When the original Keystone pipeline cut through the extreme northeast corner of Platte County and down the length of Colfax and Butler counties in 2009-10, it stirred few complaints from property owners along the route.

Area officials said this week they expect a similar reaction following the Nebraska Public Service Commissions narrow 3-2 vote to approve TransCanadas mainline alternative route for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, shifting the project east to run parallel to the original pipeline.

I had no complaints, said Mark Arps, who saw how TransCanada treated property owners from a personal standpoint and worked with the Canadian company on the job as Colfax Countys highway superintendent.

Arps wife's family owned agricultural ground along the pipeline path near Bellwood and he worked with TransCanada as construction proceeded.

They treated (my wifes family) real nice, doing exactly what they said they would do, Arps said. They kept their promises.

The highway superintendent said TransCanada tore up county roads as the pipeline was going in the ground, but the company brought in its own certified grader operators to rebuild and gravel local roads.

The pipeline infrastructure also added to property tax payments going into local coffers, Arps said.

Mondays decision by the state commission rejects TransCanada's preferred route for the Keystone XL stretching across the outskirts of several area communities to the west of Columbus, including Albion, St. Edward, Genoa, Fullerton, Silver Creek and Stromsburg.

The Lincoln Journal Star reported that TransCanada didn't immediately say whether it will pursue Keystone XL construction along the alternate route through Platte, Colfax and Butler counties.

"As a result of today's decision, we will conduct a careful review of the Public Service Commission's ruling while assessing how the decision would impact the cost and schedule of the project," Russ Girling, the company's president and CEO, said Monday in a statement.

The alternative route would impact about 40 new landowners, mostly in Madison County, who aren't along the preferred route and don't have the original Keystone pipeline cutting through their land already, according to the Journal Star.

The alternative route to the north and east of Columbus would impact only a couple of landowners in Platte County, according to County Assessor Tom Placzek.

With the original pipeline, the assessor said, TransCanada did a good job of addressing any ag-related issues, such as the threat of environmental damage as a result of pipeline leaks.

There were no complaints from what I heard, Placzek said. They didnt impede things (crossing fields during construction) any longer than they had to and farmers were able to plant their fields.

Colfax County Commissioner Gil Wigington said the county has had pipelines running through it for years and complaints were few and far between when the original Keystone began shipping crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to Steele City in southern Nebraska.

"I hope it gets built," Wigington said of the Keystone XL.
Its admirable, in a way, that so many left-leaners are calling for Al Franken to quit the Senate.

Columnist Paul Waldman says Democrats have a good opportunity to take the high road against sexual harassment. Activist-podcaster Sally Kohn tweets, Wrong is wrong. Democrats need to show they strongly and consistently stand for womens rights. The same sentiment is echoed by progressive groups like Credo Action and Indivisible.

But lets not be hasty here.

Im warning against haste not because Franken is a Democrat; if he were to quit, Minnesotas Democratic governor would keep the seat blue anyway. Im warning against haste simply because, amidst the flood of raw info about predatory misogyny in high places, and with so much we still dont know, the allegation-and-punishment process threatens to veer out of control before weve even established a fair and balanced system of justice.

Ill explain what I mean in a moment. But first, heres Waldmans argument. He wrote on Monday that Democrats should call for Franken to resign, as penance for the two accusations lodged against him, because it would demonstrate that theyre willing to put their actions where their principles are, that they want to take this opportunity to begin really changing the culture of male supremacy ... If Democrats want to show that theyre different [from Republicans], nows their chance.

I get what he says  with one massive caveat.

Hes basically advocating unilateral disarmament. Democrats can walk the high road and set whatever noble example they want, but theres no way Republicans will follow suit. At virtually the same time that Waldman and other liberals were calling for Frankens head, Trump propagandist Kellyanne Conway was telling Fox News that Roy Moore, accused repeatedly of pedophilia, was perfectly acceptable because we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through. If self-policing Democrats stand up for morality, amoral Republicans will try to leverage that to their advantage.

In that view, Im hardly alone. Kate Harding, a feminist author and podcaster who wants Franken to stay, points out that, like it or not, we have a two-party system, and that unilateral Democratic disarmament will empower the other party: If we [compel Franken to quit] in the interest of demonstrating our partys solidarity with harassed and abused women, were only going to drain the swamp of people who, however flawed, still regularly vote to protect womens rights and freedoms. The legislative branch will remain chockablock with old, white, Republican men who regard women chiefly as sex objects and unpaid housekeepers, and well show them how staunchly Democrats oppose their misogynistic attitudes by handing them more power.

But, as mentioned earlier, Im most concerned that were at risk of losing all sense of proportion. Were at risk of ushering in an era of mandatory sentencing (Franken must go!) before we even set up a fair system of justice.

Step back from Franken and look at the big picture. Not all accused male lawmakers (the ones we know, the ones we will soon know) have erred equally. Should an isolated grope be deemed as serious as a serial pattern? Should verbal harassment warrant the same punishment as physical assault? Should accusations that involve the use of taxpayer money be treated more seriously than other accusations? Should bad behavior outside the congressional workplace be deemed as dire as bad behavior with underlings at the workplace? Should any exculpatory weight be given to testimonials from professional women who were treated with respect by the accused?

In Frankens case, he has gotten such testimonials. And neither of his two accusers were in the workplace. If he is frog-marched out of the Senate  if quitting ones seat is deemed the appropriate punishment for non-consensual kissing and groping  it surely means that all lawmakers accused of anything more severe should summarily resign. Heck, if Franken is compelled to quit, then surely Donald Trump (with 16 accusers) should do the same.

Even Waldman, whose work I admire, acknowledges that we need to make sure we dont lose our ability to make moral distinctions between different kinds of sexual misconduct, and whatever punishments we mete out are proportional and just ... A man who doles out the occasional unwanted kiss might deserve a vigorous public shaming, but still be allowed to have a career.

All the more reason to take a deep breath. We need proportion. We need just punishments that fit the alleged offenses. And rest assured, our Thanksgiving will be better than Frankens.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks.org/polman) and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com.
One of Netflix's most anticipated series has released a new trailer and it has us ready to feel bleak all over again.

Black Mirror, known for its dark setting and dystopic themes, is set to return to Netflix for a six-episode fourth series.

Each episode of British writer Charlie Brooker's renowned show features a new story, cast and setting.

The key to good parenting. pic.twitter.com/J97Ij0u9jc  Black Mirror (@blackmirror) November 24, 2017

The latest trailer is from episode two of the next series.

The episode, Arkangel, will be directed by Jodie Foster and looks set to feature more creepy mind-bending and thought-provoking scenes.

The episode deals with parenting, but without us spoiling anything you can take a look for yourself here:

The world of the episode does not look that much different to our own - apart from the fact that they inject children with needles into their brains and someone says they are 2,000 years old.

We watch a mother have a mini-panic over temporarily losing her daughter.

The same child, Sara, is seen being injected as part of a trial, most likely due to her earlier scare.

"The key to good parenting is control," the trailer posits after.

No doubt we can expect to have some interesting conversations with our Netflix viewing buddies about helicopter parenting.

Could it be mind control? Are they androids? Who knows. We can't wait.

The release date for Black Mirror series four has yet to be announced.
A British mother jailed in Iran has spoken from prison in Tehran to thank those campaigning for her release.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe addressed those attending a rally and march, including actress Emma Thompson, through a phone and loudspeaker to thank everyone for their support.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been imprisoned in Tehran since April 2016, when she was arrested at the city's airport after a holiday with her then 22-month-old daughter Gabriella.

She told the rally near her home in north London: "I'm so grateful for everybody's support and love... I am so overwhelmed and moved.

"All that is on my mind is to be back home and to be back with my family."

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of spying and seeking to overthrow the Tehran regime, and has been held in solitary confinement.

Her family has led a long-running campaign for her release, saying she is innocent and raising fears for her physical and mental health.

At the protest a tearful Thompson hit out at the "bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster" and urged the Government to do more to bring her home.

The Love Actually actress, who was suffering from pneumonia, called on Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to "get on a plane", after his suggestion earlier this month that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran exposed her to the threat of her five-year sentence being doubled.

The Oscar-winning actress said: "We are a net of compassion and love for Nazanin and her family. This is what we human beings do best, in stark contrast to the bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster.

"If I can get out of bed with pneumonia to support a horribly abused member of our community then our Foreign Secretary can get on a plane and go to Iran and deal with the problem he's so seriously exacerbated."

Thompson added: "The screw is twisting more and more and her physical and mental health is deteriorating to such a degree now that I think we are in a very urgent situation.

"I can't imagine the effect of being separated for 19 months from your child. I would have gone bonkers if that had happened to me.

"I'm just so passionate about getting her back, it's a sort of physical feeling of anguish for her."

Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq spoke to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and later said: "We discussed how we would take both our daughters to Peppa Pig World when she's released."

Mrs Zaghari-Racliffe's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said: "It is profoundly moving to see so many people here.

"I can really feel the love, and Nazanin can feel the love, and in the end that's the most important thing, that's what keeps us going."

The rally took place before a march to the Shia Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, north-west London, to hand in a "Mothers' Open Letter" asking for Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release from the Tehran prison.

An online petition calling for her to be returned to Britain has had more than 1.3 million signatures.

Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK's director, said: "Once again, it's inspiring to see so many people supporting Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family this way.

"She's been put through a deeply unfair trial and could be facing a fresh charge, so it's extremely important that the recent political focus on Zaghari-Ratcliffe's case now translates into the Iranian authorities finally releasing her."
Zimbabwe's former finance minister has testified that armed, masked men in uniform abducted him from his home during the military operation leading to the ousting of Robert Mugabe and held him for a week in an unidentified location.

His account has fuelled debate about the legality of the popular, mostly peaceful takeover by the armed forces.

The evidence of Ignatius Chombo came a day after a High Court judge, a retired general, ruled that the military's actions last week, which commanders described as a move against "criminals" around Mugabe, were legal.

While some critics said it set a dangerous precedent, the decision by Judge George Chiweshe reinforced the military's assertion that it acted within the law even though it set off events, including impeachment proceedings and street demonstrations against 93-year-old Mugabe, that ended his 37-year rule.

The joyful inauguration on Friday of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a former top aide to Mugabe, showed that most Zimbabweans were happy to have a new leader who might take steps to revive the shattered economy and grant them more freedoms.

Even so, perceptions that the abrupt political transition was constitutionally sound are important to Zimbabwe's new leadership, which must prepare for 2018 elections while it seeks to attract foreign investment.

However, Mr Chombo and two leaders of the ruling Zanu-PF party's youth league who said they were abducted by the military before being handed over days later to the police described experiences reminiscent of human rights violations that were a routine occurrence during Mugabe's rule.

The three men have been linked to a party faction loyal to Mugabe's wife, Grace, whose presidential ambitions triggered the military intervention.

"I was in the custody of armed persons who were dressed in soldiers' uniforms," said Mr Chombo, who has been charged with corruption. "I don't know where I was taken to."

He described in court how the raid in the early morning of November 15 began with two explosions, one of which shook his home.

Men entered his bedroom with AK-47 assault rifles pointed at him, his wife and his maid, then handcuffed and hustled him out of the house through a smashed living room window, blindfolding him with his own T-shirt, Mr Chombo said.

A one-hour drive to an unidentified location led to days of custody during which interrogators told him that he had performed badly in his role as a government official and ruling party leader, he said.

He said he was blindfolded most of the time and never saw his captors' faces. He was not assaulted and saw a doctor after requesting pills, but suffered lacerations during the forced exit from his home, falling several times while barefoot.

Several days ago, his captors told him to pack his things and they drove him home, he said. There, two cars with police were parked.

"They said, 'You are under arrest'," Mr Chombo said.

Defence lawyer Lovemore Madhuku said it was obvious that Mr Chombo was originally taken by state agents, probably the military, and that his constitutional rights had been violated because he was not taken to court within 48 hours of his detention.

The police arrest, he said, was designed to provide legal cover for an illegal act.

"The military must know that there is a constitution in this country," Mr Madhuku said. "There's no such thing as a military arrest."

However, state prosecutor Edmore Nyazamba said the police arrest of Mr Chombo was lawful and that there was no evidence the "armed men" who previously held him belonged to the military.

The detained youth leaders, Kudzanai Chipanga and Innocent Hamandishe, have been accused of denigrating the military. All three men are now in police custody.

AP
The landlord of a historic pub in England has described how a man "escorted from the premises" was the driver of a car which then crashed into the front door, injuring four people.

UK police were called to the Cinque Ports Arms in Kent, at 9.52pm on Friday, after the silver Vauxhall Corsa crashed into the front of the building, pushing in the door.

Owner Kevin Gibbons said that at about 9.30pm a man in his 20s was escorted from the premises before he got into a car which hit "the front of the pub, subsequently causing injuries to some of our patrons and staff".

Photo: Cinque Ports Arms/PA Wire

Mr Gibbons added: "We would like to take this opportunity to thank our staff who not only remained calm but acted in a highly professional manner to ensure that our customers and children above the pub were safely evacuated while assisting the emergency services.

"We would also like to thank the emergency services for their rapid response and the service they provided.

"We have had builders working throughout the night to make the pub structurally safe and will be carrying on with business as usual."

A Kent Police spokesman said: "A 24-year-old man from New Romney, reported to be the driver of the car, has been arrested in connection with the incident and remains in custody.

"Four other people are reported to have been injured, with three men taken to a local hospital for treatment to injuries that have not been reported to be life threatening.

"The fourth injured person did not require hospital treatment."
Several fundraisers are planned for the family of Terre Du Lac Police Officer Adam King who died in a vehicle crash Nov. 19 just after his shift ended.

Terre Du Lac Police Chief Tim Cook said there are several ways to donate to Kings family and one way is the youcaring.com page for "Officer Adam M. King's family."

They can donate that way and when you donate to that it will automatically go to an account at First State Community Bank that we set up, said Cook. People can also walk in to Belgrade State to donate, which is a savings account set up for the children and the First State Community Bank account is just a donation account to the family.

Cook said there is going to be a bake sale/toy drive for the children at the Terre Du Lac Fire House 1 located off St. Francois Road near the gas station.

It will be Sunday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and they will selling baked goods and drinks, said Cook. They will also be taking toys for the children for Christmas and monetary donations. King has an 8-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son."

Cook said the woman who organized the bake sale/toy drive had gotten locked out of her house one day and King went to help.

She had locked herself out of the house and her sons inhaler was inside, said Cook. King was able to get into the house and she was able to get her sons inhaler. So she set this up to help his family.

Cook said all donations made and sales from the bake sale will go to the family.

A Terre Du Lac police officer's wife also designed bracelets which will be sold at the event. Cook said the bracelets are end-of-watch thin blue line bracelets in Kings name and they will be selling them for $3 a piece and all the money goes to the family.

We just made a really big order of them because they were being sold right and left, said Cook. We should be getting those in soon, so if anyone wants to pre-buy them, they can. We will add them to the list if they come down and pay for them ahead of time. Otherwise they can buy them when they come in.

Cook said they can be purchased at the Terre Du Lac Police Department, Terre Du Lac Fire Department or the Terre Du Lac Association Office.

We also invited all police departments who want to show their support and respect by being in the funeral precession, said Cook. I had central dispatch send a statewide fax out to all the departments letting them know everything and the arrangements.

DeClue Funeral Home located at 301 E. High St. in Potosi is handling Kings funeral arrangements. Visitation for the public continues Saturday from 9 to 11 a.m. followed by a service at 11 a.m.

A procession will leave the funeral home and travel to Highway 21 South to Liberty Baptist Church in Belgrade. Any law enforcement officer, fire department or EMS vehicles are welcome.
A 24-year-old man is facing a slew of felony charges for illegal straw purchase of 21 guns at gun stores, almost exclusively in Bucks County. Leonard Truesdale was arraigned on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2022, on 21 counts each of making false statements on firearm purchase forms, criminal conspiracy to make false statements on firearm purchase forms and selling or transferring...
Tata Motors Nano, the cheapest car launched in recent times, is now also among models clocking lowest monthly production and sales volume (in double digits to be precise). The average daily production of just two Nano cars at the companys Sanand plant is indication enough that this vehicle is now as good as obsolete. Dealers of Tata Motors in most parts of the country have stopped placing orders for this small car in the last three-four months and the showrooms are displaying contemporary models such as Tiago, Tigor, Hexa and Nexon.
Kazakhstans national airline Air Astana is preparing for an IPO in FY19. Peter Foster, CEO, Air Astana, tells Arindam Majumder in an interview that the airline is counting on transit passengers from India to improve its business. Edited excerpts:



Air Astana is planning an IPO. What are the steps you are taking to increase its value proposition?



The intention is to do the IPO in 12 to 15 months. It will be a dual listing in Kazakhstan and London. Some of the promoters will hold onto their shares and new shares will be coming in. The existing shareholders' holding will go below the majority stake.
With the first phase of Hyderabad Metro Rail ready for inauguration on November 28, construction major Larsen & Toubro on Saturday said that it is ready to pitch for the second phase proposed by the Telangana government.

The 30 km stretch of the total 72-km-long project is ready for launch by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 28. The remaining stretch of the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) project is expected to be commissioned by the end of next year.

Telangana Urban Development Minister K T Rama Rao on Saturday said the government had started talks for expanding the metro. He told reporters that he will be visiting Japan in January next year to hold talks with Japan International Cooperative Agency (JICA).

Shivanand Nimbargi, MD & CEO, L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad (LTMRHL) said they would definitely look at the second phase.

"Phase two will be taken up by the government. They are doing pre-feasibility studies. As and when the government finalises the alignment and how the bid should be, we will definitely look at it. We would like to participate in it," he said.

He said since L&T was already here, it would definitely look at the second phase. The company is already helping the government in pre-feasibility studies with its technical inputs.

"We are in the initial stage. We are doing studies and exploring different possibilities and financial opportunities including JICA," said N V S Reddy, Managing Director, Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR).

Reddy, along with two other top government officials, recently visited Japan to hold preliminary talks with JICA.

The state government said last week that it is considering a new proposal where 60 per cent of the cost for the metro project can be met through external loans while the Centre and the state governments can bear 20 per cent cost each.

Under the second phase, the government proposes to expand metro up to Hyderabad Airport and connect the city to neighbouring towns.

Meanwhile, a 30-km stretch from Nagole to Miyapur is all set for the inauguration. The original construction period for the elevated metro ended in July this year but the project could not be completed due to various reasons and the developer was granted a 17-month extension.

The entire project, barring 5-km stretch in the Old City and about 1 km stretch between Hitec city and Raidurg, is now likely to completed by the end of 2018.

Billed as the world's biggest metro rail project in PPP, it was taken up in 2012 at a cost of Rs 14,132 crore.

Both the minister and L&T officials, while confirming the cost overruns, declined to give a figure or comment further, saying they were trying to solve the issue through talks.

"There have been cost-escalation issues which have been requested.A We are in discussion. As and when we have to disclose, we will disclose," said Nimbargi.
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American technology and engineering company Emerson sees Indian firms lagging behind the technology curve if they continue to follow the lowest bid criteria for awarding contracts. The company has executed projects for Reliance Industries as well as national oil .
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Having reached the 80 per cent capacity utilisation mark, tyremakers are planning to invest Rs 35,000 crore in greenfield and brownfield projects to expand capacity. The manufacturers also anticipate double-digit growth from FY19  against single-digit growth this year  driven by domestic and export demand.
Seeking to exploit a crude meme tweeted by the Congress mocking the Prime Minister's 'chaiwala' past, BJP leaders, including Arun Jaitley and Amit Shah, will listen to PM's radio talk 'Mann ki Baat' while having tea with people across poll-bound Gujarat on Saturday.

The event, to be held at all 50,128 polling booths in 182 Assembly seats, is named 'Mann ki Baat - Chai Ke Saath'.

While BJP chief Amit Shah will attend the program in the Dariyapur constituency in Ahmedabad, the Union finance minister will have tea with people at a booth in Adajan area of the Surat-West seat, said a party release.

Other party leaders who would join the program at various places are Union ministers Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Uma Bharti, Smriti Irani, Jual Oram, Parshottam Rupala, state BJP president Jitu Vaghani, chief minister Vijay Rupani and several Gujarat ministers, MLAs and MPs.

The event is being organised ahead of Narendra Modi's tour of Gujarat on November 27 and 29, during which he will address eight rallies in Saurashtra and south Gujarat which would be going to polls on December 9.

Referring to the meme mocking Modi over his tea-seller background, tweeted by the Youth Congress, state BJP in-charge Bhupender Yadav on November 23 had announced this event.

The Twitter handle of the Youth Congress's magazine "Yuva Desh" kicked up a row with the tweet which was seen to be mocking Modi's humble past and English skills. Soon after, the Youth Congress apologised and removed the tweet.

Chief minister Rupani had dubbed the tweet as "blatantly classist and anti-poor".

Ahead of 2014 Lok Sabha polls, senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar had said that Modi, a former tea-seller, could never become prime minister.

The BJP leveraged the remark to launch Modi's 'chai pe charcha' sessions as part of the election campaign.
The death toll in in Maharashtra rose to four from one on Saturday.

A three-storey residential building collapsed on Friday morning in Bhiwandi in Thane district.

Many people were injured, while several others feared to be trapped inside the debris.

The 'Tahir Biznor' building, situated in Navi Basti area, was unauthorised, a district official said.



The building collapsed around 9 am on Friday morning, Regional Disaster Management Cell chief Santosh Kadam said.



The deceased were identified as Ruksar Yakub Khan (18), Asfaque Mustaque Khan (38) and Jaibunissa Rafique Ansari (61).



The nine injured, including a six-year-old boy, have been admitted to the state-run Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital and the civic hospital here, District Disaster Management Control officer Asmita Nikam said.



The Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams were rushed to the spot, along with fire-brigade teams from Bhiwandi, Thane, Navi Mumbai and Kalyan civic bodies.



Bhiwandi Tehsildar Shashikant Gaikwad, who was supervising the rescue operations, told PTI that the building, over 10 years old, was not on the list of dangerous buildings.



At least eight families lived in it, the officials said.



The officials said the possibility of some more people being trapped under the debris cannot be ruled out yet.




Pakistan has justified the release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, claiming that Islamabad was committed to the implementation of UNSC sanctions regime on terrorists.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder, who has a $10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan yesterday.

He is a UN and US-designated terrorist.

India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Saeed's release confirmed once again the lack of seriousness by the Pakistan government in bringing to justice perpetrators of terrorism, including individuals and entities designated by the UN.

"It also appears to be an attempt by the Pakistani system to mainstream proscribed terrorists. Pakistan has not changed its policy of shielding and supporting non-state actors and its true face is visible for all to see," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in New Delhi on Thursday.

Responding to the comments made by the MEA, Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan was committed to the implementation of UNSC 1267 sanctions regime and has taken several steps in this regard.

"The (MEA) spokesperson took exception to self-serving insinuations," he said in a statement issued late last night.

Faisal said that courts in Pakistan, pursuant to their constitutional duty, were determined to uphold rule of law and due process for all citizens of Pakistan.

Legal processes were anchored in rule of law, not dictates of politics and posturing, he said.

"It is in the interest of all States to speak and act in a manner that is consistent with the imperatives of adhering to rule of law at the and international levels," Faisal said.

He said that Pakistan's resolve, actions and successes in the fight against terrorism, terrorist violence and terrorists are unmatched in the world.

"Pakistan condemns and opposes all forms of terrorism by any individual or group," the FO spokesperson said.

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The fire-brand cleric's release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

Saeed was individually designated by the UN under the Security Council Resolution 1267 in December 2008.
A police officer, who was part of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case probe, and his two family members, have been booked on the charge of abetment to suicide after a woman allegedly hanged herself in suburban Mulund and named him in the suicide note, an official said today.

The 44-year-old woman, Riya Palande, had allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself from a ceiling fan at her residence in Mulund East on November 23. Palande, a widow, was living with her two children and used to run a grocery store, police said.

"During the investigation, sleuths of Navghar police station found a message written on the wall, which said that she was committing suicide due to harassment by ACP Damodar Choudhary. The message also said that a detailed suicide note was kept in her grocery store," an official said.

A police team went to her grocery shop, from where they recovered a note, which mentioned the names of Choudhary, his wife and daughter, the official said.

"On the basis of the suicide note, Navghar police registered a case of abetment to suicide against Choudhary and his two family members," he said.

Choudhary was among the policemen, who probed the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case. He has also been appreciated by his seniors for his work, he said.

Choudhary is currently posted as a senior inspector in the Local Arms division in Andheri.

"As the names of the officer and his family members name were found written in the suicide note, we registered an offence of abetment to suicide against them," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone-7), Akhilesh Singh, said.

"We are investigating the exact reason behind the woman's suicide and the officer's role in it. We will take necessary legal action in this case," Singh said.
As a young doctor committed to serving the needy, she used to visit slums in Lucknow with suggestions and advice to inhabitants on how to safeguard their health. Despite telling a woman repeatedly not to drink water from a contaminated source, and seeing the woman ignore her advice before her very eyes, the young doctor asked why? Irritated, the unlettered woman replied: who are you to advice? The collector?



The doctor was quiet, but resolved to answer the question. She cleared the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) examination in 2009, becoming an officer in the Chhattisgarh cadre. The doctor-turned-bureaucrat, Priyanka Shukla is now serving as district collector in Jashpur district. As a district collector, she is using her authority to enable young people, especially students, to dream big.
At least 305 people were killed and 109 others injured in a gory terror attack on a mosque in Egypt's northern Sinai region on Friday, reported state media, making it one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the countrys modern history.
Haryana has been put on alert and the state government has sought 25 companies of paramilitary forces in view of the proposed rallies of a Jat body and a BJP MP tomorrow.

The Haryana Police said that "adequate" number of security personnel have been deployed in almost 13 districts of the state to maintain law and order, and claimed that the situation was "peaceful and under control".

Kurukshetra MP Raj Kumar Saini, who has been opposing reservations for Jats, would be holding a "Samaanta Maha Sammelan" in Jind while the All India Jat Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti's chief Yashpal Malik would take out a rally at Jassia village in Rohtak district on November 26.

"The situation is peaceful and under control," Haryana Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Muhammad Akil told PTI this evening.

"We have deployed adequate forces in 12 to 13 districts of Haryana," he said without specifying the number of security personnel.

The state has also sought 25 companies of paramilitary forces from the Centre in view of the two rallies being organised in Rohtak and Jind districts, the officer said.

However, the paramilitary forces are yet arrive, he said.

Inspector General of Police (IGP), Rohtak Range, Navdeep Virk said that as many as 3,500 security personnel have been deployed in Rohtak.

Deputy Commissioner (DC), Rohtak, Yash Garg said, "Prohibitory orders banning carrying of arms, weapons or lathis has been issued."



Besides, routes have been diverted at several points so that those participating in the rally at Jassia village would not have to pass through the city, he said.

"As many as 19 police check posts have been set up while 38 duty magistrates have also been deployed in the district," the officer said.

DC, Jind, Amit Khatri said that the district administration and the police are on alert and adequate security forces have been deployed.

"Hisar Range IGP is also camping in the district," he said, adding that no prohibitory orders have been issued.

Yesterday, a group of Jats, who had been opposing Saini's rally, had clashed with police in Jind and had blocked the Jind-Chandigarh highway.

The police had to use a mild lathi charge to disperse the protesters and clear the highway.

The Haryana government had yesterday suspended mobile internet services at 13 places in the state for the next three days, apprehending breach of peace and law and order problem because of the rallies.

Mobile internet, SMS and dongle services provided by cellphone networks, except voice calls, would remain suspended for the next three days, till November 26 midnight, in Jind, Hansi, Bhiwani, Hisar, Fatehabad, Karnal, Panipat, Kaithal, Rohtak, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Bhiwani and Charkhi Dadri districts.

(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.)
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Congress Vice-President on Saturday took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Pakistan released 2008 Mumbai attacks mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest, saying that the former's 'Hugplomacy' with US President Donald Trump failed.



Gandhi took to Twitter and said "more hugs were urgently needed" between PM Modi and Trump.

Narendrabhai,   . Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed.https://t.co/U8Bg2vlZqw  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 25, 2017

Earlier on November 24, Saeed was released from house arrest in Lahore.

Police guards were removed from his residence where a large number of supporters gathered to celebrate the end of his house arrest.

In his first address after being released, Saeed blames India and the US for detention and raked up Kashmir.



ALSO READ: Hafiz Saeed calls Nawaz Sharif a traitor for seeking peace with India



Saeed is said to be the head of the US-designated terror outfit, Lashkar-e-Taiba and had been under house arrest since January 31 this year.

The decision to put Saeed under house arrest in January was seen as a response to actions by US President Donald Trump's White House against nations deemed linked to terrorism.

He has been declared a global terrorist by the United Nations and the US for his role in the Mumbai attack which claimed the lives of 166 people and maimed over 300 others.

He has a $10 million bounty on his head.

(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.)
Admiral Sunil Lanba will embark on a three-day visit to Bangladesh tomorrow for a multilateral naval exercise being held under a regional maritime forum set up by India's initiative.

His visit was also aimed at consolidating bilateral naval relations and to explore new avenues for maritime cooperation, the defence ministry said.

It said Indian naval ships Ranvir, Sahyadri, Gharial and Sukanya along with one maritime patrol aircraft P-8I will take part in the International Multilateral Maritime Search and Rescue Exercise (IMMSAREX) which will be inaugurated by Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday in the port city of Cox's Bazar.

The exercise is taking place under the aegis of Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) -- an initiative of the Indian Navy that was launched in 2008 to bring together littoral states in the region.

The IONS has now grown into a formidable organisation comprising 23 member nations and nine observer countries.

The ministry said apart from the exercise, an 'Extraordinary Conclave of Chiefs (ECoC)' meeting of IONS was scheduled on November 28 which will also be attended by Admiral Lanba.

The meeting was expected to review the progress made by three IONS Working Groups on maritime security information exchange, interoperability and humanitarian assistance.

Lanba will also hold bilateral discussions with Chief of the Naval Staff of Bangladesh Navy on Monday and several other navy chiefs of other participating countries.

The defence ministry said Lanba would also be gifting 'War Memorabilia' for the 'Liberation War Museum' of Bangladesh.
There have been great strides and many important victories in the fight against HIV. Scientific innovations and sustained investment have been the most important weapons in this ongoing battle.
The Kipembawe Division is hidden in the southern highlands of south-west Tanzania, a long seven-hour drive north from the city of Mbeya. The scenery is stunning, yet when you look closer you can see that plants dominate agricultural areas, and the sound of trees being felled is a constant background noise.
Amid the Padmavati row, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said today that giving violent threats and announcing rewards for physical harm was not acceptable in a democracy.

Not directly referring to the controversy, but films and art in general, he warned against undermining the rule of law in the country.

Naidu, at a literary festival here, said there is now a new problem over some films where people feel that they have hurt the sentiments of some religions or communities and that has led to protests.

He said while protesting, some people go overboard and announce rewards.

"Whether these fellows have that much money or not, I doubt. Everyone is announcing Rs one crore reward. Is it so easy to have Rs one crore?



"This is not acceptable in a democracy. You have the right to protest in a democratic manner, go to the appropriate authorities...you cannot physically obstruct and can't give violent threats. Let us not undermine the rule of law," he said.

Stressing that he was not talking about a particular film but in general, Naidu read out names of previously banned films like Haram Hawa, Kissa Kursi Ka and Aandhi.

His remarks, however, assume significance as they come amid protests by many groups against Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed Padmavati, alleging that the movie distorts history.

Historians are divided on whether Rani Padmavati even existed.

Some leaders and groups have also reportedly announced a bounty for beheading Bhansali and the female lead Deepika Padukone.

"You have no right to take laws into your own hands. At the same time, you don't have the right to hurt the sentiments of others", Naidu said.

The vice president also warned against selective condemnation and said it was wrong to link it to religion.

He said there was a difference between religion and culture. While religion was a way of worship, culture was a way of life, he said.

(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.)
Where is it written that is Pakistan's, questioned Occupied (PoK) leader Tauqeer Gilani on Saturday.

He said that there is no agreement that says that the PoK is a part .

"Where is it written that is Pakistan's? No agreement says so. This is nonsense and is a propaganda by Muslim Conference and their paid stooges. Even on our bathroom doors they have written 'Kashmir banega Pakistan' (Kashmir will become Pakistan)," Gilani said.

He said that there is a limit of nonsense.

There is a limit of nonsense. On television, they (Pakistanis) term us treacherous. But, we purchase Pakistani salt Rs 20 per kilogram, which no one other buys. Even you (Pakistanis) drink our water," Gilani asserted.

He also said that Pakistan's terror agencies masterminded the murder of senior Kashmiri separatist leaders.

" was behind killing of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Sajjad Lone's fathers," Gilani said.

Mirwaiz Farooq, father of the present chairman of moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, was shot dead at his residence on May 21, 1990, while Abdul Gani Lone was gunned down during a commemorative rally for the senior Mirwaiz on May 21, 2002.

India has been bearing the brunt of Pakistan sponsored terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir since over three decades.
With rising onion prices becoming a recurring problem in many parts of the country, including the national capital, the Delhi government is believed to have suggested constituting a price stabilisation fund (PSF), which would enable it to purchase onions from neighbouring areas and retail in the Capital in times of shortage. A proposal to this effect was discussed at a meeting between the Centre and state officials some weeks ago.
India's ability to stand up to China has increased but New Delhi remains "much more vulnerable than her powerful neighbour", says a new book.

"While it may be safe to assume that China does not seek an escalation or a wider conflict (with India), the fact is that it holds more cards than India," says Arun Bhatnagar in his book "India: Shedding the Past, Embracing the Future 1906-2017" (Konark Publishers).

"The long-term strategy or goals that the Chinese wish to advance by taking an uncompromising position are to restrict India's influence globally and to curb its emergence as a pre-eminent power in South Asia," says Bhatnagar, a retired civil servant with close to four decades of experience who was also associated with the National Advisory Council in 2004-08.

"The stakes are very high for India," adds the 264-page book, an overview of Indian history from the early 20th century to now.

"As of now, the net result is that India-China relationship, carefully constructed, despite the odds, in the last three decades is disintegrating and this too in a very short period of time," the book says.

Bhatnagar also says that China's growing influence in South Asia amounts to creating a web of strategic alliances with India's neighbours, eclipsing New Delhi's influence in the region. "There can be no underestimation of the Chinese threat."

The author warns that the days of India viewing Bhutan as a "protectorate" were over. "India's Big-Brother demeanour has not helped, either with Bhutan or Nepal, or elsewhere."

The book adds: "The fact is that India lacks a coherent and consistent policy vis-a-vis Pakistan and the Pakistan Army continues to take advantage of the situation."

The author adds that although a major plank on which Narendra Modi won the 2014 Lok Sabha election was the promise to defeat Pakistan's proxy war, "a blow-hot-blow-cold approach suggests that a coherent strategy has yet to be put in place".

On the domestic front, Bhatnagar says that India cannot achieve its development goals if it was trapped in the morass of communal conflicts and ethnic strife.

"However, the biggest cause of worry should be that the government continues to be in denial mode of the actual state of the economy and often opts for diversionary action such as the setting up of yet another Economic Advisory Council.

"This denial is extremely dangerous since the first step to resolving a problem is to acknowledge that it exists.

"In the fourth year of its term, the NDA-II faces a major crisis which has emerged not from issues like Pakistan and terrorism that dominate the headlines, but from the vital issue of the middle-class standards of living and its expectations.

"Global fuel prices are much lower than they were during the UPA, but the benefit of the drop in prices has not been passed on to the consumer.

"The situation is critical enough to force the preparation of a stimulus package, even at the risk of increasing the fiscal deficit," says Bhatnagar, grandson of eminent scientist and educationist Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar.

The views expressed are solely of the author.

It does not voice Business Standard's stand on the issue
Indian have started mining data on customers smartphones for fast loan approval, testing out cutting-edge but controversial technology in what is potentially a huge market for such products.
Thanks to Donald Trump and Alabama judge Roy Moore, men in power nationwide suddenly find themselves besieged by accusations of sexual misconduct including rape and **********. No one should be surprised. The same year Assistant District Attorney Roy Moore was reportedly forcing himself on 16-year-old Beverly Nelson, a book-length psychiatric study revealed in detail the abusive sexual habits of men in power, especially those in politics. Theres no reason to think men in power are any different today than they were back then, in 1977.



Heres what the study found:



Many politicians have an exaggerated drive for sexual dominance. To compensate, they are much more likely than ordinary men to visit prostitutes, and to do so much more often, averaging 2 or 3 times per week. This reflects a psychic structure which generates extreme sexual needs that seem to be basic to the power drive itself.



Furthermore, few politicians visit prostitutes for straight sex: the vast majority of them are seeking kinky sex, which the 1977 study defined to include exhibitionism, voyeurism, cross-dressing, fetishism, threesomes, golden showers, humiliation, bondage, and flagellation. By far the most common service politicians demand from call girls is to be beaten, the study reported. Most politicians prefer sex that is sadomasochistic in nature, involving bondage, discipline, humiliation and pain. As one prostitute reported, Sometimes it is hard to think of things that will hurt them badly enough to keep them happy. The study offered an elaborate Freudian explanation for this weird behavior.



A Sexual Profile of Men in Power



The study, A Sexual Profile of Men in Power, was carried out over a seven-year period by Sam Janus, Ph.D., and Barbara Bess, M.D., both at that time members of the psychiatry faculty of New York Medical College. Between 1969 and 1976 they conducted lengthy and repeated interviews with 80 sex workers (68 elite call girls and 12 madams), gathering reports about 7,645 johns or clients, 60% of whom were politicians. In addition, they conducted another 300 hours of interviews with 10 legislative aides, 10 secretaries, and 10 research assistants on Capitol Hill in Washington or in state legislatures. {pg. xviii} When gathering data on politicians specific sexual preferences, each story was confirmed in detail by at least two other unrelated sources.



The published report is based on data from 773,920 separate visits to prostitutes by judges, mayors, governors, congressmen, senators, district attorneys, assistant district attorneys, city councilmen, and aldermen, but the statistical analysis was limited to members of the U.S. Congress.



The study concluded that politicians are motivated simultaneously by the highest ideals, and by the most primitive need to prove their mightiness by imposing their will on others. The politician presents a clinical picture of an obsessive striving for power and control, to which he has subordinated every other aspect of life and sacrificed all human relationships.



An insatiable need to control and dominate



Politicians  at least the ones who visit prostitutes  are narcissistically vain and are compulsive risk takers because the arrogance of power wraps these men in an illusion of invulnerability. In addition, they are incapable of publicly admitting to error. The politician needs to win not only for the intoxication of victory in a hard-fought battle, but because he has a compelling drive to dominate. It is very common among men who reach high office to speak of themselves as singled out by a supernatural agency to fulfill the will of God, the study noted. Some of those who stay in office long enough to gain seniority, and thus unusual power, have virtually abnegated their humanity in the relentless, all-consuming, and insatiable need to control and dominate.



Once he reaches a position of power, an elected official gains many privileges which are denied the lower and middle classes but traditionally have been enjoyed by the aristocracy. He quickly becomes accustomed to the privileges of the class he now belongs to, and begins to take it for granted that if he wants them, women will be made available to him to use pretty much as he pleases.



Sex lubricates the wheels of legislation



The multitude of lobbyists and influence peddlers who understand very well that sex is the emollient which lubricates the wheels of legislation also see to it that these gatherings [receptions, business lunches, cocktail parties, and official dinners] always include a generous sprinkling of compliant single girls, professional prostitutes, or secretaries and aides who have retained a semi-amateur status. So, Very soon [the politician] comes to regard access to quantities of available young women as one of the many fringe benefits that naturally accompany his exalted position.



The most notorious womanizers are the most hostile to women



Many men in power are deeply conflicted in their feelings toward women. On the one hand, they want to dominate, use, and abuse them; on the other hand, they want them held sacred on a pedestal. The study examined the voting records of 48 men in Congress who have wide reputations as womanizers, finding that  far more than the average politician  they are hostile to women. Ninety-two percent of notorious womanizers opposed abortion, expressing a strongly punitive attitude toward womens sexuality. The most notorious womanizers, not to say whoremongers, are the most narrowly repressive, the study found.



The study reported some pretty bizarre behavior among men in Congress: one politician has a woman come to his office and torture him while he makes business phone calls. And: the chairman of a committee of the United States Senate regularly has himself bound against a wall and subjected to mock crucifixion. And: Another senator has to have surgery performed on him with kitchen knives. (These men are trying to convince themselves how much stronger they are than ordinary humans.) Most bizarre of all, one congressman asked a prostitute to kill a cat, skin it in front of him, and let the blood drip all over his body. She refused.



In 1977, the authors wrote, We were totally unprepared for the startling results of their study. Today, on the other hand, no one should be surprised when politicians  and other men in power  assume they have a right to use and abuse women. Power itself drives men to take advantage of subordinates, and the urges for power and sexual dominance are inseparable.



What is to be done?



The saving grace in all this will be the rise of many more women into positions of countervailing power. In 1976-77 there were only 18 women (3%) serving in Congress; presently there are 105, which is 20%. Thanks to reports of sexual abuse by President Trump, former President William Clinton, Alabama Judge Roy Moore, and many other prominent politicians, aggressive nationwide campaigns are now under way to increase female representation at all levels of government. As these campaigns coordinate and come together, they will surely succeed. Slowly the abuse of women, at least in Congress, will likely diminish. Until then constant vigilance and zero silence are in order. If we abandon our illusions about men in power and act accordingly, we can avoid many future unpleasant surprises.
Admiral Sunil Lanba, PVSM, AVSM, ADC, Chief of the Naval Staff, Indian Navy is visiting Bangladesh on an invitation of Bangladesh for participation in International Multilateral Maritime Search and Rescue Exercise (IMMSAREX) being held at Bangladesh from 26 to 28 November 2017 under the aegis of Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS). .

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IONS, an initiative which was started by Indian Navy in 2008, has grown into a formidable organisation with 23 Member nations and Nine observer countries. Continuing with the active engagement within IONS, Bangladesh, the current Chair of IONS is conducting the first ever operational exercise called IMMSAREX, under the IONS Charter. The exercise will be inaugurated by Honble Prime Minister of Bangladesh on 27 November 2017 in Cox Bazar, Bangladesh. Indian Naval Ships Ranvir, Sahyadri, Gharial and Sukanya along with one Maritime Patrol Aircraft P-8I will be participating in the exercise. In-addition to the conduct of the exercise, an Extraordinary Conclave of Chiefs (ECoC) meeting of IONS is also scheduled on 28 November 2017, at Cox Bazar, which would also be attended by the Chiefs of the Navy. The ECoC would deliberate upon activities being undertaken by IONS in-addition to reviewing the progress made by three IONS Working Group (IWG) namely HADR, Maritime Security & Information Exchange and Interoperability. .

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The visit is also aimed at consolidating bilateral naval relations between India and Bangladesh and to explore new avenues for naval cooperation. Admiral Sunil Lanba will also hold bilateral discussions with Chief of the Naval Staff, Bangladesh Navy on 27 November 2017, and other participating Chiefs of Navy/ Head of Maritime Agencies. .

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Indian Navy regularly interacts with Bangladesh Navy through the medium of Staff Talks and other interactions, which include operational interactions including Port Visits, Passage Exercises, Training, Shipbuilding Cooperation besides regular participation by Indian Navy serving and retired officers in Victory Day Celebrations, held in Bangladesh to commemorate Liberation War of 1971. .

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The CNS during his visit to Bangladesh would also be gifting War Memorabilia for Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh. .

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Fruits of economic development must reach poorest of the poor: Vice President Inaugurates All India Gandhian Constructive Workers Conference

The Vice President of India has said that the fruits of economic development must reach every section, particularly the poorest of the poor. He was addressing the gathering after inaugurating All India Gandhian Constructive Workers Conference organized by Harijan Sevak Sangh in Gandhi Ashram, here today. The President of Parmarth Niketan, Rishikesh, Swami Chidandand Saraswati and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

The Vice President said that we are all privileged that Gandhiji himself framed the constitution, rules and regulations of Harijan Sevak Sangh, which was founded in 1932. He further said that this organization had rendered yeoman services in promoting education among the downtrodden and in fighting against social evils like untouchability. The divisive walls erected in the minds of the people in the name of caste, religion or social hierarchy will have to be removed, he added.

The Vice President said that New India, which we are envisaging to build, has to be free of poverty with equitable distribution of wealth and prosperity. He further said that it has to be free from gender-based discrimination, atrocities on women and weaker sections, corruption, religious extremism, terrorism and regionalism. It has to be a country of people with strong ethical and moral values, who believe in One Country and One People, irrespective of religion, he added.

The Vice President said that with about 65 per cent of the Indian population under 35 years of age, India is on the cusp of a big a transformation and the skills and the talents of the educated youth will have to be fully tapped for development of the country.

Following is the text of Vice President's address :

"I am extremely delighted to inaugurate the two-day All India Gandhian Constructive Workers Conference and also the Mahatma Gandhi Yoga Center.

In fact, I deem it a huge honor to be associated with this great voluntary organization, which was founded by the Father of the Nation with the objective of eradicating untouchability and uplifting the poor and downtrodden. We are all privileged that Gandhiji himself framed the constitution, rules and regulations of Harijan Sevak Sangh, which was founded in 1932.

Since its inception, this organization had rendered yeoman services in promoting education among the downtrodden and in fighting against social evils like untouchability. Friends, it is a matter of grave concern that even 70 years after Independence and in spite of concerted efforts by the governments and voluntary bodies like yours, we come across instances of the evil practice of untouchability now and then in different parts of the country.

This is not acceptable and cannot be tolerated.

It is most paradoxical that as India marches ahead as one of the fastest growing large economies of the world, social evils like casteism, communalism and corruption are still prevalent and negatively impacting the social fabric of the country. These three cankers affecting Indias growth narrative have to be destroyed. Measures taken to promote social inclusiveness like implementation of 25 per cent seats for the poor in private schools will have to be strictly implemented.

Friends, the fruits of economic development must reach every section, particularly the poorest of the poor. While the governments will continue with their welfare programmes for the poor and the needy, every conscientious citizen of the country must try to make a difference to the lives of the underprivileged in every possible manner. The divisive walls erected in the minds of the people in the name of caste, religion or social hierarchy will have to be removed.

The New India, which we are envisaging to build, has to be free of poverty with equitable distribution of wealth and prosperity. It has to be free from gender-based discrimination, atrocities on women and weaker sections, corruption, religious extremism, terrorism and regionalism. It has to be a country of people with strong ethical and moral values, who believe in One Country and One People, irrespective of religion.

With about 65 per cent of the Indian population under 35 years of age, India is on the cusp of a big a transformation and the skills and the talents of the educated youth will have to be fully tapped for development of the country. Youth will have myriad of opportunities and they should seize them to pave the way for a brighter tomorrow for themselves and the country.

Apart from the economic reforms being undertaken to accelerate the growth and make India the most attractive global destination for investors, some electoral reforms might also have to be considered to improve governance and make it more accountable to the people.

This indeed is a timely conference and I am happy to know that all of you who have gathered here today are hugely contributing to the task of nation building.

Various programmes launched by the Harijan Sevak Sangh like running schools and hostels, a family counseling centre, a charitable dispensary and Prakritik Chikitsa Jeevan Kendra are excellent and laudable initiatives. All these will go a long way in uplifting and integrating the downtrodden members into the mainstream of the society. In fact, the statement of former President K R Narayanan that had there not been an Ashram School run by Harijan Sevak Sangh it would have been impossible for him to get school education is a huge testimony to the magnificent humanitarian work being rendered by this great organization.

Finally, I would like to conclude by appealing to various philanthropists, corporates and industries to donate liberally to enable Harijan Sevak Sangh to expand its activities in serving the needy and the poor.

JAI HIND!"
The Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh chaired the 12th meeting of the Standing Committee of Inter-State Council (ISC), here today. .

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Addressing the meeting, Shri Rajnath Singh said that a number of steps have been taken in recent years by the Central Government to promote cooperative federalism. He said that the meeting of the Inter State Council, which was held in July, 2016, happened after a gap of 10 years. Subsequent to that, meetings of the Standing Committee of the Inter-State Council are being periodically convened to lend speed and purpose to the process of harmonizing Center State relations, he said. He expressed satisfaction over the fact that the meetings of the Zonal Councils have now become regular and periodical. He also said that our effort is to see that at least one meeting of all the Zonal Councils is convened annually. He mentioned that a number of important State-to-State and Centre-State issues that are raised at these meetings find resolution. In 2015 such 82 issues were resolved and 140 issues were resolved in 2016. .

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Shri Rajnath Singh expressed satisfaction over the fact that the Inter State Council and the Standing Committee have been rejuvenated. He said that it is important for us to promote the spirit of cooperation with greater zest and zeal and expressed satisfaction over the deliberations held today in harmonious and congenial atmosphere for arriving at consensus on some complex issues that have been covered in the agenda notes. .

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The Home Minister said that Volumes-I & II were discussed during the eleventh meeting of the Standing Committee in April this year and Volumes-VI and VII will be discussed during the next meeting of the Standing Committee. Shri Rajnath Singh said that the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Punchhi Commissions report will then be placed before the Inter-State Council, headed by the Prime Minister. .

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The subjects discussed at the meeting included : Matters related to financial transfers from the Centre to the States; Goods and Services Tax; Structure and devolution of functions to local bodies; District Planning; Special provisions for Fifth and Sixth Scheduled Areas; Maintenance of communal harmony; Deployment of Central Forces; Migration issues; Police reforms; Criminal justice system and other internal security issues. The Standing Committee at its meeting considered 118 recommendations contained in Volumes-III, IV and V and finalised its recommendations. .

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The Punchhi Commission was set up by the Government under the chairmanship of Justice (Retd.) Madan Mohan Punchhi, former Chief Justice of Supreme Court of India in 2005. The Punchhi Commission submitted its report in 2010 containing 273 recommendations in 7 volumes. The 11th meeting of the Standing Committee of ISC was held on 9th April this year after a gap of 11 years and 69 recommendations of the Punchhi Commission relating to the Constitutional provisions on various subjects such as the role of Governors, the Inter-State Council, assent to bills passed by Legislative Assemblies etc. were discussed. The convening of the Standing Committee meetings twice in the same year reflects the importance attached to the promotion of harmonious Centre-State relations. .

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The meeting of the Committee was attended by the Union Ministers of Finance and Corporate Affairs Shri Arun Jaitley; Social Justice and Empowerment Shri Thaawar Chand Gehlot, the Chief Minister (CM) of Chhattisgarh Dr Raman Singh, CM Odisha Shri Naveen Patnaik, CM Rajasthan Smt Vasundhara Raje Scindia and CM Tripura Shri Manik Sarkar as members. Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for law and Justice, Shri Hardeep S Puri, Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Development were present as special invitees. States of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh were represented by their ministers. .

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Representatives of 30 Union Ministries/Departments and 7 State Governments were also present to assist the Committee in its deliberations. .

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The Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh will be leaving tomorrow on a three-day visit to Russia from 27th-29th November, 2017. .

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During his visit, the Union Home Minister will hold discussions with Mr. Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Minister for Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation and other senior Russian leadership. The discussions would cover the entire gamut of bilateral, regional and international matters of mutual interest. .

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Union Home Minister, Shri Rajnath Singh is likely to sign an Agreement on Cooperation between Ministry of Home Affairs, India and Ministry of Interior of the Russian Federation. He will also sign a Joint Action Plan between the Narcotics Control Bureau, MHA and Ministry of Interior of the Russian Federation. The signing of a comprehensive security agreement on cooperation in combating terrorism and organized crime with the Ministry of Interior of the Russian Federation would reinforce the relationship between India and Russia through exchange and sharing of information, expertise, best practices and would help in curbing terrorism and enhancing security in the region. .

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Shri Rajnath Singh will also hold meetings with Mr Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary, Security Council of the Russian Federation, Mr. Vladimir Puchkov, Minister of Civil Defence, Emergency Situations and Disaster Relief of the Russian Federation and Mr. Alexander Bortnikov, Director, Federal Security Service of Russia. He will pay a visit to the National Crisis Management Centre (EMERCOM) under the Ministry of Situations. .

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As both the countries have long history of close cooperation on matters of shared security concerns, this visit will provide an opportunity to further cement and strengthen the mutually beneficial bilateral ties between both the countries. .

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With critical national elections only months away, anxiety is building that Italy will be the next target of a destabilizing campaign of fake news and propaganda, prompting the leader of the countrys governing party to call on Facebook and other social media companies to police their platforms.
The Amazon.com founders fortune is up $2.4 billion to $100.3 billion, as the online retailers shares jumped more than 2 per cent on optimism for Black Friday sales. Online purchases for the day are up 18.4 per cent over last year, according to data from Adobe Analytics, and investors are betting the company will take an outsized share of online spending over the gifting season.
The Lahore High Court (LHC) has summoned ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz for allegedly misusing official protocol.

The court reportedly took a decision to summon Sharif and his daughter on Friday during the hearing of plea seeking to retract official protocol from the former prime minister and his family, the Express Tribune quoted the Express-News, as saying in a report.

The petition was filed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Andleeb Abbas.

On July 28, The Pakistan Supreme Court had disqualified Sharif from holding the office of prime minister and asked the National Accountability Bureau to file references against the Sharif family in connection with the corruption case against them.

The apex court also directed the trial court to decide the references within six months.

Earlier on Sunday, Sharif said that no decision of the court could separate him from the people of Pakistan.

Addressing a rally in Abbottabad, Sharif said, "The support of the [large] number of people gathered here is proof that no decision of the court could separate me and them."

He further said that the people expressed the same support for him in the 2013 general elections.

"If someone thinks I will be defeated, then they are wrong, I'm not the one who is going to be defeated here," Sharif added.

Sharif, his sons Hasan and Hussain, daughter Maryam, son-in-law Capt (retd) Mohammad Safdar and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar are facing multiple corruption references in the accountability court.
Violent protests erupted across Pakistan on Saturday after security forces launched an early-morning crackdown on thousands of religious demonstrators camped on a highway in the capital in which a policeman was killed and 200 hundred people were injured. The authorities ordered private television channels to go off the air.

Roughly 8,500 elite police and paramilitary troops in riot gear were seen throwing rocks and using slingshots in the bid to followers of the cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi of the Tehreek-e-Labaik party who began rallying near Faizabad interchange soon after dawn.

The protests had erupted after the Pakistani Parliament approved an amendment to the electoral law earlier, removing an oath public servants had to take before assuming office, reiterating their belief in Prophet Muhammad.



ALSO READ: Pakistan media blackout: TV channels go off air amid Faizabad crackdown

The amendment was deemed a "clerical error" by the government and was rectified. But the protesters still demand the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid for his alleged role in the controversy. They attacked his home in Pasrur but the minister and his family were not present at that time.

Security forces resorted to rubber-bullets after the protesters put up the resistance. The law enforcement agencies lobbed tear gas shells and used water cannons to disperse the crowd. In return, the demonstrators pelted stones on the security personnel.

Amid the furore, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal claimed that religious parties protesting in Islamabad had "contacted India", and that the government was investigating the matter.

"Why they did it, we are looking into it. They have inside information and resources that are being used against the state," he was quoted as saying by Dawn online.

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) prohibited all satellite TV channels from covering the operation at Faizabad. The authority advised media houses to ensure the safety and security of their field staff.

Social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were blocked by web browsers across the country.

Protesters broke the gate of former Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar's residence. They set the gate, a building and a mobile satellite van located near Nisar's residence ablaze.

He and his family were not at the residence at the time of the incident.

The protesters had been camping since November 8 on the main highway that connects Islamabad to the city of Rawalpindi causing huge traffic snarls that led to the closure of some schools in the capital.

The Islamabad High Court on November 18 directed the local administration to clear protesters from Faizabad, within 24 hours. However, the government did not carry out the orders and initiated several rounds of talks with the protesters to disperse them peacefully, but failed each time.

The operation on Saturday came a day after the court issued a show-cause notice for contempt of court to the Interior Minister over his failure to take steps ordered by the court to end the sit-in.

According to reports, the operation against protesters was suspended at 1.30 p.m. At least 370 protesters were taken into custody, said police officials. At least 10 motorcycles and two vehicles were torched during the operation.

Ninety police and Frontier Constabulary personnel were among 200 injured. An Islamabad police spokesman confirmed that a policeman was killed in the clash with protesters after he was struck in the head by a rock.

The crackdown also sparked protests in other parts of the country. In Karachi, people supporting the sit-in took to the streets and blocked several roads, causing disruption in traffic flow.

Clashes also erupted between supporters of sit-in and police after they burned tires and blocked roads and railway tracks in the country's eastern cities of Lahore and Daska.
fought running battles with stone-throwing Islamist activists on Saturday as they tried to clear a sit-in by religious hard-liners who have blocked the main routes into Islamabad for more than two weeks.
goober said: The tax plan that if passed will bring about the greatest economic collapse in the history of the country, that tax plan? Click to expand...

YES. That tax plan. What Goodface doesn't tell you is that the deductions he's speaking of are tax credits for children--mostly American citizen children. Illegals get to deduct $1000 per year/per child. This includes the "class" known as The Dreamers.Does anyone still believe that this tax plan will help the lower and middle classes?A married couple making less than $90,000 would be taxed at a 12 percent rate, instead of the current 15 percent. The size of their standard deduction would nearly double to $24,000. Sound good?? Keep reading.But that same couple would lose personal exemptions  deductions that largely benefit families with multiple children. The child tax credit would rise to $1,600 from $1,000  short of the $2,000 that Sullivan said would be needed to make many families whole.What about deductions? The tax plan would also repeal the deduction of substantial medical costs, including what families might spend on nursing home care. Nor could people with student loans deduct the interest paid on the debt anymore. NO deductions for mortgage interest. Or property tax. Personal and dependent exemptions of $4,050 vanishCharities lose. Better check your 401K or Roth.And the plan would cap the deduction of state and local taxes. It also would use a less generous measure of inflation, so that more middle class taxpayers would creep into a higher bracket over several years.The good news is for business owners: Partnerships, sole proprietorships, and S-corporations in the top income tax bracket.Winners: Wealthy families and their heirs, particularly those who haven't made any estate plans. Does that sound like the Trump family? Cabinet members' famlies?
In a bid to defuse the situation in Myanmar's Rakhine state where violence has triggered an outflow of Rohingya refugees, India has sent relief material consisting of 3,000 family relief packs.

"With best wishes from the people of India. Indian Air Force aircraft lands today in Yangon, Myanmar, with 3000 family relief packs consisting of daily essentials including rice, oil, salt, sugar, soap, etc. for distribution amongst the displaced persons in Rakhine state," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted on Friday evening.

More than 600,000 Rohingyas have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since violence erupted in Rakhine late in August.

The minority Rohingya community does not enjoy citizenship in Myanmar and is sparingly given refugee status in Bangladesh.

Human rights monitors accused Myanmar's military of atrocities against the minority population during its clearance operations following Rohingya militants' August 25 attacks on multiple government posts.

On Thursday, however, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Minister for the Office of the State Counsellor of Myanmar Kyaw Tint Swe signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Nay Pyi Taw for the return of these refugees.

India has maintained that the issue should be handled in a humane manner, development activities should be initiated in Rakhine and conditions should be created for the safe and secure return of the refugees to their homes.

During his visit to Myanmar in September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi shared India's concerns over the issue in a meeting with that country's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

India has also sent relief material to Bangladesh to handle the Rohingya refugee crisis.
Since August, over 600,000 Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar, have fled their homes to escape persecution. These refugees have been forced to take shelter in makeshift settlement camps in Bangladesh, where disease and malnutrition have contributed to a pervasive gap in human services. In recent weeks, as a cold front has set in around the camps, there has been increasing concern over children freezing.
The United States will cut off its supply of arms to Kurdish fighters in Syria, a move by President Donald Trump that is sure to please Turkey but further alienate Syrian Kurds who bore much of the fight against the Islamic State group.

In a phone call yesterday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump said he'd "given clear instructions" that the Kurds will receive no more weapons "and that this nonsense should have ended a long time ago," said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

The White House confirmed the move in a cryptic statement about the phone call that said Trump had informed the Turk of "pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria."



The White House called the move "consistent with our previous policy" and noted the recent fall of Raqqa, once the Islamic State group's self-declared capital but recently liberated by a largely Kurdish force. The Trump administration announced in May it would start arming the Kurds in anticipation of the fight to retake Raqqa.

"We are progressing into a stabilization phase to ensure that ISIS cannot return," the White House said, using an acronym for the extremist group.

The move could help ease strained tensions between the US and Turkey, two NATO allies that have been sharply at odds about how best to wage the fight against IS.

Turkey considers the Kurdish Syrian fighters, known by the initials YPG, to be terrorists because of their affiliation to outlawed Kurdish rebels that have waged a three-decade-long insurgency in Turkey. Yet the US chose to partner with the YPG in Syria anyway, arguing that the battle-hardened Kurds were the most effective fighting force available.

Cavusoglu, who said he was in the room with Erdogan during Trump's call, quoted the US president as saying he had given instructions to US generals and to national security adviser HR McMaster that "no weapons would be issued."



"Of course, we were very happy with this," Cavusoglu said.

Yet for the Kurds, it was the latest demoralizing blow to their hopes for greater recognition in the region. Last month, the Kurds in neighbouring Iraq saw their recent territorial gains erased by the Iraqi military, which seized the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other disputed areas from the Kurdish regional government in retaliation for a Kurdish independence referendum that the US ardently opposed.

Trump's decision appeared to catch both the Pentagon and the US State Department off guard.
The biggest in the United States will start running prime-time television commercials and full-page ads in national newspapers on Sunday  but the campaign is unlikely to spur enthusiasm for their products.
A gold industry obsessed with containing costs and minimising risks will find itself at the edge of a cliff by 2020 as supply tightens, according to one of the most profitable producers.
Major social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter were allegedly blocked in Pakistan after a police crackdown on protesters turned violent.

According to the Express Tribune, scores of people complained about inaccessibility to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter across the country as clashes between police and protesters intensified.

Earlier today, Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) warned that it would prevent live coverage of the Faizabad sit-in during a police crackdown on protesters.

Following the PEMRA order, there was a media blackout in Islamabad, where almost all leading private TV channels went off air.

"It is informed that under the Electronic Media (Programmes and Advertisements) Code of Conduct 2015, live coverage of any security operation is prohibited," the PEMRA said in a written statement.

"Therefore, all the satellite TV channel licensees are directed to exhibit utmost sensitivity on the matter and comply with Clause 8(8) of Electronic Media (Programmes and Advertisements) Code of Conduct 2015, in letter and spirit and refrain from live coverage of the ongoing operation at Faiz-e-abad, Islamabad," it added.

PEMRA has also directed law enforcement agencies to make strict security arrangements for staff present in different media outlets across country.

As per the reports, one police officer has died after sustaining head injuries while dealing with the protesters in Islamabad.

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The newly crowned Miss World, Manushi Chhillar, arrived in Mumbai in the wee hours of Sunday.

The 21-year-old model's win at the pageant comes 17 years after Priyanka Chopra won the crown in 2000.

A medical student hailing from Haryana, Chhillar competed against 108 contestants from various countries at a glittering event held at Sanya City Arena in China to grab the title.

Manushi has been showered with praise for her answer in the final round. On being asked, "Which profession deserves the highest salary and why?", she replied, "I think a mother is of the highest respect. I don't think its just about cash but love and respect she gives to someone. She is the biggest inspiration in my life. Mother should get the highest respect."

She was crowned the new queen by Miss World 2016 winner Puerto Rico's Stephanie Del Valle.

Besides Chhillar, the first runner-up was Stephanie Hill from England, while Andrea Meza, hailing from Mexico, was announced the second runner-up.

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After being named the world's richest person just over four months ago, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' has now surpassed $100 billion mark in his total net worth.

The new achievement comes on the backdrop of Black Friday sales which got Bezos' fortune swelling. It was observed that Amazon's Black Friday stock price bump pushed him over the 12 figure mark, and reportedly accounted for half of all online sales for the day.

Bezos' fortune is channelised into a number of things, such as $250 million on the Washington Post in 2013, a billion dollars a year in stock to fund rocket company Blue Origin and its rockets, and convertion of a billion dollars worth of stock into cash earlier this month, as reported by The Verge.

Earlier this year, Bezos took away the mantle of world's richest person from Microsoft founder Bill Gates and achieved the feat after a 1 per cent pop in the shares of Amazon.com, which accounts for the vast majority of his wealth.

The Forbes estimated Bezos' wealth at about $90.6 billion, compared to $90 billion for Gates.

(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.)
Earlier on Saturday, a number of reports claimed that the troops were called in Islamabad to restore peace after a police crackdown on protesters went violent, but it turns out, the army hasn't been deployed yet.

According to sources, the civilian government requested the Commander 111 Brigade directly, as per the mail that was leaked to the Pakistan media, violating the protocol. The proper channel would have been through the Chief of Army Staff General (COAS), Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Several hours later, there was no sign of any army movement in Islamabad or Rawalpindi.

A statement of Pakistan's Ministry of Interior read, ".....is pleased to authorize deployment of sufficient number of troops of Pakistan Army to be determined by the Commander 111 Brigade, in aid of civil power, to control law and order situation in Islamabad Capital Territory with effect from November 25 till further orders".

Reportedly, major social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter, have also been blocked in the country.

As per the reports, one security official died and over 200 people were injured after the law enforcement agencies clashed with a cleric's supporters, who have been camping at national highway leading to Rawalpindi.

The cleric, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, and his followers are demanding resignation of Pakistani law minister Zahid Hamid, as they saw the change in wording of an oath sworn by the lawmakers as blasphemy.

Though the change has been reversed, the protesters continue to demand Hamid's resignation.

On Saturday, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) warned that it would not cover Faizabad sit-in during a police crackdown on the protesters.

Following the PEMRA order, there was a media blackout in Islamabad, where almost all leading private TV channels went off air.

The PEMRA has also directed the law enforcement agencies to make strict security arrangements for the staff present in different media outlets across the country.

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Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said on Saturday that the decision to hike the price of Delhi Metro was taken by the fare fixation committee and neither the Delhi government nor the Central government has authority to decide.

"When fare is increased, its impact is studied by taking in account data of at least two to three months. Neither Delhi government nor the Central government has authority to decide fares of Delhi Metro, only fare fixation committee can do that," he told ANI.

According to an RTI reply, over three lakh commuters stopped taking Delhi Metro in October after the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) increased the passenger fare for the second time this year.

As part of the two phase revision of Metro fares recommended by the committee, the fare would remain Rs. 10 for the first 2 km but will subsequently increase by Rs. 10 in each slab, going up to a maximum of Rs. 60.

The metro fares were last revised in May when the minimum tariff was raised from Rs. 8 to Rs. 10.

The revised fare structure is: up to 2 km - Rs. 10, 2-5 km - Rs. 20, 5-12 km - Rs. 30, 12-21 km - Rs. 40, 21-32 km - Rs. 50 and for journeys beyond 32 km - Rs. 60.
FOCUS ON DEFENSE CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND OCEANIA
Peter Baldwin, who started as an actor and went on to become a prolific TV director, died on Sunday in Pebble Beach, California. He was 86.

Peter took his last breath at his home in Pebble Beach, California, his son, Drew Baldwin, CEO of Tubefilter and creator and executive producer of the Streamy Awards, informed, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Peter won a Primetime Emmy Award for directing 'The Wonder Years' and a Cable ACE Award for 'Dream On.'

He started his journey behind the camera in Italy when he served as an assistant director under the legendary 'Vittorio De Sica on Woman Times Seven' (1967) and 'A Place for Lovers' (1968), which he also co-wrote.

After he returned to the U.S., producer Sheldon Leonard hired him to work on The Dick Van Dyke Show starting in 1964, launching his career as a TV director.

He returned to the U.S. and was hired by 'Dick Van Dyke Show' producer Sheldon Leonard. He went on to direct hundreds of episodes of popular shows including 'The Andy Griffith Show,' 'The Partridge Family,' 'Mary Tyler Moore' and many more.

He also directed comedy feature film "Meet Wally Sparks" starring Rodney Dangerfield and produced the HBO movie "As Summers Die" starring Bette Davis, Jamie Leigh Curtis, and Scott Glenn.

After retiring to Pebble Beach, he served on the board of the Pacific Repertory Theater in Carmel-By-The-Sea.

He is survived by his wife, Terry, son Drew Baldwin (creator of the Streamy Awards), daughters Amy Anderson and Eleonora Baldwin, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

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The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Saturday lashed out at Haryana's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Suraj Pal Amu's Surpanakha statement on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, and said only cowards make such statements.

TMC leader Derek O'Brien told ANI, "Only cowards make statements like these, when they can't fight the TMC politically in Bengal."

"It's best to not even listen to these cowards. Just completely ignore them," the TMC leader added.

Taking a jibe at the BJP leader, O'brien said, "Come fight us politically."

Earlier in the day, Amu threatened Banerjee of a similar fate like Surpanakha if she continues to support Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus 'Padmavati'.

The party's chief media coordinator, Amu told ANI, "Mamata Banerjee should not forget how woman like Surpanakha was dealt by Lakshman, who chopped off her nose."

"Like Rani Padmavati, she (Mamata) is also a woman. If she cannot respect a woman, she will get the answer from the people of Bengal," added Amu.

Amu made the statement after Banerjee, at an event on Friday, welcomed the film in Bengal.

A few days back, the Bengal chief minister tweeted in support of the film, 'Padmavati', and said the controversy surrounding it to be "the calculated plan of a political party to destroy freedom of expression".

"We condemn this super emergency. All in the film industry must come together and protest in one voice," the tweet further reads.

Earlier on November 19, Amu made derogatory remarks against Bhansali, actress Deepika Padukone and actor Ranveer Singh and announced a reward of Rs 10 crore for beheading the actress.

Amid the hue and cry, the release date of the epic drama 'Padmavati' starring Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone and Shahid Kapoor has also been postponed from December 1.

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While the recent advances in quantum computers may soon give hackers access to machines powerful enough to crack even the toughest of standard internet security codes, researchers are wielding the same strange properties that drive these computers to create theoretically hack-proof forms of quantum data encryption.

And now, these quantum encryption techniques may be one step closer to wide-scale use thanks to a new system developed by scientists at Duke University, The Ohio State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Their system is capable of creating and distributing encryption codes at megabit-per-second rates, which is five to 10 times faster than existing methods and on par with current internet speeds when running several systems in parallel.

The researchers demonstrated that the technique is secure from common attacks, even in the face of equipment flaws that could open up leaks.

"We are now likely to have a functioning quantum computer that might be able to start breaking the existing cryptographic codes in the near future," said researcher Daniel Gauthier. "We really need to be thinking hard now of different techniques that we could use for trying to secure the internet."

To a hacker, our online purchases, bank transactions and medical records all look like gibberish due to ciphers called encryption keys. Personal information sent over the web is first scrambled using one of these keys, and then unscrambled by the receiver using the same key.

For this system to work, both parties must have access to the same key, and it must be kept secret. Quantum key distribution (QKD) takes advantage of one of the fundamental properties of quantum mechanics -- measuring tiny bits of matter like electrons or photons automatically changes their properties -- to exchange keys in a way that immediately alerts both parties to the existence of a security breach.

Though QKD was first theorized in 1984 and implemented shortly thereafter, the technologies to support its wide-scale use are only now coming online. Companies in Europe now sell laser-based systems for QKD, and in a highly-publicized event last summer, China used a satellite to send a quantum key to two land-based stations located 1200 km apart.

The problem with many of these systems, said another researcher Nurul Taimur Islam, is that they can only transmit keys at relatively low rates -- between tens to hundreds of kilobits per second -- which are too slow for most practical uses on the internet.

Like many QKD systems, Islam's key transmitter uses a weakened laser to encode information on individual photons of light. But they found a way to pack more information onto each photon, making their technique faster.

By adjusting the time at which the photon is released, and a property of the photon called the phase, their system can encode two bits of information per photon instead of one. This trick, paired with high-speed detectors developed by Clinton Cahall, graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, and Jungsang Kim, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke, powers their system to transmit keys five to 10 times faster than other methods.

Though their transmitter requires some specialty parts, all of the components are currently available commercially. Encryption keys encoded in photons of light can be sent over existing optical fiber lines that burrow under cities, making it relatively straightforward to integrate their transmitter and receiver into the current internet infrastructure.

The results appear online in Science Advances.

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Indian Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba is visiting Bangladesh to participate in the International Multilateral Maritime Search and Rescue Exercise (IMMSAREX), the first ever operational exercise held under the aegis of Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) in Bangladesh, from November 26 to 28.

Indian Naval Ships Ranvir, Sahyadri, Gharial and Sukanya along with one Maritime Patrol Aircraft P-8I will be participating in the exercise.

The exercise will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on November 27 in Cox Bazar, Bangladesh.

Admiral Lanba's visit is also aimed at consolidating bilateral naval relations between India and Bangladesh and to explore new avenues for naval cooperation.

In pursuance of this aim, he will also hold bilateral discussions with Chief of the Naval Staff, Bangladesh Navy on November 27, and other participating 'Chiefs of Navy/ Head of Maritime Agencies'.

In addition, an 'Extraordinary Conclave of Chiefs (ECoC)' meeting of IONS is also scheduled on November 28, at Cox Bazar, which would also be attended by the Chiefs of the Navy.

The ECoC would deliberate upon activities being undertaken by IONS in-addition to reviewing the progress made by three IONS Working Group (IWG) namely 'HADR', 'Maritime Security' and 'Information Exchange and Interoperability'.

The Navy Chief, who is visiting on the invitation of Bangladesh, will also be gifting 'War Memorabilia' for 'Liberation War Museum' of Bangladesh.

IONS is an initiative, which was started by Indian Navy in 2008.

With time, it has grown into a formidable organisation with 23 member nations and nine observer countries. Continuing with the active engagement within IONS, Bangladesh, the current Chair of IONS is conducting IMMSAREX under the IONS Charter.

Indian Navy regularly interacts with Bangladesh Navy through the medium of staff talks and other interactions, which include operational interactions such as port visits, passage exercises, training, and shipbuilding cooperation.

There is also regular participation by Indian Navy's serving and retired officers in Victory Day Celebrations, held in Bangladesh to commemorate 'Liberation War' of 1971.

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Ahead of the November 27 hearing in an alleged 'love jihad' case, Kerala woman Hadiya arrived in Delhi on Saturday to appear before the Supreme Court.

Before leaving from Kochi Airport, Hadiya told reporters, "I am a Muslim. I want to go with my husband. Nobody forced me to convert."

24-year-old Hadiya has been in the headlines after she converted to Islam following her marriage to Shafin Jahan.

Earlier, the Kerala High Court had sent her with her parents K. M. Asokan and Ponnamma, who alleged that her marriage is a case of 'love jihad', and annulled her marriage to Shafin.

The case is under the consideration of the apex court, which had ordered the Investigation Agency (NIA) to look into it.

On September 16, Jahan filed a plea in the top court and requested to call off the NIA probe, alleging that the investigation agency "is not being fair".

On October 30, the Supreme Court directed her father to produce her on the next date of hearing.

On November 21, Hadiya's father moved a fresh application in the top court seeking direction for audio and video recording of the hearing.

On November 23, the NIA submitted a status report in a sealed cover to the Supreme Court in connection with the case.

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Ahead of the November 27 hearing in Kerala's 'love jihad' case, Hadiya on Saturday left from Kochi to appear before the Supreme Court.

At the airport, Hadiya told reporters, "I am a Muslim. I want to go with my husband. Nobody forced me to convert."

The 24-year-old Hadiya has been in the headlines after she became a Muslim following her marriage to Shafin Jahan.

Earlier, the Kerala High Court had sent her with her parents K M Asokan and Ponnamma annulling her marriage with Shafin Jahan, after her parents alleged that her marriage is a case of 'love jihad'.

The case is under the consideration of the apex court, which had ordered the Investigation Agency (NIA) to look into it.

On September 16, Jahan filed a plea in the top court and requested to call off the NIA probe, alleging that the investigation agency "is not being fair".

On October 30, the Supreme Court directed her father to produce her on the next date of hearing.

On November 21, Hadiya's father moved a fresh application in the top court seeking direction for audio and video recording of the hearing.

On November 23, the NIA submitted a status report in a sealed cover to the Supreme Court in connection with the case.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled on November 27.

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Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday condemned the killing of a Territorial Army soldier Irfan Ahmed Dar at Shopian in the state.

The Chief Minister said that such heinous acts will not weaken the government's effort to restore peace in the valley.

"Strongly condemn the brutal killing of Irfan Ahmed, a brave Territorial Army soldier at Shopian. Such heinous acts will not weaken our resolve to establish peace and normalcy in the valley," she said in a tweet.

The bullet- ridden body of 23-year old jawan was found in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian on Saturday.

The locals found the body lying in pool of blood at Wothmula Nad area of Keegam, after which they informed the police.

Dar had reportedly gone on leave 10 days ago and had gone missing yesterday.

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Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday cornered Prime Minister Narendra Modi led Democratic Alliance (NDA) government over winter session of the Parliament.

The Gandhi scion said, "Generally, every year Parliament session is held in November and the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha sit for one month to discuss issues. But, this year the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha will convene after Gujarat elections."

The Modi government on Friday recommended that the winter session of Parliament be held from December 15 to January 5, with 14 sittings of both Houses during the 21-day session.The Congress has been targeting the government for deferring the winters session for the sake of Gujarat Assembly elections.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday launched scathing attack on Prime Minister Modi over the winter session.

Addressing the Congress Working Committee meeting, Gandhi said, "Modi government in arrogance has cast dark shadow on India's Parliamentary democracy by sabotaging Winter Session on flimsy grounds. The government is mistaken if it thinks by locking temple of democracy; it'll escape constitutional accountability ahead of elections."

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday lashed out at the Prime Minister and state Chief Minister Vijay Rupani over 'Gujarat model' and termed it as 'Narendra Modi marketing model'.

The 14th Gujarat Legislative Assembly election, 2017 is scheduled to be held on December 9, 2017 and December 14, 2017.

The Congress is eyeing to dethrone the BJP led Gujarat government when the results of the assembly elections are announced on December 18. The last Congress government in Gujarat was led by Chhabildas Mehta from February 17, 1994 to March 13, 1995.

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West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Mukul Roy has filed a criminal defamation case against Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee over using "defamatory statement" in the notice sent to the former by the parliamentarian.

The hearing in this matter will take place on December 1 in New Delhi's Patiala House Court.

Earlier this month, the Bhabhanipur MLA had sent legal notice to Roy after the former TMC leader, at a public rally, had said Biswa Bangla Marketing Corporation was not a government entity but a private company owned by Abhishek, the nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

The legal notice sent by Abhishek's advocate to Roy read, "On 10 November, Roy in a public rally made certain defamatory, malicious, and false statements against Banerjee. Roy had deliberately levied various baseless allegations which were published, broadcast and circulated by various news organisations."

"Roy has deliberately targeted All India Trinamool Youth Congress president which are nothing more than an attempt to malign and tarnish his reputation. The notice further states that no such paper depicting Banerjee's ownership or association with either a company 'Biswa Bangla' and 'Jago Bangla' exist," the notice further read.

Mukul Roy quit the TMC and joined the BJP on November 3.

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The Lahore High Court (LHC) has summoned the ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz for using official protocol.

The court reportedly took decision to summon Sharif and his daughter on Friday during the hearing of plea seeking to retract official protocol from the former prime minister and his family, the Express Tribune quoted Express News as saying.

The petition was filed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Andleeb Abbas.

On July 28, The Pakistan Supreme Court had disqualified Sharif to hold the office of prime minister and asked the National Accountability Bureau to file references against the Sharif family in connection corruption case against them.

The apex court also directed the trial court to decide the references within six months.

Earlier on Sunday, Sharif said that no decision of court could separate him and the people.

Addressing a rally in Abbottabad, Sharif said, "The support of the [large] number of people gathered here is a proof that no decision of the court could separate me and them."

He further said that the people expressed the same support for him in the 2013 general elections.

"If someone thinks I will be defeated, then they are wrong, I'm not the one who is going to be defeated here," Sharif added.

Sharif, his sons Hasan and Hussain, daughter Maryam, son-in-law Capt (retd.) Mohammad Safdar and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar are facing multiple corruption references in the accountability court.

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Union Minister of State (MoS) for Defence Subhash Bhamre slammed Pakistan for encouraging global terrorist Hafiz Saeed.

Bhamre's statement comes a day after Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief Saeed was released from house arrest.

Hitting out at the Pakistan, the MoS Defence said that political and military leadership of the country is weak.

"The non-state actors like Saeed are being encouraged. He was set free in the name of High Court's decision. This invited a negative reaction from all over the world. Our government also expressed concern over it," he said in a media briefing.

Bhamre also pitched for eliminating the terrorism and claimed that India is prepared to face the global threat.

"We want to maintain a peaceful relationship with our neighbours. Terrorism has become a global issue. Nothing is in the hand of the political leadership in Pakistan today," he added.

He further cornered the military leadership of the country and accused it of involving in double-speak.

"Their military leadership also speaks something else and does something else at the border. They talk good but the infiltration bid and cross-border terrorism have been increasing by the day at the border," he said.

Saeed, accused of masterminding the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, was released from house arrest after a Pakistan judicial body ordered his release.

Follwing his release, the United States called on Pakistan to ensure that the JuD chief was arrested and charged for his crimes.

(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.)
Union Minister of State (MoS) for Defence Subhash Bhamre slammed Pakistan for encouraging global terrorist Hafiz Saeed.

Bhamre's statement comes a day after Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief Saeed was released from house arrest.

Hitting out at the Pakistan, the MoS Defence said that political and military leadership of the country is weak.

"The non-state actors like Saeed are being encouraged. He was set free in the name of High Court's decision. This invited a negative reaction from all over the world. Our government also expressed concern over it," he said in a media briefing.

Bhamre also pitched for eliminating the terrorism and claimed that India is prepared to face the global threat.

"We want to maintain a peaceful relationship with our neighbours. Terrorism has become a global issue. Nothing is in the hand of the political leadership in Pakistan today," he added.

He further cornered the military leadership of the country and accused it of involving in double-speak.

"Their military leadership also speaks something else and does something else at the border. They talk good but the infiltration bid and cross border terrorism have been increasing by the day at the border," he said.

Saeed, accused of masterminding the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, was released from house arrest after a Pakistan judicial body ordered his release.

Follwing his release, the United States called on Pakistan to ensure that the JuD chief was arrested and charged for his crimes.

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In a major disclosure, the Pentagon is likely to announce that there are 2000 U.S. troops stationed in Syria, rather than the 500.

Two U.S. officials detailed the new figure, as the military acknowledges that an accounting system has under-reported the size of forces on the Syrian ground, reported the Guardian.

The number reflects a more accurate count as the official troop count in Syria currently given by the U.S. military is around 500.

The U.S. military has mostly been supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces group of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting Islamic State in the north of the country.

An accounting system, known as the Force Management Level (FML), was introduced in Iraq and Syria under the Obama administration as a way to exert control over the military.

The actual number in Iraq was not expected to be announced because of "host nation sensitivities."

But the numbers do not reflect the extent of the US commitment on the ground.

The U.S. defense secretary, Jim Mattis, has expressed frustration with the FML method of counting US troops in conflict zones, the report said.

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Rajasthan police on Saturday seized a truck loaded with explosive materials in Dholpur district.

The explosives included 12 cartons of detonators, 20 cartons of gelatin rods and 12 fuse wires, Dholpur Police Station Sub Inspector Rakesh Sharma said.

Truck driver Balla, a resident of Mathura, was arrested and sent to jail. An FIR was lodged under section 4 and 5 of the Explosive Substances Act.

The truck was heading to Gwalior, allegedly to a person called Aarif.

Further investigation is underway.

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The family of Pradyuman Thakur, who was allegedly murdered at Gurugram's Ryan International School, will be approaching the Supreme Court on Monday challenging the bail granted to the Pinto family by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

On November 21, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had granted anticipatory bail to the Pinto family, founders of the Ryan Group of Institutions, in connection with the Pradyuman murder case.

However, the High Court bench of Justice Surender Gupta has barred them from leaving the country without permission and directed the family to extend their help in the investigation.

The anticipatory bail pleas by Ryan Pinto and his parents, founding Chairman Augustine Pinto and managing director Grace Pinto, were filed on September 19.

Eight-year-old Pradyuman was found in a pool of blood with his throat slit inside Ryan International school in Gurugram on September 8.

The incident sparked a public outcry following which Gurugram police arrested Ashok, accusing him of killing the seven-year-old student.

But the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is now probing the matter, gave him a clean chit and held a class 11 student responsible for the murder.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill into law allowing Russia to register international media outlets as foreign agents.

"According to the text of the law, media that receive financial assistance from foreign states or organizations can be recognized as foreign agents, while the decision on which outlets will be classified as 'foreign agents' will be taken by the Ministry of Justice."

The move is a retaliatory response for a similar measure taken by the U.S. Department of Justice against the state-funded RT television.

Earlier, the U.S.Department of Justice had asked Kremlin-funded TV network to register its American arm as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), reported CNN.

In 1938, the Congress passed the Foreign Agent Registration Act in an effort to curb the amount of German propaganda circulating in the United States.

The amendments signed by Putin had been previously approved by both chambers of the Russian parliament.

According to the reports, the U.S. has accused RT, formerly known as Russia Today, of being a propaganda outlet for the Kremlin.

It was specifically accused of spreading false information during the 2016 presidential election.

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Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Pakistan released 2008 Mumbai attacks mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest, saying that the former's 'Hugplomacy' with US President Donald Trump failed.

Gandhi to his Twitter handle and said "more hugs were urgently needed" between PM Modi and Trump.

"Narendrabhai, ??? ???? ???. Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed (sic)," he tweeted.

Earlier on November 24, Saeed was released from house arrest in Lahore.

Police guards were removed from his residence where a large number of supporters gathered to celebrate the end of his house arrest.

In his first address after being released, Saeed blames India and the U.S. for detention and raked up Kashmir.

Saeed is said to be the head of the U.S.-designated terror outfit, Lashkar-e-Taiba and had been under house arrest since January 31 this year.

The decision to put Saeed under house arrest in January was seen as a response to actions by US President Donald Trump's White House against nations deemed linked to terrorism.

He has been declared a global terrorist by the United Nations and the US for his role in the Mumbai attack which claimed the lives of 166 people and maimed over 300 others.

He has a USD 10 million bounty on his head.

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Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh on Saturday extolled Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision of appointing Prabhari officers for 115 backward districts and said that it will accelerate the journey of realising 'New India'.

Singh took to his Twitter account and said, "PM @NarendraModi's visionary decision of appointing Prabhari officers for 115 backward districts will accelerate the journey of realising New India. This innovative blending of wisdom of senior officers with the energy of young ones shall revolutionize the way India is governed."

Senior government officials in the rank of Additional Secretary and Joint Secretary have been designated as Prabhari Officers or the in-charge to coordinate the efforts of the Centre and the states in addressing the specific developmental needs of the districts.

Yesterday, the first meeting of the Prabhari Officers was entrusted with the responsibility to co-ordinate the efforts of the Centre and the States towards rapid transformation of 115 backward districts across the country.

Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha chaired the meeting with the CEO of the NITI Aayog, Amitabh Kant. Secretaries of key ministries attended this session.

Among the 115 backward districts, 35 are affected by Left Wing Violence.

Shortly after this event, meeting of representatives of the state governments and Prabhari officers was organised to ensure that transformation of backward districts in India is carried out by a dedicated team of Central and State governments.

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An international analyst has expressed concern on the repatriation process of the Rohingya refugees saying that the absence of an international body to monitor the implementation is worrisome.

Prof. Ali Riaz of the Department of Politics and Government at Illinois State University in United States emphasised that there are many hurdles to get over before the repatriation starts.

"I'm afraid that within the period stipulated in the signed instrument Myanmar may rush and eventually engage in a small-scale symbolic repatriation to fend off international pressure," The Daily Star quoted Prof. Riaz as saying in an interview with UNB.

Bangladesh and Myanmar on Thursday signed a deal on repatriation after both the countries came to a consensus following a meeting between Foreign Minister A H Mahmood Ali and Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Bangladesh Foreign Ministry said that the Rohingya repatriation process will start soon.

"The return shall commence within two months," Bangladesh foreign ministry said in a statement, adding, "A Joint Working Group will be established within three weeks of signing the 'arrangement'."

Prof. Riaz further elaborated that "the instrument may neither ensure repatriation of all Rohingya refugees, nor allow Bangladesh to involve the international community if the process gets stalled."

More than 620,000 Rohingya have crossed the border into Bangladesh since August, running from a military crackdown that Washington termed as ethnic cleansing.

A study prepared by the New York-based Amnesty International charged the Burmese government with promoting and practicing a form of "apartheid" against the Rohingyas in Myanmar's Rakhine state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bangladesh Foreign Minister A H Mahmood Ali on Saturday said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will be involved in the repatriation process of Rohingya refugees.

"The signing of the arrangement is an initial step . there are more steps. UNHCR will be involved in the repatriation process of Rohingyas," the Dhaka Tribune quoted Ali, as saying.

More than 620,000 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh since the Myanmar security forces launched an operation in response to alleged attacks by militants on August 25 against 30 police posts and a regimental headquarters.

"Their houses have been torched . where will they stay after going back . I have talked to China and Myanmar over their rehabilitation there and they agreed to extend their cooperation," the foreign minister said.

Bangladesh and Myanmar on Thursday signed a deal on repatriation after both the countries came to a consensus following a meeting between Foreign Minister A H Mahmood Ali and Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Bangladesh Foreign Ministry said the Rohingya repatriation process will start soon.

"The return shall commence within two months," Bangladesh foreign ministry said in a statement, adding, "A Joint Working Group will be established within three weeks of signing the 'arrangement'."

The long pending talks started on Wednesday with the aim of signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enable both the countries to start the repatriation process of Rohingyas from Bangladesh to their homeland Myanmar.

There is global outrage over the distressing plight of dispossessed Rohingya in Bangladeshi camps currently.

On October 12, a United Nations' report based on interviews conducted in Bangladesh found that brutal attacks against Rohingyas in the northern Rakhine state have been well-organised, coordinated and systematic, with the intent of not only driving the population out of Myanmar, but preventing them from returning to their homes.

The Rakhine state is home to the Rohingya community of Myanmar, ethnic Muslims, who have long faced persecution in the Buddhist-majority country, especially from the extremists.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Greater Albany Public Schools is not making any promises about boosting scores on state math tests. But the district is working on several programs intended to improve overall math skills.

Superintendent Jim Golden outlined the district's efforts in a letter to former State Rep. Mae Yih, who has spoken at recent school board meetings in support of more emphasis on state assessment tests.

Yih has said she would like to see the district publicize a plan, including strategies and timelines, that would have 90 percent of Albany students passing state tests in reading and math in six years.

Math is of particular concern to Yih, who noted at a board meeting in October that only 40.1 percent of Albany students passed the state math test last year, just shy of the state average of 40.8 percent.

Some individual schools notched even lower rates: Third-graders last year at two Albany elementary schools had math passing rates of just 14 and 15 percent, respectively.

At the Nov. 20 meeting of the Albany School Board, Yih introduced Professor Ren Guo of Corvallis, who teaches math at Oregon State University. Guo echoed Yih's concerns and said he believes a school district "shirks the responsibility of education" if it doesn't adopt a goal of high academic achievement, particularly in math.

Gabriele Huycke, John Hebda, Tom Cordier and Bruce Madsen also spoke in support of more emphasis on rigorous academics. Cordier and Hebda in particular said they believe local employers should know what students have achieved, because effective reading, writing and figuring play huge roles in the workplace.

In his Nov. 20 letter to Yih, which Golden read aloud at the board meeting, he stressed the school district has every intention of improving student outcomes in math, although he did not specifically cite extra emphasis on state assessment tests.

Golden has said in the past he has little faith in the current tests, known as Smarter Balanced, or SBAC. Instead, he said, the district is working on a new, five-year strategic plan to increase efficiency and effectiveness in several areas. That plan is to be approved by June 2018.

The district has identified five "pillars" that research suggests are critical for school improvement. One is the expectation that all students will graduate from high school and go on to successful placements, whether that's a four-year university, a two-year community college, a trade school or service in the military.

"As part of this global academic goal, I am working closely with Oregon State University and Linn-Benton Community College to insure that our students have the necessary skills to be successful in these settings," he wrote.

The district also is setting specific benchmark goals for "developmentally appropriate milestones," such as making sure all students are reading at grade level by third grade, and all students are ready to take algebra by eighth grade.

Golden said the district also is working on a program that trains instructors in teaching math.

"As you may know, math is another form of language and we are focused on having teachers trained in understanding how students learn math," he wrote.

And, he added: "Finally, we are developing classroom norms and relationships to support a math culture of effort and growth. We believe that math is an essential part of every students' education and that all students can learn math and show growth over time."

The district's five pillars do not specifically cite high academic achievement and character development as necessary to a successful post-high-school placement, which has been a source of contention for Yih.

Speakers at the meeting did not call out teachers for poor test results. But Sue McGrory, president of the Greater Albany Education Association, also spoke at the Nov. 20 meeting, saying residents should rethink their beliefs if any are convinced teachers are solely responsible for lagging scores.

Class sizes have exploded in the past decade, she said. Teachers have increasing numbers of students with dangerous behavior issues. Costs have risen exponentially. Common Core standards for SBAC tests were adopted before teaching strategies were in place to address them.

And, she said, SBAC tests can't be fairly compared to their predecessors, which were multiple-choice exams that could be taken multiple times. The SBACs themselves are comparable to four-hour "research papers," she said, and are given only once.

McGrory encouraged the speakers to work with the district on providing social services to children, particularly mental health, and to spend time in classrooms to get a better idea of the challenges teachers face.

"We do not appreciate being an easy target of attacks," she said.
The Government announced the trajectory for achieving its targets of commissioning 175 GW of Renewable Energy (RE), 100 GW of solar generating capacity and 60 GW of wind power, by 2022.

Union Minister of State (IC) for Power and New & Renewable Energy , Shri Raj Kumar Singh said that there was a long pending demand form the Industry to declare the RE roadmap of the Government. Hence, today with the declaration of this trajectory, the Government has clearly spelt out its plan of speeding up of RE installation in the country and strengthening the RE manufacturing base in India.

Shri Singh informed that to encourage the Make in India in RE sector, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) is working out the scheme and going to issue an Expression of Interest (EoI) to the Industry, for establishing domestic Manufacturing facilities to the tune of 20GW, in the near future. Further, the MNRE is exploring innovative ways to achieve additional installed RE capacity through Floating Solar Power Plants over dams , Offshore Wind Energy Systems and Hybrid Solar-Wind power systems, which may provide over 10GW additional capacity. The MNRE team of experts has already surveyed the Bhakra Nangal dam for floating solar power plants and off-shore Gujarat and Tamil Nadu for wind power plants, the Minister added.

Expressing confidence of comfortably achieving a rather conservative RE target of 175GW by 2022 and even exceed it, along with providing 24x7 affordable, clean and efficient power for all, Shri Singh said that all these targets would be positively achieved with the cooperation of the States in ensuring that their power utilities/ DISCOMS remain financially viable. The Centre has provided all the required support, including funds under Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) and Integrated Power Development Scheme (IPDS), to the States to ensure 24x7 Power for All by strengthening the intra-State transmission networks and by ensuring mandatory presence of metered connections. The Ministry is in talks with the States to ensure 100% metered connections through Smart/Pre-paid meters, Shri Singh added.

Talking about issues in Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), Shri Singh made it very clear that the sanctity of the PPAs have to be ensured and they would have to be mandatorily honoured. The Ministry is in constant talks with State Governments, including Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, to ensure the same. Talking about the Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPOs), the Minister that these obligations are mandatory and need to be adhered to strictly.

Elaborating the RE Development road map , Shri Anand Kumar, Secretary MNRE, said that for achieving 100 GW solar power target by 2022, the Ministry, along with the States, would lay out bids for ground mounted solar parks for 20 GW in 2017-18, out of which 3.6 GW have already been bid out, 3 GW will be bid out in December 2017, 3 GW will be bid out in January 2018, 5 GW in February 2018 and 6 GW in March 2018. 30 GW will be bid out in 2018-19 and 30 GW in 2019-20.

Further, Shri Kumar informed that against the target of 60 GW for wind power, 32 GW have already been commissioned.

The Central Government in participation with the State Governments intends to issue bids of cumulative capacity of about 8 GW this year. Out of this, 5 GW (including present 2 GW) have already been bid out, 1500-2000 MW will be bid out in January 2018 and 1500-2000 MW in March 2018. A total of 10 GW will be bid out in the financial year 2018 and 10 GW in 2019, leaving a margin of 2 years for commissioning of projects. Further adding to this, Shri Kumar informed that the Ministry would soon be issuing the Wind Bidding Guidelines.

Shri Kumar also said that with wind power tariffs becoming competitive and State DISCOMs encouraged to buy more of Renewable Energy power, the Government has doubled the auction capacity for the third national level wind auction from 4GW last year to around 9GW in the current year. Regarding clarity on GST rates on Solar panels, Shri Kumar said that the MNRE is in talks with the Ministry of Finance and in the next 7-10 days all the issues would be resolved.

The present scheme of Wind Power Auction is for setting up of 2000 MW Wind Power Project connected to Inter-State Transmission System (ISTS). The bidder can bid for a minimum capacity of 50 MW and maximum up to 400 MW. The projects under this scheme are expected to be commissioned towards the end of 2019.

Power Sale Agreements (PSA) for purchase of wind power under second wind auction with States were also signed with Solar Energy Corporation of India with utilities of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Punjab, Goa and Odisha. The reverse auction for SECI-II wind bid was conducted on 4th October 2017, which resulted in very competitive tariff of Rs.2.64/2.65 per unit.

It may be mentioned that the winners of SECI II wind bid namely Renew Power (250 MW at Rs.2.64/unit), Orange (200 MW at Rs.2.64/unit), Inox (250 MW at Rs.2.65/unit), Green Infra (250 MW at Rs.2.65/unit) and Adani Green (50 MW at Rs.2.65/ unit) would be setting up wind power plants in states of Gujarat, TN and MP to sell power to these utilities. PPAs with these winners are expected to be signed shortly.

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The Argentine submarine that went missing nine days ago while heading northward from the country's southern tip was not on a secret mission and authorities have no reason to believe the vessel was attacked, the Navy has said.

"The submarine was sailing from Ushuaia to Mar del Plata on a direct route inside the exclusive economic zone, near the edge, exercising the monitoring of sovereignty as any other Navy unit does," Captain Enrique Balbi said at naval headquarters in Buenos Aires on Friday.

Headquarters last heard from the ARA San Juan on the morning of November 15, when the sub was located in the San Jorge Gulf region some 432 kilometres east of the Argentine coast.

"It was not on a secret or special mission. There is no indication of any attack or anything similar," the Navy spokesman said.

In Mar del Plata, the sub's home port, some 350 people, including friends and family of the San Juan's 44-member crew, mounted a procession from the city's Our Lady of Lourdes cathedral to the naval base to honour the missing sailors and pray for their safe return.

"The truth is that we are bad at this moment. At the beginning we had hope ... but we still have hope!," one of the participants said.

The procession came amid growing discontent among the families of the crew after they learned that an explosion was detected near the sub's last known location on the day contact was lost.

More than a dozen nations are assisting Argentina in the search for the San Juan, which was built in Germany in 1983 and refurbished a few years ago.

The government announced the start of an investigation to "determine the degree of responsibility and non-compliance within the chain of command" and said that the current naval command would be dismissed once the submarine was found.

--IANS

soni/vm

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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday hit back at Rahul Gandhi for his "failed hugplomacy" jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the release of LeT founder Hafiz Saeed, saying the Congress Vice President should stand with the country and not with the mastermind of the Mumbai massacre.

"Rahul baba, Aadte nahi badli (Habits have not changed). For once, stand with the country and not with Terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks and Ishrat Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. By the way have you congratulated your 'Hafeez Saheb' on his release yet," BJP spokesperson G.V.L Narsimha Rao said in a tweet.

Accusing the Congress of showing sympathy with Pakistan, the BJP leader said "Congress Ka Haath, Aatankivadiyon ke Saath" would be a more appropriate slogan for the grand old party.

"While Manmohan Singh's government treated Pakistan as a victim state and let it off lightly, Narendra Modi has succeeded in isolating and cornering Pakistan as terroristan not just in the region but globally and in all international fora like the UN, G20, BRICS, ASEAN etc," Rao said.

He said that the Congress and Rahul Gandhi have repeatedly betrayed the country by pandering to anti-India elements.

"The manner in which they questioned the surgical strikes against the terror launch pads across the LoC and the utterly disgraceful attacks against the army chief as a 'Street thug (Sadak Ka Goonda)' and Rahul Gandhi's joining the groups shouting "Bharat ki barbaadi" slogans are symptomatic of Congress party's support for anti-India sentiments.

"The statements of Congress leaders eulogising and praising Burhan Wani and their solidarity for separatists clearly show their sympathies for pro-Pakistan elements. It is a tragedy that a party which ruled India for six decades has compromised with the terrorist groups that have bled India for the sake of appeasing a minority vote bank. They have abused Hindu religion with terms like Hindu Terror and Saffron terror for appeasing minorities. In no other country, terror is politicised as the Congress sought to do in power," he said in a statement.

Earlier, Rahul Gandhi took a dig at the Prime Minister and termed the latter's relationship with US President Donald Trump as failed "hugplomacy".

"Narendrabhai, baat nahi bani (this is not done). Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed," Gandhi tweeted on Saturday morning.

On Friday, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed, accused of masterminding the 26/11 Mumbai massacre in 2008, was freed after 10 months of house arrest in Pakistan.

Earlier this month, the US Congress also passed a bill which dropped action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) as a condition for Pakistan to receive hundreds of millions of dollars.

--IANS

bns/rn

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Haryana BJP leader Suraj Pal Amu on Saturday threatened West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee that she would meet the same fate as "Surpanakha", a demoness from the epic Ramayana whose nose was cut off by Lakshman, a day after she asserted her state was ready to welcome Sanjay Leela Bhansali's controversial film "Padmavati" and its crew.

Amu's comments drew flak from Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, as also writers and cultural personalities of Bengal, who described the remarks as "shameful" and "unfortunate".

Addressing a public meeting, Amu refered to the mythological character "Surpanakha".

"I have come to know that Mamata Banerjee is saying Sanjay Leela Bhansali, come to Kolkata. We will welcome you. I say, this is the village of Ramchandra Ji's brother Lakshmanji. And what Laxmanji did to Surpanakha, I don't have to tell you," Amu said, making a gesture of cutting one's nose.

Further egging on the crowd, Amu, also a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Kshatriya Mahasabha, repeated: "Do I need to say? What Lakshman had done, will you do or not?"

In Valmiki's Ramayana, Surpanakha - the sister of Ravana - had proposed toRama and Lakshman, but was spurned by both. In retaliation, she tried to attack Ram's wife Sita, but Lakshman rushed to protect his sister-in-law, and cut off Surpanakha's nose.

Amid the raging controversy over the period drama, Banerjee on Friday had promised to make special arrangements for the screening of "Padmavati" in her state.

"Yes, we would welcome them. They are welcome here if they can't do it in other state. We can make special arrangements. Bengal will be very happy," she said, in response to a query whether her state would welcome the film's crew for a premiere here at a time when a number of states have banned the movie.

An angry Trinamool demanded an apology from Amu.

"The language, and the content of his remarks cannot be condoned. Either he should apologise, or else the people of the state would keep a watch on him, and launch proper protests," its Secretary General Partha Chatterjee said.

Eminent Bengali writer Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay described Ammu's comment as "unfortunate". "I do not know how to protest. Such comments create despair among us. As politicians, they should be more careful about using their words. I do not know why police are not taking any action. Police must take action against such comments," he said.

Educationist Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri said some politicians often cross the limit and forget political ethics.

Poet Subodh Sarkar welcomed the Chief Minister's stand of standing by the director, actor, actresses of the film. "Let people watch the movie and come out with their own opinions. Let historians express their opinions after watching the movie. Threatening the Chief Minister for her comment was shameful. Are they political leaders?" he said.

Theatre personality Debesh Chattopadhyay said threatening people was part of agenda of the BJP and the RSS.

"The more they talk like this, the more their hidden agenda will be exposed. History assures us the people of India would reject and protest such attempts," he said.

Poet Srijato Bandyopadhyay said through such comments, people like Amu were ensuring the "democratic right of cutting of nose".

Bhansali's attempt to bring alive the story of Rajput queen Rani Padmavati on the silver screen with his movie "Padmavati" hasn't gone down well with Hindu groups backed by the BJP. It features Deepika as Rani Padmavati, Shahid Kapoor as her husband and warrior king and Ranveer Singh essays Delhi Sultanate ruler Alauddin Khilji.

Bhansali faced many hiccups while shooting the film, but the protests escalated as the film neared its release date. There are conjectures that it "distorts history" regarding the Rajput queen, though he has denied it repeatedly.

--IANS

bdc-ssp/vd

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Thousands of people gathered in the centre of the capital to protest violence against women to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

The UN designated November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to commemorate the Mirabal sisters, who were assassinated on the same day in 1960 for opposing the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

A crowd of around 5,000 joined the two-hour march on Friday organised by the Chilean Network against Violence towards Women, bringing traffic along one the city's main arteries to a standstill.

Protesters were pleased by the large turnout, calling for an end to gender-based violence both in Chile and around the world, Efe news reported.

According to the protest organisers, 61 femicides have been recorded in the country so far this year, in addition to the 36 women who have committed suicide.

Women in Chile have called on authorities to amend the law on gender-based violence as the current legislation only accounts for violence within marriages and relationships.

--IANS

umer/soni/vm

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The by-election scene in Tamil Nadu hotted up on Saturday with the DMK renominating its candidate Marudhu Ganesh in the R.K. Nagar Assembly constituency, and immediately got support from the Congress, Viduthalai Chiruttai Katchi (VCK) and All India Forward Bloc.

The party also asserted that it was not worried about the "Two Leaves" going to the ruling AIADMK faction.

Ganesh, who was the party candidate in the April by-election that was later countermanded, will be fielded again in the December 21 bypoll, DMK Working President M.K. Stalin announced, quoting a statement of General Secretary K. Anbazhagan.

"We will face the elections in a democratic way and we will win it in a big way with the support of allies. We already have the support of our allies and would appeal to more parties to support our candidate," he told reporters.

Asked about Chief Minister K. Palaniswami claiming big victory after the allotment of the "Two Leaves" symbol to his faction, Stalin said "We have faced Two Leaves in the past and have won elections and come to power in the past. There is no fear or worry about Two Leaves."

Tamil Nadu Congress unit President S. Thirunavukkarasar announced the party's support to DMK candidate while VCK leader Thirumavalavan extended his party's backing to DMK. He hoped the by-election would be held in a fair manner without money power being allowed to play a part in it.

The bypoll in R.K. Nagar was necessitated by the death of then Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha in December last year.

The AIADMK, which had fielded its Presidium Chairman E. Madhusudanan, is yet to announce its candidate, while the BJP said it would decide whether to contest or not in the changed circumstances in consultation with the high command.

BJP state unit President Tamilisai Soundararajan said the issue was discussed at a meeting of the state leaders and the views have been conveyed to the high command. The BJP had fielded well-known Tamil music composer Gangai Amaran in the countermanded election.

Soundararajan, however, said the symbol of "Hat" which was given to the T.T.V. Dinakaran faction during the countermanded election should not be allotted to them this time because it is associated with the corrupt practices adopted by Dinakaran earlier.

Dinakaran, whose faction lost the symbol battle, has decided to contest again in R.K. Nagar.

Thangathamizh Chelvan, leader of the Dinakaran faction, said the party's governing council would meet on November 29 and make a formal announcement on the candidate.

He, however, rejected the view that their faction should not be given "Hat" and asked were the rivals worried that they would be defeated.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced seven people to death for joining the Islamic State (IS) in Libya and contributing in beheading 21 Copts, the media reported.

The defendants formed a cell in the north coast city of Marsa Matrouh province bordering Libya for training and recruiting new elements and planning for terrorist operations, the official news agency MENA cited a prosecutor as saying.

Cairo Criminal Court referred the files of seven members of the militant group to the country's highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti, for his non-binding Islamic legal opinion on their execution.

The accused militants took part in terrorist attacks in Cairo, Alexandria, Maras Matrouh and also outside Egypt from 2012 till April 2016, the court judge said.

Some of the terrorists contributed in killing 21 Egyptians Copts who were working in Libya in February 2015, Xinhua news agency reported.

Egypt has been fighting against a wave of terror activities that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military toppled Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently blacklisted Brotherhood group.

Terror attacks in Egypt used to focus on police and military men in North Sinai before spreading nationwide and targeting the Coptic minority as well, with most of them claimed by a Sinai-based group loyal to the regional IS group.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The death toll in a terrorist attack on a mosque in Egypt's northern Sinai has risen to 305, with 27 children among the dead, Egypt's state prosecutor said on Saturday.

Another 128 people were injured as the Al Rawdah mosque, affiliated with Sufi groups, in the town of Bir al-Abed was bombed during Friday prayers by 25 to 30 armed men and fleeing worshippers were then gunned down.

Though no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, the state prosecutor said that the militants were carrying Islamic State flag, state news agency MENA reported. The case will be tackled as "an emergency supreme state security case," he added.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed to respond to the massacre -- believed to be the deadliest terror attack on the country's soil -- with "brute force". He also ordered the armed forces to build a memorial for those killed at the mosque.

Egyptian warplanes conducted airstrikes on "terrorist outposts" and vehicles following the attack, the military said on Saturday. "The Egyptian Air Force pursued the terrorist elements, discovered and destroyed a number of vehicles that carried out the brutal terrorist killings and killed all terrorists inside those vehicles," military spokesman Tamer Rifai said.

It also targeted a number of terrorist outposts containing weapons, ammunition and radical elements, Rifai said.

"What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism," Sisi said in a televised address. "The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force."

Dozens of gunmen surrounded the mosque in vehicles and opened fire on those trying to escape after bombs were set off. The militants were reported to have set seven parked vehicles on fire in the vicinity to block off access to the mosque and fired upon ambulances trying to help victims.

A witness told the Guardian he had heard calls for help emanating from other nearby mosques after the attack.

"I went with my family and friends to the scene of the mosque and found ambulances loading bodies and injured," he said. "What happened in al-Rawdah is a massacre against peaceful civilians."

"In the Ber al-Abd hospitals, there was chaos," he said. "Blood and screaming were everywhere."

Friday's attack prompted wide international condemnation, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump among the leaders expressing their condolences.

Landmarks and government buildings across the globe paid tribute to the victims. In Israel, which borders the Sinai peninsula, Tel Aviv's city hall was lit up with the Egyptian flag.

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower went dark to honour victims of the attack. In England's second largest city, The Library of Birmingham was lit up in the colors of Egypt's flag.

And in Canada's most populous city, Toronto, the CN Tower was also lit to honour of the victims.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The death toll in a horrific terror strike on a mosque in Egypt's northern Sinai region has climbed to 300 as the military kicked off a hunt for the attackers and responded with airstrikes at "terrorist" locations and vehicles.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed to respond to the gory attack on Al Rawdah mosque, affiliated with Sufi groups, with "brute force". More than 100 people were injured, the BBC reported.

The mosque in the town of Bir al-Abed was bombed during Friday prayers and fleeing worshippers were then gunned down.

No group has yet claimed the massacare, one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the country.

"What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism," Sisi said in a televised address. "The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force."

Hours after the massacre, "terrorist spots", where weapons and ammunition were reportedly stocked, had been bombed by Air Force jets in response. An Army spokesperson said that several vehicles used in the attack had been located and destroyed.

Dozens of gunmen surrounded the mosque in vehicles and opened fire on those trying to escape after bombs were set off. The militants were reported to have set parked vehicles on fire in the vicinity to block off access to the mosque and fired upon ambulances trying to help victims.

A witness told the Guardian he had heard calls for help emanating from other nearby mosques after the attack.

"I went with my family and friends to the scene of the mosque and found ambulances loading bodies and injured," he said. "What happened in al-Rawdah is a massacre against peaceful civilians."

"In the Ber al-Abd hospitals, there was chaos," he said. "Blood and screaming were everywhere."

There was also international condemnation for the attack. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called "for those responsible for today's horrific attack to be swiftly brought to justice".

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: "Strongly condemn the barbaric terrorist attack on a place of worship in Egypt. Our deep condolences at the loss of innocent lives."

US President Donald Trump called it a "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless" and said terrorism and its ideology must be defeated.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron also gave their condolences.

Landmarks and government buildings across the globe paid tribute to the victims. In Israel, which borders the Sinai peninsula, Tel Aviv's city hall was lit up with the Egyptian flag.

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower went dark to honour victims of the attack. In England's second largest city, The Library of Birmingham was lit up in the colors of Egypt's flag.

And in Canada's most populous city, Toronto, the CN Tower was also lit to honour of the victims.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju on Saturday said the Central government has identified many pockets in the northeastern states for opening up with neighbouring countries.

On the Indo-China border disputes, he said the talks have been going on and stressed that India believed in friendly neighbourly relationships.

"We have identified so many pockets within northeast in India, exc ept the border with (area towards) China where we have problems, to open up with neighbouring countries," he said at the India Today Conclave East.

Along with the infrastructural and connectivity development, the Central government has identified border trade, and relaxed "many things" along the border so that the life of people in those areas improved, he said, adding commissioning of integrated check posts and border 'haats' would help to open up with neighbouring country.

"Problem along the border line with China, it is not the creation during our time. This is a long-pending issue. There are talks going on and I do not want to put extra spin into that by commenting on what happens there.

"Since the Indo-China border along the McMahon line in Arunachal segment is undefined, border haats, integrated check posts and these kind of communications have been stopped since 1962. Besides, all other borders are being looked into properly," Rijiju said.

He said India has no problems with any of the neighbouring countries "in terms of trade, political, cultural relationship and people-to-people connect".

According to him, unless eastern India and northeast India get into a particular mode, the dream of India becoming a super power would remain unrealised.

"We had a Look East Policy and were looking at the northeast but it was lacking in action. That is why, it has been turned into Act East Policy.

"Considering the geography of the entire Southeast Asia, the northeast occupies a crucial position. Southeast Asia starts from the region but we were unable to harness the potential that we have," he added.

He said only two per cent of the northeast is connected with the rest of the country, and the rest 98 per cent with neighbouring countries.

Responding to a query on how the government is planning to overcome strategic vulnerabilities, he said: "We are not aggressive towards anybody but we are firmed in defending our interests."

He said: "Prime Minister has made things aptly clear that we are not too small to be cut down (bogged down) by anybody's action and we are not kind of a power that we will intimidate our smaller neighbours. We believe everybody is equal and (also believe in) peaceful coexistence".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
John Wayne Lehr, 37, was arraigned Friday afternoon in Linn County Circuit Court on charges of robbery, burglary and unlawful use of a weapon.

Court records list a count of first-degree robbery, a count of first-degree burglary and two counts of unlawful use of a weapon. Jail records list the burglary and robbery charges but only one count of unlawful use of a weapon, and add menacing and harassment to the list.

The charges stem from an incident earlier this month in which Lehr allegedly pointed a handgun at his father, Wayne Lehr, in the garage of 39380 River Road, Lebanon.

The date of the alleged incident is unclear, with sheriff's logs indicating it happened between Nov. 8 and 22.

Lehr faced a separate allegation of fourth-degree felony assault dating Nov. 8 and was arrested on that charge Nov. 17. He posted $5,000 against a $50,000 security fee at the time.

On Friday, attorney Forrest Reid said the cases are connected and asked Linn County Circuit Court Judge Thomas McHill to combine the new charges with the old one and use the $5,000 post for both of them, so Lehr could be released.

George Eder, the attorney for the state, asked the court instead to keep the cases separate and to impose $100,000 security on the new charges. The new charges involve a separate victim and took place at a separate location and time, he said, which he believes warrants the separate security.

Eder also asked that Lehr be shackled while in court.

McHill agreed with Eder, imposing security of $100,000 on the new charges and saying Lehr must be shackled for court appearances. He also ordered Lehr have no contact with his father and possess no firearms if security is posted.

Lehr's next appearance is 8:30 a.m. Dec. 11.
A fake advertisement reportedly led some users searching for "Amazon" on Thanksgiving to a scam website just before the Black Friday shopping frenzy, media reported.

"Some Google users searching for "Amazon" on Thanksgiving were shown a phony ad that redirected to a scam website, one day before the biggest shopping day of the year," CBS reported late on Friday.

"The advertisement appeared at the top of search results on Google for an unknown number of users for at least part of the day on Thursday," the report added.

Meanwhile, the search engine giant has said that the advertisement violated its policies and has been removed.

"This was an abuse of our platform. We strictly prohibit advertising of illegal activity and have removed these ads and suspended the account," a Google representative was quoted as saying.

The app which redirected users to a scam site purporting to be run by Microsoft's support team with a message saying the computer was infected with malware, according to CNET.

However, the site's URL suggested that it was not affiliated with Microsoft.
Police in Ghaziabad have arrested a criminal involved in the killing of a city trader on Tuesday, a senior police officer said on Saturday.

Unravelling the murder mystery at a press conference, Superintendent of Police-City (SP-City) Akash Tomar said three persons were involved in the crime and the trader was murdered over a financial dispute.

According to Tomar, during patrolling near Sihani Gate area in the city, the police team spotted a person moving around in a suspicious manner. They caught hold of him and questioned him, but he failed to come up with satisfactory replies to their queries. He was then taken to the police station.

On sustained interrogation, he revealed his name as Mintu Tyagi alias Kuldeep Tyagi -- a resident of Siddique Nagar locality in Ghaziabad. He confessed to killing the trader on November 21, along with two of his accomplices. On his information, the police recovered a country-made pistol of .315 bore.

Mintu gave the names of two other persons involved in the crime as Bunty Tyagi and Rajiv Sharma.

They killed the trader following a dispute over Rs 2.5 lakh. The deceased was demanding the money back that he had lent to the accused. Irritated with his reminders, the criminals eliminated him.

Earlier, the traders' organisations had given the police a 24-hour ultimatum to work out the killing.

Trader Gagandeep Khanduja was killed when he was on his way back to home on his two-wheeler after buying a cake to celebrate the birthday of his son. The assailants shot him twice in his head near Nehru Yuva Kendra in the city.

Khanduja was rushed to hospital, but he was declared dead.

"The deceased trader and the accused persons had business relations and money-lending between the two sides would happen every now and then. But this time, reminders to return the money proved fatal for the trader. We are trying to nab the absconding two other criminals," said Tomar.

--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 on Saturday sought fixing of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) at 18 per cent on all goods except tobacco and luxury items bringing it down from the present level of 28 per cent.

West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra told the media here that the launching of the GST in a hurry led to a loss of nearly Rs one lakh crore for the Centre and the states put together.

Speaking at an event at the International Trade Fair here, Mitra said that despite Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee warning the Centre against the GST saying that they were not ready for it, it went ahead with the new tax regime and now traders were unable to file returns due to various technical complexities.

"We told the central government not to launch GST on July 1, 2017," Mitra said.

"I am unhappy to say that the Centre has shortfall of approximately Rs 65,000 crore in last three months and states of around Rs 30,000 crore," Mitra said.

He added that about close to Rs one lakh crore of "expected protected fund" has already been lost in past three months.

The Minister said that in September, close to 30 per cent taxpayers did not file returns which increased to 40 per cent in October.

"A possible reason is that small traders are not able to file their returns... If they don't file returns, there has to be a tax shortfall," Mitra said adding that the situation is "very grim".

"Traders are not able to file GSTR - 2 forms, which is meant for purchase. Therefore, we had proposed a simple form for filing returns," he said.

Mitra also said that there should be a principle on the basis of which tax rates should be decided on goods and services, not on the basis of "cherry picking and lobbying".

He said the most dangerous thing with the situation is non-availability of refund processing menu system till date.

"Now, they are talking about manual refund, instead of the computerised process. Even the return data is not available. This may create a stumbling block in smooth refund... Therefore the traders are not able to claim refunds," he said.

"Data consistency" is another serious problem, said the Minister, adding that the data provided by GSTN to the states is "incomplete and erroneous".

Speaking of digital transactions, Mitra said that there has been drastic fall since March 2017.

"In March 2017, e-transaction was up to Rs 149 lakh crore. However, in August 2017 it came down to Rs 109 lakh crore," he said.

Speaking of Aadhaar accounts, the Minister said, "According to a government department, Centre for Internet Security, 13.5 crore Aadhaar accounts have been compromised," Mitra pointed out.

He said "compromised security" of Aadhaar accounts was the reason that Banerjee did not open an Aadhaar account.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After a stand-off which lasted several days, IFFI organisers have now written to "S Durga" director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan asking him to submit a censored version of the film for consideration.

A spokesperson for the filmmaker told IANS that the required documents and film copies would be submitted to the IFFI authorities by Saturday afternoon.

A letter from Sunit Tandon, director of the 48th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), was uploaded on a social media site by Sasidharan late on Friday.

In the letter, Tandon asked him to submit copies of the film to the festival authorities, as per directions of the Kerala High Court.

"In this connection, you are requested to kindly provide the censored version of 'S Durga' in 35mm print/DCP, Blueray, along with two DVD copies to IFFI, Goa. Please also submit a copy of the censor certificate," Tandon said.

Speaking to IANS on Saturday, Kannan Nayar, the film's lead actor, said that copies of the film as well as the censor certificate would be submitted to Tandon's office by today afternoon.

"We have the copies of the film, but the censor certificate will be received by us from Kerala by afternoon, after which we will submit all the required documents and film copies to the IFFI director," Nayar said.

The last few days has seen a standoff between the makers of "S Durga" and the festival authorities over screening of the controversial film, which was one of the two films to be dropped from the screening schedule of IFFI's Indian Panorama section.

The festival officials have been tight-lipped over the issue, despite an order earlier this week by the Kerala High Court directing IFFI organisers to screen the film.

On Friday the High Court, despite a request from the Union Ministry for Information and Broadcasting, had also refused to stay its earlier order.

The cast of the film, which is present at the festival, had also accused IFFI organisers of harassment and succumbing to political pressure, which they said was the reason why the film was not being screened at IFFI.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India on Friday strongly condemned the terror attack at a mosque in Egypt that claimed at least 270 lives.

"Government of India strongly condemns the heinous act of that has claimed innocent lives in Bir-al-Abed, North Sinai in Egypt today," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.

"In this hour of tragedy, the government and the people of India stand by the government and the people of Egypt," he said.

"We offer our deepest condolences to the families and friends of those affected in this attack. This incident is another stark reminder of the need to develop a global strategy to fight this menace of ."

At least 270 people were killed and 109 others injured in a gory terror attack on a mosque in Egypt's northern Sinai region on Friday making it one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the country.

The attack on Al-Rawdah mosque, affiliated with Sufi groups, took place during Friday prayers.

The assailants planted home-made explosive in the mosque in the town of Bir al-Abd, near Arish, and detonated them as worshippers were leaving after prayers. They also shot at anyone who tried to escape, a security official told Efe news agency.

The gunmen also fired at ambulances transferring the injured to hospital, eyewitnesses said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Indian-origin Yoga instructor lost nearly 12,000 pounds when fraudsters broke into his Facebook account and made transactions to an online gambling website.

According to a Telegraph report, Jasbir Mann who runs a Yoga studio in Warwickshire recently discovered 110 fraudulent transactions were made to a poker gambling site using his Facebook account.

"Mann kept his debit card details stored on Facebook as he occasionally paid to advertise his business on the social media site," the report said on Saturday.

The advertisement usually cost Mann about 30 pounds.

But Mann was shocked to discover transactions, ranging between 21 and 215 pounds, made to an online poker game site in September.

"Aside from the occasional lottery ticket I don't gamble and do not know how to play poker," Mann was quoted as saying.

When contacted, his bank cancelled the debit card and told him to remove his details from Facebook.

Mann raised a dispute with Facebook but moments later, the entire history of transactions vanished.

Later, "Facebook began refunding some of the transactions, paying 5,747 of the stolen 11,878 back in 30 tranches," the report added.

"I can't believe Barclays and Facebook have taken so long to deal with this. I'm a yoga instructor, not a millionaire," Mann was quoted as saying.

Following pressure from Telegraph Money, Facebook finally refunded the remaining 6,132 to him without explanation.

"We can confirm that unfortunately this account was compromised. A full refund has now been made," a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying.

Facebook, however, refused to explain how the fraudsters accessed Mann's account, the report said.
BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi on Wednesday accused West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of practising a dangerous form of appeasement and harming the cause of national security by providing shelter to members of fundamentalist groups in the state.

"The Chief Minister does not realise that she is harming the cause of national security, not just law and order in her state. As per a particular report, 720 criminals of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Bangladesh), an Islamic fundamentalist organisation, who do not find place in Bangladesh, are crossing over to this state and they are given space here. Bangladesh government is saying this," Lekhi, the party's national spokesperson, said at the India Today conclave East here.

She also held Banerjee and her government responsible for a number of riot like situations in the Bengal during the Trinamool Congress rule.

"The riots need to be controlked by the state government as law and order situation is a state subject. On the contrary, there is Muslim vote bank appeasement in the state and the state government including the chief minister is responsible," she claimed.

Supporting Lekhi, Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh, who was also present at the discussion, said the state government is trying to resist central agency probes into the cases of communal violence or terrorism by forcefully handing the investigation to state CID.

"The state government is trying to prevent the cases or riots from being probed by a central agency. Starting from communal clashes in Kaliachak and Basirhat to the Khagragarh blast, they are putting forward the state CID and resisting a CBI inquiry. If they want the truth to come out why are they making this attempt?" he asked.

Lekhi, BJP's Lok Sabha MP from New Delhi, said the Bengal government has a tendency of baselesly blaming the BJP in case of any law and order situation in the state.

"In the Ranaghat nun rape case, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee started blaming the BJP from the beginning but when the perpetrators were arrestd it was found they were all Bangladeshi residents. This is a dangerous brand of practised by the Bengal government," she alleged.

Lekhi also took on Banerjee over her statement that the BJP-led Central government was scaring away industrialists from the state, saying that the extortion tax that industrialists have to pay in Bengal is public knowledge.

About the issue of delay in the winter session of parliament due to the upcoming elections, Lekhi claimed the whole issue was being blown out of proportion by the opposition parties and said this has happened even during the reign of other parties at the centre.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Militants have killed an off-duty soldier whose body was found on Saturday in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district, an official said.

"Sepoy Irfan Ahmad Dar, 23, a resident of Senzen village in Shopian district, was a serving soldier. He was posted in a Territorial Army unit in Bandipora district," said Defence Ministry spokesman, Col. Rajesh Kalia

"He was on leave till November 26. While on leave, he was possibly abducted and killed by terrorists. The matter is being investigated by the police."

Dar's body, bearing bullet marks, was recovered by the police in Keegam village of Shopian district on Saturday morning.

Jammu and Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti and her predecessor Omar Abdullah condemned the killing.

Mehbooba Mufti tweeted: "Strongly condemn the brutal killing of Irfan Ahmed, a brave Territorial Army soldier at Shopian.

"Such heinous acts will not weaken our resolve to establish peace an d normalcy in the valley."

Abdullah, in a statement posted on his widely followed Twitter handle, said: "The murder of young Irfan Dar is a very tragic & reprehensible act. My unqualified condemnation & heartfelt condolences to his family."

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Following repatriation from Bangladesh, Myanmar will send Rohingya refugees to temporary shelters before moving them back to their original villages or new neighbourhoods of their choice, an official said on Saturday.

Bangladeshi Foreign Affairs Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali said that the two governments have agreed that the repatriation of the refugees to Rakhine should start within the next two months and will be conducted in phases, although he did not specify a start date, Efe news agency reported.

Myanmar will also carry out a verification process before accepting the refugees back in the country, according to a Memorandum of Intentions signed by the two countries that was made public on Saturday.

The document, signed on Thursday, specifies that the final decision about the repatriated refugees will rest with the Myanmar government but stipulates that the Myanmar authorities will not persecute or punish the refugees for fleeing the country illegally, except in specific cases involving terror links or criminal activities.

The agreement added that both countries will assist the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in the process of repatriation as and when necessary. The UNHCR had warned on Friday that conditions were not conducive for the safe return of the refugees to Rakhine.

The current Rohingya exodus started when the Myanmar Army had launched a military offensive -- described as "ethnic cleansing" by the UN -- in the region on August 25 following multiple attacks on government posts by Rohingya rebels.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Foundation honors local students

Last June the OSU Folk Club Thrift Shop Foundation awarded $66,000 in scholarships.

Twelve scholarships of $3,000 were awarded to Benton County high school students who are attending Oregon State University as freshmen this fall. Four scholarships of $3,000 each were awarded to students who will be in their second year at OSU. Five scholarships of $3,000 went to nontraditional full-time women students from Benton County who also are attending OSU.

Two scholarships of $1,500 were given to nontraditional part-time women students from Benton County who are attending OSU. Several of these awards are named for past thrift shop volunteers and present club officers. Funding of these scholarships is made possible by the work of the shop, donations and endowments.

High school scholarship recipients are Claire Hekkala, Crescent Valley High School, the Leonora Kerr Memorial; Kendrea Beers, CVHS, the Betty Slegel Memorial; Jordan Holdaway, Corvallis High School, the Lorraine Crowell Memorial; Josephine Crofoot, CHS, the Jane Loomis Memorial; Seth Javorsky, CHS, the Janie Engle Memorial; Samantha Garcia Aguilera, CVHS, the Alma and Mario Pastega Memorial;

Nicholas Burns, CVHS, in memory of Dottie Frank; Anna Collins, Philomath High School, in memory of Virginia Wilson; Joshua Pauls, CVHS, Joan and Roger Ryan Honorary; Madison Moore, CHS, Eneke Warnke Honorary; and Steven Kontra, Santiam Christian High School, Rosie Toy Honorary.

Second-year OSU student scholarship recipients are Petar Jeknic (philosophy), Jaime Law (College of Business), Brinn Rich (human development and family science) and Rebekah Richardson (choral music education).

The nontraditional women scholarship winners are Michelle Bernard (human development and family studies), Dorothy Weswig Memorial; Yvonne Dominguez (human development and family studies), Dorothy Hopkins Memorial; Shelley Gale (environmental science), in memory of Yvonne Peckham; Amanda Riley (civil engineering); Stephanie Russo (environmental science); Lisa Steinback, part-time (human development and family studies); and Angela Barker, part-time (human development and family studies).

Students graduate from Gonzaga

Travis Callahan, Sarah Storniolo and Jaclyn Zalesky, all of Corvallis, participated in graduation exercises during the Gonzaga University commencement ceremony held last May 7 in Spokanes Veterans Memorial Arena.

These students either have completed an undergraduate degree or are expected to complete their degree requirements this year.

Local man receives degree

Nicholas M. Jamros of Corvallis received a Master of Business Administration degree from Marylhurst University last June 24.

The commencement ceremony took place at the Oregon Convention Center.

Corvallis native wins award

Corvallis native Jay Harman's first book, Plains to the Pacific, won a national award from Indie Reader last June.

The book is about his great-grandfathers incredible life. Plains to the Pacific was the judge's choice for the Spiritual and Inspirational category. Harman is a retired Canby High School teacher and lives on a small farm about four miles south of Canby. He received a bachelors degree from Oregon State University in 1979.
Reflecting the governments tendency of keeping faith in trusted people in key diplomatic posts, the term of Indian Ambassador to the US Navtej Sarna has been extended.

According to reliable sources, the term of Sarna, a 1980 batch Indian Foreign Service officer and who was supposed to retire November end, has been extended by a year.

He was named India's envoy in Washington in September last year ahead of the US presidential election and after serving just eight months as Indian High Commissioner to Britain.

With Sarna as the Ambassador, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a highly successful first-time meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington this year.

Both Sarna and his predecessor, Arun Kumar Singh, are former Indian Ambassadors to Israel, underlying the importance of a posting in Tel Aviv which is one of Washington's closest allies.

Sarna has had a previous posting in Washington when he was Minister for Press, Information and Culture between 1998 and 2002.

Prior to his London posting, Sarna was Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs where he oversaw the successful hosting in October 2015 of the India-Africa Forum Summit that was attended by a record number of 53 African countries.

Modi was personally very happy with the organisation of the Summit and had congratulated External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj for it.

It is clear Modi wanted someone in Washington he was confident would be able to steer the multi-faceted India-US relations into a new phase with a new administration.

Sarna was among the longest-serving spokespersons of the ministry between 2002 and 2008. He has also had postings in Moscow, Warsaw, Tehran, Geneva and Thimphu.

Sarna is also a prolific author of many fiction and non-fiction books, the most recent being 'Second Thoughts: On Books, Authors and the Writerly Life' that was released in 2015.

This is the second high-level extension this year after Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar's term was also extended by a year. Jaishankar is set to retire in January 2018, but South Block is agog with speculation whether he would get another extension from Modi.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday reiterated his demand to the Central government to resolve the Mahanadi and Polavaram water disputes.

Patnaik, who attended the 12th Standing Committee meeting of the Inter-State Council in New Delhi, expressed serious concern that the flow in the Mahanadi river in his downstream state has dipped alarmingly on account of the unilateral action of construction activities undertaken by Chhattisgarh.

He urged the Standing Committee to take urgent action to stop this unilateral construction in Chhattisgarh and constitute a Tribunal without further delay to address the problem.

This month, Patnaik had written two letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking constitution of tribunal to resolve the Mahanadi water issue.

He also urged the Standing Committee to discontinue Polavaram project in Andhra Pradesh as it will impact a large number of people in hinterland tribal district of Malkangiri adversely.

Patnaik also mentioned that the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for paddy fixed by the Central government at Rs 1,470 per quintal is not commensurate with the rising cost of inputs and the non-remunerative MSP acts as a deterrent to doubling farmers' income.

He urged the matter be discussed with the Agriculture Ministry and it consider his government's proposal to fix the MSP of common paddy at Rs 2,930 per quintal in the interest of the state's farmers.

The Chief Minister highlighted that the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) poses the biggest threat to the internal security and impressed upon the committee to ensure equitable distribution and deployment of central forces, funds and logistic support and not insist upon reimbursement of the cost of deployment of central forces in the affected states.

He urged Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who chaired the standing committee, to deploy at least two paramilitary battalions in Odisha at the earliest to address asymmetric deployment of CAPF along the border vis-a-vis Chhattisgarh state.

Patnaik also mentioned that the royalty on coal which was due for revision in April, 2015 should be revised upwards at the earliest, while at least 60 per cent of the clean environment cess should be earmarked for the coal bearing states which have to bear the cost of environmental degeneration and rehabilitation.

Noting the Punchhi Commission has recommended for higher Central transfer for backward states for improving their physical and human infrastructure, he said Odisha should have the same sharing pattern in Centrally Sponsored Schemes as the northeastern and Himalayan states as the state has high percentage of people below poverty line and belonging to ST and SC.

Informing that low telecom connectivity and poor financial inclusion remain major concerns of Odisha, he added that 70 per cent of Odisha's Gram Panchayats do not have any bank presence and only 221 branches have been opened in last three years.

The Chief Minister mentioned that Odisha should be given flexibility to operate all the Centrally Sponsored Schemes directly through Integrated Financial Management System instead of opening separate scheme-based bank accounts since Odisha has a robust Integrated Financial Management System which is fully integrated with Public Financial Management System.

--IANS

cd/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On the eve of the ninth anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Israel on Saturday expressed its condolences and solidarity with the people of India.

In a statement, the Israeli Embassy expressed "deep condolences and solidarity with the people of India on the anniversary of the harrowing terror attack" that was launched on November 26, 2008.

"The tragic events of that day are ingrained in our collective memories. Israel stands by India in remembrance and grief over the senseless loss of life at the hands of terrorists," it stated.

Israeli Ambassador to India Daniel Carmon said in the statement: "Together with India, the people of Israel mourn the victims from countries all over the globe including Israel, embrace their loved ones and the survivors. India and Israel, along with nations of the world, must do everything in their power to eradicate extremism and terrorism for a better future."

Over 160 people were killed and over 300 were injured a when terrorists of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba launched a series of attacks on India's commercial capital.

During his visit to Israel in July this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Moshe Holtzberg, whose parents, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, were killed when the terrorists attacked the Chabad House in Mumbai. Moshe was two years old then.

Moshe, who was invited by Modi to visit India, has been granted a visa and he is expected to accompany Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to India next year.

--IANS

ab/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"Padmavati", in a sense, is a neighbourhood story. My village, Mustafabad, happens to be in Rae Bareli, which embraces numerous Chishtiya Sufi shrines or places where the saints spent some time, including Khwaja Ashraf Jehangir Semnani, the saint Malik Mohammad Jaisi, the author of "Padmavat", was devoted to. Jaisi would faint at the controversy surrounding his masterpiece.

From nearby Salon, Naeem Ata Shah in his flowing orange robes and headgear, often visited Mustafabad. Jaisi, who preceded Tulsidas, in the list of great poets of Awadhi, was an endless source of quotations. So was Tulsidas, whose correspondence with emperor Akbar's premier courtier, Abdul Rahim Khan e Khana, on meter and structure of poetry, one heard about later and which is something one would have expected more scholarship on.

To a most unexpected source I owed my acquaintance with the fact that Rahim, known for his dohas, wrote devotional poetry on Lord Rama in Sanskrit. The source happened to be Vishnu Kant Shastri, former Vice Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University. It always puzzled me how a man of such catholic interests -- knew Jaisi as well as Akbar Allahabadi backwards -- had actually emerged from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) stable.

If Jaisi's flight of fancy can create so much mayhem, I shudder to contemplate the fate of the 1960 classic, Mughal-e-Azam, in a similar circumstance. By today's yardstick, that was the original, unadulterated case of "Love Jihad". In fact the settled conventional wisdom in the 1960s conceded Akbar victory at Haldighati.

The national mood today has reversed the outcome of that battle in favour of Maharana Pratap. There have been suggestions that New Delhi's Akbar Road be renamed "Maharana Pratap Road". In other words, revenge with retrospective effect is in order. To give this trend a more contemporary twist, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has demanded that a FIR be lodged against Mulayam Singh Yadav for ordering the police to fire on 'kar sewaks' in 1990.

In that framework, it can be argued that producer K. Asif glorified Akbar's Love Jihad. For that unforgivable guilt, copies of the film must be consigned to the flames by way of historical revenge. Dilip Kumar, who played Prince Salim, is unwell; otherwise he could have been brought into focus of public ire with great effectiveness on the eve of key elections with a singular purpose -- polarise the poll.

At a time when logic has been crowded out by a rush of non sequitur, some pundits have attempted common sense. It will not work.

The new cultural brigade destroyed the grave of Wali Dakhni who showered adoration on this land with such verses as:

"Koocha e yaar ain Kashi hai

Jogiya dil wahaan ka baasi hain."

(The lane where my beloved lives is like holy Varanasi;

The yogi of my heart has made it his dwelling place.)

The sentiments the poet represents did not deter the vandals seething with anger against past historical injustices.

Never will the bandish "Munmohan Braj ke rasiya" in Raag Paraj, steeped in Krishna lore, be sung better than by Ustad Faiyyaz Khan. They tried to desecrate his grave in Vadodara, regardless.

Rasoolan Bai's plaintive appeals to Rama, in so many of her songs, did not protect her house from being gutted during the 1969 Gujarat riots. It did not matter that the Congress was in power then. What is being tapped into is something which gained a lease of life after Partition and which invites instant, angry, passionate response at the street level.

In his very first speech in Parliament after the 2014 elections, this was precisely the nerve Narendra Modi touched: "The nation has to recover from the subjugation of 1,200 years". This is what differentiates the present government from previous regimes. Congressmen may have privately believed in "1,200 years of subjugation", but they considered it tactically proper to speak only of the British as foreigners.

Let us, meanwhile, revert to Jaisi's purpose in Padmavati. The sentiment is common in Western poetry too. The "desire of the moth for the star, of the night for the morrow. The devotion to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow."

Shelley's lines are an ultra simplified version of the interplay between love and beauty which Jaisi is delineating. Padmini and Khalji are secular symbols of Jaisi's elaboration of the theme on an epic scale.

Keat's "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know" can also be tossed in to simplify communicating Jaisi.

Maulana Hasrat Mohani communicates the mood thus:

"Maslak I Ishq hai parastish e husn

Hum naheen jaante azaab-o-sawab."

(Love's purpose is adoration of beauty.

Gains and losses I do not measure.)

Should the ever-expanding tribe of the new cultural warriors run out of ideas, here are some on offer, gratis. They should denigrate with retrospective effect those Muslims who dared to take liberties with Hindu Gods. Remember, how India's greatest modern painter, Maqbool Fida Husain, was exiled for his supreme guilt: Excessive adoration of Goddesses. His "adoration" was considered lewd by the protectors of culture and faith.

Well, in like fashion, Maulana Hasrat Mohani deserves to be shamed retrospectively. He wrote a great deal about Krishna in Urdu, but in his Bhasha or Braj verses he takes liberties:

"Mose ched karat Nandlal"

(Krishna teases me all the time)

"hum hoon jo dei liptai ke Hasrat

Saari yeh chalbal nikaal"

(One day I shall embrace him tight and squeeze out all his mischief)

"Squeeze out", in a tight embrace, has erotic connotations which should be unacceptable to the new cultural brigade.

(A leading commentator on diplomatic and political affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com. The views are personal.)

--IANS

naqvi/mr/ky

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Veteran actor Kamal Haasan, who earlier came out in support of "Padmavati" actress Deepika Padukone amid protests and death threats hurled at her for being a part of the film, says people are being "over-sensitive" on the issue.

"We are being over sensitive. I am saying so in the capacity of being an Indian. In a country where politicians wanted citizens to come upfront in the past... that doesn't mean I am dismissing off a whole group of people... There are enough Kamals not enough podiums," said Kamal during a discussion at the Times Delhi Lit Fest on Saturday.

Bhansali's attempt to bring alive the story of Rajput queen Rani Padmavati on the silver screen with his movie "Padmavati" hasn't gone down well with Hindu groups backed by the BJP. It features Deepika as Rani Padmavati, Shahid Kapoor as her husband and a warrior king and Ranveer Singh essays Alauddin Khilji.

Bhansali faced many hiccups while shooting the film, but the protests escalated as the film neared its release date. There are conjectures that it "distorts history" regarding the Rajput queen, and Bhansali has denied it repeatedly.

The movie's release date has been deferred from the original December 1 date, but there are efforts from Hindu groups to have it banned.

Kamal, whose films too have faced threats on the same level be it for "Hey Ram" or "Vishwaroopam", says the current clamour around "Padmavati" is a "problem", but it is not new.

"There is a problem but it's not new. When my film 'Hey Ram' was to release, somebody in Congress (political party) thought it should be banned just by looking at the poster. But they did not know what was in the film. Censors were being extra careful. Certification board behaved like censor board," said Kamal, who has been a part of the film industry for almost five decades.

"All my films had a problem for reasons I am still trying to understand. Same goes for rumours when you send an sms and it distributes. We are always ready to believe the negativity first. It (protests) is wrong. After it ('Padmavati') comes out and then people have problem... that I still understand," he added.

Speaking on the slamming culture on social media like Twitter where individuals are free to opine, Kamal says "those who want it regulated have some logic of their own".

"They shouldn't do it but... some are far exceeding their freedom which is why they are slammed perhaps," he said.

"Everyone blames it on youth. It's not age talking it is the lack of reverence talking. Deeper and hurtful things come from the grown up," he added.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid a raging row over "Padmavati", Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said that nobody has the right to take law into their hands, but at the same time nobody has the right to hurt others sentiments.

Speaking at the inaugural session of the Times Litfest, Naidu emphasised that inciting violence or unlawful activities as a way of protest such as announcing bounty on some people's heads was "unacceptable".

"Now this new problem has come related to some film. Some people feel that it is hurting the sentiments of this community or that community and then they protest. Some of them go out of the way and announce rewards. This is not acceptable," he said, without naming anyone.

"You have a right to protest in a democratic manner. Go to appropriate authorities and complain to them. Take the recourse in a democratic way but you cannot physically obstruct. And you cannot give violent threats," he said.

"You don't have a right to take law into your hands. At the same time you don't have the right to hurt the sentiments of others. That is a reality," he said, adding that some people are quite "selective" in their criticism.

He said respecting others' sentiments and feelings is the "essence of our culture".

A controversy has been raging over Sanjay Leela Bhansali's period drama "Padmavati" with several organisations, mainly from the Rajput community, opposing release of the movie on the grounds it "distorts history". Fringe elements have also announced rewards on the heads of actress Deepika Padukone and film director Bhansali.

The Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor starrer was scheduled to be released on December 1, but it has now been deferred.

Referring to an article in a newspaper, Naidu said in the past too films have faced bans and obstructions and mentioned "Aandhi" and "Garam Hava" as some examples.

"Aandhi" (1975) whose protagonist had striking similarities with the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was banned after 26 weeks of release. "Garam Hava" was held up by the censor board for eight months."

Speaking on Parliamentary democracy, Naidu said that it was not important as to how many days Parliament meets, the important thing was for how many days "it functions".

Naidu said people have a right to disagree but first they "must learn to respect the majority and the people's mandate".

Naidu also said that while dissent was agreeable, "disintegration is not acceptable".

"That is the bottom line and any attempt to undermine integrity and unity of India by forces inimical to growth of India must be nipped in the bud," he said in reference to last year' Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) controversy.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Denying allegations that an attempt has been made to draw a distinction between Bangladeshi Muslims and Hindus through amendment of the Citizenship Act, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Saturday said people who have come to India due to religious persecution were to be protected.

He also said the state government would follow the directions from the Supreme Court with regard to updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC). He claimed the central government's Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 had no relation with the updating of NRC.

"Look, for the preparation of NRC, it has nothing to do with that issue. Whatever discipline has been set by the apex court, it is to be followed," he said when asked about the amendment in the Citizenship Act "welcoming Bangladeshi Hindus but not Bangladesh Muslims".

Responding to a query whether his government supported the distinction between Bangladeshi Hindus and Bangladeshi Muslims, the Chief Minister told the India Today Conclave East: "Six religious minority communities, whoever have come to India, (have come) out of religious persecution from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. That has been the issue relating to a particular matter. It is not a question of distinction but a question of people who have come out of religious persecution. They are to be protected and it is the principled line undertaken by the Government of India."

In reference to updating NRC, Sonowal said the matter would be heard again on November 29 and also indicated that the state might take extension of the deadline of December for readying an updated NRC.

--IANS

bdc/ssp/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday expressed concern over the "unacceptably low" representation of women, OBCs, SC/STs in the higher judiciary and called for steps to remedy the situation.

"There is unacceptably low representation of traditionally weaker sections such as OBCs, SCs and STs especially in the higher judiciary," President Kovind said, adding that one in four judges is a woman.

Asking the judiciary to walk in pace with other public institutions in being truly representatives of society's diversity, the President said: "Like our other public institutions, our judiciary too has to be judicious in being representative of the diversity of our country, and the depth and breadth of our society.

"Of the 17,000 judges in our subordinate courts, High Courts and the Supreme Court, only about 4,700 - roughly one in four - are women," he said.

Telling the higher judiciary that it was its "sacred duty" to "groom" district and sessions judges and raise their skill so that more and more of them can be elevated to High Courts, President Kovind said "We need to take long-term measures to remedy this situation."

"This will also enhance trust in our lower courts and their judgments and serve to declog our High Courts," the President said.

However, in a caveat, he made it clear that the long-term solutions would be "without in any manner compromising on quality" of the judges and the judicial system.

The President was speaking at the inaugural function of the two-day meet organised jointly by the Law Commission of India and NITI Aayog on the National Law Day.

Speaking on the occasion, Chief Justice Dipak Misra defended the court taking a pro-active position on the fundamental rights of citizens and expanding their scope, saying that the "Protections of the fundamental rights of every citizen was a sacrosanct duty of the judiciary conferred by the Constitution".

Referring to the top court framing Vishaka guidelines' for the protection of women at the work place and rescuing children working in industry, Chief Justice Misra said, "What you see today may be relevant tomorrow."

"These are only protection of fundamental rights. We don't make policy. We interpret policy. That is our job," the CJI said brushing aside concerns raised over judicial activism or judicial over-reach by Minister of State for Law and Justice P.P. Choudhary.

Choudhary in his welcome address said, "It is a fundamental principle of governance that decisions should, as far as possible, be predictable and not disruptive. When judicial activism and review wades into policymaking, sometimes its consequences can be disruptive. This needs to be avoided if possible."

Pointing out that there was a direct co-relation between Directive Principles of State Policy and the fundamental rights, Chief Justice Misra called for a quality governance and said, "Cooperative constitutionalism is the responsibility of the three organs of the State to protect the Constitution which is the source of their origin."

Calling for judicial accountability, the Minister of State for Law and Justice said, "If judicial independence is a pillar of our democracy, then judicial accountability is the base of that pillar. Without accountability there can be no legitimacy."

Citing B.R. Ambedkar on maintaining "delicate balance" between three organs of the State, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan favoured a re-look at the collegium system of appointing judges to the higher judiciary.

Mahajan said that the collegium system that is in working for over two decades needs to be reviewed if there was any shortcoming in its functioning or there was a need for transparency in its working.

Seeking to stay free of any controversy, Mahajan said that all the institutions are manned by humans and to err is human.

--IANS

pk/rn

(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.)
Progress has been made in achieving a political settlement in Syria and it is urgent to advance the process of intra-Syrian negotiation, representatives of Russia and the United Nations said on Friday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov exchanged views with visiting UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura about the latest international contacts on the Syrian issue and its possible political settlement, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Xinhua news agency reported.

On Wednesday, presidents of Russia, Iran and Turkey agreed to continue their joint efforts to facilitate a possible transition to a political settlement in Syria and restore peace and stability to the war-torn country.

"Particular emphasis was placed on the importance of building up international efforts to launch a comprehensive intra-Syrian negotiation process with the leading role of the United Nations based on the UN Security Council resolution 2254," a ministry statement said.

The two sides agreed to maintain close contact on the whole complex of Syrian issues, it added.

Later on Friday, the UN special envoy talked with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in a separate meeting and they discussed the organization of the Syrian National Dialogue Congress.

De Mistura said Russia has made many efforts to create the basis for the political settlement of the Syrian crisis.

They agreed that it is necessary to "arrange a political dialogue as soon as possible" as well as organise and conduct a political settlement process in Syria.

The Syrian National Dialogue Congress, proposed by Moscow in late October at Astana talks in Kazakhstan for Syrian settlement, is expected to bring together opposition and pro-government forces, as well as representatives of all Syrian ethnic and religious groups to work for the peace process in the country.

The date and participants of the congress have not been confirmed yet.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Smartphone transactions hit a record high in the US on Black Friday as shoppers thronged retail stores as well as went online to celebrate.

According to Adobe Digital Insights mobile transactions were "hitting record highs".

Black Friday follows Thanksgiving Day that is observed on the fourth Thursday of November, heralding the Christmas shopping season.

"The big story this holiday season is in mobile shopping," CNBC reported, quoting Mickey Mericle, Vice president of Adobe's Marketing and Customer Insights division.

According to Adobe Insights, 61.1 per cent of shoppers' visits to retailers' websites were for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.

A report in The Financial Times said the holiday season was set to be the first in which more shopping will happen online than in stores.

"Brands and retailers will offer an array of great deals on electronic devices. Those that we expect to lure consumers the most will be headphones, tablets, fitness bands, smartphones and TVs. We also expect smartwatches, VPA-enabled speakers and smart headphones to fuel demand," Annette Zimmermann, Research Vice President at Gartner for Black Friday, said in a statement.

For several years now, Black Friday has become a driver of sales in Europe, both in online and offline commerce.

"We see this trend in many European countries, including the UK, Germany, France and Italy, where Black Friday and Cyber Week have become well-known terms for shoppers," Zimmermann added.

Gartner expects sales of smartphones to total 1.57 billion units in 2017, up 4.9 per cent from 2016.
Taoist meditation group: The group will meet at 9 a.m. Sunday at the First Alternative Natural Foods Co-op north store, 2855 NW Grant Ave. in Corvallis.

The event will feature Taoist Quiet Sitting meditation, also known as "Preserving the Light of the One." Information: docneedlestcm@gmail.com.

Movements discussed: Those attending the 9:30 a.m. Sunday service at First United Methodist Church, 1165 NW Monroe Ave. in Corvallis, will reflect on how the Spirit moves in "movements."

Bah'ai devotions: "The Bounteous Banquet" is set for 10 a.m. Sunday at 5006 SW Hollyhock Circle, Corvallis.

We explore this gift with praise and hope: the privilege of building a community where the oneness of the human family is the core of collective life, where the equality of women and men is unassailable, and in which the seemingly counteracting forces of individual rights and social responsibilities are in harmony. All are welcome to join in this program of inspirational readings, prayers and discussion.

ECK Light and Sound Service: Happiness Is a State of Consciousness is set for 10 a.m. Sunday in the Eckankar Center of Corvallis at 425 SW Madison Ave. in Corvallis, downstairs from Starbucks.

People of all faiths are invited to experience the presence of Gods Light and Sound. Join in singing HU, a love song to God, and a spiritual discussion exploring the meaning of true happiness and how it can be achieved. As Harold Klemp, the spiritual leader of Eckankar, once said, When you are giving, you are happy. When you are unhappy, you are taking from life." Participants will share about some ways we can move into more giving and less taking.

Each ECK Light and Sound Service is based on the teachings of Eckankar  The Path of Spiritual Freedom. These teachings are not meant to change anyones beliefs, but to enhance them.

The ECK Center will be open from 9:30 till 11:30 a.m. Sunday to allow time for fellowship and opportunities to browse complementary information on subjects of interest or to use the lending library. Information: 503-233-1595, Eckankar.org or MiraclesInYourLife.org.

Share your nativity set: Organizers of the Corvallis Nativity Festival are seeking community members willing to lend their nativity sets for five days in early December.

Those willing to lend their creches can bring them to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 4141 NW Harrison Blvd., between noon and 9 p.m. Thursday. Nativity owners set up and take down their own pieces, but help is available. The exhibit will be taken down between 4 and 7 p.m. Dec. 5.

No items lent to the exhibit are left unattended at any time, even during the night. Further information is available from Suzanne Woods at 541-760-4715.

Nativity festival: The 24th annual Corvallis Nativity Festival is set for 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Friday through Dec. 4, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 5 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 4141 NW Harrison Blvd., Corvallis.

Local residents have lent hundreds of nativity scenes for display. All displays and activities are indoors. The festival offers daily concerts, childrens art activities and puppet shows.

A music lineup includes 25 choirs and other musical groups, plus more than 30 soloists. A complete schedule is available at corvallisnativityfestival.org.

Film on Luther: Local events celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation conclude Friday with a screening of "Luther: An Idea that Changed the World" at 7 p.m. at First Baptist Church, 125 NW 10th St., Corvallis.

The film will be introduced by Jodi Mammenga of Thrivent Financial.

Taize: A contemplative ecumenical Taize worship service will take place at 7 p.m. Dec. 3 at the Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan, 333 NW 35th St. in Corvallis.

The monthly event, sponsored by the Corvallis Taize Ensemble, is open to all, and features singing and prayers. Information: 541-753-7622.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was constituted by the Tripura government to probe the killing of a journalist by a Tripura State Rifles (TSR) trooper, on Saturday arrested two more security personnel, police said.

"Following their investigation, the SIT arrested Naib Subedar Amit Debbarma and TSR rifleman Dharmendra Singh, as they are found to be abettors and conspirators of the killing," a police official said.

Police produced them in the Chief Judicial Magistrate's court here on Saturday and the court sent them to a seven-day police custody.

With the latest arrests, four security personnel, including TSR Second Battalion Commandant Tapan Debbarma, are in custody in connection with the gunning down of the journalist within the battalion headquarters complex on Tuesday.

According to police, TSR Second Battalion Rifleman Nandu Kumar Reang, following an altercation, shot dead local newspaper journalist Sudip Datta Bhowmik, 50, at Radha Kishore Nagar, 25 km from Agartala.

Reang was the bodyguard of battalion Commandant Tapan Debbarma, who is a senior Tripura Police Service (TPS) officer (1998 batch). The slain journalist had gone to meet Debbarma at the battalion headquarters.

Both Reang and Debbarma are now in police custody and senior police officers are interrogating them.

The Press Council of India (PCI) has taken suo motu cognizance of the killing and sought a report from the Tripura government.

Demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the incident, several journalist organisations under a newly-formed platform -- Forum for Protection of Journalists (FFPJ) -- on Saturday took out a protest rally on Saturday.

FFPJ Convener Pranab Sarkar said a memorandum would be sent to President Ram Nath Kovind demanding a CBI probe into the killing of the journalist and protection to persons.

Bhowmik, who was a reporter with "Syandan Patrika" and local cable television channel "Vanguarda, is survived by his wife, a government teacher, and two children.

Earlier, 28-year-old TV reporter Santanu Bhowmik was hacked to death while covering an event of a tribal party at Mandai in western Tripura on September 20.

Tripura Governor Tathagata Roy, who is now in Delhi, has said he would submit a report to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Bhowmik's killing.

The Congress has demanded a high-level inquiry into the murder. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded a CBI probe and resignation of Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, who also holds the Home portfolio. Both parties observed a state-wide shutdown on Thursday to protest the killing.

The ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist has criticised the BJP for politicising the journalist's killing.

--IANS

sc/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistans top electronic media regulator ordered private television channels to go off air on Saturday during a crackdown on religious protesters in Islamabad.

The suspension was ordered by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) for violating media regulations showing live coverage of the security operation in Faizabad. The authority also advised media houses to ensure safety and security of their field staff.

Social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were also blocked on web browsers across the country.

A Pemra spokesperson told the Express Tribune that Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had directed the regulator to suspend transmission of all private TV channels.

Abbasi issued the directives on the request of the Islamabad administration which said live coverage was compromising the operation against the religious protesters. The state-run PTV continued to broadcast, but aired a talk show discussing politics.

A policeman was killed and over 200 people were injured on Saturday as the security forces moved to disperse the religious sit-in that has virtually paralysed the country's capital for almost three weeks.

The protests had erupted after the Pakistani Parliament approved an amendment to the electoral law earlier, removing an oath public servants had to take before assuming office, reiterating their belief in Prophet Muhammad.

The amendment was deemed a "clerical error" by the government and was rectified. But the protesters still demand the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid for his alleged role in the controversy.

The protesters had been camping on the main highway that connects Islamabad to the city of Rawalpindi causing huge traffic snarls that led to the closure of some schools in the capital.

Security forces resorted to rubber-bullets after the protesters put up the resistance. The law enforcement agencies lobbed tear gas shells and used water cannons to disperse the crowd. In return, the demonstrators pelted stones on the security personnel.

At least 370 protesters were taken into custody, said police officials. At least 10 motorcycles and two vehicles were torched during the operation.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura on Saturday issued a latest statement here, showing that they are getting ready for the new round of the intra-Syrian peace talk which is expected to kick off next Monday.

The statement said that the special envoy takes note of the conclusion of the just closed expanded opposition conference hosted and facilitated very effectively by Saudi Arabia in Riyadh, and confirms that he will be inviting the Syrian opposition delegation to Geneva, Xinhua news agency reported.

"He notes the broad and inclusive participation in this conference, including all opposition components identified in the UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and a wide range of others from both inside and outside of Syria, including independents and female participants," the statement said.

The statement said that the UN envoy also "notes the unequivocal rejection of terrorism and the affirmation that the solution to the crisis is political".

According to his office, the UN envoy "takes particular note of the fact that a negotiating team has been announced that is tasked to negotiate in Geneva without any preconditions, and that the implementation of relevant United Nations resolutions is regarded as the sole reference for the negotiation".

The upcoming new round of the Geneva talks will take place just days after the leaders of Iran, Turkey and Russia met in the Russian resort city of Sochi, where they supported a comprehensive dialogue for Syria.

The meeting would also come after the opposition groups agreed on unifying a delegation to the fresh talks, which marks the first time for the political opposition groups to unify a delegation to the internationally-backed talks.

--IANS

ahm/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Venezuelan opposition leader and former metropolitan Mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, has submitted a request for political asylum in Spain.

Even though Ledezma himself, who arrived in Spain a week ago from Colombia after fleeing Venezuela, had stated he had no intention of seeking asylum, Spanish government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo announced on Friday that he had changed his mind, Efe news reported.

"It's another indication of the Venezuelan people's struggle to recover their freedom and a normal democracy," the Spanish spokesman said, after noting that the opposition leader himself stated after landing in Madrid, that "today upon arriving in Spain, I feel free".

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy received Ledezma last Saturday. The Venezuelan opposition leader had been under house arrest in his country since 2015, accused of conspiracy and criminal association.

Ledezma met Rajoy and the latter told him that Spain will continue working bilaterally and in collaboration with its European and Ibero-American partners to help reach a fully democratic solution for Venezuela.

Ledezma censured the situation his country is going through and has called on other opposition leaders to forget about the "personal issues" and certain "inconsistencies" of recent times.

Earlier this week, the opposition majority at Caracas City Hall cancelled Ledezma's title of metropolitan Mayor after he fled the country.

--IANS

umer/soni/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hadiya, a 24-year-old Hindu woman from Kerala who converted to Islam, on Saturday told newspersons in Kochi airport that she wants to live with her Muslim husband. Hadiya left for Delhi to be present before the Supreme Court on Monday in a case of alleged forced conversion.

As she was brought to Kochi airport amidst tight security, Hadiya loudly told the waiting mediapersons that she wants to go with her husband, Shafin Jahan.

Hadiya was accompanied by three women police officials and two male policemen besides her parents.

On Saturday afternoon, she was moved from her home near here at Vaikom in a convoy of police vehicles to Kochi International Airport to take the evening flight to Delhi.

In Delhi she will be put up at the Kerala House, where four rooms have been booked for the party from Kerala.

The apex court on October 30 had directed Hadiya's father, Asokan to present her in the court on November 27 to ascertain her views on her marriage to Shafin Jahan.

On Wednesday, the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said that the application for in-camera hearing of the proceedings when Hadiya appears before the court on November 27 would be taken up on that day itself after a lawyer mentioned Asokan's application for an early hearing.

The court in the last hearing had said that before examining the latter issue, it would like to ascertain if Hadiya had voluntarily converted to Islam and her views on her marriage.

The court is hearing a plea by Shafin Jahan challenging the Kerala High Court order of May nullifying his marriage with Hadiya and seeking recall of its order asking the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to investigate the conversion of Hadiya to Islam and her marriage.

The NIA in its earlier report has pointed to a "pattern" involving conversion to Islam and marriages in Kerala. On November 18, an NIA team arrived at her home for the second time and took statements from her and her parents to present their case before the court.

--IANS

sg/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Many professionals, businessmen and high-ranking corporate executives have such busy schedules that they need to delegate certain duties to . Sometimes, this can include crucial tasks such as carrying out property transactions and executing contracts. That is when the (PoA) comes in handy. While using PoA is definitely convenient, it also carries certain risks and is not something that one should do without due thought and care.
A security person was killed and over 150 others were injured today in Pakistan during clashes which broke out after police and paramilitary forces launched an operation to disperse hundreds of protesters blocking main highways leading to the capital Islamabad.

The operation was launched after Islamabad High Court (IHC) yesterday issued contempt of court notice against Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads



The Pakistan government has blocked popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube amidst ongoing operation against protesters. The decision was taken after almost all channels were suspended.

Military spokesman said that army chief General Qamar Caved Bajwa talked to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on telephone and urged for peaceful solution to the problem.

So far police have failed to dislodge the protesters from Faizabad interchange which they have been occupying for about three weeks.

At least one security person was killed and over 150 persons, including protesters and security personnel, were injured, police said.

About 2,000 activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR) and the Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) for more than two weeks have been blocking the Islamabad Expressway and Murree Road that connect Islamabad with its only airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

The protesters demand the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid for changes made about Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September.

More than 70 people have been injured. They were shifted to hospital of twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, a health official said.

Those injured include also more than 35 security personnel who were hit by stones thrown by protesters, the official said.

Islamabad city magistrate yesterday issued a warning to protesters to disperse by midnight or face the consequences.

TV footage showed police firing teargas and security personnel in riot gears charging at the protesters.

Dozens of them were arrested and shifted to various police stations.

Some of the security personnel were injured due to stone pelting by protesters.

According to a security official, more than 8,000 security personnel took part in the operation against around 2,000 protesters.

The operation was still going on and police were facing stiff resistance from the protesters.

Earlier, IHC last Friday had given a 24-hour deadline to the government to clear the roads which was later extended till Thursday.

However, the court yesterday expressed strong displeasure at the government for failing to take action against the protesters.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 12-year-old girl is dead after an assailant attacked her and raped her two young sisters in their home in the northern Mexico border city of Ciudad Juarez.

The prosecutor's office in Chihuahua state says girl died of strangulation. The office did not give the younger girls' ages, but local media said they were 10 and 11.

The office said today the assailant is being sought, but did not say if he had been identified. The attack occurred Wednesday in a low-income neighbourhood on the city's west side, near a desert area where the bodies of numerous young women were found dumped in the 1990s.

Human rights officials in Mexico say number of women and girls killed in the country since then has almost doubled.

Luis Raul Gonzalez Perez, president of Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, said yesterday that the number of women killed per year in Mexico has risen from 1,519 in 1990 to 2,813 in 2016.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Three people were killed while two others seriously injured when their speeding SUV rammed into a tree here, the police said today.

The impact of the collission at Naupur village last night was such that two passengers in the vehicle died on the spot, while another person succumbed to injuries at a hospital, they said.

Naupur village is located almost 35 kilometres from the district headquarters.

"The deceased and injured passengers were from the same family. The injured persons have been referred to Varanasi for treatment. The police had to call a JCB machine to break the SUV, and take out the bodies," superintendent of police K K Chaudhary said.

The deceased have been identified as Sandeep Yadav, 28, Subhash Yadav, 38, and Munnu Yadav, 35.

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Four employees of Tripura Gramin Bank were kidnapped from Taidu area of Gomati district, about 50 KM from here, police said today.

The four employees of the Taidu branch of Tripura Gramin Bank were on their way here after work when they were kidnapped yesterday by unidentified persons, Gomati district superintendent of police Bijoy Debbarma told reporters here.

The four were identified as the bank branch manager Tanmoy Bhattacharya (30), its assistant manager Sujit Dey(28) and two other staff members Raktim Bhowmick (31) and Subrata Debbarma(32), he said.

Bhattacharya was driving his car and Dey and Bhowmick were in it. The fourth bank employee Debbarma was in a bike behind them when they were kidnapped, the SP said adding the exact location of the incident is yet to be identified.

The Director General of Police A K Shukla said a massive search operation is on by the police and paramilitary forces to rescue the bank employees.

Asked, he said it was not a case of kidnap by any insurgent outfit. "Though some insurgents of Tripura are still in Bangladesh, they are not operating inside the state."



Shukla said, the family members of the kidnapped filed an FIR when they did not return home till late in the night and their phones were found switched off.

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At least four people were killed and 19 others injured today in a suicide attack on security forces in Pakistan's Balochistan province, officials said, the latest attack on security personnel in the restive region.

The attackers targeted a security forces' convey when it was passing through Sariab road in the provincial capital Quetta, police officials said.

The officials confirmed that it was a suicide bomb attack on security forces convoy.

"The target was the vehicle of the FC commander, but he was not present in the vehicle when the bomb attack took place," a government official said.

A spokesperson for Civil hospital Quetta said that they had received four dead bodies while 19 persons, including a child, were injured in the bomb explosion.

"Some of the injured are in critical condition as they were hit by shrapnels in the attack," Wasim Baig said.

The attack came a day after senior police official of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Ashraf Noor was killed in a suicide attack on his vehicle in the upscale Hayatabad neighbourhood of Peshawar.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Taliban militants and Baloch nationalists often target security forces in the area.

A senior Pakistani police officer and his three family members were killed by unidentified, motorcycle-borne militants in Balochistan on November 15.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Muhammad Illyas who was on his way to market when he was killed in a targeted attack along with his wife, son and five-year-old granddaughter.

A suspected suicide bomber killed Additional Inspector General Telecommunications Hamid Shakeel and three other police officers in a targeted attack in Quetta on November 9.

Balochistan has been rocked by a series of attacks which raised concerns about a growing militant presence, including those affiliated with Islamic State, which has claimed several bombings in the restive province.

The unrest has raised security concerns for projects in the USD 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link from western China to Pakistan's southern Gwadar port.

At least six police commandos and a civilian were killed last month when an explosives-laden vehicle rammed into a security force's convoy on the Quetta-Sibi Highway.

In August this year, a massive suicide explosion, targeting Pakistan Army personnel in Quetta, left 15 people dead including seven civilians and injured at least 20 people.

In June this year, 14 people, including seven policemen, were killed and 21 others were injured in a suicide car bombing on Gulistan Road in Balochistan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least four people were killed and 15 others injured today in a targeted attack on security forces in Pakistan's Balochistan province, officials said, the latest attack on security personnel in the restive region.

The attackers targeted a security forces' vehicle on Sariab Road area in the provincial capital Quetta, police officials said.

Four people were killed but their identity is not known, they said.

The nature of the bombing was not known immediately, but police suspected that it could be a suicide attack.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Taliban militants and Baloch nationalists often target security forces in the area.

A senior Pakistani police officer and his three family members were killed by unidentified, motorcycle-borne militants in Balochistan on November 15.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Muhammad Illyas who was on his way to market when he was killed in a targeted attack along with his wife, son and five-year-old granddaughter.

A suspected suicide bomber killed Additional Inspector General Telecommunications Hamid Shakeel and three other police officers in a targeted attack in Quetta on November 9.

Balochistan has been rocked by a series of attacks which raised concerns about a growing militant presence, including those affiliated with Islamic State, which has claimed several bombings in the restive province.

The unrest has raised security concerns for projects in the USD 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link from western China to Pakistan's southern Gwadar port.

At least six police commandos and a civilian were killed last month when an explosives-laden vehicle rammed into a security force's convoy on the Quetta-Sibi Highway.

In August this year, a massive suicide explosion, targeting Pakistan Army personnel in Quetta, left 15 people dead including seven civilians and injured at least 20 people.

In June this year, 14 people, including seven policemen, were killed and 21 others were injured in a suicide car bombing on Gulistan Road in Balochistan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Disinvestment-bound Air India's regional arm, Alliance Air, plans to induct five ATR planes in its fleet in as many months and will soon roll out flights to three new destinations as part of the government's UDAN scheme, a top official said.

As of now, the Delhi-based airline flies to 46 destinations with a fleet of 15 ATR 72-600s.

"We are in the process of inducting new ATR 72-600 aircraft by March next year, which will take our fleet size to 20 planes at the end of the fiscal," Alliance Air Chief Executive Officer C S Subbiah said at a function held by JRD Tata Memorial Trust here today.

Subbiah said that the airline is "competing" with high density rail traffic and that it has enhanced frequency on many routes with daily flights from weekly flights in the last two years.

Alliance Air, at present, operates 89 departures per day connecting 62 city-pairs.

"Along with the fleet, we are expanding our route network as well. We will shortly be launching a flight to Agra from Delhi, which will be our 47th destinations, as part of the government's regional connectivity scheme UDAN," he said.

Alliance Air and four other operators --SpiceJet, Air Deccan, Air Odisha and TruJet -- were mandated to launch flights 70 airports connecting 128 routes in the first round of bidding for UDAN.

Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) scheme seeks to provide air connectivity to unserved airports as well as enhancing flight services to the underserved ones at affordable fares.

Alliance Air has bagged 15 routes as part of this, Subbiah said adding, the airlne has already launched flights to 12 routes and operations on the remaining three including Agra will commence soon.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A barber community organisation, which had taken offence at a statement made by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, today announced that it won't hold any protest on the issue, after Fadnavis expressed regret.

Maharashtra Nabhik Mahamandal president Kalyanrao Dale held a meeting in Indapur tehsil where the decision to cancel the proposed 'agitation' was taken.

While addressing a gathering in Kolhapur yesterday, Fadnavis said, "I had issued a letter when I realised that my comments had hurt the sentiments. I am not more important than the society. If sentiments are hurt, I express my apologies."



The chief minister had made the statement in question when taking a dig at the previous Congress-led government over its habit of starting many development works simultaneously and leaving them unfinished, drawing analogy with 'barbers' ways'.

In protest, the barber community leaders had announced a statewide road blockade agitation and mass tonsuring of heads ahead of the winter session of the state Assembly.

In a statement today, the organisation said no protest would he held.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dispensing with formalities, Puducherry Lt Governor Kiran Bedi today travelled in a bus with 100 students from all over the country and joined them in planting saplings on the side of a lake at a nearby village.

The students, from 17 educational institutions in various parts of the country, are on a three-day visit to the union territory from yesterday.

Bedi travelled with the students in a bus from her office to the site at Velrampet village, a release from the Lt Governor's office said.

The students, here under the banner 'Young India', spent more than two hours at the site and walked around the lake with Bedi after planting around 130 saplings of different species on the lake bund.

Kiran Bedi has been undertaking periodic weekend visits to villages to know the infrastructure conditions and listen to grievances of the people.

The release said the Lt Governor wanted to make the lake, which had gained a face lift after her efforts to make it garbage free and empowering the villagers to maintain it properly, an eco tourism site.

Bedi told the students to develop positive habits that would stand them in in good stead in their lives, to have a goal and be committed to reach it.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress today condemned the BJP over its "shameful" barb that Rahul Gandhi was siding with terrorists after he alleged Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "hugplomacy had failed" in keeping the 26/11 terror attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed under arrest in Pakistan.

Speaking to reporters here, Congress leader Anand Sharma said that the BJP leaders "in their arrogance" have lost their mental balance as they targeted Gandhi.

He said the BJP needs to be reminded that Gandhi belongs to a family which made sacrifices for the unity and integrity of the country and accused the BJP of taking political discourse to a new low.

"It is shameful. It deserves to be condemned. The BJP leaders have lost their mental balance in arrogance. Gandhi is the leader of Congress, which has made sacrifices in fighting terrorism and for the integrity of India...for them to say such a thing, I will say it has hit a new low," he said.

The BJP said today that its government had succeeded in isolating Pakistan over terrorism, while the UPA treated it as a victim state and let it off lightly.

BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao accused the Congress and its vice president of "repeatedly betraying the country by pandering to anti-India elements" and cited their alleged questioning of surgical strikes to make his point.

Taking to Twitter earlier in the day, Gandhi said, "Narendrabhai, baat nahi bani (this has not worked). Terror mastermind is free," he said, adding that the prime minister's "hugplomacy" has failed.

Gandhi was referring to Modi's bonhomie with US President Donald Trump during his last visit to the US when the two leaders were seen hugging each other several times.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu today accused the Centre of delaying the process of giving the state's share in GST collections.

The minister along with Congress workers also took out a protest march against the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

The state is facing problems in spending on development projects because of a cash crunch caused by the delay in disbursement of Punjab's share in GST collections, he alleged here.

"The GST has created terror among people and it is a direct attack on the federal structure. Rs 3,500 crore has not been paid by the Centre to the Punjab government," Sidhu said.

He also claimed that traders and customers were upset with the tax slab.

"Earlier there was a six per cent tax on goods but with the implementation of the GST, tax was being charged at 18 per cent on most of goods because of which both traders and consumers are upset," the minister said.

The Local Bodies Minister alleged that the "improper" implementation of the GST had left business communities fuming as they were finding it difficult to adjust to the new tax system.

He claimed that with the Centre sharing tax proceeds with states, the latter had become "beggars" for their share of revenue.

Reportedly, two ambulances carrying patients got stuck in the traffic jam for half-an-hour because of the protest march.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With little fanfare, Cuba today commemorated the first anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro as it prepares to move into the post-Castro era.

Since his death at the age of 90 on November 25 last year, Castro's wishes have been respected. No street, square or building bears his name, and no statue or monument has been erected in his honour.

But Castro remains present in the minds of Cubans, and state media daily recalls his exploits, speeches and writings.

The most important commemoration will be held at nightfall at Havana University, where Castro often delivered his lengthy and fiery speeches.

The Union of Communist Youth has organised a "political- cultural evening" marking the "physical death" of El Comandante.

Raul Castro, the 86 year-old leader who took power when his older brother Fidel became ill in 2006, may make an appearance.

But the government has scheduled no major events marking the death of Fidel, who governed Cuba for 48 years and died at the age of 90.

Nevertheless signs and slogans painted on walls that read "I am Fidel," "Fidel will always live" and "Fidel is among us" can be seen around the country.

Cuba's two newspapers, the state-run Granma and Juventud Rebelde, dedicated most of their issues to the late communist leader.

"This year we, the people of Cuba, have within us great sadness but mixed with joy because he (Fidel) left a youth that ... is much better than us old folk," said Emerido, a 75 year-old retiree who declined to give his last name.

Leisi Chi, a 22 year-old history student, recalls the pain she felt upon hearing of Fidel's death.

"It touched us, especially the youth and the people here, even if some people rejoiced," she told AFP.

Fidel Castro "is alive in our thoughts, our culture, our battle of ideas," added elementary school principal Gladys Garcia.

The leftist regimes of Venezuela and Bolivia also held events in memory of the late revolutionary leader.

When Fidel Castro died Cuba went into mourning until his ashes were interred in the southeastern city of Santiago de Cuba. An event marking the anniversary may be held there on December 4.

The anniversary of Fidel Castro's death comes just ahead of the first round of municipal elections which will mark a turning point in Cuban history.

The polls will kick off a series of elections ending in February 2018 with the first top government generational change in 60 years -- the election of Raul Castro's replacement, who will, for the first time, be a post- revolutionary figure.

President since 2008 when he took over from Fidel, 86- year-old Castro said he will not run for re-election.

First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, 57, is favoured to replace him.

Born after the revolution, Diaz-Canel would have the tough task of forging the first post-Castro government, consolidating the revolution's gains and executing an economic transition plan.

Raul Castro, however, will remain head of the all- powerful Cuban Communist Party until the next Congress scheduled for 2021 -- when he would be 90 years old.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The death toll from the deadliest terrorist attack on Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Egypt's restive North Sinai region was today raised substantially to 305, which included 27 children, the state prosecutor said.

General Prosecutor Nabil Sadek said in a statement that another 128 people were wounded in the attack, when heavily- armed militants bombed the al-Rowda mosque in Al-Arish city and opened fire on people attending the Friday prayers.

The death toll was reported at 235 yesterday.

Sadek said the number of terrorists involved in the attack varied from 25 to 30, some of whom had raised the Islamic State flag during the attack.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.

The Egypt government announced three days of mourning, even as President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi chaired an emergency meeting with officials to review security after the attack.

Egypt's Army said in a statement that a number of terrorists have been killed in air strikes in North Sinai since the attack yesterday. The Army was conducting raids in the troubled region to eliminate terrorist hideouts.

The Al-Ahram newspaper, citing a military source, reported that a military operation was underway in North Sinai. The unnamed source did not reveal the details of the operation, but told the daily: "The response will be on the ground and will not stop until the elimination of everyone involved in the attack. We are taking our revenge now."



Sisi has vowed a "brute" response to the mosque attack.

During the attack, the terrorists took positions near the door and the 12 windows of the mosque and then opened fire on the worshippers, the statement said.

They had come to the mosque in five SUVs and torched another seven vehicles parked outside the mosque and owned by the worshippers there, the prosecutor said.

According to people injured in the attack, some of the terrorists had masked their face and all of them wore military-like dresses. After the bomb ripped through the mosque, the gunmen on four off-road vehicles opened fire on worshippers who tried to escape from the site after the blast.

Nearly 50 ambulances were rushed to the site to shift the injured to hospitals.

Speaking to state-run Masriya TV, Egypt's health ministry spokesman Khalid Mujahid described it as a "terrorist attack."



One report said the target appeared to be the supporters of the security forces who were praying at the mosque. Local residents were quoted in reports saying that followers of Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, often gathered at the mosque.

Islamist jihadist groups, including the Islamic State, see Sufis as heretics.

The Sinai peninsula has endured many attacks blamed on the Islamic State and other terrorist groups since the January 2011 revolution that toppled president Hosni Mubarak, but this was the deadliest assault of its kind.

The attacks against police and military officials increased after Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was ousted in 2013 by the military following massive protests against his rule. More than 700 security personnel have been reported killed since then.

In May this year, gunmen attacked a bus carrying Coptic Christians in central Egypt, killing at least 28 people.

In April, two suicide bombings at Palm Sunday service at churches in the northern cities of Alexandria and Tanta killed 46 people.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The death toll from the deadliest terror attack on Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Egypt's restive North Sinai region has risen to 305, the state prosecution said today.

Among the deceased are 27 children, Egypt's General Prosecutor Nabil Sadek said in a statement.

Sadek said 128 people were injured in the attack, the deadliest terror attack in the country.

Heavily-armed terrorists bombed al-Rowda mosque in Al- Arish city during the Friday prayers.

The number of terrorists involved in the attack vary from 25 to 30, the statement said, adding that they had raised the Islamic State flag.

They took their positions facing the door of the mosque and its 12 windows before opening fire on the worshipers, it said.

The terrorists used five vehicles in the attack and torched 7 vehicles owned by worshippers, the statement added.

The prosecutor said that according to the injured people, some of the terrorists were masked and others were not and all of them were dressed in military-like outfits.

After the bomb ripped through the mosque, the gunmen on four off-road vehicles opened fire on the worshippers who tried to escape from the site after the explosion, it said.

Speaking to state-run Masriya TV station, Egyptian health ministry spokesman Khalid Mujahid described the incident as a "terrorist attack."



One report said the target appeared to be supporters of the security forces who were praying at the mosque.

Local people were also quoted as saying that followers of Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, regularly gathered at the mosque.

Islamist jihadist groups, including so-called Islamic State (IS), see Sufis as heretics.

About 50 ambulances were rushed to the attack site to shift the injured to hospitals.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack and there is no word yet on what happened to the terrorists involved.

There have been regular attacks blamed on militants on the Sinai peninsula since the January 2011 revolution that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak, but this is the deadliest assault of its kind.

The attacks targeting police and military increased after the ouster of Islamist ex-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by military following massive protests against his rule.

Over 700 security personnel have been reported killed since then.

The military has launched security campaigns in the area, arrested suspects and demolished houses that belonged to terrorists, including those facilitating tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip.

The Egypt government has announced three days of mourning, even as President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi chaired an emergency meeting with officials to review security situation after the deadly attack.

Egypt has witnessed a series of terror attacks this year claiming scores of lives.

On May 26, gunmen attacked a bus carrying Coptic Christians in central Egypt, killing at least 28 people and wounding 25 others.

On April 9, two suicide bombings at Palm Sunday services at churches in the northern cities of Alexandria and Tanta left 46 people dead.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today conducted a surprise inspection of public toilets along with Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chief Swati Maliwal and expressed dissatisfaction with the state of the washrooms.

Kejriwal visited toilet complexes located in Chhatarpur and east Delhi's Ghazipur and Geeta Colony.

During the inspection, he found that the toilets in Chhatarpur were non-operational, said the DCW in a statement.

The toilet in Geeta Colony was extremely dirty while the toilet in Ghazipur was being cleaned at the time of the visit, it said.

The contractor for the upkeep and maintenance of the toilets was found not engaging 'safai karamcharis' (sanitation workers) and it meant that the toilets remained dirty, the statement said.

Kejriwal sought an explanation from the chief executive officer of the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board and directed him to take immediate action to ensure proper upkeep of the toilets.

He was also directed to regularly inspect the toilets and set up a system to ensure proper monitoring.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two motorcycle borne armed miscreants today shot dead district Congress Vice President's son at Gyan Babu Chowk in Motihari town of Bihar's East Champaran district.

The deceased has been identified as Chhotu Jaiswal (30), son of East Champaran District Congress vice president Munmun Jaiswal, town police station SHO Anand Kumar said.

The deceased is the brother-in-law of Rani Jaiswal, who is a councillor from ward number 12 of Motihari Municipal Council, he added.

After getting information, Superintendent of Police Upendra Kumar Sharma reached the spot. CCTV cameras are being searched by the police to gather detail about the incident.

The incident occurred when Chhotu Jaiswal was having tea at Gyan Babu Chowk under town police station area when two motorbike borne miscreants appeared and opened fire on him (Chhotu), the SHO said.

He was rushed to a private hospital where he succumbed to his bullet injuries, the SHO added.

Chhotu Jaiswal received three bullets, the SHO said and added that the murder appears to be the fallout of a land dispute.

The miscreants managed to espcape from the spot after the incident, the SHO said.

Police have recovered six empty cartridges of 9 mm from the spot, police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri today claimed that the dip in the Delhi Metro's ridership, according to an RTI reply, cannot be linked to the fare hike effected in October, which it said was necessary for maintaining "efficiency".

The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Housing and Urban Affairs told reporters here that despite the increase, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation's (DMRC) fares were among the "lowest in the world" and the "lowest in India".

"The fare hike has not led to a decline in metro ridership. For example, in 2016, there was a ridership dip by 1.3 lakh from September to October when there was no change in fares," he said.

His comments came hours after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who has been opposing the fare hike, tweeted: "This steep hike in metro fare will kill Delhi Metro. If people stop using it, then what purpose does it serve?"



Puri said that every year, there are a few months that see an increase in ridership and a decline is observed in the others.

The ridership after the fare revision for many days was actually higher than the ridership on some days before it was revised, he said.

"On previous occasions of fare increase, there were at times temporary dip in ridership which recovered shortly. Ridership in November has shown a rising trend," the union minister said.

However, according to the DMRC's records, the fall in October was the steepest ever. The metro has been logging a daily average ridership between 27 lakh and 28 lakh over the recent years, with minor variations.

Till May, the Delhi Metro transported around 28 lakh passengers daily. But, after the first phase of the hike in May, it lost nearly 1.5 lakh passengers per day in June as the ridership dropped to 25.7 lakh.

However, the ridership picked up from around July.

In July and August, the Delhi Metro witnessed a daily average ridership of 26.6 lakh and 27 lakh respectively



Last year, in July, August and September, the metro's daily average ridership figures were 26.9 lakh, 28.5 lakh and 28.4 lakh, respectively, reflecting a trajectory of sustained growth.

Seeking to defend the fare hike, Puri said that metro fares are neither fixed by the Centre or the Delhi government, both of which hold equal stakes in the DMRC, and pointed out that it was after a gap of eight years that the fares had been hiked.

Fare Fixation Committee, a statutory body created under an Act of Parliament, determines the metro fares, he said.

"When the new fixation committee was formed, they decided that since the fares were not hiked during the last eight years, the increase would happen in two segments, one in May and the other in October," Puri said.

He also said that the metro is a capital intensive project and if it has to be run efficiently, it's "long-term liabilities in terms of loan repayment" need to be discharged timely".

"DMRC has a loan of Rs 28,268 crore from JICA. So far, they have only paid Rs 1,507 crore. For the current year, they have to pay Rs 890 crore towards principal and interest liability," he said.

According to the RTI query by a PTI correspondent, the metro's daily average ridership came down to 24.2 lakh in October from 27.4 lakh in September, a fall of around 11 per cent.

The Blue Line, considered the metro's busiest, lost over 30 lakh commuters, according to data shared by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) in response to an RTI query.

The 50-km corridor connects Dwarka to Noida. The metro currently has a 218-km network across Delhi-NCR.

On October 10, the DMRC effected the fare hike, leading to a rise of around Rs 10 for nearly every distance slab. This came barely five months of another hike of up to 100 per cent.

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The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has issued a fresh show-cause notice to NRI businessman C C Thampi for alleged violation of foreign exchange laws to the tune of over Rs 1,000 crore in the purchase of vast tracts of land in Kerala, official sources said today.

The central probe agency has issued the notice under provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), alleging contravention of Rs 1,014.75 crore by the businessman, his wife M Rodrigues and their companies.

The couple, under the scanner of the agency for their reported dealings with the families of some politicians and bureaucrats, are non-resident Indians and hence were not entitled to purchase land, they said.

The ED, in February this year, issued a similar show- cause notice to Thampi and his firms for alleged FEMA violation amounting to over Rs 288 crore in acquiring about 927 acres of land in Delhi and adjoining areas (national capital region).

"Further probe in case of Thampi's companies in Kerala revealed that he had adopted a similar modus operandi (like the Delhi-NCR land purchase instance) of forwarding loans to his companies and getting it converted into equity in his name and in the name of his family members and purchased land including agricultural land in the name of the companies," a source said.

The latest notice is for the FEMA violation amounting to Rs 1,014.75 crore and the land that he allegedly purchased in Kerala is over 594 acres.

The agency registered a FEMA case against Thampi and his associates last year.

The firms that are being investigated by the ED, as part of the two show-cause notices, include Holiday City Centre Private Limited, Holiday Properties Private Limited and Holiday Bekal Resorts Private Limited.

The ED earlier said that Thampi had "acquired huge agricultural land mass in Palwal and Faridabad districts of Haryana in the name of his company Holiday City Centre Pvt. Ltd. by circumventing the prescribed law of land and in contravention of extant provision of FEMA".

The probe revealed that Thampi was residing outside India and he had advanced unsecured loans to his three companies which was later converted into equity in his name and in the name of his family members in these companies, it had said.

Agency sources said the businessman was also under the scanner for his reported dealings with some politicians and bureaucrats.

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A court in Egypt today gave the death penalty to seven people and sent 10 more to life in prison for beheading 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya and for joining a terrorist organisation affiliated to the Islamic State.

The Cairo Criminal Court also sent three others to 15 years in prison in the same case.

The court found that the convicts had joined the "Marsa Matrouh cell", which is affiliated to IS in Libya.

They were also found guilty of joining training camps in Libya and Syria, planning terrorist attacks in Egypt, possessing weapons, inciting violence and participating in killing of 21 Christians in Libya in 2015.

The court ordered that all convicts, except those sentenced to death, remain under police surveillance for five years after serving their sentences, local media reports said.

The sentencing came a day after the deadliest terrorist attack on worshippers at a mosque in Egypt's restive North Sinai region. The death toll in the attack today rose to 305.

The Egyptian security forces, meanwhile, have continued their air strikes against terrorists involved in the attack.

Army spokesperson Tamer el-Refai said in a statement that the Air Force destroyed a number of terrorists hideouts and the Army was conducting raids to eliminate terrorists.

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A herd of seven elephants has damaged standing paddy crop in a number of villages in Gajapati district of Odisha.

Forest officials have been asked to assess the loss of the affected farmers, Gajapati district collector Sudhansu Mohan Samal said.

The herd strayed into the villages under Goshani block near Paralakhemundi yesterday and it might have migrated from Lakhari elephant reserve via Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh, Divisional Forest Officer, Berhampur, A K Behera, who is also the in-charge of Paralakhemundi Forest Divicion said.

The jumbos did not cause any loss to life, he said.

"The farmers will be compensated in accordance with government provision," the district collector said.

The DFO said forest personnel were keeping a strict vigil on the movement of the herd, he said.

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A French court has sentenced a man who wounded a photographer in a shooting in 2013 to 25 years behind bars, in a case that predated the string of jihadist attacks that has since struck the country.

Abdelhakim Dekhar, now 52, was arrested in November 2013 following a major manhunt after he broke into the headquarters of the BFMTV channel.

There, he threatened journalist Philippe Antoine with a shotgun, and said: "Next time, I won't miss."



Three days later, still on the run, he managed to stage a shooting attack at the offices of left-wing newspaper Liberation, also in Paris, that left a photographer's assistant seriously hurt.

There was also a separate incident where shots were fired at the headquarters of the Societe Generale bank.

The court found him guilty of attempted murder of Philippe Antoine, now chief editor at BFMTV, and Cesar Sebastien, the wounded photographer's assistant at Liberation.

Prosecutor Bernard Farret had argued that "spite" had been Dekhar's main motive, adding that the shooter harboured "resentment against society, the state and capitalism".

Dekhar, sentenced yesterday, was considering filing an appeal, his lawyer Hugo Levy said.

Of the total, Dekhar will only be eligible for parole once he has served two thirds of his sentence.

During his trial, Dekhar repeatedly evoked political arguments, raising topics such as France's colonisation of Algeria and social problems in the French suburbs.

He had also claimed he was suicidal and "desperate" for the police to end his life.

Dekhar had been jailed in the 1990s for his role in a "Bonnie-and-Clyde" style multiple murder and left rambling letters denouncing conspiracies and media manipulation.

The case predated the January 2015 jihadist attack on the premises of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which left 12 people dead.

On November 13 that year, gunmen and suicide bombers left 130 people dead in a coordinated attack targeting several Paris locations including a concert hall.

The attacks profoundly shook France, triggering a state of emergency that was lifted only this month after President Emmanuel Macron signed a controversial new anti-terror law.

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French President Emmanuel Macron named a Socialist lawmaker to a top budget post as part of a cabinet shuffle unveiled today, following grumblings from leftists who accuse his centrist government of favouring the rich.

The moves were prompted by the nomination of Macron's ultra-loyal government spokesman, Christophe Castaner, as head of his Republic on the Move (LREM) party last Saturday.

Olivier Dussopt, a 39-year-old specialist in regional affairs, will become junior minister in the public accounts ministry led by Gerard Darmanin.

Dussopt -- who voted against Macron's 2018 budget in a National Assembly vote just a few days ago -- will oversee finances for France's public sector, which Macron has vowed to pare down.

The budget puts a freeze on major infrastructure projects, while nearly 1,600 civil service jobs are to be axed.

Dussopt's nomination did not go over well with his leftist colleagues, with one party official, Rachid Temal, telling AFP that "He is no longer a Socialist Party member."



Another new arrival in the government is Delphine Geny- Stephann, 49, who had been a high-ranking finance ministry official until 2005, when she joined the French glass and building materials group Saint-Gobain.

She was named junior finance minister. Her boss Bruno Le Maire said this week that Macron was "totally determined" to bring France's deficit below the EU limit of three percent of GDP this year.

Benjamin Griveaux, the junior finance minister who was the spokesman for Macron's En Marche (On the Move) movement before he was swept to the presidency in May, will become the government's spokesman.

Macron has been moving to rekindle the support of his base after passing labour overhauls and tax cuts that trade unionists and even his leftwing supporters say favour businesses and the wealthy.

Last Saturday, hundreds of protesters marched to Macron's official residence in Paris to denounce what they called his "anti-social policies".

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Georgian leaders have vowed to punish those responsible for a blaze that killed 11 people at a five-star hotel in Georgia's Black Sea resort city of Batumi.

Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, who was returning yesterday to the Georgian capital Tbilisi from a summit with EU leaders in Brussels, diverted his plane to Batumi upon learning of the fire at the posh 22-storey Leogrand hotel.

He pledged a prompt investigation into the cause of the blaze.

"All those responsible for this tragedy will be punished," he said late yesterday.

Officials today revised down the death toll after initially putting it at 12 people.

"Eleven people died as a result of the fire" in Georgia's second-largest city of Batumi late Friday, the Caucasus nation's interior ministry said in a statement.

The victims -- 10 Georgians and an Iranian -- all died of smoke inhalation, the interior ministry said.

Twenty one people were hospitalised, mostly with carbon monoxide poisoning, and were in a stable condition, it added.

Five Turkish nationals and an Israeli were among those injured, regional health minister Zaal Mikeladze said.

The bodies of eight of the victims -- all of them men -- were found in an elevator, another body in a swimming pool and two more in a gym, Georgia's Interpress agency reported, citing the victims' relatives.

"It took just minutes for the smoke to fill the entire hotel," one of the hotel guests, Kakha Mikiashvili, told journalists.

"The electricity went off and all the doors were automatically blocked. We were trying in vain to break windows to get some fresh air," he was reported as saying.

"Firefighters arrived in a few minutes and we were saved."



Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili offered his condolences to the victims' families.

Interior Minister Giorgi Gakharia told journalists that an investigation had been launched into the "breach of fire safety norms" in the hotel which reportedly lacked a fire escape staircase.

Seventeen fire engines, 120 firefighters, and 200 rescue workers were sent at the site, Gakharia added.

Twenty participants of the Miss Georgia beauty contest were staying at the hotel when the fire erupted, said Ia Kitsmarishvili, head of a model agency that sought to organise the event.

"None of them has been injured, they have all been evacuated on time," she said in televised remarks.

The contest, which had been due to be held in Batumi today, was postponed, she added.

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The Goa government has decided to formulate a heritage conservation policy for the Portuguese- era structures in the state.

Town and Country Planning Minister Vijai Sardesai said today the policy would be framed after consulting experts in the field.

He said the policy would not only document the existing heritage structures but will also work to give them a new lease of life.

The minister informed that the Department of Archives and Archaeology could also be roped in to restore the dilapidated structures if they are covered under the policy.

"Incentives would be introduced for those who have conserved their ancestral structures with heritage and architectural value," he said.

He said the state-based Charles Correa Foundation, which has been working towards heritage conservation, has been requested by the government to document and list heritage buildings across Goa.

"The structures would be graded by the Foundation. They had started grading the heritage houses in Panaji much before we approached them. We have now asked them to extend scope of their work to other places too," Sardesai said.

The coastal state has several hundred houses with the Indo-Portuguese architecture built during the colonial rule.

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The government has announced the post-GST rates for claiming rebate of state taxes under the scheme for Remission of State Levies (RoSL) on exports of readymade garments and made-ups, in a bid to support the outward shipments.

The government has also doubled the rates for incentives under an export promotion scheme -- MEIS -- to 4 per cent for readymade garments and made-ups.

In a series of tweets, Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani said post-GST rates for remission of state levies/taxes and Enhanced Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) rates will boost exports of garments and made-ups.

Garment exporters' body AEPC said the increase in MEIS rates will help in the fulfilment of orders for the Christmas festival as it will help in unblocking the blocked capital.

In a release, the textiles ministry said post-GST rates of RoSL are up to a maximum of 1.70 per cent for cotton garments, 1.25 per cent for MMF, silk and woolen garments and 1.48 per cent for apparel of blends.

The ministry said the notification of post-GST RoSL rates for rebate of state levies/taxes is in pursuance of the decision of the government to boost exports and employment generation in the labour intensive textiles and apparel sector.

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has enhanced rates for garments and made-ups to 4 per cent of value of exports from 2 per cent under MEIS. New MEIS rates are effective from November 1.

"Announcement on post-GST rates of RoSL will be effective from 1 Oct 2017. Post-GST rates for remission of state levies/taxes will boost exports of garments & made-ups," Irani tweeted.

In another tweet, the minister said the enhanced MEIS rates will further boost exports of garments and made-ups from India.

Under the MEIS scheme, the commerce ministry gives duty benefits to several products. It provides duty benefits at 2 per cent, 3 per cent and 5 per cent depending upon the product and country.

The DGFT said the rates for incentives under MEIS for two subsectors of textiles industry -- readymade garments and made-ups -- have been enhanced to 4 per cent of value of exports with effect from November 1 till June 30 next year.

As a result, the estimated annual incentives will be Rs 1,143.15 crore for 2017-18 and Rs 685.89 crore for 2018-19, the commerce ministry said in a statement.

Commenting on the measures, H K L Magu, Vice Chairman of AEPC, said the garment exporters' body has been demanding the increase in rates of MEIS along with RoSL and duty drawback from a long time.

"We are also hopeful that the government will intervene and address the issue of restoration of the old duty drawback rates as the sharp reduction in the rates of duty drawback has dealt a huge blow on the competitiveness of the industry," he said.

Ready made garment exports dipped by about 40 per cent to USD 829.44 million in October.

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The police have registered a case against a government officer for allegedly embezzling funds meant for salaries of health department employees in Jammu and Kashmir's Kishtwar district, officials said today.

A special team has been constituted to investigate the case and bring the culprits to book, they said.

The officials said that a junior assistant, posted with the chief medical officer's (CMO) office, was entrusted with the assignment of preparing and processing salaries of employees in the health department.

However, the official allegedly for "ulterior motives" and "committing a criminal breach of trust" forged various signatures and diverted salaries of two months of several employees to his personal accounts, they said.

"The police have detected both the personal accounts of the employee at the Jammu and Kashmir Bank's Bhalla Bhaderwah Branch," the officials said.

The bank manager concerned was directed to freeze the accounts and efforts are being made to arrest him, they said.

"A case under various sections of the Ranbir Penal Code, including criminal breach of trust by a public servant, cheating and forgery was registered at the police station concerned," the officials said.

The police suspect the involvement of some senior level officers in the alleged embezzlement of funds, they said.

The officials said that the CMO's office has been asked to provide all relevant records pertaining to the case.

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Unhappy over the BJP nominating his daughter-in-law instead of his wife from the Kaalol Assembly seat in Gujarat, party MP Prabhatsinh Chauhan has warned that he would not guarantee a win for the party, if the candidate is not replaced with someone of his choice.

The BJP yesterday released its fifth list of 13 candidates for the second phase of Assembly polls in Gujarat. In the list, the ruling party dropped sitting MLA Arvindsinh Chauhan and instead fielded his wife Suman Chauhan, the daughter-in-law of Prabhatsinh Chauhan, from the Kaalol seat in Panchmahal district.

Enraged over the announcement, Prabhatsinh Chauhan dashed off a letter to BJP chief Amit Shah yesterday, urging him to replace Suman Chauhan with a "local candidate".

Although, in the letter he did not clearly demand that his wife Rangeshwari be given the party ticket, recently he had told reporters that she was the best candidate for the Kaalol seat.

While Rangeshwari is the president of Ghoghamba taluka panchayat of Panchamahal district, Suman Chauhan is a member of Panchmahal district panchayat.

In the letter, the parliamentarian also alleged that his son Pravinsinh is a "bootlegger" and that he and his wife had even gone to jail.

"My son Pravin is a bootlegger and several cases are still pending against him. Both he and his wife Suman even went to jail in the past. This will dent the BJP's prospects of winning the seat. Further, Suman belongs to Godhra and people of Kaalol will not accept her," Chauhan said in the letter.

"Though I am senior, having spent 45 years in public life, the party has not taken my opinion while selecting the candidates. I was also not taken into confidence while selecting the candidate for Kaalol. Thus, I urge you to consider changing the current candidate with a local one of my choice," he added.

Prabhatsinh Chauhan, a prominent Rajput face in the region, who had joined the BJP in 1992, claimed that though he had single-handedly established the BJP's dominance in that district over the years, he has been ignored by the party and not given any post in the organisation.

Chauhan stressed that the BJP would not get even a single vote from tribals. While his wife Rangeshwari is a tribal, Suman Chauhan is a Rajput.

"The BJP will not get a single vote, out of the 1.10 lakh votes of tribals due to this ongoing controversy. There are huge chances that we will lose Kaalol. Thus, I want to inform you that I will not take any responsibility of ensuring the party's victory on any of the seven seats under my constituency including Kaalol," Chauhan said in the letter.

Three days ago, Chauhan said that he had sought ticket for his wife on the ground that she had done "very good work" as Ghoghamba taluka panchayat president.

"Just go to Ghoghamba to see what kind of work she has done. She has completely uprooted corruption. Rangeshwari is the best candidate and that is why I have appealed to the party leaders to select her for Kaalol seat," Chauhan told reporters.

Yesterday, when Rangeshwari came to know that she has been ignored in ticket allocation, she targeted her husband in a fiery Facebook post, in which she even dared him to enter Kaalol for poll campaign.

However, she deleted the post today.

"I had posted that comment out of anger and disappointment. That was not against the BJP, it was against the Member of Parliament. But now, I have entered into a compromise with him over the issue," Rangeshwari told reporters.

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Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed today "postponed" a scheduled press conference he had called to respond to the demand by the US for his re-arrest after he was released from detention by Pakistan earlier this week.

A spokesman of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), an LeT front Saeed heads, said he had "postponed his scheduled presser following riots in the country in the wake of police action against the activists of Tahreek-i-Labaik Pakistan in Islamabad."



Saeed, who has an American bounty of USD 10 million on his head, walked free on Thursday midnight after his 10-month detention ended. The Pakistan government decided against detaining him further in any other case, pushing back against India's efforts to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks to justice.

In May 2008, the US treasury department designated Saeed a global terrorist. Saeed was "individually" designated by the UN under the Security Council Resolution 1267 in December, 2008, following the Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including Americans, were killed.

Yesterday, the US had asked the Pakistan government to re-arrest and charge Saeed for his crimes. "The US is deeply concerned that Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Hafiz Saeed has been released from house arrest in Pakistan... The Pakistani government should make sure he is arrested and charged for his crimes," state department spokesperson Heather Nauert said.

It was rare for the US government to issue a statement during the Thanksgiving holidays but the State Department felt that the issue was urgent enough to ignore this tradition.

The JuD spokesman, Ahmad Nadim, said Saeed had calledthe press conference at the outfit's headquarters in Lahoreto speak on the "Indian propaganda" against him and the US demand to re-arrest him.

"However, the current situation forced him to defer it," he added.

Nearly 2,000 activists of several organisations, including Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah, have been protesting near the national capital Islamabad since November 8. They demand the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid for changes made to the 'Khatm-i-Nabuwwat', or the finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September.

Saeed has asked Pakistan to desist from holding peace talks with India. He has reiterated that the US pressured Pakistan to detain him on India's request.

"...I was detained on the pressure of the US on the Pakistani government. The US did so on the request of India," he claimed.

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A senior Hindu seer today said Hindus must bear at least four children till the Uniform Civil Code is implemented to check "demographic imbalance".

Swami Govindadev Giriji Maharaj of Bharat Mata Mandirin Haridwar said the two-child policy should not be restricted to Hindus alone, noting that India had lost those territories wherever Hindu population reduced, resulting in demographic imbalance.

He was speaking to reporters on the second day of the three-day Dharma Sansad organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, in the temple town of Udupi of coastal Karnataka.

The Swami said the government was insisting on a maximum of two children, but till the time the Uniform Civil Code is implemented, Hindus should have at least four children.India lost many of its territories wherever Hindu population reduces, he said.

"We have seen that India lost those territories wherever Hindu population reduced, resulting in demographic imbalance. The two-child policy should not be restricted to Hindus alone."



On cow-vigilantism, the seer said some criminals were settling personal scores under the guise of 'Gau Rakshaks'.

"Gau Rakshaks are peace loving people. They havebeen defamed by some vested interests. Some criminals aresettling scores under the guise of Gau Rakshaks," said GirijiMaharaj.

The mega religious event is being attended by over 2,000 Hindu seers, matt heads and VHP leaders from all over the country.

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The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum here in Chhattisgarh has found a private hospital guilty of "medical negligence".

The forum has ordered the hospital to pay a compensation of Rs 7.14 lakh to the relatives of Chandrakant Sahu, who died during treatment.

Sahu, a lawyer by profession, died on July 19 during treatment at the Fortis OP Jindal Hospital and Research Centre here.

His father Rohit Kumar Sahu had alleged negligence on the doctors' part, and moved the district consumer forum demanding a compensation of Rs 19 lakh, said his lawyer D K Jaiswal.

District Forum President M D Jagdalla issued the compensation order yesterday, he said.

Chandrakant Sahu was suffering from kidney ailments and underwent dialysis three times a week at the Fortis OP Jindal Hospital and Research Centre, he said.

On July 18, his condition turned critical while undergoing dialysis.

When his relatives asked the dialysis operator to call senior doctors, he allegedly refused, saying they visit only as per their schedule. Subsequently Sahu died.

During the hearing, advocate Kishore Thawait, who appeared for the hospital, argued that the standard procedure of treatment was followed and there was no negligence.

The consumer forum, however, held that there was negligence and asked the hospital management to pay of Rs 7.14 lakh, including Rs 1 lakh for mental agony, to the victim's kin, Jaiswal said.

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Flies can be more than pesky picnic crashers, they carry hundreds of different species of harmful bacteria and may help to spread disease, a study warns.

Researchers at the Pennsylvania State University in the US have warned the public to avoid eating food during picnics.

In a study of the microbiomes of 116 houseflies and blowflies, they found that these flies carry hundreds of different species of bacteria, many of which are harmful to humans.

"We believe that this may show a mechanism for pathogen transmission that has been overlooked by public health officials, and flies may contribute to the rapid transmission of pathogens in outbreak situations," said Donald Bryant, from the Pennsylvania State University.

The researchers were able to investigate the microbial content of individual fly body parts, including legs and wings.

The legs appear to transfer most of the microbial organisms from one surface to another, said Stephan Schuster, from the Pennsylvania State University.

"The legs and wings show the highest microbial diversity in the fly body, suggesting that bacteria use the flies as airborne shuttles," said Schuster.

"It may be that bacteria survive their journey, growing and spreading on a new surface. In fact, the study shows that each step of hundreds that a fly has taken leaves behind a microbial colony track, if the new surface supports bacterial growth," he said.

Blowflies and houseflies - both carrion fly species - are often exposed to unhygienic matter because they use feces and decaying organic matter to nurture their young, where they could pick up bacteria that could act as pathogens to humans, plants and animals.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, also indicates that blowflies and houseflies share over 50 per cent of their microbiome, a mixture of host-related microorganisms and those acquired from the environments they inhabit.

Surprisingly, flies collected from stables carried fewer pathogens than those collected from urban environments.

The researchers found 15 instances of the human pathogen Helicobacter pylori, a pathogen often causing ulcers in the human gut, largely in the blowfly samples.

The known route of transmission of Helicobacter has never considered flies as a possible vector for the disease, said Schuster.

"It will really make you think twice about eating that potato salad that's been sitting out at your next picnic," Bryant said.

"It might be better to have that picnic in the woods, far away from urban environments, not a central park," he said.

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The Haryana government today launched a monthly pension scheme for Matrabhasha Satyagraihis at a programme in Kurukshetra district.

In the scheme's first phase, as many as 194 beneficiaries have been identified, an official release said here.

The event, organised as part of the International Gita Mahotsav, was attended by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, governors Kaptan Singh Solanki and Acharya Devvrat, and Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, it said.

They presented cheques of Rs 10,000 each to eight beneficiaries as pension for November at the event, the release said.

The pension scheme has been started by the state government for those who participated in the Hindi movement in 1957, Khattar said



He said the movement was neither for any individual benefit nor political mileage, but to revive the honour of the language.

This historical movement started on April 30, 1957, and continued till December 27, 1957. Sumer Singh of Rohtak district's Bans village laid down his life for the movement, Khattar added.

The chief minister said that he had announced the scheme for Matrabhasha Satyagarihis during the closing ceremony of the Swarna Jayanti Year celebration of Haryana on October 31.

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The note ban in 2016, introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and anti-dumping structure have resulted in a decline in import of Chinese tyres, the chairman of Automotive Tyre Manufacturers Association said.

"Now you can say the Chinese imports have become less than half. During the demonetisation month (November 2016), it dropped by 20 per cent. GST coupled with anti-dumping duty, it has started to sink further," ATMA chairman Satish Sharma told reporters here today.

Noting that import of Chinese tyres has started to 'decline', he said, "the imports of Chinese tyres stood at 1,50,000 units in May 2016. Today it is 50,000 units and still going down."



Tyre dealers have become "confident" of not purchasing Chinese tyres as their "profitability" has also crashed, he said.

To a query on the growth of the tyre industry, he said it was pegged at "high single" digit during the current financial year and would be "high double digit" in FY18-19.

"My guess is that the industry this year would see a high single digit (growth) and then it should be in the double digit (as turnover)," he said.

Referring to the recent interaction of ATMA's top office-bearers with Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu, he said the Minister assured to take care of which can be done and also asked them to discuss again in "board rooms" the difficulties.

"There have been restrictive trade practices which actually spoilt the case even further. They restricted the imports (raw materials) to a few ports. You can bring in through JNPT only. So we expect these things can be taken care of," he said.

He said India signing free trade agreements would also give support to the industry.

Stating that India was not producing radial tyres when the world was looking for radial tyres a decade ago, Sharma said, "now we are producing radial tyres, we are re-entering the world market and the world has taken note of this".

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Israeli media reports that the country's health minister, who heads a powerful ultra-Orthodox political party in Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, is resigning over railway infrastructure work taking place on the Sabbath, when all labour is prohibited according to Jewish law.

Channel 10 TV and other media reported today that Yaakov Litzman told the prime minister he will step down on Sunday over the issue.

It could spell trouble for Netanyahu if other Ultra- Orthodox Jewish politicians follow Litzman's lead.

Ultra-Orthodox parties offer Netanyahu support to stabilize his coalition, while the government carves out large budgets for their community's schools and seminaries.

Much of Israel comes to a halt at sundown Friday for the Sabbath.

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Two people, including a daily wager of a state-owned company, were arrested for "misappropriation of government-supplied cement" in Jammu and Kashmir's Doda district, an official said today.

They were arrested after a police team intercepted a truck at the Bharat Nala area on the Doda-Bharat road last night. Sixty bags of cement were also seized from the vehicle, a police spokesman said.

The arrests were made after the police received information that some employees of the state-owned Jammu and Kashmir Projects Construction Corporation (JKPCC) Limited were involved in "misappropriation of government-supplied cement", he said.

The police has registered a case under various sections of the Ranbir Penal Code, including criminal breach of trust, against the daily wager Zafrullah Shah and the truck's driver Rayees Ahmad, the spokesman said.

The matter is being probed, the police said.

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Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today said that the state would be free from the menace of naxalism by the beginning of next year.

He was speaking at the India Today Conclave East here.

For any state to prosper, peace is the most important thing and any government's priority is to provide security to its masses, the chief minister said.

"In last three years we have taken steps in this regard. More than 70 per cent of naxalism has ended in Jharkhand. The remaining 30 per cent will come to an end by the end of December," Das said.

"There are some naxal leaders who are hiding in Buda Pahar. Our police personnel have been countering them and I have full faith on the police that by December end, we will be able to complete the operation and put an end on naxalite terror. From the beginning of 2018 the state will be free from (naxal) insurgency and crime," he said.

Das said that several Maoists have surrendered after the state introduced an attractive surrender policy.

"We have also cracked on naxal sympathisers in our villages and our cities by attaching their properties," the Jharkhand chief minister said.

Das said he is confident about the victory of the BJP in the upcoming Gujarat elections as the people of that state have made up their mind to give a befitting reply to the Congress.

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The JD(U) and the BJP are "natural" allies and the two parties will fight the 2019 polls together, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said.

"When the time comes, we will sit together and divide the seats. We will fight together and Narendra Modi will be again the prime minister in 2019," he said at the India Today Conclave East here last night.

He was replying to a question on whether the BJP might not feel the need for JD(U)'s support in the elections in 2019.

The BJP in alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP), Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and the Hindustani Awam Party accounts for 32 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar.

"Alliance is a give and take. When both the partners feel they will benefit from it then only it will work. We will fight together with Nitish Kumar-led JD (U) in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls," he said.

His remarks assume significance as there were some discordant voices from leaders of both the parties on seat sharing for the next general elections earlier.

After a meeting with MPs from Bihar, BJP chief Amit Shah had asked partymen to strengthen it down to the booth level in all 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The JD(U) also appealed to its workers to brace for contest on all the 40 seats.

RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and other opposition parties leaders had used the occasion to attack Nitish Kumar, claiming that he was marginalised by the saffron party to avenge an incident in 2010 when he had cancelled a dinner for BJP leaders over a tiff with Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat.

"The JD(U) and the BJP are made for each other," said.

"Nitish Kumar has been our partner for 17 years and again the JD(U) and the BJP have come together, it is a natural alliance," said the senior BJP leader, who also served as the deputy chief minister in the earlier NDA government.

The JD(U) had severe ties with the BJP in June 2013 over elevation of Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate.

After collapse of an alliance comprising the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress in July this year, Nitish Kumar and the BJP once again joined hands after four years to form a coalition in the politically sensitive state.

Sushil Modi's allegations against Lalu Prasad and his family of acquiring benami properties had played an important role in the disintegration of the alliance comprising the JD (U), the Congress and the RJD.

When the JD(U) and the BJP coalition was sworn in again on July 27 this year, was made the deputy chief minister.

The senior BJP leader dismissed speculation that a seat- sharing adjustment, in which the JD(U) would also be accommodated, might upset the sitting BJP MPs if they were denied tickets.

"What is the guarantee that every MP will get party ticket a second time? And what will they do by getting upset. If people make up their mind then it hardly matters who is getting ticket or not," said.

Sushil Modi accused Lalu Prasad of being "chaotic, disorganised and an irresponsible man".

"No gentleman can work with a person like Lalu Prasad. An unnatural alliance (of the JD(U), RJD and Congress) died a natural death. The day Nitish Kumar left the NDA, I knew this alliance (with the RJD) would not work but, I never thought it would break so soon," he claimed.
Two more Tripura State Rifles (TSR) personnel were arrested in connection with the killing of journalist Sudip Datta Bhowmick at the para-military force's 2nd battalion headquarters here, the police said today.

Nayek Amit Debbarma and Rifleman Dharmendra Kumar Singh were arrested last night on the charge of criminal conspiracy for killing journalist Datta Bhowmick at the battalion's headquarters in R K Nagar, DIG (Southern Range) Arindam Nath told PTI.

They were produced before the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate Sharmishtha Mukherjee and remanded to police custody for seven days.

Datta Bhowmick, a senior crime reporter of local Bengali newspaper 'Syandan Patrika', was allegedly shot dead on Tuesday inside the battalion's headquarters, around 15 km from here, when he had gone there to meet TSR commandant Tapan Debbarma, who was arrested on Wednesday.

The journalist's mobile phone was recovered from the possession of the commandant. Tapan Debbarma's personal bodyguard Nandalal Reang was arrested on Tuesday after the killing.

Editor of 'Syandan Patrika' Subal Kumar Dey had yesterday alleged that Dutta Bhowmik, who had written 11 items about the Tapan Debbarma's misdeeds, was called by the commandant and shot inside the battalion's headquarters.

Tripura Journalist Union (TJU) secretary Pranab Sarkar had said that the Press Council of India (PCI) had taken cognisance of the killing.

Datta Bhowmik is the second journalist to have been killed in the state in two months. In September, TV journalist Shantanu Bhowmick was killed when he had gone to Mandai in West Tripura district, about 20 km from here, to cover a political event organised by the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT).

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The DCW has written to the police after parents of the children, who were rescued last week from traffickers, approached it alleging that they were receiving death and rape threats from the son of a placement agency owner who had been arrested during the raids.

A senior Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) official said that the women's panel received representations from the parents of the children.

"They have stated that the son of the arrested owner managed to reach the place where they are staying in Delhi and asked them to withdraw the case, threatening them with rape and murder.

"They also threatened to rape the girls who have not been traced till date and whose whereabouts are not being disclosed by the accused woman," the official said.

The Commission was informed that when the premises of the said placement agency was raided by the police, several items were not seized, including many unlocked almirahs and a laptop.

Taking cognizance of the same, the Commission has written to the DCP East seeking explanation for the same, the official said.

Last week, the Commission claimed to have busted an alleged trafficking racket in East Delhi and rescued three minors with the help of police.

A statement by the DCW said the Commission's helpline received a call from a group of parents from Jharkhand who were searching for their children missing since three years.

The parents were accompanied by a minor girl who was trafficked along with other children earlier but had managed to flee.

The girl said she was getting calls from an alleged woman trafficker, who ran a placement agency in East Delhi, and was luring her to return to the national capital. The girl was earlier working in Bangalore where she was not paid for over two years, it said.

After receiving this information, DCW chairperson Swati Maliwal set up a team and a trap was laid. The alleged trafficker was called to meet the girl at Akshardham metro station.

When the woman and her accomplice met the girl, they tried to take her with them and were caught with the help of local police.

During interrogation, details emerged about two minor girls. They were subsequently rescued by the women's panel and local police.

The girls aged 12 and 13 years were rescued from Janakpuri and Pitampura. The younger girl is suspected to be pregnant. Separate FIRs were filed against the employers in these two cases.

A minor boy was also rescued from Haryana's Hisar.

The commission learnt that the arrested placement agency owner and the alleged trafficker were running the racket for a very long time and earlier too, several minors were rescued and many cases were filed against them.

The minors were not paid for their work for years and on the papers seized their monthly salaries were fixed between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,500. They were not allowed to go out of their employers' houses or contact their parents.

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After Mumbai, the country's next major financial hub will be Kolkata within a few years, West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra said today.

"27 banks are taking land in Bengal to create a financial hub including State Bank of India which is constructing the largest training centre on 11 acres adjacent to the hub," the minister told reporters here.

"This is an indication, that they see Bengal as a financial hub. Not only that, HSBC back office is in Kolkata today. Obviously we are moving towards competing with Mumbai. Some day because of our core competency of human capital, we will overtake Mumbai," he said.

Mitra claimed that the financial cluster that is coming up in Kolkata for various activities like banking, insurance, mutual funds and is spread over more than 100 acres of land is a "unique" example of how West Bengal is progressing.

The minister, who was in Delhi on West Bengal Day at the International Trade Fair, also claimed than 81 lakh people in the state have been provided jobs since it came to power in 2011.

Mitra said that the industrialists now feel that Bengal is the state to invest.

"As far as ease of doing business is concerned, earlier Bengal was in 15th position among the states. But now we have gone up to third position," he noted.

Regarding of launching Goods and Service Tax (GST), Mitra said he had always objected to the decision of the Centre to implement it from July 1.

He said that though his government always favours reduction of GST, "but it should have been done based on certain principles".

"28 per cent GST should have been made for sin goods like tobacco and other extreme luxury items and rest should have been under 18 per cent which could have been further reduced to 12 per cent," Mitra added.

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The CBI today filed charge sheet against eight police personnel, including an IG rank officer, in connection with the custodial death of an accused in the rape-and-murder case of a minor in Kotkhai on July 4.

These police officers were a part of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was set up to probe the rape and murder of the girl.

They were arrested by the CBI on July 29 in connection with the custodial death of Suraj Singh, a 29-year-old labourer from Nepal.

In the 500-page charge sheet, filed in the the designated CBI court here, the accused have been charged with murder, conspiracy, wrongful confinement to extort confession, causing grievous hurt, framing incorrect record and destroying evidence, CBI sources said.

Judge Rajinder Singh extended the judicial remand of the eight police officials and Superintendent of Police D W Negi, arrested on November 16 by the central probe agency, till December 7.

Challan against D W Negi is yet to be presented.

Suraj Singh, who was a suspect in the rape-and-murder of a minor school girl in Kotkhai area of Shimla in early July, was among six people arrested by the local police.

He was allegedly killed by a co-accused at the Kotkhai police station on the night of July 18, triggering a massive public outrage.

The CBI, which was later handed over the probe into the case by the Himachal Pradesh High Court, questioned several people before arresting IGP Zahur Haidar Zaidi and seven other police officials.

The Class 10 student had gone missing on July 4 and her naked body was recovered from Haliala forests in Kotkhai on July 6.

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The BJP today approached the Centre over the LDF government's decision to redraw the boundaries of the Neelakurinji sanctuary in Idukki district and alleged that it was "illegal" and an attempt to "legalise encroachments."



Neelakurinji is a purplish blue flower which blooms only once in 12 years and the blossoming attracts a large number of tourists and nature enthusiasts from Kerala and outside.

The 'Neelakurinji sanctuary' is proposed over 3,200 hectare land in Munnar of Idukki which is part of the biodiversity hotspot of Western Ghats.

A preliminary notification for the same was issued in 2006 by the LDF government but it is yet to become a reality due to resistance from locals.

State BJP chief Kummanam Rajasekharan today met Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan in New Delhi and apprised him of the issue, a party release said here today.

The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests would soon convene a high-level meeting to discuss the matter, Rajasekharan said in the release.

"The Centre will intervene in the state government's move to redraw the boundaries of the sanctuary. Senior officials of the Environment and Forest Department will take part in the meeting," he said.

Claiming that any move to redraw the boundaries of the sanctuary was "illegal" and an attempt to "legalise encroachments," Rajasekharan alleged that there was also an ulterior motive to assign lands to the favourites of Chief Minister Pinarayi Viajayan.

As per the Wildlife Protection Act 1972, the state government cannot redraw the boundaries of a national wildlife sanctuary as the permission of the National Biodiversity Board is necessary for it, he claimed.

The state BJP president also sought a CBI probe into the land deals related to the Neelakurinji sanctuary.

The CPI(M)-led LDF government had recently decided to conduct a scientific study on the proposed sanctuary and redraw its boundaries to alleviate fears of locals.

A high-level meeting, chaired by Vijayan, had entrusted Revenue Secretary P H Kurien with the task of carrying out a study on the status of populated areas, institutions and places of worship falling within the territory of the proposed sanctuary.

He was also asked to submit recommendations on fixing the boundaries without shifting the people from the area.

Besides the BJP, the Congress had also come out against the government's plan to re-fix the boundaries.

Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala alleged that the move was part of the LDF government's plans to protect the encroachment by CPI(M) leaders in the hilly district.

The redrawing of boundaries would destroy the biodiversity of neelakurinji, the leader added.

The ruling LDF front partners, the CPI(M) and the CPIhad difference of opinion over the shifting of local people from the proposed sanctuary area.

CPI leader and Revenue Minister E Chandrasekharan had yesterday rejected Kurien's statement that the present plan to redraw the boundary would reduce the sanctuary area from the proposed 3,200 hectares.

Meanwhile, CPI(M) leader from Idukki and Power Minister M M Mani said the government was committed to protect Neelakurinji but it would also consider the concerns of people in the area who have land title deeds.

The government's move is being seen in the political circles as a fallout of the cancellation of title deeds of 20 acres of land possessed by LDF-backed Independent MP Joice George and his relatives at Kottakambur in Idukki that also forms part of the sanctuary.

CPI(M) MLA from Devikulam in Idukki district, S Rajendran had also come out against Sub Collector V R Premkumar for cancelling the land title deeds of MP and family.

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Kerala woman Hadiya, who has to depose before the Supreme Court on November 27 in an alleged 'love jihad' case, Sunday said she wanted to be with her husband, as she was whisked away by her parents and security personnel to board a flight to Delhi.

Chaotic scenes prevailed as media persons, who tried to approach her, jostled with the policemen after she reached the airport in Nedumbassery amid tight security.

"I am a Muslim. I was not forced. I want to be with my husband," the 25-year-old woman, wearing a headscarf, shouted as she was being taken inside the airport.

Earlier, the woman, who converted to Islam and married a Muslim man Shafin Jahan, and her parents left from their house in a village near Vaikom in this district, accompanied by a police team which also comprised women personnel, for a two-hour long journey to the airport.

The direction by the apex court for producing the woman for an interaction came amid an assertion by the Investigation Agency (NIA) that this was a case in which the woman was indoctrinated and she may be incapable of giving free consent to marriage.

A Supreme Court bench, comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, had asked senior advocate Shyam Divan, representing the father of the woman, to ensure she is produced before them to ascertain whether she had married of her own volition.

The woman and her parents are likely to stay at Kerala House in New Delhi, sources said.

The NIA, represented by Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, had said there was a well-oiled machinery working in Kerala that was indoctrinating and radicalising society in the state.

As many as 89 cases of similar nature have been reported from the southern state, the ASG had said.

Divan, appearing for woman's father K M Ashokan, claimed that Jahan was a radicalised man and several organisations like Popular Front of India were involved in radicalisation of society.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, counsel for Shafin Jahan, had opposed NIA's submission and that of the woman's father.

Hadiya, a Hindu, had converted to Islam and later married Jahan.

It was alleged that she was recruited by ISIS' mission in Syria and Jahan was only a stooge.

Jahan had on September 20 approached the apex court seeking the recall of its August 16 order, directing the NIA to investigate the controversial case of conversion and marriage of a Hindu woman with him.

Meanwhile, the Kerala government on October 7 told the Supreme Court that its police conducted a "thorough investigation" into her conversion and subsequent marriage to Jahan and did not find material warranting the transfer of probe to the Investigation Agency.

Jahan had moved the Supreme Court after the Kerala high court annulled his marriage, saying it was an insult to the independence of women in the country.
An armed squad of banned naxalite outfit CPI-Maoist attacked the base camp of an agency engaged in the construction of Jagdishpur-Haldia gas pipeline and set their many vehicles on fire in Bihar's Gaya district, police said today.

The Maoists yesterday attacked the camp located at Darna village under Aamas police station of the district and indulged in arson in which many vehicles, including three trucks, were set on fire, Patna's Inspector General of Police (IGP) Naiyar Hussnain Khan said.

"The ultras also beat up some staff of the agency," he said.

The over 2,500 km gas pipeline from Jagdishpur in Allahabad district of Uttar Pradesh to Haldia in West Bengal will pass through Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha as well as the two states.

Khan said he has asked Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) (Operations), Gaya, to camp at Aamas to carry out special operations against Maoists in the area.

"City SP Gaya has been asked to submit a report on the incident," the IG said.

"Besides, Aamas police station Station House Officer (SHO) has been suspended with immediate effect," he said.

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A municipal mayor in Mexico's violent eastern state of Veracruz was killed Friday, local authorities said, just four days after a mayor-elect was murdered in the same state.

Victor Manuel Espinoza -- mayor of Ixhuatlan de Madero, located some 270 kilometers northeast of Mexico City -- "was killed with four others including his wife" in the attack, the state prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Authorities did not provide details concerning a possible motive for the attack, which occurred yesterday night on a dirt road in a neighboring municipality near the state's capital Xalapa.

The murders came days after a group of at least 30 armed men murdered Santana Cruz Bahena, mayor-elect of the municipality of Hidalgotitlan. That act was allegedly linked to a criminal gang that traffics stolen fuel.

Three more mayors were assassinated in other Mexican states last month, while nearly 50 have been killed since 2003, according to figures from the National Association of Mayors.

Violence in Veracruz has risen in 2017 compared to the year prior, with 1,382 murders documented from January to October -- a figure that already exceeds 2016's total 1,258 homicides.

The state government ascribes the rise in violence to power struggles between crime gangs involved in drug smuggling, illegal immigration from Central America and the theft of fuel from pipelines.

Around 190,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, when the government launched a military campaign on the drugs cartels. The numbers do not show how many of the victims were linked to crime groups.

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The workers of Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) today protested against Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam at a public meeting in suburban Ghatkopar.

Nirupam and the MNS are at loggerheads since the Congress leader supported illegal hawkers against whom the Thackeray-led party launched an agitation after the Elphinstone Road stampede tragedy.

Nirupam today addressed a meeting in Ghatkopar's Pant Nagar. He was in the area to meet slum dwellers whose houses are facing demolition.

When he was getting down from the stage, some MNS workers shouted slogans against him.

"Why is he (Nirupam) supporting illegal activities all the time? This time he came in support of slums which are illegal," said Sandeep Deshpande, an MNS leader.

Nirupam, in a statement, claimed the slums were not illegal.

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A JetLite flight was delayed by about one-and-a-half hours today after its communication system developed a "technical" glitch just before its departure for Mumbai from the city.

The JetLite flight S2 4166, scheduled to depart from the Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport at 1720 hours here, left for Mumbai only at around 1845 after the airline engineers fixed the problem, a Nagpur airport official said.

However, the number of passengers on-board the aircraft, a Boeing 737, could not be known.

JetLite is a subsidiary of Jet Airways.

Jet Airways confirmed the delay, saying it happened due to a "technical" reason.

"The Boeing 737 aircraft system malfunctioned before it was to depart for Mumbai, forcing the airline to ground the flight. Subsequently, engineers were called in to fix the issue and make the aircraft airworthy," the official said.

The Naresh Goyal-promoted private carrier Jet Airways has been facing frequent delays in its flight operations for quite some time now.

A three-week-long protest over non-payment of salary hike dues by a group of the airline's pilots last month severely affected its punctuality.

Later, the airline claimed of having the issue resolved.

It performed poorly in terms of punctuality with nearly one-thirds of its flights failing to arrive or depart on time from four metro airports -- Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad -- in September.

The airline's OTP (on time performance) was the worst from Mumbai (56.9 per cent) and Delhi (64.1 per cent), which account for most of its flights.

Significantly, yesterday, Bollywood actress Sunny Leone and her husband, Daniel Weber, took to Twitter to complain about delays experienced on four Jet Airways flights this week.

"Seriously, its crazy the amount of delays @jetairways is having everyday. Was on a plane all week and usually only with Jet (Airways) but everyday was delayed at least by 1 hour. Ruined my week of sleep (sic)! Something needs to be done," Leone wrote in a tweet.

Weber posted that he received a call from the airline's customer care who sought to blame the airport for the delays.

"Call from @jetairways this morning to me after a complaint about 4 flight delays this week -- sir, it is the airports fault , not the airlines, dont be mad at us !... Good response @jetairways," Weber wrote.

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In the memory of martyrs of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack on its ninth anniversary, various events have been organised in the city tomorrow, including a 'Salutation Ceremony' by the city police.

The Mumbai police have organised 'Salutation Ceremony' at Shahid Smarak (martyrs' memorial) at the Police Gymkhana at Marine Lines at 9.00 am tomorrow, said an official.

Maharashtra Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, DGP Satish Mathur, city police commissioner Datta Padsalgikar, ministers, senior bureaucrats, police officials and family members of martyrs would pay homage to those who were killed in the attack.

Tributes would also be paid at the memorial of assistant sub-inspector Tukaram Ombale at Girgaum Chowpatty. It was at this spot that Ombale caught Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab alive while getting killed himself.

Hundreds of people are also expected to offer tributes at the city landmarks targeted by Pakistani terrorists, including the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Taj Hotel at the Gateway of India, Cafe Leopold, Rang Bhavan Lane near Cama Hospital and St Xavier's College where then ATS Chief Hemant Karkare, Additional Police Commissioner Ashok Kamte and Inspector Vijay Salaskar were killed.

Family members of martyrs will be felicitated at the Bombay Stock Exchange in the presence of chief minister Fadnavis, RSS leader Indresh Kumar, Union ministers Hansraj Ahir and Kiren Rijiju and Lt Gen Vishwambhar Singh, General Officer Commanding, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Goa.

Seventeen jawans of the Border Security Force, who set out for Mumbai on November 14 on 'Martyrs' Ride', are expected to reach the Gateway of India tomorrow.

On November 26, 2008 Mumbai was attacked by 10 terrorists of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba. In the mayhem that followed for the next three days 164 people including 18 police officers and two NSG commandos were killed while 308 people were injured.

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Mahatma Gandhi's message that sanitation is more important than political independence was still relevant and showed the importance of the issue, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu said here today.

"Our tradition is unity in diversity. We are one nation, one people and one world. That should be our path. More than a century ago, Mahatma Gandhi had given a powerful message that sanitation is more important than political independence and that cleanliness is next to Godliness which are still relevant and show the importance of this issue.

"Today, we need to protect this great 'sanskriti' (culture) of our country which is to serve and give to others before oneself -- his life was his message," Naidu said at the Gandhi Ashram here.

Naidu was speaking at an event jointly organised by the Harijan Sevak Sangh, founded by Mahatma Gandhi, and the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance.

A collective pledge for taking Mahatma Gandhi's vision for a clean India into mission mode was taken at the event.

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Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today inaugurated archaeological excavation work at Lal Pahari near Jainagar in Bihar's Lakhisarai district.

The excavation work will be carried out by Archaeological Survey of India under the banner of Bihar Virasat Vikas Samiti (BVVS) and Vishwa Bharti Vishwavidyalaya, West Bengal, a government release said.

Academic documentation will be done of the items discovered in the excavation, the release said, and added that a MoU was recently signed between Bihar Virasat Vikas Samiti (BVVS) and Vishwa Bharti Vishwavidyalaya in this regard.

Kumar also directed Art, Culture and Youth Affairs Department's principal secretary, Chaitanya Prasad and Lakhisarai District Magistrate to put in place better management for conservation of places of archaeological importance in the district.

Lal Pahari has idols dating back to the 10th and 11th centuries installed at temples, besides a cave, archaeologist Anil Kumar said.

Chaitanya Prasad added that a museum is likely to be constructed in Lakhisarai after identifying land for the purpose.

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In a bid to improve credit guarantee for the micro, small and medium enterprises sector, the state will soon revive the Odisha State Financial Corporation (OSFC), MSME Minister Prafulla Samal said.

Addressing a seminar on Initiatives to develop the sector at Utkal Chamber of Commerce and Industry (UCCI) here yesterday, Samal admitted that MSMEs were not getting the support it should from the banking system.

"The MSME sector is not getting adequate support from banks. As a result, this vital sector, which provides substantial opportunity for employment, is gasping for financial support," the minister said.

He also said the state government has constituted a committee to revive the OSFC, since it had a good track record of providing hand-holding support to entrepreneurs in the state.

Taking into account the contribution of the MSME sector to the GDP, exports and employment generation, the Odisha government had formed a separate department for it, he said.

"I will ensure more and more interaction with entrepreneurs in future to know their difficulties," he said.

More efforts are being made to provide women entrepreneurs all necessary facilities to grow, Samal said.

The state government, which is laying stress on skill development, has formed the Odisha Skill Development Authority, he said.

A MoU has been signed with Singapore-based ITE Education Services (ITEES) for training of ITI instructors, Samal said.

Steps will soon be taken to fill up all posts in district industrial centres that facilitate the process for setting up of new enterprises in the state, he said.

Speaking on the occasion, Ramesh Mohapatra, president of the UCCI, said finance is one of the major problems plaguing the sector in the state.

The MSME space is responsible for about 40 per cent of the exports and 45 per cent of the total manufacturing output in the country, Mohapatra added.

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Over 1,200 people from Myanmar's restive Arakan state have crossed the border and taken shelter in neighbouring Mizoram's Lawngtlai district, officials said today.

The people who crossed over yesterday are mostly Buddhists and Christians and speak the same tribal language as the locals. They fled their homes after the Myanmarese Army clashed with the 'Arakan Army' militants recently, they said.

The government officials, on condition of anonymity, said 500 people took shelter in Laitlang village while Zochachhuah, Hmawngbuchhuah and Dumzautlang villages hosted 420, 200 and 120 people, respectively.

"Several of them have put up at their relatives' place while the others were provided accommodation in village community halls and school classrooms," an official said.

The official said that this is the fourth instance in recent months of Myanmarese people entering the state.

Village leaders informed officials that the Arakanese people have said they heard gunshots even on Thursday night and expected more people to pour into the district.

The locals volunteered to provide food to the Arakanese people and arranged shelter for them.
As many as 1,240 people from Myanmar's restive Arakan state have crossed the border and taken shelter in neighbouring Mizoram's Lawngtlai district, officials said today.

The people who crossed over yesterday were mostly Buddhists and Christians, and they speak the same tribal language as the locals. They fled their homes after the Myanmarese Army clashed with the 'Arakan Army' militants recently, they said.

Deputy Commissioner, Lawngtlai district, Arun T told PTI over phone that elaborate security arrangements were in place and personnel from the Assam Rifles and state police were deployed in the area.

The district administration has arranged food and medical supplies for the Arakanese, he said.

The government officials, on condition of anonymity, said that 500 people took shelter in Laitlang village while Zochachhuah, Hmawngbuchhuah and Dumzautlang villages hosted 420, 200 and 120 people, respectively.

"Several of them have put up at their relatives' place while the others were provided accommodation in village community halls and school classrooms," they said.

This is the fourth instance in recent months of Myanmarese people entering the state, the officials said, adding that the Arakanese have claimed that they had heard firing on Thursday night.

The locals volunteered to provide food to the Arakanese people and arranged shelter for them, they said.

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Pakistan has justified the release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, claiming that Islamabad was committed to the implementation of UNSC sanctions regime on terrorists.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder, who has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan yesterday.

He is a UN and US designated terrorist.

India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Saeed's release confirmed once again the lack of seriousness by the Pakistan government in bringing to justice perpetrators of terrorism, including individuals and entities designated by the UN.

"It also appears to be an attempt by the Pakistani system to mainstream proscribed terrorists. Pakistan has not changed its policy of shielding and supporting non-state actors and its true face is visible for all to see," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in New Delhi on Thursday.

Responding to the comments made by the MEA, Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan was committed to the implementation of UNSC 1267 sanctions regime and has taken several steps in this regard.

"The (MEA) spokesperson took exception to self-serving insinuations," he said in statement issues late last night.

Faisal said that courts in Pakistan, pursuant to their constitutional duty, were determined to uphold rule of law and due process for all citizens of Pakistan.

Legal processes were anchored in rule of law, not dictates of politics and posturing, he said.

"It is in the interest of all States to speak and act in a manner that is consistent with the imperatives of adhering to rule of law at the national and international levels," Faisal said.

He said that Pakistan's resolve, actions and successes in the fight against terrorism, terrorist violence and terrorists are unmatched in the world.

"Pakistan condemns and opposes all forms of terrorism by any individual or group," the FO spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif expressed deep anguish over alleged human rights violations in Kashmir and arrests of Kashmiri leaders, saying the intensified cordon and search operations are violative of the Kashmiris' dignity and the sanctity of their families.

These operations are also designed to inflict collective punishment on the innocent and defenceless people, he said in a statement issued by the FO last night.

"We will continue to steadfastly stand by them until the resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people," Asid said.

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The fire-brand cleric's release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

Saeed was individually designated by the UN under the Security Council Resolution 1267 in December, 2008.

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Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal today said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him not to compromise while acting against corruption.

Nobody will be spared if there is enough evidence, he said at the India Today Conclave East 2017.

"There will be no discrimination ... Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked me not to compromise while acting against corruption," he said.

"We (BJP government in Assam) had started acting against corruption from the first day ... No one will be spared if there is evidence. Even the CM will have to go behind bars if there is enough evidence," Sonowal said.

His government has recognised the loopholes and weaknesses in the system and has tried to fix it, he said.

Asked whether he is comfortable in working with Himanta Biswa Sarma, who joined the BJP in 2015 and is a minister in the state cabinet and is allegedly involved in the Louis Berger bribery scam, he said "We don't take action out of prejudice. It's impartial. If there is proof against someone, that person will be brought to book."



The CBI has taken over the probe into the Louis Berger bribery scam in Assam on the orders of the Gauhati High Court, and registered an FIR.

The US company had allegdly adopted illegal means for obtaining three water supply projects in Goa and Guwahati.

Sonowal lauded the prime minister for focusing on the north east and said Modi is the first prime minister to consider all available resources in the region.

Asked, the chief minister said there was no divide among communities in Assam. "We believe in Sabka Sath Sabka Vikas. We have four districts which share borders with Bangladesh and we are prioritizing growth in them. These are all Muslim majority areas. It is not about Hindu or Muslim, it is not about Assamese or Bengali. It is about everyone's growth and development.

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President Ram Nath Kovind today attended the marriage ceremony of the daughter of Ambala MP Rattan Lal Kataria here.

The President reached Ambala Cantt Airforce station here through a chartered plane this morning.

Haryana Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Ambala Municipal Corporation Mayor Ramesh Mal and senior officers of the Army and the Air Force were present to welcome him.

Kovind went straight to a resort located on the Haryana- Punjab border near Ambala city to attend the marriage ceremony amid tight security.

He later left for Kurukshetra, where he was to inaugurate the 'International Gita Mahotsav'.

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Pakistan's Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal claimed today that the hardline religious parties staging protest for than two weeks in Islamabad had "contacted India", and the government was investigating "why they did it".

Iqbal did not give any details about his claim.

In an interview to DawnNews, he said the hundreds of protesters gathered in the national capital were "not simple people".

"We can see that they have various resources at their disposal. They have fired teargas shells [at security forces], they also cut the fibre-optic cables of cameras monitoring their protest," he told the network.

Iqbal claimed that the protesters had also "contacted India". "Why they did it, we are looking into it. They have inside information and resources that are being used against the state."



Nearly 2,000 activists of Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah and other religious groups have been protesting in Islamabad since November 6, demanding law minister Zahid Hamid's resignation for changes made to the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, or the finality of the prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September.

They have blocked the main roads connecting Islamabad with its only airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

The Islamabad High Court yesterday asked Interior Minister Iqbal to explain by next week why he should not be charged with contempt for failing to act to end the protests.

Today, a security official was killed and more than 150 others were injured in clashes after police and paramilitary forces launched an operation to disperse the protesters.

"Our administration is acting on the court's orders and we are completely supporting them," Iqbal said.

"We have made all peaceful efforts, but we are forced to act as the group has not budged. These people do not know that anti-Pakistan elements are using this to spread malice against Pakistan," he said.

Iqbal also insisted that as Muslims "we all believe in" Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, and that the modification to the law has made it more effective than before. "The last thing Pakistan needs is the instigation of agitation using people's religious sentiment.

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Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi in poll-bound Gujarat today and alleged that the latter did not want the "truth" behind the multi-crore Rafale deal and Jay Shah issue to come out before the Assembly election in his home state.

He also alleged that the NDA government was delaying the Winter Session of Parliament as Modi was not ready to discuss the Rafale and Jay Shah issues in the House before the Gujarat polls.

"I would ask Modiji three questions (on the Rafale deal). First, is there a difference in the cost of planes in the first and the second contract (signed with a French firm) and did India pay more or less money as per the second contract?



"And, has the industrialist (whose company has formed a joint venture with the French firm), who was given the contract, ever manufactured planes?," he asked while addressing a public gathering here in Gandhinagar district.

The Congress leader also sought to know if the due procedure was followed while inking the deal with France last year to procure the Rafale fighter jets.

"And a more important question, did you follow the due government procedure? Why was the (then) defence minister seen catching fish in Goa? And, was an approval from the Cabinet Committee on Security taken (for the mega-deal)?" he asked.

Gandhi alleged that the prime minister was avoiding answering these questions due to the fear that the "truth" would come out before the crucial polls in his home state.

"Narendra Modiji is not replying to these questions because he wants that the truth of Rafale and Jay Shah should not come before the public ahead of the Gujarat elections," he said.

"Rafale is a matter related to the Indian Air Force, security, martyrs. Modiji will have to answer these questions before the people of the country and Gujarat," he said.

The 47-year-old Amethi MP said while the media persons asked him a lot of questions, they did not do the same with the prime minister over the Rafale and Jay Shah issues.

"Modiji will make many tours of Gujarat. Press reporters ask me various questions. Why don't you ask Modi about the Rafale deal and Jay Shah? The people should also ask Modiji about Rafale and Jay Shah when he comes to Gujarat," he said.

The prime minister is scheduled to address a series of poll rallies in Gujarat in support of the BJP candidates next week.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases -- on December 9 and 14. Counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.

"Generally, Parliament's (Winter) session is held every year in November and discussions (on crucial issues) take place in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. But, due to two reasons, Parliament is opening after the Gujarat polls this time.

"First, (BJP chief) Amit Shah's son (Jay) converted Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore in three months. Second, and a more important reason, is the Rafale deal. The entire procedure went on for the purchase of the planes and after all the discussions were over, Narendra Modi himself went to France to change the contract," he alleged.

In September last year, India had inked an intergovernmental agreement with France for the procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around Rs 58,000 crore.

The Congress had recently raised questions over the deal and accused the Modi-led BJP government of compromising on interest and security while promoting "crony capitalism" and causing a loss to the public exchequer.

However, the BJP had rubbished the allegations.

In an article published on news portal The Wire, it was alleged that the turnover of a company owned by Jay Shah grew exponentially from Rs 50,000 to Rs 8 crore after the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014.

Both Amit Shah and his son have denied any wrongdoing by the company. Jay Shah has filed a criminal defamation case against the news portal.
The Chhattisgarh government has decided to take up water conservation works on a large scale in forest areas of the state, a senior official said today.

Forest Minister Mahesh Gagda today gave the green signal to the Rs 250-crore plan while chairing a meeting of his department officials, he said.

Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF) R K Tamta and other officials were present in the meeting.

As per the plan, about 1,306 water conservation structures, including stop dams, canals, small ponds and waterholes, would be built at a cost of around Rs 250 crore in forest areas under the jurisdiction of the Van Prabhandan Samiti (forest management committees), he said.

These structures will be constructed through several schemes, including the rural job scheme MNREGA and the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), he added.

In the first phase of the project, water conservation facilities will be developed in Raigarh forest division, under Bilaspur forest circle, which is currently facing an elephant menace, the official said.

The water bodies will provide relief to elephants and stop them from straying outside the forests into villages and at the same time act as a source of irrigation for farmers, he said.

The thick forested northern part of the state, comprising Surguja, Korba, Raigarh, Jashpur and Korea districts, is known for human-elephantconflict.

The region has witnessed several killings of tribals and widespread damage to houses and crops by rogue elephants in the past few years.

According to forest officials, the forest area of the state is around 59,772 sq km, which is 44.21 per cent of the state's geographical area (1,35,191 sq km).

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Four girl students of a government higher secondary school here ended their lives by jumping into a well in a suicide pact after being allegedly chided by teachers for not being attentive in class, police said.

The Class XI students of Panapakkam Government Higher Secondary School at the nearby Arakkonam town jumped into a farm well at Nangamangalam village yesterday.

Fire and Rescue Services personnel fished out the bodies and sent them for autopsy to a government hospital last night.

"Based on the preliminary inquiry, the headmistress and class teacher have been suspended," a district education official told reporters here today.

The reason for the girls' suicide is yet to be ascertained, a top district police official said.

"Four teams of police personnel are questioning the class students, teachers, and others and only after the conclusion of the enquiry would the cause of the suicide be known," he said.

The official said no suicide note had been recovered.

He said a preliminary enquiry revealed that 11 students were chided by teachers for not being attentive in class and were asked to bring their parents on November 24.

"Yesterday, out of the 11 students, seven apologised and assured the teachers that they will be attentive. The other four students ended their lives," he told PTI.

The seven girls who tendered apology too had not brought their parents, he added.

Of the four girls who committed suicide, two came to school in the morning and left the premises immediately.

They later joined the other two and all of them went to the farm in their bicycles.

"Local people, including a cowherd, saw the girls going to the farm well," he said.

Villagers alerted police and local officials after they spotted the abandoned bicycles near the farm well.

Senior police officials and a district official placed wreaths on the bodies.

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The daughter of policeman Tukaram Ombale, who was killed while trying to capture terrorist Ajmal Kasab, says her family still awaits his return, nine years after the Mumbai terror attacks.

"We feel papa will come home any moment, although deep in our heart we know that he will never be amongst us now," says a teary-eyed Vaishali Ombale, the eldest daughter of the Mumbai terror attacks hero.

"We always think that Papa has gone out on duty and will return home. We have kept his belongings at the place they used to be in our home. Our family is proud of his supreme sacrifice," Vaishali Ombale, who has completed her M Ed (Masters in education) and aspires to be a lecturer, told PTI.

Ombale, an assistant sub-inspector, was killed by Kasab's bullets in the early hours of November 27, 2008.

In a daring act, he had pounced on Kasab without thinking much about the consequences. His bravery had made it possible for the police to overpower Kasab, the only 26/11 terrorist to be captured and hanged.

"Not a day has gone by in the last nine years that we have not remembered him," said Vaishali Ombale, who stays at the Worli Police Camp with her mother Tara and sister Bharti, who is an officer in the state GST department.

"For how long will police or armed forces personnel continue losing their lives in the name of supreme sacrifice," she asked.

"This should stop somewhere. There should be a change in this scenario. Every citizen should always be alert and foil incidents in which we are losing our men," she said, ahead of the 26/11 attacks anniversary.

Vaishali Ombale said citizens should know their responsibilities and must understand that when policemen or armed forces personnel get killed in the line of duty, it is not only the family's loss but also that of the country.

"Satara district in Western Maharashtra from where my family hails has a long history of martyrs. Among the recent ones are CRPF head constable Ravindra Dhanawade, who was killed while fighting terrorists in Kashmir in August and Colonel Santosh Mahadik, who died while fighting terrorists in Kashmir in 2015. The list is unending, which disturbs me a lot," she said.

"We treat every member of a martyr's family like our own family and we help them overcome the grief," she said.

Vaishali Ombale gives tuitions to students from class 8th to junior college, which keeps her busy and makes her forget the pain of losing her father.

On November 26, 2008, 10 Pakistani terrorists arrived in Mumbai by sea route and opened fire indiscriminately at people on different locations, killing 166, including 18 security personnel, and injuring several others, besides damaging property worth crores.
Haryana BJP leader Suraj Pal Amu today trained his gun on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for welcoming 'Padmavati' director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and his team to her state, drawing an angry retort from the Trinamool Congress.

Amu, who is up in arms against the release of the Hindi film, addressed a large gathering of the Rajput community in Bhondsi village in Gurgaon today.

The gathering, which was also attended by Karni Sena president Lokendra Kalvi, unanimously decided to prevent the screening of the film in entire Haryana.

"We have urged the Haryana chief minister to imposed a ban on the film in Haryana. We will make sure that the film is not screened in any city of the state. No one has courage to release the film here," Amu said.

Targeting the West Bengal chief minister, the BJP leader said, "Mamata Banerjee should understand and respect the sentiments of the Rajput community. She should roll back the decision to release the film in her state and not test our patience."



According to a Trinamool Congress leader, the Haryana BJP leader also threatened that Banerjee would meet the same fate as Surpanakha, the sister of demon king Ravana in Hindu epic 'Ramayana'. Surpanakha nose was cut off by Lakshman in the epic.

Reacting to the BJP leader's remarks, senior TMC leader Partha Chatterjee said, "We condemn such regressive and derogatory remark against our chief minister. Either he should tender an apology or the people of Bengal will keep an watch on him and would protest against his remarks."



Another TMC leader and state minister, Chandrima Bhattachraya said, "It is a reflection of the mindset of BJP which tells us they don't respect women. The people of Bengal will democratically protest against this such regressive and derogatory statement against our beloved chief Minister."



Banerjee yesterday said that she would welcome 'Padmavati' director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and his team to the state and make special arrangements for the film's premiere and release.

Banerjee's statement came just days after she tweeted that the row over the film was a "calculated plan" to destroy freedom of expression in the country.

The release of the film, which has been directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and stars Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor, has been deferred indefinitely by its producers, Viacom 18. It was initially slated to release on December 1.

Amu, the BJP's chief media coordinator in Haryana, earlier offered a bounty of Rs 10 crore to anyone beheading Bhansali and actor Deepika Padukone.

Amu was booked by the Gurgaon police for his remarks and the BJP distanced itself from the comments and issued a show- cause notice to him.

Amu later said he had made the remarks in his personal capacity and that he would resign if his party asked him to but would not tolerate any "insult" to his community.

Amid rumours of a romantic dream sequence between Rajput queen Padmavati and Alauddin Khilji's characters in the film, many Rajput groups have been up in arms against the movie, alleging that it distorts history.

Historians, however, are divided on whether Rani Padmavati existed.

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Tirupur Exporters' Association (TEA) today welcomed increase of the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme rates for Readymade garments and Madeup from two to four per cent for November 1 2017 to June 30 2018 period.

The announcement of MEIS increase is a relief to the ailing knitwear garment export sector, TEA President Raja Shanmugham said in a statement here



He thanked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Textile Minister Smriti Irani and Commerce and Industry minister Suresh Prabhu "for crucial support at this hour of crisis."



He also made a request to incorporate the embedded tax and announce the revised Rebate on State Levies and Duty Drawback rates as these were desperately needed to bring back exports' growth and boost confidence of garment exporters to take fresh orders and sustain themselves in global business.

In another statement, Southern India Mills' Association Chairman P Nataraj also welcomed the announcement, which, he said, has given some relief to the industry.

The government today announced post-GST rates for claiming rebate of state taxes under the scheme for Remission of State Levies (RoSL) on exports of readymade garments and made-ups, in a bid to support outward shipments.

The government has also doubled the rates for incentives under an export promotion scheme -- MEIS -- to four per cent for readymade garments and made-ups.

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The third Indo-UK joint Army training exercise 'Ajeya Warrior' will be conducted in Rajasthan next month, a defence spokesman said today.

"A training exercise between the armies of India and the United Kingdom will be held from 1st to 14th December at the Mahajan Field Firing Range. It will be the third joint military exercise between the two countries," defence spokesperson Lt Col Manish Ojha said.

The first exercise was conducted in 2013 at Belgaum, Karnataka, where as for the second exercise in 2015, an Indian Army contingent had visited the United Kingdom.

Approximately 120 personnel from the 20th Battalion of Rajputana Rifles and the 1st Battalion of Royal Anglican Regiment of the Royal British Army will participate in the exercise, Ojha said.

"The aim of the exercise is to build and promote bilateral relations and enhance interoperability while sharing experiences between the Royal British army and the Indian Army," he added.

20 Rajputana Rifles has extensive experience in counter- terrorist operations, while the 1st Battalion of Royal Anglican Regiment has been involved in combat operations across Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Tamil Maanila Congress party president G K Vasan today said he was confident that party cadres would work towards making the TMC a prominent one and ruling party in Tamil Nadu.

Vasan said the party enjoyed the support of all sections of people and would emerge as a ruling party in future.

He was addressing the fourth anniversary celebrations of the party's formation here.

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The police today claimed to have solved the murder case of a handloom trader, who was shot dead on November 21 night, by arresting the main accused.

Gagan Khanduja (40) was killed when he was returning home after purchasing a cake for his son's birthday. He was shot from point blank range, the police said.

SP City Akash Tomar said that acting on a tip-off, police and crime branch officials nabbed the main accused, Mintoo Tyagi, this morning from near a school.

Tomar said that the pistol used in the crime was also seized from Tyagi. The police during interrogation learnt that Khanduja was not repaying Rs 2.5 lakh to the accused and had heated arguments with him, the officer said.

Tyagi along with his two accomplices Ravi and Bunty, who are still at large, shot Khanduja twice. The trader was declared brought dead at a hospital here.

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US President Donald Trump today called his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the the two leaders discussed implementing UN Security Council resolution for a peaceful settlement to the Syrian crisis and defeat of ISIS, the White House said.

Trump reaffirmed the strategic partnership between the United States and Turkey, particularly in combating terrorism in all its forms and fostering regional stability, it said in a readout of the phone call between the two leaders.

On Syria, the two leaders discussed the importance of implementing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254 and supporting the United Nations-led Geneva Process to peacefully resolve the civil war in that country, the White House said.

It said Trump and Erdogan underscored the need to end the humanitarian crisis, allow displaced Syrians to return home, and ensure the stability of a unified Syria free of malign intervention and terrorist safe havens.

"Consistent with our previous policy, President Trump also informed President Erdogan of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria, now that the battle of Raqqa is complete and we are progressing into a stabilisation phase to ensure that ISIS cannot return," the White House said.

It said the two leaders also discussed the purchase of military equipment from the United States.

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Turkey expects US President Donald Trump to stick to his promise not to supply weapons to the Syrian Kurdish militia fighting Islamic State jihadists, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said today.

"It is our most natural right to expect Trump to keep his promise," Cavusoglu said in televised comments in the southern Mediterranean resort of Antalya.

"Naturally, as I said yesterday, we want to see this applied," he added.

Ankara's top diplomat on Friday said Trump had told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he has given an order that weapons should no longer be supplied to the Kurdish YPG militia, during a phone call between the leaders.

The YPG is the Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units militia in Syria, which Washington views as the most effective fighting force on the ground against the IS extremist group.

However, Ankara sees the YPG and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as "terrorists" linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Proscribed by Turkey and its Western allies including the US as a "terror" group, the PKK has waged an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.

But the White House was less explicit about the US military's intentions towards the YPG, only saying that Trump informed Erdogan "of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria".

In recent months, the YPG has recaptured territory from IS, including the former de facto IS capital of Raqa in northern Syria.

Ties between Washington and Ankara have been tense since the administration of former president Barack Obama over US support for the YPG and also the failure to extradite Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara accuses of masterminding last year's failed coup to overthrow Erdogan.

Gulen vehemently denies the charges.

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Two alleged drug-peddlers were arrested and heroin recovered from their possession in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district, police said today.

On a tip-off, a police team intercepted a bus and seized 110gms heroin from the bus driver Mohd Junaid and his companion Imran Zari, police said.

A case has been registered against the two accused, they added.

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The police today arrested two youths from upper Assam's Jorhat district for their alleged links with inter-state car lifters and seized a firearm and ammunition from their possession.

Acting on a tip-off, police personnel picked up the youths from A T Road Borpool area, and seized a .22 pistol, two rounds of ammunition, one magazine and two mobile phones from their possession, Hemen Das, town sub-inspector of Jorhat Sadar police station said.

Around 50 pain killer capsules were also recovered from their possession, he said.

The youths, both residents of Dergaon in the neighbouring Golaghat district, worked at a vehicle dealer's showroom here, the police officer said.

They used to meet members of car lifting gangs from Nagaland and Manipur at the showroom, he said, adding, interrogation is on.

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Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray today hit out at NCP chief Sharad Pawar, saying that Pawar 'served' Sonia Gandhi for 15 years despite being kicked out by the Congress president from her party in 1999.

Thackeray addressed a rally at Sangli in western Maharashtra, ahead of the Sangli Miraj Kupwad municipal corporation election.

"Today Pawar said he had not seen a coalition government such as ours (Sena-BJP) where we criticise the BJP but stay in power. He should know that both the parties are separate since inception. It was you, who back-stabbed then Congress chief minister Vasantdada Patil to become chief minister of Maharashtra. I haven't seen a leader like you.

"Shiv Sena criticises BJP if there is a mistake and we both are capable of sorting it out. Pawar should not worry about it. Pawar did not leave the party, in fact he was kicked out of the Congress by Sonia Gandhi, still he served her for (the next) 15 years," the Shiv Sena leader said, in reference to NCP's subsequent alliance with the Congress.

Pawar, while paying tributes to the first chief minister of Maharashtra late Yashvantrao Chavan at Karad this morning, took potshots at the Sena. "Shiv Sena is stuck to the power as if by adhesive. I have not seen such coalition government where one party continues to criticise another," he said.

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The UN Special Envoy for Syria says he will be inviting the Syrian opposition delegation to Geneva for the intra-Syrian talks beginning next week.

Staffan de Mistura's statement today came a day after the opposition named its delegation that includes internal and external groups to the Geneva talks which will start on Tuesday.

The statement said de Mistura takes particular note that an opposition negotiating team has been announced and tasked to negotiate in Geneva without any preconditions, and that the implementation of relevant United Nations resolutions is regarded as the sole reference for the negotiation.

The opposition ended yesterday a three-day meeting in Saudi Arabia in which its representatives called for direct and unconditional negotiations with the Syrian government over the more than 6-year civil war.

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Two people, including a teacher, were detained in Beijing amid a nationwide uproar in China over child abuse allegations in kindergarten schools in several cities.

Two suspects in a recent child abuse case in Beijing's RYB school were detained by local police, state-run People's Daily reported today.

The teacher surnamed Liu was under criminal detainment for alleged child abuse. A woman also surnamed Liu was held for fabricating misleading information.

She expressed deep regret about her illegal acts, the report said.

Yesterday China's central Cabinet called for nationwide inspections of kindergartens following allegations of child abuse at a Beijing private kindergarten that sparked public outrage.

Kindergartens in several cities have reported child abuse. Such incidents show that some kindergartens have failed to implement measures and were poorly managed, a notice issued by the education committee of the cabinet called State Council said, state-run Global Times reported.

The media has reported alleged child abuse cases at other kindergartens as well. A teacher at a kindergarten in Zhenjiang, in east China's Jiangsu Province reportedly punched the heads and pulled ears of children. The local education bureau said the teacher who allegedly committed the acts has been suspended.

New World kindergarten is run by RYB Education in Chaoyang district where children were allegedly sexually molested, pierced by needles and given unspecified drugs, the report said.

A senior People's Liberation Army (PLA) official has denied that the kindergarten has any links with the Chinese military.

The kindergarten was not operated by the army or relatives of soldiers, and soldiers were not involved in the alleged molestation of children, Feng Junfeng, political commissar of a regiment of the PLA Army, told the PLA Daily.

Feng said the kindergarten's head was a relative of a veteran of the regiment.

Audio and video recordings, in which children claimed they were forced to take pills to sleep and given physical examinations by some "uncle and grandpa doctors," with one allegedly being naked, went viral on Thursday, sparking public outrage.

Some netizens claimed that the kindergarten was allegedly run by Feng's regiment, and even soldiers from the regiment had allegedly molested children.

RYB Education responded yesterday, saying the company has provided documents and surveillance footage to police, and that the teachers allegedly involved have been suspended.

The company also told police it has been falsely accused and framed by some people.

Founded in 1998, RYB Education is based in Beijing and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It has more than 1,300 day-care centres and nearly 500 kindergartens in 300 cities in China.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Trump administration backtracked today on its decision to order the Palestinians' office in Washington to close, instead saying it would merely impose limitations on the office that it expected would be lifted after 90 days.

Last week, US officials said the Palestine Liberation Organization mission couldn't stay open because the Palestinians had violated a provision in US law requiring the office to close if the Palestinians try to get the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis. The move triggered a major rift in US-Palestinian relations that threatened to scuttle President Donald Trump's ambitious effort to broker Mideast peace before it ever got off the ground.

Yet the United States delayed shuttering the office for a week while saying it was working out the details with the Palestinians, before abruptly reversing course late today, as many Americans were enjoying a long Thanksgiving Day weekend. State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said the US had "advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians."



Vasquez said even those restrictions will be lifted after 90 days if the US determines the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in serious peace talks. The White House, in an effort led by Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, has been preparing a comprehensive peace plan to present to both sides in the coming months.

"We therefore are optimistic that at the end of this 90- day period, the political process may be sufficiently advanced that the president will be in a position to allow the PLO office to resume full operations," Vasquez said.

The reversal marked a serious departure from the administration's interpretation of the law only a week earlier. Officials had said then that, one way or another, the office had to close because Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a UN speech in September, had called on the ICC to investigate and prosecute Israelis. That same law, though, says that the president can let the office re-open after 90 days despite an ICC push if serious Israeli-Palestinian talks are underway.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
I am a retired newspaperman. I am 69 and live in Poca, WV, with my wife of 45 years, Lou Ann. We grew up in Cleveland. Three kids. Grandfather.

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Clashes today broke out here as security forces launched a crackdown on protesters belonging to hardline religious groups who were blocking a key highway to the capital, leaving one policeman dead and over 200 others injured and triggering violent demonstrations in other cities.

The government ordered suspension of private TV channels and blocked popular social media sites as police and paramilitary personnel fought pitched battles with the activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLY) and Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) who torched vehicles and attacked the houses of political leaders.

However, the protesters regrouped agian and continued their siege of the capital that started about three weeks ago, demanding sacking of Law Minister Zahid Hamid for changes in a law related to the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat (finality of prohpethood) oath in the Elections Act 2017.

They alleged the action undermined Islamic beliefs and linked it to blasphemy. The government already amended the law and restored the original oath but the hardline clerics refused to go away until the minister was sacked.

The siege played havoc with the more than half million commuters who daily travel between Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

The government was reluctant to use force, but launched operation after Islamabad High Court (IHC) yesterday issued contempt of court notice against interior minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads.

Islamabad city magistrate yesterday issued a warning to protesters to disperse by midnight or face consequences.

More than 8,000 personnel of police and paramilitary Rangers and Frontier Constablary launched the crackdown to clear Faizabad interchange linking Islamabad with garrison city of Rawalpindi and the only international airport of the capital.

In the morning hours, it looked that the police would clear the roads but the protesters regrouped by mid-day to re-occupy the interchange bridge, forcing the authorities to suspend the operation temporarily.

They also pelted stones on the security personnel who used batons and teargas shells to disperse them.

According to health officials, more than 200 people, including at least 95 security personnel, were injured in the clashes and shifted to various hospital of the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

At least one policeman reportedly died due head injury, but the government has so far not confirmed the death.

Private media reported that two protesters also died in the clashes, but it could not be independently confirmed.

TV footage showed police firing teargas shells and security personnel in riot gears charging at the protesters dozens of whom were arrested and shifted to various police stations.

Protesters also burnt some vehicles and thrashed several policemen and other security personnel.

Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) ordered media houses to stop live coverage and temporarily suspended several channels, including Geo TV, for failing to follow the directive.

Pakistan blocked popular social media site including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stop protesters from uploading their messages.

Violent protests were also reported from several other cities including Karachi and Lahore.

In the commercial hub of Karachi, at least 28 people were injured, according to local police.

Protesters attacked the house of federal law minister Zahid Hamid in Pasroor area of Sialkot district of Punjab but no one was injured as the minister and his family were not present inside.

The rioters also attacked the house of former interior minister Nisar Ali Khan in Faizabad area of Rawalpindi.

They damaged the gate of his house and tried to enter the premises, but were prevented by police.

Mian Javed Latif, a lawmaker of ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, was thrashed by protesters in Sheikhupura area of Punjab and was being treated for injuries in the local hospital.

In the midst of challenging law and order situation, interior minister Ahsan Iqbal alleged involvement of Indian hand in the mischief and said protesters "contacted India" and the government was probing it.

"Why they did it (contacted India), we are looking into it. They (protesters) have inside information and resources that are being used against the state," he said.

Iqbal said government was implementing court's orders to disperse the protesters.

"We are trying to clear the area with minimum violence, but we also need to ensure the fundamental rights of people of twin cities," he said.

A military spokesman said that army chief General Qamar Caved Bajwa talked to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on telephone and urged for peaceful solution to the problem.

"COAS [chief of army staff] telephoned PM. Suggested to handle Islamabad Dharna (sit-in) peacefully avoiding violence from both sides as it is not in national interest and cohesion," said spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor.

Earlier, the IHC last Friday gave a 24-hour deadline to the government to clear the roads which was later extended till Thursday.

However, the court yesterday expressed strong displeasure at government for failing to take action against protesters.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Clashes today broke out between security personnel and protesters belonging to a hardline religious groups in the Pakistani capital following a government crackdown, leaving one person dead and over 150 others injured and triggering violence in other cities.

The government blacked out all TV channels and blocked popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stem the spiralling violence.

The police and paramilitary personnel tried to disperse the protesters who have been blocking main highways leading to the capital Islamabad for more than two weeks to press for the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid.

The protesters are objecting to changes made in the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September, alleging the action undermined Islamic beliefs and linked it to blasphemy.

The operation was launched after Islamabad High Court (IHC) yesterday issued contempt of court notice against Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads.

The protesters belonging to Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR) and the Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) attacked the house of former interior minister Nisar Ali Khan in Faizabad area of Rawalpindi.

They damaged the gate of his house and tried to enter the premises, but were prevented by police, official said.

Khan is a former minister and his house is located very close to Fiazabad interchanged which has been occupied by the protesters for almost three weeks.

It was not known whether he was present inside the house at the time of attack.

At least one security person was killed and over 150 persons, including protesters and security personnel, were injured, police said.

TV footage showed police firing teargas and security personnel in riot gears charging at the protesters.

Dozens of them were arrested and shifted to various police stations.

Some of the security personnel were injured due to stone pelting by protesters.

According to a security official, more than 8,000 security personnel took part in the operation against around 2,000 protesters.

The operation was still going on and police were facing stiff resistance from the protesters, they said.

Meanwhile, violence also erupted in many parts of Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city and financial hub, where normal life was paralysed by protesters who forced shut down of markets, shops and petrol pumps. At least 15 people were injured in the violence.

Security forces fired in the air and baton charged the protesters who came out in many areas after a crackdown was launched at the Numaish roundabout on the M A Jinnah road.

The protesters had also gathered at Al-Asif square and tried to block the roads leading to Hyderabad, traffic police officials said.

A military spokesman said that army chief General Qamar Caved Bajwa talked to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on telephone and urged for peaceful solution to the problem.

As authorities struggled to contain the violence, the government sources said the decision to shut down private channels and social networking sites was taken in view of the experience of the military operation against extremists holed up in the Lal Masjid in Islamabad in 2007.

"At that time some media channels glorified suspected terrorists and vandals and there was a backlash due to this," a source said.

"In such a delicate situation there was also concerns that social networking sites would be used to spread unverified and false news/information and create panic and fear among the people," another source said.

About 2,000 activists of TLYR and ST have been blocking the Islamabad Expressway and Murree Road that connect Islamabad with its only airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi for more than two weeks.

Islamabad city magistrate yesterday issued a warning to protesters to disperse by midnight or face the consequences.

Earlier, IHC last Friday had given a 24-hour deadline to the government to clear the roads which was later extended till Thursday.

However, the court yesterday expressed strong displeasure at the government for failing to take action against the protesters.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
National Award-winning filmmaker Anand Gandhi says he feels "restless" and "anxious" when he sees fundamental rights of the artistes being attacked in the country today.

The 37-year-old director says the kind of threats, both commercial and indie projects are facing from different sections of the society, the creative freedom is at stake.

In an interview with PTI, Gandhi says, "Artistes, actors, filmmakers, journalists and even students are being constantly threatened. It has become completely acceptable for these communities to get threatened openly. We are being pushed towards silence, self-censorship and to accept the threats given to us.

"As a producer, I will be deeply concerned to back a film dealing with a topical or social issue. Such environment causes anxiety to me. I am deeply affected and engaged by the policy of law in my country. The fundamental rights and the law & order situation in this country are under threat right now. When I see criminals being legitimised, it makes me very restless."



The "Ship of Theseus" director believes no scope of dialogue exists anymore as few fringe elements have converted the debate into a "law and order situation".

"There is a certain legitimisation of violence that is going on. Few groups have just crossed the line of debate or protest. All these things have crossed the dialogue on censorship as well. These are people who are inciting violence and leaders of political parties are backing them instead of condemning them.

"This is a law and order situation. It is no longer a conversation around protests or sensitivity," he says.

Gandhi, who faced a series of hurdles to get a censor certificate for his production "An Insignificant Man", is now supporting Malayalam film "S Durga", which was pulled out from the Indian Panorama section of the ongoing International Film Festival of India (IFFI), by the information and broadcasting ministry.

The director, who is a member of the steering committee of the festival, says supporting the movie is his personal choice as it a "well-made" project which needs to be promoted.

"The jury has come out in support of the film. I saw the film at the London Film Festival. It is a film that needs to be seen. The idea of the title (originally called 'Sexy Durga') is essentially coming from the violator. The director is guiding our attention towards how the aggressor is looking at the woman."



Gandhi says the movie's title addresses the dichotomy prevalent in the society, where every second woman's name is based on that of a goddess'.

"The title shows this contradiction and the dichotomy of naming every second girl after a goddess and the violator looking at this girl as an object of sexuality, not a human being. It is this dichotomy that the filmmaker is commenting on with the title of 'S Durga'," he says.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A youth was injured after he was allegedly set on fire by unidentified men for objecting to them taunting his female friend in outer Delhi's Bawana, the police said today.

The police said there were some contradictions in the statements of the girl and the victim, and the possibility of self-immolation cannot be ruled out.

On November 23, the police were informed by the GB Hospital authorities that a 19-year-old man has been admitted to the hospital with burn injuries.

The victim told the police that when he was walking with his female friend, a minor, on Kanjhawla Road, three persons came on a motorcycle and allegedly taunted the girl, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini) Rishi Pal said.

When he objected to their taunts, the accused allegedly poured inflammable liquid on him and set him blaze, the officer said.

The families of the girl and the victim have been staying on different floors of the same house in Nangloi for five years, the police said.

Both the families, in their statements to the police, said that they were aware about their friendship.

Around 50 letters, many of which written in blood, were found from the bags of the duo. The contents of the letters were found bizarre and some had mention of something he wanted to do to prove his love for the girl, the officer said.

There are some variations in the statement of the victim and the girl about the exact sequence of events and further investigation is underway, Pal said, adding according to doctors a "petroleum product" had been poured on the victim.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The note ban in 2016, introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and anti-dumping structure have resulted in a decline in import of Chinese tyres, the chairman of Automotive Tyre Manufacturers Association said.

"Now you can say the Chinese imports have become less than half. During the demonetisation month (November 2016), it dropped by 20 per cent. GST coupled with anti-dumping duty, it has started to sink further," ATMA chairman Satish Sharma told reporters here today.

Noting that import of Chinese tyres has started to 'decline', he said, "the imports of Chinese tyres stood at 1,50,000 units in May 2016. Today it is 50,000 units and still going down."

Tyre dealers have become "confident" of not purchasing Chinese tyres as their "profitability" has also crashed, he said.

To a query on the growth of the tyre industry, he said it was pegged at "high single" digit during the current financial year and would be "high double digit" in FY18-19.

"My guess is that the industry this year would see a high single digit (growth) and then it should be in the double digit (as turnover)," he said.

Referring to the recent interaction of ATMA's top office-bearers with Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu, he said the Minister assured to take care of which can be done and also asked them to discuss again in "board rooms" the difficulties.

"There have been restrictive trade practices which actually spoilt the case even further. They restricted the imports (raw materials) to a few ports. You can bring in through JNPT only. So we expect these things can be taken care of," he said.

He said India signing free trade agreements would also give support to the industry.

Stating that India was not producing radial tyres when the world was looking for radial tyres a decade ago, Sharma said, "now we are producing radial tyres, we are re-entering the world market and the world has taken note of this".
The government has announced the post-GST rates for claiming rebate of state taxes under the scheme for Remission of State Levies (RoSL) on exports of readymade garments and made-ups, in a bid to support the outward shipments. The government has also doubled the rates for incentives under an export promotion scheme -- MEIS -- to 4 per cent for readymade garments and made-ups.

In a series of tweets, Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani said post-GST rates for remission of state levies/taxes and Enhanced Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) rates will boost exports of garments and made-ups.

In a release, the textiles ministry said post-GST rates of RoSL are up to a maximum of 1.70 per cent for cotton garments, 1.25 per cent for MMF, silk and woolen garments and 1.48 per cent for apparel of blends.

The ministry said the notification of post-GST RoSL rates for rebate of state levies/taxes is in pursuance of the decision of the government to boost exports and employment generation in the labour intensive textiles and apparel sector.

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has enhanced rates for garments and made-ups to 4 per cent of value of exports from 2 per cent under MEIS. New MEIS rates are effective from November 1.

"Announcement on post-GST rates of RoSL will be effective from 1 Oct 2017. Post-GST rates for remission of state levies/taxes will boost exports of garments & made-ups," Irani tweeted.

In another tweet, the minister said the enhanced MEIS rates will further boost exports of garments and made-ups from India.

Under the MEIS scheme, the commerce ministry gives duty benefits to several products. It provides duty benefits at 2 per cent, 3 per cent and 5 per cent depending upon the product and country.

The DGFT said the rates for incentives under MEIS for two subsectors of textiles industry -- readymade garments and made-ups -- have been enhanced to 4 per cent of value of exports with effect from November 1 till June 30 next year.

As a result, the estimated annual incentives will be Rs 1,143.15 crore for 2017-18 and Rs 685.89 crore for 2018-19, the commerce ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Several garment exporters' bodies from all over the country applauded the move. Commenting on the measures, H K L Magu, Vice Chairman of AEPC, said the garment exporters' body has been demanding the increase in rates of MEIS along with RoSL and duty drawback from a long time. AEPC said the increase in MEIS rates will help in the fulfilment of orders for the Christmas festival as it will help in unblocking the blocked capital.

"We are also hopeful that the government will intervene and address the issue of restoration of the old duty drawback rates as the sharp reduction in the rates of duty drawback has dealt a huge blow on the competitiveness of the industry," he said.

Tirupur Exporters' Association (TEA) also welcomed increase of the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme rates for Readymade garments and Madeup from two to four per cent for November 1 2017 to June 30 2018 period.

The announcement of MEIS increase is a relief to the ailing knitwear garment export sector, TEA President Raja Shanmugham said in a statement here

He thanked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Textile Minister Smriti Irani and Commerce and Industry minister Suresh Prabhu "for crucial support at this hour of crisis."

He also made a request to incorporate the embedded tax and announce the revised Rebate on State Levies and Duty Drawback rates as these were desperately needed to bring back exports' growth and boost confidence of garment exporters to take fresh orders and sustain themselves in global business.

In another statement, Southern India Mills' Association Chairman P Nataraj also welcomed the announcement, which, he said, has given some relief to the industry.

The government today announced post-GST rates for claiming rebate of state taxes under the scheme for Remission of State Levies (RoSL) on exports of readymade garments and made-ups, in a bid to support outward shipments.
LOGAN  A man in his 80s died Friday morning while crossing Main St. on his bicycle. The crash occurred at 11:15 a.m. near 1475 N. Main.

Logan City Police Capt. Curtis Hooley said the elderly man was riding his bike across the street, going east to west, when he was struck.

He crossed in front of a truck that was northbound on Main Street, a Ford F-150 pickup, said Hooley. The truck struck the male and the bicycle. The bicyclist was transported up to Logan Regional, where he was pronounced dead.

The mans identity has not been released, pending notification of family. Hooley said both the bicyclist and driver of the truck are from Cache Valley.

There are no crosswalks in the area. Officers believe the man was riding the bike, trying to cross the street.

That is what it appears to be. It doesnt appear that there was any impairment on the driver of the pickup. So they are still working through the witnesses that they have, trying to determine what the circumstances were.

Traffic was partially detoured for over 90-minutes while officers investigated the accident and cleared the scene.

<hr /><p style=text-align: center;>will@cvradio.com
Prof Brown made a complaint against the Raiders after two stints of major gambling after losing $226,050 over 18 months at the Raiders club in Belconnen, until the alert was finally raised by her bank at the beginning of this year. Prof Brown says she gambled on 160 nights from about 10pm to closing 4am, making 242 cash withdrawals from ATMs and 353 from the club's eftpos. On some nights she went back six or more time to withdraw more money, losing thousands of dollars on some nights.
Mr McKenna said the taxpayer would now pay the legal bill to defend the three defendants as they had been forced into relying on the "unfortunately" limited legal aid resources for the most serious charge on the criminal calendar.
Your digital subscription includes access to content from all our websites in your region. Access unlimited news content and The Canberra Times app. Premium subscribers also enjoy interactive puzzles and access to the digital version of our print edition - Today's Paper.
She recalled that when she picked Hercules up he seemed uncomfortable and "in quite a bit of pain", but she was reassured pain relief had been given to him. One of the complaints upheld by the board was that the single x-ray was inadequate to diagnose the extent of the problem, the second was that inadequate and inappropriate pain relief had been provided.
"The government mandated that you have to say at weddings that the marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others ... which we don't believe and it's discrimination towards our loved ones," Ms Stone said in March.
British MP Tony Benn, in his farewell parliamentary speech, said there are five critical democratic questions to ask people in power: " 'What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?' If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system."
She has performed credibly, if not brilliantly, as Foreign Minister, but has shown no particular aptitude in domestic policy, whether economic, welfare or defence. Her Howard-era career in education was undistinguished, and without lasting monuments; her brief foray as shadow treasurer was an embarrassment. She has repeatedly demonstrated a tin ear for political theatre  witness her treason allegations over a Penny Wong staffer's New Zealand inquiries about Barnaby Joyce's citizenship status. She has some admirers, not least in a press gallery well-educated in the way she sees things, but she also has enemies out to get her, not least Abbott, who believes she was disloyal to him at the time of his downfall. Abbott would go out of his way to do her any disservice he could, even at a cost to himself.
Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
Renault has been mulling with the idea of launching a cheap electric car in China for a few years, and its finally happening.



Speaking to Autonews, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance CEO, Carlos Ghosn, confirmed an electric version of the Kwid, admitting that prototypes have already been built.

In China, we cant sell the Leaf. Too expensive and too sophisticated. We cant sell the Renault Fluence. Too expensive. What sells in China? Low-cost electric cars, said Ghosn. So we are putting engineers from the alliance to develop a low-cost Kwid EV for China. I just test drove the car in China. It will be a very well engineered car at a very low cost.

Renaults head honcho didnt give any insights into the launch date, power, range or pricing of the Kwid EV, but admitted that it will eventually make its way into emerging markets. Once it works in China, theres no reason youre not going to export the car to India, to Brazil, to the Middle East.

Carlos Ghosn is looking at the Alliance as a whole when it comes to developing future products, especially electric vehicles, which will eventually help them achieve their objectives: mass marketing and profitability.

In the beginning, it was Renault going by itself, because they were prototypes, and we didnt know exactly where we were going. The Nissan Leaf had its own technology. The Renault Zoe has its own technology. Mitsubishi started with its own technology. But now were saying: one platform, one set of batteries, one set of motors, Ghosn added.

Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi isnt the only automotive giant that sees China as a market with a huge potential when it comes to affordable EVs, as Volkswagen has a similar approach. However, the Germans wont use their own brands to breach into this segment, as they have reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding with Jianghuai Automobile Co. (JAC) to develop a cheap EV.

PHOTO GALLERY
Say hello to Abu Dhabi Motors, a place youre probably familiar with thanks to all the BMW Individual cars and M models that are being showcased in their theater on a regular basis.



During a recent visit to the UAE, YouTuber Shmee150 stopped by the famed BMW dealer to not just check out some of the rides on display, but also drive BMWs flagship, the M760Li.

In case you didnt already know, Abu Dhabi Motors houses both BMW as well as Rolls-Royce cars, and if youve been paying attention, youll recognize a lot of models weve previously shown, like that green Alpina B4 S or the Rolls- Royce Dawn Inspired by Fashion.

Were also given a better look at the theater section of the showroom, which is an actual theater and wasnt just made to look like one. So you can go there and watch whatever car thats on display, or actually watch something on the projector screen.

As for his ride behind the wheel of the M760Li, Shmee praised the car for its torque and effortless way of accelerating, saying its perfect for a high-speed Autobahn run. The M760Li is powered by a 6.6-liter V12, producing 610 PS (603 HP) and 800 Nm (590 lb-ft) of torque.

VIDEO
I am writing you in regards to how people become homeless even though we have a government office that says they are here to assist the low income community.

Recently my husband and I have resulted in applying to Social Services to get by, our circumstances are a whole lot different than regular recipients that apply. You see for 51 years my husband worked hard however, after being a productive member of society, when we need help the government won't assist us. I guess being totally honest with the Ministry doesnt pay off. I myself am on their disability program but to them, so what. I'm just another number in the system, I have sleep apnea in which I need electricity for. I was in a wheelchair for ten years but have worked my way out of it. I have rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia. On top of that I have diabetes, PTSD, and now depression. However, they dont care. Im just a file number in the system.

My husband is 67 and is ailing from typical old age aches and pains that come with years of working in construction as an electrician. He has been trying to find work but it's not easy for a man at his age. He's overqualified or too old.

When we received a courtesy call from BC Hydro at 3:45 in the afternoon letting us know they will be disconnecting our power I was appalled. I asked for an extension but they denied, they said I have until midnight even after I explained to them I submitted the disconnection notice to the Ministry last week. They didn't care, they said well I suggest you call them. By this time it was after 4pm, the Ministry called back approximately around 5:30. They denied my request and told me they would send me forms to appeal their decision, no compassion what so ever.

I have had my son's family stay with us, they have an eight year old and a two year old. They are here until the 25th when my daughters husband can drive up here to pick them up and move them down to the coast. I explained to hydro we had children here but no compassion here either. If the welfare rates dont go up there will be more tent cities being built. I saw a woman and her baby going down into tent city, God help her and that baby. This is a serious matter that Trudeau should be looking into instead of legalizing marijuana!

Last Christmas I had my purse stolen, instead of retaliation I gave her a Christmas hamper with the help of Vernon police. Ive given the missing women a voice by writing and giving the community an insight to life downtown eastside, it was the Robert Pickton trial I was reporting on. Prior to that I came close to being one of the missing women, it was my husband who was a big part of me being here today.

If you could imagine yourself living in your dwelling with no power to cook (what little food we have) or no heat, lights, warm water, let alone money how would you feel? What would you do? Why is welfare so low? When will poverty get help? Is building an apartment complex for 98 homeless people going to make a change? No! There needs to be more! Like how many of those people are druggies or alcoholics? How many are mental health? This is how the Ministry lets people live?

It has been almost 20 years since either of us has picked up any mind altering substance. Ive been giving myself to those who need help since then, Id love to work at a legit paying job. As a lady of the night there arent benefits or EI, CPP, old age securities, RRSPs.

I took care of 5 of my grandchildren. Ive volunteered because I dont have the education or skills to do anything else.

Pauline Vankoll
I would like to say a few things in regards to that article about a treatment that costs $ 700'000.00 per year.

Why is the name of that pharma company not mentioned? It should be and in bold so everybody knows who the crooks are. To them it's either you pay or you die. I am sure that there is a patent on that drug and that way nobody can touch it.

Well, I am also sure that we have labs in Canada that could make that drug at a price that is affordable. If they go to court over it, slam them with a second degree murder charge and see how they like that.

This is not the first time a pharma company is pulling this stunt. What they do is criminal in my opinion. Does nobody have the guts to tell the truth about it and try to stop that. I realize that they most likely spent a lot of money to develop that medicine, however, if nobody pays their price, what are they going to do with it?

Stuff like that is so sickening!

Roger von Dach
Photo: campingrvbc.com Nk'Mip RV Resort in Osoyoos.

If you're planning on spending the winter in your RV and looking to do so in the South Okanagan, you probably won't have to look far.

Competition is growing among RV parks in the South Okanagan that are looking to attract winter campers  which is a growing business in the region, according to officials at several of those parks.

Those who spoke to Castanet on Friday said there are multiple driving factors.

Factors included the mild winter climate in the region compared to other parts of Canada, the relative availability of living in an RV  permanently or temporarily  and cheaper costs of spending the winter in Canada as opposed to travelling south.

Katrina Baptiste, the general manager at NK'Mip RV Park in Osoyoos, said her park has undertaken a massive expansion in the past five years to accommodate the growing business.

She said the park added 75 sites in 2012, giving them 165 sites available in the winter  noting that, in an average year, 150 of those sites are occupied for the entire winter season.

"We've definitely seen an increase, because we're still full and we have twice as many sites available."

Baptiste estimated that 90 per cent of those occupants in the winter are retired snowbirds, and noted there are young working families or couples that live there year-round.

Most of the snowbirds, she said, are from the Prairies and places with harsh winters, noting the better climate in the region is a draw.

"A lot of people said there's a 20-degree difference in temperature from where they're coming from."

Jamie Cox, the resort manager at Gallagher Lake RV Resort just north of Oliver, said the park wasn't open in the winter when he joined on in the spring of 2014.

But with a growing demand, Cox said the park has opened 34 of 151 sites to operate during the cold season.

"Last week, I did some quick research on eight resorts from Penticton to Osoyoos. And everybody's doing winter now," Cox said.

He added that he noticed a considerable decrease in monthly rates at many RV parks that now operate year-round as opposed to seasonally.

"Everybody's come down a couple of hundred dollars. There's a competition out there now that wasn't there a year ago."

That competition is spoken for as well at Holiday Hills RV Park in Penticton. There, operator Dan Selles said the park with about 90 sites, which only opened this year, is close to three-quarters full currently.

Many of those occupants, Selles said, intend to stay year-round.

"We get all of the demographics. We have the retirees, the snowbirds, and we also have the working-class as well... And the job market out here is bringing people here that I would say wouldn't of happened a couple of years ago."
Photo: Contributed

Christmas shopping may be a little more convenient for some South Okanagan residents, thanks to an extra bus that will run on Fridays in December.

The bus will be added to route 40 which runs from Osoyoos to Penticton, on Dec. 1, 8, 15, and 22, beginning at 8:30 a.m.

The route makes stops in Oliver, Okanagan Falls and Kaleden before unloading at the Cherry Lane Shopping Centre in Penticton at about 9:45 a.m.

A return trip from the mall to Osoyoos will run at 1:30 p.m.

More information on bus routes in the region can be found here.
EU concludes negotiations with Armenia for a new aviation agreement

24 November 2017 On the occasion of the Eastern Partnership Summit held today in Brussels, the European Union concluded negotiations with Armenia for a new aviation agreement. It is estimated that this agreement will bring an additional 87.000 additional passengers and will generate more than 16 million in the first five years. This agreement will improve market access for airlines, providing better connectivity, more choice and lower fares for travellers. More flights also mean more jobs and more wealth for all partners. Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc said, "Today we are further delivering on our ambitious aviation strategy by taking our aviation relations with Armenia to the next level. This agreement will not only improve market access, it will also contribute to the highest safety, security and environmental standards. This is good news for European and Armenian travellers and businesses." Besides market access, these agreements will establish a common regulatory framework, for instance in the fields of aviation safety and security. This agreement was negotiated by the European Commission as part of its Aviation Strategy for Europe, a milestone initiative to give a new boost to European aviation and provide new business opportunities. Next steps: The Armenian delegation has agreed to recommend its authorities to sign the agreement following the completion of the necessary internal procedures. Background information The European Commission is currently negotiating new aviation agreements with the Association of Southeast Asian Nationals (ASEAN), Qatar, Tunisia and Turkey. Once signed, over 75% of all passengers flying in and out of the EU, or more than 240 million passengers per year, would be covered by EU-level aviation agreements. In addition the EU has already negotiated with partners like the US, Canada, Morocco, Jordan, the Western Balkans, Ukraine, Israel, Georgia, Moldova and Switzerland which have already brought significant benefits. For instance, passenger numbers have doubled with partners such as the Western Balkans, Morocco, and Georgia. For more information: Fact Sheet - Aviation Agreement with Armenia An Aviation Strategy for Europe
Bill E. Buddy King of Hixson, Tennessee, went home to be with our Lord and Savior on November 22, 2017. He was 80.

He was preceded in death by his wife of 50 years, Willie Mae and two sons; Charles Hal King II and a stillborn son.

Buddy is survived by one son and two daughters, Bill and Joyce King, Tina Thorpe, and Viola and Tom Boruff, 13 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild and several nieces and nephews. A special thanks to TJ and Rhonda King, Jimmy King and Gene Burton.

He was a wonderful and loving father and grandfather who will be greatly missed by his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and all who knew him. We love and miss you.

Pallbearers will be Wayne King, Ray Blakemore, Bobby Blakemore, David Raby, PJ Burton and Johnathan Haswell

The family will receive friends on Sunday, Nov. 26 , from 12-2 p.m. at Chattanooga Funeral Home North Chapel, Hixson.

The funeral service will be on Sunday in the funeral home chapel with Brother Kevin Weaver officiating. Interment will follow in Chattanooga Memorial Park.

Arrangements are under the care of the North Chapel of Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory and Florist, 5401 Highway 153, Hixson.

Please share your thoughts and memories at www.chattanooganorthchapel.com
It's all in the finish. Well, maybe not all. But the thing that makes Angel's Envy whiskeys, Angel's Envy whiskeys, is that the distillery finishes its whiskeys in used spirits barrels.

That approach, common in the rarefied world of single-malt whiskey but a relatively unusual tack for a producer of bourbon and rye whiskeys, adds dimension and complexity to Angel's Envy's whiskeys. Take its bourbon. It is finished in port casks, which lend the whiskey dark berry and vanilla notes, along with a hint of spice.

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Angel's Envy's whiskeys represent the vision of Lincoln Henderson, an iconic Brown-Forman master distiller who helped develop some of the company's most well-known brands, including Woodford Reserve, Gentleman Jack and Jack Daniel's Single Barrel.

When Henderson and his son Wesley founded Angel's Envy in 2010, they wanted their whiskeys to be distinct but not too distinct.

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"It's a fine balance," says Wesley Henderson, the distillery's chief operating officer. "You have to understand what your customer appreciates about bourbon and where you can and can't go."

Lincoln Henderson, who died last year, recognized where to draw that line and how to make Angel's Envy bourbon stand out, says Wesley Henderson.

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That was important because Lincoln Henderson wanted to sell bourbon as soon as the distillery opened its doors in 2010. But since straight bourbon by law has to be aged at least two years, that meant it had to source the bourbon from another distillery.

Finding the right bourbon  balanced, not too woody, not too tannic  took time. But the investment was worth it, Henderson says. As are the distillery's small-batch production techniques. It hand-blends batches of eight to 12 barrels at a time.

The approach seems to be working. Its sales last year doubled from the year before, and it is positioned to soon be among the largest U.S. craft distillers. It also recently broke ground on a 100,000-square-foot production facility where it will soon be distilling its own whiskey.

But that growth hasn't come at the expense of quality. The distillery has released three whiskeys  bourbon, rye and cask-strength bourbon  since opening up shop, and each has garnered rave reviews in journals such as Whiskey Advocate and Wine Enthusiast.

Try it.

Angel's Envy Bourbon: Finished in port casks, the bourbon is smooth, silky and complex, with notes of berries, toffee and vanilla and a hint of spice.

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Angel's Envy Rye: Finished in Caribbean rum casks, the rye is spicy but sweet, with maple syrup, toffee and vanilla notes and a warm, spicy finish.
Protesters calling for Chicago police reform marched along North Michigan Avenue sidewalks packed with post-Thanksgiving shoppers Friday, in a clash of activism and commerce thats become something of a Black Friday tradition in recent years.

Marking the second anniversary of the release of a video showing the fatal shooting of black teen Laquan McDonald by a white police officer, about 100 people called for shoppers to boycott Magnificent Mile stores because Mayor Rahm Emanuel and aldermen wont take up the cause of civilian oversight of the Police Department.

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Chanting Who do you serve? Who do you protect? the crowd stopped in front of the Water Tower Place mall and the Nike Store as dozens of police officers on foot and riding bikes flanked them and kept a path clear so tourists could get in and out of shops on the biggest shopping day of the year.

Fridays event was smaller than last years Black Friday march. And it was dwarfed by the protest in 2015, when as many as 1,000 people stopped traffic and blocked the doors at many high-end retailers along Michigan while clashing with police and shoppers. That first march took place just days after a video was made public showing Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times.

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By contrast, things were orderly and peaceful Friday. Protesters made plenty of noise, but there werent many confrontations or disruptions beyond some bottlenecks forming on sidewalks in front of stores.

The groups list of grievances remains largely the same. They want aldermen to take up an ordinance to create a civilian police accountability council, an elected police watchdog group they say would give community organizations the power they need to punish officers who have done wrong. That ordinance has been buried in the City Council Public Safety Committee for more than a year.

Yahama Tunson, 67, center, marches during a Black Friday protest on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago on Nov. 24, 2017. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

And they want Emanuel out of office for what they say is his complicity in covering up the McDonald video for more than a year until after he could win a second term.

Charlotte Chung, in town from Miami with her husband, said she understands protesters targeting Chicagos highest profile shopping district when its at its busiest. We need to keep attention on these issues, and theres no better time and place to get that attention than here and now, Chung said.

jebyrne@chicagotribune.com

[ No more indictments against cops in handling of Laquan McDonald shooting ]

[ Laquan McDonald timeline: The shooting, the video and the fallout ]

[ Chicago Tribune coverage of the Laquan McDonald shooting ]
Parishioners, many of them from Guatemala, who speak only the native Mayan language of Q'anjob'al, attend Mass at the Church of St. Mary in Champaign, Ill., on Nov. 5, 2017. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

In June 2016, Lucia crossed the border with her 3-year-old daughter into Texas. Their journey from Santa Eulalia, Guatemala  on foot and by bus  took nearly a month to complete.

For Lucia  who now lives in Champaign and said she was fleeing an abusive relationship  it was worth it. Aqui la vida es bien, she said, in halting, imperfect Spanish. Here life is good.

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Lucia, who asked that her last name not be used because she is living in the United States illegally and is in deportation proceedings, is one of about 550 people in the Champaign-Urbana area who speak Qanjobal, one of Guatemalas more than 20 indigenous Mayan languages. But with interpreters of uncommon languages like Qanjobal in short supply, effectively representing native speakers in immigration court can be challenging.

When we dont have a decent interpreter who can communicate with them, and then you know you have to rely on a family member or someone in the community and youre asking these questions about prior gender violence or family violence, youre not necessarily going to get the correct information or the full picture, said Ashley Huebner, an attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago, a program with the Heartland Alliance that provides legal assistance to immigrants. So it really does impede the ability to fully represent these individuals and for these individuals to have access to protection.

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The National Immigrant Justice Center began noticing an uptick in Qanjobal-speaking immigrants within the last eight months. While they attend immigration court hearings in Chicago, most of them live in the Champaign-Urbana area or in southern Indiana. In immigration courts across the country, Qanjobal was the 17th-most popular language in 2016, up from 25th just two years before, according to statistics from the Department of Justice. Two other indigenous Mayan languages  Mam and Quiche  were the ninth- and 10th-most popular languages, respectively, last year.

A man in a t-shirt with a large image of Jesus Christ kneels in prayer. Parishioners, many of them from Guatemala who only speak their native Mayan language of Q'anjob'al attend mass at St. Mary Catholic Church in Champaign on Nov. 5, 2017, where the service is in Mayan, Spanish and English, but primarily in Mayan. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

Attorneys often scramble to find interpreters to help them prepare cases before arriving in court. In one act of desperation, Hillary Richardson, a staff attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center, found a radio DJ in Guatemala who agreed to translate for her client via Skype.

There is a Guatemalan community in Chicago, but as far as being able to find anyone who speaks Qanjobal and Spanish or Qanjobal and English to be able to help, its been difficult, Richardson said.

In interviews with law enforcement officers when theyre detained and at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-ins, immigrants must bring their own interpreters. They often rely on their imperfect Spanish instead.

Well come across kids where maybe their initial intake information was done in Spanish because they can speak enough Spanish to get through some initial questioning, but ultimately they figure out they cant go forward in Spanish, or theres just not enough Spanish there for effective representation, Richardson said.

Relying on a friend or family member to interpret, when its allowed, also can pose problems for immigrants trying to attain asylum. If they are fleeing domestic or sexual violence, they may not want to share their story with someone they know, particularly if its a man, said Rebekah Niblock, a lawyer who represents Lucia and other Qanjobal-speaking immigrants in the Champaign-Urbana area.

For immigration court hearings  for which the government is required to provide interpreters for defendants  Qanjobal interpreters are often flown in from other parts of the country. Sometimes two interpreters are required, complicating the situation further.

Huebner said she has been in court proceedings with Qanjobal speakers when the court had to rely on relay interpretation, in which one person interprets from Qanjobal to Spanish and another person interprets from Spanish to English. Sometimes one of them interprets by phone instead of in person, Huebner said.

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President Donald Trump has made immigration policy one of his top priorities, vowing to increase deportations and reduce border crossings. And some dont think providing interpreters should be the courts responsibility.

I think its saying quite a bit that the American taxpayer has to pay for a translator, given the fact that removal proceedings are civil proceedings. Theyre not criminal proceedings, said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Washington-based conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. Many states, including Illinois, leave it up to the courts to determine whether interpreters are needed in civil proceedings.

Lucia, 25, was detained by ICE officials at the U.S. border in Texas when she arrived last year. Authorities released her with an immigration hearing scheduled for December 2018. She is applying for asylum with her daughter, claiming domestic abuse and fear for her life in Guatemala, according to Niblock, her attorney. If Lucia is not granted asylum in court, she will be deported. In the meantime, Lucia checks in with ICE every two or three months in Chicago, Niblock said.

Today, many Central American immigrants  like Lucia  come to the U.S. to escape gang or domestic violence. But in the 1980s, immigrants fleeing civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador began arriving in Champaign-Urbana and seeking sanctuary in churches that agreed to protect them from deportation.

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

While the close-knit community of Qanjobal speakers in Champaign-Urbana may not be able to assist one another in legal proceedings, they do help one another assimilate and make their way in a new country. Little by little, theyve helped one another to learn English and Spanish and get jobs. Most of the Qanjobal-speaking immigrants in the area today work in construction or lawn service or in restaurants, where Lucia hopes to work too.

To assist immigrants with language acquisition and to help educate the rest of the local community about their Qanjobal neighbors, the linguistics department at the University of Illinois has created alphabet books and posters in Qanjobal for classrooms and booklets with simple translations for medical words for local hospitals. The Church of St. Mary in Champaign, which was part of the sanctuary movement in the 1980s, also has a weekly Qanjobal-language Mass.

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Its unclear whether the Qanjobal-speaking community in Champaign-Urbana will continue to grow under the Trump administration and whether those already there will be allowed to stay. Looking to the future, Lucia says she doesnt want to return to Guatemala. She wants to get a job and stay in Champaign.

Solo Champaign. Esta bien. Es bonito tambien, she said. Only Champaign. Its good here. Its beautiful too.

coconnolly@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ColleenMConn

RELATED:

[ Spike in legal representation for immigrants in Chicago is attributed to $1 million city fund ]

[ Chicago's history as a sanctuary city ]

[ Judge in Chicago refuses to change ruling on sanctuary cities ]
Chicago police on Saturday wouldn't immediately say whether two North Side robberies at the hands of a man with a knife were related.

Authorities are searching for either a man or two men who robbed two stores while wielding a knife, officials said.

The first incident happened about 10:50 a.m., according to a media notification from Chicago police. A man walked into a business in the 1200 block of North Wells Street in the Old Town neighborhood and pulled out a knife, authorities said.

He took an undisclosed amount of money and fled, police said.

The robber was described as a black man between 40- and 50-years-old, wearing a light brown skull cap and a black jacket. No one was injured and the robber took off in an unknown direction, police said.

About 30 minutes later, in Lakeview, a man walked into a retail store in the 3300 block of North Ashland Avenue and announced a robbery, officials said.



The man walked up to a female employee, demanded money from the cash register, and held the knife against her, police said.



The woman complied and the robber took off on foot with an undisclosed amount of money, police said. No one was injured.



The robber was described as a black man in his mid-30s, last seen wearing a tan knit ski cap, a black jacket and he was said to be carrying a large black backpack, officers said.



Police said one armed robbery is being investigated by detectives from Area North and the other is being investigated by detectives from Area Central. When asked whether the robbers with similar clothing descriptions might be the same person, Chicago police did not immediately provide an answer.
An image of a man wanted for questioning in the robbery of a 34-year-old woman on the CTA's Green Line. (Chicago Police Department)

Police are asking for the public's help identifying a man wanted for questioning in the robbery of a woman on the CTA Green Line.

The robbery happened about 6 p.m. Nov. 13 in the 4000 block of South Indiana Avenue in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood, police said.

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A 34-year-old woman was seated on the train when she was approached by a man who snatched her phone from her hand and fled.

The robber is described as black, about 18 years old, 5-foot-7 to 5-foot-10 and weighing between 150 to 170 pounds, police said.

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Anyone with information about the robbery is asked to call detectives at 312-747-8382.
A Southeast Side man died Friday morning after his car collided with another vehicle on Interstate 57 in Matteson, authorities said.

Dean Scalzitti, 51, of the 2900 block of East 103rd Street in the South Deering neighborhood, was pronounced dead at 9:06 a.m. Friday following the crash near Vollmer Road on I-57, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

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State police were called to the scene about 8:20 a.m. after the two vehicles collided on northbound I-57 and the vehicle Scalzitti was driving went off the road, hit some trees and stopped in a ditch to the right of the road, state police said in an email.

A passenger in Scalzitti's car and the driver of the other vehicle were taken to an area hospital, where their conditions were stabilized, police said.

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No information on citations or the cause of the crash was immediately released.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the date of the crash. We regret the error.
Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, shown Aug. 24, 2017, who said she has pushed for electronic filing since taking office more than 16 years ago, acknowledged there may be some hiccups but said her office is prepared. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

More than 15 years after the federal court system went paperless, Cook County Circuit Court clerks still spend their days ferrying stacks of Manila case folders and entering handwritten judges orders into an antiquated computer interface.

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Many judges and attorneys still use carbon paper  a cotton-gin-era innovation for simultaneously making multiple paper copies.

But after years of lobbying by frustrated attorneys, the county will soon take an important step toward catching up with a world that already does much of its business online.

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Nearly all new court filings in Cook County and across the state must be submitted electronically starting Jan. 1. Its an important step experts say, but one that still leaves the state years behind the federal system, not to mention less populous states like Iowa and Wisconsin.

E-filing is intended to cut costs, increase convenience and make tracking cases much simpler.

Not every county is likely to make it. So far only one Illinois county  DuPage  has petitioned to be exempted from the New Years deadline mandated by the Illinois Supreme Court, a spokesman for the high court said. But the impending deadline has lawyers, judges and legal observers wondering if Cook County is really ready to make the switch and if the transition will save taxpayers money.

The transition could be jarring  only about 38 percent of Cook Countys roughly 178,000 civil case filings so far this year have been submitted electronically, though the number has climbed from about 21 percent last year, according to clerks office figures.

Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, who said she has pushed for electronic filing since taking office more than 16 years ago, acknowledged there may be some hiccups but said her office is prepared.

Were the second-largest unified court system in the country  theres going to be some challenges, Brown recently told the Tribune. Were going to ask people to be patient. We were not given a pass or more time (by the Supreme Court) than someone with one courtroom in their county.

Browns office, which the Tribune reported last year was under federal investigation for its hiring practices, does not exactly have a reputation for efficiency.

County board members this year cited their lack of trust in her staff when they approved a $1 million contract for a technology company to oversee the rollout of a nearly $37 million case management system to replace the outdated mainframe system currently in use. The clerks office is also facing a federal lawsuit alleging that it takes days or even weeks for electronically filed lawsuits to become public even though paper filings are available the day theyre filed.

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Figures provided by Browns office show the current e-file system has been down only six days this year, and Brown said that if the new system cant handle the caseload, her staff will shift filing to the old system. Courts have until this summer to work out the kinks in the new process.

Already, some savings have been realized. In Cook County, the costs of printing court forms has dropped nearly 67 percent from last year to $145,000. Brown said clerks in her office will retire their file stamps and shift to helping customers e-file their cases. Non-lawyers who represent themselves will continue to have the option to file cases on paper.

Requiring e-filing in Illinois will modernize and simplify the process of filing documents for everyone involved, Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Lloyd A. Karmeier told lawmakers during a budget speech this year.

But although Browns office is frequently criticized, experts say much of the blame for Illinois slowness in moving toward e-filing is the balkanized structure of the states court system and a wait-and-see approach by the Supreme Court, which oversees court operations in all of Illinois 102 counties, some of which are too small to have their own dedicated courthouse.

Lets just say the Supreme Court was very cautious, said Jim McMillan, the longtime courts technology guru at the National Center for State Courts. But it was the economics of Illinois courts system structure basically that resulted in delays and obstacles that had to be hurdled.

The states court system is unified in name only said Marcia Meis, director of the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, which means that there is no cost-sharing or a statewide budget to cover technology expenses. Only last year, state legislators passed a law allowing court clerks to collect a $9 fee on all new civil filings to help cover the software costs of switching to an e-file system.

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And while many practicing attorneys question why Illinois doesnt have a system like PACER  the federal courts browser-based system that allows users to file or view public files anytime and anywhere  that is most likely still years away.

For starters, only a few counties have begun allowing criminal case documents to be filed digitally.

We are slow-walking criminal e-filings, Meis said, citing a variety of concerns from prosecutors, public defenders and others who worry about crime victim or other sensitive information becoming available to anyone. Similar issues exist with civil filings, which is why the state is still formulating a policy for remote access to all types of cases.

The more pressing and complicated issue is the concept of public records versus private information, Meis said. In court files we have what we call a practical obscurity. You could go in and ask for them and look at them, but how many people are going to ask for them?

Its easier if you can look at documents on your computer.

There have been cases where people use personal information like Social Security numbers from online court documents for identity theft, including two people who were charged in Alabama using the same e-filing system Cook County now uses. Brown said the responsibility for redacting those sensitive details falls on attorneys.

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Cook County will be far from paperless even after the transition. Brown said she expects even after e-filing becomes mandatory for clerks to still print out documents for judges, who have said the terminals in their courtroom for viewing electronic records are difficult to read documents on.

And it will remain the only large metropolitan court system in the nation where carbon paper is still widely found. Judges and attorneys still prefer to use it, but Brown hopes to eventually change the courthouse culture.

Im encouraged by how far weve come, she said.

sschmadeke@chicagotribune.com

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

Twitter @SteveSchmadeke
A woman reported that she was assaulted by two men while riding a CTA train on the North Side early Saturday, officials said.

Chicago police officers responded to the Addison Red Line station in the 900 block of West Addison Street just before 4 a.m. to investigate the report, police said. They have classified the incident as a battery.

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The woman told officers that two men, ages 18 to 20, verbally harassed her and touched her inappropriately, police said.

The offenders fled, and no one was in custody.

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Area North detectives are investigating.
Abdallah Abdel Nasser, 14, receives medical treatment at Suez Canal University hospital in Ismailia, Egypt, on Nov. 24, 2017, after he was wounded during an attack on a Sufi mosque in Sinai during Friday prayers. (Amr Nabil / AP)

ISMAILIA, Egypt  They arrived in five SUVs, took positions across from the mosque's door and windows, and just as the imam was about to deliver his Friday sermon from atop the pulpit, they opened fire and tossed grenades at the estimated 500 worshippers inside. When the violence finally stopped, more than 300 people, including 27 children, had been killed and 128 injured.

As the gunfire rang out and the blasts shook the mosque, worshippers screamed and cried out in pain. A stampede broke out in the rush toward a door leading to the washrooms. Others tried desperately to force their way out of the windows.

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Those who survived spoke of children screaming as they saw parents and older brothers mowed down by gunfire or shredded by the blasts. Some marveled at their narrow escape from a certain death. Some families lost all or most male members in the massacre.

So composed were the militants that they methodically checked their victims for any sign of life after the initial round of blazing gunfire. Those still moving or breathing received a bullet to the head or the chest, the witnesses said. When the ambulances arrived they shot at them, repelling them as they got back into their vehicles and fled.

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Friday's assault was Egypt's deadliest attack by Islamic extremists in the country's modern history, a grim milestone in a long-running fight against an insurgency led by a local affiliate of the Islamic State group. Al-Rawdah Mosque was in a sleepy village by the same name in Egypt's troubled northern Sinai, near the small town of Bir al-Abd.

A statement by the country's chief prosecutor, Nabil Sadeq, said the attackers, some masked, numbered between 25 and 30. Those with bare faces sported heavy beards and long hair, it added. Clad in military-style camouflage pants and black T-shirts, one of them carried a black banner with the declaration of the Muslim faith  there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. The banner matched those carried by IS, which has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

They also torched seven cars parked outside the mosque that belonged to worshippers, the statement added.

The chief prosecutor's statement was the most detailed account given by authorities and it generally agreed with what witnesses told The Associated Press on Saturday in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, where some of the wounded are hospitalized.

"We knew that the mosque was under attack by (militants)," said witness Ebid Salem Mansour recalling the intense gunfire. Mansour, a 38-year-old worker in a nearby salt factory, said he had settled in Bir al-Abd three years ago to escape the bloodshed and fighting elsewhere in northern Sinai. He suffered two gunshot wounds to his legs on Friday.

"Everyone lay down on the floor and kept their heads down. If you raised your head you get shot," he said. "The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning and then became more deliberate. Whoever they weren't sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead."

The militants were shouting Allahu Akbar, or God is great, as they fired at the worshippers and the children were screaming, Mansour added. "I knew I was injured but I was in a situation that was much scarier than being wounded. I was only seconds away from a certain death," he said. Amid the shooting many worshippers recited their final prayers, he added.

Friday's attack targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam. Islamic militants, including the local IS affiliate, consider Sufis heretics because of their less literal interpretations of the faith.

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President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi vowed that the attack "will not go unpunished" and that Egypt would persevere with its war on terrorism. He did not specify what new steps might be taken. On Saturday, he ordered that a mausoleum be built in memory of the victims of Friday's attack and cancelled a visit to the Gulf Sultanate of Oman that was scheduled for next week.

The military and security forces have already been waging a tough and costly campaign against militants in the towns, villages and desert mountains of northern Sinai, and Egypt has been in a state of emergency since April. Across the country, thousands have been arrested in a crackdown on suspected Islamists as well as against other dissenters and critics, raising concerns about human rights violations.

Seeking to spread the violence, militants over the past year have carried out deadly bombings on churches in the capital of Cairo and other cities, killing dozens of Christians. The IS affiliate is also believed to be behind the 2016 downing of a Russian passenger jet that killed 224 people over Sinai, an incident that decimated the country's already ailing tourism industry.

Friday's assault was the first major militant attack on a Muslim congregation, and it eclipsed past attacks, even dating back to a previous Islamic militant insurgency in the 1990s. The death of so many civilians in one day recalls the killing of at least 600 in August 2013, when Egyptian security forces broke up two sit-in protests in Cairo by supporters of Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist president ousted by the military the previous month.

Another witness to Friday's attack said worshippers tried to jump out of windows as soon as the militants opened fire. "The small door that leads to the corridor for the wash rooms was about the only one where worshippers rushed to escape," said a 38-year-old government employee who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation.

"There was a stampede. I fell down and then bodies piled up on top of me," he said.

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The local IS group affiliate has targeted Sufis in the past.

Last year, the militants beheaded a leading local Sufi religious figure, the blind sheikh Suleiman Abu Heraz, and posted photos of the killing online. Islamic State group propaganda often denounces Sufis. In the January edition of an IS online magazine, a figure purporting to be a high level official in the Sinai affiliate of the group vowed to target Sufis, accusing them of idolatry and heretical "innovation" in religion and warning that the group will "not permit (their) presence" in Sinai or Egypt.

Millions of Egyptians belong to Sufi orders, which hold sessions of ritual chanting and dancing to draw the faithful closer to God. Sufis also hold shrines containing the tombs of holy men in particular reverence.

Islamic militants stepped up their campaign of violence in northern Sinai after the military ousted the elected but divisive Morsi. Authorities followed up with a fierce crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood group, jailing thousands.

The result has been a long, grinding conflict centered on el-Arish and nearby villages and towns in north Sinai. The militants have been unable to control territory, but the military and security forces have also been unable to bring security, as the extremists continuously carry out surprise attacks, mostly targeting outposts and convoys.

The attacks have largely focused on military and police and, more recently, Christians. Hundreds have been killed, although exact numbers are unclear. The militants have also assassinated individuals the group considers to be spies for the government or religious heretics. Egypt has also faced attacks by militants in its Western Desert.

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Hendawi reported from Cairo.
Last week, U.S. officials said the Palestine Liberation Organization mission in Washington had to close because the Palestinians had violated a provision in U.S. law. But the State Department said Friday, Nov. 24, 2017, that the office can stay open, with restrictions. (Alex Brandon / AP)

WASHINGTON  The Trump administration backtracked Friday on its decision to order the Palestinians' office in Washington to close, instead saying it would merely impose limitations on the office that it expected would be lifted after 90 days.

Last week, U.S. officials said the Palestine Liberation Organization mission couldn't stay open because the Palestinians had violated a provision in U.S. law requiring the office to close if the Palestinians try to get the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis. The move triggered a major rift in U.S.-Palestinian relations that threatened to scuttle President Donald Trump's ambitious effort to broker Mideast peace before it ever got off the ground.

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Yet the United States delayed shuttering the office for a week while saying it was working out the details with the Palestinians, before abruptly reversing course late Friday, as many Americans were enjoying a long Thanksgiving Day weekend. State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said the U.S. had "advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians."

Vasquez said even those restrictions will be lifted after 90 days if the U.S. determines the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in serious peace talks. The White House, in an effort led by Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, has been preparing a comprehensive peace plan to present to both sides in the coming months.

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"We therefore are optimistic that at the end of this 90-day period, the political process may be sufficiently advanced that the president will be in a position to allow the PLO office to resume full operations," Vasquez said.

The reversal marked a serious departure from the administration's interpretation of the law only a week earlier. Officials had said then that, one way or another, the office had to close because Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a U.N. speech in September, had called on the ICC to investigate and prosecute Israelis. That same law, though, says that the president can let the office re-open after 90 days despite an ICC push if serious Israeli-Palestinian talks are underway.

Asked how the Trump administration explains its new interpretation of about what must happen if the Palestinians call for an ICC investigation, Vasquez said: "These actions are consistent with the president's authorities to conduct the foreign relations of the United States."

There were no indications that the Trump administration had initially moved to close the office as part of a premeditated strategy to strengthen its hand in eventual peace talks. Instead, officials explained the move by saying Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in a strict interpretation of the law, determined that Abbas' speech had crossed the legal line.

The chaos that ensued after the announcement, with the U.S. unable for several days to explain if the office was truly closing and when, indicated it had caught much of the government off-guard.

Still, the move led the Palestinians to issue an angry response last weekend threatening to suspend all communication with the U.S. Additionally, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accused the U.S. of bowing to pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government "at a time when we are trying to cooperate to achieve the ultimate deal."

Vasquez said the original position had never been intended to create leverage or impose pressure. The State Department said that the administration is actively working to pursue lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The requirement about the mission closing stems from a little-noticed provision in U.S. law that says the U.S. cannot allow the Palestinians to have a Washington office if they back the international court's move to investigate or prosecute Israeli nationals for alleged crimes against Palestinians.

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Abbas said at the United Nations in September that the Palestinians had "called on the International Criminal Court to open an investigation and to prosecute Israeli officials for their involvement in settlement activities and aggressions against our people."

The PLO is the group that formally represents all Palestinians. Although the U.S. does not recognize Palestinian statehood, the PLO maintains a "general delegation" office in Washington that facilitates Palestinian officials' interactions with the U.S. government.

The United States allowed the PLO to open a mission in Washington in 1994. That required President Bill Clinton to waive a law that said the Palestinians couldn't have an office. In 2011, under the Obama administration, the U.S. started letting the Palestinians fly their flag over the office, an upgrade to the status of their mission that the Palestinians hailed as historic.

Israel opposes any Palestinian membership in U.N.-related organizations until a peace deal has been reached.

The Israelis and Palestinians are not engaged in active, direct negotiations. But Trump's team, led by Kushner, is working to broker a deal aimed at settling the intractable conflict.

The Trump administration has not disclosed details about its effort to achieve an agreement that ostensibly would grant the Palestinians an independent state in exchange for an end to its conflict with the Israelis. Kushner and other top Trump aides have been shuttling to the region to meet with Palestinians, Israelis and officials from Arab nations.

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The Palestinians, publicly supportive of the U.S. effort, are nonetheless skeptical because Trump's close ties to Israel suggest whatever deal he proposes might be unfavorable to them.
M. Zia Hassan, dean of the school of business at the Illinois Institute of Technology who helped found the Islamic Foundation mosque and school in Villa Park, died on Oct. 29 at 84, his wife, Shakeela Hassan, said. (Jose More / Chicago Tribune)

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M. Zia Hassan was a professor and dean at the Illinois Institute of Technology who helped found the Islamic Foundation mosque and school in Villa Park in the early 1970s.

Hassan went on to serve as the chairman of the foundation for 40 years, a period of significant growth.

He was an enlightened soul among his peers and used his kindness to develop unity in the team he led, to reduce rivalry among various groups of donors, and to promote spirituality over religiosity, said Moon Khan, a member of the foundation and a former York Township trustee. His role was to provide sunshine after a heavy spell of snowstorm.

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Hassan, 84, died of pneumonia Oct. 29 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after undergoing several surgeries, said his wife of 57 years, Shakeela Hassan. He had moved to Streeterville in July and previously had been a longtime Hyde Park resident.

Born Mohammad Zia Hassan in what now is Pakistan, Hassan earned a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Punjab in Lahore, Pakistan. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1956 to study at IIT. Hassan earned a masters degree in industrial engineering from IIT in 1958 and a doctorate in industrial engineering from IIT in 1965.

Hassan began lecturing at IIT in 1960 and became a full professor before being promoted to become the dean of IITs Stuart School of Business, which was founded in 1969. Hassan focused his research on business policy and quality management, and he wrote more than 30 academic papers. He also cowrote a textbook in the early 1980s, BASIC Programs for Production and Operations Management.

Hassan retired from IIT in 2014. Before his retirement, IITs Stuart School of Business endowed a $2 million professorship in Hassans name, and IIT professor Elizabeth Durango-Cohen recently was named the first educator to hold that position.

In the late 1960s, Hassan helped establish the Muslim Community Center on Chicagos Northwest Side. He then joined forces in the mid-1970s with Abdul Hameed Dogar, who also died in October, to create the Islamic Foundation in DuPage County, consisting of a mosque and an adjoining school.

Always strongly committed to education, Hassan worked to develop the Islamic Foundation even though his own home in Hyde Park was a meaningful distance from DuPage County.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 86 Dick Orkin, an award-winning radio advertising creator for close to a half-century who was perhaps best known for his syndicated Chickenman spoof, which aired on Chicago stations, died on Dec. 24 in California. He was 84. Read more. (Handout)

Hassan was the Islamic Foundations chairman for 40 years, overseeing both the mosque and the school. In the early 1980s, the group bought the shuttered High Ridge School on High Ridge Road in Villa Park, which had closed as a public school in 1982 due to low enrollment. The Islamic Foundation then opened its own mosque and K-12 school on the site, which grew to now provide education for some 750 students.

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Ali Ahmed, a foundation member and former chairman of the Islamic Foundations school who worked closely with Hassan, recalled meeting regularly at Hassans office at IIT and seeing him interacting with his graduate students and other IIT professors.

His intent was to help others and to help to see the community grow and prosper, Ahmed said. And in both settings, he really was the driving force for getting the younger generation involved in things, whether graduate students in his program or the second or third generation of (Muslim) immigrants at the foundation. He really understood the needs of my generation and those younger, and he could understand balancing our community with our personal and professional lives.

Hassan stepped down as the chairman of the foundation in 2014, his daughter Rubeena Mian said.

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In addition to his wife and daughter, Hassan is survived by daughters Ayesha and Isra; five grandchildren; sisters Naseem Ahmed and Tasneem Bashir; and brothers Imtiaz and Iftikhar.

Services were held.

Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
Benjamin Trey Gruber, originally of Ohio, was the frontman of Chicago band Parent. He died of a heroin and fentanyl overdose in September. (Photo courtesy of Dan Geddes)

I knew hed finally hit the vein when the blood back-filled the syringe. He fired the heroin, pulled out the rig and knocked the belt off his bicep, leaving a single, fat drop of blood behind.

We were on speakerphone with an administrator from a detox facility at the time. My friend Trey Gruber didn't have a phone anymore, so he had texted me from a desktop computer asking if I would take him to detox. I went over to his apartment and started calling.

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One facility was full, and a few wouldnt take his insurance. He said he would be better able to manage the insurance and intake questions if he used. To be honest, I didnt think he was leaving that building until those baggies were empty anyway.

We finally found a detox that would accept him that night, and I drove him to it in Uptown. I filled out the paperwork when he couldnt hold the pen steady. He nodded in and out of consciousness.

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He was out of detox after five days. A week later he scored some dope, probably south of Chicago Avenue between Homan and Pulaski. It had fentanyl in it.

He shot that heroin and died. He was 26.

My friend knew he could die if he kept using. Lots of addicts and alcoholics do, and in fact I told him so more than once, though I hedged the amount of time I gave him  months and years, not the weeks and days he apparently had left. I still regret that.

His illness was one that distorts thinking and emotions. Its a disease that turns human beings against themselves. It creates the calm delirium of using while on hold for detox. Its an active manifestation of the human capability for self-sabotage.

Those who knew him remember Treys dedication to honesty, a painfully empathetic spirit and acerbic sense of humor. Someone for whom the small sacrifices  a ride out of your way or a spare cigarette  always felt right. Hed do them for you, and you knew it. He was the kind of person whose funeral was shoulder-to-shoulder, whose ex-employer, the cafe that fired him during a relapse, freely opened its doors for a large memorial service.

And he was a brilliant musician, something of a genius, whose band I saw turn the heads of disinterested bar crowds. There are some recordings and pieces of songs, now in the process of being recovered and preserved by his family, that I hope one day find new listeners. The fact that no more of his music is possible will underscore the tragedy of his death.

He was also a lifesaver. Literally. There are other addicts  alcohol, heroin, whatever  who are alive today because of his efforts to help them in their recovery. His memorial felt like a lifeboat, but one he unfortunately fell out of.

Americans my age have been misinformed about drugs for most of our lives. I was taught in D.A.R.E. that addiction is simply the result of drug usage, and not a disorder. I was taught drug users were dangerous people to be avoided  even though avoiding addicts only facilitates their addiction. I was taught that marijuana is more harmful and devoid of therapeutic use than cocaine or methamphetamine.

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All the while, pharmaceutical companies were producing legal drugs, marketing them to doctors despite evidence such practices would cause addiction, as the LA Times and The New Yorker found in a groundbreaking series of reports. A billionaire pharma founder with Chicago connections was recently indicted for allegedly bribing doctors to prescribe a fentanyl product so powerful it is supposed to be reserved for serious cancer-related pain.

Corporate America profited off addiction, while political America arrested and stigmatized the addicted.

Treys first dope fix? Three pilfered OxyContin.

Drug overdoses now kill more Americans per year than car crashes did in the 60s and 70s, or guns did at the peak of Americas violent crime boom, or HIV/AIDS did at the height of the crisis. They killed more Americans in 2016 than died in the entire Vietnam War.

What can we do better?

Are we going to start teaching kids that addiction is a disease whose cause lies not in the drugs used, but in the mind that uses them? Are we going to educate them about the warning signs and genetic markers for addiction? Are we going to stop incarcerating low-level drug offenders and open treatment centers with that cash instead? Are we going to force the makers of opioids that often lead to heroin addiction to clean up the mess theyve made, as we did tobacco manufacturers?

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It took the Trump administration nearly three months to declare the opioid crisis a public health emergency, a half-measure by his own commissions estimation, bereft of new federal funding.

Democrats have unveiled a $45 billion anti-opioid abuse bill. Would Donald Trump sign it?

Treys mother told me she spoke to a Chicago police officer who responded to Treys death, a man used to encountering suffering and tragedy. He told her that as soon as word got out, her sons apartment was flooded with mourners. He told her he remembered thinking, This one still has lots that loved him.

He was right.

Struggling with drugs or alcohol? Contact Chicagoland Narcotics Anonymous at (708) 848-4884 and Alcoholics Anonymous at (312) 346-1475.

charjohnson@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @Charliemagne
An apartment building in Summit is considered a total loss following an early morning fire, officials said. Nov. 25, 2017. (Frank Vaisvilas / Daily Southtown)

A resident and a firefighter were injured Saturday in an early morning fire that destroyed a Summit apartment building, Summit Fire Chief Wayne Hanson said.

Firefighters called to the 7600 block of West 61st Place about 2:30 a.m. found "heavy smoke and fire" coming from the building, he said.

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All 12 occupants of the three-unit structure escaped, but one needed to be treated for smoke inhalation. A firefighter was treated for exhaustion, he said.

"The building at this point will be considered a complete loss," Hanson said.

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A man named Eduardo, who identified himself as the building's owner but declined to give his last name, said he felt badly for his tenants, who are now displaced during the holiday season.

Hanson said the Red Cross provided housing assistance to the residents.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Several other fire departments provided mutual aid, including Oak Lawn, Evergreen Park and North Palos, he said.

Frank Vaisvilas is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Naperville City Councilwoman Patty Gustin has requested the number of seats on Napervilles Sister Cities commission be reduced from 15 to nine. (Jon Langham/Naperville Sun )

With more than half its 15 positions empty, the Naperville Sister Cities Commission has been unable to meet because they lack enough members for a quorum.

That could change by the end of the year if Naperville City Councilwoman Patty Gustin's request to reduce the number of seats on the mayoral-appointed commission to nine.

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The commission, created by ordinance in 1977, has had 15 seats since its inception. Eight members must be present for there to be enough to hold a meeting; the current commission only has seven.

The purpose of the mayoral-appointed commission is "creating greater understanding and of fostering a lasting friendship between the people of Naperville and its sister cities," according to city code. Naperville has two sister cities  Nitra, Slovakia, established in 1993, and Patzcuaro, Mexico, established in 2010.

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In July, the commission submitted a request to Mayor Steve Chirico asking they have a voice in the process of approving new commission members in order to be "more strategic" about filling empty seats. The commission now interviews prospective members before applications go to the mayor, commission Chairwoman Patty Lindstrom said.

The commission has already vetted three applicants who could be options for filling two vacant seats if City Council members approve reducing the the number of seats from 15 to nine, Lindstrom said.

"Over the past two years, four of the seats have been consistently open," she said. "I asked they not be filled because I felt they weren't being filled strategically in regards to looking at what talents we didn't already have around the table."

Chirico is in agreement with the request from Lindstrom and Gustin, who serves as the council's liaison to the commission.

Reducing the number of seats will make the commission "more consistent with other boards and commissions," Chirico said.

Naperville's Sister Cities commission has more seats than any other of the city's 19 board and commissions. The Riverwalk Commission can have up to 12 members, transportation advisory board and advisory commission on disabilities up to 11 and and historic preservation commission can have as many as 10 members, according to city documents. All other commissions can vary in size from five to nine members.

Gustin was named council liaison to the commission in July. Prior to that, former Councilman Kevin Gallaher was the liaison and did not attend any Sister Cities meetings, Lindstrom said.

Naperville City Council members Tuesday also approved a Special Events and Cultural Amenities 2018 funding plan that denied the Sister Cities Commission's request for $42,950 to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Naperville Sister Cities in 2018 will not receive any money from the SECA fund, which gets its money from the city's 1 percent tax on food and beverage.

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"When we don't get this kind of support, it's disappointing," Gustin said. "There's so much going on and changing in the world we need to be abreast of it. That's what this commission does."

ehegarty@tribpub.com
Park district seeks public input on Oakton Park

The Park Ridge Park District is holding a public input meeting to help form a master plan for Oakton Park.

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The meeting will take place on Thursday at 7 p.m. inside the O'Connor Community Building at Prospect Park, 733 N. Prospect Ave. in Park Ridge.

According to the park district, members of the public are invited to provide ideas to help "sculpt future potential park amenities and facility improvements at Oakton Park."

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The park board has discussed potential improvements to the Oakton Ice Arena building and park itself, and is working with consultant Wight & Company to form a master plan.

Maine South Orchesis dances in annual show

Maine South High School's Orchesis Dance Company will present its annual show "Admit One," on Dec. 1 and Dec. 2 at 7:30 p.m. in the school auditorium, 1111 S. Dee Road in Park Ridge.

Tickets are $7 and will be sold at the door.

The movie-themed show will feature contemporary, jazz, tap, lyrical, and musical-theater dance styles choreographed by Orchesis members.

This year's Orchesis dance company is made up of 35 students.

Maine East concert features Marine musicians

Two trumpet soloists from the United States Marine Band will perform during Maine East High School's Winter Concert on Dec. 3.

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The concert, featuring performances of holiday-themed music by the school's band, orchestra and choir students, will take place at 2 p.m. in the school auditorium, 2601 W. Dempster St. in Park Ridge.

Joining the students are Marine soloists Staff Sgt. Barndon Eubank and Gunnery Sgt. Brad Weil, said Maine Township High School District 207.

St. Paul hosts St. Nicholas Party

St. Paul of the Cross Catholic Church will host its annual St. Nicholas Party on Dec. 3, from 10 a.m. to noon in the church's Morello Parish Life Center, Washington and Summit avenues.

Children are invited to meet with Santa and also bring an unwrapped gift for a child in preschool through eighth grade that is approximately $10 in value. Gifts will be sent to local charities for children in need, the church said.

The event will also feature a bake sale and a Santa's workshop with gifts for children to buy for their family and friends.

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jjohnson@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @Jen_Tribune
Tikyle Yates, 17, of East Garfield Park was born with a particularly severe case of Treacher Collins syndrome, a rare craniofacial condition that affects bone and tissue development in the face, which often including the ears and cheekbones. Yates was unable to open his mouth more than a few millimeters until two rounds of intense surgery at Rush University Medical Center. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

Tikyle Yates said he wouldn't cry while watching "Wonder," yet the 17-year-old's eyes welled at the film with a protagonist whose atypical face and surgical scars so closely mirror his own.

"It was very emotional," Yates said after the theater emptied, a few tears still staining his cheeks, which were recently reconstructed during a life-altering surgery. "I'm proud of who I am."

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Based on the best-selling novel of the same title, the drama "Wonder" chronicles the first year of school for 10-year-old Auggie Pullman who has a form of Treacher Collins syndrome, a rare craniofacial condition that affects the development of bones and other tissues in the face, often including the ears and cheekbones.

Yates, of East Garfield Park, was born with a particularly severe case of the disorder, which rendered him unable to open his mouth more than a sliver until two rounds of intense surgery in the last year at Rush University Medical Center. Since then, the Young Magnet High School senior has eaten food for the first time after subsisting on the meal replacement drink Ensure for much of his life. He is able to breathe better and is learning to speak more clearly.

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Yet the teen sometimes still wears a hoodie to conceal his profile from strangers, who often stare at his facial structure and then quickly look away.

Many kids with craniofacial anomalies and their families are hopeful the burgeoning popularity of "Wonder"  which unexpectedly collected an estimated $27 million its first weekend in theaters  could allay some of the social stigma around faces that appear different from the norm.

Yates' mother, Tonyana Rockett, believes the tale will inspire confidence in her son. She's also optimistic the public will gain a better understanding of conditions like his, which alter the looks but not minds of those afflicted.

"All he wants to do is to be accepted," she said.

There is a scene in "Wonder" where Auggie is in his bed crying over reactions to his appearance. His mother, portrayed by Julia Roberts, tries to comfort him.

"Is it always going to matter?" the little boy asks her.

"I don't know," she responds.

This was where Yates' mom broke down.

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"This is our story," she said.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 10 Senior Tikyle Yates, 17, on Nov. 17, 2017, at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School in Chicagos Near West Side neighborhood. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

The other is not so different

The surgeon touched an acrylic model of Yates' skull made before his most recent operations, her fingertips sweeping across cheekbones that were almost entirely absent and without any arch. The bones around the eyes were partially missing and underdeveloped. The lower jaw also didn't form normally.

Before the surgeries, Yates' mouth could open only 2 millimeters, and his nasal passage was too small to breathe, said Dr. Christina Tragos, reconstructive surgeon and co-director of the Rush Craniofacial Center.

"It's your face," she said. "When you meet somebody, within seconds  it's how people interpret who you are. And that's reality."

Tragos keeps a copy of the novel "Wonder" in her waiting room for her patients, children with various complex craniofacial conditions. While function drives her work  helping kids eat, sleep, breathe and hear  she's aware of the impact of aesthetics, particularly on self-esteem.

"This is a story I know so well," she said. "This is every kid I treat."

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Tragos believes people tend to be scared of the unfamiliar, but that instinct isn't innate. Reactions to people who look different are learned behaviors, she said, and books and movie likes "Wonder" can help a mass audience rethink these tendencies.

"They remind you that the other is not so different from us," Tragos said. "I think it will make an impact on this entire generation of people."

Another patient of hers, Dominika Tamley of Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, watched "Wonder" with her parents last week. She has Apert syndrome, a genetic disorder in which certain bones in the skull prematurely fuse together, altering the shape of the head and face.

"I have a craniofacial difference, but I'm just like you," said Dominika, 11. "I'm unique."

Before a major midface surgery over the summer, she said other kids sometimes gawked at or followed her around while whispering to their friends. She hopes the film will teach others not to stare or make rude comments, which can be deeply hurtful.

"We love how Dominika looks," said her father, Kevin Irvine. "We wouldn't do anything to change her looks, other than to improve functionality. She's our beautiful girl. On the other hand, we know we don't live in her body. We can't own her experience for her. She has to own her experience."

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Watch the trailer for "Wonder." (Handout)

"Wonder" review: Julia Roberts, Jacob Tremblay show the importance of being kind, empathetic 

His one criticism of the movie is that the main character wasnt played by a child with a craniofacial condition.

Seventeen-year-old Peter Dankelson of Libertyville attended the films Hollywood premiere this month and met the cast. The high school junior has Goldenhar syndrome, a rare congenital disorder often marked by incomplete development of the ear, nose, soft palate, lip and jaw.

Peter often speaks at school assemblies to students who are reading Wonder in class. His mother, Dede Dankelson, is on the board of the nonprofit Childrens Craniofacial Association.

Peter is understanding about passers-by who do double takes, especially when he's without his prosthetic ear.

"It's not everyday people see someone without an ear," he said.

But he does hope more people make the connection between his appearance and the journey of Auggie in Wonder.

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"Maybe if they see the movie, they'll have a better understanding," he said. "They'll remember that I'm just a regular person."

He came from my body

Yates' mom was told something was wrong around the middle of her pregnancy, when her first and only child was found to be undersized. Although given the option, she chose not to terminate.

Hes my baby, he came from my body, Rockett said. Whatever comes with him, its all mine.

After an emergency Caesarean section at 34 weeks, Yates was born weighing just over 3 pounds and rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit. Rockett recalled that someone from the hospital brought her a photo of the newborn  her first glimpse at his face  but she thinks she was too numb to process anything right away.

He was later diagnosed with Treacher Collins syndrome, which occurs in an estimated 1 in 50,000 births.

Yates uses hearing aids and is legally blind, but with glasses can see well enough to park a car when he plays the video game Grand Theft Auto. He has an infectious laugh: His mom didnt see anything funny about his favorite episode of Family Guy, in which a giant chicken fights the title character, but she always seems to double over once her son starts laughing.

Hes always been self-conscious but has grown more outgoing since two rounds of reconstructive surgery at Rush in February and June. Tragos changed the contours of Yates face and inserted two titanium hinge joints that connect the jaw to the skull, allowing him to open his mouth. Fewer than 30 children nationwide have this kind of custom titanium joint, according to Rush.

His face is now more symmetrical and appears rounder and fuller in the middle. The position of his eyes is more even and his jaw line is more pronounced.

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Rockett sometimes catches her son looking at his profile in the bathroom mirror, and hes begun posting photos of himself on Instagram.

I looked like a new person, he said, his words a little muffled, but Rockett interprets for him.

His speech is becoming clearer, though he still often communicates with sign language. He tasted food for the first time, still in pureed form as his mouth muscles continue to strengthen. He loves macaroni and cheese but hates ravioli.

Yates wants to eat chicken wings some day. He also longs to remove his tracheotomy tube, which is below the vocal cords in his neck and allows air to enter the lungs.

Rockett wants him to go to prom in the spring. Hes not so sure; he says he needs to find a girl to take.

Right off, sometimes people look at him and shun him, Rockett said. You look different, I dont want any part. Maybe a few people will see the movie and say hi, introduce themselves and be more friendly to him. Theres nothing at all wrong with asking questions. I would prefer people ask questions instead of staring and making faces. Just come up and ask.

eleventis@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @angie_leventis
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China's oracle bone scripts, an ancient type of Chinese characters inscribed on animal bones or turtle shells, have successfully entered the UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education on Friday.

A piece of oracle bone script [Photo/CCTV]

Launched in 1997, the Memory of the World Register of the UN organization was aimed at preserving and making better use of the aging documents and files that have been dying out from the human history.

So far, China has 11 pieces of documentary files on the list, including the documents of Nanjing Massacre, which recorded the history of 300,000 Chinese victims murdered by the Japanese invaders during World War II and were enlisted in 2015.

Yin Xu, relics of the Shang Dynasty in Anyang City, Henan Province [Photo/Radio of Anyang]

The oracle bone scripts, originally discovered from relics of the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC  1046 BC) in Anyang City, Henan Province, is an ancient type of Chinese language used for divination.

It was discovered by epigraphy expert Wang Yirong from the Chinese medical materials he bought, since the animal bones and turtle shells were usually used as medicines in China. Wang was therefore dubbed as the "Father of Oracle Bone Scripts."

The characters inscribed on the bones and shells have contributed greatly to the Chinese civilization, enabling the Chinese culture to be passed on from generation to generation and become the only civilization to last up to the present.

However, in the past 100 years since being discovered, only around 2,000 characters from the oracle bone scripts have been decoded. There are at least 3,000 more remaining to be deciphered.

According to published materials, there are about 150,000 pieces of unearthed oracle bone scripts, and about 100,000 were preserved in the Chinese mainland, 30,000 in Taiwan and the other 20,000 were scattered across the world.

It is expected that by entering the Memory of the World Register, the archaeological study of the ancient characters could be encouraged.

"It is only a new beginning," said Song Zhenhao, director of the Oracle Bone Scripts Study Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, hoping that the new achievement could inject a vigor into the ancient study.
The Financial Dreamworks Chengdu is believed to be China's first financial co-working space. [Photo by Zhang Lulu/China.org.cn]

The financial technology startup BankLink had a choice among Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu to locate. Despite Beijing and Shanghai being the favorites for many Chinese entrepreneurs, the fintech company eventually decided they would settle in Chengdu, capital of western China's Sichuan Province.

The reason, according to heads of the company, was the city's new focus on developing its finance sector. Known for its spicy cuisines and as home of China's giant pandas, Chengdu has now put the stakes on the financial industry, trying to attract ambitious financial entrepreneurs from across the country.

Financial Dreamworks

One of the flagship establishment for Chengdu's developing finance sector is the Financial Dreamworks Chengdu, a three-story, 7,000-square-meter co-working space, said to be China's first financial startup incubator of this size.

The space opened a year ago, and has since attracted more than 40 financial startups, filling the building in just six months. With about 500 people filling the building's capacity, some companies had to make over a few recreational places and turn them into work space, according to people working there.

Chen Zhengting, co-founder and CIO of BankLink, said the fintech company opted for the Financial Dreamworks instead of rent-free space because it matched their ambition.

The Financial Dreamworks, according to its general manager Zheng Kuang, focuses on the red-hot fintech industry, and occupants of the co-working space have formed a complete financial ecosystem that includes a diverse mix of companies working on credit-based payment, blockchain technology, cloud computing, big data-based financial risk control, and others. "Entrepreneurs of different teams working here can interact with each other and share precious information among them," said Zheng.

In addition, Chen said he also trusted in the government-backed incubator as it sets higher bars for companies that settle in. Instead of admitting companies that only want to make a quick buck, the space's lessor made sure to allow in ones with longterm prospects, creating a genuinely friendly environment for serious entrepreneurs.

The incubator also invites representatives from government agencies and financial institutions to come and visit, so that the teams here can get first-hand information on the latest policies and possible reforms, Chen said.

Since it set foot at the incubator in June, the firm has now reached industries including catering services, tourism, and automobile after-sale services. It serves, for instance, more than 2,000 chain catering service providers, Chen said.
The 23rd Conference of Parties (COP 23) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) concluded last week in Bonn. The delegates held crucial talks to prepare the ground for the COP 24 next year which will sum up the details, also termed as the Paris "rulebook" about implementation of the Paris agreement.

China's special representative on climate change affairs Xie Zhenhua delivers a speech during the high-level forum on south-south cooperation on climate change held in the China pavilion at the 23rd Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, on Nov. 15, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

The historic agreement reached in Paris in December 2015 will direct efforts after 2020 to control global warming in view of the cataclysmic impact it could have on the global environment and its habitants.

The agreement plans to control global climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It also has set a worldwide target to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above that of the pre-industrial age

The deal was result of a common understanding between countries that global warming was a reality and the common responsibility of all humanity to take part in efforts to curtail the deadly consequences if left unchecked.

The challenge is huge and is impossible for a single nation or exclusive group of nations to deal with. This realization helped to clinch broad agreement in Paris with NDCs or nationally determined contributions as its basis.

For the first time, the small island nation of Fiji was given the Presidency of COP 23 in Bonn, where all logistic support was arranged by the German government. The gesture amplifies the commitment made by a world recognizing this tiny nation could not be allowed to be swallowed up by the cruelly rising sea waters.

Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama warned of looming natural disaster at the conference opening ceremony and asked to "preserve the global consensus for decisive action enshrined in the Paris Agreement" to check the global temperature.

The drastic impact of the temperature rise was noticed in the last century. It led to global concern about the collective future of humanity. The fight against climate change began in earnest from 1992 with the UNFCCC. Efforts made in this direction so far can be divided into pre-2020 phase and the years after the Paris deal is set to be implemented.

The efforts to carry forward the Paris consensus suffered a severe jolt when U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was pulling out of the agreement. He is among the group of naive people who have shut their eyes like a pigeon and insisted that the deadly cat of global warming is just fiction.

However, unlike the pigeon that, according to the story risked only its personal safety through inaction, the Trump cult is endangering the entire globe. Trump's unilateral action is a major disappointment, as his country is one of the major polluters and his dithering could certainly dilute the efforts to clean the environment of poisonous materials.

The U.S. decision to turn its back on global commitments has created space for China to come forward and play a role for the sake of coming generations. China under President Xi Jinping has exhibited enormous vision to foresee the danger of global warming and show commitment to provide leadership in implementing the Paris deal.

China took part in the Bonn conference and reiterated its intention to push ahead with global efforts. Lu Xinming, a negotiator from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and part of the delegation, told media that the Bonn meeting was crucial in defining the implementation guidelines of the Paris deal and battling climate change.

Lu said that China had submitted five proposals to the meeting on implementing the Paris Agreement, demonstrating the country's "proactive attitude in participating in and guiding the global climate negotiations."

China emphasized flexibility for the developing nations under the principal of "common but differentiated responsibilities" and also highlighted the comprehensive approach to mitigation, adaptation, finance and capacity building.

China has taken local initiatives to meet national targets and is also playing role promoting south-south cooperation in joint and integrated efforts to tackle global warming.

China in collaboration with other nations has paved way for the COP 24 scheduled to be held in December 2018 in Poland to compete the process.

As the world moves forward to deliver on the global commitment, Trump is further isolated on the climate change challenge, as the U.S. is now the only country out of the Paris deal after Syria announced during the Bonn meeting it would sign the agreement.

Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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China is ready to work with France in a joint and positive effort to deal with climate change while maintaining multilateralism and an inclusive world economy, Premier Li Keqiang said.

Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 24, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

Li spoke when meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday.

Li said relations between China and France have been advancing well, and China puts strategic emphasis on Sino-French ties and is willing to work with France to advance bilateral ties with a healthy and stable development momentum. He said China is willing to enhance cooperation with France in areas including civilian nuclear energy.

China supports European integration and hopes cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European countries will boost balanced development of the European Union, Li said.

Le Drian also met with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, and they jointly talked to reporters. Wang said the two countries are ready to seek common ground while maintaining differences, and are preparing for French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to China in early 2018.

Wang said the key lesson from the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue in the past two decades is that when confrontation and misunderstanding persist, all stakeholders miss the chance for a peaceful dialogue. "The pressing task is to fully implement decisions made by the UN Security Council and spare no efforts to start consultation on the issue as soon as possible," Wang said.
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The death toll in an attack on Friday on a mosque in Egypt's North Sinai province rose to 235, Egypt's state TV reported.

A man injured in a mosque attack in Egypt's North Sinai province receives medical treatment at a hospital in Cairo, Egypt, on Nov. 24, 2017. The death toll in an attack on Friday on a mosque in Egypt's North Sinai province rose to 235, Egypt's state TV reported. [Photo/Xinhua]

At least 109 others were wounded when suspected militants attacked the mosque, the report said. Earlier report said at least 115 people were killed in the attack.

An explosive device planted outside the mosque near Arish city went off, before militants opened fire at the prayers, an official security source told Xinhua.

The attack occurred in the village of Rawda in Beir el-Abad, 40 km from Arish, the source added.

Some 50 ambulances rushed to the scene after the attack. Most of the wounded were transferred to the Arish Hospital for treatment.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi will chair a meeting of the security committee on the attack, official MENA news agency quoted presidential sources as saying.

The meeting will be attended by the ministers of defense and interior in addition to the heads of general intelligence and military intelligence services, the report said.

The Egyptian presidency declared three-day mourning across the nation.

The presidency in a statement condemned that terrorist attack as treacherous and heinous action that wouldn't be passed without punishment.

"The pains that the Egyptians are suffering now wouldn't be overcome without strict response, and the hand of justice will reach all those took part in the attack," the presidency statement added.

Egypt will continue its war against the black terrorism with hope and willingness and will uproot it, it added.

Grand Imam of Al Azhar Ahmed el Tayeb denounced "the terrorist attack" stressing the importance of working to eliminate terrorists.

Head of the European Union Delegation to Egypt, Ambassador Ivan Surkos, also condemned the attack.

"Media bringing news on attack against mosque during today's Friday prayers in Rawda, Northern Sinai, reporting many injured," Surkos tweeted.

"I condemn this barbaric terrorist act against innocent civilians," he added.

Egypt is suffering a wave of terrorist attacks, mostly centered in Sinai where militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers since the army-led ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Most of the attacks, which recently expanded the city and some other cities, have been claimed by the Islamic State branch in Sinai.
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Brazilian prosecutors charged 213 prisoners Friday with involvement in the murder of 56 other inmates on Jan. 1 at a prison in Manaus, the second worst massacre in Brazilian history.

The 213 prisoners at the Anisio Jobim penitentiary in Amazonas were charged with the murder of six people, the torture and destruction of bodies of 26 more, and others.

Prosecutors sent to the court a 110-page document, describing the facts of "extreme barbarity, with scenes of horror and perversity that cannot remain unpunished."

The killing happened on the first day of 2017, after a rebellion at the prison lasted over 17 hours. Several of the prisoners were dismembered and burned.

The riot was sparked by the internal fight of two rival criminal gangs fighting for control of drug trafficking in the region.

It then spread to other Brazilian prisons, plunging it into a crisis that lasted for months, and leaving over 100 dead, hundreds injured and causing dozens of riots.
China and Canada's Ontario province have inked 25 deals worth almost C$600 million ($472 million), mainly in technology, e-commerce, finance and healthcare sectors, as the two countries continue to deepen economic and trade ties.

Highlights of the signed deals included technology giant Tencent's cooperation with Ontario's OTT Financial Group to build a business accelerator center in Toronto and to develop the tech company's cloud market, as well as China CITIC Bank's agreement to provide education services to Ontario's U Education Group.

"Partnerships with international leaders like China are critical to Ontario's economic success," said Kathleen Wynne, premier of Ontario, Canada's largest province by population and economy.

"Ontario's diverse and innovative economy makes it one of the best, most competitive places in the world to invest, and we encourage Chinese businesses to take advantage of what Ontario has to offer," she said.

In 2016, China was Canada's second largest trading partner and its second largest source of imported merchandise.

Ontario's trade with China has surged by nearly 40 percent over the past five years, totaling C$42 billion in 2016.

Science and technology are two priority areas of cooperation. In these sectors, bilateral trade between China and Ontario accounted for 42 percent of the total, according to the Ontario government.

Lepu Medical Technology Co signed an agreement with Ontario's Communication & Power Industries, valued at C$2.85 million, under which the latter would supply Lepu with a high-voltage generator producta key component in angiography and cardiovascular X-ray systems for medical applications.

"Ontario spends about C$50-55 billion every year to strengthen the medical sector," Michael Chan, Ontario's minister for international trade, told China Daily.

"It's good to reach out to the world including China. As Chinese population is aging, there's tremendous potential for Ontario and China to collaborate in bioscience, medical devices and healthcare."
CHANGCHUN - A subsidiary of Chinese trainmaker, China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC), said Saturday it had established an Asia-Pacific headquarters and a research & development center in Australia.

The Melbourne-based headquarters will help provide technology support for train design, manufacturing and maintenance in the region, according to CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles Company in Northeast China's Jilin province.

"The office will create more job and export opportunities for local train manufacturers," said Wang Run, chairman of CRRC Changchun.

The office employs 41 local workers.

In November 2016, CRRC Changchun signed a deal with Victoria to build high-capacity metro trains worth $1.5 billion, the biggest metro train purchasing project in the Australian state's history.

CRRC Changchun has more than 18,000 employers and annually manufactures more than 8,000 trains.
BAKU - Azerbaijan's Smart Systems Technology company and Chinese telecom giant ZTE signed an agreement here on Thursday to enhance cooperation in the telecommunications market of Azerbaijan.

As part of bilateral cooperation, the large projects implemented by Smart Systems Technology will make use of the Enterprise-class equipment, which will strengthen the position of the leading Chinese telecom equipment maker in the Azerbaijan market.

"Cooperation with ZTE will allow the company to expand coverage of broadband services both in Baku and in the country's rural areas in a short period of time," general director of Smart Systems Technology Firudin Akberov told local media.

"Based on the price-performance ratio of ZTE equipment, we will be able to expand the coverage of broadband services using GPON technology, which will also allow the development of IP-TV and telephony services," he said.

ZTE Vice-President Yang Jun said that Smart Systems Technology has a huge technical and engineering potential, which was highly appreciated by ZTE.

ZTE is also a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the mobile Internet.

Azerbaijan's Smart Systems Technology is a software development and telecommunication solutions provider.
Shoppers reach out for television sets as they compete to purchase retail items at a store in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Thursday.[Photo/Agencies]

Major cross-border e-commerce players are betting big on Black Friday, the start of the Christmas shopping season in the United States, to boost Chinese online purchases overseas.

They are wooing Chinese consumers with a wide range of authentic and high-quality overseas products and quicker delivery services, as the demands of country's middle class shoppers are becoming increasingly diversified and personalized.

Amazon.com Inc kicked off its biggest-ever Black Friday promotion by gathering deals from Amazon China and four overseas sites including the US, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany, as well as speeding up logistics and delivery operations.

Chinese consumers will enjoy authentic deals from overseas markets and purchase authentic products shipped directly from Amazon's overseas fulfillment centers, the company said.

"At present, Amazon Global Store has covered the top destinations of China customers' cross-border shopping, a result of efforts to provide Chinese customers with authentic international products," said Elaine Chang, president of Amazon China.

She added that Amazon Prime members can enjoy exclusive deals with up to 50 percent off on some of the best Prime-eligible products. They are also available at just 288 yuan ($43.8) for various benefits, including extra coupon packages.

Last October, Amazon launched Amazon Prime service in China, the first unlimited free cross-border shipping membership program globally. The Shanghai-based cross-border e-commerce site Ymatou.com provides a more diversified shopping service during this year's Black Friday carnival.

"With users' demands becoming more and more personalized and diversified, not only more high-quality goods are needed, all-round services are also necessary," said Zeng Bibo, chief executive officer of Ymatou.

The company will recommend products with excellent quality and reasonable prices to customers by utilizing big data technology and analyzing commodity sales, user ratings, brand influence and price information.

It also announced a strategic cooperation with Eastern Air Logistics Co Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of China Eastern Airlines Co Ltd.

Ymatou said more than 40,000 orders were transacted during the first minute, and it sold 100 million yuan worth of goods in seven minutes 53 seconds when the sales started last Friday, a week earlier than the official start of the shopping season.

Chen Tao, an analyst with Beijing-based internet consultancy Analysys, said: "Black Friday, as a cross-border shopping carnival has been growing in popularity in China, but its size is small compared with China's homegrown online shopping festival Singles Day."

Li Jiayue contributed to this story.
Two customers head for the exit after shopping at a 24-hour Carrefour supermarket in Shanghai. Carrefour is the second largest retailer in the world behind Walmart.[Photo provided to China Daily]

A partnership between French retailer Auchan and internet giant Alibaba could push Carrefour further behind in China and could even persuade its new boss to pull out of the country.

Alexandre Bompard took the helm at Carrefour, the world's second-largest retailer behind Walmart, in July; on Jan 23, 2018, he will unveil his turnaround plan for the French company, which issued a profit warning in August.

Bompard has to decide whether to stay or go in China, where Carrefour has spent years trying to fix a business whose sales still fell 5.4 percent in the third quarter amid fierce competition from local players and a buoyant online market.

Asked whether he had made a decision on China, the CEO told Reuters on the sidelines of an investment conference in Paris on Tuesday: "I will speak about it very soon." He confirmed that the subject would be included in his January presentation.

"Until now, the only Western retailers to have successfully established themselves in this country have done so via partnerships with local retailers, like Auchan with Sun Art Retail," Bryan Garnier analysts said in a research note.

"A combination of offline and online is also an option, as seen with the recent agreements between Walmart and JD.com ... and Auchan and Alibaba ... Failing the rapid conclusion of such a partnership, a decision could be taken at Carrefour to sell assets in China," they added.

On Monday, Alibaba announced a HK$22.4 billion ($2.9 billion) investment for a stake in Sun Art, China's top hypermarket operator, in which Auchan has the biggest stake. Carrefour has been trying to reposition in China, where it makes 5 percent of group sales, having been too focused on large hypermarkets. It has been expanding into e-commerce and convenience stores and opening logistics centers to cut costs.

Former CEO Georges Plassat repeatedly said Carrefour would stay in China and did not rule out a deal with a local partner, although nothing materialized.

Brick-and-mortar retailers have taken action to forge alliances with e-commerce players.

Among international retailers, Walmart and Carrefour have begun to see market share recovery on a quarterly basis though they are still closing non-performing stores; they are proactively reformatting their existing stores to be more competitive and appealing to shoppers, according to Kantar Worldpanel China.

They are introducing new stores that are 30 percent to 50 percent smaller than the old ones to make their merchandise more accessible and reduce the sales area for nonfood, according to the report.

In June, Carrefour opened its first Easy Carrefour store in Wuxi and this is the first time the retailer introduced the smaller format store outside its home base in Shanghai. More recently, it launched its own digital wallet, called "Carrefour Pay," together with UnionPay to facilitate more mobile payments in store.

"Carrefour is seeing more recovery lately, as they are making efforts to move from (a) hypermarket only model to a multi-format strategy by opening more Easy Carrefour and launching compact hypermarkets," said Jason Yu, general manager of Kantar Worldpanel. However, on e-commerce, Walmart and RT-Mart are likely to get upper hand with the JD and Alibaba alliance," he said.

China Daily-Reuters
By Zou Shuo in Beijing and Sun Ruisheng in Taiyuan | China Daily | Updated: 2017-11-25 09:32

Shanxi, China's major coal-producing province, is planning to step up energy cooperation with East China's Jiangsu province.

The coal-rich northern province is expected to transfer shares of its State-owned coal-fired power plants to enterprises in Jiangsu, according to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Shanxi.

State-owned Jiangsu Guoxin Investment Group Ltd will take a major share of coal-powered power plants in the province, Shanxi SASAC said on its WeChat account recently. It is the first time that Shanxi has opened its coal-fired power sector to outside investment.

There will be no limit in terms of how many shares can be transferred to enterprises in Jiangsu, said the post.

"The partnership will bring capital, technology, management experience and talents to Shanxi," said Wang Yixin, vice-governor of Shanxi.

"More importantly, by building a market-based environment in the coal sector, we can ensure more scientific decision-making and standard management of coal enterprises in Shanxi," said Wang.

Han Xiaoping, chief information officer of China Energy Net Consulting, said: "The two provinces are highly complementary in power cooperation."

"Jiangsu is an economically developed province with high demand for energy consumption and insufficient energy resources, while Shanxi has large amounts of coal power resources," Han said.

Xiao Xinjian, a researcher from the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, said: "This cooperation can better connect the upstream and downstream enterprises of energy consumption, so they can better fend off risks from price fluctuation."

"The market, rather than the local governments, should decide the mergers or shareholding between enterprises of the two provinces," Xiao said.

Earlier this month, a framework agreement on electricity transmission was signed between the two provinces, signaling the launch of the Jinbei (Northern Shanxi)Nanjing 800kv High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission project.

The project, which aims to transmit up to 45 billion kWh of electricity from Shanxi to Jiangsu every year, went into operation on June 30.

Stretching 1,119 km and crossing six provinces, the Jinbei-Nanjing HVDC project is one of the 12 power transmission channels listed in China's National Action Plan on Air Pollution Control and Prevention.
TIRANA - Business representatives from Albania and China met Friday afternoon in Albania's capital, Tirana, to discuss ways of strengthening and expanding business cooperation in different fields.

The meeting was held with the presence of Albania's Minister of state for enterprise, Sonila Qato, Chinese Ambassador to Tirana Jiang Yu, Secretary General of China's Council for Promotion of International Trade Yu Jialong and a significant number of Albanian and Chinese business representatives.

The B2B meetings between businesses of the two countries are organized at the same time of the international fair "Klik Ekspo Klik" in Tirana where Chinese companies have a high presence with around 20 stands.

In her opening remarks, Albanian Minister Qato thanked the Chinese companies for coming to Albania, noting that such high presence confirmed the good will to explore Albania and further develop the business ties between two countries.

She also praised the great presence in the trade fair saying that the fair would serve as a direct contact point for Albanian and Chinese businesses as well as an opportunity to get to know each other. Qato noted that China is a story of success from which Albania can learn a lot.

She further said that China remained a key trade partner of Albania. However, she said that there was still room for further development of trade relations so that Albania imports and exports more from/to China and on the other side, China might increase its investments here.

Then, Qato made a summary of the reforms undertaken by the Albanian government in the field of doing business.

She also assured Chinese entrepreneurs that the Albanian government would take concrete initiatives and measures to assist the Chinese companies as well as to create a favorable and stable business climate.

Chinese ambassador Jiang Yu stressed in her speech that the meetings held in Tirana would serve the businesses of both countries to jointly explore development opportunities and further advancing the economic-trade cooperation that exists between China and Albania.

Jiang noted that China's investments in Albania exceeded the value of $700 million, by employing at least 1,500 local residents and by contributing actively in Albania's tax revenues as well as promotion of exchanges in the field of technology, markets' management and human resources.

"China is Albania's third largest trade partner, but also its largest trade partner from the non-European Union countries," Ambassador said.

She added that Chinese companies are cooperating with Albanian businesses in the fields of telecommunications, mineral resources, energy sources, road infrastructure, etc.

Further, she noted that many other companies were studying Albania and its resources as well as seeking for cooperation with Albanian investors.

The Chinese Ambassador voiced hope that the Albanian government would take effective steps to provide a greater support to the foreign investors, including Chinese companies as well as establish a fairer, more stabilized, predictable and more transparent business climate.

Jiang also mentioned the fact that Albania is part of "One Belt, One Road" initiative and "16+1" cooperation mechanism launched by the Chinese government.

"China and Albania have signed Memorandum of Understanding for building together of "One Belt, One Road" as well as many other agreements in bilateral trade, investments, etc," she noted.

Meanwhile, the Secretary General of CCPIT Yu Jialong highly appreciated the interest shown by Albanian Premier Edi Rama in Chinese companies' stands a day ago during the fair launching ceremony.

According to Yu, Rama's attention to Chinese companies showed the friendship that existed between the two countries and for this, he also thanked the Chinese ambassador here for the outstanding work.

In his speech, Yu also presented four main proposals to the Albanian government.

First proposal related to the need to have more direct contacts and B2B meetings between Albanian and Chinese businesses to strengthen their ties.

Second one was to encourage entrepreneurs to cooperate even in the framework of global economy.

The third put the emphasis on a more favorable business climate. He highlighted that Chinese companies were strongly encouraged to visit Albania and see investment opportunities here.

In the end, he asked the Albanian government to protect the interests of Chinese companies in Albania so more Chinese companies would come in the future.

Later on, representatives of businesses continued meetings with each other.

Meanwhile, talking to the representatives of Chinese companies attending the fair in Tirana, many of them said that they felt good to have visited Albania while voicing hope for cooperation opportunities with Albanian companies.

"We really hope to cooperate with Albanian companies as we are looking for business partnerships here which would also contribute to the strengthening of trade and economic cooperation between the two countries," Xuan Huashi, Sinotruk chief representative of Eastern Europe and Turkey office told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, companies from other countries which are also present at the fair said that they felt good to see a great number of Chinese companies in Tirana. This shows that China has great interest in Albania, they added.
SHENZHEN - The mission of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to support infrastructure investment is good for the world's economy, and the institution is operating "to the highest international standards," according to Sir Danny Alexander, the bank's vice president and corporate secretary.

Alexander was a cabinet minister in the British Treasury from 2010 to 2015. He was appointed as vice president and corporate secretary of the AIIB in February 2016.

In an interview with Xinhua, Alexander said he was one of the senior ministers in the British government at the time "who advocated strongly that the UK should join the AIIB."

In March 2015, Britain became the first major western country to announce its intention to join the new multilateral development bank, which started operations in January 2016 and has grown to 80 approved members from around the world.

"The AIIB seems to us to be a very good initiative to create a new framework for countries to work together and to further that common interest in infrastructure investment," he told Xinhua in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

He noted that there had been more than 20 countries choosing to join the AIIB since the founding of the bank.

The fact shows that "they [members] can see that the bank is developing in the right way and to the highest international standards," said the former British politician.

Great responsibility

In the interview, Alexander said that it is "a great responsibility" to work for the AIIB.

"It is very rare for new multilateral development banks to be set up. Ours is the first in the 21st century, and it is the first ever to be headquartered in China, so it is a great responsibility to do that well and to get it right," he explained.

As vice president, he is responsible for the bank's relations with its members, the board of governors, the board of directors and other aspects of governance, including the admission of new members.

"I have a role as part of the senior management team in the bank, with a particular responsibility for the governors of the bank, making sure the board of directors, the board of governors and so on operate in the right way," he said.

"We have a very good team ably led by President Jin Liqun. And I think together we are helping to ensure that the AIIB is built in a way that fulfills the vision that our institution is lean, clean and green," he said.

Highest standards

In the interview, Alexander repeatedly stressed that the AIIB is committed to "operating to the highest international standards."

The bank is focused on its work "to ensure high standards in everything that we do: high standards of governance, high standards of environmental and social management and high standards of project development," the AIIB vice president said.

By focusing on investing in "good projects" that have strong safeguards on environmental and community impact, the AIIB "can help to ensure through those investments that we spread the high standards and that we share better practice," he noted. "That helps to ensure that there is a good business environment, so I think that is the main way in which the AIIB can make that contribution."

Priorities

In January, the AIIB unveiled its three priorities for the year ahead, namely sustainable infrastructure, cross-country connectivity and the mobilization of private capital, according to a statement on its website.

Alexander said sustainable infrastructure helped to support the transition for Asian countries to be "more environmentally sustainable," which requires renewable energy and sustainable cities.

On connectivity, the vice president said it meant "improving the connectivity between Asian countries, and through Asia, and other parts of the world."

"That means transport projects, like roads, railways, airports and ports, but also things like electricity transmission and energy pipelines," he said.

"The scale of the need for infrastructure in Asia is so huge that all of the national government resources and all of the international financial resources are too small," he said, highlighting the need to mobilize private capital.

"We must mobilize more private capital, so we also have a role to play in helping to make infrastructure more attractive for private sector investors as well as institutions like ours," he urged.

Shared aim

In the interview, Alexander also shared his views on the links between the AIIB and the Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by China in 2013 with the aim of building a trade, investment and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along ancient trade routes.

He said that though the AIIB and the initiative are two separate initiatives, they also overlap at certain intersections and share a similar goal.

"There is overlap and there is mutual interest and mutual benefit in terms of their shared aim to promote productivity within the Asian region," he told Xinhua.

The AIIB, together with five other major multilateral development banks, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese Ministry of Finance at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held in May this year.

"That created a framework for all of the major international financial institutions to work with the Belt and Road Initiative," Alexander said.

He stressed, however, the AIIB would invest in good projects, "according to its own strategy" and would apply the same high standards and tests to its investment projects.
BEIJING/SHANGHAI - Chinese police are investigating claims of sexual molestation and needlemarks on children at a Beijing kindergarten run by RYB Education Inc, the latest case in a booming childcare industry to spark outrage among parents, sending the company's New York-listed shares tumbling on Friday.

The official Xinhua news agency said late on Thursday that police were checking allegations that some teachers and staff at the kindergarten had abused children, who were "reportedly sexually molested, pierced by needles and given unidentified pills".

Shares in RYB plunged 38 percent on the New York Stock Exchange early on Friday, almost wiping out most of the 44 percent rise in the Chinese company's stock since its IPO in September.

Parents said their children, some as young as three, relayed troubling accounts of a naked adult male conducting purported "medical check-ups" on students, who were also unclothed, other media said.

Some parents, who gathered outside the school to demand answers on Thursday, said their children gave matching accounts of being fed unidentified tablets and of punishments where students were "made to stand" naked in class, media said.

The welfare of children in professional care has become a hot-button issue in China, where a string of high-profile cases of abuse has underlined lax regulations and supervision in the childcare and early learning industry.

"We deeply apologise for the serious anxiety this matter has brought to parents and society," RYB said in a statement on its official microblog on Friday, adding that it was helping authorities.

"We are currently working with the police to provide relevant surveillance materials and equipment; the teachers in question have been suspended and we are co-operating with the police investigation," it said.

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION

The school's principal had lodged a police report against "individuals who have engaged in false accusations and framing", it said, without elaborating.

Beijing police did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.

In a statement before its shares opened trade on Friday, RYB said it was planning a $50 million share buy-back programme and had established a special task force led by independent company directors to do a "thorough self-inspection across all teaching facilities".

China's education ministry has begun a special investigation into the operation of kindergartens, it said in a statement on Thursday, and told education departments nationwide to "take warning from these types of incidents".

Separate incidents in China of children being slapped, beaten with a stick and having their mouths sealed shut with duct tape have also gone viral and fuelled anger online.

News of the investigation into the Beijing kindergarten triggered a wave of outrage on social media, with more than 76 million mentions of "RYB" on Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat messaging service on Thursday.

"These may be individual cases but the deeper problems they reflect cannot be overlooked," a Xinhua editorial said. "Laws must be enforced, supervision strengthened, teacher wages increased. The childcare industry cannot be allowed to grow in an uncivilised fashion."

HOT SECTOR

Chinese education providers have been attracting major investment, while others have sought global listings, latching onto fast-growing demand from parents for high-end education services.

Before Friday, shares in RYB had been up about 44 percent since a September New York listing, giving it a market value of nearly $766 million.

This was not the first case of alleged abuse at an RYB school.

In 2015, a court in Jilin province found two teachers guilty of physically abusing children at one of its kindergartens in the city of Siping. In that case, staff at the school on "multiple occasions used needles and intimidation tactics to abuse many of the children under their care", according to the court ruling document.

Earlier this year, RYB said it had found "serious mistakes" at another one of its Beijing schools and had asked the principal to step down after videos emerged showing teachers hitting and pushing children.

State television broadcast images of police and angry parents gathered outside the school in Beijing on Thursday, calling for answers.

On Friday, one father leaving the school said he had been there to cancel his son's enrolment and demand a refund.

Another parent, 36-year-old Wang Siqi, said she took the day off work to demand answers, even though her six-year-old son does not attend the school.

"As a mother when I saw this news I really couldn't take it," she said. "This is unforgivable."

RYB says on its website it runs a network of more than 1,300 directly owned and franchised play-and-learn centres and nearly 500 kindergartens for children up to age six in about 300 Chinese cities and towns.
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, will address a high-level dialogue meeting at which leaders of political parties and organizations from around the world will gather on Dec 1 in Beijing.

Delegates from more than 120 countries and more than 200 leaders have confirmed their plans to attend the meeting, Guo Yezhou, vice-minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, told a news conference on Friday.

This is the first major multilateral diplomacy event hosted by Beijing after the recently concluded 19th CPC National Congress, said Guo, a major official of the Party department in charge of party-to-party exchanges.

The upcoming high-end gathering, the first of its kind, is scheduled to convene through Dec 3 for political parties to collect wisdom for tackling global challenges, to boost exchanges on governance experiences and to learn from one another.

At the meeting, the CPC's leaders and major officials of departments concerned will brief guests on the Party congress as well as Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Guo said.

In addition, the meeting will present the Party's idea about building a community with a shared future for mankind and jointly building a beautiful world, Guo added.

In addition to the first plenary session of the meeting on Dec 1 and the second plenary session on Dec 3, seminars will be held on Dec 2 on such topics as the new thoughts introduced by the 19th CPC National Congress.

Four seminars will convene to discuss boosting party building, promoting governance, jointly building the Belt and Road and advancing the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.

China aims to address concerns of the global community by building such a global, high-level dialogue platform for political parties, Guo said.

Su Ge, president of the China Institute of International Studies, said the gathering will be one of the most important diplomatic moves taken by Beijing following the Party congress and will highlight the new features of China's diplomacy in the new era.

By hosting the gathering, China is honoring its commitment to contributing to global prosperity and development at a time when the world faces challenges to peace, development and governance, Su said.

"The world is looking forward to China's voice and experiences," Su said, adding that China has played a major role in boosting exchanges.
The 44-year-old Chen Kebiao attends one of his classes at a college in Cangzhou, Hebei province, on Nov 16. [Photo by Fu Xinchun/China Daily]

A 44-year-old man from Cangzhou in North China's Hebei province has enrolled as a freshman at a local college for more than two months, realizing his old dream.

Chen Kebiao, a herb planter, didn't expect to be admitted by a college.

"I read books with my daughter, only to encourage her and give her company, because she failed last year's college entrance examination," Chen said.

He borrowed some books he was interested in about planting herbs and agricultural technology.

"With more than 10 years of experience in planting herbs, I always wanted to gather some professional knowledge," he said.

But as he began reading more books, he remembered his old dream of going to college, which he was not able to realize when he was young because of poverty.

"All of my family members objected to the idea at first, saying that if I went to college at this age, I would become a huge joke," Chen said.

He added even his daughter didn't want him to take this year's college entrance examination together.

"I also didn't think I would succeed, and just wanted have a try," he said.

When the result showed that he was accepted at Cangzhou Technical College, he felt like he had won a lottery.

His daughter was admitted to another university.

Majoring in modem agricultural technology, Chen said he has learned a lot during the past two months.

"I believe it can be helpful for my planting," he said.
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China hopes to help safeguard stability in region, Xi tells visiting military chief

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, president of China and chairman of the Central Military Commission, greets Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of Myanmar's Defense Services, before their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday. FENG YONGBIN/CHINA DAILY

China would like to play a constructive role in Myanmar's domestic peace process and safeguard the safety and stability of the border region, President Xi Jinping said on Friday.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks while meeting with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of Myanmar's Defense Services, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

China respects the sovereignty of Myanmar and pays strong attention to Myanmar's domestic peace process, Xi said.

Noting that the traditional friendship between the two sides has a long history, Xi called for joint efforts with Myanmar to enhance strategic communication and to take each other's major concerns into consideration.

The military relations between the two countries are at the best level in their history, Xi said, adding that China supports military exchanges and cooperation with Myanmar.

The CPC's 19th National Congress has provided the blueprint for China's economic and social development, which will not only inject powerful impetus into China's development, but also bring new opportunities for other countries, including Myanmar, to cooperate with China, Xi said.

Min Aung Hlaing congratulated Xi on the success of the CPC's 19th National Congress as well as Xi's re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission.

He expressed gratitude for China's long-term support toward the national and military development of Myanmar and its support for Myanmar's peace process.

Myanmar would like to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative and enhance cooperation in all areas with China, he added.
BEIJING - President Xi Jinping on Friday sent a congratulatory message to Zimbabwe's new president Emmerson Mnangagwa, a foreign ministry spokesperson said.

Xi said in the congratulatory message that China and Zimbabwe are good friends, partners and brothers. Bilateral ties have withstood the test of time and changing international situation.

China values the traditional friendship with Zimbabwe and stands ready to work together for strengthening all-round cooperation and advancing bilateral ties, so as to bring benefits to the two countries and two peoples, according to spokesperson Geng Shuang.

Mnangagwa was sworn in as the president of Zimbabwe Friday.
View of the RYB Education Kindergarten in Beijing, Nov 23, 2017. [Photo/IC]

China's top education authorities ordered on Friday an immediate inspection of all kindergartens across the country amid a number of reported child abuse cases.

The recent cases reflect management problems in some kindergartens, and education authorities at all levels must attach greater importance to preschool education, establish a regular supervision mechanism for the operation of kindergartens and improve the accountability system to punish those involved in child abuse, the Education Steering Committee of the State Council, China's Cabinet, said in a statement.

At least three incidents have been reported this month in which children were assaulted or were suspected of being abused.

In the most recent case, RYB Education Kindergarten, a well-known chain of preschools, has been the focus of a huge public outcry since Thursday.

On Wednesday night, some parents whose children attended the Xintiandi branch of RYB Education Kindergarten in Beijing's Chaoyang district called the police, alleging that their children were pricked with needles and fed unidentified white pills at the kindergarten. Some claimed that their children were molested or forced to strip as punishment, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Beijing police and the education commission said they were investigating the case but had reached no conclusion.

RYB Education Inc, the parent company of the Xintiandi branch kindergarten, said in a statement on Friday that the accused teachers had been suspended and the company was cooperating with police.

Its shares slumped by 42 percent at the opening of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, almost wiping out all of the 44 percent rise in the stock since its IPO in September.

In response to rumors on social media that the Xintiandi branch's headmaster is a family member of an active-duty soldier at a regiment of the People's Liberation Army, and that the soldier was involved in the abuse case, the Ministry of National Defense said on Friday that a preliminary internal investigation found no involvement of any PLA staff in the case.

"The headmaster of the kindergarten is a family member of a veteran," said Feng Junfeng, political commissar of the regiment. "So far, we've found that no one from the regiment has ever participated in the operation of the kindergarten or been involved in sexually assaulting children."

Feng said the regiment will assist the investigations, and if the accusation about the PLA is proved to be false, those who made the accusations should be held legally liable.
Tank destroyers from the People's Liberation Army's base in Djibouti participate in a live-fire exercise at a range in the African country's capital on Thursday. ZHANG QINGBAO/FOR CHINA DAILY

The Djibouti Logistics Support Base of the People's Liberation Army conducted a live-fire exercise on Thursday with its heavy-duty weapons, according to the Chinese military.

Several wheeled tank destroyers and wheeled infantry fighting vehicles from the base in the Horn of Africa took part in the exercise at a local shooting range and fired dozens of shells, according to a news release published late Friday by the PLA Navy, which administers the logistics support base.

Infantry practiced assault maneuvers with the armored vehicles, it said. It quoted Senior Captain Liang Yang, commander of the base, as saying that the move was intended to verify the combat capability of troops and their weapons and to improve their adaptability in the local environment.

The PLA established its Djibouti Logistics Support Base, the first of its kind for the Chinese military, on July 11 and put it into formal operation on Aug 1.

Located in Djibouti City, the African nation's capital, the base will support the Chinese military's naval escort, peacekeeping and humanitarian missions in Africa and western Asia, the Navy said. It will also help China improve its capabilities in international military cooperation, joint exercises, emergency evacuations and overseas rescue.

It will enable the nation to better guard the safety of international strategic maritime passages with other countries, it said.

President Xi Jinping, also chairman of the Central Military Commission, had a teleconference with troops at the Djibouti base this month during an inspection of the CMC Joint Command Headquarters in Beijing. Xi told them to gain a good reputation for Chinese soldiers and to contribute to regional peace and stability.

On Friday, Premier Li Keqiang met with Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh in Beijing. Calling Djibouti a major partner in East Africa, Li said China is willing to work with the nation to make use of each other's advantages to foster economic cooperation and to build a regional hub of trade and logistics.
Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 24, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

China is ready to work with France in a joint and positive effort to deal with climate change while maintaining multilateralism and an inclusive world economy, Premier Li Keqiang said.

Li spoke when meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday.

Li said relations between China and France have been advancing well, and China puts strategic emphasis on Sino-French ties and is willing to work with France to advance bilateral ties with a healthy and stable development momentum. He said China is willing to enhance cooperation with France in areas including civilian nuclear energy.

China supports European integration and hopes cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European countries will boost balanced development of the European Union, Li said.

Le Drian also met with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, and they jointly talked to reporters. Wang said the two countries are ready to seek common ground while maintaining differences, and are preparing for French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to China in early 2018.

Wang said the key lesson from the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue in the past two decades is that when confrontation and misunderstanding persist, all stakeholders miss the chance for a peaceful dialogue. "The pressing task is to fully implement decisions made by the UN Security Council and spare no efforts to start consultation on the issue as soon as possible," Wang said.
Federations at all levels called to back public, nonpublic development

Federations of industry and commerce at all levels were called to promote the integrated development of the public and nonpublic economy and the sustainably continuous growth of private investment, Premier Li Keqiang said in a congratulatory letter on Friday.

Li read the letter on behalf of the Communist Party of China Central Committee at the opening ceremony of the 12th National Congress of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce.

The letter said nonpublic parts of the economy have played a vital role in boosting steady economic growth, technological innovation and employment opportunities. It said federations at all levels have made crucial contributions to the healthy and sustainable development of the national economy.

Federations were called to motivate the enthusiasm, initiative and creativity of nonpublic businesses, guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. They also were called to boost the ability to serve enterprises, provide immediate help for them, encourage private businesses to shoulder social responsibilities and bolster livelihoods.

All such institutions nationwide were called to adhere to the new development concept to contribute wisdom and strength to achieve higher quality and more efficient, fairer and more sustainable development.

Founded in 1953, the industry federation is a key unit of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and connects the nonpublic economy with the CPC and the government.

China has about 25 million private enterprises, with registered capital exceeding 150 trillion yuan ($22.7 trillion) and contributing more than half the country's taxes, according to the industry federation. These enterprises also contribute more than 60 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, fixed asset investment and outbound investment.

More than 70 percent of new products and technological innovations have been developed and produced by private enterprises, creating more than 80 percent of urban jobs and contributing more than 90 percent of the new jobs being created.

In the next five years, the industry federation will do its utmost to strengthen cohesive affinity, influence and execution while taking the initiative in leading nonpublic businesspeople to render patriotic dedication, legal operations and innovation, according to Wang Qinmin, the federation's chairman.
A former vice-minister of health dismissed the possibility of clinical trials in China involving a human head transplant, adding that an experiment done in China had severely violated ethical rules.

"We will never allow such clinical trials to be carried out in China," Huang Jiefu, chairman of the China National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee and former vice-minister of health, told China Daily in an interview on Friday.

"(A live head transplant) is technically impossible, and violates Chinese laws and regulations on organ transplants," he said.

Huang made the remarks following a heated controversy stirred in the past few days by the announcement of completion of a human head transplant on a corpse in China.

The procedure was carried out last week by a team led by Ren Xiaoping, a surgeon at Harbin Medical University in Harbin, Heilongjiang province. During the 18-hour operation, Ren said, he and his assistants successfully reconnected a severed head with the spine, nerves and blood vessels of a corpse.

Italian professor Sergio Canavero, who worked as a partner with Ren in the past few years to make a head transplant feasible, said the transplant was the first such surgery in the world and a similar operation on a live human would take place "imminently", according to a report in the Daily Mail.

The transplant caused widespread controversy, and doctors and scholars in China have been critical.

Huang said the committee is also taking measures that could hold Harbin Medical University accountable for allowing Ren to do such an experiment. "Repair of damaged spinal nerves and brain cells is a challenge that has not been overcome in any part of the world," he said. "It's a meaningless and ridiculous activity to draw attention by experimenting on a corpse."

While there are many disabled people with spinal cord damage, doctors cannot produce any evidence proving that damage to the spinal cord can be repaired, he said.

Even with organ transplants that are routinely performed, rejection after transplantation remains a challenge, he said.

In addition to the technical barriers, a head transplant would come with serious ethical questions, Huang said.

"A patient's identity does not change after having received an organ such as a kidney or liver donated by others, but who will the patient be after having the head changed?"

Huang said he has received phone calls from some top transplant experts in other countries who also suggested similar tests be banned.

"China's organ transplant technologies in the liver, kidney, heart, lungs and small intestine have reached a world-class level," Huang said. "China's organ transplants should progress following indisputably high ethical standards."

There was no response on Friday to calls to Ren and Harbin Medical University from China Daily.
Chinese-made drone capable of reconnaissance/combat missions

China recently flight-tested an unmanned reconnaissance/combat helicopter on a plateau in Qinghai province, according to Aviation Industry Corp of China, the State-owned aircraft giant.

The AV500W unmanned autonomous helicopter was flown for the first time on Saturday on a plateau test base in Golmud of the northwestern province of Qinghai, which has an altitude of 4,300 meters.

Air-to-ground missiles were fired by the drone and hit targets during the test, the AVIC Helicopter Research and Development Institute in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, said in a news release sent to China Daily on Thursday.

The test showed that the AV500W is capable of conducting reconnaissance or strike operations on high-altitude regions, paving the way for deployment of such aircraft on plateaus, according to the institute, the helicopter's developer.

The 7.2-meter-long drone has a maximum takeoff weight of 500 kilograms on plains, but the carrying capacity would be reduced to 430 kg on plateaus, said the release.

It has a maximum speed of 170 kilometers per hour, and is able to fly four hours in a single mission. The helicopter can carry up to 120 kg of weapons and equipment, according to the release.

The institute said that there are many users in the international market wishing to employ unmanned helicopters to serve civilian and military purposes, noting such demand has been "especially urgent" for China's plateau areas.

The helicopter is good in terms of mobility, deployability, penetration capability as well as automation.

It also has a stealth design. A typical mission would be a precision attack on light-duty armored vehicles and personnel, the institute said, adding it can be useful in counter-terrorism, riot control, communication relay, and drug and smuggling suppression.

All of the military drones China has offered to the international market have been fixed-wing models, making the AV500W the first Chinese unmanned military helicopter available in that market, industry observers said.

Materials about the AV500W previously distributed by the institute show that an armed AV500W typically carries four air-to-ground missiles. Each missile weighs 8 kg and can hit a target 5 km away. The aircraft can also carry bombs or a machine-gun pod.

Jiang Taiyu, one of the chief designers of the AV500W, said all of the helicopter's tests will be finished before the end of this year and it will be ready for mass production in 2018.

He said only the United States and Israel have developed unmanned armed helicopters, such as the Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout in the US.

The aircraft can take off and land autonomously on any landform, according to Jiang. Its target market will be countries dealing with terrorism such as those in the Middle East, he said, adding the institute plans to develop a shipborne variant.
BEIJING - Studying President Xi Jinping's new book on governance will deepen the understanding of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, said senior official Wang Huning Friday.

Wang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks at a symposium on the second volume of "Xi Jinping: The Governance of China," which was published and put up for sale earlier this month.

"Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era is considered as the Chinese Marxism of the 21st century, which shows its originality and reflects the features of the times," said Wang. "According to the 19th CPC National Congress, it is an important strategic task to equip the whole Party with Xi's thought."

The first volume was published in September 2014 and received widespread attention and praise from readers at home and abroad.

The second volume, covering 17 topics, collects 99 of Xi's speeches, conversations, instructions and letters between Aug. 18, 2014 and Sept. 29, 2017.

Sales are likely to exceed those of the first book, which has sold about 6.6 million copies worldwide in 24 languages, according to the Foreign Languages Press, the book's publisher.

The new volume depicts the practice of the CPC Central Committee with Xi at the core in uniting and leading Chinese people to uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics in a new era.

According to Wang, the new book reflects the development and achievements of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. It also provides Chinese wisdom and solutions for developing a community with a shared future for mankind and in promoting peace and development.

Wang called for deep understanding of the historical background that has produced Xi's thought, the original contributions it has made to Marxism and the guidance it provides for the realization of the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.

"Studying and publicizing the newly-published volume will further ingrain Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era in people's hearts and enhance the international community's understanding of Xi's thought," Wang said.

"The main reason why foreigners should read these books is that they are the first time that a Chinese leader has sought to capture his whole philosophy and communicate it to the international audience in so many languages," said David Ferguson, the English editor of both books, with the Foreign Languages Press. "There is everything you need to know about where China is now, and where China is trying to go."
XINING - Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli has underlined the importance of environmental protection in northwest China's Qinghai Province.

Zhang made the remarks during a visit to Qinghai between Thursday and Friday.

As an important shield for China's ecological security, the province should make clear areas that are off-limits for development and the rules for access to create natural space in which people and nature co-exist in harmony, Zhang said.

Qinghai should build a green and sustainable industrial system with its own distinctive features and push ahead construction of projects including the Qilian Mountain water conservation area and the region surrounding the Qinghai Lake, Zhang said.

He also said that the environment supervision system and the natural resource asset management mechanism must be improved.
NANCHANG - Mao Haofu, 28, has returned from studying in Britain to his hometown in Ciping in east China's Jinggangshan City, which was the first rural revolutionary base established in 1927 by the Communist Party of China (CPC).

He is now an on-site teacher at Jiangxi Executive Leadership Academy. Although most tourists are Chinese, he is prepared to tell the Party's story in English.

He has been influenced by his father and grandfather, both masters of Party history, as well as his colleagues who have devoted themselves to teaching despite poor living conditions.

"I felt a sense of achievement when I saw more foreign officials come to our academy. They were keen to know more about our country," he said.

Kuang Sheng, vice president of the China Executive Leadership Academy of Jinggangshan, said the world is eager to know more about the CPC and the Chinese path and experience, as China offers Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving problems.

To introduce the former residence of Comrade Mao Zedong, Mao Haofu studied materials in a local museum and the authoritative English versions of the works of Mao Zedong, rather than directly translating the tour guide introduction.

The Jinggangshan Mountains are known as the birthplace of the Chinese Red Army, and the cradle of the Chinese revolution.

Liu Hong, Party chief of Jinggangshan, said that the city is developing an open economy led by tourism. It has been visited by delegates from several foreign countries, including Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and African countries.

Liu said a leader of an African delegation told him that China's experience in helping people get rid of poverty were worth learning from.

Red tourism sites have attracted more visitors in recent years and are receiving huge investment from the country.

China's National Development and Reform Commission has encouraged more efforts to preserve revolutionary sites and released a list of red tourism sites in 2015.

In 2016, a total of 1.55 billion yuan (about $228.3 million) was spent to support "red tourism," according to the Ministry of Finance.

At another revolutionary site, Xibaipo, in Pingshan County of north China's Hebei Province, Duan Keqian, a tour guide of the Xibaipo Memorial Hall, was busy preparing an English version of her speech.

Xibaipo is an old revolutionary base where the leadership of the CPC was garrisoned from May 1948 till early 1949, drawing up the blueprint for a new country and preparing for the CPC's new role as the ruling party.

"We have been really busy in the last month, but are happy to introduce more information to our audience," said Duan, adding that she has witnessed a growing number of visiting foreign teachers, doctors and business people who work near Xibaipo.

"We have taken exams to qualify as guides. Each of us should focus on a certain field, and I focus on people's daily lives," Duan said. "People will be fired if they get poor regular assessments."

According to Duan, there are about 80 such guides at the memorial hall, as well as at the revolutionists' former residences, working in Chinese, English, Russian, Italian and Japanese languages.

Russian Andrey Lyakh, 45, visited Xibaipo after doing business in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province, about a two-hour drive away.

He listened carefully to his interpreter and nodded at times, walking in the yard of the former residences.

"I have heard of Lenin and Mao Zedong since I was a child, and I think they are all great men," said Lyakh. "The site impressed me very much."
HOHHOT - Chinese archaeologists have found evidence of an ancient ethnic minority group following Confucianism over 1,000 years ago in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Remains of Confucian temples have been found in the ruins of Shangjing, the upper capital of the Liao Dynasty (916-1125), said Dong Xinlin with the research institute of archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The team of archaeologists from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Inner Mongolia archaeological institute started excavation of the site in 2011 with Dong as the team leader.

Dong said the first Confucian temple was built as early as the Khitan started building the upper capital. Besides Confucian temples, Buddhist and Taoist ones were also found at the site.

"The Khitan had an inclusive culture," he said.

The Liao Dynasty was founded by the nomadic Khitan and ruled the northern part of China. Shangjing, now located in Bairin Left Banner in Inner Mongolia, was first built in 918. The capital was the dynasty's political, economic and cultural center on the prairie for over 200 years.

The ancient capital was also found to be divided into two parts, with the Khitan living in northern part and Han Chinese people in southern part.

"This showed Khitan's respect for the Han population and its culture," said Dong.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday sent a message of condolences to his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi after a terror attack on a mosque in North Sinai Province killed at least 235 people.

In the message, Xi offered his deep condolences to the victims and sincere sympathy to President Sisi, the families of the victims and the injured.

China firmly opposes all forms of terrorism and strongly condemns the attack, Xi said.

China is steadfast in supporting Egypt's efforts in fighting against terrorism and safeguarding its national security and stability, the message added.
A teacher from a RYB kindergarten was detained for alleged child abuse in Beijing on Saturday.

The suspect, surnamed Liu, a 22-year-old woman from Hebei province, was sent to criminal detention, according to the police.

Several parents reported to police on Wednesday night that their children, all around 3 years old and enrolled at the RYB Xintiandi branch, had needle marks on their bodies and were repeatedly fed unidentified white pills.

An investigation was launched immediately.

On Saturday, the police also detained another woman, 31, also surnamed Liu, for spreading rumors about the incident.

The government of Chaoyang district has ordered the head of RYB Education to immediately fire the head of the kindergarten where the incident occurred and punish others found responsible.

On Saturday night, RYB issued a statement, saying the teacher surnamed Liu and the head of the kindergarten have been fired.

RYB will also actively cooperate with police in further investigation.

It will also communicate with parents and invite mental health experts to provide help for children involved.

The education commission of Beijing's Chaoyang district, which oversees the kindergarten, strongly condemned the incident and asked districts and kindergartens concerned to cooperate with judicial authorities for improvements.

"We consider this was an extreme case that harmed children with serious social repercussion," said the spokesman from Chaoyang district.

A thorough investigation was conducted in Chaoyang district and a special inspection to regulate the kindergartens' qualification was also launched, the district government added.

The Ministry of Education has started a special inspection of the management of kindergartens nationwide and asked local education authorities to take effective measures to improve teachers' morality and tighten supervision, according to a ministry release late Thursday.

RYB Education Kindergarten was China's largest early year education service provider in annual revenue last year, according to the Frost & Sullivan report.

This has been the third reported child abuse case in a month. On Nov 13, Shanghai police detained a person surnamed Zheng who was in charge of a day care center where staff were caught on camera abusing toddlers. Three other staff members were detained, according to Shanghai police.

Almost at the same time, Golden Cradle Education and Technology Group, which has more than 700 kindergartens and schools nationwide, also became involved in a similar accusation as parents said teachers at one of its kindergartens in Beijing abused children. Police are investigating, but so far no details have been released.
As a national symbol of France, the Palace of Versailles on the outskirts of Paris, also known as the Chateau de Versailles, is actively extending its global horizons in a bid to enhance its international standing.

For example, Versailles recently joined with 12 other top-level French museums to become part of an ambitious cultural project to loan portions of its collections on a long-term basis to the newly-opened Louvre Abu Dhabi in the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

At the same time, the museum, seat of France's permanent royal court from 1682 to 1789, also intends to forge closer ties with China.
Zhai Haijun / For China Daily

On Nov 17, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero announced that a team led by him and Ren Xiaoping, a professor at Harbin Medical University, had performed the first human head transplant on a corpse, and mentioned the prospect of doing such a surgical operation on a living human being. Is there even a hint of possibility in his claim? Two experts share their views on the issue with China Daily's Zhang Zhouxiang. Excerpts follow:

Should not call it a 'surgical operation'

It is misleading to call what Canavero and Ren have done a "surgical operation". "Surgical operations" are done on living human beings or animals to help sustain life or improve the patients' physical abilities. "Transplanting" the head of one corpse on the body of another should more properly be called "dissection".

Besides, Canavero claimed the 18-hour "operation" showed it is possible to reconnect the spine, nerves and blood vessels, without mentioning whether he had succeeded in doing so on the corpse.

In practice, the most difficult part of transplantation is not in repairing blood vessels or muscles, but in reconnecting the nerves and reactivating them, so that the signals from the brain can be transmitted through the reconnected nerves. Unless there is a breakthrough in reviving the impaired nerves, it would be irresponsible to do such an "operation".

Canavero also said it is "imminent" that his team will try to transplant the head of a living person paralyzed from the neck down. According to medical ethics and standards, enough tests and trials should be conducted on animals before trying out a new surgical operation on a human body. But Canavero said he and his team conducted only a few tests on animals. For example, last year his team successfully grafted a monkey's head on the body of another monkey, but Canavero has not revealed the total number (of such "tests"). Nor has any medical authority claimed to have given approval for doing so.

Therefore, the attempt to do such an "operation" on a living person must be put under strict regulation. We may hold a more tolerant view toward experimental "operations", but when it comes to such operations on humans, professionals, the media and supervisors must all be cautious.

Wang Yue, a professor at the Institute of Medical Humanities, Peking University

A highly complicated and dangerous affair

Canavero said he would transplant the head of a living human. Let us assume he succeeds in his efforts and the patient survives after the operation. The problem that will arise is: Who is the "new person"? Will he or she be identified with the head or the body?

Plus, the physiological, ethical, psychological and legal problems carry unprecedented complications.

Physiologically, the new person's mind (the brain) should control the body, but since the body would be that of another person, it might not respond accordingly. The result could be utter internal chaos.

Ethically, if the new person marries and begets children, whose DNA will the children inherit? And psychologically, the new person could develop a split personality, torn between the dictates of the mind and the calling of the body.

But none of the problems would be as troubling and complicated as the legal one. Whose identity should he/she inherit, the head's or the body's? Whose property should he/she inherit? Whose family would he/she belong to? Would the person get a new social security number, or should he/she use one of the two old ones?

Luckily, none of the above is likely to happen in the near future, because no medical authority is yet ready to grant approval for a head transplant on a living human. And I hope the medical authorities will be as cautious as they always have been, because such a transplant would create many, many more problems than solutions.

Zhang Tiankan, deputy chief editor of Encyclopedia magazine and a former medical researcher
Japan's Princess Mako arrives before a meeting with Paraguay's President Horacio Cartes at the presidential residence in Asuncion, Paraguay September 8, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Japan's imperial family has been catching the headlines in recent times. On Wednesday, Japan's Imperial Household Agency announced that 25-year-old Princess Mako, the eldest granddaughter of Emperor Akihito, will marry her college sweetheart Kei Komuro, a commoner, on Nov 4, 2018.

Under Japan's Imperial Household Law, which governs the succession of emperors, women born into the imperial family must officially leave it once they marry commoners. Mako's aunt, Sayako, the only daughter of Emperor Akihito, renounced her imperial title for love, tying the knot in 2005 with a town planner.

Mako's love story has melted the hearts of her peers and drawn praise from the Japanese people. But Emperor Akihito's is the more touchy story.

In a rare televised address in August 2016, the octogenarian emperor informed the nation of his desire to abdicate the throne due to failing health. But the Imperial Household Law, which has no provision for abdication, only allows posthumous succession.

Opinion polls have shown the vast majority of Japanese people sympathize with the emperor and respect his desire to retire, and the Japanese government and parliament have approved one-off legislation for his abdication. Eventually, a special panel will decide the dates for Emperor Akihito's abdication and the enthronement of his elder son, Crown Prince Naruhito.

Emperor Akihito would be the first living Japanese emperor to abdicate in 200 years. The emperor is a symbol of Japanese unity, but without any political power. His duties include constitutionally defined tasks such as the opening of parliament. The hallmark of the emperor's reign has been travels with Empress Michiko, including visits to domestic disaster sites to cheer the survivors, and trips to foreign countries to soothe the wounds of Japan's aggression before and during World War II.

The imperial couple visited Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai in 1992. "I felt that most of the Chinese people hope for friendly relations between our two peoples," Emperor Akihito said in Shanghai on the eve of his departure for Tokyo. "If people deal sincerely with each other heart to heart, I believe borders can be bridged."

Now that Emperor Akihito is set to abdicate, the Japanese government and business organizations have tons of work to do to prepare for a new era. Despite using the Gregorian calendar in most aspects of everyday life, Japan has maintained its ancient imperial-era system in which a new emperor ushers in a new era that the Japanese Cabinet defines in two auspicious Chinese characters.

The current era is Heisei, which began in 1989 when Emperor Akihito succeeded to the throne upon the death of his father Hirohito. This is the 29th year of Emperor Akihito's reign, or Heisei 29. Heisei literally means "achieving peace".

Many institutions, such as banks, city halls and driving schools, are not interested in your date of birth according to the Gregorian calendar; they need you to put your date of birth according to the imperial calendar on their forms. Of course, their employees are ready to help if you have difficulty in figuring out what year of the Japanese imperial era you were born in.

The Japanese government is expected to announce the name of the new era months before Emperor Akihito abdicates, allowing time for the switch to be made in official forms, calendars and computer programs. The government is considering April 30, 2019, as the most suitable date for the emperor to abdicate, the Japanese media reported, and Prince Naruhito to be enthroned the following day.

Though a change in the imperial era causes some inconvenience to the Japanese people, it also helps them to cherish their history and tradition. A country is known for its economic prowess as much as its culture.

The author is China Daily Tokyo bureau chief. caihong@chinadaily.com.cn
The author visiting Pingtang International Experience Planetarium in Guizhou Province. [Photo by gog.cn]

I've had my fair share of travelling around China, and a recent week-long trip to Guizhou was my first time to the province. It was a true learning experience. I must admit, it is one of the most endowed regions in China in terms of natural beauty - fascinating environment with rich culture and history.

I tried looking up the meaning and significance of the name Guizhou () before embarking on the trip, basically to have a reasonable idea of what was in store for me but that was a hard task so I inquired from a Chinese colleague among a group of local and foreign journalists on the trip. From what she said, the province was named after a famous mountain called "Gui" (), sort of noble in literal translation and zhou()which simply means province in Chinese.

With that in mind I set out on a journey of discovery and what I found was mind blowing, a photographer's paradise. Generally described as a mountainous province in southwestern China, with Guiyang as its capital, the province is truly one of natures best kept secrets. I recommend road transport - awesome breathtaking views dotted along the highway throughout the province will leave first time visitors spellbound.

Compared to other leading provinces in China, with regards to development, Guizhou has some catching-up to do, however the province remains unique not only for its amazing landscape, but for the role it played in the political history of modern China and the role it is to play in the world, in mankind's search for life beyond our planet, later to be explored in another article.

The author in Guizhou Province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Our trip began in Zunyi city, north of Guizhou province, where the group played host at a ceremony to commemorate the famous 'Zunyi Conference'. Not much is known about this famous conference in Africa and the western world, but apparently it was at this conference that China's first leader and Chairman of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong, was elected by the Politburo to lead the Communist forces (Red Army) on the historical Long March in the fight against Nationalist forces led by Chiang Kai-Shek from 1934-35.

The location of the conference has been well preserved, the original two-storey wooden-building, the conference hall where the meeting took place, the furniture and various items used by officials who were present at the meeting are all intact to this day.

We continued our journey the next day to two adjoining villages, Gouba and Huamao. The two villages played key roles in Chairman Mao's grand strategy in the fight against Nationalist forces. It is for this reason that I believe Guizhou's role in the victory against the Nationalist forces and China's eventual liberation cannot be easily overlooked and neither can it be dismissed. I am confident that the China we are witnessing today wouldn't have achieved the height and success it is experiencing- confident, ambitious, and a leading power in the world if Gouba and Huamao hadn't welcomed the Red Army. Chairman Mao chose to position his forces at the base of a mountain in Gouba to prevent Nationalist forces from attacking their camp from behind and subsequent bombardment, that way; the Red Army could meet enemy forces in a frontal attack. According to historical accounts, it was a matter of life-and-death. That was the breaking point. Defeat could have meant the non-existence of the People's Republic of China we know today. As we toured the living quarters of the soldiers I tried to visualize the tension during the encampment. Facing the enemy boot-for-boot, I believe, was the sort of guerrilla tactics Chairman Mao was noted for. Standing at that historical site where the Red Army stationed gave me a better understanding of the resilience of the Chinese nation.

To that end, it is important to preserve and protect these sites as a form of political, historical and cultural education of the younger generation. Buildings and structures in the two villages have been upgraded with support from local government to compliment the improved standard of living of resident peasant farmers whiles the original station of the Red Army have been renovated, restored and now called the "Red Army village". Local wine making, horticulture, pottery, and umbrella making using the original paper making technique are contributing immensely to wealth creation in the area.

Our last stop was in Guiyang, the provincial capital where massive infrastructural development has already taken shape and will soon catch-up with top tier cities. This is where the world's largest telescope, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) is located. Situated in a deep valley in Pintang county, southwest of Guizhou, I call it the "Earth's Ear". We were granted an exclusive tour of the facility. As a general rule and strictly observed, no cameras, mobile phones or any electromagnetic device are allowed within a five-kilometre range of the facility- the reason being that such devices could disrupt the debugging process of the telescope.

The telescope is on a mission to seek the origin and evolution of our universe. Since the beginning of time, man has been fascinated about life beyond our planet. Historical accounts of the Egyptians, Mayans, and ancient Chinese philosophers using devices to explain astral phenomenon and the existence of extraterrestrial beings "aliens" abound in numbers. In our current technological world, Guizhou is leading the charge in man's search for life beyond our universe with FAST, said to be 10 times as sensitive as the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.

The province is also home to one of China's national big data centres, whose core objectives are data storage, data collection, data processing and analysis, cloud platform construction and operation services, data security, data exchange and transaction, and artificial intelligence. Big data has been described as the diamond mine of the 21st century, I prefer to call it the "new virtual economy", and Guizhou is one of the cities at the forefront of the "big data revolution". For a general understanding, the big data industry supports smart health, smart logistics, internet finance, e-commerce, smart tourism, smart agriculture, energy, education, and public security.

Statistically, the province has been one of the top performing regions in China in recent years. Guiyang clinched the number one position among the top 20 cities in the Rising Stars: China emerging city rankings compiled by The Economist Intelligence Unit in 2015. In the 2016 top 10 Chinese cities with best performance released by The Milken Institute, Guiyang again placed first, with Shanghai and Tianjin in second and third position respectively.

I have seen it myself, Guizhou's rise is visible. The region welcomes both local and foreign enterprises, as well as talents, with the establishment of an international talent park to support industries. I'm positive that the contribution of Guizhou to the sustenance of the national economy is the reason why Chinas economy has sustained the momentum regardless of predictions of decline.
Jesuit missionaries to China Schall von Bell (Germany). [Photo provided to China Daily]

Jesuits who arrived in China to preach the gospel between the 16th and 19th centuries left an indelible mark on the country, and it was there that they spent the rest of their natural lives.

Li Xiumei loves snow. "It purifies and silences everything, especially in this part of the campus," says the associate law professor at the Beijing Administration Institute.

"After one snowy night I came here early in the morning to sink my footsteps into the spotless white sponge cake, footsteps that took me to a group of men that has occupied my imagination and much of my time for the past decade."

To be precise it is repeat visits to the tombstones of these men that have kept Li in their thrall. These tombstones, standing quietly on a patch of land measuring about 200 sq meters, are in tight formation. The intimacy is evocative, because centuries ago, when those to whom these monuments are dedicated arrived in China after months, or even years, at sea, they were essentially alone, with almost no one to turn to but themselves and their God.

They were Jesuit missionaries who journeyed to China from countries including Portugal, Spain, Italy and France between the 16th and 19th centuries, and they had at least two things in common: undoubted talent, including personal and diplomatic skills, and unwavering dedication to spreading the gospel message.
Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi, a Ming Dynasty politician and scientist who Ricci befriended. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Missionaries in China from the 16th century had royal reins placed on their work.

"The moment they sought help from a Chinese emperor was the moment they placed themselves in the hands of these powerfuland often equally intelligentmen. But the manipulation, if that's what you want to call it, was mutual," says Zhang Xiping, whose book Following the Steps of Matteo Ricci to China offers tantalizing glimpses into a group of adventurer-missionaries who arrived in between the 16th and 19th centuries. Most would never see the land of their birth again.

One example involves Emperor Shunzhi (1638-1661), the first emperor of the Qing Dynasty to enter Beijing, and Johann Adam Schall von Bell, a German Jesuit missionary who so impressed the young emperor that he regarded him as his mentor and confidant.

In 1652 the religious leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, planned to travel to Beijing and pay tribute to Shunzhi. As with the preparation of every major event of the time, a close reading of the stars was required. The task was traditionally reserved for the emperor's Astro-Calendric Bureau, an organization headed by von Bell and later by his missionary successors who, too, were astronomers.

Von Bell reported to Shunzhi that sunspots had appeared and that a "threatening meteor" was seen close to the polestar. The sunspots were interpreted as representing the Dalai Lama, who was about to obscure the radiance of "the sun"the emperor himself. And the now "threatened" polestar, in the north, was a symbol of royal authority in feudal China.
Louis-Samuel Berger, Palace of Versailles deputy managing director [Photo by Wang Kaihao/China Daily]

As a national symbol of France, the Palace of Versailles on the outskirts of Paris, also known as the Chateau de Versailles, is actively extending its global horizons in a bid to enhance its international standing.

For example, Versailles recently joined with 12 other top-level French museums to become part of an ambitious cultural project to loan portions of its collections on a long-term basis to the newly-opened Louvre Abu Dhabi in the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

At the same time, the museum, seat of France's permanent royal court from 1682 to 1789, also intends to forge closer ties with China.

"It is true that Versailles shares the Forbidden City's extravagance," Louis-Samuel Berger, deputy managing director of the institution, tells China Daily, citing a comparison with between the French palace and Beijing's Palace Museum.

"Versailles is ultimately a work of art. Its walls, its contents, and the space in which it is built ... everything is work of art," Berger says proudly.

Berger came to Tsinghua University in Beijing last week to join the cultural heritage panel at the Tsinghua Culture Creativity Forum, an occasion that invited professionals from all over the world to share their case studies in successful cultural development.

In 2016, the Palace of Versailles received 668,000 Chinese tourists, or 13 percent of the total number of visitors to the museum annually, after France and the United States, according to Berger.

"The interesting thing was that 29 percent of the guidance pamphlets were given to Chinese visitors, which shows they are more willing than other nationalities to read and learn about Versailles," Berger smiles.

Perhaps, that explains why the museum opened a public account on WeChat, the popular Chinese social media app, as early as in 2015.

In 2014, an exhibition called China in Versailles was held in the museum to display French artworks which particularly reflected Chinese characteristics.

"In the 17th and 18th centuries, the French (royal) court was very fond of China, and Versailles was greatly influenced by Chinese culture at that time," Berger recalls. "We gathered those works especially for our Chinese visitors."
CAIRO - At least 235 people were killed when gunmen set off a bomb and opened fire at a mosque in Egypt's northern Sinai Peninsula on Friday, state television reported.

The report also said at least 125 people were wounded in the attack.

Egypt's government declared three days of mourning after the attack - one of the country's deadliest in recent memory.

Security officials said four men in four off-road vehicles opened fire on worshippers during Friday prayers at Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, about 40 kilometers from the North Sinai provincial capital of el-Arish.

No group had claimed responsibility for the assault.

A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights Islamic State extremists said the mosque is known as a place of gathering for Sufis.

The IS group views Sufis as heretics.

State media showed images of bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the mosque.

Eyewitnesses reported about 50 ambulances ferrying casualties from the scene to nearby hospitals after the attack.

"They were shooting at people as they left the mosque," said a local resident whose relatives were at the scene.

"They were shooting at the ambulances too."

President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi convened an emergency security meeting soon after the attack. The meeting was attended by the ministers of defense and interior in addition to the heads of general intelligence and military intelligence services, MENA state news agency reported.

IS insurgency

Egypt's security forces have battled an IS insurgency in north Sinai, where extremists have killed hundreds of police officers and soldiers since fighting there intensified over the last three years.

Aside from the IS group, Egypt also faces a threat from al-Qaida-aligned extremists who operate out of neighboring Libya.

Extremists have mostly targeted security forces in their attacks, but have also tried to expand beyond the peninsula by hitting churches and pilgrims.

In July, at least 23 soldiers were killed when suicide car bombs hit two military checkpoints in Sinai Peninsula, an attack claimed by the IS group.

In May, gunmen attacked a Coptic group traveling to a monastery in southern Egypt, killing 29.

Reuters - Afp - Xinhua - Ap
TOKYO - The mayor of Japan's second city of Osaka said on Friday he would end sister-city relations with San Francisco after the US city decided to accept a donated memorial to wartime sex slaves.

Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura said trust between the two, which have been "sister" cities for 60 years, had been "completely destroyed "by the incident.

"The sister-city relationship with San Francisco will be terminated," Yoshimura said.

Japan's government has stepped in to urge San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee to reject the memorial. But Lee signed a document on Wednesday formalizing the city's acceptance of the memorial.

About 200,000 women in Asia were forced to serve as "comfort women" during the war, mostly from the Korean Peninsula and China.

In recent years, dozens of statues have been set up in public venues around the world, many of them in the ROK, in honor of the victims.

The statues have drawn the ire of Tokyo, which has pressed for the removal of one outside its embassy in Seoul.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who also faces criticism of attempting to gloss over the nation's wartime acts, has previously said San Francisco's "extremely regrettable" plan was "in conflict" with Japan's position.

In 2015, Japan signed a deal with the ROK, offering an apology and $9 million to open a foundation for those sex slaves still alive.

However, ROK President Moon Jae-In has said most ROK citizens cannot accept the agreement as it is, although he has not so far formally called for it to be renegotiated.

The ROK parliament on Friday passed a bill to make Aug 14 as a special day for victims to sexual slavery for Japanese military brothels during the war.

Afp - China Daily - Xinhua
Jessica Gopar (center), the wife of one of the 44 crew members of a missing Argentine submarine, expresses her grief in Mar del Plata, Argentina, on Thursday. [Photo/Agencies]

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina - An explosion apparently occurred near the last known position of an Argentine submarine, the navy confirmed on Thursday, dashing any last hopes of finding the vessel and its 44 crew members.

Relatives of the missing sailors reacted with grief to the news after holding out hope since the sub was reported overdue at its Mar del Plata base on Nov 17, two days after the explosion.

"An anomalous, singular, short, violent and non-nuclear event consistent with an explosion," occurred shortly after the submarine's last communication, Navy spokesman Captain Enrique Balbi said in Buenos Aires.

Underwater sounds detected in the first days of the search by two Argentine search ships were determined to originate from a sea creature, not the vessel. Satellite signals were also determined to be false alarms.

The ARA San Juan, a 34-year-old German-built diesel-electric submarine, had reported a battery problem on Nov 15 and said it was diverting to Mar del Plata, but did not send a distress signal, according to the Navy.

Balbi admitted on Wednesday that the situation for the sub and its crew appeared to be worsening.

However, he refused to speculate at that point on the origin of what he initially described as a "hydro-acoustic anomaly" detected in the ocean almost three hours after the sub's communication and 50 kilometers north of its last known position.

Balbi said that information about the unusual noise only became available on Wednesday after being relayed by the United States and "after all the information from all agencies reporting such hydro-acoustic events was reviewed".

Explaining the lack of debris on the surface, Baldi said "nothing will end up floating to the surface" because a submarine "implodes".

Gustavo Mauvecin, director of the Center for Hyperbaric Medicine at Mar del Plata, said hydrogen "is always an issue with submarines with electric engines".

The San Juan "has 500 tons of lead-acid batteries, which release hydrogen if there is an overcharge in the battery, hydrogen in contact with oxygen is explosive".

Argentina is leading an air-and-sea search with help from several countries now including Brazil, Britain, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Peru, Russia, the US and Uruguay.

Russia was the latest navy to volunteer help, sending an oceanographic research ship as the operation shifted from rescue to recovery.

Afp - Xinhua - Ap
Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday that the situation in Syria has reached a new stage focused on political settlement, with anti-terrorism, dialogue and reconstruction as priorities.

"Dialogue and negotiation are the only ways to solve the Syrian issue," Wang told Bouthaina Shaaban, political and media adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in Beijing.

Syria's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity should be safeguarded, and the Syrian people should remain at the core of any political settlement, he said.

Wang also said that the recent intensive interaction among related parties on future political arrangements in Syria will contribute to the United Nations-sponsored Syrian political talks in Geneva.

On Wednesday, the presidents of Russia, Iran and Turkey expressed support for a comprehensive dialogue on Syria, stressing the ongoing coordination to reduce violence in Syria and provide help for Syrians to restore the unity of the country, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Syria's Foreign Ministry said it welcomed the outcome of the trilateral talks between the three powers.

Wang said, "China hopes Syria will seize the opportunity, show flexibility and push for substantive results from the talks."

Wang called anti-terrorism the foundation, dialogue the way out and reconstruction the guarantee to solve the Syrian issue. He said the fight against terrorism in Syria is ongoing although the international community has achieved important results in anti-terrorism cooperation. Wang called for concerted global efforts to fight the remaining forces of extremist groups.

Only by steadily advancing reconstruction can we give hope to the people and guarantee the long-term stability of Syria, he added.

"The international community should pay attention to, and actively support, the reconstruction of Syria," Wang said.

Shaaban agreed with Wang's proposal, and spoke highly of China's position. Syria is willing to actively take part in the process of political settlement and welcomed a bigger role by China in this regard, she said.
Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh in Beijing, Nov 24, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING - Premier Li Keqiang said Friday Djibouti is an important partner for China in east Africa, and he encouraged Chinese enterprises to invest there.

"China and Djibouti will continue to deepen mutual trust and partnership to become a model for South-South cooperation," Li said when meeting with Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh.

China will work with Djibouti on infrastructure and industrial production capacity cooperation to make the African country a regional trade and logistics hub and improve its economy and people's livelihoods, Li said.

"China encourages well-established enterprises to invest in Djibouti and hopes the country will offer security and convenience to Chinese companies," the premier said.

Guelleh hailed the productive, mutually beneficial cooperation since the two countries established diplomatic ties 38 years ago. He thanked China's support for Djibouti's development and said the country will use its geographical advantage to further cooperate with China.

Guelleh was on a state visit to China from Wednesday to Friday.
WINDHOEK - A senior member of the Angolan ruling party, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), on Friday praised China for helping to develop the southern African country's economy.

MPLA Politburo member and Member of Parliament, Luisa Damian, who is in Namibia to attend the ruling SWAPO Party Sixth Elective congress - which started on Thursday and ends on Sunday - told Xinhua that her country is happy with its relationship with China.

"China is helping us to develop our country and our economy and we have already started seeing the benefits of this co-operation between China and Angola. We hope that this relationship between China and Angola will continue to develop," Damian said.

She said many of the Angolan students who studied in China have already started participating in the development of sub-Saharan Africa's third biggest economy.

Damian added that the Communist Party of China (CPC) and MPLA share the same ideals of peace, prosperity and improving the wellbeing of citizens.

"We have the same common objectives of ameliorating the lives of our people in our respective countries," Damian said, adding that Angola looks forward to China's support in helping Angola modernize.

The Angolan lawmaker further said that, like China, Angola - Africa's second-largest oil producer - is trying its best to rid itself of corruption.

"We are also working to fight against corruption just like in China," Damian said. "In the last election that we won, our main goal was to do better what we are doing well and to correct what is wrong. This is proof that our party has acknowledged that there are many things that need to be corrected. One of those things is corruption."

According to Cui Aimin, Chinese Ambassador to Angola, China is Angola's largest trading partner while Angola is China's second largest trading partner in Africa as well as the largest source country of imports in Africa.
MAPUTO - China's liquor giant, Maotai Group, has donated nearly $500,000 on Friday, for the expansion of a primary school in the Ka-Tembe district of Maputo city in Mozambique.

The launching of the first stone of the construction project in the Lewi Pethrus Primary School was chaired by the mayor of Maputo City, David Simango, the general manager of the Maotai Group, Li Baofang and the Chinese ambassador to Mozambique, Su Jian.

Li Baofang said it was a special occasion because Mozambique is the first African country to benefit from the Maotai's social responsibility and charity.

"In our social responsibility initiative, we decided to help the Ka-Tembe district community in the expansion of the Lewis Pethrus School, where children study in a condition that is not very good," the general manager said.

The fund donated will be used on the construction of classrooms, teacher offices and recreational facilities, which will be operated by the Guizhou Chamber of Commerce in Mozambique.

"Our desire is that once the school has been expanded, it will be able to accommodate more students than it is today, and the learning condition for children will be better," he added.

The mayor of Maputo City, David Simango, hailed the donation in his speech and said that the country is making significant progress resulting from cooperation with the Chinese people.

Simango acknowledged that the quality of teaching for now is limited due to scarcity of resources, so the Municipality praises the Maotai initiative.

"As a result of the friendship between China and Mozambique, we see the participation of the Maotai group as the only viable alternative to quality education in this country," he said.

China's ambassador to Mozambique, Su Jian, said the construction of classrooms is part of the cooperation between the two countries in the field of basic education.

"This project we are witnessing today will help the community here at Ka-Tembe district," said Su Jian, adding that "another project of school desks is under consideration".

The ambassador said that with more cooperation efforts, the infrastructures of primary and secondary schools can be improved, and not only that.

"The projects that are to be installed in Ka-Tembe, namely the construction of the cross-sea bridge, roads and schools, will stimulate development in this area," he said.
An unemployed graduate is suing Oxford University because he did not get a first-class degree, which he claims hindered his chances of a lucrative legal career.

Faiz Siddiqui began his court case at London's High Court on Tuesday over allegations of "inadequate" teaching he received on an Indian special subject, part of his modern history course, which he said resulted him in getting a second-grade 2:1 degree in June 2000 instead of a "first" or high 2:1.

He claimed that had he received adequate teaching and achieved his higher grade, he would have gone on to become an international commercial lawyer.

The 39-year-old blamed staff members being absent on sabbatical leave and is claiming damages of 1 million pounds ($1.3 million).

Siddiqui, who studied at Brasenose College, also alleges that a tutor failed to submit medical information about him to examiners.

He claimed that his clinical depression and insomnia had been worsened by his "inexplicable failure".

The London court heard that Siddiqui was a "driven young man" as a student, aiming at a postgraduate qualification from an Ivy League university before a career at the tax bar in England or a major US law company.

Second rate

His barrister Roger Mallalieu told Mr Justice Foskett that, "while a 2:1 degree from Oxford might rightly seem like a tremendous achievement to move, it feels significantly short of Mr Siddiqui's expectations and was, to him, a huge disappointment".

Under the UK's university grading system, a first, or first class, is the highest honors degree achievable. A second-class degree is split into two divisions, the higher of which is the upper second class, commonly known as a 2:1.

Mallalieu said that Saddiqui's employment history in legal and tax roles after Oxford was "frankly poor" and he is now unemployed. "Mr Siddiqui has been badly let down by Oxford. He went there with high, perhaps extraordinarily high, expectations," he added.

After graduating from Oxford, Siddiqui trained at a major law company, Clifford Chance, according to court filings, but was not kept on at the end of the program. He worked for three other law firms and then as a tax adviser at the accounting company EY but was dismissed in December 2011 "essentially for poor performance", court papers said.

The university asked last year for his case to be struck out, but a judge ruled that a trial should take place.

Oxford University denies negligence and said the case was brought "massively" outside the legal time limit.

Julian Milford, representing the institution, told the court that Siddiqui complained about insufficient resources, but had only described the teaching as "a little bit dull".
Probe launched into an alleged limit on Asian-American students

Harvard University t-shirts are displayed for sale in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. JESSICA RINALDI/REUTERS

BOSTON - The US Justice Department is investigating complaints that Harvard University intentionally limits the number of Asian-American students it admits, according to a report on Tuesday.

The department has also accused the university of failing to cooperate with the probe into the relevance of race in its admission practices, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing documents it reviewed.

A Nov 17 letter from the department gives Harvard until Dec 1 to turn over a variety of records that Justice officials requested in September, including applications for admission and evaluations of students.

The department said Harvard has pursued a "strategy of delay" and threatened to sue if it doesn't meet the department's deadline.

The inquiry is related to a federal lawsuit filed by a group of students in 2014 alleging Harvard limits the number of Asian-Americans it admits each year. A similar complaint was made to the Justice Department.

Diversity push

Harvard has previously said its admissions process is consistent with the legal precedents set over the past 40 years by the Supreme Court, which have allowed universities to consider race as a factor in admissions to obtain the benefits of a diverse student body.

A statement from Harvard on Tuesday said it will "certainly comply with its obligations" but also needs to protect confidential records related to students and applicants.

The university said it has been "seeking to engage the Department of Justice in the best means of doing so".

Many elite schools defend admissions approaches that consider race among other factors as a way to bring a more diverse mix of perspectives to campus. Harvard has previously said its practices are legally sound.

The Supreme Court last year upheld race-conscious admissions at the University of Texas but said the ruling didn't necessarily apply to all other schools.

Edward Blum, the legal strategist behind the 2014 lawsuit against Harvard, applauded the investigation into what he called "discriminatory admissions policies".

"Harvard's Asian quotas, and the overall racial balancing that follows, have been ignored by our federal agencies for too long," Blum said in a statement on Tuesday. "This investigation is a welcome development."

The school's early correspondence with Justice officials suggested that the department only wanted to weigh in on the lawsuit, but later letters revealed Harvard is the target of an inquiry.

A Nov 7 letter from a Harvard attorney said it was "highly unusual" for the department to open an investigation into a complaint more than two years after it was filed and while it's still being decided in court.

Xinhua - Ap
NEW DELHI - An all-female police motorbike squad is set to take to Delhi's streets next month, a senior police official said, as reports of violence against women rise in the Indian capital.

The 'Raftaar' or 'Speed' squad of 600 policewomen will ride in pairs through the streets on state-of-the-art motorbikes, equipped with guns, pepper sprays and body cameras.

"Basically it is a robust street criminal containment strategy," Delhi police spokesman Dependra Pathak told The Hindustan Times.

"There will be a specifically designed helmets with earpieces. The pillion will carry a weapon like an AK-47 rifle and the rider carrying a 9 mm pistol.

"They will have all the accessories to make them effective on the ground."

Women and girls in India face multiple threats - from rape, abduction and dowry-related murder to sexual harassment and acid attacks.

An October poll by Reuters found New Delhi, along with Brazil's Sao Paulo, was the world's worst megacity for sex crimes against women.

Reports of violence against women in the city have almost doubled since 2012, with 11,588 crimes, such as kidnapping and assault, recorded up to Nov 15 this year, police data shows.

Backlash

Public awareness of violence against women in Delhi, particularly sex attacks, has surged since the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a bus in 2012.

The case triggered a wave of public protests across the country, throwing a global spotlight on gender violence in the world's second most populous nation.

Indian authorities enacted stricter punishments for gender crimes, and set up a 24-hour women's helpline, fast-track courts for rape cases and a fund to finance crisis centers for victims.

Women's desks in many of Delhi's police stations have been established, thousands of police received gender sensitization classes, and Delhi has more patrols, surveillance and checkpoints at night.

Reuters
CAIRO -- The death toll in a terrorist attack on a mosque on Friday in Egypt's North Sinai has risen to 305 killed, including 27 children, and 128 others were wounded, state news agency MENA reported on Saturday.

"The attackers of the mosque were carrying Islamic State (IS) flag," MENA quoted the statement of the country's general prosecutor as saying.

"Some 25-30 militants have gunned down the worshippers while performing the Friday prayer," it added.

The attack took place after the mosque's preacher started his speech, when the terrorists threw bombs from the windows and doors of the mosque, besieging the worshippers inside, the statement said.

Later, some masked men, carrying black flags reading "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet," broke into the mosque with automatic weapons, it added.

Long queues of the victims' relatives were laid on the ground, some covered with blankets, outside the Suez Canal Hospital in Ismailia.

"My 23-years old nephew, Amir, who was working as a nurse has passed away in the attack," said Samy Mahmoud, who came from Delta Monofiya province to get the license of burying Amir.

The father of Amir, Magdy, a 45-year-old teacher has also been wounded in the attack by three bullets, two in his leg and one in his right arm, Mahmoud told Xinhua while waiting outside the hospital.

"I couldn't get the body of Amir and he was buried in collective graves with the others," he said while weeping.

But Mahmoud was waiting to ensure the status of the father who underwent some surgeries.

Magdy said the terrorists for the first time attacked mosque because they failed to cause rift between the Copt and Muslims and also found difficulties in targeting more security men.

North Sinai province, a mostly desert area bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, has been experiencing waves of anti-security attacks that killed hundreds of police and army men since the army-led ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 in response to mass protests against his rule.

Now they started to target the Muslim worshipers at mosque for the first time, which is an unprecedented development in terrorist tactics in the country, according to security experts.
Lee Hyuk, RoK Ambassador to Vietnam, spoke at the event. (Photo: ATP)

Attending the event were Vietnamese Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung and representatives of some Ministries, agencies and localities, along with Hanoi-based diplomatic corps and international organizations.

In his speech, Ambassador Lee Hyuk reviewed the achievements that the RoK has obtained during national development, along with the progress in the two countries cooperation.

He affirmed that his country is ready to join Vietnam in promoting win-win cooperation and deepening bilateral relations.

Besides, the Ambassador strongly believed that the target of reaching USD100 billion two-way trade revenue between Vietnam and his nation will become reality in 2020.

For his part, Minister Dung congratulated the RoK on its development accomplishments while voicing his delight at the development of Vietnam-RoK relations since they set up diplomatic ties 25 years ago (December 22nd).

He stressed that Vietnam is willing to boost strategic cooperative partnership with RoK, effectively implement high-level agreements and common perceptions, and foster substantive cooperation in all spheres, especially economy-trade and high technology, thus benefiting the two peoples and contributing to peace, stability, cooperation, and development in the region and the world as well./.
home World Archaeologists uncover well-preserved 1,500-year-old Georgian church mosaic in Israel

The Israeli Antiquities Authority has announced the discovery of well-preserved remains of 1,500-year-old colored mosaic from a Georgian church or a monastery in Israel's coastal city of Ashdod.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the mosaic was discovered at the ancient tel, or archaeological mound, of Ashdod-Yam in August during an excavation headed by Dr. Alexander Fantalkin of Tel Aviv University's Archeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations Department, and Prof. Angelika Berlejung of Leipzig University.

The mosaic floor features a Greek inscription indicating the year of the church's construction and dedicating the building to a prominent bishop in the sixth century.

"[By the grace of God (or Jesus)], this work was done from the foundation under Procopius, our most saintly and most holy bishop, in the month Dios of the 3rd indiction, year 292," the inscription stated.

According to Dr. Leah Di Segni, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the date on the inscription corresponds to the year 539 A.D., making it the earliest known appearance of the use of the Georgian calendar in Israel.

Leading archaeologists believe that the new discovery could be part of the long-lost ruins of Ashdod-Yam, a Byzantine city known in the classical sources as Azotos Paralios.

Breaking Israel News noted that Ashdod-Yam, or Ashdod by the Sea, was one of the most important coastal cities in Israel during the Byzantine period.

It was said to be an outpost and the sister city of the Biblical Ashdod, which stood a few kilometers inland to the north, but it became its own entity during the Iron Age and expanded to a city known as Azotos Paralios in the Byzantine period.

"Ashdod-Yam, known in sources from the period as Azotus Paralios, covered a large area, and the renowned Madaba Map shows it with public buildings, including churches and a street flanked by colonnades," the Antiquity Authority said.

The authority's Ashkelon district archeologist Sa'ar Ganor said that this would be the first time that a Georgian church or monastery has been unearthed on the Israeli coast.

Experts believe that the rest of the Byzantine city could be hidden beneath the dunes by the modern southern Israeli city of Ashdod.

"We know from historical sources and a representation on the Madaba map (a contemporary mosaic map located in Jordan, from the sixth century) that the region's center of gravity shifted from Ashdod to Ashdod-Yam during the Byzantine period," Fantalkin said.

"Obviously, the ruins of the Roman-Byzantine city of Ashdod-Yam are waiting beneath the dunes," he added.

The archaeologists are hoping to learn more about the roles of Ashdod and Ashdod-Yam in the history of early Christianity in their further investigation of the complex.
home World China orders travel agencies to stop sending tourists to Vatican

The Chinese government has reportedly banned tour groups from visiting the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica as the Holy See struggles to improve its diplomatic relations with Beijing.

According to a report from Radio Free Asia (RFA), travel agencies in China have received a directive dated Nov. 16 instructing them to delete or cancel the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica from their list of destinations.

"Travel agencies are required to cancel any tours that include the Vatican or St. Peter's in the itinerary," the directive said.

"Any travel agency found to be advertising these destinations in their promotional literature or other products will be fined up to 300,000 yuan [US$45,466]," it continued.

Asia News reported that its correspondents in China have confirmed that the directive is in effect, although there are doubts that it will be observed.

An employee at Phoenix Holidays International Travel Agency suggested that the order was based on the fact that China does not have "diplomatic links with the Vatican."

The Chengdu branch of Phoenix Holidays, as well as other travel agencies, also said that they have received similar orders.

An official at the Guangdong provincial branch of the State Tourism Bureau told RFA that the order was issued at the highest level of government.

"We didn't send this out; it was the central government. The Vatican, as a sovereign state under the rule of the Pope, hasn't legally recognized us. This is a diplomatic issue, so only the ministry of foreign affairs or the State Tourism Bureau would have the authority to [to decide this]," the official said.

The directive came after China and the Vatican took part in an artwork exchange for the first time, a move that has been hailed as a sign of warming relations between the two countries.

Forty items have been lent to the Vatican's museums while 40 pieces from the Holy's collection of Chinese bronzes, ceramics and paintings are scheduled to tour four cities in China beginning in March next year.

Both Pope Francis and his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI have enthusiastically sought to improve diplomatic ties with China. However, relations between the city-state and the communist regime have come under repeated strain under the administration of President Xi Jinping due to the Vatican's insistence that the pope should have the authority to ordain Chinese bishops.

Human rights activists and some academics have speculated that Xi will take a tougher stance on religious freedom in China, following his appointment to a second term as leader of the ruling Communist Party.
The wucai fish jar: A gem of the Eastern Renaissance

Liang-Lin Chen, specialist in Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art at Christies in Hong Kong, explains the deceptively simple composition of this vessel made for the Jiajing emperor

In the Jiajing period, an era of the Ming dynasty that stretched from 152266, the production of wucai, or five enamel vessels, reached new heights in both quality and quantity. Prior to the reign of the Jiajing emperor, Imperial kilns primarily produced small objects suitable for handling. But in the Jiajing reign, porcelain began to be produced on a larger scale  a major breakthrough in porcelain technology. This fish jar is the earliest type of large polychrome-decorated porcelain made by the Imperial kilns. With a height of 46cm, it was made in sections. Painted in wucai with underglaze blue, it required firing at least three times because of its complex colour scheme. The technique conveys an auspicious message, wishing the Emperor fortune as vast as heaven.
Vietnamese Chief Justice Nguyen Hoa Binh (L) and Nepalese President Bidya Devi Bhandari (Photo: VNA)



At a meeting with Nepalese President Bidya Devi Bhandari, Vietnamese Chief Justice Nguyen Hoa Binh briefed his host about the outcomes of his talks with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nepal Gopal Parajuli and their commitment to enhancing cooperation between the two countries courts.

He affirmed that Vietnam attaches importance to the cooperation with Nepal.

Binh also delivered President Tran Dai Quangs invitation to visit Vietnam to the Nepalese leader, adding that delegation exchanges at the head of state level will be a great stride in promoting diplomatic relations.

President Bhandari said Vietnam is always an example of national development for her country. She also highly valued Vietnams successes in reinforcing ties with nations around the world, especially neighboring countries.

She noted Vietnam-Nepal relations have obtained many new achievements, and bilateral ties will be strengthened in the time ahead. The leader added the opening of a direct air route between the two countries will facilitate trade and investment activities.

President Bhandari also asked Binh to convey her invitation to visit Nepal to Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang.

At the previous talks, chief justices Binh and Parajuli looked into the development of the law system in each country, judicial reforms, courts manpower, judicial training, and IT application in courts.

They shared the view that as the two countries are making efforts to foster diplomatic ties, it is necessary for the two court systems to build and step up bilateral cooperation.

They can negotiate and sign memoranda of understanding on cooperation in the fields that both are interested in, like law making, judicial training, smart court building, and trans-national crime prevention. The two sides should also exchange high-ranking delegations and create favourable conditions for high-level courts cooperation, the officials said.

During their stay, the Vietnamese delegation also visited the Vietnamese Honorary Consulate in Nepal and the Nepal Bar Association./.
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NEW YORK - The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau resigned Friday and named his own successor, leading to an open conflict with President Donald Trump - who announced a different person as acting head of the agency later in the day.

That means there are now effectively two acting directors of the CFPB, when there should only be one.

Typically an acting director position would be filled according to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998. But Richard Cordray, along with his resignation, elevated Leandra English, who was the agency's chief of staff, into the deputy director position.

Under the Dodd-Frank Act that created the CFPB, English would become acting director. Cordray - an Obama appointee - specifically cited the law when he moved English, a longtime CFPB employee and ally of his, into that position.

Within a few hours, President Donald Trump announced his own acting director of the agency, Mick Mulvaney, who is currently director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney had widely been expected to be Trump's temporary pick for the bureau until a permanent one could be found.

Mulvaney is a longtime critic of the CFPB and has wanted the agency's authority significantly curtailed.

The person nominated to be director of the CFPB requires confirmation by the Senate, and it could be many weeks or months before the person would be able to step into the role permanently.

Cordray's move was aimed at allowing his favored successor to keep running the agency for as long as possible before a Trump appointee is confirmed by the Senate.

Cordray had announced earlier that he would resign by the end of this month. There is wide speculation that Cordray, a Democrat, is resigning in order to run for governor in his home state of Ohio.

The CFPB was created as part of the laws passed following the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession. The agency was given a broad mandate to be a watchdog for consumers when they deal with banks and credit card, student loan and mortgage companies, as well as debt collectors and payday lenders.
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NEW YORK - Lawmakers who sped a bill through the U.S. House this month may have handed a few more goodies to Wall Street's wealthiest than they realize.

Investors in billion-dollar hedge funds might be able to take advantage of a new and lower tax rate touted as a break for small businesses. Private equity fund managers might be able to sidestep a new tax on their earnings. And a combination of proposed changes might allow the children and grandchildren of the very wealthy to avoid income taxes in perpetuity.

These are some of the quirks that tax experts have spotted in the bill passed by the House on Nov. 16, just two weeks after it was introduced. Whether they were intentional or accidental, it will be up to congressional tax writers to keep or revise them before a final bill makes it to President Donald Trump's desk - assuming both chambers can work out a compromise. Senate leaders plan to vote on their own version of tax legislation by the end of this month.

"There sure are a lot of glitches and loopholes, in large measure because there's so much complexity in this bill that's being raced through," said Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a Washington policy group.

Loopholes aside, the biggest features of the Republican tax plans in both chambers bear a mix of news for wealthy investors.

The good: a potential cut in the top marginal income tax rate; big cuts in business taxes; an end to the alternative minimum tax; and a cut or repeal of the estate tax. The bad: limits or the outright end of individual deductions for state and local taxes and tax hikes on the debt financing that fuels private equity deals.

The loopholes are deep in the details.

The House bill contemplates a major shift in how most American businesses are taxed. Right now, profits from "pass-through" entities, like sole proprietorships and partnerships, show up on their owners' individual income taxes. The House bill replaces that with a new, 25 percent top tax rate on pass-throughs' business income. Supporters describe the change as a boon for small business owners, a way to keep them relatively even with corporations, which stand to see their tax rate drop to 20 percent from 35 percent.

The bill's drafters probably didn't mean for investors in partnerships like hedge funds to use the new pass-through rate, according to David S. Miller, a tax partner at Proskauer Rose in New York. Capital gains, the kind of income these funds tend to generate, would be excluded.

'Drafting glitches'

But there may be a workaround. In a note published on Nov. 13, Miller highlights what he calls "an unusual set of drafting glitches."

Here's how it would work, according to Miller: A fund could choose to be taxed the same way a securities dealer is. It would have to mark its portfolio to market regularly and record any profits as ordinary income. Doing so would allow it to characterize the money it makes as "business income" rather than investing income, and qualify for the pass-through rate.

For a hedge fund that generates short-term capital gains, this strategy could have the effect of dropping an investor's tax rate to 25 percent from 39.6 percent. The manager of the fund probably wouldn't get the full benefit, Miller said.

The Senate plan, which is still under discussion and hasn't yet been put into legislative language, would overhaul taxes for pass-through businesses in a completely different way.

Another provision in the House bill is aimed squarely at fund managers. It targets the so-called carried interest tax break that Trump called for ending during his campaign when he said "hedge fund guys are getting away with murder."

Hedge fund and private equity managers typically get some of their pay in the form of carried interest - a percentage of their investors' profits. Under current law, if those underlying profits stem from investments held for more than a year, the managers enjoy the same preferential, lower rate on the carried interest that their clients pay on their investments.

The House bill preserves this break, but limits it by extending the holding period from one year to three.

Even that tax hike might be avoidable, according to Monte Jackel, a senior counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Jackel notes that the provision doesn't apply to corporations that hold carried interest. So a fund manager could collect his carried interest through a type of corporation that doesn't itself pay taxes.

"It looks like that's what they've written," Jackel said, adding that it's the type of discrepancy that's likely to get fixed once someone notices it. The Senate is working on a similar change in carried-interest taxation, but hasn't released detailed language.

Estate tax

Another quirk in the House bill is so glaring that Richard Levine, a special counsel at Withers Bergman in New Haven, Conn., says he can't believe it was accidental. This one involves the estate tax, a 40 percent levy that applies to the estates of a few thousand of the richest Americans each year.

The House bill would limit the tax to even fewer estates right away and then eliminate it entirely in 2025. But it leaves in place a related measure that allows heirs to sell assets without having to pay income tax on the appreciation that took place before they inherited them.

Taken together, that means that a family whose fortune derives from a long-held asset - think Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway or the Walton family's Wal-Mart Stores - might never have to pay tax on the bulk of that wealth at all.
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Oil on Friday briefly surpassed $59 a barrel in New York for the first time in two years as OPEC and Russia were said to have crafted the outline of a deal to extend their oil production cuts.

Futures closed 1.6 percent higher, just 10 cents below a fresh two-year high. After days of talks, Moscow and Saudi Arabia now agree on the need to announce an additional period of cuts at their meeting next Thursday, although both sides are still hammering out crucial details, according to people involved in the conversations. Moscow had been hesitating over the need for an extension because the current deal doesn't expire until the end of March.

"Russia has been scared of higher prices and has been sort of unwilling to commit to a nine-month" extension of cuts, said Sam Alderson, analyst at Energy Aspects in London. Oil market strength comes from "the more positive signs from Russia."

Also affecting prices was the shutdown of the Keystone pipeline, which is expected to last for several weeks. Without the pipeline, oil inventories will lose more 500,000 barrels a day, more than enough to stir optimism in the market, said Andy Lipow, an analyst and Lipow Oil Associates. The TransCanada Corp. pipeline was shut down last week after it leaked 5,000 barrels of oil, roughly 210,000 gallons, in South Dakota. The line carries Canadian crude to Cushing, Okla., the main pipeline and storage tank hub in the U.S.

"It's a fluke that is significantly impacting the price of West Texas Intermediate," he said Friday. "And combine that with continue inventory declines here in the U.S., that's painting a picture of somewhat higher prices in 2018."

The U.S. benchmark this week has traded at levels last reached in mid-2015 on heightened optimism that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies will agree to prolong cuts until the end of next year. Prices are up more than 8 percent in November, heading for a third monthly gain in what would be the longest winning streak since May last year.

"Everyone is in favor of extending the deal to reach its final goals. Russia also supports these proposals," Energy Minister Alexander Novak told RBC TV.

Novak and minister from other top exporting countries gathered at a summit in Bolivia this week before their meeting in Vienna. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said at the sidelines of the event that "the path" taken by OPEC and its allies must continue.

"It is good news the use of these spaces of permanent dialog to reach agreements to continue establishing the prolonged stability of oil prices," he said.

West Texas Intermediate for January delivery rose by 93 cents to $58.95 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after touching $59.05.

There was no settlement Thursday because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., and all transactions will be booked Friday.

Brent for January settlement climbed 31 cents to $63.86 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The global benchmark crude traded at a premium of $4.91 to WTI.

The oil market is being driven by Russia, said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group. The oil producer has been sending mixed signals.

"At the end of the day, Vladimir Putin kind of favored" an extension, Flynn said. "It's definitely supportive of the market."

Ryan Maye Handy contributed to this report.
People who cheered the Federal Communications Commission's move to reject Obama-era net neutrality rules last week say the government already has all the power it needs to regulate internet service without more regulations.

And that power lies in the courts, as evidenced by the Justice Department lawsuit to block AT&T's purchase of Time Warner, also announced last week. Antitrust law can keep the internet free, they say.

"There's no reason for anyone to panic," said Randolph May of the Free State Foundation, which calls for limited government. "The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission will be able to more than adequately perform that oversight function. The case that has been filed is a good example."

Critics aren't convinced and have promised to mount an aggressive campaign against FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's decision to seek the elimination of the net neutrality rules.

"Antitrust cannot replace the value of open internet rules," said Gene Kimmelman, the president and CEO of the policy group Public Knowledge.

Internet service providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon didn't like the way the FCC imposed its open-internet rules, concerned that the broad power the agency adopted to regulate broadband service could be used to justify future regulation, including how much the companies charge for access.

Those companies lobbied for a move away from the rules established by a Democratic-run FCC and found a champion in Republican Pai, who said his draft order would restore freedom and eliminate "heavy-handed" regulations from the internet, requiring service providers to only be "transparent."

Pai also said he would turn over enforcement of these policies to the FTC to "police ISPs, protect consumers and promote competition, just as it did before 2015."

Pai acknowledged in an interview with Fox News that the free market may allow companies to charge extra for fast Internet.

"In some cases, you can imagine that kind of arrangement being pro-competitive, being good for startups and consumers. And in other cases it might not be so worthwhile. And that's exactly why the FTC is the better agency to investigate it," he said.
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Fiction

1. The Midnight Line: By Lee Child. Jack Reacher tracks down the owner of a pawned West Point class ring and stumbles upon a large criminal enterprise.

2. The Rooster Bar: By John Grisham. Three students at a sleazy for-profit law school hope to expose the student-loan banker who runs it.

3. Origin: By Dan Brown. A symbology professor goes on a perilous quest with a beautiful museum director.

4. Two Kinds of Truth: By Michael Connelly. While he investigates the murder of two pharmacists, an old case comes back to haunt Harry Bosch.

5. Typhoon Fury: By Clive Cussler and Boyd Morrison. Juan Cabrillo chases a Filipino insurgent during a megastorm.

6. The Noel Diary: By Richard Paul Evans. A romance writer delves into a stranger's past when his estranged mother leaves her extremely stuffed house to him.

7. Every Breath You Take: By Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke. Laurie Moran investigates the murder of a wealthy widow who was pushed from the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

8. The House of Unexpected Sisters: By Alexander McCall Smith. During an investigation, Precious Ramotswe encounters a man from her past and a nurse who has her last name.

9. In This Moment: By Karen Kingsbury. A lawyer defends a public high school principal who starts an after-school Bible-study program.

10. Uncommon Type: By Tom Hanks. Seventeen short stories, each incorporating a typewriter, by the Academy Award-winning actor.

Nonfiction

1. Obama: By Pete Souza. More than 300 pictures of the former president by his White House photographer, with behind-the-scenes stories.

2. Leonardo da Vinci: By Walter Isaacson. A biography of the Italian Renaissance polymath that connects his work in various disciplines.

3. Bobby Kennedy: By Chris Matthews. The New York senator's journey from his formative years to his tragic run for president.

4. Grant: By Ron Chernow. A biography of the Union general of the Civil War and two-term president of the United States.

5. Sisters First: By Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush. How the twin daughters of former President George W. Bush grew up in the public eye.

6. Hacks: By Donna Brazile. An account of the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the fights within the party during the 2016 campaign.

7. Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans: By Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger. Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson takes on the British in Louisiana.

8. What Unites Us: By Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner. A collection of essays that define the historical changes and essential institutions of America to suggest ways to overcome divisions within the country.

9. Killing England: By Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard. Major events and battles during the Revolutionary War are told from several perspectives.

10. We Were Eight Years In Power: By Ta-Nehisi Coates. A series of essays that cover each year of the Obama administration and the writer's own journey.

New York Times
A man was fatally shot during a drive-by shooting in southwest Houston, according to the Houston Police Department.

The shooting occurred around 5:45 p.m. in the 7100 block of South Gessner Road, police said.
A Houston police officer was taken to the hospital early Saturday after a reported drunk driver crashed into her car in downtown Houston, according to police.

The police officer was driving south on Fannin around 1:20 a.m. when a person driving east on Pierce ran a red light and collided with her vehicle, according to HPD Sgt. Thomas Fendia.
Dear Abby:

I have hearing loss. My insurance isn't very good, and the monthly payments for hearing aids are the equivalent of a car payment, so I try my best and do without. People who know about my hearing loss will talk louder for me or let me know when they need my attention. Even strangers will repeat themselves or talk louder if I say I'm hard of hearing.

The problem is that my husband refuses to talk louder for me or make any attempt to improve our communication. He has gone as far as to threaten that he just won't talk to me anymore because he's sick of repeating himself. It's like he's taking my hearing loss personally.

I feel depressed and isolated, and I'm not sure what to do.

I Can't Hear You in California

Dear Can't Hear:

Of course you feel depressed and isolated! Your husband either doesn't like or hasn't accepted the fact that you have a hearing disability, so he's punishing you for it. What he's doing is emotionally abusive.

Please have your hearing checked by an audiologist to determine how much of your hearing you have lost. Take your husband along so a professional can explain it to him. And be sure to ask if there may be lower-cost options for an assistive device.

Dear Abby:

When I was 17, I was engaged to a serviceman. I broke the engagement because my mother disapproved. I was young, naive, had no job or money, and I had never disobeyed my mom.

Big mistake! I have paid for it for more than 50 years. I have raised a family, but my heart is still with my young military man. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of him. I've dreamt about him all these years. I still love him. Thoughts of him are consuming my life.

I don't want to risk disturbing two families by contacting him in another state to apologize. Please advise me about what to do.

Seeking Closure

Dear Seeking Closure:

There is no magic wand I can wave to make those feelings go away. I can, however, point out that your memories of that young man are from the perspective of a 17-year-old girl with little life experience. Viewed from that perspective, the life (and person) you have idealized may be far from reality.

Because these thoughts have become obsessive, it would benefit you to talk them through with a licensed mental health professional.

DearAbby.comDear Abby P.O. Box 69440 Los Angeles, CA 90069 Andrews McMeel Syndication
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A Bexar County jury awarded $43.5 million to a Lytle woman injured in 2015 after her vehicle was rear-ended by an SUV driven by an employee of an oil field services company using a hands free cellphone immediately before the accident.

Tuesdays jury verdict against JC Fodale Energy Services, a now-defunct oil field services company based in Shreveport, Louisiana, included $30 million in punitive damages. The employee, Mickey Hunt, was directed to pay $2.5 million in punitive damages.

Personal injury lawyer Thomas J. Henry, who represents plaintiff Jenny Hennes, said the verdict sends a message to companies that they need to be responsible for developing and implementing policies addressing cellphone usage in vehicles.

RELATED: Driver crushed to death in rollover crash at North Side H-E-B

Now Playing: It looks like itas not just Teen drivers we need to worry about being distracted on the road, Parents do it to. Video: Brandpoint

This case really represents setting a standard for companies and people making sure theyre not using their cellphones (while) driving, Henry said in a phone interview Wednesday. He cited studies that show the impairment level of talking on a cellphone while driving is the same as having a blood alcohol level of 0.08  considered to be legally intoxicated in Texas.

JC Fodale and Hunt will appeal the verdict, according to their lawyer, Brian Cano of Houston.

I just dont think this verdict is going to stand, Cano said. We think this thing will probably end up getting retried. We didnt agree with some of the things that went on in the trial court.

State District Judge Stephani Walsh presided over the trial, which started Nov. 6.

Just how much Hennes will be able to collect if the verdict stands isnt clear. JC Fodale filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in February 2016, though Henrys firm indicated in a bankruptcy court filing that they would not pursue any claims against the companys bankruptcy estate.

That leaves the firm to pursue JC Fodales insurance coverage. Cano didnt know the amount of JC Fodales insurance coverage, but Henry said its about $30 million.

Hennes suffered neck, back and shoulder injuries as a result of the wreck and likely will have trouble obtaining employment, according to Henry.

RELATED: 3 suspects at large, 1 detained after police chase through Bexar County

Hennes was driving a 2009 Cadillac STS in stop-and-go traffic on I-35 in San Antonio when she was rear-ended by a 2012 GMC Yukon driven by Hunt, according to a court filing. The SUV was owned by JC Fodale.

Jurors were told that Hunt had texted more than 2,000 times while he was driving in the five-month period leading up to the wreck, Henry said. He described Hunt as a company executive in charge of safety, which Hunt disputed.

He had been in a phone conversation for two minutes just before the incident and he had been texting within four minutes before that, Henry said.

Henry said they discovered JC Fodale had numerous different cellphone policies while driving for both executives and nonexecutives.

Jurors decided the wreck was caused by the companys lack of safety management and Hunts failure to drive carefully, according to Henry.

There are many companies now, Fortune 500 companies, that have 100 percent cellphone bans, which is great because it protects all of us, Henry said.

The jury verdict included almost $7.3 million for physical pain and mental anguish, $2.9 million for physical impairment, almost $1.3 million for medical expenses and $1.1 million for loss of past and future earnings.

READ MORE: Driver allegedly told police he was texting when he hit man at San Antonio bus stop and then fled

pdanner@express-news.net, News researcher Misty Harris contributed to this report.
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Mayor Sylvester Turner mentioned the Super Bowl, Hurricane Harvey and the city's "pension crisis" during Friday night's opening of "A Christmas Carol" at the Alley Theatre in downtown Houston. It was the first show there since storms caused an estimated $18 million in damage to the theater.

But the loudest response came when he shouted out the Houston Astros winning the World Series.

It was indicative of the city's spirit, a reminder that despite so many obstacles, Houston not only perseveres  but keeps on winning.

Photos: Alley Theatre destroyed by Harvey

'A Christmas Carol' When: Now through Dec. 30 Where: Alley Theatre, Hubbard Theatre, 605 Texas Tickets: $26 and up; 713-220-5700 or alleytheatre.org See More Collapse

"This has been a very special year for the city of Houston," Turner told the crowd. "Many thought this night would not happen.

"Tonight demonstrates that we are very much Houston strong. The theater district represents the soul of our city. And regardless of the storms, the show still must go on."

It was bustling and busy throughout the theater, and spirits were indeed bright. Just up the first red staircase, a quartet of carolers zipped through holiday tunes in front of several Christmas trees.

Turner counted down the lighting of approximately 40 trees located throughout the theater just before Friday's performance of "A Christmas Carol" inside the Hubbard Theatre. It was part of the Alley's annual Deck the Trees - A Season of Giving fundraiser, expanded this year to help cover renovations.

The most popular? An orange and blue, Astros-themed tree, of course.

GIVE A LITTLE: Houston arts groups on precarious footing as holiday season nears

Butch Mach, Alley board president, said this year's donations tripled previous efforts  "and, boy, do we need it."

The Neuhaus Theatre, Mitchell Lobby, props storage and basement dressing rooms were completely flooded during Harvey. The water was so powerful that it knocked down a cement block wall and pushed open locked doors. The theater took in approximately four million gallons of water.

The Hubbard Theatre and Long Lobby, where Friday's events took place, were not damaged. They received the majority of the upgrades from a $46.5 million renovation in 2015. There were no signs of damage or ongoing work at Friday's events.

The Alley temporarily moved productions to the University of Houston after Harvey. The smaller Neuhaus Theatre is expected to reopen by Valentine's Day for the world premiere of Suzanne Vega's and Duncan Sheik's "Lover, Beloved."

The work is still not done. Several calls for donations were included in the "Christmas Carol" playbill, including emotional letters from artistic director Gregory Boyd and managing director Dean Gladden. (Donate at alleytheatre.org/alleydays.)

AMERICAN DREAM: 'On Your Feet!' musical celebrates el sueno Americano

A spirit of giving, of course, is what ultimately helps Ebenezer Scrooge become a better man in "A Christmas Carol." Jeffrey Bean, who plays the reformed miser, played on that theme during Friday night's curtain call.

"You may have noticed that as a part of Scrooge's redemption that he has an awareness of the community around him and the importance of that community to his own well-being and his responsibility back to that community," Bean said.

"For us as a community to come together so that we can rebuild and become whole again, there are times when we must ask for help. And this is one of those times."

Cast members then took to the lobby with buckets as people left the theater. And just as the city has done time and again this year, Houston reached into its pockets to give a little hope, spread a little love and give a bit of Christmas cheer.
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
Houston's favorite celebrity couple, Houston Astros ace pitcher Justin Verlander and model Kate Upton just celebrated their first Thanksgiving together as a married couple.

Both Upton and Verlander shared the same cute picture on their social media pages that show the couple casually posing with their family on Thanksgiving Day.
Roman Forest Police Department has partnered with the Mathew Hill Foundation for No-Shave November, bringing cancer awareness and to raise funds to battle cancer.

"If you can wear pink in October, then you should be able to handle growing a beard to initiate a conversation about men's health and cancer," said Chief Stephen Carlisle. "I was inspired to participate in No-Shave November due to many of my friends being diagnosed with cancer and the recent loss of a friend to cancer."

What is No-Shave November? For 30 days, men, are encouraged to grow out their beards to help raise awareness for cancer. The goal of the No-Shave November campaign is to grow awareness by embracing our hair, something that many cancer patients lose, and letting it grow wild and free.

The tradition had been there for years, but the children of Matthew Hill, who passed away from colon cancer back in November 2007, took it a step further by using the cause to raise money for charity.

No Shave November asks men to participate by growing a beard, cultivating a mustache, and skipping that waxing appointment and donate the money saved to help battle cancer. Grooming and trimming are perfectly acceptable for people with a strict dress code at work.

No Shave November also focuses its efforts on benefiting cancer research for all cancers. This web-based, non-profit organization, which has partnered with the American Cancer Society, Prevent Cancer Foundation, and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, donates no less than 80 percent of the donations it receives to participating charities.

Participants are asked to donate the money they would otherwise spend on grooming, like razors and trips to the barber shop.

According to statistics provided by Roman Forest PD, the No-Shave November campaign worldwide has successfully raised over $3.5 million dollars to combat this disease.

To make a donation to Roman Forest PD's campaign, go online to www.no-shave.org/member/RFPD.
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A 17-year-old Texas girl was rescued from trafficking and forced prostitution in the Houston area after Harris County deputies went undercover and arrested three people Thanksgiving Day.

The girl, a runaway from La Grange, was reported to have been trafficked to the Express Inn Motel at 16720 North Freeway, officials wrote in a press release Friday. The alleged traffickers posted Backpage ads to social media, deputies say.

READ ALSO: +250 people arrested in Houston area in sweeping prostitution, trafficking sting

Now Playing: Houston has long been known as a major hub for human and sex trafficking. Video: John-Henry Perera

Tevin Brown, 25; Kendra Kimball, 23; and Jaimian Sims, 25, were arrested in connection to the case. Sims was charged with aggravated promotion of prostitution and unlawful possession of a firearm. Kimball faces a charge of compelling prostitution of a minor and Brown was charged with unlawful carrying of a weapon. One of them reportedly threatened the girl by holding a gun to her heard to make her submit to prostitution.

The teen was released into the custody of her mother and grandmother.

"Rescuing this teen on Thanksgiving Day by our law enforcement was something to really give thanks for," Constable Mark Herman said in the release. "I am very proud of our law enforcement men and women who worked on this special day."

Half an ounce of marijuana and $6,467 in cash were also recovered from the scene.

See mugshots of the people arrested in a recent prostitution bust at a Houston brothel.

Tulsi Kamath is a Digital Producer for Chron.com and Houston Chronicle. You can find more of her stories here and follow her on Twitter @tulsi_kamath.
A 34-year-old man was arrested Thanksgiving morning after a woman caught him having sex with her 16-year-old granddaughter in her bathroom, police said.

The suspect, Stephen Sawyer of San Antonio, now faces a charge of sexual assault of a child. He was booked into the Bexar County Jail on a $75,000 bond.

RELATED: Driver crushed to death in rollover crash at North Side H-E-B

According to his affidavit, Sawyer met the victim on Mocospace, a social network. The two then began chatting on Facebook for a couple days, during which time he solicited nude images from the victim, authorities said.

Now Playing: Former USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar is pleading guilty to sexually abusing scores of women Video: People

On Nov. 22, Sawyer asked to come over to the victim's house on the far North Side, police said. The two then went to a downstairs bathroom, where they allegedly had sex.

RELATED: 2 police cruisers damaged while officers respond to West Side crash

The victim's grandmother heard commotion going on in the bathroom and tried to open the door, but it was locked, according to the affidavit. The grandmother demanded the victim open the door, and when she did, the grandmother found Sawyer hiding behind the door, officials said.

She ordered him out of the house and notified police. During interviews, the victim reportedly told police what happened, and they later obtained a warrant for Sawyer's arrest.

Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

Caleb Downs is a crime reporter for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here.| cdowns@mysa.com | Twitter: @calebjdowns
Shenandoah

Lighting of Angels set for Tuesday

The city of Shenandoah is kicking off its holiday season with the 20th annual Lighting of the Angels this month.

The event takes place on Tuesday, Nov. 28 at the Shenandoah Public Works building on the south side of Municipal Complex between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Refreshments will be provided. The civic club, which sponsors the event, is asking attendees to bring an unwrapped gift for the Toy Drive. The toys and any donations collected will go to the Montgomery County Women's Center.

The city is inviting residents to it's final town hall meeting of the year. City Council and city staff will provide updates to residents regarding Toddler Park, water and trash rates and a possible dog park.

Oak Ridge North

Tree lighting Sunday night

The city of Oak Ridge North is getting into the spirit of the holiday season by hosting a series of events in the coming weeks, starting with the lighting of a 35-foot Christmas Tree Sunday. The free event begins at 5 p.m. when the city also plans to light up the accompanying sign, which reads, "Merry Christmas from the City of Oak Ridge North." The tree and the sign are located at Robinson Road and the Interstate 45 frontage road. The Silver Belles, a senior ladies choir from the Oak Ridge Baptist Church, will lead the crowd in singing Christmas carols. Parking is available in the AT&T parking lot behind Sears, but shuttle service is also provided and starts at the iFly.

Light up the Night Dec. 4-8

As Christmas gets closer and closer, Oak Ridge North residents are already showing off their spectacular display of holiday lights.

During Light up the Night, which takes place Dec. 4 through Dec. 8, anonymous judges will go through town and choose the most festive and wildly decorated homes throughout the neighborhood.

Mixer, Hayrides slated for Dec. 14 & 15

On Wednesday, Dec. 14, the mayor and city council are inviting residents, businesses and others in Montgomery County who wish to "mix-n-mingle" with city officials, said Sarah McClure, community programs coordinator. Refreshments will be provided. The city is hosting its Hometown Christmas Hayride and Santa in the Park on Dec. 15 following the release of students that day from schools. Children are invited to hop on board scheduled hayrides that roam the streets of the city hitting the homes of those who won in the Light up the Night event. Hayrides depart from the Marilyn Edgar Park every hour beginning at 5:30 p.m. A professional photographer will be on site at the park. Pictures will then be posted online on the city's Facebook page, where parents can download them. Admission to the event is one non-perishable food item that will be located to the local food bank.

Public invited to council meetings

Mayor Jim Kuykendall is inviting residents to attend city council meetings to voice their opinions and concerns.

In the city's winter newsletter, Kuykendall said citizens should take the time to come to city hall and "be involved in either serving on a committee or attending meetings to give input and help out"

The council meets every twice a month on the second and fourth Monday.
Officials with The Woodlands Township are warning residents about what's being termed a misleading advertisement making its rounds on social media that boasts of the supposed approval of solar panel installations throughout the community.

In a statement posted on the township's web site, officials say The Woodlands Township Board of Directors has not endorsed or approved the use of solar panels in the community. The statement also notes the Development Standards Committee, or DSC, is responsible for enforcing standards on property use and maintenance, including approving improvements on properties in the township.
Authorities are trying to identify a man who robbed a bank on Friday afternoon in Midtown, according to a news release from FBI Houston.

The man wore a navy-blue hooded sweatshirt as he robbed the Wells Fargo Bank around 1:30 p.m. in the 2700 block of Smith Street, the release said.
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WASHINGTON - Beyond the slick, Hollywood-style cinematics, the Islamic State is targeting Western recruits with videos suggesting they, too, can be heroes like Bruce Willis' character in "Die Hard."

That's the conclusion of The Chicago Project on Security and Threats, which analyzed some 1,400 videos released by ISIS between 2013 and 2016. Researchers who watched and catalogued them all said there is more to the recruitment effort than just sophisticated videography and it's not necessarily all about Islam.

Instead, Robert Pape, who directs the security center, said the extremist group is targeting Westerners - especially recent Muslim converts - with videos that follow, nearly step-by-step, a screenwriter's standard blueprint for heroic storytelling.

"It's the heroic screenplay journey, the same thing that's in Wonder Woman, where you have someone who is learning his or her own powers through the course of their reluctant journey to be hero," Pape said.

The project at the University of Chicago separately has assembled a database of people who have been indicted in the United States for activities related to ISIS. Thirty-six percent were recent converts to Islam and did not come from established Muslim communities, according to the project. Eighty-three percent watched ISIS videos, the project said.

The group's success in using heroic storytelling is prompting copycats, Pape said. The research shows al-Qaida's Syria affiliate has been mimicking ISIS's heroic narrative approach in its own recruitment films.

Not a new tactic

Intelligence and law enforcement officials aren't sure the approach is all that new. They say ISIS has been using any method that works to recruit Westerners. Other terrorism researchers think ISIS' message is still firmly rooted in religious extremism.

Rita Katz, director of SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks messaging by militant groups, agrees that ISIS makes strong, visual appeals resembling Hollywood movies and video games, making its media operation more successful than al-Qaida's.

"However, these features of ISIS media are only assets to a core message it uses to recruit," Katz said. "At the foundation of ISIS recruitment propaganda is not so much the promise to be a Hollywood-esque hero, but a religious hero. There is a big difference between the two."

When a fighter sits in front of a camera and calls for attacks, Katz said, he will likely frame it as revenge for Muslims killed or oppressed somewhere in the world. The message is designed to depict any terror attack in that nation as justified, and allow the attacker to die as a martyr, she said.

The promise of religious martyrdom is powerful to anybody regardless of whether they are rich or poor, happy or unhappy, steeped in religion or not at all, she said.

Pape said he knows he's challenging conventional wisdom when he says Westerners are being coaxed to join ISIS ranks not because of religious beliefs, but because of the group's message of personal empowerment and Western concepts of individualism.

How else can one explain Western attackers' loose connections to Islam, or their scarce knowledge of ISIS's strict, conservative Sharia law, he asked. ISIS is embracing, not rejecting, Western culture and ideals, to mobilize Americans, he said.

"This is a journey like Clint Eastwood," Pape said, recalling Eastwood's 1970s performance in "High Plains Drifter" about a stranger who doles out justice in a corrupt mining town.

12-step storytelling

Pape said the narrative in the recruitment videos targeting Westerners closely tracks Chris Vogler's 12-step guide titled "The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers." The book is based on a narrative identified by scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama and other storytelling.

Step No. 1 in Vogler's guide is portraying a character in his "ordinary world."

An example is a March 25, 2016, video released by al-Qaida's Syria branch about a young British man with roots in the Indian community. It starts: "Let us tell you the story of a real man  Abu Basir, as we knew him, came from central London. He was a graduate of law and a teacher by profession."

Vogler's ninth step is about how the hero survives death, emerging from battle to begin a transformation, sometimes with a prize. In the al-Qaida video, the Brit runs through sniper fire in battle. He then lays down his weapon and picks up a pen to start his new vocation blogging and posting Twitter messages for the cause.

Matthew Levitt, a terrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says it doesn't surprise him that ISIS would capitalize on what he dubs the "zero to hero" strategy because the organization is very pragmatic and accepts recruits regardless of their commitment to Islamic extremism.

Heroic aspirations are only one reason for joining the ranks of ISIS, he said. Criminals also seek the cover of ISIS to commit crimes. Others sign up because they want to belong to something.

"I've never seen a case of radicalization that was 100 percent one way or the other," Levitt said.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the U.S. would stop arming Kurdish fighters in Syria, Turkey's foreign minister said Friday, ending a policy that had inflamed tensions between the two nations.

Trump and Erdogan spoke by telephone following a summit on Syria that took place earlier this week in Sochi, Russia, between Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The gathering focused on discussions for a Syria peace settlement. Putin's plan, which largely excludes the U.S., got a boost on Friday when Syria's opposition agreed to form a single bloc to negotiate with President Bashar Assad.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in a news conference that Trump said weapons would no longer be given to the Kurdish group, known as the YPG. Cavusoglu said that Trump called the arming of the YPG ridiculous. The White House had no immediate comment on details of the Trump-Erdogan call.

The Kurds received U.S. backing as the most effective local proxies against Islamic State in Syria. But the policy of arming them, which began under former President Barack Obama, has been a point of tension with America's NATO ally.

Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist organization because of its link to Kurdish rebels in Turkey, and has been requesting that the U.S. take the weapons back now that the fight against Islamic State is winding down. Erdogan has also threatened military action against the Syrian Kurds, who control about a fifth of the war-ravaged country's territory.

Defense Secretary James Mattis said last week that American forces will maintain a presence in Syria even as the jihadist threat diminishes. "We're not going to just walk away right now," he said, citing the need to ensure progress toward a viable peace. The Russia-Iran-Turkey bloc has called for U.S. troops to go home.

Trump spoke with Putin earlier this week to discuss the situation in Syria, shortly after Putin met with Assad in Sochi. Russia and Iran are Assad's main allies, while Turkey has backed armed groups seeking to overthrow him. The three powers, who've joined forces in cease-fire efforts in Syria, are the dominant players now, though differences remain between them.

While the Obama administration had demanded the Syrian leader step down, Trump now says Assad's departure isn't a precondition for peace talks.

"Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East," Trump said on Twitter before the call. "I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!"
Yi-Chin Lee/Staff

Add the fight over net neutrality to a list of issues U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke is determined to debate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz over.

O'Rourke, a Democrat from El Paso, spent Friday on social media slamming the Federal Communications Commission actions to potentially end net neutrality rules created during the Obama administration. He also used the issue to offer another contrast with Cruz, a Houston Republican who has supported ending the policy. O'Rourke's campaign also launched a fundraising email to supporters vowing to use the issue to help defeat Cruz in 2018.
The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p.
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PEPPER PIKE, Ohio -- Abandoned vehicle, receiving stolen property, animal (miscellaneous); Gates Mills Boulevard: After the staff at Friendship Circle reported a dog being left in a car shortly before 4 p.m. on Nov. 19, police found that the car itself had been entered as stolen in Cleveland.

The car was towed to Mooney's and the dog was taken to the police station, where it was returned to a west side Cleveland man, 37, also the owner of the car, which was removed from the crime computer.

Unauthorized use of a credit card, Creekside Drive: Police are working with officers in Brooklyn Heights after they discovered on or around Nov. 21 that a Pepper Pike resident had about $4,000 run up in fraudulent credit card charges.

Disturbance, Chagrin Boulevard: An officer responded to the Pepper Pike Learning Center shortly after 9 a.m. on Nov. 20 regarding a possible custody issue, with a man attempting to check on his daughter.

Police checked his identity, noted that he was not yet registered in the child's file, and explained the registration procedure.

Driving under suspension, warrant served; Cedar and Brainard roads: A Euclid man, 30, was stopped around noon on Nov. 20 for a marked lanes violation that almost caused an accident at the intersection.

He was turned over to Euclid police after he was found to have an active warrant from that city, as well as a suspended license, for which he was cited.

-- An East Cleveland woman found to be driving on expired registration on Nov. 21, was held on an active warrant from the city and was also cited for driving on a suspended license.

Neighbor trouble, Shaker Boulevard: Police responded to a Nov. 22 dispute over a retaining wall. The neighbors were advised to confer with officials in the City Building Department.

Fraud (impersonating), Botanica Lane: An officer spoke with a resident on Nov. 17 about fraudulent activity involving her personal information.

Followup investigation, fraud, illegal use of credit cards; Legends Way: In addition to unauthorized charges on her credit card account, a resident reported Nov. 15 that she'd received a letter from PayPal indicating an account had been opened in her name.

Car crash, SOM Center Road: A postal worker, 57, from Chagrin Falls was taken to Hillcrest Hospital with possible injuries on the evening of Nov. 16 after his truck was rear-ended by a 2006 Ford Explorer south of Cedar Road.

The driver, a Pepper Pike man, 62, told police he was reaching for a water bottle he dropped on the floor at the time of the collision. He was cited for failure to maintain assured clear distance.

If you would like to discuss the police blotter, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The 12-year-old son of a Cleveland liquor store owner was killed by a stray bullet late Friday when he stepped outside the store with his dad to investigate a gunfight.

The shooting happened about 7:30 p.m. at East 116th Street and Buckeye Road, Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said. Five other teenagers were injured in the shooting.

Officers responded to the area and found the 12-year-old boy unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the torso, Ciaccia said.

The five teenagers were taken to University Hospitals. One remains confined at the hospital with a gunshot wound to the head.

Investigators learned the teenagers were on Buckeye Road when three to four males began shooting at them, Ciaccia said.

The 12-year-old boy and his father went outside to see what was happening, Ciaccia said.

They went back in the store and realized the 12-year-old was shot.

Police have not said if any arrests have been made.

Anyone with information is asked to call 216-623-5464.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Saturday's crime and courts comments section.
PAINESVILLE, Ohio -- A man was injured and a dog died in a Thanksgiving fire in Painesville, authorities said.

The man, who was not immediately identified, suffered burns to his hands after his home in the 400 block of Bank Street in Painesville caught fire Thursday, the Painesville fire department said in a news release.

The fire began about 4:52 p.m., the department said.

The man was taken to a local hospital, then flown to MetroHealth for treatment.

A dog was killed in the fire, officials said.

Authorities said firefighters attempted to put out the blaze from the outside. The fire was eventually contained just after 6:30 p.m.

Officials did not give a reason for the fire.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Six juveniles were shot, one fatally, Friday evening on Buckeye Road between East 116th and 117th streets.

While most families were giving thanks before the holiday weekend, relatives of the victims were left to mourn and worry. A group of men and women broke down in tears and wailing at the shooting scene. They spoke briefly with investigators before leaving.

Mayor Frank Jackson and Police Chief Calvin Williams visited the site of the shooting as the blustery night wore on. They addressed the media but could shed few details on what caused the seemingly senseless violence.

"Condolences to the family who lost a child," Jackson said. "These are all young people. These are all juveniles. We know that when things happen out on the street there's a lot of conversation and we would like to have as much information as we can get in order to find out who did this."

Williams said the investigation was fresh and would need time to develop. He implored anyone who was in the area between 7 and 7:30 p.m. to call homicide detectives or Crime Stoppers.

The chief said preliminary information indicated all the victims were boys between the ages of 12 and 16. The slain child's identity was not released. The other victims were taken to a local hospital for treatment, Williams said.

Williams said it appeared the juveniles crossed paths with another group and shots were fired on the street. Descriptions of the possible shooters were vague.

As onlookers gazed on, investigators worked behind a roped off area numbering shell casings well into the evening hours.

There was no indication the shooting was gang-related, the chief said.

Anyone with information can call the homicide unit at 216-623-5464 or Crime Stoppers at 216-252-7463 (25-CRIME).

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments section.
(2) the President makes an appointment to fill a vacancy in such office during the recess of the Senate pursuant to clause 3 of section 2 of article II of the United States Constitution

As an initial matter, there's the question of what "exclusive" means. Does it mean that if an exception applies the FVRA is an alternative or does it mean that if an exception applies the FVRA gives way? The legislative history sheds some light on this, as we'll see, but for now suffice it to say that there are problems with the reading of the FVRA as generally being an alternative.

More importantly, however, even if the FVRA were to stand as an alternative, what says that it is the President's choice? That assumption is not consistent with section 3347(1)(A), which contemplates statutes that authorize either "a court, or the head of an Executive department, to designate an officer or employee" to serve as the acting official temporarily. Such a delegation of authority to a court or a head of an Executive department would be meaningless if the President had the ability to override it by invoking the FVRA as an alternative. Thus, it's hard to see how the FVRA could be an alternative method of succession that is always available to the President.

2. Legislative History. The White House was borderline dishonest in its press briefing this morning. For starters, the White House called this a "typically routine move". It's not. It's a naked usurpation of power by the Executive. Routine operating procedure would be (1) to have the Deputy become the acting Director, whether under the CFPA or the FVRA (where it is the default setting), (2) not to act without having first gotten an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel, and (3) not violating the separation of powers by appointing a cabinet member who is removable at will, to simultaneously head an independent agency whose head is removable only for cause. Whatever this is, it's not routine.



But let's get into the real problem here. A representative from the White House Counsel's Office stated at a press briefing this morning that:

the Vacancies Reform Act is available, even when an agencys governing statute provides an alternate default regarding who should serve as the acting. In the VA legislative history, at the time it was enacted, the Senate said there are 40 agencies where the agency statute says X person shall become the acting, or may become the acting. And in all of those cases, that route continues to be available as a sort of default. But the Vacancies Act is there as a way the president can supersede the way those agency statutes work. The 9th circuit has sort of agreed with that approach in a case last year about the NLRB.

The problem with this argument is that it relies on an expressly inapplicable part of the legislative history of the FVRA. The Senate Report on the FVRA explains that:

[Section 3347] does allow temporary appointments to be made other than through the Vacancies Reform Act in three narrowly delineated exceptions. First, where Congress provides that a statutory provision expressly provides that it supersedes the Vacancies Reform Act, the other statute will govern. But statutes enacted in the future purporting to or argued to be construed to govern the temporary filling of offices covered by this statute are not to be effective unless they expressly provide that they are superseding the Vacancies Reform Act. Second, the bill retains existing statutes that are in effect on the date of enactment of the Vacancies Act of 1998 that expressly authorize the President, or the head of an executive department to designate an officer to perform the functions and duties of a specified office temporarily in an acting capacity, as well as statutes that expressly provide for the temporary performance of the functions and duties of an office by a particular officer or employee. (This includes statutes that provide for an automatic designation, unless the President designates another official). The Committee is aware of the existence of statutes specifically governing a vacancy in 41 specific offices, 40 of which would be retained by this bill...

The 40 agencies, and the 9th Circuit case cited by the White House Counsel's office all fall into the second exception, which deals with existing agencies. (I'll note that nothing in the statutory language makes clear that this exception even exists...) The CFPB, however, falls into the first exception, for post-FVRA statutes. This is something a first semester 1L would catch, so it's really not a good faith argument for the White House Counsel's office to make.

The FVRA could not possibly bind future Congresses from passing exceptions, so it's pretty obvious that the first exception holds, and all that exception requires is that there be a statutory provision that expressly supersedes the FVRA. That is exactly what we have the CFPA, and by making the claim that the FVRA is an alternative option, the White House has conceded that the CFPA is a statute that expressly superseded the FVRA. The only issue is whether the FVRA stands as an alternative. The FVRA's legislative history makes clear that it does not, and, as noted above, the structure of the FVRA makes no sense if it is an alternative.

3. Logic. Legislative history of the FVRA aside, it's important that CFPA was passed after the FVRA. Legislative history of the FVRA aside, it's important that CFPA was passed after the FVRA. As the CFPA's legislative history shows , Congress considered having FVRA apply to the CFPB and rejected it. I dont think its possible to read that rejection as a decision to have alternative succession mechanisms among which the President can choose. Remember that the FVRA has itself three alternative succession mechanisms: (1) the deputy director, (2) another Senate-confirmed individual, (3) an agency employee at the GS-15 pay scale or higher. The default setting under the FVRA is that the the Deputy Director becomes Acting Director. It would make no sense for Congress to have said when passing the CFPA that "The FVRA does not apply, but instead the President gets a choice between the FVRA and a provision that mirrors one of the three FVRA prongs." In other words, for the White House's argument to hold, Congress would have had to have said, Not a choice of <1, 2, or 3>, but instead a choice of <1, 2 or 3> and <1 again>. That choice adds nothing as option <1> is already on the menu, so that couldnt have been what Congress was doing.

The White House is attempting an internal putsch of the CFPB. This is going to end up in court, and the White House's legal arguments are looking pretty threadbare.
Contributed Photo / Connecticut State Police / Contributed Photo

Saturday marks 95 years since Connecticut State Police lost their first trooper in the line of duty.

Trooper Pearle Roberts died on Nov. 25, 1922. State Police said he was fatally injured in a motorcycle accident while on duty in New Haven.
NEW HAVEN, Conn.  Leroy Harris spent Thanksgiving with his family for the first time in nearly 30 years after he pleaded guilty Tuesday to kidnapping and robbery  and walked free.

Harris, now 57, was sentenced in 1989 to a 99-year prison term, according to reporting at the time by the New Haven Register.

Labeled then by prosecutors as a "career criminal" for whom a harsh penalty was meant to serve as a message, Harris was sentenced to 80 years for convictions of robbery and rape stemming from an arrest in 1983, and 19 years for twice escaping city courthouses.

A rare deal known as the Alford plea resulted in his freedom this week, according to a report in The New York Times.

Since his rape conviction, Harris has spent his time fighting to reverse the verdict, filing five appeals over the last three decades. The Connecticut state's attorney's office recognized earlier this year that the evidence against Harris in the rape case might be tainted.

It was discovered that the prosecutor who tried Harris's rape case in the late '80s had not disclosed exculpatory evidence, the Times reported, and testing showed DNA on the victim's clothes could not have come from Harris.

Additionally, the victim could not identify Harris as her attacker in a photo array. Instead, she identified him for the first time in court. The Connecticut judicial system has since ruled that prosecutors can no longer use witnesses whose only identification of the suspect happens in court.

Prosecutors agreed to let Harris go free if he took a deal. The Alford plea required him to plead guilty to a set of lesser charges in exchange for his freedom.

Prosecutors could get what they wanted  a conviction, at least on paper.

Read the complete New York Times report here.

As for Harris  he got to eat Thanksgiving dinner in New Haven with more than 100 family members.
24 Kasm 2017 Cuma, 10:49

Iklim Ongel





Members of the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission Prison Sub-Commission, CHP Deputy General Chair Veli Agbaba, CHP Istanbul MP Gamze Ilgezdi, AKP Istanbul MPs Fatma Benli and Mehmet Metiner and HDP Diyarbakr MP Sibel Yigitalp, visited detained MP Berberoglu in his cell in Maltepe Prison. The MPs who took part in the visit imparted information about Berberoglus prison conditions and cell. Berberoglu apparently replied to his MP colleagues question as to when detention will end by saying he believed this unjust and unlawful detention would end by 1 December at the latest.



From what has been gleaned, Berberoglu is being held on his own in a six-person room. On the right-hand side at the entrance to Berberoglus cell there is a bedroom and one more empty room. In the daily living area used as a common space, on the other hand, there is a 37"-screen television and a small plastic table covered in books, two plastic chairs, a large bucket, a laundry basin, a fridge and a small water bottle. There is a small samovar in the rooms kitchen section.



The walls of Berberoglus cell are covered with pages from newspapers.



15 July poster



There is also a poster containing the photographs of the 15 July fallen on the wall. With the AKPs Metiner expressing astonishment at this poster, Berberoglu apparently said, Everyone who struggles and gives up their lives for democracy is sacred to me. Be they civilian, or be they soldiers or police officers, everyone who came out into the open for democracy is a martyr and is patriotic. It is not important who came outdoors that day, be they AKP or CHP supporters. Everyone who came out onto the street was fighting against the coup.



On the wall where the table and television are situated, there are photographs of Berberoglus daughter Dilara and wife Oya Berberoglu and a small wooden model ship. Hanging on the same wall are the front pages of the 10 July 2017 Cumhuriyet, Hurriyet and Sozcu newspapers devoted to the Maltepe Rally.
Youd think that a very few things might remain sacred, and therefore safe from the post-Weinstein wrecking ball.

Say, fairy tales. We love fairy tales, indeed need fairy tales, to fill little childrens hearts with hope and wonder and dreams (and also to fill newspapers with happy speculation that one day a handsome prince will come and marry a beautiful girl called Meghan).

And hugs. Along with fairy tales, these are two of our favourite things, so they must be OK, right?

Wrong. Nothing and no one is safe any more. Two examples from last week.

Sarah Hall, from North Shields, claimed Sleeping Beauty promotes an 'inappropriate sexual' message to young children

The Girl Scouts high command in the US issued a Thanksgiving reminder captioned: Your Daughter Doesnt Owe Anyone A Hug. Not Even At The Holidays.

It went on: Holidays and family get-togethers are a time for yummy food, sweet traditions, funny stories, and lots and lots of love.

Are you ready for the but yet? Coming right up.

But they could, without you even realising it, also be a time when your daughter gets the wrong idea about consent and physical affection.

To summarise: girls must not be encouraged to give dear Uncle Billy Bob a hug, even though hes flown thousands of miles for one night only to eat pumpkin pie with the folks, and has even brought pressies.

It could lead to an ingrained expectation in the child, you see, that men must be rewarded for being nice or generous with sexual favours, as the organisation went on to explain.

Ms Hall argued Sleeping Beauty teaches children that it is acceptable to kiss a women while they are asleep

As if that wasnt drear enough.

A mum in Northumberland called Sarah Hall  who claimed to be very much affected by the #metoo movement and Weinstein revelations  decided, after reading her six-year-old boy the story, that schools should retire Sleeping Beauty from libraries.

Why? Because the slumbering princess did not give verbal consent to be woken with a kiss by the prince, sillies!

My fathers right at home in the jungle Everyone kindly asks me how my father is getting on in the jungle on Im A Celebrity... Well, so far hes been excused the high dive on medical grounds, and only done the Dingo Dollar Trial to win meal tickets, so no bushtuckering yet. He seems to be taking it in his stride, as I predicted he would last week: making bad puns, pretending not to know what Coronation Street is or who Ant and Dec are, and talking about the things he loves most  endangered species, and the last remaining wildernesses on this Blue Planet. I think hes giving a jolly good audition to be commercial tellys David Attenborough. He looks healthy and well  and, best of all, itll all be over by Christmas. Advertisement

She tweeted her epiphany without clearly understanding the first thing about the magical fairy tale, which is that the princess was asleep and had been for hundreds of years and had to be woken by the kiss.

Mrs Hall reluctantly conceded the much-loved story could be retained as a resource but only for older children to have a conversation around consent, and how the Princess might feel.

Like you, what I feel is that we could all indeed have a conversation following her intervention, about what is more damaging for a six-year-old boy: reading a sweet traditional fairy tale, or discovering that your mother has managed to unite the country for the first time since Brexit  in thinking the world has gone mad.

But that might not be productive, as there is a more important issue at stake here, and no, its not consent.

Its this.

Not all contact is sexual. The princes smacker was more like the kiss of life, as applied to a drowning man.

What next? Do we have to formally ask permission to give people who have had heart attacks chest compressions, or to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on a choking diner?

A little girls hug is, again, not sexual contact, whatever the Girl Scouts might say.

I dont want to live in this Age of Inappropriate, an unsafe and unpleasant space where innocent contact between family members, and beautiful tales of sleeping princesses, have to be dirtied by bonkers new diktats, which insist all men are potential predators and all females  and children, too  are potential victims.

Far more importantly  Ive had my life!  I dont want our kids to live in it either.

This madness must stop.

Otherwise obsessive adults will conspire to rob innocent children of their precious childhoods before theyve even had them.

Master Billy, TVs king of cuteness

Billy Jenkins, who plays a young Prince Charles in The Crown, stole the show at the premiere last week

The breakout performance of the next series of The Crown comes courtesy of Master Billy Jenkins, ten, who plays Prince Charles.

He bragged he was one of the stars and mugged to the flashbulbs so cutely that he almost stole the limelight at the premiere from the real stars of the show  the two corgis

PS: If the Duchess of Cambridge wears the same coat twice in three years, she hasnt recycled it.

She has had a garment thriftily tailored to accommodate her bump, thereby giving it a new lease of life, just as Her Majesty upcycles old sofa covers into cushions.

Is Paul Hollywoods divorce after two decades news?

Id have been far more shocked if tellys blue-eyed baker boy had remained married, tbh.

Anyway, 20 years is a decent stretch (as my husband commented on our 25th, you get less for murder).

It is the era of conscious uncoupling, not the pity party when it comes to splitsville.

Time for a Paul Hollywood commemorative Unwedding Cake to be rolled out on the high street.
Love them or hate them, November tends to mark the start of the continuous flood of Christmas songs on the radio.

But with the golden classics that never get old, or the new tracks hoping to secure themselves on the Christmas chart for years to come, a definitive favourite has been revealed.

Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl has been named the nation's most-loved festive song because, according to experts, it's a more realistic representation of how Christmas usually is.

According to music experts, the reason Fairytale of New York is such a success is because the lyrics are easy to relate to, as opposed to other loved up tunes (stock image)

Over the past few years, Fairytale of New York has pipped the likes of Mariah Carey, Wham! and Slade off the charts, and this is because it avoids the 'fluffy' version for Christmas.

Sam Sutton, senior lecturer in music technology at London College of music said: 'It's the distinctly edgier offering from The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl that most appeals to our sensibilities'.

'Perhaps the rousing squabble between the two appeals to Brits because it's somehow more real and closer to our actual experience of Christmas - a heady and sometimes tense mix of friends, family and booze'

After several recording attempts and re-writes, the song was finally released in 1987, but never managed to get to the UK number 1 spot by The Pet Shop Boys.

Speaking to The Guardian, Shane MacGowan from the Pogues said: 'Every night I used to have another bash at nailing the lyrics, but I knew they weren't right.

'It is by far the most complicated song that I have ever been involved in writing and performing. The beauty of it is that it sounds really simple.'

But despite never quite getting that number one spot, according to The Telegraph it still went on to be the most-played Christmas song in the 21st century.
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. From A Short Guide To A Happy Life by Anna Quindlen (b. 1952) Advertisement

Dear Bel,

I was always close to my youngest son, but last Christmas he announced he was quitting university after one term and we had a bit of a falling out.

This was a massive shock, as it took a lot of effort to get there and he was so happy, texting me to say so.

Yet for a few years hed worshipped (from afar) this girl from school, but she had a boyfriend. She went off to a different uni, but by November 2016 shed decided to quit. So he did, too. He said hed been unhappy and thought about suicide, but I didnt believe him.

He then started living with her at her parents (calling it home) and they havent been apart since. Mothers Day was ruined because she kept phoning during our meal, so he said he had a panic attack and left!

All summer they worked and saved to go travelling in Europe. Before they left, he was to have tea with his brother and me on the Wednesday, then we would take her out for dinner the next night.

He said he wanted to bring her to tea, too; I suggested it would be nice for us three to have a bit of time together (I split up from his father 11 years ago and brought them up single-handed). He didnt like this. My eldest protested that she isnt part of the family  just like his own girlfriend, and his gran, his aunt etc. It wasnt a slight on her, because I was taking them out next day!

But the girlfriend took umbrage and cancelled our meal. I have tried to be friendly and I bought her a lovely birthday present  a basket filled with things for their travelling  but she didnt even text me thank you.

Her parents are meeting them from the airport etc  and my elder son is angry because his brother makes no time for us at all. They have quite a tense relationship. I feel really rejected and texted him to say so.

I need him to know he is being hurtful to me. The girl seems to have a hold over him so that he is incapable of saying no to her. This behaviour is very unlike him, he is normally a very thoughtful boy.

Shall I not contact him and let him come back to me?

I am very worried that he may think I dont care. Or shall I put up and shut up, even though I dont agree with what he is doing and as a mother I still need to steer him on the correct path?

SANDRA

There comes a point when 'no mother on earth' can steer a child on the 'right path', says Bel

Oh, you have no idea how sympathetic I feel. Many years ago, when my son (then 23) called off his wedding, then went to live with a different lady, I didnt see him for six months.

We had always been very close, indeed. It all seems like a bad dream to me now  and from that standpoint I do want to counsel you to be very, very careful. I cant emphasise it enough, because your letter makes me worried, especially your last thought.

I can understand how disappointed you are that your son gave up his university course, but perhaps it wasnt the right thing for him to do.

Yes, I was there, too  but my response was to tell my son that I didnt require him to have a degree and we must work out something else he could do. That took the heat off right away.

Believe me, I absolutely see why you  after a terrible experience in your marriage (mentioned in your longer letter)  clung to your boys and a brave determination to give them a good life.

Of course you want the best for them both. Nevertheless, there comes a point (Im afraid) when no mother on earth can steer a son or daughter on the right path. Not if that person thinks its time to drive themselves.

As parents, we have to accept that. I know how hard it is, but this is the only way to avoid terrible, terminal conflict.

In your position, I would be mad and worried as hell that this girlfriend seems to be a bad influence on your son, and Id also wish her parents had perhaps been more sensible.

But Id do some deep breathing and tell myself that I must play it carefully to avoid losing him for ever. I would contact him cheerfully, saying you hope to see them both soon.

I wouldnt bang on about how hes hurting and neglecting you (martyrs can be a pain, you know) and Id warn his big brother off nagging, too. None of it will do any good  not when he is in the throes of his first great love.

You must be patient and think long-term. The best you can hope for is that this relationship fizzles out in time and that he is strong enough to accept that  and pick up his own life again.

He will always need you (especially as he doesnt sound a very strong character) so for now to put up and shut up will be the most helpful strategy.

Apart from perhaps asking what he suggests you could give her parents, as a Christmas gift for the household.

Dear Bel,

My problem seems trivial, but its worrying me.

Last October, my sister lost her partner of over 30 years. My husband and I have tried to give her support. She was at our house almost every weekend and spent last Christmas with us  not a great house guest  hardly speaking and not joining in. We encouraged her to try new things and also carry on her volunteering work.

Things are a little better, but she still looks to us for social life. When her partner was alive, her life revolved around him and she dropped friends.

We invited them to stay with us for Christmas six years running, but they never came. My problem is that my wonderful second husband has three lovely sons and six grandchildren  all very close  who have welcomed me into their lives.

Theyve invited us for a big family Christmas, but have not included my sister. We have also a large group of friends and one has asked us to their house at Christmas.

Gently, Ive tried to ask my sister if she has any plans for the Christmas period. She said: I suppose Ill come to you. When I mentioned we may be away, I got a stroppy reply: Dont worry about me, do what you want.

I care about my sister a lot  but also think my husband should be able to stay with his son in Scotland and see his family.

I wont enjoy Christmas if my sister is sitting on her own over the festive period.I feel stuck in the middle and dont know what to do. Any advice?

ANNA

The holiday season may mean family problems for some. One reader doesn't want her sister to be alone during the festive period

Theres nothing trivial about your poor sisters ongoing grief and isolation, nor your dilemma. Regular readers may remember last weeks And Finally  how sustaining active relationships can help to keep loneliness at bay.

AND FINALLY: Sometimes, tough love is the answer My goodness, did I get into trouble with one reader! TC slammed last weeks reply to Tessa as harsh and uncaring. Apparently, Im a right bitch and an ignorant woman. Why? Because when Tessa complained that her husband never loved her, that her marriage is over, that hes unfaithful, I was fairly brusque. Reminding her about self-fulfilling prophesies I said: Please try to change your mindset. Investigate Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and try a couple of sessions with a local therapist. Do the exercise of flipping all your negative statements to make positive ones. Yes, I thought her too full of pessimism and self-pity. But TC thinks I should have called her husband a horrible man and advised her to kick him out. According to this cross lady, I talk hogwash and have no compassion at all. Yet I feel sad for TC, because its clear shes been bitterly hurt, probably by a husband. And she speaks the truth: Some people have no one, no money, no family, no friends, nowhere to turn. Indeed. And if only she could see some of my letters and witness my sorrow on reading them, she would not sneer at me for lack of compassion. Nevertheless I think tough love can be useful. Every week I could switch on auto-pilot along these lines: Oh-you-poor-thing-how-awful-you-dont-deserve-it-boo-hoo. But I truly believe each of us (apart from those with mental health problems) can take control of our own life. Yes, even when things are very tough. I dont believe we should give in to the victimhood that seems to overwhelm so many people these days. This is about my respect for the individual. If a friend is troubled, I dont just murmur blandly: Oh, thats terrible. Instead, I try to work out the issue, saying: Have you thought of it this way? Why should I treat my readers differently? Of course, each story is complex, yet sometimes a simple, bracing response can be very useful in pushing people to think and act. Advertisement

Your email underlines my point; describing a woman who didnt bother with friends or family, but lavished all love and attention on her partner.

Like a machine, the heart can become rusty with lack of use. Now, without him your sister feels she is nothing  and this has made her less than brilliant company. Its a painful truth, but not your fault.

Its hardly surprising your sister was poor company last Christmas, since shed lost her partner just two months earlier.

Since then you say shes a little better  nevertheless the one-year anniversary last month must have opened the wound of her grief.

Do you really understand that  and I mean really understand?

I ask in that way, because Id like you to interpret her morose reply to your Christmas question as not so much stroppy as sad.

Sometimes we look for a negative connotation in somebodys words, in order that we may allow ourselves to feel cross or frustrated with them.

Im not suggesting you feel cross with your sister, but suspect youre a bit frustrated  as well as torn.

Youre right your husband should be able to spend Christmas with some of his wonderful family, and Im delighted you are so blessed with love and friendship.

Have you asked your husband what he thinks? It may be that he, being a kind man, will want to ask his lovely family whether your sister can be included.

Could you three stay at a hotel near the family in Scotland, joining the others for part of the day? That way you could have dinner on Christmas Eve, exchange gifts in the morning, then visit.

If this wont work, then do you know someone else in your wide circle of friends who will be alone? You could book them Christmas dinner at a local hotel  as your treat. If these suggestions fail, you might have to face the fact that she will stay home.

Maybe one of your friends would stop by for an afternoon visit? Or is there a local soup run or charity meal she could volunteer at?

You cannot force your sister to reach out to others, but you can try. If she chooses to stay home, then a shortish trip to Scotland and a Christmas phone call to her on the day is all you can do.

You could offer her a merry New Year with some of your friends.

Bel answers readers questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. A pseudonym will be used if you wish. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.




A genuinely handsome man, in my experience, is a truly rare and valuable thing. But as I dressed that summer night in London, three years ago, I was aware that the man Id be seeing would not have been out of place amid the statues and paintings of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

A classically fashioned Englishman, with green flecked eyes and a profusion of fair hair that curled at the nape of his neck, he was someone I had hankered after for a decade.

He had been married, but was now divorced. I had not seen him for five years, and when he called me and suggested I come over to his house for dinner, I accepted.

Terrible trauma: But Petronella is determined she will not be silenced

I dressed carefully. My long-sleeved short dress was designed to show off my slender legs and distract attention from my arms, which are too long.

I enlarged my mouth into a Bardot pout with lip-liner, and artfully arranged my hair to tumble about my face.

I used every trick, as a trapper does to catch a hare, and my arrival at his house had the desired effect.

I could tell he was succumbing by the warmth in his eyes and the removal of a chilled bottle of champagne from the fridge.

On Wednesday night, I appeared on a debate on Channel 5, part of an all-female panel which would discuss #metoo, and its rights and wrongs

I half lay and half sat on a sofa, kicking off my shoes. He sat beside me, so that we were pressed together. We drank two glasses of champagne and then two or three more.

I could feel my inhibitions, or rather that inner voice which tells us when we are doing something foolish, receding.

The room was swimming when I put on a CD and we danced. We moved unsteadily, drank some more and danced again.

I do not remember who instigated the first kiss. To my surprise, I didnt like it as much as I had expected. His breath was a little rancid and when I saw his face close up, there were red veins that had not been there before. Moreover, his once-luxuriant hair was receding.

But when he suggested we go upstairs to the bedroom, I didnt demur. I wanted to lie down. I felt intolerably hot and tired.

He lay down beside me and the kissing began again. I was neither repelled nor interested. I longed, most of all, for sleep.

What happened next did him no credit. I had not been drugged because I had drugged myself  with alcohol. But he knew I was the worse for wear and there are unwritten rules about that sort of thing. Rules of chivalry.

I remember little until I woke up at three. He was still asleep, snoring. I dressed and tiptoed out of the house.

I hailed a taxi in the London dawn and when the driver pulled into my street, I caught sight of my face in the rear-view mirror. My make-up was smudged and my eyes were those of dying marsupial. Tears and fury vied for my emotions.

Some women, at this point, might have gone to the police or, more recently, joined the growing number who have made allegations via the controversial #metoo hashtag.

Doubtless some women would have viewed the actions of my date as a sexual assault or even rape. Did I have a grievance? Yes. I had not wanted him to go as far as he had. But I did not go to the police, nor did I tell a soul.

Instead, I looked at my own reflection and I flinched. I had led him on at every turn.

Should a mans life be ruined because he had turned out to be unattractive, or because my drinking had made me unable to behave with any sense?

Petronella Wyatt faced abuse after suggesting it was unwise to mix heavy drinking with sex

I was not 18, I was a woman in my 40s. I knew, in my heart, that I bore some of the responsibility for what had taken place.

This is a deeply unfashionable view. In fact, as I found out this week, to express it in public is to risk being vilified, slandered and abused to the point of breaking.

Worse, it is my own sex at the forefront of this gathering mob, cheering like Madame Defarges as the heads of their victims  of both sexes  tumble from their shoulders.

On Wednesday night, I appeared on a debate on Channel 5, part of an all-female panel which would discuss #metoo, and its rights and wrongs. Or so I thought.

My section was entitled Blame And Shame. Let me say in advance that the audience had been told not to heckle, and to respect everyones views. Yet, as it turned out, I was the one who would be blamed and shamed. I have appeared on many TV panels, but never experienced such aggression, hatred and inhumanity.

The majority of the studio audience were female, young, and militant, who seemed to make little differentiation between a touch on the knee and the crime of rape.

There was a token young male who looked slightly dazed and who described himself as reformed. Like a character in The Manchurian Candidate, he denounced his own sex to the rowdy satisfaction of those watching.

I began by making the reasonable point that allegations of crime, including sexual crimes, are better made in a police station than on social media. The audience didnt like it. When I went on to say that women should be aware of how they present themselves and that revealing clothes may well send out a sexual signal, they began to hiss, cat-call and boo.

I was momentarily stunned but, recovering myself, I suggested, drawing on my own experience, that it was unwise to mix heavy drinking with sex. The noise from the audience became something like an animal roar. I could hear the sound of fast approaching tumbrils.

Even as I left the studio, the heckling and abuse continued. I was lucky a kindly producer found a car to take me home, and once there I poured myself a large vodka, my hand shaking, believing the ordeal was at an end.

When I woke the following morning, however, it was to internet headlines and comments normally reserved for serial killers. I was Vile Petronella Wyatt, according to one national newspaper website. Others traduced me, too, with one wrongly claiming I had said that some women were asking for it.

Tweets were published about me that made me glad that my father was not alive to read them. All were defamatory, many made false claims about my personal life, and some were X-rated. And here is a significant and worrying thing: the majority of these threatening, bullying tweets were composed by women, enraged because I had stepped out of line. The abuse continues, still.

The predominant view in the TV studio was that all powerful men, including MPs, were by nature vicious predators. Politicians, it was claimed, felt entitled to do with women what they pleased.

My blood is still boiling. My late father, Woodrow Wyatt, was a Labour MP who then sat in the House of Lords. If anything, he had been a victim of women.

Born in 1917, he married a fellow Oxford undergraduate and then fought in the Second World War. While he was away, his wife left him for a pacifist.

His second wife was the daughter of a Soviet Red Army officer who used to execute White Russian generals. My father had to be taken to hospital after she threw a frozen leg of lamb at his head.

He was scared of his third wife and terrified of his fourth, my mother, who is Hungarian.

From an early age. I was introduced to my fathers male friends, including Rupert Murdoch, Kingsley Amis, Peter Ustinov and numerous politicians, among them John Major, Douglas Hurd and Norman Lamont. Not once did any of them say or do anything inappropriate or intimidating in my presence.

And it was not, I am ashamed to say, for want of my trying.

Young women are sometimes manipulative and the challenge of having a famous man in thrall can be irresistible. On family holidays, I paraded before them in hot pants and revealing bikinis.

Sometimes it worked. They blushed and agreed to do things for me. Kingsley Amis helped me with my homework, and much later Douglas Hurd agreed to arrange for a plaque to be erected outside the London house of my political hero, Sir Robert Peel.

As a young journalist I was with politicians frequently. I attended Tory and Labour party conferences. Occasionally an MP would make a fruity remark or invite me to his hotel room for a drink, but on the only occasion I was seriously bothered, I had, in part, brought it on myself. I used to pick out short skirts for dinners with politicians I wished to impress, or whom I was interviewing. Men are simple creatures and they generally became more expansive.

On one occasion, I paired a short skirt with fishnet stockings and boots. The Tory MP in question, who resembled something on a fishmongers slab, couldnt believe his luck.

We were dining in a seafood restaurant in Brighton, where the conference was being held. Once again, I over-imbibed. I told the poor man he was brilliant, dashing, talented. I complimented him on his horrible tie, which was polyester and as limp as something on a washing line. He then placed his hand on my thigh. I moved my leg, pretending not to notice.

When he asked me back to his room for a nightcap, I refused, rather rudely. He was confused and upset. He called me a tease.

After I returned to my own room, he kept calling me on the phone. I was annoyed, not because I was scared for my safety, but because he had become lachrymose. My conscience was pricked and for that reason I began to loathe him.

At this point, I must reiterate that I decry rape or sex assaults of any sort. They are unforgivable.

But I have sometimes observed female colleagues behaving in a way that would put Messalina  the sexually voracious wife of the emperor Claudius  to shame.

As for myself, I have few complaints against men. Naturally, I find it mildly unpleasant if a man shouts something lewd on the street, and no one cheers when the peony-faced office bore tells another dirty joke.

But these are more a symptom of bad manners and immaturity. British women, moreover, have never been drinking more.

According to the police, there is a direct correlation between rape and alcoholic intake.

Excessive drinking makes women vulnerable  not only to unwanted advances, but to all sorts of unpleasant occurrences, and not least to their health.

Doctors have always maintained that mens bodies can tolerate alcohol better than womens.

But even saying this angers the apostles of the new religion, which is based on the fallacy that men and women are the same.

Science has been subsumed by the simian gabble of the internet, which is no longer considered gabble but wisdom of an occult and superior sort.

The bilge of this new and intolerant religion is running through the veins of our society, as I discovered when I took my seat before the assembled studio audience. Democracy is founded on free speech. If chains are put on our tongues and our minds, we take a step towards tyranny. But there is a new, young elite who cannot tolerate the expression of any opinion that is contrary to their own.

All my life, I have managed to cope with any unpleasantness from men and, as someone who was brought up to take responsibility for her mistakes, I took equal responsibility for that date which turned so sour.

Now I know how it feels to be the victim of something even worse: a witch-hunt that is not constrained by any law or any sense of decency.

I cannot laugh this one off and I will not be silenced  not just for my sake, but for others who wish to tell an unpopular truth.

Nothing a man has ever done to me was as traumatic as what a largely female studio audience did last week.
As the years go on, weddings become more lavish than ever, with money seemingly being no object.

But one particular couple may have created new expectations as they had a cake that was almost five metres tall built for their wedding day.

Le Novelle Cakes, who created the masterpiece, are based 150 kilometres away from where the wedding was being held, so they had to transport the deconstructed dessert.

'As we are based in Jakarta but the wedding itself was held in Bandung we had to transport all the cakes and decoration parts in pieces, then my team and I built it up on site for about six hours,' Miyo Minaki, who works at the company, told FEMAIL.

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One couple may have created new wedding day expectations as they had a cake that was almost five metres tall built for their special day (pictured)

Le Novelle Cakes met the couple earlier this year and they worked together to design a Grand Budapest Hotel themed cake.

'They originally wanted to make a castle wedding cake, with the parliament building as the reference,' Miyo explained.

'Then we discussed further as I proposed several designs and then they finally decided to use this see through wedding cake design - it is unique and has all the elements they like.'

Within the cake itself stands an intricate castle made entirely of sugar, complete with spires, chapels, cherubs, flowers and a moat

Within the cake itself stands an intricate castle made entirely of sugar, complete with spires, chapels, cherubs, flowers and a moat.

The structure is made from metal frame and everything else is handmade and handcrafted.

As if all of this isnt magical and impressive enough, the creation is also lit from within.

The structure made from metal frame and everything else is handmade and handcrafted

The incredible structure took 30 days to build with a team of 15 people, which included the sugar decorations.

'I actually did not expect it to be so tall and we couldnt arrange it in my kitchen earlier because of the size,' Miyo said.

'The couple was also surprised to see how tall it was but really happy on how it turned out.'
It is the most common form of cancer found in men in Britain, with 50,000 new cases diagnosed every year.

And now doctors are able to spot signs of prostate cancer with a simple but highly accurate urine test to avoid unnecessary invasive biopsies.

The test can detect two markers of the cancer found in urine  levels of which have shown to be eight times higher in men who have the disease.

Doctors are able to spot signs of prostate cancer with a simple but highly accurate urine test to avoid unnecessary invasive biopsies

Scientists claim it could prevent 41 per cent of unnecessary biopsies, and it is 98 per cent accurate in distinguishing men who do not have the disease from those who do.

Researchers at the Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands reported that the test, known as SelectMDx, is more effective at detecting biomarkers of prostate cancer, than the current, commonly used blood test and biopsy combination.

It is also capable of distinguishing between chemical markers of low grade, and potentially fatal, aggressive prostate cancer.

Every year in Britain, prostate cancer claims 10,000 lives. The disease is difficult to spot early, given that symptoms  pain when urinating and frequent, urgent trips to the lavatory  tend to arise only when the tumour has grown large enough to put pressure on the urethra. This is when men may first go to their GP with a problem.

There is no universal screening, but many men opt for a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test. PSA is a protein produced by the prostate, and concentrations in the blood often increase if someone has prostate cancer.

But there are other reasons why PSA levels may be raised, such as a benign growth or an infection or inflammation. And in some people with cancer, levels are not raised at all.

Scientists claim it could prevent 41 per cent of unnecessary biopsies, and it is 98 per cent accurate in distinguishing men who do not have the disease from those who do

If high PSA levels are detected, men can be referred for a biopsy, during which up to 20 samples of tissue are taken from the prostate to be examined.

But as biopsies sample only about one per cent of the gland, there is a 30 per cent chance that the cancer could be missed. Biopsies are also carried out with a needle, so carrying a small risk of infection afterwards.

The problem with the PSA test is that it is indicative only, says Dr Jan Groen, chief executive of Belgian-based developers MDxHealth. The test we have developed is cancer-specific.

Men become eligible for the urine test if they have been identified as being at risk of prostate cancer due to their PSA level.

A doctor puts pressure on the gland, causing cancer cells to shed. A urine sample is collected immediately afterwards to test for the biomarkers.

The 225 test is now available privately in the UK through the Lab21 Clinical Laboratory.

Professor Raj Persad, consultant urologist at the North Bristol NHS Trust and Bristol Urology Associates, says: The challenges in prostate-cancer diagnosis include finding a test which is accurate enough so that only patients with potentially significant disease go forward for biopsy.

If a non-invasive liquid biopsy can help minimise biopsies, this will be a great contribution.

If this new test is more accurate at picking up clinically significant cancers, it could be offered as a screening test for prostate cancer.

He added: This will need more rigorous clinical testing.
Julia Roberts was so moved by the tale of a boy who hides his deformed face under a helmet that she begged to be in the film of the book. Here, its author reveals the devastating real-life encounter that inspired her... boy wonder

When Raquel Jaramillos youngest son encountered a little girl with a terribly deformed face outside an ice-cream parlour, he burst into tears in his pushchair. She bustled away, causing her eldest to spill the shakes hed just been to buy and creating a scene with her frantic efforts to avoid one. As she fled, she heard the mother of the girl say sweetly to her own family: OK guys, I think its time to go

Jaramillo, then working for publishers in New York, was ashamed of the way shed handled the situation. What followed was an extraordinary public act of atonement. She wrote the childrens novel Wonder, about a ten-year-old boy with a facial deformity who is also funny, brainy, a Minecraft geek, a Star Wars obsessive and a big fan of pizza.

The childrens novel Wonder, about a ten-year-old boy with a facial deformity, has been turned into a Hollywood film

The book, which has sold eight million copies in 50 countries, has now been made into a film starring Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson.

The 54-year-old, who uses the pen name RJ Palacio, explains: I was trying to spare everyones feelings but I guess we looked like we were running away. My heart broke for both the girl and her mother because this must happen to them a million times a day. I obsessed about the incident for hours afterwards, creating alternate realities in which I turned to the girl and started chatting to her, showing my son there was nothing to be afraid of.

Wonder is a makeover of the moment when I didnt do that.

What Jaramillo did do that night was to write the opening lines of her first novel. Its a work of such resonance and wisdom that it has become a global teaching tool, lauded by charities and the medical profession for its barrier-breaking narrative about what its like to face the world without normal features.

In the book, August Auggie Pullmans eyes droop, his cheekbones are undefined, his outer ears are missing. His shrunken jaw means he eats like an elderly tortoise. He drools and has hearing aids. I wont describe what I look like, he says at the start. Whatever youre thinking, its probably worse.

(Although Jaramillo doesnt explicitly label his condition, it is usually understood to be Treacher Collins syndrome.)

Auggie has been home-schooled in the Pullman familys cosy Brooklyn home by his mum Isabel (played by Roberts in the movie), mostly while hiding his head under a toy astronauts helmet. Wonder tells what happens when he starts at his local school, Beecher Prep, where he is, in the words of his father Nate (Wilson), like a lamb to the slaughter.

What follows are lessons in resilience, kindness, courage and acceptance that do not appear on any school timetable. It says much about their influence that Roberts took her familys battered copy of the book on set and asked Jaramillo to autograph it for her own children, as did Wilson.

Wonder stopped me in my tracks, said Roberts. I read it with my kids, I loved it, they loved it. I hurled myself on the mercy of the producers and said, Please, let me be in this movie. I wanna be the mum.

Jaramillo, on set in Vancouver as an extra with husband Russell and their sons Caleb and Joseph, now 21 and 13, was thrilled by the A-listers admiration, if a bit overwhelmed. She shuns the celebrity circuit, has yet to publish another book and originally wrote under a pseudonym because she didnt want to embarrass any colleagues in publishing.

Talking to her in London ahead of the movies UK opening, I find an author whos as enthusiastic about being an ambassador for children like Auggie  and managing the global grassroots campaign for kindness and empathy inspired by Wonder  as she is writing her next novel.

It comes as no surprise to learn she lobbied hard to have a child with Treacher Collins syndrome star in the film. It was a fight she lost, with the role going to Jacob Tremblay, the award-winning child star of the Oscar-nominated Room.

Even under heavy prosthetics, the cherubic 11-year-old looks far more facially normal than the Auggie described in the book, whose shocking appearance is the pivot for key scenes with friends and enemies. Not that Auggie himself is defeated by his problems. After 27 operations to repair and improve his face, he is asked by a classmate if hed consider plastic surgery. Dude, this is after plastic surgery, he deadpans. It takes a lot of work to look this good.

Jaramillo is honest about the artistic, and ultimately commercial, decision to cast Tremblay. She says: The production team issued a nationwide casting call for an unknown boy with cranio-facial differences. One boy, Nathaniel, came close. The studio flew him to California for a screen test. But acting can be tough. You have to read the lines 30 times, in different ways, with 100 people watching you, opposite Julia Roberts.

Nathaniel had physical limitations, he was hard to understand, and if you have a $20m movie you have to make that call. The family did become consultants on the movie, though, and during filming his dad said to me, Thank God they didnt cast Nathaniel. It would have been too much.

In the end they had to go with someone they knew could bring Auggie to life. I think they made the right decision and Jacob plays the role beautifully and with respect.

From that dreadful day at the ice-cream parlour it took Jaramillo 18 months to write Wonder. Initially rejected, it quickly grew a huge following among teachers and librarians after its 2012 publication, and has since become a modern classic of childrens literature.

Its crammed with scenes from the lives of Caleb and Joseph, such as a lesson in which Auggie lets his best friend copy his test answers. Isabels protective mothering is a straight-up copy of Jaramillos style. Im Latin, she laughs, my parents were from Colombia. We like to know where our kids are and what theyre doing every single minute of the day. Helicopter-mothering? Guilty!

Even Auggies best friends name, Jack Will, is made up from two brothers who used to come and play at our house. Other names came straight out of my kids school directory. I never thought Wonder would be big. If I had, I would have disguised people a bit better!

Julia Roberts was so moved by the tale of a boy who hides his deformed face under a helmet that she begged to be in the film of the book

Wonder isnt just big, its a phenomenon, and the new movie will amplify its message, which moved Roberts and Wilson so profoundly that they led a standing ovation for Jaramillo when filming wrapped.

Director Stephen Chbosky had secretly rewritten Wonders closing speech given by Mr Tushman, the principal of Beecher Prep, who is played by Mandy Patinkin (CIA chief Saul Berenson in Homeland). Jaramillo had no inkling of what was to follow.

She says: I was just sitting there thinking they were re-doing the scene and then I realised the speech sounded different, that it was about me. My name was called and I went down the aisle towards Mandy Patinkin and one by one people stood up to give me a standing ovation. It was an out-of-body experience, like I was floating. Auggie thinks everyone should have a standing ovation once in their life. I guess that was my Auggie moment  and it was wonderful.

Wonder by RJ Palacio is published by Puffin at 7.99. The film is out on Friday
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is back to its 2014 dream team to ensure victory for the party in the crucial Gujarat elections.

National president Amit Shah has brought in 10 experienced leaders, including Union ministers, from the 2014 Lok Sabha election team who he believes could help the party win the state convincingly.

Party sources say that the coming assembly elections in Gujarat are going to be different  and difficult  from the past as the BJP, for the first time, is facing the polls without Narendra Modi as chief minister.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Chief Mohan Bhagwat with BJP National Chief Amit Shah

Sources in the party, however, add that both PM Modi and Amit Shah are aware of this fact and are taking all steps to ensure that this does not affect the partys poll prospects.

To take the feedback on the functioning of over 10 lakh  Panna Pramukhs and 58,000 booth handlers, Shah has handed over the task to the organisation in-charge, Bhikubhai Dalsaniya.

He is the man who co-ordinates with the partys foot soldiers and helps Shah and his core team form key strategies from time to time.

Dalsaniya has been working in the party as the organisation in-charge since 2004, and has extensively worked in two Lok Sabha elections and as many Assembly polls.

Based on the feedback, the core team devises its social media strategies that are implemented by the partys global convener, Vijay Chauthaiwala, who  with Pankaj Shukla  has been managing the social media for PM Modi since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall are greeted by Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India at Hyderabad House during a visit to India on November 9, 2017 in New Delhi, India

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (stock image)

Chauthaiwala is seen to be very close to both Shah and Modi. The responsibility of media management and representation of any issue in the media is bestowed upon Sanjay Mayukh, BJPs national media head, along with Bhupendra Yadav, partys secretary general.

Union finance minister Arun Jaitley gives verbal briefs on what should be the official statement on any issue.

Anil Jain, national general secretary, takes the feedback from all call centres in the 182 Assembly seats.

He decides where and which ministers or chief ministers rally should be organised. Accordingly, all the arrangements pertaining to rallies are done as per Jains instructions.

The problem solvers for all candidates and district heads are Ram Lal and Bhupendra Yadav.

BJP is taking no chance as it is facing polls for the first time without Modi as CM

They are directly in touch with them and solve all any issues they face. The BJP has divided Gujarat into four zones, each under the command of a Union minister.

Narendra Singh Tomar, for instance, has been told to look after Central Gujarat and 50 seats in Ahmadabad.

Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman is handling 36 seats in Surat, 45 seats of West zone and 42 seats of north zone and Ahmedabad.

As for Shah, he is busy conducting meetings with chief minister Vijay Rupani, deputy chief minister Nitinbhai Patel, along with Bhupendra Yadav, national general secretary (organisation) Ram Lal, Anil Jain and Bhikubhai Dalsaniya.

If other senior ministers become part of the campaigning process, they too are involved in the meeting.

Shah takes a note of the development during the day and decides about the next days election strategy.

Interestingly, this is the fourth time in a row that finance minister Arun Jaitley has been made the partys in charge of the state polls.
A policeman was killed and over 200 people were injured when a clearance operation became violent in Islamabad.

On Saturday, Islamabad Police launched a clearance operation against protesters from Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, who have camped at the Faizabad interchange for weeks.

Protesters have been demanding the resignation of Pakistan's law minister Zahid Hamid for changes made in relation to Khatm-iNabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September.

But, the situation escalated into violence, resulting in the death of a policeman and injuries to over 200 people.

Pakistani protesters from the Tehreek-i-Labaik Yah Rasool Allah Pakistan (TLYRAP) religious group shout slogans against government during a protest on November 25

As a result, the government blacked out all television channels and blocked popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stem the escalating violence.

There were protests reported from Karachi, Lahore, Faislabad, Peshawar and the SilakotWazirabad road in Punjab province.

Police and paramilitary personnel tried to disperse the protesters, who have been blocking main highways leading to the capital, Islamabad, for more than two weeks.

Pakistani police officers carry an injured protester during a clash in Islamabad, Pakistan, Saturday, November 25, 2017. Police launched an operation to clear an intersection linking the Pakistani capital Islamabad with the garrison city of Rawalpindi where an Islamist group's supporters have camped out for the last 20 days

The operation was launched after Islamabad High Court on Friday issued contempt of court notice against interior minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads.

Aside from Tehreek-i-Labaik Yah Rasool Allah Pakistan, the protesters also belonged to Tehreek-i-Khatm-iNabuwwat and the Sunni Tehreek Pakistan.

They attacked the house of former interior minister Nisar Ali Khan in Faizabad in Rawalpindi and damaged the gate of his house while trying to enter the premises, but were prevented by police.

Pakistan's Geo News reported that in Islamabad, protesters were firing tear gas shells at the security forces.

They also burned vehicles and thrashed several policemen and other security personnel.

Pakistani security officials clash with supporters of a religious group

According to a security official, more than 8,000 personnel took part in the operation against around 2,000 protesters.

A military spokesman said that army chief General Qamar Caved Bajwa talked to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi by telephone and urged for a peaceful resolution.

COAS [chief of army staff] telephoned the PM. Major General Asif Ghafoor said that during the conversation, it was suggested that the Islamabad Dharna (sit-in) should be handled peacefully, avoiding violence from both sides as it is not in the national interest, and does not foster cohesion.

The main group of protesters linked to the countrywide turmoil and unrest being seen in Pakistan was in 'contact with India', Pakistan interior minister Ahsan Iqbal has sensationally claimed.

Speaking to Pakistani news channel Dawn News, Iqbal said his government has already begun investigating 'why the protesters contacted India'.

'Why they did it, we are looking into it. They have inside information and resources that are being used against the state. They (the protesters) are not simple people,' the Dawn News' online publication quoted Iqbal, who is the Pakistani equivalent of a home minister, as saying.

Pakistani protesters

'We can see that they have various resources at their disposal.'

The protesters, Iqbal added, had themselves fired teargas, usually the weapon of choice of most riot-control forces, at policemen trying to quell violence that has spread to cities, including Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar.

Later in the day, the Pakistan government called in the army to take control of the situation.

The interior ministry issued a statutory regulatory order authorising the deployment of the army to help the civil administration regain control of law and order in the Islamabad Capital Territory.

The army would be deployed for an indefinite period to maintain peace in Islamabad, the ministry said.

The government acted under article 245 of the Constitution to deploy the army to control the situation. The development came hours after Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa spoke to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi over the telephone and discussed the security situation.
Lindy Chamberlain's name has sparked strong emotions among millions of Australians since she claimed a dingo took her baby girl Azaria from an Uluru campsite 37 years ago.

To some she was the hard-faced, cold-blooded killer of an innocent child. Others saw a loving mother who had been wrongly jailed for her nine-week-old daughter's murder.

Those reactions are widely known, as is the fact a dingo did take Azaria Chamberlain and that Lindy was the victim of one of the worst injustices in Australian criminal history.

Less well known is that more than 20,000 people put their thoughts on paper in letters and cards they sent to Lindy and, extraordinarily, that she kept them all.

Lindy Chamberlain pictured with her nine-week-old daughter Azaria at Uluru, then known as Ayers Rock, before the infant disappeared from the family's campsite in August 1980

Merry Christmas: 'Lindy, you have committed the greatest sin of all, CHILD MURDER. May God commit your soul to Satin (the Devil), for torture in Hell throughout eternity'

A poem written to young mother Lindy Chamberlain while she was wrongfully imprisoned in the Northern Territory for the murder of her daughter Azaria at Uluru in August 1980

Michael and Lindy Chamberlain on the steps of Alice Springs courthouse holding a photograph of Lindy with Azaria after the first inquest into the nine-week-old's disappearance

Many of those letters, all of which Lindy donated to the National Library of Australia (NLA), have been compiled in a book written by author Alana Valentine.

Most were written by strangers  with messages ranging from offers of support to damning the young mother to hell  but some were penned by friends and family.

One note in the book was written by Lindy's second-eldest son Reagan, who was six when his mother was jailed for life.

'Dear Mummy, I love you. On Monday I watched Superman II and I am not feeling very well,' Reagan wrote.

'The last few nights I couldn't go to sleep because I was sick and I am up with auntie powell.

'On Wednesday I am playing with David and Davina and my eye is getting better each day and I have been getting tadpoles and some have got big eyes and some are just about into a frog.

'Hugs and kisses. Love Reagan,'

Reagan Chamberlain wrote this note to his mother Lindy when she was serving a life sentence for the murder of her daughter Azaria, who was taken by a dingo at Uluru in August 1980

Reagan Chamberlain with his mother Lindy and sister Kahlia, who was born in Darwin Hospital while Lindy was still imprisoned over her wrongful conviction of murdering baby Azaria

This letter included a lullaby the author had written for Azaria Chamberlain: 'O sing the child to sleep now, And sanctify the hours; In a contrite coming touch her, And cover her with flowers'

The letters began arriving as Mrs Chamberlain and her then husband Michael were mourning the loss of Azaria late in 1980. They continued through her years in prison and have kept coming to this day.

Having remarried, the now Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton still receives almost a thousand pieces of correspondence every year.

Alana Valentine, the author of Dear Lindy: A Nation Responds to the Loss of Azaria, explains in the book's introduction how Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton came to donate the letters to the NLA.

'Lindy remembers that the library first approached her about acquiring the letters in 1986, just a few weeks after she got out of prison,' Valentine wrote.

Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton recalled for the book: 'I was in the backyard. Apparently they'd knocked on the front door and I hadn't heard them so they'd thought, we'll try the back.'

Lindy and Michael Chamberlain leaving Alice Springs Court after a coroner ordered her to face trial for the murder of the couple's baby Azaria near Uluru in August 1980

'I know I cannot express, in words, the depth of emotion our family is feeling for you and Michael. The shock and disbelief at the jury's decision has rebounded to everyone...'

Former Sydney Morning Herald reporter Malcolm Brown wrote letters of support to Lindy Chamberlain, whose innocence he had always proclaimed in private and in print

'And there I was standing next to a big 44-gallon drum burning letters. And they didn't say hello or anything else; they said, "What are you doing?"

'And I said, "I'm burning letters. Why?", and they said, "Well we're from the National Library and we'd really like to have them."

'There were 11 filing cabinets to begin with that had been filed but that didn't include the four or five tea chests, the letters under the bed, in every drawer of the house, on the veranda. They were everywhere.

'So I said to the NLA people, "You can have them but I need to sort them. I'll call you when I'm ready."

'But then it was not until after I had first published my autobiography in 1990 that I called them and said, "OK, I'm ready to give them to you now".'

'Dear Lindy, A short note to let you know we are thinking of you constantly, life seems to have fallen flat since we heard the news. We know that God has his arms of love around you...'

This 1986 letter from Scotland says the author has written to the British judiciary and Parliament including the House of Lords about Lindy Chamberlain's legal plight

Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton arrives at Darwin Magistrate's Court in February 2012 for the first day of the fourth coronial inquest into the disappearance of her daughter Azaria

Some of the letters are filled with love, others drip with hate.

One family even sent Lindy a bib made from old lace for her daughter Kahlia, who was born while she was still in jail.

'Also enclosed is a small gift for your baby,' Geoff and Marg wrote in 1982. 'When my little baby was born 4 months ago I got carried away making bibs - he hasn't even dribbled enough yet to use half of them.

'I have never been too well with words but you must know we care and there are thousands of Australians who feel as we do and we are all with you in Spirit.'

Another letter addressed Lindy as 'Murderer' and asked 'Will you also cut this babe's throat? You deserve life with hard labour.'

'Lindy, you have committed the greatest sin of all, CHILD MURDER. May God commit your soul to Satin (the Devil), for torture in Hell throughout eternity.'

Valentine, a playwright and award-winning author, interviewed Graeme Powell, NLA curator at the time the papers were acquired in 1992.

'The first time we went out there it was this chaotic heap of paper,' Mr Powell told Valentine.

'Don't give up! Someday soon you will be freed from all this trouble and heartache. Remember Lindy Jesus sees your tears and He cries out with you. He feels your heartaches too'

Elizabeth Guy sent this poem: 'A sensitive, lovely, radiant thing Whose beauty the years can never face - God's Hands lovingly forming pearls From which the gates of Heaven are made'

Baby Azaria Chamberlain, who was taken by a dingo from her family's tent near Uluru on August 17, 1980; her mother Lindy was wrongly convicted of the nine-week-old's murder

'But when I came back a few months later, it was transformed. Lindy had devised this filing system and she didn't like the idea of even one bit of loose paper.

'I spent two or three days there and, if she came across a loose piece of paper, she'd immediately grab a file, do one of those yellow stickers, summarise and find the right place for it.

'And she drove us all very hard. She had the children all working on it. And her parents at one stage.'

The author was originally granted permission by Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton to view her letters for what would become a stage play and is now a book.

She spent three months looking through what the NLA held from May 2013.

'From the entry in the NLA catalogue, these letters promised to be a unique insight into the way in which Azaria Chamberlain's disappearance had resonated with and polarised an entire nation and, indeed, provoked responses from across the globe,' Valentine wrote in the introduction to the book.

Dear Lindy: A Nation Responds to the Loss of Azaria features some of the 20,000 letters written to Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton after the disappearance of her daughter in 1980

Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton pictured with Alana Valentine, the author of Dear Lindy: A Nation Responds to the Loss of Azaria, published by the National Library of Australia

THE LINDY CHAMBERLAIN CASE: OVER THE YEARS August 17, 1980  Lindy Chamberlain discovered her daughter Azaria missing from her family's tent during a camping trip at Uluru in the Northern Territory. December 1980  An initial inquest supported Lindy and Michael Chamberlain's claims their daughter was taken by a dingo. December 1981  A second inquest was ordered after the Supreme Court quashed the initial inquest's findings. September 1982  Lindy was charged with Azaria's murder and Michael was charged with being an accessory after the fact. October 29, 1982  The couple was found guilty of their respective charges. Lindy was sentenced to life in prison and Michael received a suspended sentence. Early 1986  The jacket Azaria was wearing when she was killed was found by authorities in a dingo lair after a British tourist fell to his death in the same area. 1986  The Northern Territory government ordered Lindy to be released from prison. 1988  Lindy and Michael were acquitted of Azaria's death by the Supreme Court and their convictions were overturned. The couple received a $1.3million pay-out for their wrongful imprisonment. 1991  Lindy and Michael divorced. 1995  A third inquest into the infant's death was held and returned an open verdict. 2012  A fourth inquest was held and a coroner ruled a dingo did in fact take Azaria from the family's campsite. Michael said he and his ex-wife had no contact. Advertisement

The librarians took Valentine to 199 boxes of correspondence stretched across 'endless steel-reinforced shelves'.

'Inside those boxes was the most extraordinary panoply of human nature,' Valentine wrote. 'Poets, supporters and vicious detractors. People sending apologies, advice, theories and frequent admonishments.

'People who had been touched by God to write, had been moved with fury to write, had had their lives changed or indelibly affected by their encounter with Lindy and her story.

'Pornographers, eccentrics and hundreds of children. People who spent thousands of hours writing to newspapers and politicians and raising funds.

'People who donated their savings and their time and every ounce of their energy. Many of these letters, the ones I was particularly attracted to, were sent to her from strangers.'

A letter to Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton from now retired Sydney Morning Herald reporter Malcolm Brown in 1990 declared the journalist's ongoing support.

Lindy and Michael Chamberlain with eldest son Aidan (right), second son Reagan (left) and youngest daughter Kahlia (front) who was born when her mother was in prison

The tent near Uluru from which Azaria Chamberlain was taken by a dingo on August 17, 1980

Lindy Chamberlain walks through scrub near Uluru during the first coronial inquest into the disappearance of her nine-week-old daughter Azaria at what was then called Ayers Rock

'Even though I remain a journalist and not a public relations man, and have my first loyalty to my employer, I am still prepared to pledge the services available through me to do whatever I can for the welfare of you, of Michael, and of your three beautiful and long-suffering children,' Brown wrote.

Valentine was surprised at how many of the letters from strangers started the same way: 'Dear Lindy', and 'May I call you Lindy?'

A letter from Ginny and Barry French written before Kahlia's birth is signed-off 'lovingly'.

'Dear Lindy, I know I cannot express, in words, the depth of emotion our family is feeling for you and Michael,' the couple wrote. 'The shock and disbelief at the jury's decision has rebounded to everyone to whom we have spoken.

'We pray for you as you approach the birth of your new baby and we hope you will be able to find serenity and peace and that your baby will bring you comfort.

'We cannot know what you have suffered, but we can admire your strength and your courage; you are a wonderful lady.'

Dear Lindy: A Nation Responds to the Loss of Azaria, by Alana Valentine, NLA Publishing, RRP $39.99.
A former Yazidi sex slave who was beaten and gang-raped in every way imaginable on a daily basis by ISIS terrorists during four months of hell has finally found happiness after getting engaged to a fellow refugee.

Fareeda Khalaf, who was 16 when she was kidnapped by Islamic State, feared she would never be able to live a normal life after being tainted by the sexual abuse she suffered in captivity.

She was so badly beaten that her skull was broken in three places, she temporarily lost her eyesight and was so desperate she tried to kill herself several times to escape her tormentors.

But five years on, Fareeda, now 21, has learned to trust again and found love with fellow Yazidi refugee Nazhan Elias, 23.

I never thought Id find happiness with someone, after what Id been through,' she told MailOnline. 'Now Im planning an engagement party and a wedding.

Fareeda Khalaf, a former Yazidi sex slave who was beaten and raped in every way imaginable on a daily basis by ISIS terrorists during four months of hell, has finally found happiness after getting engaged to fellow refugee Nazhan Elias (above)

The 16-year-old was kidnapped by Islamic State in 2014 and feared she would never be able to live a normal life after being tainted by her life in captivity

Crying as she recalled her horrific experience, she told MailOnline: For 10 days I hid while men selected us for all kinds of sexual and physical violence, day and night'

Nazhan added: Im so proud of her. Ill always do all I can for her so she can do whatever she wants with her life now.

Fareeda - who has written a book called The Girls Who Beat ISIS - lived a simple teenage life going to school and dreaming of becoming a maths teacher in Kocho, northern Iraq.

That life fell apart in August 2014 when Islamic State fighters rounded up everyone in her village, saying theyd be killed if they didnt convert to Islam. The Yazidis - a minority Kurdish group in Iraq - follow an ancient pre-Islamic faith.

All the women and girls were kept in a school. The men were taken away and Fareeda unwittingly heard her father being shot and killed alongside the other men.

The teenager then became one of 7,000 Yazidi women and girls forced into sexual slavery when the militia took over her communitys heartland in Sinjar, northern Iraq, and slaughtered 5,000 people.

She was taken to Solag in northern Iraq where the pregnant and older women were removed and shot, with 80 of their bodies eventually found in another mass grave.

Fareeda, her mother, two brothers and 150 girls aged eight to 30 were taken to Mosul, with other Yazidis. She was separated from her family when she was sent on to Raqqa in Syria.

Crying as she recalled her horrific experience and sexual abuse, she said: They did everything imaginable that you wouldnt want done to an animal. We were raped, humiliated and passed around daily.

'For 10 days I hid in Raqqa while men selected us for all kinds of sexual and physical violence, day and night.

Fareeda was so badly beaten that her skull was broken in three places, she temporarily lost her eyesight and was so desperate she regularly tried to kill herself to escape her tormentors

'They did everything imaginable that you wouldnt want done to an animal,' she said. 'We were raped, humiliated and passed around daily.'

When I heard what they were about to do to me I found some glass and slashed my wrist. I thought Id die but they saved me.

There were five or six men at a time, there was nothing I could do to stop them when they found me.

'They did everything you can imagine. Theyd taunt us, sell us, give us as gifts and switch slaves.

Ive tried to kill myself at least four times, once taking an overdose and another time hanging myself, and I tried to escape.'

Fareeda, who now lives in Germany, regularly defied IS and was punished as a result.

My father always told me I was strong, that I should believe Im strong whatever. His words made my hold my head up high, so they beat me more because I challenged them and made them angry. I wouldn't become a Muslim.

I told them real men would fight other men. Id also protect a nine-year-old girl from them, so theyd just beat me instead.

Recalling the group attacks, she said: I was taken away to a room where six - including the commander - beat me repeatedly and raped me.

Five years on, Fareeda, now 21, has learned to trust again and found love with Nazhan: I never thought Id find happiness with someone, after what Id been through,' she told MailOnline. 'Now Im planning an engagement party and a wedding'

Fareeda - who has written a book called The Girls Who Beat ISIS - lived a simple teenage life going to school and dreaming of becoming a maths teacher in Kocho, northern Iraq. Pictured before she was kidnapped by IS

Her life fell apart in August 2014 when Islamic State fighters rounded up everyone in her village, saying theyd be killed if they didnt convert to Islam. The Yazidis - a minority Kurdish group in Iraq - follow an ancient pre-Islamic faith. Pictured as a young girl

It went on for such a long time. They broke my skull in three places, I lost the sight in one eye temporarily and I couldnt walk afterwards for two months. Only surgery stopped the headaches but I still have pain sometimes.'

After four months in captivity, Fareeda and eight others were taken to a boarded-up house in another part of Syria to wait for ISIS men who threatened to pass them around again and kill them.

Fareeda eventually persuaded the other girls to follow her through an unlocked door over what the militants had claimed was mined ground.

They fled to Kurdistan, northern Iraq, where she was reunited with her brother whod survived the mass shooting which had killed their father.

She discovered the 15-year-old had played dead in the same mass grave as his father, covered in a family friends blood.

Fareeda arrived back in Iraq on 17 December 2014, a date she describes as her real birthday, the date I was free from ISIS.

Six months later she fled to Germany - with her mother and brothers who had also escaped IS - and met her fiance there a year ago.

Now 21, she campaigns globally for the Yazidi people, for justice in their name and to preserve the mass graves - so one day she can find the remains of her father.

The teenager then became among 7,000 Yazidi women and girls forced into sexual slavery when the militia took over her communitys heartland in Sinjar, northern Iraq, and slaughtered 5,000 people

Now 21, she campaigns globally for the Yazidi people, for justice in their name and to preserve the mass graves - so one day she can find the remains of her father. Pictured with Nazan

'I campaign to free other Yazidis still held, to get justice, to get misplaced Yazidis a permanent home and to protect our mass graves,' she said.

Looking to her future, she said: I didnt think anyone would ever want me after all that Id been through. But now Ive found my fiance I have his support to go on.

Nearly 3,000 Yazidi women and children remain in captivity and the UN has called the killings of thousands of Yazidis a genocide. Its Security Council is collecting evidence to use against Islamic State.

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney represents another Yazidi campaigner Nadia Murad, 24, whos also written a book on her captivity, and is pushing for the Islamic group to be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court.
Jailed for 472 years: Sex trafficker Brock Franklin

A U.S. court has sentenced a man to 472 years in prison for sex trafficking children, a court official said on Friday.

Brock Franklin, 31, was the leader of a human trafficking ring that reportedly recruited its victims, several women and girls, on Facebook.

The gang then drugged them and sold them online for sex that took place in hotels.

He was found guilty in a Colorado state court earlier this year on 30 counts including human trafficking of a minor, human trafficking of an adult and soliciting of child prostitution.

His sentence is being described as the longest in U.S. history for a case of human trafficking.

'A 400-year sentence sends a strong message across the country that we're not going to tolerate this kind of violence,' Janet Drake, a spokeswoman with the Colorado Attorney General's Office, told FOX 31.

'I can't begin to even explain what he did to my life,' one of the victims told local media. 'He deserves every single minute in those walls.'

The sex trafficking ring counted seven members, four of whom have already been sentenced, it was reported.

Among them was David Fullenwiley Jones, who received and 18-year sentence after pleading guilty to human trafficking for sexual servitude.

Another was Isis Debreaux, who was handed a four-year deferred sentence after she pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Franklin used violence and narcotics to control his victims and set rules they had to follow, including daily earning quotas.

Members of Franklin's ring Isis Debreaux, left, and right, David Fullenwiley Jones

He would then take all of the money earned to support himself and further his criminal business.

One juvenile victim, known as D.Y., told authorities that Franklin recruited her between April and July 2015 after persuading her to leave her parents' home.

The victim said that during this time Franklin supplied her with ecstasy and repeatedly punched her in the face, causing serious bodily harm to her right eye and her ears.

Another juvenile victim, known as C.W., who was recruited by Franklin's ring for around five weeks between January and February 2015, said the leader required her to perform oral sex acts on him in front of other gang members.

Both victims said they were encouraged to advertise themselves for sexual services on classified ad website Backpage.com.

One adult victim said that Franklin used the GPS on her cell phone to monitor her location and, on more than one occasion, choked, pistol whipped and forced her to have sex against her will.

Anti-slavery group Polaris said it had received reports of more than 22,000 sex-trafficking cases in the United States over the last decade.

Globally, more than 40 million people are victims of human trafficking, according to the International Labour Organization. An estimated 4 million of them are forced into sexual exploitation.
An American diplomat was shot in the foot during an attempted robbery while traveling outside of Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian police said Friday.

Stephanie Bohlen, a vice consul, and a man identified as her partner were attacked after stopping at the side of the road while driving Thursday night on a coastal highway in Angra dos Reis, federal highway police said. The man was not hit.

Bohlen was brought to a nearby hospital and then transferred to a hospital in Rio for surgery, according to civil police.

Stephanie Bohlen, a vice consul pictured here, was shot in the foot during an attempted robbery while traveling outside of Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian police said Friday

The U.S. Consulate in Rio confirmed in a statement that a consulate official had sustained injuries that were not life-threatening 'in an incident involving gunfire'. It provided no further details.

The diplomat and her partner had pulled over on the side of coastal highway BR-101, when they were approached by unidentified individuals,O Globo reported.

The attackers then fired two shots at their vehicle, with one of them hitting the diplomats foot.

Pictured here is the car Stephanie Bohlen and a man identified as her partner were driving

The violence in Rio has escalated over the past few months, forcing President Michel Temer to deploy thousands of army soldiers to help patrol the slums of its capital.

Earlier this year, a British tourist was shot and wounded in Angra dos Reis, when she strayed into a rough neighborhood.

The popular vacation destination is about 90 miles (150 kilometers) from Rio.

Stephanie Bohlen (above) and a man identified as her partner were attacked while driving Thursday night on a coastal road in Angra dos Reis, federal highway police said
This photo provided by Chesterfield County, Va., Police shows Christopher R. Gattis. Police say Gattis shot and killed three people late Thanksgiving night

A youth pastor from Virginia was arrested Thanksgiving night after he allegedly killed three people, police say.

Christopher R. Gattis, 58, was found at the Chester home when officers reported to the scene where his wife, Jeanett Gattis, 58, her daughter, Candice Kunze, 30 and the daughter's boyfriend, Andrew Buthorn, 36, were shot dead.

Startled neighbors heard the gunshots just before midnight.

When officers scoped the scene, they discovered the women's bodies inside the home and the man's, in the front yard.

The suspect was a full-time cleric at Grace Lutheran Church on Harrowgate Road, according to his Facebook page.

'This incident appears to be domestic related,' Chesterfield Police Sgt. P.H. Zoffuto confirmed in a news release Friday.

A neighbor and friend to the pastor described the suspect as 'a gentle man,' local WTRV reported.

Mike Brown said: 'We were all friends; we hang out sometimes [and] cook out in the back.

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Jeanett Gattis, 58 and her daughter, Candice Kunze, 30, are shown together. They are two of the victims in the alleged domestic murder Thursday

(L to R): Andrew Buthorn, 36, alongside girlfriend Kunze, Jeanett Gattis and alleged killer, Christopher Gattis

Christopher Gattis is shown with his wife Jeanett on Facebook. Police are investigating the suspicious Thanksgiving night murders at the couple's Virginia home

Candice Kunze is pictured above in a Facebook image. Kunze's body was found inside the home, along with her mother's

'I mean, every time I see them, they're always the same way. [I] had no clue that they were having problems that I knew of, but behind closed doors is behind closed doors.'

A church deacon, in disbelief of the horrific news, said Gattis was 'an excellent man.'

Meanwhile, members of the parish expressed their mourning message after learning of the community deaths.

'Members of Grace Lutheran Church are deeply saddened by the loss of life last night as a result of three individuals being shot in Chester and this tragedy included members of Grace Lutheran Church,' the statement read.

Kunze's boyfriend Buthorn is shown. His body was dumped in the front yard of the Virginia home last night

The late Kunze is shown smiling next to her mom and the youth pastor accused in the murders

The horrific incident took place at the family home (shown) in the 14000 block of Dogwood Ridge Court in Chester

'Grace Lutheran Church has experienced many hardships over the years, but this heartbreak has unique challenges.

'[We] ask for the prayers from the community as our congregation begins the process of addressing the grief being experienced by everyone involved.'

The pastor has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder. He is being held without bond in the Chesterfield County Jail.

'It's just sad that their Thanksgiving ended that way,' said family friend, Larry Patton.

The holiday murder investigation is underway.
President Donald Trump has told Turkey's president that the United States will cut off its supply of arms to Kurdish fighters in Syria.

The decision is sure to please Turkey, but further alienate Syrian Kurds who bore much of the fight against the Islamic State group.

Word of the change in policy came in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Early Friday morning, Trump took to his Twitter page to announce his plans.

'Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East,' Trump said.

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the U.S. Coast Guard at the Lake Worth Inlet Station Thursday in Riviera Beach, Fla. Trump spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Friday morning

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks with people after Friday at his presidential palace in Ankara Friday. The Turkish leader discussed the Syrian crisis and other regional issues with Trump

'I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!'

A Turkish official announced Trump said he'd 'given clear instructions' that the Kurds will receive no more weapons.

The White House confirmed the move in a cryptic statement about the phone call.

In the conversation, Trump informed Turkey of 'pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria.'

Trump boasted about diplomacy as he spoke to the Turkish leader and announced U.S. will drop support for Kurds

The move could help ease strained tensions between the U.S. and Turkey.

In a previous statement, the White House said Trump told Erdogan the United States is making 'adjustments' to its military support for partners in Syria.

It's was a reference to the U.S. halting the supply of arms to Syrian Kurdish fighters.

Erdogan speaks during Russian-Turkish-Iranian talks at Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, November,22,2017. Trump told Erdogan the United States is making 'adjustments' to its military support for partners in Syria

The White House said the decision comes as the Syria conflict moves into a 'stabilization phase' of ensuring the Islamic State group can't return.

That phase follows the recent fall of the extremist group's self-declared capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

The Trump administration moved earlier this year to arm the Kurds to help them liberate Raqqa. That move incensed Erdogan's government.

The White House said Trump and Erdogan also discussed the political process for ending the Syrian civil war and Turkish purchases of U.S. military equipment.
When Amazon officially launches its Australian website next week, major electric appliance, clothing and cosmetic retailers could be in for a shock.

The global e-commerce behemoth is predicted to snatch a large chunk of the retail business from Australian giants Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi, David Jones and Myer - after it's 'soft launch' on Friday.

At least 60% of Amazon's revenue is expected to be made up by electronics, clothing and cosmetics by 2023, and the company is expected to significantly 'accelerate' Australia's online shopping market, new UBS research revealed.

At least 60% of Amazon's revenue is expected to be made up by electronics, clothing and cosmetics by 2023, USB research revealed

The global e-commerce behemoth is predicted to snatch a large chunk of clothing and shoe business from Australian stores like Myer and David Jones

The financial services company revealed more than half of surveyed Australian shoppers would be spending their money on Amazon, as a desire for more - and better quality - online stores still exist.

More than 40% said they'd ramp up their online spending once Amazon's full website was in action, despite small volumes and limited amounts of product expected to be available initially.

While most still prefer an in-store experience over buying online, particularly when wanting to touch a product or seek advice, Amazon will likely accelerate Australia's major shift to online shopping - much like it did in Italy, Spain and Mexico.

Not all is lost for Australian stores however, with analysts reporting a huge drop in market share of international online stores in recent times when local retailers amped up their online presence.

At least 60% of Amazon's revenue is expected to be made up by electronics, clothing and cosmetics by 2023 USB research revealed

While most still prefer an in-store experience over buying online, Amazon will likely accelerate Australia's major shift to online shopping

Amazon is expected to significantly 'accelerate' Australia's online shopping market

Stores like Baby Bunting, Supercheap Auto and the big supermarket chains are among those expected to dodge Amazon's disturbance to Australian business.

While shoppers are still expected to swarm to large malls long into the future, high-street and boutique retailers have a grim path ahead, UBS says.

UBS also predicts the global company will encourage shoppers to price check online before heading in-store, creating a sense of 'customer empowerment', Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Stores like JB Hi-Fi (pictured) have tough times ahead, with Amazon expected to cause serious disruption to its business with customers predicted to chase bargains with the global giant

Major electric appliance retailers, like Harvey Norman (pictured) could be in for a very rude shock when Amazon launches in Australia next week

Supercheap Auto is clear of the wrecking ball heading towards Australian business in the face of Amazon's launch

While Amazon Australia's launch was predicted to be the 'biggest shake-up in retail in a generation' - customers were faced with mark-ups of almost 1000% during its 'soft launch' on Friday.

Tech products were on sale for prices up to ten times more than local retailers like JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman.

Logitech surround sound speakers were being sold by Amazon for $504, while the same speakers could be bought for $369 at Kogan or $397 at Harvey Norman.

Baby Bunting is also clear form destruction, with shoppers still likely to make baby-related purchases in-store

Amazon Australia's launch was predicted to be the 'biggest shake-up in retail in a generation' - but instead customers were faced with mark-ups of almost 1000%

Logitech surround sound speakers were being sold by Amazon for $504, while the same speakers could be bought for $369 at Kogan or $397 at Harvey Norman

The biggest mark-up appeared to be a laptop bag made by software company HP, which Amazon had on sale for $267 compared to JB Hi-Fi's $29.95.

While the Olympus Tough TG5 camera was marketed as $796 by the online giant, despite retailing for just $598 at Harvey Norman.

Analysts from Deutsche Bank said Amazon's soft launch would 'undoubtedly have been disappointing' and confusing for customers expecting a full catalogue.

'Entire categories such as televisions, mobile phones, and grocery segments such as hair-care were missing,' analysts for the bank wrote, reported Business Insider.

While the Olympus Tough TG5 camera was marketed as $796 by the online giant, despite retailing for just $598 at Harvey Norman

The biggest mark-up appeared to be a laptop bag made by software company HP, which Amazon had on sale for $267 compared to JB Hi-Fi's $29.95

'Searches for Apple products such as iPhones, or Sony does not produce the hardware results we intended (the results would mostly be books). Indeed, we observed a number of anomalies on Amazon's Australian website.'

However, Amazon managed to out-price their competitors with some items, including a $1,289 Yamaha surround sound bar that was $200 cheaper than Harvey Norman's offering.

And while the Brother PT-E110VP label printer was more expensive than the same one offered at Officeworks, an Epson Workforce printer was 21 per cent cheaper.

Amazon Australia Price Comparison Item Amazon JB Hi-Fi Harvey Norman Officeworks Alternative Retailer Logitech Surround Sound Speakers Z906 $504.47 $399.00 $397.00 $478.00 $369.00 Olympus Tough TG5 Camera $796.13 599.00 $598.00 N/A $599.95 Epson Workforce WF-2750 Printer $150.22 $128.00 $178.00 N/A $182.25 Yamaha Sound Bar YSP-2700 $1,289.00 N/A $1,496.00 N/A $1,399.00 HP Value Top Load Laptop Bag $267.95 $29.95 N/A N/A $40.90 Brother PT-E110VP Label Printer $103.25 N/A N/A $99.00 $86.93 Source: Business Insider

Amazon did manage to out-price their competitors with some items, such as a $1,289 Yamaha surround sound bar that was $200 cheaper than Harvey Norman's offering

The 'soft launch' of Amazon Australia began with promises the marketplace giant would forever change the face of shopping in this country.

The 'internal testing phase' was limited to a small number of customers who were able to order from the local site, with the full launch expected on Friday.

Despite the hype, Amazon Australia's website still looked the same on Friday afternoon as it has in recent years.

The home screen remained as the Kindle book store, with avid buyers unable to access the new products.
Senator Pauline Hanson has clashed with a Labor candidate in the lead up to the Queensland state election.

The party leader was filmed confronting Adrian Tantari, the Labor Candidate for Hervey Bay, and accusing him of bullying.

Queenslanders head to the polls on Saturday to decide who will lead the new state parliament, voting for candidates in a newly-expanded 93 seats.

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Pauline Hanson's (pictured) One Nation is tipped to perform well in regional seats, but a return to full preferential voting in the state has made predictions difficult

Hervey Bay is a safe LNP seat, held by Ted Sorensen since 2009. Polling from early November had Sorenson in the lead, followed by Labor's Adrian Tantari (pictured) and One Nation's Damian Huxham

'You are nothing but a bully,' Ms Hanson told Mr Tantari, as an onlooker tried to block the camera with a Labor pamphlet.

'Don't be such a bully and don't you put your finger up at me, we don't need people like you on the floor of parliament,' Ms Hanson continued.

'Prove it, Pauline,' replied Mr Tantari.

'How am I a bully? Say it on film, Pauline, how am I a bully?'

Queensland Labor volunteers hand out 'How to vote' cards to voters at a polling booth at Inala State School in Brisbane

Queensland Labor and LNP volunteers hand out 'How to vote' cards to voters at a polling booth at Inala State School in Brisbane

Voters arrive at a polling booth at Inala State School in Brisbane on Saturday during the election

Queensland Labor volunteers hand out 'How to vote' cards to voters at a polling booth

Queensland Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls and his wife Mary Nicholls vote at St John Catholic Church in Hendra in his electorate of Clayfield

Voters stand by a "stop One Nation - vote Labor" sign in Graceville, near Brisbane on Saturday

Queensland Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, member for the seat of South Brisbane at a voting station at West End State School, Brisbane

Ms Hanson posted the clip on social media, with a caption stating: 'I hate bullies!' (pictured)

Ms Hanson posted the clip on social media, with a caption stating: 'I hate bullies!'

'My candidate for Hervey Bay has been subjected to constant, grubby behaviour by Labor's candidate, Adrian Tantari,' she wrote.

'I wasn't going to take him giving me the finger as I drove off from the polling booth in Hervey Bay.

'You're damn right I got out of the car and cornered the coward.

'Annastacia Palaszczuk, I'm publicly calling on you to disendorse this horrible man you have standing for you in Hervey Bay.

Queensland One Nation leader Steve Dickson (centre) at a polling station in Buderim, Sunshine Coast

This time, the resurgence of One Nation and return of compulsory preferential voting will further complicate Labor and the LNP's chances of winning a majority government

Ms Hanson accused Mr Tantari of abuse earlier in the campaign (pictured), posting screenshots appearing to show comments made by the Labor candidate on Facebook

'F*** Damian Huxam[sic],' read one comment, 'F*** all you racist bogan trash,' said another

'Where is your vetting process Labor, because this horrible grub slipped through a giant hole in your net.'

Ms Hanson accused Mr Tantari of abuse earlier in the campaign, posting screenshots appearing to show comments made by the Labor candidate on Facebook.

'F*** Damian Huxam[sic],' read one comment.

'F*** all you racist bogan trash,' said another.

After 28 days on the hustings, three million Queenslanders are finally heading to the polls today.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Liberal National Party leader Tim Nicholls will join the battlers, city slickers and undecided in the fight for their political lives.

Queensland Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, member for the seat of South Brisbane at a voting station at West End State School, Brisbane

Cricket fans are seen posing for a selfie outside East Brisbane State School polling booth as people vote in the Queensland election on Day 3 of the First Test match between Australia and England at the Gabba

Greens candidate Amy MacMahon votes at the Brisbane State High School during the Queensland election on Saturday

But it could be days before a final result is delivered, with counting of booths and pre-polls to be get underway on Saturday.

The calculation of hundreds of thousands of postal and absentee votes begins on Sunday.

It took more than a week before Labor could claim power in 2015, after the LNP was resoundingly dumped after a single term.

This time, the resurgence of One Nation and return of compulsory preferential voting will further complicate Labor and the LNP's chances of winning a majority government.

Ms Palaszczuk and Mr Nicholls are both in for a tough fight, with Labor claiming a narrow lead over the LNP in the latest polling.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (pictured) and Liberal National Party leader Tim Nicholls will join the battlers, city slickers and undecided in the fight for their political lives

Queensland Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, member for the seat of South Brisbane at a voting station at West End State School, Brisbane

Queensland Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls is surrounded by Anti Adani protestors as he arrives to vote at St John Anglican Church in Hendra in his electorate of Clayfield

The premier will start the day on the Gold Coast before returning to her southwest Brisbane electorate to cast her vote at Inala State School.

Mr Nicholls will help his 78-year-old father, Peter, at a polling booth in his blue-ribbon Clayfield seat.

A total of 93 seats are up for grabs, up from 89 after electoral boundary changes earlier in the year, the first in 32 years.

Pauline Hanson's One Nation is tipped to perform well in regional seats, but a return to full preferential voting in the state has made predictions difficult.

Hervey Bay is a safe LNP seat, held by Ted Sorensen since 2009.

Polling from early November had Sorenson in the lead, followed by Labor's Adrian Tantari and One Nation's Damian Huxham.
The minimum investment in maintaining the stable operation of Ukraine's gas transportation system (GTS) is $200-300 million annually with the existing volumes of transit work, Chairman of Naftogaz Ukrainy Andriy Kobolev has said.

"The Ukrainian GTS has been audited by Mott MacDonald, which clearly defined the minimum amount of investment needed to maintain the system in case of transit at the existing level. This is approximately $200-300 million per year," he said on the air of the Priamy TV Channel.

Kobolev noted that revenues received from gas transit in 2017 will amount to about $3 billion.

"It is mathematically absolutely possible to find $300 million from $3 billion. Therefore from the point of view of payback, from the point of view of self-sufficiency, this is a self-sufficient and financially stable business at the current level of income," he said.

According to him, statements about the cost of modernization of the Ukrainian GTS from the Russian side are overstated.

"I think that if to give the contract to upgrade Ukraine's GTS to Mr. Rotenberg, the figure could be $30 billion, it could even $50 billion," he added.
Police found nine Eritrean boys in a lorry at a motorway service station in Surrey.

Officers made the discovery as they opened the rear doors to the vehicle, which witnesses said had a foreign plate.

Surrey County Council took the children into care but says it is struggling financially, with more than 130 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASCs) already under its wing.

The children, who were with an adult, were found at the M25 Cobham services where the driver stopped and called police. The adult was taken to an immigration facility.

Surrey County Council took the children into care but says it is struggling financially, with more than 130 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASCs) already under its wing

The children, who were with an adult, were found at the M25 Cobham services where the driver stopped and called police. The adult was taken to an immigration facility. This image shows a South Sudanese refugee child stand at a UNHCR camp in Sudan's White Nile state

A lorry driver who witnessed the incident on October 13 said: It was a foreign registered lorry and a policeman came along and opened up the back, then within about ten minutes there were three or four more police cars and you could actually see the people in the back. They looked African and quite young. A source said they were from Eritrea.

More than 4,200 child asylum seekers were in council care last year  a 54 per cent increase on the previous year. The surge has had a significant impact in Surrey, said council leader David Hodge.

He said the care and support needed for UASCs, who can suffer from psychological problems, costs more than 50,000 a year per child and that the amount of money received from Whitehall was not enough. He said he has written to immigration minister Brandon Lewis, demanding more funding.

Refugees and migrants have been trying to find a way to Europe in the hope that their lives will be better there. These men were pictured leaving the Calais Jungle camp today

Mr Hodge said: As you can imagine, finding the right care and support for these vulnerable young people  arriving alone from countries around the globe  is difficult and expensive work.

The Home Office said that last year it increased funding to local councils by 20 per cent for unaccompanied asylum seeking children under 16.
Highly respected surgeon Colin Baillie was accused of sexism after using the word 'manfully' in a letter to a patient

The toddler in Colin Baillies consulting room at the Royal Preston Hospital in Lancashire had blonde hair and a bubbly personality.

Jessica Martin was, in the words of paediatric surgeon Mr Baillie, a lovely young lady.

He said so in a follow-up letter to her parents; it was a nice touch which typified Mr Baillies warm bedside manner, a quality not all consultants possess.

Jessicas condition, it should be stressed, was not critical, nor were her symptoms causing her discomfort. Nevertheless, her GP took the precaution of referring her to Mr Baillie.

Mr Baillie is actually based at the renowned Alder Hey Childrens Hospital, Liverpool, but holds regular clinics at the Royal Preston; he has more than 30 years of experience and is widely respected in his field. This is evident from the messages of thanks left on Alder Heys own website.

One glowing testimonial is from the parents of a little girl who was born with a heart condition and had to undergo a series of operations at Alder Hey last year. The doctor they singled out was Mr Baillie.

Jo Martin, pictured here with her husband Billy, daughter Jessica and sons George and Sam (centre) took offence to the word and said the word 'manfully' was so sexist

Freelance typist Mrs Martin had been too ill to attend the consultation at a hospital in Preston so her husband went along instead

You saved my daughters life, they wrote. Thank you  you will never know the gratitude we have for you.

Nor is it an isolated tribute. Mr Colin Baillie is fantastic surgeon and I can never thank him enough for saving my beautiful daughter, were the heartfelt words of another grateful mum.

So Jessica, aged three  who lives in Chorley, Lancashire, with her mum and dad, Jo and Billy Martin, and her two brothers  could not have been in safer hands.

Mrs Martin, 33, a freelance typist, was unable to attend the consultation about her daughter with Mr Baillie on October 20, because she was ill. Jessica was accompanied instead by web designer Mr Martin. The examination went well. And Jessicas family were assured there was nothing to be unduly concerned about.

Why are we telling you about Jessica Martins routine appointment at the Royal Preston?

Because of what happened next: an almost farcical chain of events which, for many people, epitomises the kind of world we now live in, where all too often offence is sought, where none really exists, and common sense has all but disappeared.

This is the letter that caused a top surgeon to be accused of sexism and a hospital trust to issue a grovelling apology

Mr Baillie's letter was headed 'NEW APPOINTMENT' and in it he described three-year-old Jessica as a lovely young lady

The letter went on: Unfortunately, her [Jessicas] mum could not be at the clinic  as she has not been well and father stepped in manfully

Exactly how such a dedicated doctor like Mr Baillie became the victim of what can only be described as politically correct fanaticism is the cruel irony at the heart of this story and will be revealed in due course.

But the very fact he became a story in the first place, culminating in the health trust that runs the Royal Preston apologising on Mr Baillies behalf, is an indictment in itself.

So, back to the events in question.

Some weeks after Jessicas appointment, the familys GP received a standard letter from Mr Baillie informing him that he would need to see Jessica again in three months time. A copy also landed on the doormat of the Martins terrace house.

The correspondence from Mr Baillie, under the utterly uncontroversial heading NEW APPOINTMENT, consisted of just three paragraphs in which, as already stated, he described Jessica as a lovely young lady. Yet, by the time Mrs Martin had put the letter down, she was practically shaking with indignation, judging by her comments last week.

I could not believe it when I read it, she said. I dont know what the consultant was thinking. What had Mr Baillie done to elicit such a reaction? What heinous crime had he committed? What terrible insult had he hurled at Mrs Martin to make her feel this way?

The answer, it emerged, was in the second sentence. It read: Unfortunately, her [Jessicas] mum could not be at the clinic  as she has not been well and father stepped in manfully.

Confused? You certainly wouldnt be alone.

In fact, it was Mr Baillies use of the last word  manfully  that left Mrs Martin in a state of shock. I read it out loud, she added, and I was like: What? Surely I read that wrong. I thought: They cant have put that.

Mrs Martin was left in a state of shock after reading the letter

Now, to the vast majority of us, manfully is a perfectly inoffensive, everyday adverb. According to the Oxford dictionary, it simply means brave and resolute.

Here it was clearly applied  or intended  in a fairly light-hearted way.

Mrs Martin, who has started her own parenting blog chronicling the daily challenges of bringing up three young children, saw things rather differently.

Manfully was loaded with sexist connotations, she claimed. So sexist was the phrase she actually used. She could not imagine, she said, Mr Baillie using womanfully in the same context.

The consultant, she added, did not know that I was the one who was supposed to be taking her.

'As far as he should be concerned, fathers and mothers should have equal responsibility for taking their children to hospital.

'I couldnt take her because I was ill and was already distressed about not being there. It made me feel guilty because I could not attend and it was like they were pointing it out.

Distressed. Guilty. Sexist. Strong words.

All because of one harmless word Colin Baillie used to humanise a bland letter in which, remember, he also referred to her daughter as this lovely young lady. How many other paediatricians would have bothered to say that about one of their patients?

Even if a semantic  some might say, pedantic  justification could be found for Mrs Martins argument, it should have been perfectly obvious to anyone that Mr Baillie meant no offence.

Mrs Martin is a devoted mother, of that there is no doubt, which is apparent from her blog. Married to Billy, mum to Sam, Jess and George, it begins. She says she is usually to be found under a mammoth pile of ironing  we have a dog named Toby and a hamster named Nibbles.

The family, including Mrs Martin, are popular with their neighbours. But wouldnt most women, even the most strident of feminists, have overlooked Mr Baillies use of manfully, if indeed there was anything to overlook?

Instead, Mrs Martin made her feelings very public on her own Facebook page, with an extract of the incriminating sentence, around midday on November 12.

This sentence, she wrote, was in a letter we received yesterday from Jessicas hospital consultant! Father stepped in manfully! Surely father brought her to the hospital because he was her dad?! Wth!! [what the hell/heck].

Mrs Martin agreed to be interviewed by a press agency in Liverpool. Their story ended up splashed across newspapers and websites around the country

At 7.20 pm on the same day, Mrs Martin shared the same concerns on Unmumsy Mum, a popular parenting site on Facebook.

The initial reaction on Facebook was supportive. Wow, wrote one woman. Jeez, wrote another. Seriously? was the response of a third, who read Jo Martins manfully post.

The post was also spotted by a local press agency in Liverpool. Jo and Billy Martin agreed to be interviewed and photographed along with Jessica. The next day (November 15) the story was splashed across newspapers and websites.

Hospital accused of sexism after praising father for manfully bringing daughter for treatment, read one headline.

Underneath was a picture of the family holding Colin Baillies offensive letter aloft for the camera.

What went unreported was the fact that Mrs Martin was even considering making an official complaint about Mr Baillie to the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Royal Preston Hospital.

I have not decided whether to or not, she told the journalist from the press agency.

The Trust, it transpired, did not receive a complaint. But  and this is crucial when it comes to analysing the kind of world we are now living in  it apologised anyway.

The apology was given added weight because it came from Chief Executive Karen Partington.

Since the story broke, the Martins have been on the receiving end of a backlash online, with one person saying: Stop taking offence at imagined slights

The wording of the apology, which the trust said was also on behalf of Mr Baillie, read: We apologise if any offence was taken, that was not the intention. Our priority is to provide excellent care with compassion for our patients and make them feel as comfortable as possible while they are being treated.

Isnt that precisely what Colin Baillie did?

He didnt know anything about the story until his mother showed him the coverage the next day, said Mr Baillies wife Christine when we called at her home on the Wirral.

The Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said that it did try to get in touch with Mr Baillie and left a message for him to contact them. Clearly, he couldnt have got it.

Nevertheless, it is perhaps typical of Mr Baillie that, according to his wife, he has no complaints about the apology either way.

By now, the initial positive support for Mrs Martin on social media had died down and instead turned into an angry backlash.

There is no excuse for the abusive comments which were then directed at her. But many others, it has to be said, went to the heart of the matter. Too many people are enjoying taking offence over the smallest thing, read one.

Too easy to complain about nonsense these days, read another. We really have lost all sense of perspective . . . Stop taking offence at imagined slights...

Should be writing to thank the surgeon. On they went.

All pointed to the uncomfortable truth that there is more than a hint of McCarthyism around the culture of political correctness that holds sway today.

Despite not receiving an official complaint, the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust issued an apology over the incident

But surely there could not be a more unlikely, or less deserving, victim of the new orthodoxy than Mr Baillie, a man with an unblemished career who is widely respected both inside, and outside Alder Hey and the Royal Preston hospital.

Mr Baillie, who is in his 50s and himself the father of three children, was among a group of doctors who swam across the English Channel to raise money for charity back in 2008.

He is also an active member of his local church in the village of Upton, a few miles from Birkenhead, where he sings in the choir and where he wrote about his work in the parish newsletter.

I suppose if someone was to ask me what I do, I would reply that I am first and foremost a paediatrician and lastly a surgeon  totally dependent on the skills of those around me (nurses, radiologists, anaesthetists, and other hospital staff) to practise, he said.

Working at Alder Hey Childrens Hospital is a team effort, and a genuinely humbling experience.

Doesnt this say everything about Colin Baillie  both the man and the doctor?

As does the way he has handled the recent controversy.

He doesnt blame the parents, said Mrs Baillie. He doesnt think they understood what would happen [once they voiced their views] and he has no problem with them. His main concern now is for their welfare.

'He is upset about the treatment the mother, in particular, has received on social media. It has been blown totally out of proportion.

Maybe so. Some might say, though, that Colin Baillie has behaved rather manfully in the circumstances.
The Environment Secretary (pictured outside Downing Street) hit out at online firms after two million web users read misleading claims that MPs had voted against treating animals as sentient beings

Michael Gove launched an attack against social media yesterday for 'corrupting and distorting' politics by spreading fake news.

The Environment Secretary hit out at online firms after two million web users read misleading claims that MPs had voted against treating animals as sentient beings.

Celebrities helped to share the story that MPs had voted that animals cannot feel pain or emotions.

Former Great British Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins tweeted that MPs were 'shameful b******s', while broadcaster Ben Fogle retweeted the story. Both have now retracted their claims.

And late on Thursday night, the online Independent newspaper grudgingly retracted its original story.

On Radio 4's Today programme yesterday, Mr Gove blamed social media for presenting a false impression after the Commons rejected an amendment to Brexit legislation which would have brought EU animal protection provisions into UK law.

The Environment Secretary said: 'On social media there was a suggestion that somehow MPs had voted against the principle that animals are sentient beings.

'That did not happen. That was absolutely wrong. There's an unhappy tendency now for people to believe that the raw and authentic voice of what's shared on social media is more reliable than what is said in Hansard or on the BBC.

Celebrities helped to share the story that MPs had voted that animals cannot feel pain or emotions. Former Great British Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins (pictured) tweeted that MPs were 'shameful b******s', while broadcaster Ben Fogle retweeted the story. Both have now retracted their claims

'We've got to stand up against the way in which social media corrupts and distorts both reporting and decision making.'

Mr Gove insisted there would be no gap in Britain's animal welfare provisions after Brexit 'because I think what we are going to do is ensure we have stronger protection written into law in order to ensure that there is no gap.

'It is better to have an absolutely well-designed piece of UK legislation, rather than a poorly designed piece of EU legislation'.

The row came after an amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill  which would have transferred an EU protocol on animal sentience into domestic law  was voted down last week.

Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas, who tabled the amendment, had raised concerns that current rules risked dropping out of UK law by accident once Britain leaves.

Countdown's Rachel Riley (pictured) posted a link to a web article saying the Government had decided to 'exclude the status of animals as sentient beings'. She wrote: 'The possible reasons why Tory MPs would have voted [for this] baffle and worry me.' She did not respond to requests for comment

The Independent was accused of spreading fake news after it published a story headlined: 'The Tories have rejected all scientists and voted that animals don't feel pain.' In a clarification, the paper said its report 'was not right'.

'Put simply, what happened is this  MPs did not vote that animals are not sentient creatures,' it said.

Yesterday Mr Gove said Brexit could lead to stronger animal welfare measures in areas such as live exports and puppy farming.

'There is a particular concern  that outside the European Union our democratic institutions can't do better than we did in the EU  Parliament is an effective and vigorous institution which can ensure protection for human rights and for animal rights.'

He added that 'some of those who have shared some of these messages on social media have been generous to acknowledge that in their zeal to be sure we maintain the very highest standards they may have unwittingly passed these messages on'.

Tory MP Zac Goldsmith described the reporting by some organisations as 'absurd, fabricated and a non-story'. 'Most people believed this stuff  But it was fake news,' he told LBC radio.

'Clearly there is not a single MP in Parliament, not one from any party, who doesn't believe animals have feelings.'

He added: 'I don't think we should kid ourselves that EU environment law is some kind of panacea  you can produce foie gras, you can do veal farming, donkey torturing in Spain and fur farming all over Europe.'

Fellow Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg said: 'Some rather gullible people have forgotten that the EU allows bull fighting and that its fine words are less important than the practical steps the British take to protect animals.'

The Green Party's home affairs spokesman Shahrar Ali said the story 'would be a good candidate for what has been described as fake news'.

Luvvies forced to say sorry for animal slur

Former Great British Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins last night deleted three tweets relating to the fake story, and praised Michael Gove.

On Monday Miss Perkins tweeted: 'Shameful b******s, denying what is obvious  animal sentience. Let's not take this one lying down. #resist'

She included a link to an article on the i newspaper's website entitled: 'Moment MPs voted that 'animals cannot feel pain or emotions'.'

Miss Perkins posted a link to the theyworkforyou.com website, writing: 'Here you can see how your MP voted. Am truly disgusted by this.'

She also tweeted a link to an online petition claiming MPs had 'put animals rights at risk by voting that no animals have feelings or the ability to experience pain'.

After the Daily Mail contacted her publicist yesterday, the three tweets were removed.

She then tweeted: 'Good to see @michaelgove promising 'no gap' in principle of #animalsentience after Brexit.'

After retweeting links to the story, TV host Ben Fogle said on Thursday that he had 'deleted the misleading threads' and was 'happy to apologise'.

Yesterday he tweeted: 'I have apologised. It would be interesting to turn the focus on the national newspapers who printed the story.'

Countdown's Rachel Riley posted a link to a web article saying the Government had decided to 'exclude the status of animals as sentient beings'.

She wrote: 'The possible reasons why Tory MPs would have voted [for this] baffle and worry me.' She did not respond to requests for comment.
When I got home from tours of duty in Afghanistan and Lebanon in the summer of 2006 I thought my days in the desert were over.

At last I could marry my fiancee Dawn, the mother of my little boy. That was on a Saturday. We began our honeymoon on the Sunday. I got a phone call on the Wednesday and by Friday I was back in Afghanistan.

Id been deployed to Kajaki, a village in the north of Helmand Province, which in all honesty I regarded as a bit of a resting post. My sergeant major was trying to help me out, knowing Id worked my arse off on previous tours. So he thought hed send me down to Kajaki for a bit of R&R, because there wasnt much happening there.

The base was on top of a hill, looking down on the Taliban so we had a good overview. I used to get up every morning and go with a couple of the boys down to the dam, where wed wash a bit of doby [laundry], have a bit of a swim.

Lance Corporal Paul Tug Hartley served with 23 Air Assault Medical Squadron in Afghanistan

But there was something inside me that told me not to go that morning, September 6.

It was good I didnt, because at around 11 oclock Corporal Mark Wright came running in, saying a landmine had been detonated on the far side of the neighbouring hill.

I remember grabbing my T-shirt, webbing, medical kit and rifle.

It was about a kilometre and a half down our mountain, up the next hill and down the other side. Going up that hill was probably the most physical and demanding thing Ive ever done.

I did fall behind the rest of the pack. They moved like machines, knowing that one of their blokes was injured, but my Bergen medical pack weighed about 70 pounds, and I was carrying rifle and webbing as well.

As we reached the site of the explosion, some of the guys had already set up cordons around the mines. I could immediately see Stu Hale, a sniper, had lost his leg and had damage to one of his fingers. Jarhead, one of the Paras, had done an excellent job with the tourniquets.

I believe he saved Stu Hales life. We went into the minefield to Stu and I administered morphine, re-attached the tourniquets and put some dressings on him.

The guys from 3 Para were amazing: they were all assisting me and did a real good job. Meanwhile, Mark Wright, Sgt Stu Pearson and Jarhead were making a plan.

I was trying to get a cannula into Stus arm and as I struggled to find a vein I remember looking around and seeing anti-personnel mines on the surface, some partially dug in.

As I composed myself, my good friend Alex Craig, another medic, came running down the hill to help. He had heard the first call on the radio and thought it was me who was injured. He had actually run through a minefield to assist us.

Between the two of us, we got Stu bandaged up and stable, on oxygen; Id even written up my report  it was stuffed down the front of my shorts  and we were literally just waiting for a helicopter with a winch to come and airlift us out to Camp Bastion Hospital.

Mark Wright served in the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan and took part in the rescue of a fellow para, who lost a leg in a minefield

Time went on and more people started to notice the other mines around us. Mark and I decided we had to move Stu to a safe location from where he could easily be winched out without the downdraft from the helicopter causing any further problems by setting off more mines.

Stu Pearson got a couple of guys to clear a safe path through the mines using bayonets and their own eyes. It took them a while in the blistering heat, but they plodded away, with no fear or emotion showing. The guys just got on with the vital job they had to do.

Eventually, a path was cleared and Stu Pearson walked back to make sure it was all OK. Some of us picked up the stretcher and carried it to the safe location.

Mark and I decided that, with four others, I would stay to load Stu Hale on to the winch and everyone else should pull out. A lot of the guys walked straight back across the safe marked path and Stu Pearson was the very last man to go across it.

He got about ten to 20 metres away from us, and then he just detonated on the path.

As he detonated, I remember looking and thinking: I have just walked from there.

Medic Alex Craig and Mark Wright jumped straight in to help. Alex told me to stay where I was and he would manage Stu Pearson. Again, it worked. We now had two guys whod lost legs, but it wasnt the first time wed dealt with these kinds of things. It was OK. It was all right. Both guys were stable.

Time dragged on. I was shouting to Mark: Where is this helicopter? We kept getting told, ten minutes, ten minutes. Ten minutes turned into 30 minutes and 30 minutes turned into hours, and the hours just went on and on.

In the film 'Kajaki: The True Story', Paul Hartley was played by Mark Stanley. He was wounded in the incident

Eventually, we could hear a helicopter in the distance, a Chinook. It flew in over the top of us and round the back of the hill then came in a second time, low.

It was 70 metres away from me when it started to touch down, landing on its back wheel and ramps.

The loader came to the door and started waving to us to come on. I stood up and gave him the finger. Not a f***ing chance! Two of the boys had already got blown up  I wasnt going to risk carrying the two casualties 70, 75 metres through a minefield for anybody. Over the deafening noise of the Chinooks engines, we started using hand signals to warn him about the mines. But the loader didnt understand and eventually the helicopter took off again.

It caused a total brown-out. I couldnt see anything  eyes and mouth full of sand and dust. It turned into a scene from Star Wars, with people shielding themselves from the dust and suddenly the inevitable happened  mines started going off all around.

I remember lifting my head up, looking over to where Stu Pearson was  and seeing a blast go off around waist height. And then it all went quiet.

The dust settled and the helicopter disappeared. I looked at Alex, my fellow medic  the colour had gone out of his skin and he had small wounds across his chest. I looked at Mark  he had a severe injury to his torso and an injury to his face. I could see Stu Pearson had been hit again.

Then the shouting and screaming started. People were begging for help. I remember thinking: Its ten metres away. I cant go across to them. Its the day before my sons first birthday.

I looked down and saw my rifle. I bent down and felt the coldness  the part of the rifle between the trigger housing and the magazine housing, and for a split second I was going to execute Alex Craig, Mark Wright, Stu Pearson.

It was a split-second, but it seemed like an eternity to make the decision. Thank God I never did.

Stu Hale, the very first casualty of the day, had my medical pack under his leg. I remember grabbing it and thinking, F*** it, Ive got to do something.

A young Fusilier, Andy Barlow, stepped on a mine, instantly losing a leg. He is depicted in the film 'Kajaki'

I threw it. It didnt go bang, so I jumped on it and slid it out from underneath my feet.

I repeated this, trying to cross the minefield to get to where they were. I remember falling off it at one point and everyone panicking  nobody more than me.

If I had fallen backwards, I would have got hit by a mine. If I went forward, I would probably get hit, too, but I had to risk it for the boys. I pulled the pack out again and threw it. Nothing went bang, so I jumped on it. I was about a metre and half away.

Young Andy Barlow, a Fusilier kid, was in there trying to give first aid. He was in a state; he had never seen anything like it.

Someone threw a bottle of water to Andy and he caught it. Then he was thrown a second bottle, but he missed it and when he turned to pick it up, he stepped on a mine, instantly losing a leg. The blast lifted me up and dumped me on my arse.

Again it was a brown-out. I couldnt see anything and I thought: This is it, this is what it feels like to be dead. Its not that bad. Theres no pain or anything, just silence. Not as bad as people make out.

Then, all of a sudden, I had a burning pain in my chest and I sucked in a big breath and it hurt like f***. And I knew I was alive.

I was bleeding heavily from my left shoulder. My chest was killing me. At that point I accepted that I was going to die. And when you accept that, things get easier.

But if I was going to die, I was going to die doing the best I could for the other guys. I picked up my medical pack and simply walked the remainder of the way.

I went straight to Mark, who was hammered  hed taken by far the most direct hits. I threw a tourniquet to Andy who, in spite of losing a leg, was still able to assist others. I told him how to apply a tourniquet to his badly injured leg.

I gave Stu more morphine and checked his tourniquet. I grabbed a bandage to try and dress the wound on Marks chest, but it was too small, so I took off my T-shirt and packed it into the wound.

His arm was barely hanging on, from just above the wrist the inside of his bicep and tricep had been blown away. His face was damaged, his teeth partially gone, burns down his throat.

I remember Andy screaming that the morphine wasnt working, then Mark laughing and telling me I was going to get a VC for being crazy and crossing a minefield.

Soldiers from the 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment drive a Jackal vehicle providing security along a convoy route in Kajaki

Time dragged on. I kept shouting: Wheres this helicopter?

Ten minutes, they said. Ten minutes never came.

It seemed like a lifetime, with the pain in my chest and the blood I was losing from my arm and my shoulder. I kept wanting to pass out but the boys kept shouting, stimulating me to keep me awake.

Mark said some inspirational things. You wouldnt believe someone with injuries that severe could come up with it. But he did, to keep everyone else stimulated and awake.

Dave Prosser, another young lad, spoke to me  hed caught a little bit of shrapnel on the chest earlier on. He went on about it being his birthday, so I got the boys to sing Happy Birthday, for me to check peoples levels of consciousness.

And then Mark was talking about getting married to Gillian, so we talked about what it would cost, would she still recognise him, things like that.

Stu Pearson was shouting that he wanted more morphine. But Id run out of everything.

Mark started to complain he was thirsty, but Id got nothing. The water that had been dropped in had been blown up with Andy. I remember looking down and seeing an old bag of saline.

Its not the best thing to drink, but I moistened his lips, got rid of some of the sand and rubbish inside his mouth.

I cut the corner off and as I poured it into his mouth, I watched it come out the side of his neck.

He saw my reaction and I think he knew. But he didnt give in. He kept cracking on with his jokes, making inspirational comments, keeping everybody motivated.

Eventually we were told there was a helicopter coming in ten minutes again. Within two minutes we could hear the rotor blades of a Black Hawk. There were two of them; again they flew past and around the hill.

I was shouting to the guys who were in communication with them, telling them to look for the fat bloke in the blue shorts, meaning me.

The film showed how soldiers tended to their wounded comrades in the minefield

I started signalling to them which casualties needed to go first.

The Black Hawk came in, and one of the Para rescue men fast-roped down with a six-foot stretcher. Everyone was shouting at him: Its a minefield, its a minefield!

Mark grabbed my hand, saying to me: If I die, please tell Mum, Dad and Gillian that I love them.

Tell my uncle, who is Regiment Sergeant Major in Special Air Service; tell them I died being a good soldier, and a good paratrooper.

He made me promise. I told him not to be silly, I was going to see him again and he made me promise him I would come and see him back at Camp Bastion.

As they winched him up, I remember our hands separating and as he got up into the air, I remember being rained on with his blood.

Everyone else got taken out of the minefield, I was the last one there. I was thinking: When they lift me up, Im going to be on a mine and Im going to bring this helicopter down with me, but at least I knew Id done my best.

I remember getting into the back of the Black Hawk. We just put our arms around each other and no one spoke, no one said a word.

I remember a tear rolling down my cheek, tears rolling down the other boys cheeks. Still no one said a word.

We got back to the helicopter landing site and the boys all got off.

I went to climb in the back of a Land Rover and as I grabbed on to the frame to pull myself up, blood squirted out some of the little holes that I had, but nothing massive.

I remember being picked up by the scruff of my neck and thrown back on the Black Hawk with this bloke shouting to the guys to take me to Bastion.

I remember getting off the helicopter and getting an oxygen mask on. I was burnt, I was dirty, I was bleeding.

I walked into the field hospital and in my hand I had a T-shirt that I had pulled from the minefield. The wings on the T-shirt were different from what the Para Reg wore. I knew it belonged to Alex Craig, one of my best friends and fellow medic.

I walked to the ward and I could hear Alex screaming. They were putting a chest drain into him and I pushed them all away and I gave him his T-shirt.

He just threw his arms around me; I put my arms around him. Again without saying a word, we shed a few tears.

Corporal Mark Wright was posthumously awarded the George Cross for his bravery

I walked across to the other ward to see Stu Pearson lying there. He was unconscious, tubes hanging out of him. There was a bed sheeted off and I could hear someone shouting and screaming.

I pulled the curtain back and it was Dave Prosser. He was shouting: Hes dead, hes dead. I said: Whos dead? He said: Marks dead.

That feeling left me empty. Like my whole life had been sucked out of me. If anyone was going to die that day, it was going to be me.

But it wasnt: I was alive and Mark was dead. Id promised him Id see him back at Bastion. I had failed my promise.

I was treated for my wounds. Nothing too serious. Someone there said it had come across the radio that a medic had died; everyone presumed it was me.

So when I walked in, they all thought they had seen a ghost. But it was Mark who was dead. Hed gone unconscious on the Black Hawk and they revived him. And once he was on the Chinook with the Medical Emergency Response Team, he asked if everyone was on. The doctors said yes. And he just closed his eyes. He timed his death to perfection. He made sure everyone was saved.

Mark Wright is by far one of the most heroic men Ive ever served with. His determination, his selfless sacrifice, his sense of humour is what kept everybody else alive that day.

As the Paras say, every man is an emperor. Every man who was in Kajaki was an emperor that day and more people should have been recognised for the service that they gave.

Because of Marks leadership and dedication and heroism, I wanted to make true the promise I made him that Id see him back at Bastion.

So when the Chinook came to take Marks coffin back to the UK, I pulled a few strings and managed to ride in the ambulance with his body.

I remember lifting the lid of the coffin and putting my hand on his chest and thanking him. I know I probably sound a little bit emotional right now telling it, but Im not emotional thinking of the badness, the horror or anything like that. Im emotional because of the heroism, the dedication, brotherhood and bond that was formed that day. I thank all of them for what I witnessed, what they demonstrated, what I saw.

Mark received the George Cross posthumously. For the rest of us, young boys became men, and men became legends in that minefield. And that will live with me for ever.

Lance Corporal Tug Hartley was also awarded the George Medal for his courage.

Adapted from The Paras: From The Falklands To Afghanistan In Their Own Words by Max Arthur, published by Hodder at 25.  Max Arthur 2017. To order a copy for 20 (offer valid to December 2, 2017, p&p free), visit www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640.
Tobias Ellwood is understood to have concerns about proposals which could see the Army's full-time strength reduced to 70,000.

A defence minister who battled to save a Westminster terror attack victim has threatened to resign if cuts are imposed on the Army.

Tobias Ellwood, the minister responsible for defence personnel and veterans, is understood to have concerns about proposals which could see the Army's full-time strength reduced to 70,000.

Mr Ellwood, who was pictured coming to the aid of police officer Keith Palmer after he was fatally stabbed by Khalid Masood, has shared his 'deep discomfort' with colleagues about a list of cost-saving options faced by the Ministry of Defence, the Times reported.

A Whitehall source quoted by the newspaper said the Ministry of Defence was 'beginning to try and push back' against the cuts.

The MoD said no decisions had been made and dismissed reports about the options being considered as 'speculation'.

But Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson was said to be shocked by the 'completely awful' headline proposals drawn up by military chiefs, according to a Times source.

Other measures thought to be under consideration include reducing the order for Ajax armoured vehicles and delaying upgrades to other tanks.

Mr Ellwood was pictured coming to the aid of police officer Keith Palmer after he was fatally stabbed by Khalid Masood during the Westminster attack

Mr Ellwood, who served in the Royal Green Jackets from 1991 to 1996 with tours in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Kuwait, Germany, Gibraltar and Bosnia and is now in the Army Reserve, has indicated he would have to step down if the military was not shielded from the proposed reductions, the Times said.

Asked if Mr Ellwood was known to have concerns about the prospect of cuts, a senior defence source said: 'Absolutely.'

Speculation about defence cuts has mounted in recent months since the launch of a review led by Theresa May's national security adviser Mark Sedwill.

Other options reportedly under consideration include the axing of amphibious assault ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, alongside the loss of 1,000 Royal Marines.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson was said to be shocked by the 'completely awful' headline proposals drawn up by military chiefs

An MoD spokesman said: 'We have the biggest defence budget in Europe and are one of very few countries to not only meet but exceed NATO's 2 per cent spending target.

'In the face of intensifying threats, we are contributing to the cross-government review of national security capabilities and looking at how we best spend the rising defence budget to protect our country.

'No decisions have been made and any discussion of the options is pure speculation.'
Stunned magistrates watched in disbelief as a man they had banned from driving got into his car and sped off just minutes after the hearing.

George Fothergill, 60, had been disqualified for 12 months following a number of traffic offences when he ignored the ban.

At a subsequent court case he initially denied driving while disqualified  claiming someone else had been at the wheel.

But since the magistrates had seen him in his car from the window of their retiring room at Mansfield Magistrates Court, this defence was instantly branded a lie.

Stunned magistrates watched in disbelief as a man they had banned from driving got into his car and sped off just minutes after the hearing. George Fothergill, 60, was spotted by magistrates through the window of a retiring room at Mansfield Magistrates Court (above)

At a hearing on Thursday, Michael Treharne, prosecuting, said that Fothergill  who was previously banned from driving in 2009  was spotted jumping into his car after the earlier hearing on July 19.

The magistrates were taken aback when they went into the retiring room which overlooks the car park, he said. They saw the defendant go to the side of his car and speak on a phone.

This is idiocy at its best Lucy Jones, defending

Having made the phone call, they were surprised to see him get into the car and drive off fairly rapidly. It was as plain as day.

Lucy Jones, defending, added: This is idiocy at its best.

Jailing Fothergill for ten weeks, district judge Andrew Meachin said: This was absolutely flagrant. He walked out of court and got into his car. He had been disqualified literally minutes before.

Your defence was that someone else was driving, which was a lie.

Fothergill, from Stoke-on-Trent, was ordered to pay a 115 victim surcharge, and banned for 57 weeks.
University vice chancellors who are paid many times the average staff salary will be named and shamed, the new watchdog has vowed.

Sir Michael Barber, chairman of the Office for Students, said the body would bear down on pay levels that look out of kilter with an institutions performance.

It comes amid a growing row over vice chancellors generous pay packets and whether they provide value for students.

Sir Michael Barber (left) has warned highly paid university vice chancellors will be named and shamed. Dame Glynis Breakwell (right) is the highest paid VC in the country on 468,000

Dame Glynis Breakwell, the highest paid vice chancellor in the country on 468,000, has faced calls to resign over the largesse and the university has been criticised by the spending watchdog over her pay.

Sir Michael told BBC Radio Fours Today programme: One of the particular things we will do is look at the ratio between the vice chancellors pay and the average pay of the staff in an institution.

'That will make it very visible where certain pay packets stand out like a sore thumb.

Unions have said it is inappropriate for vice chancellors to get pay rises when ordinary staff wages remain stagnant.

Dame Glynis, vice chancellor of Bath University (pictured), has faced calls to resign over the largesse and the university has been criticised by the spending watchdog over her pay

However, Sir Michael said that universities would still have the independence to set their own pay rates.

I have said publicly to universities and to vice chancellors, the best form of regulation is self- regulation.

See among yourselves where the pay packets stand out and see whether you should reduce them.

He added: We arent going to interfere directly with university autonomy which is fundamental to the success of British universities.
Angela Jay, the young doctor who was stabbed 11 times and doused in petrol by her crazed ex-boyfriend, has revealed she doesn't plan on wasting her 'second life'.

The 28-year-old has spent the last year campaigning against domestic violence after Paul Lambert, a man she met on Tinder and briefly dated, tried to kill her in her Port Macquarie home.

Standing alongside another victim of domestic violence Dr Jay declared herself a warrior for women on White Ribbon Day, and called for others to do the same.

'We have both stared death in the eyes and lived to tell the tale,' Angela Jay captioned this picture - her own personal post for White Ribbon Day - a year after her ex-boyfriend tried to kill her in her Port Macquarie home

The young doctor has become a White Ribbon ambassador and 'warrior' against domestic violence

She was stabbed 11 times and doused in petrol by her ex-boyfriend before escaping to a neighbouring property

'We have both stared death in the eyes and lived to tell the tale,' she said.

'We won't waste what I call my ''second life.'' We are unbreakable warriors using our best weapons - our voice.

'We stand together on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence toward Women and Girls, stand with us!'

Dr Jay previously spoke exclusively with Daily Mail Australia about her struggle getting 'back to reality' following the attack on November 3.

Her 36-year-old attacker was shot-dead by police which is the only reason she feels comfortable telling her story.

She is still haunted by his memory.

Her attacker, Paul Lambert, pictured, was shot dead by police after fleeing the scene

The young woman said he haunts her every day - but she can tell her story because he is dead

'Even though my attacker is no longer here, the memory of him and what he did terrifies me every day,' she said.

The young woman can't look at photos of the man who hurt her, and is left shaken if she comes into contact with men who look like him.

The one salvation for Dr Jay is that she will never come face-to-face with Lambert. He was shot dead by police shortly after attacking her.

However, the traumatic incident has forever changed the way the once independent woman lives her life.

'We won't waste what I call my ''second life.'' We are unbreakable warriors using our best weapons - our voice.'

'I am definitely too afraid to live alone or with strangers, and I have a real issue with closets,' she said.

'My bed is on the floor, there is no closet in my room now, there is nowhere for anyone to hide.

'I think the recovery of any major trauma takes time  I am coming to terms with the fact that I will never be the same person I was before,' she said.

'I think about the attack every day  sometimes it is brief, sometimes it's not.

'We stand together on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence toward Women and Girls, stand with us!'

'And of course I have the scars  every time I see them it brings me back. One of the scars on my arm is very painful and uncomfortable when touched, which also brings me back.'

On the night of the attack Dr Jay managed to escape her would-be-killer ex and get help from a neighbour. She talked him through what he needed to do to save her life in the moments before paramedics arrived.
A cop-killer gunned down her fiancee just months before their dream wedding.

But Nikki Salgot decided she would show her devotion to the love of her life by posing for poignant photos of her in a wedding dress  on her own.

Salgot, 29, was due to wed Wayne State University police officer Collin Rose on October 14, 2017.

But Rose was tragically shot while on duty in Detroit last November.

Instead of being overwhelmed by grief, Salgot chose to be defiant, according to NBC's Today.

She asked a friend, who's a professional photographer, to help her pay tribute to Rose by posing for pictures in a white wedding dress that she had already bought.

A cop-killer gunned down her fiancee just months before their dream wedding. But Nikki Salgot decided she would show her devotion to the love of her life by posing for poignant photos of her in a wedding dress  on her own

Salgot, 29, was due to wed Wayne State University police officer Collin Rose on October 14, 2017

But Rose was tragically shot while on duty in Detroit last November. Instead of being overwhelmed by grief, Salgot chose to be defiant

She asked a friend, who's a professional photographer, to help her pay tribute to Rose by posing for pictures in a white wedding dress that she had already bought

The photographer, Rachel Heller, hadn't spoken to Salgot in 10 years. But when she heard about what happened to Rose on the news, she decided she wanted to help

In a few of the photos, her face emits sadness and grief. But, in others, she is playful and smiling. 'She had an ease about her,' said Heller

Salgot is seen with her fiancee in this undated picture before his tragic death nearly a year ago

Rose lost his life while on duty for the police force at Wayne State University in Detroit

Rose, 29, was shot in the head in a west side neighborhood a few blocks from Wayne State while investigating possible thefts of navigation systems from cars

The photographer, Rachel Heller, hadn't spoken to Salgot in 10 years. But when she heard about what happened to Rose on the news, she decided she wanted to help.

Heller is the owner of Rachel Smaller Photography, a brand based in Detroit.

Last month, Heller and Salgot met in the woods to conduct the photo shoot.

Heller didn't mention to Salgot that she was a week away from her own wedding.

'I remember being in tears on the way there, thinking, "How am I going to do this? How am I going to find a way to take photos that will do this justice, not just for her but for him?"' said Heller, 28.

'When she got out of the car, it was clear as day,' Heller said.

The alleged killer, Raymond Durham (left), 60, was charged this past August in the shooting. Durham was charged in March with attempted murder of two Detroit police officers who were shot when they stopped him. They survived and Durham was arrested at the scene. Rose is seen right

'She was the picture of grief and resilience and strength and vulnerability and authenticity, all at once. I thought, I have to take photographs that when people see them, they will feel how I felt when she got out of the car.'

Salgot is seen in the photos holding onto a folded American flag and Rose's police hat.

In a few of the photos, her face emits sadness and grief. But, in others, she is playful and smiling.

'She had an ease about her,' said Heller.

'She said, "Collin never took himself too seriously, and we never took ourselves too seriously as a couple. ... It is what it is".'

'There were moments when Nikki would shift her dress around, or step on it and start laughing. I wanted to capture those moments, too, to show that she can still laugh. ... I needed to tell the story of this woman who's lost the love of her life but is still going to have closure, and still going to be his wife one way or another.'

Heller recalls tense moments during the shoot.

At one point, Salgot had brought Rose's police badge and tried to pin it onto the flag.

'She kept smiling and telling me, "It's OK, it's OK" - imagine, this woman who's been through all this, telling me that it's OK,' Heller said.

'She was so sure of herself. She didn't tell her family because ... she wanted to do this herself,' Heller said. 'She was very empowered that day. ... She made it really easy for me to do what I needed to do, to give her what she needed,' Heller said.

After Heller finished editing the photos, she gave Salgot the prints as a gift. She then told Salgot that in another three days she was supposed to walk down the aisle.

Durham allegedly shot Rose (pictured), 29, in the head a few blocks from the university's campus

Wayne State University police officers carry Rose's coffin at his funeral

'She was so excited for me,' Heller said.

'So collected. It was so generous of her to be happy for me. It really put things in perspective. ... My busy schedule and whatever else I have to do doesn't matter because at least I get to do it. It was way more important to be there for her.'

On her Facebook page, Salgot wrote: '(Heller) captured images that still vividly show the pain left behind; images that show I am still able to laugh, smile and be me; images that show this loss has not and will not destroy me; and my favorite, images that show I am still just as fierce as ever and refuse to let this define me.'

'This is a woman who is not broken,' Heller said. 'This did not break her. To me, she is an inspiration.'

Rose, 29, was shot in the head in a west side neighborhood a few blocks from Wayne State while investigating possible thefts of navigation systems from cars.

Before the shooting, Rose radioed in that he was about to speak to someone on a bike. He died the next day.

The alleged killer, Raymond Durham, 60, was charged this past August in the shooting.

Durham was charged in March with attempted murder of two Detroit police officers who were shot when they stopped him. They survived and Durham was arrested at the scene.

Police Chief James Craig had said that DNA evidence linked Durham to the Rose shooting.

Durham has twice been found incompetent to stand trial in those shootings.

A judge ordered Durham to also undergo a mental evaluation to determine if he is competent to stand trial in the Rose slaying.

Family members have said that Durham lived in an abandoned house and repaired bikes.

His defense attorney, Gabi Silver, has said that Durham appeared 'to be somewhat delusional.'

Wayne State has more than 27,000 students and is located in the heart of Detroit. The school employs around 65 officers.

Rose, of St. Clair Shores, was a five-year veteran of the university's police force and worked in the canine unit. He is the only Wayne State officer killed in the line of duty.

He was awarded a citation for valor and posthumously promoted to sergeant.

'Sgt. Rose's career and his impact on others will never be forgotten,' Worthy said Thursday. 'This case continues to strongly illustrate the dangers that police officers face every minute of every day.'

Durham's scheduled arraignment Thursday was postponed. He's due back in court in December.
The Right-leaning Spectator magazine recently awarded Jeremy Corbyn its politician of the year accolade.

It was well-deserved as 2017 has, so far, turned out to be a good year for the Labour leader.

It had begun badly. In January, Theresa May enjoyed a commanding lead over him in the opinion polls. He was struggling to get the full support of his Parliamentary party, as many Labour MPs were convinced he could never lead them to victory in a general election.

Voters have overlooked his befriending of extremists and crazy Marxist policies and warmed to him as a grandfatherly figure

Even his closest supporters, who admired his principles and the way much of the countrys youth were attracted by his policies, never, in their hearts, believed he would ever become prime minister.

Then came Mrs Mays decision to hold an election in June.

In general, voters didnt want an election. Corbyn cleverly exploited this unhappiness, as well as highlighting divisions over the Governments Brexit strategy.

Slowly, many began to warm to this grandfatherly figure.

Overlooking his befriending of extremists and espousal of crazy Marxist policies, they favourably compared what they saw as his old-fashioned authenticity and principled bloody-mindedness with Mrs Mays rigidly-scripted, robotic and rather nervous performances.

Even though Labour didnt win, the partys share of the vote increased by more than that achieved by any Labour leader since Clement Attlee shortly after World War II.

To many, Corbyn was no longer a no-hoper with extreme views, he was seen as a potential prime minister.

Today, though, I will stick my neck out and say that I believe Corbyns advance has stalled  indeed, perhaps, irredeemably.

The 68-year-old may have been the political success story of 2017 but I predict hell find next year a far more difficult challenge.

Readers will know that I have often praised him in this column, in particular for his moral courage and shrewd judgment on foreign affairs. He was right about our misguided invasion of Iraq; right on Afghanistan and one of only 13 MPs to vote against the Cameron governments calamitous Libyan intervention.

The Labour leader's blustering House of Commons response to the Chancellor Philip Hammond's budget was dire

He has, however, proved much less sound on the domestic front.

This week, we witnessed a turning point in the comparative fortunes of Labour and the Tories.

Philip Hammonds Budget may not have been earth-shaking. But in contrast to his fiasco of a financial statement in the spring, it was a reminder that the Conservatives are still the party of economic responsibility.

Corbyns blustering House of Commons response to the Chancellor was dire.

In fairness, it is always hard for any leader of the Opposition to respond at a moments notice to a complicated financial package he or she has not seen in advance.

Very much more troubling was the economically subliterate performance of Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. In his most egregious example of ineptness, he was exposed on Radio 4s Today programme for his ignorance of basic facts.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell failed to answer basic questions about the national debt

He failed to answer kindergarten questions about the national debt, and with breathtaking arrogance and stupidity said he didnt need to know key economic figures  because thats why we have iPads, and thats why I have advisers.

The fact is that McDonnell is not merely ignorant of economics. He is a useless Shadow Chancellor.

Labour will never be able to present itself as a credible government-in-waiting if it believes McDonnell can be trusted to be in charge of Britains finances.

However, this leaves Corbyn with a huge problem.

McDonnell is his closest political ally and friend. His son, Seb, is McDonnells chief of staff. Corbyns only hope is to be ruthless and sack his long-time comrade. But I doubt he has it in him.

This isnt Corbyns only problem. Considering Mrs Mays troubles  no Parliamentary majority, difficult Brexit negotiations, two recent Cabinet resignations, a struggling Chancellor etc  it is surprising that the Tories and Labour are neck and neck in the opinion polls.

Indeed, Mrs Mays personal rating is above Corbyns and, despite all her recent misfortunes, still attracts the support of around 40 per cent of voters.

Corbyn ought to be doing far better. Whats more, there has been concrete proof in recent days that public sentiment is turning against Labour.

In a council poll in Stroud, Gloucestershire, this week, for example, Labours share of the vote dropped six per cent while the Tories rose by eight per cent.

I do not want to suggest that Corbyn is finished.

Labour will never be able to present itself as a credible government-in-waiting if it believes McDonnell can be trusted with Britains finances but the shadow chancellor is Corbyn's closest political ally and friend

He is still a cult figure among young people and many public sector workers  and I understand why.

To the economically naive  those who have no collective memory of the nightmare that was Britain under Labour in the Seventies  he represents a modern kind of straightforward conviction politics that is refreshing after two decades dominated by the cynical opportunism and PR gimmicks of David Cameron and Tony Blair.

But time is running out for Corbyn. He will be in his early 70s by the time the next general election is due to be held.

Furthermore, the Tories have a trick up their sleeve.

I am sure that Mrs May will step down before that election, making way for a replacement from the younger generation.

Political history shows that a new leader of a ruling party always brings a boost in the polls to their party.

This happened with John Major in 1990, Gordon Brown in 2007 and Theresa May last year.

Of course, unexpected events exposing Tory incompetence could yet propel Jeremy Corbyn into No 10.

But his position is much weaker than it looks. This week we may have reached peak Corbyn.
A terror suspect linked to Islamic State has wasted thousands of pounds of taxpayers money asking a judge to lift a ban on visits to McDonalds.

The hate preacher  a close associate of London Bridge attacker Khuram Butt  said strict curbs on his movements meant he could not buy his children Happy Meals.

The Muslim fanatic, known as LF, was eager to take them to McDonalds even though it does not serve halal meat. He went to court claiming the ban hampers his family life.

One of the UKs most dangerous extremists, he was a colleague of firebrand cleric Anjem Choudary, who was convicted in August last year of inspiring British Muslims to carry out terror attacks.

London Bridge attacker Khuram Butt, pictured, was a close associate of the Muslim fanatic LF who has wasted thousands of pounds in taxpayers money

Cleric Anjem Choudary, pictured, was convicted in August last year of inspiring British Muslims to carry out terror attacks

British spies say LF was a leading figure in the now banned terror group Al-Muhajiroun, which has links to 15 terror plots, including the 7/7 attacks.

He is one of six people subject to Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures orders, introduced in 2012 to restrict their movements, their use of computers and who they can meet.

LF has squandered tens of thousands of pounds of public money challenging orders to relocate miles away from his home in east London and ban him from using the internet.

He is understood to have been granted legal aid to fight his case, which has forced Home Secretary Amber Rudd to use Government lawyers to oppose it.

Mrs Justice Elizabeth Laing reviewed the restrictions at a High Court hearing in London in July, where she heard evidence from a member of MI5.

In a ruling published yesterday, she said: He is not allowed to go into shops or cafes with internet access, such as Debenhams or even McDonalds.

One of his children loves Happy Meals, so this is an issue, as he will not be able to give the child a treat if he visits.

But Mrs Justice Laing threw out his case, insisting the restrictions were plainly necessary and proportionate.

She said: It would obviously be difficult to monitor or control LFs access to the internet in such a place. Unfettered access to the internet is vital to Al-Muhajirouns activities.

Mrs Justice Laing said ministers had been entitled and right to decide that he had engaged in terrorism-related activity.

The man, who has a wife and two young children, moved to the UK as a child. He gained A Levels and an apprenticeship but had not worked since 2012.

A security services assessment said he was a senior leader of Al-Muhajiroun, and had radicalised vulnerable young people and encouraged them to join Islamic State.

MI5 said LF and Butt  one of three jihadists who murdered eight people in a van and knife rampage at London Bridge in June  were likely to know one another.

They were photographed standing behind a black flag with white Arabic writing on it in a London park.

The High Court ruling is a boost to Mrs Rudd because the judge refused to water down the restrictions, which the Government says are crucial in the fight against terrorism.
With scenes of stranded revellers cooking up a feast in a remote pub, the Waitrose Christmas advert is undeniably heartwarming.

But it has also proved rather puzzling for locals  as it is set more than 50 miles from the nearest store, where they cannot even get deliveries.

Regulars at the Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire  which at 1,732ft above sea level is Britain's highest pub  claim that Waitrose 'should have checked their facts'.

Regulars at the Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire (pictured)  which at 1,732ft above sea level is Britain's highest pub  claim that Waitrose 'should have checked their facts'. The supermarket's new advert features the pub, but the nearest branch is over 50 miles away

The advert is inspired by real events which took place in the New Year of 2010, when 30 guests were snowed in for three days.

It shows drinkers, on finding the door blocked by a snow drift, pulling Waitrose supplies out of the cupboards to whip up an entire Christmas banquet.

Louise Taylor, who lives in the same DL11 postcode, posted on the store's Facebook page: 'It's a great Christmas advert. However, I am a little puzzled as to how Waitrose got the supplies to the Tan Hill Inn.

The advert (pictured) is inspired by real events which took place in the New Year of 2010, when 30 guests were snowed in for three days. It shows drinkers, on finding the door blocked by a snow drift, pulling Waitrose supplies out of the cupboards to whip up an entire Christmas banquet

'We are in the same postcode area and are unable to receive Waitrose deliveries. Does this mean you'll soon be expanding your delivery area?'

Chris Howarth, 63, who lives in the nearby village of Reeth, added: 'I used to shop at Waitrose but since I moved here in 2009 I haven't. It's too far away.'

A Waitrose spokesman said: 'While the nearest Waitrose is an hour away, many of our customers go the extra mile to ensure their Christmas celebrations are special.'
Police officers are letting suspects walk free as they are unwilling to make hour-long journeys to the nearest custody suite, officials have warned.

The Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, said the distances now being travelled to bring in suspects is deterring front-line officers from making arrests.

Custody suites have fallen by half since 2010 leading to officers increasingly letting suspects go and hoping for the best'.

Steve White, chairman of the Police Federation, has warned officers are letting suspects walk free as they are unwilling to make hour-long journeys to the nearest custody suite

The number of arrests has dropped from 1.5million in 2008 to just 780,000 from March 2008 to March 2017.

Steve White, chairman of the Police Federation, said the decrease reflects a changing mind-set on the force as more policemen are letting suspects off with a warning.

There has been a change in the mindset of many officers not to arrest unless they absolutely have to, he told the Telegraph.

What is going through their mind is that this person needs arresting, but there is no one left on the ground, is there going to be something else more pressing that I might have to deal with?

So what they are doing is letting someone off with a warning and hoping for the best. Hoping for the best that person does not go on to do something terrible.

There is only one custody suite to cover the whole of Gloucestershire, while Nottinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Wiltshire have just two each.

Custody suites have fallen by half since 2010 leading to officers increasingly letting suspects go and hoping for the best' (file picture)

Some Wiltshire police officers complain of having to take suspects from Salisbury to Melksham, the nearest custody suite.

They say the 30-mile journey takes an hour each way, a similar travel time for Somerset police taking suspects from Yeovil to the Bridgewater cells.

The Police Federation also claim two custody suites could be scrapped by Sussex Police, which may lead to hour-long journeys for officers in the county.

Even though the number of custody suites has dropped over the last seven years, Essex Police are considering reopening one in Basildon.
Gone are the days when an advent calendar was a piece of flimsy card with tiny windows that opened to reveal a picture of a snowman or a thumbnail-sized chocolate.

Now, calendars are elaborately designed boxes stuffed with expensive beauty products, wine and even stationery. They are staggeringly big business and can cost tens or even hundreds of pounds.

But just what are you getting for that rather substantial price? While some calendars boast contents worth far more than their cost, recently a lifestyle advent calendar created by YouTube star Zoella came under fire from parents of her young fans, who claimed the contents werent worth the hefty 50 tag. Some outlets have since reduced it to 25.

So, if you want style and substance, which calendar should you buy? JENNY WOOD rounded up some of the most popular, peeked inside and worked out what the contents are really worth . . .

For the well-groomed man

Packaged in a huge, brown book-fold box, Mankinds calendar (mankind.co.uk) has 25 pull-out drawers with a selection of full-sized mens grooming products

Packaged in a huge, brown book-fold box, Mankinds calendar (mankind.co.uk)has 25 pull-out drawers with a selection of full-sized mens grooming products, from shower gels, face washes and shaving solutions to deodorant, eye serum and a fancy double-edged razor. The price tag may seem steep, but with the contents ranging from 5.50 (for a tube of cinnamon and mint toothpaste) to an impressive 98 (for a hyaluronic acid face and eye night cream), it represents a surprising 400 saving on buying everything individually.

Cost: 250

Worth: 650

Looks: 5/5

Value: 5/5

For beauty bliss

The priciest of the Body Shops three advent offerings this year, this ultimate advent calendar is also the best value, containing full-sized products

The priciest of the Body Shops three advent offerings this year, this ultimate advent calendar is also the best value, containing full-sized products. The enormous pink, red and gold calendar opens up to reveal 25 boxes with goodies such as Japanese Matcha Tea Pollution Clearing Mask (17), Vitamin E Day and Night creams (14 each), and Matte Lip Liquid (6). The final box contains a special wooden dice, plus instructions for how to transform the calendar into a family trivia quiz game.

Cost: 99

Worth: 214

Looks: 5/5

Value: 5/5

For a houseful of treats

Marks and Spencer's calendar sells out every year, and its easy to see why. A house-shaped exterior opens to reveal 24 smaller boxes

Marks and Spencer's calendar sells out every year, and its easy to see why. A house-shaped exterior opens to reveal 24 smaller boxes  which you could keep and re-use. The contents include mini and full-sized treats from M&Ss range and other brands, such as an M&S Formula Absolute Sleep Cream worth 6.60 and a Leighton Denny nail polish worth 12. The roof of the house opens to reveal a spotty make-up bag on Christmas Day.

Cost: 35

Worth: 250

Looks: 4/5

Value: 5/5

Top-drawer toileteries

Inside this calendars red and green boxes are 24 generously sized Molton Brown favourites

Inside this calendars red and green boxes are 24 generously sized Molton Brown (molton brown.co.uk) favourites including nine 50ml body washes (worth around 5 each), two candles (worth more than 10 each), and two 50ml eau de toilette fragrances (45 each).

Cost: 165

Worth: 256

Looks: 5/5

Value: 5/5

For chocs you can share

This minimalist white box from Hotel Chocolat has 24 tear-off windows that each reveal a pair of mini chocolate truffles  one for you, one for your partner

This minimalist white box from HOTEL CHOCOLAT has 24 tear-off windows that each reveal a pair of mini chocolate truffles  one for you, one for your partner. The chocolates are good quality, in festive flavours that include gingerbread praline, clementine and Madagascan vanilla. The contents weigh 300g  but the same weight in full-sized truffles would cost just 16.92, so in essence youre paying extra for the novelty sizes and packaging. Then again, maybe rationing your festive sweet treats over 24 days is actually quite a sensible idea . . .

Cost: 26

Worth: 17

Looks: 3/5

Value: 2/5

For scent fiends

Decorated like a chic London townhouse, this calendar contains 24 mini Jo Malone candles, colognes and bath oils

Decorated like a chic London townhouse, this calendar contains 24 mini Jo Malone (jomalone.co.uk) candles, colognes and bath oils. If you work out the price of each product per millilitre or gram, the value of the calendars contents by volume is around 188  far less than the 300 price tag. But with the calendar you get to try more products.

Cost: 300

Worth: 188

Looks: 5/5

Value: 2/5

For manicure maniacs

A pot of Ciate nail polish costs 6 on the brands website and this calendar contains 22, making it a steal

A pot of Ciate nail polish costs 6 on the brands website (ciatelondon.com) and this calendar contains 22, making it a steal. For the remaining days of advent, theres a nail file and pot of nail glitter, plus a large 13.5ml nail polish in a festive sparkly gold and pink shade (12 on the website).

Cost: 35

Worth: 144

Looks: 4/5

Value: 5/5

For sparkling socialites

This calendar from The Pip Stop has 24 200ml bottles of prosecco, cava, sparkling wine and champagne

This calendar from THE PIP STOP (thepipstop.co.uk) has 24 200ml bottles of prosecco, cava, sparkling wine and champagne. Most arent usually available in small sizes, so its difficult to estimate their value. I work it out based on the price by volume of full-sized bottles, and find the contents are worth just over 78. Not an amazing deal, but it is a fun way of tasting a variety of fizz without shelling out huge sums. For example, a full-sized 750ml bottle of Laurent Perrier champagne would cost around 25.95, so this 200ml version is the equivalent of 6.92 by volume.

Cost: 125

Worth: 79

Looks: 1/5

Value: 3/5

For preening teens

This calendar from Superdrug may not look fancy but its filled with 24 full-sized, decent-quality products

This calendar from SUPERDRUG may not look fancy but its filled with 24 full-sized, decent-quality products. There are lipsticks and glosses, a set of travel make-up brushes worth 4.95, highlighters, plus an eyeshadow primer, bronzer, travel mirror and a pretty palette containing 12 matte and shimmer eyeshadows worth 6. Now reduced to 30, its a great deal and perfect for any beauty-obsessed teen.

Cost: 79

Worth: 50

Looks: 2/5

Value: 5/5

For mums to de-stress

This classy box from Diptyque has 15 half-size candles

This classy box from DIPTYQUE (selfridges.com) has 15 half-size candles. A full-size one costs 24, so I estimate these at 12. Then theres one full-sized candle (28), seven 10ml fragrances (100ml for 100, so 10 each), a body polish and facial oil (27.37).

Cost: 300

Worth: 293

Looks: 4/5

Value: 4/5

For fans of perfumed potions

Open these 24 windows to find great-smelling mini LOccitane products

Open these 24 windows to find great-smelling mini LOccitane (uk.loccitane.com) products. A 250ml full-size shower gel is 16, so the mini 35ml version is worth 2.24).

Cost: 49

Worth: 87

Looks: 4/5

Value: 5/5

For wine buffs

A huge red cardboard box from Virgin Wines weighing over 11kg

A huge red cardboard box from VIRGIN WINES (virginwines.co.uk) weighing over 11kg. Each door reveals a 187ml or 200ml bottle of red, white, rose or sparkling wine. Many arent available in small sizes, so I apply the price-per-ml of a full-size bottle to these. Theres a decent, if moderate, saving.

Cost: 80

Worth: 94

Looks: 1/5

Value: 4/5

For connoisseurs of gin

Gin kiosk's modestly sized box contains craft gins in 30ml bottles  the equivalent of one shot

Gin kiosk's (ginkiosk.com) modestly sized box contains craft gins in 30ml bottles  the equivalent of one shot. Again, I work out the price-per-ml of a full-size bottle, and find the gin in this is worth around 37.

But then, in a bar you could pay anything from 2 to 8 for each shot.

Cost: 125

Worth: 37

Looks: 2/5

Value: 2/5

For make-up addicts

This offering from Amazon comes in a fun dispenser  when you pull out one of the boxes, the next drops into place for the next day

This offering from AMAZON (amazon.co.uk) comes in a fun dispenser  when you pull out one of the boxes, the next drops into place for the next day. Almost everything is full-sized, and from a well-known brand. The final box contains a Rimmel palette with eyeshadows in eight neutral shades worth 6.24. A good deal for beautyholics.

Cost: 50

Worth: 185

Looks: 3/5

Value: 5/5
A 19-year-old woman who died alongside two friends after the car she was driving hit a tree was just days away from celebrating her birthday, police say.

The young woman, and her passengers, a 17-year-old boy and 36-year-old man, all from Lakes Entrance in Victoria were just five kilometres from town when their car crashed at 2.15 on Saturday morning.

In an emotional press conference Assistant Commissioner Doug Fryer revealed all three of the young people killed in the crash were a part of the small coastal community.

'Weve got three young lives lots and we have got the entire community of Lakes Entrance that are now devastated,' he said.

The crash occurred on Colquhoun Road in Lakes Entrance just after 2am

Three people have been killed after the car they were travelling slammed into a tree overnight

The woman's birthday on Monday should have been a celebration but will now be a day of mourning.

'She was due to have 19th birthday on Monday  it is a birthday that will never be celebrated and a day that will be mourned by the community,' AC Fryer said.

The three young victims were well known in the community, including to the emergency service crews who attended the crash.

'Country roads are far more dangerous than metro roads,' AC Fryer said as he urged the community to drive to the conditions.

Police remain on the small country road where the deadly crashed occurred and believe speed could be a factor.

'Here we have three young people dead, we have three young people dead who have wrapped themselves around a tree and speed will clearly be a determining factor,' AC Fryer said.

Just hours after the horror crash another two lives were lost after a head on collision in the state's west.

There have been 221 lives lost on Victorian roads this year.
Sources say the White House perceives Tillerson not sending any senior level State Department officials as a slight

The Summit, held next week, is put on by the state department and has often been attended by the Secretary of State in years past

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson won't be sending senior staffers along with Ivanka Trump to India for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit

Ivanka Trump is gearing up for a major moment on the world stage, headlining the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in India next week- but she won't have the support of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

According to CNN, Tillerson won't be sending high-level delegation to India to support her, even though the Summit is put on by the State Department, amid reported tensions between Tillerson and the White House.

'Rex doesn't like the fact that he's supposed to be our nation's top diplomat, and Jared and now Ivanka have stepped all over Rex Tillerson for a long time,' a source close to the White House told CNN. 'So now, he's not sending senior people from the State Department to support this issue. He's not supporting Ivanka Trump.'

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (left) will not be sending senior State Department officials along with Ivana Trump for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit

The noticeably lighter than years past State Department delegation at the Summit is being perceived by the White House as a slight by Tillerson, and, it's causing further friction in an already shaky alignment.

'They (Tillerson and his staff) won't send someone senior because they don't want to bolster Ivanka. It's now another rift between the White House and State at a time when Rex Tillerson doesn't need any more problems with the President,' the a senior State Department official told CNN.

'No one higher than the deputy assistant secretary is allowed to participate. The secretary and his top staff have insisted on approving all travel-- even the most minute details,' the official added.

In year's past Secretary of State John Kerry and even President Barack Obama attended multiple times.

Last year's summit was in California's Silicon Valley and was attended by included Secretary of State Kerry, a State Department undersecretary and other staff.

President Obama attended with a large delegation when it was held in Kenya in 2015, as did Kerry when it was in Malaysia in 2013.

Jared Kushner is also rumored to have struck a nerve with Tillerson, who sources say feel like both Jared and Ivana have 'stepped all over him'

This year's summit, however, comes just as the White House has directed Secretary Tillerson to slash his agency's budget, though the sources tell CNN the budget slashing isn't part of the reason behind not sending senior State Department officials.

Trump was invited by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June, and this year's theme is supporting women entrepreneurs.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told CNN that: 'The Department is committed to supporting women's economic empowerment and entrepreneurship, and the Summit is a prime opportunity to showcase the importance of these themes.'
Two inmates who took two correctional officers hostage in an Arkansas prison were subdued by law enforcement agents, it was learned on Friday.

The incident took place early Friday evening at the Maximum Security Unit in Tucker.

Two convicts incarcerated at the facility took the two correctional officers hostage.

The incident took place early Friday evening at the Maximum Security Unit in Tucker, Arkansas (seen above)

Courtesy: KARK

A spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Correction said that at about 7pm on Friday, the officers were freed.

They suffered lacerations and bruising, according to ArkansasMatters.com.

Officials said that the hostage situation ended thanks to the use of force.

The two inmates and the two correctional officers were taken to hospital for treatment.

This is a developing story.
Australian banknotes are considered some of the most secure in the world.

And that's certainly the case with the $10 bill, which was given an elaborate upgrade on September 20 with a rolling colour effect when you tilt it, a flying cockatoo which changes colour and two raised bumps on either end of the note to help the visually impaired.

Many of the old features on the iconic note remained the same after the revamp, including the inclusion of Dame Mary Gilmore and AB 'Banjo' Paterson.

Scroll down for video

Many of the old features on the iconic note remained the same after the revamp, including the inclusion of Dame Mary Gilmore and AB 'Banjo' Paterson (pictured)

But what many people don't know is there are excerpts of Paterson's 'The Man From Snowy River' written on it, hidden behind the artist's impression of the Aussie writers.

In a micro-sized font, which isn't easily read by the naked eye, one can make out the start of the poem: 'There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around. That the colt from old regret had got away, and had joined the wild bush horses  he was worth a thousand pound, so all the cracks had gathered to the fray.'

Some of the reason this has gone undetected for so long may be because of its size - with a microscope or similar equipment needed to read it.

Some of the reason this has gone undetected for so long may be because of its size - with a microscope or similar equipment needed to read it

In a micro-sized font, which isn't easily read by the naked eye, one can make out the start of the poem (right)

'You've got to admit, our money is a work of art. Every little detail that they put into it, truly is amazing,' a Reddit commenter wrote.

But Paterson isn't the only represented artist on the note.

Beside the impression of Mary Gilmore are excerpts from her work 'No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest', which was written in 1940.

'You've got to admit, our money is a work of art. Every little detail that they put into it, truly is amazing,' a Reddit commenter wrote

The bill continues its theme of outback Australia with a wattle branch printed with fluorescent ink - making it only visible under UV light.

There is also a horseman from the era of Paterson's writing - although the old note had the words 'Waltzing Matilda' emblazoned across it, the latest one doesn't.

While there was some uproar when the reprinted $5 note first came into circulation, Australians overall seem impressed by the colour and features on the $10 variant.
Global online store Amazon is set to finally open up shop in Australia next week, and shoppers have been giving local retailers good reason to be shaking in their boots.

Rallying their support behind the international store, Australians have taken aim at major local chains - saying they've been getting 'ripped off' for far too long.

With shoppers hoping for better customer service, faster delivery and a wider range of options, it seems Amazon couldn't arrive Down Under any sooner.

Australians have blasted local major chains online ahead of Amazon's official launch next week

Future Amazon shoppers have been giving local retailers good reason to be shaking in their boots

Australians have taken aim at major local chains - saying they've been getting 'ripped off' for far too long

Future customers have taken to Twitter to pledge their allegiance to the online store, openly admitting to their plans to one day boycott Australian giants for good.

'So glad that @amazon is coming to Australia time to show the likes of Harvey Norman and others that we are sick of your crap!! #REVOLUTION,' one impassioned social media announced.

'I'm hoping that @amazon's launch in Australia will totally decimate Harvey Norman and Gerry's Harvey's refusable to adapt his business model. I won't support a store that lobbied for a sales tax on internet purchases - I'm looking at you Gerry!.'

'@BaramulStud (Gerry Harvey) still dangerously out of touch with reality of what shoppers want and what is already a reality for millions in the US get from Amazon, much better service than any retailer I've dealt with in Australia and fast delivery! #amazon #retail.'

Several Twitter users took aim at Harvey Norman for being 'out of touch' with its customers

Hundreds have taken to Twitter to pledge their allegiance to Amazon and voice how unimpressed they are with Australian retailers

Another echoed similar thoughts and couldn't wait to splash their cash on a reliable delivery service.

'Hoping #amazonaustralia improves customer service here. #target took 10 days to deliver an item - just 6km from Brisbane CBD.'

Plenty more chimed in, some claiming to have already witnessed Amazon's effect on the Australian market.

'Already seeing impact of having Amazon in Australia. Other retailers are being forced to up their game to remain competitive. This is a good thing.'

Some claimed to have already witnessed Amazon's effect on the Australian market, slamming retailers for being a 'rip off'

'Large Australian chains/retailers without modern online strategies sulking about the incumbent launch of @amazon in our country is laughable, youve had ample time to be prepare . Seems reminiscent of the taxi industry complaining when @Uber came into the market #amazonaustralia.'

Others haven't been fooled by changes in local retailer trends, with some waiting patiently for the competition to drive down prices and raise service standards.

'I love seeing what all the big australia company's are doing to take on amazon lmfao.'

'Let the #retail games begin. It's time to beat #market monopolies in #Australia. Competition can only be good for the #Customer. Welcome @amazon.'

Many Australians have been waiting patiently for the competition to drive down prices and raise service standards

When Amazon officially launches its Australian website next week, major electric appliance, clothing and cosmetic retailers could be in for a shock.

The global e-commerce behemoth is predicted to snatch a large chunk of the retail business from Australian giants Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi, David Jones and Myer - after it's 'soft launch' on Friday.

At least 60% of Amazon's revenue is expected to be made up by electronics, clothing and cosmetics by 2023, and the company is expected to significantly 'accelerate' Australia's online shopping market, new UBS research revealed.

At least 60% of Amazon's revenue is expected to be made up by electronics, clothing and cosmetics by 2023, USB research revealed

The global e-commerce behemoth is predicted to snatch a large chunk of clothing and shoe business from Australian stores like Myer and David Jones

The financial services company revealed more than half of surveyed Australian shoppers would be spending their money on Amazon, as a desire for more - and better quality - online stores still exist.

More than 40% said they'd ramp up their online spending once Amazon's full website was in action, despite small volumes and limited amounts of product expected to be available initially.

While most still prefer an in-store experience over buying online, particularly when wanting to touch a product or seek advice, Amazon will likely accelerate Australia's major shift to online shopping - much like it did in Italy, Spain and Mexico.

Not all is lost for Australian stores however, with analysts reporting a huge drop in market share of international online stores in recent times when local retailers amped up their online presence.

At least 60% of Amazon's revenue is expected to be made up by electronics, clothing and cosmetics by 2023 USB research revealed

While most still prefer an in-store experience over buying online, Amazon will likely accelerate Australia's major shift to online shopping

Amazon is expected to significantly 'accelerate' Australia's online shopping market

Stores like Baby Bunting, Supercheap Auto and the big supermarket chains are among those expected to dodge Amazon's disturbance to Australian business.

While shoppers are still expected to swarm to large malls long into the future, high-street and boutique retailers have a grim path ahead, UBS says.

UBS also predicts the global company will encourage shoppers to price check online before heading in-store, creating a sense of 'customer empowerment', Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Stores like JB Hi-Fi (pictured) have tough times ahead, with Amazon expected to cause serious disruption to its business with customers predicted to chase bargains with the global giant

Major electric appliance retailers, like Harvey Norman (pictured) could be in for a very rude shock when Amazon launches in Australia next week

Supercheap Auto is clear of the wrecking ball heading towards Australian business in the face of Amazon's launch

While Amazon Australia's launch was predicted to be the 'biggest shake-up in retail in a generation' - customers were faced with mark-ups of almost 1000% during its 'soft launch' on Friday.

Tech products were on sale for prices up to ten times more than local retailers like JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman.

Logitech surround sound speakers were being sold by Amazon for $504, while the same speakers could be bought for $369 at Kogan or $397 at Harvey Norman.

Baby Bunting is also clear form destruction, with shoppers still likely to make baby-related purchases in-store

Amazon Australia's launch was predicted to be the 'biggest shake-up in retail in a generation' - but instead customers were faced with mark-ups of almost 1000%

Logitech surround sound speakers were being sold by Amazon for $504, while the same speakers could be bought for $369 at Kogan or $397 at Harvey Norman

The biggest mark-up appeared to be a laptop bag made by software company HP, which Amazon had on sale for $267 compared to JB Hi-Fi's $29.95.

While the Olympus Tough TG5 camera was marketed as $796 by the online giant, despite retailing for just $598 at Harvey Norman.

Analysts from Deutsche Bank said Amazon's soft launch would 'undoubtedly have been disappointing' and confusing for customers expecting a full catalogue.

'Entire categories such as televisions, mobile phones, and grocery segments such as hair-care were missing,' analysts for the bank wrote, reported Business Insider.

While the Olympus Tough TG5 camera was marketed as $796 by the online giant, despite retailing for just $598 at Harvey Norman

The biggest mark-up appeared to be a laptop bag made by software company HP, which Amazon had on sale for $267 compared to JB Hi-Fi's $29.95

'Searches for Apple products such as iPhones, or Sony does not produce the hardware results we intended (the results would mostly be books). Indeed, we observed a number of anomalies on Amazon's Australian website.'

However, Amazon managed to out-price their competitors with some items, including a $1,289 Yamaha surround sound bar that was $200 cheaper than Harvey Norman's offering.

And while the Brother PT-E110VP label printer was more expensive than the same one offered at Officeworks, an Epson Workforce printer was 21 per cent cheaper.

Amazon Australia Price Comparison Item Amazon JB Hi-Fi Harvey Norman Officeworks Alternative Retailer Logitech Surround Sound Speakers Z906 $504.47 $399.00 $397.00 $478.00 $369.00 Olympus Tough TG5 Camera $796.13 599.00 $598.00 N/A $599.95 Epson Workforce WF-2750 Printer $150.22 $128.00 $178.00 N/A $182.25 Yamaha Sound Bar YSP-2700 $1,289.00 N/A $1,496.00 N/A $1,399.00 HP Value Top Load Laptop Bag $267.95 $29.95 N/A N/A $40.90 Brother PT-E110VP Label Printer $103.25 N/A N/A $99.00 $86.93 Source: Business Insider

Amazon did manage to out-price their competitors with some items, such as a $1,289 Yamaha surround sound bar that was $200 cheaper than Harvey Norman's offering

The 'soft launch' of Amazon Australia began with promises the marketplace giant would forever change the face of shopping in this country.

The 'internal testing phase' was limited to a small number of customers who were able to order from the local site, with the full launch expected on Friday.

Despite the hype, Amazon Australia's website still looked the same on Friday afternoon as it has in recent years.

The home screen remained as the Kindle book store, with avid buyers unable to access the new products.
Australia's top Airbnb earner raked in $5.3 million in the past year, renting out 247 properties in Sydney.

Top Australian hosts are earning far more than loose change for listing their spare room, apartment or house on popular accommodation site, new figures reveal.

The top 10 Airbnb hosts or property managers nationwide made between $2 and $5.3 million in the year to October 2017 across multiple listings.

The figures show the top earner in Australia was an unnamed host or property management company in Sydney.

Australia's top Airbnb earner raked in $5.3 million in the past year, renting out 247 properties in Sydney (pictured is an Airbnb property in Sydney)

Top Australian hosts are earning far more than loose change for listing their spare room, apartment or house on popular accommodation site, new figures reveal (pictured is an Airbnb property in Sydney)

The top 10 Airbnb hosts or property managers nationwide made between $2 and $5.3 million in the year to October 2017 across multiple listings (pictured is an Airbnb property in Sydney)

The figures show the top earner in Australia was an unnamed host or property management company in Sydney (pictured is an Airbnb property in Sydney)

Their staggering $5.3 million total revenue came from 247 properties.

Seven of the top earning hosts in the past year were in New South Wales.

Operators in Wingecarribee and Wyong pulled in $4 million across a portfolio of 97 and 168 properties respectively, and a host near Byron Bay took in $3.7 million across 40 properties.

The average Airbnb host in Sydney makes $11,150 per listing annually.

In Melbourne, an operator made $3.7 million across 158 listings, while in Colac Otway someone made $3.5 million across 80 properties.

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia (pictured) argues it's a 'misconception' that the sharing platform involves property groups renting out entire apartments full-time

In Melbourne, an operator made $3.7 million across 158 listings, while in Colac Otway someone made $3.5 million across 80 properties (pictured is an Airbnb property in Brisbane)

The figures come from AirDNA, which is a company that crunches the numbers based on data from Airbnb (pictured is an Airbnb property in Sydney)

The figures come from AirDNA, which is a company that crunches the numbers based on data from Airbnb.

AirDNA chief executive Scott Shatford says Airbnb is increasingly becoming the domain of property management companies, despite starting out as a platform for individuals to share a spare room, apartment or house.

But Airbnb Australia manager Sam McDonagh insists two-thirds of the listings are still people sharing the home they live in.

'We do know there are of course the professional property managers and traditional hospitality, like bed and breakfasts, that have always operated and are now listing on Airbnb,' he said.

But Airbnb Australia manager Sam McDonagh insists two-thirds of the listings are still people sharing the home they live in (pictured is an Airbnb property in Sydney)

Mr McDonagh said so-called 'next generation property managers' were generally managing people's homes (pictured is an Airbnb property in Canberra)

Mr McDonagh said that ultimately 'market dynamics' would determine the success or failure of big operators (pictured is an Airbnb property in Adelaide)

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia argues it's a 'misconception' that the sharing platform involves property groups renting out entire apartments full-time (pictured is an Airbnb property in Adelaide)

Acknowledging Airbnb needed to do a better job of categorising listings, Mr McDonagh said so-called 'next generation property managers' were generally managing people's homes.

They took some of the work out of being a host by, for example, providing linen and cleaning services.

'We see that as certainly growing in popularity,' he said.

Mr McDonagh said that ultimately 'market dynamics' would determine the success or failure of big operators.

In cities around the world, the popularity of Airbnb has led some policymakers to argue the website is adding to housing affordability crises (pictured is an Airbnb property in Melbourne)

State and territory governments in Australia are scrambling to regulate the booming short-term holiday letting industry (pictured is an Airbnb property in Melbourne)

NSW has more than 40,000 Airbnb listings - with 25,000 in Sydney alone - but is yet to pass specific laws governing rentals (pictured is an Airbnb property in Melbourne)

'We're ambivalent in terms of whether someone has one property or five properties - if they're a great host and they're serving the community then we're supportive of that.'

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia argues it's a 'misconception' that the sharing platform involves property groups renting out entire apartments full-time.

'When we go city by city, country by country, our hosts are everyday average people,' he said in Sydney this week.

In cities around the world, the popularity of Airbnb has led some policymakers to argue the website is adding to housing affordability crises, by transforming residential properties into tourist accommodation.

NSW Better Regulation Minister Matt Kean says a parliamentary inquiry should help 'get the balance right' (pictured is an Airbnb property in Perth)

A recent Deloitte Access Economics report found Airbnb guests were contributing $1.6 billion to the Australian economy and supporting over 14,000 jobs (pictured is an Airbnb property in Adelaide)

State and territory governments in Australia are scrambling to regulate the booming short-term holiday letting industry.

NSW has more than 40,000 Airbnb listings - with 25,000 in Sydney alone - but is yet to pass specific laws governing rentals. Instead, they're left to local councils to regulate.

NSW Better Regulation Minister Matt Kean says a parliamentary inquiry should help 'get the balance right'.

A Sydney host who has happily let out two modest properties for years on Airbnb is shocked a fellow operator is earning a huge $5.3 million annually across 247 listings (pictured is an Airbnb property in Canberra)

'I'm not sure how that's even happening to be honest - how do they own that many properties,' said Noa Peer (pictured is an Airbnb property in Adelaide)

'We don't want a holiday accommodation market that's so over-regulated it puts people off coming here, but people are also entitled to the quiet enjoyment of their homes,' he said in a statement.

A recent Deloitte Access Economics report found Airbnb guests were contributing $1.6 billion to the Australian economy and supporting over 14,000 jobs.

It found hosts across the country earned a median income of $4920 in 2015/16.

AIRBNB TOP EARNERS AUSTRALIA TOP EARNERS IN NSW Sydney - $5.3 million across 247 properties Wingecarribee - $4 million across 97 properties Wyong - $4 million across 168 properties Byron Bay - $3.7 million across 40 properties. NSW hosts accommodated 742,800 guests for 1.4 million nights in 2015/16

TOP EARNERS IN VICTORIA Melbourne - $3.7 million across 158 properties Colac Otway - $3.5 million across 80 properties Surf Coast - $2.7 million across 187 properties Hepburn - $2.6 million across 61 properties. Victorian hosts accommodated 651,600 guests for 1.1 million nights in 2015/16

TOP EARNERS IN QUEENSLAND Douglas - $2.8 million across 44 properties Cairns - $2.5 million across 52 properties Sunshine Coast - $2.4 million across 51 properties Gold Coast - $1.3 million across 37 properties Queensland hosts accommodated 343,800 guests for 586,700 nights in 2015/16

TOP EARNERS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA Barossa - $692,512 across 27 properties Victor Harbour - $611,000 across 32 properties Adelaide - $606,000 across 16 properties Holdfast Bay - $327,000 across 12 properties South Australian hosts accommodated 64,100 guests for 109,000 nights in 2015/16

TOP EARNERS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA Brusselton - $1.45 million across 50 properties Perth - $1 million across 40 properties Augusta-Margaret River - $796,700 across 21 properties Mandurah - $564,151 across 33 properties West Australian hosts accommodated 171,500 guests for 292,900 nights in 2015/16

TOP EARNERS IN TASMANIA West Tamar - $267,000 across 12 properties Hobart - $265,000 across two properties Huon Valley - $256,000 across two properties Launceston - $180,000 across seven properties Tasmanian hosts accommodated 124,500 guests for 126,300 nights in 2015/16

TOP EARNERS IN THE NORTHERN TERRITORY Darwin - $378,000 across eight properties Northern Territory hosts accommodated 8800 guests for 18,000 nights

TOP EARNER IN THE ACT Canberra - $334,000 across six properties ACT hosts accommodated 20,000 guests for 47,300 nights

Source: AirDNA and Deloitte Access Economic report for Airbnb 2017 Advertisement

A Sydney host who has happily let out two modest properties for years on Airbnb is shocked a fellow operator is earning a huge $5.3 million annually across 247 listings.

'I'm not sure how that's even happening to be honest - how do they own that many properties,' said Noa Peer who has two one-bedroom Surry Hills apartments listed on Airbnb.

Ms Peer and her partner have listed their two properties for between $116 and $160 a night for nearly three years and say Airbnb makes them more money than having fixed tenants.

Ms Peer and her partner have listed their two properties for between $116 and $160 a night for nearly three years and say Airbnb makes them more money than having fixed tenants (pictured is an Airbnb property in Perth)

Ms Peer and her partner initially only rented out their properties on weekends but demand grew fast (pictured is an Airbnb property in Perth)

She noted the average annual takings for each of the 247 listings operated by the country's top earner in Sydney 'wasn't that high' once you broke down the numbers (pictured is an Airbnb property in Brisbane)

She was initially drawn to the personalised approach of the accommodation website and is surprised it's increasingly being used by what Airbnb terms 'next generation property managers'.

Ms Peer and her partner initially only rented out their properties on weekends but demand grew fast.

She noted the average annual takings for each of the 247 listings operated by the country's top earner in Sydney 'wasn't that high' once you broke down the numbers.

'It's not heaps of money - about $21,000 a property,' she said.

The small-time operator also questioned whether the bigger players on Airbnb were able to offer the level of personalised service she prides herself on.
A Florida police department is using horse patrols in a neighborhood thats been plagued by homicides in recent weeks.

Officials in Tampa have been searching for the person - or people - responsible for shooting and killing four in the Seminole Heights neighborhood since October 9.

Police have said the shootings have happened with in close proximity of each other, arent robberies and could be the work of a serial killer.

The homicides have left residents scared and city officials frustrated because there hasnt been an arrest, despite a reward of more than $100,000 for information to help solve the case.

The department has received some 1,100 tips.

Tampa police released new footage on Wednesday, showing the man wanted for last Tuesday's murder of Ronald Felton. The video shows the suspect just moments before the 5am shooting

The mounted horse patrols in the neighborhood will begin Friday and extend through the weekend.

Last week, Tampa police released new video of man they believe is behind the murders.

Cops shared the new footage of a the suspect stalking the streets after a 60-year-old man was shot to death early Tuesday morning in the murder-plagued neighborhood.

Police in Florida have all but confirmed that the man responsible for killing Ronald Felton this week is also the same man who killed three people in a 10-day span last month.

Ronald Felton, 60, has been identified as the victim of last Tuesday's shooting. He was on his way to volunteer with the homeless when the suspect came up behind him and shot him dead

Police Chief Brian Dugan says they haven't been able to connect all four murders to one suspect yet, but they believe the suspect of last Tuesday's shooting was at least responsible for the first murder on October 9 as well.

'We cant say this person has done all of the homicides,' Dugan said. 'But we are pretty convinced this person has committed at least two of them.'

On Wednesday, police released a video showing surveillance footage of the suspect in the first and fourth shootings.

They show a man of a similar build and gait, walking around the neighborhood with his hood pulled up.

'That's why we're convinced, when you look at the (clothes) they way the person walks....we think that's our suspect,' Dugan said.

Police finally have a profile of the suspect. He's described as a thin black male who is about 6' to 6'2" tall, with a light complexion.

Investigators believe that the suspect lives in the neighborhood, a working-class district that has been gentrifying.

Police ask asking anyone with information about a possible suspect to come forward.

The reward for information leading to the killer's arrest has been raised to $91,000 thanks to funds donated from the FBI.

They also asked residents to check their gun safes to make sure their guns were accounted for, on the chance that a loved one is the killer and has been using one of their weapons.

Law enforcement briefly placed the neighborhood on lockdown while they searched for the suspect

The suspect is believed to live in the neighborhood, a working-class district that has been gentrifying

The map above shows where the four shootings have taken place in the neighborhood

Police have also ordered residents to keep their porch lights on between the hours of 6pm and 6am, since the killer strikes under the cover of darkness.

The most recent attack happened on Tuesday, at 4:51am.

Ronald Felton was gunned down as he crossed the street on the way to feed the homeless at a local church.

Police said the victim, a construction worker and father of three adult children, was crossing at Nebraska and Wilder when a man dressed in all black came up behind him and shot him.

His murder, in the city's Seminole Heights neighborhood, is close to where three other people were murdered in apparently random shootings.

Benjamin Mitchell became the first victim on October 9, when he was shot dead after getting off a bus in the neighborhood at night.

Two days after Mitchell, 22, was shot, Monica Hoffa, 32, was gunned down. And on October 19, Anthony Naiboa, 20, was shot after taking the wrong bus home from his new job. Police patrolling nearby heard the gunshots and rushed to the scene to find Naiboa dead.

Two days later, Monica Hoffa (left) was also shot after getting off a bus. On October 22, Anthony Naiboa, 20 (right), was shot after taking the wrong bus home from his new job
Steve Smith has shared an emotional moment with fiancee Danielle Willis after scoring his 21st Test century.

The Australian captain raised his bat in a touching salute to Ms Willis, who accepted his New York City observation deck proposal in June.

Ms Willis joined the rest of the Gabba crowd in giving Smith a standing ovation as his batting heroics kept Australia alive in the first Ashes Test of the summer.

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Steve Smith (pictured, left) has shared an emotional moment with fiancee Danielle Willis (pictured, right) after scoring his 21st Test century

The Australian captain (pictured) raised his bat in a touching salute to Ms Willis, who accepted his New York City observation deck proposal in June

Smith was visibly pumped up as he celebrated the milestone, beating the coat of arms badge on his chest.

The gritty hundred - made from 261 balls - was his slowest of all time, and the slowest by an Australian against England since David Boon took 284 balls in 1993.

Smith's masterful knock took Australia's total to 287 for eight by tea on day three, putting the home side within reach of England's first innings 302.

The century was Smith's 13th as Test captain, and came in his 105th innings, making him the third fastest to 21 after Don Bradman and Sunil Gavaskar.

Ms Willis (pictured) joined the rest of the Gabba crowd in giving Smith a standing ovation as his batting heroics kept Australia alive in the first Ashes Test of the summer

Smith (pictured) was visibly pumped up as he celebrated the milestone, beating the coat of arms badge on his chest

Ms Willis, a law student who played waterpolo at university, met the batsman at a bar in Sydney in 2011

The pair have been engaged since Smith popped the question at Manhattan's Top Of The Rock at Rockefeller Centre earlier this year

The captain found unlikely support from Pat Cummins, who added 66 runs with Smith in a stubborn rearguard partnership.

Ms Willis has been spotted in the stands throughout the Test, spending much of Day Two alongside David Warner's wife Candice.

Her pride was evident as she joined the packed crowd to applaud her fiance, raising her hands above her head as she clapped and grinned.

The pair have been engaged since Smith popped the question at Manhattan's Top Of The Rock at Rockefeller Centre earlier this year.

Ms Willis, a law student who played waterpolo at university, met the batsman at a bar in Sydney in 2011.
A mother and her toddler were killed in a tragic Thanksgiving accident when their car collided with a bear in California.

Sarah Rohde, 27, was driving with her 19-month-old daughter, Ariana, in Calaveras County just after 6pm when the crash happened.

The bear was thrown over the hood of Rohde's Subaru Impreza and flew through the windshield, according to Kevin Raggio with the Calaveras County coroner.

Both Rohde and her daughter were killed, as well as the bear, in the evening crash. Rhode's 4-year-old son, Julian, was also in the car. He survived the crash and was taken to UC Medical Center.

Sarah Rohde, 27, pictured with her daughter Ariana, they both died in a tragic Thanksgiving accident after their car struck a bear

The bear flew over the car's hood and went through the windshield of their car, killing the bear as well

The mother was pronounced dead on the scene, while her daughter was pronounced dead in Mark Twain Medical Center in San Andreas, the Sacramento Bee reports.

Rohde's mother, Tracy Browning, told KCRA 'She was the best mom any child could ever ask for, and she was the best daughter,' adding 'She was my rock, and I was her rock too.'

'I'm having a hard time, questioning God about this. I really am,' Browning said.

Rohde worked for Tuolumne County as a extreme tour guide at Mercer Caverns in Murphys, her family said.

Family members say they would like to make a roadside memorial for the mother and her little girl.

Bear accidents in Calaveras County have risen along with the bear population.

'The bear population is growing and I don't see it stopping. There are going to be more wrecks,' Calaveras Fish and Game Commissioner Ron Severud said to KCRA.
An incredible haul of ancient artefacts personally found by a 95-year-old 'Tomb raider' is being held illegally in Perth, Egyptian archaeologists have claimed.

Joan Howard boasts a collection of antiquities worth $1 million which she unearthed during a series of Middle Eastern expeditions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it was legal to bring such artefacts back to Australia.

But after detailing her impressive collection in an interview with the West Australian, investigations have been launched into whether she's entitled to hold onto the precious relics under current laws.

Joan Howard (pictured) is accused of illegally possessing antiquities she collected during a series of Middle Eastern expeditions in the late 1960s and early 70s

Ms Howard, otherwise known as 'Indiana Joan', volunteered on archeological digs for around 11 years with British and American archaeologists in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel from around 1967 while her husband, Keith, was working with the United Nations.

Her diplomatic credentials meant she could travel freely throughout the region.

Her collection includes neolithic axe heads more than 40,000 years old, pottery and weapons from the Phoenicians and the Romans, coins and seals and jewellery from the time of the pharaohs, and a precious funerary mask from Egypt.

She said a favourite was a Roman dagger she found buried with the skeletal remains of its owner.

'Indianna Joan' boasts a collection of antiquities amassing upwards of $1 million in value

Another was the wrappings of a mummy's remains and a cat claw wound within it, indicating the deceased was buried with their pet.

While notably proud of her selection, she has come under fire from prominent archaeologist Monica Hanna who believes it is illegal for Ms Howard to have possession of the items.

Ms Hanna, who works closely with the Egyptian government, has called for all of the treasures to be returned to their rightful homelands.

'This is not something nice or fashionable to do to come and pretend to be Indiana Jones' Ms Hanna told The Sydney Morning Herald.

'We want to investigate how these pieces made it out of Egypt illegally,' she was quoted as saying.

She is boldly campaigning for the return of the pieces, having addressed an open letter to Australia's Ambassador to Egypt, Neil Hawkins, and gained 400 signatures in a petition.

Among her collection are neolithic axe heads more than 40,000 years old, pottery and weapons from the Phoenicians and the Romans

'It is not acceptable that Mrs. Howard behaved as a pirate and appropriated from the different archaeological sites,' the letter reads.

Ms Hanna claims to have had informal correspondence with the Australian embassy in Cairo, but not an official response.

The matter was being looked into by the government, according to a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman.

'Australia implements its obligations under the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970)  this includes the return of foreign cultural property which has been illegally exported from its country of origin and imported into Australia,' they said.

The convention sets out agreed rules for whether cultural artefacts from one signatory country can be taken to another, and how to deal with cases where such artefacts have been taken.

The convention came into force in 1972, and Australia did not accept obligations under the agreement until 1989 - years after Ms Howard travelled through the region and collected the artefacts.

It is possible that Ms Howard has 'valid title' under the convention to the artefacts because they were taken before it came into force.

If so, the originating country would need to 'furnish, at its expense, the documentation and other evidence necessary to establish its claim for recovery and return' of the artefacts.
A man who allegedly filmed two women neighbours in their bedrooms and bathrooms and then secretly uploaded the videos to a porn site has apologised in a Sydney court for his 'silly' actions.

Wawan Pradiat, 23, has been refused bail at Parramatta Bail Court where he was accused of recording and distributing intimate images of four victims in Surry Hills without their consent.

The Indonesian national handed himself into Surry Hills Police Station on Friday night after police raided his apartment where he lives with his partner and brothers, the court heard.

Wawan Pradiat, 23, (pictured) has been refused bail at Parramatta Bail Court where he was accused of recording and distributing intimate images of four victims in Surry Hills

Police prosecutor Ben Rutzou told the court on Saturday the 23-year-old confessed to police and gave them his username details to a website where the videos were uploaded and had been viewed thousands of times.

'He informed police he was responsible for them and wanted to hand himself in,' the court heard.

'He knew the videos were publicly visible.'

Mr Rutzou told the court he was opposed to bail because the accused was a flight risk and could interfere with victims and witnesses.

'It's an extremely strong prosecution case,' he told the court.

More victims may be discovered upon further examination of a number of electronic items that were seized in the raid, including mobile phones, hard drives and computers, the court heard.

The 23-year-old local chef (pictured) started sobbing when he first appeared in court via video link and continued to hang his head as the matter was heard

The 23-year-old local chef started sobbing when he first appeared in court via video link and continued to hang his head as the matter was heard.

He told the court he wanted to apologise for his 'silly' behaviour.

'To each of the victims, I would like to apologise,' he said.

'I just don't want to do it anymore.'

His lawyer told the court the 23-year-old was willing to surrender his passport, provide $1000 for surety and report daily to police if bail was granted.

But Magistrate Malcolm McPherson refused bail, saying Mr Pradiat had no real ties to the community and could not go back to his home.

The matter is due before Central Local Court on Wednesday.
Pop music star Nick Lachey is asking the public on Friday to help us find some justice after a manager at his Cincinnati bar was shot in the face before dawn on Thanksgiving.

According to police, Elizabeth Richardson, 27, was shot in the face by an unknown assailant at around 3am while she was working at Lacheys Bar.

Local police believe the shooter was driving a van and shouting obscenities at her at the time of the incident, according to WLWT-TV.

Investigators believe that Richardson walked toward the van to confront the driver who was shouting the obscenities.

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Pop music star Nick Lachey (left) is asking the public on Friday to help us find some justice after Elizabeth Richardson (right), a manager at his Cincinnati bar was shot in the face before dawn on Thanksgiving

According to police, Richardson, 27, was shot in the face by an unknown assailant at around 3am while she was working at Lacheys Bar (seen above)

Local police believe the shooter was driving a van and shouting obscenities at her at the time of the incident. Cincinnati police released surveillance video footage of the van, which appears to be a brownish color

Richardson was rushed to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where she is listed in critical but stable condition.

Her injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

Richardson has a three-year-old son and was recently engaged to be married, according to police.

Cincinnati police released surveillance video footage of the van, which appears to be a brownish color.

Richardson was taken to University of Cincinnati Medical Center for injuries that were not life-threatening

Richardson has a three-year-old son and was recently engaged to be married, according to police

Ellie is the brightest light and she will find a way to shine through this darkness, Nick Lachey tweeted early Thursday morning

Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 513-352-3040

The van resembles an Astro, though it is difficult to ascertain its precise make and model.

Police said the van was caught on camera driving by City Hall.

Investigators are asking the public for information leading to the arrest of the suspect.

He is described as a black man in his 20s with gold-rimmed glasses and a light beard.

Lacheys Bar was started by former 98 Degrees boy band member Nick Lachey and his brother, Drew Lachey.

Ellie is the brightest light and she will find a way to shine through this darkness, Nick Lachey tweeted early Thursday morning.

Anyone with any information, help us find some justice.

Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 513-352-3040.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a tearful apology for abuses and cultural losses to the former students of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Some 150,000 indigenous children over more than 100 years were separated from their families and forced to have a state-run education according to the BBC.

'For every Innu, Inuit, and NunatuKavut child in Newfoundland and Labrador who suffered discrimination, mistreatment, abuse, and neglect in residential schools - we are sorry,' Trudeau said.

Through tears Trudeau said: 'Saying that we are sorry today is not enough. It will not undo the harm that was done to you. It will not bring back the languages and traditions you lost. It will not take away the isolation and vulnerability you felt when you separated from your families, communities and cultures.'

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a tearful apology on behalf of the Government of Canada to former students of the Newfoundland and Labrador Residential Schools

Trudeau sits in the crowd before delivering an apology on behalf of the Government of Canada to former students on Friday

'While this long overdue apology will not undo the harm done, we offer it as a sign that we as a government and as a country accept responsibility for our failings.'

'The treatment of Indigenous children in residential schools is a dark and shameful chapter in our country's history,' he said in his address. 'For all of you  we are sincerely sorry.'

Last year the federal government settled a class action suit on behalf of the survivors paying out a $50million settlement last year from the Trudeau government to 1,000 students who attended residential schools.

Referencing the settlement, Trudeau said it would not have been possible without the courage of those who spoke out about their experiences at residential schools.

'Sadly, not all are here with us today, having passed away without being able to hear this apology,' he said. 'We honour their spirits, and we cherish their memories.'

'Canada has now accepted responsibility for all that we went through': Residential school survivor Toby Obed responded to the government's apology

Emotional day: Elders offer prayers before Trudeau apologized on behalf of the government

The schools often did not allow the students to speak their language or to practice their culture in the name of educating the students.

'They were made to feel ashamed of who they were,' Mr Trudeau said.

More than 3,000 children died while at the schools and others suffered physical, emotional or sexual abuse according to the BBC.

'This burden is one you no longer have to carry alone. It's my hope you can get some closure, that you can give your inner child some rest, that you can finally begin to heal.' he said.

Trudeau made the apology from Happy Valley-Goose Bay in central Labrador.

Between 1884 until 1996, when the last of the schools closed, children were taken from their families and sent to these residential schools which were either church-run institutions or government-funded boarding schools.

In a landmark report titled Truth and Reconciliation which was released in December 2015, it said the policy was an attempt to weaken indigenous culture, and amounted to 'cultural genocide'.

In 2008 an apology was issued to survivors of the schools, but survivors from the Moravian Mission and the International Grenfell Association that established boarding schools for indigenous children were not included.

Over 1,000 survivors of those schools disagreed with being excluded and filed the class-action against the government, which was settled in 2016.

Residential school survivor Toby Obed accepted the apology on behalf of all the students.

'This apology has been a long time in the making. Too long,' he said.

In 2008 'we felt left out, forgotten and abandoned. Canada has now accepted responsibility for all that we went through'.
A man accused of the shooting murder of his partner who was left for dead at a Melbourne hospital has failed to front court.

Qasim House, 32, was charged with murder on Friday, a day after the 42-year-old woman was shot in the upstairs of a house, bundled into a car and dumped at Sunshine Hospital.

The woman died shortly after arriving at the hospital's emergency department on Thursday night.

Man accused of the shooting murder of his partner who was left for dead at a Melbourne hospital has failed to front court

Qasim House, 32, was charged with murder on Friday, a day after the 42-year-old woman was shot in the upstairs of a house, bundled into a car and dumped at Sunshine Hospital

Police alleged House fled the hospital, crashing into two other cars before stealing one of them and leaving two people with minor injuries

Police alleged he fled the hospital, crashing into two other cars before stealing one of them and leaving two people with minor injuries.

House's defence lawyer told the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Saturday she was instructed he be remanded in custody in his absence.

She said her client was withdrawing from heroin and ice, and asked that he be seen by a nurse as soon as possible.

Charge sheets allege House stole a Toyota Hilux ute valued at $50,000 and tried to steal Mazda 2, with a sawn off shotgun.

He faces seven charges including carjacking, attempted carjacking, being unregistered to possess a firearm and reckless driving endangering serious injury.

Magistrate Alan Spillane remanded House in custody to reappear on Thursday for a preliminary filing hearing.

House's defence lawyer told the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Saturday she was instructed he be remanded in custody in his absence

She said her client was withdrawing from heroin and ice, and asked that he be seen by a nurse as soon as possible
A One Nation volunteer has claimed he was spat on by a voter at a polling booth in Queensland.

Tensions were running high at the Geebung State School in Aspley on Saturday, as the state takes to the polls.

The One Nation volunteer, known only as Mark, told 9 News a man turned down a how-to-vote card before turning around and spitting in his face.

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A One Nation volunteer (pictured) has claimed he was spat on by a voter at a polling booth in Queensland on Saturday

'I'm volunteering for One Nation handing out how-to-vote cards and he didn't take it,' Mark said.

'[He] took a step past me, then turned around so I assumed he wanted one so I turned around and he just spat in my face.

'It's a filthy thing to do.'

Mark said while everyone is 'entitled to their own opinion', spitting in a person's face was 'just absolutely filthy'.

The One Nation volunteer, known only as Mark, told 9 News a man turned down a how-to-vote card before turning around and spitting in his face

Queensland Police were made aware of the incident, but said no official complaint had been made

James Ashby, chief-of-staff for One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, described the behaviour of the voter as 'vile and disgusting'.

Shaun Byrne, Aspley's One Nation candidate, also told told The Courier-Mail of the incident.

Queensland Police were made aware of the incident, but said no official complaint had been made.

Earlier, Senator Hanson said she believed her party would win 'quite a few seats' in the state election.
A Sydney mother has publicly apologised for getting caught driving while nine times over the legal limit.

Susan Lung, 42, claimed she drank six glasses of wine before she got behind the wheel of her silver Audi car on Friday at about 12.35pm.

When she was breathalysed by police around the middle of the day, she recorded a blood alcohol reading of 0.445 - almost nine times the legal limit, 9 News reported.

The mother from Willoughby, on Sydney's well-heeled North Shore, admitted she made a 'stupid mistake' and 'could have injured people'.

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Susan Lung, 42, (pictured) has opened up about drinking six glasses of wine before driving

The mother-of-two was caught driving her silver Audi (pictured) after midnight Friday while nine times over the limit

The mother told 9 News she made a 'stupid mistake' and 'could have injured people'

'All the things that could have gone wrong ... just don't do it,' Ms Lung said.

Police stopped the 42-year-old after midnight on Friday at Mowbray Road and Marlborough Road at Willoughby in Sydney's north.

Through tears, the mother-of-two wanted to apologise to the her children and the harm she put other people in.

'It's something that I shouldn't have done,' Ms Lung said.

The mother had her license suspended after she allegedly had a breath analysis reading of 0.445.

NSW Police said the woman had been charged with high range drink driving at Chatswood Police Station.

Police told 9 News it was 'one of the highest' readings NSW Police had seen 'in a long time'.

Ms Lung is expected to appear before Hornsby Local Court on December 14.
A $50 million bet between a tech giant and an enterprise software company came to fruition on Saturday as Elon Musk announced that the new South Australian mega-battery is ready to be powered up.

South Australia has been plagued with rolling blackouts for the past year and a half, and Tesla's energy products vice president Lyndon Rive offered a solution.

Mr Rive claimed in a March interview with the Financial Review that the company's batteries could fix the problem within 100 days.

Tesla's energy products VP Lyndon Rive said he could solve South Australia's energy problems

Mr Cannon-Brookes asked Elon Musk and Lyndon Rive to 'guarantee' a battery within 100 days

Mr Cannon-Brookes (right) challenged Tesla boss Elon Musk (left) and Tesla's energy products vice president Lyndon Rive to solve the South Australian blackout problem within 100 days

The seemingly wild claim prompted Atlassin co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes to ask Mr Rive if he could guarantee the installation of a 100MW battery pack in a hundred days.

Mr Rive, Tesla's vice-president for energy products, vowed to meet the challenge with the Tesla Powerwall 2 Battery or do it for 'free'.

Mr Musk had stated in a previous interview with Business Insider that if he failed to meet the deadline, it would have cost him 'probably $50 million or more'.

Eight months later, Mr Cannon-Brookes tweeted that he has 'never been more happy to lose a bet' upon hearing the news that Tesla's Aussie team would be ready to install the facility within the 100-day deadline.

Telsa's Australian battery team met the 100-day deadline for the battery with six days to spare

'Never been more happy to lose a bet,' the Australian entrepreneur tweeted on November 24

'Thank you Elon Musk, Tesla's amazing Aussie team, @jayweatherill & all SA. Never been more happy to lose a bet,' the Australian entrepreneur tweeted following news that testing is due to begin.

The battery will serve as a back-up power system capable of powering 60,000 homes for more than four hours and is reportedly three times more powerful than anything else on earth, according to ABC.

Tesla Powerwall 2 Battery is reportedly three times more powerful than anything else on earth

The battery will serve as a back-up power system capable of powering 2,500 homes for a day

Powerpacks from the Tesla battery will be connected to the 99-turbine Hornsdale wind farm run by French company Neoen, have been fully installed on the site near Jamestown, north of Adelaide, at a cost of approximately $33 million.

Adelaide Now reported on Saturday that the enormous lithium-iron battery is expected to be ready to provide power to the state from December 1.

Premier Jay Weatherill has announced that he will travel to Jamestown next week to officially launch the battery, which will also store power for use by the state government to put into the electricity grid.

The battery will form part of a $550 million plan to 'provide backup power and affordable energy to South Australians during the summer months',Fortune reported.

South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill will travel to Jamestown to officially launch the battery
Theresa May is considering giving the European Court of Justice a role in Britain once it has left the EU.

The Prime Minister has held talks about a potential referral system to the ECJ for European citizens who remain in the UK.

Judges in the UK would refer cases to Luxembourg should queries crop up that have not been addressed during Britain's membership of the EU.

Theresa May discussed the idea at a meeting of her inner Brexit Cabinet on Monday, The Sun reported.

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Theresa May has held talks about a potential referral system to the European Court of Justice for EU systems who choose to remain in the UK after Brexit. The Prime Minister is pictured with European Council President Donald Tusk during a bilateral meeting in Brussels yesterday

Judges in the UK would refer cases to Luxembourg should queries crop up that have not already been addressed during Britain's membership of the EU. Theresa May was in Brussels yesterday for talks with EU leaders

One senior Government source said the solution would be a 'good compromise' and could represent a significant breakthrough in Brexit negotiations.

They added that such a move would be acceptable to Brexit supporters because referrals would 'still be a UK court decision' an 'numbers would be very small'.

Theresa May previously insisted that the ECJ have no jurisdiction in British affairs -- making it a 'red line' during her Lancaster House speech earlier this year.

Theresa May previously insisted that the ECJ have no jurisdiction in British affairs -- making it a 'red line' during her Lancaster House speech earlier this year

Immigration Minister Brandon Lewis told MPs on the home affairs select committee that the issue was 'part of the negotiations and this has not concluded yet'

But the EU has been uncompromising in the ECJ maintaining oversight over 3million EU citizens living in Britain after Brexit.

It comes after Immigration Minister Brandon Lewis sparked speculation that Britain could acquiesce on Tuesday after refusing to rule out a potential role for the ECJ.

He told MPs on the home affairs select committee that the issue was 'part of the negotiations and this has not concluded yet'.

In her Florence speech on November 22, the Prime Minister said: 'Where there is uncertainty around underlying EU law, I want the UK courts to be able to take into account the judgments of the European Court of Justice with a view to ensuring consistent interpretation.'

After weeks of stalemate, the president of the European Council yesterday hinted at a breakthrough following talks with Theresa May.

European Union leaders and their partners from the East met for an Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels yesterday

Donald Tusk suggested it was 'possible' talks on trade could begin at a crunch summit of EU leaders in Brussels next month.

But he warned of a 'huge challenge' ahead  and set the Prime Minister a new deadline of ten days for progress on 'all issues' before trade negotiations start.

It comes after Mrs May secured agreement from her Cabinet this week to increase the Government's offer on the Brexit 'divorce bill'.

The EU had insisted talks on trade could not begin until its leaders were satisfied 'sufficient progress' had been made on this issue  as well as on citizens' rights and the Northern Irish border.

But after yesterday's meeting, Mr Tusk tweeted: 'Sufficient progress in #Brexit talks at December #EUCO is possible.

'But still a huge challenge. We need to see progress from UK within 10 days on all issues, including on Ireland.'

As she left the talks, Mrs May insisted Britain would 'honour its commitments' to the EU budget and said there were still issues to be resolved.

But she added: 'There has been a very positive atmosphere in the talks and a genuine feeling that we want to move forward together.'

But Mr Tusk (pictured) warned of a 'huge challenge' ahead  and set the Prime Minister (right) a new deadline of ten days for progress on 'all issues' before trade negotiations start

The Prime Minister admitted she and Mr Tusk had been 'talking about how we can progress the issue in relation to the financial settlement'.

But Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov said he thought EU talks were moving towards a hard Brexit.

His remark comes barely a month before his country is due to take over the presidency of the Council of the EU.

Next's month summit will be the key to progressing from discussions of the divorce bill, citizens' rights and the Irish border.

The next stage of the talks will cover future trading arrangements and an implementation period to avoid a cliff-edge for businesses.

This week, Mrs May and ten key ministers  her Brexit 'war cabinet'  agreed to offer billions more in EU divorce payments in return for assurances on a future trade deal.

Precise figures were not discussed but Brussels has previously suggested it would not start talks without an offer of around 40billion  double what the Prime Minister had previously indicated.

Downing Street would not say whether Mrs May had made her new offer to Mr Tusk or German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The British Prime Minister and European Council president are pictured at the Eastern Partnership Summit at the European Council HQ in Brussels, Belgium yesterday

But the positive atmosphere suggests the agreement to up the offer may have led to a breakthrough.

The Prime Minister came under pressure yesterday from Dublin for fresh assurances there will be no 'hard border' between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Ireland wields a veto in the Brexit talks and the country's premier Leo Varadkar warned deadlock in the negotiations cannot be broken until the border issue is resolved.

His comments came amid a crisis that could see the Irish government collapse. His minority administration is in dispute with the opposition, which could lead to a snap election.

Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said it was difficult to see how border checks could be avoided if the UK left the single market and customs union, while Ireland remained in them.

Mr Varadkar has previously suggested a 'bespoke' arrangement similar to that on the Isle of Man  under which Northern Ireland, or the whole of the UK, would continue to observe the rules of the single market and customs union without necessarily remaining a member of them.

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said there was 'strong solidarity' with Ireland, adding that 'Irish issues are EU issues'.

Mrs May said the UK and Irish governments had 'the same desire', adding: 'We want to see that movement of people and trade across that border can carry on as now and that we don't create any new barriers to trade or the movement of people across that border.'

But last night Mr Coveney said British assurances on the issue were 'aspirational' and that there had to be a 'credible road map' from the UK setting out how it would resolve the issue.

He added: 'The truth is that if we see regulatory divergence between the two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland it is very hard to see in that scenario how you avoid hard border checks.

'So we need progress on this issue  If we can't, I think there is going to be a difficulty coming up.'

Mr Coveney said the other EU members were fully behind Ireland's stance on the issue.

Yesterday, the PM had meetings with Mr Tusk and with European leaders to discuss the Eastern Partnership  EU relations with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
The terrorists who slaughtered 305 people at a mosque in Egypt yesterday were carrying an ISIS flag and wearing masks, it has been revealed.

Around thirty gunmen created an arena of death around the holy house by blocking off escape routes with burnt-out cars before gunning down the penned-in worshippers in a 20-minute massacre.

The public prosecutor's office said today the gunmen, wearing masks and military-style uniforms, surrounded blocked windows and a doorway before setting off a bomb and opening fire with automatic rifles.

'They numbered between 25 and 30, carrying the Daesh flag and took up positions in front of the mosque door and its 12 windows with automatic rifles,' the statement explained, using an Arabic term for ISIS.

In the meticulously planned attack - the worst Islamist atrocity in Egypt's modern history - the murderers reportedly gunned down civilians while screaming 'Allahu Akbar', causing them to stampede and jump out of windows to escape.

But when the worshippers - many of whom were Sufis, a mystical Islamic sect despised by Sunni jihadists - fled, they were caught in the trap and massacred.

Quoting testimonies given to investigators by survivors, the prosecutor's statement said some of the attackers were masked. Those who were not sported heavy beards and long hair. The militants wore camouflaged pants and black T-shirts, it added. Pictured: Sulieman Awad receives medical treatment at the Suez Canal University hospital in Ismailia

People carry the victims on stretchers following the gun and bombing attack on the Rawdah mosque near the North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish

Dozens of suspected ISIS terrorists created an arena of death around the holy house by blocking off escape routes with burnt-out cars before gunning down the penned-in worshippers. Pictured: Victims in the mosque

The public prosecutor's office said today the gunmen, wearing masks and military-style uniforms, surrounded blocked windows and a doorway before opening fire inside with automatic rifles

The terrorists torched seven cars parked outside the mosque, which belonged to worshippers inside

Around thirty gunmen created an arena of death around the holy house by blocking off escape routes with burnt-out cars before gunning down the penned-in worshippers

The victims included civilians and conscripts praying at the mosque, with reports suggesting the terrorists launched rockets before firing on fleeing worshippers. Pictured: The scene after the attack

In a meticulously planned attack - the worst Islamist atrocity in Egypt's modern history - the murderers surrounded the mosque in off-road cars and fired rocket-propelled grenades inside. Pictured: A burnt-out car outside the mosque

Ahmed Abul Gheit, head of the Arab League, which is based in Cairo, condemned the 'terrifying crime which again shows that Islam is innocent of those who follow extremist terrorist ideology,' his spokesman said in a statement. Pictured: Where the attack occurred

The murderers then fled the Al-Rawdah mosque (pictured) - in Bir al-Abed, near El-Arish on the Sinai Peninsula - before being blown up hours later by Egyptian warplanes

Twenty-seven children were among the innocents gunned down and blown up.

At least 128 were also hurt during the horrifying bloodshed, according to the state news agency.

The murderers then fled the Al-Rawdah mosque - in Bir al-Abed, near El-Arish on the Sinai Peninsula - before being blown up hours later by Egyptian warplanes.

A statement by chief prosecutor Nabil Sadeq said the attackers arrived at the mosque in five all-terrain vehicles and positioned themselves at the main door and the facility's 12 windows before opening fire.

They also torched seven cars parked outside the mosque, which belonged to worshippers inside.

The public prosecutor's office said today the gunmen, wearing masks and military-style uniforms, surrounded blocked windows and a doorway before setting off a bomb and opening fire with automatic rifles. Pictured: The inside of the mosque after the attack

A statement by chief prosecutor Nabil Sadeq said the attackers arrived at the mosque in five all-terrain vehicles and positioned themselves at the main door and the facility's 12 windows before opening fire. Pictured: A Quran and remnants of personal belongings of victims of the explosion are seen at Al Rawdah mosque

At least 128 were also hurt during the horrifying bloodshed, according to the state news agency. Pictured: Relatives of the victims of the bomb and gun assault on the North Sinai Rawda mosque wait outside the Suez Canal University hospital in the eastern port city of Ismailia

People bury victims of the of the savage attack on the mosque in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt

Funerals for the victims were held overnight and many were buried unwashed in their bloodied clothes, according to the Islamic burial practices for martyrs, security and medical officials said. Pictured: Burials today

Some spoke of their narrow escape from a certain death, others of families that lost all or most of their male members. Pictured: Burials today after the savage massacre

Abdullah Abdel-Nasser, 14, who was attending prayers with his father, said the shooting began just as the cleric was about to start his sermon, sending panicked worshippers rushing to hide behind concrete columns or whatever shelter they could find.

At one point, a militant shouted for children to leave, so Abdel-Nasser said he rushed out, though he was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel and a bullet.

'I saw many people on the floor, many dead. I don't think anyone survived,' he said at a hospital in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, where around 40 of the wounded were taken, including many children.

Mohammed Ali said 18 members of his extended family were killed in the attack. The mosque belonged to a local clan, the Jreer, so many of its members worshipped there.

'Where was the army? It's only a few kilometers away. This is the question we cannot find an answer to,' he said.

Funerals for the victims were held overnight and many were buried unwashed in their bloodied clothes, according to the Islamic burial practices for martyrs, security and medical officials said.

Quoting testimonies given to investigators by survivors, the prosecutor's statement said some of the attackers were masked. Those who were not sported heavy beards and long hair. The militants wore camouflaged pants and black T-shirts, it added.

The statement was the most detailed by authorities on the attack.

Witnesses spoke of horrific scenes during the approximately 20 minutes it took the militants to kill and maim worshippers.

They spoke of some jumping out of windows, a stampede in a corridor leading to the washrooms and of children screaming in horror.

Some spoke of their narrow escape from a certain death, others of families that lost all or most of their male members.

President Abdel Fattah al Sisi convened an emergency security meeting soon after the attack, state television reported. Pictured: Victims in the mosque

One witness, Ebid Salem Mansour, said the imam had barely made it atop the mosque pulpit to deliver the sermon when intense gunfire rang out.

'We knew that the mosque was under attack by (militants),' he said, recounting an attack that constitutes a grim milestone in Egypt's brutal fight against increasingly emboldened militants.

Mansour, a 38-year-old worker in a nearby salt factory, said he settled in Bir al-Abd, the small town near where the attack took place, three years ago to escape the bloodshed and fighting elsewhere in northern Sinai.

He suffered two gunshot wounds in the legs on Friday.

'Everyone layed down on the floor and kept their heads down. If you raised your head you get shot,' he said.

'The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning and then became more deliberate: Whoever they weren't sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead.'

Fake pictures spread in aftermath As the shocking news of the savage attack on Al-Rawdah mosque first broke, a number of websites and social media accounts began running images that were soon revealed to be fake. News site Al-Araby shared one image showing a smoking building with crowds of people outside. News site Al-Araby shared an image showing a smoking building with crowds of people outside. But the image was actually from two years ago It attached the picture to text explaining that 200 people had been killed in a bombing at a Sinai mosque. But the image was actually taken in 2015 by a photographer working for the AFP news agency. It shows the aftermath of a bombing in a different part of Egypt, in which eight people died. Advertisement

The militants were shouting Allahu Akbar, or God is great, and the children were screaming, Mansour said.

'I knew I was injured but I was in a situation that was much scarier than being wounded. I was only seconds away from a certain death,' he said. As the shooting took place, many of the worshippers recited their final prayers, he added.

The worshippers, according to another witness, began to jump out of windows as soon as the militants opened fire.

'The small door that leads to the corridor for the wash rooms was about the only one where worshippers rushed to escape,' said a 38-year-old government employee who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation.

'There was a stampede. I fell down and then bodies piled up on top of me,' he said.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but ISIS has in the past vowed to rid Sinai, and Egypt, of Sufis.

A local ISIS affiliate is spearheading the insurgency in Sinai, where government forces have battled militants for years.

Some reports claimed a rocket was fired into the children's kindergarten area of the mosque before the terrorists - in military uniforms and wielding black flags - slaughtered those who fled. Pictured: People in the area after the savage attack

A still taken from a video footage shows people and ambulances waiting to evacuate victims outside the mosque

Several hours later Egyptian air force jets destroyed vehicles used in the attack and 'terrorist' locations where weapons and ammunition were stocked, an army spokesman said. Pictured: The aftermath of the attack

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning will begin today, with a special prayer service starting this morning.

In a televised speech the president pledged to 'respond with brutal force', adding that 'the army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period'.

He went on: 'What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism, to destroy our efforts to stop the terrible criminal plan that aims to destroy what is left of our region.'

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (pictured) vowed to respond to the attack with 'brute force'

Several hours later Egyptian air force jets destroyed vehicles used in the attack and 'terrorist' locations where weapons and ammunition were stocked, an army spokesman said.

President Sissi also ordered the construction of a mausoleum in memory of the slain.

He did not say where it would stand or who would be commissioned to build it, but the decision to have one reflects the depth of grief felt by the government over the death of so many people.

A witness of the attack said: 'They were shooting at people as they left the mosque.

'They were shooting at the ambulances, too.'

Some reports claimed a rocket was fired into the children's kindergarten area of the mosque before the terrorists - in military uniforms and wielding black flags - slaughtered those who fled.

A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights Islamic State said that the mosque is known as a place of gathering for Sufis.

The Islamic State group shares the puritan Salafi view of Sufis as heretics for seeking the intercession of saints.

A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights Islamic State said that the mosque is known as a place of gathering for Sufis. Pictured: People outside the mosque on Friday

An injured man, identified as Reda, who survived Sinai mosque attack, receiving treatment at a hospital in Cairo

Cairo's international airport boosted security following the attack, with more troopers and forces seen patrolling passenger halls, conducting searches and manning checkpoints at airport approaches. Pictured: A victim in hospital

Egyptian army conscripts stand guard outside the Suez Canal University hospital in the eastern port city of Ismailia after the attack

Cairo's international airport boosted security following the attack, with more troopers and forces seen patrolling passenger halls, conducting searches and manning checkpoints at airport approaches.

Resident Ashraf el-Hefny said many of the victims were workers at a nearby salt firm who had come for Friday services at the mosque, which had contained hundreds of worshippers.

'Local people brought the wounded to hospital on their own cars and trucks,' he said.

US President Donald Trump used the attack to make the case for building a wall with Mexico and a travel ban on citizens of countries plagued by terrorism.

In response to the savagery, the lights of the Eiffel Tower in Paris were switched off

The President used Twitter to make his case for building a wall with Mexico and imposing a travel ban

In the aftermath of the atrocity, he tweeted: 'Will be calling the President of Egypt in a short while to discuss the tragic terrorist attack, with so much loss of life.

'We have to get TOUGHER AND SMARTER than ever before, and we will. Need the WALL, need the BAN! God bless the people of Egypt.'

Earlier he condemned the mass murder as a 'horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshipers', adding: 'The world cannot tolerate terrorism.'

Police said militants in four off-road vehicles bombed the mosque and fired on worshippers during the sermon segment of Friday prayers. Pictured: Al-Rawdah mosque

British prime minister Theresa May said she was 'appalled by the sickening attack', which she declared an 'evil and cowardly act'.

UK foreign minister Boris Johnson, meanwhile, condemned the 'barbaric attack' in a post on Twitter, while his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian expressed his condolences to the families of victims of the 'despicable attack'.

Ahmed Abul Gheit, head of the Arab League, which is based in Cairo, condemned the 'terrifying crime which again shows that Islam is innocent of those who follow extremist terrorist ideology,' his spokesman said in a statement.

Who are the Sufis targeted by ISIS? The mosque where the massacre occurred is associated with Sufi Muslims, who have frequently been attacked by extremist Sunni jihadists. They accuse them of polytheism - the greatest sin in Islam - because they seek the intercession of dead saints. But in much of the Muslim world, Sufism has for centuries been accepted and practised by mainstream Muslims and Sunni Islam's most important theologians. The head of Al-Azhar, Egypt's top Islamic authority, is a Sufi, as are many top clerics in the Muslim world. They date their practices back to some of Mohammed's companions and the early generations of ascetics who shunned the increasingly powerful Islamic empire for a life of prayer. While some Sufis use music in their prayers, the more established and larger orders shun the practice. They say they want to focus on achieving a state of purity - from which the term Sufism is believed to have been derived - to witness God's presence in their lives. The Salafis condemn what they call 'innovations' - rites and prayers adopted by Sufis which Mohammed himself never prescribed. ISIS has claimed attacks that have killed dozens of Sufis in the past, most notably in Pakistan. Advertisement

In response to the savagery, the lights of the Eiffel Tower in Paris were switched off.



The jihadists had previously kidnapped and beheaded an elderly Sufi leader, accusing him of practising magic which Islam forbids, and abducted Sufi practitioners later released after 'repenting.'

The group has killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, forcing many to flee the peninsula.

A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights Islamic State said that the mosque is known as a place of gathering for Sufis. Pictured: Inside the mosque after the attack

Cairo's international airport boosted security following the attack, with more troopers and forces seen patrolling passenger halls, conducting searches and manning checkpoints at airport approaches. Pictured: People gathering outside the mosque after the attack today

Witnesses spoke of horrific scenes during the approximately 20 minutes it took the militants to kill and maim worshippers. Pictured: The aftermath of the slaughter

The military has struggled to quell the jihadists who pledged allegiance to IS in November 2014.

IS regularly conducts attacks against soldiers and policemen in the peninsula bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, although the frequency and scale of such attacks has diminished over the past year.

They have since increasingly turned to civilian targets, attacking not only Christians and Sufis but also Bedouin Sinai inhabitants accused of working with the army.

Aside from IS, Egypt also faces a threat from Al-Qaeda-aligned jihadists who operate out of neighbouring Libya.

British prime minister Theresa May said she was 'appalled by the sickening attack', which she declared an 'evil and cowardly act'

US President Donald Trump has condemned the mass murder as a 'horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshipers', adding: 'The world cannot tolerate terrorism'

A group calling itself Ansar al-Islam - Supporters of Islam in Arabic - claimed an October ambush in Egypt's Western Desert that killed at least 16 policemen.

Many of those killed belonged to the interior ministry's secretive National Security Service.

The military later conducted air strikes on the attackers, killing their leader Emad al-Din Abdel Hamid, a most wanted jihadist who was a military officer before joining an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Libya's militant stronghold of Derna.

Reacting to the news, Britain's ambassador to Egypt, John Casson, tweeted: 'I am disgusted by the evil attack that killed & injured so many Egyptians in Sinai today. On behalf of the UK my deep condolences to all involved.

'These attacks on people praying in mosques & churches only strengthen our determination to stand together, & defeat terrorism & hate.'

Who are jihadists in Egypt's Sinai? Jihadists had operated in Sinai for years, but infrequent attacks turned into a fully fledged insurgency after the military, prompted by mass protests against Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, ousted him in 2013. The main jihadist group operating at the time was called Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, and its propoganda reflected loyalty to Al-Qaeda. Following Al-Qaeda's split in Syria, IS declared a caliphate there and Iraq in 2014, and Ansar Beit al-Maqdis pledged allegiance to the new 'caliph'. There are no reliable figures on how many fighters have joined it. The military says it has killed hundreds of the jihadists, believed to be led by Bedouin militants from tribes in the sparsely populated peninsula. War of attrition Unlike in Syria and Iraq, IS has been unable to seize and hold urban centres in Sinai. One July 2015 attempt to seize the town of Sheikh Zuweid ended with the jihadists' withdrawal after the military unleashed F-16 jets against them. But the group has kept up a steady war of attrition involving roadside bombings, sniper fire and checkpoint attacks. Its fighters are believed to hide in the mountainous desert in mid-Sinai and have some freedom of movement between army checkpoints and away from major thoroughfares. In occasional propoganda releases, the jihadists can be seen setting up their own checkpoints to confiscate cigarettes and other items they deem un-Islamic. They also have deadly underground cells that carry out assassinations and bombings in the North Sinai capital of El-Arish and on the mainland, including southern Egypt. Well-armed Officials said the jihadists have been well-armed with anti-tank missiles, machine guns and explosives smuggled from chaotic Libya and elsewhere. But the scale of Friday's attack on a Muslim house of worship shocked even IS supporters who argued on social media that the jihadists could not have carried it out. The state prosecution quoted witnesses as saying the attackers - between 25 and 30 militants wearing camouflage - had flown IS's dreaded black banner. Shadowy leadership, foreign fighters Details about the group's leadership are scarce, and security services avoid disclosing them except in statements announcing their deaths. Both the leadership and the lower ranks are believed to be dominated by Bedouins and mainland Egyptians. The group and affiliated jihadists have identified several Palestinians from the neighbouring Gaza Strip killed fighting in their ranks. After an attack on a monastery in south Sinai, police also released an image of a slain attacker who wore a vest identifying him or the vest's original owner as Moroccan. In 2016, the military said it had killed the group's overall commander in Sinai, Abu Duaa al-Ansari, in air strikes. He is believed to have been Mohamed Freij, the brother of deceased Ansar Beit al-Maqdis founder Tawfiq Freij. IS later confirmed his death and said it had replaced him with another commander, Abu Hajar al-Hashemi, of whom little is known. A captured jihadist told interrogators that the identity of the group's top leader in Sinai was not known, and that he passed on instructions through a subordinate. Under the top commander, responsibilities are divided among militants who command sections on 'security', 'military affairs', bomb-making and media. Advertisement

The main gateway for Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip was closed following the attack.

The Rafah crossing was expected to open temporarily. But following the attack, travelers were told they would not be able to cross after all.

On Saturday, guards were the only people to be seen at the crossing. Ruling party Hamas says 30,000 people have been waiting for a chance to travel. Thus far, Rafah has opened for people exiting Gaza only 17 days this year.

Egypt has kept Rafah largely sealed off since 2013, after the ouster of Egypt's elected Islamist President Mohammed Morsi while authorities have been fighting an Islamist insurgency.

Hamas, which has wielded power in Gaza since it ousted forces loyal to the Western-backed Fatah faction in 2007, condemned the Sinai attack.
The woman who was killed after being struck by lightning in Melbourne has been identified as Lauren Brownlee.

Ms Brownlee, an office manager with Stockdale and Leggo real estate in Croydon, was struck and killed on Friday night as severe thunderstorms battered the city.

Ms Brownlee's professional profile describes her as friendly and positive, who enjoyed photography, music and art.

The woman and her partner, Ben Hollow, both in their 20s, were standing between their car and a tree in Chirnside Park, around 8.40pm, when they were both struck.

Scroll down for video

Lauren Brownlee, an office manager with Stockdale and Leggo real estate in Croydon, was struck and killed on Friday night as severe thunderstorms battered Melbourne

Ms Brownlee was watching the thunderstorm roll across the city with her partner when they were both struck

Ms Brownlee's professional profile describes her as friendly and positive, who enjoyed photography, music and art

Both were taken to hospital where Ms Brownlee died of her injuries later that night, The Age reported.

Mr Hollow, who worked alongside Ms Brownlee in real estate, was taken to The Alfred hospital in a serious condition on Friday night, after going into cardiac arrest.

A spokesman for The Alfred confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that Mr Hollow remains in a serious but stable condition on Saturday evening.

Melbourne was hit by dozens of lightning strikes on Friday night, as thunderstorms left 55 homes without power.

Young couple Ben Hollow and Lauren Brownlee were both struck by lighting on Friday night, killing Ms Brownlee and leaving Mr Hollow in hospital

Ben Hollow (centre) went into cardiac arrest before being taken to The Alfred hospital, where he remains in a serious but stable condition

Ms Brownlee (left, front) her partner Ben Hollow (left, middle row) were standing between their car and a tree in Chirnside Park, around 8.40pm, when they were both struck

Emergency services attend to the scene where the young couple were struck by lightning

While firefighters responded to an influx of calls between 8pm and 9.30pm, SES volunteers were called out to 32 people asking for help.

The weather bureau had issued a severe thunderstorm warning at 7.20pm on Friday night, warning residents to stay indoors.

Flights out of Melbourne Airport were delayed due to the storms, with temperatures dropping to 20 degrees by 9pm.

Homes in Altona Meadows were still without power on Saturday morning, and outages were reported in Geelong, Corio, Pipers Creek, Stanhope and Mortlake.

Lightning was confirmed as being responsible for further outages in Gisbourne and Ondit.

Flights out of Melbourne Airport were delayed due to the storms as emergency services responded to calls for help
Former television presenter John Leslie has reportedly been charged with sexual assault for allegedly putting his hand up a party-goer's fancy dress tutu at a nightclub.

The former Blue Peter star, 52, is accused of sexually assaulting the 26-year-old reveller during a busy VIP night at Edinburgh's popular Atik nightclub earlier this year.

Police arrested Leslie after questioning him and the woman separately at the venue, according to The Sun.

Atik nightclub in Edinburgh where the alleged sexual assault is said to have taken place

Officers have now submitted a report of the alleged incident to Scotland's prosecutors, who will decide what action to take.

Leslie, who lives in Edinburgh, rose to fame in the late 1980s when he became the first Scot to host Blue Peter before going on to present Wheel of Fortune and This Morning.

Recently he has involved himself in property development.

The alleged sexual assault is said to have taken place on a night to mark the re-opening of the club, which recently appeared in the film T2 Trainspotting, after a 450,000 refurbishment at the venue.

A spokesman for Police Scotland said: 'Police in Edinburgh have charged a 52-year-old man following a report that a 26-year-old woman was the victim of a sexual assault at a nightclub in the Tollcross area on Sunday 25 June.'

A spokesman for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service - Scotland's equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service - said: 'The Procurator Fiscal has received a report concerning a 52 year old male, in connection with an alleged incident in Edinburgh on 25 June 2017.

'The report is currently under consideration.'
Police have arrested a Heathrow Airport security guard on suspicion of helping a member of a Colombian drugs cartel to smuggle 700,000 of cocaine into Britain.

The 30-year-old from Southall, west London was arrested in a toilet on the airside of Terminal Five along with a 37-year-old man from Colombia.

Officers from the National Crime Agency and Metropolitan Police raided the toilet and recovered 14 pounds of cocaine during a joint operation.

Four men, including a Heathrow security guard have been arrested on suspicion of smuggling 14 pounds of cocaine contained in this bag which had been carried from Colombia

The National Crime Agency said the cocaine could have a potential street value of 700,000

The Colombian national had just arrived from Bogata when he went to the toilet on Thursday afternoon carrying a black bag containing the drugs to meet his contact.

Police also arrested a 43-year-old man in the airport arrivals area who is believed to be linked to the smuggling plot.

According to the National Crime Agency, the drugs had a wholesale value of 250,000, but one cut and sold the value would increase to 700,000.

Shortly after arresting the three suspects at Heathrow, Met Police officers raided an address in east London where they detained a 46-year-old man.

All four are being questioned on suspicion of drug importation offences.

Darren Barr, senior investigating officer at the NCA said: 'Heathrow Airport provided invaluable assistance in this operation, and working with partners such as the MPS, Border Force and the Heathrow authorities we are determined to target those who may be involved in criminality at the airport.

'Corruption threatens the security of the UK border and the public at large which is why we see it as a priority.'

The Heathrow security guard and the Colombian national were arrested along with the cocaine inside a toilet on the airside of Terminal Five. A third man was arrested in arrivals
Exit polls indicate Annastacia Palaszczuk is set to make political history in Australia by becoming the first woman to win a second election.

Ms Palaszczuk, 48, has been Premier of Queensland since 2015, and now looks likely to retain the position following Saturday's election.

Her Labor government is tipped to be returned to power in a tight race against LNP leader Tim Nicholls.

Exit polls indicate Annastacia Palaszczuk is set to make political history in Australia by becoming the first woman to win a second election

Steve Dickson has virtually conceded the seat of Buderim on the Sunshine Coast, leaving One Nation searching for a new Queensland leader.

LNP defector Mr Dickson is well behind in the counting and admitted he was unlikely to win it.

'I'm not about to give it up quite yet, but it's not looking fantastic for me and I've got to be very straightforward,' he said at a party function in Buderim.

Mr Dickson said the LNP and Labor had worked together to give preferences to each other to keep him from winning the seat.

'That is the way the cookie crumbles, and the cards fall'.

Ms Palaszczuk handed out how-to-vote cards in her seat of Inala with her father Henry, mother Lorelle and sister Julia.

'[The choice] is whether they want to continue with a stable, hardworking, decent government, or do they want to put that at risk with Tim Nicholls as premier with Pauline Hanson,' she said.

Mr Nicholls was swamped by anti-Adani protestors as he arrived with his wife Mary to vote at a church in his inner-Brisbane seat of Clayfield.

'I'm feeling really positive, we've got a great message, we're talking about cheaper power, we're talking about jobs, and jobs for regional Queensland that Annastacia Palaszczuk doesn't want to deliver he said.'

The big issue for the LNP is the re-emergence of One Nation which is sucking away its support from conservative voters.

Senator Pauline Hanson said she was confident the party would get a groundswell of support in the Queensland elections.

'We're going to win quite a few seats here in Queensland and I think that's going to carry across to the next federal election too,' she said.

Mr Nicholls was swamped by anti-Adani protestors as he arrived with his wife Mary to vote at a church in his inner-Brisbane seat of Clayfield

Pauline Hanson is remaining upbeat despite One Nation failing to make the impact she touted in the Queensland election.

Her party's two biggest names - state leader Steve Dickson and former senator Malcolm Roberts - are set for defeat before half the vote is counted in their seats.

LNP defector Mr Dickson is well behind his former party in the seat of Buderim while Mr Roberts has only 28 per cent of the vote in Ipswich where Labor's sitting MP Jennifer Howard is on track to hold.

Although Mr Dickson virtually conceded defeat at a party function, Senator Hanson was still holding hope of a miraculous turnaround.

'I still have faith in Steve,' she said while standing beside him in Buderim.

Supporters are seen at the campaign party house for Queensland One Nation leader Steve Dickson in Buderim

Senator Hanson also said preferences would flow Mr Roberts' way in Ipswich.

'There's still preferences and a lot of people don't follow the how-to-vote cards,' she told reporters. 'Where just going to wait and see.'

But Mr Roberts conceded defeat shortly after.

The One Nation leader at the start of the four-week campaign tipped repeating the party's efforts in the 1998 election when they won 11 seats.

But after two hours of voting they will be hard pressed to win more than a quarter of that, let alone hold the balance of power in parliament.

One Nation candidate Malcolm Roberts greets Queensland voters at the Raceview State School

Maryborough appears the only seat that will go One Nation's way but Senator Hanson also talked up its chances in Callide, Lockyer, Burnett and Hervey Bay.

'I think we're looking good in some of the other seats,' she said.

'I think we will win some seats, there's no doubt about that.

'It's going to be a long night.'

Queensland's shadow treasurer Scott Emerson is not giving up his fight for the new Brisbane seat of Maiwar, despite a dramatic swing to the Greens.

Mr Emerson is one of three Liberal National Party frontbenchers in grave danger, in a worrying election indicator for his party, as almost half of the vote has been counted on Saturday night.

A supporter is seen at the campaign party house for Steve Dickson in Buderim

Shadow attorney-general Ian Walker and the LNP's spokesman for natural resources and mines Andrew Cripps are also in severe trouble.

Mr Emerson, the LNP's spokesman over the four-week campaign, is under pressure with 40 per cent of the primary vote, only narrowly ahead of the Greens' Michael Berkman (29) and Labor candidate Ali King (28).

Greens and Labor preferences will flow to each other so whichever party finishes second on the primary vote will be favoured to unseat the shadow treasurer and former journalist.

'I think it will be a tough fight. We are still in it. We are not giving up anything at the moment,' he told the ABC.

The Greens had targeted the new affluent inner-western Brisbane seat of Maiwar, which had been made up of Mr Emerson's old seat of Indooroopilly and Mt Coot-tha, held by Labor's Steven Miles.

Environment Minister Dr Miles moved to the safe Labor seat of Murrumba in northern Brisbane, which the shadow treasurer hit out at, as well as Labor's parliamentary move to reintroduce compulsory preferential voting.

Cricket fans are seen posing for a selfie outside East Brisbane State School

Mr Emerson says the final result could be decided by pre-poll votes, which had risen in his electorate.

'Those figures will play significant roll,' he said. 'They tend to favour the incumbent.

'It was always going to be a tough fight and given the new boundaries and change to the voting system, but I am not a quitter and that's why I stayed here and didn't run away like Steven Miles did.

'I was going to fight it out until the polls closed.'

Mr Walker appears set to lose the seat of Mansfield with Labor's Corrine McMillan on track to win with 41 per cent of the primary vote to 38 per cent for the shadow attorney-general.

The LNP are also in danger of losing long-time Hinchinbrook MP Mr Cripps who is in a tight tussle with Katter's Australian Party candidate Nick Dametto.
A Japanese politician has been thrown out of a council meeting because she brought her seven-month-old baby with her.

Yuka Ogata, a member of the Kumamoto city assembly, brought her little son into the chamber on Wednesday - but was asked to take him out because of a rule limiting attendance to assembly members, city official Naoya Oshima said.

Ogata tried to stay but the speaker of the assembly eventually persuaded her to take the infant out. She then handed him over to a babysitter and returned.

She has now used the ejection to highlight the many hurdles faced by working women in Japan.

Yuka Ogata, a member of the Kumamoto city assembly, brought her little son into the chamber on Wednesday - but was asked to take him out because of a rule limiting attendance to assembly members, city official Naoya Oshima said

Ogata tried to stay but the speaker of the assembly eventually persuaded her to take the infant out. She then handed him over to a babysitter and returned

'I wanted to highlight the difficulties facing women who are trying to juggle their careers and raise children,' the 42-year-old Ogata was quoted by the Asahi Shimbun daily as saying.

Ogata was not immediately available for comment.

Economists say given Japans rapidly aging population, bringing women into the workforce is essential.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made increasing the number of women workers a key part of his economic plan, pledging, among various measures, to increase daycare for children.

'I wanted to highlight the difficulties facing women who are trying to juggle their careers and raise children,' the 42-year-old Ogata was quoted as saying

He told the United Nations in 2013 that he would create 'a society where women can shine', but little progress has been made.

Japan ranked 114 out of 144 in the World Economic Forums 2017 Global Gender Gap report, falling 13 places since Abe took power.

Abe appointed only two women to ministerial posts in a cabinet reshuffle in August, down from three and five respectively in his previous two cabinets.

Only 14 percent of Japans lawmakers are women.

Japanese labour law has no official system in place for maternity or parental leave for politicians.

In 2000, a national lawmaker in Abe's Liberal Democratic Party took three days off from parliament to give birth, prompting the legislature to allow maternity leave for members.

A total of 12 lawmakers have taken advantage of the time off, being granted up to three months of maternity leave at the most, the Mainichi Shimbun daily reported this year.
A man is fighting for his life after he was knocked out in a brawl in Sydney's Darling Harbour.

The 30-year-old man was repeatedly bashed near Kings Street Wharf at about 10.30pm on Friday night.

NSW Police said there were reports a man was repeatedly assaulted by another man outside the Sea Life Aquarium.

A man is fighting for his life after he was knocked out in a brawl in Sydney's Darling Harbour

When Police (pictured) arrived at the scene, the man, 30, was unconscious on the pavement

The man, 30, was repeatedly bashed near Kings Street Wharf Friday night at about 10.30

When Police arrived at the scene, the 30-year-old man was unconscious on the pavement.

The man was rushed to St Vincent's Hospital in a critical condition suffering head injuries, where he is now fighting for his life.

Sydney City local area command Acting Inspector Luke Geradts told The Daily Telegraph that 'alcohol was certainly a factor'.

'They had come from somewhere operating under a liquor license,' Acting Inspector Geradts said.

Police are urging anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
New defence secretary Gavin Williamson has privately expressed shock at the extent of cuts due to be imposed on the MoD by the Treasury.

Mr Williamson has been told he must find a way of reducing the defence budget by 2 billion a year.

The Ministry of Defence has dismissed speculation over the nature of the planned cuts, but the government faces a backbench rebellion from angry MPs.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson was said to be shocked by the 'completely awful' headline proposals drawn up by military chiefs

One Whitehall source told The Times that Mr Williamson is trying to prevent the army's decimation.

The source said: 'Gavin is aware he has a huge challenge on his hands. He does not like what he came into . . . We are beginning to try and push back.

'Britain would risk becoming a global laughing stock at a time when we need defence to be our strong card post-Brexit.'

The army has a target strength of 82,000, but it is now at 77,440 and could shrink to below 70,000.

Such is the anger within the Conservative Party to the proposed cuts, one defence minister, Tobias Ellwood - who battled to save a Westminster terror attack victim - has threatened to resign if cuts are imposed on the Army.

Other measures thought to be under consideration include reducing the order for Ajax armoured vehicles and delaying upgrades to other tanks.

Mr Ellwood, who served in the Royal Green Jackets from 1991 to 1996 with tours in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Kuwait, Germany, Gibraltar and Bosnia and is now in the Army Reserve, has indicated he would have to step down if the military was not shielded from the proposed reductions, the Times said.

Asked if Mr Ellwood was known to have concerns about the prospect of cuts, a senior defence source said: 'Absolutely.'

Speculation about defence cuts has mounted in recent months since the launch of a review led by Theresa May's national security adviser Mark Sedwill.

Other options reportedly under consideration include the axing of amphibious assault ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, alongside the loss of 1,000 Royal Marines.

Mr Ellwood was pictured coming to the aid of police officer Keith Palmer after he was fatally stabbed by Khalid Masood during the Westminster attack

An MoD spokesman said: 'We have the biggest defence budget in Europe and are one of very few countries to not only meet but exceed NATO's 2 per cent spending target.

'In the face of intensifying threats, we are contributing to the cross-government review of national security capabilities and looking at how we best spend the rising defence budget to protect our country.

'No decisions have been made and any discussion of the options is pure speculation.'
A staggering 1,500 child abuse cases each year are linked to witchcraft and demonic possession, Government statistics have revealed.

The data shows there were 1,460 cases in England, which included concerns about abuse which was 'linked to faith and belief' during the year to March 2017.

Experts are now warning that there is an increased number of children who are being abused by adults.

Of the near 1,500 cases of abuse, 310 took place in the North West, 240 in London and 220 in the West Midlands.

One local authority in Lancashire reported 86 cases - the largest for any district, the Telegraph reports.

Of the near 1,500 cases of abuse, 310 took place in the North West, 240 in London and 220 in the West Midlands

The figure is likely to be higher as local authorities are unaware of the warning signs, charities claim.

The executive director of safeguarding at the Churches' Child Protection Advisory Service told the Church Times there was a 'limited understanding' of warning signs.

Justin Humphreys said: 'The data presented by the Government reflects the reports to the Education Select Committee 2012 that an increasing number of children in the UK are being harmed in the belief that "it will get the devil out of them".

'We should be taking this as a call to re-energise the national effort to educate communities and professionals and safeguard all our children.'

The data was previously only released by forces when pressured under the Freedom of Information act.

The Metropolitan Police released data in 2014 which showed it had dealt with 148 cases since 2004 - yet new data proves the issue is much greater than initially thought.

The Government launched a national action plan in 2012 following the murder of Kristy Bamu, 15, who was accused of witchcraft.

His sister Magalie Bamu and her partner Eric Bikubi drowned him in a bath on Christmas Day 2010 after he was tortured for several days. They were both jailed for life.

In 2000, Victoria Climbie was tortured and murdered by her guardians who said she was possessed. She died from hypothermia and was forced to sleep in a bath tub in her own excrement. Her body was covered in scars and bruises and led to major changes in child protection policies in the UK.

A Government spokesman said: 'Children must be kept safe, and no belief system can justify the abuse of a child.

'The Department for Education is investing up to 1.5 million to tackle child abuse and support charities such as Barnardo's in their work to tackle abuse linked to faith or belief.

'Those responsible for child abuse linked to faith or belief would be subject to prosecution. Our statutory guidance is crystal clear that anyone who has concerns about a child's welfare should report this to children's social care or the police.'
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Two men aged 21 and 40 have handed themselves in to police over the platform fight that triggered mass panic last night in Oxford Street.

Detectives had earlier released two photographs of suspects they believed started the stampede after an altercation broke out in a tube station.

Witnesses said two men 'bumped' into each other before 'several punches' were thrown on the westbound platform at Oxford Circus.

It sparked a major panic with gun shots mistakenly reported to police who declared a terror response and stormed the station on the busiest shopping day of the year.

This afternoon British Transport Police said in a statement posted on Twitter: 'We appealed for information following an incident at Oxford Circus yesterday.

'Since the appeal two men, aged 21 and 40, attended a police station voluntarily and were interviewed.

'Thank you to everyone who helped to share the appeal. The investigation continues.'

It is not known whether the men who handed themselves in are those pictured by police.

British Transport Police had earlier released these images of two men after reports of 'gun shots' led to a stampede and several people being injured

Passengers reported hearing 'shots fired' at about 4.40pm prompting police to storm the station and evacuate it on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

Minutes later, pop star Olly Murs tweeted that he had heard 'gun shots' inside department store Selfridges - half a mile from the tube station - and encouraged people to flee.

The presenter, 33, told his 7.8million followers: 'F*** everyone get out of Selfridges now gun shots!! I'm inside.'

Armed police triggered their protocol for terrorist attacks as terrified shoppers bolted from the area - leaving several injured with nine taken to hospital.

Crowds were seen running from Oxford Street after gunfire was reportedly heard in or around the Underground station shortly before 5pm last night

People fled down Regent Street and looked fearful as the chaos began to unravel around Oxford Circus

Other people were seen running away from the scene as police tried to confirm what was happening at the tourist hotspot

Armed police were seen entering Oxford Circus and shouting out to people passing by as they evacuate the premises

Panic, wild rumours, and some VERY over-excited tweeting: How Oxford Circus lost its head in an hour of confusion 4.43pm London Fire Brigade are called to an 'incident' at Oxford Circus tube. Three fire engines & 15 firefighters are sent. 4.55pm: Reports begin to circulate on Twitter of 'gun shots' being heard near Oxford Street. People flee the streets and rush to hide inside shops. 4.56pm: British Transport Police tweet: 'We continue to respond to an incident at Oxford Circus. The station is currently closed, please avoid the area at this time. Officers are on scene.' TfL confirms they have closed Oxford Circus station. 5pm: People write on Twitter there is a 'big gang fight at Oxford Circus'. 5.04pm: Police say they were called at 4.38pm to a 'number of reports of shots fired' on Oxford Street and underground at Oxford Circus tube station. 5.16pm: Police say: 'We have responded as if the incident is terrorist related. Armed and unarmed officers are on scene.' 5.39pm: Police issue another statement saying they have not found any 'suspects, evidence of shots fired or casualties.' They continue to discourage people from going to the area. 6.02pm: British Transport Police confirm they are reopening Oxford Street underground station. 6.05pm: Officers are told to stand down. Advertisement

Terrified shoppers who ran from the area were told to take cover and sought refuge in Topshop, the Nike store, Zara and John Lewis.

Shops pulled down the shutters while staff at other stores sent terrified crowds down to the basements for safety.

Boots pharmacist Alyssa Puddle, 25, originally from Cwmbran, South Wales, said: 'There were hundreds of people standing with their Black Friday shopping waiting to get home, and some people were not in the best mood.

'I saw a group of 20 lads walking down the westbound platform in one direction, and two other men coming the other way.

'My view was blocked, so I'm not sure what started the fight, but the next second a woman was screaming as if something terrible had happened. They must have bumped into each other and started it from there.

'Because it was so busy people were just being sucked into the fight and shoved around. I got forced up against a wall as the brawl got bigger.

'More people were screaming and shouting and I saw several punches fly.

'Eventually the larger group grabbed one of the other men by the scruff of the neck and dragged him to the edge of the platform.

'There was a train coming and it looked like he would be pushed onto the tracks. It was horrifying.

'Everyone panicked and started shouting to get the guy away from the platform edge.

'When the train came up to the platform the fight stopped and the group moved off.

'I jumped on the train to get away, and that's when they made the announcement to evacuate the station.

'All I could see before it pulled away was a herd of people surging towards to the stairs to escape.

'As I got on the tube the comms speaker announced the station as being evacuated and for everyone to leave.

'As the tube doors shut police officers had arrived.

'As the speakers went off I saw everyone run from the platform. People panicked because it looked very sinister.'

Police put cordons in place and a young family were seen clutching each other's hands as they dashed away

Officers wore balaclavas as they patrolled the streets while shoppers ran away and hid inside the shops

Armed police were seen running past a department store after ordering shoppers to leave the scene immediately

One man was stopped by officers as he tried to walk down Regent Street and past the Apple store

Officers heavily clad with guns and protective gear were seen walking past Bond Street station towards Oxford Circus

Teams of armed police stormed the station but said they found no evidence of gunfire. An officer carrying a gun is seen entering a department store

Panicked shoppers locked themselves in shops at the height of the scare and some stores rolled down their shutters to protect them

'F*** everyone get out of Selfridges now gun shots!!' How Olly Murs got caught up in the Oxford Circus panic Popstar Olly Murs was caught up in the Oxford Street panic after apparently overhearing people saying 'gun shots' inside Selfridges. The presenter, 33, live-tweeted as police descended on the streets following reports gunfire in a number of locations on Oxford Street and at Oxford Circus underground station. Murs wrote: 'F*** everyone get out of Selfridges now gun shots!! I'm inside.' He later confirmed he was taken to the back office for protection while other shoppers were 'screaming' and 'running towards exits'. Murs added later he was evacuating the store and was told that there were no shots inside, contrary to earlier reports. He was later criticised by Piers Morgan, who told him to 'stop tweeting'. But he responded: 'Listen piers! I was shopping and then all of sudden the whole place went mad, I mean crazy people running & screaming towards exits. 'We found a small office to hide to which loads of staff and people were saying there was shots fired. If you was there you'd have understood mate.' The singer later tweeted that he was glad 'nothing serious' happened and that he hoped everyone had got home safely. Advertisement

Regan Warner wrote on Twitter that she saw a man bumping into another man on the 'overcrowded platform' at 4.35pm.

She said: 'They exchanged words, then a punch to the gut, then a full-out fight.'

'People were trying to break it up, there was lots of yelling. People were running away, a woman fainted, children were scared and crying.

'The emergency button was pressed. The fight was broken up and the parties walked in opposite directions.

'The fight was broken up and the parties walked in opposite directions. Then there was an announcement to evacuate the station. I jumped on a train.'

MailOnline journalist Keiligh Baker, who was walking towards Carnaby Street when the incident unfolded, said: 'Lots of armed police arrived and stormed Oxford Street. They were shouting "move, move, move!".

'Then the uniformed officers started shouting "go, go, go". People were sprinting and screaming.'

Ms Baker added: 'We ran along Oxford Street and there were lots of shops with people in them, some were locked, some were still letting people in.'

Another witness Ryan Smith, who was working in a building on the corner of Great Titchfield Street and Oxford Street, said: 'It seemed as if there were thousands of people running past the building. One girl who ran into the building said she heard several bangs. She was very shook up.

'It was just like a stampede  there were thousands of people running down the street. They started flocking into the building.

Do you know the men who were involved? Call 0203 615 1536 or email scott.campbell@mailonline.co.uk Advertisement

'And then I have come up and I have gone to the window and then it was calm for a second. Then people started running into shops.'

Greg Bird told MailOnline he was sat outside a coffee shop near Oxford Circus station when he saw 'about 50 people sprinting around the corner and screaming'.

About 90 minutes after responding police said there was no evidence of any shots, casualties or suspects and stood down the operation just after 6pm.

A large section of Oxford Street was locked down at the height of the scare, but Oxford Circus and Bond Street stations later reopened. Cordons have been removed and the area has returned to normal.

British Transport Police confirmed the mass evacuation was caused by an 'altercation' between two men and urged those pictured in the CCTV images to come forward.

In a statement, they said: '[Officers] would now like to speak to these two people in the CCTV images, who they believe may have information about the incident and the circumstances around the incident.

'They would also like to speak to anyone who was at the station or in the area at the time and saw or heard anything that would have caused mass evacuation.'

Chief Superintendent Martin Fry said: 'Thank you to everyone for bearing with us this evening and also to colleagues from all the emergency services who helped carry out a swift response.

'Our officers, alongside those from the MPS, reacted quickly and responded professionally in line with our well prepared plans.

'I know incidents like these can cause concern, but our officers are highly visible around the network and across the country so if you ever need us please call us on 0800 40 50 40 or text 61016.'

Dozens of people were seen fleeing the station after it was evacuated following reports of gun shots inside the station

Later on, the centre of Oxford Circus was completely empty aside from police vehicles and 10 officers patrolling the street

People are seen taking refuge inside the Gap shop, on Oxford Street, in the cellar and inside the shop

Buses were told to pull over and evacuate as armed police stood around Oxford Circus keeping an eye out for suspects

The area was in lockdown and a cordon was in place while police scoured the area. People are seen on the phone as they wait for the all-clear by police

Several other pedestrians were seen on their mobile phones during the widespread panic yesterday evening

A cordon was set up near John Lewis, on Oxford Street, towards near Topshop and the Nike Store. Officers also partially cordoned off the right hand side of Regent Street, near All Saints

A police statement released at 5:40pm said: 'To date police have not located any trace of any suspects, evidence of shots fired or causalities. Officers continue to work with colleagues from British Transport Police in the area of Oxford Circus.

'Updates will be provided as soon as we have them.

'If you are in building stay in a building, if you are on the street in Oxford Street leave the area. Officers are continuing to search the area.'

At 6.08pm, Scotland Yard put out another statement saying: 'The Met response on Oxford Street has now been stood down.

'If you sought shelter in a building please now leave and follow the direction of police officers on the ground if you need assistance.

'At 16:38hrs on Friday, 24 November police started to receive numerous 999 calls within a short space of time reporting shots fired in a number of locations on Oxford Street and at Oxford Circus underground station.

'Given the nature of the information received, the Met responded in line with our existing operation as if the incident was terrorism, including the deployment of armed officers.

'Officers working with colleagues from British Transport Police carried out an urgent search of the area. No causalities, evidence of any shots fired or any suspects were located by police.'

The BTP spokesman added: 'A full and methodical search of the station and Oxford Street was conducted by officers.

'At this stage, we are examining the circumstances of the incident which resulted in the station being evacuated.

'During the station evacuation, one woman is believed to have sustained a minor injury.

'We continue to work with the Metropolitan Police Service and are working to reopen Oxford Circus and Bond Street Tube stations. '

A Kensington Palace spokesman confirmed that despite the incident, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended the Royal Variety Performance at the nearby London Palladium.

Do you know the men who were involved? Call 0203 615 1536 or email scott.campbell@mailonline.co.uk

Fire engines were also dispatched to the scene after people were evacuated safely from the area by police officers

Four heavily armed officers were seen talking as officers staged the cordons in the background of the shopping district

Stunned witnesses described seeing a stampede of shoppers and the a cordon was put in place while police swarmed the area

One man was seen speaking to a police officer during the chaos while holding his phone to his chest

A large group of people were seen looking around and filing out of the underground station later on

Police officers were seen standing on islands as people returned to the pavements afterwards

Several people were seen standing outside an exit point of Oxford Circus tube station earlier

Two officers looked on as people remained on the roads and walked around after the incident

Earlier, police officers blocked an exit point at Oxford Circus as people stood around and waited for instruction

Oxford Circus was extremely busy as people stood around and tried to work out what was happening

Due to the incident in Oxford Circus, despite police allowing the public back in, most of the shops remained closed

The shopping district is seen in pitch black as shoppers walked around Regent Street earlier this evening after the cordons were removed

Several people were seen carrying shopping bags after the incident and walking calmly around the district tonight

Despite Black Friday being a huge event for shops across the globe, several shops including Gap (which hid people in its basement hours before) remained shut

Terrified shoppers have told how they locked in the basement of a bar after gunshots were reportedly heard at Oxford Circus
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said today she wanted to get a new government in place 'quickly' - and ruled out holding new elections.

It comes after she was left scrambling to find a way to govern when three-way coalition talks collapsed last Sunday.

'Europe needs a strong Germany, it is desirable to get a government in place quickly,' Merkel told a party meeting, adding, however, that her acting government was able to carry on day to day business in Europe's biggest economy.

She added: 'Asking voters to go to the polls again would, I think, be totally wrong.'

'Europe needs a strong Germany, it is desirable to get a government in place quickly,' Merkel (pictured) told a party meeting, adding, however, that her acting government was able to carry on day to day business in Europe's biggest economy

On Monday, Merkel had said she would prefer new elections to a minority government.

Addressing party members today, Merkel argued voters had given her conservatives a mandate to rule in a September 24 election which handed her party the most parliamentary seats but limited coalition options.

She added she was prepared to talk to the Social Democrats (SPD) after the centre-left party reversed an earlier decision and said it was prepared to talk to Merkel's conservatives, but she stressed any talks should be based on mutual respect.

Merkel's fourth term was cast into doubt when the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) walked out of talks with her conservative bloc and the Greens last Sunday, causing a political impasse in Europe's biggest economy.

But on Friday, the Social Democrats (SPD) reversed a previous decision and agreed to talk to Merkel, raising the possibility of an extension of the 'grand coalition' which has ruled Germany for the last four years, or a minority government.

Sounding self-assured, even cracking the odd joke, and receiving regular applause during her speech, Merkel said she wanted to look ahead after the setbacks of the last week and she clearly turned her attention to the SPD.

She welcomed the opportunity to explore the possibilities with the SPD, provided it take place on the basis of mutual respect.

Merkel defended the record of the last 'grand coalition', saying under its leadership Germany enjoyed the strongest labour market for decades, a balanced budget and pensioners and families had benefited.

Addressing party members today, Merkel argued voters had given her conservatives a mandate to rule in a September 24 election which handed her party the most parliamentary seats but limited coalition options

'We worked well together,' she said.

Merkel also laid out some priorities for a future government, including maintaining solid finances, making some tax cuts, extending the digital infrastructure and aiming to limit the number of migrants entering Germany to 200,000 per year.

Acknowledging an election result that reflected voters' fears and insecurities - the conservatives and other parties bled support to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) - Merkel acknowledged the task ahead was difficult.

'The election result shows that we have a mountain of tasks ahead,' she said.

Schulz said that the Social Democrats were now willing to meet with other parties, but insisted that the talks 'won't automatically take a particular direction

The SPD will likely approve a renewed coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives if party leaders present a convincing proposal, a member of the party's executive leadership said earlier today.

Niels Annen of the SPD, in an interview with the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper, called for quick action to form a new German government given a range of crises around the world, and said a 'grand coalition' was an option that could not be excluded.

SPD leader Martin Schulz on Friday agreed to hold talks with Merkel about reviving their outgoing coalition government, but said no decisions had been made and party members would have the final say on any deal.

But he suggested that governing could help the SPD achieve its political aims and told the party's youth wing - which rejected another grand coalition at a party conference - that he expected their loyalty and 'constructive cooperation.'

Annen said the SPD needed to hear from 'the failed chancellor' about how she envisioned the future government before agreeing to another four-year tie-up with conservatives.

The centre-left SPD had vowed to go into opposition after suffering its worst result in 70 years in September's election, but came under intense pressure, including by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to rethink its position and help avert a disruptive repeat poll in Europe's largest economy.

Sounding self-assured, even cracking the odd joke, and receiving regular applause during her speech, Merkel said she wanted to look ahead after the setbacks of the last week and she clearly turned her attention to the SPD

Schulz said party leaders agreed to talks out of a sense of responsibility to Germany and Europe after Merkel's attempt to form a government with two smaller parties collapsed on Sunday.

'Germany urgently needs a predictable and reliable government. A grand coalition could be an option and we should not exclude it,' Annen told the newspaper, adding that the SPD was focused on 'what is good for the country.'

He welcomed plans to take any coalition agreement to members for a vote, and said the party should continue its restructuring efforts after the September election setback.

'I'm certain, if the SPD leadership makes a convincing proposal, it will be able to convince the membership,' he said.

Annen cited citizens' insurance and better protection for renters as issues to hash out with conservatives.

SPD deputy leader Ralf Stegner told the Funke newspaper group that Schulz would retain his leadership role, saying he continued to enjoy strong support within the party.

'There is absolutely no doubt that Martin Schulz will be re-elected as party chairman with a good result,' he said.
A 19-year-old woman who claims she was raped by two NYPD detectives in the back of their van after being arrested has described for the first time how nine others visited her in hospital to try to bully her out of reporting them.

Anna Chambers was 18 when she was arrested in Brooklyn on September 15 after being found smoking marijuana in her car with two male friends.

NYPD detectives Eddie Martins, 33, and Richard Hall, 37, took her into their police van after finding her with the drugs.

She claims that once she was in the van, they forced her to perform oral sex on them while handcuffed and then took turns raping her then let her go.

The men have been charged with a string of offenses including rape and aware awaiting their next court date. They admit engaging in sexual activity but say the sex was consensual.

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Anna Chambers, 19, has described how nine NYPD officers visited her in hospital after she reported being raped by their colleagues. She says they tried to talk her out of pursuing pressing charges against the men

Detectives Eddie Martins, 33, and Richard Hall, 37, have been charged with raping the woman. They are pictured leaving Brooklyn Supreme Court earlier this month

After the alleged attack, Chambers went to Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn to be tested with a rape kit.

It is there that she says nine other officers arrived and tried to bully her out of reporting their colleagues' alleged crime.

On Saturday, she described their visit for the first time in her own words.

'At least nine officers showed up to the hospital trying to intimidate me and my mom.

'I was sitting in the room by myself . . . They were pressing me, saying things like, "Oh, this isnt the first time youre having an encounter with the police."

'I was bawling my eyes out. The way they were speaking with me was so rude and aggressive,' she told The New York Post.

Chambers says the men spoke in her native Russian to try to build a rapport with her and that they claimed Martins and Hall were not police officers.

Days later, she claims she described the hospital visit to the Internal Affairs Bureau

Chambers was receiving treatment at the Maimonides Medical Center in New York the day of the alleged rape when she says nine NYPD officer showed up to talk with her

Similar details of the alleged visit were previously given by her lawyer, Michael David, and her mother.

'He kept saying to Anna and her mom, "How do you know they were real cops?"' David said earlier this week.

Chambers, who was 18 at the time, said the cops spoke 'aggressively' towards her

The NYPD has not commented on the visit but it confirmed earlier this week that an investigation has been launched. No other officers have yet been charged.

Neither Martins nor Hall is alleged to have been in the hospital room.

Lawyers acting on their behalf however cast doubt on Chambers' version of events and said her story had changed.

The two cops were scorned for pointing out in their attempts to defend themselves that the young woman had posted provocative photographs on social media.

They included reference to the photographs and to the fact she had filed a $50million lawsuit against in the city in a letter to prosecutors which was filed before a grand jury indicted them on 50 different charges.

On Saturday, in response to her description of the visit, Mark Bederow, Martin's lawyer, said there was nothing to prove her account.

'Nothing corroborates the sensational allegations made by a plaintiffs lawyer more than two months after the incident,' he said.

Martins and Hall both posted bail earlier this month and are awaiting their next court date which has been set for January 2018.

The woman says the other NYPD cops said neither Martins (above with his lawyer) nor Hall was even a cop

Both of the men posted bail and are awaiting their next court date. They say they had sex with Chambers but that it was consensual

The men deny the charges against them. They quit the force soon after surrendering to police earlier this month.

Chambers claims that the men told her they were 'freaks' after arresting her on September 15.

She says they asked her what she would do to get out of the drug charges before launching their sexual attack.

Prosecutors say that they instructed her to phone the two men she had been with in the car to tell them not to follow their police van after they arrested her.

Afterwards, the men released her without charge.

The rape kit which was used at the hospital where she claims the other officers visited her detected traces of the two men's DNA. If convicted, the men face 25 years in prison each.

David, Chamber's lawyer, previously said the entire ordeal has made her lose faith in law enforcement.

'She's embarrassed. She's very depressed over this. Her whole life had changed after this experience. She's afraid of the police, and she really wants justice to be served,' he said.
A young boy was taken to hospital after being hit by a car - which crushed his bicycle.

The 11-year-old sustained leg injuries, but paramedics said the injuries would have been far worse if he hadn't been wearing a helmet, 9 News reports.

The crash happened at Daceyville, about seven kilometers southeast of Sydney.

A boy riding his bike was hit by a car (pictured) Saturday afternoon and suffered leg injuries

The 11-year-old boy's bike was crushed by the car seven kilometres from Sydney's southeast

The 11-year-old was rushed to Sydney Children's Hospital with leg injuries.

However, the extent of the rest of the boy's injuries are currently unknown.

The driver of the car was taken away for mandatory drug and alcohol testing.

The driver of a silver Toyota Corolla pulled over to help the boy after the crash.
A rare wartime pistol used by the resistance forces to fight against the Nazi occupation forces was handed in to police during a gun amnesty.

The single-shot FP45 Liberator pistol was dropped in the amnesty box run by Kent Police, along with other modern guns and firearms.

One million FP45 Liberator pistols were manufactured in the United States with the intention of being used by the resistance in occupied territories during the Second World War.

This wartime FP-45 single-shot pistol was designed for use by operatives behind enemy lines in the Second World War. Resistance fighters were told to use the weapon to kill an individual Nazi and steal his weapon

The Metropolitan Police released footage of this Bren gun, forward and a Browning M2

Officers also saw sub machine guns, WWI-era rifles and a Tommy Gun, fourth down

But the crude and often ineffective nature of the weapon meant a large number were dumped at sea or melted down for scrap metal so examples are relatively rare.

The FP-45 was a crude, single-shot pistol designed to be cheaply and quickly mass-produced and it was never intended for front line service.

Originally The Liberator was designed as an insurgency weapon to be mass dropped behind enemy lines to the resistance in both Eastern and Western European occupied territory.

Resistance fighters would then to recover the gun, sneak up on an Axis occupier, kill or incapacitate him, and retrieve his weapons.

During the original engineering drawings labeled the barrel as 'tube', the trigger as 'yoke', the firing pin as 'control rod', and the trigger guard as 'spanner' to disguise the secretive handgun was being mass produced.

Police forces across the country are running the two-week appeal for the public to surrender unwanted and illegally-held firearms without facing any criminal charges.

During the amnesty a Bren light machine gun and a Browning M2 machine gun were also handed in to the Metropolitan police.

Members of the public have until 5pm to hand in their firearms to avail of the amnesty

Most of the guns handed over to police will be melted down although some will go to museums

One police station in Nottingham received this shotgun disguised as a walking stick

The FP45 Liberator pistol was handed over at the desk at Folkestone Police Station and rather than being destroyed, it will be sent to a military museum in York.

Det Ch Supt Rob Fordham said: 'This firearm is a part of history and I am sure it will be a welcome addition to the collection at the Royal Armouries Museum.

'Weapons such as these are often forgotten heirlooms which have been taken from past conflicts and passed down over the generations.

'If it's unwanted, or if you're unsure if it's illegally-owned, please hand it in. You will not be prosecuted for possessing the weapon whilst surrendering it, you could prevent it falling into the wrong hands, and you could save a life.'

The drive will be running for another three days to hand in weapons without consequences.

Any guns and ammunition can be disposed of during the amnesty at police stations throughout Kent until 5pm on Sunday.
Neighbors in the New York City borough of Staten Island stabbed each other during a fight over a car on Thanksgiving, police say.

Francisco Glenn, 27, and Mark Archipoli, 23, were quarreling over damage to Archipoli's Hyundai Sonata at around 9.15pm on Thursday, the New York Daily News reports.

The fight turned particularly violent after the men began attacking each other with knives, police say.

Staten Island neighbors Francisco Glenn, 27, and Mark Archipoli, 23, got into a knife fight over damage to Archipoli's Hyundai Sonata (pictured in a stock photo), police say. They were taken to a hospital and critical condition and both were charged with assault and weapons possession, police say

Glenn was slashed in his abdomen and Archipoli in his chest and hand, police say.

They were both taken to Staten Island University Hospital.

Both were in critical condition, police say.

Each now faces charges of assault and weapons possession, police say.
Residents of Jersey have called for the return of the island's 'Elgin Marbles' monument that was taken and rebuilt in Oxfordshire as a governor's retirement gift.

The dolmen - a large structure reminiscent of a stone circle which is built from slabs of pink granite - was discovered in 1785 in Mont de la Ville, near the capital St Helier.

The Neolithic monument was uprooted and taken to the Oxfordshire estate of retiring Jersey governor General Henry Seymour Conway via barge three years later.

The surviving ancient dolmen is now in the grounds of Templecombe House in Henley-on-Thames which is on the market for 7million.

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The dolmen - a large structure reminiscent of a stone circle which is built from slabs of pink granite - was discovered in 1785 in Mont de la Ville, near the capital St Helier

The Neolithic monument was uprooted and taken to the Oxfordshire estate of retiring Jersey governor General Henry Seymour Conway (pictured) via barge in 1788

It has given the residents of Jersey a new hope that they could buy back the stones and return them to the island.

One local man named Neil Holmes is planning to raise 8million through an online crowdfunder in a bid to purchase the estate.

He said: 'The aim of this is to buy the property that the neolithic Jersey dolmen currently resides on, repatriate the dolmen, then resell the estate.'

The surviving ancient dolmen is now in the grounds of Templecombe House, pictured, in Henley-on-Thames which is on the market for 7million

The stones were one of dozens of dolmens placed across the island which were shrouded in legend and thought to be 'the home of sprites and fairies'.

But many were broken up for building materials in the 17th and 18th century amid waning interest in the mythology surrounding the stunning monuments, according to local history experts.

General Conway was persuaded by his cousin - author Horace Walpole - to pay for the transport of his gift.

The stones, pictured, were one of dozens of dolmens placed across the island which were shrouded in legend and thought to be 'the home of sprites and fairies'

Many of the ancient sotones were broken up for building materials in the 17th and 18th century amid waning interest in the mythology surrounding the stunning monuments

He wrote: 'Pray do not disappoint me but transport the Cathedral of your island to your domain on our continent.'

The island has attempted to claim back the dolmen and the issue was brought up in Parliament in 1928.

In the book Megaliths in History in 1973, author Glyn Daniel wrote: 'It is not a mock megalith or folly; it is a genuine antiquity but has no right to be in southern Britain.'
Adrian Rothlisberger (pictured), 26, was the 45th crew member on the ARA San Juan, which disappeared without trace last week in the South Atlantic

The mother of a sailor who should have been on the missing Argentinian submarine told yesterday how her son got off 'with just seconds to spare' before the vessel began its doomed last journey.

Adrian Rothlisberger, 26, was the 45th crew member on the ARA San Juan, which disappeared without trace last week in the South Atlantic Ocean as it returned to a naval base in Mar del Plata.

Adrian, who has been in the navy for eight years, embarked with his 44 other colleagues on the submarine in the port of Ushuaia in the southern tip of South America.

Although he had made a formal request to his superiors for leave in order to complete paperwork for his imminent house purchase, Adrian had not heard back and assumed he would have to complete the mission, according to his mother Sandra Alvares.

She told Argentina's Clarin newspaper: 'Adrian had asked his boss for some days off to sort out the documentation for the new house he was buying.

'It was going to require a lot of his time, so they ended up giving him exemption from that journey.

Adrian, who has been in the navy for eight years, embarked with his 44 other colleague on the San Juan submarine (pictured) in the port of Ushuaia in the southern tip of South America.

'He already had all his things on the submarine, and they told him he could go moments before the submarine went down. He got off with just seconds to spare.'

Now back at his home in Mar del Plata, when news of the missing submarine started to emerge Ms Alvares travelled from her home in Villa Angela, in the north of Argentina, to be with his son, who she says is 'in shock'.

This week he changed his Facebook profile picture to a photo of his black 'ARA San Juan' cap

This week he changed his Facebook profile picture to a photo of his black 'ARA San Juan' cap.

Also this week, distraught family members gathered at the naval base were reportedly informed that their loved ones had perished, probably in an underwater explosion hours after their last communication.

The explosion is believed to have happened between 100 and 1,000 metres under the water and sent the submarine plummeting to more than 3,000 metres, according to officials who spoke to relatives.

News of the miracle escape of one of the San Juan crew comes after it emerged another sailor who was supposed to be on the sub was also spared the fate of his colleagues after getting off the vessel to tend to his ill mother.

Now back at his home in Mar del Plata, when news of the missing submarine started to emerge Ms Alvares travelled from her home in Villa Angela, in the north of Argentina, to be with his son, who she says is 'in shock'. Pictured: Adrian with his fellow sailors

The explosion is believed to have happened between 100 and 1,000 metres under the water and sent the submarine plummeting to more than 3,000 metres, according to officials who spoke to relatives. Pictured left: Adrian with his father. Right: Adrian in happier times

Rene Humberto Vilte was a confirmed crew member and was even initially listed as one of the missing.

But it turned out the sailor had disembarked as the submarine prepared for trip between Usuahia to Mar del Prata after hearing that his mother had been rushed to hospital after becoming seriously ill.

Although he had made a formal request for leave to complete a house purchase, Adrian had not heard back and assumed he would have to complete the mission

Another crew member is believed to have been called up to replace him, believed to be Jorge Luis Mealla, who reportedly called his parents to tell them he had been told to reboard the doomed submarine at the last minute.

Rene's mother has since recovered and has returned home.

A friend of the sailor, Anabella, said: 'He says that his mother gave him life for the second time.

'He is in shock, he can't believe what has happened and how close he came to death.

'I spoke to him on the day his photo was published among those who were on the missing submarine. I saw his name and Picture on the lists, it was terrible, so distressing.

'He told me he had been on the crew, but that he had got off to see his mother.'

The submariner has not commented on his escape and friends say they have been able to contact him, but yesterday he updated he posted a black ribbon on the Navy logo on his Facebook page.
Richard Buttrose, former drug-dealer to Sydney's elite, walked free from Berrima prison on Saturday.

The 45-year-old, the nephew of Australian media legend Ita Buttrose, served eight years and nine months of his original 16 year sentence for drug dealing.

Walking free from prison gates shortly before 9am, Mr Buttrose told reporters he felt 'fantastic' and his first stop as a free man would be Bondi Beach, The Daily Telegraph reports.

'I made a big mistake a long time ago,' he said, as he walked to a waiting black Mercedes hire car.

Richard Buttrose, 45, was released early from jail on Saturday after serving eight years for drug dealing (pictured in 2009)

'I have done my time. I did the best to make the most of my time, I did two university degrees and now I am out a better person.'

Mr Buttrose left prison with a degree in both accounting and a Master's in business administration.

The father-of-two was greeted by two friends at the prison gates before shaking the hand of a prison officer for the last time, the publication reports.

He reportedly spent the afternoon at a barbecue in Bellevue Hill, surrounded by friends and family, after enjoying Saturday's warm weather at the beach.

Mr Buttrose was sentenced to 12 years jail in 2010 after police found millions of dollars worth of cocaine and cash at his Sydney properties (pictured)

Police located more than $1.3m in cash along with around 7.7 kilograms of cocaine (pictured) during a raid on Mr Buttrose's properties

Mr Buttrose was originally sentenced to 16 years in jail in 2010, after police found over seven kilograms of cocaine, worth more than $10.8 million, during a raid on his properties.

Police also discovered more than $1.3 million in cash stashed at his Paddington and Darling Point homes.

The cocaine-dealer had an A-list clientele, whose contacts he kept in an infamous little black book, the publication reported.

Mr Buttrose gave up his high-flying Sydney eastern suburbs clients for a reduced sentence.

His sentence was reduced to 12 years and six months with a non-parole period of nine years and six months.

The drug-dealer is the nephew of Australian media legend Ita Buttrose (pictured)

The cocaine-dealer had an A-list clientele, whose contacts he kept in an infamous little black book (stock image)

The deal to hand over his clients placed his wife and children in danger, the court heard at the time.

His family fled the country and Mr Buttrose himself served his sentence in protective custody, the publication reports.

The nephew of media icon Ita reportedly became known as 'The Man' during cocaine dealing days, racking up millions in cash and property.

After his initial plead of guilty, the 45-year-old told the District Court that having cocaine was regarded 'much like having a glass of wine'.
US tobacco companies have been ordered to run television and newspapers advertisements to correct lies they told over the course of the 20th century.

The 'corrective statements' are part of a 2006 judgment in which a US court found that tobacco manufacturers conspired to deceive the American public about the drawbacks of smoking and cigarettes.

The court has ordered the ads to be paid for by tobacco companies Lorillard Inc, Philip Morris USA, RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company and Altria Group.

US tobacco companies have been ordered to run television and newspapers advertisements to correct lies they told over the course of the 20th century (Pictured, packs of RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company cigarette brands Pall Mall, Winston, Camel, Doral, and Kool)

The 'corrective statements' are part of a 2006 judgment in which a US court found that tobacco manufacturers conspired to deceive the American public about the drawbacks of smoking and cigarettes (Pictured, L&M Cigarettes, a brand produced by Altria Group, Inc)

According to the order, the ads will run in more than 50 newspapers and on major broadcasting networks. The companies must also buy full-page ads in the first section of each Sunday newspaper, and 260 television ads will be run for one year.

In 2015, $8.9billion was spent on advertising and promotion of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco combined.

However, tobacco companies will not have publish corrections online or on social media, mediums where four in 10 American now regularly get their news.

Experts say this was a delay tactic due to appeals over the original judgment.

'The tobacco companies' basic strategy for everything, whether it's science or regulation or litigation, is delay,' Stan Glantz, an expert on tobacco company strategy at the University of California, San Francisco, told The Guardian.

'They have used a lot of arguing about what in terms of the real world are trivial issues, to delay having to make these statements for 11 years  but it is what the tobacco companies do.

'The problem is the technology has moved on, and the statements are not in social media because it didn't really exist back then. But better late than never.'

However, tobacco companies will not have publish corrections online or on social media, mediums where four in 10 American now regularly get their news (Pictured, various cigarette brands of Philip Morris including Marlboro, Parliament and Basic)

According to the CDC, more than 16 million Americans are living with a disease caused by smoking and cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the US (Pictured, Newport cigarettes on sale, a brand produced by Lorillard Inc)

The companies were first ordered to run the ads in 2006 by US district judge Gladys Kessler, who found that tobacco firms had caused 'a staggering number of deaths per year, an immeasurable amount of human suffering and economic loss, and a profound burden on our national health care system'.

Many of these deaths were found to be because of detrimental ad campaigns such as companies that tried to use 'physician endorsements' to encourage consumers to buy their products.

Camel began an ad campaign in the 1940s alleging that doctors gravitate towards Camel products, and Lucky Strike purported that '20,679 physicians' said that Luckies were less harmful to the consumer's throat than other cigarettes.

In the early 1930s, Lucky Strike also marketed their cigarettes to women as an appetite suppressant with the slogan: ''Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet'.

According to the CDC, more than 16 million Americans are living with a disease caused by smoking and cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the US.
Confusion is gripping the top consumer watchdog agency in the nation after the Trump administration appointed an interim head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau just hours after the outgoing director named a successor.

The move signals a potential showdown between the White House and the federal agency over who will take over of the department, CNN reported Friday.

President Trump on Friday appointed Mick Mulvaney, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, as the interim head of the department until a permanent replacement can be found.

Donald Trump named an interim head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday just hours after the outgoing director Richard Cordray (pictured) named a successor

Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, was named as Trump's interim appointee to head the federal agency

'Director Mulvaney will serve as acting director until a permanent director is nominated and confirmed,' the White House said in a statement.

But just hours before, Obama administration appointee Richard Cordray announced his resignation as head of the agency, naming his chief of staff, Leandra English, as his deputy director.

The move, according to CNN, essentially establishes English as his replacement.

The outgoing director, an Obama administration appointee, named Leandra English as his successor just hours before

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency was created in 2010 through the Dodd-Frank Act as a response to the global financial crisis the struck the economy just two years before.

The federal department was setup to regulate the financial services industry which includes banks, credit unions and mortgage-servicing operations among others.

It remains unclear who will run the agency when employees return to work on Monday, according to CNN.

Cordray was tapped as the first ever director of CFBP. His resignation marks an opportunity to dramatically overhaul the agency under the auspices of the Trump administration.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MASS), who helped craft the CFBP, posted in a tweet Friday evening that under the current law the agency's deputy director assumes the role of acting director if there's a vacancy.

'The Dodd-Frank Act is clear,' Warren wrote, 'if there is a @CFBP Director vacancy, the Deputy Director becomes Acting Director.'

The President 'can't override that,' she added.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MASS), who helped craft the CFBP, said it's not within the power of the President to appoint a leader of the agency following a resignation

'The Dodd-Frank Act is clear,' Warren wrote, 'if there is a @CFBP Director vacancy, the Deputy Director becomes Acting Director'

Trump 'can nominate the next director -- but until that nominee is confirmed by the Senate, Leandra English is the Acting Director under the Dodd-Frank Act,' Warren posted in another tweet.

According to the Federal Vacancies Act, a government official is not required to leave their current position if appointed by the President to fill a new role as long as they are confirmed by the Senate.

Mulvaney says that he intends to stay as head of the Office of Management and Budget while tackling the additional interim position.

Mulvaney and his Republican colleagues have routinely attacked the CFBP, claiming it has too much power and burdens the market with excessive regulations.

Last month, the US Senate voted to terminate a rule created by the agency that would have allowed class-action suits against banks or credit card companies.

The rule would have addressed fine-print clauses that bank and credit card consumers must agree to which bar them from seeking redress through litigation.

The vote was criticized by many Democrats as a sop to Wall Street.

In his resignation letter, Cordary said the CFBP was vital to the US economy and provided essential protections against predatory practices that helped lead to 2008's 'Great Recession.'

'We have returned almost $12 billion to more than 30 million consumers who had been cheated or mistreated by banks or other large financial companies,' Cordray wrote in the letter.
The LAPD says it has 28 open sex-crime investigations linked to Hollywood and the media, and that it expects more will come.

As well as the investigations it currently has open, the force has also passed on 37 cases to other jurisdictions where it believes the crimes may have occurred.

'We anticipate the LAPD and other jurisdictions will receive even more high profile sex crime reports in the coming weeks and months,' Police Chief Charlie Beck told the LA Times.

'We encourage all victims of sexual assault to come forward to report these crimes.'

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Suspects: Scandal surrounding film producer and alleged rapist Harvey Weinstein (left) has led to other claims emerging in Hollywood. Actor Ed Westwick (right) has been accused of rape

Beck said that his department is committed to investigating all cases of sexual assault.

To that end, they have opened up two teams of five detectives each, with cold-case investigators on board to help look into historical accusations.

However, he noted that some - such as Corey Feldman's claim that he was sexually abused by two adults while a child actor - had passed the statute of limitations.

Investigation: Hollywood agent Tyler Grasham is also accused of sexual assault. The LAPD has two teams of detectives looking into its 28 open sex crime cases

However, he thanked Feldman for coming forward, and asked others who believe that they have been affected to do the same.

'We recognize the significant trauma these victims suffer at the hands of the predators who commit these heinous crimes,' Beck said

'Our detectives are coordinating closely with our local prosecutors and other police agencies including the NYPD.

'The high profile nature of these particular cases has not changed our unyielding commitment to seek justice for ALL victims of sexual assault.'

Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey has also announced this month that veteran sex crimes prosecutors will examine the cases put to them by the LAPD.

Hollywood has been abuzz with sex crime allegations since an investigation into eight claims of sexual harassment and assault against Harvey Weinstein snowballed.

More than 50 women have now come forward with claims about Weinstein, with allegations ranging from sexual harassment to rape.

Too late: The PD has promised to look into all claims, but for Corey Feldman (pictured) it was too late - the statute of limitations has expired on his claims he was abused as a child

Weinstein is one of those on the LAPD's books, but he has been joined by a number of other figures as others, emboldened by the high-profile case, have come forward.

Among the others being investigated are Gossip Girl star Ed Westwick, who is accused of raping two actresses and sexually assaulting a third; and Girls writer Murray Miller, who is accused of sexually assaulting an actress.

Hollywood agent Tyler Grasham is also on the books, having been accused of sexually assaulting three men, trading sex for favors with a fourth, and asking a 16-year-old boy to be his boyfriend.
A Florida teenager who, along with his grandmother, had been reported missing earlier in the week has been detained at the United States border with Canada.

Logan Mott, 15, was reported missing after he and his grandmother Kristina French, 53, were supposed to pick up his father and his father's girlfriend from a Jacksonville area airport, CBS News reports. He was detained late Friday.

The body of an individual believed to be French was discovered in a shallow grave in the backyard of Mott's father, who is her son, on Friday.

Logan Mott, 15, was detained at the US-Canada border late on Friday. He and his grandmother Kristina French, 53, were reported missing in Florida earlier this week

Police issued an arrest warrant for Mott earlier on Friday on charges of auto theft. French's Dodge Dart was missing from her home in the Jacksonville area. Guns were also missing from the home of Mott's father, who is French's son

Courtesy: WJXT

When Mott and French did not pick up the teenager's father on Wednesday, the couple returned to their home via Uber and found it looted.

The couple also noted that guns were missing from a gun safe, News4Jax reported.

Police who later investigated the scene said they found evidence pointed to 'possible criminal violence' in the home.

They also discovered remains in the home's backyard that they said might be the body of French. Authorities have not yet officially identified the body.

Police searched French's home, which was also ransacked. Her car, a 2015 Dodge Dart, was also missing, the Florida Times-Union reports.

Authorities previously issued an arrest warrant for Mott on charges of auto theft.

Wanted posters for the teenager branded him 'armed and dangerous'.

They also said they hoped to speak to him to try to piece together the chain of events.

He was detained near Buffalo, New York.

The boy's mother, Carrie Campbell-Mott, said in a statement: 'We are relieved he is safe and in custody and we just ask for everyone to give us time to sort out what happened.

'That no matter what, Logan is our child and we love him and are standing by him to help in any way.

'We want to find out what happened to Kristina and we need time for that to happen.'

Police say they want to question Mott about the chain of events that led to his grandmother's disappearance and the ransacking of her home and the home of her son (who is Mott's father)

She had previously issued pleas for any knowledge of her son's whereabouts.

She wrote on social media that he was dependent on insulin and expressed worry that he might not have access to it.

Campbell-Mott said she had last spoken to her son on Sunday, November 19 and had last communicated with French on Tuesday, November 21.

Regarding the conversation with Logan, she told News4Jax: 'There just wasn't any indication that there was anything wrong, nothing. It was just a normal conversation.'

The boy is a student at Sandalwood High School in Jacksonville.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has warned Theresa May that the idea of using the Irish Sea as a post-Brexit border between the rest of the UK is 'non-negotiable'.

Nigel Dodds, who leads the DUP in Westminster, said any proposals to make special arrangements for Northern Ireland in Brexit talks should be taken off the table.

The topic of the Irish border has been a major problem in Brexit negotiations with the UK, Republic of Ireland and the EU struggling to come to an agreement on how to regulate trade and the movement of people post-Brexit.

Speaking at the DUP's annual conference in Belfast - the first since they became the political kingmakers in Westminster - Mr Dodds said: 'Make no mistake - for us the integrity of the United Kingdom is non-negotiable.

Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) deputy leader Nigel Dodds delivers his key note speech during their party's annual general meeting

'If the EU wants to insist on border check points on the island of Ireland that is a matter for them. There will be no internal UK border in the Irish Sea.'

His remarks come after Ireland threatened to block talks on the UK's future relationship with the EU until 'credible answers and a credible road map' were laid out to avoid a hard border.

The Irish government wants a system whereby Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union, which would mean it would have to obey EU standards post-Brexit. This would means there would be no border checks although this has been ruled out by Mrs May.

Yet Republicans view Brexit as a chance to push through a referendum on the reunification of Ireland, a move which would break up the UK.

Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP, struck a 1billion confidence and supply deal with the Conservatives following the General Election

There are fears there could be a return to the hard border of the Troubles-era if a hard border was to return, something which has not existed since the Good Friday Agreement.

The matter is expected to come to a head before December's crucial EU summit in Brussels, where the 27 EU states will decide whether to progress with talks or not.

Mrs May cannot afford to anger the DUP due to the 1billion confidence and supply agreement she has with the party to get through key votes in the Commons following a poor showing at the General Election which left the Conservatives without a majority.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly made clear that the UK, including Northern Ireland, will leave the Single Market and the Customs Union after Brexit.

She said yesterday: 'We [the UK and the Republic] have the same desire. We want to ensure the free movement of people and trade across the border can carry on as now.'
A judge in Ohio has ordered drug dealer Michael Chandler, 29 (pictured), of Cincinnati, to cover the funeral costs for a teen who died of a fentanyl overdose. He was also sentenced to nearly 17 years in prison and to pay $9,000 in restitution to the teen's family

A judge in Ohio has ordered a drug dealer to cover the funeral costs for a teen who died of a fentanyl overdose.

Michael Chandler, 29, of Cincinnati, was also sentenced to nearly 17 years in prison and to pay $9,000 in restitution to the teen's family.

Authorities say they were able to trace the fentanyl that killed the 17-year-old, identified in court documents as JH, back to Chandler. The teen died of an overdose at his Kentucky home in April 2016.

The Kentucky Drug Task Force discovered the teen had bought heroin from a person known as 'Goldie'. When investigators obtained the phone number for the alleged drug dealer, a records search led them to Chandler, court documents said.

The investigators then used a friend of the deceased teen to make a controlled purchase from 'Goldie'. He wore a wire and turned over the purchased substance to the Hamilton County Coroner's crime lab, which turned out to be fentanyl.

From there, a search warrant was obtained for Chandler's home, where investigators found 644 grams of fentanyl, 28 grams of cocaine, drug paraphernalia, a handgun and ammunition, according to WCPO.

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Authorities say they were able to trace the fentanyl that killed the 17-year-old, identified in court documents as JH, back to Chandler (left and right). Investigators found 644 grams of fentanyl, 28 grams of cocaine, drug paraphernalia, a handgun and ammunition at Chandler's home

In an undated video that Chandler recorded on his cellphone (left and right), five customers line up their cars in broad daylight to buy drugs from him. At the beginning of the video, prosecutors say, Chandler 'profoundly touts' that he was 'just like McDonald's'

Chandler pleaded guilty to distributing fentanyl and heroin, as well as drug possession on Monday.

According to prosecutors, Chandlers wanted to be the best drug dealer in Cincinnati.

In an undated video that Chandler recorded on his cellphone, five customers line up their cars 'in broad daylight' to buy drugs from him

At the beginning of the video, prosecutors say, Chandler 'profoundly touts' that he was 'just like McDonald's'.

Chandler was sentenced to three years in prison in for cocaine and heroin trafficking. He was paroled in December 2012 but immediately began selling drugs again, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

He was then sentenced to two years in prison.
A Manchester student has gone viral after making ridiculous claims she is Madeline McCann because she has a similar mark in her eye and on her leg.

Harriet Brookes sent a message to friend where she made the bizarre claim which was later shared on the internet by 30,000 people.

The group chat, which is clearly an ill-judged joke, opened with: 'Right guys. I dont usually believe in conspiracy theories but honestly I think Im Madeleine McCann.'

Harriet Brookes, right, told friends she thinks she might be Madeline McCann, left

Ms Brooke showed her friend the evidence which supported her claim including her eye

Ms Brooke shared her suspicions on a group chat with several of her friends

Her friends ridiculed the claims, but she continued: 'Im Madeleine McCann and I dont know what to do with myself.'

Madeline McCann disappeared from Portugal in May 2007 and would be 14 years of age.

However, Ms Brookes studied at the University of Leeds.

One social media user claimed: 'Are you even Madeline or are you just joking messing with peoples head.'

Sue Garland on Facebook said: 'So in summing up: 'Woman acts like a complete attention seeking idiot by announcing she is a missing child at least five years younger than she is.' No you are not Madeleine love, I hope that clears that up!'

Another commentator said 'she put it in a group chat for a laugh.'

Ms Brookes responded to the criticism claiming the post was a joke which has gone over those people's heads.

The Metropolitan Police announced last month it planned to continue its investigation into Madeline's disappearance.

Operation Grange has completed the vast majority of its work and is concentrating on a small number of focused leads.

Scotland Yard began investigating the disappearance in May 2011 with officers reviewing more than 40,000 documents.

The team have taken 1,338 statements and collected 1,027 exhibits. Officers have probed more than 60 people of interest while the team has considered 650 sex offenders.

In total, there have been 8,685 potential sightings of Madeline across the globe.
Police are trying to locate a yob who allegedly spat on a nine-month-old baby girl on board a tram.

The shocking incident is said to have taken place at around 5.15pm on Thursday, when three teenage boys 'looking for trouble' left the tram at the Martinscroft stop, near Warrington.

The young baby, who was in her pram and with her mother at the time, had to have blood checks following the incident to check for diseases.

Greater Manchester Police are now searching through CCTV evidence in a bid to help track down the alleged perpetrators.

Writing on a Facebook post, the child's mother said she was left 'fuming and upset' by the incident on the Metrolink tram near the station. It is being treated as an assault by spitting, a Greater Manchester Police spokesman said.

She said that the boys, who were already on the tram, were 'looking for trouble' before the alleged offence.

When they exited the tram, one of the boys stepped back inside and spat as the doors were closing, covering her baby and a man stood next to her, she said.

The incident is believed to have taken place near Martinscroft tram station on Thursday

She posted: 'As the tram doors were beeping to close, one of the lads stepped back on and spat.

'It went all over my nine-month-old daughter and all over the man stood next to my pram. I am fuming and so upset.

'My innocent little nine-month-old baby girl now has to go through numerous checks and bloods to make sure she's not got anything.'

The trio reportedly ran from the scene after the incident.

Greater Manchester Police believe the target of the spit was a security guard on board the tram.

No description of the boys has been given but Greater Manchester Police has urged anyone with information to come forward to help with their investigation.

A spokesman for GMP confirmed: 'We were called at 5.30pm to reports of an assault by spitting.

'It had occurred at the Metrolink stop, a male offender had walked on to the tram and tried to spit at a security guard, but hit the baby instead.

'CCTV enquiries are ongoing and we would urge anyone with information to contact police on 101.'
A court in Florence has banned the commercial use of images of Michelangelo's David without official authorisation

A court in Florence has banned the commercial use of images of Michelangelo's David without official authorisation.

The ruling aims to stop tour companies from overcharging tourists visiting the city's Galleria dell'Accademia, which houses the iconic 16th century statue.

The museum took legal action against the tour company Visit Today after it used images of the statue to advertise its 45 (40) tours of the gallery. An ordinary ticket is just 8.

The company has now been ordered to remove all images of David from its promotional material and will be fined 2,000 each day it fails to do so.

According to the ruling, which applies to Italy and the rest of Europe, images of the statue may only be used with the permission of the gallery and the payment of an agreed fee.

Reacting to the ruling, the gallery's director Cecilie Hollberg, told La Repubblica: 'It sets a precedent, an example.

The ruling aims to stop tour companies from overcharging tourists visiting the city's Galleria dell'Accademia, which houses the iconic 16th century statue

'Lots of other museums which are victims of the plague of tickets being sold at inflated prices can now take this path, because the law will prevail over what is essentially a scam for visitors.'

It is not yet clear if the ban applies to all souvenirs portraying the icon.

Other cultural organisations are now considering doing the same.

Luca Bagnoli, head of the body which runs the Duomo and Giotto's Bell Tower, said he was satisfied with the result and is now looking at following the gallery's example.

It is not yet clear if the ruling could apply to all trinkets portraying the icon

'The problem of touting and selling tickets for inflated prices by people who exploit our image also afflicts the Florentine cathedral, he told the Italian news agency Ansa.

'We would like to adopt strategies as soon as possible which allow us in some way to effectively combat this phenomenon.'

Meanwhile, the director of Florence's Uffizi gallery told The Guardian it was also considering following suit.

'It will be of great help in the preparation of the various legal actions that we intend to take against the many touting companies that infest us,' Eike Schmidt told the paper.

The city's mayor Dario Nardella added: 'This ruling is the first concrete sign. Now it's the job for everyone - institutions, citizens and companies - to apply [this ruling] and make sure it is respected.

'The image of Florence should not be commercially exploited without limits and without rules.'
The US Navy has named the three sailors who went missing after their cargo plane crashed in the Philippine Sea on Wednesday shortly after taking off from Japan.

The three were identified on Saturday as Lt Steven Combs, from Florida; Airman Matthew Chialastri, from Louisiana, and Airman Apprentice Bryan Grosso, from Florida.

Their C-2A Greyhound cargo plane, carrying 11 crew and passengers, was en route to the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.

The news comes one day after the Navy suspended its search for the missing men.

The US Navy has named the three sailors who went missing after their cargo plane crashed in the Philippine Sea on Wednesday shortly after taking off from Japan as Lt Steven Combs (not pictured), from Florida; Airman Matthew Chialastri, from Louisiana (left), and Airman Apprentice Bryan Grosso, from Florida (right)

Their C-2A Greyhound cargo plane, carrying 11 crew and passengers, was en route to the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. The news comes one day after the Navy suspended its search for the missing men (Pictured, Lt Steven Combs)

'Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of these Sailors,' said Vice Adm Phil Sawyer, commander of US Seventh Fleet.

'Their service and sacrifice will be lasting in Seventh Fleet and we will continue to stand the watch for them, as they did bravely for all of us.'

According to Stars and Stripes, Combs was assigned to Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 30, also known as the 'Providers'. He was a recipient of National Defense Ribbon and the Navy Battle 'E' Ribbon, for winning a battle efficiency competition.

According to Stars and Stripes , Combs (right) was assigned to Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 30, also known as the 'Providers'

Combs (pictured with his father and mother) was a recipient of National Defense Ribbon and the Navy Battle 'E' Ribbon, for winning a battle efficiency competition

Chialastri and Grosso, from Florida are also recipients of the National Defense Ribbon

Grosso comes from a Navy family with his father being a decorated former member. He leaves behind his parents, his brother and his girlfriend.

Eight of the 11 were rescued by US Navy helicopters during a two-day search effort led by the USS Ronald Reagan and joined by units of the Japanese self-defense force. The Seventh Fleet said they remained in good condition.

The search by ships and aircraft covered nearly 1,000 square nautical miles, the Navy said in a statement.

The cause of the crash is under investigation. However, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told reporters Wednesday that. according to US military, the plane may have gone down because of engine trouble.

The crash was the fifth accident this year for the fleet, which has its headquarters in Japan and is the Navy's largest fleet overseas.

Grosso (left, with his mother) and Chialastri were also recipients of the National Defense Ribbon

Grosso comes from a Navy family with his father (second from left) being a decorated former member. He leaves behind his parents, his brother (far right) and his girlfriend

Eight of the 11 were rescued by US Navy helicopters during a two-day search effort led by the USS Ronald Reagan and joined by units of the Japanese self-defense force (Pictured, a C-2A Greyhound aircraft is pictured in flight)

The crash was the fifth accident this year for the fleet, which has its headquarters in Japan and is the Navy's largest fleet overseas. This photo shows the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier arriving in Hong Kong on Monday, October 2

Among the accidents include among them, the destroyer USS Fitzgerald which collided with a Philippine Cargo ship in June.

Seven of the Fitzgerald's crew were killed and several were injured, including the ship's commanding officer, Cmdr Bryce Benson.

In August, 10 sailors were killed after the destroyer USS John McCain collided with an oil tanker near Singapore.

The head of the Seventh Fleet, Vice Adm Joseph P Aucoin, was removed in August because of the accidents. A Navy investigation found that the fatal collisions had been the result of 'avoidable' basic errors.
Actress Emma Thompson braved the cold despite suffering with pneumonia to join a march in support of a British mother jailed in Iran.

The Oscar-winning actress turned out with dozens of supporters as they urged the government to do more to bring home Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been imprisoned in Tehran since April 2016, when she was arrested at the city's airport after a holiday with her then 22-month-old daughter Gabriella.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been imprisoned in Tehran since April 2016, when she was arrested at the city's airport after a holiday with her then 22-month-old daughter Gabriella.

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The Oscar-winning actress turned out with dozens of supporters as they urged the government to do more to bring home Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Mrs Thompson is pictured with Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, Richard Ratcliffe

The Love Actually actress called on Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to 'get on a plane', after his suggestion earlier this month that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran exposed her to the threat of her sentence being doubled

Richard Ratcliffe talks to demonstrators after following a march in support of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian mother who is in jail in Iran

Demonstrators march in support of the British mother, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliff, who is an aid worker with the Thomson Reuters foundation. She was accused of trying to overthrow the clerical regime in Tehran

Mrs Thompson told the rally near her home in north London: 'I'm so grateful for everybody's support and love... I am so overwhelmed and moved.

'All that is on my mind is to be back home and to be back with my family.'

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of spying and seeking to overthrow the Tehran regime, and has been held in solitary confinement.

Her family has led a long-running campaign for her release, saying she is innocent and raising fears for her physical and mental health.

At the protest a tearful Thompson hit out at the 'bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster' and urged the Government to do more to bring her home.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, right, pictured with her husband Richard and their child Gabriella

The mother-of-one's employer The Thomson Reuters Foundation confirmed she has not been training journalists while on her visit to see her family in Iran

Richard Ratcliffe, right, discussed his wife's case with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, left

The Love Actually actress, who was suffering from pneumonia, called on Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to 'get on a plane', after his suggestion earlier this month that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran exposed her to the threat of her five-year sentence being doubled.

The Oscar-winning actress said: 'We are a net of compassion and love for Nazanin and her family. This is what we human beings do best, in stark contrast to the bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster.

'If I can get out of bed with pneumonia to support a horribly abused member of our community then our Foreign Secretary can get on a plane and go to Iran and deal with the problem he's so seriously exacerbated.'

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of spying and seeking to overthrow the Tehran regime, and has been held in solitary confinement

At the protest a tearful Thompson hit out at the 'bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster' and urged the Government to do more to bring her home.

She added: 'The screw is twisting more and more and her physical and mental health is deteriorating to such a degree now that I think we are in a very urgent situation.

'I can't imagine the effect of being separated for 19 months from your child. I would have gone bonkers if that had happened to me.

'I'm just so passionate about getting her back, it's a sort of physical feeling of anguish for her.'

Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq spoke to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and later said: 'We discussed how we would take both our daughters to Peppa Pig World when she's released.'

Richard Ratcliffe is joined by supporters including actress Emma Thompson (left) and Tulip Siddiq MP (right) in Hampstead

The rally took place before a march to the Shia Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, north-west London, to hand in a 'Mothers' Open Letter' asking for Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release from the Tehran prison

The actress pictured with Richard Ratcliffe. He said: 'I can really feel the love, and Nazanin can feel the love, and in the end that's the most important thing, that's what keeps us going'

Mrs Zaghari-Racliffe's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said: 'It is profoundly moving to see so many people here.

'I can really feel the love, and Nazanin can feel the love, and in the end that's the most important thing, that's what keeps us going.'

The rally took place before a march to the Shia Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, north-west London, to hand in a 'Mothers' Open Letter' asking for Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release from the Tehran prison.

An online petition calling for her to be returned to Britain has had

more than 1.3 million signatures.

Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK's director, said: 'Once again, it's inspiring to see so many people supporting Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family this way.

'She's been put through a deeply unfair trial and could be facing a fresh charge, so it's extremely important that the recent political focus on Zaghari-Ratcliffe's case now translates into the Iranian authorities finally releasing her.'
Military bands are facing the axe as the Ministry of Defence desperately tries to slash costs without cutting frontline units.

Dozens of bands could be merged into larger groups including the Royal Artillery Band, which was formed more than two centuries ago.

The Band of the Parachute Regiment, which was created following the Second World War, is also likely to face cuts.

Defence chiefs are thought to have earmarked at least 14 musical groups where savings can be made.

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Military bands are facing the axe as the Ministry of Defence desperately tries to slash costs. Pictured is the band of the Royal Regiment of Scotland with the Pipes and Drums of the 7th Battalion

The military's bands comprise hundreds of soldiers who play 31 different instruments. Pictured is the band of the King's Troop

But critics have blasted the idea warning that the bands 'provide the glue between the military and society'.

A defence source told The Times: 'One band can only be in one place at a time. What are you going to do on armed forces day?

'Send the trumpets one way and the triangles another? It is ridiculous.'

A defence source told The Times: 'One band can only be in one place at a time. What are you going to do on armed forces day?' Pictured is the band of the Adjutant General's Corps

Here a military band of the Army Air Corps is seen playing in Times Square in New York

Critics have blasted the idea warning that the bands 'provide the glue between the military and society'. Pictured: The band of the Royal Corps of Signals

The military's bands comprise hundreds of soldiers who play 31 different instruments - with the first mention of music thought to have been the Royal Artillery's drum and fife in 1557.

Now musicians - who are fully trained soldiers - play everything from classical to contemporary with duties including state ceremonies and concerts.

However military sources have claimed the proposal would create more opportunities for instrumentalists.

Now musicians - who are fully trained soldiers - play everything from classical to contemporary with duties including state ceremonies and concerts. Pictured: the Pipes and Drums of the Corps of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers band

The band of the Royal Armoured Corps plays to commemorate the 95th birthday of HRH the Duke of Edinburgh in June last year

The bands which perform duties for the royal family are not thought to be affected by the proposed cuts to music services.

It comes after new defence secretary Gavin Williamson was told he must find a way of reducing his department's budget by 2 billion a year.

One Whitehall source told The Times that Mr Williamson is trying to prevent the army's decimation.

Military sources have claimed the proposal would create more opportunities for instrumentalists. Pictured: The band of the Corps of Royal Engineers

The source said: 'Gavin is aware he has a huge challenge on his hands. He does not like what he came into . . . We are beginning to try and push back.

'Britain would risk becoming a global laughing stock at a time when we need defence to be our strong card post-Brexit.'

The army has a target strength of 82,000, but it is now at 77,440 and could shrink to below 70,000.

It comes after new defence secretary Gavin Williamson was told he must find a way of reducing his department's budget by 2 billion a year. Pictured is the Royal Artillery Band

Speculation about defence cuts has mounted in recent months since the launch of a review led by Theresa May's national security adviser Mark Sedwill. Members of the Parachute Regiment Band are pictured at a St George's Day Parade in London

Such is the anger within the Conservative Party to the proposed cuts, one defence minister, Tobias Ellwood - who battled to save a Westminster terror attack victim - has threatened to resign if cuts are imposed on the Army.

Other measures thought to be under consideration include reducing the order for Ajax armoured vehicles and delaying upgrades to other tanks.

Mr Ellwood, who served in the Royal Green Jackets from 1991 to 1996 with tours in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Kuwait, Germany, Gibraltar and Bosnia and is now in the Army Reserve, has indicated he would have to step down if the military was not shielded from the proposed reductions, the Times said.

The army has a target strength of 82,000, but it is now at 77,440 and could shrink to below 70,000. Pictured: The band of the Adjutant General's Corps

The Band & Bugles of The Rifles perform during a dress rehearsal for the Perth leg of the 2007 Tattoo Spectacular in Australia

Military bands which are facing the axe Band of The Adjutant General's Corps

Band of The Royal Armoured Corps

Royal Artillery Band 4 Corps of Royal Engineers

Band of the Royal Corps of Signals

Band of The Royal Regiment of Scotland

Band of The Queen's Division

Band of The King's Division

Band of the Prince of Wales's Division

Band and Bugles of The Rifles

Band of the Parachute Regiment

Band of the Army Air Corps

Band of the Royal Logistic Corps

Band of the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Advertisement

Asked if Mr Ellwood was known to have concerns about the prospect of cuts, a senior defence source said: 'Absolutely.'

Speculation about defence cuts has mounted in recent months since the launch of a review led by Theresa May's national security adviser Mark Sedwill.

Other options reportedly under consideration include the axing of amphibious assault ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, alongside the loss of 1,000 Royal Marines.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: 'We have the biggest defence budget in Europe and are one of very few countries to not only meet but exceed NATO's 2 per cent spending target.

'In the face of intensifying threats, we are contributing to the cross-government review of national security capabilities and looking at how we best spend the rising defence budget to protect our country.

'No decisions have been made and any discussion of the options is pure speculation.'
Paul Cook, who has a fetish for 'sleep sex', has been jailed for six years after he raped a woman while she slept

A rapist with a fetish for 'sleep sex' wept in court as his victim spoke of the devastating impact his attack had had on her life.

Paul Cook broke down down as his victim told him from the witness box at Teesside Crown Court that initially she had felt it had been her fault.

Judge Peter Armstrong jailed the 35-year-old for six years after hearing he has a fetish for so-called 'sleep sex'.

The judge described it as 'a perverted interest' after hearing it had happened before with another woman.

Prosecutor Caroline Wigin told the court that Cook told the woman it was her fault because she 'looked so sexy asleep'.

The victim made the decision to read her victim personal statement to the court in person.

She said she felt worthless, used and manipulated by a man who said it was 'no big deal', and has needed counselling.

She said: 'I will never trust anyone again. I was scared that I wouldn't be believed.'

Cook admitted he took advantage of the woman to satisfy a 'deviant' interest, which he had convinced himself was normal.

The court heard how he later walked into a police station to confess what he had done before a complaint was made.

His barrister, Stephen Grattage, said Cook now appreciated his 'outrageous' behaviour was rape and caused emotional distress.

Teesside Crown Court heard Cook told the woman it was her fault because she 'looked so sexy asleep'

Mr Grattage said Cook showed remorse and was 'devastated' by his actions, and added that he had 'normalised' his behaviour.

Cook, of Lingdale, North Yorkshire, admitted five charges of rape.

Judge Armstrong said he did not accept a suggestion by a probation officer that Cook's behaviour seemed to be 'naive'.

He told Cook: 'You developed a sexual fetish in what you called sleep sex... a perverted interest as I'm going to call it.

'Completely contrary to her wishes and consent, you took advantage of a situation.

'Your fetish kicked in and you had sex with her when she was asleep.'

Judge Armstrong handed Lingdale a sexual harm prevention order requiring him to tell future sexual partners of his rape conviction.

He was also given a restraining order banning him from contacting the victim in this case, referring to her on social media or approaching her home, and will be on the sex offenders' register indefinitely.
In a statement (bottom) shared to Instagram on Tuesday, the former TOWIE star (top left), 32, admitted she was the voice in the shocking audio files, but claimed she only recorded them because she feared 'serious harm and in the face of significant threats'. She wrote in full: 'I am aware that people will have a number of questions about the voice messages being put into the public domain and purportedly sent by me. 'I feel I have no choice but to address these (to the extent that I can as there are restrictions on me which I explain below). Most importantly I want to apologise to all the victims of Arthur Collins (inset) abhorrent actions in 2017 that they have to relive that night and the pain that followed because this matter is again in the public domain. In particular I want to apologise to Sophie Hall (top right). I do not believe her to be ugly or stupid. She has been brave beyond belief.' It comes after her fiance Lorri Haines shared a series of cryptic posts with his 170k followers, amid the ongoing conflict surrounding his partner. His posts come following claims that Ferne made derogatory comments about ex-partner Arthur 's acid attack victims in a series of leaked voice notes, claiming to be of her voice.
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As the dust from Black Friday settles, retail stores are licking their wounds and counting their dollars - but their digital counterparts aren't done yet.

This Monday sees the return of the annual Cyber Monday digital sale, with dozens of websites offering discounts of hundreds of dollars on all kinds of items.

This year, experts predict that $6billion will be spent online on Monday alone. The figure last year was $3.45billion, a new online sales record.

And while many of the deals are kept secret until they kick off, usually just after midnight on Monday morning, we've gathered up a few of the best leaked deals coming to your browser from some of the big retailers.

Among the deals being touted, Walmart is selling a 58-inch, 4K Samsung television for $598 - that's a saving of $200 - as part of its Cyber Monday online promotion. The promotion starts just after midnight on Monday morning.

Amazon is selling a Kindle Paperwhite - the backlit reading device costs $89.99 for the ad-supported one. With no ads it's $109. Both save $30.

At Target a PlayStation VR headset, along with the Gran Turismo Sport racing game, is being sold for $299.99 - a saving of $100. The PS4 needs to be bought separately.

And at Dell, its gaming range of laptops are being sold at a discounted rate on Cyber Monday, with an Inspiron 15 5000 laptop costing $699.99, a $150 discount.

It is too soon to say whether more money will be spent on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

By 5pm Thursday, shoppers had already spent $1.52 billion, which is a 17 per cent increase from last year.

Some websites began taking online orders on Friday after putting deals online early.

Lowes, the home improvement retailer, buckled under the surge in traffic and its website crashed.

'The site is currently offline and will be available within the next hour. Until then, we invited you to check out these other Lowes affiliated sites. Thanks for your patience,' was the message which greeted shoppers.

It was back up and running after an hour or so.

Walmart

Vision on: Walmart is selling this 58-inch, 4K Samsung television for $598 - that's a saving of $200 - as part of its Cyber Monday online promotion. Walmart's promotion starts just after midnight on Monday morning

Play time: Sony's newly redesigned PlayStation - the PS4 Slim - is available from Walmart for just $199 - that's $100 off its usual selling price. It has the same specs as the original, but with 1TB of storage, and is 40 per cent smaller in size

X machine: For those who prefer Microsoft consoles, Walmart is also selling the Xbox One S for $189, which means it's $90 cheaper than usual. It comes with a 500GB hard drive, and is also 40 per cent smaller than its predecessor

Now hear this: If you have to travel long distances to visit family and are worried about your fellow passengers keeping you awake, Bose's !uietComfort 25 noise-canceling headphones could help - and at $179 on Cyber Monday, you'll save $100

Amazon

A novel idea: Looking to escape the family's post-Monopoly-game arguments? Lose yourself with a Kindle Paperwhite. The backlit reading device costs $89.99 for the ad-supported one. With no ads it's $109. Both save $30

Echo location: Of course, Amazon is also the main place to pick up its new second-generation Echo smart speakers, which will cost $79.99 - that's $20 off the usual price

Take your tablet: The new Kindle Fire HD 10 tablet offers 1080p resolution and voice-activated video control, among other features, for $99.99 during the sale - that's $50 off the usual retail price

Target

Beat 'em up: A pair of Beats by Dre EP headphones will cost you $99.99 from Target, rather than the typical $129 - a saving of $30. They also come with a $20 Target gift card

Virtual insanity: Cyber Monday deals see Target selling this PlayStation VR headset, along with the Gran Turismo Sport racing game, for $299.99 - a saving of $100. The PS4 needs to be bought separately

Ear, ear, ear! Beats by Dre BeatsX earphones are selling for $149.99 during Target's special deal; a saving of $50. They also come bundled with a $20 gift card

Dell

Laptop of luxury: Dell's Gaming range of laptops are being sold at a discounted rate on Cyber Monday, with this Dell Inspiron 15 5000 laptop costing $699.99, a $150 discount

PC gone rad: This stylishly designed Dell XPS 27 has all its components built into a 27-inch screen and costs $1,649.99 - a whopping saving of $500 on the recommended retail price

Sounds good: This LG 300W sounds bar comes with a wireless subwoofer and costs a bargain $129.99 during the sale - that's $50 less than the usual selling price
Clayton County officials are offering $2,000 reward to anyone with information that will lead to the joyrider's arrest

The clip only hit the Internet earlier this week and made its way to urban news site World Star Hip Hop

The suspect entered the police vehicle after an officer jumped out to pursue an unrelated suspect on foot

Clayton County Police said that they were unaware of the July incident

Georgia Police said that they have placed a suspect on their most wanted list after he filmed himself joyriding in a police car and posted the footage to social media.

Clayton County Police said that they were unaware of the July incident until a clip of the unidentified suspect surfaced on Instagram, according to Channel 2 Action News.

'We are driving a police car man,' the individual can be heard saying into his camera.

The suspect (pictured) entered the police vehicle after an officer jumped out to pursue an unrelated suspect on foot

The person entered the police vehicle after an officer jumped out to pursue an unrelated suspect on foot.

'A young man seeking attention and fame videotaped himself taking a Clayton County Police car for a joyride after a officer took off running after a suspect,' the department wrote in an advisory.

The clip only hit the Internet earlier this week and made its way to urban news site World Star Hip Hop. The publicity quickly caught the attention of local law enforcement.

'Sheriff Victor Hill has now ordered the unidentified male placed on his most wanted list and has dispatched his elite Fugitive Squad to join in on the manhunt along with the County Police,' the advisory adds.

The clip only hit the Internet earlier this week and made its way to urban news site World Star Hip Hop

Residents in Clayton County, located just 15 miles from Downtown Atlanta, described the crime as 'foolish,' and assumed the stunt was pulled off for social media attention and bragging rights.

'He's just doing it for clout,' Nestar Yankson told Channel 2. 'Everybody wants clout these days.'

'He thinks he's hard now, but he's not gonna be hard when he's in jail,' Yankson added.

Clayton County officials are offering $2,000 reward to anyone with information that will lead to the joyrider's arrest.

Individuals with tips are urged to call 770-477-4479 or contact Crime Stoppers Atlanta at 404-577-8477, text information to 274637 or visit the crime stoppers website.
Advertisement

The fascinating true story behind the World War Two Spitfire has been revealed in a new book celebrating those who designed, maintained and flew the iconic plane.

The incredible archives shows Prime Minister Winston Churchill observing a female riveter working on the fighter plane at the Castle Bromwich factory in Birmingham, before delaying his return journey to sit with test pilot Alex Henshaw after a demonstration flight.

Ground staff are shown re-arming a Spitfire Mk 1 and the collection offers insight into how the Women's Auxiliary Air Force got to grips with barrage balloons.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill is pictured with test pilot Alex Henshaw following a demonstration flight at the Birmingham factory. He delayed his return trip to meet with workers behind the RAF's most iconic aircraft

Armourer Fred Roberts re-arming a Spitfire at the No 19 squadron in Cambridgeshire. This is just one of the incredible images that goes behind the scenes of the fighter plane's wartime history

The single-seat aircraft fly in starboard echelon formation. These Mark I planes were part of the No19 Squadron, which was based at Duxford

Spitfire specifications ENGINE: 1030hp Rolls-Royce Merlin SPAN: 36ft 11 LENGTH: 29ft 11 TOP SPEED: 362mph ARMAMENT: Eight 0.303" Browning machine guns; 350 rounds per gun Advertisement

Images also show aircraft workers can be seen examining their aircraft as part of a wartime morale-booster to show factory employees the results of their labour.

The wartime photographs are revealed in Spitfire Stories by Jacky Hyams, who says the collection is an attempt to show the people behind the RAF's most famous aircraft, chronicling its first flight and aerial battles.

'As soon as war was declared in September 1939, the Spitfire was up in the sky: in October 1939 an enemy aircraft was intercepted over Britain for the very first time and the Spitfire dominated the front pages as the first ever plane to tangle with the enemy,' she writes in the book's introduction.

Flight Sergeant Grumpy Unwin, Flight Lieutenant Lawson and Sergeant Jennings of No 19 Squadron walking in Fowlmere, September 1940

Winston Churchill observes a female riveter working on a Spitfire at the Castle Bromwich factory in Birmingham. The prime minister visited the factory in 1941 and delayed his trip home to speak with workers

'Beneath the icon and its history, there remains another, equally fascinating story: that of the people behind the Spitfire.

'We tend to associate the Spitfire, quite naturally, with its wartime heroes: the RAF pilots from many countries who served through the war and beyond, flying the Spitfires and other planes, or "The Few" of the Battle of Britain whose valiant efforts will never be forgotten.

'Yet there are many others whose lives have been affected in some way by the Spitfire - the factory workers, the ground staff and the engineers, as well as the pilots and individuals whose love and passion for the Spitfire changed their lives. Such stories resonate down the years from wartime right to the present day.'

Spitfire Stories charts the birth of the iconic plane, how it was made and how it was maintained in tales told by those who were closest to the aircraft.

Ground staff re-arm a Spitfire Mk1 at Biggin Hill, Kent, in 1940. Jacky Hyams explores the people behind the fighter plane in a new book that opens up the archives to reveal the history of the RAF's most iconic vehicle

The Women's Auxiliary Air Force learn how to handle barrage balloons, which were used to defend against aircraft attacks. This picture was taken at the Cardington training station in Bedfordshire

From factory floor workers to the brave pilots who flew in the single-seat fighters, the book takes readers from its creation to the legacy we're familiar with today.

Ms Hyams writes: 'Thousands of Spitfire workers, many of them women who joined the "secret army" of Britain's munitions workers, toiled in these factories, in often difficult conditions, as the country struggled to survive and work through the frequent bombing raids overhead.

'Others were engaged in a wide range of Spitfire roles for the RAF and its wartime auxiliary organisation, the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), whose female ferry pilots were the first women in the world to fly brand new Spitfires and other planes from factory to RAF airfield.

Factory workers were invited to observe the final result of their labour as part of a morale-boosting exercise. Here, Spitfire workers were permitted to inspect the place at an RAF fighter station

'It is also a little acknowledged fact that it was the RAF ground crews, the "erks" as they were called, who worked through the night and in difficult conditions to get the fighting Spitfires back up into battle.

'Every one of these many thousands of workers and their families played some part in this story of the Spitfire.'

Spitfire Stories: True Tales from Those Who Designed, Maintained and Flew the Iconic Plane by Jacky Hyams is available now in hardback, priced 16.99 (Michael O'Mara Books).
Newborn cubs are taken from their mothers, days old and still blind, and fed by humans

It is the most degrading and cruel of fates for the king of the jungle. Bred in captivity, lion cubs are torn from their mothers while still blind, a few days after birth.

Growing up, they are petted as playthings for tourists until they are ready to be released into small enclosures where they will be shot and killed by wealthy trophy-hunters in what are known as canned hunts.

But then a final indignity is visited upon the dead lions: for the carcasses are sent to the Far East to meet the enormous demand for medicines, jewellery and even wine made from the remains.

This has been the horrific destiny for 800 lions from South Africa this year alone  and it is entirely legal, as the government rubber-stamps export licences for the lucrative industry.

Chinas insatiable demand is fuelling the trade in the lion bones, while shameful products from the callous trade are also on sale in other South East Asian countries including Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

There are about 8,000 captive-bred lions awaiting this fate on 200 farms in South Africa  twice the number of lions roaming free in the wild in the nation.

While international conservation groups have put up a fierce fight against the callous industry, the quota has been allowed by the powerful Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which has 169 member nations.

Its ruling is seen as a compromise to appease many of the countries that were pressing for the legalisation of trade in the remains of wild lions as well as captive-bred animals.

With a sad irony, consumers in the Far East believe the bones come from tigers and therefore, in their minds, have almost magical medicinal properties and are seen as aphrodisiacs. But the strict laws now protecting tigers has led to increased use of lion bones by unscrupulous traders.

A chicken is fed to an older lion, getting it used to human contact while in a wire cage

The practice of canned hunting has long been controversial, and lion farmers are notoriously secretive.

But a Mail on Sunday investigation can reveal details of the chain of shocking animal abuse inflicted on captive-bred lions from the first days of their birth to adulthood at four years when they are killed for trophies  and the lucrative trade to be had from their skeletons.

Hunters pay an average of 12,800 to shoot the animal in a small enclosure, then take home the skull and skin. The farmer can make extra profit selling on the carcass for about 1,440 to Asian countries. When divided into smaller consignments, each carcass could fetch up to 50,000 on the streets.

We visited four so-called lion parks and spoke to conservationists who have documented first-hand how lions are processed for an industry reviled by animal-lovers.

At Ukutula Park, two hours drive north of Johannesburg, tiny cubs were huddled up to their mothers in small woolly bundles.

A few days later they would be taken away and bottle-fed by volunteers, mostly young people who are paying for the experience during their gap years, believing they are involved in lion rescue.

At about a month old, the cubs are submitted to petting by fee-paying tourists who play with them and take photographs for several hours every day.

A lion carcass is hung out, as shown in the hard-hitting documentary Blood Lion, made to highlight the sick trade

Later, when the youngsters have become adolescents they are used for bush walks in which dozens of tourists stroll alongside the animals armed with sticks  intended to show domination  and are later rewarded with diplomas to show their courage.

Mail on Sunday journalists saw one lion climb a tree to rest on a branch. It was rewarded with a piece of raw chicken thrown up to it by the walking guide  a circus act that helps keep the lions tame.

The guide explains that if the lions kill wildlife in the park, they are not allowed to eat it. They learn this way that their food comes from inside their enclosure.

They must remain in captivity, he says. And they will die in captivity.

The story was the same in three more lion parks  at the Krugersdorp Rhino and Lion Park and the Lory Park, both on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and at Akwaaba, outside Rustenburg, two hours east of Pretoria.

The guide explains that if the lions kill wildlife in the park, they are not allowed to eat it. They learn this way that their food comes from inside their enclosure

At about three or four years old, when male lions have grown a substantial mane, they become the target of trophy-hunters. The parks where they were born often sell them on to canned hunts, despite the sustained international outcry at images of drugged lions being placed in small enclosures with no chance of escape from hunters.

Attempts to ban these sick spectacles have failed, although new regulations have forced owners to put the animals in bigger enclosures, and to release the lions at least a week before hunting begins, to give the appearance of some sort of fairness.

But this newspaper has been told that lions are still being released on the day they are transported to a hunting enclosure, while still suffering the effects of sedation from the journey. Sometimes, the animals  who have become used to human voices and whistles  are summoned closer to the hunters, who then shoot from their four-wheel-drive vehicles.

The reasoning of South African ranch-owners who run canned hunts appears to defy logic. Clayton Fletcher, a professional hunter and owner of Tinashe, in the countrys North-West Province, is proud that his father Douglas was the first person to hunt a captive-bred lion back in 1985.

Making a killing: Carcass trader Clayton Fletcher with a lion he shot on his Tinashe reserve

And he justifies the cruel trade by saying: The reason people breed lions is because of the value and the only reason why lions are valued is because they are being hunted.

If you stop hunting, you take away the value of the lion and if you take away the value of the lion, then nobody breeds them and the lion becomes extinct.

The only way you can protect an animal like a lion is to give it a value, and unfortunately the only way is through hunting.

Defending the use of captive-bred lions for the Asian market in their bones, Mr Fletcher said: We hunt the lion legally and then we notify the nature conservation authorities that we would like to sell the bones.

There are seven or eight permits we have to get before that carcass goes out. And when that carcass leaves the country, we have saved one lion from being poached in the natural world.

Derek Gobbett is a celebrated safari photographer who was once hired by Americans to film them killing lions, but is now a fervent conservationist. He told of seeing the hunters shooting a lioness that had panicked and hidden in a porcupine burrow, and of another animal that climbed a tree to escape and was subsequently shot at point-blank range.

He said: I shot footage that no hunter would show in order to boast. One male lion was whistled at and the shooter fired from the bed of a pick-up truck; another was impaled on fence-posts and shot. It was slaughter, with ten hunters killing ten lionesses in a week and wanting film footage of each shoot to take home with them.

He said the lions had arrived the day before the hunt from a farm in Bloemfontein. Four were being released into an enclosure at the same time as the American hunters private plane landed.

Ian Michler, a wildlife guide and photo-journalist who made the hard-hitting documentary Blood Lion, exposing South Africas canned hunting industry, is campaigning to stop the trade in lion carcasses. He said: Lions are a charismatic species at the apex of our ecosystems.

'If we cant look after them responsibly, then what hope is there for anything? He condemned the farmers who breed lions in captivity, saying: Theyve tamed the lions. There is nothing noble or fair about the chase and it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to with conservation whatsoever.

According to data from CITES, 2,000 full lion skeletons were shipped to Laos from South Africa in the six years up to 2015 and there were a further 2,300 shipments of incomplete skeletons, meaning bones and parts.

A spirit made from lion bones sold as a magical tonic, on sale in the back streets of China

But wildlife activists believe this is just the tip of the iceberg. Tons of animal parts are sent through the porous border dividing China and Laos, with no documentation.

Some are smuggled through to Vietnam for Tiger Bone Cake, which is crumbled into wine and used as an aphrodisiac and bone-strengthener. One ton of lion bones will make 60 to 70 cakes, which sell at $1,000 (762) each.

A pilot in the region said a colleague had witnessed huge shipments of unregistered lion skeletons in cargo holds. They are marked Scientific supplies and sent to China.

The full extent of South Africas despicable treatment of one of the noblest wild creatures has been revealed by Britains Environmental Investigation Agency.

Campaign leader Debbie Banks said: There is a huge surge in these businesses now Asian countries are accepting lion bones.

She predicts a substantial increase in the poaching of wild lions, and of the endangered tigers remaining in Asia.

We fought against the quota of carcasses allowed by South Africa and we fought against CITES allowing the trade. But the sad truth is that lions have now replaced tigers as the worlds prime source of big-cat body parts.

The South African governments Department of Environmental Affairs has argued that allowing a quota for the export of lion bones could help to deter poaching.

But conservationists believe this is spurious. Dr Luke Hunter, chief conservation officer of wild cat protection group Panthera, says: There is not one shred of scientific evidence to show that canned hunting and legal bone exports help the wild lion population.

They only stimulate the demand for wild lion, leopard and tiger parts throughout the world.

And Mark Jones, of conservation organisation Born Free, said: The intensive breeding of lions and their exploitation for profit is completely unacceptable.

'South Africas lion-breeding industry serves no conservation purpose and the animals all too often suffer short, miserable lives. The government has a responsibility to close this industry down and focus on protecting wild lions.

His organisation is seeking tighter rules on trophy imports into both the EU and the US.

Additional reporting: Toby Selander
Former White House national security adviser Mike Flynn is under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller for his work on an unfinished documentary film financed by a Turkish businessman.

The documentary, per a report from the Wall Street Journal, was to be a hit piece on exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in rural Pennsylvania.

Gulen has been accused by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of orchestrating the failed July 2016 coup.

Former national security adviser Mike Flynn's involvement in financing a documentary produced by a Turkish businessman is being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller

Mueller is investigating how Flynn Intel Group gave $530,000 to the production, which was to be a hit piece on exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in rural Pennsylvania and has been accused by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of orchestrating the failed July 2016 coup.

Flynn, 59, was fired from his White House role in February, after he had only served for 24 days.

Information emerged that he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his contact with Russian officials during the 2016 Presidential Election.

Mueller's investigation is looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election and collusion between Donald Trump's campaign team and foreign operatives.

Flynn has been accused of concealing his financial ties to foreign interests.

Flynn's lawyers, as of this past week, are no longer cooperating with the White House.

Political analysts believe that this means that Flynn's team is trying to broker a deal with Mueller.

Flynn was to help finance the film to the tune of $530,000 through his Flynn Intel Group.

The United States has not agreed to extradite Gulen, citing insufficient evidence. Pictured are US President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shaking hands

Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin, who heads consulting firm Inovo, was producing the film.

Alptekin, an ally of Erdogan, previously told Reuters he hired Flynn to provide research on how Gulen is 'poisoning the atmosphere' between Turkey and the United States.

The Journal previously reported that Flynn wanted his organization's involvement in the film kept under wraps.

A freelance journalist who did work for VICE named David Enders and a former CNN anchor named Rudi Bakhtiar were hired to work on the documentary.

Both have been contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with the film, the Journal reports.

The documentary was to look at how Gulen (pictured) is, according to one of the film's producers, 'poisoning the atmosphere' between Turkey and the United States

Both have also said that they were misled about the true nature of the film.

Alptekin characterized the film as a '"60 Minutes" kind of' documentary and another consulting group, per the Journal, was to promote the film to be shown on a channel such as PBS.

Production on the film was halted in November 2016, the same month that Flynn was tapped to become Donald Trump's national security adviser.

Flynn is also under investigation for an alleged plot to forcibly extradite Gulen to Turkey.

The United States has resisted pressure from Turkey to extradite Gulen, citing insufficient evidence.

He and his son were allegedly offered $15million to orchestrate the action.
The partner of a drunk father who drove off a pier killing himself, their two children, her mother and sister, is suing the local council over the tragedy.

Sean McGrotty, 49, was more than three times the legal drink-drive limit when his Audi Q7 jeep slid off the slipway in Buncrana, Donegal, plunging into the Lough Swilly in March last year.

With him in the 4x4 were his sons Mark, 11, Evan, eight, mother-in-law Ruth Daniels, 57, and her 14-year-old daughter Jodie-Lee Tracey, all of whom died.

On Wednesday an inquest concluded Mr McGrotty died by misadventure.

But it has now come to light his partner, Louise James, is suing Donegal County Council after claiming the slipway at the pier should have been closed to the public.

Sean McGrotty (back left) and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight (pictured front) died when the Audi they were in plunged off a pier and into the water. Their baby sister Rionaghac-Ann (pictured with their mother Louise James, who was not involved in the crash) survived. Ms James is now suing Donegal Council over their deaths despite an inquest's misadventure verdict

High Court proceedings were filed under her name on June 9 this year in relation to the fateful incident, reports the Irish Daily Star.

But legal experts are skeptical she will have a case, after this week's inquest at Donegal Coroner's Court revealed he was over three times the legal alcohol limit when he plunged to his death.

A lawyer told the newspaper: 'The fact that he, as the driver of the car which went over this pier, was three times over the drink drive limit, could play a significant part in deciding any civil court case.'

They added that any culpability the council may have would be severely reduced by Mr McGrotty's drink driving.

His and Ms James' four-month-old baby Rioghnach-Ann was the sole survivor after being rescued by a heroic bypasser, who swam to the sinking car.

MailOnline has contacted Donegal County Council for comment.

Louise James (pictured) has filed High Court proceedings against Donegal County Council over the Buncrana pier tragedy in which her partner, two sons, sister and mother died

Louise James (pictured centre) is pictured leaving the Lake of Shadows Hotel in Buncrana, where she said her heart was shattered by her family's deaths

Ms James said the pier was an 'accident waiting to happen' because there were no signs warning of the dangers of slipping and a gate designed to control crowds using a summer ferry service in the popular tourist spot was left open.

'My heart is shattered,' she said, as she described Mr McGrotty as a wonderful partner and adoring father and spoke of her 'disbelief, pain and anger'.

'He lived for them and it is clear from what this inquest has heard that in fact he died as he lived, in that he could have saved himself and chose not to,' she said.

'I firmly believe the slipway should have been closed to the general public or else proper warning signs displayed as it was an accident waiting to happen.

'Hopefully lessons will be learned and the recommendations made following this inquest will be implemented.'

The panel had been asked to deliberate on whether the deaths were accidental or a result of misadventure.

Misadventure means jurors believe there was risk associated with the events of the day and that somebody had done something to increase the chance of the event happening.

Ms James (pictured), who was at a hen do in Liverpool when the tragedy took place, is pictured with her baby daughter who survived and son Evan, who passed away

Ms James's mother Ruth Daniels, 57, (left) and Ms Daniels's teenage daughter Jodie-Lee Tracey, 14, (right) also died

Coroner Denis McCauley said the evidence suggested Mr McGrotty decided voluntarily to drive onto the slipway and added jurors knew what condition he was in.

A post-mortem examination also found his reading was 159ml per 100ml of blood. The legal limit is 50ml.

But the inquest heard that experts could not be certain how that level of alcohol would have impaired Mr McGrotty, because it would depend on whether he was 'habitual or accustomed' to that amount of drink.

There were also no signs at the slipway warning of the dangers of slipping. A gate designed to control crowds using a summer ferry service in the popular tourist spot was left open, the hearing was told.

Recording the verdict, the jury's foreman said: 'The finding was that death was due to drowning. Cause of death was death by misadventure.'

The spokesman also urged the Irish Water Safety promotional organisation to take a lead on advising and working with all other bodies on implementing best international practice for safety on all slipways and piers.

The family died when the car slid off Buncrana Pier and into the waters of Lough Swilly in Donegal (pictured) on March 20 last year

He added: 'We hope that this can be implemented as quickly as possible in the light of the tragedy.'

Mr McCauley said the jury had handed the Irish safety authority a 'golden key' in its dealings with other agencies, to become the main agency in raising prevention issues.

He said he could not imagine what the victims' families were going through. 'It is a terrible thing, we can see that it is just unimaginable,' he said.

He said the response times of the emergency services were incredible.

'They did it with immense thought for the tragedy that did unfold.'

He paid particular tribute to Davitt Walsh, who managed to rescue the little girl from the sinking jeep.

He said: 'This was such a courageous act. He is an ordinary man who did an extraordinary thing which he should be commended.'

'I knew something wasn't right': Woman reveals moment she found out five members of her family had died The bereft woman who lost her mother, partner, sister and two little boys in the Buncrana drowning tragedy told an inquest how she knew something was wrong the moment she got a phone call alerting her to the tragedy. Louise James told the hearing that she had last seen her family on Friday, March 18, when her partner Sean McGrotty and the two boys had left her at a friend's house ahead of a hen weekend in Liverpool. She was at the airport travelling back from the weekend when the incident took place. Ms James told the inquest how minutes before the tragedy, she spoke on the phone with her tragic sister Jodi Lee who said the boys were playing in a playpark on the shorefront in Buncrana. Half an hour later, she received a phonecall from her brother Joshua. She told the hearing: 'I got a feeling something wasn't right.' Joshua then told Ms James there had been an incident in Buncrana and that a car had gone into the water, but it was not clear who was in there. Ms James said she had tried to contact both her partner and her sister but could not reach them. When she landed in Belfast, she was informed that five members of her family had died. She travelled to her home in Derry before going to Letterkenny University Hospital to see her surviving child and to identify the bodies of the rest of her family. Advertisement

On the second day of the hearing, the coroner heard how the car doors could have been locked when the car hit the water.

RNLI crew member John O'Raw, who dived down to the vehicle when it was submerged three metres underwater, said in evidence that he had tried to reach the family, but could not open the doors of the car.

The experienced snorkeller - who reached the vehicle about 40 minutes about the first 999 call - told the hearing: 'The door handles were giving freely but not engaging with the locking mechanism.'

The rescuer also described how the driver's window was smashed but had bowed inwards, creating an obstacle as he tried to enter the vehicle.

He said the window was only a third of the way open, suggesting the electronics failed at some point due to the water.

Gerard Boyle, a technical expert representing Audi, added that the door would have been left in the same condition it was in when it hit the water - either locked or unlocked.

But he said that, in most circumstances, the door handle should have opened if used from the inside.

The tragic brothers Mark, 11, (right) Evan (left), eight are pictured with their sister, who survived when her father passed her out of the car window to a hero who jumped in the water to try and save them all

Mr Boyle also said that, once the vehicle lost grip on the slippery algae, it would have been uncontrollable.

The hearing had previously heard how Mr McGrotty had managed to pass his four-month-old daughter through the window to Davitt Walsh - a bypasser who had swam out to the car - moments before it sank.

Evidence suggested Mr McGrotty had managed to smash the window with his elbow.

Mr Walsh had also tried to save one of the two boys, whose hand he managed to grasp, but had to let go when the boy's foot got caught and Mr Walsh feared he too would be dragged under the water.

It is not known which of the two boys he was trying to save.

SAFETY EXPERT PLEADS WITH DRIVERS TO PREPARE FOR BEING TRAPPED UNDER WATER A water safety expert has pleaded with people to buy cheap items which could save their lives if they become trapped under water in their cars. Chief Executive Officer of Water Safety Ireland, John Leech, was speaking at the inquest into the loss of five lives in the Buncrana Pier tragedy. Mr Leech, a naval officer for more than 20 years, gave a moving experience of how he has recovered many bodies in his career from both cars and fishing trawlers. He showed those at the inquest some items which could be used to help people get our of their cars if they ended up under water, including seatbelt cutters and a centre-punch which could easily break a car window. 'These items are very inexpensive - I got some of them for as little as 10 - and they can save a life,' he said. He also gave a step-by-step guide of what is recommended to people who become trapped in their cars. He firstly advised people not to use their phones to contact the emergency services. Instead, people should free themselves from their seatbelts, then break a window and allow children to escape the vehicle first before the adults. He added: 'People have to remember that cars float for a long time in the water and people should get out as quickly as possible and then they can hang onto the cars. 'It is an issue in Ireland and we have people drowning every year.' Advertisement

Hero: Mr Walsh was pictured cradling baby Rionaghac-Ann after he risked his life to save her

Witnesses had also described how the slipway was 'thick' with algae.

Garda Seamus Callaghan, one of the first officers at the scene, told how he had to get down on his hands and knees to stop himself slipping.

ALGAE-COVERED SLIPWAY WAS 'TREACHEROUS' WHEN FAMILY DROWNED The algae-covered slipway was as 'slippery as ice' when a car slid into the water killing five members of the same family, the inquest heard. There were also no barriers to prevent people from accessing the slipway, with no signs to warn of the potential danger. The hearing into the Buncrana pier deaths also heard that a risk assessment had not been carried out for 15 years. Lawyer Keith O'Grady told the hearing: 'In 2016 you have open access to a slipway covered in algae and in 2017 you have the slipway power-washed, cleaned, in excellent condition, and the gate closed and nobody can go down.' He added that the cost of removing the algae would have been 400euroes. John McLaughlin, a director at Donegal County Council, said the purpose of cleaning the slipway was to facilitate a ferry which used it during the summer but not in the winter. He said during winter the slipway was rarely used. Advertisement

He explained how he had arrived to see a woman being given CPR before the area was sealed off and the pier cleared to give the fatalities some dignity.

The priest blessed each member of the family as they were taken from the water, he told the hearing.

Garda Sergeant Mark Traynor, also described the algae as thick and slippy.

John McLaughlin, a director at Donegal County Council, admitted no signs had been installed warning the slipway could be slippery.

He said the pier was rarely used in winter and was usually only cleaned to facilitate the summer ferry.

During the hearing, a public safety expert who gave evidence urged drivers to carry equipment to break the car window and wanted information on escaping from water included in instruction manuals.

John Leech from the Irish Water Safety promotional body said those becalmed often had only a minute to take action like undoing seatbelts and rolling down windows before exiting safely.

Speaking after the inquest verdict, Inspector Murphy said: 'We truly hope the conclusion of the inquest will go some way to aiding the grieving process.

'Generations of a family have lost their lives, as we have heard in the course of this inquest.'

He said the tragedy has impacted on many communities including Buncrana, the Inishowen peninsula and around the country.
Romello Leach (pictured), 22, allegedly admitted to the crime during a recorded phone call

A Colorado pastor accused of having sex with a 14-year-old girl admitted to fathering a child with the teenager after he was arrested.

According to El Paso County arrest documents, the girl became pregnant and gave birth to a child which 22-year-old Romello Leach told investigators was his.

Authorities say Leach is associated with several churches that met at a Colorado Springs hotel, according to The Gazette.

The El Paso County Sheriff's Office began investigating him in May after getting a tip from the pregnancy center where the girl and her mother sought help.

The teenager mother gave birth to the child on Sept. 15, shortly after she turned 15.

According to court documents, the teenage girl did not mention the pregnancy to anyone until her noticed her 'larger belly' in May.

Authorities say Leach is associated with several churches that met at a Colorado Springs hotel

Authorities say Leach, recorded during a phone call with his ex-wife, admitted his actions were wrong but said that he was 'full of lust' at the time.

The teenager mother gave birth to the child on Sept. 15, shortly after she turned 15

Leach reportedly tells his former wife that he 'knows he had made the worst mistake,' an affidavit in the case states.

'It's not like (I) will go around and sleep with everybody's 13 or 14-year-daughter,' he adds.

In an separate conversation with an unidentified person, Leach admits to having sex with the underage girl on at least four different occasion and acknowledges being the babys father.

Leach was arrested Wednesday multiple counts of sexual assault on a child and is being held in jail. It's not known if he has a lawyer.
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Another week of wild parties has kicked off for Schoolies, as interstate teenagers descended on the Gold Coast for their annual end of exam celebrations.

Tens of thousands of Queensland graduates were spotted enjoying themselves over the last week, however Saturday saw an influx of New South Wales and Victorian students taking over.

A heavy police presence was out and about helping to keep the contingent safe though, as bloody fights broke out along the strip.

One man was left bloodied after another week of wild parties kicked off for Schoolies Saturday, with interstate teenagers descending on the Gold Coast for their annual end of exam celebrations

Paramedics and ambulance officers were out in force, attending to injured people and transporting them to hospital

A heavy police presence was also on hand to help keep the contingent of New South Wales and Victorian teens safe though, with 66 arrests made throughout the week

One man was left bleeding from his head as he lay on the pavement after an incident, before he was attended to by paramedics.

While groups of officers were spotted throughout the night, investigating items including money and a small plastic bag, amid the antics.

Queensland Police said Saturday that thousands of school leavers had enjoyed their final night of organised activities, with just three male schoolies arrested on the final night.

They also confirmed that an increased police presence would remain in Surfers Paradise as they prepared for the arrival of interstate revellers, many of whom will be of legal drinking age.

Officers were spotted making arrests throughout the night, while one group was spotted investigating items including a small plastic bag with unidentified contents (pictured)

Another officer was spotted looking at money notes among a group of gathered police, as thousands of school leavers enjoyed themselves

One law enforcement pair appeared to share a joke together as they patrolled the Gold Coast strip to help keep school leavers safe, with three males arrested on the final 'official' night

An increased police presence will remain in Surfers Paradise as preparations get underway for the arrival of interstate revellers, many of whom will be of legal drinking age

Throughout the official week of celebrations 66 schoolies were arrested for a variety of charges, including drug possession, while others were issued alcohol infringement notices.

The official number of arrests was down from previous years, with more than 20,000 leavers hitting the strip.

On the final night of the first week many schoolies were spotted hitting the waves for a night time dip, with shoes in hand and towels wrapped around them.

Feather boas, shorts and revealing tops were some of the popular outfits among those making the most of the summery Queensland night.

Always a shoulder to lean on: Lots of Schoolies stuck together, making sure they had each others backs as they celebrated

Another night of wild parties for the young Schoolies began for the second week of the annual end of year celebrations

One Schoolie appeared to be wearing a red feather boa (right) and a black leather skirt, standing out from the crowd

Huge groups of teenagers made their way down to the sandy shores as the sun set on Saturday for a pre-party dip.

Many of the Schoolies were spotted strolling along the beach front in towels and minimalist outfits to account for the warm north weather.

While some party-goers appeared to be well-dressed for the tropical party season, donning long shirts and even heavy jackets.

Thousands of teenagers have been spotted hitting the famous surf waves for a night time dip in the cool ocean (pictured)

Some of the Schoolies were even spotted strolling beside the beach front in towels (pictured) as they carried along the shoes

Some party-goers donned matching black strappy sandels (pictured) jean skirts, and strappy tops as they hit the town

Many Schoolies took a quick refreshing swim in the ocean before partying away the rest of their night (pictured)

While most schoolies appeared to behave during their time on the Gold Coast, one group of 17-year-olds allegedly left a destructive mark on a Surfers Paradise penthouse hotel room.

Footage uploaded to social media in the early hours of Saturday morning showed the extent of the wrecked room at the Mantra Sun City Resort on the Gold Coast.

Schoolies celebrations will continue for the next couple of weeks as more graduates are expected to flock to the popular destination.

Bedazzled: One Schoolie went all out with a stand out glittery eye shadow and a jewel encrusted choker necklace (pictured)

Saturday night marked the first night for many NSW and Victorian Schoolies arriving in Queensland to take part in the fun
Jetstar, Virgin and Qantas have cancelled flights in and out of Bali after Mount Agung volcano erupts for a second time.

Despite Indonesia's disaster management authorities assuring travellers it's still safe to fly, Australian airlines aren't taking any chances after the temperamental volcano blew steam and rock 1,500 metres into the air on Saturday.

A mere two hours after the eruption several airlines diverted or cancelled flights to and from Denpasar's Ngurah Rai International Airport.

A mere two hours after the eruption several airlines diverted or cancelled flights to and from Denpasar's Ngurah Rai International Airport

Jetstar diverted three flights heading to Bali and cancelled six flights ready to leave the island

After months of observation Mount Agung erupted on Tuesday, with grey ash spewing from the peak at 5.05pm local time

Jetstar diverted three flights heading to Bali and cancelled six flights ready to leave the island.

'Following an eruption of the Mount Agung volcano in Bali, Indonesia, it is not currently safe to operate flights around Denpasar Airport,' the airline said in a statement.

'As a result we have cancelled flights to and from Bali this evening. Three flights that were en route to Bali have returned to Australia.'

Qantas and Virgin took a similar stance and cancelled all flights to and from Australia travelling to the tourist hotspot.

A mere two hours after the eruption several airlines diverted or cancelled flights to and from Denpasar's Ngurah Rai International Airport

Qantas and Virgin took a similar stance and cancelled all flights to and from Australia travelling to the tourist hotspot

Indonesia's Disaster Mitigation Agency reminded passengers that only a small part of the island was affected and, as yet, their international airport was still operating.

After months of observation Mount Agung erupted on Tuesday, with grey ash spewing from the peak at 5.05pm local time.

With Schoolies underway, thousands of students have flocked to Indonesia or are expected to fly this week.

The Department of Foreign Trade is advising anyone travelling to Bali to always 'exercise a high degree of caution in Indonesia'.

The eruption of Bali's Mount Agung volcano has caused major flight disruptions

The eruption has forced about 29,000 evacuees into emergency shelters (pictured)

The eruption was considered small although the National Disaster Mitigation Agency said the danger zone around the volcano was 'dynamic' and could change at any time.

They advise people to stay out of the exclusion zone, which remains unchanged, and extends 7.5km from the volcano.

About 29,000 evacuees are currently living in shelters  that's far less than the 150,000 people who fled their homes last month in fear the volcano would erupt.

The Australian government advises all Australian tourists in Bali to monitor local media, follow instructions from local authorities and ensure they have travel insurance.

The alert level remains at three after it was downgraded from the maximum level of four on October 29.

Agung has been rumbling intermittently since August.

The Australian government advises all Australian tourists in Bali to monitor local media, follow instructions from local authorities and ensure they have travel insurance
Aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and her navigator were executed by the Japanese government to avoid an international incident, and the US played along, a shocking theory claims.

The theory says Earhart, who was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and navigator Fred Noonan were killed on the island of Saipan, now a US commonwealth, after their disappearance in 1937 has been around for more than 50 years now.

But now claims have emerged that Earhart's body was retrieved by the US military - which may have hidden her killing to keep the peace, the Pacific Daily News reported.

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Did Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan (both pictured) die at the hands of Japanese soldiers, not exposure, after their disappearance in 1937? New evidence backs that claim

Bill Sablan of Guam says his uncle worked in a prison camp on the island of Saipan in the late '30s when two American pilots - one female - were brought in, having been found at sea

Saipan prison camp where Bill Sablan of Guam says his uncle worked is pictured

The theory fits the recollections of William 'Bill' Sablan, a resident of Guam whose uncle, Tun Akin Tuho, worked at the Saipan prison camp.

Sablan, who was born in Guam and raised in San Diego, told the Daily News that he remembered telling Tun in 1971 about how he hoped to become a pilot.

That triggered a memory in Tun, who recalled how two white pilots had been interned for several days on Saipan, then a Japanese hub, before they were executed.

He said his uncle couldn't recall the exact date, but said that 'some time in the middle '30s' an American woman and man were brought in for questioning.

That was unusual, and caused an uproar in the otherwise quiet prison, Tun had said.

They had been found in the southern islands, Tun told Saipan, and Japan had ordered them to be brought in.

'But during their session, I guess, Imperial Japan didn't want anything to do with them, because hey didn't want to get involved in any national [sic] scandal,' Sablan said.

Sablan said his uncle claimed Imperial Japan decided to kill the pair because they wanted to avoid an incident, and that the US military collected their bodies after World War II

'So apparently I think they were both killed in Saipan and buried there, and I found out later on as I made my inquiries that... after the war was over, their bodies were exhumed by an American military branch and shipped back to the United States.

'Now where those bodies are now is somebody's own question to answer.'

The Daily News suggested that they may have kept quiet in order to avoid an incident of their own.

That contradicts the most popular theory, which is that she crashed and died in the sea on July 2, 1937, after noting poor visibility and her declining gas levels in a series of transmissions earlier that morning.

But it fits a theory proposed on the History Channel special Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence in July that Earthart died at the hands of the Japanese, and that her murder was covered up by the US government.

Sablan's story is the latest in a number of pieces of evidence that suggest Earhart died on Saipan, rather than perishing at sea.

That theory emerged in 1960, when CBS radio reporter Fred Goerner interviewed several witnesses who said that two white 'flyers' or 'spies' had been picked up on the island before the Second World War.

They claimed that one of them was a tall white woman with short hair, dressed like a man.

His claim fits a long-standing theory that Earhart died on Saipan, even though the most common belief is that she and Noonan died after ditching at sea

Josephine Blanco Akiyama (left) was 12 years old and living in Saipan (right) when she claims to have seen Earhart being hauled away by the Japanese in July 1937 after crashing her plane

And in July, Josephine Blanco Akiyama, who grew up on Saipan but now lives in California, said she saw the pair as a child.

'I didn't even know it's a woman, I thought it's a man,' Akiyama told NBC's Today that month.

'Everybody was talking about her but they were talking in Japanese - that's why I know that she's a woman. They were talking about a woman flyer.'

Akiyama, who was 12 at the time, claims she later learned Earhart had been executed.

Also in July, a fuzzy photograph emerged as part of the promotion for the History Channel documentary purporting to show Earhart and Noonan in Saipan, along with her plane, in 1937.

It shows a woman - purportedly Earhart - facing away from the camera. A man who is said to be Noonan stands nearby, while her crippled plane can be seen on the far right being dragged by a large ship.

The faces of the two cannot be seen, but their profiles do bear a striking similarity to the pair. It has been claimed that the photographer was a US spy or emissary operating behind enemy lines in the Pacific.

A facial recognition expert said that it is likely Earhart and Noonan in the photo, which was discovered in the National Archive by retired federal agent Les Kinney.

This image reportedly shows Amelia Earhart (sitting center) after she vanished from the sky - but it is disputed by some. It was found in the national archive

Experts disagree on whether the figures are indeed Noonan and Earhart. It's also been asked why the photo, purportedly taken in 1937, was found with photos taken in 1940

But investigators told MailOnline a year ago that the photo could not be that of Earhart because it was found among a batch of pictures taken after 1940 - three years after Earhart vanished.

An investigator who researched the photo for MailOnline believed initially that the figures on the end of the jetty showed Earhart and Noonan but his enthusiasm waned when he realized the date they were supposedly taken.

'The 1940+ date is probably the most disheartening of all,' the investigator said, adding that the body shapes of 'Earhart' and 'Noonan' did not appear to be correct.

And another recognized Earhart investigator, Mike Campbell, has lashed out at what he described as 'bogus photo claims'.

Campbell said it wasn't evidence of anything except that a Japanese ship, the Koshu Maru, was once in Jaluit Harbour.

Campbell claims that the photo 'does little except discredit the truth'.

He says that Earhart and Noonan are 'absolutely not in the photo and it's incredible that anyone could believe they are'.

'Zoom in and you can see the upper half of a white man with black hair on the far left of the group on the dock,' he said, but adds that the features, the nose, the hairline are all wrong 'and any intelligent analysis rules him out'.

The alleged details of Earhart's final flight, and where she is believed to have ended up based on different theories over the years

Campbell said that 'nobody in the photo remotely resembles Earhart inasmuch as anyone's facial features can be determined at all'.

MailOnline's investigation last year also concluded that if Earhart and Noonan had been captured by the Japanese, the suspected spies would have been under guard but there is no sign of any Japanese soldier on the jetty.

'The group on the dock appears to be out for a Sunday stroll, or awaiting someone's arrival from one of the ships in the harbour,' Campbell said.

As the MailOnline's investigator who uncovered the questionable photo notes: 'In the archives I found that the envelopes containing the photographs were stamped on the lower rear corner - something that was difficult to notice as they're in a three-ring binder/enclosure.

'The [aerial] surveillance photos in the first few envelopes were dated earlier than the 1940s, but the photos taken from on the island [Jaluit], that were in the latter envelopes, were dated 1940+'.
A Russian link to Boris Johnson and Michael Goves successful plot to persuade Theresa May to take a tougher stance on Brexit has been uncovered by The Mail on Sunday.

This newspaper has established that a secret letter sent by the Cabinet Ministers to the Prime Minister was co-ordinated by a senior figure in a free-market UK think-tank founded by a tycoon who made a fortune in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The financier who established that think-tank, the Legatum Institute, also helped President Vladimir Putins associates to take control of Russias state energy giant Gazprom.

The institutes economics director, Shanker Singham, was the third man in drawing up Johnson and Goves Brexit ultimatum, which this newspaper disclosed last month.

The organisation, which operates from a townhouse in Londons affluent Mayfair, was set up using some of the fortune that secretive New Zealand-born tycoon Christopher Chandler made with brother Richard from a string of investments, some of which were made during the wild capitalism of the post-Soviet economy.

Tonight one leading MP called for an investigation by Parliaments intelligence and security committee into the Legatum Institute and its influence on the Government.

But an Institute spokesman strongly defended the charitys influence in the Brexit letter, and denied that Mr Chandler had played any role.

It comes amid a separate political row over claims that the Kremlin secretly interfered in both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. This newspaper has traced thousands of pro-Brexit social media posts to a troll factory based in St Petersburg.

Mr Singham and Mr Gove were both at a behind-closed-doors Commons seminar on Brexit on Friday, which was also attended by No 10 and officials from the US Embassy. All guests were sworn to secrecy.

The Mail on Sunday photographed Mr Singham as he slipped out of the meeting on Friday afternoon.

Asked about his links with the Legatum Institute, Mr Gove told this newspaper he had met one of the Chandler brothers on one occasion. But he declined to comment on Fridays meeting with Mr Singham, or Mr Singhams role in the letter, saying: The blessed sponge of amnesia wipes the memory slate clean.

Johnson and Goves Legatum-backed letter, revealed by The Mail on Sunday a fortnight ago, made three key demands to Mrs May: to force Chancellor Philip Hammond to do more to plan for a hard Brexit; to use our withdrawal from the EU to scrap swathes of rules and regulations; and to appoint a new Brexit Tsar to head up a task force within Whitehall.

All three demands seem to have been met. Mr Hammond used the Budget to announce an extra 3 billion to prepare for a no deal on Brexit talks. Mr Gove has reportedly boasted that he has won Mrs Mays backing to use our EU withdrawal to break free of all Brussels rules.

And our investigation suggests that Mr Singham is effectively becoming that Tsar: over the past year, he has held at least seven secret meetings with Ministers and officials at DexEU  the Department for Exiting the EU  including a summer summit at Chevening, the Kent home shared by Johnson, Brexit Secretary David Davis and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox. Mr Singham, who has dual UK and US citizenship, has worked on trade deals involving Russia in the past.

He previously spent 18 years working for US law firm Squire Sanders, which was subsequently dragged into the row over Donald Trumps links to Russia. The company formed an alliance with one of the Presidents former lawyers, Michael Cohen, who had been embroiled in controversy for approaching Putins spokesman for help on a property deal.

The tycoon bought La Fleur Du Cap, the old mansion on the French Riviera formerly owned by David Niven

Asked if Mr Singham had helped write the letter to Mrs May, Mr Gove declined to answer four times before claiming he had forgotten. The Environment Secretary confirmed he had met Mr Singham, an Oxford University contemporary.

He also said he had met Monaco-based Christopher Chandler, who fiercely guards his privacy, at an event backed by the Legatum Institute and hosted by former Tory Cabinet Minister Lord Cranborne.

The Chandlers extended their flourishing business empire into Russia in the 1990s, when state businesses were being privatised, and lucky entrepreneurs were able to make a killing. Through their company, Sovereign Global, they built a substantial holding in Gazprom, the government-controlled energy giant.

Shortly after Putin became Russian President for the first time in 2000, the Chandlers, angered by the corruption they had witnessed in Gazprom, were credited with helping to trigger a boardroom coup which subsequently led to Alexey Miller being installed as head of the company. The Chandlers say they helped to bring transparency and accountability to the company. Miller was a close ally and confidant of Putins from their time working together in St Petersburg.

Putin used the vast profits from Gazprom, the worlds largest energy company, to consolidate his grip on power. In 2005 another Putin ally, Dmitry Medvedev, the current Prime Minister, became chairman of Gazprom.

The brothers split their fortunes in 2006, with Christopher using his share to help form the Legatum Group, which operates from Legatum Plaza in Dubai. The Legatum Group then spawned the Legatum Institute, which the group says is a completely independent charity with its own trustees.

The Legatum Institute has played a key role in pushing Mrs Mays Government closer to a hard Brexit deal.

Who's behind - and what drives - Legatum? Q What is the Legatum Institute? A It is a mysterious Mayfair-based think-tank which has become a hot house for Eurosceptic hard Brexit ideas. Q Who funds it? A The vast bulk  nearly 90 per cent  of its 4 million-a-year income comes from the Legatum Foundation; this was spun out of the Legatum Group created by tycoon Christopher Chandler a decade ago after splitting the fortune he made in emerging markets with brother Richard. Q What is the Institutes purpose? A Legatum means legacy: it says it is focused on tackling the major challenges of our generation. Brexit is certainly that. Q How did it influence the Boris-Gove letter? A Shanker Singham, Legatums director of economic policy, secretly helped to draw up the hard Brexit trade policies advocated by Gove and Johnson  including preparing for a no-deal Brexit. Q What is its input on Brexit? A Legatums experts appear to have untrammelled access to Ministers: and in the case of Crawford Falconer have supplied the Government with its senior trade negotiator. Q Has the institute done anything wrong? A Civil servants resent the fact that Mr Gove and Mr Johnson appear to be using it as a parallel Whitehall. But it has not broken any rules. Advertisement

It referred questions to the Legatum Group, which last night confirmed that Mr Singham is advising the Government because of his unparalleled expertise in economics and trade as a public service.

The spokesman said Mr Chandler was not aware of the Johnson/Gove letter. He added that Mr Chandler had made his money in many endeavours, not just Russia, was not involved in running the Legatum Institute and had no role in appointing Mr Singham.

According to the institutes accounts, it received more than 4.4 million in funding last year  of which 3.9 million came from the Legatum Foundation, the development wing of the Legatum Group.

The Johnson/Gove letter is not the only thing linking the organisation to the Government:

lIt paid Brexit Secretary David Davis 5,000 to make a speech at its London office and flew him to Los Angeles for another function;

lLegatum Institute trade expert Crawford Falconer was appointed Liam Foxs chief trade negotiator two months ago;

lAnd Legatum Institute senior fellow Matthew Elliott was chief executive of Gove and Johnsons Vote Leave referendum campaign.

Mr Elliott was previously caught up in a Russian controversy in 2012, when he was targeted by a man the Home Office now believes was a Russian spy.

Russian diplomat Sergey Nalobin cultivated links with Elliott and helped to found Conservative Friends of Russia, which was later revealed to have links to Russian intelligence.

But in August 2015, Nalobin had his permission to stay in Britain suddenly revoked after the inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko by polonium poisoning in London concluded that he was probably murdered on the personal orders of Putin.

The Chancellors 3 billion Budget boost, and claims that Mrs May now supports Mr Goves demand to ditch EU standards will fuel claims the Government is following the Legatum Institutes Brexit blueprint.

Furthermore, the charitys involvement in the secret Johnson-Gove letter and Fridays behind-closed-doors Commons summit will lead to more questions about the alleged cloak-and-dagger aspects of the organisations influence.

One senior Government source claimed the institute had staged a soft coup via Johnson and Gove and that civil servants who have to obey strict anti-corruption rules had effectively been bypassed.

Mr Johnson is to visit Russia in December for talks with Vladimir Putin in his role as Foreign Secretary. Brexit is expected to be on the agenda.

Labour MP Liam Byrne, a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: In the light of The Mail on Sundays revelations of the close links between the Legatum Institute and the Johnson-Gove hard Brexit putsch, it is now critical that this think-tanks relationship with the Government is thoroughly investigated. I urge Parliaments intelligence and security committee to launch a wide inquiry into Russian interference and settle the serious and lingering questions.
The British Army is secretly training Saudi Arabian troops to fight in Yemen, where the country has been accused of committing crimes against humanity, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Up to 50 UK military personnel have been teaching battlefield skills to soldiers who will be deployed in the so-called dirty war.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in bombing raids and an estimated one million children are facing starvation and serious illness as a result of the conflict.

The Armys involvement is part of Britains shameful complicity in the suffering, according to Tory MP and former Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell.

Salem, five, is one of the thousands of children affected by the conflict in Yemen. The five-year-old suffers from malnutrition and Unicef predicts that 150,000 children could die by the end of 2017

The training mission  codenamed Operation Crossways  came to light only after the Army released photos and information by mistake.

The United Nations is investigating the situation in Yemen, describing it as the worlds worst humanitarian crisis. Some 10,000 people have died since the conflict between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and rebels supported by Iran began in 2015.

Recently a Saudi blockade of Yemens ports brought the country to the edge a famine, with the charity Unicef predicting 150,000 children could die by the end of 2017.

Last night, Mr Mitchell demanded that the UK Government provide answers in the Commons about Britains role in Saudi military operations.

He said: The UK has been shamefully complicit in Saudis role in Yemen, which has clearly included breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

'I have no doubt Parliament will require an explanation of this training mission in view of the high level of concern about the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Yemen.

Operation Crossways involved troops from 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland (2 Scots) teaching Irregular Warfare (IW) techniques to officers from the Royal Saudi Land Forces Infantry Institute.

IW is a collective name for specific tactics used by conventional armies to defeat terrorist groups.

In Yemen, Saudi soldiers are fighting against an Iranian-backed paramilitary force known as the Houthi rebels.

SNAP BRITISH ARMY DIDN'T WANT YOU TO SEE: Saudi troops preparing to fight in Yemen  shown in the light blue map in the middle of the board  look on as a British Army trainer taking part in Operation Crossways gives instructions on conducting an irregular warfare mission

Due to the concern surrounding Saudi Arabias military operations in Yemen, Operation Crossways was never supposed to be made public.

It came to light only after a mission summary and photographs were inadvertently posted on 2 Scots Facebook page earlier this month.

In one picture a British instructor is seen standing in front of a map showing Yemen and the surrounding region as he explains a possible attacking strategy.

The MoD attempted to launch a cover-up after the MoS brought the images to the attention of defence officials.

Within 20 minutes of a reporter contacting the MoD, the images and the summary had been removed from the Facebook page.

Last night, former head of the Royal Navy, Lord West, demanded transparency over the UKs role in training Saudi troops.

He said: Given the sensitivities surrounding Saudi Arabia and Yemen at the moment it would be better to be open about what we are doing. Our training will hopefully save lives.

A serving senior British Army officer who chose to remain anonymous added: There will be serious concern that this mission has leaked out given the sensitivities of Saudis role in the Yemen conflict.

The MoS can also reveal the British training mission has involved Explosive Ordnance Disposal officers from the Royal Logistic Corps teaching Saudi troops how to defuse roadside bombs.

The UK has been heavily criticised for selling billions of pounds of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, in particular as British-made bombs are understood to have been used in the Saudis aerial bombardment of Yemen.

The MoD said: The UK is not training the Saudi Armed Forces in irregular activity but is providing courses in how to counter it.

Our complicity in this biblical horror is shameful writes ANDREW MITCHELL, former international development secretary

It is a proud achievement that, in the aftermath of two terrible world wars, our leaders created the Geneva Conventions, a historic set of rules to govern conflict.

Yet even this month, as we mark the sacrifice of our soldiers, that rules-based international order is crumbling.

And in Yemen, it is being fatally undermined by our own allies.

As wreaths were being laid in the UK to mark Remembrance Sunday, Yemen was enduring yet another day of a brutal blockade that risks plunging the country into the worlds largest famine. It has been imposed by Saudi Arabia.

The blockade  enforced after Houthi rebels fired a missile towards Riyadh, the Saudi capital  has now been in place for more than 20 days, cutting off half a million tons of food and fuel to a starving population, barring delivery of desperately needed medical supplies, and grounding UN humanitarian flights carrying aid workers to their lifesaving missions.

Saudi Arabia's Defence Minister, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, pictured in Moscow during a meeting with Vladimir Putin

Ever more urgent pleas from the UN and humanitarian agencies to fully lift the siege fall on deaf ears. Despite Saudi protestations, it is increasingly hard to deny that this constitutes collective punishment of an entire population.

This is a crime under international law  and as an ally and major arms supplier to Saudi Arabia, the UK is shamefully complicit.

The impact of the blockade could not be more grave. Yemen is a country ravaged by medieval diseases and on the precipice of a biblical famine.

The Saudi pledge to open some ports to urgent humanitarian supplies does not come close to feeding a population reliant on commercial imports for 80 per cent of its food.

Every hour, 27 children are diagnosed as acutely malnourished: thats 600 more starving children every day. Fuel shortages mean at least seven cities have already run out of clean water and sanitation; hospitals have shut down due to a lack of running water and fuel for generators.

As vaccines run out, one million children are at risk of diphtheria, known as The Strangling Angel of Children.

The imagery on our television screens seems from a bygone era: emaciated children; tiny babies in incubators, their tenuous hold on life dependent on fuel for hospital generators that is fast running out.

Preventing the supply of weapons to Houthi rebels fighting Yemens internationally recognised government is a legitimate aim, mandated by UN Security Resolution 2216. But this cannot justify the ongoing strangulation of Yemen and its people.

A UN panel of experts found no evidence to support Saudi claims that their obstruction of civilian goods is stopping missiles being shipped to the Houthis by Iran.

Such an obstruction is illegal under the international system. The UKs silence in the face of these clear crimes against the people of Yemen not only shames us, it implicates us.

This is a war waged by British allies using British weapons: we have supplied Saudi Arabia with almost 4 billion of weapons and military support in recent years.

As the penholder on Yemen, responsible for leading action at the Security Council, we bear a special responsibility  political as well as moral  to lead the international response to end this conflict.

Yet the British government has declined to call this what it is: an illegal blockade. While the Government was right to condemn the attempted Houthi missile attack on Riyadh airport, where is the British condemnation of 1,000 days of intensive Saudi bombing of Yemen? On the first day of my recent visit to the capital, Sanaa, the city was attacked six times by bombers from the Saudi air force.

Throughout the conflict, our quiet diplomacy has failed to curb outrage after outrage perpetrated by our allies in pursuit of what the UN Secretary General has called a stupid war.

The current blockade does not just risk the senseless death of millions. By tightening the noose around a starving population, Saudi Arabia is feeding the propaganda machine of the opponents it aims to vanquish.

More than collective punishment, then, it is self-harm on a grand scale. The Houthis have publicly vowed revenge, blaming Saudi aggression that shuts down all doors for peace and dialogue.

Saudi Arabias borders can ultimately be made secure only by having a stable Yemen. But as it wreaks relentless havoc on its own neighbourhood, it cannot be surprised when the Yemenis refuse to toe the line.

Every action of the Saudis currently serves the narrative of Saudis enemies who want it to be seen as the aggressor to win support of the general population.

Prolonging the conflict serves the purpose of those who profit from war and wish to undermine stability in the region: including Iran and extremist groups.

When I was in Yemen, I saw signs in the street in Arabic and English declaring America and Britain are killing Yemeni children.

The time for UK leadership is now. We must demand an urgent ceasefire, an immediate and unconditional end to the blockade, and a return to reinvigorated, inclusive peace talks.

A new Security Council resolution is long overdue: it is widely recognised that Resolution 2216 is an anachronism that constitutes a barrier to a peace process.

The cost of our inaction is measured in Yemeni lives. The clock is ticking: a child dies every ten minutes. Yemen is also a time bomb threatening international peace and security.

The abrogation of our responsibility to denounce these crimes and use our leverage to stop them condemns millions of Yemenis to death. Shying away from demanding compliance by all to the international rules-based order that we helped take root also weakens a strained system that keeps British citizens safe.

We must use every inch of our leverage  diplomatic, political and economic  to demonstrate to our allies they have more to gain from peace than a fruitless military strategy that is exacerbating the worlds largest humanitarian catastrophe, and undermines the international rules-based order that keeps us all safe.
Standing alongside his wife, the businessman in a pinstripe suit exuded confident respectability as he chatted to Prince William at a charity polo event.

It was a summer afternoon in 2009 and Muhammad Asif Hafeez, a familiar face on the polo circuit and a man noted for his quiet charm, was a VIP guest.

But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that at the time of his encounter with the Prince, Hafeez was allegedly masterminding a massive global drugs operation that saw no borders or boundaries.

According to prosecutors, the 58-year-old  who is thought to have made a donation to the elite event that benefited six of Prince William and Prince Harrys favourite charities  was referred to by members of his syndicate as The Sultan.

Hafeez's wife, Shahina, presenting Prince William with a bouquet at a charity polo match. She also gave Prince Harry a protocol-busting hug which made onlookers gasp

Yet in the rarefied circles in which he moved in Britain, Hafeez was esteemed as a wealthy industrialist and lifelong polo enthusiast. Since 2009 he has been one of Ham Polo Clubs international club ambassadors.

Following a joint UK-US operation, he was arrested in August at his flat in Regents Park, London. He also has a 5 million home in Berkshire where he breeds polo horses.

Now in Wandsworth Prison, he is fighting extradition to the US where he is wanted for allegedly attempting to smuggle heroin and crystal meth into the country. Along with associates, he is also accused of setting up a massive drugs factory in Mozambique.

On Friday, Hafeez appeared via videolink before Westminster magistrates court. But back in June 2009, he took his place in the VIP enclosure at Ham Polo Club in Richmond to watch William and Harrys team play.

It is understood he was given the opportunity of meeting the brothers after the match because of his donation. During their conversation, Hafeezs wife Shahina, 57, presented William with a bouquet and gave Harry a protocol-busting hug which made onlookers gasp.

Friends said Hafeez has also met Prince Charles and other senior Royals through polo. In the same month that he met William and Harry, Hafeez and Shahina attended another event at Ham, rubbing shoulders with Princess Beatrice and her boyfriend Dave Clarke, as well as Pippa Middleton and then England manager Fabio Capello.

William and Harry, of course, had no idea Hafeez was a long-time priority target of Americas Drug Enforcement Administration. And to anyone who pressed him, Hafeez headed a Dubai-based conglomerate, producing everything from textiles to military hardware.

Hafeez has also met Prince Charles and other senior Royals through polo and said he ran a Dubai based conglomerate

But during an earlier hearing at Westminster magistrates court in August, details of an altogether different business empire were outlined. It was claimed he has been involved in narcotics trafficking since 1993 and that his operation stretched across Asia, Europe and North America.

In a press statement issued before the hearing, US Attorney Joon H Kim said: [The] Sultan trafficked in drugs on a massive and global scale, working with transnational criminal organisations to manufacture and distribute enormous quantities of heroin and methamphetamine [crystal meth] around the world and the United States. From Kenya and Mozambique to London and New York, Hafeezs alleged drug operation saw no borders or boundaries  until now.

Hafeez was arrested at the request of the US authorities following an operation by Britains National Crime Agency and Met police and the DEA.

According to the official DEA indictment, Hafeez is accused of joining forces with a feared African crime family called the Akasha Organisation, led by brothers Baktash Akasha Abdalla and Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla, who have already been extradited to the US.

In 2014, the DEA launched an undercover operation against the Sultan-Akasha network, a sting in which its undercover agents posed as Colombian drug dealers wanting to buy heroin. In October 2014, Ibrahim Akasha delivered a kilogram of heroin to the DEA agents in the Kenyan city of Mombasa, which the Colombians said was destined for the US.

The following month, the Akasha organisation delivered 98 kilograms of heroin to the DEA agents. The agents were told that the heroin was the Sultans drugs, and they reportedly spoke to Hafeez by Skype video. The conversation was secretly recorded. The Akasha brothers and two others  Gulam Hussein and Vicky Goswami  were subsequently arrested by Kenyan police and extradited to the US earlier this year after a three-year legal battle.

Kenyan police officers display bags of heroin. Hafeez is fighting extradition to the US where he is wanted for allegedly attempting to smuggle heroin and crystal meth into the country

Separately, Hafeez is accused of trying to smuggle tons of crystal meth into the US while working alongside the Akasha organisation.

The DEA alleges that they set up a special laboratory in Mozambique to make the drug.

At the same time, others in the gang  Goswami and his wife Mamta Kulkarni, a well-known Bollywood actress  were running a factory 3,600 miles away in India to manufacture ephedrine, the deadly drugs active ingredient.

This was then due to be smuggled to Mozambique.

During the August hearing, prosecuting barrister Hashim Chaudhri said Hafeez could face life imprisonment in the US if found guilty.

But Hafeezs defence team said he was the victim of mistaken identity and stressed he does not have a criminal record in any jurisdiction. He next faces court on December 13.

Last night, his solicitor, Hassan Khan, said: Mr Hafeez entirely denies all the allegations made against him by United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

He will be vigorously defending all the allegations made by the US and the associated extradition request initiated by the US.

The allegations made against him are inaccurate and unsupported.

Although Hafeez has been listed as one of Ham Polo Clubs 14 international club ambassadors every year since 2009, club treasurer Paul de Rivaz last night said he was not a current member.

Last night, Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the Princes meeting Hafeez and his wife at the polo match.
Is is an app that could make phones far more secure.

Rather than rely on traditional voice recognition, researchers have revealed an android app that uses sonar to monitor how users are moving their mouth as they speak.

This would put an end to so called 'spoofing' through replay attacks - when an identity thief edits recordings of your voice to play to these systems in order to access your data.

Biometric voice authentication is the technology that allows your voice to be recognized as a password, instead of typing in a password. However, voice biometrics is vulnerable to replay attacks - when an identity thief edits recordings of your voice to play to these systems

RISE OF BIOMETERICS Various kinds of biometrics can and are used for authentication, including fingerprint, iris, facial and voice recognition systems. Voice authentication has become a low-cost and reliable way of authenticating users, and it's becoming increasingly popular in mobile apps - for example Google's 'Trusted Voice' for Android devices. Biometrics have gained increasing levels of attention as an alternative to typed passwords for authentication. Biometric voice authentication is the technology that allows your voice to be recognized as a password, instead of typing in a password. However, these systems are vulnerable to attacks, which are easy to commit due to to the availability of low-cost, high-quality recording and playback devices. Advertisement

Researchers say their sonar system called VoiceGesture can detect live users and whether or not people are misusing recordings for 'replay attacks.'

The fact that people share so much audio and video of themselves on social media makes it even easier for identity thieves to pass voice authentication tests fraudulently.

According to New Scientist, Google is currently reviewing the technology for Android.

'We hope to hear in early February,' Jie Yang at Florida State University in Tallahassee told New Scientist.

The team also plan to expand the antispoofing technologys applications to voice assistants, like the Amazon Echo and Google Home.

The detection system requires only a speaker and a microphone that are commonly available on smartphones.

It works by using the smartphone as a Doppler radar, which transmits a high frequency sound from the built-in speaker and listens to the reflections at the microphone when a user speaks their passphrase.

When a user sets their passphrase, the VoiceGesture app emits a barely audible, high pitched 20 kilohertz acoustic signal from the phones loudspeaker.

Illustration of how the VoiceGesture system works. VoiceGesture performs liveness detection by extracting features in the Doppler shifts that are caused by the unique articulatory gestures from when a user speaks a passphrase

This signal bounces off the moving jaw, lips and tongue as they speak, and creates a unique 'mouthprint'.

The Doppler shift is the same effect that causes sirens from an emergency vehicle to change in pitch as it passes you by.

In a study with 21 participants and different types of phones, the VoiceGesture system achieved over 99 per cent detection accuracy at a 1 per cent Equal Error Rate.

The study also showed that the system works well with different voice frequencies and different phone placements - for example when the phone is placed by the ear or in front of the mouth.
As we step off the plane in Puerto Escondido, the air slaps us in the face like a hot flannel.

Its hot and humid in Oaxaca (pronounced Wahaca), near the bottom of Mexico close to Guatemala. It has been a long journey to get here: two aeroplanes and 12 hours flying time.

Our three children, Dash, 11, Edith, eight, and Artemis, two, immediately shed their clothes. I look at my husband in dismay. Have we made a mistake?

Life and soul: Oaxacas thriving Playa Marinero, where the sea is refreshing and warm

By the time we have located our rooms in a poorly signed apartment block on the other side of town, the toddlers cheeks are flaming. A smoothie? suggests my husband desperately.

The smoothie helps. And then we hear the surf, slamming down on Zicatela Beach. It is thrilling watching the spume fly up and the surfers crash down.

The children are desperate to go in, but the under-toad, as my husband calls it, would have us all for dinner.

The surf is the reason Puerto Escondido took off as a tourist spot back in the Sixties. Now, its surfer roots are overshadowed by hotels and candlelit restaurants serving everything from ceviche to pizza.

That evening, it is exciting enough just to watch the sun set and the surfers turn into black seals, but the next morning, we walk ten minutes to Playa Marinero. It is here that our trip truly begins to make sense.

The sea is refreshing, but warm enough to stay in for hours. The waves are manageable. My husband teaches the older two how to dive under the bigger waves and avoid a battering.

Edith divides the waves into slappers, bashers and bobbers. Soon, Dash and Edith are body-boarding, hands thrust out in front like miniature missiles. For children who used to shriek about getting their faces wet in the bath, this is a result.

Dancers take part in a carnival in Oaxaca, which has been a tourist hotspot for 50 years

At lunchtime, the Mexican families pull out giant cooler boxes full of food and order more from the vendors labouring up and down the beach. By the time the tamale woman reaches us, there are hardly any left: the tamales turn out to be steamed corn dough wrapped around chocolatey chicken, served in a banana leaf. Theyre delicious.

For Artemis, there is a Mexican prawn cocktail, less mayonnaise, more tomato and lime.

Afterwards, we eat pastries good enough for Paris: light and sugar-sprinkled, only here bought from a barefoot woman.

San Agustinillo is our next stop, an hour east along the coast. The village has a European feel, thanks to the Italians whove opened up restaurants here. Palapas, the palm-roofed buildings typical of the area, sit on the steep hill away from the beach, and the shops are owned by friendly Mexicans who help my husband and Artemis improve their Spanish.

For Dashs 11th birthday, we book a tour with Pacifico Magico. Our guide, Efren, takes us carefully alongside a migrating humpback whale (Come at them head on and you frighten them, he says).

We marvel at its great, glistening back and watch its giant tail slipping noiselessly beneath the waves. Edith is astonished by its peaceful eye.

But the real thrill are the dolphins. As we speed across the ocean, there they are, leaping from the sea, at least 20 of them cutting through the water at joyous speed.

The area is a shining example of eco-tourism. We take a trip to the Mazunte Turtle Museum. Here, the same people who used to slaughter the sea turtles have become their protectors. Most breeds of Mexicos turtles paddle around here, gazing beadily up at us from their outdoor aquariums.

A mile away at the Ventanilla lagoon, the community run boat tours.

On the shore waits a crocodile, close enough to snap up a toddler, and in the branches of the mangroves, we spot nesting pelicans and herons.

But it is the iguanas we love, jewel-bright and pawing each other to get closer to us, hoping for scraps. No, we cant take them home, I tell the children firmly. We instead buy a hand-beaded version  much easier to fit on the mantelpiece.
There comes a time in every parents life when they must explain where Father Christmas lives. I had brought my six-year-old daughter Claudia to see him in his natural habitat: Rovaniemi in Finland, the official Home of Santa Claus.

Our base was the boutique Arctic Light Hotel. In winter, the sun sets early here. But there are things to do in the long evenings in Rovaniemi. The superb Pilke Science Centre closes at 6pm, and you can always hunt for the Northern Lights.

Other than that, hunker down  there are fires and a hotel restaurant, even if reindeer served three ways prompted difficult questions from Claudia.

Anna Melville-Jones and her daughter Claudia on their visit to Rovaniemi in Finland to visit Santa Claus

After fielding mind-bending queries, youll need a Lappish G&T, infused with rosemary and cloudberries  and possibly a lie-down in the hotel sauna.

Building up to the big guy, we went snowmobiling next morning  heading down the frozen Kemijoki river and out to a silent forest of dark pines against a dazzling, desolate landscape.

This is Christmas like youve never known. Locals mention with trepidation that winters are getting warmer, but warm here still means minus temperatures that make your cheeks ache as you zip along under a sky of pale blues, pinks and oranges.

You can snowmobile across the Arctic Circle (or catch the No 8 bus to cross the Circle instead) to swap horsepower for a sled at a reindeer farm. Reindeer have been integral to indigenous Sami culture for centuries, but theres an art to driving one. Stay on for a Sami shamanic ceremony in a tipi and learn about living in one of the worlds most inhospitable climates.

In winter, the sun sets early. But there are things to do in the long evenings in Rovaniemi, pictured

When we finally reached the Santa Claus Village, Claudia was pink with anticipation. This is a commercial take on Santa, with elf hats to buy and postcards to send from the post office. For a more intimate experience, theres the Santa Claus Secret Forest at Joulukka, which offers an elf school and private meetings.

At the village, the queue for Santa was long and the visit short, with the inevitable photo-buying finish.

I dont think that was him, whispered Claudia conspiratorially as a quiet snowfall began, natural enchantment descending from the skies. She caught a flake on her tongue and giggled.

Wherever Santa was, it didnt really matter. Christmas had come early, and the magic was real.
Abu Dhabi has been busy rebranding itself and now wants to be known as the Gulfs capital for culture and cuisine.

As part of this, 3billion has been spent on creating the worlds most spectacular new art gallery. The Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, has opened on Saadiyat Island, with art critics drooling with pleasure at its contents and physical beauty.

The aluminium and stainless steel dome  650ft wide and open on all sides  is supported by four concealed piers and so appears to hover above the desert like a lattice flying saucer. It is a dramatic architectural statement and no doubt will become as recognisable a symbol of this wealthy emirate as the Burj al Arab is of neighbouring Dubai.

The Etihad Towers and Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi. The Gulf State is rebranding itself as a capital for culture and cuisine

I spent several hours wandering through this Louvre in the desert and emerged from its cool confines thrilled by what I have seen and impressed with the organisation of the museum.

It is arranged chronologically as the story of humanitys art and is spread across a series of 20 galleries. It is, according to His Excellency Saif Ghobash, of the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, about universality, about the evolution of art.

So, you start with an 8,000-year-old two-headed figure from Jordan, then the ancient Egyptian sarcophagus of Princess Henuttawy from 950 BC, working your way through 8th Century gold adornments from Iranian Azerbaijan, and then through Middle Eastern treasures, to great European Renaissance works. Then its on to Picasso, Van Gogh, Mondrian, Cy Twombly and Ai Wei Wei, along with other contemporary stars.

Not surprisingly, there have been minor journalistic flutters around the presence of Christian religious works such as Bellinis Virgin And Child and nude sculptures in a Muslim country that remains essentially very conservative.

These are, however, flutters that His Excellency Ghobash dismisses out of hand. In fact, he says he sees the Louvre as building a creative class and attracting a creative class, something you can only do if you have a more tolerant, more progressive people living here.

Inside the new Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi, which has opened at a cost of 3billion

He says Abu Dhabi is planning for the day the last barrel of oil is pumped. We are striving to become one of the worlds cultural capitals.

To that end Saadiyat Island, which is already home to a branch of New York University (with its own art gallery), is being earmarked as the emirates cultural hub with plans to build a National Museum, designed by Lord Foster, a new Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry, and a maritime museum designed by the Japanese modernist Tadao Ando.

One of the exhibits in the new museum is this self portrait by Vincent van Gogh

Whether travellers will flock to Abu Dhabi to look at Leonardo da Vincis mesmerising Belle Ferroniere or Davids dramatic Napoleon Crossing The Alps or Picassos Bust Of A Woman is open to question.

Tourism numbers are reportedly growing at more than ten per cent a year, and next year almost five million visitors are expected. However, most go for the winter sunshine, the combed white-sand beaches and the luxurious hotels that for much of the year offer very competitive prices. That more sybaritic side of Abu Dhabi is on offer on the island next to Saadiyat.

Yas Island is home to tourist playgrounds such as Waterworld, Ferrari World, the Du Arena  which has hosted Jay Z, Paul McCartney, Calvin Harris and Mumford & Sons  and the Yas Marina Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit, the venue today for the 2017 seasons last race.

Having spent the morning in the cool cerebral retreat that is the Louvre, I crossed from Saadiyat to Yas to attend the Abu Dhabi Taste Festival, a raucous annual open-air food, drink and music carnival that includes concerts by the likes of former Spandau Ballet vocalist Tony Hadley. On the evening of my visit, it featured a cook-off to decide Etihad Airways Taste The World champion. The Abu Dhabi airline had flown in 12 chefs from across the world, regional winners of domestic competitions, to contest the big prize. Among the favourites was Dean Parker, head chef at Londons The Manor restaurant. However, much to the disappointment of the British partygoers, the Michelin-star chef Kotaro Noda, from Romes Bistro64, took the crown.

Chef Takashi Ando at the Jumeirah Etihad Towers' Japanese restaurant Tori No Su

Etihad Airways has, since it launched in 2003, marketed itself as the gastronomes airline and even in these more austere times  it is being forced to cut operating costs by 30 per cent  boasts an in-flight chef for First Class passengers on all long-haul flights. (Even in Economy, the food served is superior to most other airlines fare.)

As final affirmation of the all-round excellence of the emirates culinary offerings, on my last day I had lunch at Jumeirah Etihad Towers Japanese restaurant Tori No Su and then dinner at the hotels Rays Grill, the atmospheric steakhouse on the 63rd floor overlooking the waterfront.

The food at both was superb, with chef Takashi Andos sushi and sashimi the best Ive had in years.

There are seven restaurants in this luxury property and both Tori No Su and Rays are bafflingly empty. Were these London restaurants, one would struggle to get a table.

As is the case with the new Louvre, British travellers are not going to fly to Abu Dhabi for the cuisine. However, if they are coming anyway for the winter sunshine, theyre in for a treat on both counts.
She's the Weekend Today star who announced her engagement to cinematographer Trent Butler on Monday.

And now Jayne Azzopardi has detailed the emotional moment she burst into tears after he bent down on one knee from the balcony of their hotel in Hobart last weekend.

Speaking during Weekend Today on Saturday, the 34-year-old also revealed that viewers have since drawn similarities between her lover's appearance and her on-air partner Tom Steinfort.

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Something was in the air: Jayne Azzopardi (right) recaps her emotional engagement to Trent Butler... and reveals viewers thought her husband-to-be was co-host Tom Steinfort (left)

Jayne said she was whisked away to Trent's home state of Tasmania after hosting Weekend Today last Sunday, before she said 'yes' through tears to Trent's proposal.

'We were staying at this beautiful hotel and we were on our balcony, and it was fantastic weather, Hobart really turned it on,' she explained to co-host Tom.

'I started to get a little bit emotional. I was looking at him thinking "you look so handsome, I love you so much", and he came over to give me a hug and comfort me and next minute he was on his knees pulling out a ring, and I cried.'

Newsreader Davina Smith chimed in, asking Jayne to elaborate on people mistaking Trent for Tom.

Awkward! Speaking during Weekend Today on Saturday, the 34-year-old also revealed that viewers have since drawn similarities between her lover's appearance and her on-air partner Tom Steinfort

'I started to get a little bit emotional': Jayne said she was whisked away to Trent's home state of Tasmania after hosting Weekend Today last Sunday, before she said 'yes' through tears to Trent's proposal

'Well I certainly haven't ... but I suppose in the photo we posted I am covering half of Trent's face,' Jayne responded.

She added: 'There were a few viewers saying "is that Tom Steinfort?" It's not.'

The pretty brunette then jokingly 'friendzoned' Tom, telling him that Trent is the only one for her.

'You've made the right choice,' Tom responded.

Jayne took to Instagram on Monday to share the exciting news, beneath an adorable snap that showed her cosied up with her new fiancee.

She said Yes! Jayne took to Instagram on Monday to share the exciting news, beneath an adorable snap that showed her cosied up with her new fiance.

Top talent: Jayne is widely considered one of Channel Nine's most popular stars - both among viewers and colleagues

'Say no more.. the answer is YES!! I'm the luckiest, happiest girl in the world. Can't wait to marry my love', Jayne wrote in a post uploaded for her 8700 followers.

The stunner shared a selfie that appeared to be taken right after Trent's proposal.

Beaming as she placed her hand over her man's mouth, journalist Jayne showed off her new engagement bling.

Loved up: Jayne and Trent were immediately inundated with well-wishes from Channel Nine's biggest stars
She is expecting her second child with boxer husband Amir Khan.

And Faryal Makhdoom looked to be missing the I'm A Celebrity star as she attended a meet and greet at Marhaba Restaurant in Luton on Friday night.

The 26-year-old's public appearance comes after reports emerged Amir is the highest paid I'm A Celebrity contestant, earning a staggering 400k for his appearance in the reality show.

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Flying solo: Pregnant Faryal Makhdoom looked to be missing her husband Amir Khan as she attended a meet and greet at Marhaba Restaurant in Luton on Friday night

He's in the money: The boxing legend is reportedly the highest paid contestant in the history of I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!

Faryal nailed maternity chic in a geometric-print cape as she made her way to the restaurant launch.

Paired with a chunky polo-neck jumper and suede knee-high boots, the mother-of-one covered up her baby bump in the fashionable outerwear.

She styled her raven black tresses in a sleek center parting and showcased her model looks with bold eyeliner and heavily contoured cheeks.

Glam: The Instagram star nailed maternity chic in a geometric-print cape as she made her way to the restaurant launch

Big deal: New reports claim Amir is being paid more than Katie, due to his recent marital woes with Faryal as well as his status as a former world champion

Faryal's outing comes after reports Amir Khan is the highest paid contestant in the history of I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!

The record was previously held by Katie Price, who bagged a whopping 400,000 for her second stint on the show in 2009 - but according to The Sun, the boxer, 30, is receiving a touch over that figure.

Amir is said to have been paid even more than Katie due to his recent marital woes with Faryal as well as his status as a former world champion.

Fashionable: The mother-of-one covered up her baby bump in the fleecy outerwear and a knitted jumper

Dramatic make-up: Faryal showcased her model looks with bold eyeliner and heavily contoured cheeks

In demand: A source said: 'Amir was a great get, but he came at a hefty cost. Hes going to be the best paid celeb theyve ever had'

Overtaken: Amir is reportedly receiving over 400,000 - the figure Katie Price was paid to make a return to the jungle in 2009 (above)

Amir and Faryal acrimoniously split two months ago, following a number of bitter family feuds and public rows, but reconciled one week before he jetted to Australia.

A source said: 'Amir was a great get, but he came at a hefty cost. Hes going to be the best paid celeb theyve ever had.

'Katie Price got somewhere close, but Amirs is slightly higher again.'

Opening up: It has been a tough year for the couple after Amir accused the model of cheating and Faryal accused Khan's Pakistani parents of bullying her for not being a good Muslim

On again: Amir confirmed he and Faryal were back together with a cosy Instagram snap last week, captioned: 'Closing the year with a happy ending'

Back in the day: The Olympic silver medalist filed for divorce in September but are back on again

Addressing his recent marriage split, which even saw him accuse Faryal of cheating with Anthony Joshua, the insider added: 'He has plenty to gain in improving his public image  but he also wasnt doing it for peanuts. ITV have dug deep.'

Bosses are no doubt keen for the boxer to discuss his marriage in the jungle, after confirming he and Faryal were back together with a cosy Instagram before his stint the jungle, captioning it: 'Closing the year with a happy ending.'

In a public war of words this summer both accused the other of cheating and Faryal accused Khan's Pakistani parents of bullying her for not being a good Muslim.

Happy family: Faryal is currently expecting Amir's second child

Amir then filed for divorce in September, shortly before she confirmed she was expecting his second child.

He even accused his American wife of having an affair with heavyweight rival Anthony Joshua, prior to their reconciliation.

He later apologised to both Faryal and the boxer, and revealed there was 'no truth' to the claim.
She is a well known animal rights activist who uses her platform to educate the public.

And Mena Suvari was spotted protesting the use of animal fur on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California, as part of the Fur Free Friday campaign.

The 38-year-old actress was joined by other animal rights activist who protested along the luxury shopping area on Black Friday.

'Actorvist': Mena Suvari was spotted protesting the use of animal fur on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California, as part of the Fur Free Friday campaign

Mena put on a stylish display with bootcut jeans and a gray T-shirt with 'Fur Is Cruel' emblazoned on the front to show her support.

The American Pie beauty added height to her frame with black boot-heels, that featured a buckle at the ankles.

Mena kept her silky blonde tresses down under a tan fedora, while showing off her radiant beauty with only a minimal amount of make-up.

The Last Chance For Animals activist accessorized with a dazzling gold ring that she flashed while holding up a banner that also read, 'Fur Is Cruel.'

Fur free: The 38-year-old actress was joined by other animal rights activist who protested along the luxury shopping area on Black Friday

Standing up! Mena put on a stylish display with bootcut jeans and a gray T-shirt with 'Fur Is Cruel' emblazoned on the front to show her support

Mena first promoted the Beverly Hills event on Tuesday, alongside a somber picture of a fox kept in a cage.

The Spun actress captioned the photo: 'Over 50 million animals are tortured and killed exclusively for their fur each year. Please join me and @lc4a at the annual Fur Free Friday #protest!'

The protest was held on Rodeo Drive to encourage Black Friday shoppers to stay away from the high-end stores that use animal fur for clothing.

During the event Mena was seen holding up another protesting sign that read, 'Fur Only Looks Good On Her,' with a picture of another fox.

Support: The animal activist accessorized with a dazzling gold ring that she flashed while holding up a banner that also read, 'Fur Is Cruel'

'Fur is cruel': Mena constantly shares photos and statistics about animal cruelty to encourage her Instagram followers to join her movement

Activism: Mena is very vocal about her activism efforts and has coined the term 'actorvist' to describe herself on her Instagram biography

Mena constantly shares photos and statistics about animal cruelty to encourage her Instagram followers to join her movement.

After the Fur Free Friday march, the movie star posted a snap of herself with the caption: 'So honored to share in another moment with @lc4a to support the #awesome work that they do.Thank you for having me, today, for #FurFreeFriday! #LetsDoThis'

The blonde-bombshell also shared multiple other shots from the protest including; her with protesters and a selfie of her marching down Rodeo Drive.

She wrote: '#Powerful moments of #change today with #awesome #activist #BryanMonell and everyone in support of @lc4a and #FurFreeFriday!

'I am honored to stand amongst such #fearless and #committed #warriors! #TheseAreTheTimes to #fight for what you #believe in!'

Mena is very vocal about her activism efforts and has coined the term 'actorvist' to describe herself on her Instagram biography.
She's known for her killer body.

But Pamela Anderson, 50, covered up her famous curves as she landed in Warsaw, Poland on Friday evening.

The swimsuit model looked to be in good spirits wrapped up in a heavy winter coat despite the crisp 40 degree Polish weather.

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Blooming: Pamela Anderson, 50, covered up her famous curves as she landed in Warsaw, Poland on Friday evening

The animal activist carried a massive bouquet of hot pink flowers with long green leaves and stems.

Her light pink faux-fur coat covered her tanned and toned shoulders as she walked through the terminal with a handful of minders.

She sported a flirty red dress emblazoned with small white flowers that swept down past her knees.

Cheery disposition: The swimsuit model looked to be in good spirits wrapped up in a heavy winter coat despite the crisp 40 degree Polish weather

Blush: Her light pink faux-fur coat covered her tanned and toned shoulders as she walked through the terminal with a handful of minders

Staying warm in the cool autumn air, the Baywatch actress donned a pair of black tights underneath her floral frock.

She accentuated her slim pins with a pair of pointy black heels while carrying one small black purse across her arm and a black-and-white patterned satchel in the other hand.

Anderson seemed to be makeup-free with bright rosy cheeks peeking through her darling smile.

Cozy: She sported a flirty red dress emblazoned with small white flowers that swept down past her knees

Beautiful! The animal activist carried a massive bouquet of hot pink flowers with long green leaves and stems

Covered up: Staying warm in the cool autumn air, the Baywatch actress donned a pair of black tights underneath her floral frock

Her classic platinum blonde hair was worn in loose waves and cascaded down past her shoulders.

The Playboy centerfold rose to fame as busty lifeguard C.J. Parker alongside David Hasselhoff in the hit television show Baywatch.

She enjoyed success as an actress between modeling gigs, and now champions animal rights through her nonprofit organization, The Pamela Anderson Foundation.

Red hot! The Playboy centerfold rose to fame as busty lifeguard C.J. Parker alongside David Hasselhoff in the hit television show Baywatch; seen with co-star Nicole Eggert in 1992
She's no stranger to London's nightlife scene and is often spotted at the capital's hottest haunts.

And Lottie Moss headed for a night on the town once again on Friday as she made her way to Kiru restaurant in Chelsea with former Made In Chelsea star Nicola Hughes.

The 19-year-old showed off her model figure in a tiny white crop top, which highlighted her washboard abs.

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Night out: Lottie Moss headed for a night on the town once again on Friday as she made her way to Kiru restaurant in Chelsea

Flashing her toned stomach, the half-sister of Kate Moss didn't seem phased by the chilly November weather, with just a classic leather jacket to keep her warm.

The star complemented her ensemble with a pair of high-waisted leggings.

Lottie styled her long blonde locks in a half-up half-down do and showed off her youthful complexion with a brown smokey eye and pink matte lip.

She completed the look with suede heels and a patent black handbag.

Stylish: Flashing her toned stomach, Lottie didn't seem phased by the chilly November weather, with just a classic leather jacket to keep her warm

Double trouble: The 19-year-old was joined by Nicola Hughes for the fancy dinner

The fashion model was joined by Nicola Hughes, who sported a burgundy pair of leather leggings and a soft brown bardot top.

The Irish beauty draped a khaki coat off her shoulders and finished the look with a pair of military inspired grey boots.

Nicola showed off her deep tan with heavy make-up, opting for burnt orange eye shadow and a nude lip.

Preoccupied: The friends seemed distracted by their phones as they made their way to the restaurant

Stunning blonde: Nicola sported a burgundy pair of leather leggings and a soft brown bardot top for the outing

Lottie is often seen in the company of a slew of Made In Chelsea stars, having made firm friends with the cast.

She is known for previously dating Alex Mytton from the E4 reality series, but their on and off nine-month romance had come to an end in July.

Alex also dated Nicola on and off for two years after meeting in August 2014 while he was DJing in Ireland.

Good genes: The beautiful model is the half-sister of Kate Moss

But the two ex-girlfriends have proved there is no bad blood between them, having been seen in each other's company over the past few months.

Lottie and Mytton, meanwhile, have remained amicable following their break up.

The striking blonde was scouted for her first modelling agency at the tender age of 13 and first courted the attention of the modelling world when she attended her older half-sister Kate's wedding to her ex-husband Jamie Hince in 2011.

The Sussex native has gone onto land campaigns with Calvin Klein and Bulgari, as well as fronting the cover of Vogue Paris in 2016.
They've been busy living it up in Thailand during their romantic wedding anniversary getaway.

But Jesinta and Lance 'Buddy' Franklin took a break from celebrating their love on Friday to celebrate their friends' at a picturesque seaside wedding.

Jesinta took to Instagram to share a loved-up selfie with her AFL star hubby before the same-sex wedding of 'her American boys'.

Love is in the air! Jesinta and Lance 'Buddy' Franklin attended the wedding of their same-sex pals during their own romantic getaway in Thailand

The 26-year-old looked her usual stunning self as she struck a pose for the camera, with Buddy cuddling up behind her.

Jesinta was seen wearing a white wrap-dress, while Buddy followed the memo by wearing a matching linen shirt.

She also shared some snaps from the wedding, which appeared to be a tasteful affair decorated with white roses and candle lighting, at a venue overlooking the sea.

The wedding celebration came just days after the WAG showcased her stunning frame in a skimpy bikini as she sunned herself poolside at the luxury Kata Rocks Hotel, Phuket.

With her arms behind her head, Jesinta was the picture of relaxation as she stretched out on the pool's concrete edge.

Celebrations: Jesinta took to Instagram to share a loved-up selfie with her AFL star hubby before the same-sex wedding (pictured) of 'her American boys'

Picturesque: She also shared some snaps from the wedding, which appeared to be a tasteful affair decorated with white roses and candle lighting, at a venue overlooking the sea

'Never want to leave': The wedding celebration came just days after the WAG showcased her stunning frame in a skimpy bikini as she sunned herself poolside at the luxury Kata Rocks Hotel, Phuket

Showcasing her flexibility, the beauty arched her back and bent her knees as she soaked up the views from the ocean-side hotel.

'Never want to leave @katarocksphuket. So divine here Already planning our next visit,' she wrote in the caption.

Jesinta and Sydney Swans star Buddy celebrated their first wedding anniversary almost three weeks ago.

They chose picturesque Thailand to mark the momentous occasion, sharing envy-inducing snaps from their trip on Instagram all week.
Reports claimed the hunky marketing manager became The Bachelor after he was left 'a little heartbroken' after learning his ex-girlfriend was engaged last year.

But Matty J, who is now in a loved-up relationship with Laura Byrne, congratulated ex Sara Bray in person when he attended her Byron Bay wedding on Friday.

The reality star wore a suave suit white and grey suit for the outside event, taking to Instagram to show his support for the newly wed couple.

Wedding bells! Bachelor Matty J puts on loved-up display with girlfriend Laura Byrne as he attends ex Sara Bray's Byron Bay nuptials

Matty appeared to have enjoyed a whirlwind romance with the brunette Sydneysider while they lived in London together.

But their relationship seemed to be well in the past, as the hunky TV personality wrote on social media: 'Congrats @sarajanebray and @alexlloyd #lloydsforlife.'

Matty paraded his affection for Bachelor winner Laura by placing his arm affectionately around her slender figure in the picture.

Flaunting their love: Laura captioned a shot of the couple 'Old mate Zoolander and I are ready for another wedding', playing up on rumours that she and Matty J are already engaged

Cheers! The couple appeared in high spirits as they mingled with other guests at the reception, held at Harvest Newyrbar, drinking rose

Laura wore a stunning grey Talulah frock, with an off-the-shoulder design that exposed a glimpse of cleavage.

She captioned a shot of the couple 'Old mate Zoolander and I are ready for another wedding', playing up on rumours that she and Matty J are already engaged.

The couple appeared in high spirits as they mingled with other guests at the reception, held at Harvest Newyrbar.

One picture showed them sitting at 'table 7' raising their glasses of rose in a celebratory fashion.

Matty referenced the night of partying in his post the next day: 'Currently in bed with rose seeping out my pores... looking back at this photo and reminiscing of a time when my suit wasnt stained (apologies @mjbale), my head didnt hurt and I knew where my sunglasses were.'

Bittersweet: On Monday, New Idea claimed Matty J (left) is perhaps feeling 'a little heartbroken' after learning his ex-girlfriend Sara Bray (right) is engaged to be married

Last year, New Idea claimed while Matty was 'really happy' for his former flame and PR professional Sara's engagement, they suggested the news was bittersweet.

An insider reportedly said: 'Matty J just wants to settle down, get married and have kids. He and Sara were really close and in love, but things just didn't work out.

'And while he's really happy for her, and happy that she's getting married, I'm sure it would break his heart a little that he's struggled to find love since they broke up.

Moving on: While Matty is reportedly 'really happy' for his former flame, PR professional Sara Bray, it was claimed the engagement news was perhaps bittersweet

'He'd be feeling like he's wasted the last four years, while Sara's found lasting love,' the continued, before adding: 'He tends to stay quiet about the whole relationship.'

In previous interviews, Matty had referenced being in a relationship with a mystery lady while living in England - but her identity had remained a secret.

But sleuthing fans from the The Bachelor And Bachelorette Spoiler Forums claimed to discover she was, in fact, Sara.

The One: It appears Sara (right) is happily in a new relationship with Alex Lloyd (left), and the couple got engaged in November last year

Photos from her Instagram page dating back to 2012 showed the pair enjoying what is a 'rite of passage' for many young Australians.

From homemade dinners with friends, to relaxing at the pool and larking about at bus stops, Matty and Sara appeared blissfully happy in the UK.

In two separate Instagram posts Sara referred to Matty as 'mine' and an 'amazing human', appearing to confirm they were more than friends.

The former Bachelorette star previously told NW he broke up with his girlfriend from the UK because 'the timing was not right'.

He added: 'It's hard, because sometimes a relationship ends not because of a reason or something that's happened - say, you've cheated on each other or there's an actual event that's forced you to break up.'

Meanwhile, Sara is now a happily newlywed to husband Alex Lloyd, who proposed to her in November last year.
It was the year that started with her husband locked away, but ended with a happy rekindling of love.

And Roxy Jacenko reflected on the year that was on Friday alongside her hubby Oliver Curtis and mother Doreen at her PR company's annual Christmas party.

The 37-year-old was feeling sentimental when she took to Instagram to share a snap of the loving trio laughing it up on Sydney's ritzy Woolloomooloo wharf.

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'The storms that we have weathered': On Friday, Roxy Jacenko (right) shared a sentimental post to Instagram about her mum Doreen (left) and husband Oliver Curtis (centre) after capping off her year at a lavish Christmas party

'The storms that we have weathered,' the PR queen captioned.

Insider trader Oliver was released from Cooma jail in June after spending 12 months behind bars, while Roxy learned to cope with her breast cancer diagnosis on her own.

She later surrendered to the advances of her ex Nabil Gazal, who she was seen passionately kissing in April - two months before her husband's release.

But Oliver and Roxy fell back in love with each other and even celebrated a 'second engagement' in July.

Reflecting: The 37-year-old was feeling sentimental when she took to Instagram to share a snap of her with Oliver (pictured) laughing it up on Sydney's ritzy Woolloomooloo wharf

A year of highs and lows: Insider trader Oliver was released from Cooma jail in June after spending 12 months behind bars, while Roxy learned to cope with her breast cancer diagnosis on her own

Finishing with a bang! Since then, Roxy has ended the year on a number of professional highs after landing ambassadorial roles with TONI&GUY and Skinny Tan

Since then, Roxy has ended the year on a number of professional highs after landing ambassadorial roles with TONI&GUY and Skinny Tan.

And the pretty blonde was clearly feeling in a good mood on Friday, after she decided to open her wallet to splurge on some designer items to gift her Sweaty Betty PR staff at their annual Christmas party.

Heading out for some food and drinks at Sydney's China Doll restaurant, her employees were each greeted with a $230 Louis Vuitton limited edition notebook, adding up to a total of whopping $1840 for the eight holiday presents.

Best boss ever! The pretty blonde was clearly feeling in a good mood on Friday, after she decided to open her wallet to splurge on some designer items to gift her Sweaty Betty PR staff at their annual Christmas party

Hard works pays off! The 37-year-old's employees were each greeted with a $230 Louis Vuitton limited edition notebook, adding up to a total of $1840 for the eight holiday presents

Following in their leader's footsteps, the publicists, who are jokingly referred to as Roxy's 'clones', were all quick to take to social media to flaunt their new goodies.

'Best boss ever goes to Roxy Jacenko,' talent manager Holly Brooke captioned one photo.

Mixing things up, the blonde bombshell chose three different designs to distribute amongst her staff.

Grateful: Following in their leader's footsteps, the publicists who were once jokingly referred to by Roxy as her 'clones' were all quick to take to social media to flaunt their new goodies
She's the busty model who is known for regularly flaunting her enviable figure in scantily-clad ensembles on social media.

But the Australian beauty offered a glimpse into her childhood on Friday, sharing throwback photos from her childhood.

Seen as a fresh-faced youngster in the snaps, can you recognise this socialite and bikini designer?

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Guess who! She's the busty bikini designer and model who has been romantically linked to many celebrity hunks... but can YOU recognise the star from this childhood throwback?

The stunner, now 24, shared a series of old photographs playing outside, eating at the table and riding a horse.

The blonde girl posed with a large smile by a tree with a life-size doll in jeans, a white jumper and black sneakers.

The social butterfly was born in the Australian coastal town of Torquay, but was raised in Santa Cruz, California.

Mystery star: Seen as a fresh-faced youngster in the snaps, can you recognise this socialite and bikini designer?

Is horse riding a clue? The social butterfly was born in the Australian coastal town of Torquay, but was raised in Santa Cruz, California

In recent years she shot to fame after being linked to Justin Bieber during a trip to Hawaii.

She has also been linked to high-profile celebrity hunks Jordan Barrett and Cody Simpson.

Also the daughter of surfer Tony Ray, the person in the pictures is none other than Sahara Ray.

She also designs her own swimwear under her label Sahara Ray Swim.

REVEALED! Also the daughter of surfer Tony Ray, the person in the pictures is none other than busty model Sahara Ray

Romance: In recent years she shot to fame after being linked to Justin Bieber during a trip to Hawaii and has also been linked to high-profile celebrity hunks Jordan Barrett (pictured) and Cody Simpson

The buxom babe is certainly no stranger when it comes to baring her physique, leaving little to the imagination when posting pictures of herself online.

Sahara often frees the nipple in her posts, and most recently stripped naked and covered her ample assets with a bagel in a cheeky video upload.

She found herself in the spotlight last year after she was spotted skinny dipping in Hawaii with Justin Bieber - whose impressive manhood was revealed to the world through some racy paparazzi photos.

The Australian's notoriety has increased in recent years thanks to her raunchy Instagram profile, which now has more than 1.3 million followers.
Kelsey Grammer beamed as he headed to the Royal Variety Performance in London on Friday night.

The Cheers and Frasier star, 62, had fourth wife Kayte Walsh on his arm as he strolled along the streets of the British capital on his way to the London Palladium.

The actor was dapper in black tie while Kayte, 37, wore a peach dress with turquoise coat.

Date with a Duke and Duchess: Kelsey Grammer, 62, beamed as he headed to the Royal Variety Performance in London on Friday night with fourth wife Kayte Walsh, 37

The couple are currently based in London where Kelsey is making his West End stage debut in the musical Big Fish.

He's been focusing on theatre lately with star turns on Broadway in La Cage aux Folles and Finding Neverland.

Kelsey was among the celebrities who were presented to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge who attended the show featuring a variety of performances from stage and screen.

Kelsey, who is currently starring on stage in London, was presented to Prince William at the variety show at the London Palladium attended by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

Well turned out: The Cheers and Frasier star was dapper in black tie while Kayte wore a peach dress with turquoise coat and copper heels

Stylish: Kayte's frock was embellished with silver detailing on the skirt and she added a pair of copper pumps. She wore her long blonde hair loose and sported enormous earrings

British-born Kayte, a former flight attendant, wed Kelsey in 2011 and the couple share three young children.

Her frock was embellished with silver detailing on the skirt and she added a pair of copper pumps.

She wore her long blonde hair loose and sported enormous earrings.

Six years and counting: British-born Kayte, a former flight attendant, wed the American star in 2011 and the couple share three young children

Earlier this month, the American star learned that his former wife Camille would be getting half of his retirement fund in their divorce.

The former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills castmember has been awarded 50 per cent of the money from the Kelsey's 401K account from the time of their marriage in 1997 until they went their separate ways in 2010.

According to court documents obtained by PEOPLE, a judge signed off on the order in October.

Camille - who has children Mason Olivia, 16, and son Jude Gordon, 13, with Kelsey - filed for divorce from the 62-year-old star in July 2010 and their separation was officially completed in February 2011.

Kelsey went on to marry Kayte a few weeks later.

49-year-old Camille has also found love again with lawyer David C. Meyer, who she got engaged to last week. She wrote on Twitter: 'Party night with my love. We have a secret.. guess (sic)'

The star - who has been dating David for more than a year - then retweeted a story about the pair getting engaged and thanked fans for their well wishes, confirming the news.
She mingles with the well-heeled Made In Chelsea set, has a reported personal fortune of 800,000 and once claimed she had never heard of Gregg's.

But it has emerged that Georgia Toffolo hails from humble beginnings, as her father Gary Bennett, 52, is a modest rag and bone man from Torquay, Devon.

The 23-year-old I'm A Celebrity star's dad collects scrap metal in his white van and sells it on for cash in between repainting his 200,000 flat.

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Who knew? It has emerged that Georgia Toffolo hails from humble beginnings, as her father Gary Bennett, 52, is a modest rag and bone man from Torquay, Devon

Gary defended his hard-grafting job, saying he is 'proud' that he is not a 'toff'.

'I am what I am. Im not a toff but so what? Im proud of that. Ive had the big house and the big business and this is my world at the moment,' he told The Sun.

Bennett, who is also a commercial property landlord, claimed the Toffolo wealth lies in the 'other side' of Georgia's family.

'Georgias gone a different way. The other side of the family yes, there is money, theres still money there. My side of the family there isnt,' he revealed.

MailOnline has contacted reps for Georgia for comment.

Modest guy: The 23-year-old I'm A Celebrity star's dad collects scrap metal in his white van and sells it on for cash in between repainting his 200,000 flat

Humble guy: Gary defended his hard-grafting job, saying he is 'proud' that he is not a 'toff'

Gary used to run a one-man car repair business that has since folded, according to the publication.

He is now working as a commercial property landlord as well as being a rag and bone man.

Gary had to work relentless to pay for Georgia's private education at Maynard girls' school in Exeter and Blundell's boarding school in Tiverton, Devon, insiders told the Sun.

Georgia also attended Torquay Girls' Grammar School and studied politics at Westminster University, where she fell in with the Made in Chelsea set.

Proud: 'I am what I am. Im not a toff but so what? Im proud of that. Ive had the big house and the big business and this is my world at the moment,' he told The Sun

Eye-opening Gary used to run a one-man car repair business that has since reportedly folded and is now working as a commercial property landlord as well as being a rag and bone man

Speaking about her rise in the reality TV world, Gary gushed that he was 'extremely proud' of her career path.

'I've been proud of her all the way. I'm just a standard guy, a normal Devon guy who works for himself,' he told The Mirror.

'I'm extremely proud of what she's doing and where she is at the moment.'

Gary split from Georgia's 'socially ambitious' mother Nicola, who married company boss Jeffrey Hewett, 56, in 1999 when Georgia was five.

Rumour has it: Gary had to work relentless to pay for Georgia's private education at Maynard girls' school in Exeter and Blundell's boarding school in Tiverton, Devon, insiders told the Sun

High flyer: Georgia also attended Torquay Girls' Grammar School and studied politics at Westminster University, where she fell in with the Made in Chelsea set

They separated four years ago and Nicola, 52, who runs a property management business s now thought to be dating amusement arcade owner Bernard Jones, 60.

Georgia, who often shares snaps of Nicola on her Instagram, keeps her dad out of the spotlight on social media.

But the former motor industry worker still gets a taste for the high life thanks to his daughter and holidayed in Ibiza with Georgia this summer while she was filming the Made In Chelsea special.

Complicated family life: Gary split from Georgia's 'socially ambitious' mother Nicola (pictured), who married company boss Jeffrey Hewett, 56, in 1999 when Georgia was five

Snap-happy: Georgia, who often shares snaps of Nicola on her Instagram, keeps her dad out of the spotlight on social media

Discussing how she became a star on the reality show, Georgia admitted she 'fell into it' when she got to know some of the cast through the party scene.

'I just used to go up to London a lot and hang around SW3,' she admitted to Devon Live.

'I just feel so lucky to be part of the cast. I am now used to the filming and being a part of the show and how everything is set up.

'Everyone has been so accommodating and I am now so close to everyone.'
Married Strictly professionals Karen and Kevin Clifton have reportedly hit a rocky patch and are barely speaking to each other.

The couple's relationship has 'become strained' during the BBC One dancing competition this year and things 'aren't going well', sources claimed.

Group rehearsals for the couple, who wed in 2015, have allegedly turned awkward since Karen, 35, was voted off the show last month with partner Simon Rimmer.

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Rumour has it: Married Strictly professionals Karen and Kevin Clifton have reportedly hit a rocky patch and are barely speaking to each other

The allegations comes amid claims the notorious Strictly 'curse', which has broken up a string of romances, could strike the couple.

Cracks in their romance have reportedly started to appear, with Kevin, 35, often in Scotland to train with his celebrity partner Susan Calman.

'Kevin has spoken to some of those close to him and admitted things aren't going well between them at the minute,' an insider told The Sun.

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Karen and Kevin for comment.

Karen previously admitted their marriage is nothing like the perfect union it appears, and that their domestic fights often result in them sleeping separately.

Rocky patch? The couple's relationship has 'become strained' during the BBC One dancing competition this year and things 'aren't going well', sources claimed

Claims: Group rehearsals for the couple, who wed in 2015, are allegedly awkward since Karen, 35, was voted off the show last month with partner Simon Rimmer (pictured at the Pride Of Britain Awards)

Were not a superhuman couple, were normal, so when things happen, we fight, she told The Daily Mail in August.

We fight about things like him not taking the rubbish out. He does it more than me but thats only because I tell him to do it.

The Venezuelan brunette joined the show in 2012, and met Lincolnshire-born Kevin when he joined a year later.

At the time, he had been married to fellow dancer Clare Craze for six years, but they split that same year. Striking up a romance with Karen, he married her two years later.

Hmm: The allegations comes amid claims the notorious Strictly 'curse', which has broken up a string of romances, could strike the couple

Allegations: 'Kevin has spoken to some of those close to him and admitted things aren't going well between them at the minute,' an insider told The Sun

When we fight we dont always make up before going to bed. Well go to sleep angry, she added.

Hes not the one who sleeps on the sofa, though, I am, because I actually like to sleep on the sofa. I like watching TV so its fine.

Kevins sister, Strictly dancer Joanne, also fell victim to the curse after splitting from her boyfriend, actor Joe Edward-Bader, earlier this year.

Previous victims of the curse include ex-rugby player Ben Cohen, who starting dating his dance partner Kristina Rihanoff after splitting from his wife, and TV newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky, who left her then-partner Mike Barnard after having an affair with her dancer partner, Brendan Cole, while on the show.

Oh dear: Cracks in their romance have reportedly started to appear, with Kevin, 35, often in Scotland to train with his celebrity partner Susan Calman (pictured performing on the show)

Candid: Karen previously admitted their marriage is nothing like the perfect union it appears, and that their domestic fights often result in them sleeping separately

Karen insisted she and Kevin are resilient. When we fight we make up and life goes on. The best way to take care of your marriage is to make sure you communicate with each other.

It comes amid claims Karen and fellow professional Janette Manrara are jealous of newcomer and former Playboy model Nadiya Bychkova.

The report claims that the fight escalated after judge Bruno Tonioli praised Ukrainian world champion Nadiya's stunning looks on the show, saying she resembled a 'movie star'.

A Strictly source told The Sun: 'They think she looks cheap  more like a lap dancer than a Hollywood A-lister. There is a lot of tension and jealousy at the moment behind the scenes.
She has been embroiled in controversy lately.

And Lena Dunham's social media accounts have been taking a hit as users have been unfollowing the writer across multiple platforms as of late.

The 31-year-old actress has lost thousands of followers after she came forward to defend 'Girls' writer Murray Miller after actress Aurora Perrineau accused Miller of sexual assault in 2012, in addition to a former Lenny Letter writer accusing Dunham of 'hipster racism'.

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Love lost: Lena Dunham's social media accounts are taking a hit as users have begun the task of unfollowing the writer across multiple platforms following her; seen in September in New York

Though statistics show Dunham did lose followers prior to the controversy, recent stats show that more and more users had been unfollowing the actress lately.

Lena's averaging losing 493 followers per day on her personal account following a joint statement where Dunham and 'Girls' co-creator Jenni Konner defended Murray Miller after Aurora Perrineau filed a police report against the writer on Nov. 17 for allegedly sexually assaulting her in 2012 when she was just 17.

'While our first instinct is to listen to every woman's story, our insider knowledge of Murray's situation makes us confident that sadly this accusation is one of the 3% of assault cases that are misreported every year,' Dunham and Konner wrote in a joint statement.

'It is a true shame to add to that number, as outside of Hollywood women still struggle to be believed. We stand by Murray and this is all we'll be saying about this issue.'

Unfollow: The 31-year-old actress has lost thousands of followers after she came forward to voice support for Girls writer Murray Miller after actress Aurora Perrineau accused Miller of sexual assault five years ago, in addition to a former Lenny Letter writer accusing Dunham of 'hipster racism'; seen in September in New York

Aurora Perrineau filed a police report against the Murray Miller on Nov. 17 for sexually assaulting her in 2012 when she was 17; seen at a Vanity Fair party in 2016

Seeing red: Recent statistics show that Dunham's Instagram page has taken a huge hit with nearly 15,000 users jumping ship from following her account in the last 30 days

Previously: She did previously lose followers, though the number jumped following the controversy

Miller vehemently denies the allegations, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Less than one day after issuing support for Miller, Lena backpedaled on her words and issued an apology, writing in part on Twitter: 'I naively believed it was important to share my perspective on my friends situation as it has transpired behind the scenes over the last few months. I now understand that it was absolutely the wrong time to come forward with such a statement and I am so sorry.

'Every woman who comes forward deserves to be heard, fully and completely, and our relationship to the accused should not be part of the calculation anyone makes when examining her case. Every person and every feminist should be required to hear her.'

A day after Dunham posted her apology online, she lost nearly 4,000 Instagram followers, followed by 3,000 the next day.

Opt out: In addition to losing fans on her personal account, her weekly online feminist newsletter, Lenny Letter, has also seen a steady decline of users

Standing up: Zinzi Clemmons who wrote for Lenny Letter said in a Twitter post on Sunday that she could no longer work for the outlet because of Dunham's alleged disrespect for women of color

Her follower count began at 3.27million on Tuesday, Nov. 14, only to see thousands more of her fans opt out in the following days.

In addition to losing fans on her personal account, the Instagram account for her weekly online feminist newsletter, Lenny Letter, has also seen a steady decline of users.

Since voicing her support for the former 'Girls' writer, Lenny Letter is averaging losing 51 followers per day, with a monthly average lost of 1,530 users.

Zinzi Clemmons who wrote for Lenny Letter said in a Twitter post on Sunday that she could no longer work for the outlet because of Dunham's alleged disrespect for women of color.

Clemmons referred to actress Aurora Perrineau's accusation of rape by 'Girls' writer Murray Miller in 2012 when she was just 17.

'She cannot have our words': Clemmons referred to actress Aurora Perrineau's accusation of rape by 'Girls' writer Murray Miller in 2012 when she was just 17.

'Let's hold Lena accountable' Clemmons wrote in a lengthy post

The writer said she 'ran in the same circles' as people like Dunham and 'Girls' star Jemima Kirke while she was attending Brown University in the mid-2000s.

Kirke attended the Rhode Island School of Design, whose campus is adjacent to Brown. Dunham's sister, Grace, attended the Ivy League school. Dunham herself attended Oberlin College in Ohio.

'I'd call their strain 'hipster racism', which typically uses sarcasm as a cover, and in the end, it looks a lot like gaslighting--"It's just a joke. Why are you overreacting?" Clemmons wrote.

She claimed that one woman in the group was 'known to use the N word in conversation in order to be provocative, and if she was ever called on it, she would say "It's just a joke". I was often in the same room with her, but I never spoke to her, only watched her from far in anxiety and horror.'

Familiar: The writer said she 'ran in the same circles' as people like Dunham and 'Girls' star Jemima Kirke while she was attending Brown University in the mid-2000s; Dunham and Konner seen at the Costume Institute Gala in May

Nearly one month ago Lena was celebrating women who chose to speak on assaults against producer Harvey Weinstein.

In one Twitter post, she wrote, 'The woman who chose to speak about their experience of harassment by Harvey Weinstein deserve our awe. It's not fun or easy. It's brave.'

In another post she showed support for victims and survivors of abuse by writing, 'Can't sleep because I want, with everything I have, to convey how complex it is to be assaulted and continue living in that person's world.'

Seeming to continue supporting victims, the actress tweeted, 'This week's been a hideous reminder for every woman I know, every survivor. But thanks to these brave women something is changing. Feel it.'

'It's brave': Nearly one month ago Lena was celebrating women who chose to speak against producer Harvey Weinstein

'Can't sleep': She showed support for victims and survivors of abuse on Twitter

'This week's been a hideous reminder for every woman I know, every survivor. But thanks to these brave women something is changing. Feel it.'

Controversy: Dunham has been facing drama as of late (pictured 2017)




She's known for stripping down to her bikini in some of the world's beautiful beaches.

And this time Natasha Oakley has returned to Australian shores to show off Rottnest Island, just off the coast of Perth, WA.

The 26-year-old left little to the imagination in a blue triangle bikini top and matching tiny bottom from her Monday Swimwear line, in her Instagram post on Saturday.

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Doing what she does best! Natasha Oakley returned to Australian shores and flaunting her curves in a bikini snap posted to Instagram on Saturday, also showing off WA's pristine Rottnest Island

Fans loved the saucy post, including one who wrote: 'Absolutely stunning Tash we love your fresh natural healthy profile you are promoting - such a positive for women.'

Another commented: 'How amazing is Rottnest!'

In another snap, the blonde beauty reclines back on the sand, showcasing her figure in brown and white trimmed bikini top holding in her ample assets.

The look was completed with a matching pair of high-waisted bottoms that hugged her curvy figure.

Beach babe: In another snap, the blonde beauty reclines back on the sand, showcasing her figure in brown and white trimmed bikini top holding in her ample assets

This comes after she and best friend Devin Brugman, 27, returned home for a photo shoot on Perth's Rottnest Island.

The co-founders of the A Bikini A Day blog gave their combined 3.8million followers a sneak peek of the shoot, writing: 'Making magic today in Perth.'

The pair flew in from Bali last night and headed straight to work to promote their new Swim + Resort Series.

'Making magic today in Perth': A Bikini A Day babes Tash Oakley and Devin Brugman shared behind-the-scenes snaps from their swimsuit photo shoot on Rottnest Island 'I woke up like this...' Tash flaunted her cleavage and lithe legs while seductively posing in a robe on a yacht

Tash flaunted her cleavage and lithe legs while seductively posing in a robe on a yacht.

She started her caption: 'I woke up like this...', before quickly completing the post with a comedic addition of words.

The blonde stunner added: 'after a late night flight from Bali, an early wake up call, a team of hair and make up artists and a car and boat ride to Rottnest Island.

'It takes a team': Both bikini babes were styled for the shoot by at least five professionals, including hair and makeup artists

Looking all-white! Sharing another picture to their A Bikini A Day account, the pair stood in shallow water while in skimpy white bikinis and linen shirts and skirts

In her Instagram Stories she showed off the prep that went into the photo, with hair and makeup artists swarming around the beauty, writing: 'It takes a team.'

Tash also took a robe selfie with business partner Devin.

Sharing another picture to their A Bikini A Day account, the pair stood in shallow water while in skimpy white bikinis and linen shirts and skirts.

'Devin is prepared': Tash posted a clip of her pal being sun safe in between photos on set

During their down time on the island, they appeared to meet the local wildlife.

Devin took to Instagram to pose with a friendly Quokka.

She captioned the cute animal selfie: 'The Quokkas on Rottnest Island have stolen my heart!!! (and my french fries).'
This year's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show featured the most diverse range of models ever seen on its fabled catwalk.

But it still wasn't enough for South Sudanese-born Australian beauty Ajak Deng, who believes the brand should do better.

The 27-year-old said the famous fashion show is 'on the right track' but could do more to recruit people of different cultural backgrounds, as well as different body types.

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'I think it can be better': Ajak Deng hits out at Victoria's Secret saying their annual runway show needs to be more diverse

'I think it can be better,' Ajak told Yahoo7 Be.

'It wouldve been nice to see Ashley Graham in there, thats my kind of diversity,' she added, referring to the American plus-size model.

Ajak also suggested Somali-American Halima Aden - known as the first hijab-wearing high-fashion model - would have also been a good fit for the show.

Hitting out: The 27-year-old said the famous fashion show is 'on the right track' but should do more to recruit people of different cultural backgrounds, as well as different body types

'Thats my kind of diversity': Ajak said she'd like to see the likes of plus-size model Ashley Graham (left) and Somali-American Halima Aden (right) in the show

Increasing: Almost 50 per cent of the models who featured in Victoria's Secret's main event this year were of an ethnically diverse background, compared to 30 per cent the year before. Pictured: Nadine Leopold and Megan Williams

Almost 50 per cent of the models who featured in Victoria's Secret's main event this year were of an ethnically diverse background, compared to 30 per cent the year before, the publication reported.

Models added to the roster who helped increase the diversity figure included Angolan Maria Borges, and Indian-Australian Kelly Gale.

Ajak said she hopes to be the next model in line and has her 'fingers crossed' for a call up in 2018.

Making a difference: Models added to the roster who helped increase the diversity figure included Angolan Maria Borges (right), and Indian-Australian Kelly Gale (left)

'Now Im confident': Ajak said she hopes to be the next model in line and has her 'fingers crossed' for a call up in 2018

'I couldnt do it in the past because of my back problem but now Im confident, my back is straight and Im like "bring it on",' the stunner said.

Ajak - who fled South Sudan aged 12 with her mother sadly perishing from malaria in a Kenyan refugee cam - has partnered with The Body Shop and International Alert's Play for Peace project.

The campaign - supporting Syrian children refugees affected by war - aims to raise 250,000 pounds (approx $438,325 AUD) to the project, from Christmas range sales.

Using her profile for good: Ajak - who fled South Sudan aged 12 with her mother sadly perishing from malaria in a Kenyan refugee cam - has partnered with The Body Shop and International Alert's Play for Peace project
Gwen Stefani's been busy this week.

The Anaheim, California native, 48, was back on the West Coast on Friday, promoting her new holiday album You Make It Feel Like Christmas with a pop-up shop/ meet-and-greet with fans, looking amazing in a gold skirt with large ruffles on the shoulders and a belted waist.

She rounded out the ensemble with black leather thigh-high boots with fishnet stockings, accessorizing with gold and silver bracelets and diamond earrings.

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Overjoyed: Gwen Stefani, 48, dazzled next to a gingerbread man as she appeared at The Grove in LA to promote her new holiday album You Make It Feel Like Christmas on Friday

Stefani had her long blonde locks pulled back into a ponytail, and had her face made up with bold red lipstick at the outdoor mall in La La Land.

She also had some Santa-themed sweets on hand, as she took to Instagram posed alongside a tray of cupcakes to celebrate the fun time.

'Thank u @sprinklescupcakes @thegrovela and everyone that came to hang!!!! Amazing night' she wrote, adding the hashtag, '#blownaway.'

The Make Me Like You artist has been hard at work on the promotional trail for her album, which features covers of Holiday classics such as Last Christmas, Silent Night and Jingle Bells.

Shining star: The No Doubt vocalist dazzled in a gold skirt with large ruffles on the shoulders

Meet-and-greet: The superstar singer provided memorable moments to fans

Center-of-attention: Gwen was moved as her fans snapped shots of her with their phones

One for the gram: Gwen waved as a fan snapped a selfie at the promotional event

Season's greetings: Gwen posed with a quartet of young fans in front of a holiday arrangement

She was in New York earlier this week, where she taped a performance that was broadcast on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade; attended a lighting ceremony at the Empire State Building; and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

The Sweet Escape songstress told Fallon that her beau Blake Shelton, 41, is 'really hard to buy for' when the holidays roll around.

'He doesnt fit in any of my furniture at my house, hes too big,' she said, revealing that she told People's Sexiest Man Alive, 'Im gonna get you a couch, like, thats gonna be your Christmas present.'

Picture perfect: The blonde beauty beamed as she posed with fans at the event

Holiday spirit! The star looked thrilled to be at the event

Priceless memories: Gwen looked to be in top form amid a whirlwind week of promotion

Patty cake: The A-list singer was clearly in the spirit of the season as she clowned around with fans

'Im putting it outside so he can put out fires and stuff like that - I try to make him comfortable in LA.'

The mom-of-three - Kingston, 11, Zuma, nine, and Apollo, three, with ex-husband Gavin Rossdale - then spent some time in the Midwest Thursday, joining her beau Shelton and his relatives for a Turkey Day feast.

Stefanis hour-long holiday special, You Make Me Feel Like Christmas, airs December 12 on NBC.

Hunky holidays: Gwen spent her Thanksgiving with her kids and boyfriend Blake Shelton in his native Oklahoma

Hard at work: The fit femme fatale waited patiently at the outdoor shopping center as her fans lined up

The sweet escape: Stefani looked in top form as she posed next to a tray of tasty cupcakes

Heart of gold: The songstress live-streamed the event via her Instagram Stories

Santa Stefani! Gwen spoke with fans young and old during the event

Festive: The La La Land shopping center was decked out with an enormous tree, presents and throngs of fans

Tats me! Dedicated fans even showed off their permanent artwork to the famous songstress
Sofia Vergara hosted Thanksgiving for her extended family at her Los Angeles mansion on Thursday.

And on Friday she shared a sweet snap to Instagram showing her snuggling up on a sofa to her cute little nephew Rafi and adult son Manolo, 25.

She is seen resting her head and one hand on Rafi's shoulder as the tot is cradled in his cousin's arms.

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Snuggling: Sofia Vergara shared a sweet snap to Instagram showing her snuggling up on a sofa to her cute little nephew Rafi and adult son Manolo, 25, as her family Thanksgiving continued

The Modern Family star, 45, also shared a photo of her husband Joe Manganiello, 40, holding Rafi and added three heart emojis.

The Magic Mike star and Rafi are both grinning broadly at the camera.

The photos are the latest in a string of images the Colombian actress has shared of her holiday festivities.

So cute: The Modern Family star, 45, also shared a photo of her husband Joe Manganiello, 40, holding Rafi and added three heart emojis

Power couple: The Colombian actress and her ripped actor hubby have shared a string of images fromt he gathering they hosted at their LA mansion

The Hot Pursuit actress looked gorgeous on Thanksgiving rocking a shimmering gold skirt, teetering skyscraper heels and a low cut white top that made the most of her busty physique.

She wore her straight brunette locks loose and parted to the side.

Her husband of two years was more casual in a dark cotton short-sleeved shirt and black trousers.

Turkey trot: The couple were captured on video dancing while wearing silly hats

The happy couple got engaged on Christmas Day 2014 after six months of dating, before tying the knot in a romantic ceremony in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 21, 2015.

This past Tuesday they celebrated their second wedding anniversary.

The actress was previously married to high school sweetheart Joe Gonzalez from 1991 to 1993, with whom she shares son Manolo.

Also at the family gathering was her lookalike niece, 25-year-old Claudia, an aspiring fashion designer.

Good genes: Sofia busted out of a strapless white top and wore a shimmering gold skirt for her Thanksgiving party; pictured with Manolo and her lookalike niece Claudia

Having a hoot: Sofia also showed off her bird-themed Thanksgiving table

Sofia paid tribute to Joe on their anniversary with a sweet Instagram snap posting an adorable photograph of the pair gazing into each other's eyes, alongside the caption: 'I adore you @joemanganiello. Happy Aniversary!!'

Joe also posted his own message to his Colombian-born wife, opting for a shot of him spinning her around the dance floor while writing a note in Sofia's native tongue.

Translated as 'happy second anniversary my love, you are my everything', Joe wrote. 'Feliz Segundo Aniversario mi amor! Eres mi todo.'
She's previously spoken out about her past domestic violence ordeal.

And now Bachelor star Jen Hawke has used her star power to bring light to the important matter on White Ribbon Day.

The 27-year-old made a special appearance at the Hills Community Aid in Sydney to help commemorate the day, taking to Instagram to share her thoughts in a very lengthy post.

Doing her part! Bachelor star Jen Hawke has used her star power to bring light to the important matter on White Ribbon Day

'It was so beautiful to see members of the community come together,' she wrote, also applauding parents who were raising their children to recognised violence against women in bad behaviour.

'As a survivor of domestic violence, it warms my heart to know that women currently experiencing domestic violence have your support and youre all so publicly getting behind an important issue,' she added.

Jen also praised the women at the occasion for sharing their harrowing stories of survival.

'To the women who came up and shared their stories, I applaud you for being brave enough to do that!' She wrote.

She also shared snaps of herself with the iconic white ribbon and urged her followers to donate to the cause.

The 27-year-old made a special appearance at the Hills Community Aid to help commemorate the day and took Instagram to share her thoughts in a very lengthy post

'I somehow found the strength to leave and walk away': Earlier in the year, she revealed to her Instagram followers that she had once been a victim of domestic violence when she was 20-years-old

Earlier in the year, she revealed to her Instagram followers that she had once been a victim of domestic violence when she was 20 years old.

'For me it was one incredibly violent incident and I somehow found the strength to leave and walk away from my relationship,' she said in the post.

In the post, she encouraged other women to find the courage to stand up and speak out if they see the signs with their loved ones, writing: 'Read between the lines and pay attention to the small details of their situations.

More recently Jen has accused her ex-boyfriend, Bachelorette 'villain' Blake Colman, of threatening to sell nude images of her.

Allegations: Recently Jen has accused her ex-boyfriend, Bachelorette 'villain' Blake Colman (pictured), of threatening to sell nude images of her

A source close to the brunette revealed to Daily Mail Australia that she is as unimpressed that Warner Bros' decision to re-cast him in the first ever Bachelor In Paradise in Fiji.

'Jen is absolutely disgusted in the Bachelor brand is allowing him in the public eye and is horrified at the example it sets for young men who watch the show.'

'Jen made it very clear that she would never appear on the same show as Blake, especially after the revenge porn threats he made towards her', they said.

The insider also claimed Jen fears for the well-being of Blake's Bachelor In Paradise cast-mates.

Disgusted: An insider recently revealed Jen Hawke thought Warner Bros was putting the Bachelor In Paradise cast IN DANGER by allowing Blake Colman on the show

Blake is currently being investigated by police in relation to allegations of threatening to sell nude photos of Jen.

New South Wales Police confirmed in October that they had received a report in relation to the incident and were investigating, but said that 'due to the ongoing investigation, no further information is able to be provided.'

An insider also claimed that Jen previously sought an AVO to be taken out on Blake, preventing him from travelling to Sydney for media appearances following his elimination from The Bachelorette.
Pia Miller is often revered as Summer Bay's resident brunette beach babe.

But Home and Away co-star Sarah Roberts gave her a run for her money on Wednesday as she stripped down to a hot pink bikini to shoot scenes for the soap.

The star - who debuted on the show just last week - was seen splashing about in the shallows after putting on an amorous display with her new co-star, Patrick O'Connor.

Dripping wet! Home and Away co-star Sarah Roberts stripped down to a hot pink bikini to shoot scenes for Home and Away on Wednesday

Stunning Sarah sizzled before a film crew in the skimpy Rip Curl bikini.

Looking incredibly fit, the Melbourne-born beauty showed off her tanned and toned torso.

Sarah's long, dark locks were dripping wet from her dip, as she stood shielding her eyes from the sun.

A babe in Summer Bay! Looking incredibly fit, the Melbourne-born beauty showed off her tanned and toned torso as she filmed with Patrick

Earlier, the beauty was seen clowning around in the waters as she filmed flirty scenes with Patrick - who appears on the soap as bad boy Dean.

Sarah, who plays Summer Bay newcomer Willow Harris, may have found an on-screen lover in Patrick, as they flicked water on one another and giggled before the breaking waves.

Patrick also looked equally fit, showing off his ripped torso wearing nothing but a shark-tooth necklace and a pair of Rip Curl board shorts.

Making a splash! Sarah may have found an on-screen lover in Patrick, as they flicked water on one another and giggled before the breaking waves

Flirty: The beauty was seen clowning around in the waters as she filmed flirty scenes with Patrick

Before their frolick in the water, the twosome were also seen filming a passionate smooch for the cameras.

And although she hasn't been on the series long, Sarah has quickly established herself as a popular cast member of the long-running show.

The brunette was seen keeping close with her new co-stars Sam Frost and Sophie Dillman inside a VIP marquee at Melbourne's recent Darby Day races.

What a pair! Patrick also looked equally fit, showing off his ripped torso weather nothing but a shark-tooth necklace and a pair of Rip Curl board shorts

She's a natural: Sarah has previously graced the screens in Wolf Creek 2 and INXS: Never Tear Us Apart

Home and Away is not the first role for the actress, who appears to be a natural before the cameras.

The Melbourne-born talent has previously graced the screens in Wolf Creek 2 and INXS: Never Tear Us Apart.

Sarah- who is part Sri Lankan- originally moved to Japan after high school to try her hand at dancing, before pursuing her acting dreams.
They're both blonde bombshells known for their love of designer goods and living the high life.

So it's no surprise hotel heiress and socialite Paris Hilton has enlisted Australia's PR queen Roxy Jacenko to host her fragrance launch when she heads Down Under next week.

After Paris took to social media to promote her event, Roxy was quick to gush over the US native.

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High powered fashion icons! On Saturday, Roxy Jacenko couldn't help but gush over Paris Hilton ahead of hosting her perfume launch in Sydney next week

'@parishilton See you Thursday,' replied Roxy adding a pink love heart emoji.

The response came after Paris revealed she was heading to Sydney for an 'exclusive meet & greet for the launch of Rose Rush Fragrance'.

Paris added that she would be handing out autographs and said she wasn't opposed to taking selfies with fans before confirming the 'que[ue] opens at 10am' on Thursday ahead of her 4pm appearance.

Shout-out! The response came after the former reality star revealed she was heading to Sydney for an 'exclusive meet & greet for the launch of Rose Rush Fragrance'

Roxy: 'Thrilled to be hosting Paris' fragrance launch at Birkenhead Point Shopping Centre on Thursday with Chemist Warehouse'

And it doesn't look like the Stars Are Blind hit maker is the only one excited, with Roxy telling Daily Mail Australia she's bee a long-term fan.

'Thrilled to be hosting Paris' fragrance launch at Birkenhead Point Shopping Centre on Thursday with Chemist Warehouse,' she revealed.

'I have long been a fan of the Hilton sisters and can't wait to meet Paris'.

Gearing up: 'I have long been a fan of the Hilton sisters and can't wait to meet Paris'

And it's not the first time the great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton has gushed over an Australian personality.

Just last week, Paris couldn't help but rave over TV journalist Lisa Wilkinson.

Seemingly making quite the impact after hosting a gala dinner for The Fred Hollows Foundation in Los Angeles, the stunner called her 'beautiful' and praised her for the smooth running event.

New friends? Just last week, Paris couldn't help but rave over TV journalist Lisa Wilkinson

'You looked beautiful on stage last night. Keep up the great work!' she captioned on one of Lisa's photos.

Leaving such a mark on the hotel heiress, Paris is now following Lisa on Instagram.

And it seems as though the former songstress is here to make a great impact, showcasing her large packed up six suitcases.
He reportedly 'lost a stone' in weight following his addiction battle and subsequent stay in rehab, earlier this year.

And showcasing his slimmer physique as he hit the beach in Australia, Ant McPartlin, 42, cut a happy and healthy figure during his jaunt by the sea on Saturday.

The shirtless star was joined by a member of his management team as he took to the waves, along with his best pal Declan Donnelly and his wife Ali Astall and a slew of other friends.

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Content: Ant McPartlin, 42, cut a happy and healthy figure as he enjoyed a beach jaunt over in Australia on Saturday with a member of his management team

Having wrapped another successful live episode of I'm A Celebrity, Ant and Dec made sure to make the most of the rest of their day over in Australia and headed to the beach with friends.

The duo are currently staying Down Under while working on the much-loved reality series and already developing impressive tans due to the sunshine overseas, Ant was seen parading his already bronzed frame in a pair of orange swimming shorts.

Appearing relaxed and content, the TV presenter was pictured enjoying a refreshing dip in the sea with a female friend and the duo appeared to be entertained by the huge waves.

Dec, meanwhile, favoured a pair of black swimming shorts and was seen carrying out his own Baywatch-inspired run, as he made his way back up onto the sand following his swim.

Relaxed: He was joined by a mystery female companion as they enjoyed a refreshing dip in the sea

Taking a break: Ant headed to the beach with a group of friends after successfully filming another live episode of I'm A Celebrity

Refreshing: Shirtless Ant teased a look at his bronzed physique in his orange swim shorts

Cooling off: The TV presenter debuted his slimmer frame after losing a stone in weight following his rehab stay earlier this year

His wife Ali cut a stylish figure in a black bikini and a loosely fitted white kaftan that she threw over her two-piece. She has joined her beau and Ant over in Oz this year, while Ant's wife Lisa Armstrong, 41, has remained in the UK due to her working commitments with Strictly Come Dancing.

Ant's appearance on the beach comes after it was revealed he has lost a stone in weight, after embarking on a healthier and fitter lifestyle following his stint in rehab.

He had sought treatment to overcome and battle his two-year addiction to painkillers following a devastating knee injury and fertility issues.

A source told The Mirror: 'The last couple of months have been about him getting back to the Ant people know and love, and he has been exercising the knee, eating more healthily and drinking a lot less.'

Channelling his inner baywatch? Dec, meanwhile, was seen running back onto the beach after taking a dip

Holidaying: Dec's wife Ali Astall (far left) had joined the group and was clad in a black bikini

Sea-ing double? Dec and a friend were perfectly in sync as they rubbed the salt water out of their eyes

Happy: Ant appeared to be having a ball as he took to the water

Speaking of the Ant - who checked into rehab in June - a source admitted: 'He put on some weight and looked tired and had bags under his eyes.'

But with a visibly slimmed down Ant appearing on ITV screens on Sunday night, it was divulged: 'The results of all that, and work in the gym, are there for all to see now. He has lost up to a stone in weight and looks better than he has for years.'

Following much speculation over whether or not he would return to I'm A Celebrity, Ant was seen kicking off this year's series live on air with Dec last Sunday and telling his co-star: 'I was always going to make it.'

The pair addressed concerns he could have been absent from the series in their usually witty style, with Dec immediately opening the show by joking he had been joined by Holly Willoughby.

Going solo: Ant's wife Lisa Armstrong, 41, meanwhile, hasn't joined him Down Under due to her working commitments with Strictly Come Dancing

Another year older: Ant had celebrated his 42nd birthday while overseas, before kicking off this year's I'm A Celebrity series

He said to viewers: 'I'm here with the gorgeous Holly Willoughby...' before adding in mock horror: 'Wait, no! Guys that's the wrong script! You've put the wrong script in!'

Turning to Ant, who was stood in mock outrage, Dec continued the joke by stating, in reference to his pal's rehab stint: 'No one was sure if you would make it or not!'

Confirming to fans he was better than ever however, the famous Geordie assured: 'I was always going to make it, come on.'

He then added excitedly: 'I'm back my friend!', before the pair sweetly hugged, to the applause of the production crew.

Ant found himself inundated with compliments about his healthy appearance on the show, with many fans taking in their droves to Twitter to express their delight at having him back on their screens.

Drying off: Dec was seen lapping up the sunshine on the beach

Back to his best: There had been much speculation over whether Ant would be returning to I'm A Celeb this year, after he spoke candidly of his battle with painkiller addiction

Woes: Ant has suffered a difficult 2017, after admitting in June he had been battling a two-year addiction to painkillers after a devastating knee injury and fertility issues

One kicked things off by writing: 'Ant so good to see you, Dec you too again on our TV screens' as another added: 'Glad you're back Ant. Wouldn't be the same without you.'

A further fan praised Ant for his bravery over the last few months, writing: 'So great to see Ant back where he belongs, it takes a very brave person to publicly go through what he has and come back even stronger...'

While another said of their famous on screen relationship: 'When Ant said Ofcourse Im back and him and Dec hugged- it was so emosh!! Cant not love these pair!!'

Later on, the pair joked about his summer once again, with Dec probing his co-host: 'Where were you all summer anyway? What were you doing?'

'He looks better than he has for years': But putting paid to the rumours, Ant had joined Dec live on air on Sunday to host I'm A Celebrity's return

Making light of it: The pair addressed concerns he could have been absent from the series in their usually witty style, with Dec immediately opening the show by joking he had been joined by Holly Willoughby

Breaking out into giggles and awkwardly sipping into his tea, Ant simply laughed in response: 'I was just dead busy!'

Ant has suffered a difficult 2017, after admitting in June he had been battling a two-year addiction to painkillers after a devastating knee injury and fertility issues.

Ant revealed his plans to check in to rehab for alcohol and drug addiction, when he gave a candid interview to The Sun admitting he had 'let people down', before thanking his wife Lisa and co-star Declan for the support they had provided.

While Lisa hasn't joined Ant, who celebrated his 42nd birthday overseas recently,

While he hasn't been joined by wife Lisa out in Oz, due to her working commitments on Strictly Come Dancing as a make-up artist, she made sure to hit back at the speculation, breaking her silence on the duo's rumoured 'marriage woes'.

No issue: Ant, meanwhile, had told his co-star: 'I was always going to make it'

Drama: As well as concerns about his health, Ant has had to face speculation over his marriage to wife of 11 years Lisa

Lisa had hit back at the long-running reports that the duo have separated by taking to Twitter, as she penned on the microblogging site: 'I'm not estranged, thank you'.

Her defiant message also touched on her absence in Australia, as she added the hashtags: '#haventbeentoOzfor10years #ihaveajob #allaloadofmadeups**t #imnotestrangedthank-you #asyouwere'.

Meanwhile, I'm A Celebrity viewers have seen two new arrivals enter camp comedian Ian Lee and politician Kezia Dugdale. While the camp had been split into two following their addition, with Iain and Kezia fronting each team, they have now all been reunited in Croc Creek.

The two teams had been forced to battle it out in trials, with Iain's team coming out victorious and secretly winning care packages for those that had been banished to Snake Rock.

Hitting back: But insisting the pair are very much together in the wake of Ant's rehab stay, make-up artist Lisa had hit back on Twitter to reveal she is 'not estranged' from her beau

Late additions! I'm A Celebrity viewers have seen two new arrivals enter camp comedian Ian Lee and politician Kezia Dugdale

The care packages had been sent from the celebrities' friends and family, with Stanley Johnson receiving a block of cheese, Georgia 'Toff' Toffolo being given a bottle of fake tan and Rebekah Vardy opened a pillow covered in photographs of her husband Jamie and their children.

While Ant and Dec are fronting the main show, Joe Swash has returned to present I'm A Celebrity's spin-off show Extra Camp, alongside last year's jungle winner Scarlett Moffatt and runner-up Joel Dommett.

Joe had found himself at the centre of rumours he was feuding with Ant, after the pair appeared to have a tense exchange on the ITV2 show, but laughing off the claims and joking it had been 'sexual tension'.

Asked by Dec if they had 'beef', Ant and Joe were quick to insist there is no bad blood between them and hugged live on air.
She just scored herself a new gig as a reporter for Ten News Melbourne.

And after partying at the network's Christmas party on Friday night, The Bachelorette's Georgia Love headed for a run at Melbourne's Tan Track on Saturday to 'sweat out' the damage.

But things didn't seem to be go too smoothly for the 29-year-old, revealing her new shoes had given her a blister.

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'Think I found out why these runners were on sale!' Georgia Love suffers from painful blister after attempting to 'sweat out' her celebrations at Ten's Christmas Party

'Think I found out why these runners were on sale,' she captioned a photo of her blistered foot, tagging shoe brand Reebok.

On Friday night, Georgia provided her 187,000 fans with a cheeky 'life hack'.

'Life hack: get a new job two weeks before the company Christmas party to get maximum free drinks for minimal output,' she captioned a happy shot alongside her colleagues.

Wise words: 'Life hack: get a new job two weeks before the company Christmas party to get maximum free drinks for minimal output'

Not the best: 'Think I found out why these runners were on sale,' she captioned tagging shoe brand Reebok

Meanwhile also on Saturday Georgia appeared to get frustrated with boyfriend and Bachelorette winner Lee Elliott after he told her he felt 'happy to be stuck' with her.

Driving around listening to the 1986 Heuy Lewis And The News hit single Stuck With You, Lee claimed it was their 'theme song'.

'Every couple has those songs that just resonate with them #justhappytobestuckwithyou,' he captioned.

That's got to burn: And it didn't seem like things were going Georgia's way on Saturday, getting frustrated with boyfriend and Bachelorette winner Lee Elliott after he told her he felt 'happy to be stuck' with her

Although telling her beau it wasn't a nice song, Lee didn't seem to be convinced.

But the couple's day seemed to end on a high after they checked into Melbourne's luxurious Crown Towers for a date night and overnight stay.

'Date night done right,' captioned Lee on his Instagram Stories.
What a difference a year makes.

Last Christmas, Roxy Jacenko vowed to 'boycott' the holiday unless hubby Oliver Curtis was released from jail on appeal, the 32-year-old's bid for early freedom proving unsuccessful.

But on Saturday, the PR queen, Roxy's jailbird hubby and the kids finally got their family Santa photo, the smiles on their faces proving it was well worth the wait.

What a difference a year makes! On Saturday, Roxy Jacenko, her jailbird hubby and the kids finally got their Santa photo, their beaming smiles proving it was well worth the 24 month wait

Roxy, daughter Pixie, six, and son Hunter, three, all shared happy snaps from a Westfield Parramatta Christmas event on their respective Instagram accounts.

Little Pixie got the best of the bunch, with her post the only one to feature Oliver, who looked thrilled to be spending time with his family this festive season.

He perched on one arm of Santa's comfy green throne, while Roxy managed to make room on the chair for her gym-honed frame.

Pixie and Hunter couldn't hide their excitement as they piled onto Father Christmas' lap.

Flashback: Last Christmas, Roxy Jacenko vowed to 'boycott' the holiday unless hubby Oliver Curtis was released from jail on appeal - he wasn't

'The adults insisted on being included,' she wrote in the caption.

Over on his Instagram, Hunter made sure the kids got some alone time to make sure Santa was all-clear on their wishlist.

Making a last-minute attempt at ensuring there'd be no naughty list surprises, he was seen bringing in the jolly North Pole native for a cute hug.

Epic! Roxy, daughter Pixie, 6 and son Hunter, 3, all shared happy snaps from the Westfield Parramatta event on their respective Instagram accounts

Hunter continued the compliments in the caption: 'He flew in this weekend and look how good he looks after hardly any rest!' he wrote.

Meanwhile, Roxy shared images to Instagram of the truly lavish set-up on offer at the western Sydney hotspot - including confetti, real Christmas trees and a crafts table.

The family made sure not to take the joyous occasion for granted and were clearly just happy to have the whole gang together - unlike last year.

Fun for all! Meanwhile, Roxy shared images of the truly lavish set-up on offer at the Western Sydney hotspot - including confetti, real Christmas trees and a crafts table

Not the best present: The family made sure not to take the joyous occasion for granted and were clearly just happy to have the whole gang together - unlike last year

In an interview with Who last December, Roxy said she wouldn't be putting up decorations unless Oliver was released from his insider trading sentence on appeal.

'My mum said to me the other day "I think Im going to get a Christmas tree" she recounted to the publication.'

'I said, "You cant, because I told Pixie and Hunter their father would be home by Christmas" - It was so far away then... Now here we are.'

Oliver's December appeal was unsuccessful, with the disgraced investment banker not released until June this year.

No Christmas miracle: In an interview last December, Roxy said she wouldn't be putting up decorations unless Oliver was released from his insider trading sentence on appeal
She's the former reality TV star known for her racy social media posts.

And on Saturday Skye Wheatley once again flaunted her gym-honed figure, taking to Instagram to share a revealing video of herself in a bikini.

The Big Brother star turned blogger left little to the imagination as she showed off her tan lines to her 372,000 followers.

Not an inch to pinch! Skye Wheatley flaunts her surgically enhanced assets and gym honed physique in a VERY skimpy bikini

In the video shared to social media, Skye wore a brown bikini which showed off her sizable cleavage and pert behind.

Skye sashayed to music as she twirled around for the camera, offering her fans a better glimpse of her toned figure.

Tan lines visible, the former Big Brother contestant wore her blonde locks tousled over her shoulders.

Dancing: Skye sashayed to music as she twirled around for the camera, offering her fans a better glimpse of her toned figure

Curves ahead! Skye wore a brown bikini which showed off her sizable cleavage

No one's looking at the product! Skye Wheatley spruiks fake tan in VERY skimpy underwear ... as fans express concern for her white couch

Meanwhile on Thursday Skye promoted another product on social media, the surgically-enhanced blonde stripping down to advertise a brand of fake tan.

But while Skye's busty assets nearly stole the show, her fans were more concerned about the white couch she was applying the bronzing product on.

Skye struck a provocative pose as she perched on the edge of her pristine white couch, brandishing a tanning mitt and a bottle of bronzer.

'You absolute idiot tanning on a white couch': Fans were quick to comment on the photo, but most seemed distracted by the notion of Skye tanning on a white sofa

The reality TV star's skimpy underwear showcased her ample assets and toned physique.

Fans were quick to comment on the photo, but most seemed distracted by the notion of Skye tanning on a white sofa.

'You absolute idiot tanning on a white couch,' one person wrote in the comments section.

Another agreed, asking Skye: 'Why would you do that on a white couch?'

One person thought the couch's fate was already sealed, sadly posting: 'RIP to the couch.'

Gone under the knife: Skye has continued to make headlines thanks to her many surgical enhancements

Rising to fame as a contestant on the last season of Big Brother in 2014, Skye has continued to make headlines thanks to her many surgical enhancements.

The social media fanatic traveled to Bangkok in 2015 for a $3,800 breast augmentation.

However, Skye later claimed the surgery was botched, leaving her with a 'double bubble' in one breast.

Since her boob job Skye has plumped her pout with lip fillers and underwent a nose job late last year.

Boob job: The social media fanatic traveled to Bangkok in 2015 for a $3,800 breast augmentation

Altered her face: Skye has also plumped her pout with lip fillers and underwent a nose job late last year

The busty blonde told Yahoo Be she had the length of her nose shortened and her nostrils shrunk.

'When I woke up from surgery it was really painful because obviously I had just had my face half ripped up,' Skye recounted.

'The surgeon took most of the cartilage out my tip because it was really long and when you looked down at my face from a particular angle, it looked like a witch's nose.

'My nostrils were flared and I just wanted my them brought in and down.'
Phone breakups are never a good idea.

But it's been alleged that's exactly what's happened to Dave Hughes and Kate Langbroek, who have reportedly been cut from KIIS FM a week early.

According to The Herald Sun, management called the HIT network-bound hosts on Friday to inform them they needn't bother coming in on Monday.

No KIIS goodbye? Dave Hughes and Kate Langrbroek have reportedly been cut from their final week at KIIS, without the chance to farewell fans before they move to HIT in 2018

'[Dave and Kate] were called after Fridays show and told they had done their final shift after three years at KIIS,' the publication claimed.

Taking to Instagram, Dave shared a picture of their whole crew, appearing to acknowledge the cancellation in the caption.

'Call has come thru that this bunch of legends just had their last Drive shift ARN,' he wrote.

Phone breakup: '[Dave and Kate] were called after Fridays show and told they had done their final shift after three years at KIIS,' The Herald Sun has claimed

'Weve loved working with so many great people there and are pumped to start with in 2018!'

What's more, the duo offered no sign-off or farewell during Friday's shift - something they would almost surely have done if they'd known they wouldn't be back.

If the report is true, the radio stars may have had the last laugh, with Dave claiming On Instagram that he would be taking all of the show's staff to Hit network.

Acknowledged? Dave took to Instagram after Friday's shift, appearing to acknowledge the call: 'Call has come thru that this bunch of legends just had their last Drive shift ARN,' he wrote

And Hughesy & Kate weren't the only ones reported to have been cut without notice, with The Herald Sun claiming Meshel Laurie and Matt Tilley also got the brutal call.

The Australian Radio Network responded to the publication's request for comment, who labelled the statement they received 'rather odd.'

No sign-off: What's more, the duo offered no sign-off or farewell during Friday's shift - something they would almost surely have done if they'd known they wouldn't be back

'The KIIS studios were due to be renovated later this year. With both Matt and Meshel, and Hughesy and Kate, due to finish up with KIIS on December 8,' it read.

'It made sense to give them a couple of weeks off early and bring forward the renovations.'

The statement did not explain how the station's other shows would operate during the renovation period.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to representatives from both shows for comment.

Last laugh? If the report is true, the radio stars may have had the last laugh, with Dave claiming On Instagram that he would be taking all of the show's staff to Hit network
She is never one to shy away from flaunting her incredibly gym-honed physique.

And Saturday proved to be no exception for Vogue Williams, 32, as she soaked up the final few days of sunshine while wrapping up her romantic break in Thailand with beau Spencer Matthews.

Slipping into a barely-there yellow bikini, the Irish model made sure to grab attention on Instagram, as she showcased her enviably taut stomach and lengthy legs while parading by the pool.

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Stunning: Vogue Williams made sure to grab attention on Instagram, as she slipped into a barely-there yellow bikini to showcase her enviably taut stomach and lengthy legs while holidaying in Thailand

Showcasing her bronzed glow from her exotic travels, Vogue donned a skimpy triangle bikini top that framed her assets, as well as a pair of matching briefs that drew attention to her slender pins, thanks to their high-rise cut.

She threw an open white shirt atop her beach attire and teasingly placed her sunglasses in between her chest, as she hung them from the strap line of her bikini.

The TV personality finished off her ensemble with a straw fedora hat that she clutched onto while posing for her latest holiday upload. Alongside her snap, Vogue penned: 'Almost home time. I just want to live on an island forever!'

Vogue's post had been just one in a string of swimsuit uploads she had shared with fans, as the starlet was also seen sporting a lemon yellow two-piece that boasted a cropped tee and matching briefs in another shot shared to her Instagram story.

Sizzling: Vogue's post had been just one in a string of swimsuit uploads she had shared with fans, as the starlet was also seen sporting a lemon yellow two-piece that boasted a cropped tee and matching briefs

Swit-swoo: The beauty is seen modelling a long-sleeved black swimsuit that made for a very sultry display, thanks to its plunging zipped design that left her assets firmly on view

Besotted: Vogue had also paid reference to her boyfriend Spencer - sharing a photo of the Made In Chelsea star sporting a floral patterned shirt across from her at the table and adding two love heart emojis across it

Positively glowing, Vogue ensured all eyes were on her killer abs as she posed in dark shades and with her lightened tresses pulled up into a bun on the top of her head.

In another shot, the beauty is seen modelling a long-sleeved black swimsuit that made for a very sultry display, thanks to its plunging zipped design that left her assets firmly on view.

While her bikini shots saw her taking centre stage, Vogue had also paid reference to her boyfriend Spencer - sharing a photo of the Made In Chelsea star sporting a floral patterned shirt across from her at the table and adding two love heart emojis across it.

During their getaway, Spencer has been caught gushing over his new love - insisting he has never been happier.

Alongside a photo of himself and his girlfriend, the reality star said: 'Never been happier in my life... @voguewilliams is mainly to thank for that but I guess I should give a nod to @intercontinentalsamui #Thailand #KohSamui'

Smitten: The couple have gone from strength to strength since they fell in love on the set of reality series The Jump earlier this year

Loved-up: Spencer has been caught gushing over his new love during their exotic getaway to Thailand - insisting he has never been happier alongside a selfie of the duo cuddled up

The couple have gone from strength to strength since they fell in love on the set of reality series The Jump.

The television personality revealed the secret to success with their relationship is that they never argue in a recent interview with The Sunday Mirror, where she said: 'He is my best pal. I remember thinking we would be best friends forever. It is the first relationship where I don't have fights with people.'

The duo are currently living together and their move came after Vogue denied reports she had moved into Spencer's Chelsea home.

Speaking during an appearance on Loose Women, Vogue revealed the pair have bought a new house together, saying: 'We moved in together last night. He arrived home at four in the morning from Greece and forced me to get up to have a glass of champagne to toast the new house. He didn't want me to move in to his house.

Beach babe! In another image, Vogue soaked up the sun on the beach in a tiny orange bikini as the tide rolled in

Cute couple: Vogue and Spencer looked smitten with each other as they cosied up for snaps

'He lives in a one-bed in Chelsea and I have a lot of clothes so that was never going to work. And I lived with two Irish boys so I think we've always wanted to have our own place so that's what we started looking at straight away.'

Besotted Vogue also admitted she and her family fell in love with Spencer after they met him for the first time.

Vogue added: 'My mum loved him... even my step-dad, who would've been the tougher one to crack, fell in love with Spencer and we get on really well with one another's family.'

Famed for his lothario womanising ways on Made In Chelsea, the starlet confessed she finds it 'cringe-worthy' when people suggest she has 'tamed' him.

Vogue added: 'My mum loved him... even my step-dad, who would've been the tougher one to crack, fell in love with Spencer and we get on really well with one another's family.

'He is very charming. I think when Spencer was on Made in Chelsea he was 21. As a 21-year-old boy, he was doing what a lot of 21-year-old boys wanted to do.

'He didn't want to be in a serious relationship for too long. I haven't tamed him in anyway which I keep reading about, it makes me cringe because I haven't done anything he was just like that when I met him.'

Previously, Vogue was married to Westlife's Brian McFadden for three years before they parted ways in July 2015. Spencer, meanwhile, has dated a string of beauties including Louise Thompson, Stephanie Pratt, Vicky Pattison and Lauren Frazer-Hutton.
She had given birth to her fourth son, and first child with fiance Michael O'Neill, just two months ago in September.

And proving she is already snapping back into shape, Danielle Lloyd, 33, looked sensational as she slipped into a vibrantly patterned bikini to soak up the sunshine in Dubai.

The former WAG has jetted overseas with her beau ahead of the Formula One Abu Dhabi Grand Prix 2017 event and confidently paraded her post-baby frame while on board a yacht.

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Stunning: Danielle Lloyd, 33, looked sensational as she flaunted her post-baby frame just TWO months after giving birth by slipping into a vibrantly patterned bikini in Dubai

Escaping her parenting duties for sunnier climes, Danielle looked simply stunning in the holiday snap that saw her clad in a revealing two-piece bikini for her jaunt out at sea.

Her bikini top teased a look at her ample bust, thanks to its daringly low-cut design, and was paired together with matching briefs that sat high on her hips.

The beauty teamed her attire with a colourful headband, as she left her brunette tresses down in a tousled style to fall past her shoulders and sported a mirrored pair of aviator shades on her face.

Beaming from ear-to-ear, Danielle oozed confidence in her scanty getup as she gushed alongside her Instagram post: 'Day on the yacht with my boy.'

Bundle of joy: She had given birth to her fourth son, and first child with fiance Michael O'Neill, just two months ago in September

Candid: It comes after the former glamour model - who had hit out at the pressure new mums face to get back into shape on Instagram - confessed to her previous body battles

It comes after the former Celebrity Big Brother star recently confessed to spending 'years' crying over her figure and her 'wobbly bits' - particularly after giving birth to her four children in a candid interview with Closer magazine.

However, Danielle - who has sons Archie, seven, Harry, six, and three-year-old George with ex-husband Jamie O'Hara, and two-month-old Ronnie with fiance Michael O'Neill - insists she has finally learned to appreciate her figure

Danielle soared to fame in 2004 when she was feted as Miss England before being crowned Miss Great Britain in 2006 although she was soon stripped of her title after posing in the December issue of Playboy in the same year.

Woah mama! She found fame as a glamour model - stripping off for countless sexy shoots (pictured in 2004)

Blooming: The 33-year-old former glamour model - who has sons Archie, seven, Harry, six, and three-year-old George with ex-husband Jamie O'Hara, and two-month-old Ronnie with fiance Michael O'Neill - has finally learned to appreciate her figure

Content: She told Closer magazine: 'I've spent years crying over my figure, especially after I had my other children I felt so big and uncomfortable. But I've finally learned to love myself and that's taken me a really long time'

She has since gone on to make various reality appearances, but has now confessed that beyond her confident public appearances, she has suffered an ongoing battle with her own body image.

Danielle, who had hit out at the pressure new mums feel to lose weight as she proudly debuted her post-baby frame just one week post-partum, said: 'I'm so happy right now and I don't care if I'm not in perfect shape. I've got wobbly bits and a little bump on my tummy but it doesn't bother me.

'I've spent years crying over my figure, especially after I had my other children I felt so big and uncomfortable. But I've finally learned to love myself and that's taken me a really long time.'

Danielle began working out twice a week just six weeks after giving birth to Ronnie but she insists the sessions are more for the mental benefits than the physical.

Way back when: In January 2007, the Liverpudlian star (right) partook in Celebrity Big Brother's fifth season during which she became embroiled in a horrific race row when she and co-stars Jade Goody and Jo O'Meara as they were accused of abusing Shilpa Shetty

Way back when: Danielle has entered a number of pageants over the years

She said: 'I don't exercise for my body, although I do want to tone up my stomach and the top of my legs. Those two hours each week are just for me, where I can get out of the house and focus on myself.

'Things are hectic at home and I absolutely love it, but it's the one place I can channel my energy into something else.'

And Danielle, who has previously spoken about her struggle with postnatal depression after her previous pregnancies, believes her fitness sessions have helped her keep the condition at bay this time around.

She told the publication: 'I've been lucky this time around. I get such a huge boost of endorphins after exercising and that's made a huge difference.'
He has found himself newly single following his recent split from wife of 20 years Alexandra.

And hoping to show another side to him, Paul Hollwood will be returning to the place where he and his former spouse first met in 1998, as he revisits places he holds close to his heart while showcasing his culinary talent on new show A Baker's Life.

Speaking in a new interview, the star has said he is hopeful viewers will 'get to know him more' as his new project airs on screen, while insisting 'everybody makes mistakes,' as he reflected on Prue Leith's mishap that saw her reveal the Bake Off winner hours before the televised final.

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Reflecting: Paul Hollywood has spoken out about his new show, that will see him return to the place he first met his wife, and THAT Prue Leith mishap that went viral on Twitter

Paul told TV Magazine: 'I think ultimately people will get to know a little bit more about me through this.'

Showing a different side to him has become even more important to the professional baker, as he claimed he has been portrayed in the wrong light following the backlash he was subjected to after deciding to stay with The Great British Bake Off following its channel move.

Switching from the BBC to Channel 4, Paul was the only star of the show to stick with it, with Mary Berry and hosts Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins choosing to step down.

New venture: Paul will revisit places he holds close to his heart while showcasing his culinary talent on new show A Baker's Life, telling TV Magazine: 'I think ultimately people will get to know a little bit more about me'

Claiming he had been seen as a 'villain', Paul protested: 'But it is so different to the real me... it's time people met a bit more of me and [I] correct loads of things wrong about me on Wikipedia.'

While the new series of the Great British Bake Off had been well received by viewers, despite its changes, it didn't end without controversy, as new judge Prue Leith had accidentally revealed the winner of the series, Sophie Faldo, on Twitter before it had aired.

Despite deleting the tweet, Prue's mishap had gone viral and discussing the accidental reveal, Paul said in response: 'Everyone is entitled to a mistake - I'm sure she won't do it again.'

Having his say: Claiming he had been seen as a 'villain' due to sticking with the Great British Bake Off following its channel move, Paul protested: 'But it is so different to the real me...' before weighing in on Prue Leith accidentally revealing this year's show winner early

Oops: Discussing the accidental reveal, Paul said in response: 'Everyone is entitled to a mistake - I'm sure she won't do it again'

Accidental: New judge Prue Leith had accidentally revealed the winner of the series, Sophie Faldo, on Twitter before it had aired, due to incorrectly working out the time difference while she was overseas

Paul's comments come after Prue appeared to make a thinly-veiled dig at her co-judge Paul while appearing on This Morning on Wednesday.

The 77-year-old celebrity chef seemed to take the swipe Paul - who had announced days earlier that he was splitting from wife Alex - as she reflected on her first marriage to Rayne Kruger who she met when he was married to someone else.

Prue candidly revealed: 'He was my mums best friend's husband and we were family friends. I think adultery is wrong, I think stealing someones husband is wrong.'

Candid: Prue appeared to take a thinly-veiled dig at Paul Hollywood as she appeared on This Morning on Wednesday

Continuing to describe the first love of her life, Prue revealed: 'I know it was the wrong thing to do. But I was only 20. He was 40. He was like God to me.'

Prue also offered her explanation as to why he left his wife for her: 'He married a woman who was 20 years older than him with three young children.

'She was like a mother to me and was deeply upset. But Rayne was determined we would remain friends,' she looked back.

Prue's confessions comes after baking enthusiast Paul revealed he and wife Alex are set to go their separate ways.

Blast from past: The Great British Bake Off judge took the swipe at Paul as she reflected on her first marriage to a man she met when he was married to someone else

'He was like God to me!' Despite knowing that it was the wrong thing to go, Prue revealed she couldn't help but fall in love with her mum's best friend's husband

Paul and Alex confirmed their heartbreaking split in a joint statement on Monday saying: 'It is with sadness that we have decided to separate.

'Our focus continues to be the happiness of our son, and we would ask the press and public to allow us privacy as a family during this very difficult time.'

The baking guru, who is now worth 10million, split from his wife, 53, temporarily in 2013 after admitting an affair with his US co-star Marcela Valladolid, 39.

The couple reconciled a few months later and he described the incident as 'the biggest mistake of my life' in an interview with BBC radio.

'It is with sadness that we have decided to separate': This comes after Paul and Alex confirmed their heartbreaking split in a joint statement on Monday

Former fling: The baking guru, who is now worth 10million, split from his wife, 53, temporarily in 2013 after admitting an affair with his US co-star Marcela Valladolid, 39

Speaking at the time, he told the BBC he 'was shocked about the whole thing kicking off the way it did... but I deserved it and I've taken it. It was my punishment'.

However a source told The Sun: 'Paul was totally into Marcela and threw himself in with both feet. When it all fell apart he went back to Alex with his tail between his legs, but in reality if Marcela had wanted to keep it going he was all for it.'

Recently, series seven winner Candice, who recently announced her engagement to Liam Macauley, was spotted with Paul as he cupped the back of her head and kissed her goodbye following a night out at the Pride of Britain Awards in London.

Regret: The couple reconciled a few months later and he described the incident as 'the biggest mistake of my life' in an interview with BBC radio

A spokesman for the pair said it was an 'innocent kiss on the cheek', and that it was 'untrue' to describe it as an 'intimate kiss'.

The representative, who was also there on the night, told MailOnline: 'Following The Mirror Pride of Britain Awards last Monday, seven of us including Paul and Candice were seated outside waiting for cars home.

'The photograph was taken as Paul was saying goodbye to each of us.'

Paul and Alex, who is also a chef, married in 1998, and have a 14-year-old son together, Joshua. It was claimed that Paul, who is worth an estimated 10m, could lose up to 5m of his fortune in the divorce.
She's the Sudanese-born Australian who's taking the world by storm thanks to her killer good looks.

And on Sunday, Ajak Deng revealed she's been trying her hand at acting.

Speaking to Confidential, the 27-year-old confessed that she had auditioned to be a Bond Girl in the new James Bond film, but was rejected due to her 'good looks'.

Not right for the role: On Sunday, Ajak Deng revealed she had auditioned for the new James Bond movie but was rejected because she was 'too pretty'

'I am studying acting and have gone to castings for some amazing roles,' she said.

'I tested for one of the Bond girls for the new James Bond movie, but....they told me I was too pretty for the role.'

'It was so good just to have that experience,' she continued.'

Good looks got in the way: 'I tested for one of the Bond girls for the new James Bond movie, but....they told me I was too pretty for the role'

Looking for change: An activist on diversity and cultural representation, the former refugee opened up last week about how she wishes the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show cast girls of different backgrounds and body shapes

An activist on diversity and cultural representation, the former refugee opened up last week about how she wishes the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show cast girls of different backgrounds and body shapes.

Speaking to Yahoo 7, the statuesque stunner said the brand could do better.

'I think it can be better,' said Ajak.

Diversity: 'It wouldve been nice to see Ashley Graham (above) in there, thats my kind of diversity,' she added, referring to the American plus-size model

'It wouldve been nice to see Ashley Graham in there, thats my kind of diversity,' she added, referring to the American plus-size model.

Although looking for more diversity, the class of 2017 saw almost 50 per cent of the models from an ethnically diverse background, compared to 30 per cent the year before, the publication reported.

Ajak also added she was hoping to be called up for the 2018 show.
She's just celebrated her 21st birthday.

But Hailey Baldwin showed no signs of post-birthday blues when she arrived in Miami with friend and fellow catwalk prowler Bella Hadid, 21, on Friday.

The pair almost immediately took to Snapchat to share their triumphant, casually-attired pose.

No hangover: Hailey Baldwin, 21, showed no signs of post-birthday blues when she arrived in Miami with friend and fellow catwalk prowler Bella Hadid, 21, on Friday

The daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin and niece of Alec looked comfortable in a vintage Pink Floyd T-shirt , sweatpants and white sneakers.

The French Connection model covered her eyes with a pair of dark, oversized trapezoid-shaped sunglasses, and her blonde tresses were pulled back in a low bun.

The Saturday Night Live guest star was loaded up with shopping bags and was also carrying a red backpack.

Monochrome model: Hadid, meanwhile, went for a black and white casual ensemble, decking herself out in white sweatpants and jacket, paired with black and white sneakers

Hadid, meanwhile, went for a black and white casual ensemble, decking herself out in white sweatpants and jacket, paired with black and white sneakers.

The monochrome look was completed with a black suitcase and black backpack.

The daughter of real estate developer Mohamed Hadid and former model Yolanda Hadid wore her brunette locks pulled back in a tight bun and wore a full face of makeup for the day.

Supermodels: The two beauties, who arrived in Florida on a private plane, later struck a pose for Hadid's social media fans

The two beauties, who arrived in Florida on a private plane, later struck a pose for Hadid's social media fans.

On Tuesday, birthday girl Baldwin posed with her bestie Kendall Jenner, 22, at her party, capturing a series of black and white snaps of herself goofing around with the reality TV star.

BFF Kendall also shared several snaps of her evening with Hailey, writing the words 'bday b***h' atop a close up of the blonde.

Famous friends: On Tuesday, birthday girl Baldwin posed with her bestie Kendall Jenner, 22, at her party, capturing a series of snaps of herself goofing around with the reality TV star

TV royalty: Baldwin is the niece of SNL star Alec Baldwin, while jenner is the daughter of reality TV matriarch Kris Jenner
She enjoyed a trip to Brighton with her 'dream man', boyfriend George Alsford, earlier this week.

But Georgia May Foote was flying solo on Saturday, as she attended the 20th anniversary performance of The Snowman at the Peacock Theatre in London.

The Coronation Street star, 26, paraded her bronzed lithe limbs in thigh-grazing checked shorts and racy thigh-high boots.

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Turning heads: Georgia May Foote looked chic as she attended the 20th anniversary performance of The Snowman at the Peacock Theatre in London on Saturday

The brunette beauty completed her chic look in a skintight black poloneck and a stylish leather jacket.

Styling her glossy raven locks in a sleek middle-parting, the Strictly Come Dancing star framed her eyes with winged liner and plumped her pout with vampy red lipstick.

Her outing comes days after she declared her love for her boyfriend George, with a sun-drenched snap of the model posing on Brighton beach.

She gushed: 'Yes I'm a mess but I'm blessed to be stuck with you....you are everything.'

Not shy about flaunting their love, Georgia said in another snap: 'My dream man right there. Reminds me what love is every single day. #getwellsoonmygza #sohandsome.'

Looking good: The Coronation Street star, 26, paraded her bronzed lithe limbs in thigh-grazing checked shorts and racy thigh-high boots

Chic: The brunette beauty completed her chic look in a skintight black poloneck and a stylish leather jacket

George, who stands at 6ft 3in tall, no doubt caught her eye across their modelling agency.

He has appeared in campaigns for Hugo Boss, Pepe Jeans and Russell & Bromley, among other top-flight brands, and frequently shows off his gym-honed torso on his Instagram account.

The duo enjoyed a romantic getaway in Los Angeles at the start of the year with her new beau.

The former Strictly Come Dancing flooded Instagram with pictures of herself with her hunky boyfriend, who is signed to Select Model Management - the same agency she is signed to.

Taking centre-stage: Styling her glossy raven locks in a sleek middle-parting, the Strictly Come Dancing star framed her eyes with winged liner and plumped her pout with vampy red lipstick

Loved-up: Her outing comes days after she declared her love for her boyfriend George Alsford, with a sun-drenched snap of the model posing on Brighton beach

The new romance comes after her split with Strictly professional Giovanni Pernice, who she began dating shortly after her relationship with her Coronation Street co-star Sean Ward.

Georgia made her name in Coronation Street, but her character left in 2015 after five years amid promises that the door was always open.

But it appears Coronation Street bosses have had a change of heart, as it's reported that Georgia May Foote's character will be 'killed off' in an off-screen accident.

Georgia will not return to play Katy Armstrong and is instead expected to die in a car crash in Portugal during an episode next week, amid claims she 'has no future in the show'.

Sweet: She gushed: 'Yes I'm a mess but I'm blessed to be stuck with you....you are everything'

Loved-up: Not shy about flaunting their love, Georgia said in another snap: 'My dream man right there. Reminds me what love is every single day. #getwellsoonmygza #sohandsome'

Lots in common! Her hunky boyfriend is signed to Select Model Management - the same agency she is signed to

Having left the soap in 2015, Georgia's alter-ego Katy has been living overseas with her son Joseph.

Katy's former partner Chesney (Sam Aston) will be shattered by the news and left feeling desperate to leave Weatherfield for Portugal.

A TV source told The Sun newspaper: 'As Katy, Georgia was really popular with Corrie fans and had some big storylines. But bosses have clearly decided that she has no future in the soap, and have ruled out a return by killing her off.

'You might have thought they would show such a well-known character being written out on screen but that wasn't to be.'

A decision was made to write Georgia out of the soap in April 2014, with bosses insisting that the door was still open and she was not being 'killed off'.
She's the Australian supermodel, who continues to take the fashion world by storm.

And years after her devastating plight as a child refugee fleeing war-torn Sudan, Ajak Deng, 27, is lending her star power to a good cause with the hopes of helping others overcome adversity.

The statuesque beauty, who is often hailed for her Afrocentric features and endless legs, is the face of The Body Shop's new Play for Peace campaign, which seeks to raise $440,000 for child refugees impacted by war in Syria.

Model on a mission: Years after her devastating plight as a child refugee fleeing war-torn Sudan, Ajak Deng, 27, is lending her star power to a good cause

'The Australian government brought us here because they felt sorry for my father with eight kids having just lost a wife, and that to me is such a beautiful thing,' she told The Sydney Morning Herald this week.

'The Australian people have such a heart, welcoming people in.

She recalled her family's decision to flee Sudan during the second civil war: 'My parents got tired of running all the time... my father didn't want to keep worrying, 'will my family be killed?' Now I can give back and help the people who cannot help themselves.'

In 2005, at age 11, Ajak, who has walked for the likes of Louis Vuitton and Lanvin among other big name brands, and her family fled Sudan as refugees.

Giving back: 'The Australian government brought us here because they felt sorry for my father with eight kids having just lost a wife, and that to me is such a beautiful thing,' she told The Sydney Morning Herald this week

Her mother died of malaria in a refugee camp in Kenya, where the family spent three years.

After their resettlement in Melbourne, Ajak was discovered while still in high school and signed to FRM Model Management in 2008.

She made headlines in February last year by declaring her plans to quit modelling over her frustration with the industry.

Difficult past: She recalled her family's decision to flee Sudan during the second civil war: 'My parents got tired of running all the time... my father didn't want to keep worrying, 'will my family be killed?' Now I can give back and help the people who cannot help themselves'

Ajak made the revelation in a post shared to Instagram, writing 'I am happy to announce that I am officially done with the fashion industry, I will be moving back to Australia in order to live the life that I fully deserved. Which is real life.'

'I can no longer deal with the fakes and the lies... My life is too short for this dramatic life.'

The supermodel had previously taken to social media to vent her frustrations over racism in the industry, claiming in 2014 she was kicked out of Balmain for being black in a since-deleted tweet.

Overcoming adversity: In 2005, at age 11, Ajak, who has walked for the likes of Louis Vuitton and Lanvin among other big name brands, and her family fled Sudan as refugees

Her manager Stephen Bucknall backed Ajak's frustrations, telling The Herald Sun Ausralian brands were more willing to book Caucasian models.

'The budgets probably arent big enough for (Deng), because shes a big money earner, but they will spend the money on a Miranda Kerr or a Jess Hart,' he said.

'Theyll book the big caucasian girls, spend the big dollars, and fly them in from LA, but Im yet to see them book a dark skinned girl in that way.'

But a week later Ajak vowed to stay in the modelling game and fight for wider acceptance of darker-skinned models in the fashion industry.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson (C) listens to a supporter being interviewed in Buderim, near Brisbane on November 24, 2017

Voters in the Australian state of Queensland went to the polls Saturday in a snap election seen as a test of support for the far-right One Nation party ahead of possible national elections next year.

Final opinion polls showed a tight race between the governing Labor Party and the centre-right Liberal National Party for control of the state, home of the Great Barrier Reef and a major tourist destination.

The surveys indicate One Nation, which was created by Pauline Hanson in Queensland in the 1990's, could hold the balance of power in the event neither major party wins a majority in the 93-seat state parliament.

The poll is seen as a bellwether of the national political mood at a time when Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's hold on federal government has been severely weakened, possibly forcing him into an early election next year.

Queensland Liberals, led by Tim Nicholls, have left the door wide open to governing in coalition with One Nation if needed, an outcome which would further undermine the moderate Turnbull and hurt his party at a national level where there is less support for the far-right group.

Labor leader and current Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has ruled out governing with One Nation even if it means going into the opposition.

One Nation has enjoyed a tide of popular support in the state on its platform of zero-net migration and opposition to Islam.

Voters stand by a "stop One Nation - vote Labor" sign in Graceville, near Brisbane on November 25, 2017

Support for the party is strongest in rural areas of the vast state, notably in the northern mining region which suffers from high unemployment and poor infrastructure and where many people feel neglected by authorities.

"I think people are sick and tired of the two major parties, they've just left them behind," Steve Dickson, state leader for One Nation, told AFP during the last day of campaigning Friday.

"If people are happy with the services they are getting for the last 20 years, vote for the major two parties. But where we sit at the moment, people aren't happy," he said.

The party was at its height in 1998 when it won 11 seats in the state parliament, but it elected no one in the last election in 2015, which Labor won in a landslide.

New elections were not due until May next year, but Palaszczuk suddenly called the snap poll last month, when Hanson was on an overseas trip and unable to begin campaigning for several days.

Saturday's ballot comes at a difficult time for Turnbull, who lost his slim majority in Federal parliament earlier this month after two members of his coalition were forced to resign when it was found they held dual citizenship in violation of the constitution.

Turnbull has maintained his grip on power thanks to support from independent and minor party deputies.

But his coalition remains deeply divided between centrist and more hardline right-wing members and there are increasing expectations that national elections, not due until 2019, could occur early next year.

Results from Saturday's vote are not expected to be known until late Saturday night or early Sunday.
Veterans of Zimbabwe's 1972-1979 independence war led the violent campaign to seize white-owned farms in 2000 which was backed by Robert Mugabe

Once Robert Mugabe's fiercest supporters, independence war veterans played a key role in ousting him,proving they still wield influence in Zimbabwe which only threw off colonial rule in 1980.

Mugabe's reign was built on support from three pillars -- ZANU-PF party, the military and the war veterans -- and their hardening stance against him in recent years was a bellwether of his downfall on Tuesday.

Last weekend, after the army took control, the war veterans rallied tens of thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans to join street protests against Mugabe in a sudden outpouring of public will.

"Our relationship with Mugabe had irretrievably broken down," Victor Matemadanda, secretary general of the Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans Association, told AFP.

"We entered into a marriage, then problems started and we opted out."

War veterans' leader Christopher Mutsvangwa led the hardening rhetoric against Mugabe, threatening to march on his private residence.

Just before the president stepped down, Mutsvangwa called further street protests, telling him "Smell the coffee. Your time is up.".

The war veterans now have their favoured candidate Emmerson Mnangagwa as president, and he was careful to mention them in his inauguration speech on Friday.

- Violent mobs -

War veteran's leader Christopher Mutsvangwa celebrating at the weekend when the ruling ZANU-PF party sacked Robert Mugabe as its leader just days before his resignation

Veterans of the 1972-1979 independence war accuse Mugabe and his wife Grace of betraying their liberation struggle and enjoying extravagant, corrupt lives while former soldiers were left destitute.

"The first couple's conduct was the last straw and we rallied the people to come together and unequivocally denounce that," said Matemadanda.

For the war veterans, the idea of styling themselves as defenders of freedom sits uneasily with much of their history as enforcers in Mugabe's regime.

They were the shock troops of Mugabe's violent election campaigns, especially in 2008, and were often implicated in the beating, intimidation and even killing of opposition supporters.

Starting in 2000, they also led the violent campaign to seize white-owned farm in what Mugabe encouraged as a correction of the British colonial legacy of black people having only small areas of poor-quality land.

Often drunk or on drugs, mobs of "war veterans" -- who have always included many activists too young to have actually fought in the war -- attacked farmers and labourers with machetes and axes, with the president's support.

- Grace's enemies -

War veterans accused Mugabe and his wife of enjoying extravagant, corrupt lives while former soldiers were left destitute

But the relations between Mugabe and the veterans soured as Grace became more active in politics and emerged as a possible next president.

Grace, backed by her younger "G-40" supporters, pushed them off the top table, and they found themselves no longer a priority for Mugabe's largesse and patronage.

In a landmark moment in 2016, they issued an angry rebuke of Mugabe, decrying his "dictatorial tendencies" and withdrawing their support for his 2018 re-election bid.

"They came to realise that they had been used as political storm-troopers for Mugabe and ZANU-PF -- and yet their real role was to take sides with the people and be as neutral as possible politically," said independent political analyst Alois Masepe.

"They realised their error and apologised and I am hoping this new awakening is permanent even under a new leader."

Mnangagwa still holds onto his wartime name of "The Crocodile", and the veterans believe his rise to power means they have regained their place in the country's power structure.

"We want to continue to play the role of protectors of the revolution and be with the people," said Matemadanda.
Taiwanese actress Vicky Chen, 14, saw off two former Golden Horse winners to collect the best supporting actress award for her performance in "The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful"

Taiwanese director Yang Ya-che's thriller "The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful" dominated the Golden Horse awards, dubbed the Chinese "Oscars", winning the coveted best film and two acting awards on Saturday.

The chilling drama about a wealthy family entangled in deadly political and business intrigues was also voted best film by audiences.

Hong Kong actor Kara Wai bagged the best actress gong for her role as the manipulative and calculating matriarch of the family.

"I want to thank my daughters (in the film) Vicky Chen and Wu Ke-xi. I couldn't have played the role so well without you," Wai said after receiving the statuette from Oscar-winning director Ang Lee and Hollywood star Jessica Chastain.

Chen, 14, wept tears of joy after she saw off two former Golden Horse winners to collect the best supporting actress award for her performance in "The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful".

"I am very fortunate," Chen told the crowd. "I want to thank the director ... and the production crew who encouraged, supported and cared about me."

The teenager also made history as the youngest-ever best actress nominee for her role in Chinese filmmaker Vivian Qu's drama "Angels Wear White", which also competed in this year's Venice film festival.

In it Chen plays a runaway who witnesses the sexual assault of two young girls and is torn between her conscience and saving her job by keeping quiet.

The film earned Qu the best directing prize at the Golden Horse ceremony Saturday.

"This is not just a story in China. This kind of story is happening around the world," Qu said.

She thanked Chen and other young actresses in the film for "giving a voice to the children who are unable to speak up for themselves".

- Heart-throbs empty handed -

Chinese actor Tu Men beat better-known rivals, including Taiwanese-Japanese heart-throb Takeshi Kaneshiro and former Golden Horse winner Huang Bo, to claim the best actor title.

Chinese actor Tu Men picked up the Best Leading Actor award for his role in "Old Beast", while Hong Kong veteran Kara Wai bagged the best actress gong for her part in "The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful"

"The other nominees were nominated for their talents and strength. I got the award because of luck," said a humble Tu, who played a ruthless gambling addict who abandons his sick wife in the dark family drama "Old Beast".

Taiwanese director Huang Hsin-yao took the best new director award for his popular drama "The Great Buddha+", which also won best adapted screenplay, best cinematography, best original film score and best original film song.

The film, which tells the story of a security guard at a factory that makes Buddha statues, has struck a chord with Taiwanese audiences as it focuses on the struggles of ordinary people against the backdrop of a widening wealth gap.

Taiwan theatre actor Bamboo Chen defeated Hong Kong star Tony Leung Ka-fai and Taiwanese-American actor Mason Lee, son of Ang Lee, to win best supporting actor for playing a transgender bar owner in "Alifu, the Prince/ss".

Nearly 50 films are nominated for the 54th edition of the Golden Horse Film Awards.

Although the Golden Horse is styled on the US Academy Awards, the winners are decided by a jury, along the lines of the Cannes film festival.
Mick Mulvaney (R), with Vice President Mike Pence (L), Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (C), has described the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which he will lead as a "sick, sad joke"

US President Donald Trump on Friday appointed White House budget director Mick Mulvaney to head a financial watchdog that the administration has sought to overhaul as part of its deregulation push.

Mulvaney, who described the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as a "sick, sad joke" in a 2014 interview, will serve as acting director until a permanent head is nominated and confirmed, according to a White House statement.

Richard Cordray, the first director of the CFPB who had long been in the banking industry's crosshairs, announced last week he would step down by the end of the month, several months early.

The Trump administration's decision to appoint Mulvaney sparked some confusion over the interim CFPB leadership, as Cordray had already named Leandra English -- who was already part of the agency -- as his de facto successor by naming her deputy director.

That move came hours before Trump tapped Mulvaney as the regulator's temporary leader.

Since the start of his presidency Trump has decried financial rules and regulations, put in place through the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation, to combat the excesses that led to the 2008 financial crisis.

Trump's Treasury Department has produced three reports calling for a whittling down of rules imposed on mid-size banks, a scaling back of stress tests and a restructuring of the CFPB.

Republicans have long deemed the bureau, which was founded in 2011 under the administration of former president Barack Obama, too far outside political control.

Last month, the US Senate voted to terminate a rule created by the agency that would have allowed class-action suits against banks or credit card companies.

The rule would have addressed fine-print clauses that bank and credit card consumers must agree to which bar them from seeking redress through litigation.

The vote was criticized by many Democrats as a sop to Wall Street.
The fate of President Bashar al-Assad (L) has been a major stumbling block in multiple rounds of negotiations between the Syrian regime and the opposition

Syria's opposition on Friday selected a chief negotiator for a unified delegation to next week's UN-brokered peace talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Geneva.

Nasr al-Hariri, head of the opposition High Negotiations Committee, was picked to lead a 36-member negotiating team for the talks on November 28, after three days of intense negotiations between various opposition groups in Riyadh.

"Hariri was selected as the head of the delegation today," opposition member Jamal Suleiman told reporters.

The unified delegation will comprise of members from various groups including the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) -- the largest bloc in the opposition -- as well as the Cairo and Moscow-based platforms.

Syria's disparate opposition has been under heavy pressure to unify their ranks and row back on some of their more radical demands after a series of battlefield victories that have given Assad's regime the upper hand.

"We expect the other side (Syrian regime) to come to the negotiations so that we can all move forward in the political process," Hariri said.

Several rounds of talks hosted by the United Nations have failed to bring an end to the Syrian conflict, which has killed more than 330,000 people since 2011 and forced millions from their homes.

Assad's fate has been a major stumbling block in multiple rounds of negotiations between the Syrian regime and the opposition.

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US President Donald Trump's call to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came as Washington contemplates a longer term military presence to influence the fate of Syria

The Islamic State group may be on the run from its last bastion in Syria but the United States is gearing up for a longer stay in the country.

And if US forces are to counter Iranian and Russian influence as Syria struggles to emerge from civil war, they will need Turkey's help.

But Washington's relations with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's testy government have been strained of late, posing a diplomatic challenge.

So when US President Donald Trump called his counterpart Friday, he needed to make a significant gesture -- and he seems to have delivered.

Tensions remain high, but Trump's apparent promise not to send any more weapons to the YPG Syrian Kurdish militia was a key concession to Ankara.

Without it, a major NATO ally might have moved closer to Iran and Russia, who are battling to save Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime.

Some in Washington and the region may see it as a betrayal of a battlefield ally that was instrumental in capturing the IS capital Raqa.

But the Kurds now have the strength to hold their own in northeastern Syria, and Washington is turning to the bigger picture.

"We can't operate in the long term in Syria without Turkish bases and Turkish airspace and to some degree Turkish diplomatic support," said former US ambassador James Jeffrey.

"So that's what the call is all about," Jeffrey, a former senior US national security adviser and envoy to both Ankara and Baghdad, told AFP in Washington.

Syria has been ensnared in civil war between Assad and an array of armed groups since 2011, and the chaos allowed IS to seize part of the east.

US commanders mobilized a coalition -- including the YPG -- to take on the jihadists, and the Kurdish Syrian fighters were in the vanguard when Raqa fell last month.

Turkey, a NATO ally, was nominally part of the US-led coalition, but in led its own intervention into northern Syria, battling extremists but also the Kurdish forces.

The YPG is an offshoot of the same movement as the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is waging a separatist insurgency inside Turkey.

- Driving Erdogan crazy -

According to Jeffrey, who as a fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy is still in touch with senior Turkish figures, "nothing drives Erdogan more crazy" than US backing for the YPG.

But at the same time, Ankara and Washington share an interest in countering Russia and Iran's influence in Syria and in shaping the country's future as peace talks loom.

After Friday's call, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Trump had promised arms supplies would halt and "essentially he said this nonsense should have been ended earlier."

The White House was less explicit, but confirmed Trump "informed President Erdogan of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria."

The White House also underlined that both leaders had discussed the importance of the upcoming United Nations-backed Syrian peace talks due to start next week in Geneva.

This is important because Turkey is now also party to a parallel and potentially rival political process being conducted under Russian auspices in the Kazakh capital Astana.

On Wednesday, Erdogan met presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Hassan Rouhani of Iran -- Assad's key allies -- in the Russian resort of Sochi, to discuss both sets of talks.

This could explain the timing of Friday's call, explained former Turkish member of parliament Aykan Erdemir, in an interview with AFP.

"There seems to be a greater convergence between NATO ally Turkey's Syria policy and Russia and Iran's Syria policy," said Erdemir, a scholar at US think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

In the early years of the Syrian conflict, Erdogan like then US president Barack Obama was rhetorically a staunch foe of Assad, despite frequent US-Turkish diplomatic spats.

But Russia's dramatic military intervention and steadily more powerful Iranian support saved the Syrian strongman's regime, and both Ankara and Washington confront a new reality.

For Erdemir, Erdogan is edging towards accepting that Assad's regime will cling on in some form, and is seeking a tactical accommodation with Moscow and Tehran.

He noted Turkey had allowed Assad to fly across its airspace for talks with Putin in Russia -- while Russian military transports brought war supplies in the other direction.

"Erdogan recently referred to Assad as the central administration, the central government in Syria, and many saw that as a landmark statement," he said.

- Radical U-turns -

But he predicted the shift would not last; Erdogan has much invested in painting Assad as a war criminal, and Russian forces will eventually want to edge Turkish troops out of Syria.

"I have serious doubts about the sustainability of Erdogan's game with Iran and Russia," he said, describing Turkish foreign policy in recent years as "a series of radical U-turns."

It might not yet be a U-turn, but after Trump's called Jeffrey said: "Are we better off now than we were 24 hours ago with the Turks? Probably."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Iran's Hassan Rouhani this week in Sochi to discuss the Syria crisis

Last week, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis stirred surprise when he announced US military presence in Syria would remain even after the Islamic State's defeat.

"We are going to make sure we set the conditions for a diplomatic solution," he said.

The solution Washington seeks would ideally lead to an elected government -- without Assad -- in Damascus, despite the effort invested by Iran and Russia to protect him.

But if that proves impossible, the priority will be stability and curtailing Iran's growing power.

To wield influence, the US will need the longer-standing military presence that Mattis envisages -- and to maintain that, Turkish support.

Turkey, for Jeffrey, is posing Washington a legitimate question: "We want a policy. What is your policy?"

Washington is now, perhaps, moving closer to an answer.
A malnourished child receives treatment at a hospital in the rebel-held Yemeni capital Sanaa on November 22, 2017

A UN plane carrying desperately needed vaccines landed in the rebel-held Yemeni capital Sanaa on Saturday after a three-week Saudi-led aid blockade that had sparked warnings thousands could die.

Three other aircraft -- two carrying UN aid workers and one carrying International Committee of the Red Cross staff -- also landed at the airport, which was repaired earlier this week after a Saudi-led air strike knocked out its radio navigation systems, an AFP correspondent reported.

The UN humanitarian affairs office had said on Friday that it had been given clearance by the Saudi-led coalition that has been fighting the rebels since 2015 to resume flights into Sanaa.

But it added that desperately needed shipments of food and medicines to the rebel-held Red Sea port of Hodeida remained blocked.

An official from the rebel-run civil aviation authority confirmed that the flights had landed.

But he warned that Saturday's aid delivery was not enough and demanded access to Sanaa airport for all flights in order to "save the lives of the sick", the rebel-run Saba news agency reported.

In a statement to the rebel-run Al-Masira television channel, Huthi leader Abdelmalek al-Huthi urged his supporters to remain mobilised against any "new Saudi escalation".

The UN children's fund UNICEF said Saturday's flight was carrying more than 15 tonnes, or 1.9 million doses, of vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and other preventable diseases.

The World Health Organization said earlier this week that diphtheria was spreading as children went unvaccinated and doctors in Hodeida reported three deaths.

More than 2,000 people have died of cholera in Yemen this year, adding to the 8,600 who have been killed in the conflict between the Saudi-backed government and the rebels since 2015.

The aid blockade, put in place after the rebels fired a missile which was intercepted over Riyadh airport, has tightened the stranglehold on Hodeida, the conduit for UN-supervised deliveries of food and medicine to rebel-held territory.

The UN humanitarian office said that a ship loaded with wheat and another with equipment to treat the cholera epidemic are ready to head to Hodeida as soon as the Saudi-led coalition gives the go-ahead.

The coalition had said it would lift its blockade of the port from Thursday but it remains in place.

The United Nations has warned that unless the blockade is lifted, Yemen will face "the largest famine the world has seen for decades".

Yemen is highly dependent on imported wheat for its basic needs, and aid groups have warned that humanitarian deliveries cover only a small portion of the need.

Seven million Yemenis are completely dependent on relief supplies for their survival, according to the UN.
Egyptians carry victims on stretchers following an attack on the Rawda mosque in the Sinai on November 24, 2017

Egypt mourned on Saturday as the death toll from a gun and bomb assault on a mosque in the Sinai Peninsula soared above 300, including children, in the deadliest attack the country has witnessed.

The army said warplanes had struck militant hideouts in the insurgency-wracked North Sinai in retaliation.

According to the state prosecution, up to 30 militants in camouflage flying the Islamic State group's black banner had surrounded the mosque and massacred the worshippers during weekly Friday prayers.

Twenty-seven children were among the dead, it said.

IS has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but it is the main suspect as the mosque is associated with followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Sunni Islam whom it has branded heretics.

Funerals for the victims were held overnight and many were buried unwashed in their bloodied clothes, according to the Islamic burial practices for martyrs, security and medical officials said.

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning and vowed to "respond with brutal force" to the attack, among the deadliest in the world since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period," he said in a televised speech.

Hours later Egyptian air force jets pursued the "terrorists and discovered several vehicles used in the terrorist attack, killing those inside near the vicinity of the attack", an army spokesman said.

- 'Darkness pervades the village' -

The state prosecutor's office said in a statement that 305 people were killed and 128 wounded in the assault on the Rawda mosque in a village roughly 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish.

It said the attackers, with long beards and hair often seen on jihadists, arrived in five all-terrain vehicles and surrounded the mosque.

Witnesses said they heard gunshots and explosions before the assailants entered the mosque, according to the prosecution.

"Nobody in that mosque escaped unharmed," said the brother of the mosque's imam, or prayer leader, Mohamed Abdel Fattah.

"He was shot in the foot," the brother, Ahmed, told AFP in a phone call, adding that the religious leader was still in "too much shock" to speak.

One of the wounded, Magdy Rizk, told AFP assailants wore masks and military uniforms, and that extremists had previously threatened people in the area.

Egyptian soldiers stand guard outside a hospital in Ismailia on November 25, 2017 where the victims of a deadly mosque attack are receiving treatment

Relatives visited victims in hospital in the city of Ismailia near the Suez Canal where the wounded were taken for treatment, an AFP photographer reported.

Locals and relatives of people living in the village where the attack happened said the Rawda mosque was prominent.

"This is the largest mosque in the area. It is the parent mosque, where events take place, funerals and weddings. When full it has 600 or 700 people," said Ahmed Sweilam, whose cousins live in the village.

"Darkness pervades the village now."

World leaders voiced outrage. US President Donald Trump denounced on Twitter the "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenceless worshippers".

Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar, Egypt's highest institution of Sunni Islam, condemned "in the strongest terms this barbaric terrorist attack".

Israel's Prime Minister called for unity against "terrorism", saying: "Terrorism will be defeated even more quickly if all countries work against it together."

- IS targeting of Sufis -

Egyptians walk past bodies following a bomb and gun assault at the Rawda mosque, near the North Sinai capital of El-Arish, that killed at least 235 worshippers

The Egypt branch of IS has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and also civilians accused of working with the authorities, in attacks in the north of the Sinai peninsula.

They have also targeted Sufis as well as Christians.

A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights IS told AFP that the Rawda mosque is known as a place where Sufis gather.

IS views Sufis as heretics for seeking the intercession of saints.

The group has also killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, forcing many to flee the peninsula.

The military has struggled to quell the jihadists who pledged allegiance to IS in November 2014.

The jihadists have since increasingly turned to civilian targets, attacking not only Christians and Sufis but also Bedouin Sinai inhabitants accused of working with the army.

View of the Rawda mosque, roughly 40 kilometres west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish, after a bloody gun and bombing attack, on November 24, 2017.

The group also claimed the bombing of a Russian plane that killed all 224 people on board after takeoff from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on October 31, 2015.

Aside from IS, Egypt also faces a threat from Al-Qaeda-aligned jihadists who operate out of neighbouring Libya.

A group calling itself Ansar al-Islam -- Supporters of Islam in Arabic -- claimed an October ambush in Egypt's Western Desert that killed at least 16 policemen.

The military later conducted air strikes on the attackers, killing their leader.
Iraqi forces advance into the western desert on November 24, 2014 in an operation to flush out fugitive Islamic State group fighters

Iraqi forces thrust north from the Euphrates Valley into the desert on Saturday, opening up a new front in the drive to flush out fugitive Islamic State group fighters, a commander told AFP.

IS has already been driven from all the towns it once held, but Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said he will not proclaim victory until the jihadists have been cleared from the western desert bordering Syria.

Troops and paramilitaries had advanced into the desert from the east and north on Thursday at the start of an offensive aimed at inflicting a final defeat on the jihadists.

On Saturday, troops and tribal militia pushed north from Al-Qaim and Rawa, two Euphrates Valley towns recaptured from IS earlier this month, in a pincer movement against retreating IS fighters, one of the operation's two commanders told AFP.

"It's a matter of linking up with the forces advancing from Nineveh" province in the north, the commander said, asking not to be identified.

Iraq-IS conflict

"The aim of the operation is to clear the desert right up to the Syrian border and hunt down the terrorists who fled into the desert from the towns that have been liberated."

The Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary force, which has played a key role in the offensive, said 100 villages and hamlets had already been cleared of IS fighters.

"The battle for the desert is very important because it's from there that Daesh fighters coming from Syria can attack our defence lines," said Hashed number two Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

In a video posted by the Hashed, Mohandis said the desert was "the last region where Daesh still has a military presence."

He said operations against it were under away over an area of 27,000 square kilometres (10,400 square miles)

But he warned that their completion would not spell the end of IS.

Iraqi forces advance into the western desert on November 24, 2017, in an operation to flush out fugitive Islamic State group fighters

"We must hunt them down in areas that have been liberated and we must arrest them before they slip back into urban areas," said Mohandis, who is widely regarded as the strongman of the Hashed, which is largely composed of Iran-backed Shiite militias.

"We must remain in a state of alert," he added. "Security will not be fully assured until we have complete control of the border with Syria."

At the peak of its power in 2014, IS ruled some seven million people in a territory as large as Italy, encompassing large parts of Syria and nearly a third of Iraq.

It is now being flushed out of its last desert hideouts in Iraq at the same time as its final pockets of control in Syria face simultaneous operations by Russian-backed government forces and US-backed Kurdish-led fighters.
South African white farmers want the government to take action on a string of murders targeting their community

Hundreds of white South African farmers on Saturday took to the streets of Pretoria, demanding government action over a wave of murders targeting their communities in rural areas.

The march is the latest protest staged over the murder of at least 72 white farmers so far this year, according to figures from campaign group AfriForum.

"In the last six years, (there has been) an increase every year in farm attacks and murders," said Ernst Roets, a member of AfriForum, which advocates for its largely white membership, many of whom speak Afrikaans.

Protesters marched under the rain to Union Building, seat of the South African government.

"Stop farm murder" and "We are mourning", read some of the marchers' placards.

Dirk Hermann, who helped organise the march, said "there is much more murder of farmers in South Africa" than of people in other professions, including the police force.

On October 30, thousands of white farmers held large demonstrations in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria, to protest against what they described as an explosion of violence against their communities.

Roets demanded concerted action by the authorities, saying that Saturday's march sought to show "the South African government that people are fed up with farm attacks and the issue of safety".

He also demanded that the government establish a "specialised unit" to protect his community.

Tensions are running high in South Africa after two white farmers were convicted of forcing a black labourer into a coffin and threatened to kill him, as they accused him of stealing from their farm.

Twenty-three years after the end of white-minority rule, South Africa is still beset by deep-rooted racial inequality.
Mount Agung on Indonesia's resort island of Bali belched smoke as high as 1,500 metres (4,900 feet) above its summit sparking an exodus from settlements near the mountain

A rumbling volcano on the Indonesian resort island of Bali spewed smoke hundreds of metres into the air Saturday, officials said, just days after thousands were forced to flee over fears it would erupt.

Mount Agung belched smoke as high as 1,500 metres (4,900 feet) above its summit, twice as high as on Tuesday when smoke sparked an exodus from settlements near the mountain.

There are fears the volcano could erupt for the first time since 1963, when nearly 1,600 people died.

People living within 7.5 kilometres (4.5 miles) of the mountain have been told to evacuate, senior volcanologist Gede Suantika said, advising residents to remain calm.

It comes after the volcano stirred to life in September, forcing 140,000 people to leave the area.

There are fears Mount Agung on Indonesia's resort island of Bali could erupt for the first time since 1963, when nearly 1,600 people died

Many returned home after the volcano's activity waned, but fresh smoke has sparked a further exodus and around 25,000 people have been evacuated to more than 200 temporary shelters.

"We will continue to see eruptions like this on similar scales, but we cannot predict when Mount Agung will really erupt," Suantika told AFP.

The volcano's alert level remains at the second-highest, he added.

Bali is a major tourist hub and its airport is operating normally, but some airlines have decided to cancel their flights.

Indonesia lies on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where tectonic plates collide, causing frequent volcanic and seismic activity.

Mount Sinabung on Sumatra island -- which is currently at its highest alert level -- has been active since 2013.
Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson led a small protest demanding the British government do more to help a woman jailed in Iran, accusing Boris Johnson of making her situation worse

Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson led a small protest Saturday demanding the British government do more to help a woman jailed in Iran, accusing Boris Johnson of making her situation worse.

Thompson said the foreign secretary should "get on a plane" to Tehran as she joined supporters of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, including her husband Richard Ratcliffe, in the couple's neighbourhood of Hampstead in north-west London.

"We are a net of compassion and love for Nazanin and her family. This is what we human beings do best -- in stark contrast to the bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster," the actress said.

"If I can get out of bed with pneumonia to support a horribly abused member of our community then our foreign secretary can get on a plane and go to Iran and deal with the problem he's so seriously exacerbated."

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian citizen, was arrested at Tehran airport on April 3, 2016, after visiting relatives with her young daughter.

She was sentenced to five years in jail for sedition. Then last month authorities presented extra charges, and she will appear in court on December 10 accused of spreading propaganda.

Johnson was accused of jeopardising her defence by saying she was training journalists before she was arrested -- something her employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), and her family have strongly denied.

The foreign secretary later clarified his remarks, saying it was clear that she was only on holiday. He is expected to raise her case when he makes an official visit to Iran in the coming weeks.

Thompson, a mother of two who won a best actress Oscar for "Howard's End", is supporting a "mother's open letter" calling on Tehran to free Zaghari-Ratcliffe so she can be reunited with her daughter.

Gabriella, now three, had her British passport confiscated and has since been living with her grandparents in Iran.
Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni gives a press conference after meeting Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi on November 25, 2017

The influx of Tunisian migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Italy is back under control after a spike in numbers at the end of summer, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Saturday.

"After some problems over the course of the summer, the accord started to work very effectively again," he told reporters in Tunis, referring to a six-year-old agreement between the two countries aimed at curbing illegal immigration.

According to the International Organization for Migration, 1,357 Tunisians reached the Italian coastline between January and August, a number which jumped to more than 1,400 in the month of September alone.

Migration has become a burning issue in Tunisia since October 6 when around 40 people were killed in a collision between a migrant boat and a Tunisian navy vessel.

Migrants use small vessels headed for the Italian islands of Sicily and Lampedusa.

The Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights said in a report last year that half of Tunisian youths from low-income areas were thinking of leaving the country, and one in three was prepared to do so clandestinely.

The NGO said increasing poverty and unemployment in the North African country were to blame.
Activists of the hardline Islamist group Tehreek-i-Labaik Yah Rasool Allah Pakistan had brought the capital Islamabad to a near-standstill

Pakistan's government called on the powerful military to deploy in the capital Islamabad Saturday after deadly unrest broke out when police moved to dislodge an Islamist protest that has paralysed the city for weeks.

At least six people were killed and some 190 injured -- around 137 of whom were security personnel -- in fierce clashes as police tried to disperse the demonstration earlier Saturday.

Security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets and demonstrators blocked roads and burned police vehicles around the site of the sit-in. As the violence intensified, protests sprouted in the major cities of Lahore and Karachi, as well as smaller towns across the country.

"According to figures we have, at least six people were killed in violence today," Deeba Shahnaz, a spokeswoman for the Provincial Rescue department, told AFP. A security official also confirmed the death toll.

Authorities had been attempting to clear a relatively small protest by the little-known hardline group Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah Pakistan (TLYRAP) that has blocked a main highway into Islamabad since November 6, causing hours-long traffic snarls and enraging citizens.

It was not clear how many protesters remained in the streets of the capital late Saturday.

There had been roughly 2,000 as the operation began, but AFP reporters said dozens more were arriving throughout the day. Many were galvanised by posts on social media, despite apparent efforts to block sites including Twitter.

Police and paramilitary forces retreated following the clashes, with the Islamabad Capital Territory authorities making the request for the army to step in soon after.

An interior ministry order said the federal government had authorised the deployment of "sufficient troops" to "control law and order" in the city until further notice.

There was no immediate comment from military officials and no sign of troops in the streets late Saturday.

The demonstrations have threatened the beleaguered Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) government ahead of a general election due to be held next year.

The PML-N is already reeling from a Supreme Court decision to oust former prime minister Nawaz Sharif over graft allegations in the summer, while finance minister Ishaq Dar -- also embroiled in a corruption scandal -- has taken indefinite medical leave.

Sharif had repeatedly clashed with the military, which has ruled Pakistan for half of its 70-year history.

Analysts and critics accused the government of bungling its response to the protests, with authorities hesitating for days over fears of violence as the city's commuters seethed in the traffic choked streets.

During the unrest Pakistan's media regulator barred local TV channels from broadcasting live images.

Twitter said it was "monitoring" reports of the government blocking the site, adding "We... hope service will be fully restored soon".

- Alarmed residents -

The TLYRAP are demanding that Pakistan's law minister Zahid Hamid resign over a hastily-abandoned amendment to the oath that election candidates must swear.

Demonstrators have linked it to blasphemy -- a highly contentious issue in Muslim Pakistan -- and claim the oath was softened to enable the participation of Ahmadis, a long-persecuted Islamic minority sect.

Earlier, police in Karachi said some 200 protesters had blockaded a major road in the southern port, with at least 27 injured -- including 22 people with gunshot wounds -- brought to hospital, according to doctors.

Markets and shops were shuttered in the megacity, Pakistan's commercial hub, as alarmed residents stayed inside, while hardline clerics urged more people to take to the streets.

At least one person was killed and scores injured in clashes between hardline Islamist protestors and Pakistani forces

An AFP journalist in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, said a main artery road was closed by police due to protests. Smaller rallies were reported in other towns across the country.

Earlier in the day Pakistan's powerful military chief phoned the prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi to urge the situation be handled "peacefully".

General Qamar Javed Bajwa called for both sides to avoid violence "as it is not in national interest", army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor said on Twitter.

- 'Explosive' situation -

The protesters come from the Barelvi sect of Islam that has strong ties to Sufism, a mystical branch of the religion that is seen as moderate.

However the execution in 2016 of Barelvi follower Mumtaz Qadri -- who assassinated liberal Punjab governor Salman Taseer over his stance on the country's blasphemy laws -- led members of the group to take a more hardline stance against any moves to reform the legislation.

"These people already had a grudge against the government and the government just provided them the opportunity to vent out their anger," said political analyst Hasan Askari.

But weeks of inaction from authorities sparked the wrath of Pakistan's judiciary, with the Supreme Court issuing a blistering statement earlier in the week and the Islamabad High Court threatening to hold government officials in contempt.

Despite the protest's relatively small intial size, authorities have hesitated to act against it, citing fears of violence as the demonstrators have vowed to die for their cause

Analysts said the government had allowed a minor issue to grow into a headline-grabbing and potentially dangerous situation.

Even before Saturday's clashes the sit-in had cost the life of an eight-year-old child whose ambulance could not reach a hospital in time due to the blocked roads.

"Politically driven procrastination has its own costs and this is what the government is paying," analyst Imtiaz Gul told AFP, adding that the situation was "explosive".
Russia's President Vladimir Putin, pictured here in November 2017, signed into law new rules on international media organisations present in Russia being termed "foreign agents"

President Vladimir Putin on Saturday signed into law new rules on international media organisations present in Russia being termed "foreign agents", following US pressure on the Kremlin-backed RT television channel.

Already approved by both houses of parliament, the legislation was published on the Russian authorities' official website and comes into force immediately.

The law allows any international media outlet operating in Russia to be classified under the controversial foreign agent label by the Ministry of Justice.

The law is in retaliation to the United States registering Moscow-controlled RT Television by the same term.

The Kremlin's council for human rights has denounced the bill, saying it was vaguely worded and difficult to reasonably enforce.

"Any foreign media could be labelled a foreign agent quite arbitrarily by the justice ministry of the Russian Federation," the council said in a statement.

Highly criticised by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, US and other foreign media will have to present themselves as foreign agents on all paperwork and submit to intensive scrutiny of staffing and financing.

The 2012 law, which had applied only to non-governmental organisations, has now been formally extended.

The Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, funded by the US Congress, are the first foreign media to have been warned by Moscow they may need to register under the new classification.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pictured here in November 2017, condemned the attack on the Rawda mosque in Egypt

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Saturday for countries to unify their efforts against "terrorism" as he condemned an attack on a mosque in Egypt that left 305 people dead.

"Israel strongly condemns the horrific and criminal terrorist attack on the Rawda mosque near El-Arish," said a statement from his office.

"Terrorism will be defeated even more quickly if all countries work against it together."

Egypt was in mourning on Saturday as the death toll from the gun and bomb assault at the mosque in the Sinai Peninsula soared above 300, including children, in the deadliest attack the country has witnessed.

The state prosecution said that up to 30 militants in camouflage flying the Islamic State group's black banner had surrounded the mosque and proceeded to massacre the worshippers during weekly Friday prayers.

The army said warplanes attacked militant hideouts in the insurgency-wracked North Sinai in retaliation.

IS has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but it is the main suspect as the mosque is associated with followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Sunni Islam whom it has branded heretics.
Hafiz Saeed (2L), meeting with supporters after offering Friday prayers at a Lahore mosque on November 24, 2017, denies links to terrorism

Pakistan-US ties could be affected if Islamabad does not act to rearrest and prosecute a mastermind of the deadly siege in India's Mumbai nearly a decade ago, the White House warned on Saturday.

The statement came three days after a Pakistani court ordered the release of Hafiz Saeed, who heads the UN-listed terrorist group Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and has a $10 million US bounty on his head.

Saeed's freedom came despite months of pressure by Washington on Islamabad over its alleged support for militants.

Freeing him "belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists," President Donald Trump's press secretary said in a statement.

"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistans global reputation," the statement said.

Saeed had been under house arrest since January following a government crackdown on JuD, but a spokesman for his party said authorities had failed to provide evidence.

Trump seeks "a constructive relationship with Pakistan, but expects decisive action against militant and terrorist groups on Pakistani soil that are a threat to the region," the White House said.

"The release of Saeed is a step in the wrong direction."

On Friday the US State Department expressed deep concern at Saeed's release and called for him to be arrested and charged.

Six Americans were among 166 people killed in 2008 during the three-day siege in Mumbai when gunmen who arrived by sea sparked battles with Indian commandos.

The drama, played out on live television around the world, nearly brought nuclear-armed enemies India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

JuD is considered by the US and India to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the militant group blamed for the attack on India's financial capital.

In October, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Washington is concerned that extremist groups are threatening the "stability and security" of the Pakistani government.

Trump has accused Islamabad of harboring "agents of chaos" who could attack US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Washington and Kabul have long accused Islamabad of supporting Afghan militants including the Taliban. They are believed to have links to Pakistan's shadowy military establishment.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied the charge.

Saeed's party says he has no links to terrorism, and his spokesman said he was placed under house arrest for talking about the rights of people in the disputed Kashmir region.
BERLIN (AP) - Pressure grew Thursday within Germany's Social Democratic Party to at least discuss the possibility of forming a new government with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, after her talks with other parties collapsed over the weekend.

SPD leader Martin Schulz ruled out returning to the current "grand coalition" with Merkel after leading his party to a disastrous result in September's election, but appeared to soften his stance before a meeting Thursday with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has urged politicians to compromise.

"The SPD is fully aware of its responsibility in the current difficult situation," Schulz told German news agency dpa. "I'm sure we will find a good solution for our country in the coming days and weeks."

Chairman of the Social Democratic party, Martin Schulz, speaks to journalists during a demonstration of Siemens employees against job cuts, in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Nov. 23, 2017. (Kay Nietfeld/dpa via AP)

Merkel's failure to reach a deal with the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats after four weeks of talks put all of Germany's mainstream parties on the spot. If no one budges, the options are a minority government - never previously tried - or a new election.

Several Social Democrats, while expressing skepticism, have suggested their party should discuss another coalition with Merkel or support for a minority government led by her.

"If absolutely nothing else works, we must again consider a grand coalition," lawmaker Karl Lauterbach told public broadcaster ZDF.

The party's deputy leader, Thorsten Schaefer-Guembel, said the Social Democrats shouldn't rule out anything.

"We need to discuss every option," he told the Passauer Neue Presse.

Meanwhile, the fate of another key figure in the German coalition talks could be decided later Thursday. Horst Seehofer, the leader of the Christian Social Union which forms the Bavaria-only part of Merkel's conservative bloc, was due to hold talks with senior party members late Thursday.

There was widespread speculation of a party shake-up.

Seehofer's party lost a significant share of its voters to the upstart nationalist party Alternative for Germany in the Sept. 24 national election. The Christian Social Union are keen to avoid a similar blow in next year's Bavarian vote, putting pressure on its 68-year-old leader to step aside and make way for a younger rival.

_____

David Rising contributed to this story.

Chairman of the Social Democratic party, Martin Schulz, speaks during a demonstration of Siemens employees against job cuts, in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Nov. 23, 2017. (Kay Nietfeld/dpa via AP)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, and Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, left, arrive for a cabinet meeting of the German government at the chancellery in Berlin, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2017. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
BEIRUT (AP) - Syrian opposition figures held meetings in the Saudi Arabian capital on Friday to name a unified delegation that will attend peace talks with the government as a Russian official said the issue of Syrian President Bashar Assad running for office in the future is still under discussion.

The meetings in Riyadh came a day after Syrian opposition representatives called for direct and unconditional negotiations with the Syrian government over the more than 6-year civil war that would lead to the launch of a transition period.

The opposition didn't condition its participation in upcoming U.N.-based negotiations on the departure of President Bashar Assad from office, signaling a degree of flexibility. The issue has always been the sticking point in previous rounds of talks, deepening division among an already fragmented opposition.

Syrian opposition official Ahmad Ramadan said the opposition will likely name an 11-member delegation later Friday that will lead talks with the government in Geneva next week.

The delegation will include members of the Saudi-based opposition as well as groups based in Egypt and Russia.

"We have agreed with groups based here in Riyadh as well as those in Cairo and Moscow to form a unified delegation to participate in the direct negotiations in Geneva in the coming few days," leading opposition figure Basma Kodmani told reporters in Riyadh late Thursday.

In Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Friday that the issue of Assad running for office in the future is still under discussion. Assad was elected for a seven-year term in 2014.

Asked about a possibility of an early presidential election in Syria and Assad running in it, Bogdanov said in an interview with RIA Novosti: "This is under the discussion now, the work is ongoing. There are no results yet."

Russia has always said that the fate of Assad will be decided by the Syrian people while Syrian government officials have said they will not give the opposition in peace talks what they failed to achieve by war.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not ruled out possible contact with Assad in a sign that his stance may be softening toward the Syrian leader. Erdogan has been one of Assad's harshest leaders and has been calling on him to step down since the early days of the conflict that began in March 2011.

Responding to a question about a possible contact or cooperation with Assad in view of both leaders' opposition to Syrian Kurdish fighters, Erdogan told journalists: "The political doors are always open until the last minute."

Erdogan was speaking on board his plane on his return from a trilateral meeting with Russia and Iran to promote a peaceful settlement in Syria that took place in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Wednesday.

His comments were reported by Hurriyet newspaper and other media on Friday.

Turkey has strongly opposed Assad and has spoken against him having any future role in Syria.

____

Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey contributed to this report.
TUCKER, Ark. (AP) - Two correctional officers at a maximum-security prison in central Arkansas were held hostage Friday by a pair of inmates, a prison system spokesman said.

The officers, who suffered cuts and bruises, were freed a short time later, said Arkansas Department of Correction spokesman Solomon Graves. The incident occurred in a housing area at the Maximum Security Unit in Tucker, 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Little Rock.

Graves said the two inmates were taken into custody after "a use of force." He did not specify what kind of force was used.

It wasn't immediately clear what led to the hostage situation. Graves said Arkansas State Police were investigating.

Several violent incidents have occurred at Arkansas prisons, prompting investigations by the Correction Department and state police. On Nov. 2, two guards suffered minor injuries while trying to seize contraband from inmates at the Delta Regional Unit near Dermott in the southeastern corner of the state.

A group of inmates refused to return to their cells on Oct. 20 at the Ouachita River Unit near Malvern. The standoff was resolved with no injuries.

On Sept. 28, three guards were assaulted at two facilities on the same day. Two guards were assaulted by several inmates at the Varner Unit hours after a guard was assaulted by a prisoner at the Maximum Security Unit, also known as Tucker Max.

On Aug. 7, several inmates held three officers in an area of Tucker Max for three hours before releasing them and surrendering.
A spear fisherman was badly injured in a shark attack in California.

State fire captain Josh Silveira said Grigor Azatian, 25, and his father, Armen, were several hundred yards offshore Friday at Pebble Beach when the son was bitten in the right thigh.

'He jumped in the boat, grabbed his spear gun went down and saw the shark,' Armen Azatian said to KSBW.

'Great white. From his description, it was about 15 feet long.'

Armen claims that his son was bit by the shark about two or three times.

Grigor Azatian, 25, and his father, Armen, were hundreds of yards offshore Friday at Pebble Beach, California, when the son was bitten in the right thigh

Grigor was rescued by two off-duty deputies that had been fishing out on the water. Police in a helicopter also spotted a 'large aquatic animal off Pescadero Point, which may have been a shark'

Grigor was rescued by two off-duty deputies that had been fishing out on the water.

One of the deputies was able to stop the 'massive blood loss'.

Silveira says the man's leg was intact but the bite was serious. The victim was taken to a trauma center for surgery but there was no immediate word on his condition.

His father said that the shark ripped off chunks of flesh but didn't severe any major arteries.

His father said that the shark ripped off chunks of flesh but didn't severe any major arteries

One of the deputies was able to stop the 'massive blood loss' because he was adequately trained in emergency field medicine

Police in a helicopter also spotted a 'large aquatic animal off Pescadero Point, which may have been a shark,' according to the Mercury News.

The beach was tagged with warning signs.

Silveira says there haven't been any recent shark sightings at the Monterey County beach.

However, in March a great white shark attacked a kayak in Monterey Bay, knocking the kayaker into the water. He wasn't bitten.

Police in a helicopter also spotted a 'large aquatic animal off Pescadero Point, which may have been a shark,' according to the Mercury News




LONDON (AP) - British officials say a Heathrow Airport security worker has been arrested in an airport toilet after seven kilograms (15 pounds) of cocaine was seized.

The National Crime Agency said Saturday the 30-year-old man, from London, was arrested Thursday with a 37-year-old Colombian man in a lavatory in Terminal 5 at Heathrow. Officials say the Colombian man had just arrived on a flight from the Colombian capital Bogota.

Another man was arrested in the arrivals airport of the busy international airport and a fourth man was arrested at a London residential address.

All four are being questioned on suspicion of importing drugs.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The crush of unfinished business facing lawmakers when they return to the Capitol would be daunting even if Washington were functioning at peak efficiency.

It's an agenda whose core items - tax cuts, a potential government shutdown, lots of leftover spending bills - could unravel just as easily as advance in factionalism, gamesmanship and a toxic political environment.

There's only a four-week window until a Christmas deadline, barely enough time for complicated negotiations even if December stays on the rails. And that's hardly a sure bet in President Donald Trump's capital.

FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2017, file photo, the Capitol is seen at sunrise, in Washington. The crush of unfinished business facing lawmakers when they return to the Capitol this week would be daunting even if Washington were functioning at peak efficiency. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Trump and congressional leaders plan a meeting Tuesday to discuss how to sidestep a shutdown and work though the legislative to-do list.

For the optimistic, it's plain that Democrats and Republicans have reasons to cooperate, particularly on spending increases for the Pentagon and domestic agencies whose budgets otherwise would be frozen. An additional round of hurricane aid should be bipartisan, and efforts to reauthorize a popular health care program for children seem to be on track.

Republicans are advancing their cherished tax cut measure under special rules that mean Senate Democrats cannot use delaying tactics. The measure passed the House just before the Thanksgiving break and moves to the Senate floor this coming week.

After the Senate GOP's failure on health care this summer, the majority party is under enormous pressure to produce a victory on taxes. Still, GOP deficit hawks such as Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona remain uneasy about the overhaul.

While Democrats are largely sidelined on taxes, they hold leverage over a mix of budget-related issues.

First, there's the need to avert a government shutdown after a temporary spending bill expires on Dec. 8. The most likely scenario, congressional aides say, is for an additional extension until Christmas. On a parallel track are talks to raise spending limits that are keeping agency budgets essentially frozen unless those caps are raised. If that happens, then negotiations could begin in earnest on a massive catchall spending measure in hopes of having it signed into law by year's end.

Taxes have gotten all the attention so far, but the showdown over a potential shutdown right before Christmas could soon take center stage. Democrats are counting on GOP fears of a holiday season closure to ensure Republican concessions during December talks.

Both sides would have to make concessions that may upset partisans in either party. Just as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., fears a revolt on the right, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California risks an uprising on her left. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., round out the quartet of top negotiators.

"Everybody's got complicated politics. The chance of short-term failure is pretty high - short-term failure being a shutdown," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist. "But the four of them, assuming they don't want to shut the government down for a long time, are going to have to come to an accommodation."

Talks on the spending caps are stuck, however, aides say. A GOP offer to lift the Pentagon budget by more than $54 billion next year and nondefense limits by $37 billion was rejected by Democrats demanding balance between the two sides of the ledger.

Long-delayed battles over immigration and Trump's promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border are huge obstacles. Many Democrats whose votes are needed on the spending bills insist they won't vote for any legislation that includes the wall. Trump remains dead set on his $1.6 billion request for a down payment on the project.

Those same Democrats also insist that Congress must act by year's end to protect immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and whose protected status is set to lapse next year. Trump backs the idea despite issuing an executive order reversing the Obama administration protections, starting next spring. Conservatives oppose drawing in the immigration issue to legislation to keep the government running.

Hurricane relief is adding one more wrinkle.

Congress has approved more than $50 billion in aid in response to a series of devastating hurricanes. The most recent request by the White House is the largest yet at $44 billion, but it's not nearly enough to satisfy the powerful Texas delegation, which is pressing behind the scenes for more.

"Completely inadequate," said Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas. "We must do far more to rebuild, repair and allow Texans to return to normal as quickly as possible."

Trump is a wild card. He warmed to the idea of cutting deals with Democrats after a September pact with Schumer and Pelosi to lift the government's debt ceiling.

He promised Democratic leaders that he would sign legislation to give the young immigrants legal status - provided border security is addressed as well.

But that demand on border security came with a long list of conditions subsequently added by the White House. Among them: building his Mexico border wall, overhauling the green card system and strengthening measures against people who stay after their visas expire.

Trump has not really engaged on the year-end agenda, however, and his impulsiveness could be a liability. He almost disowned an omnibus spending bill in May after media accounts portrayed the measure as a win for Democrats.
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) - Former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa returned home Saturday for the first time since leaving office as he gears up for a political fight against his hand-picked successor.

A chaotic scene awaited Correa at the arrival terminal of Guayaquil's airport, where police were called in as dozens of his supporters exchanged insults and even a few blows with a smaller crowd of protesting critics.

The former president arrived shortly after midnight on a private flight from neighboring Colombia.

FILE - In this July 10, 2017 file photo, supporters of Ecuador's former President Rafael Correa gather to bid him farewell before he departs for Belgium to live with his family, from Quito, Ecuador. Correa announced he would return to Ecuador as early as Nov. 24, where his once powerful Alianza Pais government party is virtually divided between those who still support him and a majority who have aligned with the current president, Lenin Moreno. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa, File)

Correa returned to Ecuador to attend a Dec. 3 convention called by some of his top aides where President Lenin Moreno is expected to be expelled as head of the ruling Alianza Pais party. But Moreno's allies and an electoral court consider the congress illegal.

Correa has accused Moreno of betraying his legacy by pursuing conservative economic policies and going after close allies such as Vice President Jorge Glas, who has been jailed on corruption charges.

Correa currently lives in Belgium, where his wife is from, and has repeatedly said that he would only come out of political retirement if the social gains of what he calls his Citizens' Revolution were threatened.

Moreno has distanced himself from his one-time political mentor, courting conservative business leaders, exposing corruption and smoothing over tensions with the media and indigenous groups that Correa shunned. He's even accused Correa of planting hidden cameras in his presidential office to spy on him.

The conciliatory approach has proven successful: After winning election by a razor-thin majority, support for Moreno's government has soared to around 80 percent, according to several polls.

He now wants to break even further from Correa by pushing through a referendum that would make it impossible for Correa to run again for the presidency and purge institutions of much of his influence.

As part of the deepening feud, Moreno withdrew all powers from Vice President Glas, who has been jailed on charges of accepting bribes during Correa's decade-long rule.
PARIS (AP) - The Latest on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (all times local):

7:30 p.m.

Turkish police haven't intervened in a banned march that attracted more than 1,000 protesters to highlight the issue of violence against women and girls.

A protestor shouts slogans during a demonstration for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in Paris, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

The demonstration ended peacefully amid a tense atmosphere and heavy security after police told the group that the march wouldn't be allowed. Despite the ban, the march took place on Istanbul's main pedestrian avenue.

But the protesters didn't march the entire route that they had planned to after police told them to stop. They read a statement to the media and dispersed peacefully.

The group said that women faced violence from "husbands, fathers, lovers, ex-lovers . teachers, clients, police officers."

Protests in Turkey have been especially restricted since 2013 after a wave of anti-government protests, extremist attacks and a state of emergency declared following a failed coup in 2016.

Cilem Yagmur Cetiner, 19, said the women were demanding basic rights. She said "we want to live equally, no, we want to live."

___

6:50 p.m.

Hundreds of women have marched in Paris to protest violence against women, with some telling French President Emmanuel Macron to increase funding to meet his ambitions for change.

Raphaelle Remy-Leleu of the group "Dare Feminism" complained during the march that France has no full-fledged ministry for women's affairs.

The women marched shortly after Macron laid out a plan to change what he said is France's sexist culture, protect women and punish offenders.

Remy-Leleu said that "it's easy to mislead everybody when you don't ... give precise numbers."

Marches were held in other French cities marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Members of the Femen activist held signs reading "Women's Vendetta" and "Female Revenge."

___

6:30 p.m.

Women have marched through central Rome to encourage others to combat violence aimed at them by men.

The noisy procession included participants who run safe houses for women escaping violent husbands or boyfriends and other groups.

Women are pushing for more attention from lawmakers, including funding, for shelters and other institutions.

Some banners held by marchers to mark an international day to focus attention on violence against women read: "Free to be" and "Free to live."

___

5 p.m.

Hundreds of protesters have gathered in Turkey for women's rights to mark a day on violence against women and girls.

Turkish police have told the group the march wouldn't be allowed. Despite the ban, the march has started on Istanbul's main pedestrian avenue.

The protesters, mostly women, shouted chants including "We won't be silent" and "we aren't afraid." Small demonstrations took place in several Turkish cities.

Violence against women is one of the most "widespread, persistent and devastating" rights violations across the world, according to the United Nations.

Monitoring group FemicideMap reports at least 1,915 women were killed in Turkey in the past seven years. The perpetrator was a victim's husband or boyfriend in 995 cases.

___

2:40 p.m.

President Emmanuel Macron has announced an initiative to address violence and harassment against women in France, with plans aimed at erasing the sense of shame that breeds silence among victims and changing France's sexist culture.

In a speech on Saturday marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Macron laid out a plan to encourage women to take action, strengthen laws against offenders and educating citizens on the issue - starting from nursery school.

He said that 123 women died of violence against them in France last year. Holding a moment of silence for them, he said: "It is time for shame to change camps."

Protestors attend a demonstration for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in Paris, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Protestors hold a banner reading "Forever and everywhere against violence against women" during a demonstration for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in Paris, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Women take part in a march marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in Rome, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

French President Emmanuel Macron, right, and his wife Brigitte Macron, second right, French Minister for Solidarity and Health Agnes Buzyn, second left, and French senator Laurence Rossignol listen as the French Junior Minister for Gender Equality addresses guests at the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Saturday Nov. 25, 2017 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. (Ludovic Marin, Pool via AP)

Women take part in a march marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in Rome, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

A woman shouts slogans during a march as part of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in Rome, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Women hold a banner reading in Italian "Against the male violence on women we have a plan" as they take part in a march marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in Rome, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
LILLE, France (AP) - Yannick Noah took a big gamble in the Davis Cup final and it paid off.

When the France captain fielded an inexperienced pair for the doubles, many were perplexed. He was rewarded by a victory that put France one point away from a 10th Davis Cup title.

"It was a tough decision," Noah said after Richard Gasquet and Pierre-Hugues Herbert, who had never played together before, defeated Ruben Bemelmans and Joris De Loore 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (2), 6-4 on Saturday.

France's Richard Gasquet, right, and Pierre-Hugues Herbert celebrate after winning a point as they play Belgium's Ruben Bemelmans and Joris De Loore during their Davis Cup final double match at the Pierre Mauroy stadium in Lille, northern France, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

France leads Belgium 2-1.

Gasquet, who was initially named as a substitute in Noah's squad, replaced doubles specialist Nicolas Mahut for the final.

Herbert and Mahut, who won two Grand Slams together and were paired in the Davis Cup semifinal win against Serbia, were an obvious choice, "the politically correct decision," Noah said.

"To me, from a personal standpoint, it's very nice that they won that match," he added. He would have been "in the hot seat" if they lost.

Noah said he made his mind up during training when Herbert shook off a back injury and Gasquet was in excellent form.

"Their styles of play are matching well, with Richard really solid from the baseline, and PH, who has a huge presence at the net," Noah said.

When Herbert and Gasquet prevailed, Noah danced on the court and hugged French sports minister Laura Flessel in the stands.

In the first reverse singles on Sunday, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga can clinch the final for France against Belgium's top player, David Goffin. If Tsonga fails, the tie will be decided between Frenchman Lucas Pouille and Steve Darcis.

Tsonga and Goffin won their opening singles in straight sets.

"I'm not feeling down at all," said Belgium captain Johan Van Herck, still hoping to deliver a first Davis Cup title to his country.

"Jo made a good impression on Friday, but he will take on a different opponent on Sunday. David has the game to beat Jo. He is confident, and this will be a match worthy of the Davis Cup."

Despite their lack of practice and matches together, Herbert and Gasquet got off to a flying start on the indoor hard court at Pierre Mauroy Stadium.

Gasquet executed perfect passing shots from both sides and Herbert had a dominant presence at the net as they raced to 5-0. The Belgians saved two set points to finally hold serve, but Gasquet served out for the set.

The French served poorly in the second and always trailed. Bemelmans served out the set and the Belgians celebrated with a chest bump.

"They (Gasquet and Herbert) were on the brink of collapse," said Noah. "In the end, it came down to just one or two points, and being focused."

The French were under pressure early in the third set and had to fend off four break points in their first three service games. They finally cracked in the seventh game when De Loore unleashed a forehand return straight into Herbert's head to seal the break, knocking Herbert to the ground.

Herbert recovered but Bemelmans became nervous, with misses on important points. The French pair exploited his errors and leveled at 5-5 to the delight of the raucous home crowd. They dominated the tiebreaker.

De Loore received treatment on his left foot before the start of the fourth set. Herbert hit consecutive double faults to trail 15-40 on serve in the sixth game, but the French held, and made the decisive break for 4-3 following another big mistake from Bemelmans, who buried a smash into the bottom of the net.

French captain Yannick Noah reacts as France's Richard Gasquet and Pierre-Hugues Herbert play Belgium's Ruben Bemelmans, and Joris De Loore during their Davis Cup final double match at the Pierre Mauroy stadium in Lille, northern France, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

French captain Yannick Noah reacts as France's Richard Gasquet and Pierre-Hugues Herbert play Belgium's Ruben Bemelmans, and Joris De Loore during their Davis Cup final double match at the Pierre Mauroy stadium in Lille, northern France, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

Belgium's Ruben Bemelmans, left, and Joris De Loore celebrate after winning a point as they play France's Richard Gasquet and Pierre-Hugues Herbert during their Davis Cup final double match at the Pierre Mauroy stadium in Lille, northern France, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

France's Richard Gasquet, left, and Pierre-Hugues Herbert celebrate after winning a point as they play Belgium's Ruben Bemelmans and Joris De Loore during their Davis Cup final double match at the Pierre Mauroy stadium in Lille, northern France, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)
OBERHAUSEN, Germany (AP) - Seven months after a double hip replacement, Manuel Charr defeated Alexander Ustinov of Russia by unanimous decision for the vacant WBA heavyweight title on Saturday.

The judges awarded it 114-111, 116-111 and 115-112 in favor of Charr, who became the first German heavyweight champion since Max Schmeling in the early 1930s.

The Lebanese-born Charr, who was also shot in the stomach during an altercation at a kebab shop in 2015, said he would have been champion sooner had he undergone the hip operation before last April.

Charr arrived in Germany in 1989 as a refugee. He was stabbed in the back with a knife when he was 16.

"I have experienced much more than fits in a life," Charr said before the bout. "I'm like a cat with seven lives. I've used five so I have to change something."

Charr rocked Ustinov in the seventh round when he had the taller fighter against the ropes and tried to finish off the bout. The Russian weathered the punches but seemed disorientated, allowing Charr through again and again with his left.

Charr finished the eighth by catching Ustinov with a vicious left blow that left the Russian on his knees with blood streaming below his left eye. The bell provided respite.

Ustinov displayed remarkable resilience as he lumbered through the next rounds but Charr had already done enough.

Charr improved to 31-4 with 17 KOs, while Ustinov dropped to 34-2 (25 KOs).
A Heathrow security worker who was arrested in an airport toilet after 700,000 worth of cocaine was seized has been charged with conspiring to import drugs.

Farhan Iqbal, 30, was detained alongside 37-year-old Colombian national Camilo Alec Pulido Suarez in the Terminal 5 bathroom on November 23, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.

Officers said the Colombian had recently disembarked a flight from his countrys capital Bogota.

Heathrow Airport sign

Four people, including an airport security worker, are being questioned in connection with a seizure of approximately seven kilos of cocaine at Heathrow, which has a potential street value of 700k once cut.https://t.co/XCoGKBFblo pic.twitter.com/PxmwQhvvtu  National Crime Agency (NCA) (@NCA_UK) November 24, 2017

About seven kilograms of cocaine were seized, which is said to have a value of about 250,000, but could be sold for more than 700,000 if cut and sold on the street.

Colombian national Wilmer Salazar-Duarte, 43, was separately arrested in the arrivals area of the airport, while 46-year-old Alexander Salazar-Duarte, also from Colombia, was arrested after a search at an address in east London.

All four were charged with conspiracy to import cocaine and appeared at Uxbridge Magistrates Court on Saturday.

They were remanded in custody until their next appearance at Blackfriars Crown Court on December 22.

Senior investigating officer Darren Barr said: Heathrow Airport provided invaluable assistance in this operation, and working with partners such as the Metropolitan Police Service, Border Force and the Heathrow authorities we are determined to target those who may be involved in criminality at the airport.
England suddenly had to battle to stay in the match on day three of the Ashes after Steve Smiths outstanding hundred helped to pile the pressure back on them at the Gabba.

Joe Roots men did their utmost to frustrate Smith by drying up his run-scoring options, but he refused to be distracted for more than eight and a-half hours in his unbeaten 141 as Australia scrambled to 328 all out and a lead of 26.

England then made a miserable start to their second innings against Josh Hazlewood on the way to 33 for two, with the early loss of Alastair Cook for his second single-figure score in three days and then James Vince  unable to follow up his maiden Ashes half-century here.

What they said

(Jason OBrien/PA)

England bowler Stuart Broad: I think after three days, were probably the best-placed England side here for 30 years. It was crucial we only lost two tonight. You can easily lose four of five, and thats the Test gone  it could have been a lot worse.

Australia captain Steve Smith: I thought they were pretty defensive from the outset. It was as if they were waiting for batters to make mistakes. It felt very defensive, (so) it might be a series where boundaries are hard to come by.

Tweet of the day

As good as it gets @stevesmith49 .... Unbelievable 100 ... #Ashes  Michael Vaughan (@MichaelVaughan) November 25, 2017

Shot of the day

Starc goes bang, but then Broad gets his revenge a short time later! https://t.co/P6sH6ROa7L #Ashes pic.twitter.com/vcpzi2XOHA  cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) November 25, 2017

No doubt about this category, despite Smiths outstanding innings. Mitchell Starcs only scoring shot came from just his third delivery, and Stuart Broads second of a new spell with the second new ball. Marginally over-pitched, it disappeared over long-off to stun Englands attacking field. Two balls later, though, Starc was gone caught-and-bowled to Broad for six off five.

Stat of the day

21.6  Smiths strike rate in the first hour as England strangled his progress with the old ball. It did not stop him in the long run, though.

Is Anderson fit?

If we take England at their word, and of course we should, then yes. Television cameras spotted a moment or two of pain, picked up too by their pundits  but the odd grimace is surely hardly surprising at some point during 29 his overs on an unresponsive pitch, including many to Smith. Whatever his ailment, if any, England will be hoping he and others do not have too strenuous a workload left here  so that they can head to the result environment of the inaugural Ashes day-nighter in Adelaide next week with a full complement of seamers.

Cummins is an all-rounder

SHOT! Cummins goes big to bring up the 250 for Australia! Trailing by 50 runs: https://t.co/P6sH6ROa7L #Ashes pic.twitter.com/1q9QVQoaRD  cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) November 25, 2017

Australias current number nine is one of the quickest bowlers in the world, and a fearsome prospect against England if he stays fit through this series. His career-best 42 was an invaluable contribution as the hosts scrambled towards their first-innings lead. More than that too, it was the innings of a batsman with a sound defence and shots. Cummins maiden half-century may well not be long delayed.

What next?

Stumps! Another riveting day of Test cricket as England go to stumps with a lead of 7 runs: https://t.co/P6sH6ROa7L #Ashes pic.twitter.com/J65zqFlv6N  cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) November 25, 2017

Spot of rain, apparently  which will be such a shame if it stops this fascinating match from reaching a fitting conclusion over the next two days.
Stuart Broad believes Englands tight spot in the first Ashes Test still represents their best position after three days at the Gabba since his dad Chris was in the team more than 30 years ago.

Englands efforts to test Steve Smiths patience failed to stop him grinding out an unbeaten 141 - over more than eight and a half hours - in an Australia total of 328 all out as they eked out a lead of 26.

Josh Hazlewood was then the successful new-ball bowler in a dramatic final session which ended with England 33 for two.

Stuart Broad

StuartBroad8: If we apply ourselves tomorrow, there are no demons in that pitch, we can bat big." #Ashes



 https://t.co/qd0GypCm4I pic.twitter.com/5C3grUdI7K  England Cricket (@englandcricket) November 25, 2017

Even so, Broad was able to put a positive spin both on Smiths close-of-play remarks - the Australia captain accused England of defensive bowling from the outset - as well as a precarious match situation.

England have famously not won in Brisbane since 1986/87, when Mike Gattings tourists had Broads father opening the batting and Ian Botham as their man of the match.

After taking three for 49 here, Broad said with a smile: I think after three days, were probably the best-placed England side here for 30 years.

WICKET Bad start as Cook caught in the deep for 7.



Follow: https://t.co/viiODZuylw#Ashes pic.twitter.com/mVUZwhLz47  England Cricket (@englandcricket) November 25, 2017

WICKET Now Vince caught at first slip by Smith off Hazlewood.



Updates: https://t.co/mbXsiUjfKr pic.twitter.com/TsamsqLToc  England Cricket (@englandcricket) November 25, 2017

It was crucial we only lost two tonight. You can easily lose four of five, and thats the Test gone  it could have been a lot worse.

As for the frustrations voiced by Smith off the field, if none evidently shown on it, Broad added: Perfect. We know they like to score quickly. If we can restrict them from scoring boundaries, well have periods of taking wickets.

He was nonetheless impressed with Smiths 21st Test century.

Steve Smith:

It meant everything. It was tough out there, the wicket was two-paced and they bowled some reasonable spells so it was about batting for a long period of time. I had to dig deep and wait for the ball to come into my areas.



More here:

 https://t.co/oBV2wwF5eH pic.twitter.com/KYUB4mm2YD  England Cricket (@englandcricket) November 25, 2017

He played brilliantly  what you come to expect from him in Australia. He showed discipline around off-stump  (but) credit to us, that was his slowest ton, so we didnt let him get away from us.

If Smith was vexed at any point out in the middle, he dealt with them very effectively.

But afterwards, he said: I thought they were pretty defensive from the outset. It was as if they were waiting for batters to make mistakes.

Massive period in the game - these two are back on and looking for a wicket #Ashes



Updates  https://t.co/cPSaRCARrE pic.twitter.com/N1WC9Kx0Bo  England Cricket (@englandcricket) November 25, 2017

It felt very defensive, (so) it might be a series where boundaries are hard to come by.

Broad, meanwhile, was required to vouch for the well-being of both his captain Joe Root - who took a blow to the helmet from a Mitchell Starc bouncer - and his pace partner James Anderson.

The latter got through 29 overs to Broads 25, but that did not stop high-profile pundits Michael Vaughan and Graeme Swann both voicing concerns about a possible, unspecified injury after Anderson was seen grimacing in the field on television footage.

Craig Overton has come on as 12th man after James Anderson has gone off. 



Australia 246/7



Smith 94*

Cummins 22*



Follow it live https://t.co/MRbmWr0DNf#Ashes #bbccricket pic.twitter.com/7s4YSkSvSM  Test Match Special (@bbctms) November 25, 2017

An England spokesman reported Anderson is fine, and Broad added: I dont really know where this mystery injury has come from. Hes just bowled 30 overs for 50.

Ive spent the whole day with him  hes not moaned about anything, or said hes sore or injured.

Root continued batting and was unbeaten at the close after being hit by Starc, and Broad said: Its always worrying when you see someone get hit like that.

But he has passed the concussion tests  Im sure hell be fine.
There is no direct link between prison suicides and overcrowding in jails, a study of almost 4,000 deaths has found.

Psychologists examined suicides from 24 countries including England and Wales, following fears that prisoner numbers were contributing to the high rate of suicide.

The research, published in the Lancet Psychiatry journal, found that a range of issues such as access to mental health care and the amount of daily activity could be more important risk factors.

(PA graphics)

After examining 3,906 suicides across 20 European countries, as well as the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, it found deaths were highest in countries with the lowest rates of incarceration.

The study said: Most of the examined prison-level factors were not associated with prison suicide rates, suggesting that prison suicides are likely to be the result of a complex interaction of different factors, and not merely due to the prison environment.

Studying these factors within countries could be informative, and their interaction might also provide some explanation.

It concluded there were no simple ecological explanations for prison suicide and called for national strategies to address the problem.

Nordic countries had the highest prison suicide rates, with more than 100 per 100,000 prisoners. Denmarks rate was slightly lower, with 91 per 100,000.

New research: Suicide in prisons: an international study of prevalence and contributory factors by @seenafazel & colleagues. #OpenAccess https://t.co/M09tLnshJY pic.twitter.com/q55imnuuD5  The Lancet Psychiatry (@TheLancetPsych) November 25, 2017

In western Europe, rates in France and Belgium were also more than 100 per 100,000 inmates.

Australia, New Zealand and North American countries had ranges of 23 to 67.

Out of the 3,906 deaths, 93% were male and 7% female.

The research was prompted by concerns that overcrowding was contributing to the disproportionately high levels of suicide in prisons, with 119 out of 205 countries reportedly exceeding their prison capacity.

In England and Wales, suicide rates are five or six times higher than among the general population.

But the research found no clear link between suicides and prison overcrowding, except in low-income countries where extreme overcrowding might cause extra stress.

It even suggested overcrowding could mitigate the risk of suicide as vulnerable prisoners were less likely to be left alone as so many cells designed for single use were in double occupation.

Self-harm incidents in prisons

But the research found a lack of detailed data on conditions in prisons and the individual prisoners circumstances that may have contributed to their decision to take their own life.

Researchers said: Prison suicides are likely to be the result of a complex interaction of different factors, and not merely due to the prison environment.

They argued that more sensitive markers of health care need to be routinely recorded to understand the high suicide rate in prisons, including how many people are engaged in active mental health treatment, and the extent and quality of prison care.

They also made the case for better recording of ecological factors in prisons, such as assault rates, levels of self-harm, the amount of daily meaningful activity, and access to employment or training.

Factors such as access to ligature points were also rarely recorded, the researchers found.

The Prison Reform Trust has long blamed overcrowding for unsafe conditions in prison. In a statement in October in response to an increase in self-harm and assaults in prison, a spokesman for the charity said: Too many prisoners are held in overcrowded and impoverished conditions with too few staff to provide a safe and constructive regime.

In response to the new research, the Prison Reform Trusts director Peter Dawson said: This useful research shows that reducing suicides in prison is complex.

But we know in this country that between 2008 and 2014 the situation was improving before deteriorating sharply as staffing levels were drastically reduced.

Good procedures and good relationships underpin every aspect of safety in prison  overcrowding is just one of the reasons both are under pressure. Tackling it is long overdue and vital to prisons delivering every aspect of the Governments many ambitions for reform.
Lionel Messi wants to finish his career at Barcelona after signing a new deal that commits him through to the summer of 2021.

A renewal was agreed between player and club in July but it is only now that Messi has put pen to paper on the contract.

Announcing the deal, the LaLiga club added that the Argentina forward has had a 626million buy-out clause inserted into his contract.

Lionel Messi has committed to Barcelona

That means the 30-year-old is likely to end his playing days at the Nou Camp and not, as has been reported for some time, move to Manchester City.

I am happy. Weve been waiting for some time to complete the signing and it was done today, Messi told the clubs official website.

Im happy to continue with the club which is my home, and Im happy to continue here to spend my entire life, my home, which is where I always wanted to have my career.

My dream was to finish my career at Barca and we are moving down that path.

Messi, who made his senior debut as a 16-year-old in a friendly against Porto, has eight LaLiga titles, four Champions League wins and five Copa del Rey successes among his list of honours with the Catalan giants.

He is regarded by some as the greatest player of all time and the signing of his new deal means his Barcelona dynasty can continue apace.

Messi arrived at Barcelona from Newells Old Boys as a teenager in 2000 and made his first competitive appearance against Espanyol as a 17-year-old.

He scored the first of his club record 523 goals  they have come in just 602 matches  against Albacete in May 2005 and has since claimed the Ballon dOr on five occasions, more than any other player.

On Friday, he was presented with his fourth Golden Shoe award for being the top scorer in Europe, while his 30 titles put him alongside team-mate Andres Iniesta as having the most success in club history.
A British mother jailed in Iran has spoken from prison in Tehran to thank those campaigning for her release.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe addressed those attending a rally and march, including actress Emma Thompson, through a phone and loudspeaker to thank everyone for their support.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been imprisoned in Tehran since April 2016, when she was arrested at the citys airport after a holiday with her then 22-month-old daughter Gabriella.

She told the rally near her home in north London: Im so grateful for everybodys support and love I am so overwhelmed and moved.

Richard Ratcliffe, centre, holds a poster calling for the return of his wife and daughter from Iran (Jonathan Brady/PA)

All that is on my mind is to be back home and to be back with my family.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of spying and seeking to overthrow the Tehran regime, and has been held in solitary confinement.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has done nothing wrong. Yet she remains in prison, & has been told she will go to court again. Iran must #FreeNazanin & let her come home to her family in the UK. https://t.co/wyg2FjfiF5 pic.twitter.com/pU2lt0toN7  Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) November 23, 2017

Her family has led a long-running campaign for her release, saying she is innocent and raising fears for her physical and mental health.

At the protest a tearful Thompson hit out at the bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster and urged the Government to do more to bring her home.

An amazing show of support for the West Hampstead mums march with Emma Thompson and Richard Ratcliffe - thank you everyone #FreeNazanin pic.twitter.com/cPG4U7sIhx  Tulip Siddiq (@TulipSiddiq) November 25, 2017

The Love Actually actress, who was suffering from pneumonia, called on Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to get on a plane, after his suggestion earlier this month that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran exposed her to the threat of her five-year sentence being doubled.

The Oscar-winning actress said: We are a net of compassion and love for Nazanin and her family. This is what we human beings do best, in stark contrast to the bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster.

If I can get out of bed with pneumonia to support a horribly abused member of our community then our Foreign Secretary can get on a plane and go to Iran and deal with the problem hes so seriously exacerbated.

Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe who is detained in Iran, is joined by supporters including actress Emma Thompson (left) and Tulip Siddiq MP (right) in Hampstead, north London before setting out on a march to deliver a petition calling for her release from prison

Thompson added: The screw is twisting more and more and her physical and mental health is deteriorating to such a degree now that I think we are in a very urgent situation.

I cant imagine the effect of being separated for 19 months from your child. I would have gone bonkers if that had happened to me.

Big turnout this morning in West Hampstead #FreeNazanin pic.twitter.com/IoMqUo00Wj  Katherine Dickinson (@katd100) November 25, 2017

Im just so passionate about getting her back, its a sort of physical feeling of anguish for her.

Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq spoke to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and later said: We discussed how we would take both our daughters to Peppa Pig World when shes released.

Mrs Zaghari-Racliffes husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said: It is profoundly moving to see so many people here.

I can really feel the love, and Nazanin can feel the love, and in the end thats the most important thing, thats what keeps us going.

An online petition calling for her to be returned to Britain has had more than 1.3 million signatures.
Will Cliffs penalty was the difference as Sale ended a run of three successive Aviva Premiership defeats following an 18-15 triumph over Northampton at the AJ Bell Stadium.

Northampton were the better team in the first 20 minutes, despite Faf de Klerks early penalty, and deservedly scored two tries via Cobus Reinach and Mike Haywood.

The Saints failed to maintain that intensity, though, and Sale hit back via de Klerk and Ben Curry before Harry Mallinder equalised from the tee to set up an exciting finale.

Will Cliff, left, was Sales hero (David Davies/PA)

FT: @SaleSharksRugby 18-15 @SaintsRugby



Saints huff and puff in the final minutes but Sale cling on for the win and gain ground on Newcastle Falcons.#SALvNOR #AvivaPrem  pic.twitter.com/czRfIf6Ats  Premiership Rugby (@premrugby) November 25, 2017

It was the Sharks who maintained their composure in the latter stages, though, Cliff kicking a three-pointer from in front of the posts to snatch the win.

Rain and sleet from the kick-off made it difficult for free-flowing rugby, but Sale tried their best in the early exchanges when James OConnor almost broke through.

Following the Australians half-break, the Saints were caught offside and de Klerk took the hosts into a 3-0 lead.

However, it was a game that was always going to be decided by mistakes and OConnors inexperience in the 10 position was soon exposed.

Northampton had already charged down two attempted clearance kicks by de Klerk when the South Africans half-back partner saw his effort blocked by Reinach.

The visiting scrum-half duly picked up the bouncing ball and scampered in at the corner to move the Midlanders 5-3 ahead.

Matters improved further for Jim Mallinders men eight minutes later as Haywood scored by the base of the post, increasing their buffer to nine points.

Frustrated by their performance in the opening quarter, the Sharks increased the intensity and that led to yellow cards for Michael Paterson and Jamal Ford-Robinson.

Although the Saints held out with Paterson off the field, the pressure eventually told and de Klerk touched down to reduce the arrears at the break.

The hosts regained their advantage when good work from the backs sent Curry across the whitewash early in the second half.

Mallinder did level matters from the tee going into the final quarter but ill-discipline continued to frustrate Northampton as another yellow card, this time for Ben Foden, allowed replacement Cliff to kick Sale back in front.

Despite a late surge by the visitors, Steve Diamonds men managed to hold on to end their barren spell in the Premiership, moving them to within two points of the Saints in the table.

What they said

Sale coach Paul Deacon: We panicked a little bit with the weather conditions and I thought we went into our shells. We spoke about that and I thought we changed our mindset quite well, and it was pleasing to get through that tough period at the end. I can never doubt the players character, theyre in it together, theyre a close group of blokes and going two tries behind and coming back shows that.

Northampton director of rugby Jim Mallinder: One of the yellows definitely was but Im not sure about the build-up to (Michael) Patersons. We will look at it, Im sure the referee will look at it and hopefully learn from his experience tonight.
By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Somalia's government said on Wednesday it had requested a U.S. air strike that killed scores of suspected militants to help pave the way for an upcoming ground offensive against Islamist group al Shabaab.

The U.S. military's Africa Command (Africom) said on Tuesday it had killed more than 100 of the al Qaeda-linked insurgents in the strike on a camp 125 miles (200 km) northwest of the capital Mogadishu.

"Those militants were preparing explosives and attacks. Operations against al Shabaab have been stepped up," Somali Information Minister Abdirahman Omar Osman told Reuters.

"We have asked the U.S. to help us from the air to make our readied ground offensive more successful."

Al Shabaab spokesman Abdiasis Abu Musab denied the air strike had taken place. "It is just... propaganda," he told Reuters.

The United States has ramped up operations in Somalia this year after President Donald Trump loosened the rules of engagement in March.

Africom reported eight U.S. air strikes from May to August, compared to 13 for the whole of 2016. Including Tuesday's strike, it has reported five this month alone.

The Pentagon said the U.S. military would continue to target militants in strikes in coordination with the Somali government.

Al Shabaab has lost control of most of Somalia's cities and towns since African Union peacekeepers supporting Somali troops pushed the insurgency out of the capital Mogadishu in 2011. But it retains a strong presence in parts of the south and centre.

Somali president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, a dual U.S.-Somali citizen, has taken a harder line than his predecessors against the insurgency since he was sworn in earlier this year.

But his plans have been undermined by the poor state of the Somali military and political infighting.

He has also had to try to mend fences with the powerful Habar Gidir clan, following a raid involving U.S. forces on the town of Bariire in August in which 10 people were killed including three children. (Additional reporting by Feisal Omar in Mogadishu; Writing by Maggie Fick; Editing by Katharine Houreld and John Stonestreet)
By Stephen Kalin and Suleiman Al-Khalidi

RIYADH/AMMAN, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Syria's main opposition group selected a new chief negotiator on Friday ahead of a new round of U.N.-backed peace negotiations with the Damascus government set to kick off next week.

Nasr Hariri said the opposition was going to Geneva on Nov. 28 to hold direct talks and was ready to discuss "everything on the negotiating table".

The announcement came at a summit in Riyadh where, a day before, the opposition stuck by its demand that President Bashar al-Assad play no role in an interim period, despite speculation that it could soften its stance because of Assad's battlefield strength.

The opposition groups met to seek a unified position ahead of Geneva after two years of Russian military intervention that has helped Assad's government reverse major territorial losses incurred since the beginning of the war.

Hariri replaces hardliner Riyad Hijab, who led the Higher Negotiations Committee at previous negotiations but abruptly quit this week, hinting that the HNC under him had faced pressures to make concessions that favoured Assad.

U.N. peace talks mediator Staffan de Mistura, preparing for the next round of Geneva talks, met on Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who said Moscow was working with Riyadh to unify the Syrian opposition.

For many years, Western and Arab countries backed the opposition demand that Assad leave office. But since Russia joined the war on behalf of Assad's government it has become increasingly clear that Assad's opponents have no path to victory on the battlefield.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for a congress of the Syrian government and opposition to draw up a framework for the future structure of the Syrian state, adopt a new constitution and hold elections under U.N. supervision.

But he has also said that any political settlement in Syria would be finalised within the Geneva peace talks process overseen by the United Nations.

The opposition has long been suspicious of the parallel diplomatic track pushed by Russia, which before the proposed Sochi congress included talks in Kazakhstan, and has insisted that political dialogue should only take place in Geneva.

Hariri said Sochi did not serve the political process and called on the international community, including Russia, "to concentrate all our efforts to serve the political process according to international resolutions in Geneva under UN auspices".

Alaa Arafat, who represents the "Moscow Platform" political grouping, though, said he would attend Sochi and urged others to go too, reflecting lingering tensions within the diverse opposition.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir, who opened the summit on Wednesday pledging his country's support for unifying the opposition, praised the creation of "one negotiating team that represents everyone".

Asked if there was any change in position towards Assad's future, he told reporters that Riyadh continued to support a settlement based on the U.N.-backed process at Geneva.

"We support the positions of the Syrian opposition. We have from the beginning and we will continue to do so," he said.

Syria's six-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions to flee in the worst refugee crisis since World War Two. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Hugh Lawson and James Dalgleish)
By Waqar Mustafa

LAHORE, Pakistan, Nov 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Most of Tajammul Abbass 17 acres of farmland produces nothing but fodder for his buffalo and three goats. His land, and that around him in Punjab province, depends on rain to grow crops and rainfall has become much more uncertain as climate change takes hold, leading to lost harvests.

But things are now looking more promising for him and for about 384,000 other people living in the Pind Dadan Khan-Khushab area, three hours drive from Lahore, Punjabs capital, after the government on Friday announced plans to build an irrigation system for the area.

The effort is expected to convert 68,000 hectares of minimally productive farmland to full production, using water from the Jhelum River.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Friday approved a $275 million loan for the project, which is supported by the Indus River System Authority (IRSA), a government agency that oversees water sharing between provinces.

"Having a sufficient and effective irrigation system is fundamental in the development of Pakistans agriculture sector, a significant driver of the countrys economy," said Ryutaro Takaku, a water specialist at the banks Central and West Asia Department.

The project "will help increase agricultural production and improve food security in Pakistan", he noted in a press release.

Agriculture contributes 20 percent of Pakistans gross domestic product and employs 42 percent of the labour force, with Punjab province producing more than 80 percent of agricultural output, according to Pakistan Economic Survey data.

Pakistans semi-arid climate means more than 90 percent of harvests depend on irrigation through the Indus Basin Irrigation System, which draws water from the Indus River.

However, about 20 percent of the countrys cultivable area - including the project area, bounded by salt hills on the northwest and the Jhelum River in the southwest - is outside the system.

MAKING ENDS MEET

Abbas, who farms in the area, said a growing lack of water for crops has made surviving on the land increasingly difficult.

"We are barely making ends meet. We have had only 2,800 kilograms of wheat from two acres of land. The rest of our land remained uncultivated. We have a small stock of animals, some of whom we sell whenever we can," Abbas told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview from Soduwall, his village.

The 40-year-old said one of his brothers has joined the army and another has gone abroad for work, thanks to a lack of income from the farm. His wife, he said, has to walk two hours each day to fetch water in the arid area.

Officials said the irrigation project will involve building a 117-kilometre canal to carry water diverted from the Jhelum River, 97 kilometres of secondary canals, and a range of other structures - some of which may require those now living on the land to relocate.

The system aims to catch floodwater and monsoon runoff at heavy rainfall times of the year and channel it into the irrigation network.

"There are about 128 structures that would need to be dismantled and land will have to be bought from people for the irrigation system. But there is no other option," said Muhammad Javed Iqbal Goraya, a water expert with South Asian Conservation Network, a non-governmental organization.

In an area with poor rainfall, "irrigation (is) essential for crop production. The irrigation network will help the farmers in the area to adapt to climate changes and have more crops," he said.

The area, if irrigated, could grow wheat, cotton, rice, sugarcane, maize, and other crops, said Goraya.

The project will introduce advanced technologies such as laser land leveling and high-efficiency irrigation, according to the ADB press release. About 6,000 farmers also will have the opportunity to learn climate-smart agriculture practices and more profitable farm management, the release said.

Goraya said that managing the new water resource and existing water with care will be key to ensuring the sustainability of agriculture in the area.

The project envisions 485 water user associations being formed to have a say in planning, designing and constructing the new irrigation system.

"Such associations and committees have been very helpful in some other areas of the country in managing watercourses and collecting water charges from users," Goraya said.

For landholders such as Abbas the new irrigation system offers promising new opportunities.

"Water through this system will be like gold," Abbas predicted. (Reporting by Waqar Mustafa; editing by Laurie Goering :; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)
The US president called on the international community to strengthen its efforts to defeat terrorism and extremism

US President Donald Trump spoke with Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi by phone Friday, offering condolences to the Egyptian people after a deadly North Sinai mosque attack, the Egyptian presidency said.

During the call Trump condemned the deadly attack where at least 235 worshippers were killed and 102 others injured attending Friday prayers at Al-Rawdah Mosque in Al-Radwa village, North Sinai.

Trump added that the United States would continue to stand with Egypt against terrorism, calling on the international community to strengthen its efforts to defeat terrorism and extremism in all its forms.

Following news of the attack Friday, President Trump condemned the attack on Twitter, announcing that he would call the president of Egypt to discuss the "tragic" incident.

Egypt's security forces have been fighting an Islamist insurgency based in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula that gained pace since the 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

The insurgency has mostly targeted security forces, with attacks on military and police checkpoints commonplace.

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By Ian Ransom

BRISBANE, Nov 25 (Reuters) - England's veteran pacemen blasted through Australia's middle order to reduce the hosts to 213 for seven at lunch on day three of the series-opening Ashes test on Saturday.

A fired-up Stuart Broad captured two wickets, most importantly breaking a 99-run stand between captain Steve Smith and Shaun Marsh, and fellow seamer James Anderson chipped in with another.

Smith, who rescued his team from a position of peril at 76 for four late on day two, remained unbowed on 81, with tail-ender Pat Cummins hanging on grimly at the other end with two runs to his name.

The home side, who had resumed on 165 for four on a muggy, overcast morning at the Gabba, were still 89 runs adrift of England's first innings total of 302.

Having shown impressive resolve after tea on day two to support his captain, Marsh lasted five overs in the morning before being dismissed softly for 51 by a slower delivery from Broad, which he spooned straight to Anderson at mid-off.

Tim Paine, who replaced Matthew Wade in part due to his better form with the bat, managed 13 in a 42-ball knock before departing with a nick behind off Anderson with the fourth delivery of the new ball.

Jonny Bairstow dived to his right to glove a sharp one-handed catch and remove his fellow keeper, leaving Australia wobbling at 202 for six.

Tail-end slogger Mitchell Starc came to the crease and got off the mark with a six from the third ball he faced, smashing Broad over the long-off rope to leave the Englishman smiling wryly.

Broad turned the tables on his fellow quick two balls later, however, inducing a leading edge from the Australian and taking the catch himself.

(Editing by ......)
BEIRUT, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Saturday that he would not accept Iran-backed Hezbollah's positions that "affect our Arab brothers or target the security and stability of their countries", a statement from his press office said.

The statement did not specify which countries he meant.

Hariri announced his resignation from his post on Nov. 4 in a televised statement from Saudi Arabia, a Sunni monarchy and regional powerhouse locked in a confrontation with Shi'ite Iran.

Hezbollah is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Gulf monarchies have accused the Shi'ite group of also supporting the Houthi group in Yemen and of backing militants in Bahrain. Hezbollah denies any activity in Yemen or Bahrain.

Hariri's resignation pitched Lebanon to the forefront of a regional power tussle this month between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which backs Hezbollah. The two regional powers back competing factions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

After returning to Lebanon this week, he shelved the decision on Wednesday at the request of President Michel Aoun, easing a crisis that had deepened tensions in the Middle East.

Following his announcement, made on Lebanon's independence day, hundreds of Hariri supporters packed the streets near his house in central Beirut, waving the blue flag of his Future Movement political party.

On Saturday, he said that his decision to wait instead of officially resigning is to give a chance to discuss and look into demands that will make Lebanon neutral and allow it to enforce its "disassociation" policy.

"Disassociation" is widely understood in Lebanon to mean its policy of staying out of regional conflicts. The regional role played by the Hezbollah political and military movement has greatly alarmed Saudi Arabia, Hariri's long-time ally.

On Saturday, Hezbollah's International Relations Officer Ammar Moussawi said that the Shi'ite group is ready to reach understandings with "our partners in the country", and that the group is open to real dialogue and cooperation with all, Lebanon's state news agency NNA reported.

Moussawi added that Hariri's resignation, which he said was done under coercion from Riyadh, was a spark that aimed to ignite Lebanon.

Top Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt on Saturday called on Saudi Arabia to enter dialogue with Iran and said that the kingdoms modernisation plans could not work while Riyadh was engaged in a war in Yemen. (Reporting by Sarah Dadouch; Editing by Alison Williams and Stephen Powell)
Minister Marapana told Daily Mirror that China fully endorsed the various joint ventures Sri Lanka has launched with India, in particular those with strategic importance such as the Mattala Airport Development Project and the Trincomalee Oil Tank Project.

Speaking to Daily Mirror on the outcome of his recent official visit to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) Minister Marapana said it was sad and indecent that certain political elements were trying to misinterpret Sri Lankas warm and friendly links with China and India.

Their modus-operandi is to create a rift between Sri Lanka and two friendly countries by making unfounded and misleading allegations. I explained in detail to the Chinese side the extremely warm and close cultural, religious and trade contacts Sri Lanka has with both countries and the importance of improving this friendship for the mutual benefits of all, sentiments that China fully endorsed," Minister Marapana stressed. (Sandun A Jayasekera)
The CMA Sri Lanka Toastmasters Club successfully conducted the fifth consecutive batch of speechcrafters sponsored by the Institute of Certified Management Accountants of Sri Lanka (CMA).



Thirty two members, passed finalists and final year students attended the programme over a period of 10 weeks. This speechcrafter batch in particular showed great commitment and dedication with 11 participants achieving 100 percent attendance and the rest fulfilling the minimum requirement of 80 percent attendance to successfully receive the certificate of successful participation from Toastmaster International USA.



In total, six speechcraft programmes have been conducted and 150 students have benefited by attending this programme. The first speechcraft programme was conducted by the Colombo Toastmasters Club, which initiated to form the CMA Toastmasters Club in 2015.



Prof. Lakshman R. Watawala together with the Council Members of CMA has continued to display commitment to enrich and enhance the knowledge and soft skill development of its members, passed finalists and final year students, enabling them to develop their leadership skills and achieve career progression in the corporate world.



The performance displayed by the fifth batch of speechcrafters showed tremendous progress and enthusiasm with speeches on Lifestyle and stress and an interesting speech on After departing from this world under Project 3 speeches. Four other excellent speeches at Project 2 level were delivered creating much interest and impression on the audience.



The final award ceremony of the fifth batch was successfully concluded at the CMA Auditorium recently. The chief guest, Prof. Watawala, expressed his congratulations to the participants for their amazing performance.



The certificates were presented by Prof. Watawala, CMA Sri Lanka Vice President Hennayake Bandara, CMA Sri Lanka CEO Kanishka Jayasinghe and CMA Consultants L.B. Wattegedara and Kosala Dissanayake.



CMA Sri Lanka Toastmasters Club Vice President Education Anil Indika, IPP CMA SL TMC Achala Perera, Charter President CMA SL TMC Chandana Samaraweera and other club members were also present.



The awards ceremony was conducted by Course Director Toast Master Dian Abeyewardene.



The next batch of the speechcraft programme will commence in January 2018 for members, passed finalists and final year students of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants following the footsteps of the successful batches of participants.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday said he had a successful round of discussions with Indian leaders on the development projects planned for Sri Lanka with the India's assistance and on the proposed Economic Technical Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) during his visit to the subcontinent.

Mr Wickremesinghe told journalists here before his departure back home that progress had been made on the proposed Economic Technical Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) that is to be signed with India. " I had extensive talks with the Indian Prime Minister and our discussions concluded positively," he said.

The Prime Minister said discussions were also held on the agreement signed between India and Sri Lanka in April this year in which both countries have decided to implement several development projects in Sri Lanka. " Our discussions focused on the delay in implementing some of these projects and certain clarifications on others. Japan will play a part in two of these development projects together with India," he added.

" I met Indian President Ram Nath Kovind, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sushma Swaraj and Indian Congress Party Leader Sonia Gandhi and each of these discussions generally focused on Indo-Lanka ties," he added.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe returned to the island yesterday (24). He was accompanied by Professor Maithree Wickremesinghe, Prime Minister's Secretary Saman Ekanayake, Additional Secretary Saman Attaudahetti, Minister of Law and Order Sagala Ratnayake and the Prime Minister's special aide Sandra Perera. (Yohan Perera in New Delhi)
It was reported that Attorney General Jayantha Jayasuriya PC had assured party leaders yesterday that he would move a motion next Monday (27) to take up the petition filed against the delimitation gazette on November 30.

The party leaders meeting was convened yesterday at the speakers office presided by Speaker Karu Jayasuriya and was attended by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, Attorney General and the Elections Commission Chairman.

The Prime Minister, party leaders, Attorney General and the Chairman of the elections commission had agreed that the local government elections should be held without delay.

The party leaders are reported to have put forward two proposals - firstly to expedite the case filed in court and resolve the matter related to the case and secondly to pass a special law to rectify the error in the gazette while the case was ongoing.

Another party leader had proposed to cancel the gazette notification. However the UNP had objected to the proposal.

Meanwhile, the Elections Commission Chairman had said that elections should be held in 133 local government bodies which were not affected by the stay order.

He has further said that the decision with regard to that would be taken at todays election commissions meeting.

However, even though party leaders had put forward several proposals, they had not reached at a consensus. (Ajith Siriwardana)
The Sri Lankan Government condemned the yesterdays terrorist attack on a Sinai Mosque in Egypt in which more than 200 people were killed.

In a statement, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said yesterday that the Government condemned in the strongest terms the terrorist attack on worshippers at a mosque in the Sinai region of Egypt.

Attacking those at prayer is an act of inexplicable brutality. The Government and people of Sri Lanka offer deepest condolences to the families of the victims, and wish those who are injured, a speedy recovery, it said.

While expressing solidarity with the Government of Egypt at this time of national mourning, it said the Sri Lankan Government urges the international community to join hands to find effective ways and means to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.
Two government Ministers representing Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)- John Seneviratne and Susil Premajayantha had discussion with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Wednesday morning to seek the possibility of uniting the two factions.

Minister Seneviartne confirmed that an information meeting took place at the residence of the former President.

We discussed how this unity can be brought about, he said.

Asked whether there was any positive response, he replied, It is not discouraging.

He said the former President had assigned some of his people to work in this regard. (Kelum Bandara)
After receiving condolences, President El-Sisi expressed appreciation for France's support, underlining the need for international efforts to combat terrorism

French President Emmanuel Macron offered his condolences to the Egyptian people over the deadly North Sinai mosque attack in a phone call to Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi Friday evening, Egypt's MENA news agency announced.

According to the state-owned agency, Macron expressed his country's full solidarity and support with Egypt in its fight against terrorism.

For his part, President El-Sisi expressed appreciation for President Macron's support, underlining the importance of strengthening international efforts to fight terrorism.

On Friday afternoon, at least 305 people were killed and 128 others injured in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Egypt at Al-Rawdah Mosque in Al-Rawdah village, North Sinai.

Egyptian armed forces declared late Friday that air forces launched strikes in North Sinai, killing a number of terrorists behind the attack.

No group has thus far claimed the responsibility for the mosque attack.

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The attack is one of the deadliest in Egypt's recent memory

At least 305 worshippers were killed and 128 were injured during Friday prayers at a North Sinai mosque by gunmen belonging to the terrorist group Daesh, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypts recent memory.

The victims, who were praying at Al-Rawdah Mosque in Bir Al-Abd city, include 27 children killed in the attack, Egypt's prosecutor-general announced on Saturday.

The prosecutor-general said that according to eyewitnesses, 25 to 30 gunmen in camouflage trousers and bearing the Daesh black flag rode up to the mosque in five SUVs and started shooting at worshippers.

The gunmen, some of whom wore masks, attacked the mosque as the imam was starting the Friday sermon.

No group has claimed the responsibility of the attack so far.

Most of the terrorist attacks to take place in North Sinai in recent years mainly targeted security forces, and have been claimed by the Daesh-affiliated North Sinai-based group Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis.

In January 2017, the Daesh-affiliated online publication Rumiyah released an interview with an alleged leading figure in Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, who described Al-Rawdah village as a Sufi centre, adding that the group is fighting Sufism in North Sinai.

In late 2016, Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis claimed responsibility for killing Sinai's oldest Sufi Sheikh Soliman El-Harez as well as the destruction of two Sufi shrines.

Sufism, often described as Islamic mysticism, involves a spiritual form of worship where adherents attempt to become close with God through meditation and asceticism.

Daesh considers Sufi Muslims to be heretics.

Al-Rawdah Mosque was built by El-Jaririyah, one of Sinai's largest Sufi orders.

Earlier today, Egypts army said that its air forces launched strikes in North Sinai, killing a number of terrorists involved in the Friday attack.

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Egyptian parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Aal said on Saturday that an urgent plenary meeting will be held on Monday to discuss a draft law aimed at regulating nuclear businesses in Egypt.

A press release said that the meeting will be held to debate amendments to the 2010 law regulating nuclear businesses in Egypt.

Deputy speaker Mahmoud El-Sherif told reporters that although parliament's plenary meetings were scheduled to be held on 3 December, the urgent meeting will be held on Monday to discuss a number of issues related to Egypt's nuclear power projects.

Parliament will also discuss the ramifications of the terrorist attack on Al-Rawda Mosque in North Sinai on Friday, which left 305 worshippers dead and 128 injured.

"Article 277 of parliament's internal bylaws allows [the speaker] to hold such urgent meetings," said El-Sherif.

Egypt's agreement with Russia to build four nuclear power stations at El-Dabaa, west of Alexandria, has seen a number of positive developments in recent days.

Minister of Electricity Mohamed Shaker announced last week that the State Council has finally revised contracts on the four stations, and "it is now up to the political leaderships in Egypt and Russia to finally sign and ratify these contracts."

Shaker said he expects that construction on the first nuclear power station at El-Dabaa will begin in December.

Russian state-owned company Rosatom, which will be in charge of implementing the project, said at a press conference on 21 November that both Egypt and Russia will lay the foundation stone of the El-Dabaa project within two months.

Rasheed Sadikov, Russia's consul in Alexandria, said that Russia has given Egypt a $25 billion loan to help build the El-Dabaa plants.

On Saturday, parliament's energy and environment committee approved a legislative amendment exempting the El-Dabaa plants from taxes and custom tariffs.

Talaat El-Sewedi, the head of the committee, told reporters that MPs approved an amendment to Article 7 of the 1976 law, which regulates the performance of the Egyptian Nuclear Power Authority (ENPA), to help facilitate the construction of El-Dabaa project.

"El-Dabaa will be Egypt's first nuclear project and it is expected to boost the countrys power capacity by at least 20 percent," said El-Sewedi, adding that the project will also make Egypt a major exporter of power to neighbouring countries.

Article 7, in its newly amended form, states that "all equipment, tools, cars, spare parts and materials to be imported by ENPA will be exempted from any custom duties, and all companies and institutions contracted by ENPA will be also granted the same exemptions."

Article 7 also stipulates that ENPA's loans and credit facilities borrowed from foreign sources to build nuclear power projects in Egypt are to be completely exempted from all taxes, and that contractors and sub-contractors employed by ENPA to build its projects will be granted the same exemptions.

Foreign contractors and sub-contractors employed by ENPA will also be exempted from any restrictions in terms of foreign workers and profit-share ceilings.

Parliament's energy and environment committee is also currently debating a government-drafted law aimed at the creation of "the Executive Authority for the Administration of Nuclear Power Generation Projects."

The authority, which will be affiliated with the Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy and will be located in Cairo with possible branches inside or outside Egypt, will be responsible for the technical supervision of nuclear stations designed to generate electricity.

"This will include supervising the performance of contractors employed to implement nuclear stations in Egypt, issue progress reports on nuclear projects, and release annual reports on the authority's finances to be revised by the minister of electricity and parliament's energy and environment committee," the draft law said.

"The Executive Authority will also take charge of the experimental operation of nuclear projects and make sure that they are implemented on time and in coordination with other authorities involved in implementing nuclear power stations in Egypt.

El-Sewedi said that parliament and the government are now moving by leaps and bounds to pave the way for the construction of the four nuclear power stations at El-Dabaa.

"All the legislative amendments related to nuclear activities will help implementing the El-Dabaa project on time and without facing any legislative obstacles or financial impediments," said El-Sewedi.

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The defendants were arrested in Hamam City in Matrouh governorate in 2015 and accused of planning and conducting terrorist attacks, among other crimes

Cairo Criminal Court sentenced Saturday seven members of what is known in the media as the Libya terrorist cell to death on a number of terror-related charges.

The courts final verdict came following referral last September to the countrys Grand Mufti for a consultative non-binding opinion, as per Egypts penal code.

The court also ordered life sentences for 10 other defendants, and 15 years for three defendants in the case.

The defendants are charged with joining a terrorist cell in Egypt's governorate of Marsa Matrouh affiliated with the Daesh militant group in Libya.

The defendants are also charged with joining training camps of the terrorist group in Syria and Libya, and obtaining military training, as well as planning terrorist acts in Egypt.

According to the court order, the defendants committed their alleged crimes between 2012 and 2016 in Matrouh, Cairo and Alexandria governorates.

The defendants were also charged with participating in the beheading of 21 Egyptians in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte claimed by Daesh in February 2015.

The defendants were arrested in Hamam City in Matrouh governorate in 2015 and accused of conducting attacks on a police station and vital establishments in the city.

In November 2016, the case was referred to court, after the State Security Prosecution revealed the defendants were also involved in attacks on Christians in their governorate, as well as hiding and training seven German citizens who were planning to join Daesh in Libya.

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JSPL says it has supplied 150,000 tonnes of rail to Iran since 2016, did not respond to a request for immediate comment.

New Delhi: A clause in Indias global tender for steel rails, part of a $130 billion overhaul of its railways, could help Jindal Steel and Power Ltd win up to 20 per cent of the work, sources said.

The worlds fourth-largest rail system is undergoing a five-year overhaul to replace ageing tracks, improve efficiency and end a spate of deadly train accidents, including one on Friday.

State-run Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) has struggled to supply the steel, however, and is expected to deliver 920,000 tonnes of it this financial year, just 65 per cent of its target.

In response, the Ministry of Railways last month opened up a global tender for 717,000 tonnes of steel rail worth an estimated 30 billion rupees ($464 million) to private bidders for the first time.

Global steelmakers such as ArcelorMittal and Thyssenkrupp could bid, as could Jindal Steel and Power, Indias only private producer of the steel.

Indias steel ministry has objected to the tender, pointing out that preference should be given to local suppliers in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modis drive to boost manufacturing.

Indian Railways officials have also expressed concern that JSPL lacks experience building rails, three people with knowledge of the conversations told Reuters this month.

A senior Railways official said any decision for the tender would depend on competitive bidding, which opens next month.

Developmental clause

However, Indian Railways is considering using a clause in the October 18 tender that allows for a developmental or a trial order of up to 20 per cent of the steel to be awarded to a domestic manufacturer, four officials with direct knowledge of the proposal said.

It can award that work even if the bidder does not have proven performance of supply of rails, according to the tender.

JSPL, which says it has supplied 150,000 tonnes of rail to Iran since 2016, did not respond to a request for immediate comment.

The railways ministry is likely to make a decision within two weeks and is keen to award work to JSPL in light of the governments policy on local producers, two officials with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters.

The ministry did not respond to a request for immediate comment.
New Delhi: Railways Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday said that Standard & Poor's (S&P) is a conservative agency and its decision to retain India's rating with stable outlook is a "huge endorsement" of the policies of the Modi government.

"We are extremely happy that S&P has continued to affirm 'BBB-minus' with a long term sovereign rating with stable outlook," Goyal told reporters here.

The rating agency is known worldwide to be a far more conservative when compared with Moody's or Fitch, he added.

"The fact that they have continued to give stable rating but in the text have given so much praise for the policies of the government and for PM Modi's bold reform initiatives is a a huge endorsement for the work which this government has done," Goyal said.

S&P on Friday kept its sovereign rating for India unchanged at 'BBB-minus' with 'stable' outlook saying vulnerabilities stemming from low per capita income and high government debt balance strong GDP growth.

"S&P usually has a time lag and in that circumstance to get the kind of favourable comments that S&P has given in its report is an affirmation of the policies of the PM Modi's government being recognised worldwide," Goyal noted.

The report has spoken at length that growth will continue to remain strong, they have recognised that the quarterly slowdown in the GDP growth is a temporary phenomena largely due the the implementation of GST which has been praised at length in the report, he added.

"They (S&P) have also reflected confidence that India's external position will continue to remain strong and fiscal deficit will remain in line with the expectations," Goyal said.

The report has also suggested that despite hurdles coming in the upper house, the Narendra Modi-led government has been very deft and successful in making transformational reform possible in India, he added.

He said that policy initiatives like GST, the bankruptcy code, NPA resolution framework and bank recapitalisation among others were praised by the rating agency.

"They have also praised India for having strong democratic institutions including the press and have said free press promotes policy stability and compromise," Goyal said.

"So all in all it is a very satisfying report from S&P. I am quite delighted that they have reflected on the successes of the Modi government in state elections and have actually predicted following the series of successes in state election in 2017; they expect many more success in state elections in the months ahead," he added.
Mumbai: The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has cleared Padmavati with no cuts, but has restricted its viewing to audiences above the age of 12 years, for its minor violence. The movie can also be released in the UK as per its old schedule of December 1.

However, the producers Viacom 18 Motion Pictures wont release the movie anywhere abroad unless Padmavati has been cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), on the same day as its release in India.

Former chairperson of CBFC, Pahlaj Nihalani, wonders how movies can be sent to the overseas boards, without clearance in India. This is against the law, he says. You cant send your film, or any other Indian goods for that matter, out of the country, without the clearance of the government. If a film isnt cleared by the CBFC, it cannot go abroad. However, for decades now, film producers have been following this practice of sending their film for certification to foreign countries, without obtaining clearance from the CFBC.

Now, with films going digital, they dont even have to pass through immigration. I think the practice of allowing films to go out of the country without a certificate shouldnt be legalised.
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Saturday that he will not accept Iran-backed Hezbollah's positions that "affect our Arab brothers or targets the security and stability of their countries", a statement from his press office said.

Hariri announced his resignation from his post on Nov. 4 in a televised statement from Saudi Arabia.

After returning to Lebanon this week, he shelved the decision on Wednesday at the request of President Michel Aoun.

On Saturday, he said that his decision to wait instead of officially resigning is to give a chance to discuss and look into demands that will make Lebanon neutral and allow it to enforce its "disassociation" policy.

"Disassociation" is widely understood in Lebanon to mean its policy of staying out of regional conflicts.

Top Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt on Saturday called on Saudi Arabia to enter dialogue with Iran and said that the kingdoms modernisation plans could not work while Riyadh was engaged in a war in Yemen.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

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Priyanka celebrating Thanksgiving weekend with her friends and family.

Mumbai: After celebrating Diwali in NYC, this week, Chopra has whisked off to LA for the Thanksgiving weekend with close friends and family. The desi girl was seen preparing a traditional Thanksgiving treat that included roasted turkey, gravy, greens, roast yams, pies and more with film producer, Mubina Rattonsey and many more delicacies.

Thanksgiving Day is celebrated in Canada, the United States and some parts of the Caribbean islands. The tradition began as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Over the years it became a day for the common gathering of friends and families who come together to express their gratitude towards the people and the year gone by and pray for an even better year ahead.

The actress had earlier posted a picture when she was leaving from New York for LA to celebrate the Thanksgiving.

You can see her pictures here:

Officially Thanxgiving break!!! #LAbound #cantwait #party #family A post shared by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Nov 22, 2017 at 8:37am PST

Lol! God bless this meal. @mubinarattonsey cant believe Im chopping! #thanksgiving A post shared by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Nov 23, 2017 at 2:03pm PST

This is how we do it.. #thanksgiving #foodcoma  A post shared by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Nov 23, 2017 at 11:29pm PST

So Thankful for my family and friends. Happy thanksgiving to everyone celebrating . Im grateful for everyone who has stood in my corner through it all.. you are the family I choose...  #foodcoma A post shared by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Nov 23, 2017 at 8:29pm PST

Casual. @irfan525 #thanksgiving  A post shared by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Nov 24, 2017 at 12:11am PST

Simple pleasures Long weekend. #lalife #thanksgiving #homeiswhereyouparkit A post shared by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Nov 22, 2017 at 5:38pm PST

Before heading to Los Angeles for the extended Thanksgiving weekend, Priyanka Chopra was filming Quantico in NYC. Priyanka plays lead character Alex Parrish on the show and she will be seen donning the new hairstyle in season 3.

Priyanka has two new Hollywood projects in her kitty - 'A Kid Like Jake' and 'Isn't it Romantic?'.
Mumbai: Shahid Kapoor's 2017 release 'Rangoon' was a colossal box-office disaster, and the actor had all his hopes pined on Sanjay Leela Bhansali's multi-starring period juggernaut 'Padmavati'. However, when the film got mired in controversy throughout the nation ultimately getting indefinitely postponed, the onus has now shifted to his next project.

Shahid's next, his maiden collaboration with 'Toilet: Ek Prem Katha' director Shree Narayan Singh, has been in the news for a while now.

With rumours of Shraddha Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha being in contention to be his leading lady gaining momentum, a leading publication ran a story citing Shahid Kapoor's apprehension with not wanting to star opposite Katrina Kaif as one of the reasons behind her not featuring in the film, despite being in contention.

However, the award winning actor squashed all rumours with a single tweet.

Director Shree Narayan Singh also rubbished the news.

This is absolutely untrue I do not even understand where this is coming from why would Shahid be unhappy? Firstly Shahid does not interfere with the creatives and casting, secondly, We are yet to take a call on this. Myself and Prerna  producer will take a joint call very soon. Regards to Katrina or any actor, it is the directors call and Shahid equally supports this. To sum it up Shahid has no reservations at all if Katrina is on board, in fact, he will be glad to have her on the film. Its better not to speculate things like this," Pinkvilla quoted the director as saying.

Shahid, who'll star as Maharawal Ratan Singh in 'Padmavati,' will be seen alongside Deepika Padukone as the eponymous queen and Ranveer Singh as Alauddin Khilji.
Watson, who is notoriously private about her personal life, has never spoken about her relationship with Knight publicly.

Mumbai: Yet another celebrity couple has come to the end of the road.

Emma Watson and her boyfriend of nearly two years, William "Mack" Knight, have called it quits, Us Magazine reported.

A source told the outlet that the Ivy League-educated pair split "earlier this year," but kept the breakup under wraps.

The 27-year-old actress and the 37-year-old tech entrepreneur were first spotted together back in October 2015, when they attended the Broadway musical 'Hamilton.'

After shooting to fame as a child star playing Hermione Granger in the 'Harry Potter' franchise, Watson graduated from Brown University in May 2014.

Knight received a Bachelor's in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton in 2003, as well as an MBA from Columbia Business School in 2011.
Chennai: A Kannada film producer has approached the Madras high court to restrain Kotapadi J.Rajesh of KJR Studios, Gopi Nainar, director and actor Nayanthara from exhibiting the Tamil film Aramm all over India.The civil suit filed by M/S Vishnu Movie Makers, Mysore, represented by its authorised signatory H.G.Manoj Kumar, which also sought a direction to the trio to pay a compensation of Rs 2 crore, is likely to come up for hearing next week.

In his suit, the plaintiff submitted that it had produced a Kannada film titled Parivara in 2013 and obtained censor certificate also in December, 2013. But the film could not be released due to financial problems. When it arranged a preview show to the distributors and friends at that time, Gopi Nainar also saw the film and appreciated the plaintiff. While so, the plaintiff was shocked to see the Tamil film Aramm, a replica of Parivara. Gopi Nainar had copied the Kannada version of his film without obtaining any rights or permission from the plaintiff. The film Aramm has been released in Karnataka also. Therefore, the plaintiff has filed the present suit, the plaintiff added.
Rating:

Cast: Sri Vishnu, Nivetha Pethuraj, Amrutha, Sivaji Raja, Raj Mudiraj

Director: Vivek Athreya





Like with Pelli Choopulu, which he handed over to debutant director Tharun Bhasker, producer Raj Kandukuri gives the baton to Vivek Athreya who justifies the confidence placed in him. Like with Pelli Choopulu, Mental Madhilo, which also revolves around marrage, was screened for a select audience in advance and has generated much buzz. The film introduces Nivetha Pethuraj, who turns out to be the highlight. She is stunning and gives a lively performance with the ease of an experienced actress. She is the big surprise from the film. Vivek Athreya takes the story of a young man who is befuddled with choices who suddenly finds himself in the marriage market and narrates it in a hilarious and entertaining manner. He establishes the lead actor Sri Vishnus character in an amusing manner from his childhood, and cleverly inserts a new girl in his life to much comical effect.

Despite this, it must be said the first half is interesting and the film tends to drag in the second. The young director deserves a pat for this neat romantic entertainer. Most of the scenes and the dialogues are uncomplicated, and flow like a conversation between friends. Sri Vishnu, known to be reserved in real life, gets to play a similar character on screen and lives the role. He looks natural and Mental Madhilo must count among his best films. The story revolves around Aravind Krishna (Sri Vishnu), who is confused when he is given choices. This is a problem from his childhood, whether it is to select a shirt or to answer a multiple choice question. Besides, he is shy and avoids talking with girls.

His father (Sivaji Raja) looks for a suitable alliance for Aravind who is rejected by many girls. An alliance is struck through a friend, and Swecha (Nivetha Pethuraj) likes him for his innocence. Both want to know each other better before the engagement. In the meantime, Aravind leaves for Mumbai on his office work where he meets the mischievous Renu (Amrutha). Vivek Athreya and the cast delightfully help the perplexed Aravind.

Sivaji Raja is gets another meaty role, playing the father of Sri Vishnu. He brings his experience to make it entertaining. It is good to see him get lengthy and good roles. Amrutha looks good in the second half. Kireeti, Anitha and Raj Mudiraj support with good performances. Prashanth R. Vihari provides good music and the cinematography by Vedaraman is impressive. Mental Madhilo is a decent film with a simple narration. It cannot be described as great, but director Vivek Athreya does come up with something new and interesting. If you like Pelli Choopulu, you may like this too.
Men with the most desirable personality profiles were rated more favourably than their counterparts only when they were also at least moderately attractive. (Photo: Pixabay)

New York: Unattractive men are not viewed as potential dating material by women and their mothers even when they possess the most desirable traits, a study claims.

Researchers at the Eastern Connecticut State University in the US assessed the mate preference of 80 women between the ages of 15 and 29 years old, and 61 mothers.

The women were presented with colour photographs of three male targets varying in attractiveness. Each photograph was paired with one of three trait profiles.

The "respectful" profile included the traits "trustworthy and honest", and the "friendly" profile included being "friendly, dependable and mature".

The "pleasing" profile meant that the man was "of a pleasing disposition, ambitious, and intelligent," according to the study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science.

The women had to rate the photographs and trait descriptions in response to how attractive they found the man, how favourably they rated his personal description, and whether they would consider the person as a dating partner for themselves or their daughters.

Physical attractiveness strongly influenced how women and their mothers saw the target men. The attractive and moderately attractive ones came up trumps.

Men with the most desirable personality profiles were rated more favourably than their counterparts only when they were also at least moderately attractive.

Even when unattractive men possessed the most desirable traits, the mothers and daughters did not view them as potential dating material.

"We conclude that a minimum level of physical attractiveness is a necessity for both women and their mothers," said Madeleine Fugere, from the Eastern Connecticut State University.

It was also found that daughters are pickier than their parents when it comes to choosing between potential mates.

Mothers rated all men, even the least attractive ones, as potentially desirable partners for their daughters, while the younger women did not.

"This may signal that unattractiveness is less acceptable to women than to their mothers," she said.

"It might also mean that women and their mothers may have different notions of what constitutes a minimally acceptable level of physical attractiveness, with mothers employing a less stringent standard than their daughters," she added.
The Nonhuman Rights Project announced Monday it has filed a lawsuit in Connecticut Superior Court on behalf of elephants named Beulah, Karen and Minnie. (Photo: Pixabay)

An animal rights organization has asked a court to legally recognize the personhood rights of three elephants at a Connecticut zoo and order them released.

The Nonhuman Rights Project announced Monday it has filed a lawsuit in Connecticut Superior Court on behalf of elephants named Beulah, Karen and Minnie at Commerford Zoo, a traveling petting zoo based in Goshen.

The nonprofit wants the court to release the elephants to a natural habitat sanctuary. It has filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which for people relates to whether someone is being unlawfully detained and should see a judge.

#RumbleForRights Online Activist Toolkit: Help raise awareness of the world's first elephant rights lawsuit https://t.co/0FN2XZgKnk pic.twitter.com/gMDFCJ45PD  Nonhuman Rights (@NonhumanRights) November 13, 2017

The organization argued unsuccessfully this year for two adult male chimps to be considered legal people.

Commerford Zoo hasnt responded to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
The bears had come to feast on the carcass of a bowhead whale that washed ashore, later resting around the food source. (Photo: AFP)

A boatload of tourists in the far eastern Russian Arctic thought they were seeing clumps of ice on the shore, before the jaw-dropping realisation that some 200 polar bears were roaming on the mountain slope.

"It was a completely unique situation," said Alexander Gruzdev, director of the Wrangel Island nature reserve where the encounter in September happened. "We were all gobsmacked, to be honest."

The bears had come to feast on the carcass of a bowhead whale that washed ashore, later resting around the food source. The crowd included many families, including two mothers trailed by a rare four cubs each, Gruzdev told AFP.

Climate change means ice, where polar bears are most at home, is melting earlier in the year and so polar bears have to spend longer on land, scientists say.

This might wow tourists but means the bears, more crammed together on coasts and islands, will eventually face greater competition for the little food there is on land.

Locals are also at risk from hungry animals venturing into villages.

Wrangel Island, off the coast of Russia's Chukotka in the northeast, is where polar bears rest after ice melts in early-August until November, when they can leave land to hunt for seals.

It is also considered the birthing centre for the species, with the highest density of maternity dens in the entire Arctic, Gruzdev said.

"A whale is a real gift for them," he said. "An adult whale is several tens of tonnes" that many bears can feed on for several months.

Studies have shown that, compared with 20 years ago, polar bears now spend on average a month longer on Wrangel Island because "ice is melting earlier and the ice-free period is longer," said Eric Regehr, from the University of Washington, the lead American scientist on the US-Russian collaborative study of Wrangel Island polar bears.

Changing ice conditions could also be responsible for the increasing number of bears flocking there, Regehr said.

This autumn, the number of bears observed was 589, far exceeding previous estimates of 200-300, he said, calling it "anomalously high".

The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates there are about 26,000 polar bears in the Arctic, with a long-term "potential for large reductions" due to ice loss.

Ice is key as polar bears hunt exclusively on the ice surface, often staking out seals by their breathing holes.

- Nothing can replace seals -

Regehr said the polar bear population in the shared US-Russian Chukchi Sea "appears to be productive and healthy" at the moment, but as time spent on land continues to increase, the bears' nutrition and body condition will be affected.

"The question is at what point the population will begin to experience negative effects, is that at one and a half months (more time on land than normal), two months, more?" he asked.

"We don't know exactly, but there is a threshold somewhere in the future."

Despite some food sources on land -- including musk oxen, lemmings, or even grass -- nothing can completely replace the energy-packed seals that bears have evolved to rely on.

"They are resourceful and adaptable animals, and some bears will probably find something to eat, but the number of bears we currently have in the Arctic definitely cannot be sustained on land," Regehr said.

That made the image of hundreds of bears around the whale carcass both impressive and concerning, he said.

"There is evidence that it foreshadows the future: larger numbers spending more time on the island and ultimately less time on the sea ice with fewer prey, with a negative cascade of effects."

- Moving walruses -

One effect is the increasing chance of conflict between polar bears and humans, for example in native Chukchi settlements, all of which are located on the coast.

Since mid-October, polar bears have been coming dangerously close to a Chukotka village called Ryrkaipy, which is located near Kozhevnikov Cape, an important site for walrus gatherings, or haulouts, that lies about 200 kilometres (about 124 miles) south of Wrangel Island.

With changing ice conditions, walruses can be forced to come ashore in steep unsuitable areas.

This year, hundreds died as the huge animals crushed one another, possibly after being disturbed by a predator, said Viktor Nikiforov, a polar bear specialist and coordinator of Marine Mammals expert centre.

The problem is that some walrus corpses then floated to the village, attracting polar bears. "One bear broke the window of a house," Nikiforov said.

The village went on high alert, forbade children to walk to school and cancelled some public events, reports said.

Nikiforov said scientists and locals used bulldozers to move walrus corpses away from the village. He echoed concerns that bears spend more time ashore as the ice-free period becomes longer.

"The concentration of people and animals in one area increases and there is conflict," he said.

"We cannot stop climate change, but we can sort out the situation on the shore and make life easier for the bears," he said, referring to measures such as bear patrols to minimise conflict with humans.

"With changes in nature, that has to be attended to."
Chennai: Four girls, all aged 16, committed suicide by jumping into an 80-ft farm well at Ramapuram near Arakkonam in Vellore district on Friday. Students of the government girls' higher secondary school at Panapakkam, were allegedly upset after their teachers scolded them for scoring poor marks in the tests.

While the bodies of three girls were retrieved from the well after much effort by the state fire and rescue services and the national disaster response force (NDRF), the fourth girl remains missing, police said.

They said preliminary investigation revealed that the girls, all classmates and close friends, took the extreme step after their class teacher asked them to bring their parents to discuss their poor performance in the tests. Police said the girls gave the afternoon session a miss, leaving their school bags in the class. After word spread about the missing girls, a local spotted their cycles near the well in the farm belonging to one Venkatesan, a few kilometres from the school.

The police was alerted and a team rushed there. As the well was very deep, it was difficult to reach the bodies and after much difficulty, three were lifted up by ropes. The bodies were removed to the government hospital for autopsy while search continued late into night for the fourth missing girl. Vellore superintendent of police P. Pakalavan and other senior police officers along with revenue personnel oversaw the rescue operations. Police sources said that rescue operations would continue late into the night. A case has been registered and the school HM and teachers were quizzed till late night by the police.
Hyderabad: Gullipally Appala, a 65-year-old army veteran was arrested by Keesara police on charges of cheating.

Mr Naidu, a resident of Old Nagaram village, had married a woman around six years ago. The marriage happened at a temple in Secunderabad in the presence of the womans father. He told the woman that he had divorced his first wife legally and had been single since then.

However, he had registered his first wife as a nominee and her daughter as legal heir for the pension he was receiving.

All the rights on the mans properties were with his first wife. Police said that he intentionally made sure that there was no evidence or record for his second marriage. The accused was sent to remand on Friday.
More than 30 migrants died and 200 were rescued on Saturday after their boats foundered off Libya's western coast, the Libyan navy said.

The coastguard conducted two rescue operations off the city of Garabulli, 60 kilometres (40 miles) east of Tripoli, spokesman Colonel Abu Ajila Abdelbarri said.

He added that patrols had found 31 bodies and 60 survivors from one boat, along with a further 140 survivors from a second.

"When we arrived at the spot, we found an inflatable dinghy with several people clinging to part of it," he said. He did not specify whether any people had been reported missing.

"The weather conditions these days are favourable for sending migrants to European shores on boats that are often unseaworthy," he added.

Libyan patrol boat commander Nasser al-Ghammoudi said one of the vessels was three-quarters under water when the coastguard arrived.

"We looked for other survivors for more than five hours," he said. "We were able to rescue one woman after we heard her shouts."

A French NGO, SOS Mediterranee, said later Saturday that it had rescued over 400 people from a stricken wooden boat in international waters further from the Libyan coast.

Other rescue operations were ongoing on Saturday evening, Italian coastguard told AFP.

Italy's coastguard, which coordinates the rescue effort in international waters, reported that a total of 1,500 people had been saved on Thursday and Friday.

The large numbers of recent days contrast with the sharp drop since mid-July in the number of migrants being brought to Italy.

On Thursday, the UNHCR put the number of arrivals at Italian ports in the previous three months at 21,666, the lowest total registered in four years for that period of the year.

The downward trend has been attributed to a controversial combination of an Italian-led boosting of the Libyan coastguard's ability to intercept boats and efforts to enlist the help of powerful militias to curb traffickers' activity.

There have also been moves to tighten Libya's southern borders, accelerate repatriations directly from Libya and measures to stem the flow of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa through transit states such as Niger and Sudan.

Those rescued by Libyan coastguard on Saturday were brought back to a naval base in Tripoli where the authorities provided them with water, food and medical care.

Migrants intercepted or rescued by the Libyans are usually held in detention centres to await repatriation, but waiting times are often long and conditions deplorable.

UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein in mid-November labelled as "inhuman" European Union support for Libyan authorities to intercept migrants in the Mediterranean and return them to "horrific" prisons in Libya.

Last week, US television network CNN aired footage of an apparent slave auction in Libya where black men were presented to North African buyers as potential farmhands and sold off for as little as $400 (350 euros).

Libya's UN-backed unity government said it would form a "commission to investigate these reports in order to apprehend and bring those responsible to justice".

People trafficking networks have flourished in the chaos that followed a NATO-backed uprising which toppled long-time dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

The unity government has said Libya is "a victim of illegal immigration, a transit state, not its source", adding that the only solution is a return to stability.

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Vijayawada: Jaguar Land Rover India has opened 3S dealership facility with their authorised retailer Lakshmi in Vijayawada, thereby expanding its network in India. Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has inaugurated the showroom at Atmakuru, Mangalagiri. He has seen the models introduced by Jaquar and the company officials have explained him the features of those vehicles.

Lakshmi has developed a state-of-the-art multi-level 3S facility which was inaugurated by Rohit Suri, president & managing director, Jaguar Land Rover India Ltd (JLRIL) and Jairam Kambhampati, managing director, Lakshmi. This dealership facility is designed and equipped to provide the highest quality of sales and after-sales services. The facility can display 10 cars enabling the display of almost the full range of products from Jaguar and Land Rover portfolio.

The facility has an integrated service workshop and is equipped with 20 service bays with state-of-the-art equipment manned by a team of highly-trained staff, including technicians and other service personnel. Mr. Rohit Suri said: We are delighted to introduce our new dealership facility in Vijayawada and are committed to easy accessibility for our customers to Jaguar and Land Rover products. The opening of this ultra-modern, integrated, one-stop facility offering our esteemed customers, sales, service & spare parts from the same location is in line with that objective.

Mr. Kambhampati Rammohanrao, TD leaderl has attended the programme on behalf of Lakshmi company. Eminent businesspersons of Vijayawada, Guntur attended the programme.
JuD head and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January. (Photo: File | AFP)

Washington: Mumbai attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed has "blood on his hands", and wants to bring extremism into the mainstream politics of Pakistan, a former top American spymaster said on Saturday.

The JuD head and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder, who has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan on Friday.

"Saeed is a terrorist. Worked with the LeT, a Kashmiri militant group, and al-Qaida on attacks," Michael Morell, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deputy director, who has also served twice as its acting director, said in a tweet.

"He has blood on his hands. Now wants to bring extremism into the political mainstream in Pakistan," he said after Saeed, a UN and US designated terrorist, was released from house arrest in Lahore.

Saeed is a terrorist. Worked with LeT, a Kashmiri militant group, and al-Qaida on attacks. He has blood on his hands. Now wants to bring extremism into the political mainstream in Pakistan. https://t.co/0RhjyQ3NkW  Michael Morell (@MichaelJMorell) November 24, 2017

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The fire-brand cleric's release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

Read Also: After releasing Hafiz Saeed Pak now justifies setting 'global terrorist' free

A deeply concerned US has asked the Pakistan government to re-arrest and charge Saeed for his crimes. It also asked Pakistan to ensure that the LeT leader is behind bars.

"NO! JuD is NOT tied to Islamic State. What a rookie... Seriously. Hafiz Saeed's Release Completes the Political Mainstreaming of Jihadists in Pakistan," tweeted Christine Fair, a well-known South Asian expert on terrorist groups.

NBC news said Saeed's release could once again sour US relations with Pakistan.

The New York Times said, for decades, Pakistan has cast a benign eye on groups like LeT which is perceived as an asset because its attacks target Indian soldiers in Kashmir even as the government battles jihadist groups like the Pakistan Taliban that directly threatens the country.

"But despite its pressure on Pakistan to move against militants like Saeed, the United States has also sent mixed messages. Just a month ago, the United States Senate struck down a provision tying American government funding to Pakistan to the country's efforts to curb Lashkar-e-Taiba's operations. The provision, part of a broader Pentagon-funding legislation that Congress introduced this past summer, would have forced the secretary of defence to certify that Islamabad was thwarting Lashkar-e-Taiba's activities inside Pakistan or risk USD 350 million in American assistance," the Times wrote.

Meanwhile, in an op-ed, The Washington Examiner said the Trump administration "should work with India" to "capture or kill" Saeed.

"Trump should call Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and offer to work with him to capture or kill Saeed," the daily said, adding that Saeed intends to lead a new Muslim theocratic political bloc in next year's parliamentary polls.

"Although Pakistan's electoral commission has refused to certify the bloc, Saeed's populist power should not be understated. Charismatic and determined, if left unchecked in his political party or terrorist activities, Saeed could destabilise the region," the daily added.

The JuD is believed to be the front organisation for the banned LeT which is responsible for carrying out the Mumbai terror attack.
The faeces are treated, and converted to compost, and used to return the nutrients from human waste to the soil.

Hyderabad: Dr Sasha Kramer, a delegate of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), says that it is good for sanitation to be considered within the realm of entrepreneurship.

Dr Kramer co-founded the Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) group in Haiti in 2006. She says that the organisation sees human waste as a valuable resource. SOIL builds toilets that separate urine and faeces through the use of specially-designed toilet seats. The faeces are treated, and converted to compost, and used to return the nutrients from human waste to the soil.

It is very difficult to explain something like toilets to people. We need to talk about the circular economic system, and the various aspects related to it. Sanitation brings together health and the environment.

1,500 entrepreneurs like Dr Kramar will participate in the GES. These types of summits help people meet sanitation practitioners who understand that basic sanitation is a human right, she says.

At the summit, she hopes to connect with like-minded people.

It is inspiring to see people from around the world. I am excited about this opportunity, she says.

Dr Kramer, who has visited India several times in the past, says that she is impressed by the Swacch Bharat campaign. She says that she hopes the Government of Haiti will prioritise sanitation in a similar manner.

Her advice to female entrepreneurs is, Dont let anyone tell you what you cannot do.
SC on October 30 had directed Hadiyas father to produce her before the court on next date of hearing (November 27). (Photo: File)

Kochi: Supreme Court will hear the Kerala love Jihad case on Monday. Hadiya who has been asked to be present before the apex court during the hearing said, I am a Muslim. I want to go with my husband. Nobody forced me to convert.

Hadiya on Saturday left Kochi in Kerala for New Delhi for the hearing of the case on November 27.

SC on October 30 had directed Hadiyas father to produce her before the court on next date of hearing (November 27).

Earlier on Saturday, Hadiya's husband Shafin Jahan filed a complaint stating that attempts were being made to reconvert her to Hinduism ahead of her being produced in the apex court on Monday.

The Supreme Court had on Wednesday refused to accord urgent hearing on a plea filed by the father of the woman, who converted to Islam before marrying Shafin, that interaction with the woman be conducted in-camera.

The counsel for Ashokan KM, Hadiya's father, sought an urgent hearing on his plea saying that it would become infructuous if the earlier order mandating open court interaction is not modified.

Ashokan referred to the communally sensitive nature of the case and sought in-camera interaction on some grounds including that radical elements could jeopardise the safety and privacy of his daughter and the family.

The apex court had earlier observed that the free consent of a major to marriage has to be ascertained amid an assertion by National Investigation Agency (NIA) that an indoctrinated person may be incapable of giving free consent to marriage.

The NIA had claimed that this was a case in which the woman was indoctrinated and hence the court could invoke parental authority even if she was a major.

The woman, a Hindu, had converted to Islam and later married Jahan. It was alleged that the woman was recruited by Islamic State's mission in Syria and Jahan was only a stooge.
Prof A R Yusuf, who heads a group the conservation of Srinagars Dal Lake, said the cyber environment has witnessed gradual degradation due to the proliferation of technology in this cyber age. (Photo: Representational/File)

Srinagar: India registered over 100 per cent increase in cyber crime during 2016-17, a two-day conference on cyber laws and cyber security being held in Srinagar was told on Saturday

As per the statistics made available to the participants of the conference, there has been a significant rise in attacks on government and private sector, particularly financial sector.

In government sector, there has been 136 percent increase in cyber crimes while the private sector has seen 119 percent in 2016-17, said Prof Yasir Latif Handoo, assistant professor, Kashmir Law College. He added that there is need for International Court on cyber Crime on the lines of International Court of Justice to deal with such crimes.

The conference has been organized by Anjuman-e-Vukla ( organization of lawyers) and is being attended by several prominent lawyers from across the country, academia, students from different colleges and universities, as well as officials of the J&K government.

V Shekhar, senior advocate, Supreme Court of India, who was the chief guest, said the information technology has witnessed innovations in hardware and software components but there is a need for aggressive legal recourse to happenings in cyber world.

After IT Act 2000 was enacted, many amendments have been brought in to cope with growing challenges in terms of privacy and theft in cyber world but we are far behind, he said asserting Our country also has to find solutions to mounting problems in cyber world.

Prof A R Yusuf, who heads a group the conservation of Srinagars Dal Lake, said the cyber environment has witnessed gradual degradation due to the proliferation of technology in this cyber age.

Our world has passed into a new era where youngsters using new technology are vulnerable to cyber crime. On social media, people fall prey to rumours and become carriers of misinformation because of which they have to face consequences, he said.

He urged Anjuman-e-Vukla, Kashmir to organise such seminars in schools and colleges in rural areas and make people aware about the cyber laws and cyber security.

A well-known Kashmiri lawyer Ateef Kanth said the cyber laws in India are nascent and a lot of education and research are required to formulate effective legislation on cyber crimes,

The scale of cyber crimes in India is negligent, mostly dealing with privacy issues, while huge cyber scams have been reported globally. Keeping this in mind, we have to be proactive in evolving an effective, since most of offences defined in IT Act 2000 are bailable, he said.

Tahir Majid Shamsi, additional solicitor general of India, J&K High Court, said that the scale of information available online makes the internet users vulnerable to privacy intrusion.

Securing data is a big issue. In todays world, most people dont know importance of cyber laws, which are meant to protect your information. There is need to educate people on cyber laws, he said.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Pakistan released 2008 Mumbai attacks mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest. (Photo: File | PTI)

New Delhi: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Pakistan released 2008 Mumbai attacks mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest, saying that the former's 'Hugplomacy' with US President Donald Trump failed.

Rahul Gandhi took to his Twitter handle and said "more hugs were urgently needed" between Modi and Trump.

Narendrabhai,   . Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed.https://t.co/U8Bg2vlZqw  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 25, 2017

On November 24, Saeed was released from house arrest in Lahore.

Police guards were removed from his residence where a large number of supporters gathered to celebrate the end of his house arrest.

In his first address after being released, Saeed blamed India and the US for detention and raked up Kashmir.

Saeed is said to be the head of the US-designated terror outfit, LeT and had been under house arrest since January 31, 2017.

The decision to put Saeed under house arrest in January was seen as a response to actions by US President Donald Trump's White House against nations deemed linked to terrorism.

He has been declared a global terrorist by the United Nations and the US for his role in the 26/11 Mumbai attack which claimed the lives of 166 people and maimed over 300 others.

He has a USD 10 million bounty on his head.
The decision to suspend mobile internet has been taken by the state government in view of maintaining law and order ahead of the two public rallies. (Representational Image)

Chandigarh: The Haryana government on Friday suspended mobile internet services in 13 districts of the state till the midnight of November 26.

This decision has been taken by the state government in view of maintaining law and order ahead of the two public rallies.

An official statement issued by the Haryana's Additional Chief Secretary (Home Department) S S Prasad reads, "Internet services provided on mobile networks except voice calls shall remain suspended for the next three days until midnight of November 26 beginning today (November 24) in the territorial jurisdiction of districts of Jind, Hansi, Bhiwani, Hisar, Fatehabad, Karnal, Panipat, Kaithal, Rohtak, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Bhiwani and Charkhi Dadri."

"This order is issued to prevent any disturbance of peace and public order in the jurisdiction of the State district as mentioned and shall be in force for the next three days," the order adds.

The All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS), led by Yashpal Malik, announced a rally at Jassia village of Rohtak district on Sunday.

On the same day, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Raj Kumar Saini will address another rally at Jind.

A group of Jats opposing Kurukshetra MP Raj Kumar Saini's rally at Jind reportedly clashed with the police and blocked the Jind-Chandigarh national highway in Jind.
Lawyer Tanveer Ahmed Mir (Centre) on Friday confirmed that he will be defending the 16-year-old student accused in the murder of Pradyuman Thankur in Gurgaon's Ryan International School. (Photo: AFP)

New Delhi: Lawyer Tanveer Ahmed Mir on Friday confirmed that he will be defending the 16-year-old student accused in the murder of Pradyuman Thankur in Gurgaon's Ryan International School, according to a report in Hindustan Times.

Ahmed Mir has successfully defended Rajesh and Nupur Talwar accused in the murder of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj, after which they were acquitted by the Allahabad High Court on October 12.

Seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur was found dead with his throat slit inside the toilet of Ryan International School on September 8.

In a sensational twist to the case, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested a class 11 student of the same school and gave a clean chit to the bus conductor, Ashok Kumar, who was arrested by the Gurgaon police for the murder and sexual assault of the child.

According to the agency, the Class 11 student, believed to be weak in his studies, allegedly slit Pradyuman's throat to get the school to declare a holiday in order to defer a scheduled parent-teacher meeting (PTM) and an examination.

The CBI is also investigating the involvement of a second student in the case.

The Pradyuman murder this september has drawn certain similarities with the 2008 Aarushi murder case because of its twists and turns.

Investigation in Pradyuman murder case has revealed illegality and destruction of evidence by Gurgaon police, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sources said on Sunday.

A shoddy investigation and lapses by the CBI and the UP Police not only delayed investigations but also generated considerable controversy.

The police also did not bother to search the terrace of the house even though bloodstains were clearly visible on the staircase, and announced its honour killing theory even before the investigations were over.

UP Police accused Rajesh of killing his daughter in a fit of rage.
Chennai: The Madras high court has directed the Muthupettai town panchayat, Thiruvarur district, to demolish the construction, designed to offer namaz (prayer) and run a Madrasa, in violation of the planning permission and if no action is taken, initiate disciplinary action against those responsible for not taking steps to demolish the building and any major punishment should be imposed on them, which should be reflected in their service records as a black mark.

Justice S. Vaidyanathan, who gave the directive, also said if no action is taken against those persons responsible for demolishing the construction, the person, who is liable to take disciplinary action should be dismissed from service.

The judge dismissed a petition from P. Abdul Azeez and K. Sathick Basha, President and Treasurer of the Tamil Nadu Thavheed Jamath Muthupettai Branch respectively, which sought to quash an order of the Muthupettai town panchayat, which cancelled the sanction for construction.

According to petitioner, after obtaining necessary approval for constructing a superstructure on their land measuring 2,400 sq.ft, they had completed the basement work and when they were erecting the ground floor, a stop-work notice was issued and later cancelled the sanction.

The panchayat submitted that the petitioners submitted an application to construct ground and first floor on the land. Following complaints, the executive officer of the panchayat visited the place and found that the construction was designed to offer namaz and run a Madrasa and hence the present order was passed.

The judge said it has been categorically stated in the stop-work notice that the planning permission was obtained for the construction of a residential house and not for any jamath/prayer hall/madrasa. When there was a specific plan accorded for construction of a residential house, the petitioners cannot deviate and hence the panchayat was right in issuing the stop-work notice and thereafter passing the impugned order of cancellation of planning approval. Proceeding with construction and claiming investment of huge amount on the same cannot be a ground to permit the construction of superstructure to stand there, the judge added.
Hyderabad: Twelve sensitive locations have been identified along the route that will be taken by delegates to the GES along the Outer Ring Road (ORR) starting from RGI airport to Kothaguda in Gachibowli where the ORR ends. The Cyberabad police, who have jurisdiction along this stretch, will deploy around 30 vehicles for round-the-clock patrolling till the summit concludes. The 30- km stretch will be guarded by armed men and commandos from Octopus, the outfit engaged in anti-terror operations.

Most of the 1,500 delegates participating in the summit will land at the RGI airport and travel to the hotels allotted to them and to the venue, the Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC).

From the airport, all the delegates will take the ORR, including Ivanka Trump, advisor to the US President, who is expected to stay at the Westin Hotel.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will leave Hyderabad after the dinner at Falaknuma Place on the first day, may also take the Outer Ring Road to reach the airport.

To ensure that the entire stretch is secured for the movement of VVIPs and delegates from all over the world, foolproof security has been set up on the ORR. A vehicle, with at least three men, will be deployed along every kilometre on both sides of the stretch, a senior official said.

The men will see that the vehicles carrying the delegates will have a smooth ride and act if the vehicles meet with an accident or break down midway, and coordinate with the control centre. Tourism department vehicles have also been kept on standby, the official added.
Hyderabad: Ahead of the Ivanka Trumps visit to Hyderabad, the citizens have aggressively taken to social media platforms requesting her to visit their localities so that at least then, the GHMC will clean up the places on a war-footing. One such message is a purported WhatsApp conversation between a Manikonda resident and Ms Trump, where the resident requests her to visit Manikonda so that new roads will be laid before her visit. When she replies that she will inform the Prime Minister, the resident says the Centre would then impose road service tax. Touche.

Netizens have taken to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to extend an invitation to the visiting dignitaries to tour their localities. Tarusha Saxena, a PR professional posted, Ms Ivanka Trump, we the citizens of Masab Tank, Banjara Hills and Punjagutta collectively cordially invite you to grace Banjara Hills Road No. 1 and Pun-jagutta with your convoy during your Hyderabad visit. This will ensure smooth and traffic-less roads for us for next 3-4 months in these areas.

Another Facebook user, Sandesh Johny, posted, Ivanka Trump is coming to Hyderabad and all the routes she will be taking are being repaired. I hope she comes to Hafeezpet... Bahut hi kharab road hain. Citizens also expressed their happiness over the sudden appearance of new footpaths. In a personal mail to GHMC commissioner, an anonymous resident wrote, Impressive, the way footpaths are being developed all over Western Hyderabad. It has already given a clean look to the roads. However, citizens are apprehensive about how they are going to be maintained. I foresee th-em being occupied by the food trucks that will soon damage the footpath. Please dont allow this to happen, GHMC must issue a stern warning and stringent action should be taken on those who destroy the footpaths.
Hyderabad: Indias defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Telangana minister for IT K.T. Rama Rao will share the stage with Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the US President, and a presidential advisor, at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit-2017 (GES) in Hyderabad next week. Ms Trump will reportedly be participating in two sessions on November 29 following the inaugural ceremony on November 28.

She will speak in the Plenary Session of the summit whose theme is Women First, Prosperity for All. In this session, chairman of the board of US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) John Chambers and chairman of the Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, Marcus Wallenberg, will be participating along with Ms Sitharaman and Ms Trump.

In the subsequent session on women at the workplace, the panellists will be Cherie Blair, founder of the Cherie Blair Foundation and wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and CEO of ICICI Bank Ltd, Chanda Kochhar along with Mr KTR and Ms Trump.

The inaugural ceremony will feature Prime Minister Narendra Modi, TS Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Ivanka Trump. Ms Trump will be leaving for the US soon after the session. Ms Blair too will grace the summit for a short time. The VVIPS will leave the summit on the second day by noon.
Dar was on a vacation and had gone missing on Tuesday. (Photo: ANI/Twitter)

Srinagar: An off-duty Army jawan was killed by suspected militants in Jammu and Kashmirs southern Shopian district overnight, the police said on Saturday.

We have taken up investigations. It appears to be a case of kidnapping and murder and we suspect terrorists are involved, he said.

No militant outfit active in J&K has, so far, claimed responsibility for killing Dar.

The deceaseds family told the police that Dar had come home on vacation. They said that he had left home in his car on Friday evening and did not return. His vehicle was found one kilometre from the place where his body was found on Saturday morning, the police said.

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, who was touring neighbouring Kulgam district as part of her public outreach, condemned Dars murder. She tweeted, Strongly condemn the brutal killing of Irfan Ahmed, a brave Territorial Army soldier at Shopian. Such heinous acts will not weaken our resolve to establish peace and normalcy in the Valley.

Her predecessor and Opposition National Conference working president, Omar Abdullah, also took to the micro-blogging site to condemn the killing. He wrote, The murder of young Irfan Dar is a very tragic & reprehensible act. My unqualified condemnation & heartfelt condolences to his family.
Kochi/Kottayam: Hadiya aka Akhila, who is allegedly a victim of Love Jihad, said on Saturday that she had embraced Islam on her own free will and wanted to go with her husband Shefin Jahan.

She also said she needed justice and that there was no compulsion from anyone in her changing the religion.

Hadiya, who will appear in the Supreme Court on Monday as directed by a bench headed by the chief justice, expressed her stand to mediapersons at the Nedumbassery airport before she was taken to New Delhi by a flight in the afternoon. It was for the first time that she appeared in public after the Kerala High Court, in May this year, had annulled her marriage to Shefin Jahan and given her custody to her father K.M. Asokan of TV Puram, Vaikom, Kottayam district.

Hadiya was taken to the airport amidst tight security by the police who tried to prevent her from speaking to the media. However, she managed to say a few words to the reporters before she was whisked away to the airport building. Chaotic scenes prevailed at the airport as mediapersons jostled to get close to Hadiya to get a response from her.

She later took a flight to Delhi accompanied by her father, mother Ponnamma and a team of police personnel headed by Kaduthurthy circle inspector John-son, another woman circle inspector, two women civil police officers and a male civil police officer. Hadiya and others are expected to stay in Kerala House in Delhi.

The Kerala High Court had annulled Hadiyas marriage after her father approached the court expressing fears that his daughter will be taken abroad for alleged terrorist activities.

Her husband Jehan, who had married her while she was studying in a homoeopathic college in Salem last year, filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the HC verdict. The apex court in October had ordered the authorities to produce Hadiya before it on November 27.

TIGHT SECURITY AT VILLAGE:

Hadiya and her parents were taken from TV Puram by the policemen around 2 pm, while their house was surrounded by hundreds of curious people and mediapersons from the morning itself. The police had provided unprecedented security at the village.

A number of police vehicles were lined up before their house and the cops tried to shield Hadiya from public view while she entered a police vehicle along with her parents.

Kottayam Special Branch DySP J. Santhosh Kumar, Vaikom DySP K. Subhash, Vaikom CI Binu, Sub-Inspector M. Sahil also accompanied the vehicle to the airport.
Weather blogger Pradeep John said that north east monsoon is to boost from month end and heavy downpour can continue till the first half of December.

Chennai: Though dry days continue for Tamil Nadu, rainy days are expected to be back within 48 hours after the formation of a low-pressure area along the southern parts of the state, said regional meteorological centre on Saturday.

The low pressure formed over the Bay of Bengal is gradually heading westward which seems to be a good sign for rains in the southern and coastal regions in next 2-3 days. Southern districts, Nagapattinam, Tirunelveli, Tiruvallur,

Ramanathapuram and delta belt are expected to receive intermittent spells. Parts of Chennai can receive short spells of rain depending upon moisture content, wind speed and direction, said S Balachandran, Director, area cyclone warning center.

Heavy rain is likely to occur at isolated places over South Tamil Nadu in next two days as per the RMC forecast.

Weather blogger Pradeep John said that north east monsoon is to boost from month end and heavy downpour can continue till the first half of December. However, the city is to receive only moderate rainfall for next two days.
Even as the day of inauguration nears a lot of work at Uppal stadium still remains incomplete. (Photo: DC)

Hyderabad: The police have deployed about 150 police personnel at the 24 Metro stations and other installations. Commissioner of Rachakonda, Mr Mahesh Bhagwat, Hyderabad commissioner (incharge) V.V. Srinivasa Rao and Cyberabad commissioner Mr Sandeep Shandilya on Saturday travelled in the Metro between Miyapur and Nagole.

A garbage dump yard adjacent to the Nagole Metro station releases an unbearable stench for people travelling this route. (Photo: DC)

They were accompanied by the Metro Rail and L&T officials. The officials inspected security equipment including surveillance cameras, metal detectors and access control mechanism. Cameras have been installed in the trains, concourse, ticketing areas at gates and platforms apart from other important points.

The 150 police personnel who have been deputed towards security for the Metro Rail have been trained at the Metro Rail Bhavan over the last three days. They will be posted at all the 24 Metro stations. Meanwhile, the police have decided to begin a Metro security wing in the next one year. The wing will have all security teams including bomb disposal squad, dog squad and a quick response team. The director general of Police, Mr M. Mahendar Reddy has asked the Cyberabad, Rachakonda and Hyderabad police to provide overall security to all HMR stations for the time being.
Lucknow: The release of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba leader Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan led to celebration by members of one community in Lakhimpur district on Saturday.

The police went into tizzy as soon as the local people started bursting crackers and decorated their houses with green lights.

Some residents of Begum Bagh colony in Shivpuri area allegedly decorated their houses with green flags and also raised slogans like Hafiz Saeed zindabad and Pakistan Zindabad.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The two sensational rabbits that were supposed to be pulled out of the GST hat  increased tax compliance and a wider tax base  have not yet materialised. This failure has worsened the states finances because of the nature of commodity placements under five major GST slabs; commodities are grouped under these slabs in such a way that the state will gain less from each good sold than before. In more definite terms, the tax the state can collect from nearly 80 per cent of the goods has fallen 5.5 percent from what it could under the VAT system.

If during the VAT regime, nearly 80 per cent commodities were taxed at 14.5 per cent, under the new system 80 per cent of commodities sold in the state will be taxed at 18 per cent. This means the states share will be just 9 per cent, 5.5 per cent less that what the state had been collecting a top finance department official said. (Only half of the GST rate flows to the states coffers.) The fall in income became more pronounced on November 10, when 177 goods were transferred from the 28 per cent GST slab to 18 per cent. The state, therefore, is in an unenviable position. Not only has GST failed to deliver, but it has also robbed the state of a part of its traditionally assured revenue.

The commodities that fetched the state its largest share of tax revenue  like cement, white goods, electrical goods, and tiles  have now been put under the 18 per cent slab. Many of the mass consumption consumer goods like mineral water, ice cream, hair oil, and tooth paste would now provide the state just 9 per cent, as against the 14.5 per cent it had pocketed before July 1, 2017. Similar is the case with watch, clock, ceramic ware and helmet; all of which had yielded a higher tax under VAT.

Some of the commodities which were earlier in the 5 per cent VAT rate, like dry fruits or edible oil or cotton textiles, will continue to be in 5 per cent GST slab. But the states revenue from these items will fall by half to 2.5 per cent. Nonetheless, there are items like paint and automobiles that have been retained in the 28 per cent slab, but even here the state's share, which is 14 per cent (half of 28 percent), is 0.5 per cent lower than what it had extracted under VAT. Here is what the report of Kerala State Expenditure Review Committee says: The reduced rate of most commodities may have an adverse impact on the state revenues unless there is corresponding increase in the base to compensate the loss due to reduction in the rate. The report came out in August, long before the Centre had shifted 177 commodities were shifted to a lower tax slab.
Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court held that a candidate who tells a deliberate lie when specifically asked cannot be taken even with a pinch of salt. He is wholly unworthy of being drafted into the police department which calls for the highest degree of honesty and rectitude, it said.

A division bench comprising Justice C.V. Nagarjuna Reddy and Justice G. Shyam Prasad while allowing a batch of petitions by the State Level Police Recruitment Board of AP, observed, Furnishing of false statement would even dwarf his earlier conduct of his involvement in a criminal case.

The board had challenged the orders passed by the AP Administrative Tribunal setting aside the cancellation of candidature of P. Vinay and five others selected as constable in 2014.

The board cancelled their candidature based on the common ground of suppression of their involvement in criminal cases.

The tribunal set aside the cancellation holding that offences against the selected candidates were not heinous like murder, rape, involving moral turpitude. The tribunal held the view that the acquittal by Lok Adalat would erase the stigma.

Referring to a judgement of the Supreme Court in Commissioner of Police, New Delhi, v Mehar Singh, the bench said Indub-itably an applicant seeking employment in the police force is expected to make a fair disclosure of their antecedents for a disciplined force like police department, a fair disclosure is an essential requirement and an aspirant is expected to state these facts honestly, which is an inbuilt requirement of any public employment.

This obligation to make a fair disclosure was incorporated in the Rule and the consequences of failure to discharge this obligation was also made explicit. These candidates had failed to disclose their involvement in criminal cases, they have gone a step further by making a blatantly false statement in the relevant column, Justice Nagarjuna Reddy and Justice Shyam Prasad said.

DOnt harass dhaba owner: HC

The Hyderabad High Court directed the city Central Crime Station police not to interfere with the business activity of petitioners who were running restaurants with a name identical to Santosh Dhaba while investigating the case of alleged trademark infringement against them, except in a manner known to law.

Justice S.V. Bhatt was disposing of a petition by owners of Maa Santosh Dhaba alleging that the CCS deputy dommissioner of police and other officers were harassing and threatening to close their business stating that the name and style of Maa Santosh Dhaba in Somajiguda was identical to Santosh Dhaba.

According to the petitioners, one Manoj Kumar Shukla lodged a complaint with the CCS police claiming that he had the registered trademark of Santosh Dhaba and running a dhaba identical to it would infringe on his copyright.

While disposing of the case, the judge refused to restrict the investigation officer from the probe, but directed that the process of investigation ought not to interfere with the business of petitioner. Justice Bhatt made it clear that the alleged trademark infringement was not considered by the court.

Plea seeks checks on LPG vehicles

A PIL has been moved before the Hyderabad High Court challenging the inaction of the transport authorities in inspecting vehicles run with LPG periodically.

Mr R. Haribabu, president of the Twin Cities Consumers Rights Forum, moved the PIL stating that the periodical inspections were required for old vehicles which were fitted with LPG tanks but the authorities were not taking any care to check the safety of the tanks and cylinder fitted into the vehicles.

He urged the court to direct the authorities to take steps to ensure safety of old vehicles runing on LPG.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Former chief minister Oommen Chandy was caught off guard when his wife Mariamma made a speech at a venue in Kuwait on Friday in his presence. She recalled the path she had been treading for the last several years ever since the solar scam cropped up. She urged the women to think of 'tensions' she was undergoing which would enable them to see theirs as "trivial". The couple left for Kuwait on Thursday to attend the Overseas Indian Cultural Congress award night to felicitate winners from different spheres.

In his speech, Mr Chandy came down on the wrong policies of the BJP Government especially, demonetisation and the GST. But he did not forget to remind the audience revival of the Indian National Congress spearheaded by vice-president Rahul Gandhi. When his 68-year-old companion came to the podium to address them, she began by saying that her husband is tense, thinking about what she is going to blurt out.

"You all must be already aware of the travails of my husband over the last several years. If wives and mothers just think about my tensions that would immediately help you to forget yours. My simple theory is that life is too short and anger is not a solution for anything," said Mariamma Oommen who had retired as a senior bank official eight years ago. It was for the first time she openly commented about her husband's travails in the aftermath of the solar scam. AICC spokesperson Kushboo Sundar also attended the programme. Mr Chandy and his wife returned to Kochi on Saturday.
Sitharaman accused the Congress of failing to take any action against black money despite a SC order on the issue. (Photo: File)

Ahmedabad: Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said the Congress in Gujarat has "failed" to play the role of a responsible opposition.

The BJP leader also targeted Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi over the alleged stalling of projects in Gujarat during the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre, and said he needs to answer certain questions related to that.

"Instead of replying to these questions, he keeps asking more questions. It is the responsibility of the opposition party to answer questions related to its government when it was in power at the Centre," she told reporters in Ahmedabad.

Sitharaman is here to campaign for the BJP for the next month's polls.

Sitharaman said the opposition party's strength in the Gujarat assembly has gone down to 43 as the party has "failed to project an image of a responsible Opposition".

"From 57 MLAs in 2012, the Congress is down to 43 MLAs today. The party was rejected four times by the people of Gujarat...What have you (the Congress) done as a responsible opposition party?" she asked.

Sitharaman rejected the Congress criticism of visits by Union ministers to poll-bound Gujarat to campaign for the BJP, saying no work of the government had been hampered due to their trips.

"We are party workers even when we are in the Cabinet. If he (Gandhi) says the work of the central government is hampered (due to our visits), then let him say so. We will say that the work there is going on without any hindrance."

She criticised the Congress for taking its MLAs to a Bengaluru resort to prevent alleged poaching by the ruling BJP ahead of the Rajya Sabha election in July when parts of the state were reeling under floods.

She claimed the UPA government prevented a 32km national highway project in Gujarat on environmental ground.

Sitharaman asked Gandhi to question former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot as to why he wrote to the Centre opposing construction of a dam under the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi's pet "Sujalam Sufalam" project for water harvesting.

Gehlot, now the party's Gujarat election in-charge, "worked against the interest of Gujarat," she said.

The Union minister said a Congress MP from Maharashtra had protested against the Narmada dam.

"He (Gandhi) asks questions instead of giving replies. He will ask questions to the entire world but not to his own MLAs, his own UPA government which created hurdles in construction of dams roads in Gujarat," she said.

She attacked Gandhi for allegedly diverting Rs 2,000-crore party fund to the National Herald Trust.

On the Dokalam issue, the Congress leader should have met External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to get details about the stand-off instead of meeting the Chinese ambassador, Sitharaman maintained.

It was an "irresponsible act" on the part of the Opposition party, the defence minister said.

Sitharaman said the Congress, when in power, did little to curb black money despite a Supreme Court orders on the issue.

The BJP leader said the Gujarat government has taken a slew of welfare measures for fishermen.

Gandhi earlier had an interaction with fishermen.

The measures include a Rs 11,000-crore 'Sagar Khedut' programme which is going on well, the minister said.

She said the NDA government has also announced projects related to marine product processing and export which will benefits the fishermen of Gujarat.
Hyderabad: Due to the tight time schedule, there will be no public meeting to mark the inauguration of Hyderabad Metro Rail, the worlds largest public-private participation costing an estimated Rs 18,000 crore.

Public meetings are usually organised for the dedication of major projects by Prime Minister. Mr Modi had addressed the inaugural function at Metro Kochi on June 17.

According to sources, the state government had proposed holding a public meeting near the Miyapur Metro Rail station, where it expected the Centre to announce a commitment for the expansion of the project.

The idea was dropped due to Mr Modis tight schedule. The Metro Rail launch was included in his itinerary just two days ago, a senior officer said. The governments request for an hour for the inaugural was not considered, he said.

Mr Modi has spared 10 minutes for a political reception in his honour to be held by state BJP leaders at the Begumpet airport on Tuesday.

Soon after landing at the airport, and after the state governments ceremonial reception ends, Mr Modi will come over to a special stage being erected by BJP leaders near the entrance.

According to city BJP president and party MLC N. Ramachandra Rao, Mr Modi will receive greetings from party leaders and wave to the cadre.

All the important BJP leaders will be introduced to Mr Modi. Whether he will address the cadre for a few minutes or not depends on the situation, Mr Ramachandra Rao said.
Ramanathapuram: Slamming the Opposition for unfair criticism that his government was acting subservient to the BJP regime at the Centre, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Saturday said here that the state had now secured much by way of Central assistance and allocations only because of the close rapport between the two governments.

Recalling the announcement of a massive Rs.one lakh crore Central allocation to Tamil Nadu that Union Minister Nitin Gadkari made during his recent visit to Chennai, the Chief Minister said such a massive help was possible only because of the good relationship between his government and the Centre.

They (DMK) are accusing us of being subservient to the Centre. But can they tell us what they had done for the people of Tamil Nadu when they were part of the Union Government as Congress allies? asked the CM while addressing a massive rally as part of the MGR centenary celebrations.

Listing out the various projects initiated by the Jayalalithaa government, such as the Rs 20,000 crore Chennai-Bengaluru expressway and the Rs 900 crore expansion for Tuticorin port, the Chief Minister said, The Centre has been supporting our government to carry out various projects only because of our close rapport with the Centre.

Speaking earlier, deputy chief minister O. Panneerselvam recalled a story narrated by his late leader Ms Jayalalithaa that stressed the need for unity in order to be able to defeat the enemy. It was a story about the five fingers in a wrestlers hand. While the man slept, the fingers fought among themselves on who was superior to the rest. But when an enemy attacked, the fingers got together and vanquished the adversary. Such is the power of unity, he said.

Party MP Dr V. Meitreyan, who has been in the news for his charge that the OPS followers are being treated as second class members in the party, lashed out at the CM again on Saturday when OPS was not invited for the partys celebration of the MGR centenary together with Jayalalithaas birthday and the retrieval of the two-leaves symbol at Madurai despite the temple town being OPS stronghold and his constituency Periyakulam is barely an hour away.

Also missing in the invitees list were the party MP and MLA from Madurai, which made it look that the CMs gala celebration there was out of bounds for the OPS camp, argued Dr Meitreyan, looking very sad and bitter before the huge media gathering outside the Raj Bhavan, where he had gone to meet Governor Banwarilal Purohit.

Dr Meitreyan insisted that he had not discussed politics at the Raj Bhavan and was there along with industrialist A.C. Muthiah to invite the Governor for the 75th anniversary celebration of Tamilisai Sangam at the Raja Annamalai Manram on December 21.
New Delhi: Hitting back at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi over his jibe at Prime Minister Modi, the BJP said on Saturday that its government had succeeded in isolating Pakistan over terrorism, while the UPA treated it as a victim state and let it off lightly.

Minutes after Gandhi termed the release of JuD chief Hafiz Saeeds release a failure of PM Modis hugplomacy, the BJP hit back by calling the Congress leader a known sympathiser of LeT, and asking if he had congratulated the mastermind of 26/11 Mumbai attacks yet.

Rahul Baba, aadatein nahin badalti hain (Rahul Baba, habits dont change). For once, stand with the country & not with terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks & Ishrat Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. BTW, have you congratulated your Hafiz Saheb on his release yet? @officeofrg, tweeted G.V.L. Narasimha Rap, BJPs national spokesperson.

Congress ka haath, aatankivadiyon ke saath is a more appropriate slogan for the Opposition party, he added.

The Congress condemned the BJP over its shameful barb, with party leader Anand Sharma saying that the BJP leaders in their arrogance have lost their mental balance as they targeted Gandhi. He said the BJP needs to be reminded that Gandhi belongs to a family which made sacrifices for the unity and integrity of the country and accused the BJP of taking political discourse to a new low. It is shameful. It deserves to be condemned. The BJP leaders have lost their mental balance in arrogance. Gandhi is the leader of Congress.
While the official announcement of who will be the next Congress president will be known in a few days from now, it hardly leaves any doubt that Rahul Gandhi is all set to take over as the new president of the party. The long-awaited change in the party leadership will soon be known to the world. Questions are being asked if this change will help in rebuilding the party or if electoral fortunes of the party will change after this. It is difficult to imagine that the problem of the Congress (being unable to win elections) will come to an end with Rahul Gandhi becoming the party president. It will still be long before he can lead the party to electoral successes. But electing Rahul Gandhi as the new president would certainly help in keeping the Congress party united. A member of the Nehru-Gandhi family heading the Congress leaves little scope for a rebellion within the party, even though there may be some undercurrents of dissatisfaction with the leadership. But any effort to elect someone from outside the family to lead the party might result in a situation of serious infighting within the Congress with various factions challenging each other.

Except keeping the party united during difficult times, Rahul Gandhis elevation to the top post hardly means anything. It will be too much to expect that the same Rahul Gandhi who has till now not won any votes for the Congress will suddenly become a vote-catcher. The Congress, which Rahul Gandhi is all set to lead is very different from what it was in the past. Let us not even look at how strong was the partys support base was when leaders like Kripalani, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, Jawahar-lal Nehru, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy or Indira Gandhi headed it. The leadership of each of these persons was unchallenged. The Congress had a decent support base even when Rajiv Gandhi or Sonia Gandhi became the party chief. When Rajiv Gandhi became the Congress president in 1984, the party had an overwhelming support among the people, a record 415 seats in the Lok Sabha and about 48 per cent share of the national votes.

When Sonia Gandhi took over as the party president in 1999, the party had witnessed decline and was not in power at the Centre but it still had a sizeable support (28 per cent vote share and 114 members in the Lok Sabha). At that moment, the Congress was the ruling party in as many as 16 states. Sonia Gandhi did face initial challenges from Sharad Pawar and P.A. Sangma, who eventually walked out of the party, but later she managed to consolidate her position and led the party to victory in 2004 Lok Sabha elections. For most of the previous presidents, the leadership was not as challenging as it is going to be for Rahul Gandhi. Those leaders faced the challenge only from the senior party leaders. Rahul Gandhi faces a far more tough challenge as compared to any other Congress chief in the past as the party at present is at the lowest level of popularity. And the challenge comes from none other than the leader of the party in power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. Though it is true that Rahul Gandhis ability to counter the high-pitched campaigning of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah is limited, it would be unreasonable to question all his abilities.

The Congress has 44 members in the Lok Sabha and its vote share during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections was 19.3 per cent. The story of the decline of the party in not limited to only the national elections. Its electoral success is very poor even in the state Assembly and local body elections. The party has hardly managed to win any Assembly election held after 2014 parliamentary elections, except Punjab. At the moment, the Congress is ruling only in five states  Karnataka, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram. Of these five states  Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram  are small and hence of very little electoral significance at the national level. Of the total 3,896 Assembly seats in the country, the Congress has 732 seats as compared to BJPs 1306; 1858 seats are with regional parties. If seen in terms of vote share, the Congress has a combined vote share of 18.6 per cent votes in the present Assembly while the BJP has 25.6 per cent. The Congress performance in the local body elections in different states is no better. The parties vote share in Assembly polls might change after Himachal Pradesh results are out. Indications are strong that the Congress might lose in HP; and find it difficult to retain power in Karnataka, Megha-laya and Mizoram which go to the polls early next year.

Rahul Gandhi can hope to change the wheel of fortune in the favour of Congress only if the party manages to win the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh or Chhattis-garh, capitalising on anti-incumbency mood. The two states with a BJP government for last 15 years may be facing an anti-incumbency mood of the voters. If that does not happen, the task cutout for Rahul Gandhi, of leading the party to victory during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, which already seems difficult, would become an impossible one. But if Rahul Gandhi manages to pull a victory in Gujarat, the fortunes of the party and Rahul Gandhi might change sooner than later. But that certainly is an uphill task.
Regardless of which way the Gujarat election result goes, adrenalin appears to be coursing through the veins of parties that stand to oppose the Modi government. This is directly traceable to the credible election campaign in Gujarat being run by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who was being projected in unfavourable light until recently. There appears to be an acknowledgment of this in the BJP camp as well. The changed mood is causing hope to build among Prime Minister Modis opponents that careful tactical footwork among them can lead to a worthwhile electoral challenge being mounted against his dispensation in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Inherent in this thinking is the admission that Mr Modi, widely regarded as probably the shrewdest political leader to emerge in years, may be hard to beat unless his opponents can display a credible sense of unity among themselves. At a public function in New Delhi on Friday, Arun Shourie, a former member of the Atal Behari Vajpayee government, urged the need for Mr Modis opponents to offer a single candidate from one among themselves to oppose the BJP on every seat.

This is a variant of the formula adopted by then PM Indira Gandhis opponents in the 1970s who merged their respective parties to form the Janata Party and trounced the Congress in the North. In the changed circumstances of today, this will be impossible to replicate. Besides, the ignoble fate of the Janata after it defeated Mrs Gandhi is still fresh in the minds of the political class. Evidently, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has been working behind the scenes to bring about a measure of understanding among parties that are at odds with the BJP of Mr Modi and his organisational commander Amit Shah.

This was strongly hinted at on a television programme recently by a leader of her party in Parliament, Derek OBrien. The difficulty of the task is evident from the campaign for the Assembly election in Gujarat, where the stakes are high. Let alone a defeat, a significantly good showing for the Congress is likely to have a negative impact on the BJPs preparations for 2019. And yet, Sharad Pawars NCP is going it alone. This will split the anti-BJP vote. Nitish Kumars JD(U), which jumped ship to join the BJP recently, has announced it will be fielding around 100 candidates in Gujarat. This is with a view to deny the Congress the votes of the powerful Patel community, a section of which is veering toward the Congress this time.
So many left-leaning and liberal political commentators have believed for long that the civil-military imbalance lies at the root of most of the countrys ills. With Nawaz Sharif taking up the cudgels for civilian supremacy and blaming his ouster from office on it as well, many conservative and right-of-centre commentators and opinion writers/anchors have also joined the ranks of those who believe in civilian supremacy as a means to stability and sanity. Agreed that many major policy areas such as national security and foreign affairs and the direction that the country follows in each must be decided and set by the constitutionally-empowered civilian leadership, with input from all key institutions. It is and should always be a civilian prerogative. The ground reality tells a very different story. Civilians can try, and have tried, to assert themselves. In the end, however, their stance, even as it is in line with constitutional provisions, represents no more than token defiance. Just rewind to where the government started on coming to office in 2013 when the then Prime Minister spelt out and tried to execute his own foreign policy. Whether on India or Afghanistan, he increasingly found no elbow room to manoeuvre. Some four years later, the once-robust politician, who could hold his own on the issue of Constitution and civilian supremacy, and now the foreign minister, does little better than to parrot with near relish the militarys views in key policy areas.

One can understand the frustration of Rawalpindi-Islamabad residents who are justified in attacking the government and its interior minister for their apparent inertia in dealing with protesters blocking a major artery connecting the two cities and also the capital with the airport. But one must also be mindful of unsaid government concerns that if administrative action sparks wider protest whether forces other than police would follow its orders. After all, the interior minister will recall what happened when he demanded action against a paramilitary Rangers soldier. The soldier had blocked the ministers path to an accountability court where he was headed to witness Sharifs trial. When the interior minister reacted angrily and demanded action, the Armys chief spokesman advised him to give shabaash (pat on the back) to the soldier for doing his job. Then there was the unprecedented seminar co-hosted by the ISPR on the economy where not a single civilian government voice was represented. Among the speakers were a couple of harsh critics of government economic policy with one known to embellish his facts with non-facts.

When sections of the media criticised that the Army had been open with its reservations on the governments economic policy, the military spokesman remained unapologetic and robustly defended his institutions right to formulate and express an opinion in this area too. These examples represent the tip of the iceberg. Should this civil-military tussle where (some allege) the judiciary also weighs in on one side or the other prevent the civilian setups at the centre and provinces from delivering good governance in areas where they do indeed have the authority? There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Well leave the performance of the other provincial governments for another time but a recent, quick visit to Karachi painted a tragic picture of neglect at the hands of the only political party Id vote for in the past.

There are no doubt big capital expenditure projects being executed perhaps because of the associated economic opportunities they represent to those authorising them. I must have counted several new underpasses and flyovers compared with a visit last year. But side by side, it was shocking to see a large number of tall buildings mushrooming across the Clifton area where clearly land-use change had been authorised after only who knows what considerations, with no accompanying mandated upgrade of the utilities. I bet untreated sewage from many of these projects will find its way to the sea which, in some cases, is merely a few hundred metres away. The countrys most avowedly democratic party, the PPP, agreed to hand over local bodies to the elected representative after much-delayed elections  which too followed Supreme Court intervention. But not before emasculating their powers through amendments to the law. The result: one of the biggest urban conurbations in the world looks to the provincial and not its city government to provide as basic a service as garbage removal. Garbage removal does not seem to sit anywhere in the list of priorities of the Sindh government.

Wherever one drives in Karachi and this includes the so-called upmarket, posh areas piles of rotting rubbish are never out of sight. At least the one blame the PPP wont have to shoulder is elitism. Crumbling roads, piles of rubbish and not a semblance of civic services is common to all rich, middle-class and poor neighbourhoods alike in Karachi. Wouldnt one way to civilian supremacy be through enhancing ones credentials through exceptional governance delivered transparently and cleanly? Of course, the civilians can argue what credentials or track record does the military high command have enabling it to claim primacy? My only response would be not to compare chalk and cheese. In a recent interview, Gen. Musharraf conceded he lacked legitimacy during his years in power. Those whose claim to power is legitimate must not dilute it with poor governance.

By arrangement with Dawn
This is the fourth TechEdSat satellite carrying an updated version of the Exo-Brake that will demonstrate guided controlled re-entry of small spacecraft to safely return science experiments from space.

NASA has recently launched the Technology Educational Satellite or TechEdSat-6, to the International Space Station on Orbital ATKs Cygnus spacecraft from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on November 12. This bread loaf-sized satellite is part of a continuing series to demonstrate the Exo-Brake parachute device, advanced communications and wireless sensor networks.

TechEdSat-6 was released into low-Earth orbit from the NanoRacks platform on November 20, to begin a series of wireless sensor experiments which will be the first self-powered tests, expanding the capabilities of sensor networks for future ascent or re-entry systems. This is the fourth TechEdSat satellite carrying an updated version of the Exo-Brake that will demonstrate guided controlled re-entry of small spacecraft to safely return science experiments from space.

The Exo-Brakes shape can be changed to vary the drag on the satellite. With the help of high-fidelity simulations, we will demonstrate a low-cost, propellant-less method of returning small payloads quickly, and to fairly precise locations, for retrieval, said Michelle Munk, NASAs System Capability Lead for Entry, Descent and Landing. We are excited about tracking TechEdSat-6 as it re-enters the atmosphere.

While the goal of returning samples from the space station and orbital platforms is integral to the project, NASA seeks to develop building blocks for large-scale systems that might enable future small spacecraft missions to reach the surface of Mars and other places in the solar system.

The Exo-Brake is funded by the Entry Systems Modeling project within the Space Technology Mission Directorates Game Changing Development program. Additional funding for the Exo-Brake is provided by NASA's Ames Research Centre in California's Silicon Valley and the agency's Engineering and Safety Centre in Hampton, Virginia.

The TechEdSat series is a science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, collaborative activity that involves NASA early-career employees, interns and students from several universities.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
The militants, according to a witness, stormed the mosque from several doors and when they opened fire, many worshippers started jumping out of windows.(Photo: AP)

Ismailia: The imam had barely made it atop the mosque pulpit to deliver the sermon when intense gunfire rang out and Ebid Salem Mansour knew exactly what was going on.

We knew that the mosque was under attack by (militants), he said Saturday, a day after the attack, giving a detailed account of the deadliest assault by Islamic extremists against civilians in Egypts modern history.

At least 305 people were killed in Fridays attack on a mosque filled with worshippers in the troubled region of northern Sinai, a grim milestone in Egypts brutal fight against increasingly emboldened militants.

Egyptian warplanes were in action on Saturday over Sinai, according to the military, targeting several vehicles in which some of the culprits of the attack were traveling.

All passengers of the vehicles were killed, it added.

It was impossible to independently verify the claim since the media is virtually banned from working in Sinai.

Witnesses speaking to The Associated Press in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia where some of the wounded were taken spoke of horrific scenes during the approximately 20 minutes it took the militants to kill and maim worshippers.

They spoke of some jumping out of windows, a stampede in a corridor leading to the washrooms and of children screaming in horror.

Some spoke of their narrow escape from a certain death, others of families that lost all or most of their male members.

Mansour, a 38-year-old worker in a nearby salt factory, said he settled in Bir al-Abd, the small town where the attack took place, three years ago to escape the bloodshed and fighting elsewhere in northern Sinai. He suffered two gunshot wounds in the legs.

Everyone layed down on the floor and kept their heads down. If you raised your head you get shot, he said. The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning and then became more deliberate: Whoever they werent sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead.

The militants were shouting Allahu Akbar, or God is great, and the children were screaming, Mansour said.

I knew I was injured but I was in a situation that was much scarier than being wounded. I was only seconds away from a certain death, he said.

As the shooting took place, many of the worshippers recited their final prayers, he added.

Fridays attack targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam.

Islamic militants, including the local affiliate of the Islamic State group, consider Sufis heretics because of their less literal interpretations of the faith.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi vowed that the attack will not go unpunished and that Egypt would persevere with its war on terrorism.

But he did not specify what new steps might be taken.

On Saturday, he ordered that a mausoleum be built in memory of the victims of Fridays attack.

The military and security forces have already been waging a tough campaign against militants in the towns, villages and desert mountains of Sinai, and Egypt has been in a state of emergency since April.

Across the country, thousands have been arrested in a crackdown on suspected Islamists as well as against other dissenters and critics, raising concern about human rights violations.

Seeking to spread the violence, militants over the past year have carried out deadly bombings on churches in the capital of Cairo and other cities, killing dozens of Christians.

The IS affiliate is also believed to be behind the 2016 downing of a Russian passenger jet that killed 226 people over Sinai.

Fridays assault was the first major militant attack on a Muslim congregation, and it eclipsed past attacks, even dating back to a previous Islamic militant insurgency in the 1990s.

The militants descended on the al-Rouda mosque in four off-road vehicles as hundreds worshipped inside.

At least a dozen attackers charged in, opening fire randomly, the main cleric at the mosque, Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Fatah Zowraiq, said.

He spoke to the media over phone from a Nile Delta town where he was recuperating from bruises and scratches suffered in the attack.

The militants, according to one witness, stormed the mosque from several doors and as soon as they opened fire, many worshippers started jumping out of windows.

The small door that leads to the corridor for the wash rooms was about the only one where worshippers rushed to escape, said a 38-year-old government employee who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation. There was a stampede. I fell down and then bodies piled up on top of me. I was the only one alive underneath.

The shooting was heavy, insane and random, he recalled. These are not terrorists. These are not humans.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. But the IS group affiliate has targeted Sufis in the past.

Last year, the militants beheaded a leading local Sufi religious figure, the blind sheikh Suleiman Abu Heraz, and posted photos of the killing online.

Islamic State group propaganda often denounces Sufis.

In the January edition of an IS online magazine, a figure purporting to be a high level official in the Sinai affiliate of the group vowed to target Sufis, accusing them of idolatry and heretical innovation in religion and warning that the group will not permit (their) presence in Sinai or Egypt.

Millions of Egyptians belong to Sufi orders, which hold sessions of chanting and poetry meant to draw the faithful closer to God. Sufis also hold shrines containing the tombs of holy men in particular reverence.

Islamic militants stepped up their campaign of violence in northern Sinai after the military ousted the elected but divisive Islamist Mohammed Morsi from power in 2013 and launched a fierce crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood group.

The result has been a long, grinding conflict centered on el-Arish and nearby villages and towns.

The militants have been unable to control territory, but the military and security forces have also been unable to bring security, as the extremists continuously carry out surprise attacks, mostly targeting outposts and convoys.

The attacks have largely focused on military and police, killing hundreds, although exact numbers are unclear as journalists and independent investigators are banned from the area.

The militants have also assassinated individuals the group considers to be spies for the government or religious heretics.

Egypt has also faced attacks by militants in its Western Desert.
The death toll from the deadliest terrorist attack on Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Egypts restive North Sinai region was raised substantially to 305, which included 27 children, the state prosecutor said on Saturday. (Representational Image)

Egyptian air force jets have destroyed vehicles used in the Sinai mosque attack and terrorist locations where weapons and ammunition were stocked, the army spokesman said. The planes destroyed several vehicles used in the attack, Tamer el-Refai said, adding they had also targeted terrorist spots containing weapons and ammunition. The death toll from the deadliest terrorist attack on Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Egypts restive North Sinai region was raised substantially to 305, which included 27 children, the state prosecutor said on Saturday.

General prosecutor Nabil Sadek said in a statement that another 128 people were wounded in the attack, when heavily-armed militants bombed the al-Rowda mosque in Al-Arish city and opened fire on people attending the Friday prayers. The death toll was reported at 235 on Friday. Sadek said the number of terrorists involved in the attack varied from 25 to 30, some of whom had raised the Islamic State flag during the attack. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.

The Egypt government announced three days of mourning, even as President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi chaired an emergency meeting with officials to review security after the attack. Egypts Army said in a statement that a number of terrorists have been killed in air strikes in North Sinai since the attack. The Army was conducting raids in the troubled region to eliminate terrorist hideouts.The Al-Ahram newspaper, citing a military source, reported that a military operation was underway in North Sinai.
Demonstrators protest as police fire tear gas shells to disperse them during a clash in Islamabad, Pakistan. (Photo: AP)

Islamabad: A security person was killed and over 150 others were injured on Saturday in Pakistan during clashes which broke out after police and paramilitary forces launched an operation to disperse hundreds of protesters blocking main highways leading to the capital Islamabad.

The operation was launched after Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday issued contempt of court notice against Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads

The Pakistan government has blocked popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube amidst ongoing operation against protesters. The decision was taken after almost all news channels were suspended.

Military spokesman said that army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa talked to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on telephone and urged for peaceful solution to the problem.

So far police have failed to dislodge the protesters from Faizabad interchange which they have been occupying for about three weeks.

At least one security person was killed and over 150 persons, including protesters and security personnel, were injured, police said.

About 2,000 activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR) and the Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) for more than two weeks have been blocking the Islamabad Expressway and Murree Road that connect Islamabad with its only airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

The protesters demand the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid for changes made about Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September.

More than 70 people have been injured. They were shifted to hospital of twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, a health official said. Those injured include also more than 35 security personnel who were hit by stones thrown by protesters, the official said.

Islamabad city magistrate on Friday issued a warning to protesters to disperse by midnight or face the consequences.

TV footage showed police firing teargas and security personnel in riot gears charging at the protesters. Dozens of them were arrested and shifted to various police stations. Some of the security personnel were injured due to stone pelting by protesters.

According to a security official, more than 8,000 security personnel took part in the operation against around 2,000 protesters.

The operation was still going on and police were facing stiff resistance from the protesters.

Earlier, IHC last Friday had given a 24-hour deadline to the government to clear the roads which was later extended till Thursday.

However, the court on Friday expressed strong displeasure at the government for failing to take action against the protesters.
The injured include also more than 35 security personnel who were hit by stones thrown by protesters, a health official said. (Photo: AP)

Islamabad: Over 70 people, including security personnel, were injured on Saturday in clashes in Pakistan after police and paramilitary forces launched an operation to disperse protesters who have been occupying main highways leading to the capital Islamabad.

The operation was launched after Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday issued contempt of court notice against Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads.

About 2,000 activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR) and the Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) for more than two weeks have been blocking the Islamabad Expressway and Murree Road that connect Islamabad with its only airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

The protesters demand the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid for changes made about Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September.

More than 70 people have been injured. They were shifted to hospital of twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, a health official said.

Those injured include also more than 35 security personnel who were hit by stones thrown by protesters, the official said.

Pakistani authorities also ordered private television channels to go off air on Saturday during the crackdown.

The suspension was ordered by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority for violating media regulations showing live coverage of a security operation, a statement from the regulator said.

State-run Pakistan Television continued to broadcast, but aired a talk show discussing politics.

Islamabad city magistrate on Friday issued a warning to protesters to disperse by midnight or face the consequences.

TV footage on Friday showed police firing teargas and security personnel in riot gears charging at the protesters.

Dozens of them were arrested and shifted to various police stations.

Some of the security personnel were injured due to stone pelting by protesters.

According to a security official, more than 8,000 security personnel took part in the operation against around 2,000 protesters.

The operation was still going on and police were facing stiff resistance from the protesters.

Earlier, IHC last Friday had given a 24-hour deadline to the government to clear the roads which was later extended till Thursday.

However, the court yesterday expressed strong displeasure at the government for failing to take action against the protesters.
The United States will cut off its supply of arms to Kurdish fighters in Syria, President Donald Trump told the Turkish president on Saturday, in a move sure to please Turkey but further alienate Syrian Kurds who bore much of the fight against the Islamic State group.

In a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump said hed given clear instructions that the Kurds will receive no more weapons - and that this nonsense should have ended a long time ago, said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. The White House confirmed the move in a cryptic statement about the phone call that said Trump had informed the Turk of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria.
On Friday, Egypt witnessed country's deadliest attack in recent memory. 235 worshippers were killed in the attack. (Photo: AFP)

Cairo: Attackers killed at least 235 worshippers Friday in a bomb and gun assault on a packed mosque in Egypt's restive North Sinai province, in the country's deadliest attack in recent memory.

A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque, roughly 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish, before gunmen opened fire on the Sufi worshippers gathered there for weekly Friday prayers, officials said.

Witnesses said the assailants surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles and then planted a bomb outside.

The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they tried to flee and used congregants' vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque.

Between 10 and 20 armed attackers "entered the mosque, killing more people than they injured," Magdy Rizk, who was wounded in the attack, told AFP.

"They were wearing masks and military uniforms," he said, adding that the area was predominantly Sufi and that locals have received threats from extremist groups.

The state prosecutor's office said in a statement that 235 people were killed and 109 wounded in the attack, the scale of which is unprecedented in a four-year insurgency by Islamist extremist groups.

US President Donald Trump condemned on Twitter the "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenceless worshippers".

Horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshipers in Egypt. The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017

A furious Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning and pledged to "respond with brutal force".

"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period," he added in a televised speech.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent condolences to Sisi, calling the attack "striking for its cruelty and cynicism", while condemnations poured in from Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other countries.

UK foreign minister Boris Johnson decried the "barbaric attack", while his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian labelled it "despicable".

109 people were injured in the attack on Friday. (Photo: AFP)

Pope Francis and Egypt's highest Muslim religious authority joined in the condemnation.

"His Holiness joins all people of good will in imploring that hearts hardened by hatred will learn to renounce the way of violence," the pope's office said.

The grand imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, condemned "in the strongest terms this barbaric terrorist attack".

ISIS targeting of Sufis

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bloodshed.

The Islamic State group's Egypt branch has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and also civilians accused of working with the authorities, in attacks in the north of the Sinai peninsula.

They have also targeted followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Sunni Islam as well as Christians.

The victims of Friday's attack included civilians and conscripts praying at the mosque.

A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights IS told AFP that the mosque is known as a place where Sufis gather.

The Islamic State group shares the puritan Salafi view that Sufis are heretics for seeking the intercession of saints.

The jihadists had previously kidnapped and beheaded an elderly Sufi leader, accusing him of practising magic which Islam forbids, and abducted Sufi practitioners later released after "repenting".

An IS propaganda outlet had published an interview earlier with the commander of its "morality police" in Sinai who said their "first priority was to combat the manifestations of polytheism including Sufism".

The group has killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, forcing many to flee the peninsula.

The military has struggled to quell jihadists who pledged allegiance to IS in November 2014.

IS regularly conducts attacks against soldiers and policemen in the peninsula bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip, although the frequency and scale of such attacks has diminished over the past year.

The jihadists have since increasingly turned to civilian targets, attacking not only Christians and Sufis but also Bedouin Sinai inhabitants accused of working with the army.

The Gaza Strip's border crossing with Egypt that had been due to reopen Saturday will remain closed until further notice because of the attack, a Palestinian official said.

Aside from IS, Egypt also faces a threat from Al-Qaeda-aligned jihadists who operate out of neighbouring Libya.

A group calling itself Ansar al-Islam -- Supporters of Islam in Arabic -- claimed an October ambush in Egypt's Western Desert that killed at least 16 policemen.

Many of those killed belonged to the interior ministry's secretive National Security Service.

The military later conducted air strikes on the attackers, killing their leader Emad al-Din Abdel Hamid, a most wanted jihadist who was a military officer before joining an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Libya's militant stronghold of Derna.
The Pakistan government called in the Army when clashes broke out after police and paramilitary forces cracked down on protesters from hardline religious groups who were blocking a key highway to the capital, leaving over 200 people injured. The interior ministry issued a statutory regulatory order (SRO) authorising the deployment of the Army in aid of the civil administration to control law and order in the Islamabad Capital Territory. The Army would be deployed for an indefinite period to maintain peace, the ministry said.

The development came hours after Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa spoke to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi over the telephone and discussed the security situation. The government also ordered suspension of private TV channels and blocked popular social media sites as police and paramilitary personnel fought pitched battles with activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Ras-ool Allah (TLY) and Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) who torched vehicles and attacked houses of political leaders.

The protesters regrouped again and continued their siege of the capital that started about three weeks ago, demanding sacking of law minister Zahid Hamid over changes in a law related to the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat (finality of prophethood) oath in the Elections Act 2017. They alleged the action undermined Islamic beliefs and linked it to blasphemy. The government has amended the law and restored the original oath but the clerics refused to call off the protests until the minister is sacked.

The siege played havoc with the over half-a-million commuters who daily travel between Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The government was reluctant to use force, but launched the operation after the Islamabad High Court issued contempt of court notice against interior minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads. The Islamabad magistrate issued a warning to protesters to disperse by midnight or face consequences.
Coal shortage, coupled with rising demand, has forced the Energy Department to tap into hydel sources, but that might lead to a tougher summer.

The other options are buying additional power or load-shedding. With the state going to the polls next year, the second option is ruled out. The department is already purchasing 900 MW a day until March. If it goes for further purchase, the burden on the exchequer will be substantial.

As a result, the department has turned to drawing an average of 15 million units (MU) from the three major hydel stations, as against the stipulated 10 MU. According to officials in the State Load Dispatch Centre (SLDC), Chief Secretary Subhash Chandra Khuntia had directed the department not to draw more than 10 MU from hydel stations.

But after the Karnataka Power Corporation Ltd (KPCL) downgraded its supply from the thermal stations, the department made it clear to the government that drawing power from hydel stations is inevitable.

The KPCL recently downgraded its supply by 500 MW a day. But it is still not meeting its revised target, according to SDCL officials.

For example, the KPCL has committed to supplying 1,100 MW from the Raichur Thermal Power Station (RTPS) until January. But it is supplying just 800 MW to 1,000 MW, which has affected power supply during peak hours.

Out of the 900 MW being purchased, the SLDC gets just 800 MW, officials said.

"The demand is increasing by the day, and without thermal support, things will get difficult. If we restrict the usage to 10 MU, we will be forced to go for load shedding. That's why we have sought permission to use up to 15 MU on average. If we start drawing anything over and above this, things will become difficult in the summer," an official said.

The SLDC has resorted to drawing power from hydel stations in the evenings as it is able to meet the demand during the day by drawing power from other sources such as solar (300 MW to 400 MW).

Officials, however, said relying entirely on solar or wind sources was ill-advised as the quantum of power generated on a daily basis was uncertain.

KPCL managing director G Kumar Naik, however, maintained that the situation was not as grim. "The coal problem that we faced a few weeks ago has slightly eased," he added.

The coal supply has, however, taken a hit yet again, with Singareni Collieries Company Ltd not meeting its commitment owing to heavy rainfall in mining areas. In addition, three units of the RTPS are down. While two are undergoing an overhaul, one has developed technical glitches.
Amid the Padmavati row, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said today that giving violent threats and announcing rewards for physical harm was not acceptable in a democracy.



Not directly referring to the controversy, but films and art in general, he warned against undermining the rule of law in the country.

Naidu, at a literary festival here, said there is now a new problem over some films where people feel that they have hurt the sentiments of some religions or communities and that has led to protests.

He said while protesting, some people go overboard and announce rewards.

"Whether these fellows have that much money or not, I doubt. Everyone is announcing Rs one crore reward. Is it so easy to have Rs one crore?

"This is not acceptable in a democracy. You have the right to protest in a democratic manner, go to the appropriate authorities...you cannot physically obstruct and can't give violent threats. Let us not undermine the rule of law," he said.

Stressing that he was not talking about a particular film but in general, Naidu read out names of previously banned films like Haram Hawa, Kissa Kursi Ka and Aandhi.

His remarks, however, assume significance as they come amid protests by many groups against Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed Padmavati, alleging that the movie distorts history.

Historians are divided on whether Rani Padmavati even existed.

Some leaders and groups have also reportedly announced a bounty for beheading Bhansali and the female lead Deepika Padukone.

"You have no right to take laws into your own hands. At the same time, you don't have the right to hurt the sentiments of others", Naidu said.

The vice president also warned against selective condemnation and said it was wrong to link it to religion.

He said there was a difference between religion and culture. While religion was a way of worship, culture was a way of life, he said.
Vishwa Hindu Parishat (VHP) leader Pravin Togadia said that the evil practice of 'Pankti Bheda' (serving food separately for Brahmins) should be stopped in the temples across the country.

Speaking at the second day of Dharma Sansad, the VHP's international working president said that there should not be discrimination practised in any form by the religious institutions and the religious heads. The people at the lower strata of society should be taken in the flow of Hinduism.

He added that the religion with its ancient importance has to be more inclusive to fight the external invasion.

Stating that inequality is not acceptable and the practice of untouchability is nowhere mentioned in Vedas, he questioned why one cannot observe divinity among Dalits, and maintained that God is present in everyone and everything.

Reiterating that untouchability is an evil which weakens the religion, Togadia said that inequality should be eliminated and religious ideals should be disseminated all over and the mass should be told about the sanctity of the religion, which is the oldest civilisation in the world.


Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi in poll-bound Gujarat today and alleged that the latter did not want the "truth" behind the multi-crore Rafale deal and Jay Shah issue to come out before the Assembly election in his home state.



He also alleged that the NDA government was delaying the Winter Session of Parliament as Modi was not ready to discuss the Rafale and Jay Shah issues in the House before the Gujarat polls.

"I would ask Modiji three questions (on the Rafale deal). First, is there a difference in the cost of planes in the first and the second contract (signed with a French firm) and did India pay more or less money as per the second contract?

"And, has the industrialist (whose company has formed a joint venture with the French firm), who was given the contract, ever manufactured planes?," he asked while addressing a public gathering here in Gandhinagar district.

The Congress leader also sought to know if the due procedure was followed while inking the deal with France last year to procure the Rafale fighter jets.

"And a more important question, did you follow the due government procedure? Why was the (then) defence minister seen catching fish in Goa? And, was an approval from the Cabinet Committee on Security taken (for the mega-deal)?" he asked.

Gandhi alleged that the prime minister was avoiding answering these questions due to the fear that the "truth" would come out before the crucial polls in his home state.

"Narendra Modiji is not replying to these questions because he wants that the truth of Rafale and Jay Shah should not come before the public ahead of the Gujarat elections," he said.

"Rafale is a matter related to the Indian Air Force, national security, martyrs. Modiji will have to answer these questions before the people of the country and Gujarat," he said.

The 47-year-old Amethi MP said while the media persons asked him a lot of questions, they did not do the same with the prime minister over the Rafale and Jay Shah issues.

"Modiji will make many tours of Gujarat. Press reporters ask me various questions. Why don't you ask Modi about the Rafale deal and Jay Shah? The people should also ask Modiji about Rafale and Jay Shah when he comes to Gujarat," he said.

The prime minister is scheduled to address a series of poll rallies in Gujarat in support of the BJP candidates next week.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases -- on December 9 and 14. Counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.

"Generally, Parliament's (Winter) session is held every year in November and discussions (on crucial issues) take place in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. But, due to two reasons, Parliament is opening after the Gujarat polls this time.

"First, (BJP chief) Amit Shah's son (Jay) converted Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore in three months. Second, and a more important reason, is the Rafale deal. The entire procedure went on for the purchase of the planes and after all the discussions were over, Narendra Modi himself went to France to change the contract," he alleged.

In September last year, India had inked an intergovernmental agreement with France for the procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around Rs 58,000 crore.

The Congress had recently raised questions over the deal and accused the Modi-led BJP government of compromising on national interest and security while promoting "crony capitalism" and causing a loss to the public exchequer.

However, the BJP had rubbished the allegations.

In an article published on news portal The Wire, it was alleged that the turnover of a company owned by Jay Shah grew exponentially from Rs 50,000 to Rs 8 crore after the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014.

Both Amit Shah and his son have denied any wrongdoing by the company. Jay Shah has filed a criminal defamation case against the news portal.
The JD(U) and the BJP are "natural" allies and the two parties will fight the 2019 polls together, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said.



"When the time comes, we will sit together and divide the seats. We will fight together and Narendra Modi will be again the prime minister in 2019," he said at the India Today Conclave East here last night.

He was replying to a question on whether the BJP might not feel the need for JD(U)'s support in the elections in 2019.

The BJP in alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP), Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and the Hindustani Awam Party accounts for 32 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar.

"Alliance is a give and take. When both the partners feel they will benefit from it then only it will work. We will fight together with Nitish Kumar-led JD (U) in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls," he said.

His remarks assume significance as there were some discordant voices from leaders of both the parties on seat sharing for the next general elections earlier.

After a meeting with MPs from Bihar, BJP chief Amit Shah had asked partymen to strengthen it down to the booth level in all 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The JD(U) also appealed to its workers to brace for the contest on all the 40 seats.

RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and other opposition parties leaders had used the occasion to attack Nitish Kumar, claiming that he was marginalised by the saffron party to avenge an incident in 2010 when he had cancelled a dinner for BJP leaders over a tiff with Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat.

"The JD(U) and the BJP are made for each other," Sushil Modi said.

"Nitish Kumar has been our partner for 17 years and again the JD(U) and the BJP have come together, it is a natural alliance," said the senior BJP leader, who also served as the deputy chief minister in the earlier NDA government.

The JD(U) had severe ties with the BJP in June 2013 over the elevation of Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate.

After collapse of an alliance comprising the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress in July this year, Nitish Kumar and the BJP once again joined hands after four years to form a coalition in the politically sensitive state.

Sushil Modi's allegations against Lalu Prasad and his family of acquiring benami properties had played an important role in the disintegration of the alliance comprising the JD (U), the Congress and the RJD.

When the JD(U) and the BJP coalition was sworn in again on July 27 this year, Sushil Modi was made the deputy chief minister.

The senior BJP leader dismissed speculation that a seat-sharing adjustment, in which the JD(U) would also be accommodated, might upset the sitting BJP MPs if they were denied tickets.

"What is the guarantee that every MP will get party ticket a second time? And what will they do by getting upset? If people make up their mind then it hardly matters who is getting ticket or not," Sushil Modi said.

Sushil Modi accused Lalu Prasad of being "chaotic, disorganised and an irresponsible man".

"No gentleman can work with a person like Lalu Prasad. An unnatural alliance (of the JD(U), RJD and Congress) died a natural death. The day Nitish Kumar left the NDA, I knew this alliance (with the RJD) would not work but, I never thought it would break so soon," he claimed.
Hadiya, the 25-year-old woman at the centre of Kerala's controversial "love jihad" case, on Saturday reiterated that her conversion to Islam did not involve coercion.



The homoeopathy graduate from Vaikom in Kottayam district said she wanted to be with her husband Shafin Jahan. In May, the Kerala High Court had annulled their marriage.

Hadiya (Akhila Ashokan, before she converted to Islam) spoke to reporters briefly at the Cochin International Airport, amid high police security, before leaving for New Delhi for a hearing at the Supreme Court, scheduled for Monday.

"I want to be with my husband, I demand justice. I'm a Muslim, no one forced me to change my religion," Hadiya told reporters after she arrived at the airport with her parents, K M Ashokan and Ponnamma.

She was escorted by a team of police personnel from her home in Vaikom to Kochi. Shafin Jahan had stated in a police complaint that attempts were being made to reconvert Hadiya to Hinduism.

On October 30, the Supreme Court said it would hear Hadiya in the case which has triggered national interest over reported organised attempts at conversions to Islam in Kerala.

Ashokan, Hadiya's father, has submitted in the apex court that his daughter was "misled and misguided" to embrace Islam and Shafin Jahan has links with radical outfits.

A S Zainaba, president of the National Women's Front - women's wing of the Popular Front of India - was identified as a key figure in the Hadiya case and other cases of religious conversion in the state.

Reported to have coordinated mass proselytisation at Sathya Sarani, a Malappuram-based organisation, Zainaba has denied role in Hadiya's conversion.

The apex court has directed the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to probe possible links of these conversion rackets with recruiters for terrorist outfits, including the IS.

The Kerala government has, however, maintained that the police investigation on the case is on course and a NIA probe into the religious conversions was not required.

Hadiya and family are scheduled to stay at the Kerala House In New Delhi.
The BJP will stage massive protests in all the district headquarters, demanding the ouster of Mines and Geology Minister Vinay Kulkarni from the Siddaramaiah cabinet on November 27.

The saffron party, which has charged Kulkarni's direct involvement in the murder of the Dharwad zilla panchayat member and its leader Yogesh Goudar, has decided to take its demand for his resignation to a logical conclusion.

The decision was taken during the party core committee meeting where Karnataka election in-charge Piyush Goyal and party general secretary Muralidhar Rao impressed upon the state leaders to chalk effective strategies and ensure the removal of both Kulkarni and Bengaluru Development Minister K J George from the cabinet.

Addressing the media in Bengaluru, BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa demanded a CBI probe into Goudar's murder. Stating that there was sufficient circumstantial evidence against Kulkarni, he demanded that the minister's mobile phone be confiscated for forensic analysis.

He also demanded the government suspend DySP Tulajappa Sulfi, who is facing charges of exerting pressure on Goudar's family to withdraw the case against the murder accused.

Yeddyurappa said that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had maintained a convenient silence on the charges against Kulkarni, but had strongly defended his other ministerial colleague George, who is facing charges in the death of DySP M K Ganapathi.

Party conventions

The BJP will be organising three conventions in Bengaluru on December 10 and 17, and January 7, ahead of its massive rally on January 28, which will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Central leaders like Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley are scheduled to participate in the precursor rallies.

The party has, so far, completed its Nava Karnataka Nirmana Parivartan Yatra in six districts covering 50 constituencies. On December 21, the party will host a convention in Hubballi where Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath is said to participate.
Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a dig at Narendra Modi after Pakistan released 2008 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed from house arrest saying the prime minister's relationship with US President Donald Trump was failed "hugplomacy".



"Narendrabhai, baat nahi bani (things didn't work out). Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just de-linked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed," Rahul said on Twitter.

The BJP hit back at Rahul accusing him of siding with terrorists and wondering whether the Congress vice president had "congratulated Hafeez saheb" on his release from house arrest.

"Rahul baba, aadate nahin badli (your habits have not changed). For once, stand with the country & not with terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks & Ishrat Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. BTW, have you congratulated your 'Hafeez Saheb's' on his release yet," BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao said.

He was referring to a remark by AICC General Secretary Digvijay Singh who had called the LeT boss 'Hafeez saheb'.

"Was it not on Family's orders that @PChidambaram_IN changed affidavits giving a clean chit to LeT operative Ishrat Jahan killed in assassination bid on @narendramodi ji? What was @INCIndia's motive in bailing out LeT, Ishrat ignoring NSA? Rahul, speak up," Rao said on Twitter.

The Congress vice president's remarks and the BJP retort came a day after Pakistan released Saeed, the founder of terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, from house arrest.

Last week, the US Congress had also passed a bill that sought to de-link the activities of the Haqqani terrror network from that of the LeT.

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma hit back at the BJP recalling the "sacrifices" of late prime minister Indira Gandhi and former prime minister late Rajiv Gandhi.

Sharma said it was Modi who went to Pakistan as a wedding guest and got the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase as a "gift".
Vice President Venkaiah Naidu denounced threats to filmmakers and actors in the wake of the row over Padmavati, saying violent threats and announcing rewards for physical harm is not acceptable in a democracy.



Inaugurating a literary festival, Naidu said, "There is now a new problem over some films which people feel have hurt the sentiments of some religions or communities, which then leads to protests. While protesting, some people go overboard and announce rewards."

Naidu said, "Whether these fellows have that much money, I doubt. Everyone is announcing Rs 1 crore reward. Is it so easy to get Rs 1 crore?"

Naidu did not directly refer to the ongoing row over Padmavati.

But it was clear he was alluding to certain groups - and some BJP leaders - who have made threats to Padmavati's director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and lead actress Deepika Padukone, seeking a stay on the release of the film.

"You have the right to protest in a democratic manner, go to the appropriate authorities... you cannot physically obstruct and give violent threats. Let us not undermine the rule of law," he said, speaking at a literary festival.

He stressed, however, that he was not talking about one particular film but speaking in a general sense.

Naidu, however, took the names of some films that were banned in the past, such as Garam Hawa, Kissa Kursi Ka and Aandhi.

The vice president also warned against selective condemnation and said it was wrong to link the issue to religion.
The Goa government has decided to formulate a heritage conservation policy for Portuguese-era structures in the state.



Town and Country Planning Minister Vijai Sardesai said on Saturday that the policy would be framed after consulting experts in the field.

He said the policy would not only document the existing heritage structures but will also work to give them a new lease of life.

The minister informed that the Department of Archives and Archaeology could also be roped in to restore the dilapidated structures if they are covered under the policy.

"Incentives would be introduced for those who have conserved their ancestral structures with heritage and architectural value," he said.

He said the state-based Charles Correa Foundation, which has been working towards heritage conservation, has been requested by the government to document and list heritage buildings across Goa.

"The structures would be graded by the foundation. They had started grading the heritage houses in Panaji much before we approached them. We have now asked them to extend scope of their work to other places too," Sardesai said.

The coastal state has several hundred houses with the Indo-Portuguese architecture, built during colonial rule.
With the first phase of Hyderabad Metro Rail ready to roll from November 28, the Telangana state government is preparing to pose the second phase of the project to funder Japan International Cooperative Agency (JAICA).



Under the second phase, the government proposes to expand metro up to Hyderabad Airport and connect the city to neighbouring towns.

The 30-km stretch of the total 72-km-long first phase is ready for launch by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The remaining stretch of this phase under Public Private Partnership (PPP) is expected to be commissioned by the end of 2018.

State Urban Development Minister K Taraka Ramarao, who took elected representatives on a trial run from Nagole Mettuguda stations on Saturday, told mediapersons that the government is keen on expanding metro. He said that he will be visiting Japan next year to hold talks with JAICA.

Confirming the proposal, Shivanand Nimbargi, MD & CEO, L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad Limited (LTMRHL), said the pre-feasibility studies are underway.

II Phase

The LTMRHL said that the construction major L&T, which is already here, would be interested in the 2nd phase. The company is already helping the government with technical inputs. "We are in the initial stage. We are doing studies and exploring different possibilities and financial opportunities, including JAICA," said N V S Reddy, Managing Director, Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) Limited.

The state government has gone on record that it is considering a new proposal where 60% of the cost for the metro project will be met through external loans, while the Centre and the state governments will chip in 20% each. Billed as one of the world's biggest metro rail projects under PPP, the first phase was taken up in 2012 at a cost of Rs 14,132 crore.
Two persons, including a woman, died on the spot in an accident near Kumsi, Shivamogga taluk, on the Sagar-Shivamogga stretch of NH-206 on Saturday.

According to police, the deceased are M Lokesh (35,) who was serving as a section officer in the Energy department secretariat in Bengaluru, and Netravathi, (34), an employee in the Vikasa Soudha in Bengaluru.

The accident took place when Lokesh, who was driving a car, lost control of the vehicle and hit a tree by the road, while trying to avoid hitting a cow at around 2.30 pm.

It is said they were on their way to Jog Falls from Bengaluru to spend their weekend. Police said the husband of the woman had lodged a complaint at the Vijayanagar police station in Bengaluru, saying that his wife had gone missing from their house since November 22. The Kumsi police have registered a case and are investigating.
Lake borders sacred no more



Shock, anger and extreme frustration greeted the legislature panel revelation that 10,785 acres or almost a fifth of Bengaluru's lake area has been encroached. But why did the government sit on the panel's recommendations on reviving those lost areas, expert advice submitted 18 months ago?

This is a critical question that demands immediate answers. In 18 months, much could have been done to address those encroachments. But beyound short-term, cosmetic measures, precious little was done, notes senior scientist Dr T V Ramachandra from the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, who, as an active member of the panel, had offered well-researched scientific inputs on ways to arrest the dramatic decline of the city lakes.

Lake connectivity

De-silting and establishing the connectivity between the lakes was a key input. "The Rajakaluves have to be cleared at any cost. Diverting them is suicidal. Any concession on this front looks like guided by political motives. This give and take policy is just not acceptable," says Dr Ramachandra.

In total disregard to the National Greens Tribunal (NGT) order, the buffer zones around the Rajakaluve linking the Bellandur and Varthur lakes have been encroached. This violation is both by private interests and by government-sanctioned projects.

"They talk about inter-linking of rivers. First, let them demonstrate how they can re-establish the links between the city lakes."

Mafia back in action

Demolition of illegal structures on encroachments had created much hype. But once it died down and faded from public memory, the encroachment mafia is back at its old game. The tell-tale signs of its deeds are visible on lake areas across the city. Construction debris and solid waste are being dumped, some under the cover of darkness and some, openly.

The encroachment pattern is similar across water bodies: Debris is dumped surreptitiously or otherwise; mud is overlaid and the land compressed over months. Once it settles adequately, the earthmovers and monster drillers come in. This has been clearly visible on the wetlands of Bellandur lake for years, a pattern visible now in Varthur lake as well.

Well-oiled nexus

The house panel has named the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) as one of the biggest offenders. Residential societies were built over 41 lakes. But officials of civic agencies were also hand-in-glove with private builders, allowing huge apartments to come up, violating every norm. Land records were fabricated and maps altered. Insiders say local corporators are also often part of this mafia, striking a deal of silence in return for a few flats.

Official apathy in lake upkeep has been another key factor in promoting encroachments. For instance, the Pattandur Agrahara lake, the Bagalagunte lake, Sadaramangala lake and the water body in Hoodi are in a deplorable state. For several years now, no official has turned up to undertake restoration work.

Official apathy

It has been almost 20 years since the Pattandur Agrahara lake in Kadugodi dried up and started losing a part of its area to encroachers. Recently, hundreds of people and schoolchildren living near the lake formed a human chain and protested against the indiscriminate dumping of debris. Citizens had complained that about 50 loads of debris are dumped every night.

Even the local corporator, S Muniswamy joined the protest. Although the dumping of debris has stopped for now, the lake survey or restoration work is yet to begin, say the residents. "We have learnt that the government is planning to build a road cutting through the lake. This is a clear violation of the NGT rule, which bans construction of any structure in the buffer zone of the water bodies," says Sandeep Anirudhan, who had initiated the protests.

A new link road is being constructed from Varthur Kodi main road to 80 feet ITPL main road. This will not only lead to felling of hundreds of trees but also pass right through the lake and a school nearby.

Buffer zone

encroachments

The case of Bagalagunte lake near Dasarahalli Metro station is even worse. It has been dead for a while now. The recent rains had filled up the lake. Yet, it has now been transformed into a garbage dumping yard, laments a local resident. Another localite points to a slum with several houses that has emerged right on the lake bed, earmarked as the buffer zone.

The Sadaramangala lake near Hoodi is another case in point. Residents there had complained against private encroachments that were even drawing water illegally from the lake. The BBMP has now begun a survey to restore and rejuvenate the lake. This lake too was filled up after the heavy rains. "We hope that the lake revival efforts will bear fruit," says Balachandran, a resident actively involved in mobilizing support to save the lake.
The CMR National Public School hosted a theme design thinking challenge titled 'CMR for Better Bangalore' on its premises in Kalyan Nagar on Saturday.



"The series of innovative products designed by the students were the result of the design thinking workshops that the students attended over a period of eight weeks. They used the hands-on iterative process to help the differently abled participate actively in society," said a press release.

"The students were given an opportunity to interact with differently abled people from various walks of life, thus giving them the time and space to empathise with the issues faced by the physically challenged community," it said.

The school also launched 'The Makery' - its on-campus Makerspace to encourage the students to translate their ideas and innovate by providing them the right opportunities and tools.
Citizens campaign against encroachers, yet efforts flounder



Encroachment of lakes and storm water drains (SWDs) in Bengaluru has assumed monstrous proportions in recent years. Result: Large parts of the city have now been left extremely vulnerable to inundation and floods, as illustrated by the copious rainfall over the last few months.

To know what exactly this means to the man on the street, DH spoke to a few Bengalureans. One of them, Ameeruddin D A, a teacher and long-time resident near Sarakki lake in JP Nagar, has this to say: "The land mafia and the public as well are largely responsible for encroachment of lakes."

He describes the process that put Sarakki lake in dire straits: "Over a long period they began dumping sand and built many buildings to occupy the land illegally. The government has not been vigilant enough to evict these occupants. The lake is now dying slowly."

Shreya Praveen, a Residents Welfare Association member in Sector 7 of HSR layout speaks for the residents of 197 apartments. "We are facing the issue of illegal construction on the storm water drain here and fighting it. Constructing any sort of structure over the drains will not allow periodic inspections and de-silting of the drains," she explains.

Citizens and RWAs, she says, can play a vital role since public service personnel are stretched in their roles. "Need of the hour are technology-enabled platforms where citizen forums can login real-time challenges of illegal construction/encroachments. This can trigger complaints and can allow the respective authority personnel to address these challenges," notes Shreya.

B N S Ratnakar, an independent financial consultant says, "Storm water drains are important outlets not only for draining the water during rains but also a conduit for flooded lake water to enter the city areas. They must be laid scientifically and maintained well."

According to him, RWAs and other citizen forums play an important role in completing the efforts of civic agencies. "Their support should be enlisted at all stages to ensure effective management of storm water drains. Encroachments across the city must be cleared and severe penalties must be imposed on errant citizens. The BBMP should also educate the public through various media about proper maintenance of drains."

Muralidhar Kopparam, RWA secretary of HSR layout sector 1, talks about encroachments by both the government and the public. "In many cases, the land mafia has shifted the drain itself. However, the BBMP has not taken any action against them. Even the BDA has encroached many areas," he explains.

The scope for RWAs and citizen driven initiatives is limited if the civic agencies remain non-responsive or demand bribes to do the work they are supposed to do. "Whenever we meet higher officials, they talk positively and build up our hopes. However no action actually takes place on the ground," points out Muralidhar.

Siddharth Varma, a psychologist wants civic agencies to do more. "All they seem to do is dig up roads to lay pipes and leave behind a mess. I doubt there is a single place in the city which has an efficient SWD. The water will obviously stagnate when it has nowhere to go, which leads to deterioration of roads," he says, suggesting an interconnected drainage system which runs below the roads.

Businessman Sunil Malapat, who lives in Whitefield near Sadaramangala lake says, "There is a group of people who are trying to work closely with authorities to save Sadaramangala lake. However, there are vested interests within the government who make sure things don't get going."

The citizens had taken up this issue with multiple government authorities. "Everyone does sugar-coating and talks sweetly in public forums. On the ground no work happens. Encroachment can be seen all across Sadaramangala lake. In the last 5-6 years the lake is getting smaller and smaller," he says. He is convinced that a nexus between government officials, elected representatives and the land mafia are all out to grab the lake in any way possible. "Even grabbing a few acres gets them a fortune, so they do it."
A 23-year-old destitute woman hailing from Nepal was gang-raped in Anekal, on the outskirts of the city, on Thursday.



The incident came to light on Saturday when a volunteer from an NGO noticed the petrified woman sitting at a bus stand in Avadadevanahalli. The volunteer put her in touch with the police.

The woman is homeless. Taking up odd jobs, she has been living in Bengaluru since 2003, a senior police officer said.

On Thursday, when she was sleeping at a bus shelter, a group of four to five men dragged her into a dilapidated house and raped her, taking turns. They brutally assaulted her and fled when she fell unconscious.

The gang also ripped off and burnt her clothes, police said. She regained consciousness the next morning and was sitting in a daze at the bus stand. She is now being treated at a hospital in Shivajinagar.

The Anekal police have registered a case, and are awaiting medical reports.

"We have some leads. We are in the process of identifying the accused," said Amit Singh, superintendent of police.
BMTC employees have charged that the money deducted from their salary towards insurance have not been paid to the Life Insurance Corporation for the past six months.



"There are 34,281 staffers in the corporation. Deductions are made in their salary every month towards insurance. Totally, the corporation deducts

Rs 3 crore, but the money is being spent for other purposes," said H V Anantasubba Rao, general secretary, KSRTC Staff and Workers' Federation.

'This is misuse'

According to Rao, the employees have received text messages on their phones, stating that the insurance payments have not been made. "This is misuse. The BMTC should make payments to the LIC immediately and pay any fines incurred due to the delay," he said.

Noting that the employees will not get insurance if the policy is allowed to lapse, he said the LIC will reject claims made by them. "Then, the BMTC should settle the claims," he has written to BMTC managing director, V Ponnuraj.

RTI activist Srinivas said it was not the first time that the BMTC has diverted the insurance money for other purposes. "The corporation is running on losses for several years now. They are playing with the lives of employees by not making insurance payments," he said.
Mines and Geology Minister Vinay Kulkarni and Labour Minister Santosh Lad stayed away from the centenary celebration programme of the Karnatak College, Dharwad (KCD) on Saturday after a Supreme Court judge refused to share the dais with the two 'tainted' ministers at the event.



According to the invitation, Supreme Court judge Justice Mohan Shantanagoudar had to inaugurate the programme. Ministers Kulkarni, Lad, Basavaraj Rayareddi and H K Patil were the chief guests for the programme. Though, Higher Education Minister Basavaraj Rayareddi and RDPR Minister H K Patil attended the programme, Kulkarni and Lad stayed away.

Sources in the KCD said that when Rayareddi went to invite Justice Shantanagoudar for the programme, the judge clearly instructed him not to allow ministers Kulkarni and Lad to sit along side with him.

This instruction from Justice Shantanagoudar was reportedly due to Kulkarni's name being linked to the murder of the local BJP leader and Dharwad Zilla Panchayat member Yogishgouda Goudar.

The sources said that Rayareddi tried his best to convince Justice Shantangoudar. However, the judge stuck to his decision and told Rayareddi that he would not attend the programme, if Kulkarni participated. This caused huge embarrassment to the Higher Education Minister, who later called up Kulkarni asking him not to attend the programme.

In his inaugural speech, Justice Shantanagoudar referred to the name of all the dignitaries but skipped those of Kulkarni and Lad.

Rayareddi reacts

Speaking to reporters after the inaugural ceremony, Rayareddi stated that as serious allegations have been levelled against Kulkarni and Lad, the two ministers themselves decided not to share the dais with the Supreme Court judge, and hence did not attend the programme.
Similar to steel flyover beda campaign, another silent campaign against the construction of Shivananda Circle flyover was organised against the construction of flyover at Kumara Park on Saturday.



The residents living near the circle along with some volunteers who are working for the same cause came out in protest against the construction of the flyover.

Dr. Nalini Krishnan, long time resident of the area said "I've been here 61 years, if the government doesn't know how to make this city better, the least they could do is not make it worse with such unnecessary flyovers. We can't sit quietly when such terrible projects are thrust upon us when there is no need."

"We do not support the project which creates more harm than help. They are spending about Rs 50 crore on the project which is of no use. We believe building flyovers is not the solution to ease the traffic problem but creating efficient public transportation system is," said Srinivas Alavilli of Citizens for Bengaluru organisation.

The protesters have decided to meet the area corporator to discuss the issue next week.
First Look Of Manchu Vishnu's 'Voter' Featuring Prominent Politicians Revealed
Worried officials to mobilise president-level security for Ivanka's India visit

US President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump will get president-level security during her visit to India amid a heightened threat perception, authorities revealed on Friday.

Ivanka, who is an advisor to the US President, will on 28 November address the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre in Hitec City, which houses several US technology giants. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also attend the summit.

The Hyderabad Police is making elaborate arrangements for the visit of PM Modi and Ivanka to the city next week. During his day-long visit, Modi would inaugurate the Hyderabad metro rail project and also the three-day GES.

During her visit, Ivanka will use three of her own vehicles while a total of 2,200 police personnel would be deployed for the two events.

The eighth annual GES will highlight the theme 'Women First, Prosperity for All' this year, and focus on supporting women entrepreneurs and fostering global economic growth. Ivanka Trump was invited by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June, and she will lead the US delegation to the summit.

Talking about the arrangements for this visit, Hyderabad police commissioner V V Srinivasa Rao told media the prime minister will arrive on 28 November and inaugurate the Hyderabad Metro Rail Ltd project at Miyapur. After this, he will inaugurate the GES.

Modi and Ivanka will also attend a special dinner at the Falaknuma Palace in the old city on 28 November along with 100 special guests. The dinner will be served on a Nizam-era table at which 101 people can sit. The palace is now a plush hotel.

A separate dinner has been arranged for about 1,500-2,000 delegates on the lawns of the 19th century palace, Rao said.

Reports say Ivanka Trump may attend the GES on 29 November and leave the city the same night.

( See: Tillerson to skip Hyderabad GES meet in 'snub to White House')
Govt to invite bids for 20,000 MW wind power capacity

The government on Friday announced plans to invite bids for its third wind power auction and also announced the road map for achieving the targets of commissioning 175 GW of renewable energy, including100 GW of solar generating capacity and 60 GW of wind power, by 2022.

Elaborating the RE development road map, Anand Kumar, secretary MNRE, said the ministry, along with the states, would lay out bids for ground mounted solar parks for 20 GW in 2017-18. Out of this 3.6 GW have already been bid out, 3 GW will be bid out in December 2017, 3 GW will be bid out in January 2018, 5 GW in February 2018 and 6 GW in March 2018, he said.

Another 30 GW will be bid out in 2018-19 and 30 GW in 2019-20, he added.

Further, Kumar said that against the target of 60 GW for wind power, 32 GW have already been commissioned. The central government in participation with the state governments intends to issue bids of cumulative capacity of about 8 GW this year. Out of this, 5 GW (including present 2 GW) have already been bid out, 1,500-2,000 MW will be bid out in January 2018 and 1,500-2,000 MW in March 2018.

A total of 10 GW will be bid out in the financial year 2018 and another 10 GW in 2019, leaving a margin of 2 years for commissioning of projects. Kumar said his ministry would soon be issuing the guidelines for bidding at wind power auctions.

The Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) under the union ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE), meanwhile, signed power supply agreements with utilities of UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Punjab, Goa and Odisha.

Addressing a function in the capital, union minister of state for power and new and renewable energy Raj Kumar Singh said his ministry will soon issue an Expression of Interest (EoI) to the industry for establishing domestic capacity of 20 GW, which will also meet `Make in India' goals.

He pointed to the industry's long pending demand to declare the government's renewable energy roadmap. He said the government intends to speed up renewable energy capacity installation in the country and strengthen the RE manufacturing base in India.

Further, he said, the MNRE is exploring innovative ways to achieve additional installed renewable capacity through floating solar power plants over dams, offshore wind energy systems and hybrid solar-wind power systems, which may provide over 10GW additional capacity.

He said an MNRE team of experts has already surveyed the Bhakra Nangal dam for floating solar power plants and off-shore Gujarat and Tamil Nadu for wind power plants, the minister added.

The minister expressed confidence in achieving a minimum RE target of 175GW by 2022 and even exceeding it, along with providing 24x7 affordable, clean and efficient power for all.

Singh said these targets would be achieved with the cooperation of the states while ensuring that their power utilities (Discoms) remain financially viable. The centre has provided all the required support, including funds under Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) and Integrated Power Development Scheme (IPDS), to the states to ensure `24x7 Power for All' by strengthening the intra-state transmission networks and by ensuring mandatory presence of metered connections, he said.

The ministry is in talks with the states to ensure 100 per cent metered connections through smart/pre-paid meters, Singh added.

Singh emphasised the need to states and discoms ensuring that power purchase agreements (PPAs) are mandatorily honoured. He said his ministry is in constant talks with state governments, including Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, to ensure that PPAs are honoured.

He also spoke of the need to strictly adhere to the renewable power purchase obligations (RPOs) in order to ensure success of the programme.

Kumar also said that with wind power tariffs becoming competitive and state Discoms encouraged to buy more of renewable power, the government has doubled the auction capacity for the third national level wind auction from 4GW last year to around 9GW in the current year.

Regarding clarity on GST rates on solar panels, Kumar said the MNRE is in talks with the ministry of finance and in the next 7-10 days all the issues would be resolved.

The present scheme of wind power auction is for setting up of 2,000 MW wind power project connected to inter-state transmission system (ISTS). The bidder can bid for a minimum capacity of 50 MW and maximum up to 400 MW. The projects under this scheme are expected to be commissioned towards the end of 2019.

On the occasion, power sale agreements (PSA) for purchase of wind power under second wind auction with states were also signed with Solar Energy Corporation of India with utilities of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Punjab, Goa and Odisha. The reverse auction for SECI-II wind bid was conducted on 4 October 2017, which resulted in very competitive tariff of Rs2.64/2.65 per unit.

It may be mentioned that the winners of SECI II wind bid included: Renew Power (250 MW at Rs2.64/unit), Orange (200 MW at Rs2.64 per unit), Inox (250 MW at Rs2.65 per unit), Green Infra (250 MW at Rs2.65 per unit) and Adani Green (50 MW at Rs2.65 per unit) would be setting up wind power plants in states of Gujarat, TN and MP to sell power to these utilities. PPAs with these winners are expected to be signed shortly.
New FFA officers

Future Farmers of America from Marianna High School have elected officers for the 1973-1974 school year. The group is under the leadership of Leon Nobles.

Officers are: Marcus Chatwood, reporter; Sid Hardy, president; Alex Sims, vice president; Donnie Mercer, parliamentarian; Tommy Melvin, treasurer; Wiley Barnes, sentinel; Ronald Tanner, chaplain; Tim Folsom, secretary. Jackson County Floridan, Friday, Nov. 23, 1973

Calhoun votes on wet-dry issue

On Nov. 27, a Wet-Dry election will be held in Calhoun County to determine whether sale of intoxicating liquor shall be prohibited in the county, and if not prohibited, to determine the method of sale.

County residents are asked to vote. Jackson County Floridan, Friday, Nov. 23, 1973

Bible presented

In accordance with National Bible Week this week, Mrs. Larry Harris of the Home Life department of the Marianna Junior Womans Club presented a large Bible to Mrs. Eileen Bramlett, R.N., director of nurses at the Marianna Convalescent Center.

The Bible will be used by Center residents. Jackson County Floridan, Friday, Nov. 23, 1973

Kidnappers sought in Georgia

South Georgia authorities pressed a search today for three young men who abducted the wife and daughter of a Methodist minister.

Ms. Jackie Nelson, 44, and her 16-year-old daughter, Debbie, were released unharmed Thursday, after being held hostage more than 30 hours.

The women told police their kidnappers released them on a rural road more than 100 miles south of their home in Jonesboro, an Atlanta suburb.

The men fled in a white Cadillac, they said. Jackson County Floridan, Friday, Nov. 23, 1973
RICHMOND, Va. - Two weeks ago, I encouraged readers to keep your casserole-loving selves in check by filling your Thanksgiving plates with side dishes heavy on roasted root vegetables, lightly breaded and baked Brussels sprouts, and simple gratins void of butter and gobs of cheese?

Yeah, well, leftovers dont necessarily count.

Many people look forward to the days after Thanksgiving because mashing a variety of foods together into one bowl or between bread slices and drenching everything in rich gravy is, at least where I come from, typically more accepted on those days rather than at the main event. But before you skip off to the kitchen on Friday (and again on Saturday, maybe) to construct a five-layer meal with no discernible resemblance to anything you ate on Thanksgiving, consider a few other ways to use up those beloved turkey day leftovers.

For example, you could fill roasted and charred poblano peppers with cheesy leftover mashed potatoes and corn. Hand pies turn into convenient, portable lunches and can be made either savory or sweet  think turkey, stuffing and a little gravy for some, then leftover sweet potato casserole for others. (We all know that casserole is basically dessert disguised as a vegetable, anyway.)

Then theres the cranberry sauce. So lovely on its own, the leftovers can be used for so many things  whipped into compound butters, slathered on those aforementioned unrecognizable sandwiches or baked into cakes and cookies for dessert, pancakes and waffles for breakfast.

But, and I may be going out on a limb here, what if you added that cranberry sauce to ... homemade ice cream?

My friends, welcome to the reason you make (or buy) cranberry sauce this year. In fact, if you intentionally keep the cranberry sauce tucked away behind the turkey and mashed potatoes where no one can find it on Thanksgiving Day, and then later make ice cream with it, likely no one will care.

Cranberries and cream strike an amazing combo here, so pull out the ice cream maker you havent seen since July and let it do most of the work.

This works with both smooth and chunky cranberry sauce, though Im partial to the chunky. Depending on your ice cream makers instructions, you can add the sauce at the beginning or the end of the process, but either way, that crimson color is a thing of beauty. Throw in some dark or white chocolate chips and youve got a magical dessert experience suitable for any lingering holiday house guests.

And an icy treat is the perfect complement to the stuffed peppers youll make for dinner. Not that poblanos are very spicy. On the official Scoville heat scale, they rank just below jalapenos, with just a slight kick.

To elevate their smoky flavor, you can roast the peppers first  just a few minutes under the broiler, until their skins are charred and blistered  but its not necessary. Slice down the middle, take out the seeds and membranes and then stuff them with leftover mashed potatoes (why not use up the corn, too) followed by your favorite cheeses before baking. Serve with chunky salsa or sour cream, or simply eat them on their own. Poblanos are large enough that one pepper per person makes an excellent side dish.

Lastly, the hand pies. If youre like me, you tend to have a package of ready-made pie crusts on hand for those moments when youre not up to making crusts from scratch. Or maybe in the midst of the pumpkin-pie prepping for Thanksgiving Day, you made one or two extras.

Either way, once the feast is over, pull out those extra crusts and stuff them with all sorts of leftovers. I found that sweet potato casserole is the perfect filling because you dont have to add any additional ingredients.

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As a clever colleague pointed out, serving the hand pies warm from the oven with a scoop of cranberry ice cream would be sublime. And chances are, this time around, there will be no leftovers.

More recipes

Sweet Potato Hand Pies

To save time and effort after a day of cooking on Thanksgiving, use pre-made pie crusts for these convenient, tasty hand pies. Sweet potato casserole works well, since it's already sweetened.

Makes 10 to 12 hand pies.

2 pre-made or from-scratch pie crusts

2 cups leftover sweet potato casserole

 cup heavy or whipping cream

2 tablespoons sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Roll out dough and cut into roughly 4-inch circles with a large biscuit cutter or wide-mouthed glass. You may need to reroll scraps as you go.

Place 5 or 6 circles on a baking sheet. Top each circle with a scant tablespoon of sweet potato casserole and place another circle on top. Crimp the edges together with a fork.

Spread heavy or whipping cream on tops and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until tops are golden-brown.

 Holly Prestidge

Cranberry Ice Cream

Ice cream makers vary, so follow your machine's instructions. The cranberry flavor is subtle, but feel free to add white or dark chocolate chips or ribbons of chocolate fudge to complement it.

Makes approximately  gallon.

1 cup whole milk or half-and-half

 cup sugar

2 cups heavy cream

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 cups cranberry sauce (chunky is better)

 cup chocolate chips, optional

Combine whole milk or half-and-half with sugar and whisk until sugar is dissolved. Pour in heavy cream and vanilla. Turn on ice cream maker and add contents to the bowl. Follow your machine's instructions for when to add other ingredients. I added the cranberry sauce and chocolate chips about 5 minutes before the ice cream was finished churning.

For better consistency, freeze immediately for at least 2 hours or overnight.

 Holly Prestidge
A DUNDALK man who was involved in four car accidents and suffers from chronic pain has welcomed the Department of Health's decision to grant a license to treat chronic pain with medicinal cannabis.

Former Colaiste Ris Secondary School teacher Gerry Malone was diagnosed with chronic pain in 2002.

The Blackrock man told The Dundalk Democrat that would like Louth TDs to fully support the legalisation of medicinal cannabis.

I've got spinal issues. I was knocked down when I was 28-years-old in Dublin and four years later in Castlebellingham, said Gerry.

I was knocked down when I was six-years-old in Blackrock but thankfully I was fine after it. The final straw was when a car crashed into the back of mine on Clanbrassil Street in 2002.

That last incident triggered a lot of issues. Within three months of that accident I had severe back pain.

The Department of Health has approved a three-month licence for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) for the treatment of severe chronic pain, a move which has been hailed as an important development by medical professionals and campaigners.

Presently, it's illegal to use medicinal cannabis for medical reasons in Ireland, however, a patients consultant can apply to the Minister for Health for a licence on a case by case basis.

At the moment I'm using the second highest pain killer available. I don't want to use the strongest one because it has too many side effects, said Gerry.

Medicinal cannabis should be made available as an option to people like myself and others in need.
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(REUTERS/ Mohamed Abd El Ghady)The inside of a Coptic church hit by a bomb during Palm Sunday.

Pope Francis and World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit have condemned the "brutal" attack at a mosque in Egypt during which 305 were kllled on Nov. 24.

People fleeing an explosion were gunned down at a Sufi mosque in Egypt's North Sinai region, according to multiple news sources, in what appears to be the deadliest terror attack ever on Egyptian soil on Nov. 24.

Francis sent a telegram of condolence for the attack, saying he was "profoundly grieved to learn of the great loss of life caused by the terrorist attacks on Rawda mosque in North Sinai.

The Pope also  renewed "his firm condemnation of this wanton act of brutality directed at innocent civilians gathered in prayer".

The pontiff said he joins "all people of good will in imploring that hearts hardened by hatred will learn to renounce the way of violence that leads to such great suffering, and embrace the way of peace."

And in a letter to the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Dr Ahmad al-Tayyeb on Nov. 25, Tveit said, We pray that our Lord grants them comfort and healing," He wrote, "We condemn strongly this tragic attack against our Muslim brothers during prayer time, in a place of worship dedicated to peace and devotion."

Egyptian security forces were hunting for the attackers of a Sufi mosque during Friday prayers in the northern Sinai, a military source said, after the brutal and lethal assault.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said Egypt would respond to the attack on al Rawdah mosque with "brute force" CNN reported Nov. 24.

Some 109 others were injured, Egyptian State media reported.

It was the deadliest attack of its kind since an Islamist insurgency in the peninsula was stepped up in 2013, BBC reported.

No group has yet claimed the attack, but extremists affiliated with so-called Islamic State (IS) have been responsible for so many deadly attacks in the province.

They usually target security forces and Christian churches, and the bloody attack on a mosque associated with Sufi Muslims shocked Egypt.

The Coptic Orthodox Church, representing some 11 million Egyptian Christians was quick to denounce the attack.

A Coptic Orthodox Church spokesperson said the Church condemned "the flagrant attack that targeted worshipers in Deir Al-Abd's Al-Rawda mosque," Ahram reported.

"We pray to God that Egypt is preserved from such unprecedented brutal terrorism," the Christian statement read.

The attack triggered a new element into Egypt's struggle with extremists because most of the victims were Sufi Muslims, who practice a mystical form of Islam that the Islamic State and other Sunni extremist groups deem heretical, The New York Times reported.

The Times commented that it underscored the failure of President el-Sisi, who has justified his harsh crackdown on political freedom in the name of crushing Islamic militancy, to deliver on his promises of security.

The gunmen had set up "ambush" locations and opened fire on ambulances as they were transporting wounded worshipers from al-Rawdah toward al-Arish before the arrival of security services, eyewitnesses reported, according to CNN.

The mosque that was attacked is known for being the birthplace of Sheikh Eid al-Jariri, a Sufi cleric considered the founder of Sufism in the Sinai peninsula.

No-one had claimed responsibility for the attacks but IS has targeted Sufis in the past.
PKK-supporter USs dirty history in Syria

All these years US armed terrorists for its own benefits in Syria, they now stated they will stop providing guns to PKK.

Following the phone call between Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Trump, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that US will no longer provide arms to terror organization PKK in Syria.

President Erdogan and Donald Trump discussed recent developments in Syria, during a phone call on Friday. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference in Ankara: "Our discomfort regarding the provision of weapons to the YPG was conveyed to Mr. Trump once again. Trump very clearly said he had given instructions to not provide weapons to the YPG. We welcome the promise of not providing weapons to the YPG, and want to see it implemented practically."
Trump: No weapons will be given to PKK/YPG

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu gives details of telephone conversation between President Erdogan and Donald Trump.

Cavusoglu said, one of the topics that negatively affected Turkey-US ties the most, were the weapons that Washington supplied to the PKK/YPG. Minister said that President Trump relayed his decision during a telephone conversation between the leaders on Friday.

THIS NONSENSE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ENDED BEFORE

Cavusoglu was present in President Erdogan's office during the telephone call. He stated that "President Trump clearly stated that weapons will not be given to YPG anymore and said that essentially this nonsense should have been ended before."

"Our discomfort regarding the provision of weapons to the YPG was conveyed to President Trump once again. He very clearly said that he had given instructions to not provide weapons to the YPG."

Following the phone call, President Erdogan tweeted: "I had a productive phone conversation with the US President Donald Trump today."
Bella Hadid and Drake are no longer talking, according to a new report.

Weeks after the alleged couple was seen spending time with together at the 21-year-old model's birthday party in New York City, a source claims they are completely estranged after the "Hotline Bling" rapper reportedly ghosted her after their brief fling.

Things ended over text when he basically ghosted her, a source told Us Weekly magazine.

While a source close to the rapper claimed that he and Hadid were nothing more than friends, other insiders have said that the two of them were casually dating up until recently.

Bella Hadid And The Weeknd May Have Become Single At The Same Time

As Hadid's relationship with Drake came to an abrupt end at the end of October, so did the romance between Hadid's ex-boyfriend, The Weeknd, and his former girlfriend, Selena Gomez. As fans will recall, The Weeknd dated Gomez for 10 months and the couple was believed to be living together up until their split at the end of October.

Following the breakup, The Weeknd seemingly retaliated against Gomez and her new (and old) boyfriend, Justin Bieber, by spending time with Bieber's former flame, Yovanna Ventura, at a club in Los Angeles earlier this month. As Us Weekly magazine revealed, the two were photographed together on Friday, November 10, and the previous day, they attended French Montanas birthday party.

The Weeknd was there hand in hand with Yovanna Ventura all night, a source told the magazine at the time. They arrived together. They were holding hands. He was there for a solid two hours with her and everywhere they went they held hands.

Bella Hadid And The Weeknd Reunited Last Week In NYC

After The Weeknd's outing with Ventura, the musician traveled to New York City and reunited with Bella Hadid at her apartment. Shortly therafter, Gomez appeared to respond to the outing by unfollowing her former boyfriend on Instagram.

Hadid's reunion with The Weeknd came just days before the model flew to Shanghai, China with her fellow models, including Adriana Lima, Elsa Hosk, and Karlie Kloss, to tape the 2017 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. While Hadid's older sister, Gigi, was supposed to walk in the show, she pulled out at the last minute and told fans she looked forward to returning to the catwalk next year.
Kylie Jenner is reportedly not handling her pregnancy very well as she allegedly prepares to welcome her first child with boyfriend, Travis Scott.

Travis Scott To Blame?

A source claims that the 20-year-old Keeping Up With the Kardashians star and lip kit creator Jenner is at a very low point" in her life. However, according to a source, her emotional state has to do with how she looks at the moment while reportedly pregnant with Scott.

"She is really bummed out, a source told Radar Online on Nov. 22. She is horrified at how her body has ballooned up, and it really bothers her that she cannot fit into any of her clothes. She thinks that she looks hideous right now.

Jenner is reportedly having a hard time with her new shape and allegedly can't stop crying. However, rather than do her best to stay healthy and in shape throughout her pregnancy, the reality star is said to be indulging in junk food as remains holed up at her home in Hidden Hills, California.

Kylie doesnt even want to leave the house right now and is telling her family that she is going to stay inside until she is skinny again, the source told Radar Online. Shes also terrified about becoming a mom because she doesnt know how to raise a baby! She just wants this whole pregnancy thing to be over, but she knows that she still has a long way to go.

Kylie Jenner Barely Seen In Public

Since rumors began swirling in regards to her pregnancy, the reality star has rarely been seen in public. Whenever she steps out, she's wearing a very baggy clothing.

As for her ongoing social media feed, she hasn't shown much of her body in months. Recent speculation suggests she is expecting a baby girl.

Meanwhile, Kylie Jenner has also not been seen with her boyfriend, Scott, a whole lot in recent months, which is likely due to his busy touring schedule. Jenner and Scott stuck up a romance that appeared to many to be a rebound romance just weeks after Jenner split from Tyga.

Then, just months later, Jenner began facing pregnancy rumors, which she failed to address.

To see more of Kylie Jenner and her family, including sisters Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashian, and Kendall Jenner, tune into new episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians season 14 on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. on the E! Network.

No word yet on whether Kylie Jenner's pregnancy will be addressed during the current season of the popular reality show.
It looks like Jenelle Evans had a Happy Thanksgiving this year. Unfortunately, the Teen Mom 2 star may have been forced to celebrate the holiday without her oldest son.

Jenelle Evans Celebrates Thanksgiving Without Jace

The longtime reality star posted a family photo on Thursday that featured her two youngest children, 3-year-old Kaiser and 10-month-old Ensley, her husband David Eason, as well as Eason's oldest daughter, Maryssa. Apparently, her oldest son, Jace, was not seen in the photo with the rest of the family.

"Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours! Hope everyone had a great day like we did! #GobbleGobble @easondavid88," Evans wrote in the caption of her Nov. 23 photo.

Evans and Eason have a blended family of five children including Eason's middle child, son Kaden. However, Kaden hasn't been seen much and doesn't appear to be living with the couple at their home in North Carolina.

Lost Custody Battle

It has been months now since Evans' mother, Barbara Evans, was granted full custody of 8-year-old Jace. In May of this year, Evans and her mother went to court to battle over custody of her oldest child.

While Evans was awarded visitation rights to the boy, which she didn't have before, she was not given any custodial rights to Jace. Perhaps it explains why her son wasn't able to celebrate the festive occasion with her this year.

"I'm not restricted to when my mom says I can have my son anymore," Evans told E! News, "and at the moment that's all I care about. [I] just want to spend time with my son. He will be home one day but today wasn't the day, sadly."

Following the court hearing, Evans made it clear that she did not have plans to rekindle a positive relationship with her mother and proceeded to ban her from her September wedding.

"I'm really happy we could to a decision for Jace but it doesn't change my feelings towards my mom," Evans explained. "She still isn't giving up my son to me but I will fight again in the future when the time is right."

Although Evans has a long road ahead of her, she isn't jumping back into another court battle with her mother quite yet. Instead, as she and Barbara remain estranged, Evans is slowly planning to embark on a new court battle next year, after the judge on their case has time to see that she has made good progress and proved herself that she is a capable parent.

Jenelle Evans, her family, and her co-stars including Kailyn Lowry, Chelsea Houska, Briana DeJesus, and Leah Messer are believed to be in production on the upcoming season of Teen Mom 2.
Hey All,



I am an engineer in IT industry. I want to know my feasibility for Australian PR.

Can someone please give me some leads.

Below is my information:



Total Work Experience : 4 years

Education: BE, Computer Engineering from a reputed College.

Currently working in PUNE.



Let me know if any other information required.



Thanks,

Sandeep
I had something similar happen - only with the convenience store down the street that serves as a drop point for Colissimo packages. Got a notice saying that they had "attempted to deliver" but no one was there. I knew that was wrong because I had been home all day, and at the time they indicated that they had "attempted" I was looking at my watch and wondering where the hell they were!



In response to that, I told them to deliver to the convenience store. So the next day I had notification that the package had been delivered there. Went down to the convenience store and - no package for me. Exchanged a bunch of increasingly more tacky mail messages with Colissimo, complaining about poor delivery (always on Friday afternoons) and they kept insisting that the package had been delivered to the drop point.



After about a week of this, Colissimo contacted the drop point and I guess must have insisted that the guy go in the back and check each package that was waiting in the back. What he found was that when they re-directed my package after the initial "failure" to deliver, they slapped a new bar code label on the package over the original label. When the new label was scanned, it did not have my name anywhere on the code - so when the store clerk scanned the packages, there was no indication who the package was for and my name didn't show up on the list of packages waiting to be picked up. It was only when he went into the back and looked at each package that he saw my name on the original label.



If it helps, you could ask them to go in the back and look at the packages waiting to be picked up. It's possible there was a "scanning error" if it wasn't a delivery that required a signature. (Or if they can't produce a slip with your signature accepting delivery. I notice these days that whenever the mailman delivers a package, he asks me to "sign" for it on his mobile phone. They should be able to produce a slip showing that "signature.")

Cheers,

Bev
Mattskii said:



I need to post a handpan to Italy. It's heavy, fragile and large!



Can anyone let me know where I can get a good strong box and packaging, I am currently in the Algarve, Portimao/Albufeira area mainly.



Also who is a good courier? I looked at the DHL website and they wanted something like 800 - I could fly there myself for less than that! Lol Will CTT take it? It will be 70*70*40cm and at least 5 or 6 kilos.



Thanks everyone Hi allI need to post a handpan to Italy. It's heavy, fragile and large!Can anyone let me know where I can get a good strong box and packaging, I am currently in the Algarve, Portimao/Albufeira area mainly.Also who is a good courier? I looked at the DHL website and they wanted something like 800 - I could fly there myself for less than that! Lol Will CTT take it? It will be 70*70*40cm and at least 5 or 6 kilos.Thanks everyone Click to expand...

Hi MattNot your beloved pan or is this another? I can't help with packaging but I'm sure that someone down there will know of an office supplies store that would be able to help. If you Google 'Office supplies Algarve' you will get some ideas.As far as carriers go, I would never recommend tying yourself to one company, but instead try a parcel wholesaler. They buy capacity in bulk from wherever is cheapest and sell on to the end consumer. Take a look at these two as examples. I have no connection with either company and these are not recommendations. I have used the first one but they wanted to deal with GLS for that particular consignment to the UK. Other than that I was very happy with their service. If you search 'reviews for GLS' you will see why I was not happy with that and they did change it for me. Email or PM me for the details of my particular experiences if you wish, as posting them here previously got me in to trouble from one particular Mod!Best of luck!
Hello,

Iam Mark Sala, 38 Years Expat live in Bangkok since 2010.

Iam Social Media and Digital Marketer,Freekancer.



Offcourse this Country (Thailand ) is the best Country i ever seen,Best People,Best Weather

,Best Food,Good Prices,Freedome .



I would appreciate help anyone Expat or plan to come Thailand with my best efforts,depend on my long experiance here.

Also can help i Digital World if you want.



Thanks and happy coming new year 2018 for everyone.





Mark Sala
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Juan Antonio Vasquez is still in his first year studying mechatronics and automation at the Universidad Tecnologica General Mariano Escobedo in Monterrey, Mexico, but several months ago he was already planning a semester in the United States.

Vasquez, 18, with good grades and an intermediate grasp of English, was one of 76 students who won scholarships from a public-private partnership in Mexico to study this semester at the Alamo Colleges. Its the fourth annual cohort to enroll for a semester in the community college district as part of the Becalos program  a name that loosely translates to, Give them scholarships.

For me, its a big opportunity to travel, to meet new people, to know a new culture, Vasquez said as he measured voltage using an electrical circuit he made in a lab at St. Philips College. I want to motivate other students to join the program as well, because theyll learn a lot in this country.

Becalos students came to the Alamo Colleges this year from 13 different technical or polytechnic universities in Mexico, said LaTanya Kurney, coordinator of international programs for the community college district. They enroll in courses that align with their degree plans back home, take supplemental English classes, participate in leadership workshops, volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and the San Antonio Food Bank  and get to hike Enchanted Rock, she said.

The visitors are either lodged with host families, in student housing at Tobin Lofts or at the Villa Maria Residence downtown, Kurney said.

The Mexican students enroll in any of the five Alamo Colleges except Northeast Lakeview, which is awaiting independent accreditation. They have studied a range of disciplines including accounting, marketing, international affairs and biomedical engineering. They return to Mexico to finish their four-year degrees after the semester ends, Kurney said.

The program is an agreement between the Alamo Colleges and the Mexican government, funded through the Mexican federal department of education, Banco Santander and the Televisa Foundation, she said.

Vasquez and seven other Becalos students worked with their American peers on a recent Monday in Brenda Clarks DC/AC circuits class. They also were taking three other classes in electronics instrumentation technology, Clark said.

Students of both nationalities learn from each other, Kurney said.

We have a lot of interaction in the colleges at various levels, to where the Becalos students are not just isolated, but they become a part of the Alamo Colleges community, she said. Theyre not just Becalos students. They are Alamo Colleges students.

Vasquez said he had been worried people would be impatient with his halting English but that hasnt been the case.

People here are better than I imagined, he said.

Vasquez is living in Tobin Lofts and has experienced been some culture shock. Im surprised that the bus has Wi-Fi, he said.

Juan Pablo Acosta Arevalo, 19, is also in his third quarter at the Universidad Tecnologica de la Zona Metropolitana del Valle de Mexico, in the state of Hidalgo. He worked on the circuit activity with Rigoberto Renteria de Leon, 19, a St. Philips student working toward a degree in biomedical engineering.

Renteria, whose mother immigrated from Mexico, said he found some common ground with the Becalos students. Acosta said his American classmates have been kind.

If you have a doubt about something, theres lots of support, Acosta said in Spanish.

The Mexican students have a strong background in the metric system, essential to engineering technology, Clark said. This is her first year teaching students in the Becalos program.

Its just been an absolute pleasure, Clark said. I really hope I get to do it again. ...Im learning just a little bit of Spanish.

amalik@express-news.net
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Since 1923, the goal of the Animal Defense League of Texas has been protecting the animals of San Antonio.

The nonprofit organization sprang from the Child Protective and Humane Society, led by Herman H. Ochs and Mrs. Scott C. Applewhite. According to an Express-News story, the mission was to prevent ignorance, pauperism, immorality and crime among children and cruel beating, harnessing, starving, overloading and other brutal use of animals.

The group of animal advocates built a series of makeshift, open cages that served as home for the stray and injured cats and dogs roaming San Antonio. The ramshackle shelter was little more than lengths of chicken wire, nailed to scraps and planks of wood, plunked down on a stretch of prairie that would become the Austin Highway.

By the early 1960s, ADL had relocated to the Northeast side, expanding its mission from supplying basic shelter to securing homes for the scores of dogs, puppies, cats and kittens they cared for each year.

The main campus, located at 11300 Nacogdoches Road, spreads across more than 12 acres that includes an adoption center, a cattery complex, an education center and a separate clinic for ADL medical care and animal surgeries on site. In 2016, the ADL took on a second location, the Paul Jolly Center for Pet Adoptions in Brackenridge Park, where potential adopters could see prospective pets through glass enclosures.

From the early hardscrabble days to the advancements of the present, ADL has always been a true, no-kill shelter.

According to an ADL operating statement, no animal will be euthanized if it can be cared for and returned to health. And if they reach the maximum capacity of 400 animals, no more animals would be taken in, nor euthanized to make room for other dogs and cats.

An example of the ADL creed for the past 94 years can be seen in the story of Melon, a black Labrador Retriever mix, who arrived at the shelter as a pup and died at ADL at the age of 12. In 2009, he held the title of the stray that had lived the longest at the shelter.

According to ADL, the shelter is funded through adoption fees, bequests from individuals, donations, special events and grants.

In a letter to the community, executive director Janice Darling, thanked the public for its help through gifts of time, money, resources and advocacy.

The thought that the love of an animal makes us more human, humane and compassionate and being part of a community of people who care is inspiring, Darling said. Some year, maybe in the not-too-distant future, our work may no longer be needed.

But that time has yet to come, and Darling thanked San Antonio for supporting the difficult but gratifying work.

ADL spokesman Matt Elmore said the ADL is the states oldest, continually running animal shelter. Walking the grounds, Elmore said they often change the building spaces to meet their needs. He pointed out a building that was configured to take in animals rescued from Houston shelters after Hurricane Harvey.

In the past several years, the campus has seen new buildings rise to better serve its occupants. In September 2014, the nonprofit opened a 1,600-square-foot hospital addition that included 31 kennels, larger runs and more capacity to care for more ill and injured animals.

Veterinarians at the state-of-the-art clinic perform an average of 40 surgeries each day and more than 100 sterilizations in a five-day week.

That same year, two new kennels opened as the result of a partnership between ADL and the city. The $2.2 million facilities included a room with 18 kennels for up to 72 puppies.

Elmore said at the core of their work is an effort to solidify best practices and work in the best interest of their orphaned pets.

He said the shelter is one of Animal Care Services rescue partners that pulls stray dogs from ACS six times a week to make more room in the city shelter and help decrease the stray dog population.

Along with the other large animal organizations in the city, were all working toward the same goal, Elmore said, to make San Antonio the largest no-kill city in the United States, and we are right there.

ADL dog trainer Jamie Gibson said their focus is trying to re-home animals in the best homes possible.

Were kind of like the bridge, Gibson, 33, said, between from where they came from to where theyre going. While theyre in our care, were trying to make sure theyre getting all of their needs met, physical, mental and emotional. Our main goal is to make sure were the best caretakers while we find them their forever homes, and our volunteers are a big part of that.

vtdavis@express-news.net
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As darkness fell at Travis Park on Friday night, Carrie Briseno recalled when she was a little girl and her parents took her to Alamo Plaza for the traditional lighting ceremony of the city tree.

Now she was with her daughter, Vanessa Aguilar, and son-in-law, Gilbert Aguilar, who brought their 2-year-old son, Dominic, who danced to the songs of mariachis at the lit stage.

I used to bring my kids when they were little, said Briseno, 55. Now, they bring their kids.

Its time for a new tradition, she said, both for her family and the city.

For the first time, the giant 55-foot fir tree stood at the heart of Travis Park instead of in front of the Alamo, as it had for more than 30 years.

Briseno and the Aguilars joined in the whooping and hollering as the crowd watched the bright red lights of the tree and 200,000 white ones throughout the park flicker on, kicking off the citys yuletide season and the 33rd Annual H-E-B Tree Lighting Ceremony.

City officials said future construction linked to Alamo master plan development led to combining the lighting of the tree with Centro San Antonios Annual Lighting of Travis Park. With the controversial Confederate memorial gone, there was room at the much larger park with easier access for the public, officials said.

Now Playing: The City of San Antonio celebrates the 33rd Annual H-E-B Tree Lighting Ceremony at Travis Park, the new location for the holiday event. Video: Brandpoint

The tree and lights will be on display through Jan. 7.

Lori Houston, assistant city manager, said visitors to Alamo Plaza would still be able to snap holiday photos of a tree in front of the historic structure: an 18-foot-tall decorated one also provided by H-E-B.

Theres a contingent of San Antonians who arent happy about the move and are leaving a tangible statement at the old site in the form of small Christmas trees. Local resident Steve Monreal told mySA.com that he set up his tiny tree to protest the break with the traditional ceremony.

Opponents plan a ceremony of their own at 1 p.m. Dec. 2 to light up more than 100 trees at Alamo Plaza that are all less than 3 feet tall, Gina Castaneda said.

For his part, Gilbert Aguilar didnt mind the change of venue.

I like it, he said. Its more open here. Over there, its more crammed in.

For the past three decades, numerous grocery chains have sponsored the trees that became a yuletide icon outside the Alamo. H-E-B has provided the Christmas tree since the mid-1990s.

Before the lights turned on across the grounds at Travis Park, Mayor Ron Nirenberg welcomed the crowd and noted that the event has always been about tradition and celebrating the holidays together. Nirenberg also said the hearts and prayers of San Antonians go out to neighboring cities that have suffered hard times this year.

Throughout the evening, Santa Claus wandered through the crowd, stopping to pose for photos and hand out candy to the little ones.

The lights and music drew Diane and Rich Weyer and their friends Jim and Donna Franklin, on vacation from central New Jersey. Jim Franklin, in his mid-50s, said they didnt have any idea about the tree lighting ceremony when they made plans to visit San Antonio.

As they walked beyond the towering bright-red tree, Diane Weyer, 64, said the ceremony was a bonus to their holiday trip.

We just started walking and saw the lights, she said. Its very festive.

Tradition continued as San Antonians and visitors headed to the River Walk and the bridges to watch the 36th annual Ford Holiday River Parade.

A crowd estimate was not provided, but last year 50,000 people attended the parade, according to the Paseo del Rio Association.

This years theme was Christmas at the Movies, and each of the 28 floats had movie themes, including A Christmas Story, The Polar Express and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Cheryl Ladd of Charlies Angels fame was the grand marshal.

Christmas music heralded the approach of many of the floats. One played Lets All Go to the Lobby and released a buttery popcorn scent.

Carla Rodgers, 44, and her two daughters hadnt attended the parade in at least four years. But this year, Rodgers in-laws from Cibolo wanted to buy tickets, so the family went.

This is awesome because last time it was freezing cold, said Rodgers about 8 p.m., as temperatures hovered around 60 degrees. The family also paid for a better spot this year, on the River Walk between the Shops at Rivercenter mall and the Convention Center.

Emily Rodgers, 12, said she liked the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer float, which featured several frisky dogs.

Julia Aguilar, 43, of San Antonio, and her family watched nearby, eating a Chinese dinner from the malls food court.

Aguilar and her sons, ages 19 and 7, come to the parade every year. The kids get to enjoy the night, Aguilar said.

Her friend Maria Lopez, 42, begged to differ as she waited for the float from her daughters alma mater, the University of the Incarnate Word, depicting the movie A Christmas Carol.

Im enjoying myself more than the kids, Lopez said. I love to see the kinds of designs they show.

A Star Wars float was a big hit with the crowd, which cheered as stormtroopers waved.

Oh my gosh, is it Star Wars? called Brandy Flores, 33, from her perch on a 4-foot wall outside Range, a steakhouse on the river near Houston and St. Marys streets. Boba Fett! Princess Leia!

Flores and her mother, 54-year-old Sheila Melnick, come to the parade every year, but Flores husband, Albert Flores, said this was his first time at the parade despite his lifelong residence in San Antonio. The family said they enjoyed the lights, festive atmosphere and easy access to the parade after seeing retired Spurs player Matt Bonner at the tree lighting in Travis Park.

All you had to do was walk right down the road, Melnick said. I love San Antonio. I think its a fantastic city.

vtdavis@express-news.net | amalik@express-news.net
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AUSTIN  It took months to find the medication that would temper Dakota Flores sons anger and help keep him awake and focused in school. Now the eighth-grader at Jones Middle School is earning accolades in classes and choir, but Flores is afraid that it could soon slip away.

Congress missed the September deadline to renew funding for the Childrens Health Insurance Program, which covers doctor visits, prescriptions and other medical needs for Flores son and nearly half a million more low-income Texas children. With no action in Washington, Texas is projected to run out of money for CHIP by the end of January.

I cant sleep. I am nervous. I dont know whats going on, said Flores, a single mother of four who works at a pawnshop in San Antonio. He is going so far due to his medication. You take it away and you will see his progress drop.

CHIP has typically enjoyed support from Republicans and Democrats, but this year lawmakers havent found agreement on how to fund it. Subsidized by federal and state dollars, CHIP will end under Texas law if money from Washington dries up.

Texas legislators and advocates are now starting to push for state backup plans if federal delays persist.

House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, recently called on the state health agency to work with the legislative budget office to come up with contingency funding options in order to avert any potential disruptions to this important program.

Ensuring the programs continuity is a priority of the Texas House, Straus wrote in a letter Nov. 16 to Health and Human Services Commissioner Charles Smith.

Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, wrote Texas congressional delegation last week demanding quick reauthorization of CHIP. In light of Hurricane Harvey and all the other things in Texas, its not the time to be messing around with children, Menendez said, adding that he supports Straus request.

CHIP covers roughly 100,000 children in counties hardest hit by Harvey, while more than 27,000 children in Bexar County get the government-subsidized health coverage, according to figures from the state commission.

Advocates, meanwhile, are warning that enrollees could soon get notice from the state that their benefits are ending, potentially sparking panic and confusion. In most cases, the state must notify families 30 days in advance of any termination in benefits, which means letters could arrive right around Christmas if Congress doesnt act before then, advocates said.

We are very worried about these letters going out just because of the enormous amount of stress thats going to cause for families and the amount of work thats going to be needed to undo the harm, said Laura Guerra-Cardus with the Childrens Defense Fund of Texas.

Agency officials wouldnt say when theyre planning to send out such notices or confirm whether the agency has requested supplemental federal funding to keep CHIP running past Jan. 31, when money is expected to run out.

Were closely monitoring congressional efforts to reauthorize the program and are hopeful that it will be extended prior to the exhaustion of our current allotment, HHSC spokeswoman Carrie Williams said in a written statement.

At least five other states, including Arizona, Ohio and Oregon, could run out of CHIP funding by years end, according to news reports. Nevada recently requested $11.3 million from the federal government to keep the states CHIP running through February, while Congress debates whether to renew it.

Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, said its her understanding that the states health and human services agency has similarly submitted a federal funding request to cover CHIP clients through the end of February.

Because CHIP long has enjoyed bipartisan support, I am optimistic that Congress will reach a deal that will reauthorize it timely. In the event it does not, however, Texas should take swift action to ensure the children of our state are not impacted negatively, she said in a written statement.

If the program isnt renewed in time, the state agency will send Texas children who lose CHIP coverage into the insurance marketplace, Williams said.

But advocates warn that many families likely cannot afford coverage in the health care exchange. CHIP is meant for kids whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to pay for private insurance. The program in Texas, for example, covers children in a family of four that earns between roughly $33,000 and $50,000 a year.

There will be families that fall in that gap of affordability and will not find affordable coverage for their kids, said Guerra-Cardus of the Childrens Defense Fund.

Flores previously had private insurance at a corporate job, but she had to find new work with more flexible hours when her teenage daughters special health needs grew.

Now Flores relies on CHIP for both her son and her youngest daughter, who was born with bad vision in one eye and sees a specialist regularly.

Flores hasnt gotten any information from the state, she said, but rather learned from a Texas lawmaker in October that her childrens CHIP was at risk. In preparation, Flores is seeing her childrens doctors in mid-December to discuss alternatives the family might be able to afford. Mostly though, she is praying.

The anxiety and fear for parents of losing this is heartbreaking, she said. There are so many kids on CHIP that benefit. Taking it away will injure our future and our children.

amorris@express-news.net
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When he was in middle school, Elionas Puente heard about SAY Si from his sister Asaiah and decided to see for himself what it was all about.

Nearly four years later, Elionas, 15, speaks highly of the multidisciplinary arts training program that enables kids from middle school and high school to unleash and develop their inner artist.

School programs are not as hands-on as SAY Si is, said Puente, a Central Catholic High School sophomore. Its been a great starting point for artists who dont know what they want to pursue.

Catherine Cat Quinn, 17, a junior at Communications Arts High School, a magnet school of the Northside Independent School District, is also keen on SAY Si.

Quinn has been taking classes there since she was in the sixth grade. Shes tried all kinds of media but in recent years, has developed an interest in textile work.

I had done weaving and even made my own loom, she said. Right now, Im more interested in textile art and the different textile processes.

More Information By the numbers Students on-site: 150 to 200 Students served annually through Artists Building Communities: 3,000 Cost: Programs are tuition-free Graduation rate: 100 percent graduate from high school and go on to college. Retention rate: 95 percent of middle school students have gone into high school programs offered by SAY Si. Graduates since 1994: More than 2,000 See More Collapse

Puente and Quinn are just two of the students who currently participate in the creative youth development program.

The best thing, the two said, is that there is no tuition.

Ours is a completely free program, with no fees charged, said Jon Hinojosa, SAY Sis Artistic/Executive Director.

Open year-round, SAY Si serves urban inner city economically-disadvantaged youth.

In addition to the after-school classes at its building at 1518 S. Alamo, SAY Si has an outreach program, Artists Building Communities (ABC).

We wanted to expand to the community not getting artistic opportunities such as hospitals, Title I public schools, community centers, Hinojosa said. The biggest frustration for us is that many times, there are places that want us to come but they dont have the support or funds to pay for our teaching artists and for materials.

Recently completed was an eight-week project with children who are patients at University Hospital, Hinojosa said.

SAY Si alumni who are attending college in San Antonio are recruited as teaching artists for the ABC program.

Weve found that because of their youth, our alumni who work as teaching artists build quick relationships and rapport with the children, Hinojosa said.

Thanks to continued funding from the Rackspace Foundation, SAY Si has been working with students at Windcrest Elementary for several years, added Hinojosa.

If we had funding, we would like to take our ABC program to other Title I schools, he said.

According to its web site, the Rackspace Foundation is funded by payroll contributions from employees of the San Antonio-based managed cloud computing company. The foundations philanthropic focus is on science, arts, math, education, technology and engineering.

For nearly a quarter of a century, SAY Si has been nurturing young people interested in the arts. Started under the aegis of the King William Neighborhood Association, SAY Si began offering classes in February 1994 at the Blue Star Arts Complex.

Woven into the arts programs are components that teach participants, many of whom are third and fourth generation Mexican-American, about their culture.

Prior to the inauguration of SAY Si Muertitos Fest 2017 earlier this month, a professor of Mexican-American studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio spoke to students about culture and tradition in Mexico.

SAY Si's first students  just 12  were from Brackenridge High School. Studio sessions were limited to eight hours a week at Blue Star, located across the San Antonio River from the King William Neighborhood.

In 2000, SAY Si moved to larger space at the Blue Star Arts Complex and began its Media Arts Studio, designed to provide students marketable skills that would lead to careers in areas such as advertising, graphic design, commercial art and printing.

One year later, a Saturday program held year-round for middle school students began. It offered classes in visual and media arts with high school students as instructors.

With expanded programs and need for more space, in 2007 SAY Si moved into its own building, a 26,00-square foot warehouse on South Alamo Street that once housed a beer distributor.

That same year, the theater arts program was added. There is even a black box theater.

Through the years, programs have been expanded. In 2015, the HIVE Studio (Home for Innovation and Video Ecology), a game design studio, was added.

Today, its alumni who began the program as children number more than 2,000.

Currently, four alumni work on the SAY Si staff. Many return to the organization during the summer.

Weve got alumni doing great work in other cities, Hinojosa said.

One former student is a tenured art professor at a small suburban college outside Chicago.

Another alum, Gerardo Oyervides Garza, uses art to teach high school physics at Poteet High School.

Im trying to incorporate art into the curriculum, said Oyervides, 24, a first-year teacher and UTSA graduate. I want students to be engaged in the work.

He added, Im inspired by my high school physics teacher but also the people at SAY Si, who are very supportive and positive. I owe a lot to them.

Meanwhile, expansion of programs is never far from Hinojosas mind.

What we dont have is a literary arts component, or journalistic and culinary arts, he said. Music is also being looked at.

But even with current programs, space and a lean budget limit what the organization can offer.

Its disappointing to us that because of lack of adequate capacity and space, we have to turn away students when our goal is to reach more and more, said Hinojosa.
Gwendoline Christie has wanted to be in 'Star Wars' since she was six years old.

Gwendoline Christie

The 39-year-old actress felt "unbelievable joy" when she was cast as Captain Phasma in 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' because she'd dreamed of being a part of the sci-fi universe after being captivated by the late Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia in the original movies when she was a child.

She said: "I can remember the precise moment I was cast as Captain Phasma in 'Star Wars'. It was an explosion of unbelievable joy.

"For a long time, I had campaigned to be in the franchise to anyone who would listen,

"It was an ambition motivated by one of my earliest memories, of when, aged six, I was placed in front of the flamboyant space opera.

"I marvelled at this fantasy world in a way I couldm't yet articulate, with its misfits and droids and a woman who fought the enemy with intelligence, who was funny and refused to be shackled - the inimitable Princess Leia.

"I recall thinking even then, 'She isn't like all the other women on TV. She won't be told what to do.' "

And Gwendoline felt "truly electrified" when she saw her costume for the first time because it hadn't been made sexy just because of her gender.

She said: "When I was taken to the top-secret wardrobe department to see my Captain Phasma costume - a shiny, full-body suit of armour - I was truly electrified.

"Kathleen Kennedy, president of LucasFilm, had asked me if I'd ever Googled 'female superheroes' and proceeded to show me the results; a plethora of scantily clad, cartoon-like women and not a whole lot else.

"The concept of a female character in a huge film like 'Star Wars', whose flesh we are denied from the outset, felt fresh and exciting.

"A suit of genderless armour for a female character shouldn't have felt new, but it did."
Being the first conscious electronic world music artist I love to transgress borders and mindsets with my music by infusing electronica with world music instruments.

Nathassia hopes to change the world through her music

Since the invention of the 80s term World Music, it has connected countries, cultures and languages. The term was initially invented to bring foreign music closer to the mainstream of western popular music. Even though the UK charts are now filled with South American style floor fillers, I feel that the evolving of this process has maybe reached it peak. On the contrary, electronic music has spread out in the last few years like a virus all over the globe, infecting an entire new generation of music lovers. And its evolvement is ongoing.

I decided it would be a great opportunity to use the fluidity of electronic music, to continue the progress of world music by merging the two. The ideology of connecting countries, cultures and languages could expand in a new way. After all, isnt that what music is all about!

I am lucky that I have so many wonderful fans all over the world from such diverse countries as Egypt, Morocco, India, Mexico, Portugal, Greece, Brazil and Suriname. A really important aspect of connecting with my international fans is social media. The fact that they can watch my videos and stream my music so easily and often for free, means I can have an instant rapport with all those enjoying my music. Regular live streaming sessions gives me the opportunity to have real-time and a personal connection with my fans. Thanks to technology the actual distance between us simply fades away and we can be instantly connected as if we were in the same place. I am also in discussions with a new virtual reality company to take this process further.

Another advantage of the internet is that it allows me to get my message out there. I have strong views on many subjects that I like to entwine with the electronic beats such as male & female relationships, multiculturalism, paganism and love consciousness merging with artificial intelligence. A recent publication in Brighton described my views as both gnostic and futuristic. This is no surprise as I tackle these subjects in my live show. With songs about goddesses, powerful women from the past like queen Nefertiti and whats coming soon with A.I. and robotics.

Something I did not expect was for my music to hit a nerve with so many different cultures and appeal to men and women from so many ethnic backgrounds. Unusually, a very high percentage of my fans are from Arab countries, but I dont speak a word of the language and I havent really been there much! Thank goodness for Google Translate!

Being described as a role model for multiculturalism by the Mauritius Times meant such a lot to me. I was born in The Netherlands as a product of two controversial cultures, my mother being from Indian descent but born in Suriname, South America, and my father Dutch. Growing up meant absorbing so many different cultural and musical influences, but at the same time it was a challenge to find my own identity without shaking off either the Dutch or Indian side. Especially being a female.

A pleasant surprise is how accepting men have been of my image from what are perceived to be places where it is much more difficult for females to branch out and have their own career. This sits well with me as I champion the emerging independence of women. It feels like things are really moving faster in this area but there are still a lot more changes that need to happen. I have recently received many requests from radio and publications on this subject, for instance next weekend I will be featuring on the first ever all-female artists day on South Africans leading EDM and electronica radio station.

To conclude, from my perspective, technology has made it much more accessible for me to reach my goals. I can record, produce my music & vocals by myself without necessarily the need of the strong arms of a man to carry heavy equipment! (Perhaps with the exception of when I perform live!)

As we enter the feminine cycle, the world will allow the divine feminine to play a more equal role on the world stage.
Bangladesh has decided to amend its labour law and the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (BEPZA) law to comply with the European Union (EU) recommendations. The decision was announced by law minister Annisul Huq after a recent meeting of stakeholders and will be conveyed to the prime minister and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).The amended laws will be introduced in parliament this winter, Huq said. Commerce minister Tofail Ahmed, junior minister for labour and employment Mujibul Haque, representatives of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) were present in the meeting, according to media reports in the country.

Bangladesh has decided to amend its labour law and the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (BEPZA) law to comply with the European Union (EU) recommendations. The decision was announced by law minister Annisul Huq after a recent meeting of stakeholders and will be conveyed to the prime minister and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).#

The EU had earlier called on Bangladesh to show tangible progress on labour rights to avoid temporarily losing the generalised system of preferences (GSP) benefit that allows the country duty-free export to the 28-nation economic bloc.Bangladesh exported goods worth $18.68 billion to the EU in fiscal 2015-16, which was 54.57 per cent of the total receipts for the year. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Cambodias private sector is worried over the uncertainty created by the proposed universal minimum wage law, according to Sok Lor, secretary general of the Cambodian Federation of Employers, who said recently that new labour laws, including a national social security scheme and a higher minimum wage for garment workers, have already put businesses on edge.The government is also planning to introduce a new minimum wage law, rather than solely focusing on the garment sector, and the labour ministry is likely to send a draft of the same to the council of ministers by 2017 end, he said.

Cambodia's private sector is worried over the uncertainty created by the proposed universal minimum wage law, according to Sok Lor, secretary general of the Cambodian Federation of Employers, who said recently that new labour laws, including a national social security scheme and a higher minimum wage for garment workers, have already put businesses on edge.#

As it is politically incorrect to say employees should not have increased wages and new regulations are a result of populist government policies, wage has to be attached to productivity, a newspaper report in Cambodia quoted Lor as saying.The private sector under any situation cannot fight any government decision, he added.Moeun Tola, director of labour rights group Central, said that if a universal minimum wage is adopted, it should reflect the increased cost of living, not an employers perception of productivity or profits. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Kazakhstan is now exporting its cotton varieties to 11 countries  Russia, Belarus, Germany, Latvia, Moldova, China, Belgium, Iran, Ukraine, Italy and Korea, said Askar Nametov, chairman of the board of the National Agrarian Scientific-Educational Centre under the agriculture ministry. In 1991, the nation did not have a single cotton variety of its own.Out of ten new varieties created, five successfully passed tests, a Kazakh news portal quoted Nametov as saying. Raw cotton yield now is 22-23 centners per hectare, although the potential of new domestic varieties is 38-40 centners per hectare, he said.

Kazakhstan is now exporting its cotton varieties to 11 countries  Russia, Belarus, Germany, Latvia, Moldova, China, Belgium, Iran, Ukraine, Italy and Korea, said Askar Nametov, chairman of the board of the National Agrarian Scientific-Educational Centre under the agriculture ministry. In 1991, the nation did not have a single cotton variety of its own. #

The challenge is to raise yield by 30-40 per cent along with improving fibre quality, which will help increase the produces competitiveness in domestic and international markets, he said.About a quarter of the Kazakh population is employed in the agriculture sector. Family farms own nearly 70 per cent of land in southern and south-eastern parts of the country and account for 95 per cent of the total cotton production.Despite being significantly larger in area than its Central Asian neighbours, the countrys cotton production is relatively lower due to the significance of grain cultivation and other food crops. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Amid a sharp fall in exports, especially in October 2017, the Indian government has increased the incentive under the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) for readymade garments and madeups. The incentive has been increased from two per cent to four percent of value of exports made during the period from November 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018.

The estimated annual incentives will be Rs 1,143.15 crore for 2017-18 and Rs 685.89 crore for 2018-19, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said in its Public Notice no. 42 for 2017-18.

This measure will incentivise the exports of labour intensive sectors of readymade garments and made ups and contribute to employment generation, the DGFT notification said.

Amid a sharp fall in exports, especially in October 2017, the Indian government has increased the incentive under the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) for readymade garments and madeups. The incentive has been increased from two per cent to four percent of value of exports made during the period from November 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018.#

The announcement of MEIS increase is a relief to the ailing knitwear garment export sector, said Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA) president Raja M Shanmugham in a press release.

Under MEIS, exporters are given duty exemption scrips that are pegged at a certain percentage of total value of their exports. These scrips can be used by exporters to pay duties on inputs including customs duties.

Indias apparel exports fell by 40.75 per cent in October 2017 to Rs 5,398.08 crore compared to exports of Rs 9,110.75 crore in same month of the previous year. This includes garments of all textiles, according to the quick estimates of Indias foreign trade during the month, released by the ministry of commerce and industry. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
KELOWNA, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/24/17 -- Big Wind Capital Inc., ("Big Wind" or the "Company") (CSE: BWC)(CSE: BWC.CN)(CNSX: BWC)(OTC PINK: BGGWF) and Hill Top Security Inc ("Hill Top") are pleased to announce that, further to the terms of the previously announced letter of intent agreement, through which Big Wind will acquire various interests in Hill Top and its assets (the "Transaction"), Big Wind has closed the 2nd tranche of its non-brokered private placement of $0.15 common shares and advanced a total of USD$600,000 to Hill Top.

Dev Randhawa, CEO of Big Wind, commented, "In the recent months, Hill Top has continued to enhance its patented, military-grade, cybersecurity platform, as well as its exciting cryptocurrency product, and this USD$600,000 payment is an important step towards completing the existing binding LOI of July 4, 2017. With cybercrime now prolific across the world, cybersecurity has never been more important and with Hill Top's unique products, and highly-skilled team, we are well positioned to grow shareholder wealth in the rapidly-growing sector."

Hill Top Security Highlights and Recent News

-- Unique cybersecurity platform: Hill Top has a patented, military-grade cybersecurity platform - originally developed for and currently used by the US government and big business - now being made available to the small and medium sized business (SMB) sector. -- Strategic Partnership: Hill Top recently partnered with GuardSight - a cybersecurity specialist with a strong customer base of Fortune 1000 companies, -- Cryptocurrency product development: Hill Top is at an advanced stage of development in developing its first crypto currency product for the mining and metals industry. The product, called MineCoin, will enable Hill Top to expand its current protection of company networks and communications to include the protection of company transactions. -- Team with military background: The platform has been developed by a team of security experts with substantial military and commercial experience, including the US Army, Marine Corps and Wall Street.

The Company has closed the second tranche of its previously announced non-brokered private placement of common shares of Big Wind, pursuant to which, Big Wind issued an additional 3,290,247 common shares for gross proceeds of CAD$493,357. These common shares have a hold period that expires 8 months and a day after the date of distribution.

Completion of the Transaction is subject to a number of other conditions, including but not limited to acceptance by the Canadian Securities Exchange and entering into a definitive agreement. There can be no assurance that the Transaction will be completed as proposed or at all. Further details regarding the proposed Transaction will be provided in a news release, if and when the parties enter into a definitive agreement.

Both parties are completing the definitive agreement and intend to finalize and enter into the definitive agreement once all financial statements, MD&A, and pro forma have been completed.

Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements included in this news release constitute forward-looking information or statements (collectively, "forward-looking statements"), including those identified by the expressions "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "should" and similar expressions to the extent they relate to the Company or its management or the negative thereof or similar variations. The forward-looking statements are not historical facts but reflect current expectations regarding future results or events. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company.

All information in this news release concerning Hill Top has been provided for inclusion herein by Hill Top. Although the Company has no knowledge that would indicate that any information contained herein concerning Hill Top is untrue or incomplete, the Company assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any such information.

Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the listing statement to be prepared in connection with the Transaction, any information released or received with respect to the Transaction may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon.

Statements about the closing of the Transaction, expected terms of the Transaction, and the parties' ability to satisfy any and all other closing conditions, and receive necessary regulatory and CSE approvals in connection therewith, are all forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions which are difficult to predict. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include, failure to obtain regulatory approval, the continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. Although such statements are based on management's reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that the Transaction will occur or that, if the Transaction does occur, it will be completed on the terms described above. Big Wind assumes no responsibility to update or revise forward-looking information to reflect new events or circumstances unless required by law. Readers should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein in the United States. The securities described herein have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities law and may not be offered or sold in the "United States", as such term is defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act, unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration requirements is available.

The CSE has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Contacts:

Big Wind Capital Inc.

Richard Matthews

rmatthews@dccnet.com

778 484 8028




Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recentglobal compensation software marketreport. This research report also lists 22 other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170821005562/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global compensation software market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The global compensation software market is expected at a CAGR of almost 9% during the forecast period. One of the major reasons for this growth is the need to streamline data management and compensation workflows in enterprises, enabling decision makers to make informed reward decisions. Compensation software consolidates compensation and performance-related data securely in one place and utilizes advanced analytical tools to drive and report employee reward strategies.

Competitive vendor landscape

This report provides an exhaustive list of all the global vendors that provide the compensation software. Vendors are identified based on the revenue and market dominance in terms of their geographical presence, product portfolio, and R&D. The vendor matrix included in the report gives a detailed comparison of the features, deployment model, training and support, customer size, and geographical presence of each major vendor.

"The global compensation software market is witnessing intense competition because of the presence of many vendors. The major vendors are constantly competing for a leadership position in the market. The major vendors such as ADP, Oracle, SAP SuccessFactors, Ultimate Software, and Workday in the global compensation software market are identified based on the market visibility, market penetration, and market momentum," says Amrita Choudhury, an industry expert in enterprise application research from Technavio

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Top five compensation software market vendors

ADP

ADP offers cloud-based HCM solutions that integrate payroll, talent management, HR, time management, and tax and benefits administration. The company offers HCM solutions for both SMEs and large enterprises.

Oracle

Oracle provides hardware systems (includes Oracle engineered systems, storage, servers, networking), database and middleware software, application software, cloud infrastructure software, along with support and related services.

SAP SuccessFactors

SAP acquired SuccessFactors a provider of cloud-based human capital management software for talent management, core HR, and HR analytics in 2012. After the acquisition, the company functions as an independent entity and was renamed SAP SuccessFactors. This acquisition has helped the company to establish its presence in cloud services and analytics.

Ultimate Software

UltiPro, the cloud-based solution from Ultimate Software, simplifies and improves work experiences for all employees. The solution helps the organizations to manage global people, data, and process easily.

Workday

Workday provides enterprise cloud applications for finance and HCM. The company provides software solutions for financial management, HCM, and analytics. In addition, the company also provides professional services, training and support, and customer services.

Looking for more information on this market? Request a free sample report

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

Browse Related Reports:

Global Courier Management Software Market 2017-2021

Global Gym Management Software Market 2017-2021

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About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170821005562/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/25/17 -- A recent injunction application filed by CUPE in Federal Court to prevent the transfer of more RCMP civilian employees to the flawed Phoenix pay system has achieved the desired result, even though it had yet to be heard by a judge. RCMP civilian employees, who want to join CUPE, will now be protected from the government's Phoenix fiasco.

The federal government just informed Canada's largest union that the transfer of the remaining RCMP civilian employees to Phoenix scheduled for April 26, 2018 is being put on hold "indefinitely". The blackout period scheduled to start on December 1, 2017 is also postponed, which means that the pay of employees who are promoted, reclassified or transferred will continue to be adjusted immediately in the current pay system, and will not be put at risk. An injunction application hearing scheduled to take place on Wednesday, November 29, will now be adjourned.

"CUPE's political and legal pressures clearly forced the government to completely change course.This is a sweeping victory for the RCMP telecommunications operators and intercept monitoring analysts who want to join our union," said CUPE's National President Mark Hancock. "It gives them a taste of what CUPE can do to protect the interests of its members. No employee in any part of the public service should ever have to see their livelihood jeopardized the way so many have under Phoenix."

"Since the problems with Phoenix won't be fixed anytime soon, according to the recent Auditor General report, the President of the Treasury Board now has to make sure that the indefinite hold will mean that not another RCMP civilian employee will be transferred to Phoenix. Nobody should be forced to live under the stress and uncertainty of wondering whether they will get a paycheck or not," added CUPE's National Secretary-Treasurer Charles Fleury.

CUPE has filed applications for certification of RCMP telecommunications operators and intercept monitoring analysts with the Federal Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board (FPSLREB).

Contacts:

Philippe Gagnon

Media relations, CUPE

(613) 894-0146

pgagnon@cupe.ca




Technavio analysts forecast the global subsea umbilicals, risers, and flow lines (SURF) marketto grow at a CAGR of almost 8% during the forecast period, according to their latest report. The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global SURFmarketfor 2017-2021.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171125005025/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global subsea umbilicals, risers, and flow lines market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Global SURF market at a glance

SURF act as a vital link between various operation centers in subsea drilling. They are designed to withstand high mechanical and chemical stresses and high operating temperatures and pressures to ensure the continuous and reliable supply of services in challenging environmental conditions below the sea. The global SURF market is highly dependent on the growth of the upstream oil and gas industry, which, in turn, is dependent on global crude oil prices. The rise in demand for oil and gas globally is expected to be the major driver for the market during the forecast period. The slump in crude oil prices has affected the upstream industry significantly while benefitting the downstream industry.

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Technavio analysts highlight the following three factors that are contributing to the growth of the global SURF market:

Deepwater drilling turns economical

Rising global oil and gas demand

New exploration policies

Looking for more information on this market? Request a free sample report

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

Deepwater drilling turns economical

The shale boom that led to a sharp decline in oil prices in mid-2014 made it difficult for companies operating in deepwater to extract oil feasibly. Since crude oil prices slipped below the $50/barrel mark, it became almost impossible for companies drilling in deepwater to break-even, since costs incurred in deep sea drilling were high. As a consequence, many oil and gas companies reduced their capex and many planned projects were shelved or deferred.

Gaurav Mohindru, a lead unit operations research analyst at Technavio, says, "Though the deepwater technology has been in existence for years, the process has become economically feasible only in recent times. The streamlining of operations by producers and prioritizing drilling in core wells resulted in reduced costs, which made producers capable of achieving breakeven at lower crude oil prices

Rising global oil and gas demand

Oil producers, especially OPEC countries, need to increase their production or venture into drilling new wells to meet the rising fuel demand. Most oil-producing countries do not have large additional capacities. Therefore, to meet the high fuel demand, oil companies will be required to explore and drill greenfield wells in new and existing oil fields.

"Natural gas has seen a higher rise in consumption than oil and the adoption of natural gas as a fuel is increasing. The continuous growth in the demand for oil and natural gas is expected to drive onshore and offshore exploration activities, in turn driving the growth of the global SURF market," adds Amit.

New exploration policies

In a move to attract companies to explore oil and gas fields, countries, such as India, Brazil, and Israel, have made noteworthy changes to their existing oil and gas exploration policies. To encourage the influx of investments in the oil and gas industry, the federal government of Brazil announced a change in its policies. The existing Brazil policy requires a number of goods and services produced in the country to be hired or contracted.

Numerous changes have been made to existing policies. A single license for conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon exploration, decrease in royalty values, and change in fiscal regime to revenue sharing contracts are a few of the major changes. HELP is still in the formulation stage and is expected to be rolled out shortly. These policy changes are anticipated to attract new investments from global players and drive the global SURF market.

Top vendors:

Aker Solutions

Prysmian Group

Schlumberger (OneSubsea)

TechnipFMC

Browse Related Reports:

Global Smart Transformer Market 2017-2021

Global Submarine Power Cable Market 2017-2021

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About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171125005025/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

www.technavio.com
LONDON UK / ACCESSWIRES / November 25, 2017 / At its core, a successful distribution business functions to add value to the customer, by flawlessly delivering the desired product or set of products at the right point in time, without quality defects and in the most cost-effective fashion. It is imperative that a successful distribution business operates with the costumers top-of-mind.

According to Jozef Opdeweegh, a Miami businessman with over 17 years of experience as CEO, Chairman and Board Member of private and public companies, there are 9 key tenets that make up an ideal distribution business model, that will not only emanate in the highest level of customer satisfaction but will also reward associates for their contribution to the success of the company and shareholders for their confidence in the company's strategic plan.

Quality of operations

The breadth of the product range, fill rate, on-time delivery, competitive pricing, a multi-channel approach, along with extensive and up-to-date product information, are vital in creating an excellent customer experience. In order to satisfy these demands, the logistics operations behind the distribution business need to be of exceptional quality: qualified and well-trained personnel, real-time inventory visibility throughout the cycle, continual optimization of the process flow inside the distribution centers, a relentless focus on continuous improvement/six sigma/lean manufacturing and the automation of put away and pick processes are key focal points to differentiate the business from its competitors. Furthermore, the choice of like-minded transportation and last-mile delivery partners who equally view customer service as their core mission is key to the overall customer experience.

Organic Growth

The key differentiating factor as well as the proof of concept, and one of the main drivers of shareholder wealth creation is the achievement of organic growth exceeding that of the relevant competition. Customer empathy, SKU (Stock Keeping Units) proliferation, relevant information and excellent knowledge about the product range, as well as the overall quality each aspect of the supply chain are indispensable characteristics that define a better distribution business. This type of distribution business will garner outsized customer loyalty and recurring sales.

Gross Margin Management

One of the most relevant success factors for a distribution business is the laser-focused management of gross margin, both in percent of sales and in terms of currency. In some instances, the sales force has not be provided with the analytical tools to allow them for the promotion of those products that generate the highest margin potential. This is of particular importance in a landscape with certain SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) that have identical characteristics and can serve the customer requirements with the same effectiveness, which is often the case. Additionally, in their quest for revenue, the sales force may be inclined to engage in price discounting, which harms the margin potential of the sale. Finally, a number of distribution organizations lack the sophistication to keep track of ancillary services that may have been offered to the customers or are reluctant to charge for those services, which further erodes the margin.

The key is to develop the business analytics and IT infrastructure that will allow for the identification and sale of the highest margin product in order to serve customer's needs at the right price. This also allows for the appropriate charge to the customer for the ancillary services and the delivery method he or she enjoys.

Back Office Efficiency

Many distribution businesses maintain a back office that is inert, too large and costly. By virtue of their business model, large distribution businesses operate via geographically dispersed distribution centers. Lack of an integrated ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution and the absence of a standardized operating platform often create a detrimentally decentralized management structure. This leads to a large discrepancy in customer experience, in product and service offerings, and in the quality of operations across geographies. Furthermore, it may lead to an erosion of the leverage the distributor otherwise would be able to exercise on its suppliers. Lastly, it creates duplication in management and support structures - efforts and costs that can easily be avoided. In a successful distribution business, the operating system and the SKU management should be centrally managed, with the execution residing in the different regions, but based on a provided prescriptive playbook.

Network Optimization

A large number of distribution businesses operate from a suboptimal set of distribution centers. Often their network consists of a combination of too many facilities and less than optimally located distribution centers from a geographic perspective. This leads to duplicative inventory and inflated working capital requirements. A distribution business needs to constantly assess the size and location of its distribution facilities, so it can live up to its (next day) customer delivery promises from the fewest number of distribution centers. Case studies show huge savings can be generated in the area of network optimization, with a payback that often is less than 12 months, while at the same point in time enhancing the overall customer experience.

E-commerce

Since an online sales model does not require brick and mortar, and it does not require a direct sales force and the related costs, the bottom-line profitability of e-commerce sales vastly exceeds the profitability of the same SKU through another sales channel. A successful e-commerce sales effort requires a user-friendly web experience, impactful SEO efforts, detailed product information, breadth and availability of inventory, and on-time delivery of the entire order. It is also essential to have a simple return policy and a great back office to deal with product information, defects, and returns. Online sales may be boosted through the creation of an online user community consisting of customers who have purchased the product and can provide others with first-hand product information and applicability. Most often than not, e-commerce is one of the channels through which sales can be generated, in a multi-channel strategy that also includes direct sales and catalog sales. It is most certainly the most cost-effective and agile sales channel.

ERP-Solutions (Enterprise Resource Planning)

A distribution business may handle as many as 1 million distinct SKUs. In order to effectively run the distribution organization, it is imperative the company has real-time global inventory visibility to know exactly where different SKUs are stocked. This level of visibility allows for the avoidance of duplicative inventory, the calculation of appropriate inventory levels in the network through demand forecasting, and the minimization of risk of obsolescence. In many regards, the ERP solution is the engine of the distribution organization and is an invaluable part of network optimization. While implementation of a state-of-the-art ERP solution may be costly and time-consuming, with the cost amounting to as much as the equivalent of one year EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Appreciation & Amortization), it is hard to imagine a world-class distributor that does not possess such a tool.

Customer and Supplier Segmentation

In any distribution business, there are a number of items that are high volume. Conversely, there typically are a number of products that are only sold very occasionally and may have a negative impact on the profitability of the organization. In a similar vein, the average distribution business will spend time, effort and money maintaining relations with suppliers who provide low-demand products. It is important to continually reassess the contribution margin of low-selling items and to cut certain parts of the long tail, both in product and in supplier range.

Private Label

A distributor can significantly enhance its gross margins by focusing on the sale of private-label items, or items that have the desired functionality but that are being sourced through contract manufacturing and branded under a proprietary brand name. Certain competing suppliers may react negatively towards competing private-label products. Nevertheless, in the area of more generic SKUs, a distributor should aim at selling its own branded products and ideally, private labels will constitute 15% or more of overall revenue.

About Jozef:

Jozef Opdeweegh, also known as Jos, has served as CEO for over 17 years of global technology, distribution, and supply chain optimization companies with 5,000 to 20,000 employees, public or privately held. Opdeweegh has extensive board membership experience on 4 continents with related and unrelated companies.

Website- http://jozef-j-opdeweegh.com/

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jos-jozef-j-opdeweegh-13986b70/

Related Articles: Jozef Opdeweegh- 6 Core Organizational Values and the Importance of Corporate Culture





Source: European News Daily




NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 25, 2017 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Omega Healthcare Investors, Inc. ("Omega" or the "Company") (NYSE: OHI) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, for the Southern District of New York, and docketed under 17-cv-09024, is on behalf of a class consisting of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired Omega securities, seeking to recover compensable damages caused by defendants' violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

If you are a shareholder who purchased Omega securities between February 8, 2017, and October 31, 2017, both dates inclusive, you have until January 16, 2018, to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll-free, Ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and amount of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Omega is a self-administered real estate investment trust ("REIT") that invests in income-producing healthcare facilities, including long-term care facilities located in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Complaint alleges that, throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company's business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) financial and operating results of certain of the Company's operators were deteriorating; (ii) as a result, certain of the Company's operators were experiencing worsening liquidity issues that were significantly impacting the operators' ability to make timely rent payments; (iii) as a result, certain of the Company's direct financing leases were impaired and certain receivables were uncollectible; and (iv) as a result of the foregoing, Defendants' statements about Omega's business, operations, and prospects were materially false and/or misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.

On July 26, 2017, after the market closed, the Company issued a press release entitled, "Omega Announces Second Quarter 2017 Financial Results; Increased Dividend Rate for 20th Consecutive Quarter."

On the next day, July 27, 2017, the Company held a conference call to discuss its second quarter results. On this news, the Company's stock price fell $1.35 per share, or 4%, to close at $32.10 per share on July 27, 2017, on unusually heavy trading volume.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.

SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP
It is often said that the screenplay is the soul of a film. The greatest filmmakers from all over the world have stressed on the importance of the script and the role it plays in turning a film into a great film. In the Indian film industry, for an astonishingly long period of time, very few people seemed to talk about the script. This, however, in no way meant that the script was considered any less important in this part of the world. It simply meant that in the bright firmament of dazzling stars and star directors, somehow, the script writers face and name often used to get lost.

They may or may not have gotten their due credit, but it is undeniably true that very few of these script-writers got the limelight they deserved. But now, when theres so much talk about the screenplay and its role in the making of a film, it is only fair that we rectify our past mistakes and make a genuine effort to bring into the spotlight the scrip-writers of some of the greatest films of Indian cinema  the very people who were responsible for entertaining us over the decades. Film journalist, festival curator and author Ratnottama Senguptas documentary film And They Made Classics is a well-meaning and successful effort to do the same, because it tells the story about her father, the veteran screenplay-writer Nabendu Ghosh, who along with legendary filmmakers such as Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Bhattacharya, gave us such landmark films as Devdas, Parineeta, Sujata, Bandini, Abhimaan and Teesri Kasam, among many, many others.

And They Made Classics opened to a packed auditorium at the recently concluded 23rd Kolkata International Film Festival. The hour-long film was in the form of an interview of the late author, script-writer and National Award winning filmmaker Nabendu Ghosh, as he spoke about his association with his film guru Bimal Roy in an interview with the latters son Joy Bimal Roy. As the film progresses, we learn how, in his youth, the writer was moved beyond words on watching a Bengali film that was playing in the local theatre in Rajshahi, and how upon stepping out of the theatre, he had vowed that if he ever wrote for films, it would be for the director of the film he had just watched. That film was the Bengali classic Udayer Pathey (Towards the Light), and the filmmaker was, of course, none other than Bimal Roy himself. A couple of years later, Ghosh had the opportunity to meet Roy, but it was not until 1951 that their association really began  when Ashok Kumar, the owner of Bombay Talkies, invited Roy to come to Bombay to work on a film titled Maa, and Roy asked Ghosh to come along with him. What happened next is truly the stuff dreams are made of. One after the other, the filmmaker-writer duo created films which are considered classics today  essential viewings included in any good book on Indian cinema worth its salt.

Throughout the documentary, what perhaps strikes the viewers the most is the placid, unassuming charm of a man so immensely talented  a man who seemed more keen on talking about the people he had worked with than about himself. A man who remained almost faceless to the film-going public for decades, and yet one who had written these marvellous gems for the screen. A man who, at the height of the freedom movement, had not cowered down from writing a novel in the backdrop of the Quit India movement, even if it meant losing his job with the Accounts Department of Patna Police. And a man who knew his place in the world, made it to that place with vigour, passion and hard work, but chose never to boast about it. Even as Nabendu Ghosh sat in his pristine white dhoti and kurta and narrated tale after tale from the days of yore, several quotes by such eminent people as Dilip Kumar, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Nutan, Nargis, Shammi Kapoor, Gulzar, Subhash Ghai and many others appeared on screen  all of them speaking fondly of his humility and rare talent not only as a writer, but as one who truly understood the medium of film. And even as the gentleman spoke, it was so vivid that Nabendu Ghosh had lived his life well  and that the precious memories of the golden age of Indian cinema were his most prized possessions.

Film lovers in India are in debt of Ratnottama Sengupta  for having brought this legend to the limelight. As you watch her film, you realise that somewhere, in some unannounced corner of every frame, along with the fond working relationship between a protege and his guru, along with several behind-the-screen anecdotes from the making of some of the greatest films ever made, and along with the haunting scenes and the melodious scores from those very films, lies the simple, reverential love of a daughter for her father. And thats what makes the film more than a documentary. Thats what makes it a human story.

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.
Nivin Pauly is currently one of the most popular actors in Malayalam cinema; his films have had terrific openings, and have received a great response from family audiences  the most important viewer segment. His last release Njandukkalude Nattil Oridavela emerged as the big Onam winner. Nivin has been eyeing Kollywood for sometime now, and his second Tamil film Richie, where he will be seen playing the title role, is due for release on 8 December. In an exclusive interview to Firstpost, the soft-spoken and elusive actor opens up.

How did you land Richie, your second film in Tamil after Neram (2013)?

I always wanted to do a Tamil-only film; Neram was a bilingual in Malayalam and Tamil. Richie is not made as a bilingual, because I believe you can be faithful only to one language. The film is releasing in Kerala, my home state, only in the Tamil version. The trade experts in Kerala wanted it dubbed and released in Malayalam, but I made it clear that the essence of the original will be lost.

Is it a remake of Kannada star and director Rakshit Shettys hit film Ulidavaru Kandanthe?

Yes, you can say that it is an adaptation and not a scene-to-scene remake. When Gautham Ramachandran, the director of Richie, narrated the Tamil script, I was hooked.

Tell us about the character you play in the film.

I play a local rowdy in this crime drama which revolves around a mysterious murder that happens during a village festival. A journalist played by Shraddha Srinath tries to piece together the incidents that lead to the death of the person in question. The story is told through five different people, with each one narrating his or her own version of the incident. There are interesting shades to each of the characters, as well as twists. I saw a sneak preview of Richie and loved it because it is slickly made and pacy with a running time of two hours.

Premam is the film that established you as a Malayalam superstar and also allowed you to capture the market outside Kerala, as the film ran in a Chennai screen for 258 days. Is this the reason why you are doing films in Tamil?

I would say that today, cinema cannot be rooted to a particular language or region as it has become global. Social media has changed the way we look and react to a film. Im always on the lookout for exciting scripts and a fusion of cinema. I will be doing another Tamil film next year, based on a script written by producer RD Raja of 24 AM and directed by a debutant. Right now I have completed an exciting film, Moothon, directed by Geetu Mohandas in Malayalam. Anurag Kashyap has written the Hindi dialogues of this fantasy adventure shot in Mumbai and Lakshadweep.

A lot of people in Kerala say that you should stick to Malayalam films which are your core strength, instead of doing films in other languages. Your thoughts?

What excites me is the script; the language is not a barrier. I have a lot of Malayalam movies coming up back-to-back. I always try to choose films with strong content  something audiences can relate to. Equally, I also consider how I can make such strong content commercially viable. I also believe that there is an audience out there which wants to see me experiment. I do not want to fall into an image trap. After Premam, I received more offers to do only romantic characters, but if you look at my last few releases, I have played varied characters. And in Richie I have broken the mould; there is not a single romantic scene in the film! (laughs).

Veteran directors in the Malayalam film industry say that you are ignoring them and giving dates only to newcomers. Why?

It happened such that I have given breaks to directors who have come out with terrific scripts like Premam, Vadakkan Selfie, Jacobinte Swargarajayam, Sakhavu, Njandukkalude Nattil Oridavela, and they worked for me at the box-office too. Im also working with seniors like Shyama Prasad and Rosshan Andrews in my upcoming films.

What are your upcoming projects?

After Richie my next release is Shyama Prasads Hey Jude, a romantic story where Trisha plays my heroine. Then I will start work on Love, Action Drama, which is the directorial debut of Dhyan Sreenivasan, the brother of director and producer Vineeth Sreenivasans (director of Malarvadi Arts Club, Nivins first film, and Jacobinte Swagarajayam). Nayanthara is the heroine in this film. Right now, Im shooting for the big budget project Kayamkulam Kochunni, a Robin Hood-like highway man who lived in 19th century Kerala. I have learned kalaripayattu and horse riding, and am very excited about this film which has been shot in natural light by ace cameraman Binod Pradhan. It will be my summer 2018 release.

Now you have forayed into production too...

Yes I have produced two films; Action Hero Biju, a very satisfying film, which received acclaim from critics and at the box-office. The film is now being remade in Hindi by Rohit Shetty with Ajay Devgn. I also produced Njandukkalude Nattil Oridavela. The next production will be on the mysterious disappearance of the ship Kairali owned by the state government, which occurred a few years back.

You seem to be in a happy frame of mind, with recent addition to the family.

Im happy and contended; my career is going well and five months ago, my daughter Rose Treesa was born, which brought a lot of joy to my family. My son Daveed Pauly is a lovable brat. I think it is all a blessing.
Mumbai: Amid protests against Sanjay Leela Bhansali's upcoming film Padmavati, the Indian Films and TV Directors' Association (IFTDA), along with 20 other bodies of the film and television industry, is planning a 15-minute blackout in support of the film and "to protect the right to freedom of expression of creative individuals".

Confirming the plan, Ashoke Pandit of IFTDA told IANS, "We will keep showing our support for Padmavati and SLB (Sanjay Leela Bhansali) because it is the basic right of a creative person to tell a story in his own way.

"Sanjay is a responsible filmmaker, and making a film on history is not something easy for him but a big responsibility. To express our solidarity (with the film), we are gathering on Sunday for a 15-minute blackout where all shooting units in Mumbai will put off lights and no shootings will take place."

Pandit said, "We strongly protest against the non-institutional bodies who every now and then protest against movies and threaten actors and makers of films. We will keep condemning their actions in a democratic manner. We have faith in our Prime Minister...for justice to Padmavati," added Pandit.

Earlier this month, IFTDA, along with several other cine bodies, came together in support of Padmavati.

"We as film industry feel hurt every time such groups target our films and try to control our freedom of expression. Unfortunately, we do not get support from any other industry, not even from the government as if we are orphans as a community," Pandit added.

The controversy started with the assumption that there are some intimate scenes between Rajput queen Padmavati and Alauddin Khilji, which could hurt the sentiments of the Rajput community.

Thereafter, the Rajput Karni Sena started a protest and threatened the makers of the film to stop its release.

"We are living in a democracy and I have faith in the government and its judiciary. These protesters have not watched the film, and Sanjay has already made it very clear by releasing a video that it is a tribute to Padmavati and no obscene scenes are there," Pandit added.

The members of film and television industry will be joining the blackout protest, titled "Main Azaad Hoon", on 26 November at the Film City main entrance starting 3.30 pm.
In the rhyming stanza of the famous poem about Jhansi Ki Rani by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, the words go as 'Bundele Harbolo Ki Mooh Hamnein Suni Kahaani Thi, Khoob Ladi Mardaani woh to Jhansi Wali Rani Thi'. In its rhyme, the poem gives away its political standing.

Composed to rouse nationalist spirit during the long march to freedom that Indians made back in the day, this poem is a reflection of oral history. In this oral history by the Nomadic tribe of Bundelas, Jhansi Ki Rani is celebrated for her bravery and heroism. However, if one looks at contemporary texts of the Revolt of 1857, she is counted as one among the troupe led by Tatya Tope in an unplanned, impulsive retaliation of the East India Company Army.

In legend, she stands tall as a brave warrior and mother figure. In reality though, the Ranis decision to stand up against the British was a knee-jerk defence to their annexation attempt.

Such is the nature of oral history. One doesnt need to quote the context, reign and space of Padmavat, Malik Muhammad Jayasis poem, to understand that lore passed down through multiple generations is bound to distort. Yet, some historical figures, when made on celluloid, invite ire while others dont.

Take for instance, Jodha Akbar. This visually spectacular film featuring Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan focused on the classic love story of Jodha Bai and emperor Akbar. It reformed a king and pulled him deeper towards his spiritual connect. However, in reality, Akbar married many times over for political and diplomatic alliances.

Hagiographies and court documents from his era, one of the most well documented phases of medieval Indian history, cant gloss over the fact that the emperor had a most calculative approach towards marriage. He had married three Rajput princesses to manage the Rajput kingdoms and strike a secular balance. Which one of these three was the beautiful Jodha Bai, again, varies as per oral histories.

Any tour guide at Fatehpur Sikri, the magnificently well-planned palace of the emperor, will walk you to the intricately designed Mariam-E-Zamaani, the palace he had designed for his Rajput wives. A level below are the smaller, less airy quarters and home to his wives earned in conquest. This section even has a prison, where misbehaving wives from the harem would be imprisoned for a short period. A visual walk through this space is self-explanatory  Akbar never quite lost his heart to one woman. But his self-indulgence when it comes to treating women like war booty has never been viewed negatively. In fact, the king of Mewar, Maharana Udai Singh II lost his life to Akbars armies in 1567 and the entire women folk of this small kingdom committed Jauhar to save their honor.

So how does that set Akbar apart from Alauddin Khilji?

In fact, oral histories of emperor Shah Jahan perhaps offer the most colorful bouquet of interpretations. Shah Jahans cruelty and obsession come alive in the legend which reveals that he got the architects arms chopped off after the design of Taj Mahal was complete. No scope of replication there. Oral histories also indicate his lovelorn, art loving and self-indulgent behavior. A close look at Shah Jahans track record, though, shows a poor king, whose expensive choices for monuments and complete lack of interest in the sophisticated taxation system designed by Akbar, led to the downfall of the mighty Mughal. Shah Jahan remains a poetic figure of classic love, despite it all.

Beyond cantankerous politics, Alauddin Khiljis demonisation is linked to his reputation for brutality. For a king that united central and North India under one rule and also standardised tax collection across religious and local hierarchy, Alauddin still remains evil. He did massacre women and children, but these came from the Mongol hordes that he managed to stop. His massacres were no less bloody than those of other emperors. Khiljis extreme persona is also a consequence of oral history, as beyond Amir Khusro, there arent any surviving court texts.
Editors note: Patio Unplugged  a platform for indie artistes and a Lazy Patio Films production  is bringing over 30 musicians from Mumbai in its first season, to audiophiles. Born out of a love for acoustic music and a passion for film-making, Patio Unplugged not only provides a stage to artists but also a chance to record their music, and shoot two music videos. What sets this programme apart, is that artistes from across genres recreate their music in an unplugged format. Each artist/band featured on the show will perform two original songs. The Habitat Comedy and Music Cafe is the audio partner for the show. The Habitat also records, mixes and masters the tracks for Patio Unplugged and hosts the artistes every Saturday as an event called 'The Listening Room Sessions'. We're featuring each of the artistes from season 1, on Firstpost.

***

Artists like Bob Dylan and Neil Young (even Nirvana on MTV Unplugged) have proven over the decades that you don't always need a stack of Marshall amps to make a decent record. Without any heavy-handed attempts to sound hip or screaming guitar solos, they managed to make emotionally resonant music with a simple combination of sensitive to vigorous acoustic guitar-plucking and pensive lyrics. Patio Unplugged's sixth indie artist Abeineth's barebones, all-natural approach to music is steeped in similar old-fashioned, folky acoustic traditions. But unfortunately his efforts sound, perhaps by most metrics, pretty uninspiring.

Abeineth says he learnt the rudiments of playing the guitar from his musician father but, after familiarising himself with a few chords, he took a more self-taught learning approach. By the age of 18, he tried his hand at writing lyrics and then soon began composing original music.

Week 6 of Patio Unplugged sees Abeineth play two acoustic ballads: Frightening us and On my own.

After seeing a post on SoFar Sounds about the global refugee benefit concert series Give A Home, Abeineth was inspired to write a song about what is arguably the moral crisis of our era. On 20 September 2017, across more than 200 cities in 60 countries, over 1000 musicians  including Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sande and Jessie Ware  came together to demonstrate their solidarity with the refugees. So, galvanized by the crisis, Abeineth too joins in with Frightening us, an anti-war protest song that hopes to raise awareness of the plight of refugees. His monotone flow and brooding lyrics work well with music stripped down to its acoustic basics. "Have you been silenced almost all your life now? Have you seen violence like all of us?" he sings in interrogative fashion. The song also features a pretty catchy, sing-along refrain. "Why are we fighting? Hold it. Hold it. They keep on frightening us!"

Abeineth's second song 'On My Own' is a moody and meditative ballad. "It talks a lot about myself and how I came up doing all of this on my own," he says. The confessional-style tune is one of those love-it-or-hate-it tracks. The vocals on the melancholy refrain, "If I keep waiting and I don't make it, I'll just stay here on my own" sounds awfully puffed against the backdrop of steady acoustic guitar strums.

Though his drawl provides an interesting contrast to his finger-picked guitar melody during the refrains, his vocals still feel laboured and listless in the remainder of the tracks. But Abeineth does possess the raw songwriting talent to create more captivating music in future.
When they came together on-screen for the first time in 1991 Tamil film Thalapathy, their fans went quite nuts. Now, after nearly 26 years, south India's biggest superstars  Rajinikanth and Mammootty  may be seen together in the upcoming Marathi film Pasaayadan, reports Mumbai Mirror.

The film will also be the Marathi debut of both the superstars. Mirror adds that the film is expected to go on the floors in February, 2018. Producer-politician Balkrishna Surve is most likely to produce the film, as he is the one who got Rajinikanth on board.

First-time director Bhave had worked as a co-writer on the Marathi film Idak (helmed by Deepak Gawade) which premiered at the 48th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) this year in Goa.

Both Rajinikanth and Mammootty command immense fan following in south India. Such was their idolatry, when Thalapathy released, the makers of the film had to shoot different climaxes so as to comply to the requirements and sentiments of the fans of these two actors in Tamil Nadu and Kerala respectively.

While Mammootty has a bevy of Malayalam films to release next year, Rajinikanth is currently busy promoting his sci-fi film 2.0 with Akshay Kumar and Amy Jackson.
What's more fun than passing off stalking celebrities on social media as work?

Very little, right?

And so, we scanned the Instagram and Twitter accounts of celebs from India and abroad, to bring to you weekly updates from the interwebz. Who tweeted to whom? Who re-posted last night's party pics? Who went on a rant about what. Whatever it is, don't worry, we've got you covered.

We stalk, you read. Deal?

This edition of the Social Media Stalkers' Guide is dedicated to Rakhi Sawant, who has made a return to Instagram after her account was hacked! She's back, and she's verified. We know how much she enjoys posting on Instagram and how much we enjoy watching her, so here's a look at what she was up to for the last few days.

She wished herself on her birthday, obvz

A post shared by Rakhi Sawant Official (@rakhisawant2511) on Nov 24, 2017 at 11:42am PST

She told us that she's on her way to her party, and that she was going to have a ball! We'd say "You do you, Rakhi," but she understands that adequately well.

She reminded people to wish her for her birthday

A post shared by Rakhi Sawant Official (@rakhisawant2511) on Nov 23, 2017 at 9:15pm PST

Isn't that something we all want to do? At least for some forgetful people in our lives?

She had fun with the filters

A post shared by Rakhi Sawant Official (@rakhisawant2511) on Nov 23, 2017 at 10:38am PST

A post shared by Rakhi Sawant Official (@rakhisawant2511) on Nov 23, 2017 at 12:24am PST

She's always enjoyed experimenting with them, to be honest.

She told us about her dance institute in the US!

A post shared by Rakhi Sawant Official (@rakhisawant2511) on Nov 23, 2017 at 2:17am PST

Rakhi Sawant is starting her own dance institute in America, and she roped in everyone from Shah Rukh Khan and Sanjay Dutt to Anu Malik and even Mithun Chakraborty to talk about how they enjoyed working with her, and how well she dances.

She spoke about Padmavati and about freedom of expression

A post shared by Rakhi Sawant Official (@rakhisawant2511) on Nov 18, 2017 at 11:02pm PST

At a time when many actors and directors in Bollywood are shying away from commenting on Padmavati and the threats and opposition that Sanjay Leela Bhansali, as well as Deepika Padukone and Ranveer, have had to face, Sawant voluntarily spoke about how she thinks the film deserves a release. She also acknowledged the effort put in by the cast and crew, and how stopping the film's release is not fair to them.

She warned off hackers and called out harassers

A post shared by Rakhi Sawant Official (@rakhisawant2511) on Nov 19, 2017 at 2:10am PST

Following her comments supporting Padmavati, Rakhi Sawant found herself at the receiving end of rape threats and lewd comments, and she made it amply clear that she would not tolerate it, threatening to submit their details to the police. She also spoke about how her contact details were revealed, and the trouble she had to go through as a result.

Her Instagram account is a party in itself, and she stands up for what she believes in. And that is reason enough to follow her.
Directed by Shakti Soundar Rajan, Tik Tik Tik, an upcoming Tamil film starring Jayam Ravi and Nivetha Pethuraj, calls itself India's first space film.

The Tamil flick's trailer, launched last evening on 24 November, has created much hype thanks to this new genre. This film too is a thriller except looks like it's majorly set in space.

Tik Tik Tik starts as a story about an asteroid that strikes a town in Tamil Nadu and how officials are now nervously awaiting another disaster to strike and destroy the livelihoods of many. For the same, Jayaprakash who is seen leading the squad, employs Jayam Ravi who happens to be a magician and an escape artist. The upcoming space flick is all about how Jayam Ravi risks his life to capture the missile that will save planet earth.

The actor is shown as this macho guy, trained in almost every survival tactic, except this time he doesn't play the cop like in his highly acclaimed Thani Oruvan.

Through this rather interesting premise, we see glimpses of sleek action sequences, but only this time they are set in space and not earth. We also see little of Nivetha Pethuraj who is on the same mission along with Jayam Ravi. However, we are yet to feel the seriousness of this plot said to be dealing with the future of 4 crore people.

D.Immam's background score for this space thriller increases our interest and is quite a throwback to few Hollywood space flicks.

So, can a con man actually save the country with his schemes? We need to wait and watch.

Produced by Nemichand Jhabak Tik Tik Tik, this one of a kind space drama is set to release in December.
The draft of the Bill may come up before the next Cabinet meeting.
Jaipur: The third India-United Kingdom joint army training exercise 'Ajeya Warrior' will be conducted in Rajasthan next month, a defence spokesman said on Saturday.

"A training exercise between the armies of India and the United Kingdom will be held from 1 to 14 December at the Mahajan Field Firing Range. It will be the third joint military exercise between the two countries," defence spokesperson Leuitantt Col Manish Ojha said.

The first exercise was conducted in 2013 at Belgaum, Karnataka, whereas for the second exercise in 2015, an Indian Army contingent had visited the United Kingdom.

Approximately 120 personnel from the 20th Battalion of Rajputana Rifles and the 1st Battalion of Royal Anglican Regiment of the Royal British Army will participate in the exercise, Ojha said.

"The aim of the exercise is to build and promote bilateral relations and enhance interoperability while sharing experiences between the Royal British Army and the Indian Army," he added.

20 Rajputana Rifles has extensive experience in counter-terrorism operations, while the 1st Battalion of Royal Anglican Regiment has been involved in combat operations across Afghanistan and Iraq.
Thane: The death toll in a building collapse in Bhiwandi has risen to four after the recovery of a woman's body and the police has booked its owner in connection with the case.

The unauthorised four-storey 'Tahir Biznor' building, situated in Navi Basti area, had collapsed on Friday.

Regional Disaster Management Cell chief Santosh Kadam told PTI that the fourth deceased was identified as Parvin Khan (65).

The other three deceased were Ruksar Yakub Khan (18), Asfaque Mustaque Khan (38) and Jaibunissa Rafique Ansari (61).

The officer said nine people were injured in the collapse and they were admitted to various hospitals.

He also said rescue and relief operations launched by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were called off at 6.45 am.

A case under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act was registered against the building's owner, a senior police official said.

The accused, Mohammad Tahir Rafique Ahmed Ansari (46), was absconding, he said, adding that efforts were on to nab him.

Bhiwandi tehesildar Shashikant Gaikwad had said the building was over ten years old and it was not in the list of dangerous buildings.
"I read the Firstpost report on how the banks have fudged data on the loan waiver scheme. If the banks are guilty of committing fraud, then why is Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis silent? The government must file criminal case against the banks or chief minister reveal the truth about the mess," said former Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan as he lashed out at the BJP government for the delay in the disbursal of the Rs 34,022 crore loan waiver.

Speaking exclusively to Firstpost over the telphone from Karad in western Maharashtra, Chavan on Saturday said: "The first phase of the loan waiver scheme was released on 18 October. The second list was announced on Friday night without any details of bank names, disbursement amount and district-wise farmers' names. The government, especially Fadnavis, is just using the loan waiver as a publicity tool. He should disclose the details of the nationalised and District Cooperative Central (DCC) banks which have given ghost account numbers, fake farmers' names, and wrong Aadhaar details."

After Firstpost broke the story on the irregularities by banks on Friday, Fadnavis has been facing intense heat from the Opposition.

"I demand a judicial probe into the large number of bogus names which have allegedly crept in the list of beneficiaries. I suspect that most of the corrupt activities have taken place because of the online system.

"Who are the officialsprivate and governmentinvolved in pocketing money from the IT contract (for setting up the online system) worth crores? Why is the chief minister shielding them? Why is IT principal secretary VK Gautam being sent on 15 days leave when the online process incomplete? It's all suspicious," Chavan told Firstpost.

Interestingly, the state IT portfolio is with the chief minister.

"Ten days ago, I wrote to the Union Bank of India to enquire how the number of farmers applying for beneficiary loan waiver dropped from 6.48 lakh to 1.34 lakh. Did they take action against the officer who is responsible for the drop in numbers?" asked Chavan. He added that he is yet to receive a reply to his letter.

"The farm loan waiver was not mentioned in the original contract for the firm which was awarded the DBT scheme. Which close aides of the chief minister are responsible for this mess? Why does the gang of educated people always back the chief minister for digital Maharashtra?" Chavan wondered.

The senior Congress leader alleged that multiple conditions for the loan waiver scheme had affected the number of beneficiaries. "They announced that loans of 89 lakh farmers would be waived off, but now the figure is around 67 lakh. They have put so many conditions that many farmers are being left out," Chavan claimed.

Chavan alleged that the Maharashtra government was humiliating the farmers by deleting genuine names and adding fake beneficiaries.

"The government had said that the Aadhaar-based linking will help avoid any duplication as well as fake accounts getting the benefit of the loan waiver. But in reality, the Aadhaar compulsion and too much complexity with 66 fields to be filled in the form has affected roll out," he said.

On 24 June, Fadnavis announced on Twitter that 89 lakh farmers would be eligible for loan waiver and that the Maharashtra government would waive off the outstanding loan amount worth Rs 34,022 crore. Chavan sought to know how the scheme failed to reach farmers.

He said: "There should be a judicial inquiry. After SLBC (State level bankers' committee) meeting, the numbers came down from 89 lakh to 77 lakh. Who deleted 12 lakh names?"

The former chief minister made it clear that the onus lies with his successor for the goof-up since it was Fadnavis who announced that online submission and Aadhaar number were mandatory to avail benefits under the loan waiver scheme.

"Aadhaar is made compulsory by the government, and not by banks. The government is not able to get its information technology act together. The chief minister's mindset is that loan waivers only help banks and most cooperative banks are controlled by the NCP and the Congress. It's a totally baseless allegation," Chavan said.

Though it is the primary responsibility of the banks to ensure that the accounts are adjusted against correct Aadhaar numbers, multiple names have appeared against same Aadhaar numbers. This raised eyebrows as many suspect it to be an attempt to divert money.

"The implementation of the loan waiver scheme is being completely mishandled. It's not a mistake. The mess has been deliberately made. It is a well-planned exercise to reduce the number of farmers. This would automatically reduce the loan waiver amount," said Chavan.

Chavan said that the Congress was demanding a judicial probe because of the belief that bogus names of farmers have been included in the list of beneficiaries. "There should be a transparent probe. The name of those responsible for the mess should be revealed by Fadnavis as early as possible," Chavan said.
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday spoke to her Egyptian counterpart to strongly condemn the barbaric terrorist attack on a mosque in North Sinai province that left 235 worshippers dead.

Armed attackers today killed the worshippers in a bomb and gun assault on the packed mosque in Al-Arish city.

"I have just spoken to the foreign minister of Egypt (Sameh Shoukry) and conveyed the feelings expressed by our Prime Minister," Swaraj tweeted.

I have just spoken to the Foreign Minister of Egypt and conveyed the feelings expressed by our Prime Minister. https://t.co/tUo2M08LR6  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 24, 2017

She also also mentioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tweet to reiterate India's support to Egypt in the fight against all forms of terrorism.

"Strongly condemn the barbaric terrorist attack on a place of worship in Egypt. Our deep condolences at the loss of innocent lives," the prime minister tweeted earlier.
Mumbai: Former Mumbai Police commissioner MN Singh on Friday said the minorities in the country are feeling a "bit uneasy", and this issue needs to be addressed.

He said the current narrative on cow slaughter ban should change and the focus should be on improving internal security.

The retired IPS officer was speaking on the topic 'How Safe is Mumbai?', at a function organised by the think-tank Observer Research Foundation.

"The minorities in the country are a bit uneasy and it needs to be addressed. The (current) national narrative, the debate, is creating some anxiety. It has to change," he said.

"The issue of Babri Masjid and Ram Mandir has to be solved amicably," Singh said.

"This Babri Masjid issue has to be amicably settled between the two communities. It is not an easy solution. Any decision coming from the top or court will be half-accepted. It (the issue) will never end," said the former top cop.

"There are some private groups that are talking sensible things, going and meeting so many Muslim groups. I think that is what should be encouraged," he said.

There have been some 12 terror attacks in Mumbai, of which three have been very deadly. The first was in March 1993 (serial bomb blasts), but security measures improved only after the November 2008 carnage, he said.

V Balendran, a former special secretary in the central government, said, "It is sad our police and anti-terror squads had no night vision cameras; hence the terror attack continued for three days in Hotel Taj (during 26/11). The situation has slightly improved since then."
Hafiz Saeed being set free by Pakistan is no surprise. He was, anyway, only under house arrest and provided protection. That does not mean outsiders were not allowed to meet him, he could not confer with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistani military and his coterie of radical rodents: Same as Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, who as per Pakistani media, was being given the red carpet by the Pakistan military in prison before he was set free on bail.

As Pakistani scholar Ayesha Siddiqa wrote in January after Qamar Javed Bajwa was appointed army chief and superseded his seniorsincluding Zubair Mahmood Hayat, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee since November 2016 even his (Bajwas) epaulette weighs heavy. With his limited maneuverability before Islamists, hell continue to clean his yard and pet the useful jihadis.

Incidentally, Zubair recently alleged Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) established a $500 million fund to disrupt the China-Pak Economic Corridor (CPEC). That allegation was promptly trashed by China to boost Bajwa (the more useful pawn) with the ongoing tussle between Zubair and Bajwa within the Pakistani military.

Najam Sethi writing in Friday Times on 16 March, 2012, said the ISI has walked into GHQ (General Headquarters) and seized control of the armed forces, indicating a critical point in Pakistans political history was a harsh reality. That is as stark as Sidiqqas reading of Bajwa.

Looking at the radical pedigree of Saeed and Masood Azhar, both of them are more that useful not only to Pakistani military, ISI and the Chinese, with China using Pakistan (as a borrowed knife) to destabilise India. So, if Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes the initiative to improve relations, these radical mullahs can be used to launch terror attacks such as the one on the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot. And, of course, Nawaz Sharif can be sacked, Panama papers or any other pretext notwithstanding.

The cover for the release of Saeed was lack of enough evidence. It is extremely convenient that the prosecutors were doing just that: Producing just enough evidence to set him free and suppressing critical proof.

Some critics in India talk of the need for Pakistani justice system to be reformed without realising judges in Pakistan not adhering to the writ of the military can simply vanish overnight.

Before Saeeds release, the US issued a formal statement: "The US is deeply concerned that Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) leader Hafiz Saeed has been released from house arrest in Pakistan. LeT is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent civilians in terrorist attacks, including a number of American citizens. The Pakistani government should make sure that he is arrested and charged for his crimes.

In 2008, US designated Saeed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, in addition to the UN designating him so in the same year. Since 2012, the US has offered $10 million reward for information to bring Saeed to justice. But isnt it ironic that the US has not pursued the incriminating statement of David Coleman Headley, the American terrorist of Pakistan origin in US prison, who admits he conspired with the LeT to plot the 2008 Mumbai attacks?

Ironically, US focus has been on focusing the Haqqani Network attacking Afghanistan, not terrorism across Pakistans eastern borders. This, even as the involvement of Pakistan-based terrorist organisations such as LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) undertaking terror attacks in Afghanistan have been acknowledged by the UN Assistance Mission Afghanistan (UNAMA) since July 2016.

It is also known that the ISI formed the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISK) in Peshawar region by amalgamating what the US intelligence acknowledged as disgruntled elements of both Taliban, pushing them west into Nangarhar province of Afghanistan. Afghans often describe the ISK as ISI, different from the Islamic State of Iraq-Syria, cadres of which are now homing on to the Af-Pak region.

Significantly, Afghanistan officially told Pakistan in July 2016 that Saeed was directing Islamic State operations in Afghanistan. It is a different issue that the actual Islamic State has started extracting blood in Pakistan. The latest victim was Ashraf Nur, Additional Inspector General, Pakistan Police, who was killed along with two other police personnel and another six injured on 24 November in Hyatabad, Peshawar.

On being freed, Saeed called Nawaz Sharif a traitor for seeking peace with India. He said he will continue to fight for the Kashmiris and "liberate" them from India. Saeed recently launched a political party while under house arrest: The Milli Muslim League (MML), which won thousands of votes in by-elections.

Now that Pakistan has absolved him of involvement in any such case, why should Saeed not contest elections? Why would the Pakistani military not be amenable to install him even as the prime minister? Wouldn't Beijing be absolutely thrilled? The timing of his release was also carefully chosen: Cocking a double snoot at the US and India just before Ivanka Trumps visit.

As after every Pakistan-sponsored terror attack, there is a furore in our media about Saeeds release. It is humorous to see questions on social media: What is America doing, why are they not rescinding of the Major non-NATO ally (MNNA) status accorded to Pakistan? Why are they not designating Pakistan a terrorist state?

But how about looking in the mirror? Have we had the gumption of even withdrawing the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status from Pakistan? Not to mention, when a motion designating Pakistan a terrorist state was introduced in Parliament by MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, not even 50 MPs turned up.

MK Dhar, former Joint Director Intelligence Bureau wrote in his book Open Secrets: The Pakistani establishment is a geopolitical bully. The best response to blunt such a bully is to take the war inside his home. The sabre rattling of coercive diplomacy, which is nothing but sterile military power, cannot convince the Islamist Pakistani Establishment that India can take the border skirmishes inside their homes and hit at the very roots of the jaundiced Islamist groups.

So, what are we going to do: More missile tests and keep thumping our chest about surgical strikes on terrorist launch-pads? Are we aware that in many foreign lands, India is referred to not NATO-member but NATO itself: No Action, Talk Only? Isnt it ironic that during elections we try the dirtiest of tricks but when it comes to dealing with a rabid neighbor, we want to comply with the rules of Mahabharat?

The media is reporting that a town in Uttar Pradesh celebrated Saeeds release: Biased reporting? Pervez Hoodbhoy, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, wrote in 2008: The promotion of militarism in Pakistans schools, colleges and universities has had a profound effect on young people. Militant jihad has become a part of the culture in college and university campuses, with armed groups inviting students for jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan. The immediate future of Pakistan looks grim, as increasing numbers of mullahs are creating cults around themselves and seizing control over the minds of their worshippers.

Interlocutors of all hues report progress in Jammu and Kashmir, but has anyone addressed what the young generation is being taught? A Class five textbook of a schoolnot a madrassain the Valley teaches non-Muslims are to be hated. And are madrassas elsewhere in the country preparing youth for jihad? Killing 190 terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir this year is good, but 110 of these were foreigners as per Jammu and Kashmir DPG SP Vaid. Meanwhile, 32,000 madrassas in Pakistan are producing a million radicals annually.

It is time to stop being No Action Talk Only and take the hybrid war into enemy territory. That is, if policymakers understand what that means, and more importantly, have the guts to do so.

The author is retired lieutenant-general of the Indian Army
It is tempting to interpret Pakistan's move in releasing Hafiz Saeed from "house arrest" as a hackneyed script trapped within a capsule of time where characters are forced to eternally repeat their actions. The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder will be "arrested" and released, "arrested" and released, "arrested" and released in sync with varying degrees of pressure stimuli on the Pakistani State.

And yet such an interpretation, this time, could be misleading. In the events that led up to Saeed's so-called arrest, his subsequent release and behaviour of the major players, there is an indication that the power equation in South Asia is irrevocably changing, and we must be sensitive to those changes.

In very broad terms, the Hafiz Saeed episode captures the reality of waning US influence over Pakistan in line with its increasing inability to carry out the role of a global influencer. Thiscoinciding with the growing clout of Chinais creating more space for Islamabad to pivot towards Beijing in defiance of the US. The trend presents both an external and internal challenge for India, whose strategic interests are better served by an US-led regional order in South Asia than a China-led one.

New Delhi must calibrate its foreign policy to adapt to the post-Cold War era reality and brace for impact in Kashmir where the trouble is more likely to intensify. It shouldn't surprise that in his very first speech following release, Saeed targeted Kashmir and vowed to ramp up jihadist violence.

This reality, in a rather counterintuitive way, is reflected in the sharp US response against Pakistan's decision to set free the UN designated terrorist just ahead of the ninth anniversary of 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks.

The State Department release claimed the Donald Trump administration was "deeply concerned that LeT leader Hafiz Saeed has been released from house arrest in Pakistan." Recognising LeT as a "designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent civilians in terrorist attacks, including a number of American citizens," the statement urged Pakistan to "make sure that he is arrested and charged for his crimes."

Time was when the global superpower ensured favourable outcomes without having to huff and puff over it. Rather than demonstrate resolve, this US statement ends up showcasing its erosion of clout where even openly coercive behaviour isn't bringing desired outcomes. This vocal admonition is more likely aimed at India, to show that Washington is not equivocal in the war on terror.

It requires a great deal of gullibility to assume that Washington did not conceive of such an eventuality when it decided to delink Coalition Support Funds (CSF) from verifiable action against the LeT while requiring Pakistan to do so only against the Haqqani Network. In the Senate version of the defence bill passed in September, the CSF was tied to demonstrable action from Pakistan on both the LeT (which operates against India) and the Haqqani Network (which is active in Afghanistan).

Section 1212 of the defence authorisation bill demanded that Pakistan must validate that "it has taken steps to demonstrate its commitment to prevent the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba from using any Pakistan territory as a safe haven and for fundraising and recruiting efforts" and also demanded (albeit indirectly) action against "senior leaders and mid-level operatives of the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba".

However, under pressure from the US Department of Defence, the US Congress modified the key provision to drop the mention of LeT from legislation, ostensibly to maintain exclusive focus on Pakistan's compliance in Afghanistan. The LeT reference was deemed as premature and distracting.

This indicates that US action against "war on terror" lacks consistency and homogeneity and is subject to prioritisation of interests. It seems to be at odds with Donald Trump's iteration of Afghanistan and South Asia policy where Pakistan's status as a "safe haven" for "terrorist organisations, the Taliban, and other groups" was severely criticised, and specific mention made that Pakistan's actions are posing a "threat to the region and beyond." Trump also demanded that Pakistan must "demonstrate its commitment to civilization, order, and to peace."

This led some commentators, such as Chidanand Rajghatta in The Times of India, to point out that "as with all previous US administration, this one too has shown that when it comes to a toss-up between its objectives in Afghanistan (where it has a military presence) and India's interests in Kashmir, its objectives will win."

The truth is a little more complex. More than US equivocation on terror, the prioritisation indicates that Washington is now dependent more than ever on regional players to achieve its foreign policy objectives. This creates tension in its bilateral ties. Therefore, while it must align with India and "like-minded democracies" to contain the rise of China in South Asia, it equally cannot afford to antagonise China (in so far as the Trump administration is concerned) and complicate further the North Korea situation. Similarly, while backing India on its position in Kashmir, it needs to leave Pakistan with enough lollies to ensure compliance of objectives in Afghanistan.

These cleavages will become even more pronounced as US power wanes, and its dependence increases on regional players. It is instructive to compare US behaviour with China, which seems to be achieving its foreign policy objectives much more silently, and without much ado, as ORF fellow Abhijnan Rej explains in an essay for Livemint (What China does when it disagrees with you).

It is pointless for India to outrage against Pakistan, whose dependence on terrorism as a foreign policy tenet will continue as long as its serves domestic interests and benefits outweigh the costs. It is equally futile to feel betrayed by the US in its policy priorities. India must instead take note of the shifting sands in power balance and calibrate its response.

A good start will be to understand that Saeed's release is as much triggered by shift in US policy as an attempt by the Pakistan's military-industrial complex to degrade the capabilities of its civilian government in controlling the direction of foreign policy. In fact, Saeed's targeting of Nawaz Sharif for "cosying up with Narendra Modi" is a dead giveaway.

As Kunwar Khuldune Shahid writes in The Diplomat, "Saeeds release has both symbolic and actual perils for the political parties gearing up for the 2018 elections. This is as firm a sign as any that anyone eyeing improved relations with India by putting the Kashmir conflict on the back burner will not be allowed to run the country. But, of course, with Saeed himself now free to plan electoral strategies there should be a tangible presence of jihad-mongers in the Parliament: A constant reminder of the fate of civilians that do not toe the lines on security and diplomacy."

As elections in Pakistan draw near, as an immediate aftermath, violence in Kashmir may increase manifold. So what are the policy lessons for India? Work with the US in areas where there is an alignment of strategic interests (Afghanistan, the Quad) and start delinking the dialogue process with Pakistan from terrorism. Empowering the civilian government in Pakistan is the only way to restrict the influence of Rawalpindi. There are likely to be stiff political challenges domestically, but policy paralysis might extract a greater pound of flesh from us.
The Hyderabad Metro Rail, the countrys first elevated metro rail on PPP (private public partnership) is finally ready to chug after a rollercoaster ride of a decade. It will not only change travel patterns but also behavioural patterns of people in the Nizams town, said NVS Reddy, MD of HMRL, as it gets ready for launch on 28 November.

This comes as a great relief for the core management team of L&T MRH, its chairman SN Subramanyam and MD Shivanand Nimbargi who, over almost a decade, went through several ups and downs caused by successive political interventions, social activism leading to delays, PILs and cost hikes. Thank God, we are rolling finally, said a representative of the L&T MRH, which is the concessionaire, spending almost 90% of the project cost of Rs 16,375 crore at Rs 13,000 crore.

The L&T MRH, which is implementing the project with Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) (a Telangana government entity) and the Government of India, enjoys the concession for 35 years. The company laments that it has already lost two years since the appointment date of June 2012 set during Congress Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy as the real work picked up only after the formation of Telangana in 2014. Even after resolving the issue of diversion and re-routing with the current Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) government, they have been able to complete only 30 km of the 72 km route for which they originally inked the PPP deal and need an extension of 2 more years.

The TRS Roadblock

The scene changed in 2014 after the TRS government took over the reins of the project and its Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao declared that Hyderabad would have a 200 km metro and that it would not be allowed to pass over historic locations like the Assembly and Sultan Bazaar. As if on cue, its political ally MIM also raised its voice against the Metro crisscrossing 12 historical locations in the Old City and sought realignment of the route.

L&T group chairman AM Naik wrote several detailed letters to KCR in a bid to resolve the issues and also called for caution about the legal aspect. The letter of February 2017 was part of a huge correspondence with the government to resolve challenges in execution of the project. The letter of Naik sought to relieve L&T from the project as there were unusual terms from the Telangana government and adverse economic conditions contributed to unforeseen cost escalation which made the project incapable of performance.

The letter seeking termination of the project was wrongly highlighted by the newspapers, it was only a gesture and not final, said VB Gadgil, Chief Executive of L&T Hyderabad Metro Rail in a media interaction in September.

L&T had allegedly lashed out at the government interference and delay in finalisation of routes and corridors. Politically, the Centre which had put in 10% of the cost at Rs 1458 crore was also wary of the Telangana governments unsteady approach. It is alleged that the Centre finally cautioned that such an unclear approach by the Telangana government would only cause setbacks to other projects and subsequent central support cum guarantees. We kept mum and Telangana finally saw the light, and GoI intervention also helped, said a spokesman of the L&T HMR requesting anonymity.

The issue was discussed at a cabinet meet and finally the CMO which had initially leaked the letter of the L&T threat to walk out worked out a compromise and dropped its demand for realignment and re-routing and asked the concessionaire to complete the project as scheduled. But the builder had lost two precious years already and the Telangana government kept dismissing L&Ts demand for an extension of the deadline by a year or two, insisting instead on completion of at least the first phase by hook or crook. We wanted to showcase the Metro during the Global summit at Hyderabad, said the CM who also holds the industry portfolio.

A Tunnel of Woes

The Metro Rail, Outer Ring Road and PV Expressway were part of the Vision 2020 document released by the Chandrababu Naidu government as urban infrastructure initiatives to support the IT explosion that began in early 2000. The Naidu government had done its homework on land acquisition from Wakf and endowment departments for development, and also the estimated Metro Rail cost at around Rs 10,000 crore. But his successor, YS Rajashekhara Reddy, with his focus on welfare schemes, put the Metro project in cold storage. After his 2008 electoral victory for a second innings, YSR finally brought the Metro Rail project out for bids.

The first bids of the PPP project took place in 2008 and was awarded to the consortium of Maytas, a wing of Satyam group. This was cancelled after the unraveling of the massive Satyam scam involving its founder Ramalinga Raju and the failure of Maytas to raise funds. YSR died in a chopper crash the following year and the Metro Rail project was back in cold storage in the political anarchy that followed.

The last Congress Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh N Kiran Kumar Reddy relaunched the process and awarded it to L&T in 2010 for Rs 12,132 crore and after preparatory work the launch date was set as June 2012 with a deadline for 2017 to complete the project. The Telangana agitation then intensified and work was hit once again. When the project was finally flagged off in 2014, after the creation of the new Telangana state, the government wanted the project to be completed in three years.

At present there are over 200 court cases including 12 public interest litigations (some of them filed by TRS supporters in 2010 protesting against Wakf land acquisitions for Metro) pending against the Hyderabad Metro Rail. The officials of HMRL and L&T claim that work is gathering pace and the project would be fully operational by December 2018 for the 72 km stretch of initial bidding.

If the government is keen to take up other corridors, the project will have to go back to the negotiation table with the concessionaire.

Stage Of The Hyderabad Metro

The L&T MRH is ready to roll out six car trains with capacity to carry 2000 passengers at a frequency of 15 minutes each on its 24 stations between Miyapur-Ameerpet-Nagole, the maiden corridor being unveiled on November 28. It also has plans to install over 670 escalators at a cost of Rs 400 crore. The Telangana government has also invited Ivanka Trump for a journey with the Prime Minister, but US government officials have not approved it yet.

As per the projections of L&T and HMRL the travel time is 45 minutes on Corridor 1 from MiyapurL B Nagar (29 km) as against 144 minutes by road, 22 minutes for Corridor 2 from Jubilee Hills to Falaknuma (15 km) as against 140 minutes by road and 39 minutes for Corridor 3 (28 km) from 126 minutes on road.

In September last year, Congress leaders went to visit the works, but were stopped by the police on the directions of Metro officials and the government. Leader of Opposition in Telangana legislative council Mohammed Ali Shabbir says that the delay was deliberately caused by the TRS-MIM combine for political gains in the Hyderabad civic polls of 2016 by influencing Muslims voters of old city. Both TRS and MIM played to the gallery as protectors of Hyderbad heritage and put roadblocks in L&T works, he charged.

Shabbir has sought PM Narendra Modis intervention at the Metro inaugural to assure that the Old City circuit of 5.5 km from Imliban to Falaknuma would be completed at the earliest in the interests of the development and progress of Muslim community. The political elements of MIM, who are scared of their (Muslims) growth and empowerment of youth and women in Old City, are opposing the Metro, he added.

The Congress has also charged the TRS and MIM combine as responsible for the hike in project cost by a whopping Rs 4000 crore as a result of their political dillydallying. Now the people of Hyderabad who have already gone through hell due to the traffic jams during the construction of Metro rail have to bear the brunt of high tariffs, he said.

L&T HMR now seeks a further extension of the deadline by a year or two along with the concession so that they can reap the benefits of their huge investments in the PPP. They have already projected the revenue as 40% from passenger tariff, 50% from malls and shops at Metro stations and only 10% from advertisements over 30 years i.e. till 2047. As of now L&T has invested 90% of the project cost at Rs 13,000 crore and may have to put in more for the final stage, said an L&T spokesman.

The government of Telangana pitched in a mere Rs 300 crore towards land cost and the GoI is picking up 10% at Rs 1458 crore. As on date, we have put in Rs 9,000 crore which includes Rs 2700 crore equity, Rs 600 crore from VGF and the rest is debt, said J Ravikumar, Chief Financial Officer of L&T MRHL.

The ball is also in the Telangana governments court now as L&T has made it conditional for extension of both deadline for construction and also the concession. The concession is for 35 years, including 5 years of construction period, which ended in June 2017. Only 30 kilometres have been completed in the scheduled 72 km and 42 km of construction activity remains, of which nearly 78% of works are already complete. The developer has requested the government for extension of schedule for a year or two and it is under consideration of the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, said Chief Secretary SP Singh.

But there is not enough light at the end of the tunnel. L&T will have a tough task in building the Old City corridor of Metro Rail. As many as 145 heritage structures including 15 listed heritage structures have been identified, though the builders contend that it will pass through only nine heritage structures. The convener of Forum for Better Hyderabad Veda Kumar who has filed a PIL on the issue wants the L&T and HMR to dig tunnels as in Delhi and Bengaluru to protect heritage townships and monuments instead of overhead tracks. The tunnel will cost Rs 600-700 crore per km, say the builders.

As the future of the Metro Rail in the 400-year-old ramparts of Hyderabad city still hangs in confusion, the project shows why politics of development, votes and heritage should not be mixed up.
Chandigarh: Haryana has been put on alert and the state government has sought 25 companies of paramilitary forces in view of the proposed rallies of a Jat body and a BJP MP on Sunday.

The Haryana Police said that "adequate" number of security personnel have been deployed in almost 13 districts of the state to maintain law and order, and claimed that the situation was "peaceful and under control".

Kurukshetra MP Raj Kumar Saini, who has been opposing reservations for Jats, would be holding a "Samaanta Maha Sammelan" in Jind while the All India Jat Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti's chief Yashpal Malik would take out a rally at Jassia village in Rohtak district on 26 November.

"The situation is peaceful and under control," Haryana Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Muhammad Akil told PTI this evening.

"We have deployed adequate forces in 12 to 13 districts of Haryana," he said without specifying the number of security personnel.

The state has also sought 25 companies of paramilitary forces from the Centre in view of the two rallies being organised in Rohtak and Jind districts, the officer said.

However, the paramilitary forces are yet to arrive, he said.

Inspector General of Police (IGP), Rohtak Range, Navdeep Virk said that as many as 3,500 security personnel have been deployed in Rohtak.

Deputy Commissioner (DC), Rohtak, Yash Garg said, "Prohibitory orders banning the carrying of arms, weapons or lathis has been issued."

Besides, routes have been diverted at several points so that those participating in the rally at Jassia village would not have to pass through the city, he said.

"As many as 19 police check posts have been set up while 38 duty magistrates have also been deployed in the district," the officer said.

DC, Jind, Amit Khatri said that the district administration and the police are on alert and adequate security forces have been deployed.

"Hisar Range IGP is also camping in the district," he said, adding that no prohibitory orders have been issued.

On Friday, a group of Jats, who had been opposing Saini's rally, had clashed with police in Jind and had blocked the Jind-Chandigarh national highway.

The police had to use a mild lathi charge to disperse the protesters and clear the highway.

The Haryana government had yesterday suspended mobile internet services at 13 places in the state for the next three days, apprehending breach of peace and law and order problem because of the rallies.

Mobile internet, SMS and dongle services provided by cellphone networks, except voice calls, would remain suspended for the next three days, till 26 November midnight, in Jind, Hansi, Bhiwani, Hisar, Fatehabad, Karnal, Panipat, Kaithal, Rohtak, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Bhiwani and Charkhi Dadri districts.
Kolkata: Union minister Kiren Rijiju said India has "good relations" with China and there is "enough space" for both countries to work together. He said that India believed in keeping friendly relations with its neighbours and was approaching with "the correct policy" in the North East.

"We have good relations with China. There is enough space for India and China to work together and we believe in friendly relations with our neighbours and are approaching a correct policy now what should have done before," Rijiju said at 'India Today Conclave East'. The Union minister of state for home, asserted that India was not aggressive against anybody, "but, at the same time, is firm in protecting its national interests".

In order to empower the north-eastern states in terms of trading prowess, he said the government had identified many pockets along the Northeastern border for opening up with the neighbouring countries, except with China, Rijiju said. "It has become imperative for the Act East Policy," he said, adding the country enjoyed the best relations with Myanmar, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.

"With China, the border line in Arunachal Pradesh is not properly delineated and after 1962, commerce with China has stopped along this route," he said.
Chandigarh: The Haryana government has suspended mobile internet services in 13 districts for three days, apprehending law and order problem in view of two public rallies by a Jat body and ruling BJP's Kurukshetra MP on 26 November.

MP Raj Kumar Saini, who was opposing quota for Jats, had announced a "Samanta Maha Sammelan" in Jind while All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti national president Yashpal Malik had also announced a rally in Rohtak district's Jassia on the same day.

Internet services on mobile networks, except voice calls, in the districts of Jind, Hansi, Bhiwani, Hisar, Fatehabad, Karnal, Panipat, Kaithal, Rohtak, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Bhiwani and Charkhi Dadri shall remain suspended for three days until the midnight of 26 November, an official order said on Friday.

The order, which came into force on Friday, was issued by Additional Chief Secretary (Home Department) SS Prasad.

"The order is issued to prevent any disturbance of peace and public order in the jurisdiction of state of districts as mentioned...," it said.

It said there was a likelihood of tension, danger to human life and property, disturbance of public peace and tranquility in Haryana by protestors and anti-social elements during the two public rallies on Sunday.

On Friday, a group of Jats who were opposing Saini's rally at Jind clashed with the police and blocked the Jind-Chandigarh National Highway in Jind.

The police had to resort to mild lathicharge to disperse the protesters and the highway was cleared for normal movement of vehicular traffic after a while.

Jat leader Sandeep Bharti, who led the protesters, was demanding cancellation of Saini's rally.

Bharti alleged that Saini was known for his anti-Jat rants and accused him of spreading communal hatred by making inflammatory and derogatory statements against the community.

Officials said the situation remained tense in Rohtak and Jind.
Nagpur: The NCP will launch an agitation in Maharashtra next month to highlight the "failures" of the BJP-led government and hardships caused to people due to policy decisions like GST and demonetisation, a party leader said on Friday.

The Sharad Pawar-led Opposition party will launch "halla bol" (raise your voice) agitation on 1 December and it will go on till 11 December, Maharashtra NCP chief Sunil Tatkare said.

The stir comes in run up to the winter session of Maharashtra legislature scheduled to begin in Nagpur on 11 December.

Claiming that the BJP government has "failed" on all fronts, Tatkare said the stir's objective is to "awake the government from its deep sleep on the issues of incomplete loan waiver scheme, deteriorating law and order situation, lack of jobs and hardships faced by people due to the adverse impact of GST and demonetisation."

The farm loan waiver scheme, which was widely publicised by the Devendra Fadnavis government, has not served its stated purpose and cultivators are still committing suicide, the former minister said.

He said the 'halla bol' padyatra will begin from Yavatmal on 1 December and end in Nagpur on 11 December. All prominent NCP leaders will take part in the stir.

Similarly, a joint 'halla bol' agitation with the Congress and other like-minded opposition parties will be held on 12 December at Nagpur during the winter session, he said.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar will address a gathering being organised as part of the stir, Tatkare said.
Editor's note: In light of the fact that the Centre is planning to introduce a new legislation to outlaw triple talaq, Firstpost sought opinions from various experts about how the legislation should be drafted and what are some of the issues that the government should keep in mind.

By Sharanya Gopinathan

"It's all nonsense, whats going on!" says 25-year-old Amina, a homemaker in Bangalore. Reports from Wednesday suggest that the central government is set to draft a law that will not only make triple talaq invalid, but also a criminal offence. The bill is likely to be tabled in the Winter Session of the Parliament. A committee of ministers has been formed to fine-tune the legislation. Unfortunately, none of them are Muslim women. However, Amina is effusive when trying to establish that this law has nothing to do with her life.

She says, Triple talaq is not mentioned in the Quran, and it is mentioned in the Hadith in very specific circumstances. Even then, a man doesnt randomly give talaq and get divorced! This is not a real practice in our community. Only people who dont read the Quran and dont practice true Islam fall into such things. Why are we wasting time debating such petty issues?

Its been three months since an all-male bench set aside the practice of triple talaq, or instant divorce in Muslim communities, rendering such divorces invalid, and opinions seem to be as strong as ever. Its always been a controversial issue, given the loaded nature of personal law. There is also the fear of a right-wing governments attempt to co-opt the struggle of Muslim women to free themselves from this tool for their own political gains.

So how do Muslim women really feel about this new development? Do they feel, like Amina, that this is a non-issue being blown up on TV debates? Or do they welcome the move as a long-awaited change for Muslim women? More importantly, do women feel that the nature of their marriages is going to change without the threat of triple talaq looming over their everyday interactions?

Sarah, a Bangalore-based journalist, thinks this is a welcome development that will shake up a lot of family dynamics. Through triple talaq, men feel they can threaten at the drop of a hat. So long as they have the power to use triple talaq, its like theyre constantly saying, 'You know I can send you to your mothers house at any time, right?'"

For Reema, a 27-year-old fashion designer, divorce wasnt an empty threat, but it didnt come the triple talaq route. Reema and her husband had a mutually accepted divorce, but she recalls that her husband used to throw the threat of divorce around in fights. At the same time, she wants the world to know that Muslim women have equal rights and powers to divorce in Islam. Shes referring to the practice of khula, a form of divorce where the wife is free to leave without having to pay any money or maintenance, unlike men who give triple talaq.

She still recalls that her husband would often threaten her, saying, I should just divorce you this instant. But she knew that triple talaq wasnt an accepted reality, so she never took the threat seriously. Reema thinks Muslim men make the threat loosely because they dont understand the obligations of marriage. Before Muslim women get married, they read the Quran, they learn and study everything they need to know about marriage beforehand. Muslim men just celebrate with their friends, saying they have someone to cook them dinner every day.

Many Muslim women, when asked about triple talaq, turn to the belief that Islam already contains guidelines for lifes crises, big and small. Its one of the reasons why they are furious that the government is now trying to pass laws that interfere in their most personal matters.

Alia, a homemaker from Bangalore, asserts that Islam already has many in-built protections for Muslim women. In triple talaq, a man has to return to the wifes family the expenses they paid on the wedding. If a woman takes khula, she doesnt have the right to claim any money or maintenance back. In many cases, women dont take the option of khula and wait for triple talaq because they know that they wont get their money if they take that route.

Taking a different view on the issue, Dr Kala Balasubramaniam, a marriage counsellor at Bangalores Inner Peace Counselling Center who counsels Muslim couples, thinks removing the looming spectre of triple talaq can help women feel more secure and confident. You need security and belonging in a marriage, and a tool like triple talaq is like having a Damocles sword over your head all the time.

Sarah believes that this development will influence norms outside marriage too. She believes it will make families more confident when their daughters marry. She says that this tool was the reason why Muslim women were raised by their parents to be quiet and docile. Until now, mothers would tell their daughters, 'Dont try to be Jhansi ki Rani, be Allah ki gaai'. After this rule, mothers dont have to tutor their daughters to not be be bold and dont talk. Theyll say you have a legal right. If you face any injustice, raise your voice.

She also floats the intriguing possibility of it having the opposite effect, similar to the kind of backlash Susan Faludi documented in the wake of second-wave feminism in the West. She wonders if losing this power would make Muslim men feel threatened and insecure, and increase the desirability of uncommonly quiet women. Maybe after this decision, there will be more demand for such girls and Muslim girls will be taught even more not to be the ones who ask for their rights.

Muslim women activists who have been working in the field for several years also have similarly complex and contradictory views on the matter, but they have clear ideas about what shape they want the August judgement to take.

On Thursday, we spoke to Hasina Khan, of the Bebaak Collective, a Muslim womens rights group, just as she was returning from a press conference in Mumbai, where the collective publicly opposed the governments decision to make triple talaq a criminally punishable offence. This criminal offence act wont have a good impact on any kind of healthy relationship, she says. The insecurity and threat of divorce? Every marriage [in every religion] has it. But triple talaq is not an offence. We are very opposed to this, and many Muslim women came together today to oppose it because the government should implement the judgment through awareness programs, and various kinds of agencies to educate and inform Muslim women, and give them guidance. Not this.

She believes the government is going beyond the apex court judgment. The mindset that the government is taking is that divorce is a crime. The SC judgement set aside triple talaq and said its not valid. Sarkar yeh keh raha ki agar husband divorce kar raha hai toh crimes mein daal denge. Theyre overdoing it.

Noorjehan Safia of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, on the other hand, thinks that criminalisation is a meaningful actualisation of the judgement for which Muslim women have fought so hard. BMMA has always said if somebody does give an oral divorce, the Domestic Violence Act should apply. The punishment described there is applicable. Thats how it is in other personal laws, there are punishments for polygamy, underage marriage, in POCSO and the DV Act. So why such a big hue and cry about triple talaq being made into a punishable offence?

She says she doesnt know if it will affect the dynamics between husbands and wives right away, but adds that it doesnt matter if theres no translation into immediate action. The question is, how do we make gender justice available to women? How do we ensure she continues to get her maintenance, her house, her access to matrimonial property, the custody and maintenance of her children? Those are aspects that need to be assured by the law. If a husband does land up giving a divorce and if he isnt hauled up for it, how will it help the women? Men are continuing to give divorces to women as recently as yesterday. If the man continues to get this message from the state and society  De doh, kya hoga?  then the poor woman will continue to run around asking for maintenance, custody, all her rights, and he will be as free as he was when the law was not there.

She nods to the many complex issues around this development, and specifically, to the widespread concern that the government is using the issue as an excuse to persecute Muslim men. That fear of how the state will use it against Muslim men is always there. We are also concerned about Muslim men, but what about the concerns of Muslim women? We know the attitude the government has. Of course we are aware. But legal protection of Muslim women has to be made concrete. Otherwise whats the point of codification, if theres no fear of law?

The Ladies Finger (TLF) is a leading online womens magazine delivering fresh and witty perspectives on politics, culture, health, sex, work and everything in between.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's campaign managers must be happy. Prime Minister Narendra Modis popularity, on which hinges saffron party's fortunes, remains intact, said a survey by American think-tank, Pew Research Center. That is so after three eventful years of Modis rule at the Centre and his controversial economic experiments.

To be precise, nearly nine-in-ten Indians hold a favorable opinion of Modi, said the Pew survey, adding that roughly seven-in-ten say they have a very favourable view of the prime minister similar to public views in 2015. The only problem with the survey is that its sample size is too small  just 2,464 respondents in India from February 21 to March 10, 2017.

Even for a basic statistical survey, that is an insignificant number for a nation of 130 crore people and, especially so, when you want to give a verdict about the national level popularity trend of the leader of the ruling political party. Secondly, though the survey was done at the peak time of the note ban impact, it doesnt capture the public mood (particularly among small traders) post the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on 1 July, 2017.

Hence, when the survey finds "the publics positive assessment of Modi is buoyed by growing contentment with the Indian economy", one can argue that that may not necessarily go well with the mood on the ground, particularly if one looks at other indicators or reports on business optimism, unemployment trends and perception among small traders.

Having said that, coming from a globally reputed think-tank, the Pew survey (unlike the surveys done on the Narendra Modi app) will hold highly in favour of the Modi-governments campaign managers ahead of the crucial state Assembly election in Gujarat  Modis home state and one of the biggest industrial hubs in India. And at a time when the Modi government is facing criticism from both within and outside his party on charges of economic mismanagement, this is good news for Modis poll campaign managers.

Remember, Modi faced criticism on the economy despite initiating certain big moves to clean-up the parallel economy (through demonetisation), bring in a uniform tax regime (GST), change India into a global manufacturing hub (Make in India) and work towards ease of doing business. But, lack of planning and inadequate execution skills proved to be the villain in each of these initiatives denying the full credit to the government and giving an opportunity for the political opposition to launch counter-attacks.

Demonetisation was one of the high-risk political moves executed by Modi with the intention to clean-up the economy but poor planning caused more damage, particularly in the cash-intensive informal sector, compared with the gains of the stated objectives. Modi pulled off GST  the biggest indirect tax reform in Indias history  after breaking a decade-long deadlock but, again, faced backlash when the rate structure and compliance process hurt small traders and caused confusion.

The delay to act in clearing the banking sector mess and address the economic slowdown (mainly caused by drag in the manufacturing segment and a slump in demand) proved costly in the third year of Modis rule forcing his government to come with one of the biggest economic stimulus packages in Indias history worth Rs 9 lakh crore, of which Rs 2.11 lakh crore came as recapitalisation fund for banks and the rest to push investment in infrastructure.

The Modi government, particularly Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, has been in a continuous state of denial about the sad state of the economy. But, by offering a massive fiscal stimulus, the government acknowledged the problem, finally.

Indeed, the Pew survey is a shot in the arm for BJP and Modi. But, no political analyst would attach too much of importance to popularity surveys, because when people finally go to polling booths, the outcome may not be in sync with these surveys (remember Donald Trumps popularity polls ahead of the 2016 US Presidential Elections).

Modi continues to be BJPs mascot and trump card even after three years of his ascension into the national scene. The pan-India BJP wave is still riding largely on Modi, and the Pew survey surely works towards the party's advantage, but Modis real popularity test will come when the votes are counted in the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls, where the prime minister continues to dominate the poll scene more than the local leaders.

Yes, there arent too many political analysts who doubt BJPs win in the BJP dominated Gujarat. But, the victory margin and trends will be watched keenly as a metric of Modis popularity.
The purchase of 36 Rafale jets from France is mired in such deep controversy that it's more confusing than enlightening.

Perhaps what is needed is, to remove the element of overwhelming expertise and fiscal semantics and discuss this in layman's terms.

Let's take the cost of the aircraft. It is complex and predicated to a confidentiality clause on both sides. We'll never know what was paid for it, however, there are a dozen figures out there. Depending on who is doing the calculations, the cost of Rafale jets, for the most part, is lower than what Egypt and Qatar paid for their aircraft.

Then there is the mind numbing procedural nomenclature. Ajai Shukla wrote for Business Standard, "Both (Nirmala) Sitharaman and (Manohar) Parrikar point out the defence procurement procedure (DPP) permits regular procurement procedures to be bypassed on strategic grounds. Indeed, Paragraph 71 of the DPP caters for 'occasions when procurements would have to be done from friendly foreign countries which may be necessitated due to geo-strategic advantages that are likely to accrue to our country.'"

However, Paragraph 71 also stipulates that this requires prior clearance. It says, "Such procurements will be done based on an Inter-Governmental Agreement after clearance from Competent Financial Authority (CFA)", in this case the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS).

Further, Paragraph 73 of the DPP says, "Decisions on all such (strategic) acquisitions would be taken by the CCS on the recommendations of the Defence Procurement Board (DPB)".

No ministry or Cabinet body was consulted before Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed India to the Rafale purchase on 10 April, 2015. The CCS sanction was processed and obtained only later.

The prime minister didnt follow procedure.

After which, there comes the questions. Why didn't the NDA do the deal? What was the UPA doing? Why did the prime minister make a unilateral announcement in Paris and stun his team? What's the deal with Reliance Defense? What took the IAF five years of trials to okay the choice when a posse of air marshals with wings on their chests should have worked it out by just reading Jane's All the World's Aircraft.

It is a never ending gobbledygook. What we should be asking is, did we need these aircraft? The answer to that question is, yes. Why are we wasting time on these technicalities? We are 11 squadrons short, our MIG 21s (flying coffins) fell away years ago and the call to add muscle now is shrill and filled with anxiety.

I bought a flight ticket for Rs 11,000 in early November. I booked the same route for Rs 28,000 now because it is the new year week. This is known as good business practice.

We all understand that and perhaps this is exactly what Modi intended to do: get the aircraft because we need the aircraft. We have two hostile neighbours with planes in the sky and we cannot afford to sit on our hands.

If there is any drawback, it is having to wait for these 36 fighters till 2019 rather than being able to get them now because that's how long it takes to get them manufactured.

Now, if some aviation authority recommended that we get lease fighter aircraft in the interim I'd listen regardless of the cost.

Look at the ground reality. Of the sanctioned 42 squadrons (years ago) we have only 32 at present, of which some are flying obsolete planes or are grounded for spares as with the MiG 23s and MiG 27s.

Does this paint a fair of a sorry mess?

So, with our reputation for hemming and hawing and even frequently asking for kickbacks (rather shamelessly), there is not much excitement on the global market for an Indian bid.

Give Modi a pass on this one. If it actually turns out that we did paid less than other customers, all this becomes moot.

Still, in layman terms, shouldn't we rather sleep well at night knowing our pilots are safe and so are we?
Kolkata: Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das on said that the state would be free from the menace of naxalism by the beginning of 2018.

He was speaking at the India Today Conclave East. For any state to prosper, peace is the most important thing and any government's priority is to provide security to its masses, the chief minister said.

"In last three years we have taken steps in this regard. More than 70 percent of naxalism has ended in Jharkhand. The remaining 30 percent will come to an end by the end of December," Das said.

"There are some naxal leaders who are hiding in Buda Pahar. Our police personnel have been countering them and I have full faith on the police that by December end, we will be able to complete the operation and put an end on naxalite terror. From the beginning of 2018 the state will be free from (naxal) insurgency and crime," he said.

Das said that several Maoists have surrendered after the state introduced an attractive surrender policy.

"We have also cracked on naxal sympathisers in our villages and our cities by attaching their properties," the Jharkhand chief minister said.

Das said he is confident about the victory of the BJP in the upcoming Gujarat elections as the people of that state have made up their mind to give a befitting reply to the Congress.
New Delhi: Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu said on Saturday that it does not matter how many days the Parliament sat but what matters is how many days it functioned.

His remarks come a day after the dates for Parliament's Winter Session were announced following opposition's criticism of the government for delaying the session.

The Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA) headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh met in New Delhi on Friday to decide the dates of the Winter Session. The CCPA recommended that the session be held from 15 December to 5 January.

Speaking at a literary festival, Naidu said that the debate on the freedom of speech and expression should go on.

"How many days the Parliament sat doesn't matter, what matters is how many days it functioned," he said.

Naidu said that the philosophy of life should revolve around "character, calibre, compassion and conduct and not caste, community and cash".

Stressing that literature was the backbone of the society, Naidu said that it mirrors its inner workings, its triumphs and challenges, its anxieties and its possibilities.

"From Kalidasa to Premchand, from Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore to present day, India has always been blessed with a strong literary lineage of writers, poets, intellectuals and thinkers, who have chronicled times, exemplified our open traditions," he said.

The vice-president also said that India is the world's youngest country of its size, and new intellectual churning and questioning, new ideas about society, politics, citizens' activism and youth power are its exciting new features.

He urged the "pseudo politicians" to leave the three Cs of caste, community and cash and go back to "character, calibre, capacity, conduct and compassion" as the only yardstick for measuring merit.
Lucknow: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav accused Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and his ministerial colleagues of misusing government machinery and offering allurements during campaigning for the ongoing polls.

"There is misuse of official machinery in the ongoing poll process... BJP leadership is openly violating the model code of conduct and harming the chances of free and fair elections," Yadav said in a party statement released.

Yadav alleged that the Election Commission turned a blind eye even after doubts were raised over the EVMs being used in the civic polls.

"The chief minister and his ministerial colleagues are offering allurements like lakhs of jobs to the youth, roof over heads of all, free power connections and street lights during their election meetings... Will these efforts to woo voters not effect the impartiality of the polls," he asked.

The former chief minister said that efforts were being made to divide the society on the lines of caste and religion. The SP chief said that the BJP government has not fulfilled any of its promises, law and order was in a dismal state and women were feeling insecure.
New Delhi: The Congress on Friday held Prime Minister Narendra Modi "solely responsible" for creating a "mess" of the economy, after Standard & Poor's kept its sovereign rating for the country unchanged.

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said the government was taking shelter under these "dubious" certificates from rating agencies.

Rating agency Moody's had on last Friday raised India's sovereign rating from the lowest investment grade of Baa3 to Baa2 - the first upgrade in almost 14 years.

Sharma accused Modi of being solely responsible for creating a "mess" of the economy and charged him with being in "arrogant denial".

Mr Prime Minister, the ground is shaking, and people feel betrayed. People have downgraded the government on its economic performance, these dubious upgrades dont matter.  Anand Sharma (@AnandSharmaINC) November 24, 2017

He said that a "sudden flurry" of certificates from credit rating agencies is the "only fall back" of a government which has derailed India's economy.

A sudden flurry of certificates from credit rating agencies is the only fall back of a government which has derailed Indias economy. GDP has sharply fallen, jobs have been destroyed in millions, business have shut down.  Anand Sharma (@AnandSharmaINC) November 24, 2017

Sharma alleged that GDP has sharply fallen, jobs have been "destroyed" in millions and business have shut down.

The leader also further raised questions over the ratings agencies waking up when all the parameters of the Indian economy are "in the red".

"About 3.72 crore jobs have been lost in the MSME/unorganised sector. Investment rate has plunged by 7%, credit offtake falling to a 65-year low. This calls into question the very credibility of these rating agencies," he said on the micro-blogging site.

Declining to follow Moody's recent India rating upgrade, Standard & Poor's on Friday kept its sovereign rating for the country unchanged at the lowest investment grade of 'BBB- minus' citing high government debt and low income levels.

Lauding it, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the rating is a reflection of the agency's appreciation of the steps taken by the government to keep the economy stable and ensure a high growth trajectory.

"The S&P had inferred that over the next two years, growth in India will remain strong and the country will maintain its sound external accounts position," Sitharaman

said.

Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi lauded it, saying "After Moody's, S&P gives Narendra Modi govt thumbs up, keeps India's outlook stable."
New Delhi: The Congress condemned the BJP over its "shameful" barb that Rahul Gandhi was siding with terrorists after he alleged Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "hugplomacy had failed" in keeping the 26/11 terror attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed under arrest in Pakistan.

Speaking to reporters, Congress leader Anand Sharma said that the BJP leaders "in their arrogance" have lost their mental balance as they targeted Gandhi.

He said the BJP needs to be reminded that Gandhi belongs to a family which made sacrifices for the unity and integrity of the country and accused the BJP of taking political discourse to a new low.

"It is shameful. It deserves to be condemned. The BJP leaders have lost their mental balance in arrogance. Gandhi is the leader of Congress, which has made sacrifices in fighting terrorism and for the integrity of India...for them to say such a thing, I will say it has hit a new low," he said.

The BJP said that its government had succeeded in isolating Pakistan over terrorism, while the UPA treated it as a victim state and let it off lightly.

BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao accused the Congress and its vice-president of "repeatedly betraying the country by pandering to anti-India elements" and cited their alleged questioning of surgical strikes to make his point.

Taking to Twitter earlier in the day, Gandhi said, "Narendrabhai, baat nahi bani (this has not worked). Terror mastermind is free," he said, adding that the prime minister's "hugplomacy" has failed.

Gandhi was referring to Modi's bonhomie with US president Donald Trump during his last visit to the US when the two leaders were seen hugging each other several times.
Chennai: The by-election scene in Tamil Nadu hotted up on Saturday with the DMK renominating its candidate Marudhu Ganesh in the RK Nagar Assembly constituency, and immediately getting support from the Congress, Viduthalai Chiruttai Katchi (VCK) and All India Forward Bloc.

The party also asserted that it was not worried about the "Two Leaves" going to the ruling AIADMK faction.

Ganesh, who was the party candidate in the April by-election that was later countermanded, will be fielded again in the 21 December bypoll, DMK Working President MK Stalin announced, quoting a statement of General Secretary K Anbazhagan.

"We will face the elections in a democratic way and we will win it in a big way with the support of allies. We already have the support of our allies and would appeal to more parties to support our candidate," he told reporters.

Asked about Chief Minister K Palaniswamy claiming big victory after the allotment of the "Two Leaves" symbol to his faction, Stalin said "We have faced two leaves in the past and have won elections and come to power in the past. There is no fear or worry about two leaves."

Tamil Nadu Congress unit President S Thirunavukkarasar announced the party's support to DMK candidate while VCK leader Thirumavalavan extended his party's backing to DMK. He hoped the by-election would be held in a fair manner without money power being allowed to play a part in it.

The bypoll in RK Nagar was necessitated by the death of then chief minister J Jayalalithaa in December last year.

The AIADMK, which had fielded its Presidium Chairman E Madhusudanan, is yet to announce its candidate, while the BJP said it would decide whether to contest or not in the changed circumstances in consultation with the high command.

BJP state unit President Tamilisai Soundararajan said the issue was discussed at a meeting of the state leaders and the views have been conveyed to the high command. The BJP had fielded well-known Tamil music composer Gangai Amaran in the countermanded election.

Soundararajan, however, said the symbol of "Hat" which was given to the TTV Dhinakaran faction during the countermanded election should not be allotted to them this time because it is associated with the corrupt practices adopted by Dinakaran earlier.

Dhinakaran, whose faction lost the symbol battle, has decided to contest again in RK Nagar.

Thangathamizh Chelvan, leader of the Dhinakaran faction, said the party's governing council would meet on 29 November and make a formal announcement on the candidate.

He, however, rejected the view that their faction should not be given "Hat" and asked were the rivals worried that they would be defeated.
If the buzz from the trenches in Gujarat is to be believed, Congress is going to announce a waiver of farm loans ahead of the Gujarat polls. The signs were always there: Congress has time and again criticised the BJP led central government for being anti-farmer.

Rahul Gandhi has been particularly evocative when he compared the plight of the farmers with that of the corporate defaulters. He has cleverly pivoted on the accounting write-off of loans to certain corporate houses by banks to create a stir amongst indebted farmers. Congress has in fact gone ahead and distributed pamphlets and flyers promising a farm loan waiver ahead of its manifesto release. The manifesto drafting exercise, with Sam Pitroda lending his name to it, seems more like an afterthought now, given that Congress has already decided on the course of action it is going to take.

This is not the first election where Congress has pitched a waiver to farmers. In UP elections, realising that there were massive loan defaults by farmers, Congress evoked the farm loan waiver of 2008-2009 and promised a repeat of the same if elected. In fact, this promise received so much traction on the ground that BJP was forced to promise the same and implement it after coming to power with significant cost to the exchequer. However, the UP farm loan waiver was not only politically expedient but also a necessity, given that most of the farmers who received the benefit of the loan waiver would not have been able to repay their loans. Two previous governments (BSP first and SP then) had focused heavily on large-scale infrastructure projects to the detriment of the agriculture sector.

The low penetration of agriculture insurance schemes, absence of formal credit systems and increase in number of farmer suicides due to indebtedness all contributed to the demand of loan waivers. A loan waiver would have given the farmers of the state a clean slate but wouldnt have been enough to revive the agricultural sector. Therefore, the BJP, in a masterstroke, combined the promise of farm loan waiver with a number of institutional changes like guaranteed payment cycles for wheat farmers, compulsory purchase of paddy harvests, free crop insurance for small and marginal farmers, free energy efficient water pumps for farmers, guaranteed electricity for agricultural purposes, increasing the number of cold storages, and reform of the APMC system. All these factors combined signalled to the voters that systemic changes will be initiated to revive the farm sector.

The situation in Gujarat is quite different though. Unlike UP, Gujarats farm sector has been doing well. The outstanding loans are not desperate attempts by the farmers here to keep their heads above the water but have been taken for purchasing machinery, diversification into allied activities etc. The penetration of insurance schemes and irrigation projects is significantly better than in UP. The APMC infrastructure, rural electrification and rural road network all serve to give the Gujarati farmer an advantage over the farmer in UP.

While it is true that farming-related income has been on the decline, a farm loan waiver is not the answer. A farm loan waiver in Gujarat will cost the exchequer close to Rs 30,000 crore and will largely benefit large farmers with average loan sizes upwards of Rs 1 lakh. The Rs 30,000 crore could instead be used for making inputs cheaper, launching farm cooperatives and giving incentives to effective food processing and marketing schemes.

Besides that, a promise of farm loan waiver in Gujarat does not stem from an unequivocal demand from the farmers as there has been significant mobilisation on farm loan waiver in other states as absent in Gujarat. In this scenario, the Congress promise to waive off farm loans seems ill-conceived. If this desperate bid to win the support of farmers forces BJPs hand to follow suit, it would be putting the future of farmers of the state in jeopardy rather than securing their future.

The writer is a public policy consultant.
When Rahul Gandhi reached the coast of Porbandar on Friday to address the fishermen community, the Congress vice-president received a warm welcome. Shortly afterwards, the demands from the fishermen community were put forward.

Rahul listened to the fishermen and promised that their demands will be met once the Congress government comes to power in Gujarat. But during his rally, the much talked about subject in Porbandar was that the leader from fishermen community who shared the stage with Rahul belonged to the BJP.

Rahul himself mentioned this. Addressing the fishermen community, he said even a BJP worker speaks out about your demands from the Congress platform. "We will accept it because the Congress will come to power in Gujarat," he said.

Why are the fishermen angry with the BJP?

Bharat Bhai Modi, president of Porbandar Machhimar Boat Association, on behalf of fishermen community, explained his stance to Rahul. Bharat Bhai has been with the BJP for quite a long time. He was the party's Porbandar district president. On this backdrop, it could be gauged which way the political wind is blowing in the state.

It is being asked whether the president of Porbandar Machhimar Boat Association is going to switch sides. After the rally, Bharat Bhai said, "We are with the BJP. But, when it comes to the community, we can even go to Pakistan for talks."

But things are not as easy as they seem. Because this time, the fishermen from Porbandar are furious. Bharat Bhai sharing the stage with Rahul is just a representation of that fury.

Govind Bhai Kharva, listening to Rahul's speech during the rally, said, "I have my mother, wife and four children to look after but our only source of livelihood is fishing. Whatever promises BJP had made to us, they didnt fulfil it."

Mansukh Bhai Parmar said the only occupation they have is fishing but nobody is paying attention to them.

Fishermen community in Porbandar is upset with the governments decision to cut down on the subsidy on diesel and kerosene. Earlier, subsidy for up to 250 litres of kerosene was decided for small fishermen. Now it has been reduced to 32 litres. So rest has to be purchased from the open market, which is expensive.

Likewise, even big fishermen are unhappy with the BJP government due to reduction in subsidy on diesel.

There are about 500 fishermen languishing in jails in Pakistan. Fishermen community feels that the government is not taking any concrete steps for their release.

Bharat Bhai said, "Earlier this was not a problem. But, it started in the 90s when fish population started going down due to pollution and we had to go deeper into waters for fishing." He said fishermen usually wander off far and in this process, many of them are caught and put in jails in Pakistan.

There is also a problem of parking small and big boats in the area. Fishermen have spent Rs 20 lakh from their own pockets to clean the water in the seaside area.

Do fishermen trust Rahul?

During Rahul's rallies, I spoke to many fishermen. Many of them talked of voting for Congress this time instead of the BJP. The resentment towards BJP started coming out as a boost for Rahul.

Fishermen were trying to get a glimpse of Rahul. Youngsters, elders and women all were excited to see the Congress leader.

Rahul did not break their trust. Rahul promised to fulfil all of their demands

After the rally, we went to different parts of Porbandar and tried to talk to fishermen. We met a few young people from the community. Raju Bhai Kharwa, Kirit Bhai Kharwa and Rajesh Bhai Kharwa, were standing at a paan shop, as they did not participate in Rahuls rally. They said Congress will get more votes this time.

Arjun Modhwadias credibility at stake

There are more than thirty thousand voters from fishermen community in the Porbandar Assembly constituency. This time, Arjun Modhwadia, who has been the president of the Gujarat Congress, is trying to bring fishermen community into party's fold.

Modhwadia, who comes from Mehar caste, was defeated by the BJPs Babu Bhai Bokhariya. From Porbandar constituency, Modhwadia won two elections from 2002 to 2012. Modhwadia has also been leader of Opposition in Gujarat Assembly. But, in 2012 the Congress leader was defeated by the BJP.

There are about 67, 000 voters from Mehar community in Porbandar. While there are around 30,000 voters from Lohana community, the number of Muslim voters in the area is approximately 15,000.

Modhwadia thinks that Congress will taste victory in the election if Mehar community along with fishermen cast their vote for his party. Fishermen community backed BJP last time. However, this time Rahul's magic seems to be working. It all depends on whether Rahul will be able to bring fishermen community back to Congress' fold.

However, Bharat Bhai Bharat Bhai has already stirred controversy in BJP camp by sharing stage with Rahul.
Ahmedabad: Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said the Congress in Gujarat has "failed" to play the role of a responsible Opposition.

The BJP leader also targeted Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi over the alleged stalling of projects in Gujarat during the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre, and said he needs to answer certain questions related to that.

"Instead of replying to these questions, he keeps asking more questions. It is the responsibility of the opposition party to answer questions related to its government when it was in power at the Centre," she told reporters. Sitharaman was campaigning for the BJP for the next month's polls.

Sitharaman said the Opposition party's strength in the Gujarat assembly has gone down to 43 as the party has "failed to project an image of a responsible Opposition".

"From 57 MLAs in 2012, the Congress is down to 43 MLAs. The party was rejected four times by the people of Gujarat...What have you (the Congress) done as a responsible Opposition party?" she asked.

Sitharaman rejected the Congress criticism of visits by Union ministers to poll-bound Gujarat to campaign for the BJP, saying no work of the government had been hampered due to their trips.

"We are party workers even when we are in the Cabinet. If he (Gandhi) says the work of the central government is hampered (due to our visits), then let him say so. We will say that the work there is going on without any hindrance."

She criticised the Congress for taking its MLAs to a Bengaluru resort to prevent alleged poaching by the ruling BJP ahead of the Rajya Sabha election in July when parts of the state were reeling under floods.

She claimed the UPA government prevented a 32 kilometre national highway project in Gujarat on environmental ground. Sitharaman asked Gandhi to question former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot as to why he wrote to the Centre opposing construction of a dam under the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's pet "Sujalam Sufalam" project for water harvesting.

Gehlot, now the party's Gujarat election in-charge, "worked against the interest of Gujarat," she said. The Union minister said a Congress MP from Maharashtra had protested against the Narmada dam.

"He (Gandhi) asks questions instead of giving replies. He will ask questions to the entire world but not to his own MLAs, his own UPA government which created hurdles in construction of dams roads in Gujarat," she said.

She attacked Gandhi for allegedly diverting Rs 2,000-crore party fund to the National Herald Trust.

On the Doka La issue, the Congress leader should have met external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to get details about the stand-off instead of meeting the Chinese ambassador, Sitharaman maintained.

It was an "irresponsible act" on the part of the Opposition party, the defence minister said.

Sitharaman said the Congress, when in power, did little to curb black money despite a Supreme Court orders on the issue.

The BJP leader said the Gujarat government has taken a slew of welfare measures for fishermen.

Gandhi earlier had an interaction with fishermen. The measures include a Rs 11,000-crore 'Sagar Khedut' programme which is going on well, the minister said.

She said the NDA government has also announced projects related to marine product processing and export which will benefits the fishermen of Gujarat.
The intention of syncing the growth of each of the 4.33 crore voting individuals with that of the development of the state of Gujarat is evident in its ruling party's campaign slogan Ho Chu Vikas, Ho Chu Gujarat (I am Vikas, I am Gujarat). The individual doesn't become one with the grand collective as easily though, at least in the reality that lies beyond the spectre of rally and the sound of rhetoric.

One such reality are Gujarat's tribals, nearly 15 percent of the total voters in the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections. The 2011 census recorded that Gujarat was home to 89,17,174 Scheduled Tribes. In a BJP-dominated state, 16 out of 27 tribal seats across the state are Congress seats. To read into the mind of the tribal voter, Firstpost drove into adivasi belt of South Gujarat and made stops at several villages in the districts of Tapi, Navsari, Surat and Valsad.

First, we reached a village called Anaval. Interestingly, the Desai Brahmins trace their roots to this village where it's now nearly impossible to spot a Brahmin. Here, the president of Gujarats Samast Adivasi Samaj Dr Pradip Garasia runs a small clinic. Today, when he sees Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakor emerging as young faces of the Patidars, Dalits and OBCs respectively, he feels that the mainstream political discourse has completely ignored tribals.

"Till the time we remain on the fringes of public debate, we will only be viewed as another 'category'. Reservation is not the end of our problems," he said while talking about how Chief Minister Vijay Rupani distributed fake ST certificates to those living in Gir forests on 14 May, 2017 in 14th Kutiyana, Junagarh.

"In the recent recruitments for the post of deputy collectors by the Gujarat Public Service Commission, out of 68 Scheduled Tribe seats, 27 were given to those having the farzi (fake) certificates. We are filing RTIs and have complained to the government, the governor and the ST commission," Garasia revealed that the entire tribal belt is upset about this and he said that only the ST commission has responded to complaints, pacifying them into believing that an inquiry is on.

These certificates were distributed on the basis of two government resolutions, one in 2007 and another in 2017. In the first government resolution, passed on 26 June, 2007, the use of the word 'parents' was misconstrued to mean 'ancestors'.

"This means that if the people inhabiting the forests of Gir, Barda and Alech in Junagarh district are able to trace the roots of their ancestors to that region, they would be entitled to ST reservations. Similarly, the resolution passed in 2017 extended reservations to those currently living in those regions," Garasia said. He pointed out that in 1956, the locals of these regions were counted as STs and now, through these certificates, their descendants who live elsewhere are also being counted as STs. "It is not about BJP and Congress at this point. It is about repeated attempts to remodel our identity," he added. He has no big hopes from any party.

In January, the Gujarat government announced the implementation of the Rule-2017 under the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA) in 4,503 gram sabhas, to empower them with powers like fixing the loan interest and eliminating money lenders. In a village called Vyaara, an erstwhile Gaikwadi town, tribal rights activist Viral Konkani dismissed promises pertaining to the PESA.

The Act was passed in 1996 based on the recommendations made by the Bhuria committee. It was designed to give powers to the gram sabhas of regions that fall under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, where the governor has the power to adapt laws passed both by Parliament and the State legislature in a way that they suit the complicated needs of these areas. The Fifth Schedule of the Constitution mandates laws separate from the Panchayati Raj Act and the Nagarpalika Act to administer villages and towns in tribal-dominated regions.

"To implement these, there is a need for a tribal advisory committee. In Gujarat, there have been only two meetings of this committee in six years. Also, the 2017 PESA has moved away from the original act of 1996. Take a good look at the list of powers and you see that gram sabhas have no real powers left, all they can really do his debate-discuss," Konkani said.

Another issue that the tribal activists raise is the use of the words adivasi and vanvasi interchangeably. He went to say that by using the word vanvasi like in the government's Vanvasi Kalyan Yojana, anybody who simply lives in the forest belt is being defined as an adivasi. "Tribals are culturally and socially different from Hindus and the attempt to erase our identity is something we are opposed to," added Konkani, who is also a young member of the adivasi samaj.

In village Jamki, a tiny dot along the highway, where men still roam around in Gandhi topis, pramukh Pravina bhen Gamit said that even educated boys and girls, some holding BA and MA degrees aren't able to clear the teacher training Tests (TAT). A village of Congress supporters will tell you that it doesnt have water supply although the Ukai dam is just a kilometre away.

Ask these people if the Congress leaders have offered any alternative or have promised to address their issues and they say nothing. They stand around with flags and sashes, screaming 'panja aayega'. The reasons for their support arent clear.

"To understand that, you have to enter the pages of history. When I was growing up, I remember that in remote places like Lakhali, Karanjkhed, Panchor, Asopalav and Besaniya, people had no clothes to wear, no food to eat. The Congress opened primary schools here. I joined the Congress in 1966 at the age of 25 and tenants became the owners of lands," said Amarsinh Zinabhai Chaudhary, who was a Member of the Parliament from 1971 to 1977. We met him at his home in Vyaara. "Earlier, the Congress wasn't commercialised. It used to work for the people with honesty. Now, leaders work for their own benefit, whether it's the BJP or the Congress," he said.

We then travelled along the highway to Vedchi, home to a Gandhi ashram. This village was the centre for the freedom struggle in South Gujarat. Here, we met Ashok Chaudhary, the son of Dashri bhen and Kanji bhai, the couple famous across the tribal belt for having taught Kasturba Gandhi how to read and write in jail.

Ashok Chaudhary is a Gandhian environmentalist who feels that political parties, be it the Congress or the BJP, are failing to understand, let alone learn, from the values of the adivasis towards the environment. The spirit of community, brotherhood and eco-friendly way of life is being damaged by politics at large, feels Ashok Chaudhary, who has delivered lectures at Oxford Universitys Ruskin College and at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. "Congress is forgetting its old values. Its economic policies like land and wealth distribution which were earlier pro-poor are more centralised," he added.

Move some kilometres south and you reach Songadh, where the Gaikwads built a fort on a hill, a more developed taluka with three-storeyed houses, banks and shops. Here, we ran into Pramod Valvi, a former employee of Bank of India, who said that some people have found jobs after the construction of the Ukai dam and most people head to cities to find work. Dilip Bhai Bhatt, who laid the foundation of the BJP taluka in this village, explained that the Sangh is doing a lot of work to re-orient the people towards development.

He talked about the growth in Ekal Vidyalayas (one-teacher schools) and Gareeb Kalyan Melas, where cycles and clothes are distributed to the poor. However, he holds one grudge against the evolution of the BJP: That it is rapidly forgetting the work done by old Jan Sangh members and becoming arrogant about its power. He also said that if a powerful leader leaves the Congress to join the BJP, he or she gets more importance than old loyalists.

After a long drive along thinner roads, inwards from the highway, comes the home of Chhotubhai Vasava in Jhagadia. Chhotubhai gave his vote to Congress' senior leader Ahmad Patel and saved him from defeat in the recent Rajya Sabha elections. The Robinhood of the tribal belt, Chottubhai has created the Bharatiya Tribal Party after the split between Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar.

Although in partnership with the Congress, which has given him four seats, Vasava told Firstpost that big parties only politicise the needs of the tribals. He believes that neither of the parties are interested in implementing Section 330 to 342 of the Constitution with honesty.

The most immediate need is the right approach towards primary education. The government has made efforts in that direction, including opening ashram shalas and Samras hostels for Scheduled Tribes students in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot, Vidya Vidya Nagar and Jamnagar. Aside from supplying food in government hostels and appointing teachers with full pay in Eklavya Model Residential Schools, the government has decided to offer a 90 percent grant for construction of ashram shalas.

Along with ashram shalas, the RSS also operates schools. We identified three of them in the tribal regions of Ahwa, Dharampur and Limdi.

We visited one of these schools in Dharampur, which was established in 1979. The walls are painted with mythological figures, there is a resident pandit who conducts hawans every day and children are even taught how to make idols. Bhupendra Chaudhary of the Adivasi Ekta Parishad, a national movement for tribal welfare, has opened his own school 60 kilometers from Dharampur.

He said that the emphasis on primary education is in remote tribal areas is skewed. There are no exams till Class 8 and in Class 9, many children are still learning how to spell. He feels that the tribal communities havent benefited one bit from the necessity of modern education.

Tribals of South Gujarat have problems, but they don't expect political parties to solve them. Old loyalties seem to be fading away and a lack of young and substantial representation has only further alienated them this election season.
Dahegam (Gujarat): Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi in poll-bound Gujarat on Saturday and alleged that the latter did not want the "truth" behind the multi-crore Rafale deal and Jay Shah issue to come out before the Assembly election in his home state.

He also alleged that the NDA government was delaying the Winter Session of Parliament as Modi was not ready to discuss the Rafale and Jay Shah issues in the House before the Gujarat polls.

"I would ask Modiji three questions (on the Rafale deal). First, is there a difference in the cost of planes in the first and the second contract (signed with a French firm) and did India pay more or less money as per the second contract?"

"And, has the industrialist (whose company has formed a joint venture with the French firm), who was given the contract, ever manufactured planes?," he asked while addressing a public gathering in Dahegam in Gandhinagar district.

The Congress leader also sought to know if the due procedure was followed while inking the deal with France last year to procure the Rafale fighter jets.

"And a more important question, did you follow the due government procedure? Why the (then) defence minister was seen catching fish in Goa? And, was an approval from the Cabinet Committee on Security taken (for the mega deal)?" he asked.

Gandhi alleged that the prime minister was avoiding answering these questions due to the fear that the "truth" would come out before the crucial polls in his home state.

"Narendra Modiji is not replying to these questions because he wants that the truth of Rafale and Jay Shah should not come before the public ahead of the Gujarat elections," he said.

"Rafale is a matter related to the Indian Air Force, national security, martyrs. Modiji will have to answer these questions before the people of the country and Gujarat," he said.

The 47-year-old Amethi MP said while the mediapersons asked him a lot of questions, they did not do the same with the prime minister over the Rafale and Jay Shah issues.

"Modiji will make many tours of Gujarat. Press reporters ask me various questions. Why don't you ask Modi about the Rafale deal and Jay Shah? The people should also ask Modiji about Rafale and Jay Shah when he comes to Gujarat," he said.

The prime minister is scheduled to address a series of poll rallies in Gujarat in support of the BJP candidates next week.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases - on 9 and 14 December. Counting of votes will be taken up on 18 December.

"Generally, Parliament's (Winter) session is held every year in November and discussions (on crucial issues) take place in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. But, due to two reasons, Parliament is opening after the Gujarat polls this time," he said.

"First, (BJP chief) Amit Shah's son (Jay) converted Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore in three months. Second, and a more important reason, is the Rafale deal. The entire procedure went on for the purchase of the planes and after all the discussions were over, Narendra Modi himself went to France to change the contract," he alleged.

In September last year, India had inked an inter-governmental agreement with France for the procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around Rs 58,000 crore.

The Congress had recently raised questions over the deal and accused the Modi-led BJP government of compromising on national interest and security while promoting "crony capitalism" and causing a loss to the public exchequer.

However, the BJP had rubbished the allegations.

In an article published on news portal The Wire, it was alleged that the turnover of a company owned by Jay Shah grew exponentially from Rs 50,000 to Rs 8 crore after the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014.

Both Amit Shah and his son have denied any wrongdoing by the company. Jay Shah has filed a criminal defamation case against the news portal.
Kolkata: BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi on Wednesday accused West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee of practising a dangerous form of appeasement politics and harming the cause of national security by providing shelter to members of fundamentalist groups in the state.

"The chief minister does not realise that she is harming the cause of national security, not just law and order in her state. As per a particular report, 720 criminals of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Bangladesh), an Islamic fundamentalist organisation, who do not find a place in Bangladesh, are crossing over to this state and they are given space here. Bangladesh government is saying this," Lekhi, the party's national spokesperson, said at the India Today conclave East in Kolkata.

She also held Banerjee and her government responsible for a number of riot-like situations in the Bengal during the Trinamool Congress rule.

"The riots need to be controlled by the state government as law and order situation is a state subject. On the contrary, there is Muslim vote bank appeasement in the state and the state government including the chief minister is responsible," she claimed.

Supporting Lekhi, Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh, who was also present at the discussion, said the state government is trying to resist central agency probes into the cases of communal violence or terrorism by forcefully handing the investigation to state CID.

"The state government is trying to prevent the cases or riots from being probed by a central agency. Starting from communal clashes in Kaliachak and Basirhat to the Khagragarh blast, they are putting forward the state CID and resisting a CBI inquiry. If they want the truth to come out why are they making this attempt?" he asked.

Lekhi, BJP's Lok Sabha MP from New Delhi, said the Bengal government has a tendency of baselessly blaming the BJP in case of any law and order situation in the state.

"In the Ranaghat nun rape case, chief minister Mamata Banerjee started blaming the BJP from the beginning but when the perpetrators were arrested it was found they were all Bangladeshi residents. This is a dangerous brand of politics practised by the Bengal government," she alleged.

Lekhi also took on Banerjee over her statement that the BJP-led Central government was scaring away industrialists from the state, saying that the extortion tax that industrialists have to pay in Bengal is public knowledge.

About the issue of delay in the winter session of parliament due to the upcoming elections, Lekhi claimed the whole issue was being blown out of proportion by the opposition parties and said this has happened even during the reign of other parties at the centre.
Ahmedabad: So, he is finally coming. It is he who keeps off the Congress in Gujarat from celebrating a wishful victory. And it is only he who is keeping the ruling BJP smiling ear-to-ear, giving evidence that it has little else but him.

Narendra Modi aave chhey (Modi is coming) was the BJPs colourful Whatsapp media invite, giving details of his schedule, apparently as a rejoinder to Congress long continuing Congress aave chhey (Congress returning to power) slogan.

In a scenario where the BJP does not have a chief ministerial candidate for sure and Vijay Rupani is the only representative, it is only Narendra Modi who is there. But well, for Modi, the challenge is that he is the prime minister who multi-tasks as a de facto leader in Gujarat, and anything here would have a direct bearing on his politics.

More crucial than the fact that he has never seen a defeat in his political life is that he just cant afford to lose Gujarat in 2017. More crucial than the fact that this is his home state is that Gujarat is his model.

A defeat here would mean all his politics that he claims to be implementing across the country being thrown to the winds in his very own laboratory, by the very people who sustained and nurtured it over 15 years since 2002.

More crucial, still, is that two of the most self-touted big ticket decisions under his tutelage have come to hound him in his very own Gujarat just halfway through his prime ministership. The very two decisions of demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST) have already become a millstone around his neck.

It is a state and not a national election and he is the prime minister and no longer a chief minister. But when it comes to Gujarat, these differences collapse and everything is sure to revolve around him.

If Modi is removed from the narrative, a stereotype analysis of present day Gujarat politics would tell you the Congress is looking good after a drought of 32 years. It has never formed a government in the state since 1985 after its best performance of 149 seats out of 182, a record Narendra Modi has not been able to break with all his might.

It is for the first time that two loyal votebanks of the Bharatiya Janata Party, from where its entire rank and file was born and which have raised the party to its present height in Gujarat, have turned its worst enemies.

The urban middle class made up of small and medium businessmen, traders and office-goers are visibly angry with the BJP over GST and demonetisation since they have suffered the most because of the twin blows. This is not an interpretation or analysis, but a pulse that is being heard loud and clear, even by the BJP. No amount of convincing by Narendra Modi himself at public meetings that the two decisions would work well in the future seems to have worked.

There is no disagreement with the GST as a reform, but the anger  it is not anger, not a grouse  in the way it is being hastily driven down their throat refuses to die out. What is being called teething problems by Modi and BJP president Amit Shah have actually taken a heavy toll on the small and medium business segments as well as the traders, who have still not emerged from the pounding of demonetisation.

The other key votebank of the BJP is the Patidars, who have been the partys numerical, social and economic backbone and its 12 percent population is spread across all demographies of Gujarat. The mammoth response to Patidar reservation fighter Hardik Patels rallies across the state had to be seen to be believed.

Hardik Patels agitation for reservation to Patidars in government jobs and educational institutions under the OBC category grew in the middle of 2015 in the backdrop of agricultural stress, rising unemployment and a burgeoning private sector in education. His words appeal to younger Patidars between the twenties and thirties in the rural and semi-urban areas, who havent mostly seen any other partys rule in Gujarat, and have started believing in him that they had actually been used like a votebank by the BJP.

While there are already 20 lakh registered unemployed youth in Gujarat besides at least half as many not on the employment bureau records, the impact of demonetisation and GST have only accentuated the crisis and made the Patidar agitation as much stronger. This holds equally true for the Other Backward Classes (OBC) and the Dalits, who have also been hit by note ban and the new tax, while being already plagued by unemployment and the agrarian crisis they had been facing for long.
Ahmedabad: Unhappy over the BJP nominating his daughter-in-law instead of his wife from the Kaalol Assembly seat in Gujarat, party MP Prabhatsinh Chauhan has warned that he would not guarantee a win for the party if the candidate is not replaced with someone of his choice.

The BJP on Friday released its fifth list of 13 candidates for the second phase of Assembly polls in Gujarat. In the list, the ruling party dropped sitting MLA Arvindsinh Chauhan and instead fielded Prabhatsinh Chauhan's daughter-in-law Suman Chauhan from the Kaalol seat in Panchmahal district.

Enraged over the announcement, Prabhatsinh Chauhan dashed off a letter to BJP chief Amit Shah on Friday, urging him to replace Suman Chauhan with a "local candidate".

Although, in the letter he did not clearly demand that his wife Rangeshwari be given the party ticket, recently he had told reporters that she was the best candidate for the Kaalol seat.

While Rangeshwari is the president of Ghoghamba taluka panchayat of Panchamahal district, Suman Chauhan is a member of Panchmahal district panchayat.

In the letter, the parliamentarian also alleged that his son Pravinsinh is a "bootlegger" and that he and his wife had even gone to jail.

"My son Pravin is a bootlegger and several cases are still pending against him. Both he and his wife Suman even went to jail in the past. This will dent the BJP's prospects of winning the seat. Further, Suman belongs to Godhra and people of Kaalol will not accept her," Chauhan said in the letter.

"Though I am senior, having spent 45 years in public life, the party has not taken my opinion while selecting the candidates. I was also not taken into confidence while selecting the candidate for Kaalol. Thus, I urge you to consider changing the current candidate with a local one of my choice," he added.

Prabhatsinh Chauhan, a prominent Rajput face in the region, who had joined the BJP in 1992, claimed that though he had single-handedly established the BJP's dominance in that district over the years, he has been ignored by the party and not given any post in the organisation.

Chauhan stressed that the BJP would not get even a single vote from tribals. While his wife Rangeshwari is a tribal, Suman Chauhan is a Rajput.

"The BJP will not get a single vote, out of the 1.10 lakh votes of tribals due to this ongoing controversy. There are huge chances that we will lose Kaalol. Thus, I want to inform you that I will not take any responsibility of ensuring the party's victory on any of the seven seats under my constituency including Kaalol," Chauhan said in the letter.

Three days ago, Chauhan said that he had sought ticket for his wife on the ground that she had done "very good work" as Ghoghamba taluka panchayat president.

"Just go to Ghoghamba to see what kind of work she has done. She has completely uprooted corruption. Rangeshwari is the best candidate and that is why I have appealed to the party leaders to select her for Kaalol seat," Chauhan told reporters.

On Friday, when Rangeshwari came to know that she has been ignored in ticket allocation, she targeted her husband in a fiery Facebook post, in which she even dared him to enter Kaalol for poll campaign.

However, she deleted the post on Saturday.

"I had posted that comment out of anger and disappointment. That was not against the BJP, it was against the Member of Parliament. But now, I have entered into a compromise with him over the issue," Rangeshwari told reporters.
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday hit back at Rahul Gandhi for his "failed hugplomacy" jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the release of LeT founder Hafiz Saeed, saying the Congress vice-president should stand with the country and not with the mastermind of the Mumbai massacre.

Rahul baba,    

For once,stand with the country & not with Terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks & Ishtar Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. BTW, have you congratulated your "Hafeez Saheb's" on his release yet? @officeofrg https://t.co/ynOianLLYa  GVL Narasimha Rao (@GVLNRAO) November 25, 2017

Accusing the Congress of showing sympathy with Pakistan, the BJP leader GVL Narasimha Rao said "Congress ka haath, Aatankivadiyon ke saath(Congress stands with the terrorists)" would be a more appropriate slogan for the Grand Old Party. "While Manmohan Singh's government treated Pakistan as a victim state and let it off lightly, Narendra Modi has succeeded in isolating and cornering Pakistan as 'terroristan' not just in the region but globally and in all international fora like the United Nations, G20 summit, BRICS, ASEAN, etc," Rao said.

He said that the Congress and Rahul Gandhi have repeatedly betrayed the country by pandering to anti-India elements. "The manner in which they questioned the surgical strikes against the terror launch pads across the LoC and the utterly disgraceful attacks against the army chief as a 'sadak ka goonda(street thug)' and Rahul Gandhi's joining the groups shouting "Bharat ki barbaadi" slogans are symptomatic of Congress party's support for anti-India sentiments.

"The statements of Congress leaders eulogising and praising Burhan Wani and their solidarity for separatists clearly show their sympathies for pro-Pakistan elements. It is a tragedy that a party which ruled India for six decades has compromised with the terrorist groups that have bled India for the sake of appeasing a minority vote bank. They have abused Hindu religion with terms like 'Hindu terror' and 'saffron terror' for appeasing minorities. In no other country, terror is politicised as the Congress sought to do in power," he said in a statement.

Earlier, Rahul Gandhi took a dig at the prime minister and termed the latter's relationship with US president Donald Trump as failed "hugplomacy".

Narendrabhai,   . Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed.https://t.co/U8Bg2vlZqw  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 25, 2017

On Friday, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed, accused of masterminding the 26/11 Mumbai massacre in 2008, was freed after 10 months of house arrest in Pakistan.

Earlier in November, the US Congress also passed a bill which dropped action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) as a condition for Pakistan to receive hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Congress' rallying cry in the run-up to the Gujarat election has been 'Congress aave chhe, navsarjan lave chhe (The Congress is coming, and it's bringing about a new beginning.' It is difficult to predict what the Congress' situation will be like when the election is over. But Rahul Gandhi, by attending a function organised by Navsarjan, an organisation working with Dalits, has made it clear that he will make every effort to woo the community. Interestingly, in the function, it was repeatedly stressed that the event was not aligned with any political party. However, when Rahul Gandhi began his speech, it was clear thatin the politically charged environment ahead of the election the event was no less than a political rally. There is a fascinating story as to why the Congress vice-president attended the event organised by Navsarjan.

In August this year, Navsarjan got artisans from the Dalit community to make a National Flag and went to present it to Chief Minister Vijay Rupani. But Rupani declined to accept the flag, saying that there was no place to keep it, and that he would accept it when there would be place. Martin Macwan, the co-founder of Navsarjan, claims that it is the country's biggest flag. The flag was made by 1,205 Dalit labourers from 120 tehsils, and weighs about 240 kilograms. After this incident, Rahul Gandhi made it a point to accept the flag. Subsequently, there was much politics over this flag.

Apart from Rahul Gandhi, Ashok Gehlot and Ahmed Patel were also present at the event. Rahul, at the very beginning of his speech, made it clear that although the event was not organised by a political party, he would train his guns at Narendra Modi. He said that even if the flag had weighed 50,000 kilograms and he had even an inch of land to keep it, he would not have declined it. Hitting out at the BJP, he said that the party does not have a place in its heart for the National Flag.

Thakor not given a platform on event for Dalits

The event was meant to uplift and motivate the Dalit community. Here, important leaders of the Congress, including Alpesh Thakor, had marked their presence. But he was not given an opportunity to share the stage with Rahul Gandhi and Ahmed Patel. Dalits from far-flung regionseven Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Maharashtra had come to meet Rahul.

It appeared that members of the Dalit community in Gujarat present at the event were confounded as regards the upcoming Assembly election. On being asked who they would vote for, they would initially say that they would choose the Congress. But their approach would become more vigilant once Hardik Patel would come into the discussion. Gautam, a resident of Limdi village in Surendranagar said that some Patels are in need of reservation, but this quota should be given not on the basis of caste but on their economic condition.

Countering Modi wave in urban Gujarat an uphill task

Rahul Gandhi may be trying to win the Gujarat election through the support of Dalits, OBCs and Muslims, but the Congress may find it difficult to gain votes in urban areas. On 24 November, Rahul Gandhi had two events planned in Ahmedabad, but no taxi drivers were aware of his presence or the events he was supposed to attend. On being asked if it was a similar situation when Narendra Modi visited the city, the answer was remarkable. Chetan Chunara, a 25-year-old taxi driver, said, "Mota bhai (elder brother) is from here, and he keeps coming here. Even after becoming the prime minister, he has not forgotten about Gujarat."

While the BJP would be happy to hear such a statement, the Congress needs to take a lesson from this. At the ground level, Congress workers do not display the energy that BJP workers do. Rahul Gandhi toured Porbandar and Ahmedabad on the same day, in which he gave barely 30 to 45 minutes per event. In a state which is used to Modi's style of campaigning, Rahul Gandhi's short rallies will not be able to woo urban Gujarat.
Kolkata: The JD(U) and the BJP are "natural" allies and the two parties will fight the 2019 polls together, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said.

"When the time comes, we will sit together and divide the seats. We will fight together and Narendra Modi will be again the prime minister in 2019," he said at the India Today Conclave East on Friday.

He was replying to a question on whether the BJP might not feel the need for JD(U)'s support in the elections in 2019.

The BJP in alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP), Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and the Hindustani Awam Party accounts for 32 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar.

"Alliance is a give and take. When both the partners feel they will benefit from it then only it will work. We will fight together with Nitish Kumar-led JD (U) in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls," he said.

His remarks assume significance as there were some discordant voices from leaders of both the parties on seat sharing for the next general elections earlier.

After a meeting with MPs from Bihar, BJP chief Amit Shah had asked partymen to strengthen it down to the booth level in all 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The JD(U) also appealed to its workers to brace to contest on all the 40 seats.

RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and other Opposition parties leaders had used the occasion to attack Nitish Kumar, claiming that he was marginalised by the saffron party to avenge an incident in 2010 when he had canceled a dinner for BJP leaders over a tiff with Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat.

"The JD(U) and the BJP are made for each other," Sushil Modi said. "Nitish Kumar has been our partner for 17 years and again the JD(U) and the BJP have come together, it is a natural alliance," said the senior BJP leader, who also served as the deputy chief minister in the earlier NDA government.

The JD(U) had severe ties with the BJP in June 2013 over the elevation of Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate. After the collapse of an alliance comprising the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress in July this year, Nitish Kumar and the BJP once again joined hands after four years to form a coalition in the politically sensitive state.

Sushil Modi's allegations against Lalu Prasad and his family of acquiring benami properties had played an important role in the disintegration of the alliance comprising the JD(U), the Congress and the RJD.

When the JD(U) and the BJP coalition was sworn in again on 27 July this year, Sushil Modi was made the deputy chief minister.

The senior BJP leader dismissed speculation that a seat-sharing adjustment, in which the JD(U) would also be accommodated, might upset the sitting BJP MPs if they were denied tickets.

"What is the guarantee that every MP will get party ticket a second time? And what will they do by getting upset? If people make up their mind then it hardly matters who is getting ticket or not," Sushil Modi said.

Sushil Modi accused Lalu Prasad of being "chaotic, disorganised and an irresponsible man".

"No gentleman can work with a person like Lalu Prasad. An unnatural alliance (of the JD(U), RJD and Congress) died a natural death. The day Nitish Kumar left the NDA, I knew this alliance (with the RJD) would not work but, I never thought it would break so soon," he claimed.
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday thanked the international community including Britain for their support in the re-election of India's Dalveer Bhandari to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Swaraj conveyed India's gratitude to the foreign governments during a reception for the diplomatic community which was also attended by Justice Bhandari.

"A historic moment for India. EAM @SushmaSwaraj addressed the diplomatic corps in New Delhi, she conveyed gratitude to the international diplomatic community for their support for election of Justice Dalveer Bhandari to ICJ," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.

A historic moment for India. EAM @SushmaSwaraj addressed the diplomatic corps in New Delhi, she conveyed gratitude to the international diplomatic community for their support for election of Justice Dalveer Bhandari to ICJ. pic.twitter.com/3jaZJnS9jb  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) November 25, 2017

In her address, Swaraj particularly mentioned Britain for withdrawing its candidate during the contest which paved the way for Bhandari's re-election, sources said.

The External Affairs Ministry had invited all the foreign missions here for the meeting and a large number of diplomats, including British High Commissioner Sir Dominic Asquith, attended it, they said.

The event was attended by the top brass of the external affairs ministry including Minister of State VK Singh and Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar.

Bhandari was on Tuesday re-elected to the ICJ as the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly threw its weight behind him, forcing Britain to withdraw its candidate from the hard-fought race to the world court.

Bhandari and the UK's Christopher Greenwood were locked in a neck-and-neck fight for re-election as the UN could not decide between them after electing four out of five judges to the International Court of Justice (ICJ)

Bhandari, 70, received 183-193 votes in the General Assembly and secured all 15 votes in the Security Council to fill the final vacancy on the ICJ after separate but simultaneous elections were held at the UN headquarters in New York.
Reuters

A Canadian accused by the United States of helping Russian intelligence agents break into email accounts as part of a massive 2014 breach of Yahoo accounts is expected to plead guilty next week, according to court records.

Karim Baratov, who earlier this year waived his right to fight a U.S. request for his extradition from Canada, is scheduled to appear in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday for the plea hearing, according to a court calendar seen on 24 November.

Baratov, a 22-year-old Canadian citizen born in Kazakhstan, was arrested in Canada in March at the request of U.S. prosecutors. He later waived his right to fight a request for his extradition to the United States.

Andrew Mancilla, Baratovs lawyer, declined to comment. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorneys Office in San Francisco did not respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. Justice Department announced charges in March against Baratov and three other men, including two officers in Russias Federal Security Service (FSB), for their roles in the 2014 theft of 500 million Yahoo accounts.

Verizon Communications Inc, the largest U.S. wireless operator, acquired most of Yahoo Incs assets in June.

Prosecutors said that the FSB officers, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, directed and paid hackers to obtain information and used Alexsey Belan, who is among the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations most-wanted cyber criminals, to breach Yahoo.

When the FSB officers learned that a target had a non-Yahoo webmail account, including through information obtained from the Yahoo hack, they worked with Baratov, who was who paid to break into at least 80 email accounts, prosecutors said.

The individuals associated with the accounts they sought to access included Russian officials, the chief executive of a metals company and a prominent banker, according to the indictment.

At least 50 of the accounts Baratov targeted were hosted by Google, the indictment said. 21 Novembers proceedings before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria are scheduled as a change of plea hearing.

Baratov, the only person arrested to date in the case, previously in August pleaded not guilty to conspiring to commit computer fraud, conspiring to commit access device fraud, conspiring to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
IANS

After Google reportedly confirmed the practice of gathering location data from Android devices even when the service was disabled by users, regulators in South Korea summoned representatives of the tech giant this week for questioning.

Data protection officials in Britain are also looking into the matter, CNNMoney reported on 24 November. The probe in South Korea follows a report by Quartz which found that Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby mobile towers  even when location services are disabled  and sending that data back to Google.

This makes search engine giant and the unit of Alphabet behind Android to have access to huge amount of data that invades their privacy. Users cannot opt out of this even when their devices are factory reset, the report said.

Google reportedly confirmed the move which was undertaken "to improve the speed and performance of message delivery". The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) "is carrying out an inquiry into the claims that Google collected users' Cell ID data without consent even when their smartphone's location service was inactive," Chun Ji-hyun, head of KCC's privacy infringement division, told CNNMoney on 24 November.

Google said Android phones are no longer requesting Cell ID codes, and collection should be phased out this month.
IANS

Pitching for the government's flagship Digital India campaign in front of a global audience, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on 25 November said that India is committed to an open, safe, secure, inclusive, democratic and dynamic cyber space.

"The Digital India programme is focused on three key vision areas," Sushma Swaraj said while delivering the valedictory address at the closing ceremony of the Global Conference on Cyber Space (GCCS) 2017.

"One, infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, two, governance and services on demand, and three, digital empowerment of citizens," she said. Sushma Swaraj said that the Digital India programme has the potential to truly transform India from a developing to a developed knowledge economy.

She also pointed out that the very dynamic and evolving nature of cyberspace has brought cyber issues to the centre-stage of development polity, crime prevention and investigation, expansion of economy and trade, national and international security.

"The fact that all forms of activities  political , social, economic and development - which are now conducted and connected in cyber space has not only expedited the pace of growth, but also brought forth a new set of challenges for which no pre-set solutions exist," Sushma Swaraj said while dwelling on threats in the digital space.

"The lack of borders in cyberspace and the anonymity of the actors has ensured that the traditional concepts of sovereignty, jurisdiction and privacy are challenged," she cautioned.

She said that the global gathering of cyber experts in the GCCS was a testimony to the fact that the nations need to engage with each other to redefine concepts and align traditional processes to the new paradigms.

"India is committed to the objective of having an open, safe, secure, inclusive, democratic and dynamic cyberspace that responds swiftly to challenges," the External Affairs Minister, who is known for her active use of Twitter and has over 10 million followers on the social media platform, said.

Stating that the growing significance of cyber issues in the international arena could not be exaggerated, she said that this was reflected in the growing conversations across the world at all high level summits, interactions and conferences.

"That there is hardly a meeting between heads of states which goes without a discussion on cyber issues points to the growing penetration, significance and criticality of Internet to the social, economic and cultural lives of the nations," Sushma Swaraj said.

At the same time, she said that cyberspace has been infiltrated by malicious actors looking for opportunities to exploit vulnerabilities. "The anonymity, borderless spaces and speed have helped these elements to carry out nefarious activities ranging from cyber espionage, concerted attacks on networks, data theft, infringement of privacy and extremist propaganda to name a few," she stated.

"Crime syndicates and terrorist organisations now leverage malicious tools in cyberspace to carry out complex crimes posing considerable challenges to the law enforcement agencies."

Sushma Swaraj said that the disappearance of traditional concepts of borders and the speed of proliferation of crime has heightened the need to enter into agreements and arrangements among countries for cooperation at various levels.

"Further as more and more developing countries take to digital space to carry out developmental activities, new mechanisms for international cooperation need to be evolved," she said.

"It is imperative that the states engage with each other diplomatically in increasing instances of cyber attacks to defuse tensions arising in the wake of challenges of attribution," the External Affairs Minister said.

Stating that India has taken steps to promote international security and stability in cyberspace through a framework that recognises the applicability of international law, in particular the UN Charter, she said: "We are committed to a multi-stakeholder approach of Internet governance that is transparent and accountable to its stakeholders, including governments, academia, civil society and industry."

GCCS 2017 was attended by around 3,900 delegates, including 800 foreign delegates, with 139 countries being represented in the event. This was the first time that the event, which was first held in London in 2011, was organised outside the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the two-day fifth edition of the GCCS on 23 November.
tech2 News Staff

A new Xiaomi phone render has surfaced online with a full-screen 18:9 aspect ratio display. One might expect it to be some kind of successor of the Mi Mix series but, the photo clearly shows bezels (however minute) on all four sides of the phone. So then what is this device?

Speculations are leaning more towards the device being Xiaomi's yet-unannounced Redmi Note 5, which according to earlier reports, is coming with a bezel-less display. However, the apparent dual-front camera system on the front of the phone throws a twist in the tale.

According to Gizmochina the phone could most likely be the Xiaomi Mi 6C. Now there is no way to verify this information so it is all guess-work at the moment. The back side of the phone's render does not show the top of the device where we the the dual-camera system and the fingerprint sensor may be residing.

Also visible in the renders is what looks like metal body and speaker grills at the bottom, which according to the report, is quite reminiscent of a mid-range Redmi device. The report also claims that the phone could be priced around CNY 1,499. No further details are available at this point.

Xiaomi tweeted out on its Indian Twitter handle that it will be launching a new phone in India on 30 November. The tagline for this new device is #Deshkasmartphone and it might be possible that the company will be launching a smartphone that is completely built in India as it gears up to boost its manufacturing presence in India.
PTI

Cybersecurity has taken centrestage of discussion at global forums as the borderless nature of internet and anonymity of threat actors has heightened the need for closer cooperation among nations, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said. Speaking at the closing ceremony of the Global Conference on Cyberspace 2017, the minister said internet has not only expedited the pace of political, social and economic growth, but also thrown up new set of challenges for which there are "no preset solutions".

"The lack of borders in cyberspace and the anonymity of the actors has ensured that the traditional concepts of sovereignty, jurisdiction and privacy are challenged...The global community  which has so far benefited from cyberspace  is beginning to wake up to its threats," she said. Swaraj asserted that India is committed to an open, safe, inclusive and democratic internet that responds swiftly to challenges.

Highlighting the growing concerns around cybersecurity globally, she said there is hardly a meeting between the heads of states where discussions on such issues do not figure. "It points to the growing penetration, significance of internet on the social, economic and cultural lives of the nations. The linking of devices and growing Internet of Things (IoT) has made cyber issues a critical aspect of cybersecurity and development politics," she added.

While "peaceful" uses of technology have fuelled growth of economies and connected citizens globally, cyberspace is also infiltrated by malicious actors looking out for opportunities to exploit the vulnerabilities, Swaraj cautioned. "The anonymity, borderless spaces and speed has helped these elements to carry out nefarious activities ranging from cyber espionage, concerted attacks on networks, data theft, infringement of privacy, extremist propaganda to name a few," she pointed out.

Crime syndicates and terrorist organisations are leveraging malicious tools in cyberspace to carry out complex crimes, posing considerable challenge to the law enforcement agencies, she said, urging nations to come together to counter this growing threat. Swaraj said there is a greater need for countries to enter into agreements and arrangements for cooperation at various levels. Speaking at a previous session, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval urged global security organisations to enhance cooperation and look at evolving cyber-related security structure to counter the threats in cyberspace.

He warned that advent of new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics could compound the complexities of cyber threats. "It may also be necessary that security organisations of the world will need much greater cooperation and specific cyber-related security structure for fast sharing of information, identifying defaulters, proceeding against them and supporting to law enforcing agencies," he added.
Washington: Mumbai attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed has "blood on his hands", and wants to bring extremism into the mainstream politics of Pakistan, a former top American spymaster said on Saturday.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder, who has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan on Friday.

"Saeed is a terrorist. Worked with the LeT, a Kashmiri militant group, and al-Qaida on attacks," Michael Morell, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deputy director, who has also served twice as its acting director, said in a tweet.

"He has blood on his hands. Now wants to bring extremism into the political mainstream in Pakistan," he said after Saeed, a UN and US designated terrorist, was released from house arrest in Lahore.

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The fire-brand cleric's release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

A deeply concerned US has asked the Pakistan government to re-arrest and charge Saeed for his crimes. It also asked Pakistan to ensure that the LeT leader is behind bars.

"NO! JuD is NOT tied to Islamic State. What a rookie...Seriously. Hafiz Saeed's Release Completes the Political Mainstreaming of Jihadists in Pakistan," tweeted Christine Fair, a well-known South Asian expert on terrorist groups.

NBC News said Saeed's release could once again sour US relations with Pakistan.

The New York Times said, for decades, Pakistan has cast a benign eye on groups like LeT  which is perceived as an asset because its attacks target Indian soldiers in Kashmir  even as the government battles jihadist groups like the Pakistan Taliban that directly threatens the country.

"But despite its pressure on Pakistan to move against militants like Saeed, the United States has also sent mixed messages. Just a month ago, the United States Senate struck down a provision tying American government funding to Pakistan to the country's efforts to curb Lashkar-e-Taiba's operations."

"The provision, part of a broader Pentagon-funding legislation that Congress introduced this past summer, would have forced the secretary of defence to certify that Islamabad was thwarting Lashkar-e-Taiba's activities inside Pakistan or risk USD 350 million in American assistance," the Times wrote.

Meanwhile, in an op-ed, The Washington Examiner said the Trump administration "should work with India" to "capture or kill" Saeed.

"Trump should call Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and offer to work with him to capture or kill Saeed," the daily said, adding that Saeed intends to lead a new Muslim theocratic political bloc in next year's parliamentary polls.

"Although Pakistan's electoral commission has refused to certify the bloc, Saeed's populist power should not be understated. Charismatic and determined, if left unchecked in his political party or terrorist activities, Saeed could destabilise the region," the daily added.

The JuD is believed to be the front organisation for the banned LeT which is responsible for carrying out the Mumbai terror attack.
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irelands minority government looked set to collapse on Friday after the party propping it up submitted a motion of no confidence in the deputy prime minister, weeks before a summit on Britains plans to leave the European Union. Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland Leo Varadkar speaks on stage during his opening address of the Fine Gael national party conference in Ballyconnell, Ireland November 10, 2017. REUTERS/Clodagh KilcoyneThe crisis is likely to lead to an election next month or in January and may complicate the Dec. 14-15 Brexit summit. Prime Minister Leo Varadkar is due to play a major role in the talks, telling EU leaders whether Ireland believes sufficient progress has been made on the future border between EU-member Ireland and Britains province of Northern Ireland. The border is one of three issues Brussels wants broadly resolved before it decides whether to move the talks on to a second phase about trade, as Britain wants. Varadkar is now likely to go into the summit as a lame duck prime minister or in the middle of an election campaign. The head of opposition party Fianna Fail, Micheal Martin, said his party had submitted a motion of no-confidence in Deputy Prime Minister Frances Fitzgerald, to be debated on Tuesday. The trigger is her handling of a legal case involving a police whistleblower. Martin told state broadcaster RTE that an election can be avoided if the government takes action by asking Fitzgerald to resign. But the government said this would not happen. Varadkar and Martin met briefly to discuss the standoff on Friday and are due to speak again on Saturday. At a time when issues and decisions will need to be made that will reverberate in our country for decades to come, the prospect of either an election taking place or a government not being in place afterwards is actually unconscionable, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe told RTE. These are historic decisions ... The agenda that is at play here is one of political interest. We need to be aware of the consequences of the approach that Fianna Fail are taking here, the usually calm Donohoe fumed. Junior Finance Minister Michael DArcy told Reuters he believed there would be an election before Christmas and a source familiar with the partys planning said it had begun to make preparations on Friday for an election. BORDER DEBATE As well as the border, the other issues Brussels wants resolved before talks move on to trade arrangements are Britains financial settlement on leaving the bloc and the rights of EU citizens living in Britain. EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier assured Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney on Friday that the EU would defend Dublins position in talks with Britain over the coming weeks. Strong solidarity with Ireland, Barnier tweeted. Irish issues are EU issues. Coveney told parliament on Thursday the government was not yet ready to allow the talks to move on to trade issues, and needed more clarity from London. Fianna Fails Martin said Varadkar could still take part in the EU summit and that parliament would be united in supporting him. But the collapse could distract Varadkar and undermine his standing during the talks. University College Dublin politics professor David Farrell said Varadkar may be tempted to take a hard line against the United Kingdom in the talks in a bid to shore up support among Irish voters, who are overwhelmingly against Brexit. I suppose the only card he can try and play to distract from the crazy shenanigans around the causes of this election is leadership in Europe, he said. A snap election next month in the Irish Republic would also rule out a resumption of talks to restore a devolved government in Northern Ireland, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Arlene Foster, told BBC. The DUP has for months been in on-off talks with the Irish nationalists Sinn Fein to break a political stalemate north of the border. As Sinn Fein also fields candidates in the south, Foster said their focus would be entirely on that. NEW SINN FEIN LEADER An imminent election would be dominated by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, two centre-right parties that differ little on policy but have been bitter foes for decades, something that has always left the minority government one serious row away from collapse. But it would also present an opportunity for Sinn Fein to see if leader Gerry Adams decision last week to step down will boost its support. The party said deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald would lead them into the election, if one is called. While Sinn Fein, the third largest party in the Republic, has said it wants to enter government, the two largest parties have ruled out doing a deal with the left-wing party, the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Since Varadkars appointment as Fine Gael leader six months ago, his party has narrowly led Fianna Fail in opinion polls, which suggest both parties would increase their support but struggle to form anything but another minority government. The Fianna Fail move comes after Fitzgerald admitted she was made aware of an attempt to discredit a police whistleblower in a 2015 email, but failed to act. Fine Gael say she adhered to due process. The case relates to a whistleblower who alleged widespread misconduct in the force. His treatment by the authorities led in 2014 to the resignations of the then police commissioner and justice minister.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Militants killed more than 230 people at a mosque in North Sinai on Friday, detonating a bomb and gunning down worshippers in the deadliest such attack in Egypts modern history, state media and witnesses said. No group immediately claimed responsibility, but since 2013 Egyptian security forces have battled an Islamic State affiliate in the mainly desert region, and militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers. State media showed images of bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of El Arish, the main city in North Sinai. Worshippers were finishing Friday prayers at the mosque when a bomb exploded, witnesses said. Around 40 gunmen set up positions outside the mosque with jeeps and opened fire from different directions as people tried to escape. Four groups of armed men attacked the worshippers inside the mosque after Friday noon prayers. Two groups were firing at ambulances to deter them, said Mohamed, a witness. The public prosecutors office said in a statement 235 people had been killed and 109 more wounded. Hours after the attack, Egypts military launched air strikes on targets in mountainous areas around Bir al-Abed, security sources and witnesses said. The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force, Egypts President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said in a televised address. What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism, to destroy our efforts to stop the terrible criminal plan that aims to destroy what is left of our region. Egypt later said it would delay the opening of the Rafah border crossing to Gaza after the attack due to security concerns. The crossing had been due to open for three days beginning on Saturday. Striking at a mosque would be a change in tactics for the Sinai militants, who have usually attacked troops and police and Christian churches. SUFI MUSLIMS Arabiya news channel and some local sources said some of the worshippers were Sufis, whom groups such as Islamic State consider targets because they revere saints and shrines, which for Islamists is tantamount to idolatry. The jihadists have also attacked local tribes and their militias for working with the army and police, branding them traitors. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi is seen during a meeting with government members on the attack in North Sinai, in Cairo, Egypt, November 24, 2017 in this handout picture courtesy of the Egyptian Presidency. The Egyptian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS The Sinai branch is one of Islamic States surviving branches following the collapse of its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq after military defeats by U.S.-backed forces. Sisi, a former armed forces commander who presents himself as a bulwark against Islamist militancy, convened an emergency meeting with his defence and interior ministers and intelligence chief soon after the attack. Security has long been one of the key sources of public support for the former general, who is expected to run for re-election early next year for another four-year term. U.S. President Donald Trump, in a post on Twitter on Friday, called the assault a horrible and cowardly terrorist attack. The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence, he added. Trump later called Sisi to express his condolences and said the United States stands by Egypts side in its fight against terrorism and is ready to strengthen cooperation with Egypt in this field, according to a statement from Sisis office. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also condemned the attack and expressed solidarity with Egypt. SINAI STRUGGLE North Sinai, which stretches from the Suez Canal eastwards to the Gaza Strip and Israel, has long been a security headache for Egyptian security forces because of smuggling. Sisi has support from some Bedouin tribal leaders, who have helped the army locate weapon-smuggling routes used by jihadi groups, security officials said. Local militant group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, once allied to al Qaeda, split from it and declared allegiance to Islamic State in 2014. Bloodshed in the Sinai worsened after 2013 when Sisi led the overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamic State earlier this year posted a video of the beheading of two Sufis in northern Sinai, accusing them of practicing sorcery. In July this year, at least 23 soldiers were killed when suicide car bombs hit two military checkpoints in the Sinai, in an attack claimed by Islamic State. Militants have tried to expand their operations into Egypts heavily populated mainland, hitting Coptic Christian churches and pilgrims. In May, gunmen attacked a Coptic group travelling to a monastery in southern Egypt, killing 29.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Dhaka: Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed to take assistance from the UN refugee agency for the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali said on Saturday.

The two governments signed a pact on Thursday settling the terms of the repatriation process, and the return of the Rohingya to Myanmar is expected to start in two months.

Uncertainty over whether the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would have a role had prompted rights groups to insist that outside monitors were needed to safeguard the Rohingyas return.

More than 6,00,000 Rohingya sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after Myanmars military launched a brutal counter-insurgency in their villages across the northern parts of Rakhine State following attacks by Rohingya militants on an army base and police posts on 25 August.

The signing of the deal is a first step. The two countries will now have to work on more steps, Ali told a news conference.

Both countries agreed to take assistance from the UNHCR in the Rohingya repatriation process, he said. Myanmar will take its assistance as per their requirement.

A joint working group of the three parties will be formed within three weeks and the group will fix the final terms to start the repatriation process, said Ali.

Our priority is to ensure their safe return to their homeland with honour, the minister said.

After repatriation, Rohingya Muslims will be kept at makeshift camps near to their abandoned homes, he said.

Homes have been burnt to the ground in Rakhine, that need to be rebuilt. We have proposed Myanmar to take help from India and China for building camps for them, the minister said.

The UN and United States have described the militarys actions as ethnic cleansing, and rights groups have accused Myanmars security forces of atrocities, including mass rape, arson and killings.

Under the deal, Myanmar will take measures to see that the returnees will not be settled in temporary places for a long time and Myanmar will issue them an identity card for national verification immediately on their return.
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistans government on Saturday called on the army to help clear a sit-in by Islamist hard-liners blockading the capital after police clashed with activists and religious protests spread to other cities. A supporter of the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, an Islamist political party, gestures after blocking the main road leading to the airport in Karachi, Pakistan November 25, 2017. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro Dozens of people were injured in Saturdays clashes, including many police, according to reports from hospitals. Protesters said four of their activists had been killed, but police said there had been no deaths. By nightfall, protests spread to other main cities with activists brandishing sticks and attacking cars in some areas. New demonstrators had joined the camp in Faizabad, just outside Islamabad, in a stand-off with police, Private TV stations were ordered off the air, with only state-run television broadcasting. Activists from Tehreek-e-Labaik, a new hard-line Islamist political party, have blockaded the main road into the capital for two weeks, accusing the law minister of blasphemy against Islam and demanding his dismissal and arrest. We are in our thousands. We will not leave. We will fight until end, Tehreek-e-Labaik party spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters by telephone from the scene. Tehreek-e-Labaik is one of two new ultra-religious political movements that have risen up in recent months and seem set to play a major role in elections that must be held by summer next year, though they are unlikely to win a majority. CHAOS AND CONSPIRACY Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal told Reuters in a message on Saturday night that the government had requisitioned the military assistance for law and order duty according to the constitution. The ruling party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif - who was disqualified by the Supreme Court in July and is facing a corruption trial - has a fraught history with the military, which in 1999 launched a coup to oust Sharif from an earlier term. Earlier in the day, Iqbal said the protests were part of a conspiracy to weaken the government, which is now run by Sharifs allies under a new prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. There are attempts to create a chaos in (the) country, Iqbal said on state-run Pakistan TV. I have to say with regret that a political party that is giving its message to people based on a very sacred belief is being used in the conspiracy that is aimed at spreading anarchy in the country, Iqbal added, without saying who he considered responsible. Pakistans army chief on Saturday called on the civilian government to end the protest while avoiding violence from both sides. Opposition leader Imran Khan called for early elections, saying the incompetent and dithering administration had allowed a breakdown of governance. Supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, an Islamist political party, chant slogans as they walk to join the sit-in protest in Karachi, Pakistan November 25, 2017. REUTERS/Akhtar SoomroThe clashes began on Saturday when police launched an operation involving some 4,000 officers to disperse around 1,000 activists and break up their camp, police official Saood Tirmizi told Reuters. Television footage showed a police vehicle on fire, heavy curtains of smoke and fires burning in the streets as officers in heavy riot gear advanced. Protesters, some wearing gas masks, fought back in scattered battles across empty highways and surrounding neighbourhoods. The protesters have paralysed daily life in the capital, and have defied court orders to disband. Tehreek-e-Labaik blames the law minister, Zahid Hamid, for changes to an electoral law that changed a religious oath proclaiming Mohammad the last prophet of Islam to the words I believe, a change the party says amounts to blasphemy. The government put the issue down to a clerical error and swiftly changed the language back. People walk after crossing the blockades put up by the supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, an Islamist political party, along the main road leading to the airport in Karachi, Pakistan November 25, 2017. REUTERS/Akhtar SoomroTehreek-e-Laibak was born out of a protest movement lionizing Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab province who gunned down his boss in 2011 over his call to reform strict blasphemy laws. The party won a surprisingly strong 7.6 percent of the vote in a by-election in Peshawar last month. MORE JOIN PROTESTS The government had tried to negotiate an end to the sit-in, fearing violence during a crackdown similar to 2007, when clashes between authorities and supporters of a radical Islamabad mosque led to the deaths of more than 100 people. Despite the police crackdown, the protesters were largely still in place by nightfall and Tehreek-e-Labaik leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a prominent cleric, remained at the site, party activist Mohammad Shafiq Ameeni said. Four protesters had died in the police crackdown, he added. By late afternoon, Tehreek-e-Labaik supporters were coming out on the streets in other Pakistani cities in support. Police fired tear gas in Karachi, the southern port that is Pakistans largest city, to try to disperse about 500 demonstrators near the airport. Outside the northwestern city of Peshawar, about 300 protesters blocked the motorway to Islamabad and started attacking vehicles with stones and sticks. In the eastern city of Lahore, party supporters blocked three roads into the city.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Islamabad: Pakistani authorities ordered private television channels to go off air on Saturday during a police and paramilitary crackdown on Islamist protesters in the capital.

The suspension was ordered by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority for violating media regulations showing live coverage of a security operation, a statement from the regulator said. State-run Pakistan Television continued to broadcast but aired a talk show discussing politics.

Pakistani police used tear gas and water cannon and fought running battles with stone-throwing Islamist activists, as they moved to clear a protest by the religious hard-liners who have blocked main routes into Islamabad for more than two weeks.

The clashes began on Saturday when police launched an operation, involving some 4,000 officers, to disperse around 1,000 activists from Tehreek-e-Labaik, a new hard-line Islamist political party, and break up their camp, police official Saood Tirmizi told Reuters.

Dozens of protesters were arrested, Tirmizi said, and a hospital reported at least 27 people were being treated for injuries.

The mass protest, plus the recent gains of two new Islamist parties in Pakistan, demonstrated the religious rights gathering strength ahead of what are expected to be tumultuous elections next year.

Television footage showed smoke billowing and fires burning in the streets as officers in heavy riot gear advanced. Protesters, some wearing gas masks, fought back in scattered battles across empty highways and surrounding neighbourhoods.

We are in our thousands. We will not leave. We will fight until the end, Tehreek-e-Labaik party spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters by telephone from the scene.

The protesters have paralysed daily life in the capital, and have defied court orders to disband, demanding that the minister of law fired.

Tehreek-e-Labaik blames the minister, Zahid Hamid, for changes to an electoral oath that it says amounts to blasphemy. The government puts the issue down to a clerical error.

Death to blasphemers is a central rallying cry for Tehreek-e-Laibak, which was born out of a protest movement lionizing Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab province who gunned down his boss in 2011 over his call to reform strict blasphemy laws.

The party, which advocates strict rule by Islamic Sharia law, won a surprisingly strong 7.6 percent of the vote in a by-election in Peshawar last month.

Since Tehreek-e-Labaik began its sit-in, the government has blocked several roads with shipping containers to corral the protesters, but that has caused hours-long traffic jams in and around the capital.

The government had tried to negotiate an end to the sit-in, fearing violence during a crackdown similar to 2007, when clashes between authorities and supporters of radical Islamabad mosque led to the deaths of more than 100 people.

By late morning, Tehreek-e-Labaik supporters were coming out on the streets in other Pakistani cities in support of the Islamabad protesters.

About 500 demonstrators blocked one of the main roads in Karachi, the southern port that is Pakistans largest city, a Reuters witness said, though the gathering was peaceful.

In the eastern city of Lahore, party supporters blocked three roads into the city, provincial government spokesman Malik Ahmad Khan said.

We want them to disperse peacefully. Otherwise, we have other options open, he said. We dont want to use force, but we will if there is no other option left.
Islamabad: Pakistani forces fired rubber bullets and lobbed tear gas at protesters in Islamabad on Saturday as they moved to disperse an Islamist sit-in that has virtually paralysed the country's capital for weeks.

The roughly 8,500 elite police and paramilitary troops in riot gear began clearing the 2,000 or so demonstrators soon after dawn, with nearby roads and markets closed.

The sit-in by the little-known hardline group called Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah Pakistan has blocked a main highway used by thousands of commuters since 6 November, causing hours-long traffic snarls and enraging commuters.

The protesters are demanding that Pakistan's law minister Zahid Hamid resign over a hastily-abandoned amendment to the oath that election candidates must swear.

Demonstrators have linked it to blasphemy  a highly contentious issue in Muslim Pakistan  and claim the oath was softened to enable the participation of Ahmadis, a long-persecuted Islamic minority sect.

AFP reporters at the scene said small scuffles had broken out as protesters hurled rocks at police. Others were detained as security forces began to clear the site. Some ambulances could be seen in the area but it was not clear if there had been any injuries.

Television images showed people standing on top of freight containers that had blocked the roads around the sit-in, and plumes of smoke filling the air.

An Islamabad police official said that the operation sought to avoid any loss of life on either side.

The sit-in has already cost the life of at least one eight-year-old child whose ambulance could not reach a hospital in time due to the blocked roads, a statement from Pakistan's Supreme Court confirmed this week.

Despite the protest's relatively small size, authorities have hesitated to act against it, citing fears of violence as the demonstrators have vowed to die for their cause.

But government inaction has drawn the fury of the courts as well as millions of residents in Islamabad and neighbouring Rawalpindi. The Supreme Court and the Islamabad High Court have issued blistering criticism and threatened to hold officials in contempt for their inaction.

Analysts and critics have accused the government of bungling its response to the protest, and allowing a minor issue to grow into a headline-grabbing and potentially dangerous situation.

It set an alarming precedent, that "anytime anyone is upset with the government, the capital may be choked and the government will bend its knees," warned Zeeshan Salahuddin of the Center for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad.
New Delhi: In a bid to defuse the situation in Myanmar's Rakhine state where violence has triggered an outflow of Rohingya refugees, India has sent relief material consisting of 3,000 family relief packs.

"With best wishes from the people of India. Indian Air Force aircraft lands today in Yangon, Myanmar, with 3000 family relief packs consisting of daily essentials including rice, oil, salt, sugar, soap, etc. for distribution among the displaced persons in Rakhine state," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted on Friday evening.

With best wishes from the people of India. Indian Air Force aircraft lands today in Yangon, Myanmar with 3000 family relief packs consisting of daily essentials including rice, oil, salt, sugar, soap, etc. for distribution amongst the displaced persons in Rakhine State pic.twitter.com/wV7sobbTS0  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) November 24, 2017

More than 6,00,000 Rohingyas have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since violence erupted in Rakhine late in August.

The minority Rohingya community does not enjoy citizenship in Myanmar and is sparingly given refugee status in Bangladesh.

Human rights monitors accused Myanmar's military of atrocities against the minority population during its clearance operations following Rohingya militants' 25 August attacks on multiple government posts.

On Thursday, however, Bangladesh foreign minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Minister for the Office of the State Counsellor of Myanmar Kyaw Tint Swe signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Nay Pyi Taw for the return of these refugees.

India has maintained that the issue should be handled in a humane manner, development activities should be initiated in Rakhine and conditions should be created for the safe and secure return of the refugees to their homes.

During his visit to Myanmar in September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi shared India's concerns over the issue in a meeting with that country's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

India has also sent relief material to Bangladesh to handle the Rohingya refugee crisis.
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Support for Irelands governing Fine Gael party fell in a poll on Saturday as a political crisis that has left the country three days away from the calling of a snap election showed no sign of being resolved. Ireland's Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Leo Varadkar greets Director of the National Women's Council of Ireland Orla O'Connor as he arrives at the launch of the FemFest conference in Dublin, Ireland, November 25, 2017. REUTERS/Clodagh KilcoynePrime Minister Leo Varadkars minority government was on the brink on Friday after the party propping it up submitted a motion of no confidence in the deputy prime minister, weeks before a summit on Britains plans to leave the European Union where Ireland will play a key role. [nL8N1NU2FB] Varadkar has said that if the motion put down by Fianna Fail, the main opposition party, is not withdrawn by Tuesday, he would be forced to hold an election before Christmas. Support for his party dropped two points to 27 percent in the Sunday Business Post/Red C poll, only marginally ahead of the 25.5 percent it achieved at last years election and its worst performance in recent opinion polls. Fellow centre-right party Fianna Fail rose to 26 percent from 25 percent a month ago and leftwing opposition Sinn Fein were up two points to 16 percent, both also marginally higher than the last election. The survey was taken between November 20 and 24, the day the crisis escalated rapidly and suggested the parties would struggle to form anything but another minority administration. Again (the poll) suggests no one wins at a Christmas election if these numbers hold, Richard Colwell, the chief executive of Red C, wrote on Twitter. Varadkar has said that there is still time to avoid the snap poll but neither side were stepping down on Saturday ahead of the motion of no-confidence, to be debated on Tuesday. Although the leaders will do their best, it is unlikely that the positions are going to shift between now and Tuesday, and if that is the case the only way we can prevent an election is for the Tanaiste to resign, senior Fianna Fail MP Jim OCallaghan told national broadcaster RTE. The Tanaiste is the name given to the position of deputy head of government in Ireland, currently held by Frances Fitzgerald. Health Minister Simon Harris said the price of any talks over the next three days will not be the head of the deputy prime minister and that the agreement with Fianna Fail that allows the minority government to function was extremely badly damaged. Varadkar is due to play a major role in the Dec. 14-15 EU summit on Brexit, telling fellow leaders whether Dublin believes sufficient progress has been made on the future border between EU-member Ireland and Britains province of Northern Ireland. The government has said enough progress has not been made to date. The border is one of three issues Brussels wants broadly resolved before it decides whether to move the talks on to a second phase about trade and EU officials have said a snap election in Ireland would complicate that task. [nL8N1NU2UT]

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Yangon: Chinese president Xi Jinping met with Myanmars top military general in Beijing on Friday and discussed Chinas support amid international criticism over its treatment of the Rohingya minority, according a statement from the general.

China has offered diplomatic backing to its southern neighbour throughout the crisis, despite growing pressure from Western countries for the Myanmar military to be accountable for alleged atrocities.

More than 6,00,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim group have fled from Buddhist-majority Myanmars Rakhine to Bangladesh in three months since insurgent attacks on security posts sparked a brutal counter-insurgency campaign.

China helped to block a resolution on the crisis at the UN Security Council, while the United States this week called the response by the military and local vigilantes "ethnic cleansing", echoing earlier statements by senior United Nations officials.

According to a statement on the Facebook page of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, he and the Chinese leader on Friday discussed the "promotion of cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries, the situation of China standing on Myanmars side at the forefront of the international community regarding the Rakhine issue," and other issues.

Min Aung Hlaing arrived in China on Tuesday and has largely met Chinese military officers during his visit.

The statement also said they discussed ongoing talks between Myanmars government and myriad ethnic insurgent groups, some of whom are based along Myanmars shared border with China.

According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Xi said China was closely watching the peace process and was "willing to play a constructive role... for security and stability in their border areas."

The Xinhua account did not mention Rakhine, but cited Xi saying that China "always respects Myanmars sovereignty and territorial integrity".
China is ramping up its strategic release of pork reserves, as prices for the meat appear to have hit a peak after a momentous price run that has led the commodity to... Read More
Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) recently held its first investor day since 2009. That's a long time compared with many other companies, which usually have an annual or biannual investor day. However, the company now has a new CEO in James Quincey, who assumed the role on May 1. In addition, the company just completed a years-long refranchising program for its worldwide bottling operations. Therefore, the company thought it was the right time to give a higher-level view of its goals and strategy going forward. Here are the main takeaways.

Financial goals

Coke first laid out its financial goals. First, the company is targeting revenue growth of 4%-6% over the long term. While that doesn't exactly blow the doors off, Coca-Cola is already the largest beverage company in a number of categories, so it will be difficult to grow beyond the overall ready-to-drink industry, which is expected to grow 4% worldwide through 2020. That's an extra $150 billion Coke wants to go after.

In addition, Coke believes it can grow its operating income at a 6%-8% rate over the long term by expanding operating margin to 35% by 2020. That contrasts with the adjusted operating margin of 27.4% in the most recent quarter.

Strategy

To grow faster than the overall market, the company unveiled a multipronged strategy to take market share. Management said Coca-Cola wants to "be participating in each of the eight beverages people drink during the day." That, of course, means diversifying away from its core Coca-Cola brand. The company has already been making progress on that front, buying the Topo Chico sparkling water brand this summer, as well as Honest Tea and Innocent juices over the past few years, both of which have been tremendously successful. The company has actually doubled the number of billion-dollar brands under its umbrella since 2007, and plans to do more of the same going forward via more rapid experimentation, innovation, and outside partnerships.

Quincey put it succinctly on during the presentation:

This more agile, open-source approach is much more in line with a 21st- century business, where speed and agility are paramount, rather than a few huge, over-tested, global launches. The company is now much more equipped to do this, as Coca Cola only employs about 40,000 people, as opposed to the 150,000 it employed before the divestiture of its bottling operations.

New marketing

Coca-Cola is also known as one of the best marketing machines of all time, and the company is tweaking its marketing strategy along with its brand innovation. Coke will now expand marketing beyond the traditional 30- and 60-second television spots for more social media. In addition to digital marketing, the company will also emphasize e-commerce and advanced data analytics as key marketing and growth tools.

Revenue over volume

In addition to all these tools, the company continues on a path it was already on -- namely, prioritizing revenue over volume growth. The company started on this road when it began producing Coca-Cola in smaller cans (though keeping the same price) early in 2017. That not only mitigated concerns about sugar intake, but also expanded margins.

Going forward, the company will also tweak its incentive structure so that executives will be compensated on revenue targets, not volume targets, as in the past. In addition, Quincey also pointed out that big companies like Coke had ceded some profitable niches to smaller craft players, which Coke hopes to correct in the future. In fact, Chief Growth Officer Francisco Xavier Crespo Benitez believes the company may have been "leaving money on the table" by focusing on volumes and mass appeal rather than high-priced niches. As for premium Coca-Cola products, he mentioned Royal Bliss in Spain, Blue Sky with organic ingredients in the U.S. and Appletiser with 100% apple juice out of South Africa.

The big picture

Overall, Coca Cola is taking steps to become a leaner and more agile company with differentiated brands. Its smaller brands such as Topo Chico, Honest Tea, and Innocent juices have started on that path, but expect more rapid innovation in the future.

The main takeaway I got from investor day is that Coke's management realizes it cannot rest on its laurels, and must aggressively innovate to win the future. That's a good thing.

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Twitter's (NYSE: TWTR) recent announcement that it was doubling the character limit on tweets to 280 characters for almost everyone may have temporarily distracted investors from another round of poor earnings.

But is the move really worth cheering?

Why fix the one thing that wasn't broken?

While Twitter receives a lot of criticism, people generally seem to agree that it's easy to skim through a series of 140-character tweets. That limit forced people to work a little harder to condense their ideas and opinions into a few short sentences that followers could breeze through while on the subway or taking a break at work.

Twitter argues that it hasn't lost this unique factor since it began testing the 280-character limit in September and released it on a wider scale this month. It's now available in all languages except Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, where users weren't having an issue with the 140-character limit thanks to being able to say more with fewer symbols.

In a blog post, Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen said that once the novelty of the 280 characters wore off during the test phase, users still tweeted below 140 characters most of the time, so "the brevity of Twitter remained." In fact, only 5% of tweets sent were over 140 characters and only 2% were over 190 characters, she wrote.

In addition, when people needed to use more than 140 characters, they tweeted "more easily and more often" because they didn't have to work out how to make their point in fewer words, Rosen wrote.

What's working in the short term?

Before expanding the character limit, 9% of tweets in English were hitting the character limit. Lots of time was spent editing, the company said, and many people abandoned tweets before they were sent. After the 280-character limit was enacted, the number of tweets hitting the character limit dropped to 1%.

Twitter also claims that users who had a higher character limit received more engagement from followers through likes, retweets, and mentions. Even more exciting, people who got the increased character limit started to spend more time on the platform.

Will it work long term?

However, considering the data was collected during September and October, when only certain Twitter users had access to the increased character limit, the jury is still out as to whether it will really improve the user experience.

When Twitter first started allowing certain users to test out 280-character tweets in September, users had a field day. Many who received the special character limit celebrated their newfound freedom by penning creative, humorous tweets, such as by adding in useless words or by tweeting one letter per line.

Now that the novelty has worn off, things in the Twitterverse seem to have gone back to normal. The journalists, celebrities, and comedians of the world -- as well as one American president -- continue to tweet up a storm, but it's Facebook and Instagram that are seeing eye-popping jumps in number of users.

In order to predict what an increased character limit could mean for user growth at Twitter, one might remember that Twitter already went through a big redesign this summer. Twitter gave its app a more streamlined look with a side tab that directs users to their profile, Moments, or settings.

Yet despite the company's biggest redesign in years, revenue for the third quarter still fell 4% to $590 million. To Twitter's credit, the platform added 4 million monthly active users (MAUs) during the quarter to hit a new high of 330 million MAUs worldwide.

You could argue that the redesign and character-limit update still need time to marinate before there's a noticeable result on the top line. However, when you look at the numerous redesigns and updates that Twitter has undergone just in the past few years, you have to wonder if the company will ever happen upon that magical redesign that suddenly makes it the must-have news and social media platform it always wanted to be.

You can be an optimist and choose to see the small uptick in MAUs this quarter, as well as the small uptick in its stock recently, as a sign of a sudden long-term upturn at the company. Or you can be a realist and see it as another small uptick at a company that is still on an overall descending path.

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Italy's premier has met with Tunisian leaders during a two-day working visit to discuss terrorism, migration and the impact of the chaotic situation in Libya, subjects that deeply touch both countries.

Paolo Gentiloni met on Saturday with Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi and Prime Minister Youssef Chahed. He told reporters that the North African country bordering Libya and battling Islamic militants who have launched attacks in recent years needs increased aid from European partners.

He said that "it is crucial to reduce regional disparities and social inequalities in Tunisia" that feed migration to Italy and impact the terrorism fight.

He said an accord signed six years ago to contain illegal migration is working again and an uptick slowed. Under the accord, Italy can send Tunisians back home.
I think Quentin Tarantino is a fine filmmaker. From Reservoir Dogs to Jackie Brown to Inglourious Basterds, he delivers. Pulp Fiction may just be the greatest movie of its era.

But, as a resident of California, Ive got a problem. Not with him personally, but with the financing of his latest film.

He recently had to drop his longstanding business relationship with Harvey Weinstein (for obvious reasons) and shop his ninth feature, a story related to the Charles Manson murders, to the major studios.

Sony got the project. But, in addition, his film will receive an $18 million production tax credit from the California Film Commission, for which it will be shot in-state.

Tarantinos project is only one of several films getting a big break. Theyre all part of a tax credit program created by the California Legislature that, over the years, will offer hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits.

The Film Commission justifies its actions by claiming California needs the program to compete for projects.

Really? Then how does the state justify hitting up its taxpayers for so much? We residents do even more business in the state than film companies, but were not getting any breaks.

Quite the opposite. California has the highest income tax rate in the nation. The states top rate is 13.3 percent. Some dismiss it, saying thats just for millionaires, but if you make just $43,000 the rate is 8 percent, and if you make $54,000 its 9.3 percent.

California also has a huge gasoline tax and the highest state-level sales tax in the nation. Overall, Californians shoulder one of the largest tax burdens in our country. And while were at it, the state also ranks high in the burden it places on businesses.

So I have to ask: If Golden State leaders believe giving a tax break to filmmakers is good for the local economy, why dont they want to give a break in general to all residents? Sauce for the goose and all that.

My guess is that Tarantino was going to film in-state anyway. The Manson murders took place here, and when hes got a story set in California, he shoots here.

But even if he might have gone elsewhere for a better deal, guess what? Its not that hard for an individual citizen to pack up and leave a state if another one offers a better deal. That goes double for businesses.

On top of which, high taxes can discourage people from moving here, and from locating their business here. (The numbers seem to bear this out. In recent years, the rate of population growth has been cut to less than half of what it was.)

So if the state wants to make it easier on Tarantino, cant they also try to take it easier on me, and tens of millions of my fellow Californians?

In effect, my tax money is going to subsidize Tarantinos film. Ill be the first in line to buy a ticket when it opens, but dont make me an unwilling investor. Not unless I get to own a piece of it.
At 83 years old, I am one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors  thanks to the American troops who rescued me in what seems like a lifetime ago.

Since World War II, Ive felt a deep connection to American troops for saving my life  a feeling that resurfaces every year on Veterans Day and throughout the holiday giving season.

And so this year Im saying thank you to the American soldiers of the 1940s by donating $1 million to organizations serving wounded American veterans today.

My donation to the Wounded Warrior Project and the Services for Armed Forces program of the American Red Cross is my way of giving back, thanking previous generations of warriors for helping me. I hope this inspires others to give back as well.

Even though more than 70 years have passed since my rescue, its not too late to give back. Thats a lesson I hope the next generation recognizes, because its all too easy to let procrastination give way to inaction. But action is what brings hope to those who need it.

I have met many American people who I am lucky enough to call my friends. First, Americans saved us. Then decades later, they welcomed us.

As a child, I spent most of World War II hiding from Nazi invaders in my native France, where my parents moved after fleeing the pogroms in Poland. Unfortunately, with the German invasion in 1940, we were again at risk. On July 16, 1942, the French police led a big roundup of Jews in Paris. More than 13,000 Jews were detained before being deported to Nazi death camps.

The police came to our apartment at 6 a.m. My parents managed to take me to my aunts home. She was married to a French soldier and was protected.

A few hours later, my mother was arrested as she and my brother were trying to get information about my father, who was hiding in a nearby grocery store. A concierge had pointed them out to the police. They ran, but my mother was not fast enough. She was detained and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. She perished there  probably within three weeks.

I was 7, and for the next two years I lived on borrowed time, shielded by other families on the outskirts of Paris. The same was true for my future wife, who was also a child in hiding. If the war had continued much longer, we would not have survived.

I vividly remember the arrival of the hundreds of thousands of American troops who landed in Normandy to liberate us in June 1944. They were our saviors, doling out packets of sweets to half-starved, war-weary children who had almost given up hope for freedom.

The gratitude I feel to these men is beyond words. They freed our country and they saved our lives. Without American troops, my family and I simply would not have existed. I think of that every time I look at our family photos.

Since the end of the war, life has been good to me. Ive had a successful career as co-owner of one of Europes largest home appliance retailers, working alongside my brothers. Ive also enjoyed raising my family, celebrating extended family gatherings of 20 people.

My wife and I have a deep sense of gratitude for America. So in the early 1990s, freshly retired, we bought a home in South Florida. I travel with my wife each winter from our home in Paris to the warmth of Miami Beach. We still appreciate our second home there, where we now spend almost a third of our time.

I have met many American people who I am lucky enough to call my friends. First, Americans saved us. Then decades later, they welcomed us.

But as I watched news stories this fall of hurricanes, flooding and wildfires striking America, inflicting suffering among civilians and veterans alike, I realized that I still had an important task left to complete in my life. I had not yet given back to the American soldiers who saved my life nearly three-quarters of a century ago.

That is why I want to help modern American veterans today. They pursue the tradition of the young men who landed on the shores of Normandy in June 1944 and who I will never forget. In giving this donation, I want to thank Americans with all my heart for coming to rescue us in our hour of need.

But I also want to make a public stand in support of America. I hope that my donation can trigger a movement and lead others to take action. My story shows its never too late to give back, especially for a cause thats close to your heart. If it wasnt too late for this octogenarian, its not too late for you.
Former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for his involvement in an unfinished documentary film financed by Turkish interests, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday evening. The investigation is part of a larger inquiry to determine if Flynn improperly hid financial ties to both Turkey and Russia, the Journal said.

The FBI is gearing up to interview people Flynn hired to make the documentary, the paper said. That film would have revolved around exiled Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara has accused of trying to overthrow Turkish President Recep Tayyip Edorgan last year, people familiar with the investigation told the Journal.

Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, has denied being involved in the attempt to remove Erdogan.

While campaigning for Trump, Flynns company reportedly signed a $530,000 deal with a Turkish businessman who was close with Erdogan.

But, according to the Journal, the Flynn Intel Group, Flynns consulting firm, tried to mask its role in the documentary. Thats according to David Enders, a journalist employed to film interviews. Enders said that Bijan Kian, Flynns business partner, wanted the people behind the films production to remain unknown.

A spokesman for Mueller declined the Journals request for comment. Kian didnt reply and Flynns lawyer, Robert Kelner, wasn't immediately available to discuss the report, the Journal said.

Flynn didnt file federal documents showing that he was paid to work for Turkish interests until March 2017. He resigned his position as national security adviser in February following revelations that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his communications with Russias ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

In addition to the probe into whether Flynn improperly concealed his financial ties to Turkey and Russia, Mueller is also reportedly investigating a meeting where Flynn allegedly discussed a plan that would pay him and his son up to $15 million to kidnap Gulen for the Turkish government.

The news follows recent reports that Flynns lawyers cut ties with President Donald Trumps legal team, saying that they could no longer discuss Muellers probe into Russian interference during the 2016 election season. The move could indicate that Flynn's legal team either is cooperating with Mueller's investigators or is negotiating to do so.
As the nuclear threat from North Korea continues, Cuban President Raul Castro met Friday with the rogue nation's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho in a bid to diffuse tensions between Pyongyang and Washington.

Although Cuba has been an ally of North Korea since the 1960s, the communist nation opposes nuclear weapons, Reuters reported.

The longtime partnership was evident after a meeting earlier this week, when Ri and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez jointly denounced the U.S. for unilateral and arbitrary lists and designations that led to coercive measures contrary to international law, Reuters reported, citing Cubas foreign ministry.

By engaging in talks, the ministers sought respect for peoples sovereignty and the peaceful settlement of disputes, a ministry statement said.

Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday said that earlier this year he discussed the possibility of working with Cuba to help solve the ongoing conflict in North Korea.

Reacting to provocative rhetoric and actions from North Korea -- including tests of ballsitic missiles and what Pyongyang called a hydrogen bomb -- President Trump has taken a hard-line stance against the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump's actions have included a record number of sanctions by the U.S. and its allies against the Kim regime, in hopes of changing its behavior.

The president also has clamped down on Cuba, enacting stricter policies than President Barack Obama, who sought to ease a half-century of strained relations with Havana.
A showdown could loom in December.

Not over tax reform, but over funding the government.

The federal government is funded through December 8. Republicans control the House and Senate. But historically, the GOP has failed on its own to provide the necessary votes to avert a government shutdown.

The party required a bailout from Democrats as recently as Sept. 2015 to help make up the vote deficit and pass those spending bills. Republicans sometimes balk for a variety of reasons. They dont like stopgap appropriations packages. Theyre disgusted by the process. They demand more for defense. What about entitlement spending? Wheres the plan to reduce the national debt?

As an aside, the answer to the final question wasnt really addressed in the recent budget framework approved by the House and Senate to muscle through tax reform. And deficits are forecast to balloon by at least $1.5 trillion in the Republican tax bill.

But back to government funding 

When Republicans find themselves short in these government funding crises, they turn to Democrats. But Democratic votes could prove even more valuable in this Decembers scenario.

It all has to do with DACA and DREAMers.

DACA is the abbreviation for an Obama administration-era program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Democrats and some Republicans often refer to undocumented persons who arrived in the U.S. as minors as DREAMers. Thats derived from the bipartisan DREAM Act, short for The Development, Relief, Education for Minors bill.

A coalition of liberal Democrats is now flexing its muscles on the upcoming government spending bill. Many Democrats insist that congressional leaders attach the DREAM Act to the spending package, or else.

If theres no clean DREAM Act in the budget, were not voting for it, threatened Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal recently challenged House Republicans to pass the spending bill on their own.

But if  you need our votes, include a clean DREAM Act, the Washington Democrat said.

Republicans are the majority until it comes to governance, argued Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill. Oh. You dont have 218 votes? Were happy to help keep the government open.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., head to the White House Tuesday afternoon to discuss end-of-year legislative issues, said White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters.

Pelosi favors attaching a DACA fix to the spending package. Schumer also believes thats a possible legislative path for DACA.

We believe well get it in the omnibus (spending) bill because both Republicans and Democrats want it, Schumer said. If DACA is in the bill, (President Trump) wont veto it.

Is there a risk of a government shutdown if Democrats insist on shoving DACA into the spending measure despite possible presidential objections?

It wont come to that, Schumer replied.

Tell that to those on the right -- and maybe even those in the White House.

DACA will not be in the government funding bill, said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Including DACA in the spending plan could be the only way for Republicans to obtain necessary Democratic votes to avoid a government shutdown.

And Schumer appears correct: There are Republicans who want to advance a DACA solution. A group of moderate House Republicans held a press conference last week calling for just that. But immigration politics are dicey for the right.

Latching the DACA plan to the spending bill poses tremendous risk for Republicans. Ryan and McConnell are sure to draw the ire of the hard right and lawmakers who fret about border security, a border wall or amnesty.

He wont be speaker for long if he does that, a conservative House Republican predicted about Ryan if he allows a DACA provision in the spending legislation.

Ryans wants to cleave DACA from the spending bill. When asked if he would consider a DACA attachment in the spending legislation, he replied, I dont.

The speaker also said the DACA fix should be considered on its own merits. And he questioned whether Congress had to address the issue by the end of the year.

We have until, I believe, March, Ryan said. So I dont think we need to have artificial deadlines within the one we already have.

It could be time to horse trade. Democrats hold many of the cards in this poker game. But the administration has cards to play, too.

Trump may not like the idea of an immediate DACA fix. But how about a DACA deal in exchange for extra money for a border wall.

As the president explained in his letter to the House and Senate leadership, the administrations reform priorities must be included as a part of any legislation addressing the status of DACA recipients,  said a White House official to Fox.

These reforms have been identified by our nations law enforcement professionals as a vital safeguard for the American people to both prevent new illegal immigration (border wall, legal loopholes) and to end chain migration.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., has said since summer he wants a DACA fix soon. But Hoyer demurred when asked whether Democrats would demand a DACA link to the spending bill in exchange for Democratic votes.

I dont want to get there, he said.

Why should Democrats cede their demands on DACA just to help keep the government open in a bill without an arrangement for DREAMers? Hoyer has said for years that when it comes to funding the government, Democrats will always do the right thing. But Hoyer also believes its incumbent for Democrats and the rest of Congress to do the right thing for DREAMers.

We do the right thing, he said. It is unacceptable, because we do the right thing, to be held hostage to bad policies because you Democrats will do the right thing and while we do, we Republicans, will do the wrong thing. We will shut down the government as they have. We are not going to be held hostage by doing the right thing, either.

The latest wrinkle is that Trump and congressional leaders may try to load up the spending package with hurricane relief for Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Congress has already forked over $52 billion in disaster relief. The administration submitted its third disaster spending request to Congress late last week: $44 billion. But the plan includes offsets to counteract the new spending.

Just a few weeks ago, some lawmakers thought the key to courting Democratic votes for the government spending legislation was to add on disaster relief.

You mean to tell me they (Democrats) wont vote for the spending? All of the disaster aid and Puerto Rico? Meadows asked rhetorically.

But members of both parties excoriated the hurricane plan.

The OMB request "is very disappointing. Not only is it completely inadequate, it shows OMBs complete lack of understanding of the fundamental needs of Texans, groused Texas GOP Rep. John Culberson, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee and potentially a vulnerable GOPer next election cycle. Our community is still trying to recover, and this request is a nightmare for those who are trying to rebuild their lives.

Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said, The administrations third disaster supplemental request is an insult. This requests stinginess is both contemptable and ineffectual.

So all eyes are trained on the big White House meeting Tuesday afternoon with the president and top Congressional leaders.

Congressional Republicans are racing to complete tax reform. But one thing is for certain: The GOP faces disaster if they fail to fund the government.

Democrats again hold many of the cards. And Trump and congressional Republicans may have to cede a lot of ground on DACA and disaster relief if they dont want a government shutdown tussle to sideline their tax reform efforts in December.
A reference to a mysterious condominium purchase and sale in the 1990s is the earliest mention of Donald Trump in the notorious Panama Papers, according to a report published Friday.

A Panamanian company called Process Consultants Inc., which was owned through bearer shares, purchased a residential unit in the Trump Palace skyscraper in New York City in 1991, investigative journalist Jake Bernstein reported, citing the documents.

Bernstein is the author of "Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite."

Bearer shares, which provide a convenient means to transfer property anonymously, have been tightly regulated in recent years because they are frequently used in money-laundering and other illicit ventures.

The directors of Process Consultants (which is sometimes spelled Process Consultans in the documents) were employed by Mossack Fonseca, the once-obscure law firm whose clients were exposed by the massive Panama Papers leak.

But these directors were in reality nominee directors, Bernstein wrote, meaning that they were not the real decision-makers. Companies sometimes name nominee directors to obfuscate who is really running operations.

Jurgen Mossack, founder of the firm, was one of the nominee directors of Process Consultants, Bernstein reported.

In 1994, Process Consultants sold the apartment for $355,000 to a woman from Hong Kong, using the Trump Corporation as its broker.

While there is no indication that the sale was illegal, the quick turnaround on the condo and the secretive nature of Process Consultants spurred some concern that money laundering may have been involved, the New York Daily News reported.

Trump's name pops up elsewhere in the Panama Papers, but Bernsteins find marks the president's earliest known appearance.

The 2016 leak of the Panama Papers, a trove of nearly 12 million financial documents tracing Mossack Fonseca's efforts to help politicians and celebrities shield their money from taxes, led to the removal of Pakistan and Icelands prime ministers and numerous high-level investigations around the world.

Early in November, Trump's Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, was revealed in the so-called Paradise Papers to have conducted large business deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin's son-in-law.
The Trump administration has quietly reversed its decision to close the PLO office in Washington over a courts issue, amid concerns the move would jeopardize President Trumps larger, ambitious effort to achieve Middle East peace.

Last week, U.S. officials said the Palestine Liberation Organization mission in the nations capital must close, in accordance with a U.S. law related to the Palestinians having tried to get the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis.

Then officials abruptly reversed course late Friday, as many Americans were enjoying a long Thanksgiving Day weekend.

State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said the U.S. had instead "advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians."

He also said the restrictions will be lifted after 90 days if the U.S. determines the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in serious peace talks.

After U.S. officials announced plans last week to close the mission, the Palestinians said the Trump administration was using extortion tactics, in an apparent attempt to force peace talks with Israel.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki told Palestine Radio that his people won't cave to "extortion" and that they await further communication from the administration.

The ball is now in the American court," he said.

And Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the administration's decision "very unfortunate and unacceptable."

Erekat also accused the administration of bowing to pressure from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And he said the Palestinians are "trying to cooperate to achieve the ultimate deal."

A State Department official said at the time that the administration is not severing relations with the PLO or the Palestinian Authority and that the closing of the mission should not be interpreted as the administration backing away from trying to reach a peace agreement.

Netanyahu's office said at the time that the closure was a "matter of U.S. law."

Trump has made brokering a long-sought Middle East peace a top priority, with senior White House adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner taking the lead.

The president has also sought to strengthen relations with Netanyahu, with whom former President Barack Obama had a weak relationship.

Still, Trump has also apparently tried to improve ties with Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the PLO and the Palestinian National Authority.

The president talked to Abbas in September at a United Nations meeting in New York.

Abbas reportedly in September called for ICC to investigate and prosecute Israelis.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The United States will cut off its supply of arms to Kurdish fighters in Syria, President Donald Trump told the Turkish president on Friday, in a move sure to please Turkey but further alienate Syrian Kurds who bore much of the fight against the Islamic State group.

In a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump said hed given clear instructions that the Kurds will receive no more weapons  and that this nonsense should have ended a long time ago, said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

The White House confirmed the move in a cryptic statement about the phone call that said Trump had informed the Turk of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria.

The White House called the move consistent with our previous policy and noted the recent fall of Raqqa, once the Islamic State groups self-declared capital but recently liberated by a largely Kurdish force. The Trump administration announced in May it would start arming the Kurds in anticipation of the fight to retake Raqqa.

We are progressing into a stabilization phase to ensure that ISIS cannot return, the White House said, using an acronym for the extremist group.

The move could help ease strained tensions between the U.S. and Turkey, two NATO allies that have been sharply at odds about how best to wage the fight against IS. Turkey considers the Kurdish Syrian fighters, known by the initials YPG, to be terrorists because of their affiliation to outlawed Kurdish rebels that have waged a three decade-long insurgency in Turkey. Yet the U.S. chose to partner with the YPG in Syria anyway, arguing that the battle-hardened Kurds were the most effective fighting force available.

Cavusoglu, who said he was in the room with Erdogan during Trumps call, quoted the U.S. president as saying he had given instructions to U.S. generals and to national security adviser H.R. McMaster that no weapons would be issued.

Of course, we were very happy with this, Cavusoglu said.

Yet for the Kurds, it was the latest demoralizing blow to their hopes for greater recognition in the region. Last month, the Kurds in neighboring Iraq saw their recent territorial gains erased by the Iraqi military, which seized the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other disputed areas from the Kurdish regional government in retaliation for a Kurdish independence referendum that the U.S. ardently opposed.

Trumps decision appeared to catch both the Pentagon and the U.S. State Department off guard. Officials at both agencies, who would normally be informed of changes in U.S. policy toward arming the Syrian Kurds, said they were unaware of any changes. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

It was unclear whether the Trump administration notified the Kurds of the move before telling the Turks. Nor was it how much significance the change would have on the ground, considering the fight against IS is almost over.

The United States has been arming the Kurds in their fight against IS through an umbrella group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, which is comprised of Kurdish as well as Arab fighters.

But the retreat of IS, which has lost nearly all its territory in Syria, has altered the dynamics in the region and a U.S. defense official said he was unaware of any additional arms scheduled to be transferred to the Kurds, even before the Turkish announcement.

Last week, Col. Ryan Dillon, the chief spokesman for the U.S. coalition that is fighting IS in Iraq and Syria, said there has yet to be any reduction in the number of U.S. advisers working with the SDF. His comments appeared to suggest the possibility that changes in the level and type of U.S. military support for the Syrian Kurds could be coming.

As the fight against IS has waned in recent months, the U.S. has pledged to carefully monitor the weapons it provides the Kurds, notably ensuring that they dont wind up in the hands of Kurdish insurgents in Turkey known as the PKK.

Both Turkey and the U.S. consider the PKK a terrorist group. But the United States has tried to draw a distinction between the PKK and the Syrian Kurds across the border, while Turkey insists theyre essentially the same.

In both Syria and Iraq, the U.S. relied on Kurdish fighters to do much of the fighting against IS, but those efforts have yet to lead to a realization of the Kurds broader aspirations, most notably an independent state.

Washingtons support for the Syrian Kurds, in particular, has been a major thorn in U.S.-Turkish relations for several years, given Turkeys concerns about the Kurds territorial aspirations. In particular, Turkey has feared the establishment of a contiguous, Kurdish-held canton in northern Syria that runs along the Turkish border.

Relations between NATO allies Turkey and the United States have also soured recently over a number of other issues, including Turkeys crackdown on dissent following a failed coup attempt last year.

Ankara has also demanded that the U.S. extradite a Pennsylvania-based cleric that it blames for fomenting the coup, but the U.S. says Turkey lacks sufficient proof.

Lederman reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
President Trump is meeting next week with Republican senators in a push to get a congressional tax reform bill on his desk by Christmas, with a final vote purportedly coming as early as Thursday.

Trump will join the Senate Republican Policy Committee on Tuesday for the groups weekly luncheon, upon Congress returning from a week-long Thanksgiving break.

This is the second time in the past few weeks that the president has gone to Capitol Hill to persuade fellow Republicans in the GOP-controlled Senate to back the tax reform bill, with yes votes from several holdouts still needed to pass the measure with a simple, 51-vote majority.

Trump and GOP Senate leaders can afford to lose only one or two votes, considering they have just a 52-48 majority over Senate Democrats, who do not support the legislation.

We look forward to welcoming President Trump to the Senate again, Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso, chairman of the policy committee, said Friday. This is a historic opportunity for our conference and the president to build on our momentum to give Americans the tax relief theyve been waiting for.

Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Maine; Lisa Murkowski, Alaska; and Ron Johnson, Wisconsin, are among those who have yet to back the bill.

"We've got a very small window, about a dozen days," former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on Saturday told Fox News' "Fox & Friends," while suggesting those who vote no jeopardize Republicans' control of Congress after next year's midterm elections.

The House, which is controlled by Republicans with a much larger majority than they have in the Senate, passed its version of tax reform several weeks ago with no Democratic support.

Trump is eager to pass major tax reform -- the first in nearly three decades -- to get his first major legislative victory.

"We're going to give the American people a huge tax cut for Christmas, Trump said last week. Hopefully, that will be a great, big, beautiful Christmas present."

This past summer, the House passed an ObamaCare replacement plan. But the Senate ultimately failed after several attempts, maddening Trump to the point of publically chastising Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

If the Senate passes the tax legislation, GOP lawmakers from the separate chambers would negotiate a compromise bill for Trump to sign into law. The separate versions each cut individual and corporate tax rates but with different strategies.

Last week, the Tax Policy Center, a joint operation of the liberal-leaning Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, concluded that low-earners would generally get smaller tax breaks than higher-income people under the Senate plan.

The top Democrat on the Senate Finance panel, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, said the study showed that "middle-class Americans will ultimately see a tax hike under Republicans' plan while corporate sponsors line their own pockets with multi-trillion-dollar giveaways."

A McConnell spokeswoman cited a study by the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation that concluded the bill would produce higher wages, nearly 1 million new jobs and enough economic growth to generate nearly $1.3 trillion in federal revenue.

The Senate bill would also repeal an ObamaCare requirement that Americans have health insurance or pay a fine, which is a project to save the federal government billions.

Fox News Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
In what is likely to be a unique vacation experience, travelers can now rent a Cold War-era missile silo to crash at during their visit to Kansas, a report said.

The Subterra Castle was previously the home of a nuclear warhead during the early-to-mid 1960s, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported. After it was left abandoned for decades, Ed and Dianna Peden reportedly bought the property in 1994 and reconstructed it into an underground mansion.

But the idea to list the bunker on Airbnb, the online rental marketplace, was devised by their neighbor Matthew Fulkerson, the outlet said. He is the sites host and has reportedly known its owners for years.

Subterra, located in rural Wabaunsee County, opened for business six months ago, according to The Journal. Its the first and only Airbnb available that is a converted missile silo, Fulkerson said.

COLD WAR DRAMA CAUGHT ON VIDEO AS N. KOREAN SOLDIER ESCAPES

According to the Airbnb listing page, the bunkers decor has a bohemian eclectic vibe to its redesign and guests can see the story of its transformation from a bunker into a home. The underground space is more than 18,000 square feet and sits on 33 acres of property that includes a pond, a stone circle and a grass airstrip, the site said.

The structure, built in 1959, was originally part of a ring of nine Air Force silos built around Topeka, The Journal said. The underground bases were reportedly constructed during the height of the Cold War and ran for four years before being shut down and abandoned.

The building stored an intercontinental ballistic missile that had a nuclear warhead 32 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, Fulkerson said. The guys who lived here thought they would have to launch this missile at any moment.

COMMISSION ALERTED TO REVIEW ALLEGATIONS AGAINST TRIPADVISOR

The silo reportedly sat vacant for a number of years before the owners bought and transformed it into something habitable.

But Fulkerson told The Journal that he had a larger plan for the location and wanted it to become more than an overnight stay on peoples way through the state.

I see it as becoming a destination, he said.

In addition to a main-floor bedroom, Airbnb guests at Subterra will have a full kitchen, private bathroom, laundry services and a fireplace which gives a "nice, cozy feeling in the fall and winter months," Fulkerson said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Even before the Navy cargo plane crash Wednesday, the number of U.S. troops killed in plane crashes had skyrocketed this year along with the total number of crashes overall compared to this point a year ago, a Fox News investigation has uncovered.

So far this year, there have been 22 U.S. military non-combat plane crashes flying routine operations. Thats up 38 percent from this time last year.

The number of American troops killed in these plane crashes has more than doubled. Following the announcement by the 7th Fleet Thursday night that it has ended its search for three missing American sailors hundreds of miles off the coast of Japan, the number of U.S. service members lost to plane crashes in 2017 stands at 37. That is more than 130 percent higher than the number killed in non-combat plane crashes at this point in 2016.

Many on Capitol Hill say years of budget cuts are taking a toll.

NAVY SUSPENDS SEARCH FOR 3 SAILORS MISSING AFTER PLANE CRASH

Perhaps the greatest harm to our national security and our military is self-inflicted. I repeat self-inflicted, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and former naval aviator, said on the senate floor. We are killing more of our own people in training than our enemies are in combat.

The Navy cargo plane crash this week was the deadliest crash for the U.S. military since an Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed off the coast of Hawaii killing five soldiers in August.

The crash of the C-2 Greyhound occurred 575 miles out to sea while flying from Japan to the USS Ronald Reagan. A former C-2 pilot says it's a miracle eight sailors survived and compared the pilots actions in the crash to Capt. Chesley Sully Sullenberger landing a US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009.

The Navy C-2 cargo plane is used to bring passengers and supplies to aircraft carriers at sea. It first entered service in the late 60s and is scheduled to be replaced by the V-22 Osprey in a few years. But only nine of the 33 C-2 planes in the fleet can currently fly, according to Navy officials.

"We are killing more of our own people in training than our enemies are in combat."  U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Right now the investigation is focusing on the possibility of an extremely rare duel engine failure, officials told Fox News. Fuel and oil sources are also being examined. The Navy is expected to release the names of the remaining missing sailors late Friday.

Just two days before the Navy plane crash, an Air Force T-38 training jet -- with parts also dating from the 1960s -- crashed in Texas killing one pilot and injuring another. A mechanical failure is also suspected. A similar Navy training jet, a T-45, crashed last month killing both pilots.

In July, a Marine Corps KC-130 transport plane crashed in the Mississippi Delta killing all 16 on board after reaching cruising altitude during a routine cross-country flight to California originating from North Carolina.

Less than a month later, a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey crashed off the east coast of Australia killing three Marines. Rescue workers saved 23 others.

In April, following a Fox News report about instructor pilots refusing to fly the Navys T-45 training jet, citing poison in the planes oxygen system, the Navy grounded its fleet of some 200 jets for weeks. Only recently has the Navy resumed full training flights for student jet pilots, seven months after grounding the jets.

The Navys crisis in aviation extends into its premier strike aircraft as well.

3 MISSING AFTER NAVY AIRCRAFT CRASHES EN ROUTE TO USS RONALD REAGAN, 8 RECOVERED

The head of naval aviation says only half the Navys 542 F-18 Super Hornet jets can fly right now and only 31 percent are fully mission capable and ready to fight tonight.

Its even worse for the Marine Corps where roughly 70 percent of its fleet of older model F-18 Hornets cant fly.

In the Air Force, only half of the bomber fleet of B-1 and B-2 bombers can fly, forcing airmen to scrounge for spare parts in places in a remote desert scrapheap known as The Boneyard. The secretary of the Air Force told reporters earlier this month she was almost 2,000 pilots short, forcing the service to ask retired pilots to come back.

In order to get three aircraft carriers ready to deploy for ISIS strikes in the Gulf or other hotspots around the world beginning in January, nearly 100 F-18 fighter jets had to be shuffled around, robbing training squadrons of valuable flight time to train the young pilots, according to Vice Adm. Troy M. Shoemaker before a House Armed Services sub-committee hearing earlier this month.

[The] shell game leaves non-deployed squadrons well below the number of jets required to keep aviators proficient, Shoemaker warned.

"Additionally, to get those air wings ready, several hundred parts had to be cannibalized from other [F-18] Super Hornets across the force, further decimating the readiness of squadrons and adding significantly and unnecessarily to the workload of our maintainers, he added.

Shoemaker said the lack of jets caused hundreds of sailors to have to move unnecessarily or remain on board ships for longer than planned.

The U.S. Navy is down 41 ships and 90,000 sailors since Sept. 11, 2001. For years the defense budget prioritized the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Training, spare parts and maintenance suffered as well as the ability to buy newer planes.

The Navys problem has been evident at sea as well as in the air.

Since June, the Navy has lost two guided-missile destroyers in the Pacific in separate collisions killing 17 sailors. The repairs to both USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain are expected to reach more than half a billion dollars. A Navy investigation called both collisions preventable, and cited poor training as a factor in the deadly collisions with merchant vessels.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has testified before Congress, arguing that no enemy in the field has done more to harm the combat readiness of our military than [budget cuts].

According to Sen. McCain, only five of 58 Army brigades and four of 64 Air Force squadrons are combat-ready.

Congress has called for a $26 billion increase in defense spending to rebuild the military and to try to get more airplanes flying again.

Leonard Balducci contributed to this report
Two people have claimed deceased cult leader Charles Manson left his entire estate to them - separately.

TMZ reported a man who started writing to the hippie cult leader in the 1990s was given a will by Manson. The man, who asked not to be identified, showed TMZ the handwritten and typed will.

The will, dated from Feb. 14, 2002, gave the pen pal all of Mansons possessions, including money, clothing and image rights. Manson also left his exclusive music catalog to the pen pal.

HIPPIE CULT LEADER CHARLES MANSON DEAD AT 83

The will also stated the dead inmates body was to be given to the pen pal. The man told TMZ he would claim Mansons body but he has only 10 days to do so until the prison cremates the cult leader.

The tabloid website reported Manson disinherited his children, friends, cops, guard, the State of California, and his ex-wives.

The pen pal stated he began writing to Manson out of curiosity but did not receive a reply until 1997. They talked on the phone and the pen pal occasionally visited Manson at Corcoran State Prison in Corcoran, Calif., he added.

The man said he last heard from Manson on Oct. 21, a few weeks before his death.

Meanwhile, the New York Daily News reported Matthew Roberts was also given a will by Ben Gurecki, a friend of Manson, giving him the rights to Manson's estate. Gurecki said he was given the will by Manson in January 2017.

CHARLES MANSON  AMERICAS POSTER CHILD FOR OUR FASCINATION WITH EVIL AND FEAR

Roberts, 49, of Los Angeles, was told by his mother in 1998 that Manson was his father.

Gurecki told the Daily News they planned on sorting this out.

"I can assure you Matthew will be handling this," Gurecki said, adding that he and Roberts will be going to the prison to bury Manson.

Matthew and I will be there next week in person, he said. Charlie will be given a headstone, a proper burial where people will be able to grieve, or deface it as they see fit.

Manson died last Sunday at age 83 due to natural causes. The notorious cult leader was sentenced to life in prison after he ordered his followers, the Manson Family, to kill some of L.A.s rich and famous in what prosecutors said was a bid to trigger a race war. Pregnant actress Sharon Tate and coffee heiress Abigail Folger were among those killed in 1969.

Three months later, Manson was arrested and became the countrys personification of evil.

After a trial that lasted nearly a year, Manson and three followers  Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten  were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Another defendant, Charles "Tex" Watson was convicted later. All were spared execution and given life sentences after the California Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Colorado pastor was arrested Wednesday after he allegedly impregnated a 14-year-old girl who had his child.

Romello Leach, 22, of Colorado Springs, Colo., who is a pastor for several churches that meet at a Colorado Springs hotel, faces multiple counts of sexual assault on a child, The Gazette reported.

The unidentified girl said she and the pastor had sex twice, once in Nov. 2016 in Leachs car and at her home earlier this year, the Denver Channel reported.

COLORADO CHILD SEX TRAFFICKER SENTENCED 472 YEARS IN PRISON

The teenager gave birth to the child on Sept. 15 when she was 15 years old. The girl reportedly did not inform anyone she was pregnant until her mother noticed her larger belly in May, arrest records stated.

The teenagers mother took her to the Colorado Springs Pregnancy Center where they notified an employee that Leach was the father, the affidavit stated. The employee informed the El Paso County Sheriffs Office of the pregnancy and an investigation was launched.

Leach told his ex-wife in a recorded telephone discussion that he had sexual relations with the teenager and admitted to being the father of her baby, arrest records stated.

Leach told his ex-wife he knows he had made the worst mistake and its not like he will go around and sleep with everybodys 13 or 14-year-daughter, the affidavit stated.

UBER FINED MILLIONS IN COLORADO FOR USING PROBLEM DRIVERS FOLLOWING RIDER ASSAULT

In a different recorded phone call, Leach admitted to an unidentified person of having sexual relations with the girl at least four times and being the babys father. Leach admitted the behavior was wrong and said he was full of lust at the time, The Gazette reported.

Leach was being held at El Paso County jail without bond. Deputies were investigating if there were any other victims of Leachs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An Illinois woman was busted this week after cops say she torched her Infiniti SUV with a flamethrower she purchased online.

Julie Gagne, 47, of Barrington, was charged with arson, disorderly conduct, and filing a false police report, the Arlington Cardinal reported.

She reported her 2016 Infiniti QX70 stolen Nov. 10 after the fire.

She was at a restaurant, and she called to say her car was missing when she came out of the restaurant, Schaumburg Deputy Police Chief Dan Roach told the paper.

Firefighters found the vehicle ablaze at the end of a dead end street in Barrington near a precious metal refinery.

Gagne later retracted the report that her 2016 Infiniti QX70 was stolen.

The paper reported that Gagne turned herself in to police Tuesday. She was released on a personal recognizance bond after a court appearance Wednesday.

Police haven't determined a motive, the paper reported.

Barrington Police Chief David Dorn told the Arlington Heights Daily Herald an X15 Flamethrower was found near the SUV after the fire was extinguished.

XMatter in Ohio manufactures the flamethrower, which is legal in Illinois, the paper reported.

An investigation determined Gagne bought the flamethrower online, Dorn told the paper.

The flamethrower in question uses a mix of about three gallons of fuel and napalm to throw flames as far as 50 feet, the paper reported.

The device goes for about about $1,600.

XMatter says controlled burns for agricultural purposes, weed incineration and pyrotechnic events are among the typical uses for the companys flamethrowers, the paper reported.

An XMatter executive did not return a message seeking comment, the paper reported.
A judge has ordered a Cincinnati drug dealer, who authorities say was the source behind a teenagers lethal overdose of fentanyl, to pay for the funeral costs.

U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett sentenced Michael Chandler to nearly 17 years in prison and ordered the 29-year-old to pay $9,000 in restitution to the teens family.

Chandler pleaded guilty to drug distribution on Monday.

Authorities say they were able to trace the fentanyl that killed the 17-year-old, identified in court documents as J.H., back to Chandler. The teen died of an overdose at his Kentucky home in April 2016.

Investigators from the Kentucky Drug Task Force sent a friend of the deceased teen to make a drug purchase from Chandler, WCPO reported. The friend wore a wire and gave the purchased substance, which turned out to be fentanyl, to the Hamilton County coroner's crime lab, the station reported.

While conducting a search of Chandlers home, investigators said they found a large amount of fentanyl, along with cocaine, drug paraphernalia, a handgun and ammunition.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Virginia youth pastor has been arrested in the shooting deaths of his wife, stepdaughter and the stepdaughters boyfriend in their home on Thanksgiving Day, police said.

Christopher Gattis, 58, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

Police arriving at the family's Chester, Va., home around 11:30 p.m. found the womens bodies inside and the mans body in the front yard, officials said.

Authorities identified the victims as Jeanett Gattis, 58; her daughter Candice "Candy" Kunze, 30; and Kunzes boyfriend, Andrew Buthorn, 36. All of them lived together in the home, police said.

Neighbors said Kunze recently moved back home from Oregon, with Buthorn joining her. Neighbors also said the family runs a furniture store in nearby Petersburg, the Richmond-Times Dispatch reported.

Gattis was a youth pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, where he was a ministries coordinator for middle school and high school students.

Members of Grace Lutheran Church are deeply saddened by the loss of life last night as a result of three individuals being shot in Chester, and this tragedy included members of Grace Lutheran Church, the church said in a statement.

Gattis was being held at Chesterfield County Jail without bond. He was scheduled to appear in General District Court on Monday and Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court on Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The White House on Saturday condemned Pakistan for releasing designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed -- saying the move is a setback in recent diplomatic efforts and urging Pakistani officials to re-arrest him.

The United States seeks a constructive relationship with Pakistan but expects decisive action against militant and terrorist groups on Pakistani soil that are a threat to the region, said White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders. The release of Saeed is a step in the wrong direction.

Saeed is connected to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, the terror group linked to the November 2008 Mumbai, India, attacks that killed at least 166 people, including six U.S. citizens.

The terror group -- known as LeT  is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. In addition, the Justice Department declared Saeed a designated terrorist, with a $10 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

The United States and its allies have long been critical of Pakistan's connection with terrorism, since the country in past times has supported the Taliban and Al Qaeda. U.S. Special Forces in 2011 killed 9/11 mastermind Usama bin Laden while he was hiding in Pakistan.

And Trump this summer, while discussing his strategy for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, said the South Asia country harbors terrorists.

Saeed was released from house arrest Friday, after a three-judge panel ended his detention in the eastern city of Lahore.

In a statement Saturday, Sanders said the United States "strongly condemns" Saeeds release and urged his "immediate re-arrest and prosecution."

"Saeed's release, after Pakistan's failure to prosecute or charge him, sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistan's commitment to combatting international terrorism and belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil," she said.

"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistan's global reputation. "

Saeeds release also outraged Indian authorities, while Saeed spokesman Yahya Mujahid called it a "victory of truth."

"Hafiz Saeed was under house arrest on baseless allegations, and jail officials came to his home last night and told him that he is now free," he said.

Saeed ran the Jamaat-ud-Dawa organization, widely believed to be a front for the LeT.

Pakistan has been detaining and freeing Saeed off and on.

The Trump administration has been intensifying pressure on Pakistan to fight extremists and drive them from hideouts in Pakistani territory.

The campaign appeared to produce some success this year when Pakistani security forces assisted with the release of a Taliban-held U.S.-Canadian family after five years in captivity. However, U.S. officials cautioned that move needed to be followed by additional measures to prove the country's commitment.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif said during a visit to Washington in October that Pakistan was willing to cooperate fully with the administration. He said Pakistan had wiped out militant hideouts with little help from the U.S., which has restricted hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to Pakistan in recent years.

The U.S. in August said it would hold up $255 million in military assistance for Pakistan until it cracks down on extremist groups that threaten neighboring Afghanistan.

President Trump's tough words about Pakistan, a troubled U.S. security partner, infuriated Islamabad and triggered anti-U.S. protests that Pakistani police have had to use tear gas to disperse.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The search for the missing Argentine submarine lost in the South Atlantic will continue on, the countrys president said on Friday, nine days after it first disappeared on Nov. 15.

The disappearance and current search of the ARA San Juan submarine has touched all Argentines, President Mauricio Macri said while at the navys headquarters in Buenos Aires. Its a difficult moment for all, but obviously, especially for the families of the 44 crew members.

2 SAILORS DIDNT BOARD MISSING ARGENTINA SUBMARINE AT THE LAST MINUTE

Im here to guarantee you that we will carry on with the search, especially now that we have the support of all the international community, Macri said.

He also added that a review of the recently renovated subs disappearance will be conducted.

This demands a serious, deep investigation, Macri said. We need to understand how a submarine that had undergone a midlife refit, and that was in perfect conditions to sail, suffered this explosion.

The Argentine navy said Thursday that an explosion occurred near the time and place where the submarine went missing. Navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said at a news conference that the relatives of the crew had been informed and the search would continue until there was full certainty about the fate of the vessel.

ARGENTINA SAYS SOUND DETECTED IN SEARCH FOR MISSING SUBMARINE IS CONSISTENT WITH NON-NUCLEAR EXPLOSION

More than a dozen airplanes and ships have been participating in the multinational search across an area of some 185,000 square miles, roughly the size of Spain.

The Argentine navy said Friday that Russia is sending an Antonov transport aircraft, and a ship in the southern Patagonian port of Comodoro Rivadavia is being adapted to carry a U.S. Navy submarine rescue chamber. They will focus the search efforts on a smaller area where the explosion was recorded.

The submarine was sailing from the extreme southern port of Ushuaia to the coastal city of Mar del Plata. It was originally scheduled to arrive Monday at a navy base there.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is warning that unauthorized weapons in the hands of Hezbollah, and threatening rhetoric from the Lebanese militant group and Israeli officials, "heightens the risk of miscalculation and escalation into conflict."

The U.N. chief called on Hezbollah and Israel, who fought a war in 2006, "to exercise restraint at all times."

Guterres said in a report to the U.N. Security Council circulated Friday that allegations of arms transfers to Hezbollah continue "on a regular basis," which the U.N. takes seriously but "is not in a position to substantiate them independently.

He noted, however, that Hezbollah has acknowledged "use and display of that weaponry."

The U.N. resolution that ended the 2006 war calls for Hezbollah and all other militias operating in Lebanon to be disarmed and demobilized.
Argentinas navy insisted a missing submarine appeared to be in good condition before it set off on a training mission, despite fears it later exploded under the sea with 44 crew members aboard.

Enrique Balbi, an Argentine navy spokesman, said the ARA San Juan submarine passed a routine check two days before setting sail.

The hope that any crew members survived was dimming as the search hit 10 days.

SEARCH FOR MISSING ARGENTINE SUBMARINE WILL CONTINUE, COUNTRYS PRESIDENT SAYS

The Argentine navy said Thursday an explosion occurred near the time and place where the submarine went missing.

However, a multinational search and rescue effort continued Saturday. A Norwegian ship carrying a U.S. undersea rescue module was preparing to weigh anchor for the search zone, despite worsening weather.

The BBC reported Russia also joined to help search for the submarine, sending its Antonov aircraft on Friday night to help assist in the search.

More than a dozen airplanes and ships have been participating in the search across an area of some 185,000 square miles.

2 SAILORS DIDNT BOARD MISSING ARGENTINA SUBMARINE AT THE LAST MINUTE

The submarine was sailing from the extreme southern port of Ushuaia to the coastal city of Mar del Plata. It was originally scheduled to arrive Monday at a navy base there.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Separatist lawmakers in eastern Ukraine have appointed an interim chief to replace their beleaguered leader in an apparent palace coup.

The resignation of the leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic Igor Plotnitsky was announced Friday by Leonid Pasechnik, his long-time foe and minister of state security.

The separatist mouthpiece Luhansk Information Center reported on Saturday that the local legislature voted unanimously to accept Plotnitsky's resignation and make Pasechnik interim chief.

Plotnitsky's resignation ends a nearly week-long showdown between the separatist leader and the ousted interior minister, who had summoning troops in defiance of his sacking.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in a long-simmering conflict between government troops and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014. The region has been plagued with infighting between various warlords.
Two men wanted for questioning over an incident that sparked a mass evacuation of a London subway station turned themselves in on Saturday morning.

British Transport Police said the two men, ages 21 and 40, voluntarily went to a local police station after images of them were released Friday night. Their names were not released.

We appealed for information following an incident at Oxford Circus yesterday. Since the appeal two men, aged 21 and 40, attended a police station voluntarily and were interviewed, the agency tweeted on Saturday. Thank you to everyone who helped share the appeal. The investigation continues.

Panic spread quickly near the Oxford Circus subway station Friday afternoon after apparently erroneous reports of gunshots. After evacuating two subway stations, police said there were no indications that any shots had been fired.

Police initially treated the reported gunfire as a terrorist incident and social media was filled with alarming false reports about shooting at several locations.

Some people were injured in a stampede away from the subway station locations.

Major stores planned to open as usual on Saturday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This weekend, Cuba not only marks the one-year anniversary of the death of Fidel Castro, but it embarks on the beginning of a new era -- as Fidel's brother, President Raul Castro, begins to step away from power.

Starting Saturday, Cuba will commemorate the life of the leader of the Cuban Revolution, ending the ceremonies Dec. 4, one year after Castro was laid to rest, VOA News reported.

That day it will also elect Raul Castro's successor as president, meaning Cuba will soon be led by someone other than a Castro for the first time in six decades.

In 2013, Raul Castro told Cubas National Assembly of Peoples Power that he planned to retire Feb. 24, 2018, the Miami Herald reported. But the 86-year-old intends to remain head of the Communist Party, resulting in a slow transition of power.

But while Cuba commemorates the life of Fidel Castro, the reaction among Cuban-Americans in Florida will be much different, the Herald reported.

'History hasn't absolved him'

Using his own words that history will absolve me, history hasnt absolved him of anything and maybe never will, Andy Gomez, interim director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, told the newspaper. The last chapter is yet to be written, but I believe the ideals of the Cuban Revolution went to the grave with him.

Castro, who battled poor health for the last decade of his life, died last year on Nov. 25. He death was followed by a nine-day mourning period.

Different approaches

As Fidel Castro faded from power, President Barack Obama attempted to revive relations between the two countries, including sparking economic activity.

But in part because of Fidel Castro's history of human rights abuses and other oppression, President Donald Trump has taken a more hardline stance -- especially in reaction to alleged sonic attacks againt U.S. Embassy personnel.

In September, the U.S.announced it would pull its embassy staff from Havana, warn Americans against travel to the island, among other measures, Fox News reported.
Jewish groups denounce Israel's plans to deport nearly 40,000 African refugees

Jewish human rights groups are denouncing Israel's plans to deport almost 40,000 African asylum seekers, defending refugees that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu calls " infiltrators." On Sunday, Netanyahu's 28-member executive cabinet voted unanimously to give African asylum seekers three months to leave the country or face deportation to an undisclosed country.

http://www.newsweek.com/israel-deport-africa-refugees-asylum-seekers-720495
In a short time, my friend will either be deported or forced to buy a plane ticket back to a country she has not set foot in for 36 years.

Although a legal resident alien from Germany, she has raised two children in the United States, overcome homelessness, battled mental illness and forged the forces that even many lower-income Americans cannot surpass.

Now, it is a plea deal on a 2013 charge that pushes for her removal. No matter that she was not advised of the immigration consequences of this bargain. No consideration for the lack of resources that left her without proper legal counsel to fight the charges and the immigration proceedings. With little thought for the impact deportation will have on her life and the country to which she will return, the cards have been set into motion.

Options have run out.

Time is running short.

And, so far, the courts, the immigration system, state senators and even the governor has been unwilling to intervene in a situation that will set back every ounce of stability she had achieved in the last three decades.

Sadly, my friend is not alone in this era of walls, travel bans, sanctuary cities and rollbacks of immigration protections.

From January to June of 2017, there have been more than 75,000 arrests of undocumented immigrants, up 20,000 compared with the previous year. According to data from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, 26 percent have committed no crime versus 15 percent in the same period in 2016.

It is people like Pastor Noe Carias, a Guatemalan-born evangelical leader in San Diego, husband to a U.S. citizen and father of two, who are being detained during routine immigration visits aimed at rectifying decades-old deportation orders. It is Rosa Sabido, a Mexican whose 30 years of visitor visas and stays of deportation have now left her in sanctuary of a Colorado church for nearly six months. It is local people I know, who came to the U.S. for a new start but now live every day in fear that the dream they sought, and many times achieved, for their families will be diverted to many things unknown.

Just this week, headlines reminded us that the 60,000 Haitians who have rebuilt their lives in the United States after the devastating 2010 earthquake will be asked to leave or face deportation. For the second time in a decade, all these people will have to start over again, this time in their home countrythe poorest in the western hemispherewhich is still navigating precarious conditions.

One couple I know will abandon property they have acquired and businesses they have started. While Haiti is their homeland, they will soon navigate a new complexity of raising their American-born children in a very foreign place.

Do we need a reminder, in this week we commemorate the first Thanksgiving, of what it means to be the stranger on someone elses land? Nearly 50 percent of the original pilgrims died in their first winter on American soil. If it were not for support from the Native Americans, no one would have survived and the following year would not have yielded the bountiful harvest that we still celebrate today.

Even before the pilgrims, celebrating the harvest was a centuries-old tradition to honor Gods love for the immigrant, foreigner and the stranger, who were delivered from many years of struggle in the wilderness. While this seven-day Feast of Tabernacles, also known as sukkot, is not discussed until Leviticus 23, a few chapters prior begins the dialogue about who God intends to be invited to this table.

When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God, reads Leviticus 19:33-34.

Most of us, including myself, can look back in our history and trace it to one or more groups that suffered in their entrance to the United States. Someone in our immediate family may even remember what it was like to lack an invitation to the great table of the American dream. Yet, these same people are the first to claim the borders should be shut down, the refugees cut off and immigrants deported. We remain afraid of the other, even though the other is not too far from ourselves.

Ronald Takaki, author and professor at University of California, says the dynamic is like looking into a mirror and seeing nothing. Together, we the diverse people of the United States transformed America into a mighty economy and an amazingly unique society of varied races, ethnicities and religions, he says. Yet, history scarcely records the contributions of these strangersAfricanAmericans, Asians, Irish, Jews, Mexicans, Muslims and Native Americansto the American story.

Second only to loving God, the greatest commandment is loving others as ourselves (Mark 12:31). For we too were strangers in the land of America, and therefore, it is our holy responsibility and privilege to welcome the stranger.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made a triumphant visit to the newly liberated city of Kherson. He hailed the Russian withdrawal from the southern city as the beginning of the end of the war but also acknowledged the heavy price Ukrainian soldiers are paying in their grinding effort to push back the invaders. Retaking Kherson was one of Ukraines biggest successes in the nearly 9-month-old war and delivered another stinging blow to the Kremlin. But large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine are still under Russian control, and the city of Kherson itself is without water, power and heat, and remains within reach of Moscows shells and missiles. Heavy fighting continued elsewhere in Ukraine.
Juan Marte helped bring internet service to a developing nation a decade ago, then came to King George Countyand discovered the situation was worse than in his homeland.

He was working this summer with Steve and Michele Wido, missionaries he met years ago when they visited his native Dominican Republic. He was shocked by their lack of access to high-speed internet service and the fiber-optic cables that supply it.

"This is crazy. How can you live?" Marte told Michele Wido. "We have to have fiber here; the future is fiber."

The 33-year-old Dominican decided to bring it to the rural county, where he's invested in the couple's business, CRC Contracting Inc. He's also spent more than $200,000 on equipment, licenses and hiring employees for the new company, KGI Communications Inc.

Marte and his wife live in Spotsylvania County so their three children can learn English in a private school. After that, the family plans to move to King George, where he's chief executive officer of the new company, as well as its primary investor. Michele Wido is the president.

Steve Wido, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the King George Board of Supervisors earlier this month, told the supervisors Nov. 14 that the new business is poised to provide much-needed service in the most rural areas of the county.

The company plans to install equipment on three towers in King George. The cost for each is about $36,000, Marte said.

The rectangular boxes, which Marte described as stations, will broadcast a signal, via a radio frequency, to homes within a 360-degree radius, Marte said. No line of sight is needed.

This "air fiber" will provide the fastest form of broadband technology, according to the company's website, kgicomm.com.

And the company doesn't want anything from the county except a contract to put equipment on one of its water towers.

"We're not looking for grants or money, nothing from the county," Steve Wido said. "It's our money that we're investing, and we want to make sure it succeeds."

The announcement was one of four presentations the King George board heard on the same night about possible solutions to internet access problems. The lack of reliable, affordable and fast broadband service has been a regular complaint of county residents and a campaign platform for local candidates.

It's brought up almost as often as criticisms about the quality and cost of county water.

The problem isn't limited to King George, but occurs in any area that doesn't have a dense enough population to make it financially feasible for companies to extend underground fiber optic cables.

Marte said the solution is easier since the government made it possible for small businesses to tap into this radio frequency that provides access to the LTE network. Some of the big technology companies bought licenses just so others wouldn't have access to them, Marte said, but KGI Communications was able to acquire one.

The company already has gotten permission to put its equipment on a private tower at State Route 218 and U.S. 301. The second tower, still under negotiation, is past the CVS Pharmacy on U.S. 301.

After the company finalizes its second lease, it will work with King George about placing equipment on the water tower at Arnold's Corner, at State Route 3 and Dahlgren Road.

"We're going to concentrate on the area where they don't have anything, in The Meadows and for the Shiloh people," Marte said.

Installation and monthly fees would vary, based on the proximity to the towers and the desired speed. Those who want to check their email occasionally might want slower speeds, at a monthly cost of about $49, Marte said, while those requiring faster speeds might pay up to $200 a month.

Steve Wido told the supervisors that after negotiations are completed, the company could be up and running within two weeks.

"We're excited about it, we can't wait," he said.

Marte seems calm about the money he's already spent, saying he'll need about 1,000 customers to get a return on his investment.

"He's a risk-taker," Michele Wido said about Marte, a former race car driver.

"In business," Marte added, "if you don't assume risk, you're never gonna make money."
A state lawmaker from Spotsylvania County wants to stop the insurance-industry practice of charging more for certain types of coverage just because of a persons bad credit.

Republican Del. Mark Cole recently prefiled a bill for the 2018 General Assembly session that would prohibit companies from using credit histories and scores as factors in determining a consumers auto and fire insurance premiums.

Credit scores can dramatically impact insurance rates.

A Virginian with a clean driving record but poor credit pays an average of $2,566 annually for car insurance, or about $1,500 more than a driver with excellent credit, according to Consumer Reports. In fact, the average rate for someone with bad credit is about $500 more than the cost for a person with excellent credit and a drunken-driving conviction.

Cole said he proposed the bill at the request of a constituent, who he said thinks its unfair for credit scores to influence certain premiums. If approved, the legislation will take effect January 2019.

I dont see the nexus between your credit rating and what you pay for your car insurance, Cole said.

A persons age, gender, marital status and driving record also impact car insurance premiums. The average yearly rate in Virginia stood at $743 in 2014, making it the 19th least expensive state for car insurance, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

A 2007 Federal Trade Commission report found that credit-based rates cause AfricanAmericans and Hispanics to pay more because they tend to have lower credit scores than whites and Asians. But the study also determined that credit scores do effectively predict the number and cost of claims consumers submit.

Just three statesCalifornia, Hawaii and Massachusettsprohibit credit-based premiums for car insurance.

Jim Whittle, associate general counsel for the American Insurance Association, defended the practice in an interview, calling credit scores a useful and proven way to assess a persons risk. He added that some insurance companies place more weight on a persons credit than others.

Its a competitive marketplace, Whittle said, and people can find companies that use other methods of analyzing risk.

Cole is not the only lawmaker to propose legislation ahead of the session that kicks off Jan. 10.

State Sen. Scott Surovell, a Democrat whose 36th District includes parts of Stafford County, recently submitted a bill that would increase the threshold for felony grand larceny from $200 to $500. Under the bill, someone accused of stealing less than $500 would be charged with misdemeanor petit larceny rather than a felony.

Similar legislation has failed in previous sessions after facing opposition from retailers and public safety groups.
BACK IN the '70s I was attending an annual editors' meeting when I was asked in a confidential session what I was working on. At the time, I was a managing editor for investigations for Scripps-Howard Newspapers.

I replied that I didn't feel comfortable with providing many details at that point but could only report that it was an important piece that dealt with a startling affair John F. Kennedy had.

There was immediate concern expressed about relevance, considering the length of time that had expired - more than 10 years.

But more importantly, there was an unwritten rule by editors nationwide that the private dalliances of public officials (and for that matter their drinking habits) were off limits unless there was hard evidence that they were interfering with the office holder's ability to do his or her job.

"We don't publish those kinds of stories about anyone, including presidents," the inquisitor said. "Besides, Kennedy's escapades have been known for years and little or nothing has been reported"

"You're correct" I responded. "But get ready; that's about to change and probably sooner rather than later, few politicians or celebrities are going to get a pass on their sexual shenanigans."

Then I felt compelled to provide one more fact to back up my contention. "Besides," I said, "the lady in this case also was a Mafia party girl, connected to Sam Giancana, the Chicago crime boss, and furthermore [FBI director] J. Edgar Hoover knew about it."

Finally, there was stunned silence. I couldn't resist twisting the knife. "My guess is you will find this serious enough to consider, and my guess also is most of you will want to reconsider the policy of silence."

Well, it's taken awhile, but we now have a perfect storm created by the internet and the determination of women victimized over the years to right the wrongs.

The Kennedy expose took place not long after a special team known simply as the Church Committee - named after its chairman, Idaho Democratic Senator Frank Church - was created to investigate the intelligence and other activities of the CIA and FBI.

The problems with the committee were numerous, but the worst was that Church's efforts were aimed mainly at Republican administrations, not Democratic ones.

Church worked overtime to put the lid on our story, but failed.

Now nearly every news flash unveils the antics of serial fondlers, fanny pinchers, feel coppers, mashers and worse from Hollywood West to Hollywood East (Congress).

Word came last week that Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota was at least a one-time groper before his political career, when he was a Saturday Night Live player. He has apologized.

And as we all know, the Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore's alleged penchant for teenage girls years ago while he was in his 30s has let off such an intensifying stench as to set his party's leadership into spasms as they desperately seek his resignation.

Or find a way to deny him the oath of office if he wins, which is apparently utterly possible given the nature of Alabama voters who are rallying to his side.

First it was Bill Cosby, who seemed to have pushed his idea of consensual to the limit with the alleged use of drugs. Now it's Harvey Weinstein, the bigtime movie producer who has been accused by plenty of stars in La La Land and elsewhere of inappropriate behavior.

The days when the mainline press conspired to keep public attention away from the fact that Franklin Roosevelt was a cripple by not publishing his picture in a wheelchair - or more pertinent in this case, his affairs with Marguerite "Missy" LeHand and Lucy Mercer - are long gone, as they should be.

That decision, however, helped FDR win at least one election and perhaps two more than he should have as his health deteriorated.

The editors who were negligent in reporting on the private lives of elected officials were wrong.

A longtime friend who worked for one of the Southwest's leading newspapers while the silence ban was still being observed asked if I thought he should report that a Speaker of the U.S. House from his state was an alcoholic and carouser.

"Absolutely," I said, he clearly isn't doing his job while at the Zebra Room (a favorite watering hole) every afternoon."

His report was the beginning of the end for the speaker just as the John Kennedy story broke some serious ice.

By the way, every editor ran it.
FREDERICKSBURG has growing pains, which will require city officials to make some big decisions about future economic development over the next few years.

Like most things, economic development comes with costs as well as benefits. Balancing the two is never easy, particularly for an area that wants and needs to keep attracting more jobs, but is equally concerned about maintaining its small-town appeal and historic charm.

The Fredericksburg Economic Development Strategic Plan developed last year focuses on turning the city into an employment epicenter and tourist destination while at the same time ensuring that the proper infrastructure is in place to sustain growth.

Of course, this is far easier said than done.

Economic growth is a dynamic process that affects every member of the community. Bringing in new employers and creating a business-friendly environment so that existing businesses want to stay and expand is a good thing. Businesses create jobs that generally raise residents standard of living.

Look at any economically depressed area in Virginia, and you will see high levels of unemployment, accompanied by equally high levels of depression, drug use and other assorted social ills.

Although economic growth is much better than stagnation, it can also be a mixed blessing. For example, more people moving into an area increases the cost of existing housing by increasing the demand. More demand means that housing units that were previously affordable for long-time residents suddenly arent any more, which can lead to resentment at all the outsiders who are taking over the place.

This is already happening in Fredericksburg. The number of new businesses and jobs outpaced the rest of Virginia this year, pushing the median monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment up to $1,630. But 55 percent of all households in the city are having trouble making ends meet, according to the Rappahannock United Way, and the high cost of housing is one of the major factors.

To keep growing, the city will need to add housing for an expanding workforce. But some proposed high-end projects will be too pricey for many current and future residents. City officials can offer developers tax credits or other financial incentives to include more affordable housing units, but that would also reduce the amount of new tax revenue they can collect.

And that extra revenue is needed to deal with the increased traffic congestion and parking shortages exacerbated by a growing population. Traffic is already a daily problem for local residents, 95 percent of whom commute by car. And its a problem that will only get worse as more people move into the city and surrounding areas.

Even a proposal to establish a regional transportation authority to raise $34 million annually to fund badly needed local transportation projects has its costs, as well as its obvious benefits. Raising taxes increases the cost of living, which in turn makes it that much harder for residents living on the financial edge to afford the basics of life, including affordable housing and transportation.

Growing pains are a sign of vitality, and thats a good thing. But city officials also have the unenviable task of finding the right balance between competing interests. To do so, they have to answer some very difficult questions:

 How will an increased influx of newcomers affect the cost of living, especially housing?

 How much more commercial and residential development can the existing transportation infrastructure handle?

 Can infrastructure be sufficiently upgraded without raising taxes so high that current residents are priced out of their own city?

Get it right, and Fredericksburg will enjoy a period of sustained growth and prosperity. Get it wrong, and the aftereffects will be felt for decades.
185 stalls and stands : Bonn Christmas market opened

Bonn District Mayor Brigitta Poppe-Reiners officially opened the Christmas Market in Bonn. 185 stalls and stands invite visitors to stroll past them and enjoy the atmosphere.

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Next Sunday however brings an interruption in the operation of the market, because Christmas Markets in Germany remain closed on Totensonntag, which is the Sunday before the first of Advent when the deceased are commemorated. After Totensonntag the Market runs without a break until December 23.

As a consequence of the terror attack on the Christmas Market in Berlin, heavy concrete blocks, each weighing several tons, are put in place at the access roads to the Christmas Markets - like in many other cities in Germany. Because Advent has not yet begun, the Big Band of the Music School Bonn played some rather jazzy tunes, under the direction of Shawn Spicer.

Brigitta Poppe-Reiners showed her delight that besides colleagues from the district administration and the city council, also her predecessor Helmut Kollig, Lord Mayor Ashok Sridharan and Mayor Angelica Kappel attended the opening. This adds a certain grandeur to the event.

Also among the guests were Eva Buhler, Head of Marketing at the General-Anzeiger, and Marco Westphal of the Stadtwerke. Both businesses support the festive lights at the town gate. The interest group Friedrichstrae also installed lights, very special ones this year - there, a red starlit sky made out of traditional Herrnhuter stars glows above the street. 185 stalls and stands are part of the Christmas Market. They offer everything imaginable from food and drink to gifts and decorations as well as arts and crafts. Also, the childrens interests are not being neglected: At Munsterplatz, there is an event house for kids.

Children from the age of six years up are being looked after by childminders between 4pm and 7pm (Monday-Friday) and between 1pm and 7pm on Saturdays and Sundays - they can play, draw pictures and make little crafts. Theres also a puppet theatre at the Sterntor each Sunday between noon and 12.45pm. The catholic and the protestant church are not taking part this year, for the first time. Their traditional church mile cannot open this year - due to reconstruction work at the Basilica which is more than 1000 years old. The city council and the police cooperate in regards to security again - beside the concrete road blocks they have the well-established security standards in place, including a mobile police station.

There is also an office of the security staff in the Vivatsgasse. For the night hours a private security firm has been hired, which also keeps an eye on fire safety. As usual, the police are warning of pickpockets who are targeting the city centre more than usually during the run-up to Christmas. Our patrols will remind visitors if they dont close their bags properly, said spokesperson Simon Rott. The police are handing out little alarm bells which get attached to purses and ring if somebody tries to reach into the handbags.
Shrinking glacier cover could lead to increased volcanic activity in Iceland, warn scientists.

A new study, led by the University of Leeds, has found that there was less volcanic activity in Iceland when glacier cover was more extensive and as the glaciers melted volcanic eruptions increased due to subsequent changes in surface pressure.

Dr Graeme Swindles, from the School of Geography at Leeds, said: Climate change caused by humans is creating rapid ice melt in volcanically active regions. In Iceland, this has put us on a path to more frequent volcanic eruptions.

The study examined Icelandic volcanic ash preserved in peat deposits and lake sediments and identified a period of significantly reduced volcanic activity between 5,500 and 4,500 years ago. This period came after a major decrease in global temperature, which caused glacier growth in Iceland.

The findings, published in the journal Geology, found there was a time lag of roughly 600 years between the climate event and a noticeable decrease in the number of volcanic eruptions. The study suggests that perhaps a similar time lag can be expected following the more recent shift to warmer temperatures.

Icelands volcanic system is in process of recovering from the Little Ice Age  a recorded period of colder climate roughly between the years 1500 to 1850. Since the end of the Little Ice Age, a combination of natural and human caused climate warming is causing Icelandic glaciers to melt again.

Dr Swindles said: The human effect on global warming makes it difficult to predict how long the time lag will be but the trends of the past show us more eruptions in Iceland can be expected in the future.

These long term consequences of human effect on the climate is why summits like COP are so important. It is vital to understand how actions today can impact future generations in ways that have not been fully realised, such as more ash clouds over Europe, more particles in the atmosphere and problems for aviation. 

Icelandic volcanism is controlled by complex interactions between rifts in continental plate boundaries, underground gas and magma build-up and pressure on the volcanos surface from glaciers and ice. Changes in surface pressure can alter the stress on shallow chambers where magma builds up.

Study co-author, Dr Ivan Savov, from the School of Earth & Environment at Leeds, explains: When glaciers retreat there is less pressure on Earths surface. This can increase the amount of mantle melt as well as affect magma flow and how much magma the crust can hold.

Even small changes in surface pressure can alter the likelihood of eruptions at ice-covered volcanos.

Reference:

Graeme T. Swindles, Elizabeth J. Watson, Ivan P. Savov, Ian T. Lawson, Anja Schmidt, Andrew Hooper, Claire L. Cooper, Charles B. Connor, Manuel Gloor, Jonathan L. Carrivick. Climatic control on Icelandic volcanic activity during the mid-Holocene. Geology, 2017; DOI: 10.1130/G39633.1

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Leeds.
kacylee at 25-11-2017 10:20 AM (4 years ago) (f)

A beautiful Medical graduate from the University of Benin did her parents proud when she walked away with 11 awards at the convocation ceremony of the University.

A beautiful Medical graduate from the University of Benin did her parents proud when she walked away with 11 awards at the convocation ceremony of the University. Identified as Daisy Okonofua, she took to Social Media to celebrate her awards.



She wrote;



Today was indeed humbling and surreal. Distinction in biochemistry! Distinction in pharmacology! Distinction in mental health! Best graduating student in pharmacology!!



Best graduating student in Obstetrics&Gynaecology!! Best graduating student in Child Health!! Best graduating student in Mental Health!! Overall best graduating student 2009/2010!!!



Look at God!!! Every good thing comes from the Lord. This God is too good!!! Too good!!! Thank you, thank you Lord!!! Onise iyanu



TRULY, Ive tasted of your power! #lookatGod #wonthedoit #myGodofawesomewonders #toograteful #Godisgood #issagraduate #issadoctor #smallgirlbigGod



Her Sister also celebrated her, by writing;





I call her my Award Winning Sister!! She never fails to make us proud. For the lack of better words to describe how i feel, someone once said you talk about your sister like an investment that has yielded returns way beyond your expectations. She is my star girl.



She won 11 prizes!! ELEVEN!!  Distinction in biochemistry! Distinction in pharmacology! Distinction in mental health! Best graduating student in pharmacology!! Best graduating student in Obstetrics&Gynaecology!!



Best graduating student in Child Health!! Best graduating student in Mental Health!! Overall best graduating student 2009/2010!! UNIBEN!! You have once again done us proud chuchu! I love you.



See Her Pictures Below;















Identified as Daisy Okonofua, she took to Social Media to celebrate her awards.She wrote;Her Sister also celebrated her, by writing;She is my star girl.She won 11 prizes!! ELEVEN!!  Distinction in biochemistry! Distinction in pharmacology! Distinction in mental health! Best graduating student in pharmacology!! Best graduating student in Obstetrics&Gynaecology!!Best graduating student in Child Health!! Best graduating student in Mental Health!! Overall best graduating student 2009/2010!! UNIBEN!! You have once again done us proud chuchu! I love you.See Her Pictures Below;

Post Reply I have been reporting for several years now and I am very interested in visual news reportage with strong inclusion of photos and video multimedia. Posted: at 25-11-2017 10:20 AM (4 years ago) | Addicted Hero
Church Of Sweden Ban Priests From Calling God "He" or "The Lord" Because God Might Be a Woman!

bohlah at 25-11-2017 09:30 PM (4 years ago) (m)

Church clergy have been told to refer to God using gender-neutral language, dropping masculine words such as He and Lord.

Church clergy have been told to refer to God using gender-neutral language, dropping masculine words such as He and Lord.

The order came after more than 250 members of The Church of Sweden, which is a Evangelical Lutheran church, met to discuss ways of updating a 31-year-old handbook that sets out how services should be conducted.



The church is headed by a woman, Archbishop Antje Jackelen, who told Swedens TT news agency the church had been discussing using more inclusive language since its 1986 conference.



She said: Theologically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human.



But not everyone is happy with the decision.



Christer Pahlmblad, an associate theology professor with Swedens Lund University, told Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad the move was undermining the doctrine of the Trinity and the community with the other Christian churches.



He added: It really isnt smart if the Church of Sweden becomes known as a church that does not respect the common theology heritage.

The meeting lasted eight days and the decision was one of many made by the churchs 251-member decision-making body.



The new rules will come into effect on May 20 next year, which is the Christian holiday of Pentecost. The order came after more than 250 members of The Church of Sweden, which is a Evangelical Lutheran church, met to discuss ways of updating a 31-year-old handbook that sets out how services should be conducted.The church is headed by a woman, Archbishop Antje Jackelen, who told Swedens TT news agency the church had been discussing using more inclusive language since its 1986 conference.She said: Theologically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human.But not everyone is happy with the decision.Christer Pahlmblad, an associate theology professor with Swedens Lund University, told Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad the move was undermining the doctrine of the Trinity and the community with the other Christian churches.He added: It really isnt smart if the Church of Sweden becomes known as a church that does not respect the common theology heritage.The meeting lasted eight days and the decision was one of many made by the churchs 251-member decision-making body.The new rules will come into effect on May 20 next year, which is the Christian holiday of Pentecost.

Post Reply I have been reporting on latest news from Nigeria for almost 10 years now. I report on every possible news area I come across, but always ensure my reports are compiled with dignity and fact to uphold my personal values and duty as a journalist Posted: at 25-11-2017 09:30 PM (4 years ago) | Addicted Hero

gogoman at 25-11-2017 11:55 PM (4 years ago)

(m) NICE ONE OYINBO!! Posted: at 25-11-2017 11:55 PM (4 years ago) | Grande Master NICE ONE OYINBO!! Reply

Bebold at 26-11-2017 08:57 AM (4 years ago)

(m) I agree totally and daddy freezy needs to contact me Posted: at 26-11-2017 08:57 AM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac I agree totally and daddy freezy needs to contact me Reply

Mobbysmartins at 26-11-2017 09:09 AM (4 years ago)

(m) We believe that God made us in his own IMAGE,he made us MEN and WOMEN,he also made every other living things MALE and FEMALE,including the FLOWERING PLANTS,SHRUBS AND HERBS,FISHES AND ANIMALS,GOD made all living things MALE AND FEMALE,and all were made in the IMAGE of GOD.Then simple common sense will mean that GOD have a MALE part,plus FEMALE part.GOD have many names,and one of GOD'S name is "SHEKINA".SHEKINA is the female aspect of GOD.So the Church of Sweden is not wrong.But the Pastors will not teach you this,they will instead teach you TITHE. Posted: at 26-11-2017 09:09 AM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac We believe that God made us in his own IMAGE,he made us MEN and WOMEN,he also made every other living things MALE and FEMALE,including the FLOWERING PLANTS,SHRUBS AND HERBS,FISHES AND ANIMALS,GOD made all living things MALE AND FEMALE,and all were made in the IMAGE of GOD.Then simple common sense will mean that GOD have a MALE part,plus FEMALE part.GOD have many names,and one of GOD'S name is "SHEKINA".SHEKINA is the female aspect of GOD.So the Church of Sweden is not wrong.But the Pastors will not teach you this,they will instead teach you TITHE. Reply

zino2017 at 26-11-2017 11:33 AM (4 years ago)

(m) that is a big lie,i live in sweden and i have not read or heard of this news in the papers or in media,so please stop saying fake news Posted: at 26-11-2017 11:33 AM (4 years ago) | Newbie that is a big lie,i live in sweden and i have not read or heard of this news in the papers or in media,so please stop saying fake news Reply

ehudomalt at 26-11-2017 12:38 PM (4 years ago)

(m) chai d world is coming to an end Bible yarn am say all dis tins go shelle Posted: at 26-11-2017 12:38 PM (4 years ago) | Upcoming chai d world is coming to an end Bible yarn am say all dis tins go shelle Reply

osarobo62 at 26-11-2017 03:50 PM (4 years ago)

(m) Quote from: zino2017 on 26-11-2017 11:33 AM that is a big lie,i live in sweden and i have not read or heard of this news in the papers or in media,so please stop saying fake news

just because you didn't hear it does not mean it is false. you might have to start listening to the news often Posted: at 26-11-2017 03:50 PM (4 years ago) | Hero just because you didn't hear it does not mean it is false. you might have to start listening to the news often Reply

zino2017 at 26-11-2017 04:46 PM (4 years ago)

(m) Quote from: osarobo62 on 26-11-2017 03:50 PM just because you didn't hear it does not mean it is false. you might have to start listening to the news often

What do you mean that I should be listening to the news often,who told you I don't listen to news in the country that I live in,I listen and deliver newspapers to homes of people that paid for it,so don't be spreading false news Posted: at 26-11-2017 04:46 PM (4 years ago) | Newbie What do you mean that I should be listening to the news often,who told you I don't listen to news in the country that I live in,I listen and deliver newspapers to homes of people that paid for it,so don't be spreading false news Reply

Lovethlucia at 26-11-2017 06:03 PM (4 years ago)

(f) Nice one Posted: at 26-11-2017 06:03 PM (4 years ago) | Newbie Nice one Reply
TORONTO, Nov 24, 2017 - CKR Carbon Corp. ("CKR" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:CKR) (FRANKFURT:CB81) (WKN:A143MR) an integrated graphite to hybrid graphenes advanced nano material development company is pleased to announce that it has closed its non-brokered private placement announced on November 23, 2017 and raised $2,793,640 (the "Offering"). The Company placed 39,909,143 working capital units (the "WC Units").

Each WC Unit is priced at $0.07 and consists of one (1) common share and one (1) common share purchase warrant ("WC Warrant"). Each WC Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one (1) common share (a "WC Warrant Share") at a price of $0.10 per WC Warrant Share until the earlier of: (i) three (3) years following the closing of the Offering; and (ii) in the event that the closing price of the common shares on the TSX Venture Exchange is at least $0.30 for twenty (20) consecutive trading days, and the 20th trading day (the "Final Trading Day") is at least four (4) months from the closing of the Offering, the date which is thirty (30) days from the Final Trading Day.

The Company paid eligible finders cash compensation of $151,209.80 and issued 2,160,140 Broker Warrants. Each Broker Warrant entitles the holder to acquire one (1) common share of CKR at $0.07 for a period of three (3) years from the closing of the Offering.

All securities issued pursuant to the Offering are subject to a four month hold period expiring on March 25, 2018.

Arno Brand, Co-CEO of the Company, said "we are grateful to our shareholders for their continued support in developing the Aukam graphite project".

Proceeds from the Offering will be used to complete the pilot plant at Aukam, for the acquisition of mining equipment, for further exploration at Aukam, for product development and for general working capital.

Insiders of the Company subscribed for 2,400,000 WC Units for $168,000. The insider private placements are exempt from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101") by virtue of the exemptions contained in sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1) (a) of MI 61-101 in that the fair market value of the consideration for the securities of the Company issued to the insiders does not exceed 25% of its market capitalization.





About CKR Carbon Corporation



CKR Carbon Corp. is an advanced materials company focused on mine to market commercialization of graphite products most notably high value graphene based components for a range of mass market products. We are collaborating with a leading European manufacturer of graphenes to use Aukam graphite to manufacture graphene products for commercialization on an industrial scale. The Company is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol CKR.



For more information: visit the website at www.ckr-carbon.com.





"Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release."



FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Investors are cautioned that these forward looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and by those made in our filings with SEDAR in Canada (available at www.sedar.com).







Contact



Arno Brand, Co-CEO

+1 416-561-4095

abrand@ckr-carbon.com


F1's new owners are preparing to reveal a new official logo for the sport in Abu Dhabi.

Earlier, we reported that three potential new logos - to replace the familiar 'Flying 1' logo introduced under Bernie Ecclestone - were being considered.

New F1 supremo Chase Carey confirmed that Liberty Media is now ready to unveil the new logo.

"We want to provide a fresh energy to the sport and thought the new logo was a great way to emphasise that," he told British television Sky in Abu Dhabi.

However, with fans denouncing the proposed new logos, Cary admitted that replacing Ecclestone's well-liked trademark will be controversial.

"For sure, any time you change you are always going to get a mixed set of views," said Carey.

"We are not looking to change the sport, we are looking to provide a fresh innovation and energy to a sport that is a great sport. We think we can enhance and better it."

(GMM)
GREENSBORO  Bang!

The gunshot wakes an 8-year-old girl from a sound sleep inside her house on the east side of Greensboro.

Bang! Bang!

Sandra Isley hears her daughter Dyva scream.

"Mommy, what is that?" Dyva shrieks.

Bang!

Isley tells her daughter to go back to sleep and assures her that the loud noises are only firecrackers.

But Isley knows better.

She knows that by the time her daughter's friends gather for school, police likely will be at the site of yet another killing in their part of the city.

"These babies have the weight of the world on their shoulders, and it's not fair to them," Isley said. "I leave the house walking in the morning sometimes, and you have a crime scene playing out behind these babies at the bus stop."

Similar scenarios have played out all over Greensboro this year  39 times so far  and many in the city's east side where Isley and Dyva live.

Only in 2007 has the city's homicide total ever reached 39.

And in a city of more than 287,000 that has averaged 25 slayings a year since 2000, this year's total might be surprising to some.

The violence has cost Greensboro the lives of 35 men and four women  34 African Americans, four Caucasians and an Asian.

The victims range in age from 18 to 54.

One woman was strangled and a young man was struck by a vehicle. Gunfire killed the rest.

Between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31, Greensboro police responded to 439 shootings. By comparison, there were 465 shootings for all of last year.

"Somehow we're raising kids in our community here who are willing to shoot and kill somebody," said Howard Neumann, the county's chief assistant district attorney. "Most of us think: How can someone be raised and educated in a public school system and not only not know that that's wrong but not have the willpower to not do it?"

These shootings have occurred before dawn, in broad daylight and late at night.

Twice shoppers at Four Seasons Town Centre had to take cover to avoid bullets fired at men in the mall's parking lot.

Residents have stood outside their homes trying to understand how their neighbor was killed.

One person had to face the reality that a fire in the woods behind his house was an attempt to hide a man's death.

And construction crews have found gruesome scenes on job sites.

The latest killing didn't involve a gun or knife or other typical weapon.

Instead, police believe 20-year-old Jacob Montgomery Stowe used a truck to back over Jamison Logan Horvath during an argument.

Horvath's death Monday marked the city's 39th killing this year, tying the record.

And with 35 days left in 2017, the city will most likely surpass that total.

"Obviously one homicide is too many," Greensboro Police Chief Wayne Scott said. "We're in the midst of a couple of crises in this country. Violent crime is spiking in all cities, and we're not immune to it. Some of our neighboring cities are up more than we are."

Scott spoke of recent mass shootings such as the ones in Nevada, Texas and California. He cited the country's opioid epidemic. He also spoke of a rise in violent crimes across the nation.

The Guilford County Sheriff's Office, whose rural community lends to a lower crime rate, has had only two homicides this year. High Point saw an increase with 18. Winston-Salem has remained steady from last year's numbers with 22 in 2017. Charlotte has seen a rise, hitting 80 killings this year.

"It's very concerning," Scott said. "It's extremely concerning."

  

Some community leaders want more involvement from Greensboro City Council to stop this trend. Neumann went so far as to lay some of the blame for the increase in violence on the council.

"I think an increased police presence in the community where the violence is happening is essential," Neumann said. "It doesn't take much to divide Greensboro into zones and sectors and put pushpins in the areas where homicides are happening."

But Neumann said there's a potential problem with doing just that.

"Those tend to be African-American neighborhoods, and then there is blowback that police are harassing people or police misconduct or that they just aren't being nice," Neumann said. "I think the city has  police have been pressured to move away from that type of patrol so there are not as many police in those areas."

The police department has faced years of accusations that officers have targeted black residents.

Two officers  Travis Cole and Charlotte Jackson  resigned after body-worn camera footage showed Cole as he punched resident Dejuan Yourse and threw him to the ground during a 2016 robbery investigation at the home of Yourse's mother.

It was the second time Cole brought race-based scrutiny to the department.

Video surfaced in 2014 on social media showing Cole throwing Rufus Scales to the ground while a second officer grabs a camera from Scales' brother Devin, who was filming the arrest.

Both cases ended with monetary settlements.

Those cases, and several others, have led to protests, sit-ins, rallies and arrests. At one point, City Council members walked out of a meeting and allowed residents to take over their chambers.

"My opinion is that we have a local government who is trying to micromanage the police department and has no training in law enforcement whatsoever," Neumann said. "You hire a chief of police because he knew how to police, but then you tell him what he can and can't do."

Greensboro City Councilwoman Sharon Hightower, who represents District 1, disagreed with Neumann  but not completely.

"I think the DA's office is, in my opinion, too far removed from what's happening in the community and why the decisions are made in our community," she said. "While we certainly don't ask them (police) to stay out of our communities  in terms of what the DA has said  but the concern has been said to us that the only time police come to our neighborhood is when it is negative."

Officers say they are in areas of the city known as violent crime "hot spots" and trying to build relationships with residents.

"We have increased patrol in our hot-spot areas, and that's had some effect in those particular hot spots," Scott said.

At the beginning of the year, Scott identified six areas where violence is higher: Overland Heights, Smith Homes, Beck Street, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Booker Street and Claremont Homes.

Scott said after identifying those areas officers have spent 1,460 hours and $43,959 in overtime funds to have officers in those areas to reassure residents that they care about safety, to try to make connections that can help prevent or solve crimes and to detect and deter criminal activity.

Between Dec. 15, 2016, and June 15, 2017, Greensboro officers served 121 orders for arrest and arrest warrants, made 64 criminal arrests, issued 66 citations, wrote 48 field interview cards, wrote 88 ABC reports, conducted three drivers' license checkpoints and made 666 community contacts in those areas, data show.

Those community contacts have played an important role in helping the police department solve their cases, said Capt. Nathaniel Davis, who oversees the department's homicide investigations.

  

Officers said that they had poor witness cooperation earlier this year, but that, as the killings increased people began to talk and provide information.

Stowe's arrest in Horvath's death is one of 17 arrests Greensboro police made in the 39 homicide cases. And officers said they believe the killer of two other victims is now dead.

They said Trevorn Daqwain Pinckney, 23, killed both Tony Stevens Martin Jr., 27, and LaTony McCants, 26, in a July 29 shooting outside the Laurence Manor Apartments on Juliet Place.

Police took out arrest warrants for Pinckney, but he committed suicide in a hotel room in South Carolina before he could be arrested.

The district attorney's office also declared the Feb. 11 death of 25-year-old Carlos Keith Blackman as a justifiable homicide.

Officers had tried to pull over Blackman's vehicle during a drug patrol but he led them on both vehicle and foot chases before confronting them.

Body-worn camera footage captured the sound of several gunshots and then Officer J.R. LaBarre on the ground with a single gunshot wound to the shoulder. Moments later officers found Blackman, who had been shot multiple times. He died at Moses Cone Hospital later that day.

  

Davis said some argue that Blackman's death should not be counted in the total number of homicides.

"There is some back and forth on how we count homicides," he said.

The News & Record used totals the Greensboro Police Department provided to the FBI from 1975-2016 in this report. Those numbers do not include justifiable homicides, which would include some officer-involved shootings and those ruled to be in self-defense.

That means, when the final 2017 total is sent to the FBI  and if the year concludes without another homicide  the number likely would be calculated at 38, instead of 39, putting 2007 back on top for the most killings.

That discrepancy is key to why different officers use different totals when explaining the number of homicides each year.

Davis totals in justifiable homicides when he discusses the city's killings.

"I would err on the side of caution and use the total number of instances and explain it," Davis said. "That way your critics can't say you're hiding anything."

Had the city reported three justifiable homicides to the FBI in 2016, that total also would be 39. Two of last year's shootings were cleared as self-defense and the third was an officer-involved shooting.

Davis said a year's total isn't always at the forefront of his mind.

"I'm conscious of the high number but still very aware that each has a family that is still grieving and wants resolved for their loved ones," Davis said.

He said he tends to stop and think about the total more as a private citizen.

"As a citizen of the city, it is concerning," he said. "The homicide rate is going up and it should be going down. I want to play my part in helping curb this trend."

  

That's something all three men  Davis, Scott and Neumann  are trying to figure out how to do.

"I believe that we're at a place where we have to come to the realization that we can't arrest out of this trend of violence," Davis said. "We have to look for innovative ways to address the crime trend."

With the help of a $150,000, two-year grant from Project Safe Neighborhoods, Greensboro's police department launched the Safer City Summit in January. The summit brings together law enforcement, prosecutors, faith organizations, service providers and community members to find a way to curb violent crimes.

Both Neumann and Davis said partnering with community stakeholders is vital.

There's also a large concern for the youth living near the areas in the city where violent crimes are more prevalent.

Neumann has noticed more and more youth seem to have access to guns.

"I know when I was growing up and thought about what I wanted to do when I grew up, I was led to believe that within certain limits anything was possible," Neumann said. "Now kids have it so bad that from such an early age they don't have an opportunity to dream. But that's not an excuse to commit crime."

For years now, Sandra Isley has tried to help children in low socioeconomic areas of Greensboro find safe places to spend time and ways for them to take classes that would grow their interests.

She joined the Safer City Summit as a youth leader and has appealed to the Greensboro City Council to build community centers or libraries in the east side of Greensboro near Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

She said her requests have gone ignored.

Hightower and fellow Councilwoman Yvonne Johnson have said they don't remember having that conversation, but they said they share Isley's concerns.

"There are some places where there is a lack of resources, and a lot of times we want to address those needs, but unfortunately the funding hasn't always been there," Hightower said.

She added that she wants all communities to have safe zones.

"I agree that young people need safe places to be," Johnson said. "I will raise that with the planning department."

Both Johnson and Hightower said they plan to meet with Scott before the end of the year to address the violent crimes.

And Scott said the Safer City Summit plans to look at making proactive changes for 2018 and adjusting hot spots and patrols based on this year's statistics.

"I'm very pleased that our city is looking at it proactively," Scott said. "The Safer City Summit will soon talk about what to do in 2018."

All of the stakeholders said they want to put an end to the community violence.

And for Isley, living with her daughter near the violence makes that goal personal.

"These babies are going to need all the counseling they can get," Isley said. "What will they grow up to be when they grow up in an environment like this? Crime breeds more criminals, and if we don't stop it, we'll have a city that's out of control."
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GREENWICH  About 400 people have contacted Marler and Clark, the Seattle-based law first specializing in food safety lawsuits, regarding a class action lawsuit against bartaco  the Port Chester, N.Y. restaurant that was temporarily closed last month after a food handler there was diagnosed with hepatitis A.

Two of those people were of the total five who contracted the illness and claim to have eaten at the restaurant, according to attorney Bill Marler. Others who signed on to or expressed interest in the suit were among the more than 3,000 people vaccinated after potential exposure to hepatitis A at bartaco between Oct. 12 and 23.
The Greenwich Alliance for Educations annual Turkey Trot 5k & 1-Mile Walk/Run was held at Roger Sherman Baldwin Park in Greenwich on a sunny 47-degree Saturday morning.

Jane Hentemann, an advisory council member with the Alliance said that 1,100 people participated in the event that is the organizations biggest fund-raiser for the year. Hentemann said that all proceeds raised go toward funding innovative education programs in the Greenwich Public Schools, the stated goal of the organization that came into existence in 2006.
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Otto Lauersdorf isnt sure exactly who sold his daughter Rachael the fatal dose of heroin that ended her life at the age of 45, but he has a pretty good idea.

Whatever his identity, Lauersdorf believes the dealer should be locked up for a long stretch in a state prison.

The hard-core dealers  or if a person dies  they should go away for a long, long time, he said, adding five to 10 years seemed reasonable to him. The laws, and some of the judges are too lenient. Id like to see stiffer penalties.

Lauersdorf, a former municipal employee, said he thinks of his daughter, who died in January, all the time and feels a powerful sense anger at the people who got her into drugs.

As drug overdoses continue to devastate families and communities, and put a strain on local law enforcement, state lawmakers are debating whether to add greater jail time to drug dealers convicted of selling drugs that lead to a fatality.

The numbers of drug overdoses continues to rise, in Greenwich, across the region and the nation. In 2016, 17 drug-related overdoses were recorded by Greenwich police, including five fatalities. This year, police have reported 11 overdoses, and one fatality.

The debate was highlighted last month when a New Canaan man, Mark Lynch, 58, pleaded guilty to providing the heroin that led to his sons fatal overdose.

Lynch, like others accused in Connecticut of providing drugs that lead to fatalities, was charged with second-degree manslaughter. The charge is defined as recklessly causing the death of another person and carries no mandatory minimum penalty with sentences typically ranging from 18 months to about four years.

In the state capital in Hartford, lawmakers are struggling to keep pace with the rising tide of drug deaths. There were 917 fatal overdoses in 2016, and state legislators like Rep. Kurt Vail, R-Stafford, are calling for defendants like Lynch to be charged with murder.

People should all know how bad this epidemic is, and if you as a drug dealer take advantage of it and someone dies, you should be held accountable for taking the persons life, Vail said.

But faced with the state budget crisis and an ongoing effort to reduce the number of inmates in Connecticut prisons, Vails proposed stricter law  and a similar one put forth by state Rep. Devin Carney, R-Old Lyme  have never made it out of the Judiciary Committee.

State Sen. John Kissell, R-Enfield, and state Rep. William Tong, D-Stamford, co-chairmen of the Judiciary Committee, supported Vails efforts.

The push toward greater penalties for drug dealers has also received support from Greenwich lawmakers.

I fully support Rep. Vail and Rep. Carneys initiatives and am very disappointed in those in the Legislature that didnt support the bill in the Judiciary Committee, said state Rep. Fred Camillo, R- 151st. I believe that anyone who willingly gives harmful and sometimes fatal drugs to their fellow citizens should be prosecuted the same way we prosecute a criminal who willingly commits murder.

Lt. John Slusarz of the Greenwich Police Department said law enforcement can only go so far in the combatting the opioid plague, and the medical community, educators and treatment specialists are crucial allies. But measures at the state level to put dealers out of the business of trafficking lethal doses of hard drugs would be welcomed by law enforcement, the department spokesman said.

Deterrence is very important for the dealers, he said.

There has been heightened urgency to address the opioid epidemic since cheaper and more powerful drugs like fentanyl have been mixed with heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine to form an even deadlier combination.

According to the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, 479 people who died of overdoses in 2016 had fentanyl in their system. That is six times more than in 2014, when 75 people died with the drug in their system.

In 2016, there were 276 people who died of overdoses with heroin and fentanyl in their bodies compared to just one person who digested the mixture and died in 2012. There were 142 overdose deaths in 2016 with cocaine and fentanyl in their bodies compared to two people who died with the mixture in their system in 2012.

In one July day this summer, there were seven overdoses  two fatal  in Norwalk, where police say the incidents were caused by crack cocaine cut with fentanyl.

Like Lynch, 29-year-old Norwalk resident Eric Frank has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in the death of one of the men.

In Massachusetts, which also uses a second-degree manslaughter charge with no mandatory minimum in these cases, the governor has proposed increasing the penalty to first-degree manslaughter carrying a sentence of at least five years.

New York also uses a second-degree manslaughter charge, but a conviction there results in a three-year minimum sentence.

In New Jersey, there is a specific law: strict liability for drug-induced deaths, which carries a 10-year minimum sentence. There also is a similar federal law: distribution of drugs causing death has a 20-year minimum sentence.

Some feel stiffer penalties will not deter dealers from supplying lethal drugs.

The overwhelming number of people who provide illegal drugs to others on the street are themselves users, and ascribing to those people the ability to rationally evaluate the risk of their own behavior is misguided, said Lynchs attorney, Matthew Maddox.

Maddox spent months negotiating a deal for his client until reaching the agreement with Stamford States Attorney Richard Colangelo on the lesser charges of criminally negligent homicide and sale of narcotics.

Colangelo said establishing a law carrying, for example, a five-year mandatory minimum sentence would take its toll on the states justice system with more cases going to trial.

Id love to take every one of these cases to trial. But it is not what we do in the system, realistically, he said.

Colangelo said the Stamford-Norwalk Judicial District has lost five prosecutors in the past two years, in addition to other courthouse staff.

Colangelo said he understands the magnitude of the opioid crisis, but believes families of victims are more interested in drug dealers taking responsibility for their actions.

Mark Lynchs ex-wife, Pam Bacco, disagrees. She had hoped for a harsher sentence for him in the death of their son.

Drug dealers think they are untouchable, that they wont get caught, said Bacco, who left Lynch 13 years ago and is now remarried and living in Colorado. They may go to jail for 15 or 18 months and get out. Then they get out on the streets and are doing it again and more people die.

John Nickerson contributed to this report.




Haiti - RD : 229,885 Haitian volunteers or deportees, back in Haiti since 2015





Thursday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) opened, in coordination with the Mayor of Belladere, its second Border Resource Center (BRC). A third BRC will be inaugurated next week in Malpasse. A fourth and final CRF is currently under construction in Ouanaminthe while the BRC in Anse-a-Pitres has been operational since June 2017.



These structures allow a better identification, guidance and assistance to vulnerable migrants, while providing an equipped coordination space to foster the reinforcement of synergies between local protection actors. Through collaboration with the Institute of Welfare and Research (IBESR), each BRC relies on the support of trained registration officers in the management of vulnerable migrants, including unaccompanied or separated children. BRCs also provide psycho-social counseling.



"Since the expiration of the registration period for the National Regularization Plan of Foreigners (NRPF) in June 2015, IOM has recorded that more than 229,885 Haitian migrants [as of September 28, 2017] who voluntarily returned or were deported from the Dominican Republic to Haiti. This figure highlights the extensive assistance needs that exist throughout the border region in order to help vulnerable migrants, particularly women and children. The majority of which arrive in precarious conditions (i.e. no access to resources, separated from their families, undernourished, and exhausted from spending several days in Dominican detention centers)," explained Bernard Lami, Deputy Chief of IOM Mission in Haiti.



It is in this context that IOM, with the financial support of the Canadian government, has implemented an assistance project for migrants entitled, Assisting Vulnerable Children and Women in the Border areas between Haiti and Dominican Republic."



The Border Resource Center constitutes the cornerstone of the project as it allows for the registration and onward referral of vulnerable migrants to specialized institutions (such as medical centers, hosting centers, among other resource networks supported by the Ministry of Social Affairs). The BRC is also at the heart of protection mechanisms for returning migrants and deportees from the Dominican Republic. It represents the first state institution tasked with ensuring the safe and respectable return of Haitian migrants to their country of origin.



Carlos Rojas-Arbulu, Head of the Haiti-Canada Cooperation declared "Canada is committed to putting these BRCs in place to identify the most vulnerable, women, girls and unaccompanied children, who need to be assisted and supported and need to receive appropriate protection services, while aligning with Canada's feminist international assistance policy."



To date, thanks to the project "Assisting Vulnerable Children and Women in the Border areas between Haiti and Dominican Republic" :



1,927 beneficiaries living in border areas have attained their birth certificates /archives records thanks to the support of our partner ICDH Initiative Citoyenne pour les Droits de lHomme.





439 beneficiaries have received Income-Generating Activities to support their sustainable reintegration and 203 children have received school reinsertion packages and are back in school thanks to the activities of CAPAC- Centre d'Animation Paysanne et d'Action Communautaire.





295 local governmental and non-governmental actors have been trained on fundamental human rights, SGBV prevention, Child Protection, Family Planning, Trafficking in Persons (TiP) and Irregular Migration.



IOM reiterates its unconditional support to the Ministries, authorities, and migration-focused Haitian institutions working to address and confront Haitis internal and external migratory problems.. IOM hopes to continue supporting the Haitian government with all of their efforts to insure and promote regular migration and protect the most vulnerable migrants.



SL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2017/11/25 | Source

"Paper Planes" is about young women who dream bigger than themselves and want to sing.

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"Paper Planes" (2017)

Directed by Jung Dong-hoon, No Hong-sik

With Joo Ga-eul, Ye Seul-bi, Song Bo-bae, Yoon Eun-ji, Min Jun-ho, Wi Myung-woo,...

Synopsis

A sorrowful cry from teenagers who fight a horrible war. Let them sing!

Release date in Korea : 2018/01/31
Published on 2017/11/25 | Source

Added episode 2 captures for the Korean drama "Prison Playbook" (2017)

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Directed by Sin Won-ho

Written by Jeong Bo-hoon-I, Lee Woo-jeong-I

Network : tvN

With Park Hae-soo, Jung Kyung-ho, Sung Dong-il, Kim Sung-cheol, Jung Jae-sung, Lee Ho-cheol,...

16 episodes - Wed, Thu 21:30

Also known as "Wise Prison Life"

Synopsis

Set in a prison, this is a drama about the lives of the prisoners and prison staff.

Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2017/11/22

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Last year, Chris Kimmenez and his wife asked their doctors a simple question. Could Chris, who has been HIV-positive since 1989 but keeps the virus in check through medication, transmit it sexually to Paula?

They were pretty sure they knew the answer. Married for more than 30 years, they had not always practiced safe sex, but Paula showed no signs of having the virus.

Their physicians were less certain. They had a conversation and they did some research on it, Kimmenez said. They came back to us and said there may still be a risk, but were comfortable enough that unprotected sex is safe.

We knew that all along, said Kimmenez, 56, who works with ex-offenders in Philadelphia.

Simple acknowledgments like that one, spoken quietly in the privacy of doctors offices, mark the arrival of a historic moment in the history of HIV: Medical authorities are publicly agreeing that people with undetectable viral loads cannot transmit HIV.

The policy change has profound implications for the way people view the virus. It promises not just unprotected sex for couples like Kimmenez and his wife, but also reduced stigma for the 1.2 million Americans living with HIV. The change also offers the hope that more people will be tested and begin treatment if they are found to have the virus rather than live in denial.

There was something in me that said Im damaged and I made a mistake and people see it and Im a danger, said Mark King, 56, a writer and activist who tested positive for HIV in 1985. But now treatment has fully suppressed the virus. When I finally internalized this message ... something suddenly lifted off of me that is hard to describe. It was almost as if someone wiped me clean. I no longer feel like this diseased pariah.

Once considered a death sentence, HIV infection can now be managed via medication, much like chronic diseases such as diabetes, and people with the virus live full lives.

In July, Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the worlds leading authorities on HIV, publicly agreed at an international conference that people with undetectable viral loads in their blood cannot transmit the virus.

On Sept. 27, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention followed, releasing a letter that said people who take medication daily and achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load have effectively no risk of sexually transmitting the virus to an HIV-negative partner.

The influential British medical journal the Lancet HIV endorsed the idea in an editorial this month. All told, more than 500 organizations in 67 countries now agree, according to Bruce Richman, who is leading the Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U) campaign credited with beginning to change public perception of HIV transmissibility.

Like many developments in the four-decade history of HIV, this one has been slow to gain acceptance among mainstream health-care providers. Many are not aware of it or must unlearn the habit of drilling safe-sex lessons into patients, as they have been doing almost since the AIDS epidemic began. HIV-positive people also must alter deeply-ingrained beliefs that nothing good can come of revealing their status.

The change in philosophy also has sparked concerns, for which there is some evidence, that more condomless sex will lead to an increase in other sexually transmitted infections. And experts acknowledge that a few people whose viral load is not truly suppressed will eventually transmit HIV to others.

Laws in many states also are out of date. Many still criminalize the failure to reveal HIV status to a sex partner, even when there is no danger of transmissibility.

But on balance, authorities said, the agreement that people with HIV can prevent sexual transmission by taking a single pill each day is nothing less than revolutionary.

Nothing is completely risk free, Fauci said in an interview. What the community feels is that all of the good that will come from the lack of social stigmatization is worth the risk. This means a lot to them. This has a lot to do with their self-worth, their identity.

An undetectable viral load is defined as fewer than 200 copies of the virus in a milliliter of blood. Generally, people with HIV should maintain that level or a lower level for six months before beginning to consider themselves incapable of transmitting the virus sexually.

Many who faithfully take antiretroviral medication and lead healthful lifestyles can bring their viral loads considerably lower, to 50 or even 25 copies.

But progress raises other questions, said Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDCs National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. What if a person forgets to take medication for one day? What about two, or more? How long after resuming therapy should someone wait before once again considering himself or herself incapable of transmitting the virus? And what about people who go above and below the 200-copy threshold over time? Studies show that to be the case for about 10 percent of the people with HIV, Mermin said.

As yet, there are no evidence-based answers to these questions, he said. The public-health challenge now is moving from theory to implementation, he said. Many questions arise following the information that when a person with HIV has an undetectable viral load, he has effectively no risk of transmitting the virus.

In 2008, Swiss experts announced that people with undetectable levels of HIV could not transmit HIV through sex. But the world was not ready to hear the message then.

Starting in 2011, three large studies confirmed the idea, tracking more than 75,000 vaginal and anal condomless sex acts without finding a single HIV transmission to an HIV-negative partnerfrom someone whose viral load was undetectable. The initial 2011 study was named breakthrough of the year by Science magazine.

Now the challenge is to get the message out to HIV-positive people, caregivers and the public. And that process has been slow.

I would tell everyone about this, friends and family and people I wanted to date and I was coming across so much resistance, because major institutions were saying this is wrong, Richman said.

He launched U=U last year, initially a lonely and sometimes controversial campaign to let the world know something that many people with HIV had concluded for themselves. His breakthrough moment came in August 2016 when New York Citys health department signed on. Soon, other cities and organizations were joining.

Still, the message is moving mainly from people with HIV to health authorities and policymakers, rather than in the other direction, Richman said.

This is a radical challenge to the status quo and to 35 years of HIV and fear of people living with HIV, Richman said.

Brigitte Charbonneau, 71, of Ottawa, found out this year that she could not transmit the virus after 23 years of being HIV positive. I thought, My God, Ive been living with my man for 20 years and weve been using condoms,  the retired hairdresser recalled. And I phoned him right that afternoon.

Jennifer Vaughan of Watsonville, California, vividly remembers the moment she learned she could not transmit the virus to her boyfriend. The mother of three tested positive in February 2016 after she became critically ill with what was finally determined to be AIDS. HIV was not among the possibilities she or her doctors considered, until a blood test revealed the virus. She thinks she was infected by a previous boyfriend with a history of intravenous drug use.

She attended a speech Richman gave and was speaking with him in a parking lot outside a Starbucks.

Ill never forget him saying those words, You cant transmit the virus if youre undetectable,  the 47-year-old substitute teacher recalled. And I said, Wait, what?

It was like the sky opened. Are you kidding? Theres, like, zero risk? I dont feel like Im a threat anymore. I dont feel like Im dirty. I dont feel like Im a dangerous person.
LENOIR  The City of Lenoir, in partnership with the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office (HPO), will host a presentation on the communitys history and historic architecture at the historic Lenoir High School auditorium. The presentation will be at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 29, at 1114 College Ave. in downtown Lenoir.

The presentation is part of an architectural survey commissioned by the HPO in March. The mission of the HPOs statewide architectural survey program is to identify, record and encourage the preservation of the states rich and varied collection of historic buildings, landscapes, and districts. Although Caldwell County was the subject of a reconnaissance level architectural survey in 1986-87, the state had never completed a systematic, comprehensive survey of Lenoir. Given this need, HPO commissioned an architectural survey of the city to locate, document, and evaluate Lenoirs historic resources.

City of Lenoir Planning Director Jenny Wheelock said the survey will be a great resource for Lenoir to have and will help with promoting individual historic properties as well as neighborhood planning.

The survey will help us understand where our most significant structures are, and it also will provide a snapshot in time of local historic properties, Wheelock said. Well probably use a lot of this history to do more with neighborhood planning, especially historic neighborhoods.

The presentation Wednesday will include an overview of Lenoirs history and a discussion of its historic residential, institutional, commercial, and industrial architecture. Representatives from the HPO will be present to introduce the project and answer any questions from the public and stakeholder groups.
Alices Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll continues to attract new readers ever since it was told to three sisters on a summer afternoon during a boat ride on the Thames. The apparently whimsical fairy tale charmed its listeners on its first telling but the story was expanded by Carroll into the Alice of today. On the 152nd anniversary of the classics publication on November 26, 1865, as a Christmas release in England, lets consider the book as a mathematical puzzle.

Lewis Carroll in the preface to the work All in the Golden Afternoon, claimed to have invented the story on demand from Alice Liddell, and her two sisters, daughters of an Oxford don  Carroll himself taught mathematics at Oxford  during the boat ride. However, the profusion of mathematical puzzles, logical paradoxes and innuendoes throughout the body of the text tell a different story. While there is no doubt about the fact that it was created for, and to be told to children and young adults, what 21st century readers read today is a cleverly crafted tale to poke fun at the mathematics in Carrolls time and its practitioners.

Carroll, a nom de plume of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematics tutor at the Christ Church College in Oxford, was actually not a front-ranking mathematician. He swore by Elements, the famous geometry text by Euclid. Carroll waged a long battle with his peers who were revolutionising Victorian mathematics. Projective geometry, imaginary numbers, quaternion were turning the old-world of algebra and geometry upside down. Mathematics was no longer tied to the ground insofar as it was becoming more abstract, and logic that appealed to Carroll and his ilk could not be used to demystify the new avatar. Carroll was a Euclidean geometry orthodox who did throw the gauntlet at the new kids on the mathematics block but lost out. These were the times when Alice Liddell asked the young mathematics tutor to tell a story.

THE MISS LIDDELLS

Close to a decade and a half later, in 1879, Carroll, under his real name, published Euclid and his Modern Rivals. Written in the form of a play, it was Carrolls way of telling the world that Euclids Elements is the best textbook for teaching geometry. Carrolls introduction lays out his purpose and why he went about it the way he did. His words on writing for a non-scientific audience still sound particularly relevant. It is presented in a dramatic form, writes Charles Dodgson in the introduction, partly because it seemed a better way of exhibiting in alteration the arguments on the two sides of the question; partly that I feel myself at liberty to treat it in a rather lighter style than would have suited an essay, and thus to make it a little less tedious and little more acceptable to unscientific readers. Not many now are even aware of this curious publication but this can be seen as an extension of Carrolls thought process that started with Alices Adventures in Wonderland.

There is, however, no direct evidence that Carroll actually planned such a tale. Martin Gardner notes is his book, The Annotated Alice, the definitive edition, that Reverend Robinson Duckworth, who accompanied Carroll and the Liddell sisters on the boat ride, says in his account of the trip: when three Miss Liddells were our passengers, and the story was actually composed and spoken over my shoulder for the benefit of Alice LiddellI remember turning round and saying, Dodgson, is this an extempore romance of yours? And he replied, Yes, Im inventing as we go along. That story, on the insistence of Alice, was turned into a manuscript and presented to her by the Oxford mathematician.

By now, the content of the story is presented in disguised form with the use of riddles, apparently meaningless poems, puzzles, puns, and a lot more that is ostensibly nonsense. Carroll was surely not the first to use such devices.

Several examples of puns and riddles are found in nursery rhymes, and folk tales for children. The mastery of Carroll over this kind of recreational mathematics and logic takes Alices Adventures in Wonderland to a different league  it is not without reason that the story continues to inspire mathematical puzzles and word-game designers even today.

THE COMMUNITY OF ALICE

Raymond S Smullyan wrote a delightful little book titled Alice in Puzzle-Land: a Carrollian Tale for Children Under Eighty in which Alice and her friends return for another trip through Wonderland and the Looking-Glass. The book has 88 engaging puzzles, paradoxes, and logic problems. Smullyans characters speak and behave like the Carroll creations, and their puzzles abound in typical Carrollian word-play, logic problems, and dark philosophical paradoxes.

The rich tapestry of puzzles and paradoxes in Alices Adventures in Wonderland was a lifelong fascination for Carroll that in some way brought his fairy tales closer to Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. In his 1965 essay Wittgenstein, Nonsense, and Lewis Carroll, philosopher George Pitchers talks about striking similarities between the philosophical writings of Wittgenstein and the childrens stories of Carroll. According to Pitcher, both were concerned with nonsense and language puzzles. While Wittgenstein was tortured by these things, Carroll appeared to be delighted by them.

Reverend Dodgson had a playful approach to mathematics that he imported into the Alice stories. He was known to use little puzzles in his lessons to make mathematics class more engaging. For instance, here is one of his classics (many versions of this puzzle now can be found all over the web): A cup contains 50 spoonfuls of brandy, and another contains 50 spoonfuls of water. A spoonful of brandy is taken from the first cup and mixed into the second cup. Then a spoonful of the mixture is taken from the second cup and mixed into the first. Is there more or less brandy in the second cup than there is water in the first cup? (If you are scratching your head for an answer, it is equal.)

FIGURE IT OUT

In that famous conversation with the Cheshire Cat, who wants to convince Alice that they both are mad, the feline tells her that she must be, or you wouldnt have come here, but Alice refuses to believe him and in turn asks how the cat knows that he is mad. The next set of conversations that appears in Chapter IV of the book shows how deep is the logic play in this work. Here Carroll has employed the so-called modus ponens, or affirming the antecedent logic.

To begin with, said the Cat, a dogs not mad. You grant that?

I suppose so, said Alice.

Well, then, the Cat went on, you see a dog growls when its angry, and wags its tail when its pleased. Now I growl when Im pleased, and wag my tail when Im angry. Therefore Im mad.

One can read the above dialogue without even realising that one is trapped in a logic web spun by Carroll. Here, the Cheshire Cats argument may appear sound but it is invalid. Here is how Carroll constructed the trap.

Suppose P and Q are two sentences; here, P is an animal growls when angry and wags its tail when pleased and Q is it is not mad. Let us see what the cat says: If an animal growls when angry and wags its tail when pleased, it is not mad. This means, if sentence P is true, then Q is also true.

I growl when pleased, and wag my tail when angry.

Here the cat is not saying what P says.

Therefore, I am mad.

So if the cats statement does not agree with P then how can it say Q is true?

One interesting aspect of Carrolls work is that in the world of literature, especially literary criticism, a lot of emphasis has been on the psychoanalytic aspects of characters. There have been critiques highlighting Carrolls own personal psychological and sexuality issues but almost nothing on reading the tale as a mathematical text. In 2009, Melanie Bayley, of the University of Oxford, published an article in the popular science magazine New Scientist titled Alices Adventures in Algebra: Wonderland Solved.

In the article Bayley says that Carroll added a lot of material to the illustrated manuscript he personally made for Alice before it was sent for publication. It is in these parts that Carroll took on the proponents of new mathematics, ridiculing their methods and questioning their rigour. The Cheshire Cat becoming a grin, according to the Oxford researcher, was Carrolls way of portraying increasing and damaging abstraction in mathematics. In the Mad Hatters tea party, Bayley discovered the writers satire on Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamiltons discovery  the quaternion.

There are other similar discoveries made by the Oxford researcher. In the scene where Alice is troubled by growing taller or shorter and meets the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, the creature tells Alice keep your temper. This Alice interprets as keeping cool but here Carroll is using an older meaning of the word temper which was used for the proportion in which qualities are mingled. Bayley interprets this as the Caterpillar telling Alice irrespective of her body size she should maintain her body in proportion. If that is true, this reflects Carrolls love of Euclidean geometry. In this geometry, absolute magnitude does not matter, its important to know the ratio of one length to another.

For a little more than 155 years after the story was first told to Alice, Lewis Carrolls bestseller continues to throw new conundrums. No one can be absolutely sure whether Carroll actually plays those devious games with his readers. The reverend who stammered a lot and enjoyed the company of young girls did love his logic and Euclid like a fanatic. He is not remembered for his mathematics but for puzzles, logic games and biting satire. It is therefore not surprising that some of it made its way into his boat-ride story.

Debkumar Mitra is a Kolkata-based science writer and the author of Mindstretch, a book on mathematics, puzzles and stories.
Unhappy over the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nominating his daughter-in-law instead of his wife from the Kaalol Assembly seat in Gujarat, party MP Prabhatsinh Chauhan has warned that he would not guarantee a win for the party, if the candidate is not replaced with someone of his choice.

The BJP on Friday released its fifth list of 13 candidates for the second phase of Assembly polls in Gujarat. In the list, the ruling party dropped sitting MLA Arvindsinh Chauhan and instead fielded his wife Suman Chauhan, the daughter-in-law of Prabhatsinh Chauhan, from the Kaalol seat in Panchmahal district.

Enraged over the announcement, Prabhatsinh Chauhan dashed off a letter to BJP chief Amit Shah, urging him to replace Suman Chauhan with a local candidate.

Although, in the letter he did not clearly demand that his wife Rangeshwari be given the party ticket, recently he had told reporters that she was the best candidate for the Kaalol seat.

While Rangeshwari is the president of Ghoghamba taluka panchayat of Panchamahal district, Suman Chauhan is a member of Panchmahal district panchayat.

In the letter, the parliamentarian also alleged that his son Pravinsinh is a bootlegger and that he and his wife had even gone to jail.

My son Pravin is a bootlegger and several cases are still pending against him. Both he and his wife Suman even went to jail in the past. This will dent the BJPs prospects of winning the seat. Further, Suman belongs to Godhra and people of Kaalol will not accept her, Chauhan said in the letter.

Though I am senior, having spent 45 years in public life, the party has not taken my opinion while selecting the candidates. I was also not taken into confidence while selecting the candidate for Kaalol. Thus, I urge you to consider changing the current candidate with a local one of my choice, he added.

Prabhatsinh Chauhan, a prominent Rajput face in the region, who had joined the BJP in 1992, claimed that though he had single-handedly established the BJPs dominance in that district over the years, he has been ignored by the party and not given any post in the organisation.

Chauhan stressed that the BJP would not get even a single vote from tribals. While his wife Rangeshwari is a tribal, Suman Chauhan is a Rajput.

The BJP will not get a single vote, out of the 1.10 lakh votes of tribals due to this ongoing controversy. There are huge chances that we will lose Kaalol. Thus, I want to inform you that I will not take any responsibility of ensuring the partys victory on any of the seven seats under my constituency including Kaalol, Chauhan said in the letter.

Three days ago, Chauhan said that he had sought ticket for his wife on the ground that she had done very good work as Ghoghamba taluka panchayat president.

Just go to Ghoghamba to see what kind of work she has done. She has completely uprooted corruption. Rangeshwari is the best candidate and that is why I have appealed to the party leaders to select her for Kaalol seat, Chauhan told reporters.

On Friday, when Rangeshwari came to know that she has been ignored in ticket allocation, she targeted her husband in a fiery Facebook post, in which she even dared him to enter Kaalol for poll campaign.

However, she deleted the post on Saturday.

I had posted that comment out of anger and disappointment. That was not against the BJP, it was against the Member of Parliament. But now, I have entered into a compromise with him over the issue, Rangeshwari told reporters.
It will take another three months for Bharat Gadhiya, a farmer in Gujarats Saurashtra region, to sell his 10 quintals of groundnut at the governments procurement centre for the promised minimum support price (MSP) of Rs4,500 per quintal.

Every day, the centre collects groundnuts from only 25 to 30 farmers, forcing hundreds such as Gadhiya to either hold on to the produce or sell it in the open market. In the open market, groundnuts fetch Rs3,250 a quintal, barely enough to cover input and livelihood costs. Its not just development that has gone mad, agriculture arithmetic has also stopped making sense. Input costs from fertilisers and labour are increasing, while market prices for produce have come down. Our net income is just enough for us to survive and often not enough to invest in next years tilling, said Gadhiya, a Patidar farmer from Pithadiya village in Rajkot, referring to a viral social media campaign against the BJP, Vikas Gando Thayo Che (Development has gone mad). The government talks a lot and does little. BJP toh idhar nahi ayegi iss saal (BJP will not come to power from here) 100%, he added.

He is not alone. Falling market prices of cash crops such as cotton and groundnut, the mainstay of Saurashtras farmers, on the back of two consecutive years of failed rains has left farmers angry and desperate. Favourable global conditions saw a jump in cotton prices from Rs2,200 a quintal to Rs5,000 between 2002-03 and 2013-14.

Since then, the MSP has averaged around Rs4,000 a quintal with the market prices even lower. In an election year, the government has announced a bonus over the MSP with cotton now fetching Rs4,500 a quintal.

In the same period, input prices of fertilisers, pesticides and labour have at least doubled. For instance, daily labour costs have increased from Rs150 a person to Rs300 now.

When Narendrabhai (Prime Minister Modi) was in Gujarat, he would say cotton is white gold and the Centre should guarantee a price of Rs1,500 for every 20 kgs of cotton and Rs1,200 for every 20 kgs of groundnut. We have been waiting for such promises to be delivered for three years now . But no development has come our way, said 80-year-old Bhiku bhai Gathiya, Gadhiyas neighbour who is another backward class (OBC) farmer.

Ahead of the assembly polls next month, farmers discontent is widespread and may threaten the BJP, which is aiming to stretch its 22-year-long rule over the western state.

Besides falling market prices, there are complaints about inconsistent power supply, non delivery of crop insurance for cotton, insufficient irrigation facilities, water polluted by industries and an overall apathy from the government.

Across Saurashtra, it is evident that Gujarats stellar agriculture growth story  clocking over 10% from 2002 to 2012  is declining. In the last two years, agricultural gross state domestic product has shrunk, according to state government data.

This year, 50% of my BT cotton sown on seven bigha (2.5 acres) of land is lost due to pink bollworm attack. What remains on field is threatened by attacks by wild boars but I dont quality for the fencing subsidy offered by the government. And I am not expecting any crop insurance because I havent got a penny from last year, said Kishore Patel, a Patidar farmer from Pithadia. His brother Janak is clear his vote will not go to BJP. We will vote for any party but not BJP .

Pithadia falls in Jetpur assembly constituency that has been with the BJP since 2002 (except for one year between 2012 and 2013). It is in BJPs bastions like these that the party now faces a tough contest. Saurashtra sends 48 legislators to the 182-member Gujarat assembly.

Since I started voting, I have voted for BJP. But I have to accept that not enough work has been done for the farmers, said Ashok Gadhaliya, a farmer from Derdi village and a BJP worker. In Mahendranagar village in neighbouring Morbi district, also a BJP bastion, there are similar complaints of government apathy. Ramji Mohanji, a big farmer owning 50 acres of land points to a trajectory of lower yield with initial BT cotton boom flattening out and increased likelihood of pest attacks. We have been getting less yield per acre progressively over the years even as our input costs have soared. Unless there is an independent agriculture commission to work out pricing of crops and to give inputs on exports and imports to the centre, farming cannot be viable, he said. He said earlier one acre of BT cotton could fetch a yield of 700kg, which had come down to 400kg.

The agriculture growth story of Gujarat is embellishment. Our farmers are facing problems like not getting viable market rates or MSP for crops and adequate irrigation facilitiesour land acquisition policies are stacked against farmers, said Sagar Rabari, secretary of the Khedut Samaj (Farmers Organisation) that took out a rally across the state this week to raise farm demands.

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Attacking the Centre for convening the winter session of Parliament after polling is held in Gujarat, the Congress on Saturday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government of running away from scrutiny by lawmakers on several issues.

We charge the Parliament and the government from running away from Parliamentary scrutiny before the elections in Gujarat, Congress leader Anand Sharma said.

Sharma said the opposition would take up issues such as the imposition of a wrong GST on people and the Rafale deal among others in the Parliament.

The prime minister did not want Gujarat voters to see the reality. Gujarat voters would realise that the prime minister who talks big, turned out to be so weak and coward that he chose not to face the Parliament, he said.

The Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA) headed by home minister Rajnath Singh met in New Delhi on Friday to decide the dates of the Winter Session. The CCPA recommended that the session be held from December 15 to January 5.

Gujarat will vote in two phases: December 9 and December 14.

The result of the election will be out on December 18.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi alleged during his campaign in poll-bound Gujarats north and central regions on Saturday that the BJP government was favouring big industrialists but doing little for distressed farmers, small-time traders and the jobless.

He promised a Congress government, if his party is voted to power after two decades in the state, will be for labourers, farmers and small-time businessmen.

Narendra Modiji gave away Rs 33,000 crore (soft loan) to Tata for Nano plant. But he would not waive your farm loans, he told farmers at Bayad in Aravali district.

Also, he accused the government of caring little for the unemployed.

While five-10 industrialists have seen all the growth under the Modi government, Gujarat has today 30 lakh unemployed youth, he said.

The BJP was quick to respond to Gandhis unemployment jibe. The partys media cell circulated a video on social media with a caption, Rahul Gandhi is caught faking unemployment figure. Gujarat is leading in the sector of employment generation. Rahul Gandhi should apologise for misleading and maligning people of Gujarat.

The video shows Gandhi saying in Porbandar on November 24 that Gujarat has 5 million unemployed youth. Later in the day in Ahmedabad, he is heard putting the jobless figure at 3 million.

Gandhi, however, quoted 3 million during his Bayad speech on Saturday.

He began his second day of a two-day tour by visiting the family of the late Congress leader, Mirza Irshad Baig, and called on former chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki too.

In Lunawada that has a sizeable tribal and Muslim population, Gandhi hit out at the governments Rafale jet fighter deal with France.

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited has manufacturing experience. But this industrialist who got the deal has not made a single aircraft, Gandhi said and demanded an answer from Prime Minister Modi.

But winter session of Parliament is delayed. Parliament wont open before the Gujarat elections so that answering such questions can be avoided, he said.

Industrialist Anil Ambanis company is involved in procuring 26 Rafale jets from France in accordance with the 2015 deal.

The two-phase Gujarat elections are due on December 9 and 14 and results will be declared on December 18 along with Himachal Pradesh, where polls were held on November 9.

Gandhi also hit out at the BJPs development model.

Gujarat is developed because you have worked hard for it. But what Modiji has done is take away your money, water and land, and gave it to a few industrialists. He would make you listen to his Mann ki Baat. But the Congress will listen to your mann ki baat, he said.

He was referring to the Prime Ministers radio address Mann ki Baat, roughly meaning voice of the mind.

The Prime Minister will campaign in his home state on November 27. Since Gandhi has targeted his radio show, the BJP workers plan to listen to his next programme on Sunday at gatherings across Gujarat.
A Ranchi-based lawyer has moved a court seeking action against poet and film lyricist Javed Akhtar for his alleged remarks that Rajput rulers never fought against British.

Akhtar reportedly made the remarks in the context of the communitys ongoing protest against the Deepika Padukone-starrer Padmavati.

Citing a report published in a vernacular daily on November 20, Jharkhand high court advocate Naveen Kumar Singh in his petition filed before a first class judicial magistrate claimed Akhtar made objectionable comments against the community.

The case would be heard on November 27 in the court of judicial magistrate Tarkeshwar Das, Singhs lawyer Manoj Kumar Sinha said.

Singh sought action against Akhtar under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) including sections 153 (Wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion...), 153 B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 295 A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class...) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breech of peace).

Annexing the news report with his petition, Singh submitted that Akhtars prevocational remarks against Rajput kings, deeply hurt the community at large.

The report quoted Akhtar as saying, Rajput kings, who never fought with Britishers, have now taken to streets protesting the film Padmavati. These Ranas and Maharajas, wearing their turbans, had served Britishers for 200 years undermining their grace. They remained kings only because they had accepted the British supremacy.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed Padmavati, based on the life of the legendary Rajput queen, is stuck in a raging controversy even before its release as the community has been protesting against the film, accusing the film makers of distorting facts.

While the film is still to be cleared by the censor board, its release has been deferred with some states banning the screening of the movie. It was originally scheduled to be released on December 1.

The petitioner, who is also a Rajput, alleged that Akhtars remark was a deliberate attempt to provoke the sentiments of a particular community in order to disturb the countrys peace and harmony.

He argued Akhtars accusations and assertions were prejudicial to national integration.

He committed serious offenses and therefore cognisance should be taken against him to punish him appropriately, Singh submitted in his petition.

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Actor Richa Chadha has never minced her words when it comes to addressing socially relevant issues. This time, she spills the beans on why Bollywood actors are afraid to complain about cases of sexual harassment, unlike Hollywoods film fraternity (case in point: Harvey Weinstein scandal).

You have to understand why people in Bollywood dont speak up. They will lose their livelihood. How many powerful women has it taken for people to conclusively decide that Harvey Wienstine was a predator. That is how the case has become huge. If anyone, who didnt have a career, had said it, people wouldve trashed her. In India, when there is a rape, what we hear first is, what was she wearing? The culture of victim shaming is so strong here, says Richa, who also wrote a blog to share her thought on the same case.

Talking about the campaign of #me too, where women spoke about their experience of harassment on social media, Richa says,  We live in a culture of victim shaming. Its like they will lose work. Who will take the responsibility of protecting them? Slowly we have to shift to a culture where it is from Me too to Him too, where people will have the strength to complain about others.

The actor also feels that issues such as these take time to get resolved. It wont get over because it is not a temporary problem. It is an ecosystem which favours men who are in position as power. This is a very difficult situation to deal with and the ripple effect touches all other aspects of your career. This is also really difficult thing to deal with because it effects your current relationship, your relation with your sexuality and how people look at you, says the actor.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

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Writer of the book Mr and Mrs Jinnah: The Marriage that Shook India, Sheela Reddy, said she had come across several biographies on Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was a lawyer, politician and the founder of Pakistan, and all biographies were different from each other. According to the author, though Jinnah have been written about extensively, but the Qaid-e-Azams personal life remained largely under wraps.

Reddy, who works as a book editor at Outlook, was here at Chandigarh Literati International Litfest 2017 at Lake Club, Chandigarh, on Saturday.

"We have known Jinnah when it comes to geography and the history of the subcontinent. However, we don't know who he actually was as a person. I wanted to find it out, " said Reddy answering a question on why she wrote on Jinnah.

The work draws from several letters written by Ruttie Petit, Jinnah's wife, that Reddy discovered during her research in New Delhi, Islamabad and Karachi.

In a conversation with HT Correspondent, Reddy discussed her experience of writing about Jinnah and how she got hold of the letters of Ruttie and her close friends who told the story of Jinnah how he was as a husband which otherwise was unknown.

She says , "Jinnah eluded his biographer. He was one of those men in the history who were most successful in hiding their personal life behind their political persona. I thought that it had been 70 years since Partition and we should at least examine his life."

She added, "Jinnah is generally reduced to a cardboard cutout picture. He is solely thought to be responsible for Partition. However, it matters what the circumstances were during that time."

Answering a question on how she found the material for her book, Reddy says, "I started looking for books on Ruttie. I was surprised that there was no or a little mention of her in all of the books. Then I found the letters in The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, which bring out the possibilities to understand Jinnah as a person."

She also talked about how Jinnahs life was not documented by anyone on the basis of those letters that are available to everyone.

Reddy also visited Pakistan in hopes of getting some exclusive material on Jinnah and met biographers and historians. However, he had lived most of his life in Bombay and spent only two years in Pakistan.

She said how she was helped by her friends in Pakistan to get hold of the required material in Islamabad which helped her a lot.

PERSONAL BOOKS IN KARACHI

The author said that she was thrilled on finding personal books of Jinnah and Ruttie that were kept under lock and key in the basement of the library in Karachi

"I was fortunate enough to get the permission to see the books which to my surprise were heavily annotated by Ruttie and some by Jinnah too. The markings and the notes tell a lot about what went in their life," recalled Reddy.

"He was after all a human who was shattered after his marriage broke down and it had an impact on his politics too," she added.

'Mr and Mrs Jinnah: The Marriage that Shook India' was published this year in Urdu too by OUP, Karachi.
1. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs (1959)

Naked Lunch.

Banned because of: Sexual content

Narrated by drug junkie William Lee, this experimental novel was told in routines that could be read in any order. It was banned in many parts of the US but continues to be one of the most inventive books.

2. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)

American Psycho

Banned because of: Depiction of violence

Several countries restricted its sale and the author even received death threats. It was a massively controversial novel, so much so that its original publishers dropped it and The New York Times urged people not to buy it. Today its a cult novel.

3. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

Lolita

Banned because of: Obscenity

Lolita, a tale of obsession and lust, is part of syllabuses today. Narrated by Humbert Humbert on his sexual relations with the 12-year-old daughter of his landlady it was banned in the UK, France, Argentina, New Zealand and South Africa.

4. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

A Clockwork Orange.

Banned because of: Depiction of extreme violence

It was withdrawn from several schools the US and this dystopian novel was set in a near future English society. The book was an experiment in language with a new kind of teenage slang.

5. Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)

Animal Farm.

Banned because of: Being critical of the USSR

Since it reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, in the 1940s, allied forces found it too controversial to print during wartime.

From HT Brunch, November 26, 2017

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It has been a month of eating Indian food outside of home. But not the kind of Indian food you would expect to find on normal menus.

I will start with the meal I enjoyed the most  though perhaps that has something to do with nostalgia. I went to boarding school in Rajasthan, to a place called Mayo College in Ajmer. The school was set up by a now forgotten Viceroy called Lord Mayo to offer an Eton-style education to the sons of Indian princes, over a century ago.

The parallels with Eton probably existed only in Lord Mayos mind because the school, when it opened, had a distinctively Maharaja touch about it. The first student arrived on an elephant with a huge entourage and proceeded to live with his servants in a large palace built specially for him  not quite the sort of thing they ever did in Eton!

As more and more maharajas sent their kids to Mayo, new mansions/palaces were constructed over the huge campus (over 200 acres). I am not sure how much quality education was imparted but nearly all of the great North Indian princely states were represented. The late Sawai Man Singh of Jaipur (who married Gayatri Devi) was a student there. So was Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir, father of Dr. Karan Singh. The Udaipur royal family has historical links dating back many generations.

Institutional food is rarely very good, but the dishes made on special occasions at Mayo College in Ajmer are quite memorable

And eventually, the Rajput aristocracy (rajas, thakurs, etc. who were not quite maharajas) began sending its sons to the school. Almost every distinguished Rajput of (the former Foreign Minister) Jaswat Singhs generation went to Mayo, though by then the school had democratised somewhat and there were no elephants and each student did not get a palace to himself.

By the time I went to Mayo, it had become a normal public school and the mansions and palaces had been turned into boarding houses. But if you were part of say, Bikaner House, you knew that at some stage, the sons of the royal family of Bikaner had occupied the whole building. So it was with the other houses, all of which had such names as Jodhpur, Kashmir, Jaipur or Bharatpur.

Though a legendary English principal (Jack Gibson) had transformed the school into a more egalitarian operation in the 1950s and 1960s, Mayo was very proud of its Rajput legacy. We wore Rajasthani safas on Sunday. Except for the teachers, the staff were all proudly Rajasthani, wore traditional Rajput outfits and sometimes acted as though the good old days had never faded!

Which brings us to the food. Institutional food is rarely very good but I have many happy memories of the dishes that were made on special occasions. I remember the Rajasthani soola, cooked over an open fire (which bears no relation to the tandoori version they offer at hotels nowadays). Mostly, I recall the Rajasthani style of cooking, so different to the Punjabi-ised food that has now taken over institutional and commercial kitchens in India.

Institutional cooking only hints at the greatness of a cuisine. But once you get used to the flavours, these tastes stay with you.

Some of those memories came back to me when I attended the Dine With Royalty event held at the Belgian embassy in Delhi. The event went on for several days and the food of the old princely states of India was served in elegant surroundings. But I went only for Sunday lunch because I was invited by Divija Singh who was involved with the food.

Divija is the daughter of VP Singh, who is currently the Governor of Punjab. But for me, there was a Mayo connection. Divijas family is from the thikana of Badnore, a Rajasthan house with a strong Mayo connection. Divijas uncle (and the Raja of Badnore, though he never uses the title) is Raghu Raj Singh, a Mayo old boy who came back to teach at the school purely out of love. (He was well-off enough not to need a Mayo salary.) Mr. RRS, as we used to call him, is a much-loved figure for several generations of Mayo boys and I was delighted to see that he had come to Delhi specially for the event.

Raghu Raj Singh, Raja of Badnore, is a Mayo old boy

I sat in the Badnore tent and ate one of the best and most unusual meals I have had in a long time: classic Rajput cuisine with the specialities of the house. I sat with Governor VP Singh and Akali MP Naresh Gujral and we talked politics but as interesting as the conversation was, nothing could match the excellence of Badnore food. Afterwards Mr. RRS explained to me why I had enjoyed the food so much. Over half the cooks at Mayo, he told me, had come from Badnore. So, in a sense, I had grown up on these flavours without ever realising it. And yes, institutional cooking only hints at the greatness of a cuisine. But once you get used to the flavours, these tastes stay with you.

The Badnore tent offered classic Rajput cuisine with the specialities of the house

From the traditions of medieval India to something entirely modern. Shortly after I ate at the Badnore table, I went back to Diya after a long gap. Diya is the Indian restaurant at the Gurgaon Leela and was best known for many years as the home of celebrity chef Kunal Kapoor. I had eaten there when Kunal was cooking and the food was terrific. But now that he has moved on I wondered what the Leela would do with the restaurant.

The Amritsari-style fried fish with a chhola roti at Diya is highly recommended

I neednt have worried. Though the Leela groups core competence is traditional Indian food (it has two outstanding chefs: Surender Mohan for North Indian and Purshottam for South Indian) it has a pulled off an impressive makeover of Diya as a modern Indian restaurant that does not deviate from authentic flavours.

I had an excellent prawn ghee roast with tamarind rice, an intense tomato and drumstick soup, Amritsari-style fried fish with a chhola roti, and a memorable nalli gosht on barley khichda with meat so tender that you could eat it with a spoon.

Diya, at The Leela Ambience Gurugram Hotel & Residences, is a modern Indian restaurant that does not deviate from authentic flavours

If you exclude the trendy places like Farzi Cafe, this is the best modern Indian food in Gurgaon. It is served without fuss or any pretension and there are no gimmicks. This is food cooked by talented chefs who are doing their best to try something new while staying true to their roots.

I have been writing a lot about London Indian food for some weeks now. In my other column, The Taste on hindustantimes.com, I took the slightly controversial line that the poncy Frenchified Indian food of celebrated upmarket London Indian restaurants now seemed boring. And last week, I wrote on these pages that despite the abusive reviews, I thought that the Indian-inspired food at Flavour Bastard, a new and determinedly unfancy restaurant in London was good.

Kricket, another Indian-inspired restaurant in Londons Soho has, unlike Flavour Bastard, received rave reviews from nearly every British critic. I decided to go after both Manish Mehrotra and Manu Chandra, two chefs I admire, praised it. I will probably do a longer piece at some stage on the new style non-fancy Indian food in London but for now, let me just say that the food at Kricket was as good as the reviews suggested.

Kricket, an Indian-inspired restaurant in Londons Soho has received rave reviews from nearly every British critic (Hugh Johnson)

It is a small place run by two Brits and I didnt see a single Indian in the kitchen which, I think, is great. You know that a cuisine has really taken off when people of various ethnicities feel comfortable cooking it: do you expect to see Italians in the kitchen every time you go for a pizza?

The food consists of small plates at reasonable prices and I ordered most of the menu. A dahi bhel was good but not particularly special, samphire pakoras were perfectly fried, a smoked baingan dish was more Middle Eastern than bharta-like. Lasooni scallops were brilliant if not overly Lasooni, and the Keralan Fried Chicken was excellent. The one dud dish was the grilled lamb neck. There was nothing wrong with the idea but the lamb was too tough.

The Kerala Fried Chicken at Kricket is excellent

And there was one other unusual Indian meal. Of all the airlines that operate out of the madhouse that is Heathrow, Virgin offers its Upper Class passengers the best check-in experience. You avoid the departure hall, drive to a separate area and a guy comes to your car, collects your bags and checks you in before fast-tracking you through security.

Virgin also has the one decent lounge at the airport where you can order, restaurant style, from a menu. I asked for the vegetable curry out of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised to receive a thali with rice, papad, pickles, pyaaz and an acceptable gravy-sabzi on a banana leaf. It was the sort of meal that Indian railways should be serving. But of course they dont. Nor, sadly enough, do our own airlines.

Its a long way from Badnore to London (via Gurgaon)! But thats what my month has been like. I guess the lesson is that Indian food, if made well, always tastes good, no matter whether it comes from palace cooks or from Brits behind a counter in Soho!

From HT Brunch, November 26, 2017

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I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.

So begins Marianne Moores iconic and ironic defence of verse in the helpfully titled poem: Poetry.

Years ago in lit class, our poet-professor got to the heart of the matter -- this deep-seated resistance to poetry shared by many. The inspirational Eunice de Souza introduced us to a multiplicity of poetic forms and content, disabusing silly notions and planting useful ones. She said, in words more or less like these: Not all poetry is Romantic poetry. Not every poet wanders lonely as a cloud, composing soulful odes to birds while pining away for damsels locked away in castles.

When poetry is mocked or parodied (Roses are red/Violets are blue etc.) -- or even first attempted, it is in the Romantic style, that of the capital R. Of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron. Wordsworth famously described poetry as [] the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. (From the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads). But for all its considerable influence and merit, Romanticism is just one literary movement of thousands. Move on from the Romantics and you discover endless flavours of poetry for every taste, from the macabre to the merry.

Along the way youre sure to encounter TS Eliot, owner of some of the finest lines in English poetry. Whether it is the pathos of Prufrock or the erudition of The Wasteland, the playfulness of Macavity or the succinctness of the Preludes, Eliot is one of those masters whose poetic influence on western literary culture is immense. But like all theorists, his criticism must be questioned. Mr. Eliot is what postcolonial, postmodern readers would call a literary snob.

As I grow older, I find his Impersonality Theory (Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality.) particularly damaging to poets who come from a different ethos. The Confessional poets, for example, stand in stark contrast to this so-called objectivity, whether it is Sylvia Plaths gut-wrenching introspection or Robert Lowells deeply personal excavations. Beat guru Allen Ginsbergs bardic chant Howl is another counterpoint to both Romantic and Modernist traditions. Its interesting to see how Eliot himself collapses his own distinction between the man who suffers and the mind that creates in some of his most cherished works.

Far from the western literary canon (that many Indian poets in English also belong to) lies a world of eastern poets, steeped in their own traditions, imagery and philosophies. The Chinese poets give us a glimpse of distant landscapes and unfamiliar customs, with the most heartbreakingly recognizable characters. Whether it is Ghalib or Gulzar, the Urdu tradition combines depth with charm, reflecting a syncretic Hindustani identity. Mirabai and Kabir give us Bhakti poetry that is spirituality without the self-help. While reading Prakrit love poetry, you encounter gems such as the one below. (From the excellent The Absent Traveller, translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra).

After much training,

The hussys mongrel

Licks her lovers hand

And flies at her husband.

Poetry is so much more than dead white men proselytising from across the centuries. It speaks in whichever tongue the reader is familiar with, of every experience that counts, mainstream or marginalised.

Whenever someone tells me they dont get poetry, I find myself taking up the deeply irritating position of defendant-in-chief. I swamp mailboxes with accessible poets of irresistible wit (Dorothy Parker), ironic contemporary poets (Wendy Cope), everyday poets with disarming styles (Billy Collins). Vikram Seth is a much-used argument, as are one-off poems from Theodore Roethke (My Papas Waltz) and Eunice de Souza (Women in Dutch Painting). If my victim shows a fraction of interest, theres Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Agha Shahid Ali, Pablo Neruda and others waiting down the line. And for kids theres the eye-opening anthology by Gerard Benson This Poem Does Not Rhyme that even cites Shakespeare and Milton for its purpose. The strategy is effective, if not sophisticated. Reel them in with humour and sink them deep, poet by poet.

Goethe famously said: He who cannot draw from three thousand years is living hand to mouth. The German polymath would have had to add several more thousands to his estimate to the age of culture if he were to factor in non-western civilisations. But I agree with the sentiment and link it with poetry. Poetry, like all art, tells us more about ourselves than our official narratives ever will or can. It is conscious of the unconscious. Like Freud said: Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me. So its tragic if an unimaginative teacher banging on about the Romantics ends a students love for poetry even before it has a chance to begin.

From HT Brunch, November 26, 2017

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Brick jallis, standardised facades, row housing with common walls between adjoining houses and exposed concrete and brick facades are among common architectural elements that are not only aesthetically admirable, but also tell a story of how low cost mass housing was achieved using the design and choice of construction material here.

Though aesthetic beauty of the citys architecture is much appreciated but its contribution to low cost housing is generally overlooked. In fact, its architectural history and style is a major contribution in the realm of low cost housing.

With three renowned architects taking charge of designing Chandigarh, which included Pierre Jeanneret, Jane B Drew and Maxwell Fry, high degree of economy in the housing cost was achieved, says Jit Kumar Gupta, former director, College of Architecture, Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), Bhaddal.

Housing for all challenge

A 2011 study by the ministry of housing and urban affairs pegged the housing shortage in the country at 18.76 million in urban areas, of which the EWS (economically weaker section) segment and in LIG (low income group) housing comprised 96%.

Recently, speaking at a conference in New Delhi, the Union minister of housing and urban affairs Hardeep S Puri said subsequent assessments led to a revision of this figure and in the final analysis and the shortage is likely to be around or in excess of 10 million units, a sizable number and remains a tough target.

Using pre-cost battens and tiles for the roof. (Sikander Singh/HT)

In Punjab as well, the challenge for housing for all poses its own challenges. The task force on Urban Housing Shortage in Punjab in 2012 estimated the shortage at 0.39 million dwelling units. Even though the percentage of poverty rate reduced from 15-20% in 2001 to 10-11% in 2011, the share of poor families is high in big cities of Punjab.

As per the National Building Organisation, 2015, the state has 1.46 million people in slum (2% of Indias total slum population). In Chanidgarh, nearly 30% population is living in slums and it is estimated that there is shortfall of 2 lakh houses for urban poor, says Saakaar Foundation architect Surinder Bahga.

Paucity of funds and city housing needs

The city was conceived and conceptualised in 1950 as the new capital city for Punjab. The state government accorded higher priority to the construction of houses for its employees. In the initial programme, it was envisioned for more 20,000 people within three years of start of construction.

Initially, 3,208 dwelling units were to be constructed to which 4,000 units were added in 1956 when PEPSU (Patiala and East Punjab State Union) was merged into Punjab. Out of 23,000 residential sites carved out in the first phase of the citys development, 30% residential sites were marked for government housing, which formed the majority of the accommodation in the first two decades of citys development.

Small windows to save on the cost of wood. (Sikander Singh/HT)

Major determinants of Chandigarh architecture, urban form and low cost housing designs, were stringent budget and strict adherence to it, which made the city a low density and low rise city with government housing forming bulk of construction. Since the city was built on a new site, the greatest challenge was to provide large housing stock for government employees who were to be shifted to the new city, says Gupta.

Availability of funds for the Chandigarh project shaped architectural decisions. The funds available for the new city at the time were scarce and there was more emphasis on making everything economical, but at the same time not sacrificing harmony, utility and aesthetics of the architecture.

To achieve this, focus was on laid on low cost options both in terms of materials used and the design elements. Jeanneret, Drew and Fry did most of the housing and social infrastructure. Jeanneret was an innovative mind and helped use innovative methods to economise construction, says SD Sharma, architect, Chandigarh Project, 1963-73.

Low cost housing

For achieving low cost housing, stress was laid on using, locally made inexpensive brick as the vital material for construction, minimising wood work and glazing, which were seven times more expensive than brick wall, by keeping window sizes minimum, standardisation of doors, windows and sanitary fittings besides using pre-cost roof battens and tiles for economising on time, shuttering, labour and using minimum machinery during construction, says Gupta.

Using pre-cast gargoyles for draining rain water instead of rain water pipes. (Sikander Singh/HT)

Bricks were used extensively. Cost-effective bricks were the main building material for construction. It was left in its natural form without plaster or paint, saving on current and future maintenance costs. Large area was brought under exposed brick work in natural form on the facades, says Sharma.

Different design elements were incorporated to minimise the size and number of openings to save cost on wood. They made housing openings like windows smaller in size. Windows were properly shaded through an innovative system of sub-breakers to cut off the harsh sun, adds Gupta.

Majority of air, light and ventilation in the houses was achieved through perforations made in the brick wall and extensive use of brick jallis. But, this didnt come at the cost of aesthetic elements. For instance, variety in design was achieved through recessed entrances, small-square windows, projecting structural walls, exposed roof battens, says Gupta.

Battened door with cross braces (Sikander Singh/HT)

Similarly, innovative technologies involving pre-cast building components were used, eliminating use of costly machinery and promoting improved local technologies, using vernacular architecture and promoting standardization, which brought about low cost housing, says Gupta.

Use of cement was minimised and simple structures were used to keep cost low. Similarly, cost-saving design elements like protruding bricks were used in type 13 houses to shade the walls without incurring any additional costs, says Bahga. The design and materials pioneered during the early development years of the city continue to prove resilient even today.

Take example of jute doors used in the first building constructed in the city, now turned into the Le Corbusier Centre, which are still in good shape after all these years. If we see older buildings, we can notice how low maintenance these required in last 60 years, but still continue to appear beautiful and functional, says Sangeet Sharma, a Chandigarh-based architect.

Brick jallis installed in houses at Sector 22, one of the oldest sectors in Chandigarh. (Sikander Singh/HT)

Lessons not learnt

Lessons from Chandigarh architecture in low-cost housing have largely been overlooked by planners. Most new cities are planned focusing on the middle and upper middle class. Housing for poor is either ignored in the planning stage or is done shoddily.

The Chandigarh architecture teaches valuable lessons in low-cost housing and should be emulated, says Bahga. Even satellite towns of Chandigarh, particularly Mohali, have failed to emulate the lessons. Where is the second Chandigarh in the country? Chandigarh architecture is a reference, but never served as a reference for low-cost housing development in the country. This must change if we are serious about meeting the challenge of low-cost housing, says Sangeet.

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Is there a disconnect between what the government and the BJP say about Kashmir and how they act? The honest answer is I dont know although I have my suspicions. So lets explore this issue more closely.

The truth is for a while the government has sounded rather emollient. You may recall one or two instances but I bet youll be surprised by how many there have been and what they amount to.

First, on Independence Day the prime minister said the solution was to embrace Kashmiris, not shoot or abuse them. Shortly thereafter the home minister, speaking in Srinagar, said he was willing to talk to anyone and promised not to act against the sentiments of Kashmiris. He also said he would make 50 visits a year if necessary.

This month Rajnath Singh went further. He said he had asked the state government to move juveniles arrested for pelting stones from jail to remand homes and review their cases sympathetically. On November 22, the state government launched a scheme for amnesty to stone-pelters and withdrawal of cases against first- time offenders.

Of course, many of these are just statements but they are, nonetheless, significant and, taken together, suggest determination if not also sincerity.

However, the most striking promise is one thats got the least attention. When asked by this paper on November 17 if the Special Representative would speak to Hurriyat, BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav not only confirmed he would but pointedly added: The dialogue has to happen in a very open manner, without any precondition. In fact, this echoed what Madhav had told this paper in August last year. At that time he said the government was ready to engage all sections of the Valleys society and Kashmiris could ask for the moon within the Indian Constitution.

No one can dismiss all these comments as one-offs or made casually. Theyve been spoken by men of responsibility and repeated so often they clearly form a consistent chain. So the natural expectation is these comments must have led to major changes. But if they havent then, surely, the question I began with is valid?

Now lets look at whats happened. For a whole year Ram Madhavs promises of August 2016 were forgotten before the Prime Minister revived them but only verbally. A Special Representative of cabinet rank has, no doubt, been appointed but so far he hasnt made a credible effort to speak to Hurriyat. And as for the claim there will be no preconditions and Kashmiris can ask for the moon the way the Prime Minister pounced on Chidambarams stand, that India should consider reforms that may restore the autonomy Kashmir had at accession, suggests many of these things were said more for effect than implementation.

So do you get the feeling the BJP knows how to say the right things but doesnt act on them or is inexplicably slow to do so? And then, side by side, theres all this talk of scrapping Articles 35 (A) and 370 or building Sainik Colonies which, admittedly, may be intended to taunt but certainly dont reassure Kashmiris.

As I admitted, Im not sure theres a disconnect but it certainly seems like one. However, what Im more certain of is theres confusion in the BJPs and the governments thinking. They either dont realise what theyve said or dont want to act on their statements.

If this leads you to the conclusion they say one thing and do another I wouldnt necessarily disagree.

The views expressed are personal

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Why is Delhi a state? That isnt a facile question. It is also a question that merits repeating. Why is Delhi a state?

Indias capital was a beautiful city (before it became a beautiful-but-unlivable city-state) in the 1970s and part of the 1980s. The traffic was still manageable (the tricked-out-Maruti-800 revolution was a few years away), as was the population. It was still safe, although city-historians would later point to the horrific Sanjay and Geeta Chopra murders in 1978 as a tipping point. It had wide tree-lined avenues, beautiful parks, and a certain old-world feel. Gurugram and Ghaziabad were yet to become the heaving satellite-towns they would become, and NOIDA was a small and immaculately planned suburb.

Truth is, you can get nostalgic about almost any Indian city. Bengaluru in the 1970s, 1980s, even part of the 1990s, was one of the best places to live in India. Mumbai, almost till the late 1990s, was still a perfectly functioning metropolis. Kolkata was an important cultural and business centre in the 1980s. Of the lot, only Chennai (Madras in the old days), which received and still gets a bad rap for weather, has managed to keep some bit of its old self alive, although, like Kolkata, it has become a city of parents. Still, Delhis case is particularly unique and not the least because it is a city-state that is home to the central government.

Part of this has to perhaps do with its success. Even in the 1980s and 1990s, Mumbai was the countrys commercial capital and Delhi, its political capital. That has changed. Today, the centre of gravity of business in India hovers somewhere between Mumbai and Delhi and Bengaluru (although it is still slightly polarised towards the first). Today, Delhi and its environs, called the National Capital Region, and including bits of Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad, and Ghaziabad, are home to as many, if not more, multinational corporations, than Mumbai or Bengaluru. Gurugram is the largest automobile manufacturing hub in the country. This has also changed the profile of the regions population.

That success has translated into a greater demand on the citys and the regions hard and soft infrastructure. For instance, Delhi is woefully short of power and dependant on power from other regions. It also has its water piped in from elsewhere. Its roads are unable to cope with its huge volume of traffic, the result of it having more vehicles than Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Kolkata combined. It has become unsafe for women. Every year, it has at least one major outbreak of dengue, or chikungunya, or some other disease. It has a perennial garbage problem. And, over the past few years, every winter, it has the worst air quality in the country.

These are the kind of issues that would tax even the most efficient administrations. Only, in Delhi, it isnt clear who is in charge. The city itself is divided into three local bodies, the New Delhi Municipal Corporation that comes under the central government; the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (which is divided into three corporations, each elected); and the Delhi Cantonment Board which falls under the union defence ministry. On top of these are Delhis elected government or the Lieutenant Governor, an appointee of the union government. Then there are satellites such as Gurugram, Faridabad, Noida, and Ghaziabad. The first two fall under the Haryana government and the last two under Uttar Pradesh.

The number of bodies and individuals and governments responsible for Delhi puts the city-state in a uniquely piquant position. One, people do not know who is accountable for what. Indeed, ahead of this years election to the three corporations that make up the MCD, the Bharatiya Janata Party fought at least part of its campaign on the platform of change despite having been in charge of all three corporations for the past 10 years. Two, it is easy for the people in charge to pass the buck. Indeed, this is the standard response of Delhis Aam Aadmi Party government.

This was evident during the recent air pollution crisis that the city-state experienced. Despite this being an annual affair, the state government seemed entirely unprepared for it. It had not implemented many of the measures it promised to last year. Worse, it had not bought more buses despite sitting on a green fund that had more than enough money. When this was pointed out, it pointed a finger at the Delhi Development Authority, which reports to the Lieutenant Governor, saying the agency had not given it enough land to park the buses it wanted to buy.

To be fair to the Delhi state government, there are areas such as law and order, for instance, where it can do little because the Delhi Police doesnt report to it. But there are several areas where it can do a lot. In some, such as education (schools), it has achieved a lot. In others, it hasnt, and the reason for this underachievement and underperformance isnt always its limited powers, although it is a good excuse for the same.

There is an ideal solution. As Indias capital, the location of the central government, the most important vertex in the Delhi-Agra-Jaipur golden triangle in tourism, and an important cultural and commercial hub, the city-state deserves better. If this means carving out a larger region (the satellite towns and suburbs, for instance), and putting an administrative authority reporting to the union government in charge, then so be it. For one, this would immediately clarify who is in charge. For another, it would remove centre-state relations from the equation. And it would create an authority responsible for a geographical area that is already contiguous in all aspects except governance.

Sure, it would help to have such a body. Just as it would help if Delhis state government had more powers, or had better relations with the union government. But there is also a more pragmatic and simple solution: there is much the AAP government in Delhi could have done and can still do to make the city more livable.

The average Delhiite puts up with a lot: unsafe roads; harassment and rape; traffic jams; disease outbreaks; bad air; and, also helplessness arising sometimes from not knowing who to hold responsible for all this. It is time to put an end to this. It is time for the state government to step up (however limited it may feel its powers are).

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An apex trade association has suggested that the Uttarakhand government form a high-power committee so that Rs 2 lakh crore of investments the state has received in the past five years could be used in setting up industries.

Half of this investment is lying unusedAlmost the same is the case with the remaining amount, said DS Rawat, secretary general of Assocham (Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India).

Investors find it difficult to invest those funds in units they are setting up in the state owing to various hurdles, Rawat told reporters here on Saturday.

We have urged the chief minister to set up a high-power committee so that investments could be used in setting up industries.

Rawat said a study by Assocham revealed that bureaucratic red tape was one of the hurdles coming in the way of a smooth utilisation of investments. The study, titled Uttarakhand: Economic Growth and Investment Performance, had been submitted to the chief minister, he said, adding that the report presented an overview of the states performance since the fiscal 2012-13.

Apart from bureaucratic hurdles, the bottlenecks pertaining to land acquisition and environment clearances are also coming in the way of a smooth utilisation of investments, Rawat said. Even if half of the investments are properly utilized, it would result in some 30,000 people getting jobs in the industrial sector.

Rawat said agrarian sector also required the governments focused attention. The agriculture growth rate in the mountain state had registered a sharp decline from 12.3% in 2012 to 8.9% in the current fiscal, he said, quoting the Assocham study.

The growth in the service sector though had registered a marginal increase from 33.9% in 2012 to 36.9%, Rawat said, suggesting that the state government re-strategise its policy initiatives to boost to the farm and service sectors.

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The Uttarakhand Congress demand for holding urban local body (ULB) polls in the state via ballot papers over fears of the electronic voting machines (EVMs) being allegedly tampered has invited jibes from the ruling BJP.

Amid allegations of EVMs being tampered in the assembly polls earlier this year and then during the ongoing ULB polls in neighboring Uttar Pradesh, Congress corporators have approached the state election commission, demanding that EVMs be completely kept away from the upcoming local body polls in Uttarakhand.

Given how it has been shrouded in controversies, it is better to keep away from using EVMs for local body polls. They should instead be held through ballot papers for ensuring total transparency, said Rajkumar, former Rajpur Road lawmaker who led the delegation of Congress leaders.

ULB polls are scheduled to be held in Uttarakhand by April next year. The previous civic polls were held in 2013 through the EVMs at some ULBs and ballot papers at most others.

The BJP, however, lashed out at the Congress, saying that it was scared of the ruling partys popularity and hence the demand. Theyre so scared of us that perhaps in their minds they already know theyre going to lose. Tampering of EVMs has not been proved yet and their demand only goes on to show their defeatist outlook, BJPs state media in-charge Devendra Bhasin said.

It may be recalled that soon after the assembly elections earlier this year, various parties including the BSP, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party had alleged large-scale tampering of the EVMs in favor of the BJP. After the controversy, the Election Commission of India had clarified that it was not possible to tamper with EVMs, and even held a hackathon challenging parties to prove their claims.

There are 92 ULBs in Uttarakhand at present, including six municipal corporations, 43 municipal boards and an equal number of town panchayats.

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In 17 years of its existence, Uttarakhand has seen an exponential rise in the number of vehicles being bought from 42,000 registered vehicles in 2000 when the state was carved out of Uttar Pradesh to 24 lakh in 2017, a top official said Saturday.

The state accounts for 0.03% of the total deaths in the road accidents in the country. Theres an urgent need to educate the youngsters to refrain from rash driving and for instilling awareness towards traffic rules, Director General of Police Anil Raturi said.

He was addressing a seminar on road safety at St Josephs Academy.

Addressing the seminar, SSP, Dehradun, Nivedita Kukreti said the population of Dehradun is 7.5 lakhs and the district has more than 10 lakh registered vehicles. He said, there were 386 traffic personnel in Dehradun translating into one traffic personnel for every 2,676 vehicles. This ratio goes up to 1:5,200 at tourist spots.

The SSP stressed on the need for increasing the number of traffic personnel and initiating measures for traffic management. She pointed out that already the police department was trying to ensure that the left turn at all major intersections was kept free. She pointed out that school timing and parking on their campuses was another important issue and they were in talks with the schools on this.

Vikas Garg, the regional chairman of Confederation of Indian Industry, said that the police must be well equipped to deal with the surge of tourists in Dehradun and Musoorie on weekends. He also requested the traffic department to dedicate certain routes for trucks so that they are not parked by the side of the roads leading to traffic jams. He also urged the government to designate the canal route for the Kanwad Yatra so that the industries did not suffer due to closure of Meerut-Haridwar highway for 12 days during the annual event.

Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and transport minister Yashpal Arya were also present at the event that was convened by assistant inspector general, traffic, Kewal Khurana, Additional DGP Ashok Kumar, principal of St Josephs Academy Babu Verghese, regional transport officer, Dehradun, Sudhanshu Garg and road engineering expert from IIT Roorkee Rajat Rastogi.
The prime accused in the  300 crore NH 74 scam and former special land acquisition officer DP Singh was on Saturday admitted to a local hospital as a special investigation team reached to take him on police remand.

A special anti-corruption court on Friday sent Singh to the Nainital jail and permitted the state polices special investigation team (SIT) to take him on 3-day remand.

When the SIT team reached the jail in the morning, they were informed by the jail doctor that Singh was unwell and will have to be admitted to the hospital.

The jail administration requested the local police to take Singh to the hospital even as the SIT approached the civil court for his custody.

The court directed the government counsel to hand over Singh to the SIT team.

The government counsel spoke to the state inspector general of police (prisons) PVK Prasad, who directed the jail superintendent Manoj Kumar to hand Singh over to the SIT.

The SIT team led by investigation officer Swatantra Singh after taking Singh into custody accompanied him to the hospital where doctors carried out a detailed medical check-up.

Singh is suffering from high blood pressure as he was diabetic and his electrocardiogram show that his heart was not functioning properly, said Dr MS Dugtal at the hospital.

He has been referred to the Susheela Tiwari Hospital in Haldwani, he said.

Singh surrendered before the SIT in Rudrapur on November 23.

In March, the then Kumaon commissioner D Senthil Pandiyan unearthed the scam in procurement of land for construction of the NH-74 in Udham Singh Nagar district.

The nature of the land was allegedly changed from agricultural to commercial under Section 143 of Zamidari Abolishment and Land Reforms Act, 1950.

Farmers were allegedly given inflated compensation in collusion with revenue officials.

An FIR was lodged on March 11 against nearly 100 people, including revenue and National Highway Authority of India officials.

Chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat suspended six state civil service officials, including Singh, in April.
Villagers of Vyans Valley have demanded 15 more days from the Pithoragarh district administration to come down to their residences in lower valleys as part of their annual winter migration, citing delay in the onset of the cold season.

The administration wants residents of more than 10 Vyans Valley villages in Dharchula sub-division to move to lower reaches by November 30, so that construction work will begin on a rocky portion of the road from Ghatiabagar to Lipulekh Pass, the last Indian post at the border with China.

In the absence of an alternative route, the villagers will find it difficult to move to their houses in the lower reaches after the road construction begins. Unlike earlier years, winter has been delayed this time giving villagers a reason to hold up their movement to lower parts, said Mahendra Singh Budiyal, a BJP leader in Dharchula.

The district administration is firm on resuming road construction on December 1. We have told the villagers to migrate till November 30 and thereafter no permission will be given to them for movement on the route, RK Pandey, Dharchula sub-divisional magistrate (SDM), told Hindustan Times.

The villagers want the administration to start work on a 6-km rocky patch between Nazang and Bundi after December 15. Work on the 6-km portion of the 75-km double-lane motor road from Ghatiabagar to Lipulekh Pass is one of the most challenging projects of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) owing to the rocky terrain.

After construction of the double-lane motor road to the last security point at India-China border in Vyans Valley, the last border post will be linked to the mainstream of the country, said Pandey.

The construction of the road started in 2002 and was scheduled to be completed by 2007, but due to tough and rocky portions on the site, the work got delayed. The administration now aims at completing the construction by 2019.

Officials said an alternative route will be constructed for the movement of people. We are also developing an alternative route to ensure human transportation during the construction of the road, the SDM said.
A 19-year-old has alleged that he was doused in petrol and set on fire by three bikers in Outer Delhis Bawana on Thursday after he objected to their behaviour towards a girl accompanying him.

The man, an aspiring chartered accountant, received over 50% burns and has been admitted to the burns ward of Lok Nayak Hospital. The 17-year-old girl accompanying him managed to escape unhurt.

Dependra Pathak, Delhi Polices chief spokesperson, said investigators are scanning CCTV footage for any clues of the attackers and are also probing if the burns were self-inflicted. He said more than 50 love letters were received from the duos bags.

Many of these letters addressed to each were written in blood. The content of some of these letters were bizarre. In one of the letters, the man had mentioned about sacrificing his life on a Thursday if the girl deserted him. Incidentally, the day the victim was set on fire is also a Thursday, Pathak said. He said that the duos relationship appeared to be passing through a difficult phase.

The letters also suggested that the duos friendship was inspired by Beyhadh, a psychological thriller with a strong romantic angle. They had given each other the names of the lead male and female characters of the TV serial Beyhadh, said an investigator.

The girl is a Class 12 student and lives in west Delhis Nangloi. The man too lived nearby and their families have known each other for nearly five years. The parents knew about their friendship, said Rishi Pal, DCP (Rohini).

On Thursday morning, the duo had gone to Kanjhawala Road in Bawana. The man claimed that as they walked past a cow shelter in the neighbourhood, three youths on a motorcycle began passing lewd comments at the girl and one of them even pulled her dupatta.

When I protested, they caught hold of her (the girl) and began beating me up. A few minutes later, one of them brought a bottle of petrol and doused me using it. They then lit a match, threw it at me and rode away, alleged the man.

I immediately got rid of my T-shirt to save myself, but I still suffered some burns. We then looked for help, but people just looked and us and went their way. We walked for almost a kilometre before we received help from a traffic policeman, said the man.

The victim was rushed to a nearby healthcare centre from where he was referred to GB Pant Hospital and subsequently to Lok Nayak Hospital. The DCP said a PCR call about the incident was made by the hospital authorities.

No eyewitness to the burning incident has emerged so far, police said. One eyewitness, who refused to identify himself, said he only saw the duo walk towards him from a forested area in the neighbourhood.

The DCP said CCTV footage showed Kumar and the girl walking together, but none of the alleged bikers have been captured. He said a case of attempt to murder has been registered.

The officer said that there were certain discrepancies in the statements of the victim and the girl.
A top pollution prevention panel has urged the meteorological department to give out at least a weeks forecast for weather.

The pollution-prevention body said the current two-day prediction was not sufficient to implement the emergency response plan that is required to kick-in everytime the pollution in the National Capital turns severe.

Beijing and other cities across the world have 15 days pollution forecasts, which helps them strategise better. We need at least seven days forecasts, cant have a two-day alert Give us a chance to be prepared and take action, EPCA member Sunita Narain told MeT department officials on Friday.

The EPCA  Environment Pollution Control and Prevention Authority (EPCA)  is a Supreme Court-appointed committee and holds the power to implement the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), a protocol that will put restrictions on factories and vehicles to pre-empt pollution.

The National Capital Region went through an unprecedented pollution crisis earlier this month when the air became unfit to breathe for a week, staying in severe category between November 7 and 14. The worst was on November 9, when the Air Quality Index hit 486.

According to EPCA, the most advanced prediction it had before November 7 was of November 6.

It said winds will come from Punjab. But it did not provide any warning of the kind of anti-cyclonic weather disturbance that was happening in the upper circulatory system and the impending problems that it would bring In the future, we have to ensure that there is no episode like this, Narain said.

Dust from the Gulf region was later identified as the main reason for the smog crisis, contributing slightly more than the crop burning in agrarian states surrounding the NCR zone.

According to the report, EPCA is provided no advance warning for sudden change in weather patterns, but only has information about current state of pollution through real-time monitoring of the AQI.

But across the world, where such smog alert systems are in place, a robust and reliable weather forecasting system is essential for action, it said.

REGULAR ALERTS

In Fridays meeting, the EPCA decided that alerts will be sent out in newspapers when the air quality is in very poor, severe and severe plus levels. In Delhi, according to Delhi Pollution Control Committee officials, the health department was already doing it.

The EPCA urged representatives of several states to make sure the alerts are frequent. Some state officials said they will do it once in a fortnight, to which Narain suggested it be done daily.

CONSTRUCTION BAN BANE

The ban on construction activities during the emergency levels of pollution had left migrant labourers in the lurch as contractors refused to pay them, the Delhi government told EPCA.

The pollution panel has now decided to review the issue, which forced many labourers to leave, and hammer out a solution.

EPCA chairman Bhure Lal and member Sunita Narain have stressed that contractors would have to pay the labourers during the period of the ban.

But officials from Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) states, in the meeting, pointed out that in the absence of any legislation that provides the workers the safety of paid leave, it becomes next to impossible to enforce it.

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In July, speaking at the release of a report on child marriage in India, Sunita Reddy, professor at JNUs Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health had pointed out, that while educating girls can lower the risk of child marriages, often parents are reluctant to educate their daughters and prefer to have them married off at an early age because they fear that some oonch-neech would happen to the girl. This oonch-neech can be the girl getting molested, or raped or even falling in love and wanting to marry someone of her choice.

A recent study by development economist Girija Borker, published on November 3, would suggest that the hurdle of unsafe public spaces and the fear of harassment in the path of womens education exist not just in rural areas, as commonly perceived, but even in the national capital.

Borker conducted a study in and gathered data from 40 Delhi University colleges to measure the extent to which perceived risk of street harassment can help explain womens college choices in Delhi.

Delhi has the unsavoury moniker of being the rape capital of the country. According to the Crime in India 2015 report released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Delhi showed the highest crime rate in rapes (reported cases of crime against 1,00,000 women) at 23.7, as compared to the national average of 5.7.

In Borkers sample, 89% of college-going female students said they had faced some form of harassment while travelling in Delhi. The report goes on to record the kind of precaution women students take to avoid this harassment. While 72% of female students report avoiding an unsafe area, 67% avoid going out after dark.

The fear of harassment, Borker found, also played a role in the female students choice of institution. She combined data collected from the University of Delhi, with route mapping from Google Maps, and mobile app safety data, to study the trade-offs women face between college quality and travel safety, relative to men. Borker found that women are willing to attend a college that is 25 percentage points lower in the quality distribution for a route that is perceived to be one standard division (SD) safer.

Borker used selectivity in admissions as an indicator of college quality, measured by a colleges cutoff score. Men, in her sample size, were only willing to attend a college that is five percentage points lower in the quality distribution for a route that is one SD safer.

Borker analysed district-wise rape data available with the NCRB to estimate that one additional SD of route safety while walking is equivalent to a 3.1% decrease in the rapes reported annually.

She refers to various previous studies to suggest that choosing a worse-ranked college may have long-term consequences since college quality affects a students academic training, network of peers, access to labour opportunities, and lifetime earnings.

From entry decisions to actual working on the job, the threat of sexual harassment is a debilitating barrier, says Dr Kaustav Banerjee, Centre for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Early job market studies in mainstream economics, from the 60s, have drawn attention to various dimensions of gender-based discrimination and Borkers paper is in that lineage, said Banerjee.

Nalini Gulati, economist at the International Growth Centre, agrees. Safety is definitely an issue in Delhi. Given the competition, the quality of college will have a direct impact on job prospects, she says. Even when a woman is in a job, security concerns may prevent her from travelling long distances or working late, which results in her losing out on growth opportunities, she adds.

Referring to the World Employment Social Outlook 2017, Borker writes, the global labour force participation rate for women is 26.7 percentage points lower than the rate for men in 2017, and the largest gender gap in participation rates is faced by women in emerging countries. The results of this paper suggest that street harassment could help explain part of this gender gap.

Not everyone though, is in agreement of the premise or findings of Borkers study. While safety and safe access are definitely considerations when one is looking for an educational institution, I dont think anyone will forego a possible admission in any DU college for that reason, simply because there is such a scarcity of seats, says Dr Ranjana Kumari, director, Centre for Social Research.

The choice, adds Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All-India Progressive Womens Association, is often not the womens. The concern for safety is often used as an excuse by families to restrict a womans choice and mobility. We often find that even good students are stopped by their families from attending extra-curricular activities or research projects if it involves staying out late.

Meanwhile, the concern for safety is a double burden, writes Borker. While on the one hand, it may impact or restrict womens career advancement, it results in their spending more than men on the commute. Women are also willing to travel by a route that costs 20,000 more per year as long as it is one SD safer. This is 16 times more than men are willing to spend in terms of travel costs for an additional unit of safety.

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A total of 2,31,067 candidates are expected to appear in Indias biggest MBA entrance test, the Common Admission Test conducted by the Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIM-L) on November 26.

By and large all preparations have been made for the test. We wish all the candidates best of luck for the test, said Prof Neeraj Dwivedi of IIM(L), the convener of the examination.

The test, which will be held in two sessions of 180 minutes each, will have three sections. Section I will have verbal ability and reading comprehension; section II will be data interpretation and logical reasoning and section III will deal with quantitative ability, Prof Dwivedi said.

Some questions in each section may not be of multiple choice type and candidates will have to type direct answers online.

We will also allow the use of the basic onscreen calculator for computation. Candidates will be allotted exactly 60 minutes for answering questions in each section and they cannot switch from one section to another while answering questions in a section, the convener said.

CAT 2017 will be conducted in centres spread across approximately 140 cities.

This year the number of women candidates registered for CAT-2017 has increased this year by 1.16% over last years figure. Against total applicants of 231,067, this year 78,009 women candidates will take the examination. Last year 76,000 women had appeared in the exam. The number of male candidates this year is 153,027.

This year the number of transgender candidates also increased to 31 from 22 last year, said Prof Dwivedi. The number of physically challenged applicants is 910 against last years 921.

Registration for the Common Admission Test (CAT), gateway to IIMs and other leading B-schools, declined a bit this year. It had shot up to a seven-year high in 2016, with 232,434 candidates applying for the entrance test.

Information related to CAT 2017 results will be tentatively available starting second week of January 2018 on this website. The list of candidates shortlisted for the next level of selection will be made available on the website of the respective IIMs.

Each IIM will send interview letters to the shortlisted candidates directly. The criteria for shortlisting vary among IIMs. Candidates will have to visit the admission hotlinks of the respective websites of IIMs for further information.

This year IIM-L had extended the last date of registration for the entrance test from September 20 to 25 to accommodate more candidates. During the five days extension period some 20,000 candidates had applied, Prof Dwivedi said.

The candidates will be permitted to download their admit card till the test date. Dwivedi said a tutorial to understand the format of the test was made available on the CAT website from October 18.

CAT scores are accepted by the 20 IIMs and more than 100 business schools across the country. Around 4000 seats are offered through IIMs.

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The Staff Selection Commission (SSC) has released the admit card of all the regions for examination to recruit temporary constables (executive) - male and female in Delhi police. The admit card has been released for candidates of Northern region, Karnataka Kerala region, Western region (Mumbai), Southern region, Madhya Pradesh region, North Western region, Eastern region, North Eastern region and Central region.

Candidates can download the released admit card for the examination from SSCs official website. Click on the link for admit card on the top navigation bar of the home page. Click on the link for the region from which you have applied. This will take you to the regional websites of SSC from where you can download your admit card. Key in the required details and your admit card will be displayed on the screen. Take a printout and keep the admit card safely.

Or

Click on the links given below to go to the login page of the regional websites for downloading the admit card:

Northern region: Admit Card

Karnataka Kerala region: Admit card

Western region (Mumbai): Admit card

Eastern region: Admit card

North Eastern region: Admit card

Central region: Admit card

Southern region: Admit card

Madhya Pradesh region: Admit card

North Western region: Admit card

The examination will be held from December 5 to December 8, 2017.

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The father of a teen accused of murdering an eight-year-old schoolmate at Gurgaons Ryan International School has hired the lawyer who successfully defended dentist-couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the murder trial of their daughter, Aarushi.

Lawyer Tanveer Ahmed Mir confirmed on Friday that he will defend the Ryan murder suspect, a Class 11 student of the school.

Preliminary discussions have taken place with the father of the juvenile accused. Once the terms and conditions are formally finalised, I will be defending the boy, he said.

The Ryan murder this September has drawn parallels with the 2008 killing of 14-year-old Aarushi because of the twists and turns in both cases.

Gurgaon police arrested a school bus conductor on September 8 after Pradhyumn Thakur, a Class 2 student, was found dead with his throat slit outside a washroom on the campus.

But the boys father was not convinced with the police investigation and demanded a CBI probe, which was ordered later. The CBI arrested a Class 11 student on November 7, accusing him of murdering his junior to delay a scheduled school examination and a parent-teacher meeting.

In the Aarushi case, Uttar Pradesh police accused Rajesh Talwar of killing his daughter in a fit of rage and arrested him.

But the CBI, which took over the investigation, implicated three domestic helps of the Noida-based Talwars and their friends initially. When doubts were raised about their role, the agency took the police line and accused the parents.

Though a trial judge in Ghaziabad convicted Talwar, the Allahabad high court this October overturned the verdict and acquitted him. Lawyer Mir underscored the investigators about-turn and lack of prosecutable evidence.

The father of the Ryan suspect said Gurgaon police were treating his son as a witness, but the CBI accused him of murder.

My son has been framed by CBI officers  I will try to save my son as he is innocent and will fight to get justice. I will take help of best lawyers in this case, he said.

He said his son narrated the sequence of the events to the probation officer appointed by the juvenile justice board on November 13.

If my son had killed a boy would he be able to behave normally. After all he is also a child. On the day of the murder, he attended his tuition classes that evening and was absolutely normal, the father added.

According to another lawyer hired by the father, a team was being formed to defend the child.
The Allahabad high court on Friday directed to put up as fresh a petition challenging an order of additional district judge (ADJ), Gorakhpur that was in favour of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and six others in the dargah burning case of Gorakhpur of 2007.

The ADJ had set aside the order of the chief judicial magistrate (CJM), who had taken cognizance of the charge sheet filed against Adityanath and the six others in the case.

Hearing an application by Rasheed Khan, manager of the dargah and another person, Justice Rahul Chaturvedi directed to put up the matter on December 13, 2017 in the list of freshly filed cases.

The petitioner had lodged an FIR on January 28, 2007 at Gorakhpurs Kotwali police station, alleging that the then MP Yogi Adityanath and six others had burnt the dargah and looted its cash box. Thereafter, the state government had granted sanction to prosecute Adityanath and others.

Read more: UP govt committed to establishing rule of law: CM Yogi Adityanath

The police submitted a charge sheet against the accused before the CJM, Gorakhpur who, on December 22, 2009, took cognizance of the matter and directed the authorities concerned to proceed with the criminal trial.

Later, one of the accused Mahesh Khemka filed a revision before the ADJ challenging the order of the CJM. The ADJ, on January 28, 2017, set aside the CJMs order.

Now, the manager of the dargah has challenged the ADJs order.

Media Barred

In another case relating to the 2008 Gorakhpur riots case, wherein then MP Yogi Adityanath is accused of inciting communal violence and riots in the city, the court has barred the media from publishing court proceedings of the case till delivery of judgment.

The order was passed on a state government plea that alleged wrong reporting of the proceedings of the case and said it (wrong reporting) was causing lot of embarrassment to the state government.
What would a 122-year-old book of Bengali poetry be doing in an old desert mosque in Australia?

That question led postdoctoral fellow Samia Khatun on a journey into the outback, where she encountered Aboriginals who still spoke a smattering of Bengali.

It all started with a mistake  when the book was first found, it was assumed to be a Quran.

I saw a photograph in this book called Tin Mosques and Ghantowns: History of Afghan Cameldrivers in Australia by Christine Stevens and I realised it wasnt a Quran, says Khatun, 35. I recognised the script  it was Bengali  and it wasnt religious verse, it was poetry.

Khatun, a Bangladeshi, was then doing her PhD at the University of Sydney.

Her dissertation was titled, Camels, Ships, Trains: Translation Across the Indian Archipelago 1860-1930 and set out to examine cross-cultural interactions arising from the little-known but historically significant South Asian presence in Australia in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

So when she heard about the Quran at Broken Hill, an isolated mining city in New South Wales, she travelled almost 500 miles to the towns historical society  and confirmed that they had been mistaken for over a century.

Khatun is now writing a book of her own, on her discovery and its cultural connotations, called Australianama: The South Asian Odyssey in Australia.

I immediately sent some photographs of the book to my mother, who identified it as a Puthi, a kind of songbook, says Khatun.

This rare 500-page volume was printed in Calcutta in 1895, and its presence suggested that there was once a sizeable community of Bengali speakers in this middle-of-nowhere place, because these poems are meant to be sung and performed for an audience.

The songs are based on stories of Islamic and Hindu prophets and were meant for village audiences, since most people in rural Bengal would then have been illiterate.

The fact that it was here revealed that the performative cultures of South Asians had reached the absolute interiors of Australia, Khatun says.

As she began to try and trace the books journey from Calcutta to Broken Hill, it became clear that if one wanted to know about the history of South Asians who travelled to the interiors of Australia at this time, the best people to talk to were those from the Aboriginal communities, because they had an uninterrupted history in the region  and also, because many of the South Asians had married into Aboriginal families too.

The book is now being preserved by the Broken Hill Historical Society as an even rarer treasure than they thought.

And Khatun is writing a book of her own, on her journey of discovery and its cultural connotations, called Australianama: The South Asian Odyssey in Australia.

It traces the roots and influence of the subcontinental community that settled in the outback here  Bengalis migrated to be part of the camel industry, the mosque itself was built by Afghans who were trading in the camels.

The subject of Dr Khatuns book is fascinating as its not only the story of one book but also of an entire community, says Abhijit Gupta, book historian and professor of English at Jadavpur University.

It tells the story of book production in Calcutta. Its a printed puthi, mass produced at Battala more than a hundred years ago. Some migrant worker may have carried it to Australia as a talisman, so its also a story of the ways in which knowledge travels across continents, what is preserved, what is lost  this is a story of all of that, Gupta adds.

Australianama, published by Hurst in London and Oxford University Press in New York, is due out in 2018.

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Indias homegrown Arjun Mk-2 tanks may finally get missile firing capability next year.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will be ready with a new indigenous missile that can be fired from the tank, a top government official told Hindustan Times on Saturday. The upgrade of Arjun Mk-2 tank suffered a major setback in 2013 after the Israeli missile to be fitted on it failed to meet the armys requirements, delaying the programme by several years.

The indigenous missile is under trials and would be able to meet the armys requirement of engaging targets at ranges less than 1,200 metres.

The army rejected the Israeli LAHAT (laser homing anti tank) missile, manufactured by the Israeli Aerospace Industries, because it could engage targets only at ranges beyond 1,500 metres. The LAHAT missiles tested by the army and the DRDO cost nearly Rs 20 crore, an expenditure dubbed unfruitful by the national auditor in a recent report.

The army initially wanted a missile that could engage targets between 500 metres and 5km, but later revised the requirement to 1,200 metres and 5 km.

Missile firing capability is one of the most significant upgrades proposed in the tank. The defence ministry cleared the purchase of 118 Arjun Mk-2 tanks at a cost of more than Rs 6,600 crore in 2014.

The DRDO-developed tank is an upgraded version of the Mk-1 variant, 119 of which have been inducted in the army. The Mk-2 variant is supposed to have nearly 80 improved features over the previous version, including more than 15 major technology upgrades.

The major improvements on the new tank include better firepower, integrated explosive reactive armour, advanced laser warning and countermeasure system, a mine plough, a remotely-operable anti-aircraft weapon, advanced land navigation system and enhanced night vision capabilities.

The army raised its maiden armoured regiment equipped with Arjun Mk-1 tanks in May 2009, more than 35 years after the project was conceived.
India and China have heightened surveillance and security along the 3,488km boundary the two countries share, with border guards stocking up supplies for the dreary Himalayan winter.

The preparations stem from the 72-day standoff between the two armies on the Doklam plateau off east Bhutan this summer.

The armies disengaged on August 28, but a move to establish a hotline between the director general military operations (DGMO) in India and the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) of China hasnt received any encouraging response from Beijing.

Given the uncertainty, Indian border troops are keeping a watchful eye.

For its part, the PLA is said to be bringing reinforcements to its territory close to the disputed Doklam area.

But top South Block sources said the situation in Doklam is stable and both sides are stocked up to sit out the winter.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) guards the Chinese frontier from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, backed by the army. ITBP chief Ranjit Pachnanda will fly to the Northeast this week to review the winter supplies for his frontline troops.

Diplomatically, the two Asian giants are engaged in a special representative dialogue to resolve their long border dispute. Talks between Chinese state councillor Yang Jiechi and Indian national security adviser Ajit Doval is due this December-end in New Delhi.

The dates for state councillor Yangs special representative talks are still to be proposed from the Indian side, a Chinese diplomatic source said.

The two countries reiterated a resolve to maintain peace and tranquillity along the boundary at the November 17 meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India China Border Affairs.

But the Indian proposal for a DGMO-level hotline was resisted by the PLA representative.

South Block officials said the Chinese are more comfortable with communication at the local commander level, rather than between Indian Army and PLA headquarters.

The PLA is apparently worried that misunderstanding could crop up in times of crisis as the communication process between PLA headquarters and its Western Theatre Command, based in Chengdu, was slow.

The Indians sought a DGMO-level hotline to ensure no PLA commander unilaterally played Rambo, as suspicions persist that the Doklam standoff was triggered by an area officer and may not have the sanction of the top brass.
The Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry has recommended an enquiry against the vice-chancellor of Allahabad University, Rattan Lal Hangloo, to President Ram Nath Kovind, the Visitor of the institution, sources said.

For an enquiry to be conducted, the Visitors approval is required.

The recommendation follows a report from a fact-finding committee, formed by Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar, on the violence that erupted inside the campus in April.

The committee had gone there to probe the violence that took place and apart from being unable to contain the violence, they have noted other financial and administrative lapses too. To ensure the enquiry is held in an impartial and transparent manner, the vice-chancellor will be asked to go on leave once the ministry gets the Presidents approval, said an official source. Hungloo could not be contacted for comment.

Violent protests rocked the campus after a group of students, led by office-bearers of their union surrounded the universitys guest house, where an executive council meeting was underway, and shouted slogans demanding action against alleged financial irregularities in the institute.

Four students were arrested for disrupting the meeting and violating prohibitory orders.

A number of vehicles parked nearby were damaged and windowpanes smashed in the violence that ensued.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath had also sought a detailed report regarding the violence.

He had asked the chief secretary of the state and the director general of police to prepare the report and directed that all problems of the students should be speedily addressed.

It is also learnt that the HRD ministry has sent a proposal to the President seeking the dismissal of the vice-chancellor (V-C) of the Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University for alleged administrative irregularities.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday submitted the chargesheet against eight police officials arrested after the custodial death of one of the accused of the Kotkhai gangrape and murder in July.

The chargesheet was presented against inspector general of police (IG) Zahur H Zaidi and seven other police officials arrested on July 29 following the death of accused Suraj Kumar, a Nepalese.

Then Shimla senior superintendent of police DW Negi was arrested on November 16 but the challan against him has not been presented yet. The investigating agency produced all nine cops in the court and extended their judicial custody. No one appeared on behalf of the accused arrested.

The district bar association had passed a resolution that none of its members would plead the case of the accused of the gangrape and murder in Kotkhai that sent shockwaves across the hill state and triggered arson in the town. The association will review its decision on Monday.

Suraj died in custody at the Kotkhai police station on July 18.

On the Himachal Pradesh high courts July 19 order, the CBI registered two cases and took charge of the investigation into the rape and murder case registered on July 6.

The body of a school girl was found in a forest of Halaila village and the medical examination confirmed she was raped before being murdered. A case was registered under Sections 302 (murder) and 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 4 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

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After visiting displaced Kashmiri Pandits at Jagti township near Nagrota on Friday, the Centres special representative on Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma reached out to another group of victims of militancy at Talwara migrant camp in Reasi district on Saturday.

Talwara camp has over 2200 families, who had fled their homes in Reasi, Udhampur, Doda, Rajouri and Poonch districts following selective killings during the height of militancy in Jammu region in the 1990s.

They continue to live in pathetic conditions at Talwara camp in absence of basic amenities with successive state governments not providing them relief on a par with Kashmiri Pandits despite a Supreme Court ruling in 2004.

The apex court had directed the state government that it cannot have two different yardsticks for the same set of people and must treat Jammu migrants on a par with Kashmiri migrants in terms of ration, relief and cash assistance.

Sources privy to the Sharmas closed door talks with Balwan Singh, president of Talwara migrant camp divulged that the latter flagged inhuman treatment to the Jammu migrants in the camp.

He divulged that in absence of adequate help from the government, the victims of militancy are forced to live inhuman lives. He sought a proper township and other facilities akin to Kashmiri Pandits, they added.

Sharma also sought to know status of basic amenities being given to the families.

Panthers Party leader Prof Bhim Singh has demanded that the Jammu migrants should be provided all their arrears from 2004 to 2017 amounting to Rs 21 crores.

All the Jammu migrants should be provided relief both in cash, kind and for the resettlement in their native villages at par with the Kashmiri migrants without delay, he said.

Read more: Meeting Kashmiri students top of Dineshwar Sharmas agenda, unions wary

Cash and kind relief was being provided to the Jammu migrants from 2001 but for the past nine months it has been erratic.

Jammu migrants get Rs 1600 per family a month, 9 kg atta (flour), 2 kg rice, 10 liters of kerosene oil and Rs 300 for cattle a month.

In contrast, Kashmiri Pandit migrants get Rs 2500 per individual a month up to a maximum ceiling of Rs 10,000 a family. For children up to 4 years of age, there is a payment of Rs 400 a month.

They also get 9 kg rice per individual a month, 2 kg atta per individual a month, 1 kg sugar a month per family.

The cash and kind relief to Pandits was applicable to only employees in private sector. There are 17000 families out of which 3000 are Muslim and Sikh families, who had also migrated in 1990.

Later, Sharma returned to Jammu here where he met various delegations.

Prominent among them All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference (AJKPC)an umbrella organization of Panches and Sarpanches, led by its president Anil Sharma stated before Sharma that only solution to establish long lasting peace in the state was empowered Panchayati Raj institutes in the state.

They also demanded that union government must ensure that scheduled Panchayat and municipal elections are held without any interruption irrespective of political dispensation.

Their demand also includes implementation of 73rd and 74th amendments of the Indian Constitution in Jammu and Kashmir.

The delegation also regretted that families of over 20 Panchayat members, who were killed by militants, have not been given any monetary help or permanent government jobs.

Before leaving for the Kashmir Valley on Sunday, Sharma will visit villages along the Line of Control and International Border to take stock of their issues.

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Police have charged Kafeel Khan, a former doctor at Gorakhpurs BRD Medical College, with attempt to murder over the death of 30 children at the health facility in August, an incident that triggered nationwide outrage and exposed the grim healthcare scenario in India.

Khan, hailed as a hero immediately after the incident on August 10-11, has also been charged with criminal conspiracy and breach of trust,investigating officer Abhishek Singh told HT on Saturday.

Khan, then a nodal office of the National Rural Health Mission, was also the in-charge of the paediatric wing at the hospital when the children died, allegedly due to shortage of oxygen after a private company cut supply over a payment dispute.

The government, however, blamed the deaths on Japanese encephalitis and acute encephalitis syndrome which ravage several states during the monsoons.

Khan, and former BRD medical college principal Rajiv Mishra, were named in a second charge sheet filed by police on Friday at the sessions court in Gorakhpur, the constituency of chief minister Yogi Adityanath.

Besides the three IPC sections similar to Khans, Mishra has also been charged under the Prevention of Corruption Act, an investigating officer told HT on Saturday.

However, police have dropped charges under the Corruption Prevention Act, IT Act and Indian Medical Council Act against Khan for lack of evidence, the official added.

All the nine accused, including Khan, are in jail.

The role of five others including the then principal KP Kushwaha, medical officer AK Srivastav and chief medical officer AR Singh -- all members of tender committee for oxygen supply -- has also been mentioned as dubious by investigating officer Abhishek Singh who filed the chargesheet.

The role of Kushwaha and four other members of the tender committee is under scanner as the contract was not directly given to the oxygen manufacturing company but to an intermediary company, Singh said.

In the first charge sheet field in October, police had named seven persons, including hospital staff and the owner of the oxygen supplier Pushpa Sales.

Immediately after the deaths were reported, Khan was hailed as a saviour of children, Khan said he saved many lives by arranging over 250 oxygen cylinders in 24 hours. But he was under a cloud over an alleged rape case against him.
A senior Hindu seer said on Saturday Hindus must bear at least four children till the Uniform Civil Code is implemented to check demographic imbalance.

Swami Govindadev Giriji Maharaj of Bharat Mata Mandir in Haridwar said the two-child policy should not be restricted to Hindus alone, noting that India had lost those territories wherever Hindu population reduced, resulting in demographic imbalance.

He was speaking to reporters on the second day of the three-day Dharma Sansad organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, in the temple town of Udupi of coastal Karnataka.

The Swami said the government was insisting on a maximum of two children, but till the time the Uniform Civil Code is implemented, Hindus should have at least four children. India lost many of its territories wherever Hindu population reduces, he said.

We have seen that India lost those territories wherever Hindu population reduced, resulting in demographic imbalance. The two-child policy should not be restricted to Hindus alone.

On cow vigilantism, the seer said some criminals were settling personal scores under the guise of Gau Rakshaks. Gau Rakshaks are peace loving people. They have been defamed by some vested interests. Some criminals are settling scores under the guise of Gau Rakshaks, said Giriji Maharaj.

The mega religious event is being attended by over 2,000 Hindu seers, matt heads and VHP leaders from all over the country.
In a bid to defuse the situation in Myanmars Rakhine state where violence has triggered an outflow of Rohingya refugees, India has sent relief material consisting of 3,000 family relief packs.

With best wishes from the people of India. Indian Air Force aircraft lands today in Yangon, Myanmar, with 3000 family relief packs consisting of daily essentials including rice, oil, salt, sugar, soap, etc. for distribution amongst the displaced persons in Rakhine state, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted on Friday evening.

More than 600,000 Rohingyas have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since violence erupted in Rakhine late in August.

The minority Rohingya community does not enjoy citizenship in Myanmar and is sparingly given refugee status in Bangladesh.

Human rights monitors accused Myanmars military of atrocities against the minority population during its clearance operations following Rohingya militants August 25 attacks on multiple government posts.

On Thursday, however, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Minister for the Office of the State Counsellor of Myanmar Kyaw Tint Swe signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Nay Pyi Taw for the return of these refugees.

India has maintained that the issue should be handled in a humane manner, development activities should be initiated in Rakhine and conditions should be created for the safe and secure return of the refugees to their homes.

During his visit to Myanmar in September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi shared Indias concerns over the issue in a meeting with that countrys State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

India has also sent relief material to Bangladesh to handle the Rohingya refugee crisis.
The Haryana government has suspended mobile internet services in 13 districts for three days, apprehending law and order problem in view of two public rallies by a Jat body and ruling BJPs Kurukshetra MP on November 26.

MP Raj Kumar Saini, who was opposing quota for Jats, had announced a Samanta Maha Sammelan in Jind while All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti national president Yashpal Malik had also announced a rally in Rohtak districts Jassia on the same day.

Internet services on mobile networks, except voice calls, in the districts of Jind, Hansi, Bhiwani, Hisar, Fatehabad, Karnal, Panipat, Kaithal, Rohtak, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Bhiwani and Charkhi Dadri shall remain suspended for three days until the midnight of November 26, an official order said on Friday.

The order, which came into force Friday, was issued by additional chief secretary (home department) SS Prasad.

The order is issued to prevent any disturbance of peace and public order in the jurisdiction of state of districts as mentioned..., it said.

It said there was a likelihood of tension, danger to human life and property, disturbance of public peace and tranquility in Haryana by protestors and anti-social elements during the two public rallies on Sunday.

On Friday, a group of Jats who were opposing Sainis rally at Jind clashed with the police and blocked the Jind- Chandigarh National Highway in Jind.

The police had to resort to mild lathi-charge to disperse the protesters and the highway was cleared for normal movement of vehicular traffic after a while.

Jat leader Sandeep Bharti, who led the protesters, was demanding cancellation of Sainis rally.

Bharti alleged that Saini was known for his anti-Jat rants and accused him of spreading communal hatred by making inflammatory and derogatory statements against the community.

Officials said the situation remained tense in Rohtak and Jind.
The Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are natural allies and the two parties will fight the 2019 elections together, Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi said.

When the time comes, we will sit together and divide the seats. We will fight together and Narendra Modi will again be the prime minister in 2019, he said at the India Today Conclave East here last night.

He was replying to a question on whether the BJP might not feel the need for JD-Us support in the elections in 2019.

The BJP in alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP), Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and the Hindustani Awam Party accounts for 32 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar.

Alliance is a give and take. When both the partners feel they will benefit from it then only it will work. We will fight together with Nitish Kumar-led JD (U) in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he said.

His remarks assume significance as there were some discordant voices from leaders of both the parties on seat sharing for the next general elections earlier.

After a meeting with MPs from Bihar, BJP chief Amit Shah had asked partymen to strengthen it down to the booth level in all 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The JD-U also appealed to its workers to brace for contest on all the 40 seats.

RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and other opposition parties leaders had used the occasion to attack Nitish Kumar, claiming that he was marginalised by the saffron party to avenge an incident in 2010 when he had cancelled a dinner for BJP leaders over a tiff with Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat.

The JD-U and the BJP are made for each other, Sushil Modi said.

Nitish Kumar has been our partner for 17 years and again the JD-U and the BJP have come together, it is a natural alliance, said the senior BJP leader, who also served as the deputy chief minister in the earlier NDA government.

The JD-U had severe ties with the BJP in June 2013 over elevation of Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate.

After collapse of an alliance comprising the JD-U, the RJD and the Congress in July this year, Nitish Kumar and the BJP once again joined hands after four years to form a coalition in the politically sensitive state.

Sushil Modis allegations against Lalu Prasad and his family of acquiring benami properties had played an important role in the disintegration of the alliance comprising the JD-U, the Congress and the RJD.

When the JD(U) and the BJP coalition was sworn in again on July 27 this year, Sushil Modi was made the deputy chief minister.

The senior BJP leader dismissed speculation that a seat- sharing adjustment, in which the JD-U would also be accommodated, might upset the sitting BJP MPs if they were denied tickets.

What is the guarantee that every MP will get party ticket a second time? And what will they do by getting upset. If people make up their mind then it hardly matters who is getting ticket or not, Sushil Modi said.

Sushil Modi accused Lalu Prasad of being chaotic, disorganised and an irresponsible man.

No gentleman can work with a person like Lalu Prasad. An unnatural alliance (of the JD-U, RJD and Congress) died a natural death. The day Nitish Kumar left the NDA, I knew this alliance (with the RJD) would not work but, I never thought it would break so soon, he claimed.
Hadiya, a 24-year-old Hindu woman from Kerala who converted to Islam, on Saturday at Kochi airport said she wanted to live with her Muslim husband. Hadiya left for Delhi to appear before the Supreme Court on Monday in a case of alleged forced conversion.

As she was brought to Kochi airport amid tight security, Hadiya loudly told the waiting mediapersons that she wants to go with her husband, Shafin Jahan.

Hadiya was accompanied by three women police officials and two male policemen besides her parents.

On Saturday afternoon, she was moved from her home near Kottayam at Vaikom in a convoy of police vehicles to Kochi International Airport to take the evening flight to Delhi.

In Delhi, she will be put up at the Kerala House where four rooms have been booked for the party from Kerala.

The apex court on October 30 had directed Hadiyas father, Asokan to present her in the court on November 27 to ascertain her views on her marriage to Shafin Jahan.

On Wednesday, the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice DY Chandrachud said the application for in-camera hearing of the proceedings when Hadiya appears before the court on November 27 would be taken up on that day itself after a lawyer mentioned Asokans application for an early hearing.

The court in the last hearing said that before examining the latter issue, it would like to ascertain if Hadiya had voluntarily converted to Islam and her views on her marriage.

The court is hearing a plea by Shafin Jahan challenging the Kerala High Court order of May nullifying his marriage with Hadiya and seeking recall of its order asking the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to investigate the conversion of Hadiya to Islam and her marriage.

The NIA in its earlier report has pointed to a pattern involving conversion to Islam and marriages in Kerala. On November 18, an NIA team arrived at her home for the second time and took statements from her and her parents to present their case before the court.
Suspected Maoists attacked the site of a natural gas pipeline project and set on fire four heavy vehicles in southcentral Bihars Gaya district late on Friday night.

Police said about 12 armed men attacked the site of state-owned Gail (India) Ltds Phulpur-Haldia natural gas pipeline project at Mahuawan village in Aamas police station area, 70 kms southwest of Gaya and 148 kms south of Patna, and torched four heavy vehicles, including an earth-mover and a dumper.

The Maoists, who are observing weeklong martyrdom of former CPI (Maoist) politburo member Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji in Bihar and Jharkhand, also beat up guards deployed at the site and threatened the contractor of the construction firm with dire consequences if he did not stop the work , the police said. Before leaving, the attackers raised slogans and dropped pamphlets calling upon villagers to support them in their struggle to revive Maoism.

Suspected Maoists had two days ago attacked another project site of the same construction company at Gurua in the district and set on fire two vehicles.

Gaya city superintendent of police J Jalla Reddy confirmed the incident and said raids were underway in forests near the project site to arrest the Maoists involved in the attack. Reddy, who is also officiating as senior superintendent of police (SSP), said; I am on way to the spot. I have directed the local police to step up search operations in villages adjacent to the project site.

Patna zonal inspector general Nayyar Hasnain Khan has suspended Aamas police station SHO Ram Vilas Yadav for laxity.

The station house officer (SHO) was very lax and failed to gather intelligence regarding the movement of Maoists in his area. I had earlier also asked the SSP to initiate action against the SHO, Khan told HT.

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Situation remained volatile in Rohtaks Jassia village as protesters upping the ante to cancel the upcoming Sunday rally of the All India Jat Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) chief Yashpal Malik.

On Friday, heavy security forces, including the rapid action force (RAF) of the Haryana Police, had to be deployed to avoid clash in Jassia after the Sarpanch Association and jailed Jat youths (who are out on bail) sat on a dharna at the rally spot insisting they will not let the rally take place.

This would be the fourth time in last two years that the internet services have been shut due to Jat rally.

The protesters said the AIJASS defied the mahapanchayats call to resolve the issue by boycotting it. Thursdays mahapanchayat had decided to meet again on Friday to resolve the issue.

But the AIJASS volunteers refused to attend it saying they did not want a decision against them. So we came to sit on dharna at their rally spot, said Sumit Arya, the president of Sarpanch Association that is opposing the rally.

The youths who were jailed in connection with the Jat agitation of 2016 also sat on dharna to oppose the rally. Yashpal Malik has collected crores of rupees in our name but has done nothing for us. Our prime demand of withdrawal of cases against us has not been met by government, so why these rallies for education institutes? said Rahul Dadu, who is out on bail.

The protesters lifted their dharna late Friday night, giving warning that they would assemble again on Saturday morning to oppose the rally. On the dharna, Yashpal Malik said it was a government-sponsored protest that will fade in front of his supporters. These people have vested interests. This will not affect our rally, Malik said.

Meanwhile, the Haryana Jat Mahasabha asked the state government to take legal action against Malik and BJP MP Raj Kumar Saini for vitiating atmosphere in the state.

Tension, disturbance of peace likely

The government has ordered a ban on mobile internet services (2G, 3G, 4G, GPRS, CDMA), SMS services and dongle services available on mobile networks till the midnight of November 26 in 11 districts of the state to control false rumours and inflammatory messages ahead of two parallel rallies in Jind and Rohtak.

In a notice issued on Friday, additional chief secretary (home) SS Prasad said that it appeared there was likelihood of causing tension, annoyance and disturbance of peace by protesters and anti-social elements during the two rallies. The ban will be imposed in Jind, Hansi, Bhiwani, Hisar, Fatehabad, Karnal, Panipat, Kaithal, Rohtak, Sonepat, Jhajjar and Charkhi Dadri districts, the government said.

This would be the fourth time in last two years that the internet services have been shut due to Jat rally.

Haryana had witnessed unprecedented violence during Jat agitation in February, 2016, in which 30 people were killed and property worth hundreds of crores of rupees was vandalised and gutted in fire.

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Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday and termed the latters relationship with US President Donald Trump as failed hugplomacy.

Narendrabhai, baat nahi bani (It did not work). Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed, Gandhi tweeted on Saturday morning.

On Friday, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed, accused of masterminding the 26/11 Mumbai massacre in 2008, was freed after 10 months of house-arrest in Pakistan.

The US asked the Pakistan government on Friday to make sure that Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed is arrested and charged for his crimes.
Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday stressed the need for greater cooperation between central and the state governments so that any differences can be swiftly resolved.

Addressing the 12th meeting of the standing committee of Inter-State Council (ISC) in New Delhi, he said a number of steps have been taken in recent years by the central government to promote cooperative federalism.

Singh said it is important for everyone to promote the spirit of cooperation with greater zeal and expressed satisfaction over the deliberations held on Saturday in a harmonious and congenial atmosphere for arriving at consensus on complex issues.

The home minister said the standing committee of the Inter-State Council is being periodically convened to lend speed and purpose to the process of harmonising Centre-state relations.

Singh said Volumes-I & II of the Punchhi Commissions report on Centre-state relations were discussed during the eleventh meeting of the standing committee in April this year and Volumes-VI and VII will be discussed during the next meeting.

The Punchhi Commission was set up by the government under the chairmanship of Justice (Retd) Madan Mohan Punchhi, former Chief Justice of India, in 2005 to look into issues of Centre-state relations keeping in view the changes in the polity and economy of India since the Sarkaria Commission.

It submitted its report in 2010 containing 273 recommendations in 7 volumes.

Singh said the recommendations of the standing committee on Punchhi Commissions report will then be placed before the Inter-State Council, headed by the Prime Minister.

The subjects discussed at the meeting included matters related to financial transfers from the Centre to the states, Goods and Services Tax, structure and devolution of functions to local bodies and district planning.

Special provisions for Fifth and Sixth Scheduled Areas, maintenance of communal harmony, deployment of central forces, migration issues, police reforms, criminal justice system and other internal security issues were also deliberated.

The Standing Committee at its meeting considered 118 recommendations contained in Volumes-III, IV and V and finalised its recommendations.

Those who attended the meeting include Union ministers of finance Arun Jaitley, social justice and empowerment Thaawar Chand Gehlot; chief ministers Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), Naveen Patnaik (Odisha), Vasundhara Raje Scindia (Rajasthan) and Manik Sarkar (Tripura).

Representatives of 30 Union ministries and departments and seven state governments were also present to assist the committee in its deliberations.
Nitai Chandra Ghosh is perhaps best described as a reluctant confectioner. He prides himself for having scaled down the business volume of his ancestral sweetmeat shop in north Kolkata, Chittaranjan Mistanna Bhandar, after taking its reins in 1990.

Ghosh always wanted to become a cinematographer. A conspiracy at home kept him from going to Punes Film and Television Institute of India, he says. The death of his father in 1990 put him at the helm of the business.

The same year, a new world dawned on him when he went to the US to shoot a film.

Back then, quality and consistency were not the strong suits for most Indian businesses. Though celebrated, Ghoshs own enterprise was no different. Soon after he became the boss, he noticed that the milk that his company bought from generations of the same supplier wasnt consistent in quality.

Stepping out of Indias command economy, Ghosh says, he was awestruck by the scale of US and European businesses. Despite staggering sales, McDonalds burgers tasted the same across all stores. The key to it, Ghosh figured back in 1990, was its complete control over the supply chain of ingredients.

Lessons learnt, Ghosh, a fifth generation confectioner, returned to his humble store in north Kolkata and launched a mission to transform his enterprise. By 1994, against the advice of his family, he started to build from scratch his own dairy farm, 200 km from Kolkata, while knocking on the doors of scientists and several dairy research institutes.

Eventually, he managed to build a small team for his own laboratory. The aim was scientifically validate and perfect the intuitive art of producing sweetmeat.

Today, Chittaranjan Mistanna Bhandar is one of the most celebrated makers of rasogolla in Kolkata, and one of the few who make the sweet entirely out of milk produced, procured and despatched in keeping with its own stringent standards.

The key to expanding the market for the sweet is creating long-life variants. Only a handful of confectioners have successfully managed to put it cans, starting with KC Das, the company named after Nobin Chandra Das son.

What materialised from Ghoshs attempt to take control of the supply chain of milk was a 100-acre farm which supports nearby dairy farmers with fodder and other inputs, including knowhow in animal husbandry. From a controlled ecosystem, he now sources 2,000-2,500 litres of milk a day, and transports it to Kolkata in his own refrigerated trucks.

When it comes to milk for rasogolla, the fodder is one of the key determinants of quality, claims Ghosh.

Back in his fathers time, Chittaranjan Mistanna Bhandar consumed much more milk than it does now. But in the bargain, Ghosh has achieved consistency. And he still runs his business out of one store tucked in a lane in north Kolkata and refuses to expand because he isnt sure he can maintain consistency.

Small Is Beautiful

For many Bengali family-owned enterprises, punching below their weight is a badge of honour. The excuse is the same: they would happily pass up opportunities to expand if quality and consistency are thought to be at stake.

But with the Indian patent authorities now recognising the uniqueness of Banglar Rasogolla (literally Bengals Rasogolla) and granting it protection with a Geographical Indication (GI) tag, will the outlook change?

The state government of West Bengal is encouraging confectioners to expand. It is even willing to help seek out new markets, leveraging the GI recognition of Banglar Rasogolla. The idea is to build an identifiable mark of a premium product, which will add heft to businesses, says Nandini Chakravorty, secretary in the department of food processing.

The GI Battle

West Bengal upped the ante in the battle for GI protection only in 2015 after Odisha announced it was going to apply for protection from the patent authorities for its own variant of rasogolla. Odishas application never made it to the patent office in ChennaiWest Bengals trophy has left lawmakers and officers in Bhubaneswar red-faced.

In the past two years, the two states have fought a farcical battle over the origins of rasogolla. There is incontrovertible historical evidence that a variant of the sweet was offered to Lord Jagannath at the Puri temple from 800 years ago, Odisha claimed. But Bengalis do not recognise it as rasogolla at all. The variant that it claims to be the real stuff is the rasogolla invented in 1868 by storied confectioner Nobin Chandra Das.

To be sure, the GI protection secured by West Bengal for Banglar Rasogolla is not a verdict on its ancestrythe inflamed sentiments notwithstanding, it is only recognition of the uniqueness of the variant which Das developed through four years of experiments.

Much like the most copied Bengal master Jamini Roy, Nobin Chandra Das never kept his rasogolla formula a secret. (Malay Karmakar)

Even within West Bengal, confectioners produce different varieties of rasogolla, but the variant for which the GI protection was granted is the one Das is said to have invented. Through generations, his descendants have expanded the market for the sweet, and even recently, a scion of the family, Dhiman Das, played a key role in West Bengal stealing the thunder from first mover Odisha.

Smooth and delicate feel in the mouth are the key differentiators for Banglar Rasogolla, the state had said in its GI application, borrowing from the Das familys formula. It is made out of pure cottage cheese derived from curdling of milk. The cottage cheese is delicately kneaded into balls and dipped into syrup with sugar concentration of 30-40%.

In Ghoshs eyes, the osmosis that followsor the chemical process in which the tender balls get soaked in syrup and rise to float when readyis not a shade less mystical than sculptor Ramkinkar Baijs charcoal sketches in his office. But for Dhiman Das, a collector of Jamini Roys paintings, its all about adhering to an evolved process.

Much like the most copied Bengal master Roy, Nobin Chandra Das never kept his formula a secret. After he had perfected the rasogolla in 1868 and built an enterprise on its strength, he would invite other confectioners into his workshop to learn the art of making it. He had tutored many, perhaps at the cost of expanding his own business, says Dhiman Das.

Roy, too, took the same approach: in the end, he taught so many followers that a new school of art emerged named after him. But excessive copying and faking undermined the commercial value of Roys own works in the art market. But the same is not true for Nobin Chandra Das rasogolla.

For West Bengals confectioners, adopting the inventors formula is not going to be difficult, but will it earn them a premium, asks Roopen Roy, former managing director of Deloitte Consulting.

GI for Darjeeling tea acts like air cover in a battlefront: it makes sure that tea produced in only 87 tea estates of Darjeeling can stake claim to the goodwill. And within that playing field, each estate seeks value for itself on the strength of its own crop, says Roy, who now runs his own consultancy, Sumantrana (literally Good Advice).

But rasogolla and tea are different. Whereas tea has an international market, the sweet is consumed only by the Indian diaspora. The addressable market is small, and may contract further because of this charged battle of pride between the states over GI, says the veteran consultant, referring to Odishas resolution to seek GI protection for Jagannath Rasgulla.

The Way Ahead

But the key to expanding the market for the sweet is creating long-life variants. Only a handful of confectioners have successfully managed to put it cans, starting with KC Das, the company named after Nobin Chandra Das son. From 1930, KC Das has been selling the canned variant and business has expanded so much outside the state that the firm now has 16 stores in Bengaluru compared with only five in Kolkata, says Dhiman Das.

But Ghosh wouldnt walk that path: in his view, rasogolla can be preserved in pristine condition only within cold chains. So, for his Chittaranjan Mistanna Bhandar, there is no question of looking beyond the current market, at least in the foreseeable future. He deplores mechanisation, and says he will never share his secret milk-curdling formula.

KC Das, on the other hand, has grown on the strength of mechanisation. The firm has standardised the process of making long-life rasogolla, and gets them produced under its supervision at the milk processing unit of Red Cow Dairy, a firm privately owned by a veteran dairy technologist. Under the arrangement, cottage cheese is derived within two hours of milkingthat is the key to producing long-life rasogolla, according to Dhiman Das.

In the billing of government officers in Kolkata, Banglar Rasogolla has enough meat to milk, but confectioners, even growth hungry ones, want proof.
Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Saturday stressed on the need for raising the standard of living of people to eradicate corruption from the society and said this can only be possible with teaching of the Bhagavad Gita.

At an international seminar organised on the occasion of International Gita Mahotsav in Kurukshetra on Saturday, he emphasised on the need of the Bhagavad Gita in politics, which can give the right direction to the politicians.

President Ram Nath Kovind was the chief guest at the event.

Khattar said, Though we could keep a tab on corruption with the help of law and justice, but to eradicate it from all levels, the living standard of people would have to be raised. This could only be possible when people imbibe in them the teaching of the sacred Gita.

He said the topic of the seminar has rightly been selected, as digitisation has become the need of the hour for the whole world today.

The chief minister said, With digitisation, we could get any information with a click of button.

The state government has taken various e-initiatives to ensure good governance and keep a check on corruption in the administration, Khattar said, adding as many 183 e-services were being provided in about 1,150 villages of the state.

Asserting that the Bhagavad Gita is the gist of life and it was Lord Krishna who delivered the message on the sacred land of Kurukhsetra, the chief minister said, The teachings of Lord Krishna is relevant not only for the country but for the whole world.

He said representatives of 11 countries are participating in this event.

Addressing the event, Haryana Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki said with a view to fully implement the concept of live and let live and to ensure peace and prosperity in the world, there was a need to spread the message of the Bhagavad Gita.

Gita Manishi Swami Gyanand ji Maharaj described the Bhagavad Gita as the pride and honour of the Haryana and said the teachings of this sacred book are source of inspiration for the whole mankind.

David Frawley from American Institute of Vedic Studies said the Bhagavad Gita characterises the civilisation and culture of India.
Amid the Padmavati row, vice president Venkaiah Naidu said on Saturday that giving violent threats and announcing rewards for physical harm was not acceptable in a democracy.

Not directly referring to the controversy, but films and art in general, he warned against undermining the rule of law in the country.

Naidu, at a literary festival here, said there is now a new problem over some films where people feel that they have hurt the sentiments of some religions or communities and that has led to protests.

He said while protesting, some people go overboard and announce rewards.

Whether these fellows have that much money or not, I doubt. Everyone is announcing Rs one crore reward. Is it so easy to have Rs one crore?

This is not acceptable in a democracy. You have the right to protest in a democratic manner, go to the appropriate authorities...you cannot physically obstruct and cant give violent threats. Let us not undermine the rule of law, he said.

Stressing that he was not talking about a particular film but in general, Naidu read out names of previously banned films like Haram Hawa, Kissa Kursi Ka and Aandhi.

His remarks, however, assume significance as they come amid protests by many groups against Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed Padmavati, alleging that the movie distorts history.

Historians are divided on whether Rani Padmavati even existed.

Some leaders and groups have also reportedly announced a bounty for beheading Bhansali and the female lead Deepika Padukone.

You have no right to take laws into your own hands. At the same time, you dont have the right to hurt the sentiments of others, Naidu said.

The vice president also warned against selective condemnation and said it was wrong to link it to religion.

He said there was a difference between religion and culture. While religion was a way of worship, culture was a way of life, he said.
Driving from Agra to Gwalior, the beehad or ravines of Chambal become visible even before one approaches Morena, a district town in Madhya Pradesh. The undulating landscape, dotted with mud hillocks and thorny shrubs, spreads on both sides of the highway, the jungle cover thickening in the distance. From the highway, few signs of human settlement can be spotted in the ravines  a scattering of huts here and there and some temples along the road. At one time the ravines of Chambal were home to many dacoit gangs. We were told stories about them as children. Today there are no dacoits in Chambal, says the priest of one such temple along the Agra-Gwalior highway.

The last big police encounter with a dreaded dacoit  someone who could instil fear in the public  was 10 years ago, that of Rambabu Gadariya in 2007, says Umesh Joga, IG Chambal Zone, Madhya Pradesh. Smaller encounters have happened since. Last year we killed another dacoit Bharosi Malla who had been absconding for many years. But he no longer had a full-time organised gang, he explains.

Over the years, many dacoits have surrendered to the police. In 1960, for example, 20 dacoits are said to have surrendered after being persuaded by Vinoba Bhave. Then in 1972, Mohar Singh, another big dacoit of the time, surrendered with 100 men from his gang and many others from smaller gangs. When Jayaprakash Narayan had told Indira Gandhi that he could arrange for the Chambal dacoits to surrender, she had said that she would negotiate terms of surrender only if I surrendered, remembers Mohar Singh, with some pride.Other surrenders followed  Malkhan Singh and his gang in 1982, Balwant Singh Tomar, nephew of retired soldier and athlete-turned-dacoit Paan Singh Tomar, also in 1982, Phoolan Devi in 1983, Seema Parihar in 2000 and Renu Yadav in 2005, to name a few.

Malkhan Singh, 74. When Malkhan Singh protested against some people usurping land belonging to a temple in the village, he was harassed and implicated in false cases. This led to his becoming a baaghi, he says. He surrendered in 1982. Malkhan Singh objects to the tag of a dacoit and says when he was a baaghi, no one dared harass a woman (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

Having served prison time, these reformed bandits either live a life of retirement today, or are farmers, something that most of them were anyway engaged in before they took up arms. Like Phoolan Devi before her death, a few have also dabbled in politics, taken up a social cause or made television appearances, like Seema Parihar in the reality show Big Boss.

In an undated paper on Chambal dacoits available online, MZ Khan, at that time professor of criminology at the Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science, and DR Singh, then with the Bureau of Police Research and Development, write, The offence of dacoity is by no means peculiar to any part of the country; yet in the (Chambal) valley it has certain features that set it apart from those perpetrated elsewhere. First, the permanent or semi-permanent structure of gangs made up of members firmly committed to dacoity in a professional way, is rather unique.

As a section in the Indian Penal Code, robery committed by more than five people is dacoity, says Joga. But in popular perception, dacoit gangs are mostly those living in jungles, riding horses and armed with rifles.

A map of the Chambal area. (Sanjay Kapoor/HT)

Becoming Baaghis

The bandits of Chambal  the river flows through Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and the ravines are spread across the three states  were as feared as they were well known. Tales of their exploits circulated not just in the region in which they operated, but spread as far as Mumbai, where they inspired many Bollywood daku films, mainly in the 1960s and 70s  remember Sholay and Ramgarhs Gabbar Singh? But the real-life inspirations for these reel characters scoff at Bollywoods portrayal of the bandits. For one, we never came charging on horses like they showed in Bollywood films. We used to travel on foot, says Mohar Singh. Over eighty now, dressed in a dhoti-kurta and Nehru jacket, Mohar Singh is the picture of a respected village elder. But he confides that he had 400 cases of murder registered against him when he surrendered.

Mohar Singh, over 80 years old. At one time, Mohar Singh commanded a dacoit gang with 100 members. He says, with obvious pride, that when Jayaprakash Narayan had told Indira Gandhi that he could arrange for the Chambal dacoits to surrender, Gandhi had said she would negotiate a surrender only if Mohar Singh also agreed to put down his arms. He surrendered in 1972. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo)

The tag of a dacoit, even a former one, sits uneasily on Malkhan Singh, even 35 years after his surrender. We werent dacoits. We were baaghis (rebels), says the 74-year-old. Embittered by what he calls frequent misrepresentation of facts in the media, he is reluctant to share his story. There were 100 bighas of land that was the property of a temple in the village. Some people in the village wanted to take over the land. When I protested, they started implicating me in all sorts of false cases, he says. I was harassed and became a baaghi. Balwant Tomar also blames society and the system for creating outlaws. There are three mains reasons for someone becoming a baaghi  one, the village pradhan, two, the area thanedar and three, the patwari of the area. If these people deliver justice, no one need become a baaghi, he says. The uncle-nephew duo turned bandits after a property dispute with a section of the extended family turned violent and resulted in their killing two members of the other faction in retaliation and self defence. While Paan Singh was killed in a police encounter in 1981, Balwant surrendered in 1982. Thirteen people of our gang had died in the encounter that killed my uncle. 10,000 police officers had us surrounded. The encounter continued for over 13 hours. I was the only one who escaped alive from there, recalls Balwant.

Balwant Singh Tomar, 66. The nephew of retired soldier and athlete-turned-dacoit Paan Singh Tomar, Balwant says they became outlaws because of a land dispute with the extended family. If the village pradhan, the area thanedar and the patwari deliver justice, no one need become a baaghi, he says. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

Other former dacoits HT spoke to  Hari Singh Parmar, Munna Singh, Bahadur Singh  all spoke of similar disputes (often within the family) or harassment (by influential or rich people in the village or the panchayat and the authorities), as the reason for becoming dacoits.

It was a rural economy. The only occupation was agriculture. There would be a lot of land-related disputes. When the dispute would get stuck in a revenue court or a civil court for a long time, people lost patience. In case of a fight, if a grievous crime took place, they would run away to the ravines, agrees Joga.

Life In The Jungles

It wasnt easy being a baaghi. While crossing the river, we had to be careful of ghariyals. There was also a kind of thorny shrub, the sting of which was more dangerous than a bullet injury, says Malkhan Singh. There were snakes, scorpions and wild animals to contend with. The bandits mostly lived in the open. In the monsoons, we used to put up tarpaulin tents and take shelter under them, says Munna Singh, also a former dacoit.

Munna Singh, 70. The former dacoit was once a part of Malkhan Singhs gang and surrendered with him in 1982. After serving his time in prison, he now enjoys hte company of friends and family in his village home in Bhind, and also be seen teaching children at the village school at times. Munna Singh never married. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

They would constantly be on the move to avoid detection. But the jungle also becomes home, says Tomar. We hated the light. If we had to smoke, we would hide in our blankets and smoke. The cooking was done in the day. If we lit lights we would be identified. The people we kidnapped were made to work. Also, dacoit groups didnt just have dacoits - there would be those who cooked, carried etc There was no shortage of milk and ghee, we would get it from the villages, he adds.

In the paper on the Chambal dacoits, MZ Khan and DR Singh observe, Although for all practical purposes the bandits, while at large, forsake settled community life, they receive active popular support and supplies... This support came not just in the form of provisions, but also help in evading arrest. It would also often extend to information about who could be a likely target for the dacoits to abduct.

The Principled Bandit

One reason for the villagers helping the bandits could be that the latter say that they never bothered the poor. We would help the poor, says Mohar Singh emphatically.

Things were, in fact, better then, feels Malkhan Singh. No one dared harass a woman in my time. Even now when I hear of crimes committed against women, my blood boils. Dacoits have gone from Chambal, but has crime been checked? he questions.

There is also a strong sense of regional superiority among the dacoits of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. They look down upon those who operated in that part of Chambal which lies in Uttar Pradesh. The gangs in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan never had women. The one exception is Putli Bai, who was Sultana dakus partner. That was ages back. All the recent women dacoits such as Phoolan Devi and Seema Parihar have been in Uttar Pradesh. Dacoits there, such as Nirbhay Gujjar, have been known to abduct women and keep them in their gangs, says fity-five year old Hari Singh Parmar, another former dacoit who surrendered in 1996. Another example of a former UP-based woman dacoit is Renu Yadav, who was kidnapped by the late UP-based bandit Chandan Yadav and later forced to marry him and join his gang. After Chandan was killed by another bandit in 2005, Renu killed his murderer, and then surrendered in 2005.

Renu Yadav, 28. In 2003, Renu then about 13-14 years old, was kidnapped by UP-based dacoit Chandan Yadav and forced to marry him. She learnt to use arms and joined his gang. In 2005, soon after the birth of their daughter, Chandan was killed by another dacoit. Renu killed Chandans murderer and then surrendered to the police. She was released from prison in 2012. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

Parmar, and indeed most former dacoits HT spoke to, remembers giving money to get girls in the village married off if their families didnt have the funds for their marriage. I must have gotten about 30 girls married, says Parmar.

Also, the dacoits never operated in their own village or ilaka. But if they were indeed such do-gooders, what of the hundreds of murder cases that were registered against them? Joga scoffs at the idea of the dacoit as some Robin Hood like character. But Tomar explains, If anyone gave the police information about us  worked as mukhbirs or informers  we had to teach them a lesson. One of the biggest crimes that Tomar says he and his uncle committed was killing nine people of the Gujjar community in a village and setting the village ablaze, after one of them turned police informer and led to the death of Balwants father, Matadin Tomar, in a police encounter.

Parmar admits that he was a terror. In addition to killing people, he says he would cut off peoples ears and noses if they didnt pay ransom or became police informers.

Old scores, the reason why they had become baghis in the first place, also needed to be settled.

For the most part though, the dacoits say they would concentrate on abductions for funds. Contrary to popular perception, there wasnt much money in dacoity. Munna Singh says they usually got Rs 50,000 as ransom. Once we got Rs 2 lakh, he says. But dacoits who came a few years after him, such as Parmar, says they got as much as Rs 6 lakh at times. Sometimes people would be kidnapped in Delhi and Ghaziabad and brought to us. We would be given a certain amount and they would keep the rest of the ransom money, says Renu Yadav.

Hari Singh Parmar, 55. The former dacoit says that while still a bandit, he gave money to get 30 girls married, because their families didnt have the funds for it. He surrendered in 1996, but says without a licensed rifle for self protection, he worries for his own and his familys safety. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

The modus operandi was simple. The dacoits dressed in police uniforms  right down to the caps and shoulder straps  to avoid detection. We would go to the targets house, ask for him and say he had to accompany us to the nearest thana for questioning. We had a warrant for him. As soon as we were out of the village, we would fire in the air and loudly raise a cheer for the gang leader. Someone from the village would hear this and inform the victims family about the abduction, says Munna Singh. Often they carried better arms than the police, says Mohar Singh.

Interestingly, the dacoits not only dressed or armed themselves like the police, but even used official jargon with respect to their work. Most refer to the abduction process as going on a vardat or encounter. Perhaps in their minds they were a parallel system.

But where did they get the police uniforms? Nothing is difficult to obtain when you have the money to pay for it. We had our suppliers. The political leaders themselves would often help us, even with arms, says Parmar, who says he used a Carbon in those days. Others say they had AK 47s. Before elections the leaders would contact us. Dacoits would also do the propaganda for the leaders, he says.

Bahadur Singh, 77. After spending about 10 years as a bandit, he surrendered in 1972. He now lives at Gandhi Ashram, an ashram run by former bandits in Morena, where they weave yarn, keep bees for honey and also grow various trees. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo)

Of course that doesnt mean the dacoits did not live in fear every minute. The day you became a baaghi you knew that you were living in the shadow of death every hour of the day, says Balwant Singh. The cops would also keep a watch over the families of the dacoits and harass them for information of the outlaws. Once someone became a bandit, most of their families would leave their own villages and live elsewhere in hiding.

Balawnt Singhs wife was at her parents place when he became a dacoit. The family was later shifted to the quarters of a cousin who was in the army, to protect them. The day Paan Singh was killed in encounter, we were watching the news on television. I remember breaking down. I didnt know whether my husband had survived. Even now when I think of those days I cant hold back my tears, she says. 

At that time, says Tomar, I had never thought that I would someday return to live with my family like this. Theres a tinge of wonder in his voice as he says this.

Life Post Surrender

Munna Singh seems to be making up for lost time as he sits surrounded by his neighbours and family in his village in Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh. Sometimes I go to the local school and spend time with the children there, he says. Most of the bandits who surrendered have spent eight years or more in prison before being released. But their time as dacoits and jailbirds doesnt seem to have impacted their integration in society. On the way to meet Munna Singh, a local points out his house to us. When asked whether people are still afraid of the former dacoit, he laughs. Whats there to be scared of? He is old, like a grandfather, says the man. Malkhan Singh is fondly referred to as Daddaji by associates.

In the online paper on Chambal dacoits, MZ Khan and DR Singh write, The offenders are proclaimed outlaws, but they are not socially regarded as fallen or depraved. Belonging to different caste-groups, they are seldom looked down upon for their grisly deeds. On the contrary, they may be bestowed honorifics like the Baghi, Raja, Master or Thakur.

Still, there are complaints. The surrender package had included a job for one person from the family. But no one from my family was given a job. Even if one person gets a job it helps improve the living conditions of the entire family, frets Munna Singh. Most of his brothers and nephews are farmers or work as contract workers.

Parmar on the other hand has been given the land promised to him to settle down, but says it is yet to be registered in his name. A bigger grouse for him is that the license for one rifle, which he says was promised to every surrendered dacoit for self-protection, is yet to be given to him. A dacoit makes enemies. I live in fear for my and my familys safety all the time. I worry that my sons might get embittered with this constant threat and take up arms and become a dacoit like I did, he says.

Most of the former bandits say they dont talk much about those days with their families for fear that they might feel inspired to follow in their footsteps. That life has its charms  you have money, power, connections says Tomar.

What then inspired the surrender? The replies are vague. The offer of a good surrender package, says one, while another dacoit says, We had had our revenge. Perhaps, it was just exhaustion with life on the run, though none of them admit it.

Whatever the reason, the era of the infamous Chambal dacoits seems to have passed. Two things have made it difficult for that kind of dacoit gangs to flourish here now , says Joga. Roads have been constructed into the villages. This has made even remote areas accessible for the police, and hiding a challenge for the bandits. Plus, everyone has mobile phones now, so it is easier for us to get information. We have also initiated many grievance redressal mechanisms to settle disputes quickly, he adds.

A little outside Morena, as one crosses the bridge over the Chambal, groups of youngsters  men and women  can be seen taking the path down to the river, or sitting on its bank. A child plays on the edge of the beehad. The area looks like any other picnic spot. The brooding shadow of the jungle in the distance appears less threatening than the dark alleys of a city often do.

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Sri Lanka pace bowler Dasun Shanaka has been fined 75 per cent of his match fee for ball tampering during the second days play in the Nagpur Test against India, an ICC statement said. (India vs Sri Lanka - DAY 2 HIGHLIGHTS)

Shanaka was penalised for breaching the ICC Code of Conduct which relates to changing the condition of the ball in breach of clause 41.3. (India vs Sri Lanka - SCORECARD)

In addition to the fine, three demerit points have been added to Shanakas disciplinary record. If he reaches four or more demerit points within a 24-month period, he will face a ban.

The charge was laid by on-field umpires Joel Wilson and Richard Kettleborough, third umpire Nigel Llong and fourth umpire C Shamshuddin after play.

READ | Murali Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara grind Sri Lanka with tons in Nagpur Test

The incident took place in the 50th over of Indias innings when the 26-year-old was seen on TV picking an area on the ball next to the seam several times.

The pacer admitted the offence and accepted the sanction proposed by ICC Match Referee David Boon, and as such, there was no need for a formal hearing.

These are early days in Dasuns career and I am sure this sanction will ensure he is more careful when maintaining the condition of the ball in the future, Boon said in the statement.
The family of a 40-year-old man whose body was found hanging from the ramparts of the Nahargarh Fort has alleged that he was murdered, even though the police on Saturday termed it as a case of suicide.

The body of Chetan Kumar Saini was found hanging at the fort on Friday with charcoal scribblings on stones linking the death to the country-wide protests over Sanjay Leela Bhansalis Padmavati.

Preliminary investigation suggests that Saini committed suicide by hanging. It has also been revealed that he had loaned a large amount of money which was to be repaid. Two of the debts were owed to people in Delhi, said Prafulla Kumar, additional commissioner of police, crime.

Police said the forensic analysis would determine whether there were charcoal stains on Sainis hand, which could throw light on whether he wrote the messages.

The marks on his neck resemble the ones which result when a person commits suicide. We are questioning people associated with him to know more details about the case, said Satyendra Singh, deputy commissioner of police, north.

Police in a press conference reiterated that no evidence was found in the case that would suggest murder. They also claimed to have found footage from a CCTV in Meena Colony, that falls on the way to Nahargarh fort from Chetans house.

In the footage, Chetan is seen walking alone at about 4 pm on Friday but does not have any rope in his hand.

The family, however, said Chetan was murdered.

The way my brothers body was found and the injuries that he sustained suggest murder. We are sure that he didnt commit suicide. We feel that some people are trying to suppress the matter, said Ram Ratan Saini, Chetans brother.

Relatives and local residents of Nahari Ka Naka, where Saini lived, said it was unlikely that he wrote the messages. Saini used to make artificial jewellery and used to do most of the work from his house.

He was a very amiable person who never had enmity with anybody. Mostly, he would keep to himself and had no interest in reading books or watching films. Theres no way that he could have known all that history and wrote the messages, said Yogesh Saini, his brother-in-law.

Mahaveer Prasad Saini, the father of Chetan said that his son had stepped out of his house at around 3pm on Thursday and had also made a phone call a little after 5pm.

In the phone call, Chetan told his wife that he will be back home by 9pm and asked her to prepare the dinner by thenThereafter he lost contact with us. Theres no chance that he would commit suicide, said Saini.

Members of the Saini community on Saturday submitted a memorandum to the police, demanding a fair probe.

We feel that Saini has been murdered and demand that the perpetrators be arrested immediately. If the police dont conduct a fair probe we will stage protest, said Om Rajoria, district president, Mali Samaj.

One of the messages scribbled on stones read: Those of you protesting against Padmavati, we dont just hang effigies at forts. We have guts.

What has surprised many is that the name of the deceased is the same as that of a character from Malik Mohammad Jayasis fictional work Padmavat written in 1540.

Chetan Tantrik is dead, reads another message.

Raghav Chetan is a character from Padmavat, who is a sorcerer banished from the court of King Ratan Sen, the husband of Padmavati. Chetan visits Alauddin Khilji and tells him about the queens incredible beauty, resulting in the siege of Chittor by Khilji.
The bandh called by different groups and trade associations in Bhilwara town on Saturday against the film Padmavati remained peaceful, barring a stray incidents of violence, in which some youths clashed with the traders and police had to use mild lathi-charge to control them.

Youths wearing saffron headgear and muffler had started gathering in the main markets at about 9 am to ensure that the shops remained closed. While imposing the bandh near Krishi Upaj Mandi market, some youths clashed with employees at a liquor shop and police resorted to a mild lathi-charge to disperse them.

However, Bhilwara Sadar police circle officer Parbat Singh denied any lathi-charge and said that the situation was entirely peaceful.

People belonging to different groups took out a march from Chitrakoot Dham to the station square. The groups that took part in the rally include Mewar Khastriya Mahasabha Sansthan, Karni Sena, ABVP, Swarnkar Samaj, Netaji Subash Market Association and cloth merchant association among others. There was heavy police deployment on the entire stretch to ensure that no untoward incident took place.

People belonging to Sarv Brahman Mahasabha also held a signature drive in Jaipur and sent a memorandum that it claimed was signed with the blood of 10,000 people to the Censor Board urging it not to release the film in controversy.

Earlier this month, another body Jauhar Smriti Sansthan had called a bandh in Chittorgarh and other groups such as Karni Sena had also shut down the Chittorgarh Fort for the public.

On November 20, Rajasthan government stated that it will not allow release of Padmavati unless suggestions sent by chief minister Vasundhara Raje to information and broadcasting minister Smriti Irani are incorporated.

On November 18, Raje had written to Irani suggesting that a committee comprising historians, experts and members of Rajput community be formed to identify any historical distortions in the movie to ensure that sentiments of any community are not hurt.
Kanwarani Archana Singh, who belongs to an erstwhile royal Rajput family and is married to another royal, Kanwar Ranjay Singh of Badnore in Rajasthan, says the protests over Sanjay Leela Bhansalis Padmavati are overhyped, and one has to stop the nonsense.

Singh says she would like to see the film first before reacting and everyone should do the same instead of being intolerant.

I think Padmavati has been convoluted completely. I know a boy who worked very close with Bhansali in the production of the film and he said that there is not a (single) shot that you can fault with, and he is a Rajput himself. He also said that after seeing the film, the Rajputs would hug him (Bhansali), Archana Singh told IANS on the sidelines of winter edition of Royal Fables Palace Karkhana, here.

The Karni Sena and other Rajput communities are demanding a ban on the film, claiming it has distorted history. Certain scenes and sequences, including a dance number by queen Padmavati, played by actress Deepika Padukone, and some other aspects of the movie have angered the Rajput community who term it as erroneous and an insulting depiction.

Bhansali screened the film for a few media persons even before the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) had cleared it, adding to the entire controversy.

The protest escalated on Friday when a dead body with anti-Padmavati slogans was found hanging at a fort in Rajasthan.

Talking about the agitation, Archana Singh told IANS: Its ridiculous. I am a Rajput, but so many Rajputs have come out in favour of the violence that is happening. Its not correct. See the film and then decide. People dont even want to see the film.

We have to stop this nonsense. Be tolerant, see it, believe it and then act but dont react. You tend to react all the time. We have become intolerant completely, she added.

She also says the entire incidence is overhyped.

I think its overhyped. Perhaps there was a bit of PR stint here where initially we heard that there is a dream sequence of Rani Padmavati sharing screen space with Alauddin Khilji and that got everyone boiled up. Thats not true and it doesnt even exist in the movie.

Yes, Padmavati existed. I belong from Mewar and she was of course the Chittor princess from Mewar, so she did exist and Jauhar (Hindu custom of mass self-immolation by women in parts of India to avoid capture, enslavement and rape by any foreign invader) did happen but this bit (romance of Khilji with Padmavati) is completely fictionalised.

Having said that, it is overhyped and there is over reaction. People are not even waiting to see the film to give an opinion, she said.

In the film, Shahid Kapoor features as Padmavatis husband and a warrior king, and Ranveer Singh essays Alauddin Khilji.

However, Archana Singh has a piece of advice for Bhansali.

I do feel that Bhansali is a brilliant filmmaker and I have seen every film of his. The way he details his frames is brilliant. The only thing I would like to tell him is that if he wants to take cinematic liberties, dont use historical names, just go completely fictional, she said.
The industrial township of Durgapur went dry after Durgapur barrage on the Damodar river became dry following a leaking lock gate of the barrage.

The irrigation department started repair work on an urgent basis and hoped that they will be able to restore normalcy by Sunday, even as the residents said they have never seen the barrage running completely dry.

Read: HT Exclusive: 7 Marathwada dams run dry; experts point to flawed plan

The lock gate is being repaired on a war footing. We will fill the barrage within seven-eight hours with water from the nearby Maithon dam after repair work is completed, claimed irrigation minister Rajib Banerjee.

Water from the barrage is used for domestic and industrial purposes. On Friday, the Durgapur civic body announced that there will be no water on Saturday. We saved some water, but I am not sure how long it will take for the supply to become normal, said Dipak Barik, a resident of Durgapur.

The Durgapur barrage was built in 1955. It is 692 m long and has 34 gates including 2 under-sluice gates. It is a 12 metre high barrage.

Located about 170 km from Kolkata, Durgapur is a planned township with a population of 5.22 lakh (2011 census).

Read: Google doodle for Rukhmabai Raut, but Indias first woman doctor Kadambini Ganguly remains forgotten

If the gate is not repaired immediately, industry will suffer too. All the units in this industrial area dependent on the water from the Damodar river, said Rajendra Prasad Khaitan, the working president of Federation of South Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industries. Durgapur Steel Plant is the biggest industrial unit in the region.

Nibedita Datta, a homemaker from Durgapur said she has never faced such a problem even during the height of summer.

Repair work is going on. We are in constant touch with the engineers of the Irrigation department, said Sankha Santra, sub divisional officer of Durgapur.

Water may be scarce in Durgapur town and adjoining areas in the next few days. Even power generation may be affected as the power units are dependent on this water.

We are in talks with Asansol Municipal Corporation and district administration to provide water tankers in the area to supply drinking water, said Dilip Agasthi, the mayor of Durgapur.

After the repair work is done, water from Damodar Valley Corporations Maithan and Panchet dam may be used to sill up the Durgapur barrage again.

The lock gate broke on Friday morning. Locals alleged the accident was due to poor maintenance work.
Maa Mati Manush, the catchline Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee effectively used to unseat the 34-year-old Left Front government in Bengal in 2011 is registered in the name of her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, BJP leader Mukul Roy alleged on Saturday.

The former TMC leader, who switched over to the BJP earlier this month, however, did not claim there was any illegality involved in the move.

Roys allegation was in continuation of his previous attack on the 31-year-old Lok Sabha MP.

On November 10, Roy in his first public meeting as a BJP leader in Kolkata alleged that Banerjee was the owner of Biswa Bangla, the umbrella brand being promoted by the state government and Jago Bangla, the mouthpiece of the ruling party in Bengal.

Abhishek Banerjee owns the Maa Mati Manush slogan. This is not an application, but a document that shows it is registered in his name, said Roy waving a sheet of paper at a press conference.

He was flanked by BJP state president Dilip Ghosh, party central observer for Bengal Kailash Vijayvargiya and MoS heavy industries and public enterprises Babul Supriyo.

We will present everything to the court and also in front of the public, said Vijayvargiya.

Incidentally, a court in Alipurduar in north Bengal, in an interim injunction barred Roy from making any statement linking Banerjee to Biswa Bangla Marketing Corporation Ltd and Jago Bangla Media Pvt Ltd.

According to the Trade Mark Journal (No 1726 dated 04/01/2016), the trademark was granted on January 18, 2013 to Banerjee. The address mentioned in the journal is 30B Harish Chatterjee Street, Kolkata 26, the residence of the chief minister.

The ownership is valid up to January 18, 2023.

The slogan is derived from a Bengali rural play titled Maa Mati Manush staged in the 1970s. It was written by Bhairab Gangopadhyay.

There is no illegality in getting a political slogan registered in an individuals name. However, anyone owning the logo can claim royalty on anybody, or any party, organisation or even the government for using the slogan. If Abhishek Banerjee wants, he can charge the party and the government huge royalty for using his trademark, prominent lawyer and CPI (M) leader Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya told HT.

After Roys allegation on November 10, Bengal home secretary Atri Bhattacharya and micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) secretary Rajiva Sinha claimed the marketing corporation is owned by the state government.

TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee also claimed chief ministers nephew has nothing to do with the media company.

I shall keep exposing more misdeeds, Roy said at the press conference.

Reacting to the allegations, Chatterjee at a public meeting in Canning in South 24 Parganas district said: We dont want to respond to BJPs allegations. But let me ask what sacrifices did their leaders make for the rights of the common man?

Banerjee, who is also the Trinamool Youth Congress president, had on November 13 sent a legal notice to Roy, claiming that the veteran politician had made false statements against him and demanded an apology from him within 48 hours.

Banerjee later filed a defamation suit seeking the injunction before the court of civil judge (senior division) in Alipurduar.
People with tainted background and those involved in notorious activities in the past would have to mark their attendance at the police stations concerned, after casting their votes in local bodies poll to be held in the state capital of Uttar Pradesh on Sunday.

SECURITY BANDOBAST Nearly 4,500 police constables, 100 sub-inspectors, 18 companies of PAC and RAF and 5,000 homeguards will be deployed at different polling stations. Nearly 2,208 police personnel including two ASPs, six DySPs, 250 sub-inspectors, 50 head constables and 1,900 constables from other districts will also be deployed on polling day. Local intelligence sleuths would be deployed to keep close vigil on every activity during poll hours.

This is aimed at ensuring that these people do not get involved in any type of activity that causes law and order problem during polls.

Over 13,000 civil police, armed police personnel and home guards would be deployed across the state capital to ensure free and fair polling. At least 30 drone cameras will also be used to keep vigil on sensitive and vulnerable polling stations in the district.

Senior superintendent of police (SSP), Lucknow, Deepak Kumar said directions had been issued to people with tainted background to mark their attendance at their respective police stations.

He said police station in-charges had been directed to make suspicious and tainted persons cast their votes as early as possible in the morning and ensure they go to police stations to register their attendance. He said those suspected to be causing nuisance or any law and order problem would also be detained at the police stations during polling hours.

Read more| UP civic body polls: BJP wants EC to verify identities of women in burqas

Sharing details about police force deployment, the SSP said nearly 4,500 police constables, 100 sub-inspectors, 18 companies of Provincial Armed Constabulary and Rapid Action Force and 5,000 homeguards will be deployed at different polling stations. In addition to it, nearly 2,208 police personnel including two ASPs, six DySPs, 250 sub-inspectors, 50 head constables and 1,900 constables from other districts will also be deployed on polling day.

In addition, local intelligence sleuths would be deployed to keep close vigil on every activity during poll hours, he said.
A stray dog dragged away body of a newborn girl from a maternity ward of a government hospital in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday night, exposing the appalling condition of the health care even as the authorities tried to cover up the incident.

Attendants of other patients noticed the mongrel carrying away the baby near the main gate of the women hospital. They shooed away the canine and recovered the body, eyewitnesses said.

Sheela Yadav (35), wife of Mahatam Yadav of Azamgarhs Deoria Village, gave birth to a baby girl in the evening. But the child died after sometime.

The body was kept on the floor of the ward, rolled in a rug. When Sheela became little unmindful and other women admitted in the ward were fast asleep, the dog carried away the body.

After the hospital authorities came to know about the incident, they allegedly made Mahatam write on a paper that the body was in their possession.

After the delivery, the body of infant was handed over to the kin. There is no fault of the hospital administration, if they cant protect the body. Hospital administration cannot provide security to each woman in the hospital. Three watchmen and two home guards are deployed in the hospital for security. Senior officials have been apprised of the problems of stray dogs roaming on hospital the premises, said chief medical superintendent Dr Amita Agrawal.

She said that kin signed a receipt while taking the body.

Such incident is not uncommon in the state. Last year body of a newborn baby girl was found being dragged by a pack of dogs at Ghaziabads MMG district hospital.
A day after the BJP demanded deployment of women police personnel at polling booths, the state election commission (SEC) on Friday said there was already a provision for the deployment of at least one lady cop at each polling booth.

EVMs ALWAYS KEPT IN SURPLUS On the complaints about some EVMs developing snags at certain places in the first phase, Agrawal said there was nothing new about it. Some EVMs develop snag in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha polls too. And this is the reason why EVMs are always kept in surplus to immediately replace the faulty ones, if any, he pointed out. He dismissed complaints about EVM tampering as baseless.

At least one lady cop is always posted at each of the polling booths during elections to check any suspected female voter and it is being done during the ongoing civic polls as well, said SK Agrawal, state election commissioner (SEC).

He, however, made no comment on whether the lady cops would verify identities of burqa-clad voters. I cannot say what they should do. All I can say is that lady cops are already there at booths, he added.

A BJP delegation that met the SEC on Thursday demanded deployment of women cops at polling booths to verify identities of burqa-clad women to keep a check on possible forged and fake voting by some voters in the garb of veil.

Read more| UP civic body polls: BJP wants EC to verify identities of women in burqas

Meanwhile, the SEC held a meeting with senior officials of the home and other departments to take stock of preparations of the second phase of polling scheduled in 25 districts on Sunday.

We reiterated the same general directions to them to ensure free and fair polls, said Agrawal.
A few days back chief minister Yogi Adityanath had laughed off a query, will the results of the elections to the 653 urban local bodies be a referendum of sorts on the 8-month-old BJP government in the state?

The opponents have already fled, Adityanath had said in response indicating he was confident of a one-sided win.

But surely there is more to the BJPs assembly-poll like campaigning for these civic polls in which it has also fielded largest number of Muslim candidates besides releasing its civic manifesto  a first.

A campaign blitzkrieg featuring 33 to 35 political rallies by Adityanath  highest for any UP chief minister --showcases the partys intent for these polls for which it is also using two to three helicopters for campaign. Union home minister and Lucknow MP Rajnath Singh, who will be in Lucknow on November 26 to cast his vote, has twice visited the state capital to encourage the cadre and a UP minister has been tasked with the responsibility of key districts and mayoral seats  Ayodhya, Mathura, Kashi and Gorakhpur  in particular.

At stake are 653 urban local bodies and the nearly 8000 wards where the party has put up candidates on its lotus symbol, which UP BJP general secretary (organisation) Sunil Bansal says is the biggest BJP contingent ever for these urban local body polls. Ayodhya and Mathra, the two key Hindu pilgrimage cities high on BJPs agenda, are also first-time mayoral corporations where the party cant afford not to have its mayor.

These are the kind of high-impact seats where if BJP does badly, as we are hoping it does, the symbolic takeaways from that will be huge. We are aware of that and working to a plan, an OBC leader from the Samajwadi Party told HT.

But then in the past 15 years even when it wasnt doing well in assembly and national elections, the BJP had consistently won these polls earning the sobriquet of a shahari (urban) party unlike Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party with greater rural penetration.

Read More: In a first, Uttar Pradesh local polls get national-level campaigns

For instance the BJP had won 10 of the 12 mayoral seats in urban local body polls in 2012 despite getting a shocking 15% vote share in the assembly elections the same year.

In two years time, the BJP riding on an unprecedented Modi wave saw its vote share zoom to 42.6% in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls as it won 71 out of 80 seats from UP. In the assembly polls three years later, BJP maintained its connect with its new-found rural constituency and its new OBC and Dalit voters to post a stunning 312 seat win, garnering nearly 40% of the vote share. In the 2017 UP polls, the first BJP win was reported from the Muslim dominated Deoband in west UP  home to a prominent Islamic seminary.

Now, for the first time  the BJP often criticised for not fielding Muslims in big ticket elections  has fielded its biggest ever batch of minority candidates. There are as many as 17 minority candidates for Nagar Palika Parishad and Nagar Palika Panchayat chiefs post alone leave. That is besides scores of others we have fielded for corporators on our ticket, says BJPs civic-election in-charge JPS Rathore.

So is there a method to BJPs aggressive civic election campaign?

Yes, these elections would help us check our preparedness for 2019 Lok Sabha elections, re-connect with our audience but more important than that is we also get to look at whether our political opponents mauled in 2014 Lok Sabha and 2017 UP polls have managed to gain some lost ground, a BJP leader part of the partys think tank told HT.

The quote has a context. These elections are also going to be a reflection of 8 month old Adityanath government and the party also wants to ensure that its cadres dont get rusty and complacent after two spectacular wins.

But it is also the first time that the Samajwadi Party has decided to check its urban presence under Akhilesh Yadav and the first time Bahujan Samaj Partys chief Mayawati has decided to check her partys acceptability among urban voters in the elections that had been largely fought till now on bijli, sadak, paani (power, road and water) issues.

It is also a good time to check the voting pattern of Dalits and OBCs, the two groups associated with BSP and Samajwadi Party in the past who voted for the BJP. More than BSP that used to control Dalit votes, its the Akhilesh Yadav led Samajwadi Partys OBC presence that we want tested. OBCs are numerically greater and far significant, reason enough that partys OBC leader and deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya has nearly 50 plus rallies lined up for him, said a BJP strategist.

The civic poll results would be out on December 1  just before Gujarat goes to vote. Given the scale at which the party is contesting the UP polls, a good show will of course ensure good publicity that would do BJP no harm ahead of Gujarat polls. A good showing could also brighten up the prospect of national polls being advanced, says Athar Siddiqui from the Centre of Objective Research and Development.

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After days of strong opposition by the Shiv Sena against former chief minister Narayan Rane, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has requested him to not contest in the December 7 legislative council by-poll, sources said. The BJP has promised to back him for the June-July by-polls next year instead.

In its bid to not upset the BJPs ally, Shiv Sena, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has postponed his cabinet expansion plan. With this, Ranes wait to get a cabinet berth has just got longer. Rane told Hindustan Times that he would meet Fadnavnis on Sunday and discuss both the issues.

I have spoken to the chief minister today (Saturday) and we have decided to meet tomorrow once he returns to Mumbai. I am convinced that the delay in cabinet expansion is inevitable in the given political situation. I am not upset as even the BJP is compelled to take such steps to continue in power. I will discuss with the chief minister about the induction and council candidature, Rane said.

According to sources, the BJP has already shortlisted six names for the legislative council seat vacated by Rane. The last date of filing nomination is November 27.

Rane quit the Congress in September and also resigned from his legislative council seat. On October 1, he formed a new political party called Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha, which he later said would support the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. At the time, Fadnavis hinted that Rane would get a cabinet berth. He also asked him to get elected from either of the two houses.

Ranes arch-rival Sena has launched a scathing attack against him and threatened to withdraw its support from the state government if he is inducted as a cabinet minister.

To win the by-poll, the BJP, which has 122 MLAs, needs Shiv Senas support. It is short of at least seven MLAs even after garnering support from smaller parties and independents

The Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have 42 and 41 MLAs, while Sena has 63 MLAs. The three parties were planning to join hand if Ranes candidature was supported by the BJP.

With the Shiv Sena attacking NCP and its chief Sharad Pawar in the last two days, the patch-up for the by-poll remains elusive.

In such a scenario, there is no point in hurting Shiv Sena by fielding him in the council election. We have shortlisted six names on Thursday night. The CM and the state unit chief will finalise the name on Sunday, said a BJP leader.

During his meeting with CM on Sunday, Rane is expected to demand firm assurance about his induction in the cabinet. Rane, who is reportedly upset over the delay in induction, is also expected to push for it. BJP may ask Rane to wait till January for the induction as it will also help the party to get him elected within six months in council elections to be held in June next year. Any minister is needed to be elected to any of the houses within six months of his swearing in.

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In a reprieve for women seeking to terminate late-term pregnancies for medical reasons, the Maharashtra government proposes to establish eight divisional medical boards to scrutinise cases and determine whether such a course of action can be recommended.

Additional government pleader Asif Patel told the Bombay high court on Friday that the family welfare department had forwarded a proposal to the principal secretary, public health department. He told a division bench of justices Shantanu Kemkar and Girish Kulkarni that the boards, comprising senior medical officers specialising in different streams, are expected to be set up in two weeks.

According to the proposal, couples who wish to terminate pregnancies beyond 20 weeks  the limit set under the Medical Termination of Pregnancies (MTP) Act, 1971  can directly approach the board, which will get the foetus medically examined and determine if medical termination of pregnancy is recommended. The high court can then pass a formal order on the basis of the boards opinion.

Patel was responding to petition filed by a Pune couple, who sought permission to abort 28-week-old foetus on the ground that both of its kidneys were abnormal and doctors said the child would not be able to lead a normal life. The 23-year-old woman said the pregnancy posed a risk to her life too.

Their lawyer, advocate Priyal Sarda, said the foetus was examined by experts, who recommended that the pregnancy be terminated. The couple approached a gynaecologist, who refused to abort the child in view of provisions of the MTP Act.

Under section 3 of the MTP Act, a pregnancy not exceeding 12 weeks can be terminated only if a medical practitioner is of the opinion that continuing the pregnancy would involve a risk to the life of the pregnant woman, grave injury to her physical or mental health or there is a substantial risk of the child being born with physical or mental abnormalities that render it seriously handicapped. A pregnancy ranging between 12 and 20 weeks can be terminated if two or more medical practitioners are of that opinion.

The court referred the woman to BJ Medical College Hospital at Pune for a detailed examination and asked the hospital to submit a report by November 28, when the petition is slated to come up for further hearing.

It expressed the need for a permanent mechanism to deal with similar cases, in view of the increasing number of couples approaching high courts seeking permission to terminate pregnancies beyond 20 weeks.
The Sahar police on Wednesday arrested a 23-year-old man working at Mumbais Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport for allegedly molesting a 24-year-old British national twice while she was waiting for her flight.

The complainant, a resident of London, was on her way to Sri Lanka after her flight from London landed at Mumbai airport early on Wednesday.

Past incidents at airport, on flights Nov 2017: The Airport police on Monday arrested a 27-year-old man who was allegedly drunk and groped an air hostess on a Mumbai-bound flight. She filed an FIR after the flight from Delhi reached Mumbai. Jun 2017: A passenger on a Delhi-Mumbai flight was arrested for groping a woman seated next to him. He allegedly continued touching the woman even after she complained to the air hostess. When she got her seat changed, he allegedly asked her: You do not like to be touched? Mar 2017: A 32-year-old man was held for allegedly passing lewd comments at a 28-year-old woman, an immigration staffer, while standing in a queue for a security check at Mumbai airport. Feb 2017: A 43-year-old businessman travelling on from Kolkata to Mumbai was arrested by the Airport police for allegedly watching porn in front of the air hostess twice. The air hostess and her supervisor spotted him and field a complaint.

The incident took place around 6.30am when she was waiting near a food court in the transit area. She said the accused, Mohsin Shaikh, came up to her and asked how long she would be waiting at the airport. The complainant responded saying she had a 11-hour wait.

Shaikh, who works at the food court, told her that she could sit in the lounge and took her to a room nearby. He then told her that the space had free WiFi service, touched the mobile phone in her hand and put his other hand around her waist. When she pushed his hand away, he did it again.

In her complaint, the woman said she pushed him away and got out of the room by which time Shaikh ran away. The woman then approached a Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) officer who was in the vicinity and told him about the incident. She obliged when officials asked her to submit a handwritten complaint with her signature.

The CISF caught Shaikh and handed him over to the Sahar police, along with the womans statement. The police registered an FIR against him under section 354 (criminal force on a woman outraging her modesty) of the Indian penal Code and arrested him.

A magistrate court has remanded him in judicial custody.
The Bombay high court directed the Maharashtra government to pay Rs50,000 to a 35-year-old businessman from Chembur as compensation for being illegally detained by the Ahmednagar police for 33 hours.

On Wednesday, a division bench of justices SS Shinde and Mangesh Patil also directed the state to pay Sachin Sonawane interest at the rate of 8% per annum on the compensation amount from February 2015. The state must also refund the Rs10,000 Sonawane spent as litigation fees.

Sonawane said he married a Kopargaon resident in December 2010, following which they moved to Chembur. He said he lent his brother-in-law Rs5.80 lakh to buy a car. However,when he sought repayment two years later, his wife asked the local police to file a complaint. Sonawane and his family were booked under sections 498-A, 406, 323, 504, 50, 34 of the Indian Penal Code. On September 11, 2014, Kopargaon police came to Chembur and took Sonawane into custody.

He was taken to Kopargaon, but was presented before a magistrate there only at 3 pm on September 12. He thus approached the high court, saying he was illegally detained in police custody for about 33 hours.

The court accepted his claim. This case is another example of how the states police machinery s either oblivious or emboldened to breach the fundamental rights of the citizens, said the bench. It added that despite passing repeated orders regarding compensation for illegal detention, there was hardly any improvement in behaviour of police personnel.

This court has come across similar violations of the rights of citizens guaranteed under Article 21 and 22 of the Constitution, said the bench.

It said neither the state nor the police department had taken steps to set their house in order.
Even as Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced on October 18 that 80% of eligible farmers would get the loan waiver amount in a month, the state has disbursed the loans to only 73,000 or less than 1% of the 77 lakh applicants.

The total amount credited into farmers bank accounts stand at Rs 481 crore.

To speed up the disbursal process, the state government has replaced a private firm with its own agency, Mahaonline, to weed out duplication in the list of beneficiaries.

After announcing the loan waiver of Rs 34,020 crore to benefit about 89 lakh farmers in various categories, the Fadnavis government began the process of crediting the amount into the bank accounts of farmers five weeks ago.

In a programme at the Sahyadri guest house on October 18, while handing over certificates to about 100 farmers, Fadnavis had said 80% of the eligible farmers will be declared debt free in a month. He also announced that the state had prepared a list of 8.40 lakh farmers with a debt of Rs 4,000 crore.

The state government has received 73 lakh applications for the loan waiver. It believes that of these 65 lakh farmer will qualify for the waiver.

The cooperation department has prepared the list of 1 lakh beneficiaries and expects it to be cleared until the second list is cleared in next few days.

The department of information and technology (DIT) and Mahaonline are working on the list of applicants and verifying them. We expect the new list will be provided to us early next week. It will be followed by our releasing the money to banks, said an official of the cooperation department.

The state government has also replaced the private firm for digitisation and verification. Mahaonline Limited, a joint venture between government and Tata Consultancy Services, has been verifying the data for the last few days. After we found duplication in bank account and Aadhaar numbers, the first list of 2.39 lakh applicants was put on hold. The agency is reviewing the list and also preparing a new one , said the official.

Cooperation ministers Subhash Deshmukh said the preparation of the list of 70% beneficiaries will be completed by November 25 and the actual disbursement will begin by end of this month.

After days of protests by farmers in June, the government announced a loan waiver of Rs34,022 crore and later widened its scope, doing away with some criteria.

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An unidentified person stole gold jewellery and cash gifts at a wedding in Dadar, while the bride, the groom and their families were busy posing for a group photograph after the ceremony.

The thief escaped with cash gifts given to the groom in envelopes and gold jewellery worth Rs4.86 lakh, the Shivaji Park police, who are investigating the case, said. The theft took place at Suryavanshiya Kshatriya Hall on Veer Savarkar Marg, Dadar.

The police said the theft was discovered by Bhakti Miraj Sane, 46, a resident of Borivli, who was attending the haldi ceremony of her husbands nephew Himanshu Vaidya.

The police said that during the function, the family was scattered around the hall meeting and greeting guests. The gifts and cash given to the groom were collected by a family member and kept near the grooms chair. After a while, Bhakti and her family went up to the couple and the photographer called the entire family for a group photo. Bhakti kept her purse, in which she was carrying some of her own and some relatives gold jewellery, along with the other gifts on the chair. The photo session went on for around 10 minutes, at the end of which she turned to pick up her purse and found it was missing along with the cash envelopes.

Bhakti filed a complaint with the Shivaji Park police. We are checking CCTV footage of the marriage hall as well as taking down statements of guests to trace the robber. It could be one of the invitees, said Sunil Deshmukh, assistant commissioner of police, Dadar division.
A Congressman was gunned down at Motihari, headquarters of north Bihars East Champaran district, on Saturday morning.

Eyewitnesses said two masked men, riding a motorcycle, fired indiscriminately at Chotu Jaiswal, vice president of the East Champaran unit of Congress and former ward councillor of Motihari Nagar Parishad, when he was taking tea at a roadside stall. The assailants fled from the scene brandishing their gun.

The incident took place at Ganpool Chowk in Motihari town, 154 km north of Patna.

Jaiswal, who received injuries on chest and head, was taken to a local hospital where he died during treatment.

Protesting against the incident, an angry mob blocked the Mina Bazar Chowk in the town, demanding immediate arrest of the culprits. A group of people also took out a procession and vandalised public vehicles.

Deputy superintendent of police (sadar) Pankaj Rawat said the footage of the CCTV camera, installed near the site of the crime, would help the police identify the assailants.

East Champaran superintendent of police (SP) Upendra Sharma said the body of the victim had been sent for postmortem examination. Jaiswal was into real estate business and had criminal antecedents, the SP said.

BLURB

Protesting against the incident, an angry mob blocked the Mina Bazar Chowk in Motihari town, demanding immediate arrest of the culprits. A group of people also took out a procession and vandalised public vehicles
Minister of petroleum and natural gas, skill development and entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan, on Friday, said that his ministry was at the last stage of finalising the new national policy on biofuels.

Pradhan was addressing a conference of industry experts and policy makers on Ethanol as a Transport Fuel organised by the Central Institute of Road Transport (CIRT), jointly with the Indian Federation of Green Energy (IFGE), New Delhi , supported by the ministry of road transport and highways.

Pradhan said, Our ministry is in the process of finalising the new national policy on biofuels. We had a consultative meeting of all the stakeholders at New Delhi recently and are evaluating all the feedback and suggestions given so far. The new policy will provide complete off-take guarantee to the producers.

He explained that ethanol supply for blending in petrol had increased to 111 crore litres in 2015-2016 from 15.4 crore litres in 2011. Similarly, the rate of return has been upwardly revised by more than 40 % to benefit farmers. We can emphatically state that ethanol has the potential to substantially cut down the crude import bill of the country, he said.

The minister was all praise for Pune city and its intellectual prowess and described it as the land of creativity, innovation and intellectuals. He noted that Pune has been the epicentre of all the research and development activities in different domains and also in the area of alternative green fuel. Most of the technologies to convert agri waste to green fuel have been developed in Pune, he added.

Pradhan stressed that the government was committed to double the income of farmers beyond the stipulated Minimum Support Price (MSP) mechanism and help promote the farmers to monetise their farm and agri-waste as feedstock to Ethanol Bio-refineries. He complimented the conference organisers and suggested greater co-operation and collaboration between civil society, researchers, farmers, industry and all other stakeholders to promote ethanol economy.

Pune can go Delhi way if pollution level remains unchecked, says Nitin Gadkari

Union minister for road transport and shipping Nitin Gadkari warned that Pune can go the Delhi way in the coming days if the pollution level went unchecked henceforth.

Gadkari said that tier 2 cities like Pune and Chennai are likely to go Delhi way if pollution control is not stringently imposed by the respective authorities. Gadkari was addressing a gathering of industry experts and other stakeholders during a conference under the theme Ethanol as a Transport Fuel on Friday at the Central Institute of Road Transport (CIRT) organised by CIRT, jointly in association with the Indian Federation of Green Energy (IFGE), New Delhi supported by the ministry of road transport and highways.

Gadkari pointed out that there was need to curb vehicular pollution and replacing traditional fuels with alternate green fuels to conserve the environment. One can see what is happening in Delhi and the policy of odd and even arrangements being undertaken by the Delhi government to combat smog. Taking into account the rising pollution levels in cities like Pune and Chennai, the day is not far when these cities will go the Delhi way and it is an alarming situation, he added.

The minister also said that the agriculture sector in the country was going through severe crisis and maintained that there was a need to give a fair price to agri produce and adopt practices of sustainable agriculture for the growth and promotion of the sector. Referring to the rising disparity in urban and rural country space, Gadkari said that unemployment had peaked in rural India which resulted in large scale migration to the cities.

At some point, 80 % of the village population stayed in the village itself, while the remainder left to urban cities looking for opportunities. Now, 55% of village population stays in the village, while a major chunk has left for the cities for jobs and other avenues, he said.

If rural economy is strengthened through an integrated approach, then we will be able to generate 50 lakh new jobs for rural India. We also need to promote bioethanol to end agriculture crisis, he added.

The minister also stressed that the central government has embarked on a massive irrigation scheme initiative aimed at boosting agriculture production.

He said that the government has planned to bring two crore hectares under irrigation through various schemes. The severe water crisis in different states were the main cause behind farmer suicides and irrigation schemes will be fast-tracked to provide relief to the farming community, he said.
Air India will introduce two non-stop flights per week to Amritsar from Birmingham early next year, catering to demands of a large number of people of Punjab-origin in the city and the west Midlands, official sources said on Friday.

The Birmingham Airport will be the only UK airport to operate non-stop services on the new route. Air India already operates a popular daily service from the city to Delhi since August 2013, carrying nearly 5 lakh passengers so far, a statement from Birmingham Airport said.

William Pearson, aviation director at Birmingham airport, said: It is great news that we will have non-stop connections to two Indian cities. With over 200,000 British-Indian people who travel to India to visit friends and relatives, and for tourism and business interests, this additional destination shows the large demand within the region for non-stop Amritsar services from the Midlands.

Pankaj Srivastava, director (Commercial) and board member of Air India, said in Birmingham: We are delighted that we are able to announce that we are planning to commence non-stop services between Birmingham and Amritsar twice a week, starting early 2018, recognising the consumer demand from the Midlands region to Amritsar.

Air India is always very sensitive to the needs of the consumer and is pleased to be connecting the two cities thereby adding a new city pairing for Air Indias expanding global network with the only non-stop UK Amritsar service, he said.

According to Andy Street, mayor of the West Midlands, one of the most common issues raised during his interaction with the Sikh community in the region is that they and their families are unable to fly direct to Amritsar.

Ever since, weve been working with Air India and Birmingham Airport to explore whether we could introduce this direct service for the 135,000 Sikhs living in the West Midlands. I am delighted this will start early next year  I know it will be well received news and a well-used service, Street added.

News of the new service has been welcomed in the city and beyond. Labour MP Preet Gill from Birmingham Edgbaston commenting on the news said: Sandwell is twinned with Amritsar, and in my capacity as local councillor I campaigned for these non-stop flights. This is wonderful news for the West Midlands, not just for the Punjabi community, but for business too.

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Three men from Mawa village in Nurpur Bedi area Rupnagar district have sent a video to their families from Saudi Arabia where they have allegedly been forced to work as bonded labourers.

The men  Ajay Singh, Jasvir Singh and Suresh Kumar  say they have run away to the forests from where they have sent the video. Their parents on Saturday submitted a complaint with the senior superintendent of police (SSP).

They said they had sent their sons to Saudi Arabia on November 17 to work as truck drivers in a company through a travel agent of Nangal. However, upon reaching Saudi Arabia, a person from the company took them from the airport to a place to look after animals, instead of employing them as truck drivers, says the complaint. There, they were forced to work as bonded laboureres to look after the animals and cut wood, it is alleged.

SSP Raj Bachan Singh Sandhu said he has asked the Anandpur Sahib deputy superintendent of police (DSP) to conduct an inquiry.

Meanwhile, it is learnt that the Indian embassy in Saudi Arabia and the counterparts here have contacted the parents.
A honeymoon is one of the most beautiful time periods in life for a married couple. Planning for a honeymoon is quite exciting as there are a plethora of options to choose from. If you are looking for an offbeat destination to wind off the stress post wedding and spend moments of privacy and intimacy with your better half, here are the best honeymoon destinations for you. These places listed by Kapil Goswamy, CMD, BigBreaks.com provide an ideal setting, along with an opportunity to spend some quality time with each other.

-Lakshadweep

The exotic islands and coral archipelagoes of Lakshadweep are one of the most secluded beach destinations in India. Covered by a thick green carpet of coconut palms, threaded by an untainted line of silvery white sands, set in an ocean, whose colours change from palest aquamarine and turquoise to deepest sapphire and lapis lazuli, the islands of Lakshadweep are a perfect retreat. Especially for those newlyweds who wish to enjoy blissful beach surroundings with an idyllic sense of privacy. Moreover, if you two love water sports, you can enjoy various water sport activities like scuba-diving, fishing and snorkeling at this romantic getaway.

Head to Lakshadweep for pristine beaches. (Lakshadweep Tourism/Facebook)

-Tawang

Tawang is a sparsely populated town in Arunachal Pradesh with mesmerising views of valleys and mountains. Perched at a height of 10,000 ft above sea level, Tawang is an ideal honeymoon destination providing the much needed tranquillity to newly married couples. The town is immersed in the colours of Tibetan culture, with various attractive monasteries and Buddhist structures scattered all around. It is a perfect bet for couples who wish to explore a distinct culture in the realm of nature.

Tawang is seeped in culture and tradition. (AFP)

-Shillong

Capital of the wettest state of India- Meghalaya, Shillong is a picture perfect honeymoon destination in the Northeast region of India. Also, known as Scotland of the east, Shillong is home to cascading waterfalls, pretty lakes dense forests, mystical caves and fascinating ancient tree root bridges. The city has a very young vibe as it adorns a westernised culture and has many musical events running throughout the year, making it a lively place always bustling with activity.

Shillong is called the Scotland of the East. (Shutterstock)

-Vietnam

A perfect amalgamation of natural beauty and culture, Vietnam serves as an ideal honeymoon retreat nearby India. Its untouched landscape, exotic environment, lush green scenery, long coastlines and vibrant culture are sure to enamour every honeymoon couple. Revel in the ancient architecture of the country or relish the one of its kind floating villages. Experience the peace at Buddhist pagodas or relax at the many beach resorts and boutique hotels in the country. The scenic beauty of this country is boundless and inexpressible in plain words.

Explore the floating markets in Vietnam. (Shutterstock)

-Turkey

If you and your partner fancy history and culture, then honeymooning at the Mediterranean land of Turkey is the best option for you. With one foot in Europe and one in Asia, Turkey represents a truly remarkable culture and a distinct race of people. Experiences like staying in cave resorts, traditional Turkish spas, sensual Turkish baths and romantic Fayton rides add to your honeymoon memoirs. Captivating architecture, lively bazaars and pristine beaches along with a vibrant nightlife, are some other key reason to invest in a honeymoon trip to Turkey. Its all you have dreamt of!

Turkey is great for lovers of history and culture. (Shutterstock)

Khajjiar

If mainstream hill stations like Shimla or Manali do not interest you anymore, head-off to Khajjiar, a little Himalayan gem near Dalhousie. Surrounded by green meadows, forests and snow-clad mountains, Khajjiar is Himachals best kept secret and is unspoiled and less crowded. Often touted as the mini Switzerland of India, due to its resemblance to the country, Khajjiar is a perfect offbeat honeymoon destination in India. Adventure sport activities like Zorbing, trekking and paragliding also take place here which add to the element of thrill to this pleasantly charming hill station.

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TV actor Piyush Sahdev was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly raping a 23-year-old aspiring actress. Sahdev, who has worked in popular shows like Devon Ke Dev Mahadev, Sapne Suhane Ladakpan Ke and Beyhadh, has been accused of raping the woman on the pretext of marriage.

After the arrest, Piyush was presented before a court where he was sent to police custody till November 27. Heres everything you need to know about the case:

1. Piyush and the woman met through mutual friends and the TV actor promised to boost her career, police said.

2. The TV actor moved in with the woman and even proposed marriage to her after living with her for two months.

3. The woman told police she saw compromising photos of Piyush with another woman, after which they fought and he went back on his promise to marry her.

4. The woman approached the police on November 20 and filed a case under section 376 (punishment for rape) of the Indian Penal Code against Sahdev.

5. Kiran Vasantrao Kale, senior inspector, Versova police station, told HT over phone from Mumbai, Yes, he has been charged with rape. An FIR was lodged against him on November 20. After investigations, we arrested him on November 22. He was produced in court on the same day and has been sent to police custody till November 27.

6. When Hindustan Times approached Sahdevs estranged wife, actor Akangsha Rawat, she said she hasnt been in touch with him for past four months. I am not in touch with Piyush since almost four months, we separated six months back, so I have no idea if this news (of rape allegation) is true, she told us.

7. Piyush has been sent to police custody till November 27.

8. Revealing that she hasnt been in touch with Piyush for a long time, his sister and Secret Superstar-fame actor Meher Vij told Times Of India, I havent been able to get in touch with my father so I too do not know anything about this news. Actually, Piyush and I havent been in touch at all ever since he got married. His wife had some issues so I chose to back off. Whatever contact we have had, has been only through our father ever since then.

9. The TOI report also quoted a close family friend of Piyush as saying, Piyush recently went for a holiday with the actress where he got sexually involved with her. After coming back, he chose to end the relationship. Meanwhile, she had become a little serious about him. But with his negligent behaviour, she got irked. Piyush blackmailed her, threatening to leak her obscene pictures over the internet. The actress paid no heed to him. This irked Piyush who actually leaked a few pictures.

10. While his affair was said to be the reason behind the separation with his wife, the actor had earlier denied it: Yes, it is true that Akangsha and I are getting separated. The divorce is already in process. But all the rumours which are being spread are untrue.

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One policeman died and over 100 people were injured as Pakistan cracked down on radical Islamist protestors in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and imposed a gag order on TV channels covering the spiralling violence.

The government on Saturday asked all news channels to suspend live broadcast as protests against a police operation earlier in the day in Islamabad spread to other cities, with fears that the situation could turn into a major law and order problem. Social media networks including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were also blocked in various parts of the country.

The army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa talked to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and urged for peaceful solution to the problem.

Islamabad and Karachi were most affected by the violence, and till Saturday evening it was unclear who had the upper hand, with the government claiming its operation had been successful while supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik insisted they continued to protest and cause disruption in different parts of the country.

Karachis main thoroughfare, the Sharare Faisal, has been blocked at different spots.

It is feared that protests will continue on Sunday as well. Tehreek-e-Labbaik spokesperson Ejaz Ashrafi told the media over telephone that supporters of the movement were in their thousands. We will not leave. We will fight until the end, he said.

Pakistans interior minister Ahsan Iqbal claimed that the protestors had contacted India, and the government was investigating why they did it, without giving further details about his claim.

We can see that they have various resources at their disposal. They have fired teargas shells [at security forces], they also cut the fibre-optic cables of cameras monitoring their protest...They have inside information and resources that are being used against the state, he told Dawn News network.

More than 8,500 police and paramilitary personnel took part in the Islamabad operation earlier in the day to dislodge the protestors who had blocked the Faizabad interchange, one of the Pakistani capitals busiest traffic intersections, for almost 20 days.

Officials said the operation had achieved 90% success, adding that some of the protestors took to the streets and caused mayhem in different parts of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

TV channels reported that the police operation was suspended by evening, but there was no official confirmation of this.

The protesters want the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid for altering the declaration of lawmakers with regard to Finality of the Prophethood  a change which the government has already reversed.

Government hospitals continued to receive wounded persons, mostly police personnel, as fighting continued between protestors and police personnel throughout he day.

It is estimated that more than 500 people were admitted to different hospitals in Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

The Islamabad police, with the help of Frontier Constabulary (FC) personnel and other law enforcement agencies, launched the operation against protesters after the last of a long series of deadlines lapsed this morning without response from the agitators.

An Islamabad police spokesman confirmed that a policeman was killed in the clash with protesters after he was struck in the head by a rock.

Protesters hurls back a tear gas shell fired by police during a clash in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Saturday. (AP Photo)

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) warned against live coverage of the Faizabad sit-in, stating that under the Electronic Media Code of Conduct 2015, live coverage of any security operation was prohibited.

TV channels were advised to exhibit utmost sensitivity regarding the matter and refrain from live coverage. Following the PEMRA order, there has been a media blackout across the country where almost all leading private TV channels went off-air. Unconfirmed reports suggest that mobile cellular networks will also be suspended any time soon.

Several vehicles were burnt as protesters, who had dispersed in smaller lanes and congested areas, regrouped and pushed back.

Smoke and tear gas filled the air as police and paramilitary troops in riot gear were seen throwing rocks and using slingshots in a bid to clear 2,000 or so hardline demonstrators.

Dr Altaf from the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) said that no major injuries were reported. Most of the injuries are minor, but we have a number of fracture cases.

Protestors were being egged on by their leaders who conveyed through loudspeakers that policemen should be targeted as this would earn them sawab.

Prime Minister Abbasi went into a close huddle with other party members to try and see how the issue could be resolved.

A Pakistani protester from the Tehreek-i-Labaik Yah Rasool Allah Pakistan (TLYRAP) religious group runs past a burning tent during a clash with police in Islamabad on November 25, 2017. (AFP Photo)

As the Thursday deadline given by the Islamabad high court expired, the civilian law enforcement agencies went into action. In the past, the government had consistently bought time to negotiate with protesters.

(With inputs from agencies)
Sometimes, empathy is the most potent medicine for pain. An Australian ambulance crew understood that when it decided recently to took a quick detour to a beach in order to fulfil the last wish of a dying patient they were carrying.

Queensland Ambulance Service Facebook page posted a note congratulating the crew of Hervey Bay, a city in Queensland, for their act of compassion.

A crew were transporting a patient to the palliative care unit of the local Hospital and the patient expressed that she just wished she could be at the beach again. (sic), the department wrote on its Facebook page.

Tears were shed and the patient felt very happy, according to Helen Donaldson, the officer in-charge of Hervey Bay, who shared this story with the members of Queensland Ambulance Service.

The story melted hearts on Facebook as people congratulated the team and shared similar stories of empathy.

Many years ago a very close friend was getting married (and) on the day of her wedding her mother collapsed as she had terminal cancer. The ambulance was called. Instead of the ambulance taking her to hospital, they went to the church and wheeled her into the church on a stretcher. She watched her daughter get married, she died a few days later. It was a beautiful thought from the ambos there wasnt a dry eye in the church. The ambos do such a great job in all states of Australia. Thankyou all, one of users commented.

As many as 61,000 people liked the post and over 19,000 shared it.
Baloch nationalist leader Brahumdagh Bugti, whose request for asylum has been rejected by Switzerland, has not applied for asylum in India though he would be willing to consider any offer made by the Indian government.

Bugti, who has been living in exile in Switzerland for the past seven years, called on India to do more to highlight the case of Baloch nationalists and the human rights abuses in Balochistan, Pakistans least populated and natural resource-rich province.

I have not made a formal request for asylum in India though it was an issue that I discussed with Indian officials when I visited the Indian embassy here, Bugti, 35, told Hindustan Times on phone from his home near Geneva.

However, if there is an offer of asylum from the government of India in view of the oppression faced by Baloch activists, I will think about it. It would be embarrassing if I were to apply for asylum and it was rejected by India, just as the Swiss have done. I dont want this situation.

Bugti, the grandson of veteran Baloch leader Akbar Bugti, fled to Afghanistan shortly after his grandfather was killed in a 2006 military operation ordered by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf. He moved to Europe after the Pakistan government banned his Baloch Republican Party (BRP) and began pressuring Afghanistan to take action against him.

He dismissed suggestions that he and other Baloch leaders were disappointed that Prime Minister Narendra Modis mention of the situation in Balochistan in his 2016 Independence Day speech was not followed up with public support for the Baloch cause.

But yes, India should do more, it shouldnt stay silent as it is a world power. The Indian government should take a stand, he said.

Nobody was interested in the Baloch issue when Prime Minister Modi spoke about it. We are thankful for his positive policy and it was a big thing for us. We got support from members of the Indian public.

Bugti rejected suggestions that India had raised Balochistan because of Pakistan constantly raking up the Kashmir issue. These things are different, I dont agree that they can be linked. Pakistan raises the Kashmir issue as a tit for tat but the Indian government is not like that, he said.

Bugti said he had been informed by Swiss authorities that his asylum request had been rejected because Pakistan had accused him of involvement in terror activities. The documents I got also stated that a third country was opposed to me being granted asylum. This country was not named but I am sure it was China, he said.

Only Pakistan is saying Im linked to guerrilla groups and making these allegations. But I lead the BRP which is a political party working for the rights of the Baloch, he added. This was a very surprising and one-sided action (by the Swiss).

Pakistan, he said, had been embarrassed by a recent focussed campaign by Baloch groups in European cities such as London and Geneva to highlight rights abuses in Balochistan.

We had been doing this campaign for eight to 10 years but this time we changed our tactics and used huge hoardings and advertisements on buses and taxis. This angered the Pakistan government but in the UK and Switzerland they cant make us disappear, he said.

The Pakistan government is targeting a helpless person like me while the Pakistani courts free terrorists, he said. Asked if he was referring to Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed, he replied: Hafiz Saeed, Osama bin Laden. Where was bin Laden killed?

He added, But things are changing. See the strong position adopted by the Trump administration on the Taliban and al-Qaeda. They should change now.

Bugti, however, expressed concern that Switzerlands decision to link his asylum request to terrorism could have a snowballing effect on asylum requests by other BRP activists in Europe.

A week before the rejection of the asylum request, Bugtis brother-in-law, UK-based Mehran Marri, was stopped at Zurich airport and told there was an entry ban against him.

Earlier, BRP members would easily get asylum in countries such as France and Germany. But it may change now, Bugti said.

I plan to challenge the Swiss governments decision in the Swiss courts and prove that our Baloch movement is not linked to terrorism. We will fight this in the courts and, if necessary, take it to the European Court of Justice. This is what Im focused on now.

Rebel groups in Balochistan have waged a low-level insurgency since the 1960s, demanding more autonomy and a greater say in the exploitation of the provinces abundant natural resources, including gas and minerals. Balochistan is also central to the $46-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is centred round the provinces Gwadar port that was built with Chinese aid.

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The imam had barely made it atop the mosque pulpit to deliver the sermon when intense gunfire rang out and Ebid Salem Mansour knew exactly what was going on.

We knew that the mosque was under attack by (militants), he said Saturday, a day after the attack, giving a detailed account of the deadliest assault by Islamic extremists against civilians in Egypts modern history.

At least 305 people were killed in Fridays attack on a mosque filled with worshippers in the troubled region of northern Sinai, a grim milestone in Egypts brutal fight against increasingly emboldened militants.

Egyptian warplanes were in action on Saturday over Sinai, according to the military, targeting several vehicles in which some of the culprits of the attack were traveling. All passengers of the vehicles were killed, it added. It was impossible to independently verify the claim since the media is virtually banned from working in Sinai.

Witnesses speaking to The Associated Press in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia where some of the wounded were taken spoke of horrific scenes during the approximately 20 minutes it took the militants to kill and maim worshippers. They spoke of some jumping out of windows, a stampede in a corridor leading to the washrooms and of children screaming in horror. Some spoke of their narrow escape from a certain death, others of families that lost all or most of their male members.

Egyptians carry victims on stretchers following a gun and bombing attack on the Rawda mosque near the North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish on November 24, 2017. (AFP)

Mansour, a 38-year-old worker in a nearby salt factory, said he settled in Bir al-Abd, the small town where the attack took place, three years ago to escape the bloodshed and fighting elsewhere in northern Sinai. He suffered two gunshot wounds in the legs.

Everyone layed down on the floor and kept their heads down. If you raised your head you get shot, he said. The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning and then became more deliberate: Whoever they werent sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead.

The militants were shouting Allahu Akbar, or God is great, and the children were screaming, Mansour said.

I knew I was injured but I was in a situation that was much scarier than being wounded. I was only seconds away from a certain death, he said. As the shooting took place, many of the worshippers recited their final prayers, he added.

Fridays attack targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam. Islamic militants, including the local affiliate of the Islamic State group, consider Sufis heretics because of their less literal interpretations of the faith.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi vowed that the attack will not go unpunished and that Egypt would persevere with its war on terrorism. But he did not specify what new steps might be taken. On Saturday, he ordered that a mausoleum be built in memory of the victims of Fridays attack.

Relatives of the victims of the bomb and gun assault on the North Sinai Rawda mosque wait outside the Suez Canal University hospital in the eastern port city of Ismailia on November 25, 2017, where they were taken to receive treatment following the deadly attack the day before. (AFP)

The military and security forces have already been waging a tough campaign against militants in the towns, villages and desert mountains of Sinai, and Egypt has been in a state of emergency since April. Across the country, thousands have been arrested in a crackdown on suspected Islamists as well as against other dissenters and critics, raising concern about human rights violations.

Seeking to spread the violence, militants over the past year have carried out deadly bombings on churches in the capital of Cairo and other cities, killing dozens of Christians. The IS affiliate is also believed to be behind the 2016 downing of a Russian passenger jet that killed 226 people over Sinai.

Fridays assault was the first major militant attack on a Muslim congregation, and it eclipsed past attacks, even dating back to a previous Islamic militant insurgency in the 1990s.

The militants descended on the al-Rouda mosque in four off-road vehicles as hundreds worshipped inside. At least a dozen attackers charged in, opening fire randomly, the main cleric at the mosque, Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Fatah Zowraiq, said. He spoke to the AP by phone from a Nile Delta town where he was recuperating from bruises and scratches suffered in the attack.

The militants, according to one witness, stormed the mosque from several doors and as soon as they opened fire, many worshippers started jumping out of windows.

The small door that leads to the corridor for the wash rooms was about the only one where worshippers rushed to escape, said a 38-year-old government employee who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation. There was a stampede. I fell down and then bodies piled up on top of me. I was the only one alive underneath.

The shooting was heavy, insane and random, he recalled. These are not terrorists. These are not humans.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. But the IS group affiliate has targeted Sufis in the past.

View of the Rawda mosque, roughly 40 kilometres west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish, after a gun and bombing attack, on November 24, 2017. (AFP)

Last year, the militants beheaded a leading local Sufi religious figure, the blind sheikh Suleiman Abu Heraz, and posted photos of the killing online. Islamic State group propaganda often denounces Sufis. In the January edition of an IS online magazine, a figure purporting to be a high level official in the Sinai affiliate of the group vowed to target Sufis, accusing them of idolatry and heretical innovation in religion and warning that the group will not permit (their) presence in Sinai or Egypt.

Millions of Egyptians belong to Sufi orders, which hold sessions of chanting and poetry meant to draw the faithful closer to God. Sufis also hold shrines containing the tombs of holy men in particular reverence.

Islamic militants stepped up their campaign of violence in northern Sinai after the military ousted the elected but divisive Islamist Mohammed Morsi from power in 2013 and launched a fierce crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood group.

The result has been a long, grinding conflict centered on el-Arish and nearby villages and towns. The militants have been unable to control territory, but the military and security forces have also been unable to bring security, as the extremists continuously carry out surprise attacks, mostly targeting outposts and convoys.

The attacks have largely focused on military and police, killing hundreds, although exact numbers are unclear as journalists and independent investigators are banned from the area. The militants have also assassinated individuals the group considers to be spies for the government or religious heretics. Egypt has also faced attacks by militants in its Western Desert.
Fridays attack on a mosque in Egypts Sinai, which killed at least 235 people, is among the deadliest since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Here is a recap:

US in 2001: nearly 3,000 dead

The deadliest attacks in history take place in the United States on September 11, 2001.

Four passenger aircraft are diverted and three deliberately slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC. The fourth crashes in Pennsylvania.

The attacks are claimed by Al-Qaeda and leave around 3,000 people dead.

Iraq in 2007: 400 dead

On August 14, 2007 four suicide truck bombs explode in the villages of Al-Khataniyah and Al-Adnaniyah, which are mainly inhabited by members of the Yazidi community in Iraqs northern province of Nineveh.

The simultaneous attacks, blamed on Sunni Islamists, leave more than 400 dead.

Somalia in 2017: 358 dead

A truck bomb in a busy commercial district in northwestern Mogadishu leaves 358 dead in Somalia on October 14, 2017, in what is one of the deadliest ever attacks using vehicles as a weapon.

No one claims responsibility, but it is widely seen as being the work of the Shabaab, an insurgent Islamist group aligned with Al-Qaeda.

Iraq in 2016: 323 dead

On July 3, 2016 an explosives-packed minibus blows up, killing 323 people in a packed street in central Baghdad. The attack is claimed by the jihadist Islamic State group.

The enormous explosion, which sets fire to several buildings and single-storey houses, happens in Karrada, a mainly Shiite shopping area in the capital which is crowded before the celebrations of the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Egypt in 2015: 224 dead

On October 31, 2015 a Russian jet leaving Egypt crashes in the Sinai peninsula, leaving all 224 people on board dead in Russias worst air disaster. An Islamic State-linked group claims responsibility for bringing down the plane. Experts do not rule out the possibility of a bomb on board.

Indonesia in 2002: 202 dead

On October 12, 2002 attacks on a bar-restaurant and a discotheque on the island of Bali leave 202 dead, mainly tourists. The attack is carried out by a Jemaah Islamiyah commando linked to Al-Qaeda.
Egypt was hit by its deadliest ever militant attack when gunmen opened fire and set off explosives at a mosque in the northern Sinai Peninsula, killing more than 200 people.

Egypt has been battling an insurgency in the Sinai led by an affiliate of the Islamic State group that intensified after the militarys 2013 ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood from power. Hundreds have been killed in what has become a grinding stalemate in Sinai. The militants have expanded their attacks to other parts of Egypt, carrying out deadly bombings of churches to terrorize the Christian minority and deadly gunbattles with security forces.

A generation earlier in the 1990s, Egypt faced a campaign of violence by Islamic militants largely based in the south of the country. The militants attacked Christians and security forces and sought to undermine Egypts economy by striking tourists. It took years but the government was able to crush it with a heavy-handed crackdown that entrenched the long-term power of security agencies in the country. Some of the campaigns militant leaders, from Islamic Jihad and the Gamaa Islamiya, would later be prominent in al-Qaida.

Here is a look at some of the deadliest attacks seen in Egypt.

HATSEPSUTS TEMPLE

In November 1997, gunmen opened fire on tourists, killing 62 people, at the Temple of Hatshepsut in the southern city of Luxor, site of many of the countrys most dramatic and popular pharaonic monuments. It was the deadliest attack of the 1990s insurgency.

SINAI ATTACKS

In the mid-2000s, newly formed Sinai militant groups carried out a series of bombings against beach resorts. A suicide truck bomber hit a Hilton in Taba on the border with Israel in October 2004, and near simultaneous bombings hit two other Sinai resorts, killing a total of 34 people, mostly Egyptians and Israelis.

In July 2005, bombings hit multiple sites including a hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh, the biggest of Egypts Sinai resorts, killing 88 people. The following April, bombs detonated at several locations in Dahab, killing 23 people.

NEW YEARS CHURCH BOMBING

A bomb explodes at the al-Qadeeseen Coptic Christian Church, hitting worshippers as they leave a midnight Mass on New Years 2011, killing more than 20 people in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria. No suspects have ever been named and the crime is still unsolved.

METROJET FLIGHT 9268

A Russian Metrojet passenger airline crashes in Sinai after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh in October 2015, killing more than 220 people on board, mostly Russian tourists. The Sinai affiliate of the Islamic State group said it blew up the plane with a bomb smuggled on board, and Russia said the aircraft was likely downed by explosives.

ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANS

IS-linked militants have carried out multiple attacks on Egypts Christian minority. In December 2016, a bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypts main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo killed 30 people and wounded dozens during Sunday Mass.

In April 2017: Suicide bombers hit two churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta during services for Palm Sunday, killing at least 43 people and wounding dozens. The next month, masked militants killed 28 people when they opened fire on a bus packed with Coptic Christians, including children, heading to the remote monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor near the southern town Maghagha.

ATTACKS ON SECURITY FORCES

The IS affiliate has also succeeded in striking heavy and embarrassing blows on Egypts police and military. In July 2014, gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades attacked a post in Egypts western desert near the Libyan border, killing 21 soldiers. In Sinai only a few months later in October, the IS affiliate struck military checkpoints with surprise attacks that killed more than 30.

In July this year, gunmen and a suicide bomber attacked a military checkpoint in northern Sinai, killing 23 soldiers.
A municipal mayor in Mexicos violent eastern state of Veracruz was killed Friday, local authorities said, just four days after a mayor-elect was murdered in the same state.

Victor Manuel Espinoza -- mayor of Ixhuatlan de Madero, located some 270 kilometers (168 miles) northeast of Mexico City -- was killed with four others including his wife in the attack, the state prosecutors office said in a statement.

Authorities did not provide details concerning a possible motive for the attack, which occurred Friday night on a dirt road in a neighboring municipality near the states capital Xalapa.

The murders came days after a group of at least 30 armed men murdered Santana Cruz Bahena, mayor-elect of the municipality of Hidalgotitlan. That act was allegedly linked to a criminal gang that traffics stolen fuel.

Three more mayors were assassinated in other Mexican states last month, while nearly 50 have been killed since 2003, according to figures from the National Association of Mayors.

Violence in Veracruz has risen in 2017 compared to the year prior, with 1,382 murders documented from January to October -- a figure that already exceeds 2016s total 1,258 homicides.

The state government ascribes the rise in violence to power struggles between crime gangs involved in drug smuggling, illegal immigration from Central America and the theft of fuel from pipelines.

Around 190,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, when the government launched a military campaign on the drugs cartels. The numbers do not show how many of the victims were linked to crime groups.
At least five people, including a child, were killed and 19 others injured on Saturday in a suicide attack on security forces in the restive Balochistan province of Pakistan, police said.

The attackers targeted the convoy of security forces on the Sariab road in the provincial capital Quetta, they said.

The police confirmed that it was a suicide bomb attack on security forces convoy, the Geo News reported, adding five people were killed in the incident.

The target was the vehicle of the Frontier Corps commander, but he was not present in the vehicle when the bomb attack took place, a government official said.

Earlier on Saturday, Civil Hospital Quetta Spokesperson Wasim Baig said they had received four dead bodies while 19 persons, including a child, were injured in the bomb explosion.

The fifth person is believed to have died later at the hospital.

Some of the injured are still in critical condition as they were hit by shrapnels in the attack, Baig said.

The attack came a day after senior police official of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Ashraf Noor was killed in a suicide attack on his vehicle in the upscale Hayatabad neighbourhood of Peshawar.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Taliban militants and Baloch nationalists often target security forces in the area.

A senior Pakistani police officer and his three family members were killed by unidentified, motorcycle-borne militants in Balochistan on November 15.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Muhammad Illyas who was on his way to market when he was killed in a targeted attack along with his wife, son and five-year-old granddaughter.

A suspected suicide bomber killed Additional Inspector General Telecommunications Hamid Shakeel and three other police officers in a targeted attack in Quetta on November 9.

Balochistan has been rocked by a series of attacks which raised concerns about a growing militant presence, including those affiliated with Islamic State, which has claimed several bombings in the restive province.

The unrest has raised security concerns for projects in the $ 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link from western China to Pakistans southern Gwadar port.

At least six police commandos and a civilian were killed last month when an explosives-laden vehicle rammed into a security forces convoy on the Quetta-Sibi Highway.

In August this year, a massive suicide explosion, targeting Pakistan Army personnel in Quetta, left 15 people dead  including seven civilians  and injured at least 20 people.

In June this year, 14 people, including seven policemen, were killed and 21 others were injured in a suicide car bombing on Gulistan Road in Balochistan.

.
Pakistan cracked down on radical Islamist protestors in Islamabad and Rawalpindi on Saturday, calling in the military to restore law and order after violence broke out following an attempt by security forces to disperse the demonstrators.

Media reports quoted an interior ministry order, which authorised the deployment of sufficient military troops in Islamabad to control law and order in the city until further notice.

Earlier, the Islamabad police, with the help of Frontier Constabulary personnel and other law enforcement agencies, launched an operation against protesters after the last of a long series of deadlines lapsed on Saturday morning without response from the agitators.

Security forces fought running battles with stone-throwing activists of the ultra-religious Tehreek-e-Labbaik, but failed to dislodge the activists blocking roads into Islamabad.

The government also asked all news channels to suspend live broadcast as protests against a police operation earlier in the day in Islamabad spread to other cities. Social media networks including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were also blocked in various parts of the country.

At least two people were killed and over 200 were injured across Islamabad and Rawalpindi, with the number expected to rise.

Protests also broke out in Lahore and Karachi, as well as smaller towns.

A Pakistani police officer aims his gun towards the protesters next to a burning police vehicle during a clash in Islamabad on November 25, 2017. (AP)

It is feared that protests will continue on Sunday as well. Tehreek-e-Labbaik spokesperson Ejaz Ashrafi told the media over telephone that supporters of the movement were in their thousands. We will not leave. We will fight until the end, he said.

Pakistans interior minister Ahsan Iqbal claimed that the protestors had contacted India, and the government was investigating why they did it, without giving further details about his claim.

We can see that they have various resources at their disposal. They have fired teargas shells (at security forces), they also cut the fibre-optic cables of cameras monitoring their protest...They have inside information and resources that are being used against the state, he told DawnNews.

The protesters want the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid for altering the declaration of lawmakers with regard to Finality of the Prophethood  a change which the government has already reversed.

DawnNews reported that protesters tried to break into the residence of former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan in Faizabad. Hamids residence in Sialkot was also attacked.

(With inputs from agencies)
Pakistan has justified the release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, claiming that Islamabad was committed to the implementation of UNSC sanctions regime on terrorists.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder, who has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan yesterday.

He is a UN and US designated terrorist.

Indias Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Saeeds release confirmed once again the lack of seriousness by the Pakistan government in bringing to justice perpetrators of terrorism, including individuals and entities designated by the UN.

It also appears to be an attempt by the Pakistani system to mainstream proscribed terrorists. Pakistan has not changed its policy of shielding and supporting non-state actors and its true face is visible for all to see, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in New Delhi on Thursday.

Responding to the comments made by the MEA, Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan was committed to the implementation of UNSC 1267 sanctions regime and has taken several steps in this regard.

The (MEA) spokesperson took exception to self-serving insinuations, he said in statement issues late last night.

Faisal said that courts in Pakistan, pursuant to their constitutional duty, were determined to uphold rule of law and due process for all citizens of Pakistan.

Legal processes were anchored in rule of law, not dictates of politics and posturing, he said.

It is in the interest of all States to speak and act in a manner that is consistent with the imperatives of adhering to rule of law at the national and international levels, Faisal said.

He said that Pakistans resolve, actions and successes in the fight against terrorism, terrorist violence and terrorists are unmatched in the world.

Pakistan condemns and opposes all forms of terrorism by any individual or group, the FO spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif expressed deep anguish over alleged human rights violations in Kashmir and arrests of Kashmiri leaders, saying the intensified cordon and search operations are violative of the Kashmiris dignity and the sanctity of their families.

These operations are also designed to inflict collective punishment on the innocent and defenceless people, he said in a statement issued by the FO last night.

We will continue to steadfastly stand by them until the resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people, Asid said.

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The fire-brand clerics release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

Saeed was individually designated by the UN under the Security Council Resolution 1267 in December, 2008.
Harbans Lal Doll, who tried to smuggle 16 illegal migrants  mostly Iraqi nationals  into the United Kingdom in his van across the channel from France earlier this year, has been jailed this week for more than five years.

Slough-based Doll tried to smuggle the group of 16 people, comprising 14 Iraqi nationals (three families) and two women from Albania, the Home Office said, adding the group was later passed on to the French Police Aux Frontieres.

Britains Border Force officers posted at the UK inward tourist controls at the Channel Tunnel in Coquelles, France, stopped the hired van on February 12. They questioned the driver, Doll, 61, who was at the wheel. He said he had left the UK the previous day to go to Calais to collect some furniture and had stayed overnight before collecting the furniture that morning.

When officers asked to examine the load, they found the van three quarters full of beanbags and chairs with a double mattress stood upright part way inside the van. Hiding behind the mattress, the officers found the 16 people, including five minors.

Dave Smith of Border Force said: Doll was arrested and the investigation passed to Immigration Enforcement Criminal and Financial Investigation (CFI) officers. He was subsequently charged with assisting unlawful immigration into the UK.

Doll pleaded guilty on the first day of his trial at Canterbury Crown Court and was sentenced immediately to a jail term of five-and-a-half years.

David Fairclough of CFI said: Though Doll offered no explanation for his behaviour, the judge considered in his sentencing that the motivation was financial. Offences like this, where individuals take advantage of the desperation of others for personal gain, are among the worst that we deal with at CFI.

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The US on Saturday threatened Pakistan with repercussions for bilateral relations if Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, who was released from house arrest on Thursday midnight, was not immediately re-arrested and charged.

The United States strongly condemns the release of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba leader Hafiz Saeed from house arrest in Pakistan and calls for his immediate re-arrest and prosecution, the White House press secretarys office said in a statement.

Saeeds release, after Pakistans failure to prosecute or charge him, sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistans commitment to combating international terrorism and belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil.

If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistans global reputation.

Though the White House did not spell out the repercussions it could chose from among past suggestions and calls for either stripping Pakistan of its status as a non-NATO ally that come with certain military or financial benefits or declaring it a a state sponson of terrorism.

The WH statement marked a significant escalation in the USs impatience with Pakistan  a major non-Nato ally. Islamabad has been on notice from the Donald Trump administration for months for its failure to act decisively against terrorists operating from its soil.

The White House reminded Pakistan of that on Saturday. As President Donald J Trumps South Asia policy makes clear, the United States seeks a constructive relationship with Pakistan, but expects decisive action against militant and terrorist groups on Pakistani soil that are a threat to the region.

The release of Saeed is a step in the wrong direction, the statement said. The Pakistani government now has an opportunity to demonstrate its seriousness in confronting all forms of terrorism, without distinction, by arresting and charging Hafiz Saeed for his crimes.

Bilateral relations with Pakistan have been on a downward spiral for years, and repercussions for its continued inaction on counter-terrorism have take the form of cuts in aid and assistance tied to certain military cooperation and the rejection of its request for the subsidised sale of F-16 fighter jets.

There has been a growing demand in the US for tougher measures against Pakistan to force it to stop using terrorists as a foreign policy tool and drop its reluctance to act against outfits that use its soil to carry out attacks across its eastern and western borders.
The mosque where Fridays massacre unfolded in Egypts Sinai Peninsula had been widely associated with Sufi Muslims who have been attacked by the Islamic State group wherever the extremists operate.

A Bedouin tribal leader told AFP the Rawda mosque, some 40 kilometres west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish, was known as a Sufi mosque and contained a zawiya  a lodge used by the mystics for prayers and gatherings.

The Islamic State (IS) is the main suspect in the attack but has not yet claimed responsibility, so it cannot be said with certainty that the mosque was targeted because of its Sufi connections.

But IS has targeted Sufis in Egypt in the past. Last year, the jihadists kidnapped and beheaded an elderly Sufi leader, accusing him of practising witchcraft.

The groups weekly Nabaa newsletter then published an interview with the commander of its morality police in Sinai who said their first priority was to combat the manifestations of polytheism including Sufism.

Elsewhere IS has claimed attacks that have killed dozens of Sufis, most notably in Pakistan.

If the mosque was attacked because of its Sufi connections, the massacre would be in line with IS in Egypt increasingly focusing on civilian targets as it makes little headway in its Sinai insurgency.

Since December last year, it has killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings.

Jihadists such as IS bear an institutional hatred for Sufis in particular.

They adhere to a more extreme version of the puritan Salafism practised in Saudi Arabia which views Sufis as heretics.

They accuse them of polytheism  the greatest sin in Islam  for seeking the intercession of dead saints.

The Salafis also condemn what they call innovations  rites and prayers adopted by Sufis which the Prophet Mohammed himself never prescribed.

But in much of the Muslim world, Sufism has for centuries been accepted and practised by mainstream Muslims and Sunni Islams most important theologians.

The head of Al-Azhar, Egypts top Islamic authority, is a Sufi, as are many top clerics in the Muslim world.

They date their practices back to some of the prophets companions and the early generations of ascetics who shunned the increasingly worldly Islamic empire for prayer.

While some Sufis use music in their prayers, the more established and larger orders shun the practice.

They say they want to focus on achieving a state of purity  from which the term Sufism is believed to have been derived  to witness Gods presence in their lives.

Some mystical concepts espoused by their religious leaders have led to detractors over the centuries accusing them of pantheism and other heresies.

In recent times, as the mystics grew more influential and Arab governments embraced them for being non-political, some of their leaders have been criticised for becoming too worldly themselves.
By any yardstick, the terror attack on a mosque in Egypts Sinai province, where militants affiliated to both al Qaeda and Islamic State are active, was brazen and brutal.

What we know so far

Dozens of militants travelling in four-wheel drive vehicles bombed al-Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abd town, about 200 km northeast of the capital Cairo, and then opened fire on the worshippers when they tried to flee. The attackers blocked nearby roads by blowing up vehicles and also targeted ambulances and rescue workers who rushed to the mosque.

At least 235 people were killed and 120 injured, making it the deadliest attack of its kind in Egypts history.

Who was behind the attack

Though there has been no claim of responsibility, the finger of suspicion has been pointed at the Islamic State-Sinai Province, a local affiliate of the terror network led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

This group  earlier known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis before it pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014  has claimed dozens of attacks, including the bombings of churches in Cairo and the downing of a MetroJet flight in 2015 that killed 224 people, most of them Russian tourists.

The Jund al-Islam, another group in the Sinai that is believed to have links with al-Qaeda and is opposed to the Islamic State, has issued a statement of innocence, saying it had no role in the attack on the mosque.

One reason for the attack being blamed on the Islamic State-Sinai Province is the target  al-Rawdah mosque was frequented by adherents of the more tolerant Sufi branch of Islam, whom the Islamic State describe as infidels and heretics who practice idolatry because of their custom of praying at shrines.

The Islamic State has targeted Sufis in several countries in an area ranging from the Middle East to Pakistan, where 83 people were killed in an attack on a Sufi shrine in Sindh province on February 16.

While Islamic State-affiliated groups in several other countries such as Libya and Algeria have suffered reverses in recent months, the group in the Sinai has retained its ability to strike almost at will largely because of the Egyptian governments lack of control over the thinly populated peninsula that borders the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Why have terrorists become stronger in the Sinai peninsula?

The chaos that followed the Arab Spring and the ouster of Egypts first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, by the military in 2013 emboldened the Islamic extremists operating in the Sinai region. The Ansar Beit al-Maqdis was formed in the aftermath of the Arab Spring in 2011.

In 2014, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi declared an emergency in the Sinai after 33 soldiers were killed in a suicide attack and described the area as a nesting ground for terrorism and terrorists.

Options for the Egypt government

Shortly after President Sisi pledged to respond with utmost force in a televised address, combat jets targeted several locations in the region where the mosque is located.

But Egypts scorched earth strategy to go after militants and terrorists in the Sinai has been criticised by politicians and experts, who contend it leads to more violence. However, given the limited presence of the security forces and the government in the region, the presidents options are limited.

But Sisi received support from US President Donald Trump, who said on Saturday the world community cannot tolerate "barbaric terrorist" groups when he called the Egyptian president to offer condolences.

The international community, Trump said, must strengthen its efforts to defeat terrorism and extremism in all its forms.
A Monumental Racket: Pat Carty is granted an audience with rock royalty

No surprises that the hall is absolutely heaving given the social media roaring and shouting thats being going on all week. Only three days to go! QOTSA Day is nearly here!, and the like. The standing crowd are so tightly packed that when it all kicks off later on, and serious moshing breaks out, the bouncers cant get next or near the centre of the maelstrom. The reason for all this freakery, fawning and flummery is the fabulous noise made by Queens Of The Stone Age. Over a marvellous series of albums, from the chug of the 1998 debut that Josh Homme began soon after the demise of Kyuss, to the Mark Ronson assisted glam stomp of this years Villains, they have emerged as the premiere hard rock band. Some might say that title belongs with their associates Foo Fighters, but the Queens just make better records.

It is a monumental racket. After the opening stab at The Skatt Brothers creepy disco, by way of Grand Theft Auto, hit Walk The Night, and the brilliant If I Had A Tail, we get the stoner Status Quoisms of Monsters In The Parasol. So far so good, but then things go up a notch. My God Is The Sun pummels like a heavy weight, the Nuremberg rally lights blinding behind various guitar players throwing shapes like that Enrich Keckel painting Bowie and Iggy Pop nicked off. Theres an extended, ominous intro to Feet Dont Fail Me before the beat drops like a piano hitting concrete, heads are banging like its Bruxellles basement.

Its the last night of our tour. We couldnt think of a better city to end it in then here, Homme offers, but the flattery isnt necessary, the whole place is already in his pocket. The glam barn dance of The Way You Used To Do utilises their lighting to fine effect. Dotted across the stage are what look like eight feet high skinny neon safety bollards, the kind you might run over when youre making a balls of parking the car. Throughout the show theyll turn a variety of different colours, like those pound shop rings that claim to be able to read your emotions. The band gets a lot mileage out of either leaning against or kicking the shit out of them. Theres no big video screen, which means the eye is only drawn more to these simple but brilliant props.

Drummer Jon Theodore takes out every bit of aggression he ever had on his poor kit during You Think I Aint Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire, and No One Knows  the band even get nervously out of his way and let him solo for a while so he can feel better. At this point, even the young one walking around selling beer is dancing. The thrilling gear change at the end of The Evil Has Landed - Here We Come, Get Out Of The Way! - gives way to I Sat By The Ocean, before the set morphs into some sort of East German industrial disco for a coruscating Smooth Sailing. Homme drops the ball very slightly with a damp hippy speech about how we dont work for each other and we should let go and break out of our cages, blah, blah, before redeeming himself by hammering into Domesticated Animals, followed by an awesome Make It With Chu complete with extended bluesy guitar wiggery. I Appear Missing is all Jack White-style Digitech whammy guitar, and Villains Of Circumstance slow things down a bit, giving us a chance to catch our breath, before everyone is trashing around to Little Sister. Sick, Sick, Sick is like a mudslide of noise, cascading into Go With The Flow which furiously brings the main part of the show to a close.

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We dont get much time to towel ourselves down before theyre back with Misfit Love, from 2007s Era Vulgaris, which is a bit of a surprise, as it hasnt seen much service on this tour. Its motorik pulse, combined with almost Joy Division drums, is highly effective though, Whats the hell is this? my mate Danny asks, And why havent I heard it before? Homme gives out a story about the Irish fan and the cheeseburger  Im told later that hes related this tale before, but if it aint broke - before they cash out with Head Like A Haunted House and A Song For The Dead.

My ears are ringing like a sex scandal hotline in the bar afterwards, which is all you should need to know. Any fears that I might have had that they wouldnt live up to the brilliance of their last couple of records, Like Clockwork and Villains, prove totally unfounded, is it too late to update those gig of the year lists?
The oil industry found more hopeful signs as crude inventories fell, prices rose and the rig count resumed its climb ahead of OPEC's meeting later this week.

OPEC and its allies are considering extending their output cuts through next year as oil markets seem to be making progress in draining the oil glut that has lingered for more than three years. In the United States, crude inventories fell by nearly 2 million barrels as oil exports picked up and refineries churned oil into gasoline for the busy holiday driving season.
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Devon Ackerlund arrived at Target before sunrise, expecting the cutthroat crowds of Black Friday lore.

The Houston hospital worker finished his overnight shift and entered the store just after it opened, seeking a holiday doorbuster for the first time in his life. He had no competition as he located the display of Google Home Minis and dropped six small boxes into a big red cart.

"This is great," he said. "I thought it would be gone."

More than ever, this year's Black Friday encapsulated trends that have reshaped the retail industry at a time when convenience is king and promotions never end. Thanksgiving Day store openings and online sales again eroded foot traffic on the storied consumer holiday, which is expected to set an e-commerce record this year.

Adobe Digital Insights forecasted online sales to hit $5 billion Friday, up about 18 percent from 2016. And Cyber Monday, once Black Friday's little-known sibling, is expected to be the largest online shopping day ever, with $6.6 billion in sales.

"Those two are really converging this year, with many consumers doing their shopping on Cyber Monday and Black Friday or even earlier," said Natalie Kotlyar, consumer business leader for BDO.

CYBER MONDAY: The best Cyber Monday travel deals this Thanksgiving season

The unstoppable online migration had challenged retailers to compete with rock-bottom prices and perks like free shipping, which an increasing number of consumers now expect as Amazon and other e-commerce giants offer near-instant gratification.

Analysts again expect a season of heavy promotions and logistics battles to speed orders to the doorstep.

That poses a particular challenge for malls, which have for years been losing foot traffic alongside their department stores tenants.

Even the Houston Galleria, a high-performing shopping center, wasn't packed with shoppers Friday morning.

In-store pickup

Already, consumers have spent more than $30 billion online this month, nearly 18 percent more than last year. Both Amazon and Walmart, locked in a price war, began rolling out deals weeks ago before offering some of their lowest prices during the Black Friday weekend.

Technology research firm GBH Insights estimated that Amazon, the retail industry's fiercest online competitor, might have grabbed as much as 50 percent of Black Friday sales. The company's stock soared 2.6 percent Friday to $1,186.

More traditional retailers, though, have found success with an option that e-commerce retailers don't offer: in-store pickup. At Target, much of the store's Black Friday activity took place behind the scenes as employees scrambled to bag hundreds of online orders, a popular option that enabled the store to beat its Thanksgiving forecasts even before it opened that day, said store manager Cameron Dennington.

"We've done more business in here this year, but we've had less foot traffic with the higher demand for order pickup," he said.

Charlie O'Shea, lead retail analyst for Moody's Investors Service, spent much of Thursday and Friday assessing the crowds at several malls and shopping centers in the Pennsylvania suburbs where he lives. All of the usual suspects, including Best Buy, Toys R Us and Kohls, were packed for much of the day, he said.

The pickup counters for online orders were just as busy, he noted, a trend retailers hope will encourage more crossover between digital and physical purchases.

RETAIL: The era of holiday deals is dead, and so is Black Friday

"Those areas are very active in the stores I've been in," he said. "That tells me that brick-and-mortar stores are leveraging that asset."

Traditionalists and thrill-seekers, however, still opted to browse in-store on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, long considered the official start of the holiday shopping season.

Brittany Williams, in search of the Nintendo Switch gaming system, was first in a short line when Target opened at 6 a.m. She arrived at the checkout counter an hour later with a heavy cart filled with electronics, clothes and a $10 Crockpot she couldn't pass up.

She remembers the days, years ago, when she waited for hours in the dark of night to snag the doorbusters. It was a tradition she shared with her mom, who died when she was a teenager.

"I've tried to keep it alive since then," she said.

Patricia Ybarra, 63, visited Toys R Us, a store in need of some holiday cheer. The company filed for bankruptcy protection to restructure more than $5 billion in debt.

Ybarra hadn't visited the iconic toy store in 25 years. But on Friday, when a friend asked her to join in on Black Friday shopping, she wholeheartedly agreed.

"I feel like a kid in a candy store," she said.

The Best Buy on Richmond Avenue grew steadily more crowded as shoppers swarmed around high-tech televisions with brilliant displays, long a Black Friday draw.

"I always see a lot of TVs coming out of the stores," O'Shea said. "How many TVs can you fit in a shopping cart?"

RETAIL: Amazon's Prime Day proves to be its biggest shopping day ever

Nati Hunde stood in a short line at the checkout counter with a stack of three deeply discounted Lenovo laptops. He saves his big-ticket purchases for Black Friday every year.

"That's the only way to save money," he said.

It used to be a much bigger time commitment, he said. He would stand in line for hours only to battle the crowds inside. But this year, he only had to wait five minutes.

Seeing a pattern of decline

Mitzi Mellenthin, a regular Black Friday shopper, started at the Galleria at 6:30 a.m. She knew exactly what she wanted: The 2,194 piece Lego set of the Creator Palace Cinema that's going out of stock.

Over the years, she said, Black Fridays have thinned, a pattern she attributes to online sales and the Thanksgiving rush. No matter how good the Thursday night deals may be, however, you won't find her out shopping that day.

"I just don't think it's right," she said. "You should be with family."

At Target, though, more shoppers lined up on Thursday evening than on Friday morning. Store manager Dennington said about 300 people waited for the store to open at 6 p.m. for a six-hour rush to grab storage goods, cosmetics and stationery for the holiday season.

Ackerlund, after finding the Google Home Minis, scoured the sale flyer, pleased to complete his Black Friday shopping in peace. He had already bought a Christmas tree at Walmart that morning, which he said was also near-empty when he arrived.

"I really thought there would be more people," he said.
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Monday

Coal-related layoffs

The state's biggest power company, Vistra Energy, formally said it was moving ahead with layoffs of more than 800 workers after Texas' electric grid operator gave approval for the shutdown of three coal-fired power plants and an associated coal mine.

Fed chair plans departure

Janet Yellen submitted her resignation from the Federal Reserve board to President Donald Trump, announcing that she would leave when her successor is sworn in as Fed chairman.

Cloud service for spies

Amazon's cloud storage unit announced that it was releasing a new service called the Amazon Web Services Secret Region, a cloud storage service designed to handle classified information for U.S. spy agencies.

Uber goes car shopping

Uber said it plans to buy up to 24,000 self-driving cars from Volvo, a purchase that marks a significant departure from Uber's exiting business model in which private car owners make up the company's fleet.

Tuesday

Goodbye to 'net neutrality'

Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, moved to scrap rules around open internet access. His plan would allow giant cable and telecom companies to throttle broadband speeds and favor their own services if they wish. He was following through on a pledge to try to repeal "net neutrality" regulations enacted under the Obama administration.

Huge data breach at Uber

Uber disclosed that it was the victim of a data breach in October 2016 that affected 57 million driver and rider accounts and that it fired its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, for keeping the breach a secret for more than a year.

No NAFTA breakthroughs

The fifth round of talks among the United States, Mexico and Canada over the North American Free Trade Agreement drew to a close with negotiators still at odds over the pact's future.

Wednesday

A pledge to cut methane

Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and more of the world's largest energy companies said they will reduce their methane emissions. The companies said they were joining to address climate change so they can continue to provide more efficient natural gas power to the world. However, they're not adopting any specific numeric goals to reduce methane emissions. Instead, they will follow what they call "guiding principles."

Whitman to step down

Hewlett Packard Enterprise said CEO Meg Whitman, 61, would be retiring in February, six years after joining its corporate predecessor and leading a turnaround effort that split the Silicon Valley icon in two. She will be succeeded by Antonio Neri, 50, Hewlett Packard Enterprise's president.

Shut out of parks?

A group of state attorneys general urged the National Park Service to scrap its proposal to more than double the entrance fees at 17 popular national parks. The top government lawyers from 10 states and the District of Columbia sent a letter saying the increase could put access to the parks out of reach for many.

Thursday

Surprises at the stores

As shoppers hit the stores on Thanksgiving, they were finding some surprises: toys and televisions at J.C. Penney and Barbies at Best Buy. Retailers are looking beyond economic data and mapping out ways to pick up sales from other retailers as Amazon expands its reach.

Friday

Crude gains altitude

Oil briefly surpassed $59 a barrel in New York for the first time in two years as OPEC and Russia were said to have crafted the outline of a deal to extend their oil production cuts. An analyst said the temporary shutdown of the Keystone pipeline contributed to the price rise.

Amazon workers strike

Workers at a half-dozen Amazon distribution centers in Germany and one in Italy walked off the job in a protest timed to coincide with Black Friday to demand better wages from the American online giant. In Germany, ver.di union spokesman Thomas Voss said some 2,500 workers were on strike at Amazon facilities in Bad Hersfeld, Leipzig, Rheinberg, Werne, Graben and Koblenz. In a warehouse near Piacenza, in northern Italy, some workers walked off the job to demand ''dignified salaries."

A day of rest in Poland

Poland's lawmakers approved a law that will phase out Sunday shopping by 2020 despite criticism that it may lead to the loss of thousands of jobs. Trade unions proposed the plan so shop and trade workers can spend more time with their families.

From staff and wire reports

MONDAY

The Commerce Department releases new-home sales for October.

TUESDAY

Standard & Poor's releases its S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices for September.

The Conference Board releases the Consumer Confidence Index for November.

WEDNESDAY

The Commerce Department releases third-quarter gross domestic product data.

The National Association of Realtors releases its pending home sales index for October.

The Fed releases its Beige Book.

THURSDAY

The Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims,
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Northwestern Mutual fast-tracked its plans for a downtown office after Hurricane Harvey disrupted operations at its main Houston office near the Galleria.

The Milwaukee-based financial services firm has moved into the 31st floor of the Kinder Morgan building at 1001 Louisiana. The new office, totaling nearly 4,200 square feet, establishes a base for serving clients in the downtown and Texas Medical Center areas. It also provides overflow offices for financial advisers at One Riverway, which is operational but still being restored.
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Many big decisions need to be made during the holidays, from gift selections to menu creations. You are on your own with those issues, but we can offer some help when it comes to selecting TV programming. This year's lineup of shows includes traditional offerings like "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "It's a Wonderful Life," but also will feature a new take on an old favorite with a live presentation of "A Christmas Story" on Fox.

Ever since the 1983 film, based on the novel by Jean Shepherd, showed us all the dangers of owning a Red Ryder BB gun, it has aired in reruns every Christmas. "A Christmas Story Live!," scheduled to be broadcast at 6 p.m. Dec. 17 on Fox, is inspired by the film and the Tony-winning Broadway production.

Executive producer Marc Platt made the leap from making musical films ("La La Land") and musicals on Broadway ("Wicked") to his first taste of live television with "Grease: Live." He's certain "A Christmas Story" has been so popular because it broke the mold for traditional holiday productions.

"For years, our Christmas movies were sentimental, and they were sort of cozy and warm, and here came this movie that wasn't that. It was subversive and funny and sort of recognized all the family experiences each one of us have," Platt says. "We could relate to it. And so in taking it from the stage to the live television event, we're going to first and foremost deliver the humor and the comedy of the movie as it's represented on stage.

" 'A Christmas Story' is going to be a Christmas family event. We will wink with the audience. We will play tricks with you on how we accomplish it. And you will always know that you are in a film because it will be very cinematic. But we'll always pull back and go, oh, my gosh. This is actually happening live before our eyes."

The live version of "A Christmas Story" is just one offering on the holiday viewing menu. It's impossible to list them all but here are a few. Check TV listings for updated times:

"CMA Country Christmas," 7 p.m. Monday, ABC: Reba McEntire hosts the eighth annual event from Nashville's Grand Ole Opry House.

"Angry Angel," 9 p.m. Monday, Freeform: A young woman (Brenda Song) has been turned into an angel but is stuck on Earth.

"A Very Pentatonix Christmas," 9 p.m. Monday, NBC: Jennifer Hudson and Jay Leno are the special guests.

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," 7 p.m. Tuesday, CBS: Burl Ives narrates the animated tale based on the popular song of the same name by Johnny Marks.

"Victoria's Secret Fashion Show," 9 p.m. Tuesday, CBS: Supermodels hit the runway in lingerie.

"Christmas in Rockefeller Center," 7 p.m. Wednesday, NBC: The evening includes performances by Brett Eldridge, Jennifer Nettles, Leslie Odom Jr., Pentatonix, Gwen Stefani and The Tenors.

"Bruno Mars Special," 9 p.m. Wednesday, CBS.

"A Charlie Brown Christmas," 7 p.m. Thursday, ABC: The digitally remastered 1965 special shows Charlie Brown complaining about the materialism he sees everywhere during the Christmas season.

"Eloise at Christmastime," 7:30 a.m. Friday, Freeform: Eloise (Sofia Vassilieva) is warned not to interfere as the Plaza Hotel prepares for a romantic Christmas Eve wedding.

"Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas," 2 p.m. Friday, Freeform: Jack Skellington becomes obsessed with bringing Christmas under his control.

"National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," 7:05 p.m. Friday, Freeform: The Griswold family looks to have the most fun-filled old-fashioned family Christmas ever.

"Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas," 9:10 p.m. Saturday, Freeform: Jim Carrey stars as the title character who tries to ruin Christmas for all the Whos of Whoville.

"The Polar Express," 11:50 p.m. Saturday, Freeform: Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis reunite for the tale of a young boy and the magical train he boards to the North Pole.

"The Great Christmas Light Fight," 7 p.m. Dec. 4, ABC: This is the fifth season of the competition show that looks at the most spectacular and over-the-top Christmas displays in America.

"Shrek the Halls," 7 p.m. Dec. 7, ABC: Shrek doesn't have the holiday spirit, but for the sake of Fiona and the kids, he tries to get into the spirit of things as only an ogre can.

"Ready Jet Go!: Holidays in Boxwood Terrace," Dec. 11 (check local listings for time), PBS: Jet is excited when his idea for the annual Boxwood Terrace Christmas Pageant is accepted.

"Disney Prep & Landing," 7:30 p.m. Dec. 14, ABC: An elf named Wayne is upset when he doesn't receive an expected promotion to be the Director of Naughty List Intelligence.

"I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown," 7 p.m. Dec. 16, ABC: Rerun, the younger brother of Linus and Lucy, gets Snoopy to invite his canine brother, Spike, for a visit.

"Christmas With the Kranks," 11:55 p.m. Dec. 16, Freeform: A decision to skip Christmas changes when a couple's daughter decides at the last minute to come home for the holiday. Tim Allen stars.

"The Sound of Music," 6 p.m. Dec. 17, ABC: The Oscar-winning classic features the songs "Edelweiss," "My Favorite Things" and "Climb Every Mountain." Julie Andrews stars.

"Decorating Disney: Holiday Magic," 8 p.m. Dec. 18, Freeform: An inside look at how holiday magic is created throughout Disney Destinations.

"Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer," 7 a.m. Dec. 21, Freeform: Holiday special loosely based on the hit song.

"Peppa Pig: Father Christmas," 12:30 p.m. Dec. 22, Nickelodeon: Peppa and the rest of her playgroup are very excited to put on a big Christmas show.

"I Love Lucy Christmas Special," 7 p.m. Dec. 22, CBS: The new one-hour special features two back-to-back colorized episodes of the classic series: "The Christmas Episode" and "The Fashion Show."

"The Dick Van Dyke Show: Now in Living Color!," 8 p.m. Dec. 22, CBS: The two newly colorized back-to-back episodes were selected by series creator Carl Reiner. They include "My Blonde-Haired Brunette" and "October Eve."

"Christmas Getaway," 8 p.m. Dec. 23, Hallmark Channel: Travel writer finds herself double booked for the holidays.

"A Christmas Story," midnight Dec. 24, TCM: The holiday film will run continuously until 8 p.m. Dec. 25.

"It's a Wonderful Life," 7 p.m. Dec. 24, NBC: The 1946 Frank Capra film stars Jimmy Stewart.

"Disney Parks Magical Christmas Celebration," 9 a.m. Dec. 25, ABC: Hosts Julianne Hough and Nick Lachey take viewers on ride down Main Street, U.S.A. and beyond.

"Happy New Year, Charlie Brown," 7 p.m. Dec. 26, ABC: The Peanuts gang is ringing in 1986, and Marcie and Peppermint Patty are throwing a big New Year's Eve bash.
PRAIRIE VIEW  Driving to Cameron a couple of weeks ago, the little town southeast of Waco that had the audacity - with native-son Drayton McLane's encouragement - to make a bid for Amazon's second headquarters, I was mulling over my decades-old Cameron memories. As I've mentioned before in this space, Cameron was one of the little Central Texas towns I got to know long ago as my dad's summer helper on his potato-chip route.

The Milam County seat was the largest of the little towns on our Tuesday run. We called on Matula's Grocery downtown, a couple of cafes, several beer joints, neighborhood grocery stores and Tex Miller's, the best hamburger stand in all of Central Texas. (Only Bob's Big Boy Burger in Killeen came close.)

Amazingly, the hole-in-the-wall hamburger mecca is still in business. George "Tex" Miller has been gone for many years and the nondescript, old building (with no sign) is a bit dingier, but the burgers are as good as ever. In business 80 years, current owner Sandy Terry told me. The secret, she says, is the new grill - installed in 1956.

Before heading over to Rosebud after lunch to peddle our Creamer's Clover-Fresh Potato Chips, we had several other stops to make, including a small grocery store in Cameron's African-American neighborhood. The husband-and-wife owners lived in a house beside the store and had several children, including a little boy about my age who was a piano prodigy. More than once, his proud mother invited us into the house to listen to him play.

His name eventually faded away, but I occasionally wondered whether he had become a Fats Domino, a Duke Ellington, maybe a concert pianist touring the world.

"That's Danny Kelley," Milam County Judge Dave Barkemeyer told me. "He comes back home every now and then to play for special occasions."

I met Danny R. Kelley a few days ago - or re-met him, I should say - in his office at Prairie View A&M University, where for the past 13 years he's been dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. We laughed when we shook hands outside his office. Decades had passed - lives had been lived - but we shared a strange feeling we always had known each other.

At one end of his office I noticed a large desk groaning with papers and notes and manila folders, the arcana of a university administrator's life. Against the opposite wall was a Steinway upright, the piano he now plays after Hurricane Harvey destroyed the venerable instrument he's played for years at home in Spring.

Perfect pitch

His piano passion revealed itself when he was about two, he told me. Weekdays at noon his mother would switch on the radio in the store to listen to the Stamps Quartet, a Dallas-based gospel group whose peppy theme song on KRLD set little Danny in motion. He'd toddle over to a shelf, shove aside the canned goods and pretend to play along.

He had perfect pitch, he said, and from the beginning could tease out on a piano any tune he happened to hear. "It's still hard for me to fathom," he said. "I guess God put me here to be a musician."

A traveling piano salesman heard about the gifted youngster and stopped by the Kelley house with a piano on his truck. Kelley's father bought it for $125.

"My parents knew nothing about pianos," Kelley said. "They didn't realize this one had a short keyboard, 66 keys. I wish they had kept that piano. It would be a collector's item."

Hazel Cox, the wife of the band director at Cameron's C.H. Yoe High School - the white school in those days - arranged with the youngster's parents to give him free lessons. He studied with Cox from age five until he was in high school.

'Giving him a future'

He played the organ at Cameron's Bethel AME Church every Sunday and recalls a church meeting when members had to decide whether they could afford the new instrument a Dallas company had installed on a trial basis.

Sure, it would be nice to have the organ, a practical-thinking woman pointed out, "but once Danny graduates from high school, we don't have anyone who can play it, and we'll still be paying for it.'"

"And I never will forget," Kelley said, "one of the ladies there who was a leader of the church, said, 'We shouldn't worry about that; we're giving him a future.' I hardly ever play an organ that I do not think about that statement." (These days he's the organist at St. Frances Episcopal Church in Piney Point Village.)

Kelley, who gave annual recitals to help the church pay off the organ, went on to Prairie View, as did his four siblings. To nurture the gifted artist in their midst, the university offered to pay tuition, room and board at any school in the country where he could study with the teacher of his choice. He studied privately with Albert Hirsh, artist-in-residence at the University of Houston, and then was accepted at the Peabody Conservatory of Music of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. His tutor was the piano virtuoso Leon Fleisher, whose musical lineage stretches back to Beethoven.

"He took very, very few students," Kelley said, "but he was everything you can imagine as a teacher. He's now 89, and whenever he comes to Texas I make sure I go see him."

'Best days of my life'

Kelley got his master's degree and doctorate from Johns Hopkins and has performed in Europe, at Carnegie Hall, at the Kennedy Center and with the Houston Symphony. He came back to Prairie View as an associate professor in 1978. These days he's preparing for an April recital at Steinway Hall in New York City.

We talked about Creamer's Potato Chips - "the best," he recalled (and I agree). We talked about his hometown, where he gave his first recital at age six, before a mixed audience; where, thanks to his paper route, he knew everybody in town, white and black; where his mother was the first African-American city councilmember.

"I have vivid, almost photographic memories of growing up in Cameron," he said. "Those were some of the best days of my life. I had a great childhood, a great mom and dad."

Impromptu audiences

My dad and I weren't the only impromptu audience. "My mom was always trying to put me on stage," Kelley said.

His wife Janice, a physician, does the same thing, he said, laughing. "I ask her sometimes, 'How would you feel if every time we had company I had you take their blood pressure?'"

We both laughed. It was obvious Kelley wasn't all that perturbed.

It was a good afternoon, good to discover that two of Cameron's very best, Danny Kelley and Tex Miller's, are still going strong. I'm very happy to make their re-acquaintance.
In the 2008 film "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) takes a Hawaiian vacation to get over his recent breakup. He finds himself sobbing on his balcony, and the front desk calls: "We're getting complaints about a woman crying hysterically." He deflected attention by blaming it on the floor above him, only to realize he was on the top floor.

Being a crier like Peter may sound embarrassing, but science shows that he was getting healthy, on several levels.

Research indicates that crying activates the parasympathetic nervous system, or your "rest and digest" state. That's also equivalent to a meditation response to stress and the opposite of your alert, fight-or-flight state - good for the cardiovascular system and the spirit.

Tears that express emotion contain beneficial chemicals and help eliminate toxins from your body.

Crying also stimulates release of the love hormone oxytocin, a chemical associated with comforting and happiness.

It is thought that crying releases opioids in the brain, which helps reduce pain. In short, crying is an effective form of self-soothing. ("There, there, things will be OK.")

In the blink of an eye, you'll be transferring oxygen, moisture, nutrients and antibodies that fight infection to your cornea.

It helps rally support from those around you when you're down.

New hope for folks suffering with eczema

Eczema - also called atopic dermatitis, or AD) can cause dry skin - itchiness and scaly rashes that can become infected. It can make it hard to sleep, cause emotional distress, social awkwardness or embarrassment. Often, strangers are cruel, fearing that the skin condition is contagious. It isn't.

Treatment breakthroughs: There are two new medications that can be very effective for some people. According to information coming from the recent American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Annual Scientific Meeting:

Crisaborole, the first new anti-inflammatory medication approved for treatment of mild to moderate AD in over 15 years, is an ointment that reduces itching, redness and swelling. It's for anyone age 2 or older. A PDE-4 (phosphodiesterase 4) inhibitor, it tamps down immune system reactions that trigger inflammation and stimulates changes in the cells on the outer layer of skin.

Dupilumab is an injectable monoclonal antibody for folks 18 and older for whom other medications aren't suitable or don't work. It blocks interleukins 4 and 13, two cytokines that are associated with allergic inflammation.

Ask your doc if either of these is right for you. We hope so, because it would be great to scratch eczema off your list of difficult-to-treat irritations and conditions.

Q: I was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago, and we've recently moved. Even though I have a new primary care doc, I don't feel she understands all of my medical history. What should I do?

Lauren E., Hyde Park, New York

A: There are 15.5 million cancer survivors in America, and around 33 percent of office visits for cancer are handled by primary care physicians. Unfortunately, research shows they're often unprepared to do the job.

A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine looked at 12 advanced primary care practices selected from a national registry of workforce innovators. One would think that this group would be better than average in paying attention to patient needs. However, the Rutgers University researchers found that none of the practices had what's known as a "comprehensive survivorship care program." The program should include checking for cancer reoccurrence (with scans, blood tests and exams), monitoring long-term effects of radiation and chemotherapy treatment (such as atherosclerosis, joint or bone issues, organ damage, impact on the endocrine system and hormones, cognitive changes, neuropathy, fatigue) and assessing psychological well-being.

There is a push to improve survivors' follow-up care, but it's essential that you take charge.

First step: Have medical records made accessible to your new primary care doctor (most electronic medical records are shareable if you allow them to be), and get a digital and a hard copy for yourself. Include information from your cancer diagnosis, surgery, treatment and post-treatment follow-up with your oncologist and oncological surgeon, plus your records from your former primary care doctor.

Second step: Contact a local cancer treatment center. Ask about scheduling a follow-up visit with an oncologist and inquire about cancer rehabilitation services they offer. If you make an appointment, have your records transferred there, too.

Third step: Download info from the American Society of Clinical Oncology at ASCO.org; search for "Survivorship Patient & Family Resources." They offer ASCO Cancer Treatment Summaries and Survivorship Care Plans - forms for patients and doctors to complete together. Bring these to your new primary care doctor, and set up your own survivorship care program.
Hurricane Harvey is reshaping congressional campaigns in Houston.

When the flood waters socked the Meyerland area, it also washed out the home of former hospital CEO David Balat, a Republican, who was hoping to unseat fellow Republican and current U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston.

"Like so many people, we're being forced to relocate because of Hurricane Harvey," Balat said. "We're having to start over."

Balat is now in the market for a new home, and he's had to revise his political plans. While he's still running for Congress, Balat has amended his campaign paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and announced he is instead running for a different congressional district. Instead of Culberson's 7th District - a mostly west Houston and western Harris County seat - Balat is now among a growing list of GOP candidates hoping to replace Rep. Ted Poe, R-Atascocita, in the 2nd District.

Poe announced earlier this month that after six terms in Congress, he will not seek re-election in 2018. That district also includes parts of west Houston but ropes around the northern edges of Harris County and up into Humble and Atascocita. Balat said he's worked for hospitals in Spring and Humble, among other places, so he has a good feel for the district.

Strengthened resolve

There was a point after his home was destroyed that Balat said his campaign team came to him and wondered if he would continue to run for Congress, given that his family lost cars and their home of the past five years.

But Balat, who identifies himself as a conservative Republican businessman, said what happened only strengthened his resolve to run. He said he is more determined than ever to get to Congress and dig into how the Army Corps of Engineers handled the reservoir and the water releases that upended so many lives.

His prior emphasis on fiscal conservatism continues.

"My message is the same now as it was before," Balat said in a note to supporters last week. "Republicans have complete control of all three branches of government, yet Congress continues to increase the debt."

Balat's decision to shift to the Poe district improves his chances of winning a seat in Congress by not having to unseat an incumbent. In 2016, 97 percent of all U.S. House incumbents won re-election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Balat's decision also spares Culberson a potentially costly primary battle when he's also facing a spirited challenge from Democrats in one of the most competitive House races in Texas. Culberson is coming off a 2016 re-election in which he won his primary with just 57 percent of the vote over two GOP challengers.

Balat already had raised more than $155,000, including an $85,000 loan he gave his campaign. Now that money helps Balat start with a slight advantage over other GOP rivals in the race to replace Poe.

Last week, Rick Walker jumped into the race. The self-identified conservative Republican, said he will focus on more efficient government spending, smaller government and "cutting bureaucratic waste." Walker, 38, is the CEO of GreenEfficient, a company that helps commercial businesses obtain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

Texas Rep. Kevin Roberts, R-Houston, earlier this month filed papers to run for the 2nd Congressional District as well.

"From getting rid of Obamacare to strengthening our military, securing our border, and continuing the necessary work to unravel debilitating government regulations and taxes that have strangled our nation, there is no shortage of conservative reforms that are needed to create a stronger future for our children and nation," Roberts said.

Former Navy SEAL Daniel Crenshaw, 33, also has said he intends to run as a Republican in the district.

Crowded contests

Houston Democrat Todd Litton has filed with the Texas Secretary of State to run for the seat to replace Poe. He is the only Democrat in the race so far with weeks to go during the filing period. At least four other Democrats have shown interest in running for the district.

Democrats face a tough battle in District 2. President Donald Trump carried that district over Democrat Hillary Clinton by more than 9 percentage points.

A spate of retirements within the Texas delegation to Congress has triggered an active filing season for candidate seeking seats in Congress.

Just since the start of 2017, U.S. Reps Sam Johnson, R-Plano; Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas; Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio; Gene Green, D-Houston; and Poe have announced they won't seek re-election. Also, Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-El Paso, is giving his seat up to run instead for the U.S. Senate.

Green's retirement has opened the door to another crowded contest in Houston. In 29th District, several Democrats already have filed with hopes of replacing Green. State Sen. Sylvia Garcia, teacher Hector Morales and real estate agent Dominique Garcia have officially filed to get on the ballot with the state. Small business owner Pedro Valencia and Houston attorney Roel Garcia have filed statements of candidacy with the FEC. Former Houston Sheriff Adrian Garcia and state Rep. Carol Alvarado also have said they are considering the race.

Culberson still has plenty of opposition. Five Democrats officially have filed to challenge him as of Tuesday afternoon. Those candidates are Alex Triantaphyllis, James Cargas, Jason Westin, Laura Moser and Lizzie Pannill Fletcher.
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Warden Jim Willett was expecting a calm weekend.

It was Thanksgiving 1998, and he was full of turkey and ready to relax. With his family around him, he'd settled in for a quiet evening at the Walls Unit warden's house in Huntsville.

But in the wee hours of the night, the phone rang: There'd been an escape. From death row.

Using a hacksaw and dummies in prison garb, seven condemned men - including three from the Houston area - made an epic bid for freedom, cutting through the roof and running through a hail of gunfire like something straight out of a Hollywood film.

Only one made it over the outer fence, kicking off a weeklong manhunt harkening back to the days of the Bonnie and Clyde gang - the last time a Texas death row inmate successfully made it outside the prison walls.

And while the doomed escape may not have changed the fates of most of the inmates involved - five of the seven are now dead - it has forever changed life on Texas death row. In the aftermath, officials transferred all of death row to a more secure facility, eliminated work programs and took away group recreation.

"It was the talk of all around the prison system," said Willett, who now heads up the Texas Prison Museum. "We were all wondering how this all happened."

Nearly 20 years later, there are still unanswered questions.

In 1998, death row was still at Huntsville's Ellis Unit, about 30 miles northwest of its current location in Livingston. Just a few miles down the road was the Walls Unit death chamber, the busiest in the country and one that the seven inmates were particularly desperate to avoid.

A deadly crew

The planning for the escape started through the work program, officials said later. Martin Gurule, a 29-year-old killer from Corpus Christi, teamed up with a crew of desperate men ready to run.

From Harris County, there was Eric Cathey, convicted of blindfolding and shooting 20-year-old Christina Castillo in a botched 1996 robbery. Ponchai Wilkerson, the son of a retired deputy sheriff, had been sentenced to death for the slaying of Chung Myong Yi in a 1990 Houston jewelry store robbery. And Howard Guidry, one of the few still alive from the break-out, who was sentenced to death in a murder-for-hire scheme targeting the wife of a Missouri City police officer.

Three other convicted killers - including one involved in a notorious hate crime in Tyler - joined in the plot.

On Nov. 27, they made their move.

The men packed their beds with paper dummies, stuffed into prison uniforms. They hoped guards wouldn't notice them missing that night, even though they'd hidden themselves away in a rec area.

Two decades later, it's still not clear how they got the hacksaw used to cut through a fence and sneak up onto the roof, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark.

Wearing a second set of uniforms, blackened with carbon paper and coffee so as not to stand out in their prison whites, Clark said, they bided their time on top of the building, waiting until the moment was just right.

Then at 12:20 a.m., they slipped down onto the chapel roof, jumped off and rushed the fence.

As they went to scale the first layer of razor wire ringing the facility, officers spotted them and opened fire.

It was the first death-row escape since 1934, when Bonnie-and-Clyde gang member Raymond Hamilton broke out.

Gruesome discovery

Six of the fleeing men under fire stopped running, but Gurule kept at it. Before the guards could stop him, he scaled the outer fence, protected from the sharp barbs by head-to-toe cardboard armor.

It helped make him a free man, but that flimsy armor would be his undoing. As soon as he stepped in the water of a nearby creek, it bogged him down, Willett said.

Bleeding from a bullet to the shoulder and covered in inky clothes and waterlogged cardboard, Gurule drowned, probably not long after his escape.

But prison officials didn't know that, and they rounded up forces for an intense manhunt through woods and pastures around Huntsville.

"They knew the chances of him getting far were not good," Willett said.

Officials vowed to track him down "dead or alive." More than 500 searchers used helicopters, horses, cars and dogs to hunt for the escapee.

Willett remembers sleeping in his car between patrols around the perimeter of the search area.

When they finally found the missing prisoner, it was almost accidental. Two off-duty prison officers baiting a trotline spotted Gurule's body in a creek about a mile from the prison.

Authorities didn't make their gruesome find until Dec. 3, but by the start of the new year plans were already underway to move to the more secure Terrell Unit, later renamed Polunsky Unit.

Loss of privileges

The security changes were swift and lasting.

"We just expected things to get back to how they were," said death row inmate Robert Fratta, who was there at the time. "But nope, we were wrong."

Even today, there's no more work in the garment factory for death row inmates, and group recreational options were cut off.

Instead, prisoners are let out of their cells to individual caged recreation areas alone for about an hour a day some days of the week.

There's no more group church services, and piddling - when inmates make craft items for sale - isn't allowed on death row.

They don't have bunkmates, and their cells are solid doors instead of old-fashioned bars.

And there's no TV.

"They're upset about that," former prison spokesman Larry Fitzgerald said at the time.

Aside from the sweeping shifts, some of the security changes were smaller and specific: Death row inmates can only have one uniform at a time, and they aren't allowed carbon paper, Clark said.

They are still not permitted to have hacksaws.
As Black Friday bargain-hunters shopped inside, two men were injured just after noon Friday in a stabbing-turned-gunfight outside Willowbrook Mall.

Both were airlifted to hospitals in the Texas Medical Center for treatment, according to the Houston Police Department.

The popular north Houston shopping center off Tomball Parkway was filled with thousands of Black Friday deal shoppers when the incident happened. No one besides the two men were hurt, police said.

A spokeswoman for GGP, the mall's Chicago-based property manager, said the "isolated incident occurred in the parking lot near Sears" and directed further inquiries to HPD.

"We take safety and security very seriously," Lindsay Kahn, GGP's senior manager of public relations, wrote in an email.

HPD spokeswoman Jodi Silva said the melee began as a fight.

"The first male stabs the second male," she said.

The stabbed man responded by firing a gun at his attacker, Silva said.

The stabbed man was taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital in stable condition. The man with the gunshot wound went to Ben Taub Hospital. His status was unknown, Silva said.

Police did not release the name of either man. No charges have been filed and no motive has been determined, Silva said.
For two years, Frank Ourada has been "supporting our troops" - more literally than most.

He has connected soldiers and veterans with food pantries, temporary housing and legal advice. He haggled with an insurance company when a soldier's home flooded. He helped a suicidal veteran find treatment.

Ourada basically ran triage for military families, connecting them with whatever services they need to survive.

This position, National Guard Family Assistance Center specialist, may be Ourada's most rewarding ever. The only rival was his time as an infantry Marine, which in 2009 left him disabled.

"This work is my therapy," Ourada, 30, told me.

And yet last Friday he resigned. Because the job he loved so much had left him homeless.

Ourada had his pay slashed in March, from $20.08 hourly to $13.17. He soon fell behind on mortgage payments and lost his Minnesota home. He's been crashing with friends and family since August; next week he'll move in with a buddy in Utah, where he hopes to find better-paying work.

Ourada's situation is unusually dire, but he's far from alone.

Hundreds of his colleagues around the country also had their pay cut by 25 to 50 percent in March. About a third have quit, taking their networks and collective decades of experience, in an exodus that leaves American military families at risk of falling through the cracks.

The root of the problem? A bungled government contract.

In the decades since transitioning to a more professionalized, all-volunteer force, the military has added a host of support services for the growing number of long-term military families. One was the National Guard's Family Assistance Centers.

When this program's contract was awarded in 2012, the Guard had advised companies bidding on the contract to pay wages roughly equivalent to GS-7 to GS-9 levels (about $35,000 to $56,000).

When the contract came up for bid last year, however, the Guard gave vendors different - and hazier - guidance. This time it merely instructed them to abide by the McNamara-O'Hara Service Contract Act.

This law requires the Labor Department to set minimum wages for hundreds of specific government contract occupations. The goal is to prevent a race to the bottom - to protect workers, but also to prevent contractors from cutting corners.

Unfortunately, Family Assistance Center occupations aren't in the Labor Department's existing directory of jobs. And the National Guard never asked for them to be added, as it was supposed to do.

Confusion ensued.

One bidder, Cognitive Professional Services, found a junior job title that sounded vaguely related. It then built its bid around the wage floor for that occupation.

That pay level was not only substantially less than what workers such as Ourada had been making. It was even less than what janitors earn in many states.

The strategy worked. With its rock-bottom bid price, Cognitive won the contract and cut pay. (Cognitive did not respond to requests for comment.)

Unsurprisingly, workers quit en masse. At least 135 of 399 incumbent personnel left. And given the low pay, Cognitive has struggled to retain replacements. One position has been filled and vacated three times since March and is now empty again.

"Hire and train, hire and train. It's been like that for the last three or four months," says Kevin McDonnell, a Rhode Island-based supervisor whose own pay was cut in half.

This isn't the first time a lowball bid led to draconian wage cuts and mass resignations on a military family support contract. It's at least the fifth case in as many years, according to Good Jobs Nation, a worker advocacy group that filed Labor Department complaints on behalf of employees on two such contracts.

After I wrote about this problem in April, lawmakers grilled the National Guard about whether military families were getting the support they deserved. The Guard told Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., that it was undertaking a contract "review."

And then ... nothing.

On Tuesday, I called the Guard to ask what happened. Lo and behold, that very day, it decided to "modify" the contract!

Cognitive sent a cryptic email to workers Wednesday saying "changes" to job descriptions and salaries were forthcoming. No further details. No mention of any back pay for the past eight months.

A Guard spokesman told me that a different office will handle the next bid process, which begins next month. The Labor Department will be asked to come up with minimum wage rates for these occupations, as should have happened last year.

Which sounds like an improvement. But for military families left stranded in recent months and workers such as Ourada who were shortchanged and have already moved on, it's cold comfort.

Catherine Rampell's email address is crampell@washpost.com.
A motion for a change of judge was denied for Isis Schauer, 18, of Houston, charged with first-degree murder, armed criminal action and abandonment of a corpse in a September death in Texas County.

Schauer is among four charged in the death of Joseph Steinfeld, 17, who went by Ally and was transitioning to female, according to relatives.

The motion was denied as the request was not made in a timely manner, according to court records.

Schauers attorney, Paul Joseph McMahon, is seeking to withdraw as her counsel. She also has applied for a change of venue. Rulings are expected Dec. 19 before Texas County Circuit Court Judge John Beger, according to court records.

Schauer and co-defendants Andrew Vrba, 18, also of Houston, and Brianna Calderas, 24, Cabool, are charged in Steinfelds death. A fourth suspect from Thayer, James Grigsby, 25, is charged with abandonment of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence in a felony prosecution.
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Abigail Lemanski poses for a photo with her family after receiving her badge. Lemanski's mother pinned the badge to her uniform. Bainbridge with his family after the pinning. Fire Chief Robert Czerwinski gives Bainbridge a certificate to honor the occasion. PreviousNext

Two Recruits Complete Pittsfield Firefighter Training



Matthew Bainbridge is given his probationary firefighter shield from Capt. Neil Myers. PITTSFIELD, Mass.  On Tuesday, Matthew Bainbridge and Abigail Lemanski attended the state's 28th annual Firefighter of the Year Awards ceremony.

There were hundreds of firefighters from throughout the state honored for heroic efforts. And the medal of honor was given to posthumously to Watertown Firefighter Joseph A. Toscano.

They saw the heroism and they saw the risks.

The two were just Pittsfield Fire Department recruits on that day. The next afternoon though, their families pinned their new badges to their uniform and they became probationary firefighters in the department.

"Matt and Abigail got to go there and it is not something we usually get to take fresh people, new recruits to. It is not something we go to every year," Fire Chief Robert Czerwinski said. "But I think it was kind of an eye-opener for them to see what types of heroic acts go on across the Commonwealth on an annual basis."

Czerwinski addressed the pair's families, fellow firefighters, and members of the City Council who had gathered at headquarters for a graduation ceremony. Bainbridge and Lemanski were appointed to the department in October and have now completed the five weeks of training. Notably, Lemanski is the department's first female firefighter.

"They received a lot of great training over that time. They had a lot of great meals at the fire station, learning some of the tricks and pranks that we do. But I think they are excited to be done with that and get on the floor and ride on the back of the truck and start a new career for the rest of their lives," Czerwinski said.

"This isn't a job. It is a career. You always have to keep learning and you always have to know what is coming next. The next call you go on could be something trivial or it could be something major so we always have to have people on their toes."

The chief urged them to continue learning about the profession. On Tuesday, two city firefighters were honored by the governor at the ceremony for a "great rescue and a great effort." But, the department has been on the other side as well with firefighters being killed in the line of duty.

"That's not something I want any of our families to go through. We've had line of duty deaths here and we really don't want to see it. We want to be on the other end, saving lives," Czerwinski said. "I hope they are safe every day."

Training Officer Capt. Neil Myers has been with them throughout the last five weeks and after he handed them their probationary firefighter helmet shields, he left them with a challenge.

"All of us here at the PFD challenge you ton continuously educate yourself and not become a statistic. Stay hungry, stay focused, listen to your partners on the job, watch, practice, and do your job. Work hard and pass it on to those who follow you," Meyers said.

"Remember where you are today and remember how hard you worked toward this career and remind yourself of this when you get mired down by distractions and the stress that frustrate all of us from time to time. Appreciate that you've earned a career where you have the opportunity to positively affect the outcome of someone else's worst day."

He told them to look to all of the veterans in the firehouse and learn from their experiences. And as their career progresses, pass it on to those who follow in their footsteps.

The short ceremony opened with a blessing from Fire Department Chaplain Peter Gregory and ended with the cutting of a cake.

Bainbridge and Lemanski are part of the third group of recruits to graduate this year. There are some 15 probationary firefighters currently working in the Department. The probationary title lasts a year before they start to move up the ranks.
Denaturalization Sought Against Five Child Sexual Abusers in Florida, Illinois, and Texas

Washington, DC - The U.S. Department of Justice filed denaturalization lawsuits against five individuals who, according to the Departments complaints, unlawfully procured their U.S. citizenship by concealing sexual abuse of minor victims during the naturalization process. The civil complaints were filed in federal court in the Southern District of Florida, the Northern District of Illinois, the Northern District of Texas (two cases), and the Southern District of Texas.

Committing fraud in any immigration matter undermines the integrity of our immigration system, and is a betrayal of the American peoples generosity, said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It is especially appalling when it also involves the sexual abuse of children. The Department of Justice has a duty to prosecute these crimes vigorously, particularly so for individuals who commit fraud in the naturalization process. I am confident that justice will be done in these cases, and I want to thank ICE, CBP, USCIS, our Civil Division, and our U.S. Attorneys offices for their hard work. This Department will continue to fight to denaturalize immigration fraudsters and to protect the American people from sex offenders."

The cases were referred to the Department of Justice by the Department of Homeland Securitys U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection with investigative support from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

I commend the DHS personnel working diligently to remove dangerous criminals from our streets, said Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Elaine Duke. Those who unlawfully procured citizenship by concealing crimes  especially sexual abuse of minors  should have their citizenship revoked.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the citizenship of a naturalized U.S. citizen may be revoked, and his or her certificate of naturalization canceled, if naturalization was illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.

The five defendants committed crimes of sexual abuse of minor victims prior to naturalizing. As the civil complaints allege, such crimes rendered the defendants ineligible for citizenship from the start. By willfully concealing child sexual abuse crimes, the defendants also independently rendered themselves subject to denaturalization.

A description of each of the five cases and the allegations of the United States follows:

Jorge Luis Alvarado

Jorge Luis Alvarado, 56, a native of Mexico, naturalized on March 9, 2000. Shortly before filing his naturalization application, Alvarado made unlawful sexual contact with a sixteen-year-old child. In March 2007, he pleaded guilty in Texas state court to committing indecency with a child by sexual contact, a second-degree felony. Alvarado was ordered to community supervision and to register as a sex offender. He has been residing in southern Texas. United States of America v. Jorge Luis Alvarado (S.D. Tex.).

Alberto Mario Beleno

Alberto Mario Beleno, 64, a native of Colombia, naturalized on Feb. 26, 2001. Before Beleno naturalized as a U.S. citizen, he committed lewd and lascivious acts on a six-year-old child. In 2001, less than three months after he naturalized, Beleno was arrested and ultimately pleaded guilty/nolo-contendere in Florida state court to committing felony lewd and lascivious exhibition and felony lewd and lascivious molestation on a minor in 1993 and 1994. Beleno was ordered to register as a sex offender for his conduct. His last known residence in the United States is in Miami, Florida. United States of America v. Alberto Mario Beleno (S.D. Fla.).

Eleazar Corral Valenzuela

Eleazar Corral Valenzuela, 49, a native of Mexico, naturalized on June 15, 2000. Prior to applying to naturalize, he sexually abused a minor child. In November 2000, after he had naturalized, Corral pleaded guilty in Illinois state court to aggravated criminal sexual abuse, a Class 2 felony. He was ordered to register as a sex offender. He has been residing in Aurora, Illinois. United States of America v. Eleazar Corral Valenzuela (N.D. Ill.).

Moises Herrera-Gonzalez

Moises Herrera-Gonzalez, 55, a native of Mexico, naturalized on Sept. 25, 1999. On Jan. 1, 1996, before he filed his naturalization application, Herrera-Gonzalez sexually assaulted and injured a six-year-old child. He filed his naturalization application in September 1996, nine months after the sexual assault. On July 8, 2002, after he naturalized, Herrera-Gonzalez pleaded guilty in Texas state court to committing bodily injury to a child, a third-degree felony. He was sentenced to five years in prison. He has been residing in Arlington, Texas. United States of America v. Moises Herrera-Gonzalez (N.D. Tex.).

Emmanuel Olugbenga Omopariola

Emmanuel Olugbenga Omopariola, 60, a native of Nigeria, naturalized on July 1, 2004. Before he filed his naturalization application in May 2003, Omopariola made unlawful sexual contact with a seven-year-old child. In 2015, after he naturalized, Omopariola pleaded guilty in Texas state court to Indecency with a Child  Sexual Contact, a second-degree felony. He was ordered to five years of community supervision and placed on the sex offender registry. He has been residing in Grand Prairie, Texas. United States of America v. Emmanuel Olugbenga Omopariola (N.D. Tex.).

These cases were investigated by ICE, CBP, and USCIS, and the Civil Divisions Office of Immigration Litigation, District Court Section (OIL-DCS). These cases are being prosecuted by OIL-DCS and its National Security and Affirmative Litigation Unit (NS/A Unit) with support from the U.S. Attorneys Offices for the Southern District of Florida, Northern District of Illinois, Northern District of Texas, and Southern District of Texas.

The claims made in the complaint are allegations only, and there has been no determination of liability.
On the Occasion of the Inauguration of the New President of the Kyrgyz Republic

Washington, DC - The United States government congratulates the Kyrgyz Republics newly elected President, Sooronbay Jeenbekov, on his inauguration, which took place today in Bishkek. The United States commends President Jeenbekov and the Kyrgyz people on their commitment to democracy, the orderly election process, and a peaceful transfer of power, the first such transition between democratically elected leaders in Central Asian history.

The United States has been a friend and partner of the Kyrgyz Republic for more than 25 years, and we remain committed to the Kyrgyz Republics success as a democratic, prosperous, and stable country. The United States looks forward to working with the newly elected President and his administration in the spirit of equality, trust, and mutual respect.
White House on the Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen

Washington, DC - The United States welcomes the announcement from Saudi Arabia and the Saudi-led coalition that it is reopening Hudaydah port and Sanaa International Airport to allow the urgent flow of humanitarian aid to the people of Yemen. Full and immediate implementation of the announced measures is a first step in ensuring that food, medicine, and fuel reach the Yemeni people and that the aid organizations on the frontlines of mitigating this humanitarian crisis are able to do their essential work. We look forward to additional steps that will facilitate the unfettered flow of humanitarian and commercial goods from all ports of entry to the points of need.

The magnitude of suffering in Yemen requires all parties to this conflict to focus on assistance to those in need. All sides must support a political process with facilitating humanitarian relief as the top priority.

We remain committed to supporting Saudi Arabia and all our Gulf partners against the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aggression and blatant violations of international law. Backed by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Houthi rebels have used destabilizing missile systems to target Saudi Arabiasystems that were not present in Yemen before the conflict. The international community must take the necessary steps to hold the Iranian regime accountable for its repeated violations of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 2216 and 2231 as the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps exploits the grave humanitarian crisis in Yemen to advance its regional ambitions. Millions of Yemenis are currently enduring severe deprivation; the United States continues to believe that this devastating conflict, and the suffering it causes, must be brought to an end through political negotiations.
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Thanks to the Danish notion of hygge  a feeling of cosy contentment manifested by enjoying the simple things in life like candles, warming cups of tea and fluffy socks  lounging around the house is no longer considered lazy.

Instead, its fast become a favourite way for many to relax but, far from slouching about in your holey sweats, now the fashion industry is offering a way to unwind with a semblance of style.

The final word in luxury lounging, cashmere is the perfect way to tastefully hunker down for the new season, be it in a snuggly jumper, cardigan or a pair of the softest bed socks.

Recommended 8 best Christmas pyjama sets

Notoriously expensive though, those on a budget will be pleased to here that there are plenty of purse-friendly options too.

Par for the course with some of the high streets biggest names, we suggest heading to Marks and Spencers for more a affordable option where Rosie Huntington-Whiteleys line for Autograph continues to impress.

This season, you can expect to get your hands on pure cashmere two-pieces, long sleeve night dresses, cardigans and even silky separates.

Rosie For Autograph, Pure Cashmere Funnel Neck Pyjama Top, 149, Straight Leg Pyjama Bottoms, 99, Marks & Spencer

Speaking of which, pyjamas have come a long way since the days of mismatched novelty numbers. Instead, these days your drawers are more likely to be lined with lavishly superior versions that can be worn both in and out of the bedroom.

Olivia Von Halle, 380, Net-a-Porter

From Olivia Von Halles premium pairs inspired by Coco Chanel and the glamorous loungewear she wore in the 1920s, to Victorias Secret, J Crew and Whistles collaboration with London-based label Yolke, the concept of traditional sleepwear is being turned on its sartorial head.

Fly Away Yolke Pyjama Set, 175, Whistles

As shorter days and colder nights set in, theres nothing more appealing than a comfy pair of PJs, but now, thanks to a decadent shift in the market, you can embrace your inner couch potato with zero guilt and superfluous style points.

Cashmere Striped Bed Socks, 36, The White Company
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By now we know the Budget basics  the headline-grabbers that the Chancellor spent an hour whetting our appetites for this week.

We know that first-time buyers appear to have been handed a poisoned chalice in the form of abolished stamp duty.

We know about the fuel-duty freeze (again) and that, from April, we get a couple more of those newfangled pounds in our pocket before HMRC comes knocking.

But the Budget document itself is far more than just the Chancellors speech, at 240 pages  and thats considered quite short.

So whats within them? Here are the important bits:

Not North of the border

The small boost to our take-home pay is already a well-known bonus with the personal tax allowance increasing to 11,850 and the higher rate tax threshold rising to 46,350 from April.

At least, for some of us.

Scottish and the rest of the UK higher-rate income tax bands continue to diverge, as the Scottish band is currently 43,000, and unlikely to catch up any time soon, says Kate Smith, Head of Pensions at Aegon.

This means that some people resident in Scotland and the rest of the UK, but earning the same amount, will not only pay different levels of income tax, but also benefit from different pension tax relief on their contributions.

What are you?

Down on page 32 of the Budget report theres a potentially sticky section for millions of self-employed workers as IR35  the measures to clamp down on employment tax avoidance  are changed.

The IR35 changes that were brought in to the public sector to tighten up tax avoidance could now be extended to the private sector.

Hammond has opted for the middle ground and announced a consultation on applying off-payroll rules in the private sector as has been done in the public sector, says James Poyser, chief executive, of inniAccounts, an online accounting service for self-employed professionals.

In February, the Chancellor made it the responsibility of public-sector organisations hiring contractors to decide if the contractor needed to comply with IR35. If the client decides IR35 does apply then the contractor will be taxed at source as though they were an employee, but they will not receive any of the rights that an employee would.

Its very complex to understand whether someone is in IR35 or not, so [some organisations] actually advise their people to assume IR35 applies regardless of whether it does.

Contractors are really under the tax microscope, adds Martin Upton, of the Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance.

They are more likely to find themselves treated for tax and NICs purposes as though they are normal employees. This on top of hiking NICs for the self-employed from 9 per cent to 11 per cent over the next two years.

Generation rent

The backlash over the 300,000 first-time buyer stamp duty threshold was rapid and extensive, with many arguing that the move will not only fail to help those who arent in a position to buy right now, but will probably cause first home prices to increase even further.

But recent campaigning over the inclusion of rental payments in tenants credit scores may still bear fruit, with the inclusion of a 2m prize to incentivise tech companies to find a solution.

This is something better-off tenants will welcome, as it will help them secure better terms for a mortgage if they are aiming to buy in future, says Sam Hurst of online lettings agent Openrent.

But tenants who already struggle to pay historically high rents will be worried about the effect of this to their credit scores. This is especially worrying if we consider that lower-paid renters are much more likely to take loans to cover key living expenses.

Like the other housing measures in the budget it seems like it will only help the aspirational, doing nothing to help those truly at the bottom of the UKs broken housing system.

Risky business

Investors who plump for the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) in a bid to better manage their tax liabilities have had a pleasant surprise, with the Chancellor announcing plans to doubt the amount an individual can invest under the scheme to 2m in any tax year as long as 1m is invested in at last one knowledge-intensive company.

With some specialists in this field concerned the Budget would bring cuts to such tax benefits, this was a somewhat unexpected move.

The additional 1m EIS tax relief means individuals may be able to claim income tax relief of up to 600,000 if invested in knowledge-intensive companies, notes Ben Faulkner, communications director at EQ Investors. Its an attractive opportunity for those looking to supplement their 40,0000 annual pension contributions.

And finally...

If youre one of those employees who fails miserably to claw back your expenses due to lost receipts, the Chancellor may have just handed you a get-out-of-jail-free card.

From April 2019, employers will no longer be required to check receipts when reimbursing employees for subsistence using benchmark scale rates, notes law firm Ashurst. The existing concessionary accommodation and subsistence overseas scale rates will be placed on a statutory basis.

HMRC also plans to improve the guidance on employee expenses, particularly on travel and subsistence and the process for claiming tax relief on non-reimbursed employment expenses.
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One of the last surviving female members of an elite band of courageous, idealistic and resolute people risking their lives across occupied Europe recently passed away at the age of 95  but she led an extraordinary life.

From the age of 22, Yvonne Baseden was an agent in Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) and helped co-ordinate French Resistance fighters. Following one of the largest daylight airdrops of the Second World War, she was subsequently captured, tortured and survived the notorious Ravensbruck concentration camp where she also overcame illness.

Ms Baseden was awarded an MBE and Frances highest honours  a Chevalier of the Legion dHonneur, the Resistance Medal and the Croix de Guerre avec Palme.

The SOE, housed in Baker Street in London, was created in July 1940, shortly after Frances surrender to Germany, by the newly appointed Prime Minister Winston Churchill, with a remit to create havoc and set Europe ablaze. Dropped behind enemy lines, agents helped forge the secret army of resistance fighters who prepared the way for the Allied invasion. They all knew the consequences of capture by the Gestapo  often brutal interrogation and torture, followed by execution, or grim survival in a concentration camp. The F (French) Section alone sent 39 female agents into the field, of whom 15 were executed, two were liberated from camps, one escaped and two died of natural causes.

SOE was far ahead of contemporary attitudes in its use of women. From its inception, SOE began recruiting women with language skills into the Womens Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) and the Auxiliary Transport Service before sending them for specialist training; many were used as couriers because they were seldom stopped at controls and rarely picked up in mass arrests.

Codenamed Odette, Ms Baseden was paired with a French aristocrat, Gonzague de Saint-Genies, codename Lucien, and their mission was to re-establish the Scholar reseau (network) around Dole, near Dijon, eastern France, after the Gestapo had compromised the previous one. Following an aborted first attempt, on 18 March 1944, Lucien and Odette were parachuted into Auch, just north of the Pyrenees. They landed some distance away from each other. Greeted by several Frenchmen, Ms Baseden was given a bicycle and was taken to a farmhouse. She then embarked on a two-day journey to Dole, near the Swiss border, where she was to operate with Lucien.

Major Desmond Bailey marries Yvonne Baseden in 1948 (Rex)

As a wireless operator behind enemy lines, an occupation which had a life expectancy of just six weeks, Ms Baseden was vital because she was the only link between London and the resistance in the Jura area. She was tasked with organising night-time drops of arms and explosives, while constantly moving about to avoid detection by the Gestapos direction-finding technology. In addition, she also helped train fighters in setting explosive charges, which was particularly important in the run-up to D-Day (6 June).

Following D-Day, the resistance networks sabotaged bridges, railway lines and communications, considerably delaying German troops heading to the Normandy beaches; a two-day journey from southern to northern France took up to a fortnight, which helped the Allied troops and undoubtedly saved many lives and possibly shortened the war by several months.

With the new Scholar network re-established, the teams work increased as the Resistance grew bolder. In Operation Cadillac they organised a mass daylight drop (14 July) by American B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, during which Ms Baseden was in radio contact with 36 Allied planes. Around 800 armed men and women from various local resistance groups were waiting to collect 3,791 canisters and 417 tonnes of armaments dropped at the designated targets.

The operation was a success; the next day a celebratory meal in a cheese factory ended disastrously. A German patrol arrested a Scholar agent near the factory (which was also a safe house) because he was unaccountably carrying a radio transmitter. He knew nothing of the planned meal, but the Wehrmacht sergeant searched the factory on the off-chance of finding something there.

With their arrival, the team scattered for cover. The caretakers wife cleared the table but the bicycles outside raised suspicions and guards remained. After hours, a noise was heard and more Germans returned. The sergeant fired a burst from his machine-gun through the ceiling to illicit a response. One bullet hit Gonzague de Saint-Genies in the head, killing him, and blood leaked through the ceiling. Further shots were fired and the rest were caught. Ms Baseden was retrieved by the hair, punched in the face and manacled.

They were taken to Dole prison and transferred two days later to Dijon where Ms Baseden was placed in solitary confinement. Regularly interrogated by the Gestapo, she revealed nothing. Another captured Resistance fighter, however, declared Ms Baseden was a wireless operator and probably a British agent. She maintained she was an ordinary French woman who had become involved with the Resistance.

In attempts to persuade her to reveal her Resistance contacts, the Gestapo beat her, stamped on her toes and bare feet and intimidated her  leaving her in a dark cellar for a few days before having a guard tie her to a chair and start firing at her feet. She later failed in a suicide attempt when she tried to cut her wrists with a piece of glass.

On 4 September, Ms Baseden was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp (which was exclusively for women), near Berlin, where to her horror she encountered fellow SOE agents Violette Szabo, Lilian Rolfe and Denise Bloch; they were shot in February 1945. She also shared a hut with fellow SOE women, including Odette Churchill  the others were later sent to the gas chamber.

Conditions were tough, with mistreatment and abuse part of daily life. Ms Baseden laboured on a farm until falling ill with tuberculosis in February 1945. In the atmosphere of mounting apprehension among the camp authorities, as the Allied armies approached, a fellow prisoner and former escape-line organiser, Mary Lindell, secured Ms Basedens removal in a Red Cross train to Sweden, from where she was repatriated.

Yvonne Baseden (l) and Nancy Wake (r) in Sussex in 2005; they both operated in France during the Second World War (Rex)

Upon returning to England, Ms Baseden recalled: Before me lay nine months in hospital, a lung operation, pain, and nights tormented by fearful dreams.

Born in Paris, in 1922, Yvonne Jeanne Therese de Vibraye Baseden was the daughter of Clifford Baseden, an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, who crash-landed during World War One on the Count and Countess de Vibrayes estate; invited to stay for dinner, he then fell in love with, and subsequently married, their daughter.

Yvonne lived in France for eight years and then the family travelled around Europe. They were living in Spain when the Civil War broke out in 1936, so returned to France, whereupon she attended a Parisian school. A year or so later she went to Tottenham, north London, to stay with her British grandmother and embarked upon a shorthand-typing course.

With the outbreak of war, she took a job as a bilingual typist and was asked to do some translation: I got my first experience of where my French could be of some use. She recalled listening to de Gaulles radio broadcast (18 June 1940) wherein he urged those of French nationality to continue the fight to free France and warned that: Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not and will never go out.

Filled with patriotism, 18-year-old Ms Baseden was determined to play a part but was rejected, As mademoiselle was born of an English father.

Disappointed, she joined the WAAF as a general duties clerk. She was commissioned in 1941 (later promoted to section officer) and became an interpreter-secretary to an MI19 officer at Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, known as the London Cage, where she also played a part in the interrogation of captured German airmen and sailors. Perhaps, somewhat ironically, she later discovered that her file noted, This airwoman is not to be employed on confidential work, meaning she could not enter the ops room, due to having a French mother, which made the WAAF slightly wary of her.

Following a recommendation from WAAF colleagues, Ms Baseden was called by SOE (1 June 1943) and accepted their offer. Her fluent French and her looks  dark hair, olive skin and of small stature  made her the ideal recruit.

Like all female agents, she was seconded to FANY and kitted out in their uniform to avoid awkward questions from friends and family. She then embarked on a series of training courses, conducted at secluded country estates commandeered by the SOE and located throughout England and Scotland. Here recruits received commando-style training to improve fitness, as well as instruction on sabotage techniques and weapons training.

Demonstrating an aptitude for wireless operating, she underwent several months of specialist training  the only role both men and women undertook  learning all aspects of Morse code and wireless repairs. In addition, she underwent parachute training.

Once her training was complete, she met Gonzague de Saint-Genies. He had been a prisoner in 1940 but had managed to escape by breaking his arm with a hatchet. He arrived in Britain in 1943 and volunteered to return to France. She later discovered that he was a distant relative.

Ms Baseden was given a new identity, Marie Bernier, secretary, a new French-style haircut, clothes, a large sum of money and a cyanide pill, which she refused. She was fully aware of the dangers she would face in occupied France: We knew we were going into something pretty dicey.

Postwar, she married Desmond Bailey, who was award the Military Cross, of the Colonial Service and accompanied him to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Later, she worked for the French Commercial Attache in Zambia, who was another former member of the SOE, Baron Albert de Schonen.

Ms Baseden remarried in 1966 to Anthony Burney, whom predeceased her, and they lived in Zambia and Lesotho until retiring to Portugal in 1972. While travelling by car in Zambia with her 12-year old son, they were surrounded by a hostile crowd at a junction. She opened her handbag to reveal a pistol and the mob disappeared. She returned to London in 1999.

On 25 September 1955, she appeared in the second episode of This is Your Life, presented by Eamonn Andrews. She also appeared in a French documentary (Robert et les Ombres/Robert and the Shadows) in which she met, 60 years after the events, two of the Resistance fighters who were in the field when she parachuted in.
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Domestic abuse legislation hailed as lifesaving by Theresa May has come under scrutiny after it emerged that a number of police forces have brought just a handful of charges since it was introduced in 2015.

The charge of coercive and controlling behaviour has led to no more than 20 charges by half of Englands police forces in the two years since it was enacted, data obtained through Freedom of Information requests shows.

It can be brought against someone who is preventing their victim from having friendships or hobbies, refusing them access to money and determining tiny aspects of their everyday life  such as when they are allowed to eat, sleep and go to the toilet.

Announcing the legislation, which has a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison, Ms May, the then Home Secretary, said it had the potential to save lives.

She added that she was determined to put a stop to this scourge on our society.

But data obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed that, of the 29 police forces in England who responded to the FOI request, 19 forces have made 19 or less charges since the law was rolled out.

The forces had made just 532 charges overall. At least 22 forces had made fewer than two charges per 100,000 population in the same time period.

Londons Metropolitan Police  the largest force in England and Wales, which serves a population of 877,8500  has brought just 36 charges for the offence since it was introduced.

Thames Valley Police  the third largest police force  brought just 16.

Opposition politicians accused the Government of passing the legislation but then making cuts to police that would prevent them from carrying out adequate training to implement it.

 Social Experiment sees feminist bottled at a domestic violence rally

Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson, said: Its no use Theresa May passing new laws to tackle domestic violence if she then cuts resources to the police who cant then train the specialist officers or staff up the specialist teams.

To have any credibility on fighting domestic violence the Conservatives have got to will the means to do it.

Domestic violence campaigners also said the take up of the new coercive control legislation by the police was very low and that the failure by police to arrest perpetrators of domestic violence was unacceptable.

The chief executive of Refuge, Sandra Horley CBE said: Every day we support almost 6,000 women and children and we are repeatedly told about incidents where police disbelieve women or fail to investigate properly. It is unacceptable that some police forces still do not always arrest perpetrators of domestic violence.

We need to get the basics right; we need a strong arrest and charge police response to domestic violence  whatever the offence  in order to ensure women get the protection they need and deserve.

She added that in order to increase arrests under the new charge, it was essential that the police give the right support and protection to survivors.

The charitys chief executive Katie Ghose, said: Survivors of domestic abuse often do not want to support prosecutions because of a lack of trust in the criminal justice system, fear of repercussions of speaking out against the perpetrator or direct threats if they do so.

That is why it is essential that the police give the right response, support and protection to survivors so that more women have the confidence to come forward and report domestic abuse.

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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 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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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We urgently call for both the police and the CPS to continue to improve their response to coercive control so that they send out a clear message that coercive control is unacceptable, that this crime is taken seriously and that perpetrators will be held to account for the harm they have caused.

The Government has promised to transform the national approach to tackling domestic abuse through their landmark Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill, declaring that the state will do everything it can to both support [survivors] and their children.

But an Ofsted report stated that far too little was being done to prevent domestic abuse or repair the damage it causes afterwards, and accused the Government of failing to implement a long-term strategy to tackle the issue.

A Government spokesperson said: Domestic violence and abuse is a devastating crime that shatters the lives of victims and families. The action we have taken to tackle domestic abuse includes introducing a new offence of coercive and controlling behaviour and rolling out Clares law and domestic violence protection orders on a national basis.

"We are encouraged that ONS stats published this week show that the police recorded 4246 offences of controlling or coercive behaviour in 2016/17. And while bed spaces have increased by 10% since 2010 we are committed to ensuring anyone facing the threat of domestic abuse has somewhere to turn to.

"That is why the Government is providing 100 million of dedicated funding for tackling violence against women and girls. This includes a 20 million fund to support refuges and other accommodation-based services, providing 2,200 additional bed spaces."

The spokesperson added that the Home Office would also publish a draft Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill, saying it would protect and support victims, recognise the life-long impact domestic abuse has on children and make sure agencies effectively respond to domestic abuse.
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Around 200 women and children fleeing from domestic abuse are turned away from refuges each day in England, figures show, as charities warn new government policy risks pushing services to breaking point.

A survey of refuges across the country shows 94 women and 90 children who had fled abuse were turned away on just one day this year. The true figures are likely to be considerably higher due to the fact that 168 services responded out of a total of 276.

Charity Womens Aid, which obtained the data, is now warning that government plans to place councils in charge of funding for emergency accommodation will force refuges to reduce provision at a time when demand is far exceeding supply.

Women and children who are turned away from refuges can seek help from their local council, but with budgets stretched, they often face long waits for any form of emergency accommodation. This can leave mothers faced with the choice of homelessness or returning to the abusive partner.

Some are placed in hostels as they wait for accommodation, which often also house former prisoners and reportedly have a severe lack of sanitation and security.

The survey shows that more than half of residents in refuges are children. Womens Aid said many survivors report that their children are experiencing anxiety and behavioural issues and problems at school as a result of witnessing domestic abuse, with one saying her son began self-harming.

Twenty-six under-14s are known to have been killed alongside their mother in femicide killings last year, according to new data from the forthcoming Femicide Census report  demonstrating the potentially deadly consequences domestic abuse can have if support isnt available.

Freya, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, was repeatedly turned away from refuges with her children, aged two and five, after fleeing an abusive partner.

She had been with her partner for a year when she and her children moved in with him in a home hundreds of miles from where they were living in London. But within six months, he began targeting her with abuse, which began as coercive and controlling behaviour and rapidly escalated into physical and at times sexual violence.

Hed throw me down the stairs, push me into walls, pick me up and throw me around, and then always argue that he didnt punch me so wasnt assaulting me. This quickly progressed into sexual violence as well, Freya told The Independent.

I would always try to shield the kids from it and he was very aware of that. One of his methods of abuse would be screaming and shouting for hours at night and then prevent me from going into the bedroom the kids were sleeping in, even if they were awake and crying.

Freya called the police five times before she left her abusive partner. But when they came to the house she says the officers just gave him a pat on the back and told him to calm down before leaving, without referring Freya and the children to any support service.

The lack of response by police compounded my feelings of hopelessness. It confirmed his rhetoric that no one would believe the abuse and that we wouldnt be helped, she explains.

A month and a half after the abuse began, Freya fled the house with her children. Escaping in the middle of the night to be driven to London in a friends car, she left without her ID, and her children didnt even have shoes on their feet. We were literally fleeing for our lives, she says.

She tried to get into refuges multiple times, but was constantly told capacity was full and there were no spaces available. She then approached the local council for emergency accommodation, but was initially turned her away for not having sufficient ID.

They wanted six months worth of bank statements and a birth certificate for me and my children. They wanted proof that my children were mine. At one point I was even asked to provide a letter from my abuser to state that he had abused us and that we should no longer remain with him, she says.

After two months sofa surfing with friends, the family was eventually placed in a hostel by the council, where they were living among former criminals. The sanitation was poor, with Freya saying she had to scrub the walls down with bleach because they had faeces and blood on them.

Recommended Government savaged over domestic abuse in major Ofsted report

A total of eight months after she escaped her abusive partner, Freya and her children were placed in a temporary home by the council. But she says they were lucky.

I knew women who had been in hostels for more than a year, with babies, or having had birth there. These women are fleeing for their lives or are street homeless, and dont necessarily have any access to their bank accounts of financial needs to support themselves," Freya says.

Its forcing people into means to gather money, which when you dont have any ID or method of being paid in cash, it forces women into exploitation and dangerous working. I was very lucky because I had friends to support me, but there were many women there who don't."

"Unfortunately the majority of women who can't get into a refuge end up going back to their abusers, because they face further abuses and exploitation in just trying to survive. When your ex is trying to get you back, you either face deprivation or exploitation, or returning to the abuse  and at least thats familiar.

The Womens Aid figures come after the Government announced an overhaul of supported housing, which would see councils take charge of ring-fenced funding for short-term and emergency accommodation such as refuges.

Campaigners warned that funding would dismantle life-saving refuges and create a postcode lottery of funding for vital services, undermining Theresa Mays pledge to do more to help women fleeing violent partners.

Katie Ghose, chief executive of Womens Aid, said: It is completely unacceptable that refuges had no choice but to turn 94 women and 90 children away on just one day this year.

Demand for refuges currently far outstrips supply. The Governments new funding model for refuges could be the breaking point for these life-saving services which have already been operating for far too long on short-term, shoestring budgets.

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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 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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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We urge the Government to protect refuges not only for women escaping abuse but for their children too. Only by creating a long-term and sustainable funding model for a national network of refuges can we ensure that every woman and child can safely escape domestic abuse.

The Government has promised to transform the national approach to tackling domestic abuse through their landmark Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill, declaring that the state will do everything it can to both support [survivors] and their children.

But a recent Ofsted report stated that far too little was being done to prevent domestic abuse or repair the damage it causes afterwards, and accused the Government of failing to implement a long-term strategy to tackle the issue.

A Government spokesperson said: Domestic violence and abuse is a devastating crime that shatters the lives of victims and families. The action we have taken to tackle domestic abuse includes introducing a new offence of coercive and controlling behaviour and rolling out Clares law and domestic violence protection orders on a national basis.

"We are encouraged that ONS stats published this week show that the police recorded 4246 offences of controlling or coercive behaviour in 2016/17. And while bed spaces have increased by 10% since 2010 we are committed to ensuring anyone facing the threat of domestic abuse has somewhere to turn to.

"That is why the Government is providing 100 million of dedicated funding for tackling violence against women and girls. This includes a 20 million fund to support refuges and other accommodation-based services, providing 2,200 additional bed spaces."

The spokesperson added that the Home Office would also publish a draft Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill, saying it would protect and support victims, recognise the life-long impact domestic abuse has on children and make sure agencies effectively respond to domestic abuse.
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The Home Office is systematically ignoring independent medical advice not to detain people who are mentally ill as part of their bid to crackdown on immigration, The Independent can reveal.

Hundreds of immigrants with mental health conditions are currently being held in detention centres against the advice of medical practitioners, in a breach of Government policy introduced last year to ensure vulnerable people are not detained inappropriately.

An analysis of files by charity Bail for Immigrant Detainees (BID), seen exclusively by The Independent, finds that the Adults at Risk policy, designed to ensure vulnerable people are not locked up, is leaving mentally unwell people languishing in removal centres.

The policy was introduced in response to a government-commissioned review into the UKs immigration detention system last year, which found that too many vulnerable people were being placed in detention to the detriment of their mental health.

Former prisons and probation ombudsman Stephen Shaw, who conducted the review, said Rule 35 of the Detention Centre Rules  designed as a key safeguard for victims of torture or whose health would be at risk from continued detention  failed to protect vulnerable people in detention, largely due to a lack of trust in GPs to provide independent advice.

The new Adults at Risk policy sets out framework for identifying different levels of vulnerability by using a series of categories. In official guidelines, the Home Office states that it aims to ensure that genuine cases of vulnerability are consistently identified, in order to ensure that vulnerable people are not detained inappropriately.

On the basis of the available evidence, the Home Office will reach a view on whether a particular individual should be regarded as being at risk in the terms of this guidance, it states.

But critics say that rather than reducing the number of vulnerable people held in detention, the policy instead equips the Home Office with more arguments to refuse peoples release when they are found to be vulnerable by medical practitioners.

An analysis of cases of vulnerable detainees currently represented by BID, which offers legal advice and representation to people in detention, shows that 80 per cent have been defined as being at risk by a medical practitioner. The diagnosed conditions and vulnerabilities were most commonly PTSD, depression and suicidal tendencies, with two thirds recorded as being torture victims.

Although this information was passed onto the Home Office, which in 90 per cent of cases accepted that the individual was vulnerable, none of the detainees have been released from detention as a result.

In one case included in the report, a woman, named only as A, was found to be a victim of rape who suffers from a range of mental health problems including depression, PTSD and personality disorder.

It was known to the Home Office that she was on medication for her depression, but despite this she continued to suffer from suicidal ideation, low moods and hallucinations, as well as flashbacks and bed-wetting.

A Rule 35 report stated that she suffered from trauma as a result of the rape. The clinical opinion of the Home Offices own medical practitioner made it clear that As treatment could continue more effectively with specialist services that were not then available to her in detention.

But the Home Office refused to acknowledge her as an adult at risk who should not be detained. She was categorised as risk level 1 Adult at Risk despite the fact that the Home Offices medical practitioner had confirmed that detention was not suitable and was putting her at further risk.

The woman was later granted bail having been represented by BID after being held in immigration detention for over a year.

The report states: Despite Stephen Shaws recommendations and the Home Offices response, the policy does not appear to have made any tangible improvement in the protection of vulnerable persons from harm in detention either in substance or practice.

Indeed, we have observed a worsening of health in the cases examined through the application of the Adults at Risk policy. The stated objective of the Governments response to the Shaw report was to reduce the number of vulnerable people detained and treat those in detention with dignity and respect.

Instead we have seen that the onus has been placed on the vulnerable person to prove that other factors are outweighed by their vulnerability, even in circumstances where the vulnerable persons at risk status is evidentially supported by independent medical practitioners.

Pierre Makhlouf, assistant director at BID, accused the Government of failing to meet the original intentions of the results of the Shaw Review, saying: It instead equips the Home Office with more arguments to refuse people released when they are found to be vulnerable, he said.

It has introduced a categorisation of types of evidence, absolving the Home Office of any requirement to follow up evidence where it doesnt meet a higher category. Instead, the lower categories are used as reason to refuse release, when in fact at the very least they should result in further enquiry.

The intentions of the policy are being breached. The policy itself talks about reducing the number of vulnerable people detained, but the outcome of the policy is that the Home Office is able to continue to refuse peoples release.

Lawyers at law firm Duncan Lewis said they have represented dozens of people who should never have been detained in the immigration centres, the majority of whom have been released with immediate effect following legal intervention.

Toufique Hossain, director of public law and immigration at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, said: It has been clear since the Adults at Risk policy was introduced, supposedly as a response to the damning Shaw Report, that it is simply not fit for purpose.

The policy has given the Home Office further justification to detain vulnerable individuals; including victims of torture, rape, trafficking and those with serious physical and mental health issues. We have represented dozens of men and women who should never have been detained, but were languishing in immigration removal centres until we intervened; after which they were generally released with immediate effect.

We hope that this BID Report will serve as a sharp reminder to the Home Office that they are failing in their duty to safeguard vulnerable men and women from detention and that they urgently need to reconsider their approach.

Dr Piyal Sen, from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who specialises in the mental health of detainees, said the Home Office was too often putting the requirement of immigration detention above the immigrants mental wellbeing.

While in rare cases the requirement for detention might override the mental health needs, the broad thrust of the Adults at Rick policy was set up to address serious concerns about mentally ill being detained. But this is not being applied the way it should, he told The Independent.

The Home Office is ignoring the evidence in a significant number of cases. Now weve got these guidelines set out very clearly, but they need to take more account of what the medical professionals are saying.

Research shows that the detention of immigrants can have a highly negative impact on their wellbeing. A study by Kings College London earlier this year shows that the most prevalent screened mental disorder was depression, at 52 per cent, followed by personality disorder at 35 per cent and post-traumatic stress disorder at 21 per cent. Twenty-two per cent were at moderate to high suicidal risk.

From 2009 until the end of 2016, between 2,500 and 3,500 migrants have been in detention at any given time. On the basis that 52 per cent of immigration detainees have some mental health problems, there is therefore a total of 1,560 vulnerable people in detention at any one time  many of whom remain in there despite medical evidence that they are vulnerable.

The Royal College of psychiatrists has previously reported in a position statement that it is unsurprising that the prevalence of mental illness is high in immigration detainees, who are likely to have experienced stressful life events that probably acted as predisposing factor to their mental illness.

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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

Asylum seekers and other migrants are sent to immigration removal centres when the Government wishes to establish their identities or facilitate their immigration claims. It is an administrative process, not a criminal procedure.

A Home Office spokesperson said: Detention is an important part of our immigration system, helping to ensure that those with no right to remain in the UK are returned to their home country if they will not leave voluntarily.

We operate on a presumption against detention, and the adults at risk policy aims to improve our approach to identifying individuals who may be particularly vulnerable to harm in detention.

When people are detained this is for the minimum time possible, and the dignity and welfare of those in our care is of the utmost importance.
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Travellers had their plans thrown into chaos this morning after many parts of the country were covered in ice  following freezing temperatures overnight which dropped to below -6c.

Rail chiefs were forced to cancel some services because of the conditions, which in some cases left trains frozen to the tracks in locations in the south of the country.

Commuters also faced delays of up to 90 minutes on some lines because of the disruption caused by the icy weather.

Recommended More than 70 rescued from flooding as Britain lashed by snow and rain

It came as the Met Office issued a warning overnight for ice across London, the south east and south west of England, warning of slips and falls on untreated roads and pavements.

South Western Railway said its services between Guildford and Havant and Basingstoke and Eastleigh were disrupted because of ice on conductor rails.

Trains were stuck at some locations, blocking the lines, leading to rail replacement buses being laid on.

Passengers were told that services were subject to delays of up to 90 minutes, cancellation and alteration at short notice.

The delays came on top of disruption to SWR services to and from London Waterloo this weekend because of engineering work.

National Rail this morning at just after 8am announced it had been forced to suspend trains on a section of the Southern service due to the icy weather.

It said in a tweet: You are strongly advised not to travel between Lewes and Hasting this morning. Services between these stations have been suspended due to extremely icy conditions."

More ice could be possible tomorrow morning and again disrupt travel plans as forecaster predicted that temperatures could plummet as low as -4c from Saturday night into Sunday morning.

The chaos commuters faced this morning came after freezing weather overnight, with the Met Office saying they recorded a national low of -6.3c in Topcliffe in Yorkshire.

The Arctic like conditions overnight also saw up to 3cm of snow fall in higher parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 16 November 2022 Emma Woolf, great niece of British author Virginia Woolf, and her son Ludovic sit next to a new bronze statue of Woolf, unveiled in Richmond, London Reuters 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

The dramatic change at the tail end of the autumn came as Public Health England warned a prolonged spell of cold weather was likely.

Met Office forecaster Steven Keats told The Independent: Temperatures today will be around 3c to 7c but it will feel bitterly cold.

There is a risk of snow anywhere really but likely in the mountain areas in Scotland and also in South Wales and in the Moors, with a bit of sleet in parts of the Midlands.

More an issue really is hail that is coming down in wintry showers.

Its worth mentioning too there is some good sunny weather, with good visibility.

Overnight it is trickier to gauge because of wind but temperatures of minus 3c and 4c are possible in parts.

Figures earlier this week showed there were more than 34,000 excess deaths across England and Wales over the last winter period, the second highest level in eight years.

The Office for National Statistics said the rise was likely to be due to a predominant strain of flu prevalent during the 2016 to 2017 winter.
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A British mother jailed in Iran has spoken from prison in Tehran to thank those campaigning for her release.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe addressed those attending a rally and march, including actress Emma Thompson, through a phone and loudspeaker to thank everyone for their support.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been imprisoned in Tehran since April 2016, when she was arrested at the citys airport after a holiday with her then 22-month-old daughter Gabriella.

She told the rally near her home in north London: Im so grateful for everybodys support and love... I am so overwhelmed and moved.

All that is on my mind is to be back home and to be back with my family.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of spying and seeking to overthrow the Tehran regime, and has been held in solitary confinement.

Inside Iran: What life is really like in Tehran Show all 2 1 /2 Inside Iran: What life is really like in Tehran Inside Iran: What life is really like in Tehran 601510.bin EPA Inside Iran: What life is really like in Tehran 601511.bin EPA

Her family has led a long-running campaign for her release, saying she is innocent and raising fears for her physical and mental health.

At the protest a tearful Thompson hit out at the bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster and urged the Government to do more to bring her home.

The Love Actually actress, who was suffering from pneumonia, called on Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to get on a plane, after his suggestion earlier this month that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran exposed her to the threat of her five-year sentence being doubled.

The Oscar-winning actress said: We are a net of compassion and love for Nazanin and her family. This is what we human beings do best, in stark contrast to the bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster.

If I can get out of bed with pneumonia to support a horribly abused member of our community then our Foreign Secretary can get on a plane and go to Iran and deal with the problem hes so seriously exacerbated.

Thompson added: The screw is twisting more and more and her physical and mental health is deteriorating to such a degree now that I think we are in a very urgent situation.

I cant imagine the effect of being separated for 19 months from your child. I would have gone bonkers if that had happened to me.

Im just so passionate about getting her back, its a sort of physical feeling of anguish for her.

Ms Zaghari-Racliffe has spent some of her prison sentence in solitary confinement (PA)

Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq spoke to Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and later said: We discussed how we would take both our daughters to Peppa Pig World when shes released.

Ms Zaghari-Racliffes husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said: It is profoundly moving to see so many people here.

I can really feel the love, and Nazanin can feel the love, and in the end thats the most important thing, thats what keeps us going.

The rally took place before a march to the Shia Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, north-west London, to hand in a Mothers Open Letter asking for Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffes release from the Tehran prison.

An online petition calling for her to be returned to Britain has had more than 1.3 million signatures.

Kate Allen, Amnesty International UKs director, said: Once again, its inspiring to see so many people supporting Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family this way.

Shes been put through a deeply unfair trial and could be facing a fresh charge, so its extremely important that the recent political focus on Zaghari-Ratcliffes case now translates into the Iranian authorities finally releasing her.

Press Association
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DUP leader Arlene Foster has written to the leaders of all 27 EU countries, telling them that Northern Ireland will not tolerate any difference in status between itself and the rest of the United Kingdom after the UK leaves the EU.

Earlier this week, it had been suggested that Northern Ireland might remain in the customs union after Brexit, to prevent a hard border between itself and the Irish Republic. But, speaking to the DUP annual conference in Belfast, Ms Foster made clear that Northern Ireland would leave the customs union.

She said: We will not support any arrangements that create barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom or any suggestion that Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the UK, will have to mirror European regulations.

 Northern Ireland already has special customs union rules, Michel Barnier says

I have written to the heads of government of each of the EU 27 member states setting out our views.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has said he will not allow Brexit negotiations to move on to trade until the Irish border issue is settled, and no one has yet offered a workable solution to the question of no hard border in Ireland, while one side of it remains in the EUs customs union and the other does not.

It has been suggested that Irelands geographical border could serve as a de facto border, but Ms Foster rejected any such plan.

The economic reality for our economy is that our most important trading relationship is with the rest of the United Kingdom and we will do nothing that puts that at risk in any way.

We welcome the assurances from the Prime Minister and the UK Brexit team that no such internal barriers will be countenanced and that as we joined the then European Community as one nation we will leave as one United Kingdom.

The DUP and Sinn Fein have still failed to form a government, 10 months after elections to the Northern Irelands Assembly at Stormont, which returned more nationalists than unionists for the first time ever.

Ms Foster did not hold back in her criticism of Sinn Fein, accusing them of glorying in the murder of the IRA.

She added: My thoughts are with the victims of Enniskillen, Kingsmills and La Mon and the many thousands of innocent victims who have conducted themselves with such dignity over the decades.

One of the key stumbling blocks in the return to talks are over Sinn Fein demands for recognition of Irish language and culture. Ms Foster said she had been willing to set up a power sharing agreement with no conditions and deal with language and culture issues in parallel but she told her Sinn Fein counterparts: I respect the Irish language and those who speak it. However, respect isnt a one-way street. Respect works both ways.

It is time that Sinn Fein started to respect our British culture. For too long they have shown nothing but disdain and disrespect for the national flag, the Royal Family, the Armed Forces, British symbols, the constitutional reality and the very name of this country.
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UK trade plans to share out quotas for cheap food imports after Brexit have been condemned by Australia for imposing unacceptable restrictions on other nations.

Trade minister Steven Ciobo, who is in charge of talks over a UK-Australia trade deal, hit out at Government proposals to divide up with Brussels the numbers of goods that can be brought in on positive tariffs based roughly on current rates.

Mr Ciobo said the UKs quota-splitting plan would hit other nations exporting to the European Union amid concerns from other countries including the United States, New Zealand, Canada and Brazil.

His comments are likely to concern ministers, as securing favourable trade deals with nations outside of Europe is a key plank of the Governments Brexit strategy.

Mr Ciobo told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: In essence its not acceptable and the reason its not acceptable is because as the EU has expanded over the years, there hasnt been a commensurate increase in the tariff rate quotas.

He added: The point is that you have a choice about where you place your quota at the moment.

Therefore, given that you could put it in the UK or you could put it into continental Europe, why would we accept a proposition that would see a decline in the quota available because of the Brexit decision?

It comes after International Trade Secretary Liam Fox was ridiculed over claims that British businesses were harming the economy because they do not want to export their goods abroad.

His Labour counterpart Barry Gardiner said Dr Fox had been warned that the deal could cause a row and that countries raising objections have a point.

We warned the Secretary of State Liam Fox about this a number of months ago and he said this was going to be very easy because it was not going to make any changes in the current total quota that the EU has, he told the BBC.

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 also cautioned against accepting higher amounts of low-tariff imports of products such as lamb because of the impact it would have on UK farmers and the countryside.

Liberal Democrat trade spokesman Tom Brake said: "Yet again the Government has been warned that isolating ourselves from the EU is not the straightforward panacea dreamt of by Brextremists.

"There are real concerns that the UK is going to struggle to strike any deals that come remotely close to the benefits we enjoy as a member of the EU. This is another reason why the British public must have a vote on the terms of this messy divorce, including the option of an exit from Brexit."

A Department for International Trade spokesman said: As we leave the EU, we will need to update the terms of our World Trade Organisation membership to reflect an independent UK trade policy.

We want to ensure a smooth transition which minimises the disruption to our trading relationships with other WTO members and tariff rate quotas are one of the issues that we are discussing with them.

This is largely a technical process and we will continue to engage WTO members including Australia in an open, inclusive and transparent way.
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EU negotiators are already laying the groundwork to hit the UK with demands in the next stage of Brexit talks that are unacceptable to key figures in Theresa Mays Cabinet, The Independent can reveal.

Leaked documents show chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier wants to make giving the UK a good transition deal conditional on Britains automatic acceptance of new Brussels regulations during the likely two-year period after March 2019.

The plan, set out to EU leaders behind closed doors, would leave the UK with no say over rules it accepts during the transition and is likely to enrage Brexiteers in the Cabinet like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Liam Fox, who are determined 2019 should be the last year Britain takes new rules from Brussels.

The move shows that it is once again EU negotiators who are setting the terms of Brexit discussions, while Ms May is still struggling to meet their initial demands relating to the first withdrawal stage of the talks.

On Friday, she met President of the European Council Donald Tusk in a bid to gain approval for her offer to pay a divorce bill which may now total 40bn, and give guarantees over the Irish border and citizens rights.

The Prime Minister is desperate for EU leaders to approve her withdrawal offer at a December meeting of the European Council, and allow talks to move on to settling the transition, likely to be between 2019 and 2021, and future trade  with her own political survival in part depending on it.

But the documents handed to The Independent show the next stage of talks will be just as punishing and fraught with political danger for her Government.

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 papers consist of a presentation, drawn up by Mr Barnier for the EU27s representatives, in which he says any UK transition out of the EU must involve the automatic application in the UK of new EU rules post-30 March 2019.

The chief negotiator is clear Britain would have no institutional rights, no presence in the institutions and no voting rights under his plan, meaning the UK would end up following rules made in the interests of the remaining member states and even incorporating them into British law with no control of how they are formed.

Any potential conflict over the transition has yet to surface because the EU has said it will not discuss future arrangements on that or trade until the three withdrawal issues have made sufficient progress.

But the leak shows the direction the bloc is taking behind the scenes and indicates probable obstacles to agreement in future rounds of talks.

Mr Barnier said in September that any transition has to respect the regulatory and financial framework of the single market and that the UK would have to continue to follow EU rules, but the subject of new laws written during the transition has yet to be explicitly broached in public.

 Budget 2017: Philip Hammond puts aside 3bn for 'all Brexit outcomes'

The European Commissions approach also raises extra questions for the Governments EU (Withdrawal) Bill, which would give the Government powers to copy current EU law into British law at the point of departure in March 2019, but then tweak it as it pleases.

In her key speech in Florence, the Prime Minister said that a transition, or implementation period, would be governed by the existing structure of EU rules and regulations, with a Downing Street spokesperson telling The Independent more recently that the transition period is subject to negotiations.

Chancellor Philip Hammond and Home Secretary Amber Rudd have been pushing for a transition which mimics current conditions as closely as possible in order to reduce instability for business as they prepare for a new regulatory framework beyond 2021.

But Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson indicated in a interview ahead of Conservative conference with The Sun that it would be a red line of his that the UK accept no new regulations during the transition.

Boris Johnson has said the UK must not accept new EU rules during the transition (Reuters)

He said: You heard the Prime Minister say very clearly in Florence that she envisages the transition period being run under existing arrangements  that was the phrase she used, The existing rules.

But while battle lines were being drawn for the second phase of talks, Ms May was still undertaking a diplomatic round last week aimed at settling the first phase.

As well as Mr Tusk, she met German leader Angela Merkel, Danish premier Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Belgiums Charles Michel, and Lithuanias Saulius Skvernelis at a summit in Brussels.

At a recent cabinet sub-committee meeting, Ms May is said to have won backing to offer the EU some 40bn to settle the UKs financial obligations. Meanwhile David Davis has hailed progress made on the issue of citizens rights.

 David Davis nearly trips after finishing Brexit speech

However, the issue of handling Northern Irelands border emerged last week as a potential stumbling block after Dublin demanded stronger guarantees that there would be no land border on the island of Ireland.

Questioned over the matter, a Downing Street spokesperson initially said it could be a matter for negotiations whether Northern Ireland remained in the EUs customs union after Brexit, but it later backed down and clarified that the UK would leave the union as one, on withdrawal.

The issue of the Irish border is particularly difficult for the Prime Minister politically because the Northern Irish DUP is propping up Ms Mays majority in the House of Commons  and has used its conference to make clear it will not accept the province remaining part of the customs union.
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Sadiq Khan will vow there is no corner of London where Labour cant win as he spearheads his partys efforts to win over long-standing Tory councils in the capital.

Labour will target Tory crown jewels in their local election push, including Wandsworth, which has been held by the Conservatives since 1974, and Barnet  once dubbed Easycouncil for adopting the no-frills approach of budget airlines by charging for non-essential services.

In a speech to party activists, the London Mayor will promise to make Brexit a key part of the election strategy, in an effort to win over the citys pro-Remain voters who bucked the national trend in the EU referendum.

Railing against pursuing a hard Brexit at any cost, he will also take aim at air quality, police cuts and affordable housing shortages as Labour seeks to capitalise on their general election gains for Mays local council vote.

Mr Khan, who has previously spoken critically of Jeremy Corbyn, will say the party is going from "strength to strength".

He will say: Labour in London is going from strength to strength. Under Jeremy Corbyns leadership, we achieved the best results in London since 2001 in this years general election.

However, Londoners that desperately need Labour in power across London cannot afford for us to be complacent about the upcoming local elections.

Thats why we must keep taking the fight to the Tories  who are weaker and more divided than ever  and I pledge to lead Labour members in that fight.

He will add: There is now no corner of London where Labour cant win  and with enough hard work we can challenge the Tories even in their Crown Jewels of Wandsworth and Barnet.

As we have shown in City Hall, Labour in power can change lives for the better  from freezing TfL fares to tackling air pollution. If Labour can win control of more councils, we can truly transform the lives of Londoners.

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His speech comes as Labour continued efforts to keep the party on an election footing with campaign events across the country.

Mr Corbyn was due to make a speech to party faithful highlighting figures that show average workers will earn 858 less per year by 2022 than expected as gloomy economic growth forecasts set out in the Budget hit pay packets.

The Labour leader will accuse the Government of presiding over a completely broken economy which will leave many ordinary workers worse off than before the financial crisis.
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DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has suggested that the 2017 general election result was a gift from God.

In his speech to the DUP conference this afternoon, Mr Dodds said: If Im honest, I did not believe that in 2017 we were heading for a hung Parliament where the DUP would hold the balance of power, but looking back I dont think it was an accident how things turned out.

On reflection, its hard to imagine how the results could have done more to maximise our influence.

A party spokesperson said the words were indeed, An allusion to guidance from a higher power.

Theresa Mays decision to hold an election in June 2017, and then lose her majority and strike a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party, at a time when the future of Ireland is of central importance to Brexit, has left the DUP with more influence over affairs both at home and in Westminster than ever before.

Mr Dodds also ruled out suggestions that Northern Ireland could remain in the EUs customs union after Brexit, telling the party there will be no internal UK border in the Irish Sea.

He said if the EU wanted to install custom checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the republic that was a matter for them. But how an entirely frictionless border could exist between the two countries after the UK leaves the customs union is far from clear.

He told the party that Brexit is happening. who campaigned for Brexit in advance of last years referendum, despite the difficulties it might pose to the Good Friday Agreement and the open border with the South".

Since the DUPs last conference, the Northern Irish Executive collapsed over the Renewable Heat Scandal, triggering an election in January, from which no new executive has yet been formed, and the DUP have struck a 1bn deal with Theresa Mays minority government in return for supporting it at Westminster.

Mr Dodds called it a chance of a lifetime and the opportunity of a generation for unionism.

The new UK Government chief whip Julian Smith will address the conference this afternoon.
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Terrorists were carrying the Isis flag when they killed 305 people in an attack on a Sinai mosque, Egypts public prosecutors office has stated.

The claim has yet to be independently verified, but it fits the assumptions of many commentators, given that North Sinai is facing an insurgency by jihadists who aligned with Isis in 2014 and now call themselves Sinai State.

As of Saturday afternoon, no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for what was the deadliest attack by Islamist extremists in Egypts modern history.

But the statement from the public prosecutors office spoke of between 25 and 30 gunmen in military-style uniforms carrying the flag of Isis as they attacked the al-Rawdah mosque in the village of Bir al-Abed.

"They numbered between 25 and 30, carrying the Daesh [Isis] flag and took up positions in front of the mosque door and its 12 windows with automatic rifles," the statement said.

The public prosecutors office said its claim was based on investigation and the testimony of survivors.

Before the statement was issued, one expert told The Independent it was highly likely that Isis affiliates were behind the attack on the mosque, which practises Sufism, a form of Islam regarded as heretical by extremists.

Mohannad Sabry, a Sinai expert and author of Sinai: Egypts Linchpin, Gazas Lifeline, Israels Nightmare, said: Almost every sign points toward Isis in Sinai.

They have had a decades-old lethal animosity with the Sufi community in Sinai and have killed several of their most revered clerics over the past years.

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The Isis affiliate Sinai State claimed responsibility for the beheading of two Sufi sheikhs in December 2016, accusing them of apostasy and sorcery, and threatened that it would not allow the presence of Sufi orders in Sinai or Egypt. The group has also frequently destroyed Sufi shrines in North Sinai.

Mr Sabry said the mosque attack suggests that the violence in Sinai is not decreasing and that Isis has not been significantly weakened by successive army campaigns.

It casts major doubt on the claims of success and achievements spread so loudly by [Egypts President Abdel Fattah al-Sisis] regime and the Egyptian military, he said.

This attack hit a geographic area that the military claims is under control, proving that Isis is still maintaining some of its capabilities to mobilise weapons, explosives and fighters despite years of war with one of the biggest and strongest military forces in the Middle East.

Asked about progress in the fight against terrorism, one military source told The Independent the army was doing its best but added: The terrorists are hiding in between the civilians, thats the problem.

Mr Sabry said the unique and unprecedented attack sent a loud message to the North Sinai community that even a Muslim house of worship, as long as it doesnt pledge allegiance to Isis, is a target.

There was, Mr Sabry added, another reason for Isis to attack Sufis.

The Sufi community in North Sinai has definitely succeeded in what billions of dollars and hundreds of lives spent by Egypts military could not achieve, he said. It powerfully kept thousands of youths away from joining the ranks of Isis and has continued to fight them on social, intellectual and most importantly religious levels.

Theresa May spoke with Mr Sisi on Saturday and told him the UK "stands ready to help in any way possible following the massacre.

Downing Street said the two leaders agreed that international co-operation was needed to tackle the problem of terrorism.

A spokesman for Number 10 said: "The Prime Minister offered her personal condolences and the condolences of the British people for the barbaric attack that took place at al-Rawdah mosque in north Sinai yesterday."

The attack was a "terrible example of the threat Egypt faces" and "they agreed that terrorism was an international problem and that it was important for countries to work closely together and share expertise to counter the growing threat of terrorism around the world".

"They welcomed continued bilateral co-operation in this area."
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Egypts air force has conducted air strikes against suspected terrorists after the countrys President vowed to respond with the utmost force against militants who killed 305 worshippers at a mosque in the Sinai village of Bir al-Abed.

A military source told The Independent that the air strikes had destroyed vehicles linked to the attackers, who used machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades to mow down worshippers in the packed mosque during noon prayers on Friday.

Egypts air force is following the trail of the terrorists and has destroyed two or three of their vehicles, the military source said.

Other Egyptian military sources later reported that the air strikes had killed everyone inside the vehicles, although it has not yet been possible to independently verify this claim.

It is understood that the air strikes took place in mountainous areas around Bir al-Abed  the small village where the attack took place, 40km west of North Sinais main city al-Arish  hours after the attack.

At about the same time, Egypts President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gave a televised address to the nation in which he vowed: The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force.

What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism, to destroy our efforts to stop the terrible criminal plan that aim to destroy what is left of our region.

As the official death toll rose to 305 on Saturday morning, more details emerged of the attack, the deadliest by Islamist extremists in Egypts modern history.

The attack began when five off-road vehicles carrying been 25 and 30 armed men arrived at the al-Rawdah mosque just as the noon sermon was about to start.

The main cleric at the mosque, Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Fatah Zowraiq said at least a dozen attackers charged in, opening fire randomly.

He said there were also explosions. Officials cited by the state news agency Mena said the attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades as well as machine guns, and shot people as they tried to run from the building.

Witnesses speaking to Associated Press (AP) in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia where some of the wounded were taken, told how the attackers spent about 20 minutes killing and maiming worshippers.

They spoke of worshippers jumping out of windows, of a stampede in a corridor leading to the bathrooms and of children screaming in horror.

Some spoke of their narrow escape from certain death, others of families that lost all or most of their male members.

Mansour, a 38-year-old worker in a nearby salt factory, told AP: Everyone lay down on the floor and kept their heads down. If you raised your head you get shot.

The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning and then became more deliberate: whoever they werent sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead.

Mansour, who suffered two gunshot wounds in the legs, said that as children screamed in terror, the militants shouted Allahu Akbar or God is great.

Panicked worshippers hid behind concrete columns or whatever shelter they could find.

I knew I was injured, said Mansour, but I was in a situation that was much scarier than being wounded. I was only seconds away from a certain death.

Mansour, who said he had settled in Bir al-Abed three years ago in the hope of escaping the violence elsewhere in northern Sinai, added that as the shooting continued, many of the worshippers recited their final prayers.

Abdullah Abdel-Nasser, 14, who was attending prayers with his father, said that at one point, a militant shouted for children to leave.

The teenager rushed out, despite being wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel and a bullet.

I saw many people on the floor, many dead, he said. I dont think anyone survived.

Three police officers on the scene said the militants also used burning cars to block roads, effectively cutting off escape routes and impeding the progress of anyone trying to get into Bir al-Abed to stop the attack.

Despite the attackers call for children to leave, 27 children are among the dead. Egypts chief prosecutor Nabil Sadeq said the total death toll currently stood at 305, with 126 people wounded.

It is believed that many of the victims were workers at the salt factory who had come for Friday services at the mosque, which practises Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that extremist radicals regard as heretical.

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

Despite the military air strikes, at least one Bir al-Abed resident demanded to know why the Egyptian army had been unable to stop the terrorist attack while it was in progress.

Mohammed Ali, who said 18 members of his extended family were killed in the attack, demanded: Where was the army? Its only a few kilometres away. This is the question we cannot answer.

Responsibility for the attack has not yet been claimed by any group, but since 2011 North Sinai has been the site of an ongoing insurgency by jihadists, who since 2014 have been aligned with Isis. The group is responsible for near-weekly attacks on the army and police in Sinai, and claimed responsibility in 2015 for downing a plane leaving the Sharm El-Sheikh beach resort, killing all the mostly Russian tourists on board.

Almost every sign points toward Isis in Sinai being behind Fridays mosque attack, Mohannad Sabry, a Sinai expert and author of Sinai: Egypts Linchpin, Gazas Lifeline, Israels Nightmare, told The Independent. They have had a decades-old lethal animosity with the Sufi community in Sinai and have killed several of their most revered clerics over the past years.

The Isis branch in Sinai, which calls itself Sinai State, claimed responsibility for the beheading of two Sufi sheikhs in December 2016, accusing them of apostasy and sorcery, and threatened that it would not allow the presence of Sufi orders in Sinai or Egypt. The group has also frequently destroyed Sufi shrines in North Sinai.

A Sinai resident who did not want to be named told The Independent that in general there has been a change in how locals perceive Sufis in recent years. Its not really sectarianism but more like us versus the other, which was not common among Bedouins.

The military source who informed The Independent of the air strikes also believed Isis was behind the attack.

They attack everyone; Christians, Muslims, the military, he said.

He also suggested the attack could indicate a change of tactics, as this is the first such large-scale assault directly targeting civilians in the region.

They did kill civilians, but not at this scale, he said.

Mr Sabry said the unique and unprecedented attack sent a loud message to the North Sinai community that even a Muslim house of worship, as long as it doesnt pledge allegiance to Isis, is a target.

There was, Mr Sabry added, another reason for Isis to attack Sufis.

The Sufi community in North Sinai has definitely succeeded in what billions of dollars and hundreds of lives spent by Egypts military could not achieve, he said. It powerfully kept thousands of youths away from joining the ranks of Isis and has continued to fight them on social, intellectual and most importantly religious levels.

Despite successive army campaigns and after years of unrest, the mosque attack served as a dark reminder that the violence in Sinai is not decreasing, and that Isis has not been weakened.

Once again it casts major doubt on the claims of success and achievements spread so loudly by Sisis regime and the Egyptian military, Mr Sabry said. This attack hit a geographic area the military claims is under control, proving that Isis is still maintaining some of its capabilities to mobilise weapons, explosives and fighters despite years of war with one of the biggest and strongest military forces in the Middle East.

Asked about progress in the fight against terrorism, the military source said the army was doing its best.

The terrorists are hiding in between the civilians, thats the problem, he claimed.

Mr Sisi announced three-days of mourning in response to the attack.

Other countries offered their condolences to Egypt, with British Prime Minister Theresa May calling it an evil and cowardly act and the French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, condemning the attack and saying Paris stood with its ally.

US President Donald Trump denounced what he called a horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenceless worshippers in Egypt.

The world cannot tolerate terrorism, he said on Twitter. We must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence.
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Survivors of the Egypt mosque terror attack have told how Islamist extremists went on a 20-minute killing spree shouting Allahu Akbar as children screamed in terror.

They have told of worshippers jumping out of windows, and stampeding to escape terrorists who used machine guns and rocket propelled grenades to kill 305 victims in the deadliest attack by Islamist extremists in Egypt's modern history.

One witness said the terrorists began by spraying bullets at random, but finished by methodically shooting anyone they thought was still alive.

Recommended Egypt launches air strikes in response to mosque terror attack

The attack began when five off-road vehicles carrying between 25 and 30 armed men in camouflage trousers and black T-shirts arrived as the noon sermon was about to start in the al-Rawdah mosque in the small North Sinai village of Bir al-Abed.

Many of those inside were workers at a nearby salt factory, practising Sufi, a mystical form of Islam renowned for its peaceful nature but regarded as heretical by extremist radicals.

The mosques main cleric, Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Fatah Zowraiq said at least a dozen attackers burst in, opening fire randomly.

The cleric, who survived with just bruises and scratches, told the Associated Press (AP) there were also explosions.

Officials cited by the state news agency MENA said the attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades as well as machine guns, and shot people as they tried to flee the building.

"Everyone lay down on the floor and kept their heads down, Mansour, a 38-year-old salt factory worker, told AP. If you raised your head you get shot.

He added: The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning, and then became more deliberate: whoever they weren't sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead."

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

Mansour, who suffered two gunshot wounds in the legs, said that as children screamed in terror, the militants shouted Allahu Akbar, God is great.

Panicked worshippers hid behind concrete columns or whatever shelter they could find as the attackers, some of them masked, others showing heavy beards and long hair, continued firing.

"I knew I was injured, said Mansour, who is now receiving medical treatment in the city of Ismailia, But I was in a situation that was much scarier than being wounded. I was only seconds away from certain death.

Mansour, who said he had settled in Bir al-Abed three years ago in the hope of escaping the violence elsewhere in northern Sinai, added that as the shooting continued, many of the worshippers recited their final prayers.

Abdullah Abdel-Nasser, 14, who was in the mosque with his father, said that at one point a militant shouted for children to leave.

The teenager rushed out, despite being wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel and a bullet.

"I saw many people on the floor, many dead, he said. I don't think anyone survived.

Three police officers on the scene said the militants also used burning cars to block roads, effectively cutting off escape routes and impeding the progress of anyone trying to get into Bir al-Abed to stop the attack.

Despite the attackers call for children to leave, 27 children are among the dead. Egypts chief prosecutor Nabil Sadeq said the total death toll currently stood at 305, with 126 people wounded.

Some families that lost all or most of their male members.

Revealing that 18 members of his extended family had been killed, Mohammed Ali demanded to know why the authorities had been unable to stop the attack while it was in progress.

Where was the army? he said. It's only a few kilometers away. This is the question we cannot answer."
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A tiny cat hair helped to identify the women behind a plot to kill Barack Obama, according to legal documents filed in a Texas court.

Julia Poff stands accused of posting explosives to the then president, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Marylands Social Security Administrator Carolyn Colvin last October.

While the packaged intended for Mr Obama was intercepted, Mr Abbott did open the one that was sent to him but it failed to explode.

Recommended Ivanka Trump defends Malia Obama over smoking video

Had it detonated, it could have caused severe burns and death, the indictment says. He only appeared to escaped because he did not open the package as intended.

Poff allegedly said she didn't like Obama and she was upset with Governor Abbott because "she had not received support from her ex-husband," the indictment adds. She had applied for and not received social security benefits in Maryland.

FBI investigators were able to track her down using an obliterated shipping label on the package sent to Mr Abbott, according to the documents, which were filed in a Houston court earlier this week.

A cigarette packet bought near her home in the small city of Sealy, around 50 miles west of Houston, also helped them to zero in on her.

But it was cat hair was found under the address label, of the package posted to Mr Obama which was microscopically consistent with the hair of one of Poffs cats, that helped them make the breakthrough.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

When investigators searched her house they found fireworks in her garage, the indictment states.

She was charged earlier this month on six counts for allegedly mailing the bombs in October 2016, including mailing injurious articles and transporting explosives with the intent to kill and injure and is currently being held at a Houston detention centre.

She has also been charged with food stamp fraud and False Declaration in Bankruptcy.
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A church in upmarket Malibu has decided to stop providing free meals for those in need after claiming they were told by officials they were attracting too many homeless people.

The United Methodist Church, one of many churches that provides food and help, has been offering free meals twice a week. But it said it was going to stop after being told the meal service was luring too many homeless people.

Dawn Randall, a member of the church, said it recently received an email from city officials. Very succinctly, they claimed we are increasing homelessness, she told CBS.

Reports suggest that the California city of Malibu, famed for its gorgeous beaches and multi-million dollar homes, has a growing problem with homelessness, an issue that was met with both charity and taxpayer money.

The Los Angeles Times said the city, which has a population of 13,000, has roughly 180 homeless residents, but no shelter or housing for poor people.

 Cooking your way out of homelessness

The United Methodist Church and Standing on Stone, a Christian group, had been hosting twice-weekly homeless dinners on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

But the newspaper said once the metro line to Santa Monica opened last year, a number of residents complained that mentally-ill and other homeless people were camping at the beach and entering schools.

In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Show all 16 1 /16 In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Celebrities and 1,000 members of public attended the End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out in London's Greenwich Peninsula on 24 November Andy Barnes In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Sadie Frost at the End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out in London's Greenwich Peninsula on 24 November Andy Barnes In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Celebrities and 1,000 members of the public joined the End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out in London's Greenwich Peninsula on 24 November Andy Barnes In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Seyi Obakin, the Chief Executive of Centrepoint, and Colin Salmon at the End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out in London's Greenwich Peninsula on 24 November Andy Barnes In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Celebrities and 1,000 members of public attended the End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out in London's Greenwich Peninsula on 24 November Andy Barnes In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Celebrities and 1,000 members of public attended the End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out in London's Greenwich Peninsula on 24 November Andy Barnes In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Celebrities and 1,000 members of public attended the End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out in London's Greenwich Peninsula on 24 November Andy Barnes In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Celebrities and 1,000 members of public attended the End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out in London's Greenwich Peninsula on 24 November Andy Barnes In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Lib Dem Leader Tim Farron gets ready to bed down as 1000 people get ready to sleep out for the annual Centrepoint Sleep out at the Greenwich Peninsula Nigel Howard In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out The RAF prepare tasty food before a 100 people get ready to sleep out for the annual Centrepoint Sleep out at the Greenwich Peninsula Nigel Howard In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Independent reporter Alex Dymoke gets ready to bed down as 1000 people get ready to sleep out for the annual Centrepoint Sleep out at the Greenwich Peninsula Nigel Howard In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Anjali Patel, Remy Diamon-Ross and Hannah Kilminster join members of the RAF as they are given dinner Nigel Howard In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Bedding down for the night, sleepers get ready for lights out in one of several tents at the annual Centrepoint Sleep out at the Greenwich Peninsula Nigel Howard In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Bedding down for the night, sleepers get ready for lights out in one of several tents at the annual Centrepoint Sleep out at the Greenwich Peninsula Nigel Howard In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Bedding down for the night, sleepers get ready for lights out in one of several tents at the annual Centrepoint Sleep out at the Greenwich Peninsula Nigel Howard In pictures: End Youth Homelessness Sleep Out Colin Salmon is 'photo bombed' before he gets ready to bed down as 1000 people get ready to sleep out for the annual Centrepoint Sleep out at the Greenwich Peninsula Nigel Howard

A homeless person was taking a shower in the girls locker room in middle school - that wasnt real good, Gary Peterson, a retired developer, told the newspaper. Providing dinner is a nice thing to do and a good thing, but its the location.

At a public hearing this week, Malibu Mayor Skylar Peak denied making the order and apologised for any miscommunication.

No they were never formally asked to stop feeding the homeless, said Mr Peak. Not at all.

Neither the church or Mr Peak immediately responded to inquiries.
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The NYPD has launched an investigation into claims a group of policemen tried to intimidate an 18-year-old woman to stop her bringing charges against two detectives who allegedly raped her.

The woman claims nine policemen visited her and her mother at Maimonides Medical Centre in Brooklyn, New York, where she was being treated for the rape, and tried to discourage them from coming forward with the story, according to her attorney.

Eddie Martins, 37, and Richard Hall, 32, are accused of raping the 18-year-old in the back seat of their police van while she was handcuffed after being arrested for possessing drugs on September 15. She has also accused them of forcing her to perform oral sex.

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

Hall and Martins admitted to having sex with the 18-year-old while on duty but dispute her claim that it was non-consensual, according to police sources.

A lawyer for one of the accused policemen also said the womens claims of bullying were untrue.

Mark Bederow, a lawyer for detective Eddie Martins said: She was interviewed by [the Internal Affairs Bureau] on the evening of September 16.

That neither she nor her mother informed IAB that other officers were allegedly obstructing justice severely discredits this allegation.

However, the young womans attorney, Michael David, said: We were just recently in an official meeting concerning the moms recollection of events that night. Thats when it came out.

Thats when I heard it. And when I heard it come out of the moms mouth, I wasnt going to let it go.

Earlier, the young woman said in a statement: Im completely brutalised by the rape. Now every time I see any police, Im in a panic.

She says she was driving in the Coney Island area of New York with two friends, when they were pulled over by police on suspicion of possessing illegal substances.
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The US has strongly condemned Pakistan's release of the alleged militant accused of masterminding the 2008 attack on Mumbai - saying it sends a deeply troubling message about its commitment to fighting terrorism.

Hafiz Saeed, accused of plotting the commando operation that left more than 160 people dead, was released from house arrest earlier this week by a three-judge panel in the city of Lahore. His spokesman, Yahya Mujahid, called it a victory of truth.

But the White House denounced the move and said it could damage US-Pakistan relations.

 Pakistan protests: army called in after clashes with Islamist protesters

Saeeds release, after Pakistans failure to prosecute or charge him, sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistan's commitment to combatting international terrorism and belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil, said press secretary Sara Huckabee Sanders.

If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistans global reputation.

Mr Saeed, 68, has always denied being behind the multi-target attack on Mumbai that left close to 170 people dead. In 2010, he told The Independent: They make me out to be the biggest and most evil terrorist. Do I look like one to you?

He has insisted that his organisation, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, is involved solely in charitable activities.

Yet both India, the US and other countries, accuse Mr Saeed of being being the attack. They say that while Jamaat-ud-Dawa may indeed perform charitable activities, it is also a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan militant group which became notorious for strikes on Indian targets, including a 2001 attack on its parliament in Delhi.

In December 2008, UN Secretary Council declared Jamaat-ud-Dawa a terrorist front group. In April 2012, the US announced a bounty of $10m on Mr Saeed.

After the attack on the Indian commercial capital, Pakistan was put under intense pressure to detain and prosecute Mr Saeed. India and the US said there was sufficient evidence, though this was something prosecutors in Pakistan denied.

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

Instead, Mr Saeed has spent much of the last decade being placed under house arrest and then released. His situation under house arrest is not irksome; Mr Saeed has a large property in Lahore and is protected not only by his own armed guards but by armed police officers.

While some in Pakistan may wish to see Mr Saeed placed on trial, there is widespread suspicion among Indian and US officials that he still retains close links to the countrys Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which has been long blamed for sponsoring many of the cross-border attacks on Indian targets.

After his latest release from house arrest, Mr Saeed attacked recently ousted prime minster Nawaz Sharif as a traitor for his efforts to seek peace with India.

Nawaz Sharif asks why he was ousted? I tell him he was ousted, because he committed treason against Pakistan by developing friendship with [Narendra] Modi, killers of thousands of Muslims, Mr Saeed said, according to Reuters.

The Trump administration has been intensifying pressure on Pakistan to fight extremists and drive them from hideouts in Pakistani territory.

The campaign appeared to produce some success this year when Pakistani security forces assisted with the release of a Taliban-held US-Canadian family after five years in captivity. However, US officials cautioned that move needed to be followed by additional measures to prove the country's commitment.

The White Houses comments came as police in Pakistan launched an operation to clear Islamist protesters from an intersection linking the Pakistani capital with the city of Rawalpindi, sparking other demonstrators across the country to take to the streets in solidarity.
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Ivanka Trump will not be accompanied by any senior State Department officials when she visits India because Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly does not wish to bolster the image of the Presidents eldest daughter on the world change.

Ms Trump, 36, is due to travel to India next week to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in the southern city of Hyderabad. The theme of this years event is Women First, Prosperity for All.

But while the high-profile annual event was previously attended by former Secretary of State John Kerry and Barack Obama, the State Department is not sending any senior officials to accompany Ms Trump.

CNN said this was because Mr Tillerson did not want to bolster Ms Trumps position on the global stage. In recent months, both Ms Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, have taken a front seat in several international settings where Mr Tillerson believes, that as the USs top diplomat, he should represent the country

They wont send someone senior because they dont want to bolster Ivanka. Its now another rift between the White House and State at a time when Rex Tillerson doesnt need any more problems with the President, a senior State Department official told the network.

Rex doesn't like the fact that hes supposed to be our nations top diplomat, and Jared and now Ivanka have stepped all over Rex Tillerson for a long time. So now, hes not sending senior people from the State Department to support this issue. Hes not supporting Ivanka Trump.

 Ivanka Trump 'greeted with half empty-room' while giving Tokyo speech on women's empowerment

Mr Tillerson, a former top executive with Exxon Mobil, has had a controversial time since he became Secretary of State, paring down the department, failing to fill scores of senior posts and watching the departure of many senior career diplomats.

He has also had a difficult relationship with Mr Trump.

Earlier this summer, Mr Tillerson was forced to hold a press briefing to deny reports she had been planning to resign and had only stayed in his position after the intervention of Vice President Mike Pence.

In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home Show all 13 1 /13 In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The front of the house Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The lobby Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The house exterior Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The patio Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The bedroom Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The living room Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The living area Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The Living Room Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The kitchen Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The living room Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The bathroom Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The living room Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The hall Zillow

I have never considered leaving this post, he said. He declined, however, to deny reports that he referred to Mr Trump as a f***ing moron. He said: Im not going to deal with petty stuff like that.

At around the same time, Ms Trump startled international observers when she sat in for her father at several sessions with world leaders at the G20 summit in Hamburg. She was invited to visit India by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Meanwhile, Mr Kushner, who also has an office in the West Wing, has been handed a vast portfolio that includes improving US-China relations and securing a peace deal in the Middle East.

Neither the State Department of White House immediately responded to inquiries.

However, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told CNN: The Department is committed to supporting womens economic empowerment and entrepreneurship, and the summit is a prime opportunity to showcase the importance of these themes.

The summit in Hyderabad faces controversy for another reason: it was to be attended by Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone, but she pulled out amid growing protests over her participation in the film Padmavati.

The film, set in the 14th century, depicts the life of queen Padmini. It has been criticised by right-wing groups that it misrepresents history by showing a love scene between the queen and a Muslim invader, which the director has denied.

A member of Mr Modis ruling, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Suraj Pal Amu, offered a bounty of $1.5m for anyone who beheaded Ms Padukone.
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Former US Attorney Preet Bharara has said cooperating with special counsel Robert Muellers investigation may be the only sane and rational move for ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Mr Flynn has become part a central part of Mr Muellers probe into whether Trump campaign advisers colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.

That investigation also reportedly involves a probe into whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice when he allegedly asked ex-FBI director James Comey to drop an inquiry into Mr Flynn.

Recommended Michael Flynn reportedly cuts ties with Trump

This week it was said that lawyers for Mr Flynn have stopped sharing information with Mr Trumps lawyers about the investigation - the clearest indication to date that Mr Flynn is cooperating with Mr Mueller, according to the New York Times.

A lawyer for Mr Flynn did not immediately respond to The Independent's request for comment.

Lawyers for both Mr Flynn and Mr Trump declined to comment to the Times.

In a tweet, Mr Bharara - who was dismissed by Mr Trump earlier this year - suggested that helping with the investigation may be Mr Flynns only chance to save himself and his son, Michael Flynn Jr, following reports that prosecutors have enough evidence to charge them both.

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

Mr Flynns son also worked on the Trump campaign.

If you're dead to rights, flipping on others and cooperating with the prosecution is the only sane and rational move, Mr Bharara said. Also, prosecutors accept cooperation only if you can provide substantial assistance. Higher up in the food chain. Stay tuned

Mr Flynn joined the campaign as an adviser in January 2016. He was selected to be Mr Trump's national security adviser during the transition, but resigned in February after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with a Russian official.

At least one former Trump team member has already agreed to cooperate with Mr Mueller. George Papadopoulos, a low-level campaign staffer, recently pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a professor with Russia ties.

Court documents revealed in Mr Papadopoulos indictment showed the professor had promised the campaign staffer dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails.
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Police in Bangladesh have arrested a suspected Islamist militant over the hacking death of a US blogger whose writings on religion angered hardliners.

Deputy police commissioner Masudur Rahman said the man, who was named as 24-year-old Arafat Rahman, was being held in connection with the 2015 machete attack on Avijit Roy and his wife. Mr Roy was fatally injured and his wife seriously hurt, on their way home from a book fair in Dhaka.

Police said they believed the suspect was a member of the Al-Qaeda-inspired group, Ansarullah Bangla Team. The organisation has been blamed for numerous attacks, including a July 2016 assault on a restaurant in the citys diplomatic quarter that left 22 people dead, most of them foreigners.

Reuters said police revealed they had arrested the suspect after analysing CCTV footage. They said he was detained by officers of the counterterrorism police unit on the outskirts of the capital on Friday night.

In the primary interrogation, he confessed his involvement in the killing of four other secular activists, said Mr Rahman, the senior police officer.

The killing of Mr Roy, an atheist US citizen of Bangladeshi origin, sent shockwaves across the country and underscored the threat of Islamist extremists in the Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people.

 Bangladesh cafe attack suspect killed in police raid

It was one of a series of deadly attacks targeting bloggers, foreigners and religious minorities.

The news agency said police believe the Ansarullah Bangla Team militant group is behind the murders of more than a dozen secular bloggers and LGBTQ-rights activists. They believe a sacked army major, who is still at large, was the leader of the group and masterminded the killings.

In pictures: Bangladesh attacks Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Bangladesh attacks In pictures: Bangladesh attacks Bangladesh attacks Hindu ashram worker Nityaranjan Pande, 62, was hacked to death in Pabna on 10 June 2016 AP In pictures: Bangladesh attacks Bangladesh attacks Hindu priest Anando Gopal Ganguly, left, was murdered in Jhenidah in Bangladesh on 7 June 2016 EPA In pictures: Bangladesh attacks Bangladesh attacks Mahmuda Khanam Mitu, wife of the Deputy Commissioner of Chittagong Metropolitan Police, was murdered in Chittagong, Bangladesh on 5 June 2016 EPA In pictures: Bangladesh attacks Bangladesh attacks Bangladesh Students Union arranged a torch procession in protest over recent murders of free thinkers in Dhaka NurPhoto In pictures: Bangladesh attacks Bangladesh attacks Murdered gay rights activist Xulhaz Mannan, who was editor at Bangladeshs only LGBT magazine Rex In pictures: Bangladesh attacks Bangladesh attacks A Bangladeshi policeman stands guard at the site of the murder of a law student, hacked to death by four assailants the night before, in Dhaka on April 7, 2016 AFP/Getty In pictures: Bangladesh attacks Bangladesh attacks People have protested against the murders around the world, seen here in Kolkata AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bangladesh attacks Bangladesh attacks A relative of dead Bangladeshi blogger Washiqur Rahman reacts after seeing his body at Dhaka Medical College in Dhaka on March 30 AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bangladesh attacks Bangladesh attacks People gather on the spot where Bangladeshi blogger Avijit Roy was killed in a street in Dhaka (EPA) EPA In pictures: Bangladesh attacks Bangladesh attacks Bangladeshi social activists shout slogans during a protest against the killing Avijit Roy in Dhaka on February 27, 2015 AFP/Getty Images

Al-Qaeda and Isis have also claimed responsibility for a series of killings over the past few years, including that of Mr Roy, whose killing was marked by protests by hundreds of people who took to the streets to mourn his death.

At the time of his murder, his family said he had received threats following the publication of articles promoting secular views, science and social issues on his Bengali-language blog, Mukto-mona, or Free Mind.

He defended atheism in a Facebook post, calling it a rational concept to oppose any unscientific and irrational belief.

The government has denied the presence of foreign extremist groups, choosing to blame domestic militants instead. But security experts say the scale and sophistication of the 2016 cafe attack suggested links to a wider network. Police and army commandos have killed more than 60 suspected militants and arrested hundreds since that incident.

This was the second arrest in a week relating to the killing of Mr Roy. Previously officers detained a suspected militant identified as 25-year-old Mojammel Hossain.
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A British man allegedly tortured in jail by Indian police remains in custody in India.

Jagtar Singh Johal, from Dumbarton, West Dunbartonshire, has reportedly appeared at a duty magistrates court in Ludhiana.

Supporters say the 30-year-old has been remanded in custody for an additional four days.

The Sikh Federation UK say no official charges have been brought against Mr Johal, but local media reported his arrest was linked to the killing of Hindu leaders in Punjab.

The federation briefed Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn about Mr Johal's case earlier this week as he made his way to a rally in Birmingham.

A spokesman for the Sikh Federation said: "He expressed his disquiet with the method of abduction, the lack of access to lawyers, British consular staff and family for the first 10 days, Jagtar's allegations of third degree torture, the fact he remains in police custody rather than judicial custody and the refusal to grant an independent medical examination."

Mr Corbyn promised to discuss the matter with Preet Kaur Gill, the chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group for British Sikhs and Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston and to try and meet Mr Johal's family and campaigners early next week.

Three members of the British High Commission, including Deputy High Commissioner Andrew Ayre attended Mr Johal's court hearing on Friday.

His lawyer said he "pleaded his innocence" and stated he was unrelated to any of the crimes he is being linked with.

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

He also said: "The court gave the British High Commission team a copy of the directions issued to the police to arrange for a meeting between the High Commission delegation and Jagtar Singh in a separate room for privacy.

"The copy of the order was also given to Assistant Commissioner of Police Maninder Singh Bedi."

Mr Johal was taken into custody by Ludhiana police after the hearing.

Foreign Minster, Mark Field is expected to meet Mr Johal's brother as well as West Dunbartonshire MP Martin Docherty-Hughes and Sikh representatives next week.

A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "Our consular staff in New Delhi have visited a British man who has been detained in Punjab. We have met his family to update them, and have confirmed that he now has access to his lawyer."
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A teacher was arrested after staff at the nursery where she works were accused of giving drugs to children  when their parents found what they said were needle marks on their bodies.

Police detained the 22-year-old woman  only giving her surname, Liu  as part of their investigation into the allegations at RYB Education based in an upmarket area of Beijing, China.

The probe came after families claimed children as young as three were also given pills and sexually abused.

The business is part of a chain of playschools listed on Wall Street.

The purported mistreatment of at least eight children at the nursery went public when parents shared images online of marks on their childrens skin which they said were caused by needles.

Several parents who gathered outside the playschool in the Chaoyang district in protest spoke out over the claims that youngsters had been drugged there.

Disobedient students were also forced to stand naked or were locked up in a dark room at the kindergarten, one parent told local news site Caixin.

Police said in a post online that they had arrested the 22-year-old teacher, who they said is from the Hebei province next to Beijing, as part of their investigation.

They said in a separate post that they had also arrested a 31-year-old woman on Thursday for disrupting social order by spreading false information about the alleged kindergarten abuse.

It came after the playschool had reportedly suspended three teachers over the allegations.

Officials at RYB Education said they were co-operating with the police investigation.

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

If any wrongdoing is found, we will not shake off the responsibility, it said in a statement reported by the BBC.

And we have also reported to the police some false accusations against us.

RYB runs 80 kindergartens and has franchised another 175, covering 130 cities and towns in China, its website shows.

Its New York-listed shares plunged 38.4 per cent on Friday.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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A fire at a luxury hotel in Georgia has killed 11 people and injured 21, officials have said.

Contestants in the Miss Georgia beauty pageant were having dinner at the Leogrand Hotel in the Black Sea resort city of Batumi when the fire broke out, Russia's TASS news agency quoted the Georgian Interior Ministry as saying.

The 20 participants fled the building using a fire escape ladder and all were unharmed, the news agency reported. At least 100 other guests and employees also escaped.

The Leogrand hotel in Batumi

The dead have not yet been identified, but an interior ministry statement said one Iranian and 10 Georgians were killed in the fire. Earlier, officials said 12 people were dead.

Among the 21 injured was one Israeli and 12 Turkish nationals. All the wounded taken to hospital were in a stable condition, the ministry said.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear and the Georgian Prime Minister Georgi Kvirikashvili said in a Facebook post an investigation had opened into the incident. He added that "all those who are guilty of this tragedy" would be punished.

The Prime Minister had been returning to the capital Tbilisi after an EU summit in Brussels when he heard of the fire and diverted his flight to Batumi, about 360km from the capital.

In a later statement the Prime Minister declared a national day of mourning on Monday and said flags across Georgia would be lowered.

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

He offered his condolences to the families of the victims and praised the emergency services.

"Firefighters were able to save more than one hundred lives in a very difficult situation. Thanks to each of them for their dedicated service," he said.
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A 200kg tiger escaped from the circus in Paris and roamed the streets of the French capital before it was shot and killed by its owner.

The big cat was on the loose about a mile from the Eiffel Tower for some time, but the creature did not hurt anyone as it moseyed around the city.

Local media reported that it managed to wander into a train station, forcing staff into and emergency evacuation.

Trams were also suspended in the area, as witnesses said they saw police going down the tracks.

A member of staff from the Bormann Moreno circus neutralised the animal with a shotgun and police took to Twitter to inform people that all danger was over.

Images of the dead creature quickly circulated across social media with many users upset that it had been killed.

"It was a very big tiger," a witness called Ralph told Le Parisien newspaper. "We heard two or three shots and saw police going down towards the tracks."

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

It was unclear how the creature escaped from the circus but police had reportedly taken its owner into custody for questioning.

There is no ban on circus animals in France. It the UK they are protected by the Animal Welfare Act.

In England wild animals must be licensed but there is no law to stop circuses using certain types of animals. In Wales, there is no licensing requirement.
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An Afghan airstrike killed a Taliban commander and five of his family members in the northeastern Kapisa province, an official in the country said.

The strike was launched in Nijrab district, killing Taliban commander Dilawar Khan, as well as two women and three children from his family, said Qais Qaderi, a spokesman for the province's governor.

He said authorities were also searching for Khan's brother who apparently escaped during the strike. He also said that Khan was firing shots at Afghan helicopters from his home before the airstrike.

Elsewhere, security forces in the Wardak province launched an operation to clear the Jalreiz district of Taliban, killing 24 Taliban, according to Abdul Rahman Mangal, a spokesman for the province's governor. He added that two Afghan security forces were killed in the operation and six others wounded.

AP
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The army has been called in by the Pakistani government to restore order following violent protests by Islamist groups which have left at least six people dead and around 200 injured.

The countrys Ministry of Interior authorised the military deployment as clashes between protesters and police spread from the capital Islamabad to other cities, with hundreds of police officers in riot gear firing tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds.

Early on Saturday, after a midnight deadline expired, police launched an operation to clear protesters from an intersection linking Islamabad with the garrison city of Rawalpindi, prompting other demonstrators to take to the streets in solidarity, bringing several major cities to a virtual standstill.

A medical professional, Dr Masood Safdar, said five citizens were brought into the Banazir Bhutto hospital already dead from bullet wounds, and Dr Tariq Niazi of the Holy Family Hospital confirmed the death of a young man shot in the head during the violence at Faizabad intersection and the surrounding area.

The Pakistani capital has been paralysed for weeks by those supporting firebrand Muslim cleric Khadim Hussain, who leads new hardline party, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah.

The Islamist extremists have accused the countrys law minister of blasphemy against Islam and demanded his dismissal and arrest after he omitted a reference to the Prophet Mohammed in a parliamentary bill.

The minister, Zahid Hamid, apologised for the omission and said it was simply a clerical error which he later corrected.

The clashes came after a court ordered an end to the sit-in protest because it was disrupting daily life in and around Islamabad.

The police operation and reaction from protesters, who had camped out for the last 20 days, sent scores to hospital with wounds caused by stoning and respiratory problems from tear gas.

Hospital officials said almost 200 people were hurt  the majority of them police officers. At least 150 people are believed to have been arrested.

All television broadcasting has reportedly been suspended and social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are understood to have been blocked by the government.

Police clash with protesters in Pakistan Show all 11 1 /11 Police clash with protesters in Pakistan Police clash with protesters in Pakistan A Pakistani police officer aims his gun towards the protesters AP Police clash with protesters in Pakistan A protester throws a tear gas shell back towards police AFP/Getty Images Police clash with protesters in Pakistan Pakistani riot police face off with protesters AFP/Getty Images Police clash with protesters in Pakistan Pakistani police officers carry an injured protester AP Police clash with protesters in Pakistan A policeman walks with armoured personnel carriers REUTERS Police clash with protesters in Pakistan Protesters burn Police vehicles EPA Police clash with protesters in Pakistan A protester gestures after blocking the main road leading to the airport REUTERS Police clash with protesters in Pakistan Pakistani security officials clash with supporters EPA Police clash with protesters in Pakistan Supporters of religious groups burn tires at a rally to express solidarity with protesters AP Police clash with protesters in Pakistan Protesers burn a police vehicle EPA Police clash with protesters in Pakistan Police fire tear gas REUTERS

The countrys military chief general Qamar Javed Bajwa telephoned Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi to call for the peaceful handling of the protest, according to a tweet by military spokesperson major general Asif Ghafoor.

Senior police officer Ismatullah Junejo said police were swiftly clearing a venue of around 300 protesters who ignored the final warning to disperse. He said none of the police carried firearms to avoid loss of life, instead using tear gas and a water cannon to disperse the protesters, although witnesses said a police van came under attack and was set on fire after two police officers aimed assault rifles at protesters.

We are in our thousands. We will not leave. We will fight until end, Tehreek-e-Labaik party spokesperson Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters by telephone from the scene.

Tehreek-e-Labaik is one of two new ultra-religious political movements that have risen up in recent months ahead of the countrys elections due to be held before next summer.

Recommended Pakistan sentences three Ahmadi men to death for blasphemy

Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal said the protests were part of a conspiracy to weaken the government, which is still run by the party of ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif  removed by the supreme court in July over financial irregularities.

There are attempts to create a chaos in the country, Mr Iqbal said on state-run Pakistan TV.

I have to say with regret that a political party that is giving its message to people, based on a very sacred belief is being used in the conspiracy that is aimed at spreading anarchy in the country, Mr Iqbal added.

In response to the escalating situation, opposition leader Imran Khan called for early elections, saying the incompetent and dithering administration had allowed a complete breakdown of governance.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
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When I was a magistrate I saw first-hand the devastating effects of violence against women. Along with the physical and emotional impact, violence and abuse can have a long term affect not just on the women involved but also their children, families, and our communities.

In the UK, on average, two women are killed by their current or a former partner every week. An estimated 1.3 million women in Britain have experienced domestic abuse in the last year alone, while around one in four women will experience domestic violence in their lifetimes.

These are staggering statistics. But given that violence against women so often goes unreported, many fear that the reality is much worse.

Today is United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a day to raise awareness about gender-based violence across the world, and send a message loud and clear that enough is enough.

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

No woman or girl deserves to live a life of fear. Yet violence against women is one of the most prevalent, persistent human rights violations in our world today. Global statistics show that 119 women are killed every day by a partner or family member. Serious action needs to be taken at home and abroad.

Prevention is possible if we tackle the deep-rooted structures and social norms that lead to gender-based violence and abuse. In wake of recent sexual harassment allegations, MPs have woken up to the widespread misogyny and abuse of power within the walls of Westminster. But this injustice does not just pervade Hollywood or the corridors of power  it exists throughout our society, in schools and universities, in businesses and workplaces, in our newspapers and on TV screens. It must be rooted out.

We need a culture change and it must start with education. We must teach our children and young people to treat each other with dignity and respect, and to recognise unacceptable behaviour. Labour has long called for compulsory education on sex, relationships and consent in schools and we are glad this year the Government changed its position and helped make this law. But current guidance for schools is outdated and doesnt go far enough to embed these core principles in our education system. The guidance must be updated and rolled out across the country as a matter of urgency.

Prevention efforts must be matched by our commitment to bring perpetrators to justice. To achieve this goal, our criminal justice system must be fit for purpose. Effective measures must be put in place to increase reporting, police referrals, prosecution and convictions. The Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill has not yet come to Parliament. When it does, Labour will seek to include effective measures that strengthen womens recourse to justice.

 Life After Sexual Violence: A new series from the Independent

I strongly believe that those affected by violence against women should be at the heart of efforts to combat it. Women who have been affected need the right protection and the right support at the right time. It is frankly unacceptable that specialist womens refuges are facing closure and that on a typical day 155 women are turned away due of lack of space.

Womens refuges are a lifeline, access to which no woman should be denied. But the Governments proposed supported housing funding reforms threaten the very existence of womens refuges. I urge the Government to change course and develop a sustainable form of funding for womens refuge services, to ensure that no more women and children are put at risk. We owe it to women and girls to get this right.

I am proud of the positive steps Britain has helped achieve in tackling gender-based violence abroad. But we need greater progress here at home. The next Labour government will make it a priority.

Today, we demand a world where there is no more violence against women and girls, where we can all live freely and without fear. Lets come together to build it.

Dawn Butler MP is Labour's Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
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The Sinai mosque massacre proves what many have suspected for months in Egypt: that Isis  even without a direct claim yet  is taking over the peninsula, targeting more and more of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisis officers and police. Thus proving that tactical defeat in Iraq and Syria means for Isis merely a change of location.

The fall of Sinai  perhaps even stretching down to Sharm e-Sheikh  the supposedly safe tourist resort  would only further undermine al-Sisis brash claims after his coup that he would end terrorism in Egypt.

This supposed battle has led to the jailing of Egyptian 60,000 political prisoners  allegedly terrorists but many of them young men sickened by al-Sisis virtual dictatorship  and an undetermined number of murders and disappearances. But the world, as usual, turned yesterday to the sending of condolences to the innocent victims of al-Sissis enemies. Inevitably, the victims of the regime were forgotten while the evil and cowardly mass murder of at least 235 worshippers at the al-Rawda mosque near al-Arish was condemned by Nato, Theresa May and a host of other Western leaders.

At al-Sisis emergency cabinet meeting afterwards  and there are more and more of these emergency government gatherings in Cairo these days  there will have been questions asked about how the killers, with both bombs and gunfire, managed to slaughter so many civilians, quite a number of them friendly to the security forces. Does this have the potential to be an inside job? The question has to be asked since the last incidents of killings in Sinai, officially leaving more than 30 dead (although the figure might be far higher), included an ambush of more than 10 senior generals in the police and army who were  themselves  supposed to be ambushing Isis.

That is perhaps the most serious element in the current Sinai insurgency, which has taken the lives of thousands of others, including members of the Christian minority and soldiers and police. For well over a year, the Egyptian army have been using air strikes against the insurgents  a pattern that grimly follows the start of the Syrian civil war. More than two years ago, al-Sisi sent his security men to discuss with the Syrians government how to deal with their opponents. Who knows when the Syrian authorities will be invited to send their own officers to advise the Egyptians?

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

For the West, of course, the increase in widespread Isis-linked action in Sinai tarnishes all those claims  from Iran as well as from the Americans and British  that the cult has been vanquished. Egypt is evidently the next target. Since the church attacks in Cairo and Alexandria and other cities west of the Nile, it is clear that Isis has already crossed the river. You are not safe in Sinai  but neither are you safe in Cairo.

Needless to say, Egypt will now have an even easier time in receiving military support from the West  al-Sisis military shopping expedition to France earlier this month will undoubtedly be repeated. And increased weaponry will make the Egyptian military stronger; thus the al-Sisi government will feel even bolder in arresting or torturing its political opponents. Isis must also surely know that al-Sisi is increasingly unpopular in Egypt: his promises of economic recovery after a period of austerity have so far proved false. And elections, as they say, are looming.

The one thing that the Egyptian authorities have on their side is that the media have been virtually sealed off from covering the Sinai war. Thus the casualties  which may be far higher than claimed  have gone largely unreported or dismissed as falsifications by the military. The Sinai massacre was the bloodiest of the present Islamist war against the government in Cairo. It will not be the last.
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While Twitter went into a frenzy over a suspected terrorist attack in Oxford Circus yesterday (which amounted to nothing more than Chinese Whispers gone awry), around 305 innocent Muslims were killed in an actual terrorist attack in Egypt. The global responses to the separate incidents highlighted just how imbalanced our attitudes towards terrorism actually are.

Within the space of minutes, there were thousands of tweets about Oxford Circus. The Daily Mail was quick to lick its lips amid the pandemonium, citing a 10-day-old tweet to brew rumours about a lorry attack (the article has now been removed from its site). Even though nothing actually happened, the panic that ensued was instrumentalised by far-right bigots to stir up xenophobia  Katie Hopkins, for instance, tweeted: The truth of our frightened country is all the texts from children reassuring their moms and the deplorable Tommy Robinson, without any evidence to suggest Islamic extremism, tweeted: How long until we find out that todays attack in Oxford Circus was by a Muslim who was again known to our security services.

While hundreds of actual innocent lives were taken at the hands of terror in Egypt, figures from the British right seemed almost keen for Oxford Circus to be an Islamist attack.

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

As an Iraqi-Egyptian living in Britain, I find the paradox not only rage-inducing, but unbearable. Ive witnessed how the West has been so conditioned to fear Muslims that were all blind to the fact that what we really need to worry about is our culture of fear instead. It has established a dangerous social cycle where the imminent threat of Islam means a potential tweet or sighting is suddenly proof of a jihadi siege in the West.

Even though the United Kingdom has been victim to horrific acts of terror in recent years, including the London Bridge, Manchester Arena, Westminster and Finsbury Park attacks, lets not forget that it is Muslims and Arabs in the Middle East, as evinced by yesterdays massacre in Egypt, that suffer the most at the hands of extremism. Muslims and Arabs all over the world fear terrorism just as much as everybody else  yet when fears of Western insecurity are invoked, Muslims continue to bear the brunt of hate. Our fear is unacknowledged, and the far right instrumentalise global panic to invoke yet more Islamophobia.

Even more appalling, the attack in Egypt was capitalised on to propagate more hate and division  Donald Trump used the attack to yet again argue for his wall, tweeting: We have to get TOUGHER and SMARTER than ever before, and we will. Need the WALL, need the BAN. So even though over 300 innocent Muslims lost their lives, Trump somehow made it about himself and his exclusionary policies.

 Egypt mosque attack: Locator map

While most reasonable people know that Trump is the worst kind of leader there is, lets not forget that millions around the world are persuaded by his hate campaign against Muslims, and they too will see the attack in Egypt as yet more justification for all social, political, and cultural Islamophobia and segregation.

Im devastated that while Muslim Egyptian comrades suffered at the hands of terrorism, the world uses it as fodder for their hate campaigns. As the Oxford Circus panic revealed, we have become so conditioned by fear that many will take anything and everything to justify their beliefs.

And lets not forget that this growing divide, exasperated by far-right supremacy, only adds fuel to the agenda of Islamic extremism.

There is so much that is magical and peaceful about Islam that goes unnoticed, and the world has an obligation to open its eyes to it. Yesterdays Egyptian victims, for instance, were followers of Sufism. Sufi Muslims engage in a more mystical sect of Islam, where each and every Muslim has a deeply personal and spiritual relationship with Allah, who celebrates the utter individuality and uniqueness of every person. Sometimes, Sufis connect with Allah through dancing in skirts to incur a spiritual dialogue. Its beautiful and empowering.

If yesterday showed us anything, it is that we need to shift our compass from fear to sympathy and from hate to understanding. What we need right now are reasons to come together, and so I hope we can all spend some time this week properly grieving the tragic lives lost in Egypt  for that is where our collective attention should be.
The South Kingstown School Committee announced this week that it is reviewing a proposed memorandum of agreement that spells out the purpose and function of having police officers in its schools. The agreement sets clearly-defined roles about addressing student conduct and says school administrators would be responsible for enforcing the code of conduct and responding to routine disciplinary violations while resource officers would not serve as school disciplinarians or to enforce school regulations but, rather, would be on site to investigate and respond to potential criminal offenses and intervene in situations in order to maintain safety. Do you believe that having dedicated police officers inside locals schools makes students safer? Why or why not? Let us know in this week's poll question below.

You voted:
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Friday night returned from Brussels to Athens , where a hellish weekend awaited him. On Monday in parliament he will face major battle which he himself provoked, so as to provide cover for his coalition partner, Defense Minister Panos Kammenos. But the drums have already begun to beat in Syriza
Regional chain and high volume jewelry retailers will meet with pre-qualified international gold jewelry vendors, with a focus on Turkish, French, Peruvian and Italian suppliers in order to fulfill competitive, trend right, and classic gold jewelry product development.
The Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) on Friday, revealed that it has sealed 339 illegal pharmaceutical premises in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Speaking while briefing newsmen on Friday in Abuja, Registrar of the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN), Elijah Mohammed, disclosed that the council has sealed 339 illegal pharmaceutical premises in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Mohammmed who said the efforts of the councils enforcement team is to curb activities of illegal pharmaceutical outfits in the country, added that the enforcement exercise was carried out by the team on Nov. 20 to Nov. 23.

He said further that out of the 496 premises visited in the metropolis during the enforcement exercise, 20 pharmacies, 290 illegal medicine shops and 29 patent medicine stores were sealed for offences ranging from operating without registering with the council and failure to renew licences.

According to The Nation, he noted that other offences committed by some of the owners of those premises included dispensing ethical products without the supervision of a pharmacist, poor storage and sanitary conditions.

Mohammed said areas visited included Kuje, Kubwa, Mpape, Gwarinpa, Idu, Karimo, Gwagwalada, Jiwa, Deidei, Kagini, Zuba, Tunga Maje, Bwari, Ushafa, Abaji, Durumi, Kabusa, Lugbe and Paduma.

The registrar, who decried the unwholesome practices of some drug dealers thereby inflicting injuries on patients, said the council decided to step up enforcement activities across the country to curb their excesses.

He emphasised that most of the facilities had no appropriate storage facilities, leading to deterioration of medicines which made them unsuitable for human consumption.

He said the enforcement exercise is line with National Drug Distribution Guidelines aimed at ensuring that medicines remain safe, effective and of good quality as they transit from one level of distribution chain to another until they get to the patients and other end users.

One of the weaknesses in the distribution chain is proliferation of illegal medicine stores and these facilities do not have appropriate storage facilities, leading to deterioration of medicines, thus making them unsuitable for human consumption.

These illegal outlets do not have trained personnel to handle the medicines in their premises.

This has contributed immensely to irrational dispensing of medicines, resulting in treatment failures and negative effects on patients and other unsuspecting members of the public who patronise them.

Also, the activities of these illegal outlets tend to encourage abuse and misuse of controlled medicines, with attendant negative social and security implications.

The registrar, however, said some owners of the sealed premises had expressed willingness to fulfill conditions for registration by upgrading their storage facilities.

He added that some others had also pledged to employ pharmacists that would supervise the dispensing of ethical products.
A professor of Law at the University of Lagos, Ayodele Atsenuwa, has said that most of the funds allegedly stolen under the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan were money recovered from late Nigerias dictator, Sani Abacha.

Speaking Friday in Abuja at a conference on Tracking Noxious Funds organised by the MacArthur Foundation and Kent Law School, Mrs. Atsenuwa advocated a more transparent way in handling loots recovered from corrupt Nigerians.

From what we are seeing now, adequate steps need to be taken to address the issue of top government officials re-looting recovered loots, she said.

The senate ad-hoc committee set up to investigate the controversial reinstatement of former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdul-Rasheed Maina, had on Thursday accused the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, of allegedly sharing 222 houses recovered by the pension reform team headed by Mr. Maina.

Mrs. Atsenuwa added that Nigerian law is against the whistle blower policy initiated by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

The Nigerian law is against paying someone who blows whistle, she said.

Speaking earlier at the opening ceremony of the conference on Thursday, the Executive Secretary of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, PACAC, Bolaji Owasanoye, said as at October 2017, over 5000 whistles had been blown since the introduction of the whistle blower initiative in the country.

Speaking on a topic: Law and Practice of the Whistle Blower Policy of Nigeria; Scope of Citizens Participation, he said citizens have the responsibility to ensure that governments act rightly.

Mr. Owasanoye said the whistle blower initiative was also designed to improve government revenues, adding that officials of the government agencies involved in the implementation of the policy would not benefit from the reward for the whistle blowers to encourage the citizens.

Also at the event, acting EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Magu, expressed hope that the conference would come up with more ideas that would aid the fight against corruption.

Also speaking at the opening ceremony, human rights activist, Femi Falana, said failure on the part of government to arrest the former Director-General of State Security Service, Ita Ekpeyong, and a former Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, Ayo Oke, who had refused to report for questioning over corruption allegations, would send a wrong signal.

Mr. Falana said the two ex-government officials could be prosecuted for resisting arrest after the anti-graft body had obtained a warrant of arrest, citing the provisions of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act which barred any move to frustrate the rule of law.

The SSS last week prevented the EFCC from arresting Mr. Ekpeyong, and the NIA also protected Mr. Oke.

While Mr. Ekpenyong was invited by the EFCC about two weeks ago in respect of an investigation into the procurement of arms and equipment by the agency he once headed, Mr. Oke was invited for questioning in connection to the $43.4 million found in an apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos.

The EFCC and the SSS have been at loggerheads on various fronts since the inception of the Buhari administration.
The All Progressives Congress, APC, said the appointment of new Secretary to Government of the Federation, SGF, had helped to address acrimony in government.

The party made this known in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abudullahi, on Friday in Abuja.

Indeed, President Muhammadu Buhari has chosen a right man for the job; the era of acrimony that has slowed us down in the past is gone, the party said.

It commended the SGF, Boss Mustapha, for his visit to its National Working Committee (NWC) members, adding that his earlier visit to the National Assembly had a positive impact.

This, the party noted, had reflected in the way the national assembly had been handling some outstanding issues since after the visit.

According to it, the SGF`s visit to the national assembly signified a new era in the relationship between the government and the party, and with other arms of government.

It, therefore, urged Mr. Mustapha to extend the interface to other government bodies.

Mr. Mustapha was appointed as the new SGF by President Muhammadu Buhari on October 30.

He replaced Babachair Lawal, who was sacked following allegation of fraud and abuse of office against him.

Source : (NAN)
The notorious Brazilian jail, Talavera Bruce, known for fights and riots, which is also the only maximum security womens jail in Rio de Janeiro, has held its annual beauty contest for the most dangerous female criminals.

On Wednesday, ten inmates swapped their prison uniforms for high heels and glamorous gowns including having their hair and make-up done to take part in the beauty pageant which is allowed once a year.

According to the organizers, the competition was organized to improve their self-esteem and they were all judged on their beauty, appeal and attitude.

The competition was attended by the prisons other 440 inmates, including children, and relatives of the contestants, who were allowed into the premises.

One of the female inmates, Rossana Goncalves and four of her five children reduced to tears as they reunite on the sidelines during her jails annual beauty contest.

The organizers named this years Miss Talavera Bruce as 29-year-old Mayana Alves, who had seven arrest warrants when she was arrested in 2015 for cargo theft.

See more photos below..

Source: Linda Ikejis blog
Missionary medics in West Africa and Friends of 57-year-old British optician, Ian Squire, who were abducted alongside the British aid worker in Nigeria has revealed what happened during his final moment.

His fellow hostages David and Shirley Donovan, told Telegraph U.K that he was playing Amazing Grace on his acoustic guitar, before he got shot by the men who kidnapped them from their accommodation in Delta State in the early hours of October 13.

According to them, the groups spirits were lifted when the kidnappers returned a guitar, and Mr Squire played Amazing Grace.
A tour organized by the Kent Law School in collaboration with civil society organizations, have revealed the properties owned by Diezani Alison-Madueke and Kola Aluko in Lagos State.

Properties owned by former Nigerias Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, and fugitive oil wheeler-dealer, Kola Aluko were featured in Tracking noxious funds klepto tour in Lagos.

The tour, organized by the Kent Law School in collaboration with civil society organizations, visited properties owned by Diezani Alison-Madueke and Kola Aluko in Lagos State.

Tracking Noxious Funds is a week-long conference, which has facilitators from Kent Law School at the University of Kent, and sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation with the Institute of International Education (IIE).
A new revelation has shown how a crumbling Chinese-owned oil firm allegedly offered millions of dollars as bribe to Nigerian officials.

As the Chinese-owned Addax Petroleum winds up its operations on December 10, a confidential document has emerged showing how the company paid millions of dollars in bribes to Nigerian officials to secure juicy contracts in the oil industry, PREMIUM TIMES can report.

According to the report, there were payments for questionable transactions to Nigerian lawyers and a company owned by politician Emeka Offor, with a huge chunk of the money believed to be used to bribe government officials, PREMIUM TIMES can report.

The document, a report by leading audit firm Deloitte obtained this week by Swiss newspaper, Le Temps, said payments in excess of $20 million were made to four Nigerian legal advisors (one of them based in the U.S.), while more than $80 million was paid to Mr. Offors Kaztec Engineering Limited for questionable projects.

We have concerns over payments in excess of $80 million, which were made by Addax to Kaztec regarding construction projects for the Antan and Udele/Ofrima developments, the audit firm stated in the document dated November 18, 2016.

$70.8m was paid in 2015, including $48.7m for the Antan development, which was suspended in early 2015, and $15.8m for value engineering work on the Udele Ofrima development. This value engineering work has not taken place.

The audit revelations on the misuse of Addax corporate funds came amidst moves by the company, a subsidiary of Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Petroleum Corporation, to wind up some of its operations across the world.

Last August, it announced a proposed closure of its corporate offices in Geneva, Aberdeen, and Houston as oil prices continued to shrink.

In 2001, the Olusegun Obasanjo government granted a fiscal incentive of graduated rate of royalty based on the volume of crude oil produced from OPL 98/118, now OML 123, 124, 136, and 137, as against the flat rate of 20 per cent obtainable in the industry. The fiscal regime was deemed to become effective on January 1, 2000.

Addax claimed it committed a significant investment in excess of $3 billion in the development of the contract areas.

However, in July 2011, the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Department of Petroleum Resources raised an objection to the fiscal regime.

In 2014, Addax Petroleum dragged the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation before a federal court in Abuja over allegations of miscalculation of oil royalties and taxes and a breach of their 1998 Production Sharing Contract regarding the OMLs.

Joined as respondents in the suit FHC/ABJ/CS/1099/2014 were the Ministry of Petroleum Resources/Department of Petroleum Resources and the Federal Inland Revenue Service.

But just four days before leaving office, the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan negotiated a controversial out of court settlement with Addax Petroleum, agreeing to pay the company $3.4 billion (about N1 trillion).

Questionable legal fees

In 2015, PREMIUM TIMES reported how then Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke, negotiated the shocking deal in what industry experts said was reminiscent of the infamous Malabu Oil deal in which the same Mr. Adoke was involved in.

The parties expressly acknowledge and agree that this Agreement is being executed and delivered as part of a legally binding commercial transaction in full and final settlement of all disputes concerning or related to the applicable fiscal regime in respect of OML 123, 124, 136 & 137, the agreement stated.

The parties agree and acknowledge that time is of the essence with regard to the Settlement Agreement.

The audit report stated that high-level bribing of Nigerian government officials was instrumental in clinching the settlement.

However, in a letter to Addax dated September 7, 2015, the NNPC reversed that agreement in a decision endorsed by then newly elected President Muhammadu Buhari, in one of his first moves to clean Nigerias monumentally corrupt oil industry.

The Deloitte report alleged that a significant proportion of Nigerian contracts involved bribing of government and other related officials and kickbacks by Addax management.

The allegations included the use of company funds to buy a 75,000 Swiss Francs (about N30 million) Chopard watch intended as a gift for the then Nigerian Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke.

The watch never reached Mrs. Alison-Madueke.

Another allegation was the use of a Bermuda based company called Winfield to purchase about $150,000 worth of gifts to an unnamed Nigerian official.

The Nigerian official is alleged to have chosen the goods whilst in China and Addax paid for the goods through Winfield, the audit report stated.

There were also allegations that the Addax Chief Executive Officer acknowledged that the Nigerian legal payments were used for purposes other than legal work, with him quoted as saying what the lawyers do with the money after we pay it is none of our business, its only the result which counts.

In March this year, Zhang Yi, Addaxs CEO in its Geneva Office, and the Legal Director were arrested and charged with the payment of millions of dollars to some lawyers and an unnamed company in Nigeria.

In June, Addax Petroleum reached an agreement to pay 31 Swiss Francs (about N12 billion) fine in Geneva to settle the bribery allegations.

In the new document seen by PREMIUM TIMES, the law firms who received the over $20 million controversial payments from the company in relation to side letter negotiation in 2015 included Ahmed Raji and Co, Pollie Okoronkwo Immigration Attorneys, Solola & Akpana Chambers, and Consolex Legal Practitioners. PREMIUM TIMES contacted the named law firms.

Some of the concerns raised by the audit in the legal payments were unprofessional conduct, low standard documentation not of the standard of reputable law firms; unverifiable information (addresses for example), provided on invoices; extremely vaguescope of work which, in some circumstances, it was virtually impossible to determine what the law firms did; and inconsistent and contradictory explanations for the payments by management.

We have not received sufficient audit evidence that their payments were legitimate business expenses compliant with all relevant laws and regulations, the audit firm continued.

We suspect that some of these funds may have ultimately been utilised to bribe government officials to receive a favourable settlement in relation to the side letter as has been detailed in the whistleblowing allegations in this letter.

On the payments made to Kaztec Engineering Limited, the audit stated there was lack of adequate supporting documentation for the payments made in 2015 and, also, a lack of evident commercial rationale for a significant portion of the payments.

It noted that number of internal reports that were suppressed by management had expressed concerns about significant overpayments to the company.

We have not received sufficient audit evidence that these payments were legitimate business expenses compliant with all relevant laws and regulations, the report stated.

We suspect that some of these funds may have ultimately been utilised to bribe government officials to receive a favourable settlement in relation to the side letter as has been detailed in the whistleblowing allegations.

Audit report a joke

Deloitte said rather than Addax Petroleum management acting upon its audit recommendations, it chose to terminate its appointments with the firm in Nigeria, the Isle of Man, and the UK.

Mr. Offor is a controversial Nigerian politician who became broke in 2017, barely two years after donating $10 million to the Carter Centre to fight river blindness.

He did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

Pollie Okoronkwo, a U.S.-based immigration attorney, did not also respond to e-mail requests for comments.

The Nigerian law firms, however, pushed back vehemently on Deloittes claims of questionable payments made to them and the likelihood that it was used for bribing officials.

If they said they didnt know what the payment (to us) was for, then its a joke, Okey Egbuchu, a partner at Consolex Legal Practitioners said when contacted by PREMIUM TIMES.

It was a court case, so its a matter of records that we had representation so its not an issue at all. We represented (the company) in the matter, its a public record that you can look at, its at the federal high court in Abuja.

They paid for our services, its been a while now so I dont have it (the case) offhand but it involved plenty of money, hundreds of millions of dollars.

Henry Chibor, a partner at Solola & Akpana Chambers, said his firm never worked for Addax, adding that he was not aware of any audit report.

We didnt do matters for Addax, I dont know what you are talking about, any person can go and write whatever he likes, Mr. Chibor told PREMIUM TIMES.

If you have such document, I think that the only way forward is for us to see it then we will be able to answer anything. I cant sit here and begin to talk about a company that has no legal relationship with us, we didnt work for.

Because any person can write anything he likes, until we see it then wed know what the person is talking about. Addax that has gone down a long time ago, what did Addax do with Solola & Akpana?

Ahmed Raji of Ahmed Raji and Co said his firm was approached by Addax in 2014 and they started work for them in early 2015.

We did work for Addax, we were given letter of instruction and we did our job and then we agreed on fees, said Mr. Raji, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.

Addax is worth about $4 billion, they had an issue that was threatening the entire state and then they contacted us as lawyers, we have letters of appointment and we did our work and we were paid our fees, I dont know where they got that one from, the lawyer said about allegations that part of the legal fees was used in bribing Nigerian officials.

If they know any public officer that we bribed, let them name him.

If a lawyer opens an office and people walk in and they say look, this is our problem. You look at the magnitude of the problem and you say this is my bill. And you do your best. If they now want to be basking in the euphoria of speculation, they can go ahead and try it and then well meet up.

And if you are speculating that somebody had tried to bribe a public officer, as good auditors wont you go and ask them? Wont you know an audit trail and look at inflows and outflows from the account?

Because its very sickening, you are talking of bribing public officers, who are the public officers? Name them. Our accounts are there, they didnt say we were paid in cash, where is the outflow to any public officer if they are not a useless and irresponsible set of auditors? This is our story, this is my argument and there is nothing like that.
The rather bizarre story has been told of the bubbly community in Lagos State where pregnant women die giving birth.

It was about midday in the sleepy town called Sogunro Community. Quietness pervaded the environment as if there were no human lives present. It was later discovered that most of the residents had either gone to their offices out of town or had gone about their business and trades. For the housewives or older residents; they were either resting in their own homes or just minding their individual business.

As Saturday Vanguard roved the community, it was hard to realise that this location is situated within the bustling Lagos city. Originally, the essence of the reporters visit was to ascertain the claims that lives of pregnant women in the community were at the mercy of a TBA popularly called Baba Eja.

Sogunro is a community on the Makoko/Iwaya Waterfront. It is regarded as one of the largest aquatic trading communities on the suburb of Lagos Mainland coast of the Lagos Lagoon. Sadly, so, it lags behind in some of the social amenities that make life comfortable.

A trip by Saturday Vanguard to the community leaves much to be desired. As the canoe man paddled our reporter on musky water, Sogunro which inhabits over 100,000 people can simply be regarded as an isolated community in its own world.

History has it that Sogunro community comprises of displaced villagers in the late 1950s who lived in one of the villages such as -Abule Odubayo, Igan Oko, Abule Moso, Abule Aladiye, Pedoro, Sogbodie, Abule Elejo, Akinwunmi, Agege-odo -surrounding the present day University of Lagos (UNILAG) axis.

On the waterfront are different ethnic groups from across Nigeria and the Republic of Benin whose economic structures revolve around fishing, wood logging, sawmilling and boat making.

Despite a history that precedes even the Nigerian nation, Sogunro is dying for government attention for provision of basic social amenities like schools, standard hospitals, roads, potable water, security, stable power, standard market place and sanitation, among others.

Trooping out of the community to join the canoe that will paddle dwellers to the other side of the community were young and old women carrying assorted trays laden with wares of smoked fish known as Egun Fish their major staple among several other items to be sold at the markets. Young children of school age were also seen hawking.

Sogunro Community Breeding town for Baby Mothers

The sight was striking and one that would naturally force a first-time visitor to halt and ponder. In their numbers walking aimlessly across, or so it seems, were a teeming number of pregnant teenagers between ages 14 and 19. Shame or sense of remorse was not in the picture. To them, it seemed all right. Teenage pregnancy seemed like a way of life that is readily acceptable in the community.

And by the minute, it was as if their numbers were getting higher. Instinctively, the reporter began to probe. A respondent named Emeka, a fisherman in the community hinted that: Here, teenage pregnancy is no big deal.

There is a sense of laxity that enables these young girls engage in sexual activities. Education is not necessarily enforced due to so much poverty in the community. Poverty is the major factor fuelling the development. We have a situation in which many of the girls are lured with money by young men who are mostly Okada operators.

Another very sad aspect is that majority of the girls are not registered for antenatal care, mainly as a result of financial constraint and cultural beliefs. Again, the belief is that because we are surrounded by water, once the young girls or ladies feel cold, they believe that the best way to shake off the cold is to see someone that will warm them up.

It doesnt matter whether they have a formal relationship or not as long as cash is exchanged. And they do it with no sense of remorse like I said earlier. And to shock you, they dont really believe in condoms as many of them say condoms deny them full enjoyment of sex.

Asked how they cope with labour and delivery when they are due, Emeka said: That is so sad and many of them do not really seem to be bothered. Time and over again, whenever any of the pregnant girls go into labour, particularly at mid-night, they are usually in a dilemma. This is basically due to their inability to afford to register in a standard hospital. And for those who could afford it, reaching the centre at midnight is a tug of war while obstetric complication that may require surgery is out of the question.

Honestly, unless there is urgent government presence with sensitization programmes, a well-equipped public health centre at least, the situation here may escalate to the point where our young girls will be dying like fowls and their babies going down with them. It is a sad story my brother, he noted with finality.

Encounter with Baba Eja

As Saturday Vanguard moved round the community to locate the major Traditional Birth Attendant, TBA, Mr. Elijah Paul, a.k.a Baba Eja, the stench from stagnant waters and refuse at different spots filled the atmosphere bellowing epidemic on the prowl.

On arrival at Baba Ejas place, he had just delivered Mrs. Fatima Balogun, of a new born baby. She later told the reporter that she lost her first child due to complications in delivery two years back.

While waiting, the reporter did a quick survey of the delivery room. It is a single wooden room surrounded by stagnant water and refuse. Its interior was decked with several herbal tools serving as Baba Ejas medical items. There is also a single chair, table and a mat laid on the bare floor which represents the labour bed.

The floor is a sandy platform devoid of concrete or plastering on the wall. The side-walls made of wood were full of holes that served as easy access for mosquitoes.

But to Baba Eja, all these were the reporters cup of tea as he retorted with pride after cleaning up Fatima and offered her a warm bowl of pap.

Three hours later, both Fatima and Baba Eja were ready to answer the journalists questions.

I have been taking delivery in this community for over 25 years. And if we are to look at the number of deliveries, it cannot be less than 20,000. That is actually the reason I am being called Baba Eja meaning Father of Fish.

I am available 24/7 for any pregnant woman, he bragged. There is no time of the day or night time they knock on my door that I wont respond to their distress call. I want to assure you that I have the necessary documents to practice as a TBA. Really, my initial focus as an herbalist was not child delivery. I began to step in when many pregnant women were dying during delivery in our community here.

The closest health facility is about 10 kilometers from this town. And then, if you inquired, you would be told the women died yesterday why trying to give birth either because she could not get to the health centre on time or there were no health officials to attend to them. And when the situation was becoming worrisome and repetitive, I stepped in.

Further, Baba Eja said he actually mixed his practice with some level of conventional medical practice. I do encourage them to go for scan to ascertain baby position. And if the result comes out contrary, I have herbs that I give the pregnant women to enable the baby position properly.

Also, I have a trained nurse that I call in whenever there are challenges because delivering a baby is not something only one person can face as it has to do with life.

I demand N10,000, but most of them have never paid beyond N5,000. And I dont see them again until probably during another delivery.

Amid the interactive session, Baba Eja, who hails from Ipokia Local Government Area in Ogun State said he was planning to leave the Sogunro community very soon. The question is: Is Sogunro community willing or ready to leave Baba Eja?

The old man, who does not even know his real age, has lived and practiced herbal medicine for over 25years in that clan. In the thought of every pregnant woman in the community is Baba Eja to rescue them in the delivery of their babies.

However, Baba Eja is appalled by the depth of poverty the residents of that community are subjected to on a daily basis. And to say that such a community is within Nigerias commercial heartbeat, the city of Lagos, is something very hard to fathom. He lamented: Honestly, It is due to challenges of life that make many people to live here.

It is not that they are happy to do so. Given other choices, many of us will live in far better spots in Lagos. This seems like a forgotten part of the State. The community is never considered when the government is doing anything good for the state. So sad.

Fatimas story

Looking frail and pale was the newly delivered mother, Fatima Balogun, 22, as she laid on the only mat serving as bed on the sandy floor.

She told the reporter that she had registered for antenatal with Baba Eja after she lost her first child at the age of 20.

Narrating her story, Fatima said: I lost my first child about a year ago. I would have died with the baby but God just preserved my life. My labour pains started at midnight and my two female neighbours promptly responded. They tried all they could to help me deliver the baby. But it proved difficult. So, they quickly took me to a nearby TBA where I later give birth to the baby around 6:00am. But the baby died a few minutes after delivery.

Fatima, who is a hairdresser, later registered with Baba.

On a womans delivery process at Baba Ejas shelter, Fatima gave an insight.

Before delivery, Baba Eja gives the intending mother some herbs to drink and bathe with. He also makes the woman to eat some concoction to ease labour pains and make the passage of the baby easier. But for this particular delivery, Baba Eja had experienced some challenges that made him call in the nurse to come and inject me.

I really did not know the exact challenges. After the injection, I experienced some labour but still the baby didnt come out on time. So, Baba Eja told the nurse to administer infusion drip while he also gave me another concoction. After all these, the pressure to push intensified and I was able to push and the baby came out.

In Fatimas view however, the babys delay to exit her womb was not Baba Ejas fault.

I believe that the delay in my delivery was due to my failure to carry out some sacrifices Baba Eja recommended much during my pregnancy. I was unable to do them as a result of financial challenges. He had told me to appease the witches that prevented my first baby from staying but I could not due to poverty.

Both mother and baby however, survived this ordeal.

As the reporter continued the investigations on the maternal plight of women in Sogunro community, it was obvious others have tales of woes to tell.

Mr. Kunle Adigun, a resident, told Saturday Vanguard regretfully that he lost both his wife and baby boy during childbirth.

David, 27, also said his wife, Bolanle, could have been alive today to experience the joy of motherhood, but her dream was cut short because she found herself in Sogunro community where good life and health facilities are scarce. Her desire to give life led her to the great beyond. She went into labour in the middle of the night.

We suspected that was a problem on its own. Her mother, who was with us at the time called for help. But there was little anyone could do because there was no means of conveying her to the other side of the canal for medical attention, David lamented.

Prior to her delivery time, Bolanle had registered for ante-natal at a private hospital in Yaba. But there was no canoe to convey her there at that time of the night. That was how she and her baby died after several hours of labour in the hands of a TBA.

Tanwa Kazeem, 28, a pregnant woman who is close to her delivery period lamented that healthcare delivery situation in Sogunro is worrisome, adding that when a baby falls sick, rushing that baby to hospital for emergency attention is not possible due to lack of any nearby healthcare centre.

I registered with N5,000 for ante-natal at a private hospital in Iwaya area of Lagos. And I go there every Tuesday and pay N1,000 for check-ups. Already, I have paid the mandatory N10,000 for regular delivery and I pray that my labour and delivery will occur at a good time during the day when we can still move quickly to the hospital.

I have two children already also delivered in the same hospital and at a good time of the day. I also practice exclusive breastfeeding on my children and as well, give them the medically advised three years spacing interval. But government needs to come and help us here.

Agati Ufon, related that all her children were delivered in Cotonou as she would not risk giving birth to any child in the community. She said affirmatively: I dont deliver in this village. Once my delivery time is approaching, I travel to my place in Cotonou. Even though I patronise TBAs here where I registered with N3,500 and do collect herbs with N500 monthly, I still will not risk delivering in this community.

Baale Speaks

The Baale of Sogunro, Chief Yusuf Kumayon, crowned by the late Oloto of Oto in 2007 went down memory lane.

Since the existence of this community, government only remembers us during election. That time, irrespective of the obstacle, they will find their way to our community but after election they forget us.

Once our pregnant women fall into labour at night, crossing to the other side of the water is a major challenge. Many times, the women die when there is no means of taking them to the hospital. The only Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC) is in Iwaya about 20 minutes drive away and it does not operate at night.

Sogunro and two other nearby communities, Makoko and Oko Agbon have population of over 500,000 without a single PHC. Some of our pregnant women register in private hospitals in Yaba, Adekunle and Gbagada but to get them there at night has been a Herculean task. On our own, we use planks to construct bridges. But, immediately rain falls, the planks are washed away. We want government to support us in construction of roads, hospitals and schools for our children.

Kumayon disclosed that so far in 2017, about 20 women have been lost to pregnancy-related deaths. Of the 20 women less than 10 children survived because both the mothers and babies got exhausted during labour.

Once in a while, we have benefitted from the Lagos State Immunization Programme just as some non-government organisations do come here. However, we need the government of Lagos, our own state, to come here and see our plight. We dont think that those representing us are really presenting our case to the Governor because we can see how other areas of Lagos are being transformed. We believe in continuity. That is the reason we voted for him but we have not enjoyed the benefit. If we can have one PHC strategically positioned for benefit of the three communities, we would appreciate that as a starting point.

What obtains in Sogunro community therefore shows that despite governments provision of health services through the PHCs, many women still chose TBAs due to poverty and proximity; given the level of trust people repose in them and their newly established relevance in maternal care delivery. Ambode said his administration would strive to take traditional medicine to a higher level through innovative research and development, just as he advised the TBAs to discharge their duties well according to the ethics guiding their profession, urging them to improve their practice through training.

Much as the LASG expresses its high level commitment towards achieving a reduction in maternal mortality; the state MMMR is still below the national average because many of them lack access to services for women residing in hard-to-reach areas, among others.

LASG reacts

In his reaction to the development, the Chairman, Yaba Local Council Development Area (LCDA), Mr. Kayode Omiyale, said the ordeal of the 500,000 people of Sogunro, Makoko and Oko-Agbo is known to government and moves are in progress to ensure the residents have access to quality healthcare.

Since the palliative bridge built to cross the canal was swept away by heavy flood some time ago, efforts are on to build another one. We have health committees in place and they are coming up with ideas to resolve the issue.

It is however not possible for us to put health centres in all the 34 communities which we have grouped into CDAs. What we want to do is to cluster them and build PHCs that will not be too far to easily reach. We will ensure they have at least one PHC that will serve the three communities on a Public-Private Partnership scheme before the end of first quarter of 2018.

Medical Experts speak

Dr. Olusola Odujinrin, a community health expert and Fellow of the West African College of Physician (FWACP) said Nigeria has not done well in the provision and maintenance of Primary Health Facilities (PHFs) which may have contributed to the sad reports.

Nigeria is way off the track in meeting all MDGs and SDGs stipulations. We are on the back row because we lack healthcare infrastructure which necessitated the high mortality rate. Our first goal in tackling all these is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger according to the World Banks projection for sub-Saharan Africa.

We can still address these challenges if we have the political will to do just that. The appropriation of the PHC has been grossly inadequate, thereby putting the lives of the mother and child at risk.

According to Mr. Bayo Onajole, a health official with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), The major problem is that there have been so many programmes in place as regards the PHC. There is a need to review all these programmes. For the ones that are working, we need to appraise and for those that are not working, we need to modify them. If we do that, we will be moving a step close to solving the problem. Now, we are not calling for a complete departure, but for a change to reinforce the project to tone down the high mortality rate.

Government could help to bring down the mortality rate through appropriate financing and monitoring of the fund allocated to PHC as well as checking graft. The nation can also have periodic personnel training and infrastructure development.
After breaking the internet with his extraordinary Agbada last week, many Nigerians looked forward to Ebukas outfit to the white wedding of his Friends, Banky W and Adesua Etomi. He is pictured above with his gorgeous wife, Cynthia. Did his look meet your expectation? See full photo below

Source: Linda Ikejis blog
Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission have sealed off three choice properties belonging to former Governor of Benue state.

Three choice properties belonging to immediate past governor of Benue State, Gabriel Suswam in Makurdi has been sealed off by operatives of the Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

According to a report by TheIndependent, the properties are his residential home in HUDCO quarters, the Metropolitan Hotel and a residential building (still under construction) close to the River Benue.

The properties were reportedly sealed off following allegations that he misappropriated N107 billion during the eight years of tenure as governor of Benue stat. The Justice Elizabeth Kpojime Panel of Inquiry had submitted that 52 persons among them Suswam return various sums of money amounting to N107 billion.
Four UN peacekeepers and a Malian soldier were killed in two attacks on peacekeepers in Mali on Friday, according to the UN officials.

Suspected jihadists attacked peacekeepers carrying out an operation with Malian defence forces in Indelimane, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of Menaka near the border with Niger, on Friday morning, the UN officials said.

Later Friday, another attack was carried out against a UN convoy north of Douentza in the Mopti region, the officials said.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the outrageous attacks and warned that targeting UN peacekeepers may constitute war crimes and lead to sanctions, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.

The UN mission in Mali and UN officials in New York said peacekeepers repelled the Friday morning attack in Indelimane but three peacekeepers from Niger and one Malian soldier were killed, and about 17 soldiers and one civilian working for the UN were injured.

The UN mission reported that at least three assailants were also killed.

The mission in Mali evacuated the injured and dispatched a quick reaction force supported by attack helicopters to Indelimane to reinforce the peacekeepers on the ground, the UN said.

In the second attack near Douentza, the UN mission said peacekeepers engaged the assailants in heavy fighting that involved rocket launchers.

One peacekeeper was killed and three others were seriously injured, the mission said.

A 2012 uprising prompted mutinous soldiers to overthrow Malis president of a decade. The power vacuum that was created ultimately led to an Islamic insurgency and a French-led war that ousted the jihadists from power in 2013. But insurgents remain active in the region.

The UN Security Council condemned the first attack in Indelimane in the strongest terms and called on Malis government to swiftly investigate and bring the perpetrators to justice. Council members also underlined that attacks targeting peacekeepers may constitute war crimes, and any involvement could lead to UN sanctions.

The council expressed concern at the security situation in Mali and the broader Sahel region and urged Malian parties to fully implement a 2015 peace agreement without further delay.

Members said actions by the 5,000-strong force being formed by five Sahel nations Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Chad to fight terrorist and criminal groups will contribute to a more secure environment in the region.

The more than 11,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Mali has become the most dangerous in the world for soldiers as Islamic militants routinely attack UN peacekeepers and convoys across the north.

As of October, there had been 146 fatalities since the mission was established in 2013, according to UN peacekeeping data.

Source: ( AFP )
Barely two weeks, rumours surfaced that Nigerian actress, Funke Akindele has given birth to a set of twins in London. The TV strar has now dispelled the claims saying they were not true.

The news that Funke allegedly gave birth to twins started after the heavily preganant thespian left the shores of Nigeria for the United Kingdom. On the 22nd of November, online media reported that she had given birth.

As expected her widespread fans took to hers and her husbands Instagram page to leave congratulatory messages but now Funke speaking through her publicist, Mr Biodun Kupoluyi says.

Dont mind those people. Theyre only imagining. You can not hide a pregnancy for long. And when you deliver, people must surely know. So, delivering a set of twins in London is not something one can hide at all.

source: Stargist
The German Government has donated about N260m to help feed Boko Haram victims in the North-East region of Nigeria ravaged by the insurgency.

The fund, aimed at benefitting 1,200 households, is to be spent in two local governments  Mubi in Adamawa State and Jere in Borno State.

Speaking on Friday during the distribution of cash to 800 households in Jakana, Jere Local Government Area of Borno State, Country Representative of Adventist Development and Relief Agency, Mr. Adeola Omosebi, noted that the assistance would be extended to other areas of Borno and Adamawa states, which were affected by the Boko Haram insurgency.

He said the present intervention, which started in August this year, would wind up in December, adding that a decision was taken recently to give N5, 010 to each member of the qualified households rather than food items.

Omosebi said, The intervention was part of the German Humanitarian Assistance through the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs to victims of Boko Haram crisis in Borno and Adamawa states.

It is a food security intervention  in kind and cash-based transfers. In the first two months of August and September, food was given but later N5,010 was given out to a person for every household.

Speaking further, he said those to benefit from the intervention include internally displaced persons, returnees and residents of host communities.

Source : ( Punch Newspaper )
Governor of Anambra State, Willie Obiano, on Friday debunked the news that he will leave the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) for the All Progressives Congress (APC).

He said he would never leave the party on which platform he contested and won the governorship seat two times.

Obiano spoke to the State House correspondents after a meeting he had with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

No. Never. That is totally unfounded. I will never leave APGA. Im the leader and the Board of Trustees Chairman of APGA and again by Gods grace, the governor and governor-elect, he declared

The governor described APGA as a very strong party in the South-East, saying Nigerians would see more proofs in coming elections.

When asked about his relationship with his predecessor, Peter Obi, he said he had no problem with anybody.

When also asked if he would woo the son of Chief Emeka Ojukwu who left the party back into the fold, Obiano said, He is of no consequence, I am sorry to say.

He, however, said he had extended an olive branch to his co-contestants, saying that all of them had congratulated him.

He said individual ambitions could not be greater than the interest of the state.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
A woman has caused some commotion in a community in Lagos State after refusing to allow her step children take her sick husband to hospital.

The police in Lagos recently averted a major family crisis yesterday, after the biological children of ailing septuagenarian, Alhaji Shanshudeen Labinjo, made attempts to take him to hospital for treatment but their step mother resisted by locking all exit and entry points to their residence.

According to a Vanguard report, the lingering family crisis which reportedly led to a face off at their Number 18, Bashua Street in Somolu area of the state, yesterday, resulted in both the step mother, children of the septuagenarian and his relatives attacking each other openly.

When all efforts by the children to take their ailing father to hospital were allegedly rebuffed by their step mother who reportedly placed their residence under lock and key, they had to invite the police at Alade division to help them gain access to the house.

Vanguard reports that when they stormed their fathers residence, a guard at the gate stopped them from gaining access to the building claiming that nobody was inside. The visibly rattled children of the old man who suspected foul play however, insisted on gaining access but the guard persisted.

It was gathered that Policemen that accompanied them to the house also advised against forceful entry into the house.

Speaking with Vanguard, one of the sons to the old man, Okiki Labinjo alleged that the whole ugly development was masterminded by their step mother whom he claimed has been holding their sick father hostage without reasons.

He said: My father has been sick for a while now. Each time we made attempt to take him to the hospital, his wife, Funke, would not allow us. Each time we come to the house, we cant go beyond the gates let alone see our father.

For months now, none of his children or extended family has been allowed to see him. He has loss of memory. Because of his health issues, there was a time my father wanted to jump from the second floor of the building. She would bring thugs and policemen from anti-robbery squad to harass and threaten us. They went ahead and arrested my elder brother, Lukmon who was fighting to take our father to the hospital.

Right now, all we want is to have access to our father so that we can, at least, take him to the hospital so that he can have access to proper medical care, he added.

Lamenting, Engineer Kamal Labinjo, the immediate younger brother to ailing Alhaji Labinjo revealed that we have made arrangement several times to take my brother to the hospital but, his wife has refused any member of the family to see him let alone take him to the hospital.

How can she deny his children and family access to see him even while he is sick? This is so unfair.

For goodness sake, she doesnt have a child for my bother. When she moved in to live with my brother, she came with three children she had from her previous marriage who my brother trained. We dont understand why she is refusing him medical attention after all he has done for her and her children. Can you imagine that it is one of her sons from her previous marriage that is controlling my fathers estates and properties located in different places in Lagos, while his biological children are left with nothing.

She is using the police force to threaten and harass any family member that comes looking for Alhaji. Even his friends from the central mosque where he worships are forbidden to see him. The police at Alagbon have been compromised, anytime there is an arrangement to take Alhaji to the hospital At a point we had to write a petition to Police Service Commission,PSC, and to the Deputy Inspector-General of Police in Abuja after his Muslim brothers pleaded that we should intervene.

Questioning the motive behind refusing Alhaji Labinjo access to adequate healthcare, the Convener of Jashable Touch, a Non-Governmental Organisation, NGO, Mrs Favour Benson said that it was unjustifiable for a sick person to be locked up.

Why should a sick person be locked up inside the house and not taken to the hospital? How on earth do you prevent the children and relatives of a sick person from having access to him?

Efforts by Vanguard to speak with their step mother failed as she could not be seen during the period the standoff lasted and the guard refused to give out her telephone number.
A member of the Boko Haram sect was killed by some hunters from Gur village in Biu Local Government Area of Borno with assistance of hunters from Damaturu on Thursday.

According to the Army spokesman, Sani Usman,he said in a statement on Friday that the encounter took place at Burashika village in Biu.

Mr. Usman said the hunters recovered one AK-47 rifle mounted with magazine of two rounds and 48 cows, 58 goats, 36 sheep and 12 donkeys.

He added that the recovered livestock had been handed over to security operatives in Gur village, pending identification by their rightful owners and handover.

Source : (NAN)
The Federal Government has backed the decision of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) position to increase the tariffs on tobacco products.

This was confirmed by the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Adeosun, who was represented by the ministrys Permanent Secretary, Mahmoud Dutse, said government was currently putting in place policies to increase excise tax on tobacco, alcohol and other products.

The minister said federal government had also started reviewing its excise tax rates and structure tobacco, cigarettes and alcoholic beverages.

She added that the review was in line with ECOWAS draft regulation on harmonisation of excise taxes on tobacco.

She explained that one of the techniques used by governments all over the world is to tax products that are either consumed particularly when you want to do progressive taxation, or products that are hazardous to health and increase health spending.

It is a twin objective; to raise revenue and decrease tobacco consumption.

In this regard, the use of modern techniques and tools of production controls such as tax stamps or special package markings in the context of the track-and-trace system, which is a global best practice, are being considered.

The harmonisation of laws establishing a system for tracing, tracking and tax verification of manufactured or imported tobacco products in ECOWAS member states is a welcome development for Nigeria.

Mrs. Adeosun said it was important for member states to put in place effective track-and-trace systems to eliminate illicit trade.

She noted that without effective track-and-trace system, illicit trade will undermine trade and tax measures and will have serious adverse effects on public health in West Africa.

Nigeria supports the ECOWAS directives of VAT exemptions on basic food items in their raw states, medicaments and pharmaceutical products.

She expressed governments support for ECOWAS Customs Codes, adding that it was part of efforts to enhance the implementation of common tariff and promote common market for West Africa.

Source: ( NAN )
Argentina and Barcelona star, Lionel Messi finally extended his contract, which will keep him at the club till 2021,this was confirmed by the club in an official statement.

The Spanish giants had announced in the summer that Messi had committed his future to the club but the Argentine had not signed the new deal, with his existing contract set to expire in 2018.

FC Barcelona and Lionel Messi signed on Saturday morning a new contract that will keep the Argentinian superstar at the club through the 2020/21 season, read a club statement. The buyout clause was set at 700 million euros ($835 million).

Source: (Sky Sports)
Diminutive Barcelona forward has added another massive award to his already filled up cabinet with another interesting sporting achievement.

The Argentina captain, Lionel Messi, has added yet another trophy to his collection.

The Barcelona forward equaled Cristiano Ronaldos tally of four European Golden Shoes after receiving the award at a ceremony on Friday.

He claimed the prize given to Europes top goal-scorer, for his 37 La Liga strikes in 2016-17.

It is the fourth time Messi has taken the honours, after his successes in 2010, 2012 and 2013.

His tally came from 34 top-flight games and saw him top the charts ahead of Sporting CPs Bas Dost, who netted 34 in the Primeira Liga, while Borussia Dortmunds Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang rounded out the top three with 31.

Ronaldo, winner of the award in 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2015, scored 25 league goals last season and did not make the top five.

Last years winner, Luis Suarez was fifth this time around with 29, one fewer than Bayern Munichs Robert Lewandowski.
President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari sent condolences to the government of Egypt over the attacks on a mosque in North Sinai that left at least 235 people dead after Jumaat prayers.

The condolence was sent through the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, the President condemned the dastardly act on innocent worshippers.

The President said the attack further reinforced his position that terrorism had no relationship or respect for any religion, and should be visited with the full wrath of the law.

The statement read in part, The President reiterates that the workable panacea to such mindless and irresponsible attacks on citizens would be a global joint action that continually shares intelligence, simulates scenarios and regularly updates on both local and international threats.

President Buhari prays that the almighty God will receive the souls of the departed, and comfort the families of those directly affected.

It was earlier confirmed that the death toll had increased to 235 persons on Friday following the terrorist attack in which 109 were also injured.

According to reports, the attack began with two explosions. Gunmen were said to have positioned themselves outside the mosque, shelling worshippers as they attempted to flee the Al Rawdah Mosque.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper)
Being a daughter of a billionaire oil magnate definitely did not stop Ifeoluwa Florence Otedola also known as DJ Cuppy from creating a name and brand for herself.

The superstar disc jockey recently spoke about the dismay she feels when she is put in the shadow of her father and it raised quite a ruckus on social media.

As she cover the November edition of Vibe Magazine, she discusses how her familys fame affects her, her new single with Tekno Green Light as well as the disc jockey profession in Nigeria.

Read excerpts below:

On her familys fame and how it affects her:

I would never ever apologize for what family Im from and if anything, I can use my own opportunity to create more opportunities for others. Im actually a hardworking young woman that has a passion for DJ-ing and that message has taken me a lot of years to come through. Im still working on it, but I feel like, finally my work ethic is starting to speak for itself.

On her Green Light collaboration with Tekno:

Green Light is my original song. I came out to the market with a song called I love my country which was a remix, but Green Light is really me not hiding behind anyones record. Tekno and I wrote the song together, produced it, came up with it and Im so proud of it. For me its such a breath of fresh air. Regardless of how well the song does- and its doing very well- Im so proud that I decided to take a risk. Im singing on it which is a new thing for me. I love the video, I just love everything about the song, Regardless of it being my song, its such a jam. I fall in love with it every time. Every time I hear it, I feel refreshed.

On working with Tekno:

Tekno is an artiste that Ive always wanted to work with. If hes not playing the drums, hes playing the guitar or hes playing the piano. Ive always admired him. I literally cannot think of a bad Tekno song. Hes always working on epic stuff. Hes just grown from strength to strength and as far as my debut single, I couldnt think of a better artiste to kick it off with.

On the disc jockey business in Nigeria:

I feel like DJs are completely underrated, but then having said that, DJs are now getting the recognition they deserve,after so many years of playing artistes music, supporting artistes and breaking their records. Now, us DJs are taking that limelight that weve worked so hard for. You know theres people like uncle Jimmy Jatt who really started this idea of a DJ being a brand, not being hidden behind the scenes or in a corner in a room and theres amazing people like Spinall now really taking that force. For me its really exciting. As a female, I feel like we can take that branding force to another level. I could not think of a better time. When you think about how big African fashion, films, music and creativity in general is now globally, I couldnt think of a better time to be a female DJ from Nigeria.

On affluence getting in the way of love:

I feel like for me, its hard to say because Ive grown up in an environment where Ive looked at people because of their ambition not because of what they have. A lot of my friends are go- getters. We come from different backgrounds and its almost like Im a bit of a disappointment in that sense because I dont act like someone they expect me to act like. Ive dated people that have grown up completely different from me but the thing theyve always had in common is that theyve been ambitious. Theyve had careers, theyve had very serious goals. So I dont think that affects anything.

Source  36ng
Reno Omokri has posted on his Twitter page, the Spectator Index of September 2017, to show Nigeria has diminished in all sectors since Independence, compared to Singapore.

In 1960 when we gained independence, Nigeria and Singapore were at the same level. But after 57 years, and especially the last 2 years of Buhari, the difference is clear. He said.

Source  Juliablaise
The Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, said on Saturday that the force would deploy five mobile police units to Adamawa State to prevent future clashes between herdsmen and farmers.

Idris made this known in Yola when he paid a courtesy call on Gov. Mohammed Bindow to commiserate with him and the people of the state.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that about 20 people were killed and several others injured following a clash between farmers and Fulani herdsmen in Numan Local Government Area of the state.

The attack occurred on Monday night following the killing of a farmer by suspected Fulani herdsmen resulting in a reprisal by the farming communities of Shaforon, Kodomti and Kikan all in Numan local government area of the state.

The IG said that the five units would reinvigorate security operations to prevent further bloody clashes between herdsmen and farmers.

He also promised to deploy tracking units of the force for the investigation of previous incidents.

He assured the people of the state that the incidents would be thoroughly investigated to prevent a repeat.

Idris commended the traditional institution and other stakeholders in the state for wading into the crisis with a view to ending it.

Source : (NAN)
The All Progressives Congress (APC ) has been accused by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of planning to destroy its coming convention on December 9, 2017 by arresting its key members.

This was confirmed in a statement by its spokesperson, Dayo Adeyeye, the party alleged that the APC had postponed its own convention so as to monitor and sabotage that of the PDP.

We are not completely oblivious of the plans by the APC to sabotage our convention. Apart from the internal fighting within the APC, one of the reasons why the party postponed its National Convention to next year was to enable it to monitor closely our convention with a view to destabilizing our party ahead of the 2019 General Elections.

The planned parallel convention is one of those ideas of the APC to create divisions amongst members of our party.

It will be most unfortunate for members of our party to allow themselves to be used against the party especially in the light of our recent painful experience.

The National Caretaker Committee is willing and ready to address all the concerns of our party members regarding the forthcoming National Convention. Members should take advantage of our open door policy to ventilate their opinions, concerns and grievances.

We will not give room to anybody to find any excuse to sabotage the convention. We realise of course that there is little we can do to dissuade those who have decided to become paid agents of the ruling party.

According to Mr. Adeyeye, the arrest of former Senate President and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Pius Anyim, and a former Governor of Taraba State, Abubakar Danladi, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was orchestrated to run down the PDP.

Part of the agenda of the APC to sabotage our convention and destabilise our party is the arrest of leaders of our party on trump-up charges of corruption.

We had cried out a few weeks ago that there was a list of about fifty (50) top leaders of our party earmarked by the ruling party for arrest and incarceration. The APC propagandists said we were crying wolf. Now were being vindicated by the continuing and unrelenting arrest, intimidation and harassment of our top leaders.

In the last one week, the former Governor of Taraba State, Mr. Abubakar Danladi and the former Senate President and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, two prominent members of our party were arrested by the anti-graft agency, the EFCC. This is apart from the five that were earlier arrested within the month of November. We dont know who will be next in the list.

These are all part of the agenda of the APC to create an atmosphere of fear and insecurity around PDP members before and after the National Convention. It is also part of the overall strategy of the ruling party to turn Nigeria into a one party state.

We once again call on Nigerians and members of the international community to be vigilant to ensure that the APC does not institute full blown dictatorship in the country.

The only reason why the APC is hell bent on killing the opposition in Nigeria is due to its non-performance and inability to deliver on its campaign promises. They have failed Nigerians and they know too well that they can no longer convince Nigerians to vote for them again in 2019.

The party assured its members nationwide that its leadership under Ahmed Makarfi would provide an enabling environment and a level playing field for all contestants and ensure transparent, free and fair elections.

Source: ( Premium Times )
Three undergraduates of the Umaru Musa Yaradua University have been arrested by Katsina Police Command for allegedly murdering one Abdulmalik Kabir in Malumfashi Local Government Area of the state.

The suspects  all male  are two third year students and a second year student, according to Bensen Gwana, the state Commissioner of Police, who paraded them before journalists on Friday in Katsina.

The police arrested the three suspects when they attacked their victim and inflicted serious injuries on him which led to his death.

The arrested persons caused grievous harm on their victim over an issue of girlfriend, in the month of November, 2017.

The victim died in a hospital while receiving treatment, the commissioner said.

Source : (NAN)
The Niger State Police Command has rescued a man identified as Malam Haruna Gizo, the village head of Unguwan Gizo of Kagara Local Government Area of the state and three others from their abductors.

The Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr Austine Agbonlahor, told the News Agency of Nigeria in Minna that they were rescued during a joint operation by the Kagara police and a vigilance group from Birnin Gwari Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

He explained that the command was taking proactive security measures to deal with any form of security threat.

He added that we have deployed sufficient security personnel in identified areas prone to criminal activities across the state.

We will continue to adopt proactive security measures to confront any form of threat to enable residents to move on with there legitimate businesses.

He called for more cooperation from the public to enable the police to rid the state of criminals.

The village head and others were abducted on Nov. 21 at Unguwan Gizo in Kagara Local Government Area of Niger.

Source : (NAN)
The Comptroller General of the Service, Col. Hameed Ali (retd.) has ordered a cancellation of promotion examination conducted for senior officers of the Service.

The Nigeria Customs Service has cancelled the promotion examination recently conducted for senior officers from the rank of Assistant Comptroller to Deputy Comptroller, according to a report by Punch.

The decision to cancel the examination was taken due to irregularities observed in the conduct of the examination. According to an internal circular, dated November 22, 2017, the Comptroller General of the Service, Col. Hameed Ali (retd.), ordered the cancellation.

The circular, signed by the Deputy Comptroller General in charge of Human Resources, stated that Monday, November 27, 2017, had been fixed for a repeat of the examination at the Customs Command at Staff College, Gwagwalada, Abuja.

The circular with reference number NCS/ABJ/HRD/560/C/VOL.VIII addressed to all management staff and Customs formations nationwide read, The 2017 Promotion Examination (CBT) AC-DC (GD) taken on October 11, 2017, has been cancelled.

This is consequent upon violation of the integrity of the examination process.

Sources within the service said the examination, which was conducted on October 11, 2017, was allegedly marred by irregularities including leakage of examination questions.

They added that the promotion examination under the management of Ali was of higher integrity compared with the previous ones.

When contacted, the Public Relations Officer, NCS, Mr. Joseph Attah, stated that the promotion exams were conducted for all the ranks in the service but only one paper was cancelled.

He explained that the paper that was cancelled was the promotion examination paper written by Assistant Comptrollers that was to qualify them for promotion to the Deputy Comptroller rank.

He said, The paper was cancelled due to integrity issue and because the current NCS has zero tolerance for lack of integrity. The exam was rescheduled for Monday.

The NCS is doing this so that the officers who would be promoted would be people of high integrity who have no question mark on their character.
21 suspected cultists have been arrested by Soldiers attached to the 145 Battalion deployed to Umuahia, Abia State in Umudike in Ikwuano Local Government Area of the state.

This was confirmed by the Assistant Director, Army Public Relations, 14 Brigade of the Nigerian Army in Ohafia, Major Oyegoke Gbadamosi,in a statement which was made available to Southern City News on Friday.

He noted that the suspects were nabbed following intelligence gathered about their operations.

Gbadamosi stated that the suspected cultists, aged between 18 and 25 years were sighted in the bushes around Umudike in Ikwuano LGA throughout the night of October 15, probably meeting for initiation purposes.

He said, Based on the information received, the troops of the Forward Operation Base, Obot Akara swung into action and apprehended 21 suspected cult members which include one Mr. Brown Christian and 20 others.

The suspects are presently undergoing preliminary investigation and thereafter, they will be handed over to the police for further investigation and possible prosecution.

The Army spokesman also added that in a related development, soldiers of 144 Battalion on routine patrol on Uka Egbu Street in Aba North LGA smashed a gang of three suspected armed robbers on October 15.

He said the suspects, on sighting the patrol team, escaped to an unknown destination and abandoned one locally-made single-barrelled pistol, one locally-made revolver pistol, three live rounds of 9mm ammunition, three empty cases of 9mm ammunition.

He added that the suspects also abandoned one tricycle with registration number: ESA 036 VC and a bag containing their personal belongings. He said efforts are ongoing to arrest members of the gang.

According to Gbadamosi, soldiers attached to the 145 Battalion at Isiala Ngwa North military checkpoint along Aba-Port Harcourt expressway acting on a tip-off, arrested a suspected armed robber, identified as Chijindu Chidi.

He said the suspect has been handed over to the police for further investigation and prosecution.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper)
Wizkid couldnt attend the traditional wedding of his former label boss, Banky W and for unknown reasons has ignored the White wedding also.

Recall that Wizkid has expressed regret for missing the traditional wedding but promised to rock the white wedding.

In his words;

My big brother and boss for life! Love u bro ?? God bless your day! Lord knows how sad i am missing this special day?? We go rock church wedding ..Love forever!

Well the church wedding went down today and he was nowhere to be found, he shared a photo of his son on snap with him as they enjoyed a special bonding time together.

Banky W is believed to be the man that made Wizkid, and Wizkid being absent at Banky Ws weddings, speak tons about him.

source: 36ng
A leading VAT recovery firm has announced plans to grow its business by creating 80 new jobs in Kilkenny.

Taxback International employs 1,200 people globally is recruiting to deal with increased demand from Irish and global clients.
France has effectively stepped up the pressure on Ireland and other EU countries in the fight to lure London banking jobs after Brexit by making it less expensive to sack financial traders.

The French parliament approved the measures to cut the cost of sacking traders by excluding their bonuses from compulsory redundancy payouts, in a move aimed to attract trading activities to Paris as the UK leaves the EU.
Update 9.19pm: Fianna Fail is set to examine Department of Justice documents tonight in a fresh attempt to avoid an election.

They were handed over this afternoon after Leo Varardkar and Micheal Martin met to discuss the crisis in Government.

The documents had been prepared on the back of a parliamentary question brought forward by Labour's Alan Kelly.

Labour Party Leader Brendan Howlin said it is an "extraordinary development".

Deputy Howlin said the documents must be provided to all the opposition parties if the Taoiseach wants to avoid further controversy.

"If there's anything germane to the Tribunal - obviously, we assume that they'd be provided to the Tribunal in the first instance," he said.

"But if they are germane to any of the questions raised by parliamentarians, Alan Kelly, myself or others in the Dail, they should be put on the record of the Dail and provided to all of us, all of the parties in opposition and indeed all the members of the Dail."

Update 6.01pm: A meeting between the leaders of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail has finished for the day.

They have both reported a "good exchange of views" and agreed to keep in contact across the weekend to try and find a way to avoid a pre-Christmas General Election.

The impasse remains surrounding no-confidence motions tabled against the Tanaiste over her handling of the McCabe controversy.

Micheal Martin still says Frances Fitzgerald must go while the Taoiseach maintains she has done nothing wrong.

"I don't want there to be any ambiguity about this, there is no subtle message being sent out there to the Tanaiste that she should even consider resigning," Leo Varadkar said.

"I won't be seeking her resignation, I don't want her to offer it to me."

As more talks are expected tomorrow, Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has called for votes of no confidence in the Tanaiste to be pushed back until the New Year.

The TD for Dublin Bay South, has been in touch with party leaders and feels the last thing the public want is a general election.

"I contacted both Micheal Martin and Mary Lou McDonald yesterday and said: 'Without changing your tack or approach, put that motion of confidence back into the New Year - you don't have to pull it, just delay it'," he said.

"That would allow us to have an election - if that is what ends up - it means that this critical period of Christmas and the critical run-up to Brexit elections, we don't have an election. I think the Irish people don't want an election at Christmas," he added.

Update 3.49pm: The leaders of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are meeting again to try to find a way to avoid a pre-Christmas General Election.

Leo Vardakar still says Frances Fitzgerald has done nothing wrong and will not ask for her resignation.

While Micheal Martin said his party has no confidence in the Justice Minister and she must go.

Both say they are willing to engage in discussions to resolve the situation and avert the collapse of the Government.

The Taoiseach says they fully support the Tanaiste despite two tabled motions of no confidence in her by the opposition.

Varadkar said she should not even consider quitting amid a furore that has brought his administration to the brink of collapse.

There has been speculation the Tanaiste may fall on her own sword to avert a general election.

Mr Varadkar said he wanted there to be no ambiguity over his public declarations of support for Ms Fitzgerald, who is under intense pressure over her handling of a 2015 email that revealed attempts to discredit a Garda whistleblower.

The Fine Gael leader rejected any suggestion he was privately hoping his party colleague would walk away to quell the crisis.

"I don't want there to be any ambiguity about this, there is no subtle message being sent out there to the Tanaiste that she should even consider resigning," he said.

"I won't be seeking her resignation, I don't want her to offer it to me."

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin has refused to budge on a motion of no confidence in the Tanaiste.

It is scheduled for next Tuesday and, if Fianna Fail follows through with it, the confidence and supply agreement would be broken and the government would fall, forcing a pre-Christmas election.

The threat of an election has caused turmoil in government and political circles, with the biggest fear that it would be fought in the teeth of Brexit negotiations which could determine the future of the Irish border.

Fianna Fail's Stephen Donnelly said neither Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein or anyone else is looking for an election right now.

He said it is a time for cool heads and he is calling on the Tanaiste to resign:

"It is not anybody's interest to have an election right now. It is not in the country's interest to have an election right now. This is a very specific call - it is directed at Frances Fitzgerald," he said.

"The simple fact is the majority of TDs in Dail Eireann do not have confidence in Frances Fitzgerald and our position is, based on very, very serious information that came into the public domain in the last ten days, that she should step back and our hope is that she will do so."

Attending an event in Dublin on Saturday focused on role models for young women, Mr Varadkar reiterated his view that Mrs Fitzgerald had done nothing wrong.

"I think there is a real injustice here in people calling for her to resign in these circumstances," he said.

"I don't want to see a good woman who I think has done enormous service in Irish public life, who has been a real asset to Irish politics, brought down in this way.

"I just don't think it would be fair, I don't think it would be right and I don't think the majority of the Irish people would like that to happen."

He added: "I am not willing to sacrifice a good person just so the government can continue its work in these circumstances."

Earlier, Mr Varadkar used his speech at the opening of the FemFest conference in the city's Liberty Hall to publicly signal his support for the embattled Tanaiste, hailing her as an "honourable and distinguished politician".

The crisis centres on Mrs Fitzgerald's knowledge of a legal strategy to be employed by lawyers for the Garda Commissioner that was designed to discredit whistleblower Garda Sergeant Maurice McCabe at a private inquiry into his allegations of bad policing.

The information was contained in an email sent to the Tanaiste by a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Justice in 2015. It also advised that legally she had no grounds to intervene.

The Taoiseach has said Mrs Fitzgerald had been advised not to intervene in the legal strategy. He said that has since been backed up by advice from the Attorney General.

The Tanaiste has faced days of allegations from opposition parties that she was aware of the campaign by lawyers for the Garda Commissioner and took no action.

She has said she cannot remember getting the email in 2015. It alerted her that "a serious criminal complaint", which had always been denied by Sgt McCabe, was raised at the inquiry.

Sinn Fein was first out of the blocks earlier this week with plans for a motion of no confidence, with Fianna Fail then declaring its intention to follow suit.

On Saturday, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams made clear his party would press ahead with its motion, regardless of the outcome of the crisis talks between the Dail's two main parties.

"The only thing that will prevent this is the Tanaiste stepping down," Mr Adams said in Drogheda.

"This is nothing personal against Frances Fitzgerald. This is Sinn Fein doing our job - holding the government to account."

Update 12.22pm: Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said today that he is hopeful a resolution can be found in the current political impasse.

He insisted that he does not want Frances Fitzgerald to resign, and that the matter is before the Disclosures Tribunal.

"Certainly, if there is a way to avoid the Government falling and the Dail collapsing and an election, I'm open to that," he said.

"But it can't involve the Tanaiste being forced to resign, because that would just be the wrong thing to do."

Update 12.22pm: The chair of Fine Gaels National Executive has insisted that the party does not want a General Election.

The Taoiseach and the Fianna Fail leader are due to meet again, but unless a compromise can be found an election could happen in a matter of weeks.

"This is an emergency meeting of the Fine Gael Executive Council, convened to, I suppose, to prepare for a General Election," said Gerry OConnell.

"None of us want a General Election, it's our hope that a General Election can be avoided at all cost.

"The Taoiseach's position, as he set out last night, [is that] he's not going to dismiss the Tanaiste, he's going to support her to the hilt, and we support his position.

"But we're preparing on the basis that the Dail may be dissolved as early as Tuesday."

Earlier:

The Fine Gael National Executive Council is holding an emergency meeting this morning to discuss its strategy for a potential general election.

The council is meeting in the next hour at their Headquarters in Dublin.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is meeting with Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin again today in a bid to break the impasse over the garda whistleblower controversy.

However, Fine Gael is conscious that it will need time and space to prepare for an election in the event that one is called.

Fianna Fail has put down a motion of no confidence in Frances Fitzgerald over her handling of the Maurice McCabe controversy - but Leo Varadkar says he will not sack her.

It centres around an email that the Tanaiste received in May 2015 outlining the proposed legal strategy against the Garda Whistleblower at the O'Higgins Commission.

The Irish Examiner's Mick Clifford says the suggestion that she could not legally interfere in the proceedings is a distraction.

"There was nothing to stop her," he said.

"In fact you could argue that she had a duty to pick up the phone and ring the Garda Commissioner and say: Can you tell me why, is there a valid reason for this, what is it based on, just so I can understand it, just so I have polictical cover, even, if you want to put it that way, because I have met Maurice McCabe and he seems like an honourable man, can you tell me please what is going on?"
Argentina's president has said an international search will continue for a submarine carrying 44 crew members that has been lost in the South Atlantic for nine days and the vessel's disappearance will be investigated.

The Argentine navy said an explosion occurred near the time and place where the submarine went missing on November 15 as it was sailing from the extreme southern port of Ushuaia to the coastal city of Mar del Plata.

Workers stand around the ARA San Juan submarine during a ceremony in 2011.

That has led some family members of the crew to give up hope of a rescue. Navy officials and outside experts also worry that even if the sub is intact but submerged, its crew may be running out of oxygen.

"The disappearance and current search of the ARA San Juan submarine has touched all Argentines. It's a difficult moment for all, but obviously, especially for the families of the 44 crew members," President Mauricio Macri said in his first public comments about the missing submarine at the navy's headquarters in Buenos Aires.

"I'm here to guarantee you that we will carry on with the search, especially now that we have the support of all the international community."

More than a dozen planes and ships have been participating in the multinational search across an area of some 185,000 square miles, which is roughly the size of Spain.

The Argentine navy said on Friday that Russia is sending an Antonov transport aircraft and a ship in the southern Patagonian port of Comodoro Rivadavia is being adapted to carry a US Navy submarine rescue chamber to the area.

The ARA San Juan, a German-built diesel-electric TR-1700 class submarine, was commissioned in 1985 and was most recently refitted in 2014.

The sub was originally scheduled to arrive on Monday at a navy base in Mar del Plata, about 250 miles south east of Buenos Aires. Some relatives of the crew who have gathered at the base fear that their loved ones will no longer be rescued.

"Hope is the last thing you lose. I'm waiting for a surprise, but I'm not really counting on it," Luis Tagliapietra, father of 27-year-old crew member Alejandro Damian Tagliapietra, said.

"You go from denial to suffering, from optimism to pessimism," he said, holding back tears. When he found out about the explosion from his son's direct superior, he was told that there was a possibility there were no survivors.

"I asked them if they were all dead, and he said: 'Yes.'"

Some family members have denounced the navy's response to the disappearance and the condition of the 30-year-old vessel.

Although Mr Macri said that it is not the time to point fingers at anyone, he promised a probe of the sub's disappearance.

"This demands a serious, deep investigation," Mr Macri said. "We need to understand how a submarine that had undergone a mid-life refit, and that was in perfect conditions to sail, suffered this explosion."

AP
Burma and Bangladesh have signed an agreement covering the return of Rohingya Muslims who fled across their mutual border to escape violence in Burma's Rakhine state.

Burma announced the agreement but provided no details on how many Rohingya refugees would be allowed to return home. Bangladesh said the repatriations are to begin within two months.

More than 620,000 Rohingya have fled from Burma into Bangladesh since August 25, when the army began what it called "clearance operations" following an attack on police posts by a group of Rohingya insurgents.

Refugees arriving in Bangladesh said their homes were set on fire by soldiers and Buddhist mobs, and some reported being shot at by security forces.

The office of Burma's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi said the agreement "on the return of displaced persons from Rakhine state" was signed by Cabinet officials in Naypyitaw, Burma's capital. It said the pact follows a formula set in a 1992 repatriation agreement signed by the two nations after an earlier spasm of violence. Under that agreement, Rohingya were required to present residency documents, which few have, before being allowed to return to Burma, which is also known by some as Myanmar.

"We're continuing our bilateral talks with Myanmar so that these Myanmar nationals (Rohingya) could return to their country," Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was quoted as saying by the United News of Bangladesh news agency. "It's my call to Myanmar to start taking back soon their nationals from Bangladesh."

Rohingya at a refugee camp in Bangladesh expressed deep doubts about the agreement.

"They burned our houses, they took our land and cows - will they give us these things back?" asked Abdul Hamid from Hoyakong.

"I'm not happy at all. First, I need to know if they are going to accept us with the Rohingya identity," said Sayed Alom, also from Hoyakong.

Rohingya Muslims have faced state-supported discrimination in predominantly Buddhist Burma for decades. Though members of the ethnic minority first arrived generations ago, Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship in 1982, denying them almost all rights and rendering them stateless.

They cannot travel freely, practise their religion, or work as teachers or doctors, and they have little access to medical care, food or education.

The Burmese government has refused to accept them as a minority group, and the statement issued on Thursday by Ms Suu Kyi's office did not use the term "Rohingya".

The United States has declared the violence against Rohingya to be "ethnic cleansing", and threatened penalties for Burmese military officers involved in the crackdown.

The human rights group Amnesty International said in a report that the discrimination against Rohingya has worsened considerably in the last five years, and amounts to "dehumanising apartheid".

"There can be no safe or dignified returns of Rohingya to Myanmar while a system of apartheid remains in the country, and thousands are held there in conditions that amount to concentration camps. Returns in the current climate are simply unthinkable," the group's director for refugee and migrant rights, Charmain Mohamed, said.

AP
The Irish Travel Agents Association (ITAA) said such reduced tourist supply will result in a push to increase prices by hotels and other accommodation providers across mainland Europe in a bid to maintain their margins.

It cited Tourism Ireland figures which estimated double-digit percentage falls in the number of British tourists travelling outside the UK and in what they spend if they do.

It is our hope that holidaymakers from other European markets  such as Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands  will help keep prices down for Irish consumers, said ITAA president Cormac Meehan.

Addressing delegates at the inaugural Irish travel industry summit in Dublin, Mr Meehan said those in the industry (selling to consumers) must get ready for a very different world.

Brexit will result in the renegotiation of the single sky treaty and many low-cost carriers will move their bases from the UK sooner rather than later.

The uncertainty and risk are certain to impact our sectors growth, he said.

Mr Meehan said a hard Brexit would hinder travel agents in the North.

A weak pound will mean that cost of sales will rise, margins will drop, and lower customer numbers will result in higher prices. Increased border controls will also impact staff mobility, he said adding that the Government has failed to convince the UK of the gravity of the situation.

It is up to us, travel professionals, to embrace and strengthen bonds with our counterparts in Europe to facilitate and preserve our existing confederate relationships.

Latest UK data, published yesterday, shows consumer confidence is now lower than at any time since last years Brexit vote and banks approved the fewest amount of mortgages in over a year.

The UK housing market has cooled sharply this year and the UK Finance trade association said banks approved 40,488 mortgages for house purchase last month, down from 41,576 in September and 3% less than in October 2016.

The British economy has steadily slowed since the Brexit vote as rising inflation eats into disposable incomes and it growth forecasts were cut sharply earlier this week.
The cost of borrowing for the Irish state over 10 years ticked higher to 0.59%, but the gains were in line with other eurozone sovereign debt markets, which suggests the political drama in the Dail was having little effect on markets.

Local analysts said they fielded calls from international traders who were trying to get a grip on the consequences of Irish politics on the Brexit talks.

A major EU summit in early December will decide if the UK has made enough concessions on the border and on its exit divorce bill for the talks to proceed.

Irish political disruption has the potential to strengthen Londons negotiating hand and weaken the position of Michel Barnier, the EUs chief Brexit negotiator.

However, at 89.3p, the euro was still up against sterling.

Owen Callan, senior analyst at Investec Ireland, said the reaction of markets was muted because the political news from Ireland wasnt expected to affect next months big meeting.

The news had not unduly ruffled market participants who assessed that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail shared similar positions on Brexit, and that Ireland wouldnt be out of the loop in the December talks, Mr Callan said.

David Holohan, chief investment officer at Merrion, said there was still a major focus on what was going to happen to Irelands government ahead of the December summit.

Referring to the muted market reaction, Mr Holohan said while the threat of an early election was a surprise, that participants had expected an election to be called at sometime next year.

Markets may react if political uncertainty were to extend to March when a further key EU meeting on Brexit is scheduled, he said.

The threat of political uncertainty across Europe has softened as the eurozone economy has strengthened  helping to support the euro.

One headwind is German political uncertainty after chancellor Angela Merkel saw her efforts to form a coalition government collapse.

The current situation in Germany is an excellent illustration of a phenomenon which has characterised the entire eurozone throughout the year: Buoyant confidence and strong economic growth goes hand in hand with political uncertainty and instability, said Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING-Diba in Frankfurt.

This dichotomy can easily continue in 2018.

A survey by Deloitte showed European business confidence was increasing, with Irish chief financial officers seeing less uncertainty.

And most Irish chief financial officers predicted that their revenues would likely rise in 2018 and were very optimistic about the prospects of investing more in their businesses in 2018, according to the survey.

Here in Ireland, the findings mark a noticeable recovery from some of the shocks to the market in 2016, namely Brexit and the US presidential election.

The identification of geopolitical risks and currency fluctuations among the top risks in the minds of the Irish chief financial officers demonstrates that they are not getting ahead of themselves, said Deloitte partner Alan Flanagan.
Reports suggested that the group has held talks to explore a possible tie-up with Melbourne-based CrownBet, the online betting unit of Australian casino giant Crown Resorts.

The Australian online betting company is seen as being a target for industry players with a UK presence seeking to expand their international operations in order to offset tougher regulations in Britain.

A spokesperson for Paddy Power-Betfair declined to comment but the news followed an earlier statement by British betting firm William Hill saying that it has held very preliminary discussions, itself, with CrownBet about a potential merger with the UK bookies Australian unit.

There is no certainty that these preliminary discussions will lead to any transaction, William Hill said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange.

Crown Resorts admitted that it is in discussions about its 62% holding in CrownBet without providing further details.

Speculation is growing that UK-focused gambling companies are set to embark on a round of consolidation to offset the threat of stricter regulation and diversify their operations.

Last month, the British government outlined proposals to cut the maximum stake on gambling machines in betting shops, a move that would hit an important source of bookmakers revenue.

Ladbrokes-Coral held unsuccessful deal talks with online rival GVC this year and a spate of deal-making among British companies is expected once the UK government makes a decision on gambling machine stakes.

William Hill entered the Australian market four years ago when it bought Sportingbet and tomwaterhouse.com but its operations have since struggled. Earlier this week it posted a 5% decline in amounts wagered at its Australian division between the end of June and late October. Its share price was marginally down yesterday.

Earlier this month, Paddy Power-Betfair reported a 9% annualised rise in third quarter revenues to 440m (502m) and a 7% increase in underlying earnings to 121m.

While online revenues were down 3%, year-on-year, and gaming revenue remained flat, the group saw growth in its main geographical locations with Australia-based revenues via its Sportsbet online subsidiary  ahead by almost 30%.
The armed Regional Support Unit of An Garda Siochana from Waterford came across the car at Lisnalanive, Mitchelstown, Co Cork, on February 13 and the brothers were arrested after a struggle.

A jury found them not guilty of obstructing the officers but guilty of possessing house-breaking equipment with intent to commit a crime and also carrying a weapon, namely a Taser.

Judge Gerard OBrien said at Cork Circuit Criminal Court: They were caught in the darkness of night and there was a sinister possibility of a crime about to be committed. These types of offences are extremely sinister and add to peoples sense of unease in society.

Duane OCallaghan, aged 40, of 8 The Cloisters, St. Johns Hill, Waterford, was jailed for 18 months with the last six months suspended. His brother, Jonathan Lindsay OCallaghan, aged 32, of 6 Meadowbrook, Tramore, Co Waterford, was jailed for 12 months, with the last six months suspended. The older man had more previous convictions. Both had previous counts for burglary.

Sergeant James Hallahan said the armed unit encountered the car on a quiet country road on the night.

In the car there was a pillowcase containing items including torch, safety glasses, gloves and snood, all believed to be in their possession for the commission of the crime of burglary. A Taser was also found and they were convicted separately of having that as a weapon.

Des Hayes, defending, said Duane OCallaghan had come off heroin and went on a methadone treatment programme. Sian Langley, defending, said the younger man also had addiction issues and he did not want his own children to have the life that he had growing up and he wanted to change his life for their benefit.

He is sorry for these offences, Ms Langley said.

Judge OBrien noted this remorse from Lindsay OCallaghan which he contrasted with the absence of any remorse from the older brother.
It was 1990 and Brian Lenihan senior was in the wars, but the taoiseach was standing firmly behind his tanaiste, minister for defence and the aspiring president.

A few days later, Brian Lenihan was thrown under the bus, to borrow Leo Varadkars phrase. When his Progressive Democrat coalition partners threatened to collapse the government if Lenihan was not removed, Haughey unceremoniously sacked his tanaiste.

The current Taoiseachs political style is very different to that of Mr Haughey. However, he is faced with a similar dilemma.

He is being asked to rid himself of a loyal and capable colleague, at the behest of another party which has the power to end his Governments tenure.

Mr Varadkars believes an early election might give him a chance to strengthen his partys mandate. If the Taoiseach is trying to force an election, while pinning the blame on Fianna Fail, this is high-risk politics. Under the Constitution, the loss of this majority makes the Taoiseachs right to an election very conditional and gives the President a major say.

Article 13.2.2 of Bunreacht na hEireann states the President may in his absolute discretion refuse to dissolve Dail Eireann on the advice of a Taoiseach who has ceased to retain the support of a majority in Dail Eireann. Under Article 28.10 if the President does refuse to grant a dissolution, the Taoiseach must resign, and the Dail would then nominate a successor.

Mr Varadkar is no doubt aware that if he arrives at the Aras seeking a general election in the aftermath of a Dail vote that has collapsed his Governments majority, the President is within his rights to decline this request. This would make Mr Varadkar the shortest serving Taoiseach in our history.

Brian Murphy lectures in Dublin Institute of Technology. He is the author of Forgotten Patriot: Douglas Hyde and the Foundation of the Irish Presidency
Jack Nagle told his grandfather he was going to invent a device that would prevent accidents like it from happening in the first place. The now 15-year-olds tractor safe lock, a device that automatically engages the handbrake when the driver leaves the seat, is patent pending.

Mr OSullivan had been working on his suckler farm in Beaufort, Co Kerry when he got off his tractor to attend to something.

I was driving the tractor and I came off to do something and forgot to put on the handbrake. I had just turned my back and the tractor ran and trapped my left leg, he told the Irish Examiner.

Mr OSullivan lay beneath the vehicle for four hours, waiting for help. His wife, Eileen, was in Tralee shopping and his son, Joe, who farms with him, was also away. He suffered only minor injuries and was kept in hospital overnight.

I was one of the lucky ones but I did become a lot more careful about farm safety. Jack said at the time he would invent something and he was only a child.

True to his word, Jacks tractor safe lock has already won numerous awards.

It was a proud Mr OSullivan at Kerry County Council offices in Killorglin yesterday, where his grandson was honoured with a civic reception by members of the South and West Kerry Municipal District.

Im very proud of him. He wants to put it into production now, which would be a good thing.

Its very badly needed because people are always forgetting the handbrake but if you had that on a tractor you could walk away from it and the tractor is not going to follow you. Its always happening, day after day, he said.

Jacks mother Irene, grandmother, brothers Ryan and Gearoid, sister Chloe, his principal at Killorglin Community College, Con Moynihan, extended family and friends, all looked on proudly when the presentation was made.

Although he was only eight at the time, Jack recalls his grandfathers accident vividly.

I remember when he had the accident. It was a big thing in our family. I saw the problem and I thought something should be done about it. My granddad always reminds me of the conversation we had, he said.

The tractor safe lock has already won numerous accolades, including the ABP Farm Safety Award at the BT Young Scientist, the overall best project award at IT Tralees Sci Fest, and represented Kerry in the national finals, where it won the excellence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics award.

Jack was named Young Engineer of the Year at the Big Bang Science Fair in Belfast, his device won the junior overall project award at Tullamore Show and an innovation award and Peoples Choice award at the National Ploughing Championships.

Once it has been patented, the next step for the tractor safe lock is production.

Jack says his biggest obstacle here will be getting investors because of his age.

Its hard at my young age to get it to the next step but if I had backers behind me it would definitely help, he said.

The next step for the entrepreneurial teen is the Junior Cert and after his Leaving Cert he hopes to study engineering and develop more products to compliment the tractor safe lock.

Cathaoirleach of South and West Kerry, Seamus Cosai Fitzgerald, said 22 lives had already been lost on Irish farms this year.

Devices like Jacks are very important and theres great credit due to Jack coming up with an invention like this at such a young age, he said.

The recipient said he was honoured to have been nominated for the award by independent councillor Michael Cahill.

The people of this county really came behind me and I had great support over the last year and its an honour for me, he said.
Ronan Crowley, aged 34, who now lives at 47 Gould St, Cork, was remanded in custody until yesterday at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

Judge Sean O Donnabhain decided to release the accused and remand him on bail until February 28, 2018.

He pleaded guilty to a charge that, on September 20, 2012, at an address at Dunbar St, Cork, he had child porn in his possession.

Detective Garda Myles Moran said the raid on the defendants home at Gould St was made on the basis of information received about downloaded material.

Specifically, he had 167 image files and 125 movie files. Det Garda Moran said the images and videos included depictions of children in sexual activities with other children and in some cases with adults. He said the accused was totally co-operative with the investigation.

Judge Sean O Donnabhain said on Monday he could not understand why Crowley, who was a qualified tradesman, could not find work and pay for rehabilitative treatment. He said Crowley got into viewing child pornography through idleness.

Brendan Kelly, defending, said the accused was keen to get treatment but was presently unemployed.

On Monday, it was confirmed the accused had not gotten a job or completed the rehabilitation.
It is alleged that Fr Thomas Heley abused young boys in the Catholic parish of Ss Alban and Stephen in Hertfordshire in the late 1970s. The Irish Examiner has since been made aware of allegations of abuse against Fr Heley while he was in Cork, made not long before he moved to the UK.

A member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, Fr Heley worked in Cork through the 50s and into the 70s. Last weekend the parish in St Albans published a notice on its website which stated: we have received historic allegations, dating back several decades, that one of our priests based here in St Alban sexually abused some young people. The notice did not name the priest but said the person against whom the allegations had been made had died several years ago and both the Hertfordshire Police and the Archdiocese had been informed of the allegations.

On Thursday the Herts Advertiser newspaper named Fr Thomas Heley as the alleged abuser, quoting one unnamed victim: I feel I have not been able to lead the life that I could have had, which deeply saddens me and my family. The mother of another victim was also quoted.

A Hertfordshire Police spokesperson confirmed it had received a third party report of alleged abuse. However, it said that since the suspect was deceased there are no lawful lines of enquiry that we can pursue.

In response to detailed questions from this paper, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart confirmed that it had received allegations relating to Fr Heleys time in the UK but did not respond to questions as to whether any allegations had ever been lodged with respect to his time serving in Cork.

The Irish Examiner has since been made aware of at least one case involving two boys and in which it is claimed the MSC was contacted about the allegations at the time by a parent.

Referring to the St Albans allegations an MSC spokesperson said.

We informed the people in St Albans Parish of these allegations last weekend and asked anyone who has been abused to come forward and to report to the police and other relevant authorities.

It said it had reported all allegations to the British and Irish police as well as the HSE/TUSLA and the National Board for Safeguarding Children.

A newspaper archive search shows Fr Heley MSC took services in Cork in 1953 through to 1968, as well as leading retreats and conducting a sermon in October 1952 for three departing missionaries. The MSC declined to offer any additional information as to where he served.

The Herts Advertiser said Fr Heley died in 1986.

One unnamed victim is quoted in the paper: Its only recently I have felt able to disclose this abuse and I am currently struggling to process the emotions that this has brought to the forefront on my mind.
The Great Blasket Island, a bare, treeless island off the coast of Co Kerry, receives up to 400 visitors a day at the height of the tourist season  but its lack of facilities is giving rise to complaints, a meeting in Killorglin has heard.

West Kerry councillor Seamus Cosai Fitzgerald who is leading the call for leithris poibli, said on fine days hundreds make the 5km sea journey the island made famous by Irish writers Tomas O Criomhthain and Peig.
Mr Creed, who passed away on Thursday, aged 93, was a long-time Fine Gael TD for the Cork Mid and then Cork North West constituencies and held a number of junior ministerial briefs in the early 1980s.

Macroom-born, he held a number of roles including minister of state in the Department of Health in the latter half of 1981, junior minister in the Department of the Environment in 1982, and minister of state in the Department of Education from 1982 to 1986.
Fancy hitting the beach this Christmas Day? Its still possible! Heres our rundown of the best holidays still on offer this year.

Tenerife

Tenerife is an ideal destination for those of us who want to forget about Christmas and soak up some sun for a week. TUI (formerly Falcon Holidays) have a great deal departing Cork on 24th of December for seven nights staying at the Catalonia Punta Del Rey in Las Caletillas. Located minutes walk from Tenerifes famous black sand beaches, this all-inclusive resort is good value and great for families with a wide-ranging buffet restaurant, an Italian restaurant and a slightly more upmarket A La Carte eatery as well as snack bars which offer toasted sandwiches and hot dogs throughout the day. The pool is huge and there is an adults-only terrace complete with hot tubs hidden off the side for those looking for some quiet time. Rooms are spacious and have aircon and WIFI but wed suggest upgrading to a premium room to avail of tea and coffee making facilities, which are quite essential to a happy holiday.

TUI flies to Tenerife from Cork on 24th December, staying at the 3 star Catalonia Punta Del Rey for seven days on an all-inclusive basis from 1,119pp.

Fuertaventura

Fuertaventura offers a relaxed but ultra swish festive option with a fabulous holiday from Sunway departing Cork on the 23rd of December. Hole up at the Sheraton Fuertaventura Beach Golf & Spa Resort and bask in serious luxury for the week. This resort caters to adults and kids alike, with an excellent kids club, playground, mini golf and a shuttle bus to a nearby golf course and shopping centre. The Thalassotherapy spa is a must visit  but without children, please. The huge benefit of this resort is in the fact that it is part of the Sheraton brand, so certain standards must be upheld, particularly the worldwide reputation of their very comfortable beds. There are multiple options for food throughout the resort, but as this is quite upmarket, men are required to wear long trousers for dinner, particularly at the fancy meal on Christmas Day. For families travelling, Id highly recommend booking Prestige Family Rooms, which not only have sea views but also have interconnecting doors so that you can check on each other to your hearts content. If you are looking for an all singing, all dancing holiday in luxury, then this is the one for you.

Sunway flies to Fuerteventura from Cork on 23rd of December to stay at the 5 star Sheraton Fuerteventura Beach Golf & Spa Resort for seven days from 1654 pp on a B&B basis with an option to upgrade to full board if you wish.

Costa Del Sol

With a temperate climate during winter months, the Costa Del Sol is a fabulous location to spend the festivities this year. Nerja is a long-time favourite amongst Irish holidaymakers and TUI have a holiday departing Cork on 22nd of December to stay at the Hotel Nerja Club. Ideal for adults looking to get away from it all over Christmas this resort is quiet and ultra calm with a great on-site spa and a very relaxed pool area. The pool and terrace area overlooks the nearby blue flag beach, which is an easy 15-minute stroll downhill. Nerja town is a twenty-minute walk away but there are a handful of shops, bars and restaurants located minutes away from the resort.

The package on offer is half board, and meals are served buffet style in the main restaurant. They are hosting a gala dinner on Christmas Day, so bring your fancy outfit to wear to dinner after a days sunbathing.

TUI flies to Costa Del Sol on 22nd December, staying at the 3-star Hotel Nerja Club for seven days on a half board basis from 809pp.

Sunsearchholidays.ie have some fabulous Christmas holiday offers in the Costa Del Sol. Flying out on December 22rd, families can holiday at the 4-star Sunset Beach Club in Belamadena. The resort overlooks the beach and is minutes walk away from shops, cafes and restaurants. This self-catering holiday will suit families who need to maintain some level of normality while in holiday mode and provide an atmosphere that Santa can arrive in without hassle. There are a huge amount of activities on offer, from the 35-metre football pitch to table tennis and bowling in the on-site bowling alley. Golfers will love that the resort has its own golf desk and is located close to the exclusive golf courses of El Paraiso, and Atalaya, as well as multiple courses within a 10-minute drive. In high season Sunset Beach operates six bars and restaurants, but during less busy times of the year, this varies. Nevertheless, the food on offer is varied and kids are catered to with separate childrens menus in all outlets.

Sunsearchholidays.ie flies from Cork to Costa Del Sol on 22nd December, staying at the 4-star Sunset Beach Club in Belamadena for seven nights. This self-catering holiday costs 1519 in total for 2 adults and 2 children.

Lanzarote

Indulge your inner royal with a visit to Sandos Papagayo Resort with Sunway this Christmas. This all-inclusive resort enjoys a super beachfront position in Lanzarotes Playa Blanca and is a really popular resort with families. All-inclusive holidays can sometimes pose a worry if you like variety when it comes to mealtimes, but this place has it covered with a pizzeria, Mexican and Asian restaurants as well as the standard buffet offering. The package includes breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks as well as drinks throughout the day. Wed recommend upgrading to the Royal Elite Service, which involves a room with a guaranteed sea view, breakfast in a private restaurant, access to the Royal Elite lounge, chill out terrace, pool towels in the room, mini bar with water and soft drinks on arrival, tea and coffee service and a kettle. For the notion of a quiet breakfast alone, we think its worth it, but drinks and tea and coffee facilities in the room will make your life easier.

Sunway depart Cork for Lanzarote on 23rd of December to stay at the 4 star Sandos Papagayo Resort for seven nights on an all-inclusive basis from 1585pp.

The best of the rest

Skip off to Gran Canaria with Sunsearchholidays.ie and stay at the recently renovated and very fabulous Labranda Playa Bonita. Lots of resorts that are receiving revamps lately seem to be going for a clean, minimalist feel, and we applaud this move. The Labranda Playa Bonita is light, bright and super clean, with satellite televisions and in-room hairdryers (most important). Rooms are spacious and accommodate families very well. The terraces and balconies are all well appointed and are an ideal spot to take some quiet time out. Children are super welcome here and theres an onsite playground and kids club as well as childrens pool and lots of daily and evening entertainment. This holiday is all-inclusive, and the main meals are all served in the main restaurant on site. While the choice on offer is good and varied, be aware that certain items on the menu may be subject to a supplementary charge, and while drinks are included, some alcoholic drinks do cost extra.

Sunsearchholidays.ie fly from Cork to Gran Canaria on 22nd December to stay at the four-star Labranda Playa Bonita for seven nights on an all-inclusive basis from 1199pp.

Loveholidays.ie are featuring a holiday at the Elba Estepona Gran Hotel & Thalasso Spa in Estepona on the Costa Del Sol this Christmas, and it is ideal for couples who want to make this festive season the most romantic one yet. This charming hotel overlooks the beach in the quiet town of Estepona. Guest rooms are super luxurious. The hotel has an excellent spa, which is well worth a visit, and features manicured gardens, which lead out to the quiet beach in front of the property. Even though the hotel is all-inclusive, it doesnt have the sometimes-manic atmosphere that some of its counterparts have  this is intimate service on a luxury scale. Their food offering is fabulous and even includes a Champagne breakfast, for those who want to start the day right, but we would ensure that we have the All Inclusive Plus level, because you are going to want to try absolutely everything that is on offer here. Loveholidays.ie fly from Cork to Costa Del Sol, staying at the 5 star Elba Estepona Gran Hotel & Thalasso Spa on 22nd December for seven nights on an all-inclusive basis from 1395 pp.
Political Correspondent

Frances Fitzgerald was seen as a pair of safe hands, a reliable politician who could come into the Department of Justice and sieve through the mess over the garda whistleblower controversy.

Amid a web of dysfunctionality, the resignation of a garda commissioner and a department minister, Ms Fitzgerald took the baton with a role to reform how the St Stephens Green offices were run.

As then-taoiseach Enda Kenny told the Dail on May 8, 2014, when Ms Fitzgerald replaced Alan Shatter as minister, she would bring a reforming zeal to her new job: Restoring confidence and integrity to the Irish justice system now becomes the number one priority for the new minister.

However, the Department of Justice is now, in some ways, considered the new Angola of Irish politics. That negative distinction was previously given to the embattled Department of Health.

The garda whistleblower saga saw the resignation of Mr Shatter as justice minister and the then-Garda commissioner Martin Callinan, while secretary general Brian Purcell was re-assigned.

There have been cover-ups, falsehoods, a smear campaign and open derision of Sgt McCabe, who has highlighted massive wrongdoing in the force.

The current crisis engulfing the Government revolves around what the department and its then minister, Ms Fitzgerald, knew at a crucial time when garda management and the whistleblower were going head-to-head at the OHiggins inquiry into alleged garda wrongdoing.

Publicly, garda management and Ms Fitzgerald praised Sgt McCabe. Privately, the top echelons of justice were communicating about a strategy to topple Sgt McCabe with a false sex abuse allegation.

A controversial email, which now threatens to hurtle the country into a winter election, has revealed that the garda plan to use this false claim against Sgt McCabe was made known to Ms Fitzgerald.

This was on May 15, 2015, one year after she was appointed to restore confidence and integrity to the justice system.

So, what did the then justice minister do with this disturbing piece of information? Nothing.

It has also emerged the department found this email on November 9, but the new Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan, the Tanaiste and the Taoiseach were kept in the dark for days
It goes without saying we are all thrilled, me in particular: where once I only had one hi-tech, high-spec lesbian to write about, now I have two.

My sisters new apartment is in the same complex as her old one, which she is now renting out to my nephew Fergus and his girlfriend Liv.

Fergus and Liv are 23, lovely, and vegan. But this doesnt mean they wont eat toast in bed and get marmalade on my sisters carpet. Or know about Pledge. Family opinion is undivided on this rental-arrangement: we must just all cross our fingers tightly.

My sister has been sending pictures of her refurbishments over family Whatsapp as and when they happened. Her carpenter Matic featured in some of these photos. As a family, we are rooting for Matic; we hope for his sake hes as skilled at clearing up after himself as he is with a biscuit-joint.

Anyway, I am in London and the refurbishments are nearly complete. I am staying with my sister and girlfriend for a couple of nights before heading down to stay with my oldest friend Vanessa. My mother has advised me that when my sister gives me the guided tour, I am to take particular note of the ergonomic layout, and the extra bedroom.

I havent been told exactly how enthusiastic about refurbishments I must be but I am aiming for very, very, very. This means permanent smiling and nodding, maybe a bit of clapping, but no jumping up and down and definitely no weeping. Weeping would go down OK with my Sligo sister but not my London or Devon ones.

My sister greets me in time-honoured tradition: by giving me a huge hug and saying, Shoes off. No, not in a ******* minute, now.

After this, I get the tour.

First, we look at a wall in the hall. It has two blank panels on it.

Well, she says, what do you think?

Im not sure how to apply very, very, very to a wall with two blank panels on it.

What am I supposed to be looking at? I say.

She presses the panels and they sort of bounce open. Inside, is everything. The only thing missing is a robot butler.

I think this is what is meant by expensive storage solution.

I know how to apply very, very, very to this.

OH MY GOD, I shout, its like Goldie Hawns shoe cupboard in Overboard. Matic is like Kurt Russell! HES A GENIUS!!!

In the kitchen, I am very very very enthusiastic about the shower-nozzle on the mixer tap. The same goes for the Bose speaker, which is longer than me and I give a little clap on the back balcony. This is for the London landmark view, not for the fake grass, which is a step too far for a gardener like me.

After the tour, I am put to sit on a new velvet chaise-lounge from Habitat; I am astonished that I am allowed to sit on it without holding my sisters little hand-held Dyson vacuum at the same time.

She hands me wine in a long-stemmed glass and watches me with her beady eye. I watch my wine glass with mine.

My oldest friend Vanessa calls me, while I am sitting on the chaise-lounge. I am due down there tomorrow. Vanessa and my sister know each other  and each others houses  well.

Vanessas house is like an Uzbek bazaar.

I put Vanessa on loudspeaker.

So whats the new apartment like? she says.

A UFO, I say, with very strict rules. A UFO called Domestos.

Same as her other one, then, Vanessa says.

Shut up the both of you, my sister says.

Bit bigger, I say, same feeling, you know  slightly unreal, hovering above the earth and not quite able to connect with it.

Oh, Vanessa says, well this might help you reconnect with it. I ought to let you know before you come that I heard scratching noises behind the piano last night.

Please dont tell me youve got mice again, my sister says.

Vanessa says, I gave the piano a good kick. Ive heard nothing since.

Excellent plan of action, my sister says, a good kick will have seen them off.

Thats what I thought, says Vanessa.

You must remember to pass that one onto Rentokil, my sister says, in case they havent heard of it.
This ire was reflective of the widespread opinion within the Soldiers of Destiny at the time that single-party government was a core belief and Charlie Haugheys deal with Des OMalley and his fellow rebels was a betrayal.

In the Dail bar on Thursday evening, a group of Fianna Fail TDs gathered around the TV screen to watch their justice spokesman, Jim OCallaghan, effectively call time on the supply and confidence arrangement by saying that the party would not be voting confidence in Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald.

That deal, which has seen Fianna Fail facilitate the Fine Gael-led minority Government from opposition, has become increasingly unpopular among Micheal Martins troops. So when OCallaghan called time, his colleagues, including Barry Cowen, Thomas Byrne, Robert Troy, Dara Calleary, Billy Kelleher, the two Chambers Lisa and Jack, Ann Rabbitte, and Margaret Murphy OMahony cheered loudly.

Fianna Fail had made it known to Taoiseach Leo Varadkars office with just minutes to go before OCallaghan went to air that, should the Tanaiste depart her post, then their man would not appear.

As much as Reynolds and his cohorts disliked that temporary little arrangement with the PDs in the late 1980s, the current crop of Fianna Failers like the current temporary little arrangement even less.

The pace of events on Thursday was incredible and peoples views were literally shifting by the hour.

One Fine Gael minister, in the wake of a rocky performance by Fitzgerald at Leaders Questions, told me he expected her to be gone by dinner time.

But by 7pm that same minister was adamant that the party was four square behind her and that talk of her resignation or sacking was ludicrous.

But, while this was an issue which began about the maltreatment of Sgt Maurice McCabe, the Garda whistleblower, this now has way more to do with the fatal strains on the minority Government and its deal with Fianna Fail.

Being honest, it was always going to end this way.

The sheer instability of this eunuch minority Government means the arrangement was always vulnerable to collapse.

This was always ready to fall. Things on one level normalised but on the other at the back of your head was the realisation that this could still fall any time over any issue, said one minister.

What is also clear, and as I and others suggested back at the start of this Dail term, once the Budget was out of the way, all bets were off and an election was possible at any stage.

This was a political crisis primarily driven by growing internal frustration within Fianna Fail at the confidence and supply arrangement, which has seen them support the Fine Gael-led minority government from opposition for the past 18 months.

It could never last and once the Budget in October was out of the way, all bets were off.

Despite all the public pronouncements that Fianna Fail was committed to the three-year deal; in private the story was very different.

It is a pain in the backside. We are grinning and bearing it to be honest, is how one leading Fianna Fail party figure described the confidence and supply deal.

The grassroots have been up in arms in the past few months. I know there was a lot of dissatisfaction at many of our local meetings, said another.

A huge driving force behind the cheers in the Dail bar was the frustration at the partys previous marches up the hill only for them to come back down with their tail between their legs.

With the threat made during the summer on the controversy over former attorney general Maire Whelans appointment to the Court of Appeal, Fianna Fail rightly opened itself up to ridicule as to its credibility.

According to senior party figures, on that occasion, Jim OCallaghan went on a solo run in saying the appointment was a surprise and did call into question the confidence and supply agreement.

He went too far and, as a lawyer, he is probably used to finessing his argument in court. But you cant finesse your argument in a 15-second clip on the Six One News, said a colleague.

Yet OCallaghans wings werent clipped by Martin, who continuously appears willing to forgive his legal man.

There is unease from our members at us marching up the hill so often and coming back down with nothing to show for it. Sooner or later we will have to do more than talk about pulling the plug, said the source.

The decision by OCallaghan to pull the trigger was a cathartic release for Fianna Fail TDs, as revealed by their audible cheers in the Dail bar.

While Micheal Martin and Leo Varadkar were yesterday preparing to meet, it was suggested that, should Fitzgerald resign before Tuesday, the crisis would avert itself and the show would continue.

That is nonsense. Confidence and supply is dead. Even if Fitzgerald resigns the country is going to the polls.

The belated decision of her Fine Gael colleagues to jump to her defence on Thursday night appears to be solely driven by a desire to show Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein that they will not remove any one of them at their behest.

To illustrate this, on Wednesday night, Fitzgerald stood isolated and weakened and without a colleague willing to go to bat for her on the airwaves.

Come Thursday night, you could not get ministers off the airwaves telling us that she has done nothing wrong.

For Leo Varadkar, he is taking the gamble of his political career.

His stubborn refusal to consider sacking his Tanaiste, despite her obvious failings on this Maurice McCabe email saga, means he is risking ending his premiership after just four months.

While no politician wants an election this side of Christmas or even in the short run, the clear signal from Cabinet ministers is that should an election, they are not daunted by it.

I ask why?

Because Leo is now leader. If Enda was still leader, we would be goosed, but Leo and his ministers are well able to sell our message, said one minister on Thursday night.

So if Fine Gael go to the country, what would its message be?

Well, there is a school of thought that we remind them of our progress in office while ever so gently scaring the shit out of them about what life would be like if Sinn Fein get in, a minister said.

Also, it would be likely that we would talk up the prospect of a Sinn Fein coalition with Fianna Fail, which we feel is a strong play, the minister added.

What is clear is the collective experiment that is New Politics has failed and whether it is before or after Christmas, the election is on.
Girl Scout Awards

This year, Girl Scout volunteers have empowered more than 16,000 Nebraska girls to participate in a one-of-a-kind leadership development program that builds courage, confidence and character.

Thats why Girl Scouts Spirit of Nebraska council recently honored area volunteers who have gone the extra mile at Volunteer Awards Ceremonies in Norfolk and Omaha.

Girl Scout volunteers provide girls a place of their own to try new things and improve their communities  yet volunteers often underestimate the impact they have on the lives of girls, according to Marshall.

The annual awards process begins in late spring, when peers, friends, family and council staff nominate volunteers for their achievements and contributions to the girls they serve.

Following are the area volunteers and the awards they received:

Fremont: Fremont Beef  Spirit of Girl Scouting Community Benefactor Award; Jackie Lingle  Helpful Adult Award; Salem Lutheran Church  Spirit of Girl Scouting Community Benefactor Award; Brenda Spiker  Helpful Adult Award; Jenny Stewart  15 Years of Volunteer Service Pin, Volunteer of Excellence Award; Jessica Wolfe  Helpful Adult Award.

Lyons: Ashley Schild  5 Years of Volunteer Service Pin.

West Point: Erica Eichelberger  10 Years of Volunteer Service Pin.

Years of Volunteer Service Pins are given to adult volunteers for their years of service to Girl Scouts.

The Spirit of Girl Scouting Community Benefactor Award recognizes organizations or individuals who are not Girl Scout members and provide outstanding assistance and support to Girl Scout programming.

The Helpful Adult Award recognizes volunteers who have contributed outstanding service while partnering directly with girls in a troop.

The Volunteer of Excellence Award recognizes individuals who have contributed outstanding service while partnering directly with girls or adult members.

To learn more about girl Scouts, visit GirlScoutsNebraska.org.
LIBERAL THEOLOGY: A series of liberal theology lectures will be presented at St John's United Reformed Church, Lynwood Road, on Monday evenings from October onwards. The lectures will commence at 8pm and will look critically at images of God and explore new ways of understanding scripture. Further information is available on www.stjohnsurc.org.uk

CHARITY AUCTION: All Saints' Church in Orpington is holding an auction on September 29 to raise money for The Children's Society. There will be a chance to view items from 10am until noon with the auction taking place at 2pm. There is no admission charge and parking and refreshments available. Call 01689 824624 for details.

WILDLIFE WALK: The Bromley branch of the World Wildlife Federation is organising a walk for wildlife at Scadbury Park on October 7. All proceeds raised will go towards supporting the Giant Panda. The walk takes place on the circular route through the woods and meadows in Scadbury. For more details ring Edna on 020 8650 5274.

WHOSE MEDAL?: Bromley Police are attempting to trace the owner of an MBE medal which was lost in the Hayes area more than a month ago. Anyone who might be able to help, should call Brian Davis on 020 8284 8814.

LIONS WANTED: Biggin Hill and Westerham Lions Club is recruiting new members. The group supports a variety of community activities. For more details, call 01959 576628.

September 26, 2001 10:40
Today

MainStreet Fremonts Annual Christmas Walk, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., downtown Fremont. Activities will be taking place at numerous downtown businesses. The event will include refreshments, discounts, childrens crafts, raffles, movie showings, an appearance by Santa, Mrs. Claus and their reindeer, and more.

HomeStore, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., 701 E. Dodge St., Fremont. The HomeStore sells donated items at discounted prices. Proceeds support the mission of Fremont Area Habitat for Humanity.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, 136 N. Main St., Fremont.

Storytime, 11-11:30 a.m., Keene Memorial Library auditorium, 1030 N. Broad St., Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous womens heart to heart group, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous open meeting, 7:30 p.m., United Faith Church, 218 W. Gardiner St., Valley.

Narcotics Anonymous Lie Is Dead Group, 8 p.m., Care Corps, 723 N. Broad St., Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10:30 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Sunday

Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast, 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Delaney Hall, St. Patricks Catholic Church, Fremont. Pancakes, eggs, ham or sausage, toast, coffee and orange juice will be served. The cost is $5.50 for adults and $2 for ages 12 and under.

Alcoholics Anonymous Happy Sober Sunday Group, 9 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous Seekers of Serenity Group, 10:30 a.m., Care Corps, 723 N. Broad St., Fremont.

American Red Cross blood drive, 1-7 p.m., Bakers, 1531 N. Bell St., Fremont. To schedule an appointment, download the free Red Cross Blood Donor App, visit www.redcrossblood.org or call 800-733-2767.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous Point of Freedom Group, 7 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Education Building, west of the church, 1440 E. Military Ave., Fremont. Enter through the rear door.

Alcoholics Anonymous Sunday speaker, 7:30 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Monday

TOPS Club (Take Off Pounds Sensibly), 9 a.m., First United Methodist Church, 850 N. Broad St., Fremont. Weigh-ins begin at 8 a.m. Visitors (preteens, teens and adults  male and female) are welcome. The first meeting is free. For more information, call Janet Bloemker at 402-721-8952.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Fremont Board of Adjustment meeting, 4:30 p.m., Fremont Municipal Building, 400 E. Military Ave. The meeting is open to the public.

Fremont Health Board of Trustees meeting, 5 p.m., Fremont Healths Dunklau Conference Room. The meeting is open to the public.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous basic text study, 6:30 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Education Building, west of the church, 1440 E. Military Ave., Fremont. Enter through the rear door.

Celebrate Recovery, 7-9 p.m., Sanctuary Church, 1640 W. Military Ave., Fremont. Childcare is available.

Celebrate Recovery, 7 p.m., Fremont Church of the Nazarene, 960 Johnson Road.

Fibromyalgia Support Group, 7 p.m., Health Park Plaza Conference Room 5, Fremont.

Prairie Piecemakers Needlework Guild, 7 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 1544 E. Military Ave., Fremont. Members meet at 6:30 p.m. for refreshments and the meeting starts at 7 p.m. Guests are welcome. The program will be Landscape Quilts  Alaska to Wisconsin by Cathy Grier of Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Alcoholics Anonymous 12x12 meeting, 8 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.
Lowes Foods set for Charleston, S.C., debut

Lowes Foods said it will hold a grand opening Dec. 6 for its first store in the Charleston, S.C., market in Summerville.

The 50,000-square-foot store will have 150 employees. A Lowes Foods fuel center already has opened.

Lowes Foods is building a store in Mt. Pleasant. The grocer has established facebook.com/lowesfoodslowcountry to keep up with both store projects.

Richard Craver

German pharma company plans Wilson expansion

Fresenius Kabi, a global health care company, said Tuesday it will make a $100 million expansion of its operations in Wilson, adding 445 jobs at the site over five years.

The company specializes in medicines and technologies for infusion, transfusion and clinical nutrition. It currently has more than 100 employees in Wilson. It is based in Bad Homburg, Germany, with its U.S. headquarters in Lake Zurich, Ill.

The expansion will include adding to its pharmaceutical production facility and building another plant. Both sites will be dedicated to manufacturing products used in hospitals and clinics throughout the United States and Canada.

The new jobs will include production specialists, engineers, scientists and managers.

The company has been made eligible for up to $7.2 million over 12 years in performance-bases incentives from the state Job Development Investment Grant program.

Richard Craver

Cordray resigns; two successors named

NEW YORK  The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau resigned Friday and named his own successor, leading to an open conflict with President Donald Trump  who announced a different person as acting head of the agency later in the day.

That means there are now effectively two acting directors of the CFPB, when there should only be one.

Typically an acting director position would be filled according to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998. But Richard Cordray, along with his resignation, elevated Leandra English, who was the agencys chief of staff, into the deputy director position.

Under the Dodd-Frank Act that created the CFPB, English would become acting director.

Within a few hours, President Donald Trump announced his own acting director of the agency, Mick Mulvaney, who is currently director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney had widely been expected to be Trumps temporary pick.

Mulvaney is a longtime critic of the CFPB, and has wanted the agencys authority significantly curtailed.

The Associated Press

More stock records

as tech, energy rises

NEW YORK  U.S. stocks set more records in quiet post-holiday trading Friday as technology companies again did much of the heavy lifting. Energy companies rose with the price of oil.

Macys and some of its retail counterparts rose after the department stores CEO said Black Friday sales were going well. Online titan Amazon made an even bigger gain. Oil prices and energy companies rose after Bloomberg reported that a group of key oil producers plans to extend production cuts until the end of 2018.
Nearly 60 years ago, workers building a railroad bridge in Knox County, not far from the South Dakota border, unearthed human remains.

Decades later, workers building a road in the same northeast Nebraska county came across more remains, and like those found in the 1960s, they ended up at the Nebraska State Historical Society. As did those found in Platte County and those discovered by a group of boys wandering along an eroding Butler County creek bed.

On Wednesday, all those remains were returned to the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, which will take them north and bury them in a cemetery on their ancestral homeland along the lower Niobrara River.

It's an honor to repatriate the remains of their ancestors, said Dwight Howe, cultural director of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska.

"Before Nebraska was a territory, before the Louisiana Purchase, we lived here," he said. "We've been in this place for hundreds of years and we are honored to be recognized as people of the land."

On Wednesday, Howe and Shannon Wright, the tribe's historic preservationist, came to Lincoln to prepare the remains for burial.

They will be wrapped in blankets and will be buried with tobacco, sweet grass, sage and cedar, all symbols and gestures of prayer, Howe said.

"They are our ancestors," he said. "So we are developing our polices and procedures to treat them as our relatives."

The return of the Ponca remains is part of a decades-long process of repatriation begun in 1990 when the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act became federal law.

The Nebraska State Historical Society, like all state, local and university museums that get federal money, had to inventory all the human remains in its custody, and, if archaeologists could determine which tribe they came from, they were to give them back.

Many of the remains in Historical Society custody were Pawnee, said state archaeologist Rob Bozell, and several large reparations occurred with the tribe in late 1990s.

Archaeologists struggled, however, to determine the origin of hundreds of other remains, and what to do with them became a hotly debated issue. Some tribes felt all remains should be returned even when they cant be affiliated with a tribe; and some scientists believed they should remain at museums.

I dont think when Congress passed NAGPRA they realized thats what often happens, Bozell said. So museums were left with all these unaffiliated remains.

Eventually -- 20 years later -- Congress revised the regulations so that unaffiliated remains can be repatriated based on geography, he said. And, when those regulations became finalized within the last few years, it opened the way for a joint repatriation of the last of the human remains at the State Historical Society that Bozell hopes will happen this spring.

Through that work -- which involved contacting all tribes that lived in Nebraska at one time, working with the Nebraska Indian Commission and officials in Washington -- Historical Society officials found some remains that had been identified but never claimed.

Among those: Four boxes with the Ponca remains of 10 individuals and funerary objects dating back to the 1700s and 1800s.

State archaeologists follow clues to identify the remains: items buried with them, their location, the depth of the soil, the burial patterns.

Beads found with the Ponca remains, for instance, indicate they were European trading goods, probably sewn into clothing that long since decomposed, Bozell said. And the remains were found in the middle of the Poncas homeland.

You cant tell with absolute certainty, but you have to look at the evidence you have, Bozell said. Its an informed opinion.

For many years, the tribe didnt have anyone to deal with historic preservation issues, he said, which is one of the reasons the remains stayed at the Historical Society. Now they do.

Wright said it's an ongoing process, one he's been working on with museums across the Midwest since he began the work two years ago.

When remains are discovered now -- because of flooding or erosion or construction -- the goal is to rebury them at the same or as close as possible to the same location they've been found, he said.

Bozell, who has worked with the Nebraska Indian Commission on reparations since the 1990s, said he understands all the perspectives of the debate, and one of the best things about NAGPRA and related state laws is that it has forced those different groups to work together.

Thats been a really good thing, he said. We sit down and figure these things out together. Archaeologists can inform tribes about things theyre not aware of and they can inform us of things were not aware of. This has been the most positive thing about reparation -- working together to solve the problem.

Because the issue isnt going away.

It will always happen because every year the phone rings because somebody finds something, he said.
Q: Please write about the origin of Thanksgiving.

Answer: This question is a little off our theme of Everyday Religious Questions, but I wanted to remind readers about the reasons the Pilgrims came to America in 1620. There were 102 passengers initially aboard the Mayflower, and the ocean crossing took 66 days. The Pilgrims celebrated their first harvest in 1621 with local friendly Native Americans.

The Pilgrims were dissenters from the established churches and from government domination. The idea that those who rule do so by divine right can be traced to the Old Testament and Gods selection of Hebrew kings. This idea was reinforced by Paul who affirmed in the book of Romans that those who rule do so by authority from God. It is surprising that he wrote this passage because he lived during the reign of the infamous Emperor Nero.

The Pilgrims rejected this idea and ultimately agreed with John Locke who said that those who govern do so by the consent of the governed. Democracy! They also rejected the theological notion that the Bishops are the Church and the concept of apostolic succession, which claims that Jesus gave His apostles spiritual authority that was passed on through the centuries by the succession of bishops. For them, the church was the corporate body of all believers. Thus, the Pilgrims were dissenters in both government and religion.

The tradition of Thanksgiving goes back to the beginnings of the United States as a nation. In 1789, George Washington proclaimed that there should be a day for national thanksgiving. Then, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of thanksgiving. Finally, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the fourth Thursday in November as a day of thanksgiving, and this was officially approved by Congress in 1941. While we are celebrating with plenty, we should always be aware of the underfed and hungry people in our land. Thanksgiving should be a day of sharing.

We might also give thanks, not only for our bounty, but for those individuals who have influenced our lives and journey. Perhaps a family member, a friend, a teacher, a pastor or priest.

My own life-experience has been influenced by a Jesuit priest named Father Daniel Berrigan. I first met him in 1973 when he came to speak at High Point College where I was teaching. He had just been released from prison for having burned Selective Service files in Catonsville, Md. They were files of men who were to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. I expected to meet a firebrand of a man, but I met a quiet, gentle soul who told the students at High Point that Jesus taught peace and our lives should be dedicated to that end. Someone who knew him well said that he made the words and life of Jesus written on the pages of the Bible come alive in his own life. Christ was in him. I am daily thankful that Daniel came into my life. Be sure to thank those who have influenced your life.

Q: Do you believe Jonah was really swallowed by a whale?

Answer: This question is a real departure from our thanksgiving theme, but it has an important message. Actually, the Jonah story does not use the word whale. It says he was swallowed by a great fish. But the legend is passed on through such unlikely paths as a rock band named Jonah and the Whales.

According to the Biblical story, God called Jonah to preach to the ancient Hebrew enemies in Nineveh. Jonah refused to go. He boarded a ship bound for Tarshish on the coast of Spain.

Most believed that to sail beyond that point was to risk falling off the flat earth. So, Jonah was literally fleeing to the end of the earth to avoid Gods call. A terrible storm arose at sea, and Jonah was thrown overboard to appease the wrath of God. He was then swallowed by a great fish, was in the belly of the fish three days, then spit up on dry land. Some Christians see this as a prophecy of Jesus resurrection from the tomb after three days. Not likely.

Jonah finally capitulated to Gods call and travelled to Nineveh to preach. To his surprise, the king and the people heard and responded to his message. Unfortunately, the meaning of this tale has been lost as a big fish story. It is really a story that reminds the Hebrew people that they were called to be a nation of priests to the whole world ... even their enemies!
Businessman Derrick L. Davis experienced one of the proudest moments in his life when the regional cancer center at Forsyth Medical Center was renamed in his honor in November 2004, his son said.

That was a big deal for him, Chad Davis said of his father. He really believed in the city, and he wanted to give to the community and make it a better place.

The Derrick L. Davis Forsyth Regional Cancer Center was named in recognition of a gift from Davis. He asked that the amount of his contribution not be made public.

Davis, 70, died Nov. 15 in Winston-Salem following a long illness, his son said.

Dad had a larger-than-life character, Chad Davis said of his father. He started from nothing, and he was a self-made man.

A native of Asheville, Derrick Davis moved to southside Winston-Salem as a child and graduated from the former Gray High School in Winston-Salem in 1965. He graduated from Lees-McCrae College in Banner Elk in 1967 and served in the U.S. Army Reserves after he left college.

In 1974, Davis founded D.L. Davis and Co. Inc., which has become one of the more prominent financial services and employee benefits firms in the country, his son said. Derrick Davis started that business working from his car in which he sold life insurance policies to companies such as Lowes Food Stores Inc., now known as Lowes Foods.

In the early 1990s, Derrick Davis began the East Coast Capital Inc., a real-estate development business in Winston-Salem.

Despite his business success, it was important to him that he stay true to where he grew up, Chad Davis said. He was an incredible father, grandfather and husband.

Derrick Davis told the Winston-Salem Journal in November 2004 that he and his family decided that his financial donation to the cancer center was a good place to help the local community.

I have had a long history with Novant,  Davis said at that time. Both of my children were born there. It just seemed like the right thing to do. More than anything, it reaches out to so many people, people Ill never know.

Carl S. Armato, Novant Healths president and chief executive, praised Davis in a statement about his death.

We are so sorry to hear of the passing of Derrick Davis, Amato said. As a longtime leader in Winston-Salem, Derrick will be missed by many. Our deepest condolences go to his family during this difficult time.

Derrick Davis is survived by his wife, Ann Davis, his brother, Jerome Davis, his son, Chad Davis, his daughter, Suzanne Collins Davis and two grandchildren.

Chad Davis said he has worked in his fathers real-estate development business for several years.

He was a real go-getter, Chad Davis said of his father. If anyone said something couldnt be done, he said it could and then figured out how to get it done.
Heather and Riley Delaney had something extra to be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

Two of them, actually.

After 485 days at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, the Rileys formerly conjoined twins, Erin and Abby Delaney, came home to Mooresville this week, just in time for the holiday.

Abby and Erin were born in Childrens Hospitals Garbose Family Special Delivery Unit on July 24, 2016, 10 weeks premature and joined at the top of their heads. On June 6 of this year, a 30-member surgical team successfully separated the then 10-month-old twins.

The surgery lasted about 11 hours. It was the 24th time that surgeons at Childrens Hospital separated conjoined twins, but the first time with a pair joined at the head, the least common form of attached siblings.

Erin and Abby will need more plastic and reconstructive surgery over the next few years to replace the missing bone areas at the tops of their heads, adjust their hairlines and minimize scarring.

Members of the twins medical team are pleased with their progress and optimistic about their long-term potential, hospital officials said this week.

No one is more pleased than Abby and Erins parents.

The girls are inspiring, Heather Delaney said in a statement released by the hospital. As their parents, it is very neat for Riley and me to have a front-row seat to this and watch them overcome these incredible obstacles. We cannot wait to see what their future holds.

And their homecoming couldnt come at a better time, she added.

Riley and I are so grateful for the care our girls have received  and so excited to take them home just in time for the holidays, Heather Delaney said.

Conjoined twins occur once in every 50,000 to 60,000 births. Most are stillborn.

About 75 percent of conjoined twins are female, joined at least partially in the chest and with shared organs. If they have separate sets of organs, chances for surgery and survival are greater than if they share the same organs.

Born with fused skulls, Abby and Erin were craniopagus twins, which account for just 2 percent of conjoined siblings.

This is one of the earliest separations of craniopagus conjoined twins ever recorded, said plastic and reconstructive surgeon Jesse Taylor, a member of the Delaney twins surgical team, after the operation in June.

We know that children heal better and faster the younger they are, therefore our goal for Erin and Abby was separation as soon as possible with a minimum number of surgeries.
Investments in the interest of fighting crime was a primary talking point during Police Chief Doug Wright's quarterly police report at the Town of Summerville's Standing Committees meeting on Nov. 7 that saw the public official expound on an Intel Narcotics Detector.. Read moreS'ville PD reports drug enforcement, traffic offenses at Council meet
Though a variety of polls have indicated a large majority of Americans support the idea of paid family and medical leave, disagreement about whether it should be mandated by the federal government and where the money should come to pay for it from remains strong.

In the end, it often comes down to a tug-of-war between what businesses can afford and the desire to ensure workers have the chance to provide for their family members, both financially and in person.

A plan by Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer that attempts to bridge this gap offering a tax credit to employers worth between an eighth and a quarter of wages paid to eligible workers during their absences. While the plan doesnt guarantee a minimum number of paid days like those seen in other countries, it marks an initial step to address paid family leave, an area where the United States has long fallen short.

No other developed country lacks paid parental leave requirements at the federal level, according to the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Yet the U.S. has more working mothers and two-income families than ever before.

Fischer is correct in noting many pertinent federal laws were passed in an era with far different workforce participation. The Family and Medical Leave Act, for instance, wasnt passed until 1993.

Yet, nearly a quarter of a century later, the Pew Research Center reports only 13 percent of Americans received specific employer-paid leave. Most received at least some pay from banking available time off prior to their absence, but the lowest-income workers were least likely to earn any pay while away from work  and nearly half reported having to go on public assistance to cover lost wages.

Forcing Americans to rely on public assistance is an expensive proposition that often creates a vicious circle for its inhabitants. In too many cases, increasing work or wages leads to an abrupt end of needed money, trapping families by limiting their only way to make ends meet to the social safety net.

To that end, Fischers plan also has a cap on earners that attempts to provide low and middle earners the benefit theyre less likely to have than their peers.

The good news is Fischers measure, which shes billing as the nations first paid family leave plan, has been included in the Senates tax reform bill. Though that bill has some major flaws about which we harbor deep concerns, its better than its companion in the House  but faces a difficult road to passage.

Still, the senator has pushed a long-stated legislative goal closer to the finish line. Even if the Senates tax efforts fall apart, Fischer has crafted a worthwhile endeavor on paid family leave that aims to address an age-old shortcoming for American workers.

Journal Star, Nov. 22, 2017
Ukraine on Saturday held a day of mourning for the millions of victims of a Soviet-era famine, as the war-torn nation's leaders branded it a Russian attempt to destroy the country.

The 1932-33 famine, one of the darkest episodes in Ukrainian history, happened when Stalin's forces launched a campaign of forced "collectivisation", requisitioning grain and other foodstuffs and forcing many farmers into starvation.

President Petro Poroshenko, accompanied by hundreds of Ukrainians, laid symbolic wheat ears and lit candles before the central Kiev monument to victims of the Holodomor famine -- which means "death by hunger" in Ukrainian.

Poroshenko dubbed the famine a crime against humanity. "We will never forget the terrible crime of the organisers of the Holodomor," he said in a statement.

Oleksandr Turchynov, who heads Ukraine's Security and Defence Council, meanwhile accused the Russian "imperial regime" of causing the famine.

"Now there is a war and we again see manic attempts to destroy Ukraine," he said in a statement, referring to the ongoing separatist war in the country's east.

A conflict between Russian-backed fighters and Ukrainian troops has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014, when pro-Russian forces declared parts of eastern Ukraine independent following Moscow's annexation of Crimea.

Kiev and its western allies accuse Russia of plotting and backing the insurgency, which Moscow denies.

Ukraine regards the famine as a genocide specifically aimed by Stalin's regime at eradicating the Ukrainian peasantry.

Fourteen countries, including the United States, Australia and Canada, have recognised the famine as an act of "genocide" against the Ukrainian people, in a move which irritates Moscow.

Before holding a minute of silence, Poroshenko said he hoped that Russia too would one day recognise the famine as a genocide, "or at least repent for it".

The magnitude of the death toll remains controversial among historians, with estimates ranging from four to 10 million.

Ukraine has remembered the victims of the famine on the fourth Saturday of November since 1998.
Nebraska and Iowa are among the dozen states that would be hardest hit if the United States were to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement as President Donald Trump has threatened, a new U.S. Chamber of Commerce analysis says.

Nebraska and Iowa send more than 40 percent of their exports to customers in Canada and Mexico, accounting for $2.6 billion in revenue in Nebraska and $5.6 billion in Iowa. And many jobs are tied to NAFTA exports: 90,000 in Nebraska and 138,000 in Iowa, the chamber said.

Withdrawal from the free trade deal would cause Mexican tariffs on U.S. exports to spike, depressing sales, the chamber said. Tariffs would rise from zero to 10 percent on pork, 25 percent on beef, 75 percent on chicken and 75 percent on high fructose corn syrup.

The chamber has been an outspoken critic of withdrawing from the agreement, and pointed out that most of the states on its list voted to elect Trump.

Trump has said the deal is a bad one that siphons jobs from the U.S. under unfair terms with its North American trading partners.

The other states the chamber says would be hit hard: Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Texas, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Kansas State University and the University of Nebraska will present a series of meetings Dec. 12, 13, and 14 in southern Nebraska and Kansas to discuss cow-calf management options for producers with limited perennial pasture.

Perennial grass continues to be in short supply and can be expensive to lease or buy. Maintaining or even expanding a cow herd can be challenging unless producers are creative in using the resources they already have.

This series of meetings will move from east to west along the Kansas-Nebraska border, tailoring the content of each meeting to address this issue relevant to the unique needs of producers as resources change across the two states.

Free meals will be provided at each location. Attendees are asked to RSVP by Dec. 8 for the meeting they plan to attend, by using the contact information listed for each meeting. There is no charge.

Dates, location, and times for the meeting series:

 Dec. 12  Marysville Senior Center at 6:30 p.m. in Marysville, Kan.: Contact Anastasia at anastasia@ksu.edu or 785-562-3531

 Dec. 13  Blue Hill Community Center at 6 p.m. in Blue Hill, Neb.: Contact Brad at brad.schick@unl.edu or 402 746-3417

 Dec. 14  Gateway Civic Center at 6 p.m. in Oberlin, Kan.: Contact Alyssa at alyssar@ksu.edu or 785-475-8121

Speakers and topics at each meeting:

 Dr. Mary Drewnoski, beef systems specialist from the University of Nebraska will discuss, Outside the Box  Economical Forage Options.

 Dr. Jaymelynn Farney, beef systems specialist from Kansas State University will discuss Dos and Donts of Cover Crop Grazing from a Livestock Perspective.

 Dr. Karla Jenkins, cow/calf specialist from the University of Nebraska, will discuss Confinement Cow Feeding  the Science and the Art.
Nebraska soybeans are heading to Bulgaria.

The Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) has signed letters of intent with nine soybean processing companies in Bulgaria. The agreement will promote Nebraska soybeans and soybean products in their facilities.

This is a great opportunity, which is growing demand for Nebraska soybeans, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts said. Bulgaria is a country with a high demand for quality protein and is a relatively untapped market.

Ricketts said promoting Nebraska for quality agricultural commodities supports farmers and ranchers.

He said it increases our global market share, and continue to grow Nebraskas No. 1 industry.

The companies want to maximize their output and are looking to source Nebraska and U.S. soybeans. They use about 2 million metric tons of soybeans per year. They have a total production capacity of 2.7 million metric tons.

The Bulgarian companies visited Nebraska this year to learn more about soybean production.

NDA used federal Emerging Markets Program grant funds to pay for the visit. A market research study was done to promote soybean sales in eastern Europe.

They visited a soybean farm in Geneva, the Aurora Cooperative and the grain storage and trading operations of Gavilon and Scoular in Omaha. They also visited a shipping container/loading facility in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and the ADM soybean processing facility and power plant in Lincoln.

They talked with members of the Nebraska Soybean Board as well.

Good personal relationships with the owners and executives of several soybean processing facilities in Bulgaria are a tremendous asset for the future, said NDA Interim Director Mat Habrock. We share similar appreciation for people, culture and agriculture.

Bulgaria has been a member of the European Union since 2007. The EU was Nebraskas third-largest export market of soybeans and soybean products in 2015.

Trade is important to Nebraska agriculture. On Friday, the USDA reported that agricultural exports totaled $140.5 billion in FY 2017. Thats $10.9 billion more than the previous year and the third-highest level on record.

U.S. agriculture had a trade surplus of $21.3 billion. That was up 30 percent from the previous years $16.6 billion.

China was the U.S.s largest export customer at $22 billion. Canada was second at $20.4 billion. U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico totaled $18.6 billion. Thats a 6 percent gain from last year. Japans total increased by 12 percent to $11.8 billion.

The other top 10 markets were the European Union ($11.6 billion), South Korea ($6.9 billion), Hong Kong ($4 billion), Taiwan ($3.4 billion), Indonesia ($3 billion) and the Philippines ($2.6 billion).

U.S. bulk commodity exports set a volume record at 159 million metric tons. That was up 11 percent from FY 2016, while their value increased by 16 percent to $51.4 billion. Soybean exports reached a record 60 million metric tons, valued at $24 billion.

Corn, wheat, and cotton exports also grew. Wheat exports were up 21 percent to $6.2 billion. Corn exports were up 6 percent to $9.7 billion.

U.S. dairy exports increased by 17 percent to $5.3 billion and beef exports were up 16 percent to $7.1 billion. Pork exports increased by 14 percent to $6.4 billion. Horticultural product exports increased by 3 percent to $33.9 billion. Exports of tree nuts reached $8.1 billion, the second-highest total on record. Processed food and beverage exports increased by 2 percent to $39.2 billion.

Exports are responsible for 20 percent of U.S. farm income, according to the USDA.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP)  A new federal report shows rural areas across the country are losing population at an unprecedented rate as both people and industries are concentrating in urban areas.

Rural America at a Glance is the U.S. Department of Agricultures annual report on employment, population and poverty trends in rural counties. The latest edition was released last week.

While Great Plains and Corn Belt states have seen a decline in rural population for decades, whats new is the declines extension in to the eastern U.S., said John Cromartie, a geographer with the departments Economic Research Service.

One factor in the trend has been the out-migration of young adults and declining birth rates among young adults who remain in rural areas, according to Cromartie. He also said theres been a rising mortality rate among working-age adults in rural counties.

The report showed that population declines have become widespread throughout rural America since around 2010. The number of nonmetro counties losing population reached more than 1,300 between 2010 and 2016, with a combined population loss of just under 790,000.

Farm Rescue expands to include livestock feeding assistance

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  A growing one-of-a-kind Great Plains farm aid nonprofit that provides free physical labor for farmers and ranchers dealing with an injury, illness or a natural disaster is expanding its services again.

Farm Rescue is adding livestock feeding assistance to its list of services that include crop planting and harvesting, haying, and hay and grain hauling. The new service will be offered throughout the organizations territory, which has grown through the years to include North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Montana and Nebraska.

Livestock still needs to be fed when crisis strikes unexpectedly, said Bill Gross, who founded Farm Rescue in 2006 and serves as its president.

The organization had been eyeing an expansion into livestock aid for months, with Gross saying last spring that he wanted to make the nonprofit a year-round operation, helping ranchers in the winter months when farmers dont need help with crops.

Farm Rescue doesnt dole out cash, but has about 1,100 volunteers who assist farmers in need. The organization relies on donated equipment and money donations, operating on an annual budget of just under $1 million.

Monsanto asks Arkansas judge to halt states herbicide ban

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  A major agribusiness company has asked an Arkansas judge to halt the states plan to ban an herbicide thats drawn complaints from farmers across several states who say the weed killer has drifted onto their fields and caused widespread damage.

Monsanto recently asked a Pulaski County judge to strike down the rule approved by the state Plant Board earlier this month that would prohibit the use of dicamba from April 16 through Oct. 31. The ban is expected to go before a legislative panel next month, but the Missouri-based company said action is needed now because farmers are already buying their products for next years growing season.

The ban severely curtails Monsantos ability to sell its new dicamba-tolerant seed and low-volatility dicamba herbicide within the state, and every day the ban remains in place costs Monsanto sales and customers, the company said in its filing.

Dicamba has been around for decades, but problems arose over the past couple of years as farmers began to use it on soybean and cotton fields where they planted new seeds engineered to be resistant to the herbicide. Because it can easily evaporate after being applied, the chemical sometimes settles on neighboring fields. The state earlier this year approved a temporary ban on the herbicides sale and use, and has received nearly 1,000 complaints about dicamba this year.

Farmers have also complained about dicamba causing damage to their crops in other states, including Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee. The Environmental Protection Agency last month announced a deal with Monsanto and two other makers of dicamba herbicides, BASF and DuPont, for new voluntary restrictions on the weed killers use.

Agricultural groups challenge California weed-killer warning

The Associated Press

A coalition of a dozen national and Midwestern agricultural groups sued recently to overturn a California decision that could force the popular weed-killer Roundup to carry warning labels that it can cause cancer.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Sacramento seeks an injunction barring the state from enforcing what the suit describes as a false and misleading warning.

Roundups main ingredient, glyphosate, is not restricted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and has been used widely since 1974 to kill weeds while leaving crops and other plants alive.

But the International Agency for Research on Cancer, based in Lyon, France, has classified it as a probable human carcinogen. That prompted the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to add glyphosate this summer to a list of chemicals known to cause cancer. The listing could lead to a requirement for warning labels on the product.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the national wheat and corn growers associations in Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota, as well as St. Louis-based Monsanto Co., which makes Roundup. The lawsuit contends that Californias false warning has harmed Monsantos reputation and its investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in the herbicide and glyphosate-tolerant seeds.

Sam Delson, a spokesman for the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, said the agency hadnt yet reviewed the new filing but is confident its rules are legal.

In March, a California state court judge dismissed a separate lawsuit by Monsanto challenging Californias cancer warning.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study shows that the shift of more than 7 million acres into cropland led to huge releases of carbon emissions into the atmosphere after a 2007 federal law mandated ethanol in gasoline.

The increased carbon emissions are equivalent to 20 million new cars driving down American roads every year, according to the researchers estimates in the study.

The findings show big changes in land use across the Midwest and other parts of the United States between 2008 and 2012. That coincided with a change in federal law that required blending ethanol from crops like corn and soybeans into gasoline.

The federal Energy Information Agency reported that 10 percent of 143 billion gallons of gasoline came from ethanol in 2016.

The study shows the unintended consequences of a federal policy meant to reduce U.S. reliance on fossil fuels.

While adding ethanol means burning fewer fossil fuels, the study found that the benefits were lost as even larger amounts of carbon held in the soil were released into the atmosphere in newly cultivated farm fields.

The researchers used satellite images and other data to identify landscape changes over time and used computer modeling to estimate the carbon that had been stored in soil.

The results drew criticism from an industry group. The Renewable Fuels Association, based in Washington, said other university studies have shown that claims of land use change after the ethanol mandate is grossly overstated.

The study examined climate impacts after grassland, forests and other types of land were plowed under after passage of the ethanol mandate, also known as the renewable fuel standard.

The authors of the study were Seth A. Spawn and Tyler J. Lark, two graduate students in the Department of Geography, and the projects principal investigator, Holly K. Gibbs, an associate professor of geography.

The ethanol mandate has been controversial, with critics saying it has led to higher food prices and has spurred pollution by uprooting idle land into crops that require fertilizer and increased energy consumption to produce and refine the crops as a fuel additive.

Critics also say that the increase in domestic oil production in recent years has weakened the claim that farmers are helping to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil.

Many pro-ethanol groups say ethanol has been a boon to farm income. Corn prices, for example, jumped several years after the mandate was instituted before falling over the past four years.

During the 2016 election, presidential candidate Donald Trump said he supported the mandate, and this fall directed the EPA not to take steps to cut the amount of ethanol in gasoline.

Geoff Cooper, executive vice president of the Renewable Fuels Association, took issue with the methodology of the study of using satellite photographs over time to judge changes on the landscape.

Cooper also said the number of acres of corn production in the U.S. has fallen more than 3 percent between 2007 and 2017 while production per acre increased by 16 percent since 2007.
MITCHELL  For 24 years now, the Nebraska Alfalfa Marketing Association (NFMA), (dba Independent Forage Growers), has hosted the Mid-America Forage Expo, attracting forage producers from the Panhandle, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota and elsewhere. It will make its second appearance at the Scotts Bluff County Fairgrounds in Mitchell, from Nov. 28 through 29.

The expo is designed especially for forage producers, livestock/dairy producers and others involved in forage production, purchasing, hay feeding or processing. Attendees can expect two days jam-packed full of information, education and innovation  all focused on helping hay and livestock producers improve production, performance and profitability.

Although alfalfa is the fourth most valuable crop in Nebraska, hay is often overlooked, NFMA Executive Director Barb Kinnan said.

We dont have the research scholars that the corn and soybean commodities do, Kinnan said. We have to rely a lot on each other to find out whats going on in the industry.

Kinnan said thats part of the reason why the Nebraska Alfalfa Marketing Association was established in 1986.

This years expo will feature a trade show featuring some 100 exhibitors and a fundraising auction, as well as a number of contests.

The trade show runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on both days, with the fundraising auction with Henderson Auction Service on Tuesday evening from 4 to 6 p.m.

The expo is the perfect opportunity for forage producers from across the area to network with other producers, seed companies, equipment dealers and other businesses within the forage industry and to learn from expert presenters on what some possible production and/or marketing issues producers are facing and how to deal them.

Guest presentations include the following:

Tuesday, Nov. 28

 Salt Tolerant Alfalfa Variety Development by Ron Miller, Alforex Seeds, 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.

 FORAGE SORGHUM: Past, Present, Futurewe know where weve been, where are we headed? by Matt Sowder, FGI; and Jeff Jackson, CROPLAN by WinField United, 1:30 to 2:30 p.m.

Wednesday, Nov. 29

 Alfalfa Insects and Their Management by Dr. Jeff Bradshaw, UNL Panhandle Research and Extension Center, 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.

 Using Annual Forages in a Grazing Situation by Dr. Nancy Peterson of Plum Thicket Farms in Gordon.

For more details about the expo, visit http://alfalfaexpo.com.
NEUVO, Calif.  Strolling through a flock of free-roaming rust-colored hens, Christopher Nichols admits that no one truly knows whether his chickens are happier because they can strut around and wander outside.

But consumers are happier, and that matters a lot to the third-generation egg farmer and a slew of other egg producers who charge a premium price for eggs bearing the U.S. Department of Agricultures organic certification, which governs not only what hens eat, but nearly everything about how they live their lives.

The consumers have an idea of what this sort of operation looks like, Nichols said, raising his voice above the chorus of clucks emanating from more than 7,000 Rhode Island red hybrids at a Nuevo, Calif., ranch that supplies his family company, Chino Valley Ranchers.

When you give them a building with no windows, no natural light and a screened porch and label it as organic, I think theyre going to be a little bit ticked off.

Those consumers will have to be ticked off for at least another six months. In early November, the USDA quietly shelved a rule that would have given consumers a bit more of what they assume is part of organic eggs  open air.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue (who is not related to the chicken family) left open a loophole in organic regulations that has allowed factory egg farms, some with 100,000 hens to a barn, to earn an organic imprimatur without much more than a nod to letting chickens leave their coop  that is, attaching a gated, screened porch to their barns.

It was the third delay for the obscure but highly contentious rule, which had made it into the Federal Register on the day before President Donald Trump took the oath of office, only to fall victim to his regulatory freeze executive order.

Growth in free-range

The well-being of a laying hen may seem an esoteric concern to the average consumer confronted with a slew of labels that grade eggs and purport to explain how they were laid  free-range, cage-free or pasture-raised, for instance.

But how much space, and what kind, each hen gets is crucial to the $5.5 billion egg industry. Producers owe a good deal of their growth to organic, free-range, cage-free and other marketing labels  more than 13 percent of the flock is in those niches now, according to the American Egg Board.

Less than a third of those, or about 14.6 million hens, are certified organic  roaming free, with some access to the outdoors, and fed only on grains raised without conventional pesticides or fertilizers.

Organic eggs now fill the refrigerators of big-box stores such as Costco and Wal-Mart. Most of those eggs come from the titans of the egg industry, such as Herbrucks Poultry Ranch in Michigan and Mississippi-based Cal-Maine.

Those and other egg farms have built their facilities around a 2002 ruling by USDA that allowed farms to attach a screened porch to a chicken barn and qualify it as outdoor space under the organic rules. At least a third of organic egg producers operate under that model, according to USDA.

Big egg farms would like to keep it that way, saying any change would drive nearly half of them out of the market and expose birds to disease from wild birds and rodents.

Costs of compliance

USDA has said it would cost the industry $8 million to $30 million over about 15 years to comply with the revised organic rules. Consumers would pay an additional 21 to 50 cents per dozen eggs, the agency estimated. (The agency said benefits of the change, including increasing the willingness of consumers to pay more for the certified eggs, are worth $4 million to $50 million.)

But United Egg Producers contends that nearly half the organic producers will simply leave the market, leaving shortages that will drive up prices.

Nichols, who is vice president of Chino Valley Ranchers, isnt buying it.

Dont let them fool you, he said. They knew darn well that they were building these buildings out of compliance. And they knew that when this day came, that they were going to have to face this decision. But they probably figured that they had the money and the political muscle to overrule it.

Smaller producers, he said, just dont have that.

Under the new rules, even Nichols will have to expand some open areas shared by his barns. Were OK with that, he said. Its a small price to pay in order to preserve consumer confidence.

The egg industry has a longer-term strategy in mind when it fights the organic egg rules. Even as scores of restaurants and food companies, including McDonalds, have pledged to switch to cage-free eggs, the industry is using the federal farm bill process to preempt state efforts to ban cages. So far, these rotten egg measures, as opponents dub them, have failed.

Smaller producers

Virtually no one in the organic industry expects the Trump administration to side with smaller producers six months from now, when USDA must again decide whether to enforce the rule.

As a pre-emptive move, the Organic Trade Association sued USDA in September over its previous delays  making it difficult for the agency to bow to industry pressure and withdraw the rule while a federal court case is pending.

Its not just the egg industry, but commodity livestock interests, said Laura Batcha, CEO and director of the Organic Trade Assn. We believe they dont want to see this go forward, despite the overwhelming majority that supports it.

More than 40,000 comments were sent to USDA during the rulemaking process, the group noted. The vast majority favored passing it, partly due to consumer form-letter campaigns.

Matt Bershadker, president and CEO of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said Perdues stall was another example of powerful agribusiness entities trampling vital animal welfare protections.

Agribusiness, so far, has won important concessions from the Trump administration in its first year in office.

The USDA killed an Obama rule that would have lowered the legal requirements for poultry farms to win legal claims against the large meat companies that contract them to raise chickens.

That angered rural farm groups, which noted that the Farm Belt heavily supported Trump.

Citing privacy concerns, USDA also purged public records regarding the handling and treatment of animals, making them available only through a Freedom of Information Act request.
KEARNEY  Rebecca and John Lillyman have owned their home at 421 W. 21st St. for four years, but Rebecca still feels like a tenant farmer in this house. She believes that living there is a privilege. I want people to see how beautiful an older home can be, she said.

The public is invited to see it and five other homes all beautifully decorated for the holidays during the Holiday Home Tour from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 2. The event will benefit the HelpCare Clinic at 3015 Ave. A, the clinic that provides free health care to the needy.

The Lillymans white frame house was built in 1910. It has two staircases, three stories and 10-foot-high ceilings. On its welcoming front porch, greenery is wound around its pillars, and inside, in the foyer, Christmas stockings belonging to the Lillymans seven children, now aged 33-14, hang on the banister. A three-foot-high Nutcracker statue counts down the days until Christmas.

Usually we decorate for Christmas on Johns birthday, Nov. 25, but this year, we did it a little early, Rebecca said. Shes been assisted by Jayne Meyer, retired owner of Shopping Tripps at 2210 Central Ave. Rebecca loves Meyers creative ideas, like poking bits of greenery into shelves and working holiday greenery into the homes blue tones. Blue is Rebeccas favorite color, and Meyer worked it into the Christmas decorating.

We worked together room by room. Jayne sees beauty very quickly. Often, she adds to it, but sometimes she subtracts, Rebecca said. For example, Meyer placed four votive candles on a high ledge above the door leading from the foyer into the living room. I wouldnt have thought to use that space, Rebecca said.

Meyer hung garlands. She made bows. She put a splash of red ribbon on the banister and on the tall Christmas tree that sits in the bright bay window in the spacious dining room. She hung a glass garland on the tree, too.

Upstairs, tour-goers will see three bedrooms, along with a tiny room off a sunny yellow bedroom. There, Rebecca relaxes in a soft off-white chair for meditation and prayer. Visitors will see that cozy nook, and her nearby wedding gown as well.

The pair met in England and got engaged three weeks later. John, a native of Australia, is an architect at Wilkins Architecture Design Planning. Rebecca teaches English to international students at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She and John raised their family in the Glenwood Corners area but moved into the Pioneer neighborhood four years ago. Their youngest daughter, 14, is the last child at home. We wanted to bike and work and participate in the town, Rebecca said.

The 23-year-old Holiday Home Tour took a hiatus last year, but it is resuming this year with the help of the HelpCare Clinic. I know how much people enjoy the tour, Roxanne Bascom, a committee member, said. Bascom is also on the HelpCare Clinics fundraising board and knew the popular event would help spread the word about the clinic.

Since it opened in the spring of 2015, the HelpCare Clinic has provided free medical care for people in Buffalo and Kearney counties who have little or no health insurance. Some 12 percent of Buffalo County residents, and 11 percent of those in Kearney County, fall into this group.

When the clinic opened, it was open only on Thursday evenings, but it now has daytime hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well.

Were not urgent care, and we have no X-ray machines, but we have three medical providers, and weve expanded since opening in 2015, Cheryl Bressington, its executive director, said. She said several critical grants will expire at the end of the year, so money right now is essential.

The tour is a labor of love for those who are making it happen. It is overseen by a committee of 10. A captain and co-captain are assigned to each home, and 12-20 people will work in each home for both the tour and the invitation-only preview the night before.

Rebecca Lillyman cant wait to share her home with tour-goers. Theyll see things like these doorknobs, she said, pointing. People have been touching them for more than 100 years.
WOOD RIVER  A workshop demonstrating the capabilities of Google Earth will be presented by Hastings College professor of biology William Beachly from 10 a.m. to noon Dec. 9 at The Nature Conservancys Derr House south of the Wood River Interstate 80 interchange.

Workshop participants will use Google Earth to better understand beautiful and interesting landscapes, starting with a sense of place. Wi-fi will be available, so participants should bring laptops or other devices.

The workshop will count as continuing education for Master Naturalists and trainees, but the public also may attend. Some participants may want to bring a sack lunch and hike TNCs Platte River Prairies trails after the presentation.

The Derr House and prairies are at 13650 S. Platte River Drive, about two miles south of I-80.

RSVPs are needed to Karen Hamburger at karen_jay@charter.net or 402 463-1497.
KEARNEY  Participating in a play helps students with public speaking skills, teamwork, creativity  and swordplay.

3 Musketeers: All Swash & No Buckle is a comedy based on the story of the Three Musketeers, but theres a little twist in the show, said Jeni Homan, assistant director. Theres an evil villain, a stolen necklace and lots of sword fights. The boys in the cast have done a great job with the choreography of the stage fights.

The story starts as DArtagnan leaves his mother and travels to Paris with a dream of employment as one of the Kings Musketeers. He earns the trust of the other musketeers and finds himself embroiled in a scheme to retrieve a stolen necklace.

Homan describes the show as Monty Python-isque, a show filled with madcap humor.

Kearney Catholic High School drama students present 3 Musketeers: All Swash & No Buckle at 7:30 p.m. Monday at KCHS. Admission is $5 per person.

We have such an array of talent on the team, Homan said. We have band kids, kids that are athletes, kids from student council, some shy kids, kids who help with makeup. We also have kids who help with costumes, some who paint the set and help with props  we have a lot of different types of kids.

As a former teacher, Homan enjoys working on a project that includes students with different types of personalities.

They can come in and work together as a team.

The students perform 3 Musketeers: All Swash & No Buckle as an entry in one-act play competitions. The students performed the show three times in November. Those different venues forced the students to adapt to their surroundings.

We might have one stage thats 30 feet and another might be three or four times the size of the stage where we rehearsed, Homan said. Sometimes, at the last minute, we have to re-arrange or change up the show to make it fit.

The judges in the competitions timed the shows, too.

The show must be under 30 minutes, but a good show might run 28 minutes to exactly on 30, Homan said. Its kind of scary if youre backstage and the kids are getting behind. They have to speed up or slow down to make it fit. They cant just go on stage and relax. Its a tight show.

3 Musketeers: All Swash & No Buckle times out to about 28 minutes and 30 seconds.

The students contributed to the script, too. They added extra dialogue that helps bring out the humor of the story.

We bought the script, but then we got permission to do a little rewriting, Homan said. The kids helped with the cuts and jokes and the comedy. The funniest ones were written by our kids.
KEARNEY  Miles had a difficult childhood, with no opportunities to spread his wings or know his true self.

That changed at age 13 when he found a new home in Oklahoma City with Lauren McGough. The 30-year-old rehabilitation specialist has worked with Miles day after day, step by step the past two years to help him rediscover his identity as a golden eagle.

Miles was poached as a chick and kept as a pet until 2015, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seized him from the poacher. When McGough got him from a North American Falconers Association friend from New Mexico whose health issues prevented him from working with Miles, the eagle was a blank slate. He was aggressive and begged for food because the only way he knew how to get food was to bully a human for it.

Physically and mentally, he didnt know he was an eagle, said McGough, who is one of the worlds most skilled master falconers and soon will be featured on the CBS news magazine show 60 Minutes.

Although Miles didnt catch any jackrabbits Friday morning while hunting with McGough in a grassland east of Ravenna, he seemed excited when chasing several of them. McGough said it was a good day for an eagle.

They were among the humans and raptors in Kearney this week for the North American Falconers Association convention.

Miles eagle education started with a fake jackrabbit. She required him to fly away from her to get the fake rabbit and increased the distance over time. Finally, it was dragged behind a truck at 35 mph so Miles would have to give chase.

When he was introduced to a real jackrabbit in a Kansas field, he went after the flash of fur in a first clumsy attempt at hunting. Miles has killed 27 jackrabbits since then.

Its amazing how deep that instinct is, McGough said. He can maneuver and fly fast. Im so impressed with his progress. It has changed his mindset.

Miles now focuses his aggression on rabbits and is happier at home.

She said Miles never will be released into the wild because he is so imprinted on humans.

When asked to define their human-bird relationship, McGough said, I would say he sees me as the vehicle to chase jackrabbits. To hunt. Exciting things happen around me. ... He doesnt have to be hungry to fly for me now.

Her reward is watching her fast, agile eagle soar like a falcon and fly low and fast like a hawk. McGoughs goal for 15-year-old Miles is that he has a long  captive eagles can live into their 50s  happy life as a hunting partner.

Finding falconry

McGoughs passion for raptors started at age 14. The most influential information came from the book A Rage For Falcons written by Steve Bodio that included photos of Kazakh hunters in Mongolia on horseback with golden eagles.

That lit my fire, said McGough, who previously was interested in reptiles. I liked things that were wild and also hands on. Bird watching was not enough.

She contacted the president of an Oklahoma falconry club and became his student. McGoughs imagination was captured by an activity that was both domestic and wild at the same time.

Her first raptor was a red-tailed hawk. She had never trained an animal before, never even had a dog, and had never been hunting, so training the hawk to hunt with her was a struggle.

She said it also proved to be an exercise in perseverance that served her well during eagle-related travels as an adult to Mongolia and South Africa.

McGough released her hawk five years later as a University of Oklahoma sophomore preparing to study for a year at the University of Glasgow in Scotland where falconry has been practiced as a sport-art for centuries. It was the next step toward her dream of hunting with eagles.

Making it to Mongolia

When McGough was 17, she traveled with her father to Mongolia to meet Kazakh golden eagle handlers for the first time. Bodio, the author, helped them make the contacts.

When she was an OU senior nearing completion of a bachelors degree in zoology and international relations, McGough applied for a Fulbright Scholarship to go to Mongolia.

While there, she lived with an extended family of nomadic goat and sheep herders in a region of the Altai Mountains where Mongolia, Russia, China and Kazakhstan come together.

It was the original birthplace of falconry, she said, and the hunters equipment and methods are much the same as they were thousands of years ago.

McGough said the ethnic Kazakh falconers are Muslims, while most Mongolians are Buddhists.

Their golden eagles are a stockier subspecies than found in the United States, but similar in appearance. Past generations used eagles to hunt food game, such as mountain goats and deer. Then, the focus shifted to foxes that were valuable for their fur.

McGough said foxes still are hunted, although there is no fur market today. The pelts mostly are used as a cultural decoration statement on the Kazakhs clothing.

Language was her first big hurdle. She hired a Kazakh translator to live with her during part of her Fulbright year. When she returned to Mongolia for a second year in 2012 to work on her Eagle Falconry in Central Asia doctoral dissertation, she could speak enough caveman Kazakh to get by.

It was really hard, McGough said about living with no modern conveniences.There were no fruits or vegetables. They eat all parts of an animal, and its boiled. Eating boiled goat was very hard.

So was dealing with frostbite and capturing a golden eagle. When trapping my eagle, I was thrown and dragged by my horse, McGough said.

She had to learn to ride a horse with her eagle. McGough said an armrest that pivots off the saddle meant you dont have to free-carry a 10-pound eagle.

It still took time for her to be comfortable in the saddle. You kind of forget that the horse is there. ... Youre communicating with the horse subconsciously, she explained.

She completed her first year in Mongolia despite the changes. One incentive was knowing she would have to repay the Fulbright money if she came home early.

The other was her love of eagles.

They are amazing, McGough said, recalling that a month after she captured her eagle  it was on its second migration from Siberia to China  it caught its first fox.

She released the eagle when she returned home in 2010. In 2012, her Mongolia mentor loaned her an eagle.

Continuing adventures

Her interests in eagles and history took her to South Africa last April to September. A fossilized skull that proved a child was killed by an eagle provided a link to human-eagle ties dating back 2.8 million years, she said.

McGoughs role was to rehabilitate a crowned eagle that had a broken wing and leg and had been shot. It was an opportunity to learn about a bird species that sees primates as food.

Her current to-do list includes preparing to defend her doctoral dissertation early next year at Scotlands University of St. Andrews; serving as executive director of a new non-profit, the Falconry Fund; and working with an agent on a proposal for a book about how eagles make us human.

McGough also would like to teach at a university someday as an anthrozoologist, a person who studies human-animal relationships. Its a new field, one where there is room to make a mark, she said. I enjoy that.
In their efforts to provide a sufficiency of water where there was not one, men have resorted to every expedient from prayer to dynamite, wrote American historian Walter Prescott Webb, author of The Great Plains, 1931.

The Republican and Platte rivers run parallel for much of their courses, but the two rivers have very different characteristics. The Platte rises in the Rocky Mountains, whereas the Republican headwaters lie in the dusty plains of eastern Colorado.

The Platte is filled with snowmelt and groundwater, while the Republican depends mostly on rainfall for its flows.

The Platte has a vastly larger watershed, totaling more than 90,000 square miles. By comparison, the Republican watershed area is 24,900 square miles.

The Platte is one of the most heavily irrigated river basins in the United States. It is the only river in Nebraska designated as overappropriated.

The Republican River basin also has a large amount of irrigated cropland and is designated by the state as fully appropriated. Water shortages in the basin have caused interstate conflicts between Nebraska and its neighbors, Kansas and Colorado.

Even though the water resources of both basins are heavily used, the potential for excess flows  flows that exceed demands  is much greater in the Platte because of its larger watershed and water sources.

As part of its commitment to the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program, Nebraska has agreed to protect Platte flows up to certain levels for endangered species. These target flows are considered adequate to support and protect habitat for whooping cranes, least terns and piping plovers.

Flows that exceed these target levels are considered excess to the system and are available to use for other purposes. Nebraska natural resources districts and the PRRIP have made extensive use of excess flows over the past decade to recharge groundwater and augment the base flows of the Platte and its tributaries. These high flow diversions have saved valuable water by storing it underground for later use.

In spite of these efforts, much of the Plattes excess flows still pass by diversion dams and continue unimpeded to the Gulf of Mexico. At best, this water is wasted. At worst, it contributes to flooding.

The Platte-Republican diversion project proposes to use a small portion of this wasted, excess Platte water to supplement Republican River flows.

This would be accomplished by diverting water through the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District canal system to a point east of Elwood, where it would be piped into Turkey Creek, a tributary of the Republican.

The Tri-Basin and Lower Republican NRDs and CNPPID are working together to develop this project. We expect to file a water right application with the state before the end of this year.

To ensure that diverting water outside of the Platte Basin doesnt interfere with potential future uses for excess flows within the basin, we will specify that we will not claim priority over future Platte basin projects if our water right is granted.

Water is Nebraskas most precious resource. We must use it carefully and efficiently to ensure that sufficient water is available to sustain our good life for future generations.

John Thorburn is general manager of the Tri-Basin Natural Resources District based in Holdrege.
Charles Mansons bizarre plan to ignite a race war was unknown to Los Angeles in August 1969, as were his pathetic collection of young, rapt followers, his bizarre misinterpretation of Beatles lyrics, and Manson himself. What L.A. knew at the time was that seven people had been brutally murdered in two homes, apparently by invasion-style killers who left little clue as to motive. Crime was up nationwide, the turbulent 1960s were nearing their finale and the world seemed to have lost its mind. The city was terrified.

The closest modern comparison may be disco-era New York, eight years later, when a killer who called himself Son of Sam stalked the streets with a .44 caliber revolver, shot 13 people and wrote mocking notes to police.

David Berkowitz did his own killing (although he has claimed that cultists or demons were partly to blame) and Manson did none of his, instead sending his hangers-on to do his grisly work.

In both cases, though, the killers instigated urban panic, gained media notoriety before being caught and, afterward, cemented their presence in the public mind and popular culture, assisted by endless news stories, books, documentaries and dramas.

Manson and Berkowitz were rank amateurs by the murderous standards set by more recent killers, who acted in single spasms of violence  without cultish followings and with motives varying from marital spite (as in the Sutherland Springs, Texas, and Rancho Tehama, Calif., shootings) to religio-political (as in the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack) to the still-unknown (as with the Las Vegas mass shooting in October).

But in the near future the names of those killers will be recalled only sporadically, perhaps with the help of a quick Google query and a check of Wikipedia. The Son of Sam nickname may linger in New Yorkers memory, but the name David Berkowitiz is fading.

But we will remember Manson.

Why is that? After the murders and the trial, Manson did nothing but sit in prison, but the rest of us have kept him alive as a fixture in the popular imagination. We should just let his memory die.

Los Angeles Times
Charles Manson, the intellectual author of a series of 1969 murders so hideously brutal and pointless that nearly five decades later his name is still synonymous with slaughter, died last week. Of natural causes, they say, though I never thought anything about him was natural  including the chilling moment I crossed his path 44 years ago.

It was summer of 1973, between my sophomore and junior years of college, when I was working as an intern in the California Department of Corrections. The head of the state Health and Welfare Agency, which oversaw Corrections, was gearing up to run for governor, and he wanted regular positive press releases from all 32 departments he controlled. So I spent a lot of time visiting prisons to look for success stories. (Only 22 stabbings at San Quentin last month!)

One of my visits was to the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, home to the hard-core-craziest inmates. Prison administrators, told an intern was coming from Sacramento, inevitably assumed I was some kind of hippie turn-em-all-loose advocate. So my visits always began with a visit to the prison office that investigated internal crime, where Id be shown photos of various shankings and beatings. From there, Id be taken to a security cell block, where the inmates could be counted on to scream abuse and threats at any visitor. I always tried not to make eye contact or gaze at them because that prodded them to new levels of frenzy.

The Vacaville security wing was the worst Id ever visited, and I was really making a point of gazing straight ahead. But as we got about midway through the cell block, the correctional officer escorting me said, very casually, thats Charlie Manson over on your left.

I tried to keep my head pointed straight while swiveling my eyes toward him, but my face moved a little bit, and we locked eyes, and he slowly unfurled a middle finger in my direction.

Yeah, he was behind bars, but it nonetheless felt like an icicle through my heart. I thrilled with silent relief as we exited the other end of the block. I am always careful in telling this story. The first time, I said that Manson had thrown me a finger, and the person I was talking to said in horror, Oh my God? Whose was it?

I had one other near-brush with the Manson Family that summer. I visited the state womens prison in Frontera, which was populated with low-security inmates who were locked up for drugs or bad checks. Most were in dorm-style areas rather than single cells.

My tour was conducted by an inmate who asked if I wanted to go over to the prisons single real cell block, where a handful of medium-security inmates were. We walked to where it ended in a cinder-block wall with a barred door.

Thats the maximum security area, my guide said. The only ones back there are the three Manson women. Its kind of weird.

What do you mean? I asked. She took me over to the cell right outside the door and repeated my question to the woman inside.

The COs dont enforce the lights-out time back there, she said. because those women are nuts. They stay up all night, and you hear these strange noises, and sometimes witchy cackling. She paused, then added: And one time, I heard bagpipes.

Bagpipes? I said. Bagpipes, she repeated, then shrugged. I wonder if theyll be playing tonight.

Glenn Garvin writes for the Miami Herald.
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West Kelowna Fire Rescue and members of the RCMP Fire Investigation Unit work at the scene of a West Kelowna house fire where the body of a woman was found in this November 2015 file photo.
Brothers Paxton and Gabriel Vrecko with Sensitive Santa at Orchard Park mall, which provides kids on the autism spectrum and their siblings the chance to see Santa after hours in a calm environment.
Edmonton Police Const. Michael Chernyk poses in this undated handout photo. An Edmonton police officer who was rammed by a vehicle outside a CFL game and then stabbed says his life has returned to normal.Const. Mike Chernyk was on duty outside Commonwealth Stadium on Sept. 30 when a speeding car rammed through a barrier and sent him flying five metres in the air.The driver got out, pulled out a large knife and began stabbing Chernyk. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - *MANDATORY CREDIT*
NORTHWOOD | A person was life-flighted after losing control and rolling their motorcycle Friday afternoon near Northwood, law enforcement says.

The Worth County Sheriff's Office said in a news release the motorcyclist, who has not been identified, was traveling east on 480th Street before losing control around a curve and going into a ditch. The crash was reported about 1:02 p.m. near Highway 65.

Witnesses told deputies the motorcycle went end over end three to four times before coming to rest.

The driver of the motorcycle was transported by Mercy Air Med with unknown injuries, the sheriff's office said.

The crash remains under investigation.

Fire departments from Northwood and Mason City also provided assistance at the scene.

 Ashley Miller
A false killer whale named Chester has died at the Vancouver Aquarium. The young whale is shown being rescued by members of the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Centre from a beach near Tofino, B.C., on July 10, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ HO, Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Centre
FILE - In this Thursday, Nov. 23, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump speaks to the media before speaking with members of the armed forces via video conference at his private club, Mar-a-Lago, on Thanksgiving in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump says he's not playing ball with Time magazine as it decides its Person of the Year. The magazine counters that Trump has it all wrong. In a tweet Friday, Nov. 24, 2017, as he spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Florida, Trump sounded dismissive of the honor he received last year and could well receive again. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
FILE - In this April 10, 2017 file photo, women cry during the funeral for those killed in a Palm Sunday church attack in Alexandria Egypt, at the Mar Amina church. Egypt has been battling an insurgency in the Sinai led by an affiliate of the Islamic State group that intensified after the militaryAos 2013 ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood from power. Hundreds have been killed in what has become a grinding stalemate in Sinai. The militants have expanded their attacks to other parts of Egypt, carrying out deadly bombings of churches to terrorize the Christian minority and deadly gunbattles with security forces. (AP Photo/Samer Abdallah, File)
MASON CITY | North Iowans experiencing difficult circumstances are hoping the Christmas Cheer Fund will brighten their holidays.

A 37-year-old Mason City woman with four children ages 6, 12, 16 and 17 is a single mom who is self-employed.

As a single parent, raising four children and receiving child support for only one of them as well as preparing for a brand new grandbaby, things are financially difficult, she wrote on her Cheer Fund application. Any assistance available in providing Christmas to all five children would be greatly appreciated.

She is seeking funding for household needs, Christmas gifts and supplies.

A 35-year-old Klemme man with two children ages 1 and 2 has been unemployed since 2015 due to multiple surgeries.

I need help getting gifts for my two small children please, he wrote in his application requesting funds for his children.

A 36-year-old Mason City man with six children ages 3, 7, 11, 13, 15 and 17 is seeking assistance to purchase blankets and warm clothes, according to her application.

Mayberry: Cheer Fund enters 90th year of giving to North Iowa This week marks the starting point of the 2017 Christmas Cheer Fund campaign, and were hope

Since the Cheer Fund began in 1927, $3,088,122 has been raised.

This years goal is $125,000.

Can you help us help those in need?

The Christmas Cheer Fund was established by Globe Gazette Publisher Lee Loomis in 1927 so every child could have a present on Christmas morning. In the years since it has come to mean a little help at Christmastime to people of all ages.

Donations may be dropped off or mailed to the Globe Gazette office, 300 N. Washington Ave., Mason City, IA 50402-0271.

Any remaining funds not distributed for the holidays will be given to local nonprofits. The Christmas Cheer Fund balance will return to $100 in January to maintain the checking account.

Those in need can apply for help from the Cheer Fund at the Globe Gazette between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. weekdays. Applicants must use the 2017 request form. Applications will close at noon Dec. 21.
TWIN LAKES  Two men were shot to death outside a Twin Lakes tavern early Friday morning.

The suspect, a Trevor man, was taken into custody hours later on Interstate 94 near Tomah. His identity and the names of the two victims had not been released as of Friday night.

Twin Lakes Police said the shooting victims were brothers from Twin Lakes.

Police said they were called to the Beach Bar, 402 S. Lake St., at about 2 a.m. for a shooting outside the tavern.

When officers arrived, they found a 28-year-old man dead in the parking lot. He had multiple gunshot wounds.

A second man, 31, also had multiple gunshot wounds. He was taken to Burlington Hospital where he died.

Several people at the Beach Bar Friday afternoon said the brothers were regulars at the tavern overlooking Lake Mary and were well-liked in the community.

They are going to be missed by a lot of people, one man said. Its just a tragedy.

Suspect tracked down

Twin Lakes Police Chief Adam Grosz said the suspect, a 25-year-old Trevor man, fled the scene in a Chevrolet Silverado pickup.

Deputies from the Kenosha Sheriffs Department went to the suspects home looking for him early Friday, but Grosz said the suspects cellphone led them to central Wisconsin about three hours north of Twin Lakes.

We were able to track his cellphone and get his location, Grosz said.

He was found by the Monroe County Sheriffs Department and the Wisconsin State Patrol traveling north on Interstate 94. He was taken into custody at about 8:15 a.m., Grosz said. We believe he was on route to a relatives residence in Hayward, he said.

Grosz said police are not yet identifying the suspect. He was known in the community, he said. The police department has had contact with him in the past.

Witnesses to shootings

Grosz said police were told by witnesses that there was an altercation between the suspect and the victims before the shooting, which happened at bar closing time. There were witnesses to the shooting, he said.

Witnesses were able to give police information on the suspect, and Grosz said police later got a description of the vehicle the suspect was driving.

A man who lives in an apartment overlooking the parking lot said he heard nearly six shots in quick succession, saying it sounded like a semi-automatic handgun.

Grosz said the investigation is ongoing. He said he did not know whether the brothers and the suspect knew each other prior to the shooting, or what had prompted the altercation.

Rare in Twin Lakes

Homicides are rare in Twin Lakes  Grosz said he could not remember the last. Its a small community. Were obviously shocked that this happened.

The police chief said he is proud of how his officers handled the shooting.

They were able to get on top of what was going on quickly, and were able to identify the suspect and get him into custody quickly. Im proud of my department, he said.
MASON CITY | Associate Judge Annette Boehlje is being remembered by friends and colleagues as a woman of many interests and talents and who had a passion for the well-being of children.

Boehlje, 46, died Saturday, Nov. 18, at Good Shepherd Health Center.

She held degrees in law and in ministry and was active in both fields. The Rev. Steve Johnson, who will officiate at her funeral Saturday at First Covenant Church, said Boehlje was a faithful, loyal, intelligent servant.

"Many people have two degrees, but Annette is the only person I have known that carried both a law degree and a ministry degree," he said. "And she was the perfect person to do that.

"Her strong and clear mind coupled with her faithful and generous heart embodied a Christianity that allowed her to be the same person in the law office or in the pulpit."

Several judges reflected on her life and work.

District Judge Gregg Rosenbladt said Boehlje was always striving to be better.

"She always enjoyed a good conversation about legal issues or other topics of interest," he said. "She was also very strong, composed and hopeful after being confronted with a very serious medical diagnosis."

District Judge James Drew said, "Annette was an excellent judge by any measure. She was firm but fair. The juvenile case work was particularly important to her and her desire to go above and beyond to protect the children was obvious.

"Equally impressive to me is the dignity and grace she demonstrated after her diagnosis. She worked as long as she was able and I never heard her complain about her lot."

District Judge Chris Foy said,"I think Annette became a lawyer so she could help people who were down on their luck and she wanted to be a judge for the same reason."

Attorney Richard Tompkins said Boehlje was a dedicated mother, lawyer and judge. He said she could be direct in dealing with parents in danger of losing their children because of the parents' drug use. But she was extremely supportive of parents trying to overcome their drug problems.

Attorney David Grooters agreed.

"We were all heartbroken when we learned of her diagnosis," he said. "We will miss her bright face and contagious smile."

Jeremiah and Amanda Reb had a special relationship with Boehlje.

"As local foster parents, we had the pleasure of working with her on multiple cases where she always showed her love and compassion for the job," said Reb.

"Our family will be eternally grateful for her service as she presided over the adoption of two of our children. May she rest in peace and may her family know that she left a legacy to be proud of."

Boehlje was a member of the Una Vocis Choral Ensemble. Its artistic director, Dennis Lee, said, "She shared her lovely soprano voice for many years and was an active and dedicated member of the Una Vocis family. She was a bright and creative person and we miss her very much."
MASON CITY  Small Business Saturday helps North Iowans remember to shop small and can be more important than Black Friday for some of North Iowas small businesses.

Its a great day to remind people to do some of their shopping at local businesses, Rachel Herman, Assistant Manager at Affordables said.

Small Business Saturday was created by American Express eight years ago in 2010 and is a ceremonial kickoff to the holiday shopping season for small businesses across the United States.

According to the U.S. Small Businesses Administration, Iowas 266,382 small businesses account for 99.3 percent of all businesses in the state and employ nearly half of the state's private-sector workforce.

When we have customers supporting our store by shopping and donating they not only are supporting a local store and keeping that money in North Iowa, but they are supporting people in their job training and job searches with NIVC Services, Herman said.

Small Business Saturday has become a national movement to celebrate and highlight the role and impact of small businesses on our economy," said Lisa Shimkat, Americas SBDC Iowa State Director. This Small Business Saturday, and throughout the holiday season, anyone can make a difference by shopping small."

Americas SBDC Iowa is an outreach program of Iowa State Universitys College of Business and the Office of Economic Development and Industry Relations.

In 2016, an estimated 112 million consumers reported shopping at small businesses on Small Business Saturday, spending an estimated $15.4 billion.

Mason City will host Home For the Holidays in conjunction with Small Business Saturday this year.

Main Street Mason City will host the event from 3 to 9 p.m. downtown.

There will be music on the Southbridge Mall Plaza, hot chocolate, a tree lighting, storytime, Polar Express Trolley rides, crafts, cookie decorating and more.

Many of the businesses downtown and in the mall will have refreshments, gift bags, goodies, special deals and extended hours, according to Main Street Mason City.

Shops across North Iowa will be offering deals and events for the day.

Affordables will have specials throughout the day. From 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. will have a book sale and from 1-4 p.m clothes are 50 percent off.

Market 124 will have a BOGO event for ornaments.

Real Deals will be giving away $5 shop credit to the first 100 shoppers in the door. The store is also offering 15 percent off of a customer's most expensive item.

South Shore Donut Co. in Clear Lake will be offering $5 off $25 gift certificates and 10 percent off all SSDC merchandise including coffee mugs, t-shirts and more.

Bread & Buttercreme in Clear Lake will be running a promotion, "Our customers are our bread and butter." There will be buy one get one $5 and specialty loaves of bread in the bakery and complimentary house made compound butter with each purchase. Bottomless bloody marys and mimosas will be served with brunch for $10 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and a reopening for a special tapas service from 5-9 p.m.
(Adds quotes, background)

By Alexandra Alper

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Libya's foreign minister said on Friday that OPEC could decide to extend crude oil production cuts to balance the global oil market when the group meets next week, and that Libya would cooperate with such a decision.

"If it is necessary for all, we should extend cuts," said Foreign Minister Mohamed Taher Siala on the sidelines of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum summit in Bolivia. "We will go with the interest of all the other countries."

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will meet in Vienna on Nov. 30. The group, along with Russia and several other major producers, have cut their combined output by about 1.8 million barrels per day since January to reduce bloated inventories and boost oil prices.

When asked if he believed OPEC's cuts should be extended to next year, Taher Siala said: "It is a matter of balancing the position of the consumers and the producers, and that is very important. If it is necessary for the interests of both, then we would be extending, yes."

Siala said he expected that other OPEC member nations would share his position. "When there is a need for balancing, we will go with balancing for the market," he said, adding that OPEC representatives were in touch with non-OPEC countries like Russia about the issue.

Russia has said it is ready to support extending a deal among oil producers on cutting output, although it has yet to say how long it should be for.

(Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
(Adds quote, details, background)

By Alexandra Alper

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Global gas supplies currently exceed demand, a situation that could lead to a "crisis" drop in prices similar to what occurred in the crude oil market, Russian energy minister Alexander Novak said on Friday.

"The current excess supply of natural gas brings risks... of entering into the same crisis that affected oil prices," Novak said at the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Bolivia, where top officials of major gas-producing countries have been meeting this week.

Gas prices have plunged more than 80 percent in the last decade and remain under pressure due to growing supplies of shale gas and increased availability of liquefied natural gas (LNG) that can be shipped overseas.

Novak said the threats to global gas prices underscore the importance of long-term supply contracts, in which producers can be assured a stable price over the course of years instead of being subject to the ups and downs of the market.

Russia is the world's second-largest producer of natural gas, behind the United States.

The United States has vastly increased its output of both crude oil and natural gas in recent years as improved drilling technology opened previously inaccessible reserves - a leading reason for a steep drop in petroleum prices .

The GECF, which includes members like Qatar, Iran, Russia and Venezuela, is modeled after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), whose 12 member nations manage oil supply to control prices.

While the GECF has called for increased "cooperation" to defend its gas market, it has not applied production limits as OPEC has done to buoy crude prices.

(Additional reporting by Monica Machicao; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)
Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 16F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 16F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Wilbur Ross, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, is not happy with you, me, and, based on comments he made at a gathering of Big Biz executives Nov. 16, our republics representative government.

When asked about the slow-and-getting-slower NAFTA trade talks at an invitation-only Wall Street Journal CEO Council meeting that day in Washington, D.C., Ross, identified by Politico as one of President Donald Trumps closest advisors on trade, said the U.S. will continue to take a hard line on its proposals just as the fifth round of the increasingly bitter talks continued later that week in Mexico City.

Ross went on to report that the [NAFTA] negotiating environment has only grown more difficult as a result of industries like ag that have voiced a greater level of concern over the direction the administration is taking in the 2.0 talks.

The Commerce chief was right; ag has voiced great concern over the direction the White House had taken in talks with two of the nations largest farm and food trading partners, Mexico and Canada.

So concerned, in fact, that three weeks before the Journal gathering, 85 farm-affiliated businesses and groups  from Deere & Co. to the Pet Food Institute  had sent a sternly-worded letter to Ross calling into question his recent observation that there is not a world of oversupply of agricultural products.

The letter also reminded Ross of the Trump Administrations worrisome talk of leaving NAFTA, a deal that accounted for an estimated 28 percent of all U.S. ag exports ($39 billion out of $140.5 billion) in the 2017 ag trade year. Had Ross and the President forgotten that just a year ago, candidate Trumps initiative to modernize NAFTA contained a do no harm pledge to American food and agriculture sectors?

Withdrawing from NAFTA  even the suggestion of withdrawal  the letter warned, would cause immediate, substantial harm to American farmers, ranchers, and the U.S. economy as a whole.

If Ross received the letter, he didnt heed it. He again complained about agriculture to the Journal audience when asked about NAFTA. As one special interest group, say agriculture, for example, gets nervous, the Commerce secretary whined, they start screaming and yelling publicly. They start writing letters, soliciting the Congress people, and they start screaming and yelling in public.

And, good grief, an exasperated Ross added, all this public participation just complicates the environment and, frankly, makes the negotiations harder.

Yeah, thats the trouble with democracy. A government of, for, and by the people involves  believe it or not  people. Some, like Ross, are rich; others are poor. Some are powerful; others weak. Some are well informed; others completely ignorant.

All, however, were created equal no matter the amount of money in their back pocket or the number of politicians in their vest pocket. We are equal even if we are the ones screaming and yelling publicly or on the receiving end of the screams and yells.

And, sure, democratic government would be speedier and less messy if we the public sat in silence while the plutocrats and autocrats run it.

But the Founders didnt envision a government where individual wealth or personal power were paramount. Instead, they created a government that empowered all people: E pluribas unam, out of many, one. Those many include everyone  billionaires and poets, plumbers and teachers, bankers and, yes, even yellers. Everyone.

Their reason was elegantly simple. If plutocrat billionaires  and even former plutocrat billionaires like Ross  dominated American government, the United States wouldnt be a democratic republic that empowers people; it would be a banana republic owned solely by the powerful.

We are those people, all of us, including Ross. We are the public in public debate, public policy, and public accountability. We are, in fact, the public in republic.

Truly successful leaders live this idea from birth; fools die never knowing it.
North Korea has appointed a senior communist party official as its new state security chief as part of leader Kim Jong-un's reign of terror aimed at preventing potential challenges to his power, a news report said Saturday.



Kim picked Jong Kyong-thaek, a member of the central military committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, to be the minister of state security, according to the Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper. It cited multiple sources with information on North Korea.



Kim Won-hong, a top officer in the North's military, was reportedly removed from the post earlier this year.



The replacement is in line with Kim's practice of blocking certain aides or organizations from building up too much authority, it added.



Last month, the Institute for National Security Strategy, which is affiliated with South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS), raised the possibility that Jong might have replaced Kim Won-hong.



Another Japanese newspaper, Tokyo Shimbun, reported that Kim has been sent to a collective farm in Pyongyang as a worker.



The NIS told lawmakers in Seoul earlier this week that the North is conducting an inspection of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army.



Hwang Pyong-so, the bureau's chief, and Kim Won-hong, who also served as its deputy chief, were punished for "impure" acts, it added.



Choe Ryong-hae, the vice chairman of the party's central committee, has reportedly led the purge. (Yonhap)




By You Soo-sun





Kim Tae-hoon, Country Representative Ethiopia Country Office Korea Foundation for International Healthcare (KOFIH) / Courtesy of Kim Tae-hoon

In search for meaning, Kim Tae-hoon, 43, left his profession as a surgeon in Korea and went to Ethiopia with his wife and three little boys.



Although the decision has taken him away from one of the most revered jobs in the country and from one of its largest hospitals, Kim says the heart of his work in Ethiopia is still the same: saving lives.



"It was not so much about leaving my job as a surgeon but a decision that would allow me to take on a more effective role out of the many things a doctor can do," Kim told The Korea Times.





Since 2013, he has led various health programs under the Korea Foundation for International Healthcare (KOFIH) in the rapidly developing, yet still one of the poorest countries in East Africa.

There, he oversees four main projects aimed at improving its health sector: mother and child health, the healthcare insurance system, medical device system management and pediatric heart surgery.

The last one is focused on establishing a team of competent Ethiopian pediatric heart surgeons, Kim explained.

"Over 100 million people live in this vast land, and yet there is not a single hospital capable of conducting this surgery," Kim said. "For three years now, doctors from the Seoul National University in Korea and Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia have been collaborating to train a team here for this purpose. We have already seen some major accomplishments in some areas."

And in all of the projects he is leading, he stressed his colleagues are involved every step of the way, constantly challenging themselves and working together to come up with ideas.

He said the best part of his work is when he is able to confirm the friendship and trust he has established with the people there. It's also when he sees his Ethiopian colleagues whole-heartedly taking part in these programs.

"One surgeon here told me that it's a miracle a group of surgeons from Korea came to this place to help them. The same person also went to Korea for training, and everyone was surprised by just how passionate he was about learning. He would stay in the intensive care unit until midnight and tend to the patients there, taking in much as he can," Kim said. "It's a blessing to see opportunities going to those who are prepared, and to be able to be witness those moments first hand. "

Kim explained his life in Ethiopia is very different from the one he had in his home country. "I am always surprised by how different things are, how vastly different the worlds people live in are," Kim said. "People would say wherever people live are all the same, but I think that's not true at all."

What he enjoys most about living in Ethiopia is the relationship he is able to have with the people around him. "In Korea, I was so busy with work that I wasn't able to establish deep relationships with those that I should truly love and care about. Now, I have meaningful relationships with them and this is what gives me a great sense of happiness and fulfillment," he said.

"Of course the kids do miss toys, snacks, and ice cream that are not readily available here, but they are very satisfied with school and the freedom they have. I'm also grateful we are able to share much more laughter and tears together here than when we were back in Korea."

Kim believes that more people should explore outside of Korea.

"Korea is too small of a place for Koreans now, especially the younger generations. I would encourage them to reach out the world with all the potentials they have."
President Moon Jae-in talks to Natsuo Yamaguchi, president of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's coalition partner the Komeito party, at Cheong Wa Dae, Thursday. / Yonhap



By Jun Ji-hye



President Moon Jae-in reiterated his negative stance on carrying out trilateral military drills between South Korea, the United States and Japan, Thursday, during his meeting with a Japanese party leader at Cheong Wa Dae.



Sitting down with Natsuo Yamaguchi, president of Komeito, Moon said, "It is necessary to stably manage the situation to prevent tension from being excessively heightened."



Komeito is in a coalition with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party led by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.



According to presidential spokesman Park Soo-hyun, Moon made such remarks while mentioning measures to better cope with evolving threats from North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.



The comments were construed as Moon indirectly reaffirming his existing position that opposed the formation of a trilateral military alliance with the U.S. and Japan. Moon expressed a similar position, Nov. 3, during his interview with the Singapore-based English-language news network CAN.



During his meeting with the Japanese politician, Moon said Seoul has been making efforts to resolve the North's threats peacefully and diplomatically.



"South Korea and Japan, as well as South Korea, Japan and the United States, have been keenly cooperating with the international community to exert maximum pressure on North Korea to bring it to the negotiating table," Moon said.



Tokyo and Washington are reportedly hoping to expand the scope of trilateral exercises with Seoul, and eventually form a trilateral military alliance in an apparent bid to better deter the North's threats and hold China in check.



Japan's Nihon Geizai Shimbun reported Nov. 12 that the United States suggested holding trilateral naval exercises when three U.S. aircraft carriers were sent to waters near the Korean Peninsula. The newspaper said Japan welcomed the proposal, but such exercises did not take place due to opposition from South Korea.



The Moon government's hesitation is due in part to anti-Japanese sentiment still running strong in South Korea over Tokyo's atrocities while Korea was under Japan's colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.



Yamaguchi told Moon the Japanese people have been anxious as the North flew its ballistic missiles over Japan twice this year, according to Park.



"It is important for the international community to be united to pressure North Korea and change its attitude," Yamaguchi said. "I hope the unity of the international community could lead to a diplomatic and peaceful resolution of the North Korean issues."



Moon also told Yamaguchi Seoul can learn a lot from Tokyo about earthquake-related issues, referring to the South Korean city of Pohang, which was hit by a magnitude 5.4 earthquake last week.



"I wish the two nations can more actively cooperate in dealing with disasters," Moon said.



President Moon also called on the two sides to expand personnel exchanges on the occasion of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.




Egyptians gather around ambulances following a gun and bombing attack on the Rawda mosque near the North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish on Nov. 24, 2017. Armed attackers killed at least 235 worshippers in a bomb and gun assault on the packed mosque in Egypt's restive North Sinai province, in the country's deadliest attack in recent memory. / AFP-Yonhap

Head of the Egyptian Press Syndicate Diaa Rashwan, briefs the press on the militant attack that sprayed worshippers with gunfire and explosions and killing at least 235 people in the Sinai Peninsula, during a press conference, in Cairo, Egypt, Nov. 24. / AP-Yonhap



South Korea on Saturday strongly denounced a terrorist attack in Egypt that killed more than 200 people.

"Our government conveys a message of deep condolences to the victims, their bereaved families, and the Egyptian government and people, and wishes a quick recovery to the injured," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

It stressed that terrorism could never be justified for any reason, adding that South Korea will continue to participate in efforts to root it out.

The ministry was responding to the latest terror attack at a mosque in North Sinai province, which led to the death of at least 235 worshipers.

It said there were no reports of any South Korean victims so far. (Yonhap)
Students take the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) at a high school in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, Thursday morning. / Yonhap



By Kim Bo-eun



A total of 593,000 students took the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) nationwide Thursday after a one-week delay caused by a 5.4-magnitude quake that hit the southeastern city of Pohang Nov. 15.



Due to continued aftershocks _ with a 2.0-magnitude one occurring the night before _ the test was held with an emergency response system in place. Only a slight 1.7 magnitude tremor which was not felt at test sites occurred.



In Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, 5,523 students took the test with buses on standby to take them to sites in adjacent areas if a strong aftershock occurred.



Fire and police officers, rescue workers, a doctor and counselor were stationed at each of the sites.



Eleven students feeling psychologically unstable due to the quake last week took the test at a separate site, after signing up in advance.



The test sites had psychiatrists and counselors on standby.



A central disaster response team was on duty at the Pohang Office of Education.



Although the test ended without damage, the absentee rate of test-takers was the highest yet at 9.48 percent _ presumed to be due to earthquake concerns.






Police caught Saturday an unidentified man who infiltrated into an apartment home of Chung Yoo-ra, above, in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, and stabbed a man inside. / Yonhap



By Ko Dong-hwan

The daughter of Choi Soon-sil, the high-profile confidant of former President Park Geun-hye, avoided possibly being murdered Saturday as police caught a man who had broken into into her home with the alleged intention of killing her.

Chung Yoo-ra, 21, saw a man, identified by his surname Lee, 44, break into her home in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, around 3 p.m.

Lee threatened a security guard at the entrance of her apartment building and forced him to lead him to her suite. Entering her home, he stabbed a man inside.

Police received a report about the break-in and stabbing and arrived at the scene, where they grabbed Lee. The unidentified victim was taken to a hospital where he received a treatment.

During police questioning Lee confessed that he has a monetary issue with Chung.

Chung is suspected of gaining entrance to Ewha Womans University with the help of her mother, Choi, who abused her influence with Park to influence university officials, including the school's president, to enroll her daughter. Chung was admitted to the school as an equestrian in 2015 over other candidates who had better credentials, according to an investigation by the Ministry of Education.

Chung was investigated for entering the school illegally but avoided prosecution.
By Robert Skidelsky





LONDON  Sociology, anthropology, and history have been making large inroads into the debate on immigration. It seems that Homo economicus , who lives for bread alone, has given way to someone for whom a sense of belonging is at least as important as eating.



This makes one doubt that hostility to mass immigration is simply a protest against job losses, depressed wages, and growing inequality. Economics has certainly played a part in the upsurge of identity politics, but the crisis of identity will not be expunged by economic reforms alone. Economic welfare is not the same as social wellbeing.



Let's start, though, with the economics, using the United Kingdom ? now heading out of the EU ? as a case in point. Between 1991 and 2013 there was a net inflow of 4.9 million foreign-born migrants into Britain.



Standard economic theory tells us that net inward migration, like free trade, benefits the native population only after a lag. The argument here is that if you increase the quantity of labor, its price (wages) falls. This will increase profits. The increase in profits leads to more investment, which will increase demand for labor, thereby reversing the initial fall in wages. Immigration thus enables a larger population to enjoy the same standard of living as the smaller population did before a clear improvement in total welfare.



A recent study by Cambridge University economist Robert Rowthorn , however, has shown that this argument is full of holes. The so-called temporary effects in terms of displaced native workers and lower wages may last five or ten years, while the beneficial effects assume an absence of recession. And, even with no recession, if there is a continuing inflow of migrants, rather than a one-off increase in the size of the labor force, demand for labor may constantly lag behind growth in supply. The "claim that immigrants take jobs from local workers and push down their wages," Rowthorn argues, "may be exaggerated, but it is not always false."



A second economic argument is that immigration will rejuvenate the labor force and stabilize public finances, because young, imported workers will generate the taxes required to support a rising number of pensioners. The UK population is projected to surpass 70 million before the end of the next decade, an increase of 3.6 million, or 5.5%, owing to net immigration and a surplus of births over deaths among the newcomers.



Rowthorn dismisses this argument. "Rejuvenation through immigration is an endless treadmill," he says. "To maintain a once-and-for-all reduction in the dependency ratio requires a never-ending stream of immigrants. Once the inflow stops, the age structure will revert to its original trajectory." A lower inflow and a higher retirement age would be a much better solution to population aging.



Thus, even with optimal outcomes, like the avoidance of recession, the economic arguments for large-scale immigration are hardly conclusive. So the crux of the matter is really its social impact. Here, the familiar benefit of diversity confronts the downside risk of a loss of social cohesion.



David Goodhart, former editor of the journal Prospect, has argued the case for restriction from a social democratic perspective . Goodhart takes no position on whether cultural diversity is intrinsically or morally good or bad. He simply takes it for granted that most people prefer to live with their own kind, and that policymakers must attend to this preference. A laissez-faire attitude to the composition of a country's population is as untenable as indifference to its size.



For Goodhart, the taproot of liberals' hostility to migration controls is their individualist view of society. Failing to comprehend people's attachment to settled communities, they label hostility to immigration irrational or racist.



Liberal over-optimism about the ease of integrating migrants stems from the same source: if society is no more than a collection of individuals, integration is a non-issue. Of course, says Goodhart, immigrants do not have to abandon their traditions completely, but "there is such a thing as society," and if they make no effort to join it, native citizens will find it hard to consider them part of the "imagined community."



A too-rapid inflow of immigrants weakens bonds of solidarity, and, in the long run, erodes the affective ties required to sustain the welfare state. "People will always favor their own families and communities," Goodhart argues , and "it is the task of a realistic liberalism to strive for a definition of community that is wide enough to include people from many different backgrounds, without being so wide as to become meaningless."



Economic and political liberals are bedfellows in championing unrestricted immigration. Economic liberals view national frontiers as irrational obstacles to the global integration of markets. Many political liberals regard nation-states and the loyalties they inspire as obstacles to the wider political integration of humanity. Both appeal to moral obligations that stretch far beyond nations' cultural and physical boundaries.



At issue is the oldest debate in the social sciences. Can communities be created by politics and markets, or do they presuppose a prior sense of belonging?



It seems to me that anyone who thinks about such matters is bound to agree with Goodhart that citizenship, for most people, is something they are born into. Values are grown from a specific history and geography. If the make-up of a community is changed too fast, it cuts people adrift from their own history, rendering them rootless. Liberals' anxiety not to appear racist hides these truths from them. An explosion of what is now called populism is the inevitable result.



The policy conclusion to be drawn is banal, but worth restating. A people's tolerance for change and adaptation should not be strained beyond its limits, different though these will be in different countries. Specifically, immigration should not be pressed too far, because it will be sure to ignite hostility. Politicians who fail to "control the borders" do not deserve their people's trust.





Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University. Copyright belongs to Project Syndicate.


On July 27 and 28, President Moon Jae-in met with top executives of the 15 largest family-run conglomerates for the first time since he took office in May.



There was a featured guest. The CEO of Ottogi  a midsize business group and Korea's second-largest instant noodle maker  attended the event. The reason: the food maker marked the lowest ratio of non-regular workers at 1.16 percent, compared with the average of 40.7 percent among companies with 5,000 employees or more.



The meager contribution made by the nation's largest chaebol to creating jobs has remained unchanged or even aggravated, government data showed.



According to Statistics Korea, Tuesday, the number of employed people totaled 23.23 million last year, up only 220,000 from 2015. While small and midsize enterprises added 319,000 new jobs, large companies and nonprofit firms cut the number by 85,000 and 16,000, respectively.



The state statistics agency attributed the fall of hiring by big businesses to the massive restructuring of the shipping and shipbuilding sectors as well as an overall slump in the manufacturing industry. The drop of new employment by large conglomerates is a bad sign for President Moon's priority policy to increase the number of decent jobs.



However, it has long ceased to be news that revenue soars but jobs fall among chaebol affiliates. According to CEO SCORE, a chaebol watch group, the operating profits of the subsidiaries of the 30 largest chaebol in the first half of this year jumped 48 percent from a year ago to 53.1 trillion won ($48.3 billion). Their combined employment, however, dropped 0.4 percent to 963,580, over the cited period.



The government is right in this regard to move toward far bolder cut-downs of administrative red tape to encourage big businesses shy of making new investments.



Also welcome is the latest decision by the Ministry of Employment and Labor to make it mandatory for large companies to disclose their employment pattern and payment system regularly.



Business associations and media outlets accuse the move of excessive pressurization on the private sector.



Carrot and stick should go together if a policy is to get anywhere, and this applies to the attempt to rectify selfish acts by chaebol.








Moon shows resolve on crackdown of workplace offenses



Recently, there have been many media reports of sexual offenses at workplaces in various sectors.



Hallym University Medical Center came under fire last week for its alleged inappropriate treatment of some of its nurses during an annual talent show in September. A video of the show, where the nurses were dancing in revealing clothes, went viral on YouTube. Some nurses complained on a Facebook page that they were pressured to take part in the event.



The Hallym case stirred controversy after other sexual harassment cases at big companies made headlines earlier this month. A new female employee at Hanssem, the nation's largest furniture company, raised accusations of rape and sexual harassment in an online community. A female contract worker with Hyundai Card also raised accusations of sexual assault.



There has also been some very disturbing news on sexual crimes against women in the military and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Several Korean embassies abroad have come under fire for allegations of sexual assaults by diplomats. In May, a female lieutenant committed suicide after she was reportedly raped by a superior.



President Moon Jae-in has taken notice of the series of sex crimes against women, voicing during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday his resolve to crack down on workplace offenses. "I can clearly say that the heads of public agencies will be held responsible for not dealing sternly with sexual violence," Moon said.



In Korea, there is a widespread culture of silencing victims of sexual harassment. Moon mentioned a survey by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family that showed almost 80 percent of victims choose not to make an issue out of what they went through. Many said they chose to remain quiet about the abuse because they felt that raising the issue would not help resolve the situation. Some victims are also afraid to speak out for fear of facing disadvantages at work or additional violence from the perpetrators.



The status of Korean women has improved and more are entering the workforce, but they continue to face widespread workplace sexual harassment. The main problem is many workplaces still retain a very lax attitude toward sexual harassment. For example, Hyundai Card allegedly tried to brush off the sexual harassment allegations as "a private matter between two people in a relationship."



It is time for workplaces to get rid of the shameless perceptions that sexual harassment is not a grave issue and that it is okay to degrade and abuse women.



Laws need to be enforced to make it mandatory for all workplaces to conduct education on sexual harassment prevention and levy heavy punishment on bosses who neglect to deal strictly with in-house sexual violence.








This has been a very challenging year for Hawkeye Harvest Food Bank. The demand for the emergency food that we provide has been very strong. This past year we provided enough food to make 267,480 meals. That enabled us to help 10,402 families and a total of 22,290 people.

This last fiscal year are clients were 46 percent male and 54 percent female.

Also 39 percent of those we helped were under 17, 32 percent are 18-40, 26 percent are 41-64, and 3 percent are 65 or older.

A total of 637,691 pounds of food, 97,600 pounds of bread and sweets, and 12,088 pounds of non-food items (soap, toilet paper, toothbrushes and toothpaste) were given out to those who visited Hawkeye Harvest Food Bank.

We also distributed 11,481 half-gallons of milk to our families and individuals.

Our emergency food provided enough food to make meals for four days for individuals and families from 60 communities within the 10 counties in North Iowa, with 75.94 percent of those served being from Cerro Gordo County.

All who come to Hawkeye Harvest Food bank must provide proof of residency and proof of income. Clients can come once each month to get their four days of food.

Your tax deductible donation helps us buy the food and non perishables that we give out each day to individuals and families in need. Hawkeye Harvest Food Bank is a 100 percent volunteer organization. A donation of $25 will purchase enough food to make over 40 meals. A $50 donation provides enough food for approximately 80 meals, and $100 will help us purchase enough food for about 160 meals.

There are no paid staff members. Our 137 volunteers gave 11,624 hours of their time so your donation is used strictly for the purchase of food with a small amount used to maintain our facility at 122 S. Adams.

Your financial donations go a long ways with Hawkeye Harvest Food Bank. We are able to purchase the majority of our food items from the Food Bank of Iowa. Those items are purchased for $0.14 a pound, so that really stretches our donations.

Not everything can be purchased from the Food Bank of Iowa, and our local grocery stores really help us out too. They provide us with substantial discounts on those very large orders for any items that are not available from the Food Bank of Iowa. Local and area food processors have also been very generous to us with their year-round donations of meat and eggs.

This year, it is even more critical that those who gave last year do so again, and for anyone who hasn't donated in the past, I encourage you to help us this holiday season.

Numerous individuals, families, schools, churches, clubs, organizations, businesses and industries provide additional support during the year with food collections and donations. In May, we do help Stamp Out Hunger. That's been so crucial for us during the summer months when donations drop rather dramatically. Those too are very important because they provide us with items usually not available from the Food Bank of Iowa.

For those of you who are unable to make a financial donation, you might be able to donate food. Our largest needs right now are cream of mushroom soup, cream of chicken soup, chicken noodle soup, stuffing, toilet paper, rice and diced tomatoes.

Another way that you could help Hawkeye Harvest Food Bank is to become one of our volunteers. We really need volunteers to help our clients from 1-4 any afternoon from Monday through Friday. A very short training is required.

Our goal, for this holiday season is $25,000. That's an increase of $5,000 from last year. Please help us realize this season's goal.
Gordon Ramsay



By Oh Young-jin



Michelin star-studded chef Gordon Ramsay left with one pledge unfulfilled.



Ramsay vowed to give a kick to the British journalist who had dismissed the taste of Korean beer in disagreement with the chef's positive "beer of the people" review.



There is no indication that the two met during Ramsay's short visit to Seoul this week for the filming of a reality show and promotion of Cass, Korea's top-selling beer from OB, a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev, the Belgian multinational.



Therefore, there had been little chance that physical contact between the two had taken place. The journalist in this case is Daniel Tudor, who wrote that now-famous article, "Fiery food, boring beer," as a correspondent for the Economist magazine in 2012. He no longer works for the magazine and instead advises the presidential office thanks in no small part to his boring beer article.



I phoned up Cass and asked how the Ramsay promotion went. A spokesman sullenly (it could be an affectation) said that it could have gone better, if the hadn't Guardian spoilt it (he didn't mention the publication specifically).



If Ramsay and Tudor sought to settle their beer dispute by force, here is a chaser. The two may have said the same thing with a slightly different twist in flavor.



About Tudor's article that is now five years ripe, he unwittingly complimented Korea's beers if it is taken in the context of yin and yang. Would you have fiery food with fiery beer (I don't believe that there is such a thing as fiery beer)?



The gist of the Tudor article was not about the taste of the beer but more about the duopoly of the Korean beer market  Cass vs. Hite. Still, the two dominate with a little bigger presence of imported beers. Whether it was his call or his editor's call, that article had a hot-button element that never fails to get Koreans excited  North Korea. He claimed in the article that the North's Taedonggang Beer was better than Cass.



Tudor couldn't be a fair judge  as he revealed in the article, it was made with British help. So here was a Brit home away from home who tasted the taste of home. Victory hands down was preordained, wasn't it? Then, he went into beer business with his purpose being one of the following three: giving his "real beer taste" to Koreans, making a fortune or both.



Now five years later, an invitation is long overdue  asking Tudor whether he stands by his observation. By now, he has been more accustomed to Korean cuisine  no longer surprised by the Korean delicacy of chopped live small octopus wriggling in sesame oil with finely minced scallion.



Let's consider what Ramsay said. "When I have Korean food, I don't look for a wine list with the most expensive beer to go with it. I want a beer that's easy, fresh, and something I can drink without having to show off. I think that was the important thing." In other words, Cass, the Korean beer, fits Korean food. So are British beers for fish and chips.



So Ramsay as a chef spoke articulately about the complementary role of food and drinks. Tudor caught the drift of it and fell short of saying it in a complete sentence, so to speak.



Now what does the Guardian article leave those anonymous Cass naysayers and Ramsay haters? Were they all British? Or did they include anti-Cass fifth columns recruited from its rival Hite? I wouldn't want to know.



There are a couple of afterthoughts.



One is about Ramsay stirring the pot to give us better drink for thought: Is one drink necessarily better than the other? Does insisting on as such a make one a yokel? When will Koreans overcome a tendency to believe what they are told and act as if they are part of a herd?



Back to the taste of Cass, it is not a Korean beer. Jinro, Korea's top distiller, had production operations for the popular liquor soju and beer made with the help of Coors, the U.S. brewery. When it went bankrupt, it sold in parts  Jinro to Hite and Cass to OB, which is now under the Belgian multinational. True, Cass has developed over the years more to Koreans' liking. But it was originally born as American pale lager. So Ramsay was both right and wrong when he complimented Cass. The Cass spokesman said that his company didn't pay a large sum to Ramsay  the usual sum for a celebrity plugging.



Was it a British-American battle under the guise of Cass bashing? Last time they fought, it was about tea. Surely, what you drink is what you are?



Oh Young-jin ( foolsdie5@ktimes.com, foolsdie@gmail.com ) is The Korea Times' chief editorial writer.


This hotel development scenario just keeps getting more interesting.

The "bid off" Monday between G8 Development and Gatehouse Mason City is like an auction-in-reverse. Instead of the prize going to the highest bidder, this one will go to the lowest -- to the developer who provides the best deal for the city by chipping away at its previous bid.

The two developers will compete via conference call Monday morning, each getting up to a half-hour intervals to try to outdo the other for a period of not more than three hours. Then Monday night, the City Council will decide on a winner.

So, a process that started almost four years ago when Phillip Chodur of G8 first proposed a Hilton hotel in the parking lot next to City Hall, now is to be decided within a few hours on Monday.

Quick review: Chodur first approached the city about building a Hilton hotel -- but couldn't get a franchise agreement from Hilton. He came back to the city with a proposal to build a Marriott -- but was unable to meet deadlines for starting construction. He defaulted on the development agreement so the city sought other developers. Chodur then sued the city.

Gatehouse emerged as the new developer with its plan to build a hotel in the Southbridge parking lot, connect it to The Music Man Square via a skywalk and build a conference center in The Music Man Square.

The city and Gatehouse went back and forth on a development agreement. The end product, complete with changes Gatehouse wanted, was so different than the original that the city had to provide a 30-day period in which other developers could submit proposals.

And guess who showed up? G8 Development, the company that is suing the city. Hence, the bid off.

Chodur says he'll drop his lawsuit if the council approves his plan. Gatehouse supporters say this is bribery.

Gary Schmit of Henkel Construction and Steve Noto of HPI Hospitality have both spoken in favor of G8. Though both raise valid points, they have vested interests. G8 wants Henkel to do the construction and for HPI to manage the hotel if G8's plan is picked.

Emotions ran high at Tuesday's council meeting. Dalena Barz, who is with the Mason City Foundation, which oversees The Music Man Square, said the foundation has a memorandum of understanding with Gatehouse. "We have no intention of doing any business with G8," she said.

But Mayor Eric Bookmeyer said the memorandum would be of no significance in the competitive bidding process.

Barz also said she thought the Iowa Economic Development Authority, which could award the city up to $10 million, doesn't want to see any more changes in the city's proposal.

But Director of Development Services Steven Van Steenhuyse said the state understands how the process works.

Elizabeth Allison, executive director of The Music Man Square, pointed out voters gave a 75 percent "mandate" to ballot issues related to the Gatehouse plan.

But Bookmeyer pointed out the vote on Nov. 7 was on two issues -- not one project.

When the council voted to have the bid off, Bill Schickel voted against it, agreeing that the 75 percent vote was decisive and that the state might not look favorably on more changes.

Two thoughts summarize the differences of opinion.

Councilman Travis Hickey said taxpayers can't lose; they're going to come out of this with a better deal.

And then there's businessman Dan Latham, who helped bring Gatehouse to Mason City. He told the council, "Don't mess this up."

Good advice, whichever way the vote goes.
PRESS RELEASE

Enthusiasm on Belt and Road at China-Latin America Productive Capacity Forum in Beijing

Nov. 24, 2017 (EIRNS)At a Beijing forum on China-Latin America Investment Productive Capacity Cooperation, held on Nov. 22, there was enthusiastic endorsement of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by the many Ibero-American and Caribbean participants, representing Jamaica, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, and Cuba, Xinhua reported Nov. 22. Officials from two Chinese companies also attended the conference, sponsored by the China Overseas Development Association.

Zhang Zhenxi, Vice President of the China Overseas Development Association, noted in his speech that Chinese non-financial direct investment in Latin-America grew by 40% in 2016 over the previous year, adding that he was sure that this will continue to increase. "The Belt and Road Initiative... offers a unique development perspective," he said, "which has great significance for the improvement of infrastructure in Latin American countries."

The Latin American participants expressed a desire to see more Chinese investment in their countries, and stronger bilateral cooperation in the framework of the BRI. Uruguays ambassador to China, Fernando Lugris, offered details on his countrys strong bilateral ties with China, and announced that in the future "well promote relations with China under the Belt and Road Initiative, encouraging economic cooperation even further." Note that the Uruguayans have been organizing for months for the large Nov. 30-Dec. 2 China-Latin America-Caribbean Business Forum, taking place in Punta del Este, Uruguay, at which Latin Americas participation in the Belt and Road will be a key topic of discussion.

Felipe Aguayo, head of the ProMexico government trade office, said many Chinese companies are beginning to invest in Mexico because it offers favorable conditions. As for the BRI, he said, "Mexico is very interested. We want to participate in that initiative. We think it is a great opportunity." Andreas Pierotic, from the Chilean embassy in Beijing, underscored that for Chile, as well as for the rest of Latin America, "the Belt and Road has profound significance," and noted that last year, when Xi Jinping attended the APEC summit in Lima,

"he invited Latin America to become part of this great initiative of trade connectivity, infrastructure, finances, think tanks and people-to-people"

cooperation. He noted that recent agreement to expand the Chile-China Free Trade Agreement, signed by Xi and President Michelle Bachelet, reflects "the deepening of trade connectivity in the context of the Belt and Road."
PRESS RELEASE

United Syrian Opposition Delegation Will Negotiate without Preconditions

Nov. 24, 2017 (EIRNS)The Syrian oppositions High Negotiations Committee (HNC) was today choosing a delegation representing all factions, to negotiate "without preconditions" in Geneva on Nov. 28, as demanded by the trio of Russia, Turkey, and Iran, and by UN Special Representative Staffan de Mistura. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has said that the Saudis had helped Russia to unify the oppositiona unity which was facilitated by the resignation of the HNCs head, hard-liner Riyad Hijab, earlier this week.

The head of the oppositions Cairo Group, Firas al-Khalidi, denied reports that the Cairo and Moscow groups had withdrawn from the meeting, saying that there had been a technical dispute which has now been resolved, Anadolu Agency and others report from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where the roughly 140 delegates have been meeting for two days.

Although the HNCs majority position is that Bashar Assad must step down "at the beginning of the transition," this is not expected to be a barrier to negotiations.

Meanwhile, on the plane returning to Turkey from his summit in Russia with the Russian and Iranian presidents, Turkeys President Erdogan told a journalist from Hurriyet that he would not necessarily exclude meeting with Bashar Assad on the Kurdish issue in the future, although there is no contact at present.

"It is not appropriate to have an understanding of saying no way at all" he said. "The doors of politics are always open until the last moment."
If factory farms are so safe, why are the pork producers filing suit to block having to report when the toxic gases hydrogen sulfide and ammonia emitted from hog confinements are more than 100 pounds per day? All counties in Iowa now have either poor or very poor air quality, according to a recent EPA air quality map.

Factory farms are exempt from the Clean Air Act even though they produce large quantities of toxic emissions that have been proven to harm human health in multiple scientific and medical studies. With thousands of factory farms/CAFOs in Iowa that have little or no public health or environmental regulation, it's time to clean up our state so our grandchildren will inherit a state safe and pleasant to live in. That starts with a moratorium on new CAFOs until regulations can be developed to protect our most precious resource...our children.

Clean air and clean water are prerequisites for good health. Contact your legislators and Gov. Reynolds and let them know what the majority of Iowans value, and that if they don't agree with us, they will be sent home.

Joan Olive, Spirit Lake
QUESTION: I live in a three-bedroom, three-bath home with a homeowner association. I leased a single room to a friend and asked the HOA to provide a parking permit so he could park in the community. It declined to issue the permit, saying the rental constituted commercial use of my real property, which is disallowed under the CC&Rs.

This is not an Airbnb situation, nor is it a revolving door rental. It is long term. Ive read Civil Code section 4740 and relevant case law, which seem to define commercial use as something other than a sole tenant who is a friend you eat meals with, but is there anything legally definitive that answers this quandary?

ANSWER: The law is fairly well-settled in this area: Almost any use of your home for money could constitute a commercial use. Included in this definition is rental of a single room to someone for payment  whether or not they are your friend. The amount of money they pay you may determine the need for certain registrations or taxes, but the determining factor is the payment of money, not a previous relationship with your tenant.

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As you have seen, Civil Code section 4740 directly addresses regulations of rental restrictions on homes within common-interest developments. The bottom line is that an owner shall not be subject to such restrictions in governing documents unless it was effective prior to the date the owner acquired title to his or her separate interest.

Therefore, if this restriction were in place at the time you purchased your property, then the rental will be prohibited. If the restriction was passed after you purchased, then it likely wont apply to you.

The matter was litigated when a La Jolla homeowner association sued an owner for breach of the CC&Rs for renting rooms in his four-bedroom home after complaints about parking issues and a loud party. The renters included a cousin, who stayed just two months, and five others who were there as long as two years. Each renter entered into a separate lease with the owner.

In the case, Colony Hill vs. Ghamaty, the associations CC&Rs stated that each property shall be used and occupied for private, single-family dwelling purposes only and not be used for any commercial purpose whatsoever. However, the documents also gave each owner the right to lease his lot as long as they did not enter into separate leases for each individually rented room.

Because Ghamaty had rented or leased to multiple occupants, the board decided it was a commercial enterprise. A lower court ruled in the associations favor, and the California Court of Appeal upheld the decision in 2006. It found that the rentals implied the home no longer was being used for single-family purposes. It also said that considered on a larger scale, such rentals could destroy the single-family character of Colony Hill.

The citys municipal code allowed home rentals to multiple parties but the court found that under the CC&Rs, an owner could lease his entire unit to several tenants at the same time only if these tenants function as an integrated economic unit. It defined the term integrated economic unit in part by the issuance of only one lease whereby all tenants are jointly and severally responsible for all obligations under that same lease, including the rent.

The justices found that because of the separate leases, Ghamaty and the renters did not function as an integrated economic unit. One of the negative implications of having several different renters occurred when there were complaints about loud parties and parking problems at Ghamatys home. As a result of having different renters over a period of time, no one specific renter took responsibility for correcting the problem that the tenancy created.

The courts opinion does not ban rentals, nor does it prevent an owner from renting his or her entire property to an individual, or even a large family under one lease. It should be noted that not all governing documents and boards, for that matter, impose rules identical to those at Colony Hill. Owners in common-interest developments are cautioned to familiarize themselves with their deed restrictions well prior to purchase and before renting out any portion of their property. In your situation, there is a room lease in addition to your occupancy as an owner, destroying the integrated economic unit doctrine.

If you live in Los Angeles, Municipal Code section 21.43 outlines the citys position on renting your home, or a room in your home: It is not barred but is considered a commercial enterprise. In addition to complying with any requirements for commercial leasing imposed by your association, you also may be required to register with the Housing Department, obtain a business license and register for a tax certificate.

Zachary Levine, a partner at Wolk & Levine, a business and intellectual property law firm, co-wrote this column. Vanitzian is an arbitrator and mediator. Send questions to Donie Vanitzian, JD, P.O. Box 10490, Marina del Rey, CA 90295 ornoexit@mindspring.com
Macys had hoped for a rush of shoppers on Black Friday. But it appears the crowds were too much of a good thing.

Macys credit card payment system buckled due to a higher than anticipated volume of transactions, the retailer said, leading to delays that slowed the checkout process at department stores around the country Friday.

The Cincinnati retailer said in a statement that the issue caused some transactions to take longer to process. Tweets by the department store to customers specified the issue affected credit and gift card transactions.

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Macys said Friday afternoon that it had fully resolved todays system issues and that it did not anticipate any additional delays.

Customers at the Macys at Westside Pavilion said the credit card payment issues forced them to either pay for their purchases with cash or come back at a later time.

Consuela Amaya, 55, of Los Angeles, was buying shoes and clothes for her daughters at Macys around 10 a.m. when the cashier said her Macys card had been rejected. After a different credit card also failed, her daughter, Danely Amaya, 18, said they just paid cash and left.

Dhruv Iyer, 19, was in line to purchase shirts around 1 p.m. when it became clear that there were payment issues. A cashier told him that the store could put a hold on his card and charge him for his purchase two weeks from now, but Iyer declined. His credit card was eventually cleared.

Macys Chief Executive Jeff Gennette told CNBC earlier Friday morning that online and in-store traffic on Thanksgiving and Black Friday were strong.

Good start to the whole Black Friday shopping season, he said in the CNBC interview.

Macys stock closed at $21.07, up 2.1%.

samantha.masunaga@latimes.com

Twitter: @smasunaga
A computer error caused Delta Air Lines to offer super-low fares a few years ago that were up to 90% below regular prices, including a $35 one-way ticket from Raleigh, N.C., to Philadelphia.

The Atlanta-based carrier caught the mistake within a few hours but not before the cheap flights were booked by some lucky travelers.

A travel website announced this week that it is adding a service that can look for and display errors that lead to extremely low fares.

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Cheapflightsfinder.com said it can find error fares by tracking the lowest fares on over 1,200 sources and then comparing those prices with the price for the same flights on other search engines.

The website, based in Britain, said it has already found several super-cheap deals, including a round trip from San Francisco to London for $367 and New York to Paris for $346.

Error fares can occur due to a multitude of reasons  sometimes it is due to a misplaced decimal point, a currency conversion mistake or even human error during data entry, the company said in a news release.

But the travel website warned that airlines are under no obligation to honor the error fares. Because of that, the site offers this advice: Book quickly before the airline figure out whats up.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter.
In Yana Welinders house, her son will say Papa to either her or her husband. Mama isnt in his vocabulary yet. But her child, who just turned 1, does have a name for another prominent figure in the household: Aga.

Or, as the rest of us know her, Alexa  Amazons voice assistant.

Welinders son cant summon the assistant from the Echo speaker in their San Francisco home on his own. But he knows what hes trying to do.

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He says it and he looks at her, and he expects her to respond, Welinder said. It cracks me up every time.

Parents still grappling with kids app and smartphone use now have a new relationship to navigate  the bond between their children and the all-knowing, all-hearing disembodied voice in the corner.

Several parents have uploaded videos to YouTube of their kids interacting with Amazons Alexa or Googles Assistant. Some kids chatter with the voice assistants, peppering them with questions or imploring them to play their favorite songs. Others treat them as a friend who listens to what they would like to have and, in the case of Alexa, can send them gifts (much to the surprise of parents who receive those unintended orders.).

While kids seem to understand that voice assistants arent people, research shows that many see them as their own entities. But, as with so many questions about kids and tech, its hard to say what that means for their development  and whether it could be harmful.

The jurys out on it, said Pamela Hurst-Della Pietra, founder and president of the nonprofit group Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development.

The use of mobile devices among kids is already on the rise. The parental advocacy group Common Sense Media found that the average time that children 8 years old and younger spend on mobile devices has tripled over the past six years to a daily average of 48 minutes. The group also found that 42% of kids in that age group have their own tablet.

Voice assistants, with their conversational nature, take the tech relationship to another level. Common Sense Media estimates that at least one in 10 American homes with young children has a voice-activated device in it.

And, as research continues on the effects of these new, budding relationships, tech firms are quickly adding more kid-friendly features. Amazon recently made it easier for teens to order items through the Echo speaker on their parents accounts. Google has positioned its Home smart hub as a source for homework help and now allows parents to create kid-safe Google accounts for the Home. Mattel recently canceled plans for a child-focused home hub called Aristotle amid concerns over privacy.

Regulators are starting to look at home hubs for kids, but are focused solely on privacy issues. For example, the Federal Trade Commission recently said that companies can collect voice queries from children without fear of liability, as long as they use and store them only to understand a query.

Amazon said in a statement that it was evaluating the new rules to protect privacy and offer new features. Google spokeswoman Kara Berman said the company is compliant with the kids privacy law and does not store audio recordings from kid-focused apps  apart from whatever is necessary to process what someone has said.

But the broader issue of whether it affects childrens development is harder to nail down. Those opposing Mattels Aristotle highlighted that a voice assistant in the nursery could hurt parental bonding if the child considered the voice assistant to be their first playmate or a source of comfort.

Also, kids may not be able to wrap their minds around a friend that has no body but can carry on a (stilted) conversation. And Hurst-Della Pietra, who has a background in pediatrics, said digital assistants may give kids the impression that everything can be done instantaneously. Parents may also regret letting their kids issue orders without so much as a please in a voice assistants direction.

Just think carefully about the implications of tech in your home, said Jim Steyer, executive director of Common Sense Media. Dont think of smartphones and other gadgets as toys, he said, but rather as the supercomputers they are. And consider declaring the bedroom a tech-free zone and setting times when kids should be unplugged, such as dinnertime.

Technology, he said, is not a bad thing in and of itself. But parents should know how tech works, particularly when incorporated deeply into the home. Used well, voice assistants can build communication skills or teach kids phrases in other languages.

Welinder said she has thought deeply about her sons relationship with tech and is fine with his choice of early words. Her husband works in artificial intelligence, and she is a former technology lawyer and now product manager at the 3-D printing firm Carbon. She said their aim is to have her son learn to use Alexa just as he would any other tool, to be creative.

Welinder is already thinking about ways to explain Alexa to her son when hes older. She and her husband like the idea that the boy will grow up in a world in which objects can talk back to him  defining whats imaginary and whats real will be the problem to solve. Until hes old enough to understand, however, Welinder thinks its most likely her son will think of the voice as an imaginary figure, like Santa Claus.

Tsukayama covers consumer technology for the Washington Post.
Christian Rex van Minnen makes icons for an age whose virtues have curdled. The scariest part of his gut-punch paintings, watercolors and monotypes at Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica is that that age is ours.

The viciousness that lurks ever closer to the surface of everyday reality  and poisons the atmosphere with toxic dread and deadly anger  erupts from van Minnens works with the forcefulness of a volcano. Sparing no one, Mourning Wood in Liminal Dawn zeroes in on sex, death and power, particularly as they come together in the behavior of men, fueling fantasies and inspiring actions that are hard to imagine, much less stomach.

Sfumato is part of Christian Rex van Minnens Mourning Wood in Liminal Dawn exhibition (Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles)

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Forget Freud, who thought that sex and death pretty much summed up human experience. To the dynamic duo of Eros and Thanatos, van Minnen adds Power with a capital P  the kind of bare-naked, no-holds-barred brutality of evil characters in comic books or dictators pathologically detached from the last vestiges of their humanity.

Violence follows, naturally and unnaturally. Visitors come face to face with a world more horrifying than horror movies.

In the first gallery, eight intimately scaled portraits are presided over by The Rise of King Dick, a larger than lifesize masterpiece of strength run amok, pleasure taken in punishing others and beauty turned into ugliness.

Van Minnen paints like an old master, layering and glazing so that his oils on panel seem to be illuminated from within. Details have been rendered with such fidelity that his paintings seem to be more real than the real thing. If van Minnen belonged to a movement it would be Super-Surrealism.

His gigantic finger-puppet of a king looks so realistic that it seems to be alive  or at least endowed with powers that make your flesh crawl. A single eye, looking out from a malformed face with the inscrutability of the Sphinx suggests that all is not lost  that a glimmer of redemption might lie within.

That is not the case with the eight smaller portraits. Against a shadowy concrete wall, each depicts a decapitated head perched atop a gigantic gummy candy that glistens and glows, like a sci-fi alien.

Theres nothing alien about the mens faces. Some are old. Some are young. Most are white. All have been executed. But its impossible to know the circumstances that led to their deaths. Mob violence? Frontier justice? Kangaroo courts? Jury trials? Movie fantasies? Torture porn?

Adding to the confusion are the crude tattoos that spell out phrases on their faces. With all the sophistication of restroom wall scrawlings, those messages make you wonder if the men chose to use their faces as message boards or if the words were inked as punishment  a modern version of the scarlet letter.

Questions about power and language come to the forefront, as do questions about who speaks for whom, about how meaning shifts as it moves through the world and about paintings place in it all.

Similar issues take shape in the second gallery, where six monotypes, three watercolors and three oils on linen stir nuance into the queasy cocktail van Minnen so relentlessly serves up. Scholars rocks from China, folk tales from Europe and nursery rhymes from the United States expand the parameters of the Brooklyn-based artists inquiry into the malignancy of male domination, opening just a sliver of possibility in an otherwise grim reality.

Richard Heller Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica. Through Dec. 23; closed Sundays and Mondays. (310) 453-9191, www.richardhellergallery.com

Stone of Helen is among the paintings in Christian Rex van Minnens Mourning Wood in Liminal Dawn. (Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles)

Last You is a piece in Christian Rex van Minnens Mourning Wood in Liminal Dawn. (Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles)

See all of our latest news and reviews at latimes.com/arts.

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On the campus of Cal State Fullerton, Mildred Garcia is a familiar sight, with her big glasses, wide smile and ensembles in the schools blue and orange.

The university president, who many simply call Millie, loves to salsa. She waves pom-poms at sporting events. On move-in day, she rolls up her sleeves and switches between English and Spanish when talking to new students and their families.

Nearly 60% of undergraduates at Cal States largest campus are the first in their families to attend college. Garcia understands their experience. She was first-generation, too. College is for everyone, she likes to say. Its never too early or too late to start.

Garcia became the first Latina Cal State president when she was hired by Cal State Dominguez Hills in 2007. Cal State Fullerton, which she took over in 2012, now graduates more Latino students than any other California campus, and the second most nationwide. During her tenure, the campus, which enrolled a record 40,439 students this year, improved its four-year graduation rate by 65% and won recognition from a host of state and national education groups for closing the achievement gaps between Latinos and their white and Asian peers.

She pushed the campus to develop its first academic master plan, fix problems with bottleneck courses that were slowing students paths to graduation and centralized previously scattered academic, counseling and career services to make them easier for students to find and use. The main goal, she said, was to make everyone on campus focus on helping students succeed.

Garcia this month announced that she will be leaving the nations largest public university system to head the American Assn. of State Colleges and Universities, which represents more than 400 public institutions like Cal State. She took a moment to share her thoughts before taking on her new role as a national advocate for accessible public higher education.

How do you make sure no student falls through the cracks?

Its about not being afraid to show students that you love them and that you care about them.  Faculty, staff and administrators are here because they want to be. When I meet with faculty members, I always ask: Why are you here? I remember someone said to me: Look, we at the Cal State system have students who are not entitled. Here, I know I play a small part in transforming their lives. Whereas, if I was at an elite institution, they would graduate in spite of me. Here, when you tell a student, You can make it, and you have someone sitting next to you saying, Let me show you how you can get this done, it really makes a difference. ...

It's about not being afraid to show students that you love them.  Mildred Garcia, Cal State Fullerton president

Garcia hugs a student during a graduation ceremony in May. (Cal State Fullerton)

Students learn as much from outside the classroom as inside the classroom. So what are we doing to assist outside the classroom, to engage students with the university?

There were so many people, when I first got here, who didnt even know our graduation rates. They didnt know our dropout rate. And now, each college actually knows, by department, how many come in, whats the retention, whats the graduation rate, whats the ethnicity, whats the gender, where are the problems?  We improved advising. Student affairs and academic affairs now work together. We set up analytics so we can actually monitor online whos in trouble so that we can immediately get them tutoring. The first semester, we monitor them. And God forbid they fail, then at the end of the semester, individuals will call them and say: Dont lose hope, we're here to help you. As a first-generation college student, I get it. You don't believe college is for you, and failing a class could really hurt your self-confidence. So when you have people showing that they care, it helps students continue to push forward.

In her office, Garcia points to a copy of Francisco Ollers painting of Rafael Cordero, who opened free schools for children in Puerto Rico regardless of race or poverty. She says its a source of daily inspiration. (Rosanna Xia/Los Angeles Times)

It must help to have a story so similar to many of your students.

I have many students who tell me, when I tell my story, Oh my God, you just told my story. That I lost my father when I was 12, that my mom worked in a factory. ... My five older brothers and sisters were born in Puerto Rico. My brother and I were the surprises. I let them know all the time when I speak to them that I was a first-generation college student, that my parents were poor. And I'm telling them that so they know that they could reach for whatever they want to reach. That this is hard work, but  when they graduate, it transforms not only their lives but the lives of the people who come after them.  My family used to say, and Im going to translate it from Spanish: The only inheritance a poor family can leave you is a good education. 

Garcia speaks with Aiyanna Adams during a recruiting event in February about going to college. (Courtesy of Cal State Fullerton)

Garcia with Pan African graduates during commencement in 2015. (Courtesy of Cal State Fullerton)

Have you learned any lessons at Cal State that you will take with you to Washington D.C.?

You have to listen to your constituency to understand their needs. You also have to listen to the silences. Sometimes people dont speak up, yet they have a lot on their minds. So you have to reach out to them to understand where they're coming from. ... You need to understand who you serve. And you need to work hard to ensure that people collaborate for the benefit of the people you are serving.

 We need to listen to all students, may they be Caucasian, may they be African American. We take for granted that we know  but we dont. I may be Hispanic, I may be Puerto Rican, but I dont understand the issues of a Mexican American family who have loved ones here who dont have the appropriate papers. I learn from my students what their experiences are. I ask them, what are their needs? Then we can come back and say, OK, what can we do as an institution? Whether its counseling or advising or telling them where they can get legal services and giving them the resources to go, we need to listen to them before we even offer.  You cant fix something if you don't know what the issues really are.

Read more at Essential Education, our daily look at education in California and beyond 

rosanna.xia@latimes.com

Follow @RosannaXia for more education news
The Newport Beach City Council is expected next week to reverse several approvals for the derailed Banning Ranch development.

The council will take up the court-ordered repeals when it meets Tuesday.

In 2012, the council  with different members  certified an environmental impact report and approval of a general plan, code amendments and a development agreement that at the time included 1,375 homes, a 75-room resort hotel and a 75,000-square-foot retail complex on part of ranchs 401 acres of scrub and grasslands.

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The project was later whittled down to 895 homes, a 75-room hotel, a 20-bed hostel and 45,100 square feet of retail space.

Except for the environmental report and the development agreement, all other approvals were not to take effect until the California Coastal Commission granted the project a coastal development permit, among other actions. The commission rejected the permit application in 2016 and again this year.

When the California Supreme Court ruled this year that Newport Beach had improperly approved the development, the Orange County Superior Court, under direction from the states 4th District Court of Appeal, ordered the city to vacate all Banning Ranch-related approvals.

hillary.davis@latimes.com
Los Angeles homeless advocates are raising alarms over a provision of the House tax bill that they say would deal a crippling blow to plans to add 1,000 new housing units annually.

The House bill, passed this month, seeks to generate new revenue by eliminating tax-free bonds that provide low-interest funds for projects such as hospitals, schools and museums.

The tax-free bonds also help lower costs for affordable housing. But more important, if the bill becomes law, it would cut affordable housing developers access to a tax credit program that pays for about a third of some projects.

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Arcane language in the tax code requires developers who receive the tax credits to finance at least 50% of the projects cost with tax-free bonds. If there are no tax-free bonds, the tax credits would also be out of reach.

That would eclipse a major portion of the funds that were anticipated to supplement Proposition HHH, the citys $1.2-billion homeless housing bond.

Sean Spear, assistant general manager of the citys Housing and Community Investment Department, told members of the Proposition HHH citizen oversight committee the day after the House passed its bill that the goal of building 10,000 units over a decade depended on accessing $1.43 billion in tax credits.

Losing these resources will essentially blow a hole in our goals that weve set for HHH, Spear said.

Committee chairman Miguel Santana asked if that meant that we may still spend $1.2 billion but our ability to reach the 10,000 would be much more limited as the result of the drying up of other resources beyond our control?

Thats correct, Spear said.

Spear said Mayor Eric Garcetti has sent a letter to Congress joining a nationwide lobbying campaign by affordable housing advocates to prevent the House version from becoming law.

The current Senate version of the bill does not eliminate the tax-free bonds. If the Senate passes its version, there could either be a conference committee, or the House could accede to the Senate.

Nationally, according to an analysis by the accounting firm Novogradac & Co., the loss of the tax-exempt bonds would result in nearly a million fewer units of affordable housing over ten years.

Matt Schwartz, president and chief executive of the California Housing Partnership, estimated that 20,000 units of affordable housing annually are at risk in the state.

Even if the tax-free bonds are ultimately preserved, the uncertainty is causing a reaction in the financial markets, Spear said.

At this point, many lenders are trying to make a decision on whether or not they are going to draw down all their bonds on projects, he said.

One project caught up in the uncertainty is the 122-unit Metro Villas Phase II to be built by PATH Ventures next to the headquarters of the nonprofit, People Assisting the Homeless, in East Hollywood.

Amy Anderson, executive director of PATH Ventures, said the projects lenders were preparing to draw down the projects entire $36-million tax-free bond before the end of the year even though the money would then have to be deposited in a bank, at a net loss of interest, until it is needed later in the construction.

At this moment we are anticipating we will have to draw down all the bonds by the end of the year, Anderson said.

That would raise the cost of the project, even if the House bill never becomes law. But that would be a minor setback compared with the cost if the bill does become law and the agency cannot access tax credits. It would lose more than a third of the projects $53-million cost.

Schwartz of the California Housing Partnership said he remained optimistic that a fix would be found because he didnt think the House members even realized they were cutting off the tax credit program.

The House ended the tax-free bonds to bring in nearly $40 billion in tax revenue over a decade but didnt understand the consequences the move would have on affordable housing, he said.

But the drain on human capital in our field is already tremendous, as well as the anxiety about the uncertainty, he said.

doug.smith@latimes.com

@LATDoug
OTTAWA, Nov. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- betterU Education Corp. (TSX-V:BTRU) (FRANKFURT:5OGA), (the Corporation or betterU), further to Corporations press release of November 3rd, 2017, in regards to entering into a Binding Letter of Intent and working towards a Definitive Agreement (Agreement), the Corporation wishes to provide additional information to investors regarding the proposed transaction. The Corporation understands that the entity with which it has entered into the LOI, and with which it will enter the Agreement  being Treasure Union Ltd (TU)  will not be the ultimate investor in the Corporation. Rather, the investor will be an off-shore fund (the Fund) that is in the process of being set up. The funds for the investment into betterU will come from that entity post being established.



To date, the Corporation is continuing its due diligence with respect to the Fund, yet has not received any information about the specific structure of the Fund being established or its full management team. They are not in a position to confirm the investors in the Fund and the Fund manager has indicated that all investors have requested full confidentiality. The proposed Fund manager, TU, has indicated that they will provide proof of funds from the Fund by January 15th 2018; however, the Corporation has not been able to confirm that the funds are in this Fund at this time.

The Corporation remains confident that once the Fund is complete and operational, funds will be made available for this investment. This confidence is due to the level of effort put into the development of the deal by both parties. The Corporation has however at this time not been provided with evidence that funds will become available for investment in the Corporation.

The Corporations Board of Directors has yet to approve the Agreement for which the draft was received from the Corporations legal counsel, Perley-Robertson, Hill & McDougall, on November 15th, 2017. A copy of the draft Agreement has since been provided to the proposed Fund Manager for review. The final Agreement will be subject to approvals by the Board of Directors and TU prior to execution on December 31st, 2017.

In support of validating the investment opportunity, the Corporation has put a significant amount of effort in the building of the deal structure and the relationship with the proposed Fund manager. The Corporations confidence comes from the history of personal and professional relations of the parties involved with betterUs board, understanding the details about the corporate structure and officers of TU, the level of effort into several months of due diligence, negotiations around the valuation and share purchase price, the level of negotiations and approval stages the Corporation was involved with, development and discussions around use of funds, growth plans and ongoing efforts to support a potential deal of this nature.

The Corporation would also like to provide further clarification to the relationship between TU and the private investors in Hong Kong. Specifically, the Corporation has been advised that the private investors are a group of wealthy individuals that are working to seed the Fund to support investments such as betterU. TU is a private company incorporated and based in Hong Kong, that has no control over the private investors funds and has been selected by them to be the managing partner that will oversee the Fund.

betterU has taken the disclosure of this investment opportunity to the market seriously and upon the Corporations execution of the binding letter of Intent, betterUs leadership immediately contacted IIROC to voluntarily halt their stock. It was decided by the Corporation that this was an important step in assuring proper disclosures to the market prior to the launch of the Corporations news release. It was determined by the Corporations Board of Directors at that time, that the news needed to be announced about the LOI as it was considered a material event. As part of any letter of intent, it is one of many stages along the way towards receiving further details and progressing efforts to close. The Corporation has continued to perform ongoing due diligence with support of TU, advancing its plans in anticipation of further validations of this investment opportunity. The closing of the investment into the Corporation is still expected to be on or before March 15th, 2018 and is subject to the following events, which will trigger an announcement to the market by the Corporation:

(1) Execution of the Definitive Agreement by December 31st, 2017;

(2) Completion of the Fund set-up in the Cayman Islands by January 15th, 2018;

(3) Validation of Fund capacity to support an investment of this size by January 15th, 2018;

(4) Completion of the closing documents on or before March 15th, 2018.

Upon the resumption of trading, the directors and officers will be subject to the Black-out Period until the second day of trading after the second quarter interim financial statements are released to the public.

Furthermore, the insiders (directors and officers) of the Corporation have entered into a pooling agreement pursuant to which each director and officer agrees not to trade their shares until the closing of the transaction as contemplated by the Agreement or the termination of the Agreement if it has been entered into.

The Corporation can provide no assurance that the transaction will be completed as proposed, or at all.

About betterU

betterU, a global education marketplace, aims to provide access to quality education from around the world to foster growth and opportunity to those who want to better their lives. The company plans to bridge the prevailing gap in the education and job industry and enhance the lives of its prospective learners by developing an integrated education-to-employment ecosystem. betterUs offerings can be categorized into several broad functions: to compliment school programs with flexible KG-12 programs preparing children for next stage of education, to provide access to global educational opportunities from leading educators, to foster an exceptional educational environment by providing befitting skills that lead to a better career, to bridge the gap between ones existing education and prospective job requirement by training them and lastly, to connect the end user to various job opportunities.

www.betterU.ca and www.betterU.in

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which include completion of the proposed Investment, the anticipated use of the proceeds of the Investment, the development and expansion of betterUs operations, and other matters. There can be no assurance that the Investment will be completed as proposed or at all. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such information can generally be identified by the use of forwarding-looking wording such as "may", "expect", "estimate", "anticipate", "intend", "believe" and "continue" or the negative thereof or similar variations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are based will occur. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, which contribute to the possibility that the predictions, estimates, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not occur. These assumptions, risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the state of the economy in general and capital markets in particular, the development of competitive technologies, the marketplace acceptance of betterUs products, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of betterU. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release. Except as required by law, betterU disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Additionally, betterU undertakes no obligation to comment on the expectations of, or statements made by, third parties in respect of the matters discussed above. Further information on betterUs public filings, including their most recent audited consolidated financial statements, are available at www.sedar.com.

For further information, please visit http://www.betteru.ca/investor-overview/

Brad Loiselle

President and CEO

1-613-695-4100 Ext. 233

Email: ir@betteru.ca

Investor contact:

Gurinder Sandhu

Investor Relations

1-613-695-4100 Ext. 233

Email: ir@betteru.ca




Congratulations  you survived the biggest food holiday of the year. At least were hoping you did, and thus are reading this newsletter in the relative calm of your kitchen or wherever you find peace these days. You might have some post-Thanksgiving leftovers, in which case we have some suggestions for you. You might be on your way to your local farmers market, in which case wed suggest picking up some mandarin oranges, as eating a few of them out of hand sounds pretty meditative.

If its time to eat a big dinner again, you could do worse than head to Journeymen in Atwater Village, the subject of Jonathan Golds latest review. A not-so-big dinner might be a decked-out Sonora-style hot dog, the subject of one of our stories. We also have a story about a new restaurant from a favorite chef, and another about the joy of pairing beer and barbecue. Because thats the thing about holiday dining: As soon as the table is cleared and the relatives returned, its time to think about dinner again. We hope you had a marvelous holiday.

 Amy Scattergood

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THE JOURNEY TO YOUR PLATE

Journeymen chef David Wilcox, with plates. (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times )

This week Jonathan considers the cooking of chef David Wilcox, one of the two Gjelina alums who took over the Atwater Village location of the late, much-loved restaurant Canele. The new place is called Journeymen, and there our restaurant critic finds vegetable-driven dishes, natural wines, a creditable Basque cake  and lots of versions of duck. Its a bird that you might appreciate more now that the turkey festivities are over.

WITH LOVE, FROM HERMOSILLO

Alfonso Garcia holds his Sonora-style hot dog, served by Alejandro Zamorano and his nephew David Zamorano. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times )

Food writer Margy Rochlin goes in search of the elusive Sonora-style hot dog, a condiment-loaded, bacon-wrapped street food staple that may be easy to locate in southern Arizona but not so much in L.A. She finds some very good hot dogs, including two examples of the item in question, one Compton-based cart, and the other somewhere on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park. Somewhere? This is why Twitter exists.

NYESHAS NEW PLACE

If you often found yourself heading to Venice not necessarily for the beach, but for chef Nyesha Arringtons cooking at Leona, now closed, then maybe read deputy Food editor Jenn Harris latest restaurant news column. She gets the details on Arringtons new restaurant, Native, as well as a new butcher shop in Fairfax from Jered Standing, formerly of Belcampo Meat Co. And, yes, theres more, including a cocktail bar called Bibo Ergo Sum. Right.

BEER AND BBQ

Tired of turkey and wine? How about pulled pork and Mexican lager. Beer writer John Verive gives an easy guide to pairing beer with barbecue, as craft beers diversity makes it an ideal accompaniment to whatever style of cue youre into. Verive also gives a few suggestions, not just for what to match with sour beer, but where to test out the pairings.

Our Holiday Cookie Bake-off is back! Got a great holiday cookie recipe? Submit your recipe, plus an essay and photo or video by Nov. 25, to latimes.com/bakeoff. Well take the top 20 vote-getters and narrow them down to our top 5, which well bake in our Test Kitchen. The 5 finalists will be invited to our Test Kitchen and their recipes will be featured in the Saturday section in December.

Jonathan Golds 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers and now features his 2016 Best Restaurants. If you didnt get a copy of the booklet, you can order one online here.

Goldbot: You can now talk to Jonathan Gold any time you want  or at least the robot version of him that now lives on Facebook Messenger. You can ask Goldbot for a personal restaurant recommendation based on location, type of food or price. The bot will also deliver Jonathan Golds latest reviews straight to your device.

The Daily Meal, the food and drink website under the editorial direction of Colman Andrews, is now one of our partners. Check out their stories, recipes and videos.

Check us out on Instagram @latimesfood

Check out the thousands of recipes in our Recipe Database.

Feedback? Wed love to hear from you. Email us at food@latimes.com.
Should three state lawmakers under a cloud of sexual misconduct allegations  Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, Assemblyman Devon Mathis and state Sen. Tony Mendoza  resign from the Legislature?

Some people are calling for just that, saying that the accusations of sexual misconduct and harassment lodged against the three are so serious they cant effectively do their job. On Monday, Bocanegra (D-Pacoima) pledged to resign, but not until September, shortly before his term expires. His announcement came just hours before the Los Angeles Times broke the news that half a dozen women say Bocanegra inappropriately touched or communicated with them.

The accusations are troubling, but its premature to pressure these legislators to step down. The investigations into Bocanegra and Mendoza (D-Artesia), who is accused of inappropriate behavior by two young staffers, are still open. Its not clear whether the Assembly Rules Committee is still investigating Mathis (R-Visalia) now that the Sacramento Police Department closed its probe of a sexual assault accusation made by a conservative blogger.

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Anyone under investigation for serious sexual misconduct involving staff ought to be off the job  suspended with pay, that is  until the case is resolved.

What should happen to them in the meantime, if anything? Its not reasonable to summarily discharge elected officials after mere accusations of misconduct, but should they be suspended, with or without pay? Should they be expelled or censured by their peers? Should it be up to voters, and voters alone, to unseat an elected official?

Heres one policy that should be obvious: Anyone under investigation for serious sexual misconduct involving staff ought to be off the job  suspended with pay, that is  until the case is resolved. The Legislature isnt just a lawmaking body; it is the employer of hundreds of people who should be able to do their jobs without fear of sexual predators.

Beyond that, however, we have no good answers. The California Legislature lacks clear and consistent guidelines for how to deal with a lawmaker who has been convicted of a crime, let alone accused of sexual misconduct. Without such guidelines, punishments appear to be situational and meted out in accordance with the inclination of the leadership and the popularity of the accused. Thats unacceptable.

The uneven application of punishment was evident in 2014 when a trio of Democratic state senators  Leland Yee, Ronald S. Calderon and Roderick D. Wright  ran afoul with the law. California law gives each house of the Legislature the power to oust one of its own with a two-thirds vote. Yet after Wright was convicted of perjury and voter fraud, the Senate chose to take no action against the well-liked politician. It wasnt until the other two were under investigation for corruption that the Senate voted to suspend all three with pay. Ultimately, it was the right decision to remove them from their duties, and all three eventually resigned.

Theres danger of inconsistency in the current cases as well. In fact, its hard not to wonder if these accusations would have been dealt with quietly and privately were it not for the scores of women who came forth in recent weeks to decry the boys club culture in Sacramento.

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) launched an independent investigation (as opposed to one by the secretive rules committee) and removed Bocanegra from committee assignments and his position as majority whip. If the investigation affirms the accusations against Bocanegra, Rendon said, he will start expulsion proceedings.

What about Mathis, now that the police investigation is closed? What should people expect, if anything? If the Assembly continues its investigation and finds nothing, should it publicly exonerate him?

As for Mendoza, state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) said he planned to strip the senator of his committee and board assignments and announced an independent probe. But De Leon has not said what might happen to Mendoza if the accusations of inappropriate behavior are deemed credible.

In late November, the Assembly plans a hearing to discuss how to revise its approach to sexual harassment. That would be a good time to work out a policy describing how members should conduct themselves while in Sacramento and outline what the penalties are if they violate it. The Senate should do the same as an outside firm reviews its sexual harassment policies. This soul searching is healthy, but it must produce more than just empty gestures.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Since Charles Manson finished serving his life sentence Sunday, scores of readers have sent appropriately angry letters to The Times, each with all the requisite identifying information to have their words printed in the paper and online. There are enough usable letters to the editor on the late cult leader and convicted murderer to fill significant portions of print pages for several days.

And what most of those readers  who have submitted content for publication in The Times, thereby providing more material on Manson for us to print  want is not to read so much about Manson.

The truth is, on someone as singularly menacing as Manson, most of us probably have something to say  even if its to say people should stop talking about a dead killer.

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Adam Mekler of Pasadena raises issues he feels are more worthy of coverage:

Has your paper lost its mind and integrity? I find that to waste so much space on a disgusting murderer is an abomination.

I was over Mansons death when I heard it on the evening news, but The Times wont let him die.  Gene E. Schwartz, San Diego

Remember, there are many more topics and stories that are far more important: Puerto Rico, our failing educational system, the corrupt president and his cabinet, the so-called tax relief for middle-class Americans, the moral corruption of our political system, the climate change that is destroying our planet and more.

Shame on The Times for abrogating its public responsibility.

San Diego resident Gene E. Schwartz, like many readers, pointed out an irony in The Times coverage:

In the paper on Tuesday, The Times Editorial Board admonished the public to stop obsessing with Manson: Hes been effectively dead to the world for more than 40 years, except to the extent that we insisted on keeping him alive in print, on television, in pop music and film.

The Times has published multiple front-page articles since his death. Capitalizing on the sensationalism of Mansons legacy was OK for The Times, but shame on us for reading? If The Times wants the public to stop this obsession, then it should follow its own advice and stop printing these salacious and repetitive articles about this horrible loser.

I was over Mansons death when I heard it on the evening news, but The Times wont let him die.

Jo Iannello of West Hollywood suggests the appropriate place to report on Mansons death:

Why are you giving so much publicity to Manson? He hardly deserves a one-liner in the obituaries section.

I dont need to see his face when I open my morning Times. How much longer must we endure stories about him?

Kathleen McCord of Encinitas is one of only a small handful of readers to suggest Mansons death deserves extensive reporting:

In the summer of 1969, I was a young newlywed and I remember the Manson killings clearly. They were horrific and beyond anything anyone had ever experienced. The sheer brutality of the killings, in particular that of the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, who begged Mansons followers not to kill her nearly full-term baby, was beyond comprehension.

These murders are incomparable.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Buffy Wicks was expecting the birth of her daughter on the same day she thought the country would be electing its first female president.

Josephine instead was born two weeks late  after the election of President Trump. As Wicks joined hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets for the Womens March on Washington a few months later, she felt inspired to run for office, even as a new mom.

I realized Jojo couldnt be the reason not to run, Wicks said of her first child. In fact, she is the reason to run.

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Wicks, who worked as a White House aide to former President Obama and helped steer Hillary Clintons victory in California, is now attempting to win a seat in the state Assembly. The 40-year-old Oakland resident is one of nine potential candidates in the 15th Assembly District, one of Californias most diverse and politically progressive areas, covering Berkeley, Richmond and parts of Oakland.

Wicks says she jumped into the competition with a desire to apply all she learned in Washington. One could assume someone with powerful Democratic friends and political experience helping capture nearly 3 million statewide votes in a primary and 8.8 million in a general election might be an easy victor in a place like this. But she is facing some popular local contenders who see her as an outsider trying to parachute in.

That assessment of her candidacy is unfair, said Wicks, calling herself tethered to the Bay Area. She worked here as a community and campaign organizer a decade ago, and she bought her home in early 2016, long before the Assembly seat opened up.

What I think voters care most about is who can go to Sacramento and get stuff done for them, Wicks said.

The June 5 top-two primary race seems to have echoes of last years California Democratic presidential primary, which Clinton won in a closer-than-expected contest against Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The state Democratic Party is seeing bitter rifts between the perceived old guard and the newcomers. In May, there was the razor-thin defeat of Berniecrat-supported Kimberly Ellis against Eric Bauman for chair of the state party. And state party members could find themselves fractured again over the intraparty race between Sen. Dianne Feinstein and state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon.

More than two-thirds of registered voters here are Democrats  the second-highest of any Assembly district. And Wicks is billing herself as among the young new wave of Democrats seeking to take the reins.

Wicks grew up in a single-wide mobile home in the sleepy town of Foresthill, a Sierra foothills logging community northeast of Sacramento. Her father was a firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service. Her mother was a homemaker and later attended community college. Wicks followed in her footsteps and became an antiwar movement organizer in the Bay Area, later working on political campaigns.

During Obamas 2008 presidential bid, she helped develop a national grass-roots organizing model that borrowed from social movement strategies, mobilizing thousands of volunteers to work for a candidate they believed matched their core set of values.

As the White House deputy director of public engagement, she was one of the key staffers who helped pass the Affordable Care Act. Her most recent work has been with the California Kids Campaign, where as director she advocated for affordable child care and paid leave.

Now she is among dozens of former top Obama political aides and policy staff who, heeding his call to action after Trumps election, are running for seats across the country.

Democrats are in a bit of soul-searching mode after the election, and that is natural in terms of what happens after a party loses: Who are we? What are our values? she said. But I ultimately believe that at our core, we will be stronger from this. In a hopeful way, we are in a renaissance of civic engagement. That to me is the most exciting thing.

Some nicknamed her Buffy the Bernie slayer during the primary. Wicks says now she appreciates what the Vermont senator has done for her party.

We have more alike than we do apart, she said, and the community and nation should be rallying together on the things we agree on.

California could flip the House, and these 13 races could make the difference 

Richmond Councilwoman Jovanka Beckles is a longtime progressive advocate who helped enact strict rent control measures. (Dennis Hearne / Handout )

Wicks, who has not held office, faces well-known candidates in the race for the seat held by outgoing Democratic Assemblyman Tony Thurmond: Oakland City Councilman Dan Kalb and Richmond City Councilwoman Jovanka Beckles. Thurmond is running for state superintendent of public instruction.

Kalb has worked on tenant protection and gun control issues while on the council, and he helped write two winning local ballot measures  one to strengthen Oaklands Public Ethics Commission and another to create its first police oversight commission run by civilians.

Beckles is a longtime progressive advocate and helped Richmond enact strict rent control and eviction measures. In 2010, she became the citys first openly lesbian councilwoman.

Both candidates have fought local environmental battles. Kalb helped block a proposal for a coal terminal in Oakland. Beckles has been a frequent critic of one of Richmonds biggest industrial presences, Chevron.

Beckles said Wicks is in a race with people who have deep roots in the area, and national fundraising wont help. Campaign finance records for the most recent period show more than half of contributions to Wicks came from outside California.

Folks are aware and awake to the fact of who has been in the community and who has been doing the work, Beckles said. To move here and expect people to support you is insulting.

Others pointed to Thurmonds own background  he served on the Richmond City Council and an area school board before his election to the state Assembly.

Kate Harrison, a member of the Berkeley City Council, has backed both Beckles and Kalb, saying its important candidates maintain that community base.

We have an embarrassment of riches here. We have a lot of great candidates, Harrison said.

If elected, Wicks said she would work on affordable housing issues, advocate for a single-payer healthcare model, invest in community colleges and create one integrated public system of affordable child care for parents.

Sen. Kamala Harris and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom have endorsed her, and powerful Obama connections  including David Axelrod and Laurene Powell Jobs  are among her campaign donors, as are elected officials including former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona.

She has had to talk and work with a lot of different people, said Pat DeTemple, a political consultant who worked with Wicks on the Obama campaign. Because of that she has a deep knowledge of how to get things done, of how politics really works.

Following similar grass-roots strategies she helped develop for Obama, Wicks is out greeting voters at 20-plus house parties a month and having the long, one-on-one conversations she says she prefers.

At a campaign event at DeTemples Berkeley home in August, the conversation switched from rising healthcare costs to the impact of Californias housing shortage in an area many residents see as ground zero to a crisis. Wicks opened with a credo she learned from Obama.

I know what I know, and I know what I dont know, she said. But what I dont know, I want to find smart people to help me know.

jazmine.ulloa@latimes.com

@jazmineulloa

ALSO

Obamas former staffers hope to build upon his legacy as they run for office

Hillary Clinton announces California leadership team

How Hillary Clinton won California

California politics news feed
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
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Senator Minerals Inc. (TSXV:SNR) (OTC:SNRAF) (Frankfurt:T1KA) (Senator or the Company) is pleased to announce that the Company has entered into an agreement to acquire all of the outstanding share capital of Keefe Lake Projects Inc. (Keefe Lake Projects). Subject to existing royalty rights, Keefe Lake Projects holds a 100% interest in the Keefe Lake Uranium Project (the Project), an advanced exploration project that covers an area of approximately 15,400 hectares, on the eastern side of the Athabasca Basin, in northeastern Saskatchewan, Canada. The Project is on trend with the McArthur River, Cigar Lake and Key Lake Mines, three of the largest and richest uranium mines in the world. The Keefe Lake exploration model is a shallow basement or sandstone-hosted uranium deposit, with average basement depths of only 170 meters. Since 2012, the Project has been subject to over $4,000,000 in exploration expenditures, including airborne geophysics, 2D seismic and diamond drilling.



In 2012, 8 holes were completed on targets picked through an integration of traditional magnetic and EM datasets (GEOTEM, AEROTEM and VTEM) with the seismic and historical down hole data. Drill Hole AU4-01 and KEF-12-08 both encountered uranium mineralization, associated with hematite alteration and fracturing of altered quartzofeldspathic gneiss, as well as base metal enrichment (lead, cobalt, arsenic and nickel) in the sandstone. All holes at Keefe Lake showed alteration that extended into the basement. In addition, a deep 535m hole was set 374m into the basement and examined with a sonic probe to enhance the seismic survey. First pass drilling in 2012 by Athabasca Uranium encountered anomalous uranium values at depth.

Keefe Lake Drilling 2011-2012 Hole Depth from(m) Depth to (m) Width (m) U (ppm) KEF-12-08 470.9 471.5 0.54 116 KEF-12-08 546.9 547.9 0.5 175 AU4-01 400 402 2 112



In addition, the assays also confirmed base metal enrichment in the overlying sandstone indicative of favorable chemistry for uranium deposition and a high degree of silicification, which has been repeatedly fractured and healed. Results from the drilling program also encountered a massive subsurface quartzite ridge identified, similar to the control of mineralization at Denisons Phoenix A Deposit and at the McArthur River Mine.

The Keefe Lake Project was also subject to a seismic survey, which was interpreted by the University of Saskatchewan Seismology Laboratory, under the supervision of Dr. Zoltan Hajnal (Ph.D. Geophysics), who played a key role in the discovery of Hathors Roughrider Deposit, among other successes. The seismology team, which has also performed work at MacArthur River and the Millennium Mine for Cameco, has an unparalleled understanding of Athabasca Basin uranium deposits.

In consideration for the outstanding share capital of Keefe Lake Projects, the Company will issue 6,100,000 common shares. Completion of the transaction remains subject to approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, and the transaction cannot be completed until such approval is obtained.

Dr. Peter Born P.Geo., a Qualified Person, has reviewed and approved the disclosure of technical information within this news release.

For further information contact Tim Fernback at 604-340-3774.

Tim Fernback

President & CEO

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Statements in this release that are forward-looking information are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here. Information provided in this document is necessarily summarized and may not contain all available material information. All such forward-looking information and statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by management in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management believes are appropriate in the circumstances. These statements, however, are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information or statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements include those described under the heading Risks Factors in the Companys most recently filed MD&A. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or revise the forward-looking information contained in this news release, except as required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements.




MINNETONKA, Minn., Nov. 25, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vital Images unveils the newest version of Vitrea Advanced Visualization software, which is the cornerstone of its imaging platform. This includes numerous product enhancements and state of the art modality applications that have been incorporated into the release.



Vital is a pioneer in the industry, with over 25 years of experience in advanced visualization technology. Vital developed a modular viewing platform that can be configured to meet the unique viewing needs of users, providing access to relevant images from across the entire healthcare organization.

Version 7 will be available for demonstration in Vitals booth (North Hall, #7323), at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting, in Chicago, November 26 to December 1.

Performance and workflow efficiency along with a lightweight integration engine ensure users have standardized toolsets across all modalities and all ologies.

We continue to improve and enrich our clinical offerings across all modalities, says President and CEO Jim Litterer. At Vital, we are pleased and excited about the significant improvements we continue to add to our premier advanced visualization offerings.

A sample of Vitals newest innovations:



Intuitive user interface with a dark color scheme for better viewing in the reading room

Semi-automated Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement valve plane measurements

Updated stent manufacturer templates and Fleischner Criteria for 2017

4D CT Brain Perfusion addition for DSA shuttle perfusion and 4D support for thin slice axial and helical data

Multi Modality Viewer updates for XA, PET and PET/CT

CT Colon Analysis with electronic bowel cleansing (EBC)

Stereolithography (STL) export for enterprise users with new 3D printed anatomical models on display in the Vital booth

4K high resolution monitor support

Increased rendering performance and faster time to first image

Shared modified presets across the organization

In addition to the existing exceptional partner integrations with their newest releases, we have three new partner applications that help make this platform truly dynamic and focused on the clinical demands of the industry, says Dave Nuthals, Product Line Director, Advanced Visualization.

4DM, powered by INVIA, is state-of-the-art software for nuclear cardiology quantification, review and reporting for SPECT, PET, and hybrid-CT patient studies. 4DM enables physicians to assess a patients cardiac health by reviewing patient images and 4DM quantifications all in a single, convenient, and configurable application.

Building on Mirada Medicals vision to provide simple and accurate solutions to complex image analysis problems in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, Vital is pleased to announce two new integrated applications.

Mirada RTx delivers software tools for radiation therapy treatment planning that bring new levels of functionality, speed, and accuracy to the planning process.

delivers software tools for radiation therapy treatment planning that bring new levels of functionality, speed, and accuracy to the planning process. Mirada Nuclear Medicine (NM) Workflows provides flexible display protocols and workflows that allow quick and easy reading of NM studies.

About Vital Images

Vital Images, Inc., a Canon Group company, is a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and enterprise informatics solutions to help healthcare organizations deliver exceptional care while optimizing resources across multi-facility organizations. The company's solutions are scalable to meet the unique needs of hospitals and imaging centers and are accessible throughout the enterprise anytime and anywhere. For more information, visit www.vitalimages.com, or join the conversation on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

Vital Images and Vitrea are registered trademarks of Vital Images, Inc. in the US and may have protection in other countries.

For more information contact:

Diane Hunt

Director, Marketing

Vital Images

952.487.9866

dhunt@vitalimages.com
As bullets tore through flesh, fires raged and black smoke eclipsed the sky, Maxim Kuzin knew it was time to leave his home of Kiev, Ukraine.

The latest conductor to lead the Orange Coast College Symphony was born and raised in the capital city of the Eastern European country. From a young age, Kuzin, 41, displayed a superior voice and good ear, signaling a heightened musical aptitude.

His aunt Olha Shevchuk recognized his abilities and urged the cultivation of his talents.

He was enrolled in a special music school, the Lysenko Kyiv Boarding School for Gifted Children, one of three such schools in the country.

Kuzin later attained an undergraduate degree in choral conducting in 1999 and a graduate and postgraduate degree in instrumental and orchestral conducting from the Tchaikovsky National Musical Academy of Ukraine in 2003 and 2009, respectively.

In concert with his academic life, Kuzin held various jobs, including the music director and conductor of the Ukrainian version of Dancing with the Stars, an experience Kuzin called unique.

Following his education, he went on to hold jobs as a music director and conductor for various orchestras and theaters.

Then, in February 2014, a violent revolution took hold in Ukraine following months of citizen protests against former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovychs rejection of a European Union association agreement.

Many dissenters claimed the decision would hurt the countrys economy.

Kuzin said the countrys youth felt it was tantamount to extinguishing their future.

These protests, termed the Maidan revolution, took place in the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, in Kiev, near an institute where Kuzin was teaching music classes.

Many of his students and friends took part in the protests.

Kuzin said protests were peaceful until a militant police force started beating and killing the dissenters in attempts to quell the uprising.

The capital turned into a battleground, with tens of thousands of protesters raging against Yanukovychs police.

Kuzin said a family friend was severely beaten by an officer of the Berkut, or special police force, during the conflict and had to undergo three surgeries for her injuries, eventually losing an eye.

Everyones circle of friends was affected by the violence in Kiev, Kuzin said. It was heartbreaking. It was like, What is happening in my country?

A student of his was part of the Hundreds, one of the units formed to protect the protesters.

Fortunately, he wasnt shot dead as were more than a hundred other innocent people, Kuzin said. He is a bassoon player. A very bright young man.

As the violence spiraled, Kuzin made the decision to leave the country in early March 2014 with his wife, Victoria, and daughter Margarita, now 12.

They planned to visit his brother in Philadelphia for a few weeks and hoped to return once the chaos halted.

We didnt take our winter clothes with us  it was all unprepared, Kuzin said. It was a complete 180-degree change for us.

They never returned.

Kuzin moved with his family to Los Angeles in 2015 and was hired by Orange Coast College this past summer.

Hes directed two concerts so far and has said his experience has been positive.

His personality and the craft he perfected in Ukraine seems a perfect fit for the community college, said Eliza Rubenstein, OCC director of Choral and Vocal Activities and Music Department chair.

Our department prides itself on a faculty filled with world-class musicians who are also patient and compassionate teachers, and Maxim fits that bill completely, Rubenstein said. He can speak at length about the most particular nuances of Beethovens tempo choices, but he can also make the entire orchestra crack up by showing up to rehearsal in a Dracula costume.

Kuzin doesnt know if hell ever return to Ukraine with his family.

The country is in abnormal shape, Kuzin said. There is still ongoing conflict. When these things happen, its like you have an open seizure on the body. The country cannot function as normal.

Its psychologically and economically hard for people. Right now I would rather say that with the development of my career, I see my future here.

The OCC Symphony will perform Computer Games  Unplugged! at 7:30 p.m. March 3 and Carmen & Company at 7:30 p.m. May 12, both in the Robert B. Moore Theatre on campus, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa.

For more information on upcoming concerts, visit https://bit.ly/2jeTHbz.

benjamin.brazil@latimes.com

Twitter:@benbrazilpilot
A change in the election schedule may be coming to Glendale Community College, with the schools trustees leaning in one direction for new dates, though they have not made a final decision.

David Viar, Glendale Community Colleges president/superintendent, laid out two plans that would merge the colleges election dates with those of the statewide elections during a board meeting this past Tuesday.

Currently, the college holds elections in odd-numbered years, but it could change to even-numbered years to align with the state elections.

The first option elongates the terms for trustees elected in 2015 by 11 months. So, rather than having an election in April 2019, a new date of March 2020 would match up with state primaries.

Subsequently, those elected in 2017 would also have 11 months added to their tenures and would be up for reelection in March 2022.

The second option calls for a 19-month extension and switches to California general elections in November of 2020 and 2022.

The general purpose [is] to improve and encourage voter turnout, particularly for municipal and local elections, Viar said.

A change is necessary because the board is one of many governing bodies scrambling to become compliant with the California Voter Participation Act, which was signed into law in 2015 and goes into effect Jan. 1.

The act stipulates that a political subdivision cannot hold elections outside of a statewide date if the last election results were at least 25% smaller than that of the previous four statewide elections.

Viar said the difference easily crosses the threshold for the colleges past four elections.

Viar also said that if the college did not change its election cycle, it runs the risk of being taken to court.

Im not very comfortable with 19 months. That seems a little bit self-serving, Board member Yvette Vartanian Davis said.

As for which option to choose, the trustees tended to lean toward lining up with state primaries.

Looking at the big picture and whats in the best interest of the college and the best interest of trustees being elected by our electorate, I think that looking at the March date is a better date because I think well get more participation, Ann Ransford, the boards vice president, said.

Board member Anthony P. Tartaglia said he thought March was favorable over November because there would be less confusion for voters.

Clutter on the election ballot is bad enough or hard enough to get constituents to vote for community college [issues] because we generally tend to be at the last of the ballot, he said.

Viar backed Tartaglia by adding, [The] only propositions going on the March ballot are those put on the ballot by the state legislators. All citizen-initiated initiatives must now go on the ballot in November. A large number of propositions will be on in November.

Board member Yvette Vartanian Davis said she had a different concern.

Im not very comfortable with 19 months, she said of the other proposed extension of terms. That seems a little bit self-serving.

The views held by board members coincide with those of the Glendale City Council, which on Nov. 7 decided to amend the city charter to move municipal elections to the March primary cycle, beginning in 2020.

Glendale residents will have a chance to vote on that proposed change in April.

Glendale Community College trustees are expected to make their decision at their next board meeting on Dec. 19.

Viar said Glendale Unified school board members are expected to discuss moving the districts election dates during their next meeting on Tuesday.

While Glendale Unified and Glendale Community College are not bound by decisions made by the City Council, the savings if all three entities consolidated their elections would be substantial.

According to a report by Viar, [The Los Angeles] County estimate of election costs for the city, GUSD and GCC consolidating in March is approximately $250,000 , and for November would be approximately $235,000.

Glendale Community College paid approximately 27% of the last municipal elections costs this year, which totaled $159,606. A move to either statewide election date would save the college roughly $90,000.

andrew.campa@latimes.com

Twitter @campadresports
After an inconclusive fall election threatened to paralyze Germanys leadership, the renewal of an uncomfortable right-left partnership could herald an end to what analysts had been calling the countrys worst post-war political crisis.

The center-left Social Democrats abruptly said Friday that they are open to forming a coalition government with Chancellor Angela Merkels conservative party.

The Social Democrats, or SPD, had reluctantly joined forces to support the conservatives to form a majority in parliament during eight of the last 12 years. Then this fall the SPD steadfastly refused to supply the needed backing for another four years under Merkel after suffering another drubbing, its worst result in 70 years, in the national elections on Sept. 24.

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But the pressure on the SPD and its beleaguered chairman, Martin Schulz, to abandon that firm Nein grew inexorably this week after Merkels efforts to forge an unwieldy three-way coalition with two other smaller parties collapsed acrimoniously Sunday.

Merkels failure to find a willing coalition partner raised fears of political turmoil in a country that desperately craves stability.

Germanys European Union partners watched in horror as Merkels power and political career appeared to be eroding in recent weeks at the worst possible moment, when the bloc was increasingly dependent on her sure-handed leadership in the face of Brexit negotiations with Britain over its exit from the EU, the euro zone debt crisis and growing trans-Atlantic tensions following President Trumps election.

With her grip on power at home ominously slipping away and doubts about her future spreading to capitals across Europe, the 63-year-old veteran chancellor got the unexpected last-ditch reprieve Friday thanks to the heavy-handed intervention of Germanys figurehead president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Despite his limited powers as the titular head of state, Steinmeier has been twisting arms behind the scenes all week in a desperate bid to find a way to avoid the time-consuming and destructive process of new elections that would not likely take place until April. Such a delay would have prolonged the period of uncertainty at a time when the European Union and Germany, the EUs largest member, can ill afford it.

Steinmeier, who was himself defeated by Merkel in their race for chancellor in 2009, managed to persuade his SPD party ally Schulz in a private hour-long meeting Thursday at his office in the Bellevue Palace in Berlin to rethink a hasty decision made right after the election results were announced on Sept. 24. Back then Schulz ruled out helping Merkel form a stable government for another four years.

The SPD, which suffered setbacks in the last three national elections, had grown tired of playing a thankless role as second fiddle in another Merkel government. Schulz spent eight long hours through Thursday night huddling with other SPD leaders after meeting Steinmeier  nearly three times as long as planned.

Schulz emerged from the closed-door SPD talks early Friday to announce that the party had decided, for the sake of Germanys national interests, to explore the possibility of another grand coalition with Merkels conservatives even though it was not something his party wanted to do.

Attempting to save face after long refusing such a course, Schulz added that the party would nevertheless ask its 430,000 grass-roots members to vote to approve or reject any detailed coalition agreement that would be hammered out in the next month or two with Merkels conservatives.

We dont have a government crisis, but Germany is in a complicated situation, Schulz said, tacitly referring to the countrys fear of minority governments or unstable coalitions after the turmoil of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and 1930s made possible Hitlers rise to power.

Merkel, who had been facing down calls from within her own party to resign after talks with the two other parties collapsed Sunday, did not comment directly on the SPDs about-face. But as she spoke briefly to reporters in Brussels, Merkels broad smile spoke volumes; she appeared to be clearly relieved that the SPD had finally changed its mind  a move that most likely indirectly helped prolong her political career.

Merkel is not out of the woods yet, however, as the SPD is likely to demand a high price for another four years as her supporting cast. Even though the crisis appears to have been averted, the coalition talks could last until late January, analysts predict.

Kirschbaum is a special correspondent.

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Ukrainian government forces fought fierce battles against pro-Russia militants around the occupied town of Slovyansk on Monday in an attempt to recover control of the focal point of a rebellion that Kiev authorities contend is being directed from Moscow.

At least four officers were killed and 30 wounded in the latest move against the armed militants in eastern Ukraine claiming to represent a Peoples Republic of Donetsk, the Defense Ministry said in a statement reported by the Kyiv Post. A government helicopter was shot down, the ministry reported, but its crew managed to escape.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov also reported via the newspaper and his Facebook page that a special forces unit was dispatched Monday to Odessa to restore order in the Black Sea port. The city on Friday saw the worst violence in the now 6-month-old conflict between supporters of closer relations with the European Union and the Russia-allied populations in Ukraines south and east.

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At least 46 people died in Odessa after a clash Friday when firebombs set ablaze the citys trade unions building where pro-Russia gunmen had taken up positions on the upper floors. A statement issued by Odessa police after the conflagration suggested the gunmen were targeting a march by supporters of the pro-Western government in Kiev.

Riots were reported over the weekend in Odessa as Russia supporters in the culturally and linguistically divided city stormed police headquarters and freed dozens of pro-Russia militants arrested Friday in alleged violence. Odessa police reportedly did little to resist the jailbreak, prompting the relocation of more than 40 remaining pro-Russia militants in custody and the deployment of the special security force, Avakov said.

A funeral Monday for Vyacheslav Markin, an Odessa regional lawmaker who was severely burned in the Friday fire and died Sunday, drew 300 pro-Russia militants. They vowed to avenge the death of the politician, who was known for his opposition to the Kiev leadership, news agencies reported.

Ukraines acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, and interim Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk took power in Kiev in late February after former President Viktor Yanukovich agreed to a power-sharing interim government and early elections but fled to Russia instead.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin allies have denounced the Kiev leadership as coup-installed and illegitimate. Days after Yanukovich fled, Russian troops occupied the regional parliament and key government installations in Ukraines Crimea area, which organized a hasty referendum on secession and appealed for annexation to Russia. Putin issued a decree making Crimea part of Russia two days after the vote, a move denounced by the international community as illegal.

NATO officials estimate there are 40,000 Russian troops along Ukraines eastern border, and the Kiev leadership and its Western allies accuse the Kremlin of plotting to take more territory in the Russian-leaning eastern and southern regions of Ukraine.

Pro-Russia militants, some in Russian army camouflage uniforms and carrying weapons of the Kremlins armed forces, have occupied about a dozen towns and cities in an arc of land stretching from the Russian border to the strategic Black Sea ports east of Crimea.

Fighting in Slovyansk and elsewhere in the industrialized Donetsk region has intensified as opponents of the interim leadership in Kiev, the capital, appear to be trying to disrupt a May 25 presidential election. Separatist militants in Slovyansk and the coal and steel belts of the Donetsk region have called a rival vote for secession on Sunday.

Putin justified the Crimea invasion as necessary to defend the peninsulas Russian majority population, and Kremlin officials have made similar accusations of endangered Russians and Russian-speakers in denouncing Kiev authority in the tumultuous east and south.

On Monday, the Kremlin news service reported that Putin had been provided a 70-page White Book detailing human rights abuses in Ukraine since the rebellion against Yanukovich began in November.

The report is aimed at drawing the attention of the world community and international legislators to registered human rights violations in Ukraine, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said according to an RIA Novosti report.

The reported violations were based on information from Russian, Ukrainian and Western media sources, statements by representatives of the current authorities in Kiev and their supporters, eyewitness accounts and on-the-spot observations and interviews of Russian noncommercial organizations, the Kremlin news service said.

Ukraines interim authorities and U.S. and European officials have expressed concern that the Kremlin is laying the groundwork to justify an invasion of eastern and southern Ukraine on the pretext of defending the Russian communities Putin and his government contend are being abused by fascist leaders in Kiev.
The assailants arrived in five all-terrain vehicles: between 25 and 30 gunmen clad in military-style camouflage pants and black T-shirts and carrying an Islamic State flag.

They positioned themselves at the main gate of a Sufi mosque and in its 12 windows. Then, as the imam was about to deliver his Friday sermon, they set off explosives and sprayed hundreds of worshipers inside with bullets.

At least 305 people were killed  among them 27 children  and 128 were injured in what authorities are describing as Egypts worst attack by suspected Islamist extremists in modern times.

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Investigators and survivors on Saturday offered new details about the carnage that unfolded at the Rawda mosque, in the dusty North Sinai town of Bir Abed.

As the gunfire and explosions rang out, worshipers dived to the floor and stampeded for the doors and windows, they said. Some even climbed into the pulpit, where Imam Mohammed Raziq had been speaking moments before.

There were people on top of me bleeding, and I couldnt feel anything, Raziq said in an emotional interview with Egypts DMC TV channel.

After the initial round of seemingly random gunfire, the militants methodically checked their victims for signs of life.

They were shooting anyone who seemed to be breathing, Raziq said.

Those assailants who werent wearing masks sported thick beards and long hair, investigators said. They blocked access to the mosque by torching seven cars belonging to worshipers and also opened fire on ambulances as they raced to the scene.

President Abdel Fattah Sisi vowed to respond with extreme force and avenge our martyrs.

Egyptian warplanes destroyed several vehicles used in the attack, killing their occupants, and also targeted suspected terrorist hide-outs containing weapons, ammunition, explosive materials and administrative necessities, the military said Saturday.

1 / 6 Egyptians carry victims on stretchers after an attack on the Rawda mosque near the North Sinai provincial capital of Arish. (AFP/Getty Images) 2 / 6 A video frame grab shows people and ambulances waiting to evacuate victims outside the Rawda mosque in Arish, Egypt. (EPA / Shutterstock) 3 / 6 Egyptians check bodies lying in a truck after the attack on the Rawda mosque near Arish, Egypt. (AFP/Getty Images) 4 / 6 Egyptians gather at the scene of the Rawda mosque attack. (AFP/Getty Images) 5 / 6 A video frame grab shows people gathering outside the Rawda mosque after the attack. (EPA / Shutterstock ) 6 / 6 People pass the Rawda mosque on the Sinai Peninsula. (STR / EPA-EFE / REX / Shutterstock)

The governments supporters cheered the military on.

If officials wanted, we would go out with weapons and face these devils, columnist Kareem Abdel Salam wrote in Egypts Al Youm Al Saba newspaper.

But the countrys security forces have been using such tactics for years in the Sinai Peninsula without appearing to dent the ability of a persistent Islamist insurgency to inflict devastating attacks.

Its really essential that there be a review of the strategy, given such a huge attack being able to take place, said Timothy E. Kaldas, a nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington.

He noted that a state of emergency that has been in effect in the region since 2014 has strangled the local economy and alienated the Bedouin tribes who live there.

While many people agree that the counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism strategy needs to be more multifaceted and not just a military solution, fundamentally thats very unlikely to happen so long as the country remains a military dictatorship that sees the military as the solution for every one of its problems, Kaldas said.

Militants stepped up their attacks after Sisi came to power in a coup that toppled an elected Islamist president in 2013. Hundreds of police and soldiers have been killed since then, most of them in attacks carried out by a group that pledged loyalty to Islamic State in 2014.

As of late Saturday, no group had claimed responsibility for this latest attack. But a statement issued by the office of Egypts chief prosecutor, Nabil Sadeq, said at least one of the assailants was brandishing a black flag inscribed with the declaration of the Muslim faith  There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet  like those carried by Islamic State.

The groups local affiliate, known as Sinai Province, has carried out deadly bombings on churches in the capital, Cairo, and other cities. It also is believed to have been responsible for the downing of a Russian passenger jet in 2015.

But the militants have not previously taken aim at a Muslim place of worship. At least two other Egyptian militant groups, Jund al-Islam and the Hasm Movement, denounced Fridays attack.

The mosque that was targeted is frequented by Sufi Muslims, followers of a mystical form of Islam that is deemed to be heretical by Islamic State and other Sunni extremists. Many of those who worship there are members of the Sawarka tribe, who are generally viewed as supportive of the government and have refused to cooperate with the militants.

The scale of the bloodshed shocked Egyptians. Sisi ordered that a mausoleum be built to honor the victims, and prayers were offered for them at mosques and churches across the nation Saturday.

After the funeral prayer at Cairos Sayeda Zeinab mosque, one man shouted, Long live Egypt. The mosque is a focal point for both Shiite and Sufi Muslims, who chanted poems in praise of the prophet Muhammad and crowded a room said to house the tomb of one of his granddaughters.

It is practices such as these that have made the Sufi tradition a target of Islamic State, which considers the veneration of tombs to be blasphemous. The January edition of an Islamic State online magazine featured an interview with a Sinai commander who vowed to eradicate Sufis from the area.

But millions of Egyptians belong to Sufi orders. Next week, they will celebrate the prophets birthday  another practice discouraged by Islamic State. In preparation for the holiday, lights have been strung across city squares, and stalls have sprung up selling special sweets.

We dont know who is really doing this, said one Cairo sweets vendor, who was too afraid to give his name. I think Islamic State is actually people in the police themselves. Who else can do this?

Its terrible what happened yesterday. These people who killed Muslims in a mosque are not Muslims themselves.

Special correspondent Medhat reported from Cairo, and staff writer Zavis from Beirut. Special correspondent Umar Farooq contributed to this report from Cairo.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Twitter: @alexzavis

UPDATES:

5 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with witness accounts, analyst comment and prayers offered at mosques and churches across the nation.

10 a.m.: This article was updated with staff reporting including new details about Fridays attack.

This article was originally published at 3:35 a.m.
Residents of a Hanover Township, Northampton County, home noticed a fire on Thanksgiving Eve and got to safety, but they're displaced until repairs can be made, a township fire official said Saturday.

The blaze was reported about 10 p.m. Wednesday at 949 Wedgewood Road.

Destroyed were the garage and two cars, as well as the family room of the attached home, said township fire Marshal Scott Milham. There was also smoke damage throughout the home.

No firefighters were injured in the response.

The cause remained under investigation, as did the point of origin, Milham said; it wasn't immediately clear if it started in the garage or the family room.

It did not appear suspicious, and was looking like an accident, Milham said.

The residents were hosting family ahead of the holiday and planned to have nine people in all sleeping there overnight, according to the fire marshal.

The house is "non-livable for the foreseeable future," Milham said.

Assisting the Hanover Township Volunteer Fire Co. were the Hecktown Volunteer Fire Co. from Lower Nazareth Township, Catasauqua Fire Department, East Allen Township Fire Department and Bethlehem Township Volunteer Fire Co. and Nancy Run Fire Co., also from Bethlehem Township, as well as the Han-Le-Co Fire Co. from Hanover Township, Lehigh County

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
RARITAN TWP. - A two-story garage was destroyed in a large fire on Friday.

Firefighters responding to Cherryville Hollow Road around 6 p.m. reported the building was already engulfed in flames. The fire remains under investigation as of Saturday morning.

The South Tanker Task Force was activated to ferry water to the scene because there are no hydrants in this part of the township. Tankers filled up on Wescott Drive by Hunterdon Medical Center.

Firefighters, who battled the blaze for several hours, returned around 10:30 p.m. to put out hot spots.

Among the fire departments that responded were the Raritan Township Fire Department, Quakertown Fire Company, Lebanon Borough Fire Department and tankers from fire departments in the southern part of Hunterdon County and Bucks County in Pennsylvania.

Firefighters from Clinton, Readington and Lebanon Township were asked to man the responding fire department's houses while the crews were battling the fire.

Others that responded included the Hunterdon County Fire Coordinators, township police, and the Flemington-Raritan and Clinton rescue squads.
Former Lehigh County resident Adam Matos was sentenced this week to life in prison after a Florida jury was unable to agree unanimously on having him put to death for murdering four people.

The Tampa Bay Times reports 11 of 12 jurors voted Tuesday for the 32-year-old to be executed for the 2014 killings, but without unanimous agreement, Matos automatically received a life sentence.

Matos, formerly of Orefield in North Whitehall Township, was convicted by the jury Nov. 16 of four counts of first-degree murder.

Three of the victims, Megan Brown and parents Gregory and Margaret Brown, were also from the Lehigh Valley. They lived in Heidelberg Township for more than a decade before moving to Florida in 2014.

On Aug. 28 of that year, Matos shot to death Megan and Greg Brown then fatally bludgeoned Megan's new boyfriend, Nick Leonard, with a hammer before doing the same to Margaret Brown.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, after the Pasco County jury left the courtroom, the victims' survivors expressed their "rage and anguish ... as the judge heard them tell of gaping holes in their hearts."

"In my nightmares, I see him trembling and shaking to find and load his rifles, his hands shaking so much he's hardly able to get a shell into his gun to defend his family," Gregory Brown's younger brother, Richard Brown, said, according to the report. "To this day I can feel his helplessness and shock as the murders were unfolding in front of him."

Matos had pleaded not guilty to the murders in October 2014, but he admitted at his trial earlier this month to having killed the four.

He claimed he'd been attacked in the Browns' Hudson home in by Leonard, from whom he wrestled a firearm, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

He also stabbed Leonard before fatally shooting Greg Brown and Megan Brown, according to the report. He then finished off Leonard with the hammer and met Margaret Brown as she was coming home into the garage, where he killed her, the report states.

Megan Brown and Matos' then-4-year-old son was in the home at the time but was uninjured.

Matos left the four bodies piled atop each other in an open field about a mile from the home, where they were found Sept. 5, 2014.

He was arrested that same day in a Tampa hotel with his son.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
TROPHIES

Jake Weikert's interest in American Sign Language is opening horizons for other students in the Bethlehem Area School District. Weikert, now a senior at Liberty High School, took an interest in sign language four years ago. He started taking lessons, along with his mom, Courtney Weikert, a kindergarten teacher in the district, and his sister. He began volunteering at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School with hearing and hearing-impaired students, and eventually wrote a letter to Superintendent Joseph Roy about offering sign language as a high school class. This week the school board approved American Sign Language as a level-one course in 2018-19 and possibly an advanced course after that. Weikert plans to study in the deaf education program at Bloomsburg University and become a certified K-12 teacher.

The pre-Thanksgiving Day bonfire bonfire at Easton Area High School requires a lot of labor -- collecting wood, assembling it, protecting it. The annual tradition gets a big assist from the Palmer Township Fire Department, which inspects the huge pile hours before it is ignited. According to Assistant Chief Jim Alercia, the department also coordinates with the Northampton County 911 dispatch center to check out the reports of fires called in by passing motorists, many of whom mistake the bonfire for a brush fire or a fire at a neighboring building. Firefighters are on hand to extinguish any spot fires that flare up nearby, and also check on campfires used by seniors while they guard the pile.

Thanks to a gift from Lauren's Hope Foundation, a nonprofit that helps brain-injured children, the family of 13-year-old Taylor Munro will be getting a fence at their Hanover Township home. Her parents, Scott and Shannon Munro, wanted a fence to allow Taylor, who has a gross developmental delay, more freedom to play outside. They were surprised by cost estimates of up to $10,000. The foundation partnered with B&B Custom Pools and Elite Fencing Concepts to build an enclosure. The group was formed in memory of Lauren Flood, who died four-and-a-half years after her birth from complications of a traumatic brain injury.

TURKEYS

Customers of Uber, the popular ride-hailing service, are the latest victims of a large-scale data hack. The New York Times reported that names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of up to 57 million Uber customers were accessed by hackers in 2016 -- and that Uber paid a $100,000 ransom to try to cover it up. The company's new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said the breach also exposed the names and driver's license numbers of 600,000 drivers, but did not include customers' credit card numbers, bank account information, Social Security numbers or birth dates. Uber said the breach was discussed with a potential investor in the company, SoftBank Group Corp., before going public about the crime on Tuesday. Uber suffered a data breach in 2014, when information on about 50,000 drivers was stolen.

Curbside mailboxes continue to be a target for thieves in the Lehigh Valley. Authorities say two Allentown men pulled letters out of U.S. Postal Service box in Whitehall Township using string and sticky traps designed to catch mice and insects. Geudy Tatis-Gil and Jesus Alberto Perez, who allegedly cashed $380 in stolen checks, were charged with theft of mail and other offenses, according to a federal indictment filed this week. Investigators learned of the scheme when ripped-open mail was found on a road near a Bethlehem mailbox in June, which led to a sting operation at the Whitehall location.
THEY assembled at the crossroads. A huge crowd. As the flames crackled softly, there was silence. The coffin came close and then spontaneous applause rang out.

For the family it must have been a massive support. It was a simple thing but a rural Ireland statement and a mark of respect, says Mike Houlihan of the scenes in the centre of the town of Kilmallock on Sunday night last.

The local fire brigade oversaw a controlled bonfire at the crossroads. Cal ODonnell was known for his bonfires.

The 80-year-old died unexpectedly at the University Hospital Limerick last Thursday. His coffin was carried from Daffys funeral home to SS Peter and Paul's Church in Kilmallock on Sunday night.

He was buried on Monday in Effin Cemetery.

When you have a victory, you celebrate it and the bonfire was Cals symbol.

It was a statement that something had been achieved, Mike adds.

Mike and Cal were neighbours - both residents of The Green Road.

On many a great day in the town during the 1990s - particularly in 1992 and 1993 when Kilmallock and Mike were in their pomp and Cal was reveling in their success - a bonfire blazed brightly at the crossroads.

He always reckoned the bonfires had to be lit - it was tradition, continues former Kilmallock star player Bernie Savage, a good friend of Cals.

I remember the one he lit after Limerick beating Cork in 1996, Id say he lit it at about six oclock in the evening. I remember he went up to the Donie Barrys and came down with a load of tyres out of Donies. On his way back down his pants began to slip.

He didnt know whether to drop the tyres or grab his pants, Bernie smiled.

Bernie played against Cal during their time in England. While Bernie only remained in England for three years, Cal was there from 1956 until 1978.

Bernie played with Brothers Pearse in London while Cal played with St Marys hurling club in London in the 1960s and the 1970s.

He played all his life in the corner back position. He was uncompromising, says Bernie.

Cal used always tell this story. In 1955 Kilmallock won their first county minor title and he was marking a fella known as 26 Goal Eric. Eric Smith was his name. He used to hurl with Treaty. Cal was marking this 26 Goal Eric and didnt Cal bury him!

While in London, Cal was chairman of the Kilmallock Mens Association and his wife Ann was the secretary.

They did the world of good - they used to have a dinner dance every year. They would invite people from Kilmallock. They would have one special guest and they would have a couple of other special guests as well, says Bernie.

They would organise that about 40 would go from here every year for that dinner dance and that lasted for years, and years and years.

It started off in the Spotted Dog but it ended up in the Tara Hotel. It needed a bigger venue because it was getting more popular. Cal was the face, and Ann worked away behind the scenes, Bernie explains.

While Cal wouldnt have been known for his singing voice, there were a few songs that remained close to his heart.

There were two songs in particular that he would sing a few verses of - the Old Knocksouna Boat and The Road Near Abbeyshrule, says Bernie.

Cal was known affectionately by many as Calin (een),

Everyone was known as 'in' by him in the end - it was always Bernin, and Mikin and Tomin.

If you heard him talking about the hurling, he would be describing the love and pride we have for our little club.

Along with hurling, Cals other great passion in life was greyhounds.

 He was a big doggie man - be it coursing or track, says Mike Houlihan.

When you would be going or coming from school, Cal would be out with his dogs walking - that familiar stride leading five or six dogs, getting them ready for the track, adds Mike.

Cals sporting pursuits brought him all over the county and country, ensuring he built up many great friendships along the way. He was the best character Kilmallock ever had. He was known by everybody, says Bernie.

Cal ODonnell is very deeply regretted by his loving wife Ann, daughters Rose and Sue, sons Tom, Pat, and Dave, brother Tom, sisters Mary, Biddy, Ann, and Nelly, his extended family and a large circle of friends.
THERE have been nearly 60 drug seizures in Limerick Prison so far this year, according to new figures released by the Department of Justice.

Statistics released by Minister for Justice and Equality, Charlie Flanagan TD, show that there were 57 drug seizures at the Mulgrave Street prison, between January 1 and September 17.

Limerick Prison had slightly fewer seizures than Castlerea, 60, and Cloverhill Prison, with 61 drug seizures. There were 100 drug seizures in Midlands Prison, 126 in Wheatfield, and a total of 310 in Mountjoy.

The Minister released the data in response to a parliamentary question submitted by Independent TD, Deputy Clare Daly.

Deputy Daly also questioned the Minister about the review of the Keeping Drugs out of Prison policy, to which he said that it was under constant review by his officials in the Irish Prison Service.

He said that his officials are exploring new technologies to assist in the prevention of drug smuggling into prisons, and the retrieval of such contraband that have made it into the prisons.

For example, the prison service has introduced a confidential telephone line which allows prisoners and members of the public to alert authorities, in strict confidence, of activities related to the illegal smuggling  and use  of drugs in prisons, he stated.

Though the IPS regularly record drug seizures, there are limitations, such as the IPS not having the lab facilities needed to establish the exact chemical composition of all drugs, he said.

The data that the Minister released does not have a breakdown of what type of drugs were seized at Limerick Prison.

It should be noted that the policy is not just about the security element it also deals with treatment for prisoners. I am advised by the Irish Prison Service that any prisoner who enters the custody of the Irish Prison Services while presenting with addiction issues has access to addiction services, and is actively encouraged to engage with those services.
LIMERICK-based building contractor Roadbridge, which won company of the year at the annual Chamber business awards, is hoping to grow substantially and get back to 2007 levels.

Roadbridge, based at Crossagalla in Ballysimon, was named overall winner at the prestigious ceremony, which took place at the Strand Hotel last weekend.

Conor Gilligan, the managing director of the firm  which specialises in roads, civil engineering and waste water management projects  said the firm is setting itself to future growth.

We are an infrastructure contractor which has set our feet on the west coast of Ireland. Other contractors who come in from abroad find it difficult to work here. Tonights recognition is brilliant. To be recognised among your peers is hugely important. Its very good for staff morale. It demonstrates where we are at, he said.

Roadbridge employs 50 people in its city offices  plus a further 60 contractors working on Irish Water infrastructure locally. Globally, the firm has 1,000 people on its books  400 in Ireland.

Mr Gilligan says his aim is to get back to 2007 levels, both in terms of employment and turnover.

Wed like to add another 500 people, he said, adding that he hopes Roadbridge will bid for the Limerick-Cork motorway project.

Presenting the award to Roadbridge, Chamber president Ken Johnson praised the company for its innovative approach and continuous investment in its staff and services.

Roadbridge is a forward-looking company that has achieved significant growth through completing major projects in the transport, renewables and energy, utilities, commercial, industrial waste management and leisure sectors, he said.

The overall prize represented a second award for Roadbridge, which was also named best large company at the ceremony.

The biggest night in Limericks business calendar, the annual awards dinner, for which the Limerick Leader is a media partner and was sponsored by LIT, was attended by 450 business leaders and government officials across the region.

It featured a keynote address from Niall Gibbons, the chief executive of Tourism Ireland (see p13).

And there was a special lifetime achievement award for former Finance Minister, Fine Gael leader and long-serving Limerick TD Michael Noonan, from president, Mr Johnson.

In his address to the award, the PWC accountant said while Limerick is becoming a role model in terms of cities and regions in Ireland, we cannot become complacent.

We cannot take our leg off the accelerator collectively or individually. All stakeholders need to remain focused and continue working together on our shared vision and goals. To use the old slogan  a lot done, but more to do, Mr Johnson said. He added Limerick can become Irelands second capital.
LESS than two weeks ago it was damaged by floods, but Foynes Flying Boat and Maritime Museum is proving that the show must go on, as they host a very special event this Sunday.

The European premiere of a film, about one mans record-breaking journey around the world in a flying boat, will take place in the West Limerick village  a spot of historical and cultural significance for the flying boat in Europe.

Australian man Michael Smith made 83 flights and stopped in 25 countries over a seven-month period in 2015, making a film about the experience called Voyage of the Southern Sun.

I visited the Foynes museum during my few days in Ireland, and it was the greatest testament to the golden era of flying boats Ive seen anywhere. Not only was Ireland the greenest place I visited, but by the far the friendliest. Im really looking forward to returning to launch the book and film in Ireland, he said.

The man, who was named Australian Geographics Adventurer of the Year, will also launch his book of the same name on the day.

His story begins when he left Melbourne in a Searey Amphibious aeroplane called Southern Sun, to loosely follow the Qantas Empire flying boat route of 1938 from Sydney to London.

On reaching Foynes, Michael decided to continue flying across the North Atlantic, North America, the North Pacific.

Upon his arrival in Longreach, Australia, on November 11, 2015, he became the first person to solo navigate the world using a single-engine flying boat.

Incredibly, Mr Smith had limited flying experience, no support team and only basic instruments in his tiny flying boat. He risked his life to make modern aviation history.

At a leisurely 80 knots, Michael took his time to fly from cities to forests, deserts and rivers, over mountains and volcanoes, coral reefs, vast stretches of oceans, ice floes and glaciers.

His journey captured the geographic splendour of the world, and the film documents all, while he learns a little about humankind and himself along the way.

He also met plenty of adventure and made new friends along the way  including enormous raccoon-sized rats on the uninhabited Aleutian island of Attu, some surprised members of the Special Branch on his arrival in the UK, while he had a near-death experience while leaving Greenland.

I am delighted that Michael has chosen to premiere his film here. I know he has a great story to tell and believe there will be a lot of interest in it, said director of the Foynes Flying Boat and Maritime Museum, Margaret OShaughnessy.

We have had some difficult days here in Foynes following the recent flooding, but the show must go on, and what better show to lift all our spirits than the European premiere of a film documenting Michaels epic journey around the world.

Tickets to the premiere of Voyage of the Southern Sun are available from the museum, and early booking is advisable as places are limited.

For many, Foynes is the home of the flying boat and the golden era of aviation.

It is also home to some of the most coveted artefacts from the golden era of Hollywood, as its late patron Maureen OHara bequeathed her memorabilia to the west Limerick Museum.

A new wing is due to be built onto the museum to display the Maureen OHara items.

But first, Ms OShaughnessy and her team will be working to repair the damage caused during the recent flooding, ahead of the next tourism season beginning in March.

Hundreds of thousands of euro worth of damage was caused to the museum when a man-made lake near Foynes overspilled.
A MEDICAL doctor who was accused of bullying a colleague at the University of Limerick has issued High Court proceedings against UL for defamation and personal damages.

Dr Niall Cahill, the medical director of the Student Health Centre at UL from 2000 to 2015, is the third person cited in the recent HEA report into UL to sue.

Suspended whistleblowers Person B and Person C have also issued proceedings.

At least one other former employee is also considering legal action, on foot of the release of the report by Dr Richard Thorn.

Dr Cahill, Person T in the report, wrote to the new UL president Dr Des Fitzgerald, informing him of the legal proceedings issued on November 14.

If Des Fitzgerald is acting with moral authority, he will address the wrongs that were perpetrated against all of the victims, Dr Cahill told the Limerick Leader.

This is bringing the city into disrepute. It isnt fair on the decent people of Limerick, he added.

In 2015, Dr Cahill received a confidential severance package of 185,000, plus his legal costs of 24,600, and a letter of reference from the university in August 2015, after raising concerns about HR following the bullying accusations.

He said that he had been raising concerns around governance and HR matters in UL since 2010, when a number of complaints were made against him by one employee, and a package to leave the university was foisted upon him.

Dr Cahill, who is a GP in Limerick city, claimed that former University of Limerick president Dr Don Barrys remarks to the Public Accounts Committee earlier this year in relation to bullying were defamatory.

He denies the bullying in the strongest terms possible, and has said that as a doctor for more than 30 years, he wants to have these allegations heard by the High Court and not by a flawed internal process. Dr Cahill called for a detailed independent review of all HR investigations carried out by UL.

He also claims that UL misled the Revenue Commissioners when he attempted to investigate the status of his employment, after a tender was put out which made him feel as though he was being pushed out.

Regarding Dr Cahills case, the HEA report of early November found: The review believes that a proposal to tender for medical services without obvious attempts to address the fact that Person T had served the University for an extended period was unreasonable and likely to diminish the relationship with Person T.

It also found that the universitys findings regarding Dr Cahills misconduct lacked the necessary transparency of decision-making for such a significant hearing.

Dr Cahill now hopes to seek justice and fair process.

There is no moral compass at the heart of the University of Limerick , or at least there has not been for some years now, he said.

I wont be making any settlement until this is all sorted out for all of the victims  its not just about my case, said Dr Cahill.
TWO women whose partners are Travellers have failed in their objection against the renewal of a public dance licence by a city hotel.

Elizabeth McNamara and Hazel Hackett objected to the application by Kilmurray Lodge Hotel Ltd claiming they had been discriminated against because of the company they were in when they arrived at the Kilmurry Lodge Hotel earlier this year.

Solicitor Darach McCarthy said it was his clients case that the company is not of good character and is therefore unfit to hold a licence given what happened.

Judge David Waters was told the company is the licencee and that it operates a licenced premises at the popular hotel in Castletroy.

In her evidence, Ms McNamara said she made a reservation through hotels.com to stay at the hotel on the night of February 25, last.

The booking, the court heard, was for three rooms and related to three couples.

Ms McNamara told Mr McCarthy that one of the couples were married earlier in the day and that it was the intention of all six people to go to the hotel to avail of dinner and drinks as residents.

Ms McNamara said having arrived at the hotel at around 4pm, a diffculty arose which resulted in the hotel cancelling the booking and a full refund being issued.

She claimed she was told by a member of staff that the booking was not coming up on the system and that there were no available rooms at the hotel.

Solicitor Gearoid McGann, representing the respondent company, said his client was not disputing that the booking had been made but said the reason for the cancellation was that none of the guests had a valid credit card which was required by the hotel.

Receptionist Anna Hanczur confirmed the booking had been uploaded to the hotels computer system and that she had followed hotel policy by asking each of the women to fill out individual guest registration cards before handing over the room keys.

She said she also requested a valid credit card to secure the booking in accordance with procedure.

Once we have a swiped the credit card, it allows customers to charge any extras  such as food, she said.

Mr McCarthy put it to the witness that a fiction was created to avoid having to allow his clients into the hotel after the identity of their partners was established.

He said while neither of the objectors are members of an ethnic minority they believe they were refused entry because of the company they were in.

I feel we were discriminated against due to the ethnicity of the people we were with, said Ms Hackett.

Duty manager Anthony Walsh rejected this assertion saying he was unaware who the women were with as the three men had remained in the car park and had not come into the hotel.

I never met these ladies before, I didnt know who they were. I never saw their partners, I didnt see who was or wasnt with them, he said.

Mr Walsh said he had been called to reception on the day as none of the women had a valid credit card  an assertion which was disputed by Ms McNamara.

I did have a credit card, I had the one which was used to make the booking, she said

Later, Ms Hackett said the card was in the name of Ms McNamaras partner and that it was in her handbag.

Mr Walsh confirmed that he had contacted hotels.com to cancel the booking as the women were anxious they would receive a refund.

Dismissing the objection, Judge Waters said there was a direct conflict as to what had happened and what was said when the women arrived at the hotel and that he was not satisfied to refuse the application.
LIMERICK publican, Kathleen Mulcaire, Kathleens Bar, Bank Place, Rathkeale was fined a total of 2,000 at Newcastle West court for breaches of the licensing laws.

Sergeant Tony Miniter was on public house duty in Rathkeale about 1am last March 20, he told the court, and found approximately 20-25 people on the premises. A lot were consuming fresh alcohol and there was evidence of fresh alcohol being served he said.

Quite a number of people were running out the back door, he said.

He spoke to Ms Mulcaire, who was not in court to answer the charges. There were 14 previous breaches, he said.

Ms Mulcaire was fined 500 on each of four breaches of the licensing laws: selling intoxicated liquor, permitting intoxicating liquor to be consumed, permitting people to be on the licensed premises and non production of her licence. Two other breaches of opening the premises for sale of intoxicating liquor and exposing liquor for sale were taken into consideration. Recognisance with leave to appeal was fixed at 250.

On the same night, Sgt Miniter also inspected Hickeys Bar, Bridge st, Croom, the property of James Hickey. There was evidence of fresh alcohol being served, the sergeant said, and about 10-15 people on the premises. Mr Hickey was fined 300 for permitting intoxicating liquor to be consumed in breach of the licensing laws.

On March 19, the licensed premises of Brid Tangney, Kilmacow, Kilfinny were inspected about 2am and about 20 people were found on the premises. The licensee was apologetic, the court was told and the premises were cleared. Pleading for his client, solicitor Michael ODonnell said it was a very well run business.

This was the busiest weekend since Christmas, he said.

Ms Tangney was fined 250 for permitting intoxicating liquor to be consumed.
LIMERICK racehorse trainer Robbie McNamara has hit out at the ESB after finding out that he was to a face one of the coldest weekends this year alone with no electricity.

The Croom native, who has been confined to a wheelchair after a devastating fall in April 2015, took to social media to air a major complaint with ESB and Electric Ireland.

And within hours of his statement being rapidly recirculated in the Twitosphere, ESB workers were being deployed to fix the problem at his home in Kildare.

In a statement on his Twitter account on Friday evening, he told Electric Ireland that the ESB cut his electricity on Thursday without warning.

[I] was told last week I needed to change the lease into my name which I thought was already done since I moved in a year ago. There was an outstanding bill from previous tenants that I was only made aware of last week, that the landlord dealt with immediately, the Limerickman said.

He said that he is on his own in a wheelchair for three days with no electricity or heating. And though he said that everything is now in order, he has been told that services will not resume until Monday at earliest".

[I] hope you have a nice warm weekend while I sit in the cold and dark trying to preserve the battery on my phone and doing my utmost not to catch hypothermia on the coldest weekend of the year, he said.

After a busy working week, Mr McNamara told the Leader as he was returning home that the ESB workers are to meet the jockey at around 11.30pm.

I dont have to wear every stitch of clothing that I have, he said.

It was a pain in the backside. It was just inconvenient. Its a busy weekend, he said, We are building up to a busy time of the year with the races. I want things to be going well. I dont need this. I have work early in the morning, and I will be on the go until the evening time.

He said that he posted on Twitter to stop them treating people like that on Twitter. It wasnt for my own, it was for other people.

I knew it was going to be a bit controversial when I put it up. I didnt want to just write them a message on Twitter or ring their customer care, because I had tried all that and I wasnt going to get anywhere. So, I thought, the only chance I have of getting my power on is making a bit of a scene of it and, kind of, embarassing them into it. And thats exactly whats happened, he explained.

In response on Twitter, Electric Ireland said that they were very sorry to read of your experience and that they would contact him during the evening.

A spokesperson for the ESB told the Limerick Leader that they were aware of the matter and that a reconnection is being organised for this evening.
Whisky business India consumes 48% of the world's whisky. It is the fastest-growing market and the largest producer of the spirit. But what exactly are we making and drinking? /food/drink/whisky-business-111646830319184.html 111646830319184 story

When the Kenyan chef-restaurateur Kiran Jethwa visited India earlier this year to shoot Spirited Traveller, a show aired on Fox Life that discovers a country through its favourite beverages, he made Fried Whisky Ice Creamchocolate ice cream flavoured with whisky, oranges and pistachio, dipped in jalebi batter, deep-fried and served with sugar syrupfor the Delhi episode. I was told that people in Delhi love whisky and fried food," Jethwa said. So heres my tribute to that spirit."

Whisky is decidedly the spirit of choice in Indiawe consume almost half the whisky produced worldwide. From the cheapest Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL) variantwhisky makes for almost 90% of IMFLto limited-edition single-malt Scotch, people are drinking more whisky today than ever, spending anywhere between Rs50 per 25ml peg for a McDowells at a Paharganj bar in Delhi to Rs1,500 for a small Johnnie Walker Blue Label at a five-star hotel. While gin is going through something of a resurgence, it is still whisky that racks up the numbers, with a more-than-healthy lead over every other alcoholic beverage.

Though the entire alcobev (alcoholic beverage) industry has grown steadily over the last decade, whisky is the flag-bearer in India," says Thrivikram G. Nikam, executive director at Bengaluru-based Amrut Distilleries Pvt. Ltd. Part of the growth is because whisky has gone through an image makeover. It is not considered an old mans drink anymore. Just like James Bond single-handedly legitimized the vodka martini and Carrie Bradshaw made Cosmopolitan the drink of choice for young women, Don Draper has made the Old Fashioned sexy again in the 21st century.

With social barriers to enjoying a drink being discarded, increasing economic prosperity and 19 million new consumers entering the legal drinking age each year (in India), the overall economic and demographic opportunity is extremely attractive," says Amrit Thomas, chief marketing officer, Diageo India, which represents more than one-third of the whisky sold in India.

The growth is most evident at entry-level IMFL, a category that includes all alcoholic spirits made in India, except beer and wine. The majority of consumers choose IMFL, rather than beer or wine," says Nikam. This is the segment that is largest in India."

But there is one pertinent question: Is the concoction manufactured in India whisky at all?

Bottles being labelled at Amrut Distilleries Bengaluru plant. Courtesy Amrut

Drinking doubles

The Indian spirits market was valued at Rs1.84 trillion in 2016, according to data from consumer research firm GlobalData. Whisky accounts for more than 60% of this figure. The country is not only the largest market for the spirit, it is also the largest global producer of whisky.

Consider these numbers: Whisky consumption in India has more than doubled, from 80.2 million nine-litre cases in 2007 to 193.1 million nine-litre cases in 2016, according to the 2017-2021 forecast by the International Wine and Spirits Research (IWSR ), a leading source of data and analysis on the alcohol beverage market. In the same 10-year period, global whisky consumption rose from 242.8 million to 399.2 million nine-litre cases. Of the whisky consumed in India last year, 189.7 million nine-litre cases, or 98.24%, was Indian-made.

This indicates that India consumes 48% of the worlds whisky. It also suggests that India has been, by far, the largest contributor to the 157 million nine-litre case increase in worldwide consumption of the liquor over the last decade. No wonder, then, that the IWSR says that Indian whiskies will be one of the major contributors to the growth of the global industry in the next five years.

Globally, Scotch is forecast to contribute 10.5m (million) cases to whisky growth over the next five years and US whiskies a further 8.9m cases," according to the IWSR report. Other whiskies (predominantly Indian) will be the largest contributor, growing by 28.2m cases. The US is the second-largest growth market for whisky behind India..."

Whiskys growth story in India is largely predicated on the rise of IMFL brands. But most Indian whiskies are made of molasses, which means they would qualify as rum and not whisky in the international market.

Whiskys growth story in India is largely predicated on the rise of IMFL brands. But most Indian whiskies are made of molasses, which means they would qualify as rum and not whisky in the international market-

Your whisky is rum

Whisky, in the classical understanding, is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. These grainsbarley, maize, wheat, rye, etc.are malted and fermented, and can be used in various combinations or on their own to make whisky.

Ground malted barley is soaked in warm water to extract sugars. The sweet liquor called wort is drained and transferred to fermentation tanks. Yeast is added to this to break down the sugars to alcohol. The fermentation results in a liquid called wash, which is then distilled. Most companies distil the liquid twice but sometimes it is distilled thrice. The distilled whisky is then stored in wooden barrels for maturation.

In India, most of the whisky is made from molassesthe dark, viscous by-product obtained by refining sugar from sugarcane. Fermented molasses are boiled to extract alcohol, which is distilled. The distillation results in a neutral spirit with 96% alcohol by volume, which forms the base of all IMFL. This is blended with a small amount of Scotch for flavour, and voila, we have Indian-made whisky.

The major difference between the molasses-based and grains-based whisky is at the distillation stage," says Nikam of Amrut, which makes both kinds of whiskies. When we use the molasses base, we distil the alcohol till it becomes neutral and doesnt have any characteristic flavour. For grains, we do an incomplete distillation so part of the flavour from the grains is there before it goes into barrels to mature."

Amrut, which was established by Radhakrishna Jagdale in 1948, produces spirits from vodka to gin, including Amrut single malt whisky, which is exported to more than 25 countries.

According to Nikam, Amrut produces about 6 million nine-litre cases of liquor annually, 35,000 of which are single malt whisky. The company exports at least 60% of its single malts. As the company tries to expand beyond its key southern markets, Amrut is planning to increase its single malt production to 100,000 cases by 2022, half of which Nikam hopes will be consumed in India.

Globally, making whisky is a strictly regulated business. For example, in 2008, Europe passed a directive asserting that whisky was an alcoholic drink produced exclusively by the distillation of a mash made from malted cereals. This immediately excludes most Indian whiskies" from the category.

Scotland took this a step further the next year, introducing the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 (SWR). The new regulations gave the precise definition of different kinds of whisky and the difference between a single grain and a single malt. The document has stringent guidelines on regional and geographical indications, production and maturation of Scotch. According to the SWR, Scotch cant be made or matured outside Scotland. For a whisky to be called Scotch, it has to be made in Scotland, with set raw materials, and has to be aged within the country for three years or more.

Much of the whisky-producing worldfrom the US to Japan and Australiahas stuck to similar guidelines regarding the product and its manufacturing process. American bourbon whiskey, for example, must mature in new oak barrels, which are then used to age Scotch. In India, however, there are multiple regulations governing consumption age, on obtaining liquor licences and the tax structureleading to arbitrary and exorbitant prices. But there are hardly any rules that benefit the end user, such as differentiating whisky from rum, or even country liquor for that matter.

The only stricture, according to a 2005 Bureau of Indian Standards publication, is that whisky should be made either from a neutral spirit that matches its standards, or a Grade I rectified spirit, or a mix of both. It is this laxity on the part of the Bureau of Indian Standards that allows for so many different spirits, many of which are artificially coloured, to be bottled and legally sold as whisky.

Yet last year, for the first time, the Union government standardized alcohol as a consumable product beyond tax purposes, and the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) came up with the draft Food Safety and Standards (Alcoholic Beverages Standards) Regulations, 2016, which defined various kinds of alcohol and their types.

According to the draft, Whisky is an alcoholic beverage made from neutral grain spirit or rectified grain spirit, or neutral spirit or their mixture or is made by distilling the fermented extract of malted cereal grains such as corn, rye, barley; or molasses."

At the same time, both rum and country liquor are defined by the FSSAI in pretty much the same way. Going by this definition, its hard to establish the difference between these three kinds of alcohol.

Blending tanks at Amrut Distilleries Bengaluru plant. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

Angels share

Most whisky made in India is aged briefly because the higher temperatures result in quicker evaporation of the spirit during the maturation stage, a phenomenon known as the angels share". The draft regulations require that whiskies in India, when labelled matured, shall be matured for a period of not less than one year in wooden oak, wooden vats or barrels". This means that much of the whisky that falls in the IMFL category is not aged at all.

Understandably, there has been retaliation, mostly in Europe, against the rise of India-made cheap whiskies". In its 2013 annual report, the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) urged European Union-wide action against the extremely worrying" quantities of cheap Indian blends being imported into the EU.

There is no compulsory definition of whisky in India, and the Indian voluntary standard does not require whisky to be distilled from cereals or to be matured," according to a 2014 PTIreport which quoted the SWA report. Very little Indian whisky qualifies as whisky in the EU owing to the use of molasses or neutral alcohol, limited maturation (if any) and the use of flavourings. Such spirits are, of course, considerably cheaper to produce than genuine whisky."

If India is predominantly a whisky market, why are some of its best whisky makers exporting the bulk of their produce?- Anand Virmani

Long tryst with whisky

Whisky distillation came to India with the British in the 19th century. Edward Dyer, father of Reginald Dyer, the infamous British colonel who ordered the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, was the pioneer of whisky-making in India. Dyer senior set up a distillery in Kasauli in the 1820s. Kasauli, in the Himalayan highlands at 6,000ft above sea level, has climate similar to Scotland, with the added advantage that there was fresh springwater nearby. The distillery later moved to Solan.

Dyer brought equipment and copper stills from Scotland, some of which are still in use. The distillerys Solan No.1 was the best-selling whisky in India for over a century but today, the only malt whisky from the Himalayas is struggling to find takers.

How molasses took over grains is actually quite an interesting story.

Across the world, people use agricultural surplus to make alcohol. Barley in Scotland; wheat, corn and rye in the US; rice in some Asian countries; and sugarcane in India. This is why molasses became prominent in Indian alcohol production.

In 1947, entrepreneur Vittal Mallya bought United Breweries, a group of five breweries in south India that made beer for British troops. At one time, United Spirits Ltd, the groups alcoholic beverages company, was the largest spirit producer in India, with around 60% of the market share. Its brands included locally produced Bagpiper, Royal Challenge, McDowells No.1, and Antiquity, Jura and Dalmore single malt Scotch whiskies.

Diageo Plc., the worlds largest producer of spirits, now owns USL and the business is now called Diageo India.

Diageo India is a market leader in both Scotch and IMFL segments and our brands are all available at distinctive price points in the overall whisky category," says Thomas. With each brand attracting a different set of consumers driven by varying taste preferences and affordability, we see sufficient interest across all the segments."

But if you want to reach the masses, pricing your product at Rs300 per 750ml bottle, it simply isnt possible to make it with grains, says Nikam. At that price point, the product can only be made from neutral spirits," he says.

Entry-level whisky is the most volatile space of the market. Those people who were consuming country liquor will slowly move up to entry-level IMFL," says Nikam.

If you take the whiskies in the Rs300 price range and change the price by Rs5, youd suddenly gain or lose 50% of your market share," says drinks consultant Anand Virmani. Frankly speaking, at that range, you cant really make a good whisky."

But consumers are upgrading as a result of increased exposure, better knowledge and more disposable income. Brands are taking notice. Several brands in the Rs600-800 range have repackaged themselves," says Virmani. Many now have a limited edition kind of product too in the mix. It is an evolving market."

IMFL has its place. It is okay in the context in which it is being consumed," says London-based whisky writer Joel Harrison. Even though it isnt the drink of the connoisseur, it is sweet and accessible, and can be easily consumed neat or mixed into a long drink."

Theres been significant improvement in the distillation technology and, therefore, even the alcohol made from molasses in most cases is of extremely good quality and does not make much of a quality difference," says Sridhar Pongur, joint managing director at Goa-based John Distilleries Pvt. Ltd, which makes the Paul John brand of single malt whiskies. However, since maturation is not normally done in India, there is definitely a difference in taste and flavour."

The company produces around 1.3 million nine-litre cases of whisky per month which, according to Pongur, is a 50:50 mix of grain-based and molasses-based whisky. Though the company sells in select Indian markets, most of its single malt is exported to 30 countries.

Both Amrut and Paul John are making some of the best single malt whiskies in the world," says Virmani. But if India is predominantly a whisky market, why are some of its best whisky makers exporting the bulk of their produce?"

The bottling and assembly line at the plant. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

No takers at home?

It is only in the last decade or so that Indians have really started appreciating good whiskies," says Nikam. We have been making whisky since 1948. When we produced the MaQintosh blended whisky in the 1980s, which had a good portion of malt whisky, people rejected it, saying it was very dry and heavy."

When Amrut made its first single malt whisky in 2004, the company had to launch it in Glasgow, UK. People had rejected our blended whisky," says Nikam. So there was no way we could launch a single malt in India. In fact, we initially had no plans to sell it in India."

But as the initial scepticism towards an Indian single malt subsidedthe launch in Scotland proving a brilliant PR moveAmrut began getting attention. Whisky connoisseur and writer Jim Murray vouched for Amrut and in 2010, in his Whisky Bible (a yearly guide), rated Amrut Fusion the third-best single malt in the world. Heavy, thickly oaked and complex...", said Murray of Amrut Fusion.

Soon Amrut was in high demand in the domestic market. In 2010, Amrut launched its single-malt portfolio in India.

Consumption cues in India have always come from the West. Be it clothes or cars, people tend to prefer buying things that are made outside the county. But that perception is slowly changing. Compared with whisky from, say, Australia, which still is a very young industry and needs improvement, Indian whiskies like Amrut are much better," says Bill Lumsden, head of distilling and whisky creation at The Glenmorangie Company. I have tasted Amrut in blind competitions, and I must say it has potential."

Creating knowledge

Indian consumers are slowly warming up to good home-grown whiskies but there still is a general lack of awareness, especially about what makes whisky and what doesnt. This is amplified by the high import taxes on foreign liquor, which puts imported whiskies out of the reach of most people, skewing the demand in favour of IMFL.

While locally made spirits are taxed by individual states, imported spirits are taxed at both the Union and state level. An import duty of 150% is levied on all imported spiritsfinished, bottled-in-origin products such as Chivas Regal and Johnnie Walker, and bulk spirits that are bottled in India, such as Teachers. This is one of the highest import duties in the world. All states have different taxation levels and methods, so the cost of an imported whisky can appreciate by 160-500% by the time it reaches the consumer.

India could be a great market for imported spirits such as bourbon and Scotch, but it needs to simplify the tax structure, state laws and import duty," says Harrison. Maybe they should reclassify IMFL not as a whisky, to make the market more even."

One way to deal with taxes is to bottle Scotch in India. On the one hand, it reduces the tax burden on the manufacturer and on the other, it gives the consumer a far better product at a lower price point.

The high customs duty at 160% is a deterrent for the Scotch whisky business," says Anshuman Goenka, who leads Bacardi Pvt. Ltds whisky portfolio for Asia, Middle East and Africa. One of the initiatives taken by international Scotch brands is to bottle locally in India. This makes the pricing more accessible for the consumer."

Due to the complexity of the market and the tax structure, India becomes a hard market to navigate for foreign brands. Many companies feel that there is a market in India, because the consumers are used to drinking spirits. There is an emerging middle class with increasing disposable income and the population is huge, so sale potentials are massive," says Harrison. But then they try and operate in India and it is just too complex for many, so profitability is lower, and they end up moving away from the market." But high taxes open up a lot of possibilities for the whiskies made in India as well.

We should actually take advantage of the situation," says Magandeep Singh, author of The Indian Spirit: The Untold Story Of Drinking In India. There is nothing particularly wrong with molasses whisky. We have managed to create an entire industry with it. We actually have become better at it over the years and today there are some very decent molasses whisky."

The onus is on Indian distillers to improve their products and practices. In 2016, the per capita consumption of spirits in India stood at 3.2 litres compared with the global level of 6.4 litres. And the spirits market in India is forecast to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 5.1% during 2016-21, according to GlobalData.

I hope people start making good whisky here which is not just for export," says Virmani. A platform has been readied by Amrut, John Paul and Rampur. Imported whiskies like Jim Beam have managed to bring the prices down by bottling in India and have given people at that price range a taste of a better product.

I am sure in the next decade we will see many whisky makers coming out of India who will make good whiskies and will be able to sell in India."
The job market in The Woodlands and Montgomery County continues to heat up, fueled by the ongoing expansion of some of its largest employers, and just as the busy holiday hiring season arrives.

Figures from the Texas Workforce Commission show the unemployment rate for the county declined to 3.5 percent in October, a decline from the 4.1 percent county unemployment rate posted in September. The lower rate continues a string of improved monthly numbers.

The improvement in October comes as employers based in The Woodlands expand their payrolls, as new businesses move into the county and around the same time as retailers hire people to work in their stores. And, the local expansions are taking place while the entire state enjoys a hiring boom.

STATEWIDE UNEMPLOYMENT LOWEST IN 40 YEARS

Officials with the workforce commission say the Texas economy added 71,500 seasonally adjusted non-farm jobs in October, dropping the statewide unemployment rate to 3.9 percent. That's 90 consecutive months of annual growth for the state and sets the record for the lowest unemployment rate recorded in Texas in four decades.

"Texas has recently experienced some of its most serious economic challenges, but despite these obstacles, our economy is booming," Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement posted on the governor's web site. "This resiliency is a testament to the diversity of our economy and the strength of our workforce. As governor, I will continue to promote policies that allow businesses to thrive and keep Texas the best state in the nation to do business."

In The Woodlands and nearby areas, the region continues to rebound from Hurricane Harvey, while also enjoying the economic benefits of expanding payrolls of major employers. The Conroe Independent School District, which according to The Woodlands Area Economic Development Partnership is the largest employer in the township, and other organizations continue to help keeping the local employment picture shining bright.

With some 7,600 employees across its entire district, Conroe ISD hired nearly 700 new employees, including teachers and paraprofessionals for its current school year. Of those hires, 125 were to fill new positions that were added this year, according to spokeswoman Sarah Blakelock. And next year the district is planning job fairs in April and June to hire more people.

HEALTH CARE HELPING TO BOOST THE WOODLANDS ECONOMY

Also giving a boost to the local economy is the health care industry.

"Health care is certainly a growing sector," said Laura Lee Palmer, vice president of business retention and expansion for the economic development partnership. "We've had some new hospitals open and continue to grow employment in the area."

Indeed, Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Medical Center is the third largest employer in The Woodlands, while CHI St. Luke's Health The Woodlands Hospital is listed by the development partnership as sixth.

Officials at Memorial Hermann, while not providing specific hiring numbers, say hiring plans at the facility will "align" with the center's growth plans.

"In general, we will continue to hire clinical positions in the categories of nursing, respiratory therapy, radiology and pharmacy, to name a few," said Connie Heard, Memorial Hermann senior human resources business partner. "There are non-clinical positions that are priorities as well, such as administrative support, finance and security."

REGION RECOVERS RAPIDLY FROM HARVEY

Meanwhile, the region seems to be recovering especially well from the impacts from Hurricane Harvey with state figures showing the leisure and hospitality industry added nearly 35,000 jobs throughout Texas in October. The rebound comes after the industry experienced its largest monthly decline in September as some establishments were forced to shut down because of Harvey.

Statewide, employment in trade, transportation and utilities also grew, adding 10,000 jobs across the state during the month, with more jobs coming to the region. In Conroe a new FedEx facility being built in the city's Conroe Park North Industrial Park is expected to produce about 100 full-time jobs, while other companies building facilities in the park are also in the process of, or will be hiring scores more.

And the holiday season is also helping to keep the job market hot, with retailers looking for help to work in their stores.

"We do see an annual influx [of jobs] in retail for the Christmas and the holiday season," Palmer notes.
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A U.S. Navy veteran who acknowledges he's facing quite a challenge has announced he's running as a Democrat for Montgomery County judge.

Jay Stittleburg, who admits he has a difficult battle ahead to win the election in conservative, Republican-dominated Montgomery County, has filed to run as the Democratic candidate against incumbent Judge Craig Doyal.

Doyal, a Republican, has been in the post since January of 2015 after winning the county's judge race in 2014. Previously, Doyal had served as Precinct 2 commissioner from 2001-14.

Also running for the position is state Rep. Mark Keough, a fellow Republican who currently represents The Woodlands in the Texas House of Representatives. Keough had announced earlier this year that he would not be seeking another term in the House.

As for Stittleburg, he's a former Navy submarine warfare officer and a political novice who hasn't held office before. He concedes he's running against two established politicians who are well known across the community.

"I think the first challenge is name recognition," Stittleburg told The Villager, adding that he is not discouraged. "To me the biggest challenge is people don't know who I am."

Both Doyal and Keough said they were aware of Stittleburg's entry into the race, but refrained from any comments on the new challenger.

"It's been a long time we've had a Democrat running for county judge," Doyal said, noting Montgomery County's strong Republican representation. "I'm looking forward to a Democratic challenger."

Keough said he welcomed Stittleburg to the field.

"I was aware of his presence," Keough said. "I welcome him to the field because this is what's important to the people. People have choices. I say the more the merrier."

In touting his qualifications to be a county judge, the 44-year-old Stittleburg points to his experience in the Navy where he initially enlisted at the age of 18, but later earned an officer's commission after attending the United States Naval Academy. He says his Navy career includes being an Iraq War veteran where he served two tours of duty as a submarine warfare officer with a deployment to the Persian Gulf. He left the service as a lieutenant and currently works as a project manager providing consulting services on federal compliance matters to oil, gas and chemical operations.

Stittleburg, who lives in Porter, says he would use his experience to bring what he terms "judicious expenditure" over the use of tax dollars collected in the county. And, he said he won't be intimidated by his lack of name recognition or experience.

"Fiscal responsibility and tending your tax dollar. That what this job is all about," he said.

Early voting for the spring primaries begins Feb. 20 and runs through March 2. Election day is March 6.
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A California man who planned to launch himself 1,800 feet high on Saturday in a homemade scrap-metal rocket - in an effort to "prove" that Earth is flat - said he is postponing the experiment after he couldn't get permission from a federal agency to do so on public land.

Instead, Mike Hughes said the launch will take place sometime next week on private property, albeit still in Amboy, California, an unincorporated community in the Mojave Desert along historic Route 66.

"It's still happening. We're just moving it three miles down the road," Hughes told The Washington Post on Friday. "This is what happens any time you have to deal with any kind of government agency."

Hughes claimed the Bureau of Land Management said he couldn't launch his rocket as planned on Saturday in Amboy. He also claimed the federal agency had given him verbal permission more than a year ago, pending approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Representatives from the BLM and the FAA did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

Hughes said he had originally intended to arrive in Amboy on Wednesday to start setting up the rocket. The BLM's denial, along with some technical difficulties - a motor in his modified motor home quit working for a day - threw a wrench into his plans, according to Hughes.

"I don't see [the launch] happening until about Tuesday, honestly," he said. "It takes three days to set up. . . .You know, it's not easy because it's not supposed to be easy."

Assuming the 500-mph, mile-long flight through the Mojave Desert does not kill him, Hughes told the Associated Press, his journey into the atmosflat will mark the first phase of his ambitious flat-Earth space program.

Hughes's ultimate goal is a subsequent launch that puts him miles above Earth, where the 61-year-old limousine driver hopes to photograph proof of the disc we all live on.

"It'll shut the door on this ball earth," Hughes said in a fundraising interview with a flat-Earth group for Saturday's flight. Theories discussed during the interview included NASA being controlled by round-Earth Freemasons and Elon Musk making fake rockets from blimps.

Hughes promised the flat-Earth community that he would expose the conspiracy with his steam-powered rocket, which will launch from a heavily modified mobile home - though he acknowledged that he still had much to learn about rocket science.

"This whole tech thing," he said in the June interview. "I'm really behind the eight ball."

That said, Hughes isn't a totally unproven engineer. He set a Guinness World Record in 2002 for a limousine jump, according to Ars Technica, and has been building rockets for years, albeit with mixed results.

"Okay, Waldo. 3 . . . 2 . . . 1!" someone yells in a test fire video from 2012.

There's a brief hiss of boiling water, then . . . nothing. So Hughes walks up to the engine and pokes it with a stick, at which point a thick cloud of steam belches out toward the camera.

He built his first manned rocket in 2014, the Associated Press reported, and managed to fly a quarter-mile over Winkelman, Arizona.

As seen in a YouTube video, the flight ended with Hughes being dragged, moaning from the remains of the rocket. The injuries he suffered put him in a walker for two weeks, he said.

And the 2014 flight was only a quarter of the distance of Saturday's mile-long attempt.

And it was based on round-Earth technology.

Hughes only recently converted to flat-Eartherism, after struggling for months to raise funds for his follow-up flight over the Mojave.

It was originally scheduled for early 2016 in a Kickstarter campaign - "From Garage to Outer Space!" - that mentioned nothing about Illuminati astronauts, and was themed after a NASCAR event.

"We want to do this and basically thumb our noses at all these billionaires trying to do this," Hughes said in the pitch video, standing in his Apple Valley, California, living room, which he had plastered with drawings of his rockets.

"They have not put a man in space yet," Hughes said. "There are 20 different space agencies here in America, and I'm the last person that's put a man in a rocket and launched it." Comparing himself to Evel Knievel, he promised to launch himself from a California racetrack that year as the first step in his steam-powered leap toward space.

The Kickstarter raised $310 of its $150,000 goal.

Hughes made other pitches, including a plan to fly over Texas in a "SkyLimo." But he complained to Ars Technica last year about the difficulty of funding his dreams on a chauffeur's meager salary.

A year later, he called into a flat-Earth community web show to announce that he had become a recent convert.

"We were kind of looking for new sponsors for this. And I'm a believer in the flat Earth," Hughes said. "I researched it for several months."

The host sounded impressed. Hughes had actually flown in a rocket, he noted, whereas astronauts were merely paid actors performing in front of a CGI globe.

"John Glenn and Neil Armstrong are Freemasons," Hughes agreed. "Once you understand that, you understand the roots of the deception."

The host talked of "Elon Musk's fake reality," and Hughes talked of "anti-Christ, Illuminati stuff." After half an hour of this, the host told his 300-some listeners to back Hughes's exploration of space.

While there is no one hypothesis for what the flat Earth is supposed to look like, many believers envision a flat disc ringed by sea ice, which naturally holds the oceans in.

What's beyond the sea ice, if anything, remains to be discovered.

"We need an individual who's not compromised by the government," the host told Hughes. "And you could be that man."

A flat-Earth GoFundMe subsequently raised nearly $8,000 for Hughes.

By November, the AP reported, his $20,000 rocket had a fancy coat of Rust-Oleum paint and "RESEARCH FLAT EARTH" inscribed on the side.

While his flat-Earth friends helped him finally get the thing built, the AP reported, Hughes will be making adjustments right up to the launch.

But he won't be able to test the rocket before he climbs inside and attempts to steam himself at 500 mph across a mile of desert air. And even if it's a success, he's promised his backers an even riskier launch within the next year, into the space above the disc. He told Ars Technica last year that the second phase of his mission might involve floating in a balloon up to 20,000 feet above the ground, then rocket-packing himself into outer space.

"It's scary as hell," Hughes told the AP. "But none of us are getting out of this world alive."

This is true. And yet some hope to live to see its edges.
CAIRO - Egypt's security forces were on high alert Saturday after striking back at militants whose massacre of more than 300 people at a Sinai mosque raised fears of a new and bloodier phase in the country's struggle against Islamist insurgents.

Egypt's state-run Information Service tried to portray Friday's carnage - at least 305 dead, or about quarter of the male population of the village of Rawda - as a sign of "weakness, despair and collapse" among militants opting for easy civilian targets rather than hitting heavily armed security forces as in the past.

But the level of coordination and precision by the attackers gave no obvious suggestions of a struggling force in an area where Islamic State-inspired groups have gained a key foothold.

The assault on a mosque - a rarity in Egypt - also raised concerns over increasing threats to the country's minorities, including the Muslim Sufi community hit Friday.

Survivors and officials described five pickup trucks carrying up to 30 gunmen - some of them masked - converging on the al-Rawda mosque as the imam began his sermon. Some worshippers died in a suicide blast; others were gunned down as they ran. The attackers would later walk among the fallen, 27 of them children, shooting those who appeared to be breathing.

Eyewitnesses said that some had carried a black flag that local residents recognized as belonging to State of Sinai, a local Islamic State affiliate that has remained largely intact even as the Islamic State's main bases in Iraq and Syria have crumbled.

By the time the attackers left, there were so many bodies on the ground that a fleet of ambulances couldn't hold them, said a local resident, Muhamed Khalil, 25. Instead, the bodies were piled high on the back of pickup trucks and in the trunks of private cars.

Although no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, suspicion immediately fell on Islamic State-linked militants who have dueled with the army across the desert region.

President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi vowed to avenge the bloodshed with "brute force" - pushed by widespread horror to act with even more resolve. But the contours of a tougher approach remain hazy.

Egyptian security forces have been locked in battle with the country's Islamic State affiliate for several years. The insurgency has killed hundreds in the heavily patrolled Sinai and militants have struck further afield, including Christian Coptic churches in Cairo and Alexandria.

"The Egyptian government has been describing its reaction to every attack as a harsh response since the summer of 2013, if not before. So it's difficult to assess what is meant by a promise to do more than that," said Zack Gold, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Late Friday, the army said that it launched airstrikes on vehicles apparently used by the assailants, but it was unclear if any suspected militants were killed in the counterattack.

In Rawda, a hamlet off the roadway cutting across northern Sinai, almost no one was left untouched by the violence.

According to Egypt's 2011 census, Rawda was home to some 2,100 people. Assuming the population had stayed relatively constant, it appeared that Friday's massacre would have killed around a quarter of the male population.

"We had to bury them in mass graves. In every hole, we would bury 40 or 50," said the resident Khalil, who help lay entire families together. "People were silent, motionless, unable to grasp the reality of what had happened."

The massacre also drew acts of kindness. Community members arrived at a hospital in droves to donate blood, first aid kits and all the painkillers they could afford.

Egyptian security forces have been locked in battle with the militants since 2011, when the group - then known then as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis - initially trained its firepower on Israel. But when the army overthrew Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, the campaign instead set its sights on Egypt's security forces, growing ever more deadly amid deepening state repression of Sinai's Bedouin inhabitants.

Since the militants' 2014 pledge of allegience to the Islamic State, the government has worked to keep its war with extremists in the shadows. Journalists are banned from entering the area, amid frequent reports of militant atrocities and heavy-handed tactics by the army.

But local residents said that an attack had been threatened for weeks.

"An ISIS member would stand at the entrance of the village, hand a piece of paper to a resident and ask him to deliver it to one of the Sufi scholars in the area," said a local journalist, who asked that his name be withheld out of fears for his security.

"The attack was never a surprise to the community here. It is the savagery that was," he said.

Experts following Sinai Province have attributed its growing brutality to a rising number of members who do not have family ties to North Sinai, as well as the pressures that accompany affiliation with the Islamic State.

"When you call yourself ISIS, you have to start copying the more brutal attacks and showing you're in control," Gold said.

Al-Rawda's dead were mostly believed to be Sufi Muslims, a branch of Islam considered heretical by many extremists. Some of the dead also may have had links to a local tribe that had opposed the Islamic State's presence in the area. An edition of the Islamic State's al-Nabaa newsletter, published last year, featured an interview with one of the group's Egyptian cadres, promising to "combat the manifestations of polytheism including Sufism."

Friday's attack made those dangers manifest on a national stage. Keeping his eyes glued on a state television broadcast Saturday, Mohamed Saleh, a pharmacist in Cairo, described the attack as a "lightning shock."

"They targeted Muslims. They killed Muslims," he said. "Egypt has suffered a lot, but these are our cruelest years."
The record price a Leonardo da Vinci canvas fetched at a Nov. 15 auction in New York may have a downside for its seller, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev.

An unidentified buyer agreed to pay $450.3 million, including fees, for Da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi" at a Christie's auction in New York, obliterating the previous record set in 2015 for a Pablo Picasso work. And it far outstripped the $127.5 million Rybolovlev paid Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier for the canvas in 2013.

Yet the cash could complicate Rybolovlev's legal quest to prove he was overcharged by about $1 billion on a collection of 40-plus paintings he bought from Bouvier.

Rybolovlev in 2015 filed a complaint in Monaco, where he lives, accusing Bouvier of fraudulently misrepresenting the prices he paid to secure works by Picasso, Claude Monet and others, and then massively overcharging the Russian over a decade for the paintings. Bouvier, who developed a network of tax-free port storage facilities in Geneva, Luxembourg and Singapore, denies any wrongdoing and says he was merely charging market prices to a good repeat customer determined to build one of the world's top art collections.

"For Bouvier, this is very good news, as he can relax more and claim 'I advised Rybolovlev well and didn't overcharge him, look at this current result,'" said Thomas Stauffer, a partner at Zurich-based art advisory firm Gerber Stauffer. "And this gives the lawyers for Rybolovlev something of a headache."

"This proves the masterpieces sold to the Rybolovlev group were priceless," Ron Soffer, Bouvier's Paris-based lawyer, said by telephone.

Yet other sales haven't been as successful. Rybolovlev sold five paintings he'd bought from Bouvier at a Christie's auction in March for a loss of some $150 million, leaving art experts puzzled as to why he'd sell so many at once.

"The record-breaking sale of da Vinci's 'Salvator Mundi' has helped restore some of the value of the collection," said Sergey Chernitsyn, an adviser to Rybolovlev. "This is a welcome development for Rybolovlev family trusts as we undertake legal proceedings to address the shocking alleged fraud committed by Yves Bouvier who deceived the family, all while pretending to be a friend and advisor."

Rybolovlev's case against Bouvier won't be affected by the price the da Vinci fetched, Chernitsyn said.

"We are not arguing the price of the paintings bought with the assistance of Bouvier," Chernitsyn said. "We are arguing in the court the methods he has used to get the fraudulent profit hidden from his client."

The final price included a buyer's premium, which is a fee paid by the winner to the auction house. Christie's wouldn't disclose what the seller's fees were, if any. Chernitsyn declined to comment on that issue.

Complicating Rybolovlev's claim are two separate complaints recently brought against the Russian. Swiss prosecutors are examining a criminal complaint filed by Bouvier against Rybolovlev in September, alleging that he and his lawyer had "unusual contacts" with Monaco officials before Bouvier's arrest in January 2015 that "involved a clear breach of official secrecy and active bribery." That complaint is based in part on friendly text messages between his lawyer, Tetiana Bersheda, and Monaco officials, discovered by a Monaco judge.

The judge was investigating a separate complaint by Tania Rappo, a Bulgarian resident of Monaco who had introduced Bouvier to Rybolovlev, that Bersheda had illegally taped Rappo's conversations. Rybolovlev was charged as an accomplice in that invasion-of-privacy case.

Chernitsyn referred to an Oct. 19 statement when Rybolovlev said he had done nothing illegal. "All my actions in this matter have had only one purpose -- to uncover a massive fraud in the art market," Rybolovlev said in that statement.

Bersheda has also denied any wrongdoing and previously said, "There has been no crime committed other than possibly the biggest art fraud in history."
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As the identity of a man found dead in Comal County is released, details surrounding his apparent murder have yet to be released.

Glenn Larssen, 56 of Canyon Lake, was identified as the man found dead at 7:35 a.m. Monday in a home in the 700 block of Rambling Drive, according to the Comal County Sheriffs Office.
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A man was arrested Friday on accusations of committing a string of thefts at area Dollar General stores.

Andrew Ward, 30, faces at least one robbery charge and possibly more after he admitted to robbing five stores, according to the San Antonio Police Department

RELATED: Driver crushed to death in rollover crash at S.A. H-E-B ID'd

Officer Carlos Ortiz, spokesman for the SAPD, said Ward was arrested at a motel room without incident.

In each of the robberies, Ward kept his hand inside his jacket telling the employees that he was armed, Ortiz said. But he never pulled out a weapon, police said.

RELATED: BCSO: 2-year-old boy dies after being run over by relative's car

Investigators said that although he admitted to five robberies, they are asking for the publics help to determine if he was involved in any others.

jbeltran@express-news.net | Twitter: @JBfromSA
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Sacramento resident Charis Hill was caught off guard by the tiny bottle of saline solution hanging from the intravenous pole when she went for the latest infusion of medication that helps her avoid crippling pain.

Accustomed to seeing a much larger bag of fluid, she immediately asked staff about the change.

That's when she learned that, since Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, key U.S. pharmaceutical plants on the island are experiencing manufacturing delays and distribution holdups that have caused unprecedented shortages of the widely used and critical fluid.

Intravenous infusions of saline solution are used to hydrate patients during treatment or to dilute drugs during infusions, and Hill said she's worried about whether there will be enough of the fluids when she arrives for her next treatment in six weeks.

Flu season approaching

Perhaps the best indicator of the dearth of saline solution is that patients such as Hill have begun to take notice.

Earlier this month, leaders of both the American Hospital Association and the California Hospital Association sent letters about the scarcity of supplies to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, asking Commissioner Scott Gottlieb to take any and all steps to resolve the worsening shortages. The treatments, they said, are essential to patient care in hospitals.

"Baxter, one of the largest manufacturers of small-volume IV bags, has three plants located in Puerto Rico that continue to have issues with communications, transportation systems, and inadequate personnel during recovery efforts," wrote Alyssa Keefe, the vice president for federal regulatory affairs at the California Hospital Association. "These continued challenges threaten not only our present supply cache, but also future inventory needs - particularly with upcoming seasonal illnesses such as influenza."

Local health systems are taking various steps to ensure that patient care is not affected by the shortage.

At UC Davis Health, for instance, the medical team is now giving drugs directly rather than diluting them with a minibag, said UC Davis Health spokesman Charles Casey. This takes more time for a nurse, Casey said, but it probably doesn't substantially increase costs.

"Since 2013," he said, "we have increased the amount (of saline minibags) that we purchase, but right now we cannot purchase any," said Casey, adding that the shortage of saline minibags deeply concerns the system's pharmacy leaders.

Seeking domestic supply

The medical team at Dignity Health is conserving as much of its saline solution supply as possible.

Sutter Health said representatives from its pharmacy and clinical teams have worked together with inventory managers to find distributors that can supply what they need and to seek alternatives.

Hill, who suffers from a debilitating form of arthritis known as ankylosing spondylitis, snapped a picture of the little bottle of saline solution, just 50 cubic centimeters, at the top of the IV pole at her station, and she posted it on Facebook, noting that usually a much larger bag typically hung there.

"I asked if they had saline in reserve and are using it up, but no, they ordered this," she said. "It's the second order since the hurricane, and this shipment had smaller bottles than the last."

Hill said she's worried that the shortage will affect the supply at her clinic. If she has to go to a hospital, she said, she's uncertain that her Medi-Cal plan will cover it.

"I won't have any choice but to go without it," she said. "The drug builds up in your system over six months. If I miss a dose I have to build it up again, and if I go too long without it, I'll be in severe pain and have to be bed-bound."

Thomas P. Nickels, who manages government relations for the American Hospital Association, said hospitals are switching patients to appropriate alternatives such as oral products, changing how they administer IV drugs and prioritizing patients based on clinical factors.

"We strongly urge FDA to do more by pushing current manufacturers to not only continue to produce these products at their maximum capacity but also to make investments to ensure an increasing supply for the future," Nickels wrote in his letter to the FDA commissioner. "We also encourage FDA to seek out and approve new domestic suppliers of these products in locations that are not prone to natural disasters."
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CAIRO - Militants detonated a bomb inside a crowded mosque in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday and then sprayed gunfire on panicked worshippers as they fled, killing at least 235 people and wounding at least 109 others. Officials called it the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypt's modern history.

The scale and ruthlessness of the assault, in an area racked by an Islamic insurgency, sent shock waves across the nation - not just for the number of deaths but also for the choice of target. Attacks on mosques are rare in Egypt, where the Islamic State has targeted Coptic Christian churches and pilgrims but avoided Muslim places of worship.

The attack injected a new element into Egypt's struggle with militants because most of the victims were Sufi Muslims, who practice a mystical form of Islam that the Islamic State and other Sunni extremist groups deem heretical. And it underscored the failure of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who has justified his harsh crackdown on political freedom in the name of crushing Islamic militancy, to deliver on his promises of security.

"The scene was horrific," said Ibrahim Sheteewi, a resident of Bir al-Abd, the small north Sinai town where the attack took place. "The bodies were scattered on the ground outside the mosque. I hope God punishes them for this."

A Sinai police officer said the dead included at least 15 children. A witness put the toll even higher, saying he had helped gather the bodies of 25 children.

Hours later the Egyptian military carried out several airstrikes near Bir al-Abd targeting militants fleeing in four-wheel-drive vehicles, an Egyptian military official said.

World leaders quickly condemned the attack on the mosque, with President Donald Trump denouncing it as "horrible and cowardly." He said later that it explained why the United States needed a border wall with Mexico and restrictions on immigration, which he referred to as "the ban."

El-Sissi has struggled to impose his authority over Sinai since he came to power in a military takeover in 2013. Islamic militants who had found a safe haven in Sinai for attacks on Israel then turned their guns on the Egyptian armed forces.

But even by recent standards in Egypt, where militants have blown up Christian worshippers as they knelt at church pews and gunned down pilgrims in buses, the attack on Friday was unusually ruthless.

"I can't believe they attacked a mosque," a Muslim cleric in Bir al-Abd said by phone, requesting anonymity for fear he could also be attacked.

'This is insane'

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but in the past year a local affiliate of the Islamic State has killed a number of Sufis in the area and singled out the district where the attack took place as a potential target.

The attack started midday during Friday prayers when a bomb - probably set off by a suicide bomber, security officials said - ripped through Al Rawda mosque in Bir al-Abd, 125 miles northeast of Cairo.

As worshippers fled, they were confronted by masked gunmen who, witnesses said, had pulled up outside in several four-wheel-drive vehicles.

The gunmen set fire to cars parked outside the mosque to hinder escape, and opened fire on ambulances as they arrived on the scene, a government official said on state television.

Mayna Nasser, 40, who was shot twice in the shoulder, drifted in and out of consciousness as he was rushed to a hospital. "My children were there; my children were there," he said, according to Samy, a volunteer emergency worker who drove him there and who declined to give his last name.

Local emergency services were so overwhelmed that some of the wounded had to be transported to the hospital in the back of a cattle truck, he said.

Many were taken to the general hospital in the main northern Sinai town of El Arish, where medics described chaotic scenes as staff struggled to deal with a flood of dead and wounded, many with extensive burns or severed limbs.

"We are swamped," said one medical official, speaking by phone on condition of anonymity. "We don't know what to say. This is insane."

Other victims, like Mohammed Abdel Salam, a 22-year-old construction worker, ended up in a hospital in the nearby city of Ismailia. "I wish I never stopped to pray," he said. "I'm not even a Sufi. I was just there by accident."

El-Sissi convened an emergency meeting of top security officials, including the interior minister, spy chief and defense minister. "The military and the police will take revenge," he said in a televised speech.

Until a spate of attacks on Christian churches this year, Egyptian militants had avoided large-scale assaults on Egyptian civilians, perhaps because such attacks tend to backfire.

Many residents of Bir al-Abd, on the main road through northern Sinai, are Bedouins from the Abu Greir tribe, which is predominantly Sufi. Residents said that despite recent Islamic State threats, the town had been largely peaceful.

'Criminal explosion'

The Islamic State, a Sunni movement, has long considered Sufis, along with Shiite Muslims, apostates, and has a history of attacking their mosques in other countries. Sufis may be Sunni or Shiite but most are Sunni.

Since 2016, when the militant group released a video describing Sufism as a "disease," it has claimed attacks that have killed at least 130 worshippers at Sufi shrines, most of them in Pakistan. Elsewhere, the Islamic State has made a spectacle of bulldozing Sufi shrines, describing their removal as a form of purifying the faith.

Egyptian security forces have closely monitored Islamic State fighters returning from Syria and Iraq, amid worries that an influx of battle-hardened jihadis could insert a volatile new element into Egypt's militant mix.

Friday's attack was a blow to Egypt's hopes that it could stem the tide of Islamic violence in Sinai through the government's sponsorship of a Palestinian peace initiative involving Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.

Islamic State militants have previously used tunnels into Gaza to obtain weapons and get medical treatment for wounded fighters. One benefit for Egypt of the peace initiative, which Egypt's General Intelligence Directorate has mediated, is greater control over those tunnels.

In a statement, Hamas denounced the attack as a "criminal explosion" that "violates all heavenly commandments and human values" because it attacked a mosque. "It is a grave challenge to Muslims worldwide," the group said.
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The Minister for Agriculture, Food & the Marine, Michael Creed TD has initiated a number of steps to help farmers in this region cope with the fodder crisis.

IFA President Joe Healy said the fodder problems were worsening and the onus was on the Government Department to address the matter.



At a recent IFA Executive Council meeting it was agreed that urgent action is needed to assist farmers in affected areas, mainly in the north-west and west of the country.



The difficult weather conditions since August have left many farmers facing a severe fodder crisis during the winter and spring months.



Farmers under extreme pressure because of the challenges facing them expect a strong response from the Minister and the Government, said Mr Healy before pointing to a meeting that has been scheduled for December 1.



Minister Creed has indicated he can not attend on that date due to a prior engagement, so I have now written to him to ask when he would be available, as it is crucial that he hears directly from the farmers affected.

The IFA president went on to say that he visited Co Leitrim - where the fodder crisis is at its worst - recently and it was clear that many farmers were unable to get a second cut of silage; and had to house their animals earlier, using up fodder they need for the winter.



We have to address this now rather than waiting until the New Year, he continued.



IFA has also met with Teagasc and a survey is underway to identify those farmers who are likely to have a problem this winter.



Discussions have also taken place with local co-ops and merchants to provide a feed mix for those farmers.

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A man who drove the getaway car in a late night robbery at a Co Longford post office in August has been sentenced to six months in prison.

Kean Doherty, with an address at 52 Cherry Orchard Court, Ballyfermot, Dublin 10 pleaded guilty to stealing almost 500 in cash from Bells Shop, Newtownforbes, Co Longford on August 8 2017.



The 19-year-old Dubliner will, however, only spend the next two months in prison as he has been in custody since the beginning of August.



His date for release, the court was told, is January 18 2018, when his sentence in connection to an unrelated incident is due to expire.



He is the fourth and final member of a Dublin based gang who have been successfully charged and convicted over the incident.



Inspector Blaithin Moran said gardai were alerted to an incident at the Newtownforbes outlet shortly after 11pm.

When they arrived, gardai found the front door had been forced in and two tills removed.



A car, later identified to be a silver Honda Civic was eventually identified and intercepted with Mr Doherty being found at the wheel.



Inspector Moran said the total damage to the cash drawers amounted to 2,000 with 800 to its front door.



Mr Doherty, stood patiently at the side of the courtroom as details of his 34 previous convictions were relayed to Judge Seamus Hughes.

His solicitor Frank Gearty said in spite of that lengthy record, his client had already spent the past two months in prison waiting for the case to be decided.



I acknowledge it was a serious matter and to be fair to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) it (case) was kept in the District Court he (Mr Doherty) has spent the past while on remand, he said.



Mr Gearty added it was his representatives addiction to drugs which brought about the terrible offending capped off by the Bells break-in.

Despite those claims, Judge Hughes said he was alarmed by the extent of Mr Dohertys offending for someone so young.



You have spent most of your adult life in prison and as sure as night follows day you will be spending the rest of your life in prison if you continue down this path, he told Mr Doherty.



The Dubliner, who asked to be remanded back to Wheatfield Prison to continue a drugs rehabilitation programme, admitted he had taken cocaine and benzo tablets on the night of the incident.



It was also revealed through his solicitor that Mr Doherty was also learning to read and write.

Judge Hughes advised him to continue down that path and to steer clear of the dependencies which had brought about his predilection to commit crime.



If your brain is damaged there is no operation that can bring it back, said the Judge.



That said, he indicated that the message needed to go out that such an incident as the one in Newtownforbes could not go unpunished.

In sentencing Mr Doherty to six months behind bars, Judge Hughes said: Breaking into a post office in rural Ireland is a serious matter and cant be tolerated.



The six month term was consequently backdated to August 4 when Mr Doherty first went into custody.
Politicians will have to face subzero weather on top of an icy reception on the doorsteps if they decide to have a General Election before Christmas.

Met Eireann has issued a 24 hour status yellow warning for snow and ice across the country as temperatures plummet below zero.

The warning is valid from 10 am Saturday, November 25 to 10am Sunday, November 26.

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The forecaster warns of scattered snow showers across the country today, becoming mainly confined to Western and Northern parts tonight and for tomorrow.

Icy patches can be expected on roads nationwide.

Tonight will be mostly dry but a few wintry showers will continue to affect northern parts of Leinster. Lowest temperatures of +1 to -1 degrees in moderate or fresh northwest winds.

Sunday will be another cold day with bright spells and scattered showers. The showers will occur mainly in northern parts of the province and some may be wintry especially on high ground.

Highest temperatures of 4 to 6 degrees in fresh west to northwest winds.

Driving conditions will be more difficult and drivers are warned to slow down, increase braking distances and be wary of black ice.

Sunday night will be mostly cloudy with rain in all areas. The rain will clear southeastwards overnight. Clear spells will follow and showers will develop in the west and north. Lowest temperatures of 4 to 7 degrees.

Monday will bring a mix of sunshine and showers, mainly in the west and north for a time, becoming widespread and heavier later in the day and into the early night. Some may be thundery. Highest temperatures of 5 to 10 degrees with moderate westerly breezes, coldest in Ulster.

On Monday night, showers will mostly clear southwards Winds will become northerly and it will become cold with clear spells and frost developing in many areas. Lowest temperatures of 0 to 2 degrees.

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Met Eireann says Tuesday, Wednesday will each be cold, bright days with sunny spells and scattered showers, these mainly in Ulster and in coastal areas. Some of the showers will be wintry, especially at night and on high ground. Highest temperatures of 4 to 8 degrees with mostly moderate north to northwest winds.

Thursday will be even colder with wintry showers becoming more widespread and a greater risk of snow. Highest temperatures of 3 to 7 degrees.

Friday will bring sunshine and showers also. But it is not expected to be quite as cold. Highest temperatures of 5 to 8 degrees.

Through the week, the nights will be cold with frost and icy patches in many areas.

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Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain.

Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred.

For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here.
Thanksgiving Day brought record high temperatures across the region.

The high in Billings reached 68 by early afternoon on Thursday, besting the previous record of 65 degrees set on Nov. 23, 1942.

The record warmest Thanksgiving Day in Billings was 66 degrees on Nov. 26, 1998.

The night before Thanksgiving Day set records for the warmest minimum temperature in Billings as well. It got down to only 45 degrees overnight, according to the National Weather Service.

NWS also reported Glasgow, Jordan and Miles City all reached a record 73 degrees on Thursday.

It was 72 in Wolf Point and 71 in Billings and Malta. Lewistown's high of 67 on Thursday beat the old mark of 65 degrees set in 1922. Sheridan beat a previous record high by reaching into the low 70s on Thursday. Poplar topped out at 70.

Meteorologist Jim Brusda told the Great Falls Tribune that warm air from California, Nevada and other areas of the southwest was funneled into Montana on Thursday, creating record high temperatures, mostly east of the Continental Divide.

Even the high of 58 in Kalispell on Thursday was a record, breaking the old mark of 57 set in 98 years ago.

Brusda said a cold front is predicted to move into the area Sunday night.
Argentina Alleged impeded investigation

Diego Maradona's daughter Giannina could go to jail for allegedly impeding the former player's case of fraud against his ex-wife Claudio Villfane who he claimed stole 80 million pesos (3.8 million euros) between 2000 and 2015.

The lawyer representing Maradona suggested that a trip she made to Uruguay showed that she was a risk to a fair hearing and so could be held in prison.

"Do you think it is logical that one of the daughters travelled during the court case," said Matias Morla.

"Custody takes place when it is found that an impediment has taken place or there is a risk of fleeing. In the middle of the court case for fraud, Giannina Maradona left Argentina on Monday, August 31st and returned a few hours later.

"What was she doing that Monday in Uruguay? Tourism? I say to you that she has an account in Uruguay, her child takes the money and puts it into another. If that is the case, if there is money there like we think, then there is no option other than to be put in custody."

Giannina Maradona responded in a tweet: "they know where I live and they can come when they want.

"Thanks for all the warm messages. I am fine with myself inside, I have forgiven worse from him and I will do the same now."
STUART-A number of groups want to see Pioneer Hospital reopen in Stuart. The problem is there are several challenges in the way right now, involving both finances and state deadlines.

Pioneer Community Hospital filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 30, 2016 and over the next 18 months, Pioneer Health Services tried to sell the hospital to keep it open. When that didn't happen, the Stuart hospital closed its doors to new patients in September. Now the doors are closed at the hospital,

which had been one of Patrick County's largest private employers.

That closure also leaves the county without a hospital, meaning that rescue squads have to drive residents outside of Patrick County to receive treatment. Depending on what part of the county they live in, that trip could be to SOVAH Health Martinsville or Carilion Franklin Memorial Hospital. The trip to Martinsville, at best, is 35 minutes. The trip to Rocky Mount can be as long as 45 to 50. Its not just a problem for the patient being taken for treatment, but it also increases the rescue squads response time to other incidents.

Local officials say they recognize the problems caused by not having a hospital in Patrick County. In the months since Pioneer shut down, county officials have made phone calls, sent emails and worked to find a company to buy the building and reopen it. Recently, Virginia Community Capital announced the start of foreclosure proceedings against Pioneer. While that might seem to be a challenge for some, county officials say they see it as an opportunity for someone to come in and purchase the hospital, providing a clean slate.

Lock Boyce, Mayo River District supervisor and vice chair of the board, said Friday that during a session this week, the Patrick County Board of Supervisors met with a couple of members of the Patrick County Economic Development Authority, Patrick County Administrator Tom Rose, Patrick County Economic Development Director Debbie Foley, financial consultant Robert Diesel and Jeanette Filpi, who was administrator of Pioneer Community Hospital before it closed and now is a consultant for the county in the effort to reopen the hospital.

Boyce said no decisions were made in that Tuesday night session other than to continue on the path were currently on, adding that he couldn't comment on details because it was a closed session.

Boyce did say however that he's optimistic the effort under way will lead to the hospital reopening. Now as far as when that would happen, he couldn't say.

Things are farther along than people think, Boyce said, adding that a lot of work already has been done by such people as Rose, Diesel, Filpi and Foley. Steps are being taken to get the hospital up and running as soon as possible.

He noted that Diesel, who retired to Patrick County, is a financial consultant with an advanced degree from State University of New York. Diesel has a specialty in forensic financial review and has been chief financial officer and financial consultant for some of the largest corporations in the world, Boyce said.

Were very fortunate to have Diesel as a consultant, Boyce said.

He added that Diesel went through the finances of the hospital.

Filpi was able to answer very good questions concerning operational aspects of our hospital, Boyce said.

It was the consensus of the board to continue with Diesel and Filpi as consultants.

Peters Creek District Supervisor Rickie Fulcher said he is cautiously optimistic about the effort to reopen the hospital, adding that I do think we have some viable prospects.

Fulcher said its difficult to find anyone to purchase the hospital because of its level of debt, which is $7 million. The majority of that is held by Virginia Community Capital.

However, he hopes if it goes to foreclosure, the bankruptcy court will erase or at least reduce that debt, which would make the hospital more appealing to a potential buyer.

I dont think all hope is gone, Fulcher said.

The challenges ahead

Aside from the foreclosure, there are several other challenges for Pioneer Hospital. First, as it is no longer in operation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services removed Pioneer's designation as a Critical Access Hospital. In rural areas like Patrick County, it can be expensive to operate a hospital. In 1997, Congress tried to help fix that problem by creating the Critical Access Hospitals designation. There are currently 1,332 hospitals with the designation in the United States and each of those receive extra funding from Medicare. That means when a patient's bill qualifies for Medicare reimbursement, the hospital receives the full cost repaid, plus an additional 1 percent. The designation also gives hospitals access to grant funding and technical assistance. It's not as simple as reopening to get the designation back. Even if the hospital does reopen, it will have to meet several requirements before being considered. First, it must show it can maintain an average length of stay of 96 hours or less for acute care patients. Second, it must show that it can provide 24/7 emergency care services. The third part is that the facility must be more than 35 miles from another hospital.

In addition to losing its CAH designation, the facility's acute care hospital license will expire on Dec. 31, 2017. The license, issued by the Virginia Department of Health, is required to operate the hospital. Without it, the facility would be unable to provide diagnostic X-ray services, offer treatment facilities for surgery, any type of clinical lab services or other medical treatment.

Patrick County officials are asking the General Assembly to extend the license for six months or simply renew it, in order to give time to find a buyer for the facility. The Department of Health would still have to come and inspect, before it could reopen, but it simply speeds up the process. Otherwise, even if the facility is purchased, it would have to reapply to even be considered for a license and that might take up to a year. To do that, however, the General Assembly would have to return for a special session in December. That would require either an order by the governor or a petition by two-thirds of the members elected to both the House and Senate. Neither of those are close to happening.

So far, Boyce said, Patrick County officials feel that the General Assembly isn't paying attention to them.

We dont appreciate inaction so far from legislative representatives, Boyce said, adding that their help is needed.

To help with that, Boyce, Fulcher and other officials are asking Patrick County residents to take part in a letter-writing campaign, focusing on the local delegation. That includes both Sen. Bill Stanley and Del. Charles Poindexter.

The letter request was sent out Wednesday in an email by Patrick County Economic Development Director Debbie Foley, who wrote that we are concerned that the license for the hospital will expire at the end of the year, before a new owner will be in place. We are hoping for your help in lobbying our state representatives for a legislative extension and/or renewal of the license.

The letter, which includes contact information for both Sen. Stanley and Del. Poindexter, asks them to support a six month legislative extension of the Acute Care Hospital License for Pioneer Community Hospital of Patrick.

Politicians respond

Del. Poindexter said he is trying to help, but sees some ethical challenges. Poindexter said he has contacted a number of hospital systems, administrators and chief financial officers, in an effort to try to help reopen the hospital in Stuart. He said he gets the same answer: that the cost of operating such a small acute care hospital is difficult to sustain, if not impossible.

Ethically, Poindexter said, a legislator probably should not get involved in a private business. How would other private businesses in Patrick County feel if a legislator got involved in their businesses, he asked.

Poindexter said he has been concerned since the hospital entered bankruptcy more than a year ago and pointed out the hospital's situation is right now under the control of bankruptcy court.

Much like the Patrick County officials, he does hope a hospital system or group of doctors will step in to reopen the facility. Instead of a full-blown hospital, however, he suggested one option might be to have a micro hospital with emergency room and such other services as imaging and urgent care to stabilize patients. Once stabilized, then they could be flown or driven to another facility for longer term treatment, if needed.

As for the county's request for a license extension, Poindexter didn't see how he could help. Because the Virginia General Assembly does not go back in session until Jan. 10, 2018, he said there is no remedy legislatively to prevent Pioneers acute care hospital license from expiring on Dec. 31.

Sen. Stanley, meanwhile, has drafted emergency legislation to meet the request of Patrick County officials. His bill would extend Pioneer's acute care hospital license for 12 months past Dec. 31, 2017.

Stanley hopes the General Assembly will act quickly on his emergency legislation. If approved by the General Assembly and signed by the governor, it would go into effect immediately, not July 1, when new laws generally go into effect, back dated to be effective Dec. 31, 2017.

Stanley said he has been talking with different state agencies, as well as Virginia Community Capital, trying to get the debt matters resolved. He's also spoken with the Virginia Hospital Association and worked with U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, to try and address the hospitals loss of Critical Access designation.

Were not going to rest until the hospital reopens, Stanley said.
BUTTE  Heres Rob ONeill, looking every bit the rock star he has become, snakeskin boots and custom-made jacket, and every bit the Butte kid he has always been, blue jeans, ball cap and mischievous grin that could melt St. Brigids heart.

Every one of those bits hard-earned, in 400 combat missions.

The man who killed Osama bin Laden is home for a Thanksgiving stop sandwiched into a grueling 300-speeches-a-year schedule. Hes freshly married, fresh from a private dinner with the President, fresh from the best-seller lists with his book The Operator, and just plain fresh.

Always good to be back in Butte, he said Monday after a lunch stop at Pork Chop Johns. I had to figure out how many pork chops I could have and still save room for The Derby tonight.

Quickly, conversation in an interview with The Montana Standard turned to his favorite topic: his charity, Your Grateful Nation, which transitions special operations personnel  veterans like himself from elite units  into civilian life and jobs in corporate America.

The battlefield to boardroom charity grew out of his own experience. After more than 16 years in the Navy Seals, ONeill elected to retire from the military before he got his 20  the 20 years necessary for a military pension. He says a lot of special forces personnel leave early  needing the change for a host of reasons.

These guys often dont think they have anything to offer, ONeill said. They think they just know how to go kill Taliban.

But thats definitely not the case, he said. They know how to manage. They know team-building, problem-solving, stress management. And they are incredibly loyal employees.

Your Grateful Nation focuses on giving customized, one-on-one transition support to exiting special-forces veterans, and then after the specific aptitudes, interests and needs are clear, it works on matching the veteran with a corporation.

He said the program has been tremendously successful. Weve got about a 98 percent promotion rate, he said. I think we placed six guys just last week.

He wants it to keep growing. Some of his speeches are fundraisers for the program. Weve also brought in Dakota Meyer, a Marine who won the Medal of Honor, ONeill said, to help raise money for the organization.

Eventually, he said, Your Grateful Nation may be big enough to offer services to non-special forces veterans.

ONeill remembers Butte in his charitable endeavors. He spoke Tuesday at a fundraiser for Mariahs Challenge, a favorite charity that hes helped a lot previously. He cited Buttes culture of drinking, and added, Everybody screws up. When they do, theyve got to stand up, own it, and learn from it. He capped the Mariah's Challenge speech by giving $10,000 to the charity.

He says hed also like to do something for local law enforcement. I dont know what they want yet. Ill find out, he said. But lets not pretend, they let me out of a lot of st when I was a kid.

He also finds time to be a frequent contributor on Fox News, which recently signed him to a contract. He has appeared repeatedly on Fox & Friends  he just introduced friend and fellow Butte rat Tim Montana on the show last week  and has spoken on foreign policy, terrorism and other military topics.

Oh, yeah  and hes a friend of President Donald Trumps.

I got to know him because one of the things I've been asked to do is judge the Miss USA pageant," he said. "Then during the campaign he asked me to endorse him. We (O'Neill and his dad, Tom O'Neill) went and talked to him at Trump Tower.

I never did endorse him, but I like him a lot.

Believe it or not, hes a really nice guy.

ONeill and his wife Jessica had a private dinner in the East Wing of the White House last month with Trump, his friend Pete Hegseth from Fox News, and Hegseths friend Jennifer Rauchet.

O'Neill met Jessica Halpin when she booked him to speak at a get-together for her company. They married on Cape Cod in August, with Tim Montana and Kid Rock in attendance, and honeymooned in Bora Bora.

Monday at The Montana Standard, he wore the custom-made suit jacket he was married in, complete with American flag lining  a fashion trend the men's magazine GQ featured last week as the latest power-suit look in Washington. ONeill and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer were among the first to sport the suits as made by custom clothier Knot Standard.

ONeill has homes in Manhattan, Dallas (its an air-travel hub) and Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he was home-based during his Navy career. Where does he live most? In airport terminals, he said. People always say to me, You must have lots of (frequent-flyer) miles. I say, Yeah, you want em? Im spending my next vacation on my couch.

But no matter how hectic the jet-to-jet lifestyle gets, ONeill said, he never forgets his Mining City roots. Im not one of those guys who leaves here and then says hes from Northern California or someplace.

Im from Butte, and Im proud of it.
NORTHAMPTON - Former Central Intelligence Agency officer Valerie Plame Wilson, who was once called "America's best known ex-spy," will speak Dec. 11 at 5 p.m., in Wright Hall's Weinstein Auditorium at Smith College, as part of a panel on "Social Media and U.S. Foreign Policy."

Wilson, who is visiting as a guest of the college's Kahn Liberal Arts Institute and its yearlong research project looking at war across multiple disciplines, will be on the panel with Paul Musgrave, assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts.

Wilson's outing as a CIA operative by a syndicated political columnist turned her into a headline celebrity in 2003, ended her undercover career of 15 years and led to a criminal investigation that involved the Bush-Cheney White House.

Her 2010 book, "Fair Game: How a Top CIA Agent Was Betrayed by Her Own Government," along with her husband's memoir, "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies," were turned into the movie "Fair Game" starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts."

Wilson's identity as an undercover operative specializing in weapons of mass destruction was revealed in a July 14, 2003 piece by columnist Robert Novak, who said he got that information from senior administration officials.

His column appeared days after Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, raised the issue in a New York Times opinion piece of whether the "Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?"

Joseph Wilson, a former career foreign service officer who had once met with Hussein, had been asked by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq bought weapons grade uranium from Niger in the late 1990's, something Wilson said he reported back to the White House as highly doubtful, but a claim that he felt was used by the administration to justify war with Iraq.

Wilson regarded Novak's public identification of his wife as a CIA agent as retaliation by the White House for his criticism, and his wife later testified on Capitol Hill that the disclosure meant her undercover career was "over in an instant."

Federal law is said to prohibit the disclosure in certain circumstances of the identities of CIA officers.

Patrick Fitzgerald, an Amherst College and Harvard Law graduate, was appointed special prosecutor to investigate whether White House officials broke the 1982 law.

Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Richard Cheney, was convicted in 2007 with perjury, for lying about his conversations with reporters about Valerie Plame Wilson, and obstruction of justice.

President Bush later commuted his 30-month prison term.

Other reporters besides Novak were said to be aware of Wilson's role with the CIA and the investigation into them highlighted the lack of protection for reporters who use confidential sources, an issue that continues to resonate in the press and hark back to Wilson's outing.

Judith Miller, then a reporter for The New York Times, went to jail for 85 days before agreeing, with Libby's permission, to testify before a grand jury about her conversations with him.

Novak's sources were later reported to be Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, and Karl Rove, the longtime political adviser to President George W. Bush.

In recent years, Valerie Wilson Plame has also written a pair of spy novels with Sarah Lovett, become a public speaker represented by the Greater Talent Network and has been active with the Ploughshares Fund, a nonprofit that advocates for nuclear disarmament, but resigned from their board recently after her controversial tweet of an anti-Semitic article, "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars," on the Unz Review website.

Wilson, whose paternal grandfather is said to have been Jewish, issued an apology statement in regard to the tweet.

She also made headlines recently for her effort to crowdfund enough money to buy Twitter and ban President Donald Trump from using it. She has written that Trump's use of "this huge global platform has major consequences in the real world" and that he has "already brought us closer to nuclear war than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis."
The state Ethics Commission is investigating why the former State Police colonel allowed the arrest report of a judge's daughter to be altered, according to The Boston Globe.

That scrubbed report led to the early retirements for the top two commanders of the State Police, as well as lawsuits filed by the two troopers who were asked to redact comments from the document.

The head of the State Police union confirmed the Ethics Commission investigation to The Globe, the newspaper reported. Troopers Ryan Sceviour and Ali Rei were apparently interviewed by investigators this week.

However, an Ethics Commission spokesman told The Globe that he could neither confirm nor deny if an investigation was underway.

Alli Bibaud, the 30-year-old daughter of Dudley District Court Judge Timothy Bibaud, was arrested in October for drunken driving and possession of heroin. She allegedly made comments about her father being a judge and also about trading sexual favors for drugs, which were ordered to be removed from the report.

Gov. Charlie Baker maintains that the order to redact the report came from former Col. Richard McKeon and that the troopers involved did nothing wrong.

Attorney General Maura Healey has launched an investigation into the actions involving the report, as has new State Police Col. Kerry Gilpin.

"There are a lot of unanswered questions and that's part of what our investigation is going to get to the bottom of," Healey said during an appearance on WGBH's "Boston Public Radio" show earlier this week. "People want and deserve answers. There are obviously serious allegations raised here."

Gilpin will also review applicable policies and regulations regarding police report alterations, a State Police spokesman said.

Officials are also investigating communications between State Police and the Worcester County District Attorney's office regarding the report.

McKeon and Lt. Col. Francis Hughes resigned in the wake of the scandal.

Bibaud pleaded guilty to operating under the influence of liquor and several motor vehicle violations in Framingham District Court earlier this month.
A motorcyclist was left with serious injuries Friday night after being struck by a hit-and-run driver who ditched the car nearby, according to reports.

The motorcyclist was struck near the intersection of Western Avenue and Park Street, according to WCVB News. The car that struck the driver was found nearby with major front-end damage.

Lynn police did not return a call seeking more information Saturday morning.

The motorcyclist suffered a bad leg injury and was lying on the street in a pool of his blood, Boston 25 News reported. He was taken to the hospital.

Witnesses told the news stations that the driver went right through a stop sign at the intersection.

Photos from the scene show the motorcycle near the sidewalk, the bumper of the car nearby and debris scattered around.
A 26-person medical team from Massachusetts General Hospital is heading to Puerto Rico to help with continued disaster assistance in the wake of two hurricanes that devastated the island.

The team left Saturday and included 15 nurses, four nurse practitioners, five doctors, one physician assistant, and one logistics/security staff member, according to a statement from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.

The team will be providing medical care at the request of the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, the national emergency management mutual aid system that facilitates state-to-state disaster assistance.

"These medical personnel from Massachusetts will provide residents of Puerto Rico with necessary medical care," Lt. Governor Karyn Polito said in the statement. "We continue to take steps to help those impacted by recent natural disasters and urge everyone who wants to help support disaster relief operations do so through cash donations to organizations listed on the state's website."

The team will be in Puerto Rico for 16 days.

"We are honored by this opportunity to partner with the Commonwealth, and to work with MEMA and DPH on this very important mission," said Dr. Paul Biddinger, director of the Center for Disaster Medicine at MGH. "Our nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and physicians are eager for the opportunity to assist Puerto Rico as it continues to recover from the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria, and we are so proud of their willingness to help all of those in need."

Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm, hit two months ago and was among the worst the island had seen. More than 50 people were killed. Hurricane Irma, a Category 5, tore through the area just before Maria.

Gov. Charlie Baker said he is proud of MGH for stepping up to help Puerto Rico.

"Puerto Rico has many public health needs since Hurricane Maria, and MGH has volunteered a well-prepared cadre of medical professionals to support and treat a host of complicated medical needs under challenging conditions," said Public Health Commissioner Dr. Monica Bharel.

At least 113 new students have joined Worcester Public Schools after fleeing the devastation in Puerto Rico and other Caribbean Islands.

In Springfield, 383 Puerto Rican students have been enrolled in the public schools.
Massachusetts State Police have issued a silver alert for a 69-year-old man who reportedly went missing after his vehicle is believed to have become stuck on East New Lenox Road in Pittsfield.

Police said Frederick Oliver, of Washington, Mass., last spoke with his wife via cell phone at around 6:30 p.m. on Friday. Oliver, at the time, said he was on East New Lenox Road and his white Chevrolet van had become stuck, according to state police.

Cell phone data indicated that Oliver's phone hit off the Richmond tower, state police added.

State Police noted that Oliver "has suffered some mental incapacity, has diabetes and is on oxygen."

SILVER ALERT issued for Frederick Oliver of the Town of Washington in western Mass. If you see him or his white Chevy van please call 911 immediately. pic.twitter.com/zAVvzLaDLZ  Mass State Police (@MassStatePolice) November 25, 2017

Anyone with information on Oliver's whereabouts is asked to contact the Massachusetts State Police barracks in Lee at 413-243-0600.
File photo / The Republican

Massachusetts House and Senate lawmakers cast ballots on issues ranging from detention of immigrants living in the country illegally to expanded use of wiretapping as they met for various legislative sessions this week.

Here's how members from the Western part of the state voted on those proposals:

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HOUSE:

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Charles Reed

Prohibit consideration of detaining illegal immigrants

The House, by a 119-to-34 margin, upheld the ruling of Acting House Speaker Patricia Haddad, D-Somerset, that prohibited consideration of an amendment that would authorize police officers, court officers and other law enforcement officers to detain a person under certain circumstances, at the request of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the grounds that there is probable cause that such person is a removable illegal alien.

This would apply only in those cases where an individual has already been arrested and is about to be released from custody or is deemed to pose a threat to public safety because he or she has engaged in terrorism or has been convicted of a serious crime such as a felony, human trafficking or drug trafficking. The amendment also restricts the amount of time an individual can be detained to no more than 12 hours.

The amendment was filed in response to a July decision by the states highest court which ruled that state local law enforcement officials do not have the authority to detain a person based solely on a request from ICE.

Haddad ruled that the amendment is not properly before the House because it was not included in any earlier versions of the bill and introduction of this new subject-matter would expand upon the bill and violate House rules.

Supporters of the ruling said the ruling is appropriate and follows the rules of the House. Opponents of the ruling said clearly the issue of arresting and holding illegal immigrants is related to a bill making changes in the criminal justice system.

Voting "Yes," or for the ruling:, Rep. Brian Ashe, Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, Rep. Michael Finn, Rep. Solomon Goldstein-Rose, Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, Rep. Peter Kocot, Rep. Stephen Kulik, Rep. Paul Mark, Rep. Thomas Petrolati, Rep. William Pignatelli, Rep. Angelo Puppolo, Rep. John Scibak, Rep. Jose Tosado, Rep. Aaron Vega, Rep. John Velis, Rep. Joseph Wagner, Rep. Bud Williams.

Voting "No," or against it: Rep. Donald Berthiaume, Rep. Nicholas Boldyga, Rep. Todd Smola and Rep. Susannah Whipps.

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Staff-Shot

Prohibit more wiretapping to be considered

The House, on a 123-to-34 vote, upheld the ruling by Acting House Speaker Paul Donato, D-Medford, that prohibited consideration of an amendment that would allow law enforcement to request the authority from the courts to use wiretapping in cases of murder, manslaughter, rape, human trafficking, drug trafficking, the manufacturing or distribution of drugs, weapons trafficking, witness intimidation and use or possession of explosives or chemical weapons. Current law, which has not changed since 1968, allows wiretapping to be used only when the crime is committed in connection with organized crime.

Donato ruled that the amendment is not properly before the House because it was not included in any earlier versions of the bill and introduction of this new subject-matter would expand upon the bill and violate House rules. "Such new subject-matter in the form of an amendment from the floor of the House and thereby by-passing the deliberative steps required under our rules for the passage of a bill," said the ruling. "That would violate the essence of the legislative process."

Supporters of the ruling said the ruling is right on target and follows the rules of the House. Opponents of the ruling said the issue of using wiretaps to help convict criminals is related to a bill making changes in the criminal justice system.

Voting "Yes," for the ruling: Rep. Brian Ashe, Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, Rep. Michael Finn, Rep. Solomon Goldstein-Rose, Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, Rep. Peter Kocot, Rep. Stephen Kulik, Rep. Paul Mark, Rep. Thomas Petrolati, Rep. William Pignatelli, Rep. Angelo Puppolo, Rep. John Scibak, Rep. Jose Tosado, Rep. Aaron Vega, Rep. John Velis, Rep. Joseph Wagner, Rep. Susannah Whipps, Rep. Bud Williams.

Voting "No," or against them: Rep. Donald Berthiaume, Rep. Nicholas Boldyga and Rep. Todd Smola.

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Michael S. Gordon

Expunge juvenile records

A section of a proposed criminal justice bill would have allowed offenders who committed a crime before their 21st birthday to apply for expungement of certain records after 10 years for a felony or a misdemeanor if the individual has met all other qualifying criteria.

The House, on a 127-to-26 vote, approved an amendment that reduced that waiting period to seven years for a felony and three years for a misdemeanor.

Amendment supporters said research shows states with shorter expungement periods have reduced recidivism rates. They noted that the amendment will create earlier possibilities for these offenders to turn their lives around while still ensuring public safety. They argued that the amendment will reduce barriers to employment, housing and educational opportunities.

Amendment opponents said the reduction is excessive and argued that the original ten-year waiting period for both felonies and misdemeanors is fair to offenders and also in the best interest of public safety. They noted that allowing an offender who is convicted of breaking and entering and larceny under $1,000 to apply to have his or her record expunged after three years is too lenient.

Voting "Yes" vote, or for the reductions: Rep. Brian Ashe, Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, Rep. Solomon Goldstein-Rose, Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, Rep. Peter Kocot, Rep. Stephen Kulik, Rep. Paul Mark, Rep. Thomas Petrolati, Rep. William Pignatelli, Rep. Angelo Puppolo, Rep. John Scibak, Rep. Jose Tosado, Rep. Aaron Vega, Rep. John Velis, Rep. Joseph Wagner, Rep. Susannah Whipps, Rep. Bud Williams.

Voting "No," or against the reductions: Rep. Donald Berthiaume, Rep. Nicholas Boldyga and Rep. Todd Smola.

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SENATE:

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Staff-Shot

Cut entire $60,000 for teaching financial literacy

The Senate, on a 30-to-7 vote, overrode Gov. Charlie Bakers veto of the entire $60,000 for a program that mentors and teaches financial literacy to low-income women.

Voting "Yes," or for funding the $60,000: Sen. Anne Gobi, Sen. Adam Hinds, Sen. Eric Lesser, Sen. James Welch.

Voting "No," or against funding it: Sen. Donald Humason.

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Mark M.Murray

Cut $122,274 for prisoners' legal services

The Senate , on 30-to-6 vote, overrode a reduction of $122,274 (from $1,609,465 to $1,487,191) in funding for Prisoners' Legal Services, a program that provides legal representation for indigent and disadvantaged defendants.

Voting "Yes," or for funding the $122,274: Sen. Anne Gobi, Sen. Adam Hinds, Sen. Eric Lesser, Sen. James Welch.

Voting "No," or against funding it: Sen. Donald Humason.

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HOUSE & SENATE:

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John Suchocki

Cut $550,000 for various health-related programs

The House, on a 125-to-28 vote, and the Senate by a 35-to-2 margin, overrode Bakers reduction of $150,000 for programs for the promotion of health and disease prevention including prevention of breast cancer, hepatitis C and colorectal cancer; and screening for prostate cancer, diabetes, ovarian cancer, multiple sclerosis and osteoporosis. The $150,000 is not earmarked for any specific program.

The governor also vetoed another $400,000 for specific programs including $100,000 for macular degeneration research into prevention and treatment of the disease; $25,000 for a diabetes prevention program; $25,000 for a program that provides peer support and education, home independence training and adaptive aids to people who are learning to cope and function safely and independently with the loss of sight; $100,000 for research to provide solid scientific evidence for the cranberry's role in health and nutrition; and $100,000 for providing medically tailored meals to persons battling chronic illnesses and providing workforce training programs to people recovering from addiction.

Voting "Yes," or for funding the $550,000:

(HOUSE:) Rep. Brian Ashe, Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, Rep. Michael Finn, Rep. Solomon Goldstein-Rose, Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, Rep. Peter Kocot, Rep. Stephen Kulik, Rep. Paul Mark, Rep. Thomas Petrolati, Rep. William Pignatelli, Rep. Angelo Puppolo, Rep. John Scibak, Rep. Jose Tosado, Rep. Aaron Vega, Rep. John Velis, Rep. Joseph Wagner, Rep. Susannah Whipps, Rep. Bud Williams.

(SENATE:) Sen. Anne Gobi, Sen. Adam Hinds, Sen. Donald Humason, Sen. Eric Lesser, Sen. James Welch.

Voting "No," or against the funding:

(HOUSE:) Rep. Donald Berthiaume, Rep. Nicholas Boldyga, Rep. Todd Smola.

(SENATE:) None.

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LAST WEEK'S VOTES:

How they voted: Western Mass. lawmakers weigh in on criminal justice issues, overriding governor's vetoes
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A fine orator can make the world dance to his tune. With quick wit, a persuasive voice, and sharp twist to his words he can shift a rooms point of view.

Think about how some of worlds greatest (and worst) leaders have swayed entire nations with their words. JFK convincing people that they could  indeed would  go to the moon. Winston Churchill entreating his countrymen to never retreat, never give up, and fight until the end. Abraham Lincoln declaring that all men and women deserve freedom.
More than seven months after a Whitefish woman initially sued the publisher of a neo-Nazi website who called for a troll storm against her, the case is beginning to move forward.

In April, attorneys with the South Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Tanya Gersh of Whitefish against Andrew Anglin, who on his website The Daily Stormer called for readers to harass Gersh and her family over her dealings with the mother of white nationalist Richard Spencer.

The suit, filed in the Missoula branch of U.S. District Court, alleges that Anglin instigated a series of hateful and anti-Semitic messages, voicemails, emails and letters against Gersh, her husband and her son.

"Hickory dickory dock, the (anti-Semitic slur) ran up the clock. The clock struck three and Internet Nazi trolls gassed the rest of them," read one comment Gersh received on social media, according to the complaint.

Gershs lawsuit said the verbal attacks started by Anglin  who called for a troll storm against her  are an invasion of her privacy, have inflicted emotional distress that has caused her to go to therapy, and violate Montanas Anti-Intimidation Act.

In a story he published on his site in December, Anglin included Gershs contact information along with allegations that she tried to extort money from the mother of white nationalist Richard Spencer, who is a part-time Whitefish resident. Anglin also attempted to organize an armed march through the town on Martin Luther King Jr. Day  an event he planned to call the "James Earl Ray Day Extravaganza after King's assassin  but the march never occurred.

Spencers mother Sherry, who owns a commercial building in Whitefish, called Gersh  a real estate agent  in November last year after locals became angry with her sons connections to the white nationalist movement. According to the lawsuit, Gersh encouraged Sherry Spencer to consider selling the building.

But weeks later Sherry Spencer wrote a blog post accusing Gersh of having threatened to extort her and force her to sell the property and donate the proceeds.

Since Anglins post, Gersh has received threats that include Thanks for demonstrating why your race needs to be collectively ovened, and You will be driven to the brink of suicide & We will be there to take pleasure in your pain & eventual end, according to the suit.

Anglin also "urged his followers to seek Ms. Gersh out in person: 'And hey  if you're in the area, maybe you should stop by and tell her in person what you think of her actions.' "

Throughout the summer, The Daily Stormer ran into issues staying online, with multiple domain registrars refusing to host the site. Most recently, the site is registered by a Hong Kong registrar, and links to it appear in Google search results. The website includes a link for readers to donate to Anglins legal defense, saying The Daily Stormer is being sued by Jewish terrorists.

***

For months after filing the lawsuit, Gersh and her attorneys attempted to locate Anglin to serve him with a copy without success, and have written in court documents that Las Vegas attorney Marc Randazza  who told the Associated Press this summer he is representing Anglin in the case  has not returned their letters or voicemails.

Certified mail sent to several addresses in Franklin County, Ohio, that are believed to be related to Anglin came back as undelivered. Gershs attorneys eventually met the court criteria for serving the lawsuit by publishing a notice in the local newspaper for six weeks.

Since that time, Randazza has filed court paperwork that he, in addition to another attorney at his firm, are officially representing Anglin. In addition, Missoula attorney Mat Stevenson has filed a court notice of representation that says he has been hired by Anglin.

The case has deadlines set for December for attorneys from both sides to work out details of sharing discovery and dates for filing further paperwork.
Gov. Steve Bullock gave approval Friday to six bills passed during last weeks special legislative session, which will most of the states $227 million budget gap.

The Democratic governor also vetoed two Republican-backed bills, including one that would have saved $15 million by requiring certain state employees to take furloughs. The other vetoed bill would have authorized the insurance commissioner to apply for health-care innovation waivers.

By Jonathan Ambarian  MTN News

http://www.kpax.com/story/36921205/bullock-approves-six-bills-to-cover-227-million-gap-in-montana-budget-vetoes-two-others
BUTTE -- Although nearly a year has passed since around 3,000 snow geese perished on the Berkeley Pit, the Environmental Protection Agency has not decided on whether to fine the responsible parties, Montana Resources and Atlantic Richfield Company.

EPA project manager Nikia Greene confirmed, however, that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has jurisdiction over migratory birds, has decided not to fine the companies responsible for the Berkeley Pit. The wildlife service could have fined the companies as much as $5,000 per dead bird.

USFWS spokesperson Jennifer Strickland said "no comment" when asked about the decision not to fine the companies.

The U.S. District Attorneys Office for Montana, in Billings, is in charge of enforcement for USFWS. Its spokesperson Leif Johnson would not comment on the matter.

But EPA is still investigating whether Montana Resources and Atlantic Richfield adhered to the 1996 plan intended to keep migratory birds off the pits waters. The companies and agencies devised that plan  consisting primarily of wailers making loud sounds and gunfire  in 1996 in response to 342 snow geese dying on the pit water ahead of a snowstorm.

Those efforts were largely successful for 21 years but proved ineffective the night of Nov. 28, 2016, when somewhere around 10,000 geese landed. The pit, which is more than a square mile in size, was white with birds.

But while EPA's investigation continues, the companies have created a robust, comprehensive approach to keeping migrating birds off the Berkeley Pit going forward, Greene said.

So far during this fall migratory season, nine birds have died  one coot and eight snow geese.

Last week four snow geese landed on the pit and looked unhealthy, Greene said. The mine called the agencies, and a decision was made to rescue the birds and take them to a veterinarian.

Montana Resources vice president of environmental affairs Mark Thompson said the birds wandered up onto a ramp that leads to the pits waters. That enabled MR employees to capture the birds.

After given fresh water at a veterinarians office, the birds recovered and were released, Greene said.

It seems they were just tired from migrating, Greene said. It appears they didnt have a lot of exposure (to Berkeley Pit water).

Thompson said most snow geese flew over Montana on their way from their Arctic breeding grounds to various points south the weekend of Nov. 4. When the birds landed last year, they left their summer home two weeks late due to abnormally warm fall weather.

Local bird experts blamed climate change for the reason the birds mistakenly landed on the pit in such overwhelming numbers last year. When snow geese head south each fall, their first landing spot to rest along the way is Freezout Lake in northern Montana. But last fall, Freezout Lake was frozen by the time the birds came through. Warm Springs Ponds, west of Butte, were frozen, too.

That left the exhausted birds with virtually nowhere to rest except the Berkeley Pit.

In response to the incident, MR and Atlantic Richfield put together a bird advisory council filled with local ornithological experts who could advise the companies on how better to plan for such an event.

Greene said the companies, the agencies, and the bird advisory group are still considering the various technologies, which now include a machine called a VRAD that produces a sonic boom. MR tested the machine last spring.

The companies have bought $6,000 spotting scopes so the mining crew can identify the bird species that land on the pit. That helps the workers know how to respond to get the birds to leave.

Overall, the companies have spent maybe as much as $500,000 on the new hazing technologies, Thompson said.

One boat is still being built. It will travel up to 30 mph and will be powered remotely. Another boat built by Montana Tech researchers in 2016 was tested and launched in the pits waters last spring to sample the metal-laden water via remote control.

That boat now has a propane cannon added to it to scare birds.

Propane cannons, as well as wailers, sit at strategic points along the pits walls. The companies also employ laser technology and new drones. One drone can also sample pit water. One drone looks like an eagle. Some of the lasers simulate a predators eyes to scare the birds from landing on the pit water.

There are also fireworks to keep the birds from landing.

But Greene said that perhaps the most effective tool is communication. Thompson said the mine now communicates with the bird advisers, who communicate with points in Canada and Freezout Lake as well as with a meteorologist, who can advise on weather patterns that affect where the birds might land.

When large flocks are headed this way, the bird advisers put MR on alert, Thompson said.

One of the most important things is the effort Montana Resources made to put together the advisory committee with experts and create communication with the northern migratory sites," Greene said. "Its one of the biggest, one of the most important things to understand, is where these birds are going and what theyre doing and be prepared early."

The effort appears to be working. Thompson said that with nine bird mortalities this fall, that translates into a 99-percent hazing effectiveness.

We were ready (this fall) and prepared, Thompson said.

Greene said he expects to see a finalized waterfowl mitigation plan with a definite list of effective bird hazing technologies fully in place by fall 2018.


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I joined other protesters at the Helena office of Rep. Greg Gianforte on Monday to object to the House tax bill. It is a cynical and sinful act that will ultimately hurt the most vulnerable among us. If enacted this is my prediction: [1] unfair and reckless tax cuts right away [2] soaring deficits [3] dismay and outcry over those deficits [4] a call to reduce spending, especially for social programs [5] the most vulnerable among us get hammered. Sunday's Gospel reading in most churches, by the way, concludes with these words: "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." There you are, Mr. Gianforte. When you cheat the vulnerable you are stiff-arming the Lord.
DECATUR  The financial pundits who say online retail sites like Amazon are spelling doom for traditional department stores like Sears and J.C. Penney are also giving some local governments heartburn. The fear, along with lost jobs and vacant buildings, is a slide in sales taxes, which for cities like Decatur is a major revenue source.

"It's killing cities all over the place," Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe said at a recent city council meeting.

The city's sales tax revenue has mostly stayed flat for a decade, even fallen slightly. The attention is especially acute during the busy holiday season, which long had been a critical source of municipal tax revenues through purchases at large department stores, downtown retailers and other brick and mortar stores.

Falling sales tax revenue is not uncommon among Central Illinois cities. Recently, Springfield reported a similar dip, and Peoria officials voted to increase the city's sales tax a percentage point to boost slumping revenue. Bloomington's city council recently heard stagnant retail sales tax and rising costs are projected to create a revenue gap in its fiscal 2019 budget.

"You need to pass that (sales tax) on down to the municipalities based on the ZIP codes of the people that bought (online)," said Decatur City Councilman Pat McDaniel.

In the city of Decatur, about a quarter of its annual revenues come from state and local sales taxes.

Some online sellers do not have to hand over sales tax collections to where the purchaser lives. Amazon does collect sales tax, for instance, but any third-party sellers on the site do not have to  and states and cities worry that's a disadvantage for local stores, and hurting local revenue as a result.

"The people who live here still buy clothes and shoes, and if they're doing it online, that revenue needs to be coming back to us," Moore Wolfe said at the most recent council meeting.

There's no doubt local governments have to be losing some revenue to online sales, but it's difficult to track accurate figures, given that sites like Amazon and eBay include so many small purveyors all over the country.

But it is a different story in the adjacent villages of Forsyth and Mount Zion, where officials say sales tax figures are holding steady, even growing.

So far, sales tax receipts in Forsyth are about even with 2016, said Andrew Zupkoff, the village's community and economic development coordinator, "But that's not taking into effect all the business that have opened up literally in the next four months," he said.

In 2016, Forsyth ended up with $4.2 million in local sales tax receipts, and Zupkoff counts 10 new businesses that set up shot in Forsyth in the past year, including a number of stores that have filled some of the vacancies in Hickory Point Mall.

"We've had a very successful two months," said A.J. Miller, store manager of Hibbett Sports, which opened in the mall in September. "We are trending above new store expectations for (the company)."

Zupkoff, who started at his position in Forsyth this year, said promoting the village's high median income is helping attract more national chains.

"A lot of the time, when we bring up the Decatur market to a group of brokers and the company (representatives), they'll even say, 'If you want to be in the Decatur market, Forsyth is where you want to be," Zupkoff said.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Forsyth's median household income is $95,000, versus $50,500 in Decatur, and $93,000 in Mount Zion.

"Our sales tax (receipts) over the last several years have been very stable," said Julie Miller, Mount Zion village administrator.

Mount Zion's local sales tax has dipped slightly over the last three years, from $340,000 in 2014, to $331,000 last year.

"The village doesn't have any of the major retailers. We have lots of small businesses, so it's very stable," Miller said.

Mount Zion's reliance on property taxes to fund local schools and government services is also much less of a guessing game when sales taxes can ebb and flow based on any range of economic factors.

"The economy doesn't affect us as much as say, Forsyth or Decatur," Miller said.

Decatur officials, including McDaniel and Moore Wolfe, say the city's slumping sales tax figures could be boosted if state lawmakers, or even Congress, established measures to ensure all online purchases see sales tax collections go to where the consumer is.

Zupkoff said the strip of national retail stores on U.S. 51 near the mall sees some of the highest car traffic in the area, and even though online shopping has grown, it's still only 10 percent to 15 percent of total sales in the country.

According to a report from the U.S. Department of Commerce, e-commerce sales brought in $394.9 billion in 2016. The Commerce Department said online sales grew 15.1 percent in 2016 and accounted for 8.1 percent of total retail sales for the year.

"I don't know if news of the retail apocalypse is overblown, or we're insulated from it, but people are still going out and shopping," Zupkoff said.

"There's still nothing better than going to the store and getting that item on that day," Miller said. "Amazon is great, but you still have to wait; and everybody still likes going to the store to get something new, and there's nothing quite like that feeling."
Hometown: Decatur

Family: I have been married 34 years to Jack. Jack is from Decatur. We have two children, Jillian Lee and Wyatt Hayden.

Work experience: I have 25 years of experience in adult education. I was specifically engaged with professional development, BRIDGE programs, career pathways and short-term vocational programs. I have spent most of my career developing programs that help individuals obtain the skills needed to become employed.

Education: I graduated from Stephen Decatur High School. I have an associates degree from Lincoln College; bachelors degree in speech communications from Eastern Illinois University; masters degree in human services from the University of Illinois.

My Id rather be  bumper sticker would read: Id rather be spending time with family and friends. I enjoy a lot of activities, but my favorite way to spend time is with my family and friends.

Hobbies/interests: Swimming, dancing and country music.

My first job: De-tasseling corn. I was 14 and was required to get a work permit. My parents told me if I started the job there would be NO quitting. No matter how hot it got, or how long of a day, or even if my friends quit. Once, I made a commitment I was required to follow it through. That lesson has stayed with me.

Why I do what I do: I have always been a cheerleader at heart. I am always pulling for the ones that need the most time and attention. I believe that if given a chance, most people want to excel and do a good job. Now, on the other hand, I am realistic. People have to WANT to go to work and they must WANT to improve. I have been fortunate to see many students/customers learn skill sets and complete programs that lead to better opportunities and a better quality of life.

Personal approaches to challenges: My personal approach is a perseverance to live each day to the best of my ability. I learned early in life that things only get better if you work hard to make them better. I understand barriers and conflicts, and try to develop pathways for people to overcome them. I've had a lot of good examples in my personal and professional life. My parents instilled a strong work ethic in my sister and I, and never let us settle for less. My professional life was always full of strong women who accepted challenges straight on. There is always a solution, and successful people work until they find the right one.

Community involvement: I have served on several boards. I served on the local Workforce board for many years, as well as the Catholic Charities board. I was active with the Illinois Association of Adult Educators, and the Illinois Advisory Board for Adult Education. My husband is an auto auctioneer and we donate our time to the community by raising money (auction style) for local charitable organizations. We work together to raise money for our community.

What is Workforce Investment Solutions? It is a federally-funded program through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). The state of Illinois, through the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, administers and allocates the funding. Macon County is the grant recipient and the chairman of the county board, Jay Dunn, is designated as the chief elected official. All funds are administered through Macon County. Workforce is comprised of dedicated professionals committed to meeting the needs of a growing workforce in Macon and DeWitt counties. It is our mission to provide businesses with qualified employees by enhancing their skills and abilities through training and education.

What are the primary challenges facing our workforce development? The primary challenges include; job seekers who lack skill-sets for available jobs and lack of knowledge of where/how to access services. Macon and DeWitt Counties are rich with resources. The main concern is the lack of awareness of what services and/or resources are available in our community.

Workforce has developed a Business Services Team, comprised of the Illinois Department of Employment Security, Illinois Division of Rehabilitation Services, Economic Development Corporation for Decatur and Macon County, the Greater Decatur Chamber of Commerce, Richland Community College and the city of Decatur. This team understands the services/resources available and is committed to addressing the needs and concerns of our local employers. We understand there is a community need for workers in health care, manufacturing and transportation and logistics. We also see a need to increase the awareness of apprenticeships and careers in the building/construction trades. The goal is to grow these occupational areas so that we can have a pool of applicants for the future needs of local employers.

What steps are being taken to address these challenges? Workforce, and the partners at the Illinois workNet Center, provide an array of services for job seekers and businesses.

Staff at the center can assist job seekers with resume development, interviewing skills, on-line applications and job search. Workforce may be able to assist the job seeker with skill upgrades such as; tuition, fees, books, transportation, child care, etc.

Workforce can assist businesses with recruitment, candidate screening and skill assessments. Workforce also has resources to offer on-the-job training incentives to employers for a hire first/train later strategy. This incentive can reimburse an employer 50 percent of the wages of a new hire for up to 6 months.

What is the Richland/Workforce Consortium? It is a partnership between Workforce Investment Solutions and Richland Community College. The Consortium is funded by an Adult Education and Family Literacy grant through the Illinois Community College Board. The Consortium will hold adult education classes downtown at the Decatur Public Library. Classes include  free High School Equivalency (HSE), GED preparation, English as a Second Language (ESL) and BRIDGE programs to provide students with basic skills before transitioning to college and/or employment.

What is the role of Workforce Investment Solutions in the Consortium? Workforce will provide BRIDGE programs in three occupational areas  health care, manufacturing and hospitality. Students will enroll in a two-week session of essential/soft skills course before moving into the occupational-specific BRIDGE program.

BRIDGE programs are designed to offer students the opportunity to increase their basic math and reading literacy while learning skills in occupational-specific sectors. Programs will begin in 2018. Workforce will also be involved with the recruitment, assessment and selection of candidates for the program. In addition, Workforce will provide students with case management, resume development, interview techniques, job search and job placement.

What is the role of Richland Community College in the consortium? Richland Community College Adult Education Department will provide GED, English as a Second Language and Certified Nursing Assistant classes. They will assist students to transition into post-secondary education by helping them through the process of registration, academic advising and financial aid. Richland will also allow us to better align a partnership with Project Read, who is already located in the Decatur Public Library. Adult education has always connected with Project Read, but it will be easier for our customers/students by being located in the same building. Its a win-win.

What is the role of city of Decatur/Decatur Public Library in the consortium? The library provides an excellent location to base the consortium and its classes. It is downtown and very easy to access.

How can job seekers get involved? We would like to invite anyone who is looking for a job or employment services to come to the Illinois workNet center and take advantage of the resources. Whether its to develop a resume, gain interview skills, look for employment or talk to a career planner, we want them to know we are here to help. They can call (217) 875-8750, ext. 231. Or just come in, we are located at 757 W. Pershing Road in Decatur.

How can employers get involved? Employers looking for assistance with hiring and/or training can contact me at (217) 875-8720. They can also contact anyone with the Business Services Team. The team wants to help in any way we can.

We'd be remiss if we didn't ask about your name. My parents were watching a movie and there was a little girl with blonde hair named Rocki. My dad told my mom that is what they are going to name their daughter. My real name is Rockanne, but Rocki has stuck with me  even before I was born.
Every day as we watch the national news, it seems there is a major problem.

Not a week slips by without someone complaining about our president being involved in a big controversy. Two themes that never seem to be resolved are his involvement with Russia and how he prejudiced the election.

The one-year anniversary of President Trumps election just passed, and according to all reports, he has turned our country upside down and inside out. Many claims are made that he is not following up on his campaign promises. When he makes attempts to do so, political blocks are placed in his way.

As I see it, the president has made mistakes, but he has also made some positive advances. According to all reports, his promises to increase employment have brought good results. Every time he tries to make a move to change the status quo, however, his opponents, in both parties, rise up in opposition. There are members of his party very unhappy with his election who refuse to support him and constant resistance exists.

The people are watching as the political friction continues and a demonstration of dissatisfaction was evident in the recent elections nationwide. Proof that the Democratic Party is alive and in a recovery phase was evident. Political pundits are spinning lots of optimistic forecasts of sweeping victories to come, but the fall of the Republican Party is not likely.

Its time for younger voters to express their opinions about where our country is headed. It would be wise for them to observe how long many of the congressional representatives have held office. Isnt it time to look for fresh, new ideas? A recent report regarding the age of many of those serving in government was shocking. Our current congressional congress is one of the oldest in history. The Democrats are leading the old-age race. According to the online blog, Quorum, Democratic leaders in the house are two decades older than their Republican counterparts, and some of them are double the age of their constituents. It just cant be possible a person in their mid-80s is capable of guiding our nation.

President Trump has been beating the drum for term limits, but it would take a constitutional amendment and a vote of two-thirds of the entire congress to accomplish. With so many old-timers serving in the present assembly, there is little hope of any proposal succeeding.

I have beat my own drum for many years. We need new people in office with new ideas to move our country forward. We are mired down in past policies that just dont fit into the worlds evolving environment. A new political party would be a breath of fresh air that could sweep away all the old, stale ideas that never work. We need people who will support changes that will make our country stronger.

If the elected officials seated are not advancing our communities, counties, state and nation, can we really afford to leave them in office?

Capt. Fred Davis is a retired charter captain and nationally published author of boating articles. His "As I See It" columns appear Saturday in the Huron Daily Tribune.
BAD AXE  Although it was a short meeting, this week's Huron County Board of Commissioners Committee Meeting of the Whole generated some productive discussion.

Here are some of the highlights:

Safety Committee:

Chairman John L. Bodis reported that Dr. Russell L. Bush, medical director for the Huron County Health Department, may retire from that position. However, Bush will remain the countys medical examiner.

While Bush oversees numerous counties in his role as director, Bodis added the state would like each county to have its own medical director. Sharing the service with other counties, Bodis said, saves Huron $100,000.

Legislative Committee:

Chairman John A. Nugent said the project to equip the Huron County Nature Center with electricity is ago, following successful negotiations between the Huron County Road Commission and DTE Energy.

The $14,000 project is fully funded thanks to donations, but Nugent said additional costs might come from retrofitting the building for heat.

Nugent also reported on a website operated and maintained with private funds by Huron County Prosecutor Timothy J. Rutkowski.

Either hes paying out of pocket, or someone else is paying on his behalf, Nugent said.

Nugent also noted that there is no county policy regarding employees maintaining personal websites. Regarding Rutkowski's private website, it appears to be the official website of the Huron County Prosecutor's Office, including having the seal of that office on that site.

Finance Committee:

Chairman Ron Wruble said the county treasurer and county clerk are tweaking the 2018 budget to accommodate the numbers for steps and grade increases, as well as benefits and legacy costs. Unknowns remain, however, with ongoing contract negotiations. Contracts expire in December. Wruble said that in early December, he hopes to publish and post the budget, and present it to the board for approval by the end of the year.

Agencies Committee:

Committee Chairman Steve Vaughan touched on several issues, including the effects of opioid addiction on county residents. He also reported that Friday morning, he will be picking up potatoes from Walther Farms for distribution to food pantries. Vaughan added that someone broke into the Kinde Food Pantry this past weekend.

Properties Committee:

Chairman Todd Talaski said H&H Roofing has reported that half of the roof on the County Building complete. H&H would like half of the pay, and will complete the project in the spring due to recent inclement weather.

Chairmans Report:

Chairman Sami Khoury reported on the Michigan Association of Counties Region VII meeting Monday at Bay Shore Camp. Featured speakers were camp Director Jeff Parsons and Huron County Circuit Court Judge Gerald M. Prill. Parsons provided an overview of the camp, and Prill spoke about the countys recently-formed Families Against Narcotics chapter.

Personnel Committee:

Chairman David G. Peruski reported there would be a Personnel Committee meeting after the Committee of the Whole meeting.
UPPER THUMB -- The focus of wind development is blowing in a different direction in Tuscola County and on into Huron County as well.

NextEra Energy Resources LLC is applying for special land use permits for wind development in Juniata Township as part of their Pegasus Wind Energy Center. The township board will review the applications during a special public hearing 7 p.m. Monday, at the township hall.

"The plan for that project is 63 turbines with 31 in Juniata Township and 32 in Fairgrove Township," said Bryan Garner, manager of communications for NextEra Energy Resources. "It is a $200 million investment, and would generate about 150 million megawatts of power. There would be 350 construction jobs during the project, and then seven to 12 full-time jobs when completed."

If all goes according to plan, completion of that project is expected by the end of 2018.

"Over the life of the project -- 30 years -- it would generate about $35 million in property taxes and for the landowners," Garner said.

Although townships around Juniata have been receptive to wind development, there are concerns turbine construction in Juniata would be too close to the Tuscola Area Airport.

"The total height of the turbines to the tip of the blade is just under 500 feet," he said. "We understand the concerns about the airport and we will be working with the airport and the township. The Pegasus Energy Center will tie in with our Tuscola Wind I and Tuscola Wind II in Tuscola County, and with our Pheasant Run (wind) farm in Huron County."

Even though NextEra is working on the Pegasus Wind Energy Center, it doesn't mean then have given up on the proposed Tuscola Wind III project in Almer and Ellington townships.

Earlier this month, U.S. Federal District Court Judge Thomas Ludington sided with Almer Township officials against NextEra Energy Resources LLC in lawsuit filed by the energy company. Tuscola Wind III LLC, which is a subsidiary of NextEra, filed a lawsuit against Almer Township and the township board alleging there was an effort to stop the energy company from developing a wind farm of 55 turbines in those two townships.

Despite the decision the issues between Almer Township and NextEra's Tuscola Wind are not over, according to Garner noting NextEra has not given up on developing Tuscola Wind III.

"Only part of the lawsuit was decided on," he said. "There are still other issues."

Tuscola Wind III has a similar lawsuit pending against Ellington Township that is still pending in court.
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CASS CITY  Cass City is learning that it takes a village's children to feed everyone.

About 100 kids from 4-H, FFA and Cass City High School's agriscience program donate their time, hard work and fundraising skills to making sure that healthy protein is available to residents of this food desert.

Fresh meat and produce cannot be purchased affordably within a 15-mile radius.

Having endured years without a grocery store, the area's needy families are especially grateful this holiday season for a local food pantry that makes healthy eating possible.

By spring, students from Cass City's Meating the Need for our Village Hunger Project will have raised and donated nearly 7,000 pounds of fresh protein to the Revive Ministries Food Pantry over three years, as well as 500 gallons of milk.

This month alone, the program donated 98 chickens to the pantry.

Another donation of 215 gallons of milk came last week via Joe Bixler and Trey Smith of Port Huron, also knows as Salt and Pepper on their Facebook show.

Revive purchases fruits and vegetables from the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, from which it receives 50 to 60 percent of its food for distribution to some 75 local families.

Gail Tuckey, administrator for Revive, said there is currently no need to purchase meat from the food bank because of the donations from the hunger project.

Addy Battel, 15, of Cass City, helps out by raising poultry on her familys farm, alongside her sister, Dori, 11.

Addy Battel and her friends started working with Revive three years ago following the closure of Cass Citys grocery store.

Of her friends that help in the effort to provide food to the community, Battel said: We cant drive yet. We dont have a lot of money. But we do know how to raise meat, and talk to farmers and get funds for milk our focus is high-quality protein.

The hunger program has raised $15,000 so far for the project in grant funds and donations.

Even if the town gets a grocery store, Battel said, the youth dont plan to let up on donations to food pantries.

We will keep donating. If having a grocery store in town allows us to expand the project to other food pantries, that would be great, she said.

Bixler told the Tribune that Battel and other youth who help feed the community are an inspiration.

Its heartwarming, he said. It also gives me a lot of hope.

His hope springs from the fact that first, these kids see a need. Secondly, they take action.

They dont just sit around and complain, he said. They do something about it.

The 75 low-income families monthly that Revive serves could increase, especially over the holidays, Tuckey said.

Theres a lot of people who cant make it on a Saturday morning, she added. So were trying to offer more hours.

The pantry will continue to serve the community from 10 to 11 a.m. on the third Saturday of the month. Hours have been added the following Tuesday from 1 to 3 p.m. and Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m.

The food pantry serves those in the Cass City School district, which includes residents from Huron, Tuscola and Sanilac counties.

The food pantrys monthly income limits, according to Revives website, are as follows:

 Single-person household: $1,945

 Two-person: $2,622

 Three-person: $3,299

 Four-person: $3,976

 Five-person: $4,653

 Six-person: $5,330

 Seven-person: $6,007

 Eight-person: $6,684 (Add $667 for each additional family member.)

Personal identification and proof of income are required.

For more information, call Revive at 989-551-7803.
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FAIRFIELD  Its just another early evening rush at the Stag, Fairfield Universitys on-campus eatery as student pile in to see what looks good.

Just a snack, CJ Enwright tells himself out loud, looking up at the menu.

Ana Hall goes for the sushi. For Caroline Maffei, its chips and a soda.

Others line up at the register wallets in hand, or scout out a booth.

More Information Autism Facts The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates autism's prevalence as 1 in 68 children in the United States. This includes 1 in 42 boys and 1 in 189 girls. Each year, an estimated 50,000 teens with autism become adults - and lose school-based autism services. By 2020, the number of American adults on the autism spectrum is expected to reach 3 million. In June 2014, only 19.3 percent of people with disabilities in the U.S. were participating in the labor force - working or seeking work. See More Collapse

For these dozen students who are all on the autism spectrum, this isnt a break from class, this is part of class.

This is two-fold for us, Alyson Martin, an assistant professor and co-director of special education at Fairfield U. It addresses issues of transition for students with autism, helping them prepare for post high school life, and brings autism awareness to campus.

The Transition Opportunities for Post-secondary Success course, or TOPS, is a collaboration between the universitys Graduate School of Education and the Kennedy Center, a Trumbull-based provider of services for individuals with disabilities.

Many students with autism spectrum disorder are highly capable of succeeding at a university academically but often are challenged due to the lack of critical social and life skills, Kennedy Center President Martin Schwartz said.

For graduate students in Martins Introduction to Autism class, it offers field experience as they act as assistants in the class.

This is really my first time working with special education adults, said Peter Watson, a special education classroom aide in Darien. Its really interesting to go to everyday activities with them.

Watson is working toward a special education certificate.

Learning soft skills

Autism encompasses a variety of conditions that can include challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication and sometimes unique strengths. There are many types, including Aspergers Syndrome, or high-functioning autism.

More high-functioning young adults with autism are going to college. How many is uncertain.

There are 60 colleges with specialized programs and the number of students with autism at all colleges is drastically increasing, said Jane Thierfeld Brown, a clinical professor at Yale and director of Yales College Autism Spectrum program. We do not have good numbers, as most college students do not identify to the school as having autism.

The Fairfield program is not for students currently attending the university but rather participants ages 18-21 who found out about it through the Kennedy Center. Over the span of 10 weeks, the class will have visited the campus RecPlex, library, art gallery and book store to work on communication skills, problem-solving and practice spatial awareness.

The transition to adulthood is difficult for all young people, particularly for those with autism, Wendy Bloch, an administrator of therapeutic services at the Kennedy Center, said. Often, they fail not academically, but socially.

TOPS helps work on the soft skills.

When it started this fall, officials hoped to attract six to eight students. A dozen signed up. For many, a good chunk of the $300 tuition fee is subsidized by grants.

Participants come from Fairfield, Newtown, Ansonia, Shelton, Stratford and Bridgeport.

Some are already taking post high-school courses. Hall, of Bridgeport, is taking a class at Gateway Community College in New Haven.

On Mondays, Isabel Shaw said she attends RISE (Reaching Independence through Supported Education), a collaboration between Sacred Heart University and Cooperative Education Services of Trumbull. That program also helps students develop vocational, social and personal management skills through a variety of university campus- and community-based activities.

On a recent nights TOPS class, students signed in and picked up small white boards to doodle on until everyone arrived.

Before the visit to the snack bar, they prepared. Hands shot up when asked if they brought money. They were asked to think about what they might want to order.

Do we leave our stuff here? one student asked.

All but your purse, jacket and phone, Jen Narcisco, a Kennedy Center art therapist who assists with the class, told them.

After the visit, the class returned to their third-floor classroom at Canisius Hall to talk about what they liked and something they learned.

Enright, from Stratford, said he liked hanging out with his friends and learned that a campus snack bar is pretty much like a diner.

Charlie Eagleson of Newtown said he learned the student center where the snack bar is located has a service elevator across from the bookstore that only employees can use.

After students left, Martin remained with members of her graduate-level Autism Spectrum Course. Jessica Grabowski, a Westport second-grade teacher working on a special education certification, called the experience amazing.

This is nothing you can get out of a textbook. Its hands on, she said.

The Fairfield U program is still evolving but will continue into the spring and perhaps the summer.

This program comes at a crucial time for college-ready students with ASD due to recent state budget cuts for such transitional services, Martin said. Its much needed.
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CROMWELL  Michael Rogers, of Wethersfield, died here early Saturday in a single-car crash off Interstate 91, and a second driver also crashed his car near that spot a few hours later, hitting the back of a Connecticut State Police cruiser, according to a press release from Trooper Kelly Grant.

The accident took place at about 1:35 a.m., the release said, when Rogers Hyundai Genesis was traveling north on I-91, veered off the roadway to the right, through the soft shoulder, across an entrance ramp and into some trees.
SPRINGFIELD  The Illinois Supreme Court has denied Alan's Beaman's appeal in his claim that three former Normal police officers urged prosecutors to charge him in the death of his former girlfriend.

Beaman, now 45, was released from prison in 2008 after the high court reversed his murder conviction in the 1993 strangling death of Jennifer Lockmiller, an Illinois State University student from Decatur who was Beaman's former girlfriend.

In a Facebook posting after the court decision Wednesday denying his appeal, Beaman said "while I am grateful that the same court released me over nine years ago, they still had an obligation to follow through in seeking complete justice for the 13 years I spent wrongfully convicted."

The Supreme Court ruling was issued without comment.

Beaman, who now lives in Rockford with his wife and two children, received a certificate of innocence from the state and a pardon from former Gov. Pat Quinn.

An earlier appellate court ruling stated there was no evidence of pressure or undue influence by the officers on former McLean County prosecutor James Souk to file the murder charges against Beaman.

David Shapiro, one of lawyers who handled the unsuccessful lawsuits filed in federal and state court since Beaman's release, also expressed disappointment with the ruling that ends Beaman's legal options against the police and prosecutors involved in the Lockmiller investigation.

"Alan is an American hero massively wronged and denied the justice and recompense he deserves," Shapiro said.

The alleged misconduct by former Normal officers Tim Freesmeyer, Dave Warner and Frank Zayas should not taint the public's view of all law enforcement and prosecutors, Beaman said in his social media post.

"In order to properly back the badge, it is essential to protect our mostly good cops from the bad attitudes and now glorified entitlement of a few of their properly trained peers. Police misconduct has become an epidemic and while our courts look the other way, it will only get worse," wrote Beaman.

On Friday, Beaman told The (Bloomington) Pantagraph he supports a Conviction Integrity Unit in McLean County to review previous murder convictions. State's Attorney Jason Chambers said previously that he could consider such a unit if the county saw a high volume of potential exoneration cases.

Beaman also supports better police training to prevent the use of what the Supreme Court termed tenuous evidence in his case and greater awareness of the potential harm of wrongful convictions.

"American deserves better than a polarized and willful ignorance of the potential fallibility of our public officials," Beaman said.

In September, Normal police said the Lockmiller investigation is considered inactive, but could be reopened if new information is obtained.

No forensic testing or investigative work is pending in the case, according to Normal Police Chief Rick Bleichner.
Officials say the device was known as an "unexploded ordnance," or an explosive weapon that did not explode and still posed a...
MANCHESTER TOWNSHIP, MI - About 40 minutes southwest of Ann Arbor, escapees, former laboratory research subjects and neglect survivors happily wander the verdant vista of SASHA Farm.

One tenant waddled through the dust, past a towering neighbor, to attract the attention of Bob Harvie, who promptly scooped the feathered familiar up during a tour earlier this year.

"This is my friend Duck Duck," said Harvie, a tour guide and member of the farm's Board of Directors, laughing as the goose poked his beak toward Bhima, a type of Indian-bred cattle called a Gyr.

Duck Duck and Bhima are just a few the fluctuating, but roughly 200 animals that live at the sanctuary, Harvie said as Duck Duck followed along on the tour.

There's Miles, a suspected American bulldog-pitbull mix, who survived Hurricane Katrina, but broke his leg jumping off a porch roof to get to a companion dog, Harvie said, and Jefferson, named for his escape from a slaughterhouse down Jefferson Avenue in Detroit in 2003.

Dozing on bales of hay was Jordan, pig that was used as a backup in case other pigs were killed in a study at research facility, Harvie said, and not too far away was Flopsy and Frankie, goats that were taken from a hoarding case in Calhoun County.

The sanctuary was started almost by accident by Monte Jackson and Dorothy Davies in 1981, the way Jackson explains it. The two wanted to get out of the suburbs, he said, and got some goats and chickens. They then slowly started to take in animals in need, and, as Jackson said it, "one thing led to another."

SASHA Farm, named both after a beloved dog of the couple and used as an acronym for Sanctuary And Safe Haven for Animals, officially became a non-profit in 2001.

"A lot of animals come here from desperate need from neglect and abuse," he said. "We've tried to provide a very peaceful and relaxing atmosphere for them."

The goal, Harvie said, is to give the animals a permanent, safe place to live. But the mission goes a bit deeper than that.

Though Jackson said the sanctuary isn't attempting to take on the meat industry, the operation, donation and primarily volunteer based, is also vegan, down to the clothes volunteers wear and the food they serve the animals.

"What we do with animals in this county is not good," Jackson said. "We just try to educate people, give them an option by teaching through example."

The farm hopes to do just that at a number of their regular events throughout the year, including a Thanksgiving for Animals event from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 26 at 17901 Mahrle Road in Manchester Township.

The event will pay tribute to the turkeys killed this year and turkeys at the farm will eat a pumpkin pie memorial feast.

Human guests will be served free coffee and cider, and a vegan bake sale also will be available.

Proceeds from the event, donations of $20 for adults and $10 for children older than 5 years old, will be used for winter farm expenses and veterinary bills.

"We want people to know that each one of these animals are deserving of having a life and not to be stuck in a feed lot or not to be stuck in a bad situation where people aren't taking care of them ..." Harvie said.

"I mean, we want them to not eat animal products, we'd prefer that they didn't, but at least to come out and maybe make a connection during one of our events."

For more information on the Thanksgiving for Animals event or to donate to the farm, click here.
Flint Northwestern graduate, Betty Davis, 18, celebrates after receiving her diploma alongside more than 235 other graduates from Flint Community Schools at the annual joint commencement ceremony on Tuesday, June 6, 2017, at Dort Federal Event Center in Flint. More than three months later, she is struggling to make her dream become a reality. To leave her challenging childhood behind, join the military, move to Texas and later attend college to study criminal justice. "A lot of my classmates are all going through the same thing as me this summer. They keep telling me the same things that I have been thinking, 'ah man this is hard, I want to go back to high school, I want to try to start over and make it better for myself,'" Betty said.

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STORY AND PHOTOS BY SHANNON MILLARD



FLINT, MI -- Sitting on the floor gazing into an oversized, smudged mirror resting against the wall, Betty Davis applies makeup as her nieces and nephews run around the house completing their chores.

The large room features a speaker system pointing out the window, a television playing Sponge Bob to no one in particular and bedding piled into a corner creating a makeshift couch. Bar stools from the dining area are slid onto the soiled carpet as Aniyla Green, 4, and Byron Green, 6, Betty's sister's children, fight over the broom. Betty settles the fight and sprinkles carpet deodorizer powder across the floor as she slams off the television.

Today, Betty was getting her senior photos taken, three months after her graduation. For her, this was normal, doing things her own way, out of order but getting them done.

"I am going through a bunch of stuff right now, but I am going to get through it like I always do," said the 18-year-old Betty as she clipped extensions into her hair.

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Betty chops tomatoes for dinner alongside her cousins as they snack on bananas in their home on the 2000 block of Cadillac Street in Flint on July 2. "With graduating high school I feel like I have accomplished what people didn't think I could. It feels so good to me because I know now I can do anything. If I can overcome my past and everything I have been through than being an adult shouldn't be as hard. It is going to be very challenging but I know am going to eventually get through it, like I do everything else," Betty said.

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"I don't really like Flint, I am not going to lie, I really don't like Flint," Betty said. "If it was my choice, I wouldn't be here. Flint does have potential. I am proud to wear Flint on my back because I also have a lot of potential myself that I would like to share with the world. But, because I am labeled as a Flint girl, it is hard for people to see the potential in us and in Flint at all." Betty said teen are labeled as young and pregnant, being in jail, prostitutes and high school dropouts, not being able to graduate college or afford it. "I have been labeled as a lot of things but I don't let that define who I am, I don't let that get to me," she said. "I try to show that I am different. When people don't live here or see it for themselves they go by the media or what the majority see and I am not the majority. I try on my end to make a change here, as much as I can."

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On the floor of her sister Mary Cassel's home, Betty straightens her hair while babysitting Mary's children on Aug. 16, 2017 in Flint. "Graduating high school has opened my eyes," Betty said. "Now I am doing everything alone, well not alone but on my own. Usually, I would have people to ask questions to, my family and friends, I had them to fall back on but now I am doing things on my own. I am adapting, it is not going to happen overnight."

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As told by Betty and her father, L.C. Davis, 62, and mother, Laura Davis, Betty was born a crack baby. Her mother has struggled with drug addiction. L.C. favored drink. Betty grew up in and out of foster care due to the unsafe environment of her home.

"It is hard for me to remember that time, it is fuzzy for me," said L.C. I believe they were put in foster care in 2002 before my youngest son was born. I don't struggle with alcoholism. I drank heavily in my younger days, when my kids were taken away. I went through parenting classes and treatment centers. I was the most stable parent there was for them. I was doing everything I could to get my kids back, but you know, I didn't have a stable home for them. The things the agency wants you to have," he continued. "I left Flint about three years ago because of the domestic violence."

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Sitting in a chair outside her home, Mary Cassel, 33, watches her children play basketball in the street as Betty Davis drinks water from a gallon jug on Aug. 15, 2017 in Flint. Cassel shares the home with her mother Laura Daivs, 53, and sister Betty. "I was five when I moved to Flint," Betty said. "Growing up here was hard because we didn't have anything to come to when we moved from Milwaukee in 2002. It was a fresh start. I was in and out of foster care my whole life. I had to hold up a certain type of profile when I got to school but I knew what I was going home to. It was difficult for me because I had to play so many different roles."

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"Flint has its flaws, the school systems, the poverty rate and murders are at an all time high," Betty said. "You have to get through the mess and then you can see that there are some things that you can get from Flint that you can't find anywhere else. The struggle of growing up here has pushed me to be the person I am today. With that said, my time in Flint is up, I can't be here any longer. It's not that it is so bad here, it is just that it is my time. I need to go explore life without my past. There is so much here that I can't get past, so I just need to go."

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Betty recalls being told at a young age she would never graduate high school. But she can proudly say she proved them all wrong.

On June 6, 2017, she walked across a scaffold stage dressed in a bright-yellow gown with white flowers glued to her cap. Betty and 234 other graduates from Flint Community Schools celebrated their commencement that day, all proving they are not part of a statistic.

"I feel like I have accomplished what people didn't think I could," said Betty. "It feels so good to me because I know now I can do anything. If I can overcome my past and everything I have been thought, then being an adult shouldn't be as hard. It is going to be very challenging but I know am going to eventually get through it, like I do everything else. I am very happy. I really want to go back to graduation day, like it felt so good to say I made it."

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Michigan National Guard Staff Sgt. Keith Palka measures Betty Davis' height during a meeting to take the practice Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), test and gauge her readiness to join the military on July 11, 2017. "To join the Army you need to score a 31 or higher, Navy 35, Marines 31, Air Force 36, and Coast Guard 45 on the ASVAB," Palka said. "Betty can take the real test if she scores over 15 but if she is under she can study and try again or we may end up telling her the National Guard is not for her."

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Betty reacts as she learns she scored a 29 on her practice test but did not pass the physical requirements needed to sign up in the Flint Michigan National Guard recruiters office on July 11, 2017. "I am going to start classes for college online," said Betty a month after the meeting while mapping out her plan. "I am still going into the Army, but I am planning to do active for 3 years. If I do not get into to that, I will go into the reserves or guard, then transfer to Texas."

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Betty Davis, 18, lifts up her sweatshirt for Staff Sgt. Keith Palka to measure her waist, hips and neck. Standing her tallest at 5 feet, 5 inches and weighing 204 pounds, Betty did not meet the physical requirements to join the military. She needs to lose 40 pounds based on the Army body fat calculator to be at 30% body fat. "The military is my way of getting out of Flint. I can't just up and leave. Outside of Flint, I just want to explore life without family, without being comfortable and the Army is kind of my starting point," Betty said.

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Holding a high school diploma opens doors but it does not provide a clear map of how to succeed.

Betty graduated from Flint Northwestern High School with a precise plan. Join the Army, move to Texas, attend Wiley College to study criminal justice.

"(Joining the military) is my way of getting out. Getting out of Flint, I can't just up and leave. Outside of Flint, I just want to explore life without family, without being comfortable, and the Army is kind of my starting point," said Betty.

Bettys plans changed when she met with the recruiting officer, Staff Sgt. Keith Palka. She busted tape, as the army calls it, when she weighed in at 204 pounds and a height of 5 feet 5 inches. The Army standards are 30 percent body fat, meaning she would have to lose over 40 pounds before she could join according to Staff Sgt. Palka.

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Claude Monet-Wilson, 20, trains with Betty Davis, 18, as she works out to drop weight to join the Army on the track at Flint Northwestern High School on July 3, 2017, on the city's north side. Claude is in the National Guard and has been Betty's best friend since early in high school. "I already dropped 10 pounds," said Betty, one month into training. "I am on my way. I am doing the military diet as I speak. I already scored well on my practice test, so I just need to go to Corunna and take the real test. I run the block like four times, they told me to stay focused on running because that is not my foray."

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Claude Monet-Wilson, with the Michigan National Guard, pushes Betty Davis during a workout and challenges her to not give up, during a stretch and water break on July 3, 2017 on Flint's north side. "Knowing Claude has been through everything in the Army kept the fear part out of my head. I thought I was going to die going into the military. I know I will be home sick so knowing people that are in the Army keep me uplifted and focused on what is important," Betty said.

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She instantly enlisted her best friend and boyfriend Claude Monet-Wilson, 20, who was serving in the National Guard, to help her drop the weight.

In one month, Betty dropped 10 pounds but still has a way to go - making it evident her plans were going to have to change.

New plan: Stick it out in Flint.

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Lea'Monai Cassel, Betty's niece, grabs at the dog tags wrapped around her neck on June 2, 2017 as her family gathers in the front yard in Flint. Betty wears her the dog tags of Claude Monet-Wilson, her best friend who became her boyfriend.

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Laura Davis, right, Aniyla Green, 4, Byron Green, 6, Erik Cassel Jr., 3, Elijah Green, 2, and Betty Davis, 18, make s'mores on Aug. 15, 2017.

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"I wanted to be the President of the United States as a kid," Betty said as she looks at photos of her as a child on Aug. 25. "I swear I did. When I saw Obama win, I was in fourth grade and we were watching the news in class. And I was like, 'Oh my god! If he can do it, then I can do it.' So then I was going around like, 'Yeah, I am going to be the President.' Then I just thought about it and I was like, 'I'm not going to be the President, I don't like taking control all the time.'" As Betty reached seventh grade, she changed her mind to becoming a lawyer, which led to her path to study criminology and forensic psychology.

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On her first attempt, Betty was not admitted to Olivet College, a private liberal arts college 87 miles southwest of Flint. She wrote an appeals letter and they reversed their decision. She is looking for a job after quitting her last job when she said an employee would not stop making advances on her. She is homeless, jobless and spending her days babysitting her sister's children.

"Graduating high school opened my eyes to that fact that, now I am doing everything alone, well not alone but on my own. Usually, I would have people to ask, my family being one of them, my friends, I had them to fall back on, but now I am doing things on my own to get a better outcome moving away. I am adapting, it is not going to happen overnight. I planned to be gone by the end of summer but I am still here," said Betty on the front porch of her sister's house, sitting in a white plastic lawn chair drinking from a gallon jug of water.

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Betty stands in the living room looking at a family photo with her father, mother and siblings hanging on the wall explaining the relationship she has with them on Aug. 25, 2017 at her sister's home. "Being the youngest girl is hard. Everybody is not ready for me to grow up," she said. Her mother, Laura Davis, 53 responded, "They aren't really sure that you are ready for what this world has to offer." Betty said she believes there is a lot of stuff she could learn from her family, but is ready for the next chapter in her life. "They had 18 years, if they could not invest in me during those years, then I'm going to have to figure it out on my own," Betty said. "If that means I have to be hit with everything, then I will get hit with everything and I don't expect for my family to be there to pick me up. I gotta pick myself up and dust myself off. I love my family dearly and I would do anything for them, but I have a certain tolerance for them."

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Betty, center, is surrounded by her mother, siblings, cousins and nieces and nephews for a family photo. Siblings were visiting Flint from Milwaukee for the Fourth of July. "I can't stand my family sometimes. I love them but I can't stand them. There are a lot of us. It is hard because you never know what to expect when we all meet up because they all have their crazy parts," Betty said. She is the youngest girl out of twelve children. Her mother and father have six children together and each had three before their marriage.

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Standing outside of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services in Flint, Betty texts her family to check in on her cousins that she was babysitting before going to a Michigan youth opportunities initiative meeting. "It is a foster care-based group for children that are in the system to give them independent living skills and help them through the process by giving them a voice," she said.

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From the time Betty was a freshman in April 2014, the Flint water crisis was taking shape. Flint was again making national news.

"I don't really like Flint, I am not going to lie, I really don't like Flint. If it was my choice I wouldn't be here. But, Flint does have potential, I am proud to wear Flint on my back because I also have a lot of potential myself that I would like to share with the world. But, because I am labeled as a Flint girl it is hard for people to see the potential in us and in Flint at all. I kind of like wearing the Flint name but then again sometimes I am like 'come on, y'all, we can we can do better. We are giving them the reason to say what they say about Flint."

Labels Betty has noticed being placed on Flint are people being young and pregnant, prostitutes, being in jail, high school dropouts and not being able to graduate college or afford it.

"Because of my mother's actions, we don't have a typical mother-daughter relationship. I have to keep my distance. Our relationship is more like a foster mother, Betty said. I don't get too close to a foster mother, but she does show points where she cares but I wouldn't trust her with anything. It is all because of her, and the fact that she can't apologize and own up to what she did is why we will forever be the way we are now. I told myself when I left here I am done with her.

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Betty Davis, 18, teaches her dance team a move to the song "The Water Dance," by Chris Porter featuring Pitbull at a park near downtown Flint on the corner of West Fifth Street and Church Street. The co-ed group, calls Perfect Devine, is made up of friends and her 16-year-old brother Corey Davis. "I started Perfect Devine because a lot of my friends dealt with a depression and issues. I wanted to save kids my age from doing stuff they don't have any business doing, (like) smoking, drinking and partying. There is more out there than just being crazy," Betty said. The group would also spend time outside of practice together. Perfect Devine stopped practicing and split up the group in late August. "The group ended because members grew up and grew out of it. Some people are going to college or training and others are going back to high school," Betty said.

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Betty laughs surrounded by friends and family as music comes blaring out of the speakers set up at her graduation party in a park in downtown Flint. "Being a teenager in Flint, it is really easy and people make it seem as if it is hard. It is not hard to say no to weed. It is not hard to say no to drinking and partying. It is a choice. You choose to do that. Now, if you use your time wisely with working and just setting out your goals and writing them out and saying this is what I want to do, then you will do it. You just have to believe you can do it and not listen to the people who say you can't. Your neighbor doesn't dictate what happens in your life," Betty said.

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Betty Davis, 18, plays ring "Ring Around the Rosie" with her nephews and nieces in the front yard as the sun sets on Aug. 15 in Flint. "I would tell freshman Betty, 'Don't mess up, stay focused.' Your freshman year helps you throughout your high school career," she said.

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Bettys mother has 12 children, and she is the youngest of the dozen. Her mother and father have six children together and each had three before they were together.

"Being the youngest girl is hard, everybody is not ready for me to grow up," said Betty. Her mother, Laura Davis, responded, "They aren't really sure that you are ready for what this world has to offer."

Betty took a moment to think and then told her mother, "I know there is a lot of stuff I could learn from them but they had 18 years, if they could not invest in me during those years, then I'm going have to figure it out on my own," said Betty. "If that means I have to be hit with everything then I will get hit with everything and I don't expect for my family to be there to pick me up, I gotta pick myself up and dust myself off. I love my family dearly and I would do anything for them but I have a certain tolerance for them."

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Betty Davis, 18, is still struggling to find the right path for her after high school at Flint Northwestern. "I don't want to become just another statistic of Flint," Betty said.

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Today, Bettys life is still not set in stone. Her plans change periodically, but always keep the same tone. She currently works at Art Van Furniture, and is set to move into her own apartment mid-December. Then, she starts classes at Olivet College on campus and online starting in January 2018.

Her dreams of joining the military are still at the top of her list and one day she hopes to make them come true.

"I feel blessed that I have had all the struggles that I had growing up, said Betty on a late September day. "They taught me to persevere.

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"I don't have a normal relationship with my mom. My mother put me through so much, said Betty Davis. She was born a crack baby. Her mother, Laura Davis, 53, pictured holding her granddaughter, Lea'Monai Cassel, struggled with drug addiction and her father with alcoholism. "I don't know if she even knows half the stuff I had to do because of her ... (to get the) lights turned back on in our house, or the water or put food in the house. I had to do that to make sure my little brothers were living the proper way," Betty said. "Because of her, we don't have a typical mother daughter relationship. I have to keep my distance. Our relationship is more like a foster mother. I don't get too close to a foster mother but she does show points where she cares, but I wouldn't trust her with anything. It is all because of her, and the fact that she can't apologize and own up to what she did, is why we will forever be the way we are now. I told myself, when I leave here I am done with her."
HOLLAND TOWNSHIP, MI -- A report of a flashlight inside of a closed business led police to the arrest a 48-year-old man and 16-year-old boy early Friday, Nov. 24.

The two were inside of a vehicle seen leaving the 200 block of Douglas Avenue as police arrived at the scene.

Deputies were dispatched there after someone called 911 about 4 a.m. to report a person with a flashlight inside of a closed business.

Deputies stopped a vehicle leaving the area and found cash and property inside the vehicle. Police found evidence of two business break-ins in the area.

The adult was taken to the Ottawa County Jail and the 16-year-old to the Ottawa County youth home.

They area expected to be charged with breaking and entering and possession of burglary tools.

Police also are investigating whether the pair could be responsible for other similar break-ins.
Name: Michael Kehoe

Age: 29

Occupation: Executive director of Johego

City of residency: St. Louis, by way of Decatur

Your company, Johego, was recently awarded a contract with the Missouri Foundation for Health. What does this mean for the company's future going forward?

Johego is a nonprofit that develops software to connect people in need with essential services: overnight shelter, substance abuse treatment, and more. In the short term, this $270,000 award means that Johego will be able to expand our geographic coverage to 18 additional counties throughout Northeastern, Central, and Southwestern Missouri, which will allow nearly 1.1 million Missourians to find medical and social services using our software.

In the long term, our work with Missouri Foundation for Health will position Johego favorably for additional expansion throughout Missouri and beyond.

You've mentioned that you want to expand Johego's reach into Illinois someday. What inspires you to continue working to build your company?

If I wanted to watch a particular movie at the theater, I could pull out my smartphone, go online, and purchase a ticket for a time and place that works with my schedule -- all within a matter of minutes. If, instead, I wanted to connect someone with mental health treatment, legal assistance, or other essential services, I might need hours or days to do so.

It is my belief that connecting a friend or family member with essential services should be just as easy as buying tickets for movies, and I want as many people as possible to have that opportunity, no matter who and where they are.

How did you celebrate Thanksgiving this year?

I spent Thanksgiving with my parents in Decatur, enjoying classic family recipes and taking advantage of the good weather to walk some of it off.

What are some things that you are most thankful for?

I try to be thankful for as much as I can, but I am most thankful for the unconditional love and support of my parents and brother throughout my life.

In your opinion, what's the best side dish to eat during the holidays?

By far, my favorite side dish is stuffing, in almost any of its forms, since I almost never eat it outside of the holidays.
For a well-educated 34-year-old, Dustin Kincaid doesn't earn much: His salary is in the "mid-20s," part of the price of being a doctoral student.

Kincaid, who is finishing up his PhD in aquatic biology at Michigan State University, earns the money as a graduate assistant who teaches MSU classes and conducts research. Worth just as much as his salary is a MSU tuition waiver that allows him to take his graduate classes for free.

He makes it all work, he says. But Kincaid's fragile finances could take a big hit under the House version of tax reform that would treat his tuition waiver as taxable income.

The bill approved by the House would apply to all tuition waivers, including those offer to family members of university and college employees. It also would end the ability of other employers to offer tuition reimbursement as a tax-free benefit.

About 145,000 graduate students and 27,000 undergraduates at U.S. colleges get such waivers, according to a 2012 survey.

About half of employers offer some sort of tuition reimbursement, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

While the implications are broad, this particular change in the tax bill would hit graduate students particularly hard because the value of the tuition waivers typically is far greater than their income.

"Everybody is riled up," Kincaid said about the graduate students at Michigan State. "There are lots of social media posts about it. This would have a big impact on us."

The proposed change could double or even triple the taxable income of graduate students, especially those attending an out-of-state school. Kincaid, for instance, is from Wisconsin, which means his tuition waiver is worth twice that of a Michigan resident.

In the same boat is Joy Johnson, a 33-year-old getting her PhD in education policy and math education at the University of Michigan.

Her stipend for the regular school year is about $19,000 and her tuition waiver as an out-of-state student is worth about $40,000, she said. The proposed change would push her federal tax bill from $860 to $5,640.

And that doesn't include the impact of two other provisions in the House bill: Taxpayers would not longer be able to deduct the student loan interest and graduate students would lose access to education tax credits.

While he isn't borrowing money for graduate school, Kincaid said, he's a first-generation college student who took out loans to finance his undergraduate degree at University of Wisconsin in Madison. The ability to deduct the interest payments has been a big help, he said.

U.S. Rep. Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, voted for the GOP House tax bill and was touting the legislation this week in Lansing when he was asked about the proposed changes for college students.

Bishop, whose House district includes MSU and Oakland University, said that "skyrocketing tuition rates" are "an issue for all us."

"And how we resolved this issue was to remove the special credits and reductions ... and reduce rates for everybody," he said.

"Every parent, every student who will incur debt in their education will benefit by this plan if you look at it as a whole and how it applies to each and every one of them," Bishop said.

"If you focus on one deduction, one credit, you'll be disappointed because those are going, for the most part. What you're going to see though is if you apply this to the average family, the average student, it will be a benefit to them and to all," Bishop said.

But Daniel Soleimani, a tax attorney with Jaffe Raitt Heuer & Weiss in Southfield, said the House bill would "absolutely hava profound impact on the taxes of graduate students."

"A very large chunk" of their income would go towards paying taxes on their tuition benefits, he said.

What makes it particularly irksome for that group is that tuition waivers are a "cashless benefit," Soleimani said: Graduate students would be paying taxes on money they never see.

If the House bill is approved by Congress, Kincaid said, "I'd probably have to borrow money from my dad" to pay his federal taxes.

Both Kincaid and Johnson said they don't know they would have gone to graduate school if the House bill had been law when they made their decision.

"There's already an opportunity cost to going to graduate school," in that she's foregoing a higher salary for the five or six years it takes to get a doctorate, Johnson said. "I think I would have chosen something else."

The change also could hurt the ability of universities to attract international students.

"I don't think it would make it viable for us," said Fernando Leme, a Brazilian getting his PhD in classical literature at University of Michigan.

"It happens, I'll have to reconsider" staying at U-M, he said about the House tax bill.

MSU sent an email this week to graduate students from Thomas D. Jeitschko, it assistant provost for graduate education.

He said the bill could create "tremendous immediate hardship and have further adverse implications for us in years to come," he said.

But Jeitschko also told the students there is "broad pushback" on the House bill's provisions targeting higher education and noted those provisions are not included in the Senate bill.

Moreover, the email said, the Senate has "not shown any interest" in taxing tuition waivers and "key members of Congress who wrote the tax bill have publicly stated they will work to remove the provision once the bill comes back to them from the Senate."

Johnson said she's among those hoping the House will reconsider its proposed changes involving higher education.

"I just don't understand it," Johnson said. "If the point is trickle-down economics, why wouldn't you invest in research and development? Why would you hurt your best and brightest?"
DECATUR  As they say in show business, the fat lady has not yet sung for the Lincoln Square Theatre.

The century-old fixture of downtown Decatur closed in May after the resignation of several board members, including President Adam White and Vice President Jake Bonnett. Now, remaining board members hope to reorganize and start raising money again in 2018 to restore the historic theater at 141 N. Main St. to its former glory.

Every organization goes through a time where you have to pull back, reset and move forward again, said Greg Sullivan, one of 10 current board members.

The theaters bylaws call for at least 12 members, Sullivan said, which means the current members are operating as a committee with no officers. Sullivan said new members will be appointed sometime in the coming months.

Then, theyll set to work at the same task that has consumed those trying to revive the Lincoln over the past decade: raising money. Right now, the Lincoln just has enough money to cover its bills.

The theater, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in October 2016, has played host to a number of high-profile acts throughout the citys history, including Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, Chico Marx, Louis Armstrong, Davy Jones and Alabama.

Although it has been open off and on since the mid-2000s, and a number of renovations have been undertaken since then, a laundry list of problems remain. The main boiler stopped working last year, Sullivan said, and both interior and exterior work are still needed.

As a board, weve got to sit down and piece together a multiphase budget plan as far as the renovations are concerned, he said. We need to start doing our capital campaign in pieces.

Sullivan said the theater has been winterized to protect its pipes in the coming months. While its need are undeniable, Sullivan said the building overall is in decent shape, and he believes the board will transform it again into a viable part of downtown Decatur.

For theater supporters and those who pass by and reflect sadly on its vacant state, Sullivan has a message:

Stand by, he said. The old girl is coming back. She will be back.
Breaking News

At least five people, including a child, were killed and 19 others injured today in a suicide attack on security forces in the restive Balochistan province of Pakistan, police said.

The attackers targeted the convoy of security forces on the Sariab road in the provincial capital Quetta, they said.

The police confirmed that it was a suicide bomb attack on security forces convoy, the Geo News reported, adding five people were killed in the incident.

"The target was the vehicle of the Frontier Corps commander, but he was not present in the vehicle when the bomb attack took place," a government official said.

Earlier today, Civil Hospital Quetta Spokesperson Wasim Baig said they had received four dead bodies while 19 persons, including a child, were injured in the bomb explosion.

The fifth person is believed to have died later at the hospital.

"Some of the injured are still in critical condition as they were hit by shrapnels in the attack," Baig said.

The attack came a day after senior police official of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Ashraf Noor was killed in a suicide attack on his vehicle in the upscale Hayatabad neighbourhood of Peshawar.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Taliban militants and Baloch nationalists often target security forces in the area.

A senior Pakistani police officer and his three family members were killed by unidentified, motorcycle-borne militants in Balochistan on November 15.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Muhammad Illyas who was on his way to market when he was killed in a targeted attack along with his wife, son and five-year-old granddaughter.

A suspected suicide bomber killed Additional Inspector General Telecommunications Hamid Shakeel and three other police officers in a targeted attack in Quetta on November 9.

Balochistan has been rocked by a series of attacks which raised concerns about a growing militant presence, including those affiliated with Islamic State, which has claimed several bombings in the restive province.

The unrest has raised security concerns for projects in the USD 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link from western China to Pakistan's southern Gwadar port.

At least six police commandos and a civilian were killed last month when an explosives-laden vehicle rammed into a security force's convoy on the Quetta-Sibi Highway.

In August this year, a massive suicide explosion, targeting Pakistan Army personnel in Quetta, left 15 people dead  including seven civilians  and injured at least 20 people.

In June this year, 14 people, including seven policemen, were killed and 21 others were injured in a suicide car bombing on Gulistan Road in Balochistan.
Air India

Air India plans to introduce two non-stop flights per week between Birmingham and Amritsar in the new year to meet the increasing consumer demand from the Midlands region to Punjab, Birmingham Airport said in a statement on Friday.

The airport's aviation director, William Pearson, said the new non-stop connection will add to the existing daily direct flight to Delhi.

"With over 200,000 British-Indian people who travel to India to visit friends and relatives, and for tourism and business interests, this additional destination shows the large demand within the region for non-stop Amritsar services from the Midlands," he said.

"Air India has been a successful partner for over four years and offers great connections to India with services operated by the new Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft," he added.

Pankaj Srivastava, director of commercial at Air India, said the new flights are in response to the consumer demand from the Midlands region to Punjab.

"Air India is always very sensitive to the needs of the consumer and is pleased to be connecting the two cities, thereby adding a new city pairing for Air India's expanding global network with the only non-stop UK Amritsar service," he said.

Preet Kaur Gill, Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, said the new flights will lead to more business cooperation between the two regions.

"These flights will not only make it easier for Punjabis in the area to travel to Amritsar, but also provides a great opportunity for local and regional businesses to both deepen existing ties and create new ones," said Gill, who is also the councillor for the UK borough of Sandwell which is paired with the city of Amritsar.

Air India officials in New Delhi did not respond immediately.
Founder - Matrimony.com Pvt Ltd

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By Durba Ghosh

The only extravagant thing your roving eyes can catch from the 10th floor office of Murugavel Janakiraman, founder CEO of Matrimony.com is a mesmerizing view of Bay of Bengal.

Despite a stellar IPO on the Bombay Stock Exchange this year, success sits lightly on this 43-year old founder. Janakiraman became an entrepreneur accidentally after he got laid off from his job during the 'Y2K' crisis in the year 2000.

And the boy from the small fishing harbour of Royapuram, in Tamil Nadu, has weathered quite a storm, literally.

From braving a lack of electricity and extreme poverty to building a multi-million dollar company that listed this September on BSE, Janakiraman makes about 200,000 people tie the knot each year.

Matrimony Pvt Ltd runs the largest matchmaking service in India, which has 65 percent of its population under 35 years of age.

Janakiraman who also found his life partner on his own website, recounts the successes and failures of his journey in a free-wheeling chat with Moneycontrol.

Father worked as a coolie on the docks

Hailing from Royapuram, a town which boasts of the oldest surviving railway station (built in 1856) in Indian subcontinent, Janakiraman had little exposure to academics.

His father offloaded stocks at the towns harbour for a living.

My father studied till 5th standard, my mother till 1st. Education was not a priority in our village because we had to earn to live, says Janakiraman.

In fact, he went on to become the first person ever in his family to complete graduation, or even high school for that matter.

His motivation to study further, at best, was to secure a comfortable job as a lab technician, he reveals to me.

But as luck would have it, Janakiraman scored well in mathematics. This led him towards statistics and then on to computer programming.

Soon, he was in the US in 1996, working as a consultant. A strong programming skill spurred him to constantly build new things in cyberspace in his spare time.

Got laid off from job in Y2K crisis

I had a good life in the US. But I as a person am never satisfied. I got to keep doing things, creating things, he says.

It was this period of constant engagement with technology that motivated Janakiraman to do something of his own.

But money or fame wasnt Janakiramans motivating factor. I wanted to create my identity. I wanted to do something worthwhile, he says.

He chose to float a casual information website for the Tamil community in 1997 giving information on regional calendar, festival dates, property listings, and also matrimony.

While the website was being used by several users at a given time, matrimony was the only section that attracted constant traffic.

We also came to know of several people who got married through the website.

The interface was very basic and linear. It was just a 2-page portal  one for brides and the other for grooms. It was more like newspaper matrimony listings, he adds.

But it was not until 2000, during the Y2K scare, when Janakiraman was laid off from his job in the US that he was forced to launch a full-fledged website for match-making for Tamil community.

Moved from the US to India to make people marry

One has to always remember that success is a result of several known and unknown factors. One can just play their role as best as they can. We need to have that maturity, humility to enjoy it, says Janakiraman.

He moved back permanently to India to concentrate on the venture.

In 2000, he went on to launch segmented platforms for each community or class.

The dotcom bubble burst actually helped us grow. Most of the Internet companies shut down. We were able to tie up with big Indian players, such as Rediff and Sify. We kept the service paid right from the beginning, Janakiraman says.

Matchmaking was one of the key drivers of internet in India in its early days which saw competitors such as Shaadi.come emerge.

Most players would give the services for free, and monetise it through advertisements. We on the other hand were able to monetise it with a limited marketing budget, he adds.

The crucial factor for the companys success, Janakiraman says, was their frugal nature of doing business.

When we started there was hardly any external funding to depend on, unlike todays time. We didnt have any choice but to be bootstrapped. When we started the venture, we invested just US dollar 10 per month as an investment (in marketing), he says.

To put things in perspective, Matrimony has raised just about Rs 99 crore in two rounds over the last 17 years from investors such as Yahoo, Mayfield and Canaan Partners.

Only in 2017, in a pre-IPO placement it raised USD 35 million (Rs 2275 crore) from investors such as HDFC, Goldman Sachs and Baring Private Equity.

Today it has a consortium of over 300 community matrimony websites including ChristianMatrimony, MuslimMatrimony, SikhMatrimony, JainMatrimony and so on.

The company has also added several new business streams over the years that include MatrimonyPhotography, MatrimonyBazaar and MatrimonyMandaps.

Surviving the 2008 financial crisis

The journey has not been smooth. There was a time when the company came on a financial brink.

The company had spread itself thin at a time when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, which sparked a global financial meltdown.

This is how it happened. After tasting success with its community matrimony websites, the company diversified into several ancillary services such as automotive, jobs, and loans among others. It planned to give competition to leaders in their domains such as BankBazaar, 99Acres and Naukri.com.

In 2008, the company was burning cash to the tune of Rs 2 crore every month.

In fact, the company used ull of its external funding on these ancillary services.

In 2006 period we reached a certain leadership position in matchmaking segment. We wanted to go after other verticals. Then we realised that launching a portal is the easiest thing. But for success you need so much more, says Janakiraman.

He enumerates his learnings from the failure for future entrepreneurs who wish to diversify their portfolio in internet space.

There has to be a dedicated senior management overseeing it. It needs capital and focus. That was a mistake. We also had to let go off people. I had to learn skills beyond being an entrepreneur. I had to function like a CEO, he recounts.

Courtesy: Forbes India

Janakiraman had to steer the company to safety by consolidating and shutting down some of these ancillary services.

The challenge of rebuilding the company was actually a boon, says Janakiraman.

It led to innovation in our core business. We created multiple streams under our core business of matchmaking. These include - photography, assisted services, etc, he added.

Post the failure to diversify, it took six months for Janakiraman to steer the company back to profitability. He shut down all the segments that were dragging down the companys core business of Shaadi.

One of the few internet firms to go for an IPO

Matrimony.com, the parent company of Bharat Matrimony, is among very few consumer-facing technology startups to go public in India, which has over 400 million internet users.

The companys Initial Public Offering in September was oversubscribed by 4.41 times.

Matrimony.com claims to enjoy a 60% market share in the segment ahead of major competitors Shaadi.com, JeevanSaathi.com and others.

The company's last extended fundraise was in 2008 when it was valued at USD 80 million. The IPO worth Rs 500 crore this year took the companys valuation to nearly USD 350 million.

As of Fridays close the company was valued at nearly USD 300 million (Rs 1,943 crore)

Concept of Arranged Marriage has changed in India

My goal now is to build a billion-dollar company. I dont know when we will reach there, but we will, he says.

But will the future matches be decided by bots? Perhaps so.

Matrimony.com adopted artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in around 2015, when the terms were hardly commonplace.

The companys platform boasts of an intelligent matchmaking algorithm that sifts through millions of user profiles and sends recommendations to users for their future life partners.

Matrimony.com has seen immense success in the children of the 70s and 80s obsessed with marriage. But how about a generation that has grown on Tinder and Instagram?

How will it play in an emerging society that is high on dating and doesnt want to settle down in a marriage?

Janakiraman would have us believe that there is a misconception about arranged marriage.

Arranged marriage concept is misunderstood. Its a collaborative affair. The arranged marriage concept that we know today was a thing of past. Today no one can shove down a decision down your throat in India, he adds.

According to Janakiraman, over 60 percent of the postings on Matrimony are by prospective brides and grooms themselves.

The rest is posted by family (parents or relatives).

The website gets a lot of traction from tier 2 and 3 towns, accounting for nearly 35 percent of total traffic.

The company added over 870,000 profiles in the Q2 of 2017 and has already made 52,000 successful matches in the first half of the current financial year.

Janakiraman, however, is wary of dating websites.

It just doesnt work. We had also dabbled in it for some time. But scaling up the dating market and monetising it is a challenge. Theres no defined outcome to the dating business. It doesnt work for India, he says.

According to Janakiraman, there is a huge market to capture in marriages. There are over 60 million potential users of matrimony websites (people of marriageable age). But only 6 million are online across all platforms available today.

Marriages are recession proof

Marriage is a business that will see growth no matter theres recession or anything else. About 90 percent of marriages happen within ones own community in India. So I think we are well placed, he adds.

Now flushed with funds after the IPO, Janakiraman is looking at capturing the rest of the market.

Of the Rs 130 crore raised, the company has used up Rs 40 crore for buying land for an exclusive Matrimony.com tower. Another Rs 40 crore was used to clear outstanding debt.

With Rs 20 crore more in marketing, the company is hoping to expand its market wider, making people aware of the variety of life partners one can find in the online world unimaginable in the offline world.

But splurging is not even an option that Janakiraman puts on the table.

We will continue to be frugal with our expenses. Its our DNA, he says, overlooking the vast expanse of the Bay of Bengal from his window.
Indian-origin businessmen are among 20 people banned from managing a company after they were found to be employing illegal workers in their establishments across the UK.

The UK's Insolvency Service said its countrywide crackdown over the past few months had found that all 20 had already been fined for employing illegal workers.

Ashim Kumar Saha, a director of Save & Pick Limited in London, was disqualified and fined 10,000 pounds for employing one illegal worker.

Manoj Barua and Vipan Kumar Sharma, directors of MV Hospitality Limited which traded as a restaurant known as Cafe India in Glasgow were disqualified for employing four illegal workers and fined 40,000 pounds.

Eighteen people have been banned from being company directors or being involved in the management of companies for six years each, whilst two have been disqualified for seven years.

Between them, they employed 41 illegal workers and were fined a total of 505,000 pounds by the UK Home Office, none of which was paid. Two of the companies have now entered into liquidation, with a further two having been dissolved.

Cheryl Lambert, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service, said those caught sought an unfair advantage over law abiding competitors by employing people who were not entitled to work legally in the UK.

"Employing illegal workers is not consequence free, either for the employer, the employee or the consumer," she said.

"By definition this is a set of people who are without the protection of the law and knowledge of the authorities, and thereby extremely vulnerable to exploitation in all its forms. It is bad for business and bad for society as a whole," she added.

The businesses caught up in the investigation, which include 11 restaurants, four takeaway/fast food establishments and a shop, are based in London, Sussex, North West, South Wales, Glasgow, Antrim, Frome and High Wycombe and cover South Asian and Chinese cuisines.

The Home Office, which carried out the joint investigation, warned that illegal working is not victimless.

"It undercuts honest employers, cheats legitimate job seekers out of employment opportunities and defrauds the taxpayer. Businesses should be aware that they have a duty to check that their staff have permission to work in the UK," a spokesperson said.

The matters leading to all 20 disqualifications are that the directors failed to ensure that the companies complied with statutory obligations under the UK's Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 to ensure that relevant immigration checks were completed and copy documents retained, resulting in the employment of illegal workers.

Following visits from Home Office Immigration, during which the breaches were discovered, the companies were issued with penalty notices ranging from 10,000 pounds to 15,000 pounds per worker, which remain unpaid.

All were directors of the companies at the time of the Home Office visit.
Lessons in marketing excellence (LIME) is the country's biggest and most keenly contested B-school challenge. Launched in 2010, every B-schools in India lock-horns in a marketing case study competition for management students.

This year students from top 18 B-schools were given a platform to work on real life and live business challenges.
Moneycontrol Research

Value investing is generally termed as contrarian investing. Not many can withstand the heat of staying aloof when the market is going crazy around them. It needs a cool head, a strong discipline and complete faith in ones abilities to be a contrarian investor.

Ace investor Kenneth Andrade is all this and much more. With nearly 27 years of experience in the equity markets, 15 of them in managing money and staying at the top of the table, Andrade surprised the market by quitting his job as the chief fund manager with IDFC Mutual Fund and managing money on his own.

With an enviable track record of a compounded return of 22 percent for a period of 10 years, Andrade was bitten by the entrepreneur bug. He decided to launch his own portfolio management scheme (PMS) fund Old Bridge Capital. He has now opened up an Alternate Investment Fund (AIF) with an aim to garner Rs 400 crore.

With a passion for investing that can be seen in his constant search for next multi-bagger, Andrade also has an ear for music. He loves reading and likes to go on long drives in his electric car.

In a free-wheeling interview with Shishir Asthana and Jitendra Gupta of Moneycontrol Research, Andrade shares his his investment philosophy and the learnings he gained from the journey.

Q) How did you enter the investing industry?

Andrade: Well, I used to do some small investments in college and post my graduation took up a job with the investing magazine Capital Markets in 1990-91. I took up freelance assignments with a lot of other publications, and a few brokerage houses. In 1997, I also had a stint with television with Nimbus Communications which was the only one with a program on markets then.

I moved on the buy side with Kotak Mutual Fund in 2002-03 just after the tech collapse. I took care of a small portfolio called Kotak Energy. Towards the end of 2005, we launched a mid-cap fund for which we raised around Rs 600 crore. This was a sizeable amount in those days. Until that time the entire size of Kotak Mutual Fund was around Rs 800 crore.

My stints with Standard Chartered and IDFC Asset Management for nearly a decade helped me streamline my investing process. Thereafter, I started Old Bridge Capital Management in 2016. We made our first investment in September 2016. Today, we have close to Rs 1,500 crore in asset under management (AUM).

We are now launching a public market focused alternative investment fund (AIF).

Q) Has your investment philosophy changed over the years since the time you started managing funds at an asset management company to the present format?

Andrade: There has not been a tremendous change, it has happened in the sub-conscious. In all years of managing money qualitatively, you stop making mistakes. You tick off the wrong ones and everything you do incrementally adds up to your improvement.

ALSO READ: Companies with 9% return on equity are good bets: Kenneth Andrade

Q) You have been largely a mid-cap fund manager. How come you have an all-cap fund in Old Bridge?

Andrade: Back in 2000, we had a tech boom. It was a bubble economy. Any company that had anything to do with technology did well. This also holds true for 2008, everything that had to do with any form of infrastructure did well. We had commodities  cement, a contracting company, an engineering company  in our portfolio then. We called it diversified, but it was one pipeline of companies that had to do with the capex cycle.

To put it differently, I like financial bubbles. But that is the end point of it all. So, we need to identify when it actually starts. Bubbles happen in parts of the economy, they happen in sectors. Technology was one such sector. Tech companies catering to the capex cycle were part of the bubble. It happened briefly in the pharmaceutical sector as well.

It happens in a corporate which has a rising profit boom. The challenge is how do you recognise the rising profit boom. If you are early in the cycle you catch the entire cycle because eventually, everyone will participate in the boom.

So those are cycles that keep on happening in the market. I believe that if you can capture the cycle in the early stage you gain.

Q) How do you identify these companies or sectors in the early stage of the cycles?

Andrade: Rather than sectors I prefer to look at industry verticals and try to figure out which will do well. In 2013, it was very simple  the small-cap index was hitting its all-time low and companies were available at distress valuation. Around 10 percent of the companies were making profits. Everyone was exiting these companies when the market price showed that the risk was already priced in.

That was the time when we launched a fund in the mid-cap or the small-cap space called the IDFC Equity Opportunities Fund. Next three years it performed brilliantly, in fact, we paid back the entire capital as dividends.

That is how we narrow down on verticals. It operates at both the extremes. What helped me out in 2008 is we stayed out of infrastructure companies. We had a very conservative portfolio of consumer-specific companies.

How we do it? The process is very simple  try to look for a company in an industry which is making money while the others are all losing it. So, when the industry comes back you are with the best company. It happens in sugar all the time.

Its not easy to find them. I could only find it in sugar. I was also possible to spot them in the fertiliser chain.

Q) Are there any companies that are available at distressed valuation, especially as you will be raising money through the new AIF?

Andrade: You will find something that is good at all points of time. We have a pipeline of stocks that we like ready to invest at all points of time. We like media companies, but they have not given any returns over the last one year. The underlying structure of the industry itself is deteriorating. The spend by corporate India does not exist.

Q) When you buy a company at a low valuation and sell it at fair value, you are essentially playing the valuation arbitrage. How do you decide when to sell?

Andrade: You have to give some time for these things to evolve. I have bought a stock at the same price for three years. This was Bosch. Nothing happened to the company between 2007 and 2009. But with every year that passed the company became more attractive because the denominator (earnings of the price to earnings ratio) continued to grow even though the price remained static. So you have to have the patience to go through the entire cycle.

Its like one year has gone since I have bought media nothing has happened to them. I dont know if anything will happen to them. But I am willing to take the chance because I know that valuations are in my favour. The environment will expand itself. The derivative of this expansion will come to these companies bottom line.

Q) What attracts you to the agriculture space?

Andrade: My job as a fund manager is to buy capital efficiency in my fund. So, if I remove the industry from the equation what is my cash flow yield, what is my investing yield.

Let me put it little differently. For you, to compound returns you need the price-earnings ratio to expand and at the same time, you need the denominator (earnings) to expand. If I get a stock at a price-earnings multiple of 30 times I would like it to go to 40 times or 50 times. But, I would rather buy them in the range of 10 to 30.

I like to buy companies that are making profits. I define companies that are making profits as the ones that are making 9 percent return on equity (RoE). Even if it making 9 percent ROE, it is a good business, especially at a time when the rest are losing with that vertical. Because when the cycle turns they are the first off the block.

Q) Is this the only strategy through which you pick up stocks?

Andrade: We keep on searching for opportunities. We like to work on this parameter that only if this one does not throw up opportunities, should we look at others.

Q) Are banks and technology stocks popping up in your search?

Andrade: Banks, not in this cycle. Technology, yes we like a few companies. We have expanded our universe of looking at pharmaceuticals. I want low valuations and I want cash flows.

Q) Are you comfortable sitting on cash if there are no opportunities?

Andrade: We are comfortable sitting on cash, but we rarely do that. We are lucky to have an environment that offers a large universe to work with. I was invested in consumables during the peak of the 2007-08 run. After the market crashed, they were the first to bounce back. Thats when I learned never to hide behind cash in a bear market.

Q) You follow a concentrated portfolio approach of 15-20 stocks. What do you do when you get a new opportunity?

Andrade: Yes, we are happy to have 5-7 percent of our portfolio in one stock at the upper end. Any reason that we see to buy and if the converse is happening we exit. We generally give a long rope to the companies to operate in. If the company is operating in an industry where the macros are deteriorating, there is very little that the company can do. It has to just increase its ability to survive by the day because when the cycle turns it will lead the pack.

I need to be very focused on seeing that everything is right and the balance sheet is not deteriorating. Balance sheet deterioration is the last thing that I can stand. So, we manage business which we know goes through cycles. But in every cycle, the company has to come out on the top. Thats a good company for us.

But if a company is leveraged it cannot come on the top, then it carries a lot of financial risks. Because on the down cycle the leverage hits it.

Now if a new company comes up we evaluate the opportunity with the existing basket.

Q) ROE is one of the parameters that you look at, but the small-cap index has an ROE between 2 and 3 percent which does not fall into the minimum criteria of 9 percent that you have set for yourself. Is there a strict 9 percent rule you follow or a return above the cost of capital that is necessary?

Andrade: That is (Small-cap index) not a fair indicator of the space we operate in. If you look at the BSE 500 the ROE there is between 16-17 percent. In the small-cap index, if you go to their P&L account they have not reached their peak level in net profits. Their all-time high was around Rs 51,000 crore they are still at around Rs 24,000 crore. So, that is where the disconnect in valuations is.

Even in the BSE 500 space, the asset turnover ratio is off its peak offering enough headroom. That is the key  as capacity utilisation improves cash flow comes in that is when we see the denominator improve.

Q) How much importance do you give to meeting company management and studying the market environment?

Andrade: So, knowing the business and the company you invest in is very relevant. The thought process of the management and how it behaves with its stakeholders is key. Stakeholders are not shareholders, but the customers. If the customers are happy and your employees are happy, you have a good company. Then there are other stakeholders and bondholders who count.

Q) Anything in particular that you look at in the management?

Andrade: From the management perspective I like to look at quantitatively. As in management quality is dictated by financial ratios. And if he is not growing with the external capital he is doing a damn good job. So if a company is in an industry which is not growing the management is able to increase market share with the same amount of capital employed, it is a no-brainer. So when the cycle turns and the pricing power comes back this company is going to increase profitability in a bigger turnover and bigger market share.

On the other hand, we have seen what happened in the last cycle was businesses were growing at a 15 percent CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) over 4-5 years. And between 2008 and 2010 capacities that came on stream anticipated growth at 30 percent CAGR. So what we have is a very large build-up of capacity and your capital employed. But your profit continued to grow at a 10 percent CAGR which saw your return on capital and RoE nosedive. And all of that (capacities) came in with debt.

The problem of leverage is that you are borrowing it from the future. And when you are borrowing it from your future you pay for it with your future. Which is why I stay away from significant leverage.

Q) How does gauge that the management will be able to run business cycles well in future?

Andrade: You need to work for a 60 percent strike rate (in stock picking) and you will end up with a 55 percent. We all work for a 100 percent strike rate but we never get that. All you need to do is get 50 percent strike rate on businesses that do well. You have to make lesser numbers of mistakes. You cant be aiming for the boundary all the time because then you leave your wickets wide open.

You buy companies when the valuations are right. When we looked at Hero Motors (then Hero Honda), it was available at 5 percent dividend yield. The darling of the market was L&T which was at a historically high valuation. L&T is a great company but it was mispriced.

Q) What are the valuation parameter you look at for cyclical businesses?

Andrade: We generally look at cash flow to market cap or free cash flow to market cap.

Q) What has been your best pick? Something where your call played out exactly like you thought

Andrade: I think we got the previous cycle correct. We were out of infrastructure and were not trapped like many others. So we got that call right. For me, that was the inflection point. That was a career change move for me.

There are many companies that kept on coming. I got Page Industries on the table, because I had a Glaxo SmithKline with me and because of that I bought Asian Paints, and because I had Asian Paints I got Bata. All these companies in the consumable verticals were available at a price to earnings of 15 to 18 times. But that is now history.

Q) Any mistakes that you would like to highlight?

Andrade: Plenty, so if you work on a 50 percent strike rate you are bound to make many mistakes. I think I was too early in the cycle for public sector companies in 2012 end when I put together a public sector fund. The idea was not wrong, but I executed it terribly. In hindsight, it was one of my larger mistakes or largest mistake. We did not lose money, we managed index-linked returns but that is not what an investor expects from us.

Q) Is valuation a sufficient condition to exit? Many fund managers exit based on high valuation but concedes the opportunity to compounding.

Andrade: See the largest shareholder with a 10 percent stake in Bajaj Finance exited the company at a price of Rs 2,500 (pre-bonus and pre-split  the current unadjusted price will be around Rs 18,000). He was their largest shareholder. I think PE expansion shakes out a lot of people. It shakes me out too.

Q) Why are you planning an AIF rather than continue with the PMS (Portfolio management scheme) structure?

Andrade: AIF is a simpler instrument. It is an extension of the mutual fund the taxation is the same, its a single entity and documentation is easier. From an investing standpoint, nothing changes in terms of strategy.

Q) But will you be able to get new ideas to invest in the current market?

There are always opportunities. The challenge is the number of companies will be lower than what it used to be. In 2013 if you had nine companies to invest in you would have made money in eight of them with a success rate of 90-95 percent. In 2017, that ratio has probably come down to 30 percent.
November 25, 2017 / 08:35 PM IST

20:28 Delegations meet Centre's special envoy in Jammu

Demands ranging from rights of PoK refugees to special financial packages for border residents facing frequent Pakistani shelling were highlighted as the Centre's special envoy on Kashmir, data-scayt-word="Dineshwar" data-scayt-lang="en_US">Dineshwar Sharma, met delegations from different sections of the society here for the second day today.

The delegations also highlighted issues like alleged discrimination against Jammu, revocation of Article 35A of the Constitution, which gives special rights and privileges to the permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir, and deportation of Rohingya and Bangladeshi Muslims. Read the full story here.

20:00 'Unacceptably low' representation of weaker sections in higher judiciary, says President Kovind

President Ram Nath Kovind has expressed concern over the low representation of the weaker sections of the society in higher judiciary.

"There is unacceptably low representation of traditionally weaker sections such as OBCs, SCs and STs especially in the higher judiciary," Kovind said on Saturday.

The President said that one in four judges is a woman and there is need for steps to improve the situation.

"Like our other public institutions, our judiciary too has to be judicious in being representative of the diversity of our country, and the depth and breadth of our society," he said.

19:35 Chancellor Angela Merkel set her sights on forthcoming talks with the Social Democrats (SPD) as a path to forming a stable government in Germany and rejected new elections after three-way coalition talks collapsed last weekend.

Merkel's fourth term was cast into doubt when the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) walked out of talks with her conservative bloc and the Greens last Sunday, causing a political impasse in Europe's biggest economy.

But on Friday, the Social Democrats (SPD) reversed a previous decision and agreed to talk to Merkel, raising the possibility of an extension of the 'grand coalition' which has ruled Germany for the last four years, or a minority government.

19:06 Padmavati stir intensifies as filmmakers call for 15-minute blackout across India

As a mark of solidarity with Sanjay Leela Bhansali's controversy-hit "Padmavati", hundreds of people - from filmmakers to workers - across the country have announced a 15-minute blackout on Sunday.

The Indian Films and TV Directors' Association (IFTDA), along with 19 other bodies of the film and television industry from across the country will stop shooting for 15 minutes to protect the right to freedom of expression of those in the creative field. Read the full story here.

18:39 Fortis 'overcharging' fallout: Activists ask regulator to cap prices of more medical devices

The country's drug price regulator National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) on Friday issued notices to Fortis Healthcare, asking the company to provide copies of bills in connection with a case of alleged overcharging by its hospital in Gurugram.

NPPA said its notice was based on newspaper reports about Fortis Gurugram charging approximately Rs 16 lakh from Jayant Singh for treating his seven-year-old daughter Adya, who was suffering from dengue and subsequently passed away. Read the full story here.

17:57 Territorial Army jawan killed by militants, bullet-riddled body found

A 23-year-old Territorial Army jawan was abducted and killed by militants in Shopian district of south Kashmir while he was on leave, officials said on Saturday.

The jawan's bullet-riddled body was recovered from an orchard in Watmullah Keegam area of Shopian, an Army official said.

The deceased was identified as Sepoy Irfan Ahmad Dar, a resident of village Senzen in Shopian, the official said. (From PTI)

Read the full story here.

17:35 Hyderabad Metro Rail service to partial open for public from November 29

Hyderabad Metro's first 30 km stretch will be inaugurated by PM Narendra Modi on November 28, and will be opened for public from the next day, Telangana minister KT Rama Rao said on Saturday.

The 30 km stretch from Nagole to Miyapur will be opened first. Rao also said that 57 coaches are ready and available. Each train would initially have three coaches and 330 people can travel in each coach.

The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) would start feeder services for metro, he said. Some private organisations are planning to launch services to connect the metro stations.

Read the full story here.

17:26 What matters is how many days Parliament functioned not how many days it sat: VP Naidu

Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said that it does not matter how many days Parliament sat but what matters is how many days it functioned.

His remarks come a day after the dates for Parliament's Winter Session were announced following opposition's criticism of the government for delaying the session.

Read the full story here.

17:06 Egypt mosque attack update:

The death toll in a devastating militant attack on a mosque on Friday in Egypt's North Sinai has risen to 305 killed, including 27 children, and 128 more people were wounded, MENA state news agency said on Saturday, Reuters has reported.

16:37 Moneycontrol brings to you select pictures that are making headlines across the globe

News in Pics: Your daily dose of pictures from around the world



I am a Muslim. I want to go with my husband. Nobody forced me to convert: Hadiya, who will be produced before Supreme Court in Kerela 'Love Jihad' case on 27th November in Delhi pic.twitter.com/w9JzcmBw9Z

 ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

16:24 Tata Motors' SUV Hexa drives into Nepal

Tata Motors has announced the launch of its lifestyle SUV - Tata Hexa - in the Nepal market and has delivered the first batch of the vehicle to 11 customers.

Available at a price of NPR 77.95 lakh, the Hexa will be available in the XT 4x4 variant across Nepal, Tata Motors has said in a statement.

Read more here.

16:05 Steep fare hike will 'kill' Delhi Metro: CM Arvind Kejriwal

The steep fare hike will "kill" Delhi Metro, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Saturday, a day after an RTI revealed that the metro lost over three lakh commuters a day due to the fare increase.

Kejriwal also asked what purpose the metro serves if people stop using it.

Read the story here.

15:52



#Rajasthan: Police baton charged members of Karni Sena while they were taking out protest rallies against #Padmavati film in Bhilwara, markets shut at various places. pic.twitter.com/BeTwMlH0T8  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017



15:37 Pakistan crackdown update:

At least one police officer has been killed and more than 150 people have been injured in the crackdown in Faizabad, Islamabad.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have also been banned in Pakistan, according to reports in Pakistani media. However, some users said that they could still able to access these services.

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) has also instructed all TV channels to be taken off-air.

Police have cracked down to disperse 1,000 activists of Tehreek-e-Labaik, a hardline party, who had blocked main routes leading into Islamabad for more than two weeks.

15:25 Black Friday bonanza: Jeff Bezos tops rich list, net worth crosses USD 100 billion-mark

Founder and largest shareholder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos has not only become the richest person in the world, but also touched the USD 100 billion-mark for the first time, according to a Bloomberg report.

The founder of the world's largest e-commerce company made nearly USD 2.4 billion on Friday alone. Courtesy the flurry in online sales on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, Amazon's stock jumped 18 percent as compared to last year.

Read the full story here.

15:10 Over 1,200 flee Myanmar's Arakan to take refuge in Mizoram

Over 1,200 people from Myanmar's restive Arakan state have crossed the border and taken shelter in neighbouring Mizoram's Lawngtlai district, officials said today.

The people who crossed over yesterday are mostly Buddhists and Christians and speak the same tribal language as the locals. They fled their homes after the Myanmarese Army clashed with the 'Arakan Army' militants recently, they said. PTI

When Modi Ji went to France, he changed Rafale contract, without consulting anyone. Instead of giving contract to company which knows to build aircraft, he gave it to his industrialist friend who knows nothing about it. Defence Minister was in Goa then.: Rahul Gandhi in #Gujarat pic.twitter.com/SRBFnTvBsP ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

14:22



Media Blackout in Federal Capital, almost all leading TV channels suspended on order of PEMRA: Pakistan Media  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017



14:20 Rahul slams PM Modi for delay in Parliament session, accuses him of silencing criticism

Slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi for delay in Parliament's winter session, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said Modi's new slogan seemed to be na bolonga, na bolne dunga (Will neither speak, nor allow others to speak).

The Congress vice-president alleged that the winter session has been scheduled post-Gujarat assembly election as the prime minister did not want to discuss Rafale deal or Jay Shahs company, the Indian Express reported.

Gandhi had played on Modi's famous slogan "Na khaonga, na khane dunga" (will neither take bribe, nor allow others to take it). He was addressing an election rally at Porbandar in Gujarat.

13:55 Militants abducted and killed army jawan in Kashmir, bullet-ridden body found

MilitanMilitants abducted and killed a 23-year-old Territorial Army jawan and his bullet-riddled body was found today in Shopian district of south Kashmir, the Army said.

The body was recovered from an orchard area in Watmullah Keegam area of Shopian, an Army official said. The deceased was identified as Irfan Ahmad Mir, a resident of Sezan Keegam.

Mir was working in the Territorial Army and was abducted by militants and later killed, the official said, adding that further details were awaited.

Outcome of last 3 years of successful foreign outreach under PM Modi has succeeded in isolating Pak & today even those nations which were earlier hesitant to accept India's view on Pak-sponsored terror are also agreeing to India's viewpoint: MoS, PMO Jitendra Singh on Hafiz Saeed pic.twitter.com/J6rY697z1S ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

13:10 Delhi metro fare hike: Kejriwal says rising prices will "kill" National Capital's metro rail

The steep fare hike will "kill" Delhi Metro, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said today, a day after an RTI revealed that the metro lost over three lakh commuters a day due to the fare increase.

Kejriwal also asked what purpose the metro serves if people stop using it.

13:05



Where is it written that Kashmir is Pakistan's? No agreement says so. This is non-sense & is a propaganda by Muslim Conference & their paid stooges. Even on our bathroom doors they have written 'Kashmir banega Pakistan': PoK leader Tauqeer Gilani in Muzaffarabad, PoK pic.twitter.com/JKjcYp5qUh  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017



DMK Working President MK Stalin announces Marudhu Ganesh as candidate for #RKNagar by-elections. pic.twitter.com/nsu2ViYwJp ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

12:38 Violent threats not acceptable in democracy, says Vice President Venkaiah Naidu

Amid the Padmavati row, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said today that giving violent threats and announcing rewards for physical harm was not acceptable in a democracy.

Not directly referring to the controversy, but films and art in general, he warned against undermining the rule of law in the country. He said while protesting, some people go overboard and announce rewards.

"This is not acceptable in a democracy. You have the right to protest in a democratic manner, go to the appropriate authorities...you cannot physically obstruct and can't give violent threats. Let us not undermine the rule of law," he said.  PTI

12:23 Pakistan justifies freeing terror-accused Hafiz Saeed

Pakistan has justified the release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, claiming that Islamabad was committed to the implementation of UNSC sanctions regime on terrorists.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and Lashkar-e-taiba founder Hafiz Saeed, who has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan yesterday. He is a UN and US-designated terrorist.  PTI

12:02 Bhiwandi building collapse: death toll rises to 4, owner booked

The death toll in a building collapse in Maharashtra's Bhiwandi has risen to four after the recovery of a woman's body and the police has booked its owner in connection with the case.

The unauthorised four-storey 'Tahir Biznor' building, situated in Navi Basti area, had collapsed on Friday.

The accused building owner, Mohammad Tahir Rafique Ahmed Ansari (46), was absconding, he said, adding that efforts were on to nab him.  PTI

09:15 Oxford Street chaos due to 'altercation' between 2 men: Police

An "altercation" between two men at the busy Oxford Circus area late Friday night sparked a "mass evacuation" and left 16 people injured, police said, ruling out a terror attack. The Oxford Circus area, one of the busiest shopping zones in the heart of the London, was placed under temporary lockdown after police received reports of shots being fired.

However, Scotland Yard later released CCTV images, saying an altercation between two men led to the chaos in the area.

"We are releasing CCTV images of two men we would like to speak with, following the incident at Oxford Circus earlier today," the Metropolitan Police said.

The British Transport Police (BTP) said the altercation took place inside the busy Oxford Circus underground train station, "triggering a mass evacuation".  PTI

09:30 No place in Dalits, farmers & poor in PM Modi's heart: Rahul Gandhi

Slamming Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani for reportedly not accepting a giant tricolour made by Dalits citing lack of space, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said he would have accepted even a 50,000 km-long national flag even if he had little space to keep it.

The Congress Vice-President also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rupani have space in their hearts only for a few industrialists, but not Dalits, farmers and poor.  PTI

09:40 Indian-origin UK businessmen among 20 banned for employing illegal workers

Indian-origin businessmen are among 20 people banned from managing a company after they were found to be employing illegal workers in their establishments across the UK.

The UK's Insolvency Service said its countrywide crackdown over the past few months had found that all 20 had already been fined for employing illegal workers.

Ashim Kumar Saha, a director of Save & Pick Limited in London, was disqualified and fined 10,000 pounds for employing one illegal worker.

Manoj Barua and Vipan Kumar Sharma, directors of MV Hospitality Limited which traded as a restaurant known as Cafe India in Glasgow were disqualified for employing four illegal workers and fined 40,000.

Eighteen people have been banned from being company directors or being involved in the management of companies for six years each, whilst two have been disqualified for seven years.  PTI

09:45 Donald Trump appoints Mick Mulvaney new head of financial watchdog CFPB

US President Donald Trump Friday appointed White House budget director Mick Mulvaney to head a financial watchdog that the administration has sought to overhaul as part of its deregulation push.

Mulvaney, who described the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as a "sick, sad joke" in a 2014 interview, will serve as acting director until a permanent head is nominated and confirmed, according to a White House statement.  PTI

10:00 After deadly attack on Egypt mosque, Trump calls Sisi, says can't tolerate 'barbaric terrorist' groups

US President Donald Trump today said the international community cannot tolerate "barbaric terrorist" groups as he called his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to offer condolences after militants killed over 200 people in Egypt's North Sinai region.

"The international community cannot tolerate barbaric terrorist groups and must strengthen its efforts to defeat terrorism and extremism in all its forms," the White House said after the phone call between the two leaders.

During the phone call, Trump offered condolences to the people of Egypt.

"Trump condemned the attack and reiterated that the United States will continue to stand with Egypt in the face of terrorism," the White House said. At least 235 worshippers were killed and 109 others injured when heavily-armed militants bombed the al-Rowda mosque in Al-Arish city and opened fire on people attending Friday prayers.  PTI

10:05 Donald Trump claims he rejected 'Person of the Year', TIME says he's wrong

Donald Trump could probably have been TIME magazine's "Person of the Year" for the second year in succession, but for "probably" the US President turned down the publication's interview and photo shoot request.

"Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named "Man (Person) of the Year", like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!" Trump said in a tweet.

Trump was Time magazine's person of the year last year. He is currently spending his Thanksgiving weekend at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

TIME responded on its own Twitter account: "The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6."
DECATUR -- Three people were able to escape unharmed Friday afternoon from a fire that did extensive damage to a mobile home in Decatur.

One of the occupants discovered a fire burning outside the mobile home and the fire being outside the front door blocked their way out so they had to go out the back door, Decatur Fire Inspector Mike Wigginton said. He said the occupants immediately began alerting neighbors and moving vehicles away from the mobile home.

Decatur firefighters were called to the Southwest Mobile Home Community, 1575 S. Fairview Ave. Lot 25, around 5 p.m. and were on the scene for about two hours.

Battalion Chief Jeff Hott said the side entrance was on fire when crews arrived and the fire had already made its way into the mobile home. He said firefighters were able to quickly put the fire out, preventing it from spreading to nearby mobile homes.

Wigginton said there may have been some minor heat damage to a neighboring mobile home.

Wigginton said a preliminary investigation confirmed the fire started outside the door, possibly inside a couch, but the cause is under investigation. He didn't suspect foul play.
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

The Nifty50 has been forming a base near 10300 for the November series. The up move can be extended till 10600. During the week, more than 20 lakh shares were added in 10300 Put strike, which kept downsides limited

Call positions are getting added at the 10600 strike, which remains the target for the index. Closure was seen in the Nifty and Nifty Bank futures, which shows the short covering pattern seen in these indices

Volatility has seen a spike from 12.5 to 13.5 on account of closure of near the money Call strikes, which means downsides seem to be limited. This momentum should continue amid some range bound sessions.

Underperforming heavyweights from various sectors like banking, auto, IT and pharma have recently shown some resilience, which means, on any intermediate profit booking, the Nifty would be supported by these heavyweights.

In addition, increase in price ratio of (Nifty Bank/Nifty) to new highs means the performance in Nifty Bank would be supportive for the Nifty.

Being an expiry week, an opportunity can be seen in underperforming stocks where a short covering is expected.

Nifty Bank: Ongoing rally likely to continue unless index remains above 25650

Post approaching the highest Call base of 26000 last week, the index witnessed profit booking and consolidated in a narrow and tight band amid high volatility.

Throughout the week, the index witnessed a decent support near 25,650 whereas a decline in Put option premium of 25,700 strike and additions in the open interest is indicating major writing, which is likely to provide cushion going forward.

In this current leg of the rally, private sector banks continued to dominate whereas this time PSUs also supported the overall up move.

Stocks like State Bank of India have started moving up from the support level of Rs 310, which is likely to trigger broad-based buying in the PSU pack.

Additions continued in 26000 strike Call followed by 26400 strikes. We feel a close above 26000 would open more upside whereas a trigger in volatility can be seen as we approach the expiry week. In case of any major selling, the index is likely to find cushion near 25650-25700

The current price ratio (Nifty Bank/Nifty) has retraced and moved towards 2.48 from 2.50. We feel the outperformance in banking stocks will continue, which is again going to take the ratio higher towards 2.52 levels.

Rating upgrade did not generate incremental traction from FIIs in equities:

While T-5 data of foreign investors (FIIs) suggests a USD 90 million inflow, if one looks at FII data for the week, they have actually sold USD 150 million. As we approach the end of 2017, FII fresh allocation in EMs seems to be diminishing.

A look at FII EM inflow data suggests strong inflows only in South Korea with fund flows in other EMs remaining subdued.

A look at FII action in the F&O segment suggests Index consolidation bets placed by them. In the index future segment there was the long creation of USD 290 million but in the stock future segment, they covered short of over USD 458 million each.

At the same time, in the index options segment, there was selling of over USD 90 million (to capture higher Index VIX level).

Global risk sentiment seemed to be oscillating between risk-on and risk-off mode. In the recent spate of news flows, the Middle East turmoil, coupled with political instability and Zimbabwe & default by Venezuela kept the risk-off sentiment higher.

Positive developments like progress in the US on tax reform bill, strong economic data emanating from Europe and Japan kept the risk-on camp alive.

In the process, the equity market continued to move higher worldwide (with the exception of China & Hong Kong) and bond yields cooled off post-Fed minutes. This move in equity and debt market suggests the tilt is towards continuance of the risk-on mode is likely

Fresh FII inflows from here on could be more tactical in nature, as most global fund houses brainstorm on the allocation strategy for 2018. With the commodity recovery being coupled with a strong macro environment in EMs (higher forex reserves, lower current account deficit), fresh allocation in EMs by FIIs is likely to continue in 2018.
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

The country's drug price regulator National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) on Friday issued notices to Fortis Healthcare, asking the company to provide copies of bills in connection with a case of alleged overcharging by its hospital in Gurugram.

NPPA said its notice was based on newspaper reports about Fortis Gurugram charging approximately Rs 16 lakh from Jayant Singh for treating his seven-year-old daughter Adya, who was suffering from dengue and subsequently passed away.

NPPA shot off a letter the company's Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director seeking copies of invoices/bills raised, name of medicines administered along with details of quantity and price charged towards medicines and consumables.

NPPA gave Fortis a deadline till December 8 to submit the information it has sought.

The Union Health Ministry too has sought details of the case and asked the Haryana government to initiate an "urgent probe".

Fortis denied allegations of overcharging and said all the consumables were transparently reflected in the records and charged as per actuals.

"Care of ventilated patients in ICU requires a high number of consumables as per globally accepted infection control protocols, it added.

The NPPA notice comes at a time when there is a growing demand for regulation of private healthcare and reining in the trade margins that hospitals, distributors and manufacturers enjoying on medical devices and consumables.

Welcoming NPPA's notice, public health activists asked the drug price regulator to urgently add 19 additional categories of medical devices classified as drugs under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act and Drugs and Cosmetics Rules.

NPPA has earlier sought pricing data of these devices that consist widely used medical consumables such surgical dressings, hypodermic syringes, IV cannulae, disposable perfusion sets, catheters, heart valves among others.

"The prices of consumables used by hospitals are ridiculously inflated," said Malini Aisola of All India Drug Action Network (AIDAN)  a national network of several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that advocates a rational drug policy.

Aisola asked NPPA to put the data collected by the authority on 19 medical devices and consumables in the public domain.

AIDAN in its study found that trade margins over high-volume consumables such as disposable syringes, IV Cannula sometimes go as high as 10 times ex-factory prices.

In the case of Adya Singh, the Fortis bill suggests it charged for 660 syringes and 2,700 gloves during her 15-day hospital stay.

Aisola also expressed concern that hospitals bill consumables which are not directly used on the patient but used by staff for upkeep of the facility.

Hospitals were also under criticism for not sufficiently passing the benefit to the patient when the NPPA capped the prices of coronary stents, slashing the prices by around 85 percent.
At-least 27 teachers in Maharashtra have been booked for allegedly refusing to do election-related duty, police said on Saturday.

The teachers refused the work of updating the Voters' List, a senior police official said.

Following complaints from tehsildars of Ralegaon, Babhulgaon and Kalamb tehsil in Ralegaon assembly seat, a case was recently registered at the respective police stations, he said.

Officials from district administration said the teachers were appointed as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to carry out the work from November 15 to 30.

But 27 teachers refused to work saying it was not educational work. Since they did not turn up to work, we decided to lodge complaints at various police stations, they added.
Representative image

Minister of State Hardeep Singh Puri, in an RTI reply, claimed that the dip in the Delhi Metro's ridership cannot be linked to the fare hike effected in October, which it said was necessary for maintaining "efficiency".

MoS (Independent Charge) for Housing and Urban Affairs told reporters here that despite the increase, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation's (DMRC) fares were among the "lowest in the world" and the "lowest in India".

"The fare hike has not led to a decline in metro ridership. For example, in 2016, there was a ridership dip by 1.3 lakh from September to October when there was no change in fares," he said.



This steep hike in metro fare will kill Delhi Metro. If people stop using it, then what purpose does it serve? https://t.co/xkyae8okRf

 Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) November 25, 2017

His comments came hours after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who has been opposing the fare hike, tweeted:

Puri said that every year, there are a few months that see an increase in ridership and a decline is observed in the others.

The ridership after the fare revision for many days was actually higher than the ridership on some days before it was revised, he said.

"On previous occasions of fare increase, there were at times temporary dip in ridership which recovered shortly. Ridership in November has shown a rising trend," the union minister said.

However, according to the DMRC's records, the fall in October was the steepest ever. The metro has been logging a daily average ridership between 27 lakh and 28 lakh over the recent years, with minor variations.

Till May, the Delhi Metro transported around 28 lakh passengers daily. But, after the first phase of the hike in May, it lost nearly 1.5 lakh passengers per day in June as the ridership dropped to 25.7 lakh.

However, the ridership picked up from around July.

In July and August, the Delhi Metro witnessed a daily average ridership of 26.6 lakh and 27 lakh respectively

Last year, in July, August and September, the metro's daily average ridership figures were 26.9 lakh, 28.5 lakh and 28.4 lakh, respectively, reflecting a trajectory of sustained growth.

Seeking to defend the fare hike, Puri said that metro fares are neither fixed by the Centre or the Delhi government, both of which hold equal stakes in the DMRC and pointed out that it was after a gap of eight years that the fares had been hiked.

Fare Fixation Committee, a statutory body created under an Act of Parliament, determines the metro fares, he said.

"When the new fixation committee was formed, they decided that since the fares were not hiked during the last eight years, the increase would happen in two segments, one in May and the other in October," Puri said.

He also said that the metro is a capital-intensive project and if it has to be run efficiently, it's "long-term liabilities in terms of loan repayment" need to be discharged timely".

"DMRC has a loan of Rs 28,268 crore from JICA. So far, they have only paid Rs 1,507 crore. For the current year, they have to pay Rs 890 crore towards principal and interest liability," he said.

According to the RTI query by a PTI correspondent, the metro's daily average ridership came down to 24.2 lakh in October from 27.4 lakh in September, a fall of around 11 percent.

The Blue Line which is considered the metro's busiest, lost over 30 lakh commuters, according to data shared by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) in response to an RTI query.

The 50-km corridor connects Dwarka to Noida. The metro currently has a 218-km network across Delhi-NCR.

On October 10, the DMRC effected the fare hike, leading to a rise of around Rs 10 for nearly every distance slab. This came barely five months of another hike of up to 100 percent.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today said that the state would be free from the menace of Naxalism by the beginning of next year.

He was speaking at the India Today Conclave East.

For any state to prosper, peace is the most important thing and any government's priority is to provide security to its masses, the chief minister said.

"In last three years, we have taken steps in this regard. More than 70 percent of Naxalism has ended in Jharkhand. The remaining 30 percent will come to an end by the end of December," Das said.

"There are some Naxal leaders who are hiding in Buda Pahar. Our police personnel have been countering them and I have full faith in the police that by December end, we will be able to complete the operation and put an end to Naxalite terror. From the beginning of 2018 the state will be free from (Naxal) insurgency and crime," he said.

Das said that several Maoists have surrendered after the state introduced an attractive surrender policy.

"We have also cracked on Naxal sympathisers in our villages and our cities by attaching their properties," the Jharkhand chief minister said.

Das said he is confident about the victory of the BJP in the upcoming Gujarat elections as the people of that state have made up their mind to give a befitting reply to the Congress.
The 'Gujarat Model' of development is in a way "a case of jobless growth", eminent political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot said, days before the western state goes to Assembly polls.

Speaking at a session, titled "Political Conservatives and the Right in India", at the Times LitFest, the author-researcher said that most opportunities resulting from the Gujarat model created fewer jobs than small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) could have.

"The Gujarat model has been an interesting case of jobless growth or you can say growth with minimal development. It brought in large investments from multi-nationals, which were given land, cheap labourers and of course tax exemptions. They created factories, refineries, but didn't create as many jobs as SMEs would have done," he said.

The reason behind the lack of employment opportunities, according to Jaffrelot, was the industry's heavy dependence on automation and not manual labour.

"They are kind of jobs that use automation more than labourers, for example, refineries don't need workers. You are automatised as much as you can when you are a Maruti or a Tata, an area where SMEs cannot compete," he said.

Despite the development of the state, the condition of its poor people remained the same, which demands accountability on the BJP's part.

"We have seen land taken from the peasants, not just because of the industries but also because of the pollution created by it. And a model that was developed at the expense of SMEs, a record number of SMEs are losing their bank support in Gujarat.

"Earlier when at one end there were poor people and the Congress was in Delhi, now the BJP is in Delhi and the poor people are still there. So now is the time of reckoning, this is a time for accountability," Jaffrelot said.

The 'Gujarat Model' has remained the BJP's favourite example of success in election campaigns over the years.

Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, goes to polls on December 9 and 14. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat for over 12 years till he became the prime minister in 2014.
India main opposition Congress Party Vice President Rahul Gandhi speaks during the 'Kisan Akrosh Rally ' at Banswara in Rajasthan on 19th July,2017.(Photo by Vishal Bhatnagar/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Slamming Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani for reportedly not accepting a giant tricolour made by Dalits citing lack of space, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said he would have accepted even a 50,000 km-long national flag even if he had little space to keep it.

The Congress vice president also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rupani have space in their hearts only for a few industrialists, but not Dalits, farmers and poor.

Gandhi was addressing a gathering of Dalits at Dalit Shakti Kendra (DSK), a vocational training institute near Sanand town in Ahmedabad district, where he accepted a 125 x 83.3 feet tricolour weighing 240 kg.

The national flag was earlier meant to be presented to Rupani. In August, the DSK had even carried the tricolour to Gandhinagar. However, officials at the collectorate had allegedly refused to accept it citing lack of space.

"This flag is not yours alone, but belongs to the entire country. He (Rupani) said he has no place to keep the flag. Even if you gave me a 15 km or 50,000 km-long flag, and even if I had one inch space to keep it, I would have taken it," Gandhi said.

"Like you, I have a huge space in my heart for this flag. It is the mindset of the BJP chief ministers or the prime minister that they have no space for this flag or your hard work. But they have the entire Gujarat for 5-10 industrialists, who can get any amount of space they want in Gujarat or across India," Gandhi said.

He said the prime minister or Gujarat chief minister had no space for Dalits, farmers, poor and small businessmen.

Gandhi attacked Modi and Rupani over the Una Dalit flogging incident. He also assailed the prime minister over the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula at the University of Hyderabad (UoH).

On the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors' Summit organsied by the state government, he said the state is vibrant only for "5-7 industrialists of Modiji" and not farmers, tribals, poor, or Dalits.

He said the Congress wants to eradicate untouchability from not just one village, but from the mind of every Indian. Gandhi said that was also the goal of B R Ambedkar.

The members of DSK said the tricolour was made by Dalits, who also donated money to raise Rs 54,000 for it.

They said Gandhi wants the national flag gifted to him to be kept at the Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum in New Delhi.
There were no significant product launches this week, but plenty of other developments dominated the headlines. Here's a complete wrap:

Nitin Gadkari not in favour of battery swapping

Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari shot down Niti Aayog's proposal for battery swapping, terming it unviable. The policy think-tank had been in favour of the method used to promote the concept of electric mobility in many overseas markets.

The minister said that adopting battery swapping will be a very complicated method to follow in India. Instead, Gadkari said that the government is working on a charging system that can reduce charging time to just 15-20 minutes, which would thus reduce the need to remove and insert a new battery.

Mahindra opens plant in US

Detroit got its first automotive plant in 25 years following the inauguration of an off-road vehicle manufacturing plant by Mahindra & Mahindra, the leader in tractors. The vehicles, which are high on utility, will cater to personal use but are not meant for highways.

The Mumbai-headquartered company has created 250 new jobs at the plant, which will have the capacity to produce 10,000 units of the Roxor, an off-highway vehicle. Mahindra will invest another USD 600 million in the facility by 2020, adding another 400 jobs.

Maruti launches Swift limited edition

Maruti Suzuki, the countrys largest car maker has launched a limited edition version of the Swift in both petrol and diesel versions. The petrol variant is priced at Rs 5.45 lakh while the diesel version is priced at Rs 6.39 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).

While the engines remain the same, the premium hatchback now gets an infotainment system which supports Android Auto and Apple Car Play. In addition, the car gets extra bass, floor mats and alloy wheels. This is the last upgrade for the bestseller before it undergoes a complete revamp expected to be launched in 2018.

New Hyundai car spied

A new partially masked hatchback made by Hyundai was spotted in testing this week indicating that the Korean car brand could be readying its launch in less than a year. While the company has refused to say anything, speculation is rife about the car being the all-new Santro.

Photographs of the vehicle suggest it will feature a tall-boy design, something which Hyundai started with in India with the Santro in 1998. The company, however, has promised to launch a hatchback in 2018 targeted at families.

Toyota Etios Liva secures 4-star rating at NCAP

Global NCAP and AA South Africa crash-tested two Indian cars  Toyota Etios Liva and Datsun GO+. The Toyota hatchback, which is sold as the Etios Sprint in South Africa, landed a four-star safety rating for adult occupancy.

The Datsun multi-utility vehicle meanwhile got a 1-star rating for adult occupancy as it had only one driver-side airbag. Both cars were crashed at 64 km/hr.
Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed to take help from the U.N. refugee agency to safely repatriate hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who had fled violence in Myanmar, Bangladesh said on Saturday.

More than 600,000 Rohingya sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after the military in mostly Buddhist Myanmar launched a brutal counter-insurgency operation in their villages across the northern parts of Rakhine State following attacks by Rohingya militants on an army base and police posts on Aug 25.

Faced with a burgeoning humanitarian crisis, the two governments signed a pact on Thursday agreeing that the return of the Rohingya to Myanmar should start within two months.

Uncertainty over whether the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would have a role had prompted rights groups to insist that outside monitors were needed to safeguard the Rohingya's return.

Addressing a news conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali gave assurances that the UNHCR would play some part.

"Both countries agreed to take help from the UNHCR in the Rohingya repatriation process," Ali said. "Myanmar will take its assistance as per their requirement."

The diplomatic breakthrough came just ahead of a visit by Pope Francis to Myanmar and Bangladesh from Nov. 26 to Dec. 2 that is aimed at promoting "reconciliation, forgiveness and peace".

While the violence in Rakhine has mostly ceased, Rohingya have continued to stream out of Myanmar, saying they have largely lost access to sources of livelihood such as their farms, fisheries and markets.

Thousands of Rohingya - old people, women and children - remain stranded on beaches near the border, waiting for a boat to take them to Bangladesh.

FROM CAMP TO CAMP

Ali said a joint working group, to be formed within three weeks, will fix the final terms to start the repatriation process.

After leaving the refugee camps in Bangladesh, Rohingya who opt to be voluntarily repatriated will be moved to camps in Myanmar, the minister said.

"Most houses were burnt down. Where will they live after going back? So, it is not possible to physically return to their homes," Ali said.

Myanmar officials have said returnees will be moved to camps only temporarily while so-called "model villages" are constructed near their former homes.

Win Myat Aye, the minister for social welfare, relief and resettlement who heads a Myanmar government panel on rehabilitation in Rakhine, said India and China had offered to provide "modular houses" for returnees.

The U.N. and the United States have described the Myanmar military's actions as "ethnic cleansing", and rights groups have accused the security forces of committing atrocities, including mass rape, arson and killings.

The United States also warned it could impose sanctions on individuals responsible for alleged abuses.

Led by Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar is in the early stages of a transition to democracy after decades of military rule. But the civilian government is less than two years old and still shares power with the generals, who retain autonomy over matters of defence, security and borders.

The commander of Myanmar's armed forces, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, has denied that soldiers committed any atrocities.

On Friday he met China's President Xi Jinping in Beijing having been told earlier in the week by a top Chinese general that China wanted stronger ties with Myanmar's military.

Under the deal struck with Bangladesh, Myanmar agreed to take measures to see that the returnees will not be settled in temporary places for a long time.

Myanmar plans to issue them an identity card on their return, although most Rohingya have so far rejected a scheme to give them "national verification cards".

While the agreement says Bangladesh would seek the U.N. refugee agency's assistance on the process, Myanmar - which has largely blocked aid agencies from working in northern Rakhine since August - only agreed "that the services of the UNHCR could be drawn upon as needed and at the appropriate time".

Win Myat Aye told Reuters on Saturday that Myanmar would discuss "technical assistance" with the UNHCR, but had not reached a formal agreement with the agency.

There were already hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh before the latest exodus, and the Bangladesh minister said they could also be considered for the repatriation, under the terms of the agreement.

The agreement, however, says they will be "considered separately on the conclusion of the present agreement.a

Some independent estimates suggest there are still a few hundred thousand Rohingya remaining in Rakhine.
Dear Dr. Roach: My cousin is having irregular periods. Her last one was three months ago. She was given Provera for 10 days to help, but after she stopped it, she had a very heavy period. Is that normal?

-- T.R.

A: Provera is a brand of a type of progesterone, a female hormone. This hormone is high in early pregnancy: It promotes retention of the thick lining of the uterus, giving the developing embryo a place to develop, and preventing menstruation, the shedding of the lining of the uterus that normally takes place every month (or so) a woman is not pregnant.

Some women have irregular periods, and this isn't necessarily abnormal. One test that women's health specialists do if concerned about irregular periods (after ruling out pregnancy) is to give a patient 10 mg of medroxyprogesterone (Provera) for 10 days, then stop. When levels of progesterone go down, the body "realizes" it isn't pregnant, and will shed the thick lining of the uterus. That is the normal response. This period may be heavy if the lining had been there for three months.

If there is no period after stopping the Provera, it suggests there may be a blockage in the uterus. It's also possible the lining of the uterus (which requires estrogen) never built up in the first place, so further evaluation would be required.

Osteoporosis

Dear Dr. Roach: I am a 55-year-old woman. I have a leg with atrophied muscles due to having meningitis as a child. Consequently, I fall a lot. I fell and broke my wrist recently, and last year I broke my foot. I had a scan done for osteoporosis, and my T-score was -2.5. The doctor suggested I start medication for osteoporosis. I am hesitant to take such medication due to side effects. Does the number warrant taking medication? Is osteoporosis a condition that worsens over time, or will it stay at -2.5, which appears to be not too egregious, without the medication? Are there lifestyle changes that help this condition?

-- T.C.

A: The T-score is a statistical measure of how a person's bone density compares with a normal, healthy young person of peak bone mass. Someone with higher-than-average bone density will have a positive score: A score of less bone density will be negative. A T-score below -2.5 is defined as osteoporosis, so you are just at the border. However, that still puts you at greater risk for fractures, and a history of wrist fracture (even with a fall) means more risk of future fracture than someone with the same T-score and no previous fracture. Treatment is appropriate for a score this low, but that does not necessarily mean medication is the starting point for all people.

Initial treatment should include adequate calcium and vitamin D intake. Most people in North America have a hard time getting adequate vitamin D in the winter. There are few good food sources (swordfish is one); vitamin D is mostly made in the skin, and only with adequate sunlight. I often test vitamin D levels for my patients. Another reasonable approach is to give supplemental vitamin D-3 (cholecalciferol), such as 1,000 IU daily.

Exercise is another important treatment, and having balance problems is a challenge. However, any kind of exercise can be helpful, and some, such as tai chi, have been shown to improve both balance and bone density. If these are not enough, I do recommend treatment with an anti-resorptive agent, such as risedronate (Actonel) for most women in your situation. There are side effects, but these are outweighed by the benefits of reducing fracture risk. A three- to five-year course is appropriate for most women before re-evaluation.

* * *

Readers: The booklet on macular degeneration explains this common eye ailment. Readers can order a copy by writing: Dr. Roach, Book No. 701, 628 Virginia Dr., Orlando, FL 32803. Enclose a check or money order (no cash) for $4.75 with the recipient's printed name and address. Please allow four weeks for delivery.
The US accused a Russian woman on Friday of helping oversee the finances of a sweeping, secretive effort to sway American public opinion through social media in the first federal case alleging foreign interference in the 2018 midterm elections. (Image: AP)

US President Donald Trump on Saturday called his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and discussed implementing a UN Security Council resolution for the peaceful settlement to the Syrian crisis and defeat of the ISIS terror group, the White House said.

Trump reaffirmed the strategic partnership between the United States and Turkey, particularly in combating terrorism in all its forms and fostering regional stability, it said in a readout of the phone call between the two leaders.

On Syria, the two leaders discussed the importance of implementing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254 and supporting the United Nations-led Geneva Process to peacefully resolve the civil war in that country, the White House said.

It said Trump and Erdogan underscored the need to end the humanitarian crisis, allow displaced Syrians to return home, and ensure the stability of a unified Syria free of malign intervention and terrorist safe havens.

"Consistent with our previous policy, President Trump also informed President Erdogan of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria, now that the battle of Raqqa is complete and we are progressing into a stabilisation phase to ensure that ISIS cannot return," the White House said.

It said the two leaders also discussed the purchase of military equipment from the United States.
BARCELONA, SPAIN - OCTOBER 27: Catalan Independence supporters gather outside the Catalan Government building, Palau de la Generalitat, to celebrate their vote on independence from Spain on October 27, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. MPs in the Catalan parliament have today voted following a two days session on how to respond to the Spanish governments enacting of Article 155, which would curtail Catalan autonomy. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

Catalonia's former leader challenged Spain and the European Union to respect the result of Catalan regional elections in December, saying Madrid would have to end direct rule if separatists win.

Speaking from Belgium where he fled earlier this month, Carles Puigdemont said the vote was the most important in Catalonia's history.

"Will you accept the results of December 21 if the pro-independence camp wins?," he asked after supporters chanted "Puigdemont, our president" during a speech to unveil his list of candidates for the vote.

"Do you commit to ending (direct rule) if that is the result?" said Puigdemont, the public face of the move for independence who is wanted in Spain for rebellion and sedition.

After dissolving Catalonia's parliament and sacking the regional government in response to the region declaring itself independent on Oct. 27, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said a new election would be held in Catalonia and called on Puigdemont to take part.

Pro-Catalonia independence parties are expected to win next month although they may fall short of a majority of seats in parliament needed to revive the secession campaign, polls show.

"On December 21 we must tell Madrid, the EU and the tripartite support for direct rule that democracy in Catalonia must not be undermined. Never again in Catalonia!" Puigdemont said from the town of Oostkamp near Bruges, part of Belgium's Flemish region that has its own separatist aspirations.

EU leaders are extremely wary of Catalonia's search for independence because it has stirred separatist feelings far beyond Spanish borders.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker this month in Madrid called on Europe to reject what he called separatist poison.

A Belgian court has granted Puigdemont conditional release but he is barred from leaving Belgium without a judge's consent.
Violent protests in Pakistan spilt over to the country's financial hub Karachi after authorities cracked down on protesters belonging to hardline religious parties in the national capital, Islamabad, injuring at least 15 people.

Karachi police fired in the air and baton-charged protesters in several areas of the country's biggest city.

The protesters had been staging sit-ins in parts of Karachi, demanding law minister Zahid Hamid's resignation for changes made to the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, or the finality of the prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017, in September.

A bigger protest was underway in Islamabad over the same issue.

The protests in Karachi turned violent after reports came in of a crackdown by authorities on protesters in Islamabad, where nearly 200 people, almost half of them security personnel, were injured. The authorities suspended the operation to disperse the protesters in Islamabad after the activists took over the streets in the national capital.

In Karachi, the police cracked down on the protesters on M.A. Jinnah Road, where they had been protesting for eight days. This led to clashes between the protesters and the police, triggering panic among the residents and leading to forcible shutdowns of shops, petrol pumps, and entire markets.

A group of protesters belonging to the newly-formed Tehreek-e-Labaik converged near the upmarket Clifton area in Karachi and disrupted the movement of traffic and threatened owners to shut their businesses to show their solidarity with those protesting in Islamabad-Rawalpindi twin cities.

The protesters also pelted stones at the police.

Reports also trickled in of clashes between police and protesters from other parts of the Sindh province, including Umerkot, Mithi, Sujawal, Badin and other towns.

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) has ordered several private news channels "offair" in Pakistan, including in Karachi.

The tensed situation forced vehicles off roads in Karachi. The protesters had also attempted to block roads leading to Hyderabad, according to traffic police officials.

Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has assured people that no one would be allowed to paralyse Karachi city. He asked the DIG (Traffic) to ensure smooth traffic in the city.
One of the great things about going out of your way to help other people, is that from time to time it turns in your favor.

This recently happened to me.

You see, Im in the middle of a busy semester, helping out with recruiting events, launching a student-run venture and coordinating a national conference taking place in Hollywood, Calif.  just to name a few things.

So, this article kept getting pushed down on my priority list. That is, until one of my students said, If there is anything I can do you for, let me know.

I said, If only you could write this article for me! And he joyfully replied in the affirmative, only to be crushed by me two seconds later. No way, even though he really is the best writer Ive seen come through here.

I just didnt feel comfortable asking him to write something FOR me. But, it did give me an idea. What if I devoted the article to some of the regular, every day, amazing students whose lives have been impacted by entrepreneurship education?

I crossed my fingers and sent out an email (some of them still use email), and within two hours I had some solid responses.

Here are some that spoke to me about entrepreneurship education at Millikin.

Sammy Schwartz is a senior entrepreneurship major who has been market testing an idea for a food truck selling mac n cheese burgers with his own homemade recipe.

For me, its something that Ive always wanted to study because Ive always wanted to own my own food truck. And for future students with any interest in entrepreneurship he advises be involved in anything and everything because the opportunities are endless.

Sammy has learned that the joy of cooking burgers and feeding hungry people is not the same as running a food truck business. Its hard to do both.

Mikayla Krieger is a digital media marketing and management double major, and she is on the management team at Blue Brew Coffee Shop as a sophomore. She has this advice to give high school students.

I would DEFINITELY recommend entrepreneurship courses. Entrepreneurship teaches you skills that can be applied and used in almost every aspect of the business world. And I can honestly say that learning and participating in entrepreneurship activities has helped me develop into the kind of business student that I am today.

Laura Nearing is a junior biology student who went to the innovation competition with all business students in Denmark and gained a lot more from her international entrepreneurship experience than she expected.

She fearlessly threw herself into the innovation team and learned the process being used to create new and unique ideas.

My favorite quote from Laura had nothing to do with innovation or entrepreneurship, but had everything to do with the brilliance of cultural differences.

When we were working on our business idea, one of the students sneezed, and all of the Danish students said prosit, which means, may it help. I was the only person to say bless you. They all looked at me like I was crazy! I guess the students never heard bless you in response to a sneeze, and it started a really funny conversation about weird Danish and English words.

Lauras team won the challenge, by the way. Bless you, indeed!
November 25, 2017 Trump Wants Peace With Erdogan - The Miltary Wants To Sabotage It President Trump is attempting to calm down the U.S. conflict with Turkey. The military junta in the White House has different plans. It now attempts to circumvent the decision the president communicated to his Turkish counterpart. The result will be more Turkish-U.S. acrimony. Yesterday the Turkish foreign minister surprisingly announced a phone call President Trump had held with President Erdogan of Turkey. United States President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke on the phone on Nov. 24 only days after a Russia-Turkey-Iran summit on Syria, with Ankara saying that Washington has pledged not to send weapons to the Peoples Protection Units (YPG) any more. President Trump instructed [his generals] in a very open way that the YPG will no longer be given weapons. He openly said that this absurdity should have ended much earlier, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters after the phone call. Trump had announced the call: Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!

12:04 PM - 24 Nov 2017 During the phone call Trump must have escaped his minders for a moment and promptly tried to make, as announced, peace with Erdogan. The issue of arming the YPG is really difficult for Turkey to swallow. Ending that would probably make up for the recent NATO blunder of presenting the founder of modern Turkey Kemal Ataturk and Erdogan himself as enemies. The YPG is the Syrian sister organization of the Turkish-Kurdish terror group PKK. Some weapons the U.S. had delivered to the YPK in Syria to fight the Islamic State have been recovered from PKK fighters in Turkey who were out to kill Turkish security personal. Despite that, supply for the YPG continued. In total over 3,500 truckloads were provided to it by the U.S. military. Only recently the YPK received some 120 armored Humvees, mine clearance vehicles and other equipment. The generals in the White House and other parts of the administration were caught flat-footed by the promise Trump has made. The Washington Post writes: Initially, the administrations national security team appeared surprised by the Turks announcement and uncertain what to say about it. The State Department referred questions to the White House, and hours passed with no confirmation from the National Security Council. The White House finally released what the Associated Press called: a cryptic statement about the phone call that said Trump had informed the Turk of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria. Neither a read-out of the call nor the statement AP refers to are currently available on the White House website. The U.S. military uses the YPG as proxy power in Syria to justify and support its occupation of north-east Syria, The intent of the occupation is , for now, to press the Syrian government into agreeing to a U.S. controlled "regime change": U.S. officials have said they plan to keep American troops in northern Syria  and continue working with Kurdish fighters  to pressure Assad to make concessions during peace talks brokered by the United Nations in Geneva, stalemated for three years now. Were not going to just walk away right now, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said last week. To solidify its position the U.S. needs to further build up and strengthen its YPG mercenary forces. When in 2014 the U.S. started to use Kurds in Syria as its foot-soldiers, it put the YPG under the mantle of the so called Syrian Democratic Forces and paid some Syrian Arabs to join and keep up the subterfuge. This helped to counter the Turkish argument that the U.S. was arming and supporting terrorists. But in May 2017 the U.S. announced to arm the YPG directly without the cover of the SDF. The alleged purpose was to eliminate the Islamic State from the city of Raqqa. The YPG had been unwilling to fight for the Arab city unless the U.S. would provide it with more money, military supplies and support. All were provided. The U.S. special forces, who control the YPG fighters, directed an immense amount of aerial and artillery ammunition against the city. Any potential enemy position was destroyed by large ammunition and intense bombing before the YPG infantry proceeded. In the end few YPG fighters died in the fight. The Islamic State was let go or eliminated from the city but so was the city of Raqqa. The intensity of the bombardment of the medium size city was at times ten times greater than the bombing in all of Afghanistan. Airwars reported: Since June, an estimated 20,000 munitions were fired in support of Coalition operations at Raqqa. Images captured by journalists in the final days of the assault show a city in ruins. Several thousand civilians were killed in the indiscriminate onslaught. The Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is defeated. It no longer holds any ground. There is no longer any justification to further arm and supply the YPG or the dummy organization SDF. But the generals want to continue to do so to further their larger plans. They are laying grounds to circumvent their president's promise. The Wall Street Journal seems to be the only outlet to pick up on the subterfuge: President Donald Trumps administration is preparing to stop sending weapons directly to Kurdish militants battling Islamic State in Syria, dealing a political blow to the U.S.s most reliable ally in the civil war, officials said Friday.

...

The Turkish announcement came as a surprise in Washington, where military and political officials in Mr. Trumps administration appeared to be caught off-guard. U.S. military officials said they had received no new guidance about supplying weapons to the Kurdish forces. But they said there were no immediate plans to deliver any new weapons to the group. And the U.S. can continue to provide the Kurdish forces with arms via the umbrella Syrian militant coalition. The "military officials" talking to the WSJ have found a way to negate Trump's promise. A spokesperson of the SDF, the ethnic Turkman Talaf Silo, recently defected and went over to the Turkish side. The Turkish government is certainly well informed about the SDF and knows that its political and command structure is dominated by the YPK. The whole concept is a sham. But the U.S. needs the YPG to keep control of north-east Syria. It has to continue to provide whatever the YPG demands, or it will have to give up its larger scheme against Syria. The Turkish government will soon find out that the U.S. again tried to pull wool over its eyes. Erdogan will be furious when he discovers that the U.S. continues to supply war material to the YPG, even when those deliveries are covered up as supplies for the SDF. The Turkish government released a photograph showing Erdogan and five of his aids taking Trump's phonecall. Such a release and the announcement of the call by the Turkish foreign minister are very unusual. Erdogan is taking prestige from the call and the public announcement is to make sure that Trump sticks to his promise. This wide publication will also increase Erdogan's wrath when he finds out that he was again deceived. Posted by b on November 25, 2017 at 17:14 UTC | Permalink Comments
Although the initial financing document for the new Burke County jail passed at Tuesday nights county commissioners meeting, two commissioners haven't been on board with the project.

We have schools from 1910 and 1920, Commissioner Wayne Abele said. We should be talking about schools instead of talking about a darn jail.

But despite the concerns expressed by Abele and Commissioner Maynard Taylor, the financing document passed 3-2.

The document states that the county has legal authority to enter a resolution to finance the project, said Paul Ijames, finance director for the county.

The document lists the estimated cost for the project will not exceed $21 million, but the final amount will be presented to the county in January by the projects manager-at-risk Vannoy Construction.

Vannoy will gather all bids from subcontractors to help determine the cost, which will need to be approved by the Local Government Commission in February, Ijames said.

Once the cost is determined, Vannoy will agree to complete the project for that cost. If the project ends up costing more, the company assumes the risk.

But although the final costs have not been determined, Abele said he is concerned about how the county will pay for the jail.

The financing document says the county does not anticipate increasing taxes to pay for the jail. However, Abele said he does not believe that is possible.

If we didnt build the jail I dont think we would have a problem with property taxes raising, Abele said. But you cant tell me here, after 20 years, that we're not going to have a property tax (increase), and its going to be because we built the jail.

Taylor agreed with Abele.

We keep laying out money to treat the evildoers like theyre on vacation, and the good people pay the price, Taylor said. That bothers me. And thats what were doing with this jail.

Chairman Jeff Brittain said the current jail has numbers of issues and is outdated. But Abele said county residents need to know what is going to happen with the current facility, which he said is in perfectly good condition.

I havent heard any conversation, Abele said. You think we would have some conversation about the old jail. I mean, its a valuable piece of property.

Commissioner Scott Mulwee said discussion has already taken place and that residents have decided what they want based on who they voted into office.

This was actually made to be a campaign issue, which it was, Mulwee said. And several of us ran for building a jail  being responsible, being proactive. And the majority of taxpayers agreed.

And the majority of commissioners agreed Tuesday, too. Mulwee, Brittain and Johnnie Carswell all voted to approve the document, while Abele and Taylor voted against it.

Fittingly, another topic of discussion at the meeting was a request from the Burke County Sheriffs Office for additional funds to house inmates outside of the county.

The request for $250,000 from the countys general fund was made due to high numbers of inmates. Some of the high numbers are due to inmates who cannot post bond and an increase in female inmates, according to information from the county.

BCSO expects to house between 20 and 30 inmates outside the county each month for the remainder of the fiscal year, according to the county. It costs $40 to house an inmate outside of the county each day.

Sheriff Steve Whisenant said he believes the $250,000 will be enough for the rest of the year. The commissioners voted unanimously to allocate the funds.

Also on the items for decision portion of the agenda was a proposal to award a construction bid for an EMS storage building. However, County Manager Bryan Steen suggested voting against the bid so the county can continue searching for lower bids. All of the county commissioners agreed and voted against the bid.

The entire consent agenda was approved without discussion. The agenda included multiple appointments and multiple motions to help construct the Fonta Flora State Trail at Lake James State Park.

Two people also showed up to speak during the public comment section of the meeting.

Attorney Joseph Delk III, who spoke on behalf of the residents of Razors Ridge Road. Multiple residents were in attendance with large photographs of the roads current condition.

Delk asked commissioners to consider petitioning the North Carolina Department of Transportation to look at the road. Residents hope the road can be included in the DOT system or be improved.

This road has somewhat been forgotten, Delk said. There are potholes out there now big enough to park a Buick in.

The road makes it hard for residents to travel safely and for emergency workers to respond to the area, Delk said.

Jack Carroll, a former county commissioner, also spoke and asked the board for permission to construct a veterans memorial on the Historic Burke County Courthouse property.

Two official public hearings were held during the meeting to discuss building reuse grants for Project Quantam Leap and Project Rampart.

Nobody spoke during the public hearing, and the commissioners voted in both cases to approve $12,500 from the general fund to pay for the countys portion of potential building reuse grants.

To watch the entire meeting, visit bit.ly/2jkaWbA. The next regular meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Dec. 19 in the County Board Room at 110 N. Green St.

Ryan Wilusz is a staff writer and can be reached at rwilusz@morganton.com or at 828-432-8941.
The family of Maltese journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb in October, is pressing conflict of interest charges against officials responsible for the murder investigation, Politico reported Wednesday.

Galizia's family members believe the investigation into her murder is biased because the police official overseeing her case, Silvio Valetta, is married to a politician Galizia has previously criticized in her writing.

Caruana Galizia was a prominent investigative reporter who contributed to the Panama Papers investigation and was a staunch critic of corruption on the island nation. Her blog openly called out Maltese underworld figures and public officials alike for alleged crimes and misdeeds.

Valetta's wife, Justyne Caruana (no relation to Galizia) is a senior member of the Maltese government and has recently been appointed as minister of Gozo by Maltese Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, The Independent reported. Galizia has been very critical of Muscat in the past. Galizia's family sees this connection as a conflict of interest regarding the investigation.

Additionally, Valetta is on the board of the FIAU, Malta's Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit. Galizia was one of the journalists who uncovered several failings within the unit, the Times of Malta reported.

Maltese officials do not believe Valettas involvement in Galizias case is problematic, the Times of Malta reported. As a board member of the FIAU, Mr Valletta does not have an operational role and would not even be informed what investigations the FIAU is carrying out, said a Maltese police commissioner in a statement. He should not lose his job just because his wife was appointed a minister.

Galizia has tirelessly reported about crime and corruption throughout her career.

"A culture of impunity has been allowed to flourish by the government in Malta. It is of little comfort for the Prime Minister of this country to say that he will not rest until the perpetrators are found, when he heads a government that encouraged that same impunity," said Galizia's son, Matthew Galizia, in a personal facebook post.

occrp.org
I dont know if I can call it a tradition yet, but the Thanksgiving holiday highlight for me is not the turkey and trimmings

Rather, I revel in the retail bonanza that kicks off in the afternoon and lasts into wee, small hours of the morning.

For the second straight year, I ventured out among the crowds Thursday evening to get a glimpse at what Midlanders were buying and to use the eye test to gauge just how the unofficial kickoff to the holiday season is changing  and there were some big changes. Heres what I found.

 Toys Were Us: The big shock for me Thursday night was the lack of a crowd at Toys R Us. I arrived earlier this year than last year, at about 7:30 p.m., and, much to my surprise, there werent many people there. Last year, I could barely get in the door. This year, I could probably have been in and out in 15 minutes.

Maybe its a sign that the once-dominant toys retailers really is in trouble. Toys R Us filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a few months ago, citing trouble with competition from online options such as Amazon.

One employee I spoke with said there was a small line at open, but it wasnt nearly as long as in years past. She attributed the lack of business to the companys heavy discounting online before Black Friday began. At Midlands brick-and-mortar store, however, the air was quiet.

 Where the action was: An hour earlier, I started the night at Wal-Mart, which began its deals at 6 p.m. Wal-Mart was jammed, so much so that cars nearly filled the parking lots of neighbors Wendys and Chick-fil-A.

One look at peoples carts, and it was clear what the hottest items were: TVs  and several of them, though I dont mean in variety. Shoppers were snatching up Sharp Aquos 55-inch 4K and Element 39-inch models in bulk. When observing people in line, I saw five shopping carts in a row, each with a pair of Sharp TVs.

As for the scene, Wal-Mart was busy but orderly. Shoppers checking out were staged starting in the middle of the store, and, just like last year, there were several police officers working security. I counted five cruisers parked out front.

And a shout out to what Ive dubbed the cart corps. Shopping carts go out, and they have to come back in. When I left Wal-Mart, there were many employees in the parking lot retrieving carts, which isnt an easy task with people and traffic everywhere.

 Happy and calm: I arrived at Target at about 7 p.m. I didnt even get to the front door before I saw people flowing out of the store with TVs. One employee pushed a trolley with three 55-inch TVs a customer had purchased.

Target clears out the maternity department and puts TVs on the floor, most of which are purchased in the electronics department in the back of the store. Everything else is paid for at the front of the store. To get there, however, means a long journey from the back wall. I had the bright idea of counting carts. I hit 26 by the time I got to the paper towels aisle when I realized it was an insurmountable task.

The line wove up and down aisles  16 by my count  toward the cash registers. The long line and long wait didnt leave people downtrodden. The customers I talked with were all smiles, laughing and were very positive. One employee I spoke with, who coordinated the line, said the night was happy and calm.

By my estimation, she was right, and it was like that wherever I went, even Best Buy.

 The science: Last year, Best Buy was the busiest place I had visited. That wasnt the case this year. At 8 p.m., there were many people milling around, but it wasnt madness. A few employees I spoke with told me I had missed the rush at the store open. The line stretched all the way down to Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

I think Best Buy has Pre-Black Friday down to a science. The retailer can get early entrants in and out quickly, making the rest of the night easier for everyone else.

One last note about Best Buy: I learned just how much people want televisions. As I was leaving, I saw a shopper stuffing one into the back of a taxi.

 The mall: Midland Park Mall was alive and well Thursday night, except for one store. Sears had customers, but it was mostly guys hanging out in the tools department. It reminds me of mall stores when I was kid, except with far less people. Sears is like stepping back in time, and I cant help but wonder just how long Midland will have one. Odessas Music City Mall lost its Sears this year.

The rest of the mall was busy, especially JC Penney Co. and White Barn, where one employee told me the candle store had been packed all night.

Here are the businesses that werent open Thursday: Chick-fil-A, Dallas Cowboys Pro Shop, Dillards, Family Dentistry, Fuddrucker's, Gordons Jewelers, Hickory Farms, Kay Jewelers, Legacy Harley-Davidson of Midland, Master Cuts, Motherhood Maternity, Pandora, Sno Factory, Visionworks, Vitamin World and Zales.

 Black Friday itself: The day the shopping holiday is named for just wasnt nearly as busy as Thanksgiving night. Just like last year, Black Friday didnt have any oomph; rather, at least in my experience, Friday morning was just like any other shopping day. Walk into Wal-Mart, and youd never know it was packed the night before. Best Buy was busy, but every other store had what Id consider a normal volume of customers.

Also, with a few exceptions, Thanksgiving night wasnt as busy as last year. Is it a sign that more people are shopping online and earlier? Maybe. I finished my holiday shopping last week without stepping foot into a store. From what Ive gathered, a lot of people have done the same.
Hart Energy adds 3 new conferences

Energy-industry publisher Hart Energy is adding three conferences to its calendar in 2018, according to a press release issued Monday.

Were always looking for opportunities to cover oil and gas' most pressing issues, Barry Haest, Hart Energy's vice president of conferences, said. Our new and returning conferences address upstream, midstream and financial businesses and technologies. They position industry leaders where business meets opportunity.

The new conferences are:

--DUG Haynesville, a conference and exhibition in Shreveport, Louisiana, that is focused on the natural-gas-rich basin that straddles East Texas and Louisiana.

It is scheduled for Feb. 20-21.

--DUG Executive in Houston is a focused, one-day event where (executives will) share insights and business concerns from strategic and financial perspectives.

It is scheduled for Feb. 26.

--Midstream Finance, is where midstream business leaders, Wall Street financiers and market analysts will talk about market trends and key drivers for investment in the midstream sector.

It is scheduled for Oct. 22-23 in Dallas.

Over the past 10 years, Hart Energy has produced more than 110 conferences and exhibitions. It will host two conferences in Midland next year: Midstream Texas on July 5-6 and the Executive Oil Conference on Nov. 5-6.

Permian production expected to rise

The Energy Information Administration on Monday released its monthly productivity report for November. The report estimated several factors of oil and gas production for November and December. Here are highlights from the Permian Basin:

 New-well oil production per rig in November was estimated to be 582 barrels per day, with an increase to 586 barrels per day in December. Natural gas production is slated to be 1.035 million cubic feet per day in November and 1.050 million cubic feet per day in December.

 In total, the Permian as a whole is expected to produce 2.628 million barrels per day in November and 2.686 million barrels per day in December. Natural gas production is estimated at 9.020 billion cubic feet per day in November and 9.19 billion cubic feet in December.

 Continuing the month-over-month increase trend, drilled-but-uncompleted wells (DUCs) rose from 2,430 in the Permian in September to 2,533 in October. DUCs have risen by 303 percent since December 2013, when 629 were reported.

Permian Water acquires assets of Pyote Water

Permian Water Solutions announced Wednesday that it had acquired the majority of the assets and operating business of Pyote Water Solutions, a Midland-based provider of commercial salt-water disposal facilities in the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford.

Permian Water acquired fee or leasehold interests in 21 salt water disposal wells, three brine stations and three fresh water stations, the company said in a press release. Seventeen of the salt water disposal wells are located in West Texas and New Mexico and serve operators in the Delaware Basin, Central Basin Platform and Midland Basin.

The company will have a Midland office.

Permian Water is a startup portfolio company of Chambers Energy Capital. It was formed in the summer of 2017.

Energy Hunter Resources divests in Midland Basin

Energy Hunter Resources on Thursday announced the divestment of its mineral rights in the Midland Basin to an undisclosed company.

The mineral rights are in Howard County and were purchased last year for about $300,000, according to a press release. The selling price was $750,000. Three wells were drilled, with three more currently in the permitting stage.

The reason to acquire mineral rights in the Permian Basin was always a short-term focused decision designed to leverage our expertise in the sector and obtain a minor ownership position in a core area of the Permian Basin, said Chairman and CEO Gary C. Evans. We watched the value of our mineral rights in the Permian Basin significantly increase as additional wells were drilled and completed on the properties. The decision to sell these assets now will enable us to reinvest the proceeds in our new core region of the San Andres oil play located in the Permian Basin and provide additional working capital to the company.

Energy Hunter Resources is an exploration and production company headquartered in Dallas.

Houston energy private equity firm closes $600 million fund

HOUSTON  Post Oak Energy Capital has closed a $600 million fund it plans to pour into North American oil producers, service companies and midstream companies.

The Houston private equity firm, a company with investments in more than two dozen oil companies, said its fourth fund closed earlier this month and expects to begin pumping money into companies early next year.

Post Oak has invested in seven oil companies this year, including Houston explorers Tri-C Energy Partners and Sierra Resources, which drill in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas.

--Houston Chronicle
CrossFit your thumbs and charge up your mobile device because Cyber Monday is a ticktock away. Forget the sales on chenille socks and pour-over coffee makers. Instead, splurge on a vacation. Here is a roundup of the best Cyber Monday deals this Thanksgiving season. Click the gallery above for a list of deals. A few examples are below.

Royal Caribbean is offering savings of 40 percent for the second guest and 25 percent savings for the third and fourth passengers, plus up to $400 onboard credits per stateroom, depending on cruise length. Deal applies to all sailings (except China) departing on or after Dec. 24. Book Nov. 24-27 at royalcaribbean.com.
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The Texas Department of Public Safety officer shot and killed in the line of duty Thanksgiving afternoon was a married father of three and 15-year veteran of the force, the department confirmed.

The person who police say killed him, meanwhile, had served jail time for assaulting a public servant, and was indicted by a grand jury last month for crashing his car into a police vehicle.

Trooper Damon Allen, 41, died after being shot around 4 p.m. on Interstate 45 near Fairfield in Freestone County by a man later identified by police as Dabrett Black, 32, who then fled the scene.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said Thursday that "preliminary information" indicated Allen was shot as he returned to his patrol vehicle. The agency is expected to release more details Friday.

Black was captured in Waller County, nearly five hours into a massive manhunt for him was announced by Texas authorities.

He was charged with capital murder Friday morning, court records show.

Now Playing: A manhunt ended late Thursday in Waller County for a suspect officials say shot and killed a Texas Department of Public Safety officer in Freestone County. Video: METRO Video

Allen was "the definition of a gentleman," said close friend Brian Bell, Mexia's chief of police. "He was fair and polite with everyone he came in contact with, and he treated everyone like they were a friend."

The trooper grew up around Mexia, married his high school sweetheart and settled down near his hometown, said Bell, who'd known him for more than a decade. Allen went into law enforcement because he "liked to be the guy that people turned to when they needed help. That's just the way he was built."

Allen is the 221st DPS officer to die in the line of duty since the founding of the Texas State Rangers in 1823, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page. Since the 1929 founding of the Highway Patrol division, 88 officers have died in the line of duty.

Of those, 26 were deaths from gunfire and seven were from vehicular assault, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page.

Allen's death comes only a few weeks after DPS Trooper Thomas Nipper was struck and killed during a traffic stop on Interstate 35 in Temple.

The Thursday incident was hardly Blacks first violent encounter with law enforcement.

Smith County Court records show that the Lindale native was indicted by a Grand Jury there last month for aggravated assault against a public servant and evading arrest, both felonies. He had previously served jail time after pleading guilty to a separate, 2015 assault on a public servant, court records show.

His family did not respond to calls for comment Friday.

In a statement released Thursday, DPS Director Steven McCraw praised Allen for his "selfless sacrifice on Thanksgiving Day."

In a statement released Thursday, DPS Director Steven McCraw praised Allen for his "selfless sacrifice on Thanksgiving Day."

"Our DPS family is heartbroken tonight after one of Texas' finest law enforcement officers was killed in the line of duty," McCraw wrote. "Texas Highway Patrol Trooper Damon Allen was a loving husband and father of three, and we ask for your prayers for his entire family and his many friends and colleagues during the difficult days ahead. Trooper Allen's dedication to duty, and his bravery and selfless sacrifice on this Thanksgiving Day, will never be forgotten."

Gov. Greg Abbott meanwhile called the killing "callous" and "heinous."

"The killer will face justice, and the State of Texas will continue to offer our unwavering support for the men and women in law enforcement who keep our communities safe," Abbott said in a statement.

Black apparently fled the shooting in a gray 2012 Chevrolet Malibu with a Texas license plate. Authorities caught up with him in Waller County, where they fired some shots at him. He fled on foot and authorities followed him for more than an hour.

Using night goggles, authorities said the suspect was on top of some hay bales and didn't appear to have a long gun. He then crawled along some brush near Wyatt Chapel Road, authorities said.
Today, Monte Melkonian, a National Hero of Armenia and Artsakh, would have turned sixty.

To mark the occasion, Hetq spoke with Karo Tovmasyan, who served with Monte in Martuni during the Artsakh liberation struggle. Melkonian served as the regional commander of Armenian forces in Martuni.

I met Monte on February 22,1992 in the village of Tchartar. We were clearing out the enemy's firing positions. It was the afternoon when we started to advance. I met Monte at the intersection of Martuni-Fizuli-Tchartar. I saw this guy who turned out to be Monte. [Karo laughs]. He was holding a map, trying to get his whereabouts. I approached him and asked what he wanted to know. He turned around and asked me who I was. I told him I was one of the guys from the Tchartar platoon. Thats how we got acquainted.

The fact that Monte was a hard taskmaster is backed up by those who traveled the same war road as him, and not only soldiers.

He was strict, but just. If he gave you a task, you had to perform it. If you didnt, oh boy, hed show you his strict side. Im not saying hed hit you, but by slowly explaining and getting angry, the person would understand what he meant and not make the same mistake. Once, we had advanced and our tanks had wound up in the enemys minefield. We were caught in a dead-end. I went to assess the situation and reported back to him [Monte]. I told him it would take ten minutes for the guys to get the tanks out of there. He replied- I dont believe it. I told him that if he didnt believe it, lets bet on it. He said  If they dont make it out, Ill break your head. We kept time. The tanks slowly made it out in time. Monte turned to me and said  You just saved your head.

Tovmasyan says that he and the other soldiers learnt much on the battlefield due to Monte  military skills and other, human qualities.

We were grown men. But he was able to instruct us and convey his values to us. He taught us to be more patriotic, to love ones fellow human being, to appreciate beauty in general. He was always attentive to his surroundings. His glance never overlooked that which was beautiful.

It was early spring. We went out to inspect our defensive positions. Before reaching them, he stopped and looked out at the fields. He said  What a beautiful position we have. I figured he was talking about our military positions and said  Well Avo jan, we try our best. He replied  Im not talking about our military position but the fields, the flowers.

Tovmasyan didnt want to talk about Montes negative traits. He said the commander didnt have any. He could only think of one thing that came close.

Perhaps his negative trait was that he placed the issue of starting a family on the back burner. He didnt think about his personal life all that much. He never asked for anything from his friends who came from overseas. He only wanted what was necessary for a soldier on the battlefield.

Tovmasyan assures me that there are those who continue the work of Avo [Montes nickname in Artsakh]. He cites the heroic Armenian soldiers who fought and died in the April 4 Day War in 2016. He points to the former soldiers serving under Avo, who have now become army commanders themselves. Tovmasyan says they all try to be as fair-minded as Monte.

In Martuni, the people regard Monte as one of their own, even though he was born thousands of miles away in California.

Today, in Martuni, young and old alike will be celebrating Montes birthday. Those that knew him will be reminiscing about the days, terrible and triumphant, they shared. About friends left behind

Top photo (from left): Monte and Karo Tovmasyan
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 []
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The Florida Highway Patrol is searching the for person involved in a shooting on Florida's Turnpike Saturday morning.

2 people shot on Florida's Turnpike

Troopers said shooting prompted by road rage

Troopers searching for suspect and vehicle



The shooting happened at about 10:15 a.m. in the southbound lanes of the Turnpike, near mile marker 272.

A 37-year-old man and 17-year-old girl, both from Miami, were shot by someone in the a gray Toyota Camry, troopers said.

They were driving in a Chevy Impala when the shooting happened.

The shooting may have been prompted by road rage, Sgt. Kim Montes said.



Both people were taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center with minor injuries.

The driver of the Camry fled the scene. Troopers are still searching for the car.

Troopers are collecting evidence and reviewing surveillance video.

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Crimeline at 1-800-423-8477.


An interview with International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Deputy Director Marina Walker-Guevara.

The ICIJ recently published The Paradise Papers, a set of 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. The newspaper shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and a network of more than 380 journalists.

The interview with Marina Walker-Guevara was conducted during the Global Investigative Journalism Conference, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Marina Walker was a speaker at several conference panels.

A native of Argentina, Walker Guevaras investigations have won or shared more than 40 national and international journalism awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and Honors from Long Island Universitys George Polk Awards, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Overseas Press Club, Bartlett and Steele Awards, and Columbia Universitys Maria Moors Cabot Award for Distinguished Latin American Reporting (special citation).

- Marina, I have noticed that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has recently started crowdfunding, and you also regularly email your readers to support ICIJ. Does this model of self-financing work for you?

- The majority of our funding still comes from foundations and from a few wealthy individuals, but mostly from foundations, traditional foundations like the Ford foundation, OSF-Open Society foundation, etc. But we are increasingly trying to create a membership model, where we can fundraise from just regular citiizens, who value our work. Its a much better model for us, and even though we are very independent from our funders, but its much better to have a million people give you one dollar than one rich organization give you a million dollars.

- And do people, I mean ordinary readers, financially support you?

- Yes, ordinary people are contributing. For example, in the first few days of the Panama Papers, we raised something like $30,000. Those are like a lot of new individual donors, that before had never contributed to ICIJ and now they have contributed, even if they have contributed five dollars, ten dollars, fifty dollars These are people that are likely to come back and maybe fund us again and give another donation. We are trying to make relationships with them. Sometimes, if we have a trip to New York, we would look at the database and see whoever the donors in New York are, and sometimes we will go and meet them. We would call somebody, not necessarily the ones who have donated the most money, but somebody who donated two or three hundred dollars. We would say welcome to New York, would you like to meet, to have coffee? We would like to tell you more about the ICIJ. We are connecting with those.

- And what percentage of your funding comes from ordinary people?

- Oh, I think at this point we just have started, and so its probably like maybe 5%. We have some individuals who are wealthy, who have donated significant amounts of money. So, if you count the wealthy, what is called high-net-worth individuals, then you know 12-15%. But if we count just small donations, it would be like 5%, so we are working on that.

- After making such a large contribution, don t the high-net worth donors try to influence your work?

- No, when they donate to ICIJ they know from the beginning that they will have no access to any knowledge. They are not allowed to influence anybody, we dont talk to them about stories. We dont accept any donation that are directed to something. We only accept donations that we call general support. Basically, money that we can use however we see fit. So, no individual comes to us and says, I will give you money to investigate this hospital in Chicago. If somebody says that, we decline the money. We just say thank you very much, we appreciate that you like ICIJ, but we are not for hire, so if you want to contribute to us, you just give us money and we will use it the way we see fit. Were really transparent in our website, in our stories, in everything about how we spend our money.

- Are business corporations interested in your activity? Do they support you, besides the foundations?

- No, we are not seeking their support that much. Im not calling Coca Cola to get their money. These are the companies that we are investigating, so why do I want to create a conflict of interest. We are trying to improve our business following, and maybe there are companies that is possible to get their sponsorship for training, for travel, for other things. But so far, we dont have any private corporations giving us money. What we do sometimes is we accept in-kind contributions, for example there is a private company that creates a software that we use for our investigations. And they allow us that software for free, and recently they have funded a fellowship for a technologist to come and work in our team to improve our reporting, our data analysis. So that would be an example of a corporation who is giving us an in-kind contribution without any influence on our work.

- Does the support of ordinary readers grow after prominent investigations like the Panama Papers or Paradise Papers?

- Yes. We always see an increase in contributions from ordinary citizens. After Panama Papers it was very noticeable, now its again very obvious with the Paradise Papers. And we see people that are also doing very cool things, like they donate and then they even tweet, I just donated to ICIJ, because I believe in their work, follow my example, whatever So you know they share, they are proud you know, these people they feel so disconnected from their elected officials in their communities, they feel like they contrast anybody, and they feel that some media organizations like ICIJ give them hope. We take every contribution very seriously, sometimes I think why do even people bother to go on PayPal and do all the stuff for a dollar, but those are the most valuable ones, these must be some teachers, some bus drivers, who literally can only contribute a dollar.

- Do GIJN conferences help ICIJ widen its network?

- They are really important, because people here are like four times as big as our partnerships, so we are always finding new partners, learning from others, being invited to join our projects, we never miss this conference, because its really important, a lot of collaborations happen.

- Marina, are the leaks you have published legal? If not, how do you avoid prosecution?

- We have always been passive recipients of leaks that come to us. Our journalistic responsibility is to never cross that line of breaking any law to obtain any information. We are passive recepients, and the information is in the public interest. It's not for us to judge or investigate how the information was obtained. Most of these disclosures came from people who share data they shouldn't have shared probably, but they did it for a bigger cause, for the public interest.

- So, law enforcement has never been interested in where youve got the information? Do they have the right to approach you and demand that you reveal your sources?

- No, because they know that we are protected by the First Amendment in the US, and other laws around the world. I think they also know that we are not the ones going and obtaining anything, that we are a trusted organization to which whistle blowers are coming. And it would be completely wrong to focus on ICIJ.

And the issues we are reporting of, about national security, I think there might be some provisions that if we are reporting something that is of national security where they can try to take us to court . But this is the extreme situation. I can say in 99% of the cases nobody has the right to come and force you to reveal your source.

- And how does that First Amendment protect you?

- The First Amendment is the constitutional protection that journalists have in the United States, that allows you to publish information that is in the public interest and to generally conduct their reporting in a safe environment. You are protected as long as you have not broken any laws or crossed any line that you should not have to cross.

- And what is that line?

- It's breaking the law. It's like if I go and hack somebody.

- And if somebody gives you the information, it's ok?

Yes, if you are a passive recepient, its like a Watergate. In the old days, sources were talking to you in the garage, in the parking garage and perhaps give you information, documents, and now its large disclosures of digital data given in different ways electronically, because nobody goes to meet you in the parking garage. So, its the same as Watergate, only that its via technology.

- Were there any cases when you suspended your cooperation with any media organization in the world, and if yes, what were the reasons?

- I dont think we have ever suspended cooperation during the course of an investigation, because that would create a liability. But, what we have done is we have not worked again after we published the project; we have not come back to that partner. One reason is they didnt share their findings. They had access the data and the documents, but the requirement is you dont get access and then go to your corner and dont tell anybody what you found in Armenia.

The responsibility is that you go back in the platforms we provide, and you share your findings and your reporting and research. If the partners do that systematically then why are we even cooperating with that partner. We try to train partners and give them an opportunity, and in 98 % of the cases we go back to them, they are great partners, and there are few cases in which we change because the journalists or media organizations are not ready to play high level and its riskier than rewarding to work with them.

- And my last question. How can journalists or media organizations cooperate with the ICIJ? Do you have to be a member?

- If ICIJ has official members of the network, you dont need to be a member to work with us. All we say is you need to be a trustworthy and an established reporter. If you have a great story or if you found something in the public offshore leaks database and you want to try to continue to follow the money and get access to the documents we have, you can come to us. And if you have a legitimate story, and you are a journalist who is also a good team player then we will be likely to want to work again. They can also e-mail [email protected], they can go to our website and find phone numbers and other e-mails and get in touch with us.

Photo:www.mdzol.com
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Jack Stauffacher, a master printer who taught himself on a mail-order press and ended up with his austere and exquisite typography in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, has died.

Mr. Stauffacher died Nov. 16 at his longtime home in Tiburon, said his daughter, Francesca Stauffacher of Corte Madera. He was 96.

In a nearly 80-year career that started when he was a teenager, Mr. Stauffacher worked with metal and wood type and printed everything from business cards and tickets to fine art books and museum monographs.

Along the way, he was part of the North Beach bohemia that spawned the Beats after World War II. He also was the subject of a solo show, Jack Stauffacher: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Architecture and Design, at SFMOMA in 2002, and a group show, Belles Lettres: the Art of Typography in 2004-05.

Jack will be remembered by his passion for the written word and the ability for type to contribute to the emotive quality of text, said Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, curator of architecture and design at SFMOMA.

A third-generation San Franciscan of Swiss descent, Jack Werner Stauffacher was born Dec. 19, 1920, and grew up in San Mateo, where his father owned a plumbing company.

As a 13-year-old, he saw an ad in Popular Mechanics advertising a starter press kit for $15. He sent away for it, and once hed taught himself the trade, he opened the Greenwood Press, a printing studio he had his father build behind his familys house on Greenwood Avenue, where he got the name.

Ive never looked back since, in terms of my profession, Mr. Stauffacher told The Chronicle in an interview 20 years ago. When he was 20, the Greenwood Press printed its first book, 250 copies of Three Choice Sketches by Geoffrey Crayon Gent by Washington Irving.

Next, he published an illustrated guide called Bicycle Polo: Techniques and Fundamentals. No one knows about bicycle polo, he told The Chronicle. I was passionate enough to make a book. The first book about bicycle polo in the world.

Drafted into the Army at the outset of World War II, Mr. Stauffacher served as a mapmaker. Discharged after coming down with pleurisy, he returned to San Francisco, then a national printing center with Grabhorn Press, Taylor & Taylor and John Henry Nash, among others.

It was like going to Paris, he said.

In 1947, Mr. Stauffacher moved the Greenwood Press from San Mateo to Sansome Street in the city. His older brother, Frank, was a well-known avant-garde filmmaker who introduced him to the bohemian scene in North Beach. He met and befriended Dylan Thomas, Henry Miller, Ansel Adams, Alan Watts, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Rexroth.

It was a very rich moment for us, he recalled. There was the postwar dedication of the artist. Somebody said Oh, youre a Beat, Jack, But Im not. I came out of the earlier period that reflected a different social consciousness.

While visiting the old SFMOMA in the Veterans Building, Mr. Stauffacher met Josephine Grimaldi, an Italian immigrant. They married in 1948.

In 1955, Mr. Stauffacher closed the Greenwood Press and moved his wife and two children to Florence, Italy. Hed received a Fulbright grant for three years of study under the Italian masters Giovanni Mardersteig and Alberto Tallone.

He was hired as an assistant professor of typographic design at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He returned to San Francisco in 1963, when he was hired as the typographic director at the Stanford University Press.

He did dozens and dozens of books and book covers for them, said Dennis Letbetter, a photographer and longtime collaborator with Mr. Stauffacher. He also taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1966, he left Stanford to reopen the Greenwood Press at 300 Broadway.

It was a one-man shop he maintained until his death. While raising his family in a variety of rental flats in the Marina, he rode his Italian bicycle to work, always picking a flower along the way for the lapel of his tweed jacket. Later, after moving to Tiburon, he took the ferry to work.

In 1974, he was hired by UC Santa Cruz to start the Cowell Press at Cowell College. Many of his students there went on to careers in graphic design, including Les Ferriss, now the master printer at the Bancroft Library.

He was a scholar printer, Ferriss said. He was my mentor, my colleague and my friend for over 30 years.

Among his greatest honors was when the Book Club of California published A Typographic Journey: The History of the Greenwood Press and Bibliography, 1934-2000. A portfolio entitled Wooden Letters from 300 Broadway was purchased by SFMOMA, which owns nearly 100 of Mr. Stauffachers works, including experimental compositions using wood and metal type. He also designed the lettering for the museums tote bag.

In 2011, Mr. Staufachers archive was purchased by the Bancroft. His 1966 Vandercook Cylinder Handpress was also purchased. It has been restored and is being used by the Bancroft Library Press.

His last book, Oxen, Plough, Bicycle, a memoir of his years in Tuscany with his own photography and dated journal entries from the 1950s, was published this fall.

This man never retired, Letbetter said. He was a visionary in the printing world.

As such, he was central to a Friday afternoon guild, where printers, type designers, poets, filmmakers and academics from all over the world would meet at a cafe in North Beach.

A year ago, the salon met as usual, with no indication that it would be the last time. But Mr. Stauffacher was 95 and was losing energy. He called to cancel before the next lunch. Rather than continue without him, the salon folded after more than 25 years.

Without Jack it would have been unstructured, dissolute and lacking in discipline, Letbetter said. He was the true pillar of a humanist approach to design.

Survivors include his wife of nearly 70 years, Josephine Grimaldi Stauffacher of Tiburon; a daughter, Paula Stauffacher of San Francisco; a son, Mario of Tiburon; and a daughter, Francesca Stauffacher, her husband, Christopher Rand, and a granddaughter, Isabella Bertaud, all of Corte Madera. Services are pending.

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SamWhitingSF
The biggest tobacco companies in the United States will start running prime-time television commercials and full-page ads in national newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle on Sunday - but the campaign is unlikely to spur enthusiasm for their products.

"More people," one ad says, "die every year from smoking than murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined." Another reads: "Cigarette companies intentionally designed cigarettes with enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction."

Each ad starts by noting that Altria, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard and Philip Morris USA were ordered to make the statements by a federal court.

The messages stem from a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department in 1999. As part of the 2006 ruling in the suit, which sought to punish cigarette makers for decades of deceiving the public about the dangers of their product, the companies were ordered to disseminate "corrective statements" centered on the health risks and addictive nature of smoking. But until now, they resisted through appeals and by wrangling over wording.

"It's both an important victory and a frustrating one," said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, who has worked on the case since 1999. The tobacco companies "have spent millions of dollars and a decade of time resisting a court order that simply requires them to publish truthful facts about their products and their behavior," he said.

The initial order came from a 1,600-page civil racketeering judgment from Judge Gladys Kessler that excoriated the tobacco industry for lying about and misrepresenting its products beginning in the 1950s.

She said they had sought "to make money with little, if any, regard for individual illness and suffering, soaring health costs or the integrity of the legal system."

The corrective statements were meant to appear in places that tobacco companies had "historically used to promulgate false smoking and health messages." In addition to the TV and newspaper ads, there will be messaging on the packs themselves and on the company's websites, though details are still being worked out.

Altria, which owns Philip Morris USA, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, declined to comment beyond an Oct. 2 release about the ads, which said it was working to make its business practices more responsible. Murray Garnick, the company's general counsel, said in the statement that "includes communicating openly about the health effects of our products, continuing to support cessation efforts, helping reduce underage tobacco use and developing potentially reduced-risk products."

R.J. Reynolds, which is part of British American Tobacco with Lorillard, said in an email that the company was "fully complying with its obligations under the court order."
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Carl Icahn has taken a 13.5 percent stake in Sand-Ridge Energy and says he and his affiliates intend to vote against its "nonsensical" agreement to acquire Bonanza Creek Energy for about $746 million.

The billionaire investor said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that he may also propose alternative transactions at a later date and might call a special shareholder's meeting to remove the company's board. Sand-Ridge rose 8 percent Friday to $18.90.

It's the first activist stake taken by Icahn since December 2015 when he invested in Pep Boys-Manny Moe & Jack, which was bought by Icahn Enterprises the following year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Representatives of Icahn attempted to reach SandRidge CEO James Bennett Wednesday and will continue trying to meet with him and his management team soon, according to the filing.

Icahn and his partners said they looked "forward to hearing what possible justifications management could have for entering into such a seemingly ill-advised, dilutive and value-destructive acquisition and why they believe the transaction is anything more than an entrenchment technique."

A representative for the Oklahoma City-based oil and gas producer didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Icahn said he had read other shareholders' opposition to the SandRidge deal, including the views of Fir Tree Partners. Though Icahn said he hasn't spoken directly with anyone at Fir Tree, he said he "could not be more in agreement" with it, especially its conclusion that the Bonanza Creek transaction reminds it of "SandRidge's prior history when this same management team acquired disparate assets and added leverage with reckless abandon."

Shares in SandRidge fell as much as 21 percent after it announced its plans earlier this month to acquire Denver-based Bonanza Creek in a cash-and-stock deal. The transaction is expected to be voted on by shareholders in March and to close by the end of the first quarter.

Icahn, who rose to fame in the 1980s as a corporate raider, has since re-branded himself as an activist investor and shareholder advocate.
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Schenectady

Three new upstate New York casinos have so far failed to generate the big payoffs they projected, meaning less money shared with towns, cities and counties.

Slot machine and table game revenue from casinos in the Finger Lakes, the Southern Tier and Schenectady have fallen short of the rosy revenue projections operators produced when applying for licenses. For instance, Rivers Casino & Resort in Schenectady had gambling revenues of $105 million after nine months, putting it on track to finish short of its minimum $181 million projection.

And that has affected Schenectady, where city officials are bracing to bring in hundreds of thousands dollars less than the $2.75 million they budgeted for this year from the revenue. Councilman Vince Riggi likened the situation to a kid at Christmas getting fewer presents than expected.

"It's a plus, but it's still a disappointment, that's the way I see it," Riggi said. "We were told to expect much more."

State officials and casino owners argue that any revenue from Rivers, del Lago Resort and Casino in the Finger Lakes, and the Southern Tier's Tioga Downs Casino and Resort represents a stream of money for localities that didn't exist before. And they say the casinos have delivered on the state's main goal of creating jobs and new economic activity in struggling areas.

"It's been a huge success. Whatever has been promised from an economic development standpoint has been delivered by the casinos," said Tioga owner Jeff Gural. "The real losers, frankly, are the owners of the three casinos."

The casinos' slots and table games have raised $88.8 million. Eighty percent of the money goes to public schools, which have set levels of aid unaffected by casino revenue fluctuations. The rest goes to county and municipal governments.

That comes in addition to gambling revenue from horse tracks and five Indian casinos. The Indian casino payments are down steeply this year because the Senecas stopped making payments for their three western New York casinos.

The tribe and the state are headed to arbitration in the dispute over compact terms.

Analysts blame a crowded market for the disappointing new casino revenues. Aside from the five full-scale Indian casinos, New York is home to 10 "racino" horse tracks with video lottery terminals. The Oneidas, who operate the Turning Stone casino in central New York, also run a mini-casino in a strip mall near Syracuse.

"Obviously there is a pie that is divided up too much," said Alan Woinski, president of Gaming USA Corp., a New Jersey-based gambling consultancy.

A spokesman for the state Gaming Commission said it will be more accurate to analyze third-year revenues, where the casinos are more established.

Del Lago spokesman Steven Greenberg noted that their hotel only opened this summer and that they are confident about growth in 2018.

"They're new entities," he said. "You've got to give this some time to build their businesses."

Del Lago Resort and Casino generated $113 million in gambling revenue in its first nine months, putting it on track to finish short of its projected $263 million.

Woinski noted that competition will only increase next year.

A fourth $1.2 billion casino resort selected by state officials is set to open in March in the Catskills, about 90 miles northwest of New York City. Another casino less than an hour from the New York border in Springfield, Mass., is set to open later in 2018. And the Oneidas are set to open a second mini-casino near Syracuse in the spring.

"It's very hard to see a situation where things improve," Woinski said.
The Trump administration is preparing to stop supplying weapons to ethnic Kurdish fighters in Syria, the White House acknowledged Friday, a move reflecting renewed focus on furthering a political settlement to the civil war there and countering Iranian influence now that the Islamic State caliphate is largely vanquished.

Word of the policy change long sought by neighboring Turkey came Friday, not from Washington but from Ankara. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters at a news conference that President Donald Trump had pledged to stop arming the fighters, known as the YPG, during a phone call between Trump and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"Mr. Trump clearly stated that he had given clear instructions, and that the YPG won't be given arms and that this nonsense should have ended a long time ago," the Associated Press quoted Cavusoglu as saying to reporters following the call.

Initially, the administration's national security team appeared surprised by the Turks' announcement and uncertain what to say about it. The State Department referred questions to the White House, and hours passed with no confirmation from the National Security Council.

In late afternoon, the White House confirmed the weapons cutoff would happen, though it provided no details on timing.

"Consistent with our previous policy, President Trump also informed President Erdogan of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria, now that the battle of Raqqa is complete and we are progressing into a stabilization phase to ensure that ISIS cannot return," the White House statement said, referring to the recent liberation of the Syrian city that had served as the Islamic State's de facto capital.

The decision to stop arming the Kurds will remove a major source of tension between the United States and Turkey, a NATO ally. But it is likely to further anger the Kurds, who already feel betrayed since the United States told them to hand over hard-won territory to the Syrian government.

Turkey has pointed to the YPG's affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers' Party - a Kurdish rebel group that has fought the Turkish state for decades - as evidence of its terrorist ties. The YPG, which formed amid the chaos of the Syrian civil war, has worked with U.S. forces to oust the Islamic State from key areas there.

The Obama administration began arming the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia, because they were considered the most effective fighters against Islamic State militants.

The phone call between Trump and Erdogan followed a summit on Syria held this week in Sochi, Russia. It was attended by Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Russia and Iran backed the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad and helped Syrian forces to rout the Islamic State.

The two powers, along with Turkey, have forged an alliance that is advancing its own peace plan, in which the United States would play little role beyond being an observer. They have said U.S. troops should leave Syria now that the Islamic State's defeat appears imminent.

But a U.S. withdrawal without a peace plan well on its way would be victory for Assad, and by extension, Iran and Russia.

So U.S. officials have said they plan to keep American troops in northern Syria - and continue working with Kurdish fighters - to pressure Assad to make concessions during peace talks brokered by the United Nations in Geneva, stalemated for three years now. "We're not going to just walk away right now," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said last week.

James Jeffrey, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 2008 to 2010, said the decision to cease supplying weapons to the Kurds appears to reflect an evolving strategy to keep playing a productive role in Syria and weaken Iranian-backed militias and Hezbollah, both of which fought alongside Syrian forces to regain territory from the militants.

"Fighting ISIS was such a priority, we had to focus on that before other things," he said, using a common acronym for the Islamic State. "Now as the conventional fight is over, we're trying to come up with a bigger policy. We can't do it without Turkey. It's pure geography. We have to mend fences with the Turks if we want to remain in Syria."
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As darkness fell at Travis Park on Friday night, Carrie Briseno recalled when she was a little girl and her parents took her to Alamo Plaza for the traditional lighting ceremony of the city tree.

Friday night, she was with her daughter, Vanessa Aguilar, and son-in-law, Gilbert Aguilar, who had brought their 2-year-old son, Dominic, who danced to the songs of mariachis at the lit stage.

I used to bring my kids when they were little, said Briseno, 55. Now, they bring their kids.

Its time for a new tradition, she said, both for her family and the city.

For the first time, the giant 55-foot fir tree stood at the heart of Travis Park instead of in front of the Alamo, as it had for more than 30 years.

Briseno and the Aguilars joined in the whooping and hollering as the crowd watched the bright red lights of the tree and 200,000 white ones throughout the park flicker on, kicking off the citys yuletide season and the 33rd Annual H-E-B Tree Lighting Ceremony.

City officials said future construction linked to Alamo master plan development led to combining the lighting of the tree with Centro San Antonios Annual Lighting of Travis Park. With the controversial Confederate memorial gone, there was room at the much larger park with easier access for the public, officials said.

The tree and lights will be on display through Jan. 7.

Lori Houston, assistant city manager, said visitors to Alamo Plaza would still be able to snap holiday photos of a tree in front of the historic structure: an 18-foot-tall decorated one also provided by H-E-B.

Theres a contingent of San Antonians who arent happy about the move and are leaving a tangible statement at the old site in the form of small Christmas trees. Local resident Steve Monreal told mySA.com that he set up his tiny tree to protest the break with the traditional ceremony.

Opponents plan a ceremony of their own at 1 p.m. Dec. 2 to light up more than 100 trees at Alamo Plaza that are all less than 3 feet tall, Gina Castaneda said.

For his part, Gilbert Aguilar didnt mind the change of venue.

I like it, he said. Its more open here. Over there, its more crammed in.

For the past three decades, numerous grocery chains have sponsored the trees that became a yuletide icon outside the Alamo. H-E-B has provided the Christmas tree since the mid-1990s.

Before the lights turned on across the grounds at Travis Park, Mayor Ron Nirenberg welcomed the crowd and noted that the event has always been about tradition and celebrating the holidays together. Nirenberg also said the hearts and prayers of San Antonians go out to neighboring cities that have suffered hard times this past year.

Throughout the evening, Santa Claus wandered through the crowd, stopping to pose for photos and hand out candy to the little ones.

The lights and music drew Diane and Rich Weyer and their friends, Jim and Donna Franklin, on vacation from central New Jersey. Jim Franklin, in his mid-50s, said they didnt have any idea about the tree lighting ceremony when they made plans to visit San Antonio.

As they walked beyond the towering bright-red tree, Diane Weyer, 64, said the ceremony was a bonus to their holiday trip.

We just started walking and saw the lights, she said. Its very festive.

Tradition continued as San Antonians and visitors head to the River Walk and the bridges to watch the 36th annual Ford Holiday River Parade.

A crowd estimate was not provided, but last year 50,000 people attended the parade, according to the Paseo Del Rio Association.

This years theme was Christmas at the Movies, and each of the 28 floats had movie themes, including A Christmas Story, The Polar Express and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Cheryl Ladd of Charlies Angels fame was the grand marshal.

Christmas music heralded the approach of many of the floats. One played Lets All Go to The Lobby and released a buttery popcorn scent.

Carla Rodgers, 44, and her two daughters hadnt attended the parade in at least four years, but this year Rodgers in-laws from Cibolo wanted to buy tickets, so the family went.

This is awesome because last time it was freezing cold, said Rodgers at about 8 p.m. as temperatures hovered around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. The family also paid for a better spot this year, on the River Walk between the Shops at Rivercenter mall and the Convention Center.

Emily Rodgers, 12, said she liked the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer float, which featured several frisky dogs.

Julia Aguilar, 43, of San Antonio, and her family watched nearby, eating a Chinese dinner from the malls food court.

Aguilar and her sons, aged 19 and 7, come to the parade every year. The kids get to enjoy the night, Aguilar said.

Her friend Maria Lopez, 42, begged to differ as she waited for the float from her daughters alma mater, the University of the Incarnate Word, depicting the movie A Christmas Carol.

Im enjoying myself more than the kids, Lopez said. I love to see the kinds of designs they show.

A Star Wars float was a big hit with the crowd, who cheered as Storm Troopers waved.

Oh my gosh, is it Star Wars? called Brandy Flores, 33, from her perch on a 4-foot wall outside Range, a steakhouse on the river near Houston and St. Marys streets. Boba Fett! Princess Leia!

Flores and her mother, 54-year-old Sheila Melnick, come to the parade every year, but Flores husband, Albert Flores, said this was his first time at the parade despite his lifelong residence in San Antonio. The family said they enjoyed the lights, festive atmosphere and easy access to the parade after seeing retired Spurs player Matt Bonner at the tree lighting in Travis Park.

All you had to do was walk right down the road, Melnick said. I love San Antonio. I think its a fantastic city.
A court in South Africa on Friday more than doubled the prison sentence for Oscar Pistorius to 13 years and five months for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp.

Pistorius, who gained fame as a double-amputee runner who competed in the 2012 Olympics, fatally shot Steenkamp four times through a closed bathroom door at his home in Pretoria in the early hours of Valentine's Day in 2013. Pistorius claimed he thought Steenkamp was an intruder.

Under a 2015 murder conviction, Pistorius was originally sentenced to six years in prison.

On Friday, South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal called that sentence "shockingly lenient," and more than doubled it after unanimously upholding an appeal by prosecutors, the Associated Press reported.

Under the new sentence, the earliest Pistorius will be eligible for parole is 2023, according to the AP.

The lengthened sentence was another twist in a protracted legal battle over the case.

Conviction changed

Pistorius, 31, was originally convicted in September 2014 of culpable homicide, or manslaughter in the United States, and later sentenced to five years in prison.

"I am of the view that a noncustodial sentence would send the wrong message to the community, but a long sentence would not be appropriate because it would lack the elements of mercy," Judge Thokozile Masipa said at the sentencing.

Steenkamp's family said at the time they were "satisfied" with the five-year sentence, even if it wasn't what they were hoping for.

In 2015, South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal overturned Masipa's culpable homicide conviction and instead found Pistorius guilty of murder, a more severe charge that, under South African law, carries a minimum sentence of 15 years.

"He is a person well-trained in the use of firearms and was holding his weapon at the ready in order to shoot," the court's decision read. "He paused at the entrance to the bathroom and when he became aware that there was a person in the toilet cubicle, he fired four shots through the door. And he never offered an acceptable explanation for having done so."

Dramatic downfall

The decision sent Pistorius back to court for resentencing. Masipa, the trial judge, sentenced Pistorius to six years in prison for murder, effectively only adding a year to his culpable homicide sentence. The decision shocked many who had expected a sentence of between 10 and 15 years, with credit for time already served.

He remains, Masipa said, "a good candidate" for rehabilitation. In addition, she said, "he has already spent some time," 12 months, serving his original sentence.

It remains to be seen if Friday's decision by South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal will mean the end of Pistorius's legal saga. According to the AP, his lawyers can still challenge the new, lengthened sentence with South Africa's Constitutional Court, the country's highest court.

The decision marked another step in the dramatic downfall of Pistorius, who became known as the "Blade Runner" and "the fastest man on no legs" for running on two blade-like prosthetics. He was one of the few athletes to compete in both the Paralympic Games and the Olympic Games after qualifying for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
When I was in elementary school, my mom declared that Charles Manson was the devil.

Shed been reading Helter Skelter.

The dog-eared paperback was creepy; the cover was black with red letters. The words Helter Skelter were made to look as if theyd been scrawled on the top half of the cover. The subtitle, The True Story of the Manson Murders, floated underneath. My mom caught me thumbing through the book and told me to leave it alone. The book was written way over my head, but being told to put it down made me want to read all about the true story that was being kept from me.

I got the main idea.

Helter, Skelter, True Story and Murders were big, scary words in our bilingual home. My parents, aware that their daughter was always eavesdropping, were careful to keep ugliness away. We watched El Chavo and Happy Days and everything aired with the CBS special presentation lead-in, especially the Christmas stop-animation specials about Rudolph. When Eyewitness News at 10 came on, it was time for me to leave the room and get ready for bed, and if I wasnt snoring by the time the newsreel came on, there was trouble.

But people were talking about the Manson Family. A made-for-TV movie based on the book aired everywhere  but our house. Pictures of a wild-eyed Manson and the people who did his bidding were all over The Weekly World News and other supermarket tabloids. The neighbor kids with lesser media restrictions were considerably freaked out.

At the time, Manson was the ultimate boogeyman, much worse than El Cucuy or La Llorona. Manson swayed a group of fair-haired, middle-class young people to do things so terrible they could only be fully revealed within the pages of Vincent Bugliosis creepy little paperback. Nobody could understand how he did it or why they listened. Who but the devil himself could be more crafty?

Over the years, Manson made the news every time he and his family members were denied parole. He shook his permanently disheveled hair as he ranted, he stuck his tongue out at the camera, and the swastika on his forehead seemed the least bizarre thing about him. He became Americas most notorious criminal.

But symbolism is funny. Goth rocker Marilyn Manson took the surname to up his creepy factor. U2, Aerosmith, Motley Crue and Siouxie and the Banshees all covered the Beatles song Helter Skelter despite the fact that it had become synonymous with Mansons crimes  although if theyd re-recorded Yesterday, it wouldnt have been more than a throwback to the 60s. Maybe this took some of the chill off the name Manson.

Or maybe its because America grew up. We called Manson the devil, but have since met criminals far creepier. Today, we have prime-time series that focus on criminal atrocities uglier than those featured last season. We have drills designed to protect elementary school pupils from live shooter situations. And we have internet profiles on the evil that humans have been inflicting on one another for centuries before anybody ever heard of Charles Manson.

Manson died in prison last week, having lived a long life locked away but not far from the public eye. Good riddance; he was a terrible person who really did embody evil.

But was he the devil? Hardly.

Mariaanglinwrites@yahoo.com
For a while now, Ive been telling friends, family and classes, Dont fear the robots.

Theyll only make our lives easier, I say. If we dont have jobs and income, robot-made products will have no customers.

Some folks have taken Skynet from the Terminator movies too literally.

After some thought, though, maybe some caution is in order. Perhaps we should be wary of the robots that create misleading headlines and flimsy stories. Those programmed to manufacture self-righteousness warrant suspicion as well. Worst of all are the cyborgs empowered by their masters to create burdensome taxing and spending policy.

As if on cue, the politically cynical concern about the federal budget deficit is back in vogue. Who is concerned at the moment depends on who is in power. These days, its Democrats who feign such anxiety since Republicans hold all levers of federal control. A few years back, Republicans were the worrywarts, and a few years before that it was Democrats.

Republicans problem is that they cant be taken seriously when it comes to curtailing spending, the real issue. Not only do some of them favor more (defense, propping up Obamacare, building a border wall), but theyre not even willing to rein in the bloated leviathan thats been built up over the past century. Never mind President Donald Trumps campaign pledge not to touch or reform the entitlement state.

As for Democrats, no one who seriously thinks the rich can fund the vast majority of government or who characterizes slowing the growth rate of spending as a cut could possibly know enough to care about budget deficits.

Watching these two parties compete to show the most concern about the deficit is like watching a Democrat leech and a Republican leech attached to the American citizen as they argue whos responsible for the patients deficit of blood.

Meanwhile, youre probably aware of the positions staked out by these parties and their respective sympathizers in the punditocracy regarding tax reform: Leftists think we shouldnt enact tax cuts for the rich at the expense of vital federal government programs, while the right wing generally supports reform as a way to kick-start the economy that will pay for itself.

But before congressional leaders even released detailed plans, the media had all they needed with the presidents nine-page framework. MarketWatch put out a tentative tax reform-effect calculator (based partially on Republican proposals of prior years). The story that grabbed my attention, however, was on National Public Radios website. It had the click-bait headline cautioning Americans not to pin their hopes on the promised $4,000 raise from the GOP tax plan.

It reinforced this persistent notion that we live in a static society. Its that concept, after all, that informs the Congressional Budget Offices predictions of the effects of legislation; $1 of tax cuts equals $1 of tax revenue lost by the government. CBO analyses assume little ripple effect, few changes in behavior. In this case, a report by the presidents Council of Economic Advisers regarding the proposed reduction of corporate income taxes was implied to predict an exact effect on individuals.

Nothing can be forecast perfectly in a relatively free, dynamic economy, especially with so many other exogenous influences: new discoveries or inventions, business creation/closure, the regulatory state, trade policy, events near and far. Most productive members of society arent gullible enough to think that as soon as any such reform passes, they can expect a raise soon thereafter. They know raises will continue to be based on the same core principles: work ethic, value added to the company, company/industry/economic conditions. These kinds of things arent as easy to predict as a government handout.

Another headline that jumped out at me came from ABC News website and reported 60% of Americans say Trump tax plan will benefit wealthy. Well, duh. It stands to reason that those who pay progressively more would subsequently realize more after-tax income. However, some wealthy folks not only want no part of it, but think none of their cohort should experience it either.

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet, who once famously claimed that his secretary pays a higher rate of tax than he does, recently said, I dont think I need a tax cut.

Former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer piped in, pleading, Im a billionaire. Please raise my taxes. And Morris Pearl, head of an outfit called Patriotic Millionaires, said that only the poorest among us  should have tax cuts.

Buffetts secretary claim was sufficiently debunked by none other than Politifact, citing reasons that are apparently lost on Pearl; not only do most folks at such income levels fall into lower tax brackets, but they end up paying little to no net income taxes, thanks to deductions and various loopholes. Yet according to Steyer, it has been at the expense of working families that upper-income people in the United States have done disproportionately well.

I dont know about you, dear reader, but Im struggling to remember the last time I felt taken advantage of by the richest Americans.

Political science degree from Yale in hand, surely Steyer isnt referring to cuts in the size of government. After consulting USDebtClock.org, I see that Uncle Sam is spending more than $4 trillion, is in a $20 trillion hole, and has $109 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Regardless of the extra-constitutional functions Steyer fears will be deprived of funds, it appears Uncle Sams operations continue apace.

And certainly having earned an economics degree, hes familiar with the concept of deadweight loss. As John Stossel recently pointed out, we devote the equivalent of 3.7 million people working 40-hour weeks to filing our taxes.

If they are so eager to pay more taxes, I bet they could chip away at that deadweight loss by refraining from exploiting the legal loopholes available to us all. Failing that, the Bureau of the Fiscal Service is happy to accept gifts and unconditional donations on behalf of the federal government (whether such a donation is tax-deductible is unclear).

Whether such folks feel a little guilty for skillfully navigating the system as it is set up, or would perhaps prefer to maintain their perch atop the same for which they might have lobbied, or whether they just dont understand the problem here is anyones guess. The core principle of this debate is a sensible one: The tax burden on laborers and wealth-creating entities should be as minuscule and simple as possible.

In a recent essay in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Christoph Koch, chief scientist and president of the Allen Institute of Brain Science, explained the research that hes been leading to create technologies to enhance the processing and learning capabilities of the human brain in response to artificial intelligence (i.e., robots). Such work, he hopes, could turn anyone into a programmer who could create a precise and error-free piece of digital code  at the speed of thought.

Hopefully, the general public figures out how to use such technology to better decode the nonsense fed to us by the automatons disguised as public policy-makers and spinners.

Christopher E. Baecker manages fixed assets for Pioneer Energy Services and is an adjunct lecturer at Northwest Vista College.
Its not often that President Donald Trumps Twitter feed is the voice of reason and compassion, but on the issue of trophy hunting it makes more sense than his own Department of Interior.

Trump put on hold the departments initial decision to reverse an Obama-era ban and allow the importation of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia. In a tweet, Trump referred to trophy hunting as a horror show. He said he would be very hard-pressed to conclude that such hunting advances the cause of conservation, the justification for the decision.

Trump, who has publicly dissented in the past from the notorious trophy hunting of his own sons, is right. In this case, government by tweet is better than the alternative, and more in keeping with the interests of the most majestic creatures on this Earth.

The African elephant population is in historic decline, driven by the loss of habitat and poaching. Early in the 20th century, there were more than 10 million elephants. Now there are about 350,000. The killing still proceeds apace.

A 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that 100,000 elephants had been killed by poachers in a three-year period from 2010 to 2012, and the Central African population had declined by 64 percent over a decade. In one orgy of destruction in 2012, poachers killed more than 300 elephants in a national park in Cameroon with AK-47s and grenades.

Trophy hunting, which is licensed and regulated, is not illegal poaching. It also isnt a reputable practice. Or it shouldnt be.

Elephants are highly intelligent and social creatures. They really do have extraordinary memories. They have families. They mourn their dead. They arent simply walking tusks waiting to be mounted on someones office wall. Gunning them down for bragging rights, or to cross an item off a bucket list, or to post a photo with a carcass on Instagram or Facebook is thoughtless and cruel.

The argument that trophy hunting is a boon to conservation is hard to credit, and a little too convenient. Why did the hunter pay tens of thousands of dollars to travel halfway around the world to kill an elephant and chop off its head? Why, for the good of elephants, of course.

To have any chance of aiding in conservation and not fueling corruption, trophy hunting has to be carefully managed. It beggars belief that the government of Zimbabwe  long ruled by a monstrous dictator, Robert Mugabe, who was forced recently to step down  will be a responsible steward of program in behalf of animals. The government of Zimbabwe has never managed to be a responsible steward of programs related to human beings.

Trophy hunting runs counter to the global campaign against the ivory trade, which is at the root of the poaching. We have finally prevailed on the Chinese, long the worst offender on ivory, to begin to shut down its markets. It would be bizarre to turn around and say that any schmuck with money to burn and no better way to entertain himself can waltz into the U.S. with elephant tusks.

Trophy hunting is now the exception rather than rule in African countries. Botswana, with the largest population of elephants, banned hunting in 2014; Kenya prohibited it back in the 1970s. Hunting bans are hardly a magical solution to the devastation in elephant populations. Yet wildlife tourism that doesnt involve destroying a scarce and endangered resource seems a better long-term economic bet.

After the initial decision to lift the trophy ban was announced, Trump may have been moved to speak out by heart-rending images on TV of elephants getting slaughtered. If so, it was an admirable reaction.

When an elephant  a creature that means no harm and is deeply affected by trauma and loss  is poisoned or gunned down for fun or profit, its worth asking, Whos really the animal?

comments.lowry@nationalreview.com
The city of San Antonio has been fervently digging itself out of a police staffing hole, but the question we have been wondering is, how did the city end up in such an unenviable position?

The short answer is that the city severely limited cadet academies during intense contract negotiations with the San Antonio Police Officers Association just as a wave of retirements hit the department. The city had a net loss of more than 100 officers between fiscal years 2014 and 2016.

There was only one police academy class in fiscal 2014, for example. Thats unfathomable for the nations seventh-largest city. That class graduated 22 cadets, but the city lost 56 officers, mostly due to retirement.

It was even worse in fiscal 2015. The city hosted two police academy classes, graduating 43 cadets. But it lost 101 officers.

The trend finally reversed in fiscal 2017 when the city graduated 126 cadets and the department lost 95 officers. Of course, by then, the staffing hole was pretty deep. At one point it had ballooned to 227 positions. On top of this, the citys population grew by 81,000 people between 2013 and 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. San Antonios population in 2016 was 1.493 million, the census has estimated.

Vacancies have been getting filled, and in an interview months ago, City Manager Sheryl Sculley and Police Chief William McManus expressed confidence the department will be fully staffed by spring or summer  as the city aggressively recruits cadets and holds more academy classes.

The shortage is tied directly to the protracted contract dispute over public safety health care costs. As contract negotiations dragged on, city staff recommended limiting cadet classes as a way to control those costs. There were other options, but in the end, City Council chose this route.

The choice was given: Cut back on the budgeted street improvements. Cut back on public safety. Or raise taxes, said Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who at that time was the District 8 councilman. Of the three, we chose to do a little bit of one and two.

He said the shortage hasnt compromised public safety, and there is some evidence to support this. To bridge the gap, officers have filled in with overtime. City staff also provided statistics showing arrests are up and response times are down.

Still, this is hardly an ideal situation.

The manager put herself in a huge deficit, said Mike Helle, president of the San Antonio Police Officers Association.

In mid-August, Express-News reporter Emilie Eaton outlined the citys efforts to improve police staffing, but she noted the city hasnt kept up with growth. The officer-resident ratio was at one of the lowest points in the past 15 years.

There is no proper police-citizen ratio, numerous experts have said, so its hard to say if this is a big deal. But the inability to keep up with growth in San Antonio is striking.

In fiscal 2011, the city had 2,314 officers. In fiscal 2017, the city had 2,279 officers. During a time when the citys population grew, it had fewer officers.

I know we need more (officers), Sculley told us. We are a growing community. We have more calls for service, but it has to be affordable.

This reliance on overtime has led Helle to worry about officer fatigue. As much as the officers might like the overtime they are receiving, Helle said he is concerned too much overtime could lead to poor decision-making and less proactive policing.

Low amount of staffing means our guys work twice as hard to keep up with the call loads, he said.

Then there is the question of crime.

In mid-October, Eaton reported that San Antonio ranked first in serious crimes  murder, aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny-theft and arson  for all cities in 2016, according to FBI data. Its a distinction the city disputes because there are a number of ways to measure crime and compare cities.

But between 2015 and 2016, violent and property crimes increased by 8 percent. Even if staffing levels have nothing to do with these crimes  there are so many variables, its hard to say  the increase speaks to the need for more police officers.

To better get a handle on these dynamics, we spoke with Larry Hoover, a professor with Sam Houston State Universitys College of Criminal Justice. We showed him the citys improved response times of more than six minutes for emergency calls and just under 18 minutes for nonemergency calls.

The benchmarks, he said, are five minutes and 15 minutes, respectively.

Its not enough to cause grave concern, he said. But its not at a level where it would really be desirable.

More important, he said, is the question of whether officers are rushing through calls due to the staffing shortage. So, we checked it out. In a bit of good news, officers have been generally consistent in the time they spend on calls, city data show. In recent years, they appear, on average, to have spent more time handling calls.

All this suggests that Sculley and McManus are correct in saying the staffing shortage hasnt undermined service. But, again, its not an ideal situation and has the feel of playing with fire. Hoover noted that some consequences of police staffing shortages are hard to measure: Leads might not be pursued, special units could go dormant or carry vacancies, there can be less proactive policing.

There are some backstories at play as well.

All of this occurred during a moment of heightened national tension around police tactics and use of force. Departments across the country have struggled with police-community tensions, and police have also been the targets of attacks, including a mass shooting in Dallas. All of this has hurt recruiting. And the citys police contract dispute was a bruiser, hurting morale.

These issues arent necessarily going anywhere. Our concern is that when the next contract is up for negotiation, the fight will be just as protracted and ugly. The best policy prescription then is for SAPOA and city staff to set aside animosity and begin talking ideas. We know health care costs will be on the table again. We know the city will continue to grow. And we know more officers are needed.

Thats a difficult conversation to have. But its not one that should compromise staffing. Never again.
The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed, TD, has announced that 85% advance payments under new Sheep Welfare Scheme are commencing on time this week to all eligible farmers.

The Scheme is co-funded by the European Union as part of Irelands Rural Development Programme, 2014-2020.

Minister Creed indicated that: A total of 16 million will now issue to some 20,000 farmers, providing a significant financial boost to the individual farmers and the sheep sector in general.

The Minister added: the scheme, which was a key commitment in the Programme for Partnership Government, reflects the commitment of the Government to the sheep sector in Ireland, and will make an important contribution to the sustainability of the sheep sector.

Minister Creed urged any farmers with outstanding queries to respond to the Department immediately in order to facilitate payment. Advance payments will continue to issue in November as eligibility is confirmed for farmers with outstanding queries, and balancing payments are due to issue in 2018.

The Minister concluded: Year two of the Scheme will be opening in the coming weeks and my Department will be in contact with farmers shortly to advise them of this. At that stage, there will also be an opportunity for new entrants to the sector to join the scheme.
PHOENIX -- Thinking of wearing a Trump mask to a political demonstration?

A chicken suit to a protest?

Or even fake nose and glasses to a public event?

A proposed new law could send you to prison for a year -- and a dozen times longer if you or someone else at the event was involved in property damage.

Legislation crafted by Rep. Jay Lawrence, R-Scottsdale, would make it a felony to wear any sort of disguise to evade recognition or identification in the commission of any public offense.

But HB 2007 goes even farther. Masks and costumes also would be illegal at civil protests, political events or even any "public event.''

The only exceptions would be for those wearing a disguise "for a business-related purpose'' or anywhere "a disguise may generally be viewed as part of acceptable attire.''

Lawrence said he began crafting the legislation following TV news reports this past summer.

"We've seen masked, hooded people breaking windows, hitting people, fighting with police,'' he said.

The first-term lawmaker acknowledged that has not occurred in Arizona, saying only there have been threats.

"This legislation says those threats, if carried out, have penalties,'' Lawrence said.

But Will Gaona, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, said the legislation as crafted is not designed to protect the public but instead chill the First Amendment rights of those who protest.

"It's important to keep in mind that the 'disguise' that a person may wear, that disguise itself may be expressive,'' he said.

"Imagine a person wearing some kind of Donald Trump costume to a protest,'' Gaona said. And on the other side of the political spectrum, he said someone dressed up in white wigs and colonial garb at a Tea Party event could be considered in partial disguise.

Lawrence insists that's not the kind of thing his proposal is designed to stop.

"That type of disguise would not be the same as Antifa and others who wear masks and hoods to hide their identity,'' he said, referring to the self-named anti-fascist movement. So, for example, he said it would be "perfectly acceptable'' if someone protesting his views or his legislation shows up at a rally wearing a chicken suit.

Anyway, Lawrence said he believes his measure has an escape clause of sorts to prevent prosecution of those who have no ill intent: It allows a police officer to detain someone wearing a disguise to verify that person's identity "and to determine if the person has committed a public offense.''

Gaona, however, said none of that will keep the person who the police unmask from getting arrested. That's because the bill itself makes it a public offense just to wear a mask at a public event.

"So by the nature of the way it's written, you've already committed a public offense'' even before a police officer asks for ID.

That isn't the only problem Gaona has with HB 2007. He said it unconstitutionally vague because it is impossible for a reasonable person to know what conduct will get him or her in trouble.

"For example, the bill refers to a partial or a complete disguise,'' he said.

"Well, what does that mean?'' Gaona continued. "If I wear glasses and a fake mustache to a protest, am I guilty of a felony?''

There are various laws across the nation dealing with the use of masks and disguises. But Gaona said that, in general, they are nowhere near as broad and encompassing as what Lawrence is proposing.

For example, Massachusetts provides for a one-year prison term for wearing a mask. But that law is broken only in situations where there is intent to obstruct execution of the law or to intimidate, hinder or interrupt an officer or other person exercising his or her rights.

By contrast, there is an Alabama law, with a version dating to 1949, which makes it a misdemeanor to appear in public wearing a mask. That broad-based legislation was originally enacted to deal with Ku Klux Klan members.

In general, courts have upheld similar laws,

For example, a federal appeals court in 2004, looking at a New York statute, said there is a First Amendment right to anonymous speech, saying that covers things like having to disclose an organization's members or the names of people who produce political leaflets. "In contrast, the Supreme Court has never held that freedom of association or the right to engage in anonymous speech entails a right to conceal one's appearance in a public demonstration,'' the court concluded.

But a California state court struck down an anti-mask law there in 1979, ruling it was overly broad. That state's law now prohibits disguises in public -- but only in commission of public offense unrelated to wearing the mask itself.

Even if a basic anti-mask law is legal, Gaona said there are other provisions in what Lawrence wants that he believes are not.

He pointed out that while the legislation provides for a year in state prison simply for wearing a mask at public events, there is an enhanced penalty "if the person who is wearing the disguise has direct or indirect involvement in an offense involving property damage, injury or death.''

What that includes, Gaona said, is someone in a mask spray painting graffiti on a wall during a demonstration. The penalty, he said, is in the same category as rape or manslaughter: 12.5 years for a first offense "which incredibly punitive.''

Worse yet, he said, is that part about "indirect involvement.''

"If I'm at a protest and I happen to be wearing some kind of disguise, and somewhere in the course of that protest there's property damage, am I indirectly involved in that offense?'' he asked.

Lawrence suggested that the kind of questions being asked were based on an overly "literal'' reading of the law versus the intent. Still, he conceded there are questions that may need to be addressed if and when the measure gets a hearing.
Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.
By PTI

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two well-known Southern film actors have been booked for allegedly forging documents and getting their vehicles registered in the union territory of Puducherry to evade motor vehicle tax in Kerala.

Police said actors Fahadh Faasil and Amala Paul used fake documents to register their cars in Puducherry to evade the 20 per cent tax in Kerala on luxury cars costing Rs 20 lakh and above.

READ | After alleged tax evasion by Amala Paul and Fahadh Fazil, Kiran Bedi says vehicles registration in Puducherry only for permanent citizens

They said the actors, residents of Kerala, had availed of vehicle loans from Kerala and got their vehicles registered in Puducherry.

They forged documents to show that they were residents of the union territory and registered the vehicles there to evade a motor tax of vehicles above Rs 20 lakh, police said.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two well-known Southern film actors have been booked for allegedly forging documents and getting their vehicles registered in the union territory of Puducherry to evade motor vehicle tax in Kerala. Police said actors Fahadh Faasil and Amala Paul used fake documents to register their cars in Puducherry to evade the 20 per cent tax in Kerala on luxury cars costing Rs 20 lakh and above. READ | After alleged tax evasion by Amala Paul and Fahadh Fazil, Kiran Bedi says vehicles registration in Puducherry only for permanent citizens They said the actors, residents of Kerala, had availed of vehicle loans from Kerala and got their vehicles registered in Puducherry. They forged documents to show that they were residents of the union territory and registered the vehicles there to evade a motor tax of vehicles above Rs 20 lakh, police said.
After a drive-by shooting in front of bars on University Avenue near the UW-Madison campus in 2012, some feared gangs were beginning to invade an area dominated by college students.

Five years later, it has become clear to Madison police and city officials that gang members  some of whom are carrying guns  now consider the 600 block of University Avenue, with its dense collection of bars and restaurants, part of their turf.

Adding to the volatility: A bar in the middle of the block that showcases hip-hop music that also caters to people under 21 for some events.

Fights that started inside the bar turned into brawls involving hundreds of people that spilled onto University Avenue on three successive weekends in late September and early October. Police used large tanks of pepper gas to stop each of them as well as an additional brawl that broke out a few weeks later that started in another bar.

Nobody has been shot in the area this year, although one of those late-night brawls may have led to the shooting death of a Madison man on the Far East Side earlier this year, police say.

Weve had a couple of incidents that were bad but could have been much worse. Eventually you run out of that kind of luck, said Madison police Central District Capt. Jason Freedman. Were going to assume that next year is going to be very challenging.

Ald. Mike Verveer, whose district includes the area, said hes so on edge about what might happen that many weekends he doesnt go to bed until 4 a.m.

Its not UW students that are causing the problem. The issue is not underage drinking in the bars, Verveer said. Im nervous about this very small area of the Downtown and the fact that its a magnet for people who have criminal histories involving use of weapons.

In the first 10 months of this year, police calls to the 600 block of University Avenue resulted in 173 criminal cases, a 65 percent jump compared to the same period last year, according to Madison police records. Most of the cases (151) occurred between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., a 78 percent jump for that time frame compared to 2016.

The cases accounted for more than one in three of all of the Central Districts cases and included increases for disorderly conduct and underage drinking as well as for aggravated battery and simple assaults, credit card fraud and weapons violations, the data showed.

The city has made some changes that have helped reduce the problem, Freedman said. Congestion at bar time that had fueled fights and other incidents has been limited by moving food carts and taxi stands away from the block, he said. Quickie drug deals and other crimes in parking ramps have been reduced since the ramps eliminated free parking for short visits; now, late-night drivers are required to pay as they enter.

Bar owners and managers also have worked with the city to make the environment safer, Freedman and Verveer said.

For example, the music venue Liquid made several changes after the three fights that broke out there earlier this fall. The changes allowed the bar to maintain its license, which allows it to open its doors to underage patrons for some events, Verveer said. He said he hoped the effort marked a turning point for hip-hop in Madison, which some say has been too quick to crack down on such venues when problems crop up instead of helping them succeed.

It is fair to say that Liquid is the latest example of being, in a way, victimized by the genre of (hip-hop) music and being victims of their own success, Verveer said.

Freedman said Liquids owners and managers are people of good faith and good will who want a place for 18- to 20-year-olds to hang out at night. Im absolutely in favor of that.

But he said he also wonders why the nightclub is located in the middle of an alcohol zone.

Earlier this year, the Church Key also made changes after police said a huge brawl that started inside the bar contributed to the shooting death of Jameel Easter, 25, of Madison, on June 10. Easter was shot multiple times in a parking lot in the 900 block of Vernon Avenue around 3:25 a.m., police said.

Loitering gang members

What city and police officials cant control are the hundreds of people who loiter outside the bars, either while theyre open or after they close, Verveer said.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the state Department of Corrections and the citys gang unit have all done periodic surveillance work in the area on weekend nights and have spotted a number of people with a history of criminal activity and gang affiliations in the crowds, he said, including some with weapons.

Freedman, in his first year as district captain, expressed frustration that few of those people have been arrested or their weapons recovered.

Clearly there are groups around the city that dont get along with each other and sometimes they end up meeting each other Downtown. Thats certainly a driver for the increase in violence, he said.

Sometimes the loiterers appear to choose places like food cart lines at bar-time to pick fights with drunken students, said Sonny Torres, the longtime bar manager at the Vintage bar, which is located kitty-corner to the troubled block of bars.

The situation has gotten so bad that the Fluno Center, a nonprofit conference center with guest rooms affiliated with UW-Madison that is located across the street from the bars, has added extra security and patrols, general manager Andy Abelman said.

Abelman said its just a matter of time before the fist fights turn into gunfights. I think theres going to be one or multiple fatalities, he said.

Patrols come

at a cost

Overtime pay and other expenses to cover the additional police officers needed to patrol the area on Friday and Saturday nights this summer and fall could rise as much as 50 percent higher than last year, Freedman said.

There were times during weekends this year when all but a handful of the 28 police officers patrolling the entire city in the early morning hours were in a four-block area Downtown, he said.

But it still wasnt sufficient to keep people from engaging in disturbances, aggravated batteries, weapons offenses, you name it, Freedman said.

Sometimes, its even difficult to find officers to work the overtime shifts because its becoming too dangerous. During one of the September brawls that spilled onto University Avenue, two officers suffered minor injuries, he said.

Freedman has told his officers not to put themselves in danger by entering big fights to arrest somebody.

If people ask, You had five people fighting, you pepper-sprayed them, why didnt you arrest anybody? Well, (for) what is going to end up being a disorderly conduct or maybe a battery ticket, were not going to have our officers risk getting injured or possibly escalate and then we have a serious incident.

But Torres said the gangs see that as a green light to fight, recalling one brawl that happened in front of dozens of police officers, some of them on horseback.

Youd think with the bigger police presence that these people would be discouraged from fighting like they do, he said. But, nope, they dont care.
By Online Desk

Lawyer Tanveer Ahmed Mir, who successfully defended dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in their daughter Aarushi's murder, has now been hired by the family of the Class XI student, an accused in the Ryan schoolboy murder case, according to a Hindustan Times report. The similarities between the Aarushi and Ryan murder cases don't end here.

READ | Three shocking similarities between the Ryan Murder and Aarushi Talwar Case

The lawyer confirmed to HT that he will defend the juvenile, accused by the CBI of slitting seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur's throat on the morning of September 8 near the toilet at Gurgaon's Ryan International School, within an hour of the child's father dropping him off at school. The report quotes Mir as saying, Preliminary discussions have taken place with the father of the juvenile accused. Once the terms and conditions are formally finalised, I will be defending the boy."

The Class 11 student was produced before the Juvenile Justice Board after his custody ended on Wednesday on November 11. The CBI had also taken him to the school to recreate the crime scene. He is now in an observational home in Faridabad.

On November 22, Ashok Kumar, the bus conductor who was accused by the Haryana Police for murdering Pradyamn walked free from Bhondsi Jail on November 22. His wife recently alleged that he was tortured and forced to confess. READ | Bus conductor Ashok was tortured, sedated to confess, alleges wife

Pradyuman's family had opposed the bail given to Kumar, stating that the investigation was not over yet. The CBI has stated that it has not given a clean chit to anyone in the case.

The juvenile accused's father told HT that he was hiring the best team of lawyers to defend his child. If my son had killed a boy would he be able to behave normally. After all he is also a child. On the day of the murder, he attended his tuition classes that evening and was absolutely normal, he said.

He said that Gurgaon police were treating his son as a witness, but the CBI accused him of murder. He had also alleged that the CBI was torturing his son which has been strongly refuted by the agency.

In a sensational twist to the case, the CBI recently announced that it had apprehended the senior student in connection with Pradyuman's murder rejecting the Gurgaon Police's theory that the killing was the handiwork of school bus conductor Ashok Kumar.

According to the agency, the Class 11 student, believed to be weak in studies, allegedly slit Pradyuman's throat to get the school to declare a holiday in order to defer a scheduled parent-teacher meeting (PTM) and an examination.

(With agency inputs)

Lawyer Tanveer Ahmed Mir, who successfully defended dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in their daughter Aarushi's murder, has now been hired by the family of the Class XI student, an accused in the Ryan schoolboy murder case, according to a Hindustan Times report. The similarities between the Aarushi and Ryan murder cases don't end here. READ | Three shocking similarities between the Ryan Murder and Aarushi Talwar Case The lawyer confirmed to HT that he will defend the juvenile, accused by the CBI of slitting seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur's throat on the morning of September 8 near the toilet at Gurgaon's Ryan International School, within an hour of the child's father dropping him off at school. The report quotes Mir as saying, Preliminary discussions have taken place with the father of the juvenile accused. Once the terms and conditions are formally finalised, I will be defending the boy." The Class 11 student was produced before the Juvenile Justice Board after his custody ended on Wednesday on November 11. The CBI had also taken him to the school to recreate the crime scene. He is now in an observational home in Faridabad. On November 22, Ashok Kumar, the bus conductor who was accused by the Haryana Police for murdering Pradyamn walked free from Bhondsi Jail on November 22. His wife recently alleged that he was tortured and forced to confess. READ | Bus conductor Ashok was tortured, sedated to confess, alleges wife Pradyuman's family had opposed the bail given to Kumar, stating that the investigation was not over yet. The CBI has stated that it has not given a clean chit to anyone in the case. The juvenile accused's father told HT that he was hiring the best team of lawyers to defend his child. If my son had killed a boy would he be able to behave normally. After all he is also a child. On the day of the murder, he attended his tuition classes that evening and was absolutely normal, he said. He said that Gurgaon police were treating his son as a witness, but the CBI accused him of murder. He had also alleged that the CBI was torturing his son which has been strongly refuted by the agency. In a sensational twist to the case, the CBI recently announced that it had apprehended the senior student in connection with Pradyuman's murder rejecting the Gurgaon Police's theory that the killing was the handiwork of school bus conductor Ashok Kumar. According to the agency, the Class 11 student, believed to be weak in studies, allegedly slit Pradyuman's throat to get the school to declare a holiday in order to defer a scheduled parent-teacher meeting (PTM) and an examination. (With agency inputs)
Audi is continuing its drive towards becoming a premium mobility solutions provider and away from simply being a premium carmaker with the launch of Audi on-Demand in Hong Kong.

The service, which enables clients to order practically any type of Audi at the touch of a button for short- or long-term use is already live in San Francisco, Munich, and Beijing. And now, following a pilot scheme where the company provided a pool of Audis for personal use exclusively for the residents of the "Dragons Range" luxury apartment complex, Audi on Demand is being offered to the Hong Kong public at large, via two Audi showrooms.

News18.com Presents Tech and Auto Awards 2017 | Vote For Your Favourite Smartphone, Car, Two-Wheeler And More!

Customers can book the type of Audi they need for as long as they need it via a smartphone app and usage is billed at an all-inclusive hourly rate that factors in the cost of insurance fuel and 24-hour customer service.

News18.com Presents Tech and Auto Awards 2017 | Car of The Year: Jeep Compass or Maruti Suzuki Dzire? Vote and Win

"Beginning immediately, customers in Hong Kong can enjoy using the Audi model of their choice, with great flexibility and at the push of a button. Whenever they desire, and regardless of the destination they have in mind," said Lothar Korn, Managing Director of Audi Hong Kong.

In recent years, Audi has made bigger and bigger inroads into the mobility sector, testing ways of helping consumers overcome the negative aspects of car ownership. For instance, in Hong Kong parking is at a premium in every sense of the word. A lack of parking spaces is one of the main reasons why Hong Kong inhabitants choose not to go down the car ownership route. Therefore, Audi has tweaked it's On Demand service to tailor it to this specific need.

News18.com Presents Tech and Auto Awards 2017 | Two-Wheeler of The Year: Bajaj Dominar or KTM RS 390? Vote And Win

In San Francisco where the service has been running since April 2015, clients can reserve a car which is then delivered to them at the location of their choice and with the optional equipment of their choice. Users can even ask for a car with child seats already installed in the back or for a roof rack for their skis.

News18.com Presents Tech and Auto Awards 2017 | Hatchback of The Year: Tata Tiago or Hyundai Grand i10? Vote And Win

This move into premium mobility services is also why Audi recently acquired US start-up Silvercar. It's a company that develops and runs app-based car rental and mobility services and has been providing the background technological know-how for Audi's current services.

Also Watch: Maruti Suzuki's Senior Executive Director, RS Kalsi Asks #PehniKya?
Srinagar: The bullet-ridden body of a Territorial Army jawan, who was abducted by militants while on vacation, was found near his home in Shopian district of south Kashmir on Saturday morning.

The soldier who had been posted in Gurez sector of north Kashmir was identified as Irfan Dar, a resident of Sensen village of Shopian district in south Kashmir. He had been on leave for 10 days and was visiting home.

Media reports said the soldiers body was found in an orchard area in Wothmula Nad area of Keegam by locals who immediately informed the police.

We got to know about the incident at 10am. He is a Kashmiri. He was found 2-3 km from his house. He was on vacation. We suspecting terror activity. He was suspected to have been kidnapped by militants. His car was also found near the spot, Shopian SP Ambarkar Shriram Dinkar told CNN-News18.

I strongly condemn the brutal killing of Irfan Ahmed, a brave Territorial Army soldier at Shopian. Such henous acts will not weaken our resolve to establish peace and normalcy in the Valley, CM Mehbooba Mufti said.

Strongly condemn the brutal killing of Irfan Ahmed ,a brave Territorial Army soldier at Shopian. Such heinous acts will not weaken our resolve to establish peace and normalcy in the valley. Mehbooba Mufti (@MehboobaMufti) November 25, 2017

Former chief minister Omar Abdullah also condemned the Territorial Army jawan's killing. "The murder of young Irfan Dar is a very tragic & reprehensible act. My unqualified condemnation & heartfelt condolences to his family," he tweeted.

The murder of young Irfan Dar is a very tragic & reprehensible act. My unqualified condemnation & heartfelt condolences to his family. https://t.co/fzwlInBjtg Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) November 25, 2017

More details awaited
Srinagar: The bullet-ridden body of a Territorial Army jawan, who was abducted by militants while on vacation, was found near his home in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday morning.

The jawan was identified as Irfan Dar, a resident of Senzil village of Shopian. He had been on leave for 10 days and was visiting home.

As the casket carrying the body of 23-year-old Dar was taken for burial, his village descended into deep shock and anger.

While locals turned up in good numbers for the funeral service, politician gave it a miss.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and opposition leader Omar Abdullah took to Twitter to express condolences, but none of them or their partymen turned up to sympathise with Dar's family.

Strongly condemn the brutal killing of Irfan Ahmed ,a brave Territorial Army soldier at Shopian. Such heinous acts will not weaken our resolve to establish peace and normalcy in the valley. Mehbooba Mufti (@MehboobaMufti) November 25, 2017

The murder of young Irfan Dar is a very tragic & reprehensible act. My unqualified condemnation & heartfelt condolences to his family. https://t.co/fzwlInBjtg Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) November 25, 2017

Mufti was only few kilometres away from Dar's village, holding a day-long public durbar in Kulgam.

A soldier of Territorial Army posted in the Gurez area, Dar's bullet-riddled body was recovered from an orchard near Wothmula Nad village of Shopian district, barely 3 to 4 km away from his home. He had come 10 days ago on a vacation to spend time with his family and was to report back to his unit in Gurez on Sunday.

Family members told CNN-News18 that he received a call last night from someone and he immediately went out. "His phone was working till 11 pm but after that it was turned off. Early in the morning we came to know his body was lying near an orchard," said Nissar Ahmad, a relative.

Shopian SP Sriram Ambarkar blamed militants for the killings. He said militants killed Dar to show their presence in the area. "He was perhaps kidnapped by militants. And then shot. Our investigations have started, he said.

Dar's killing is not a first time that when soldiers on vacation have been targeted. Young army lieutenant Umar Fayyaz and a BSF jawan were killed by suspected militants early this year. Both were home on leave. Police even claimed to have killed their assassins.

The Army accorded Dar a formal funeral with soldier offering gun salutes on Dars grave. Senior police and Army officers were also present and placed floral wreaths.
New Delhi: The Gorakhpur Police on Saturday dropped charges of corruption and private practice against Dr. Kafeel Khan, one of the nine people accused in the deaths of 33 children on August 10 and 11 at Gorakhpur's BRD Medical College.

Dr. Khan, the head of the encephalitis ward and an assistant professor at the Pediatrics department, was removed from the post of the nodal officer at the National Health Mission in the wake of several deaths that occurred at this Medical college.

On the intervening night of August 10 and 11, Dr. Khan had spent his own money, running pillar-to-post to procure oxygen for dying children. The doctor and his team wept after they failed to children.

The basic charge levelled against Dr. Khan by the office of DG Medical Education was that he collected oxygen cylinders from his private hospital.

Dr. Khan is charged under Sections 120-B, 308 and 409 of the IPC.
Washington: Mumbai attacks mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed has "blood on his hands", and wants to bring extremism into the mainstream politics of Pakistan, a former American spymaster said on Saturday.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder, who has a $10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan on Friday.

"Saeed is a terrorist. Worked with the LeT, a Kashmiri militant group, and al-Qaeda on attacks," Michael Morell, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deputy director, who has also served twice as its acting director, said in a tweet.

Saeed is a terrorist. Worked with LeT, a Kashmiri militant group, and al-Qaida on attacks. He has blood on his hands. Now wants to bring extremism into the political mainstream in Pakistan. https://t.co/0RhjyQ3NkW Michael Morell (@MichaelJMorell) November 24, 2017

"He has blood on his hands. Now wants to bring extremism into the political mainstream in Pakistan," he said after Saeed, a UN and US-designated terrorist, was released from house arrest in Lahore.

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The fire-brand cleric's release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

A deeply concerned US has asked the Pakistan government to re-arrest and charge Saeed for his crimes. It also asked Pakistan to ensure that the LeT leader is behind bars.

"NO! JuD is NOT tied to Islamic State. What a rookie... Seriously. Hafiz Saeed's Release Completes the Political Mainstreaming of Jihadists in Pakistan," tweeted Christine Fair, a well-known South Asian expert on terrorist groups.

NO! JuD is NOT tied to Islamic State. What a rookie....Seriously. Hafiz Saeeds Release Completes the Political Mainstreaming of Jihadists in Pakistan @Diplomat_APAC https://t.co/Lc1kkcWygF (((Christine Fair))) (@CChristineFair) November 25, 2017

NBC news said Saeed's release could once again sour US relations with Pakistan.

The New York Times said, for decades, Pakistan has cast a benign eye on groups like LeT which is perceived as an asset because its attacks target Indian soldiers in Kashmir even as the government battles jihadist groups like the Pakistan Taliban that directly threatens the country.

"But despite its pressure on Pakistan to move against militants like Saeed, the United States has also sent mixed messages. Just a month ago, the United States Senate struck down a provision tying American government funding to Pakistan to the country's efforts to curb Lashkar-e-Taiba's operations.

"The provision, part of a broader Pentagon-funding legislation that Congress introduced this past summer, would have forced the secretary of defence to certify that Islamabad was thwarting Lashkar-e-Taiba's activities inside Pakistan or risk $350 million in American assistance," the Times wrote.

Meanwhile, in an op-ed, The Washington Examiner said the Trump administration "should work with India" to "capture or kill" Saeed.

"Trump should call Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and offer to work with him to capture or kill Saeed," the daily said, adding that Saeed intends to lead a new Muslim theocratic political bloc in next year's parliamentary polls.

"Although Pakistan's electoral commission has refused to certify the bloc, Saeed's populist power should not be understated. Charismatic and determined, if left unchecked in his political party or terrorist activities, Saeed could destabilise the region," the daily added.

The JuD is believed to be the front organisation for the banned LeT which is responsible for carrying out the Mumbai terror attack.
While Dane Countys two largest police agencies have shied away from equipping officers with body-worn cameras, most other area departments are embracing the technology, which they say increases transparency and is useful for prosecutors and defense attorneys, officer training and resolving citizen complaints.

Information from the Dane County Chiefs of Police Association and interviews with its members show 10 of the countys 25 police departments equip regular patrol officers with cameras, and seven are in various stages of researching them or have purchased the cameras, or plan to do so, and intend to deploy them soon.

Eight agencies  including Madison Police and the Dane County Sheriffs Office  are not currently pursuing them or did not report any plans to do so.

Belleville Police Chief William Eichelkraut said his seven-officer department is just trying to keep up with the technology.

The village has been purchasing a couple of cameras a year for the last few years, he said, and will roll them out pending a server upgrade, review of a department policy on their use and legislation now making its way through the Legislature that would set rules for how long footage has to be retained and when it can be released publicly.

The Waunakee Police Department purchased cameras in 2016 and began using them in June of this year. They go a lot of places squad video does not, chief Kevin Plendl said.

I think theyre becoming much more standard, he said, and predicted that in five years, the vast majority of departments would have them.

Town of Madison Police Chief Scott Gregory said his department, which covers areas south of the city of Madison, mostly uses body cam footage to check the performance of newly hired officers. Prosecutors and defense attorneys who request it as evidence are the second-most common users, he said.

Now you can pretty much not go into court with no video, said Monona Police Chief Walter Ostrenga. His department adopted body cams more than a year ago.

Madison, Dane County

Its been a different story in the 311-officer Madison Police Department  where only SWAT team members use the cameras  and in the 101-patrol-deputy Dane County Sheriffs Office.

Madison created a citizens commission in 2015 to study the use of body cameras. It recommended holding off on their adoption in favor of efforts to build trust between police and the community, especially communities of color.

This month, the City Council voted 17-3 to remove an amendment to the 2018 budget that would have provided $123,000 for a body camera pilot project, with many council members saying they prefer to wait for the results of a $400,000 consultants study of the department, expected in coming weeks.

Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney said money was placed in the county budget several years ago to buy the cameras, but a sheriffs office study committee that began meeting in 2016 has put the brakes on completing the purchase.

What we determined at this point is that although there is a desire by both line deputies and myself to begin a pilot program, we are waiting for pending legislation regarding open records, storage timelines, best practices on use (and) development of the technology that will allow for inter-operability between in-car cameras and body cameras, Mahoney said.

Having servers large enough to store the data and staff to handle them are also considerations, he said.

Some Madison City Council members and local activists have worried the cameras could be used to identify domestic abuse victims or people living in the country illegally, and they question whether being on camera affects police behavior for the better.

In fact, a working paper released in October on the use of body cams by the Washington, D.C., police department found the cameras dont affect the amount of force used by police or the number of citizen complaints.

Little opposition from residents

Clarifying how long footage needed to be retained and the cost of equipment were among the concerns of departments that are using the cameras, but opposition from citizens to the technology was not.

Gregory, of the town of Madison, said the town has a comparatively large Latino population, and while hes heard some concerns about the cameras from social service workers, he hasnt heard any complaints from residents themselves.

Andy Russell, director of the Catholic Multicultural Center on Madisons South Side, said his staff hasnt heard concerns about body cameras.

I did ask around and no one has heard any concerns about body cameras being used to out undocumented residents, he said. There are plenty of other fears that we hear about but that hasnt been one of them.

The executive director of Centro Hispano of Dane County, also on Madisons South Side, did not respond to requests for comment.

Body cam footage has been used to substantiate parts of complaints about police behavior, including department-initiated complaints, but it protects the officer more than anything else, Gregory said. Youth have complained about police behavior that, when shown to their parents by way of body cam footage, turns out to have been appropriate, he said.

Andrew Rose, chief of police in the Village of Blue Mounds and the president of the Dane County Chiefs of Police Association, similarly hasnt heard of residents complaining about the cameras in other jurisdictions.

Immigration status isnt something police in Dane County ask about, he said. It only becomes an issue when foreign-born suspects are brought into the Dane County Jail and cant provide proof of legal residency. The sheriffs office then contacts Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it has the option of taking action if the suspect is in the country illegally.

I think were all in the same boat except for Madison maybe being the exception, Rose said.

Aaron Chapin said hes pushing for the cameras in his new role as Shorewood Hills Police chief after having worked for UW-Madison Police, which two years ago became one of the first agencies in Dane County to adopt the cameras.

Theyre beneficial from an evidentiary purpose and for officer training and mentoring, he said, but he doesnt believe their purpose is to change behavior.

Bill passed to regulate footage

In response to the increasing use of body cameras, the state Assembly this month passed a Republican-authored bill that would generally require departments to preserve their footage for 120 days while setting a more restrictive standard for releasing it than the states open records law sets for releasing other kinds of government records.

Particularly problematic for open records advocates is a provision that would require police to reject requests for footage taken inside a residence or some other place where "an individual may have a reasonable expectation of privacy" if any of the victims or witnesses present fail to return a signed waiver to police within a specified number of days authorizing its release.

Dane County police chiefs expressed support for parts of the bill that would set guidelines for records retention but varied on whether they thought something more stringent than the state open records law balancing test was needed when deciding whether to release body cam footage. They also noted the cost and hassle of redacting footage that could come with applying the balancing test.

The bill is not perfect by any means, but a more reasonable starting point, said Verona Police Chief Bernard Coughlin, who serves on the legislative committee of the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association and worked with Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, to craft the bill.

With squad car dash cam video, Verona uses the balancing test when considering open records requests, Couglin said, but officers go into more private places than cars can. Chapin, of Shorewood Hills, cited hospitals as one place where there might be a greater expectation of privacy.

And to redact video is very cumbersome, said Gregory, of the town of Madison. We dont have the software to, say, block out a juveniles face, said Waunkakees Chief Plendl.

So far, Dane County police departments report getting very few, if any, open records requests for body cam footage.

That could change if the technology is adopted in Madison, which has seen a string of controversial officer-involved fatal shootings in the last five years and has a vocal contingent of police-reform and Black Lives Matter activists.

If I were the city of Madison, I would really be concerned because you know theyre going to get hundreds of requests, Gregory said, due to a large population of outspoken people who are against the police or not pro-police.

[Editor's note: This story has been amended to more accurately describe the bill adopted by the Assembly that would limit public access to footage captured by police body cameras. Among other provisions, the bill would require police to reject requests for footage taken inside a residence or some other place where "an individual may have a reasonable expectation of privacy" if any of the victims or witnesses present fail to return a signed waiver to police within a specified number of days authorizing its release.]
Udupi (Karnataka): A senior Hindu seer on Saturday said Hindus must bear at least four children till the Uniform Civil Code is implemented to check "demographic imbalance".

Swami Govindadev Giriji Maharaj of Bharat Mata Mandirin Haridwar said the two-child policy should not be restricted to Hindus alone, noting that India had lost those territories wherever Hindu population reduced, resulting in demographic imbalance.

He was speaking to reporters on the second day of the three-day Dharma Sansad organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, in the temple town of Udupi of coastal Karnataka.

The Swami said the government was insisting on a maximum of two children, but till the time the Uniform Civil Code is implemented, Hindus should have at least four children. India lost many of its territories wherever Hindu population reduces, he said.

"We have seen that India lost those territories wherever Hindu population reduced, resulting in demographic imbalance. The two-child policy should not be restricted to Hindus alone."

On cow-vigilantism, the seer said some criminals were settling personal scores under the guise of 'Gau Rakshaks'.

"Gau Rakshaks are peace loving people. They havebeen defamed by some vested interests. Some criminals aresettling scores under the guise of Gau Rakshaks," said GirijiMaharaj.

The mega religious event is being attended by over 2,000 Hindu seers, matt heads and VHP leaders from all over the country.
London: Indian-origin businessmen are among 20 people banned from managing a company after they were found to be employing illegal workers in their establishments across the UK.

The UK's Insolvency Service said its countrywide crackdown over the past few months had found that all 20 had already been fined for employing illegal workers.

Ashim Kumar Saha, a director of Save & Pick Limited in London, was disqualified and fined 10,000 pounds for employing one illegal worker.

Manoj Barua and Vipan Kumar Sharma, directors of MV Hospitality Limited which traded as a restaurant known as Caf India in Glasgow were disqualified for employing four illegal workers and fined 40,000 pounds.

Eighteen people have been banned from being company directors or being involved in the management of companies for six years each, whilst two have been disqualified for seven years.

Between them, they employed 41 illegal workers and were fined a total of 505,000 pounds by the UK Home Office, none of which was paid. Two of the companies have now entered into liquidation, with a further two having been dissolved.

Cheryl Lambert, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service, said those caught sought an unfair advantage over law abiding competitors by employing people who were not entitled to work legally in the UK.

"Employing illegal workers is not consequence free, either for the employer, the employee or the consumer," she said.

"By definition this is a set of people who are without the protection of the law and knowledge of the authorities, and thereby extremely vulnerable to exploitation in all its forms. It is bad for business and bad for society as a whole," she added.

The businesses caught up in the investigation, which include 11 restaurants, four takeaway/fast food establishments and a shop, are based in London, Sussex, North West, South Wales, Glasgow, Antrim, Frome and High Wycombe and cover South Asian and Chinese cuisines.

The Home Office, which carried out the joint investigation, warned that illegal working is not victimless.

"It undercuts honest employers, cheats legitimate job seekers out of employment opportunities and defrauds the taxpayer. Businesses should be aware that they have a duty to check that their staff have permission to work in the UK," a spokesperson said.

The matters leading to all 20 disqualifications are that the directors failed to ensure that the companies complied with statutory obligations under the UK's Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 to ensure that relevant immigration checks were completed and copy documents retained, resulting in the employment of illegal workers.

Following visits from Home Office Immigration, during which the breaches were discovered, the companies were issued with penalty notices ranging from 10,000 pounds to 15,000 pounds per worker, which remain unpaid.

All were directors of the companies at the time of the Home Office visit.
Agartala: Two more Tripura State Rifles (TSR) personnel were arrested in connection with the killing of journalist Sudip Datta Bhowmick at the para-military force's 2nd battalion headquarters in Agartala, the police said on Saturday.

Nayek Amit Debbarma and Rifleman Dharmendra Kumar Singh were arrested last night on the charge of criminal conspiracy for killing journalist Datta Bhowmick at the battalion's headquarters in R K Nagar, DIG (Southern Range) Arindam Nath told PTI.

They were produced before the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate Sharmishtha Mukherjee and remanded to police custody for seven days.

Datta Bhowmick, a senior crime reporter of local Bengali newspaper 'Syandan Patrika', was allegedly shot dead on Tuesday inside the battalion's headquarters, around 15 km from Agartala, when he had gone there to meet TSR commandant Tapan Debbarma, who was arrested on Wednesday.

The journalist's mobile phone was recovered from the possession of the commandant. Tapan Debbarma's personal bodyguard Nandalal Reang was arrested on Tuesday after the killing.

Editor of 'Syandan Patrika' Subal Kumar Dey had on Friday alleged that Dutta Bhowmik, who had written 11 news items about the Tapan Debbarma's misdeeds, was called by the commandant and shot inside the battalion's headquarters. Tripura Journalist Union (TJU) secretary Pranab Sarkar had said that the Press Council of India (PCI) had taken cognisance of the killing.

Datta Bhowmik is the second journalist to have been killed in the state in two months. In September, TV journalist Shantanu Bhowmick was killed when he had gone to Mandai in West Tripura district, about 20 km from here, to cover a political event organised by the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT).
Kochi: Hadiya, earlier known as Akhila, the woman at the centre of the Kerala Love Jihad Case, has said that she is a Muslim and nobody forced her to convert to Islam.

Speaking to reporters at the Kochi Airport, Hadiya said that she wants to go back to her husband, two days before the Supreme Court hearing in the crucial case. Hadiya, escorted by a heavy police presence, left for New Delhi on Saturday. She is being accompanied by her parents, too.

Hadiya's husband, Shafin Jahan, had on Friday complained that attempts were being made to reconvert her to Hinduism.

The Supreme Court has agreed to examine Hadiya in an open court, turning down her fathers plea for in-camera proceedings.

Hadiyas case is at the centre of the love jihad controversy in Kerala, which is now being probed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). Twenty-four-year-old Akila Asokan converted to Islam and later married Shafin Jahan last year.

Soon, Hadiyas father approached the Kerala High Court linking her daughters conversion to a larger terror conspiracy. The HC stepped in to annul the marriage, however, the order was challenged in the Supreme Court by her husband Shafin Jahan.

Jahan, in his petition, claims Hadiya, a homeopathy student in Kerala, converted to Islam of her own volition two years prior to their marriage and sought direction to Hadiya's father to present her in court.

Hadiya's father, however, said she was a "helpless victim" trapped by a "well-oiled racket", which used "psychological measures" to indoctrinate people and convert them to Islam.
New Delhi: The woman in the Kerala Love Jihad Case, Hadiya, earlier known as Akhila, has told the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that she married Shafin Jahan of her own accord.

The NIA, in its report to the Supreme Court, is likely to maintain that Islamic indoctrination leading to marriages is a pattern in Kerala.

The NIA has submitted a status report to the apex court ahead of Hadiya's testimony on Monday. Officials, in the know of the report, told CNN-News18 that NIA will stick to its stand. "Mental kidnapping is happening in these cases," an official said.

The investigation agency has questioned at least 6 girls who married Muslim men. Based on their testimonies and other evidence, the NIA is likely to tell the court that indoctrination is a reality.

"Indoctrinated person may be incapable of giving free consent to marriage," the NIA has told the court. The agency has also quizzed Hadiya, her husband Shafin Jahan, Athira Nambiar, and one more girl called Athira, over the last few days.

Popular Front of India's Sainaba was questioned this week after it emerged that in both Hadiya and Athira Nambiar's cases, Sainaba played a role.

Ninety cases of interfaith marriages were referred to the NIA by the state police to examine if "love jihad" was the reason behind these marriages. Of these 90 couples, at least 23 were closely examined. Sources said that the PFI's role and a pattern to convert were found in 11 cases.

The Supreme Court on October 30 had directed Hadiya's father to produce her on next date of hearing (on 27th November) in Delhi.
New Delhi: The Madras High Court on Friday sought fingerprint details of former chief minister of Tamil Nadu J Jayalalithaa on documents relating to a bypoll last year to be compared with those available with Parappana Agrahara jail at Bengaluru.

the court also asked for her thumb print details to be furnished by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

The superintendent of central prison at Parappana Agrahara and UIDAI regional officer, who handles Aadhaar, should give fingerprints' details to the court by December 8, the judge said, as repoted by PTI.

The matter relates to a petition filed by P Saravanan, DMK candidate for the November 2016 Thirupparankundram Assembly bypoll, challenging the election of AIADMK's A K Bose.

During the pendency of the case, Saravanan had filed an additional affidavit, questioning the validity of the election documents.

He contended that the thumb impression of Jayalalithaa was obtained without her consent and knowledge while she was unconscious, with the "connivance" of the doctors who attended to the former chief minister and others.

Jayalalithaa was lodged in the jail after her conviction in the Rs 65.66 crore disproportionate assets case in 2014. She subsequently secured bail from the Supreme Court and was released on October 18, 2014, after spending 21 days in prison.

The Karnataka High Court later acquitted her and three of her associates of all charges, but the Supreme Court on February 14 this year set aside the order.

However, since Jayalalithaa passed away on December 5 last year, the apex court abated the proceedings against her.

The apex court convicted Sasikala, deposed AIADMK general secretary, and her two relatives in the case and had restored the trial court's order awarding four year jail term to them. She is at present in the jail.

In his petition, Saravanan had also questioned the EC's decision to accept the left-thumb impression of Jayalalithaa affixed on the documents filed in support of Bose's nomination papers.

He further submitted that following the attestation, the AIADMK candidate (Bose) was allowed to contest on the 'two leaves' symbol under the "defective form A and form B" of the documents, which had materially "affected the outcome of the election".

The Election Commission (EC) had last month submitted that it had accepted the left-thumb impression of the late leader, affixed on documents relating to the bypoll, based on a letter from AIADMK presidium chairman E Madhusudhanan.

The letter stated that Jayalalithaa was not in a position to sign as she was unwell and hence, her left-thumb impression attested by the doctor could be taken on file, K F Wilfred, Principal Secretary of the EC, said.

The court had summoned the official for giving evidence on the election plea.

(With PTI inputs)
Mumbai: Former Mumbai Police commissioner M N Singh on Friday said the minorities in the country are feeling a "bit uneasy" and this issue needs to be addressed.

He said the current narrative on cow slaughter ban should change and the focus should be on improving internal security.

The retired IPS officer was speaking on the topic, 'How Safe is Mumbai?', at a function, organised by think tank Observer Research Foundation.

"The minorities in the country are a bit uneasy and it needs to be addressed. The (current) national narrative, the debate is creating some anxiety. It has to be changed," he said.

"The issue of Babri Masjid and Ram Mandir has to be solved amicably," Singh said.

"This Babri Masjid issue has to be amicably settled between the two communities. It is not an easy solution. Any decision coming from the top or court will be half-accepted.

It (the issue) will never end," said the former top cop.

"There are some private groups that are talking sensible things, going and meeting so many Muslim groups. I think that is what should be encouraged," he said.

There have been some 12 terror attacks in Mumbai, of which three have been very deadly. The first was in March 1993 (serial bomb blasts), but security measures improved only after the November 2008 carnage, he said.

V Balendran, a former special secretary in the central government, said, "It is sad our police and anti-terror squads had no night vision cameras; hence the terror attack continued for three days in Hotel Taj (during 26/11). The situation has slightly improved since then."
New Delhi: Veteran actor Kamal Haasan on Saturday again voiced his support for filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "Padmavati" which is facing nation-wide protests, saying people are being "oversensitive" about the film.

Citing his film, "Vishwaroopam's" example, the 63-year-old actor said it was wrong of people to demand a ban on the period drama before even watching it.

"I haven't seen the film (Padmavati). Nobody saw 'Vishwaroopam' still they wanted me banned. It's wrong... It should come out (release) and if then there is something then I can understand.

"I think we are being oversensitive. I'm not talking as a filmmaker but as an Indian," Haasan said. The actor was speaking at a discussion at the Times Delhi LitFest today.

"Padmavati" has been facing troubles with various Rajput groups and political leaders, who have accused Bhansali of "distorting historical facts" and depicting queen Padmavati in the wrong light.

It was rumoured that there is a romantic dream sequence in the film between Padmavati (Deepika Padukone) and Sultan Alauddin Khilji (Ranveer Singh), a claim which the director has time and again rejected.

Haasan said he has faced such protests with a lot of his films in the past.

He said the people in the country have become cynical and believe every negative thought when they hear it.

"What happened with 'Hey Ram'? Some Congress leader, just by looking at the poster, thought there is something wrong in it. They don't know what I'm making and they are saying that it should be banned. They judged a film without even seeing it.

"We are ready to believe the negativity. We have become cynical," he said.
New Delhi: President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday expressed concern over the "unacceptably low" representation of women, OBCs, SC/STs in the higher judiciary and called for steps to remedy the situation.

"There is unacceptably low representation of traditionally weaker sections such as OBCs, SCs and STs especially in the higher judiciary," President Kovind said, adding that one in four judges is a woman.

Asking the judiciary to walk in pace with other public institutions in being truly representatives of society's diversity, the President said: "Like our other public institutions, our judiciary too has to be judicious in being representative of the diversity of our country, and the depth and breadth of our society.

"Of the 17,000 judges in our subordinate courts, High Courts and the Supreme Court, only about 4,700 - roughly one in four - are women," he said.

Telling the higher judiciary that it was its "sacred duty" to "groom" district and sessions judges and raise their skill so that more and more of them can be elevated to High Courts, President Kovind said "We need to take long-term measures to remedy this situation."

"This will also enhance trust in our lower courts and their judgments and serve to declog our High Courts," the President said.

However, in a caveat, he made it clear that the long-term solutions would be "without in any manner compromising on quality" of the judges and the judicial system.

The President was speaking at the inaugural function of the two-day meet organised jointly by the Law Commission of India and NITI Aayog on the National Law Day.
After getting back in shape in less than a year post Taimur's delivery, actress Kareena Kapoor Khan has been on a slaying spree, looking splendid in each outfit and turning heads at every public appearance she has made of late.

From turning airports into runways to lighting up the red carpet with her presence, Kareena has done it all with ease and perfection.

Considered one of the hottest mommies of tinsel town, Kareena's dressing sense is not just admired by the fashion folks, but is also looked up to for inspiration by thousands of girls who appreciate the diva's sartorial choices.

And like each time, this time too, Kareena impressed one and all with her lovely fashion selection as she turned up in a printed shirt tucked in tailored black trousers. The diva teamed the outfit with a black neck warmer, oversized heavy-duty sunglasses and her favourite Hermes Birkin handbag.

Bold red lips and a low bun rounded off the actress's look for the day, as she arrived at the airport looking like a complete boss lady.

Now, that's some power dressing there!

Take a look.

(Photo: Kareena Kapoor KHan at Mumbai airport/Yogen Shah)

Reportedly, Kareena was leaving for Kenya, where the star will be seen walking the ramp at a fashion showcase for close friend and designer Manish Malhotra.

Kareena will be next seen in the film Veere Di Wedding, slated for release next year.
Dairy creates more than 215,000 jobs in Wisconsin and nearly 3 million across the country, according to a new economic impact study.

Thats a lot of jobs. But with global demand for products such as cheese and whey protein expected to increase in the future, its only the beginning.

U.S. dairy exports have more than quadrupled in 16 years, from less than $1 billion to nearly $5 billion last year. Thats a success story, but a fragile one. Seemingly small actions giving global competitors an edge can take away jobs in Wisconsin.

We saw that in April, when one of the nations largest makers of butter and milk ingredients, Grassland Dairy, shocked dozens of Wisconsin dairy farmers.

Long-term sale of milk products into the Canadian market has been eliminated, the Grassland letter said, due to Canadas new Class 7 pricing policy. The policy tilted the playing field north by pulling the rug out from under ultrafiltered milk from the United States. It also set up Canada to offload excess milk powder onto global markets at bargain-basement prices.

Modernizing the North American Free Trade Agreement has the potential to remedy this problem. On the other hand, walking away from NAFTA could deliver a body blow to a dairy industry that is 7.5 percent of Wisconsins GDP.

Those numbers come from that new economic impact study, Dairy Delivers, by the International Dairy Foods Association. It shows the Wisconsin dairy industry directly creates more than 41,000 full-time jobs. The study also factors in the ripple effect  counting nearly 174,000 additional jobs supported by dairy in related sectors such as transportation, retail and real estate. That lifts the total to 215,000.

To visualize 215,000 full-time Wisconsin jobs, imagine Lambeau Field, Camp Randall Stadium and Miller Park filled at the same time, thanks to dairy. Or, if you prefer, think what $2 billion in state and local tax revenues spread across Wisconsin looks like. Thats the amount dairy has brought to Wisconsin, according to the IDFA study.

It wasnt long ago we kept almost all U.S. milk in this country. Today, nearly one out of seven gallons end up in products overseas. In the next three to five years, we want to increase that to one out of five.

How dependent is the Wisconsin dairy industry on growing exports? Consider Sartori Cheese Company of Plymouth, recently named exporter of the year by Dairy Foods magazine, for building a multi-channel global strategy and customer-first philosophy that sends SarVecchio Parmesan and other award-winning cheeses to dozens of countries. Sartori and other Wisconsin cheesemakers see enormous potential to expand their global reach, boosting the states economy in the process.

Our global sales represent about 5 percent of total sales, and we would like that to reach about 15 percent of total sales in the next five years, says Sartori global markets manager Sam Allison.

Realistically what that means is that 25 (percent) to 50 percent of our overall growth is going to have to come from our global markets. We have a big task ahead of us, for sure, but we believe there is a tremendous amount of opportunity out there.

To seize that opportunity, we need open markets to go head-to-head against the European Union and other aggressive competitors. Thats where free-trade agreements come into play, none more important than NAFTA, the deal that made Mexico our top customer, at $1.2 billion in sales.

U.S. dairy exports to Mexico have soared under NAFTA, increasing 885 percent. Exports to Canada have been less spectacular. A new NAFTA should end Canadas protectionist dairy pricing policy and open the border for more Wisconsin dairy exports.

Its not time to end NAFTA. Its time to mend it. Wisconsin jobs are at stake.
After Kerala High Court refused to stay a single-judge order to screen S Durga at the ongoing International Festival of India (IFFI), festival director has asked the movies director Sanal Sasidharan to provide the censored version of the film to IFFI, Goa.

In its appeal against the single judge order, the government argued that the film though selected by the jury had not secured the exemption as required by the Panorama regulation in the absence of any certification from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). It also said the inclusion will upset arrangements at IFFI 2017 which ends on November 28.

However, a division bench of Acting Chief Justice Antony Dominic and Justice A Muhamed Mustaque gave the order, which stated, The certified version of the film S Durga will be viewed by the jury and on that basis, the film will be exhibited in the Indian Panorama of the IFFI.

In the latest development, Sasidharan, who is on his way to Goa, has confirmed to News18 that the films screening "will be happening" at the festival.

Sasidharan has also posted on Facebook a copy of the the letter from festival director Sunit Tandon which said: You are requested to kindly provide the censored version of the film S Durga in 35mm Print/DCP along with two DVD copies to IFFI, Goa.

The festival director also asked him to submit a copy of the censor certificate.

Sasidharan had moved the court after the film was dropped from the Indian Panorama section of the festival along with the Marathi film Nude.

Both films were dropped by the ministry even though they were included in the Panorama list by a 13-member jury, prompting jury chief Sujoy Ghosh and members Apurva Asrani and Gyan Correa to resign in protest

The film narrates the horrifying experience of a hitchhiking couple and has won critical acclaim at film festivals abroad.

Meanwhile, the lead actor of the movie, Kannan Nayar, told News18 Friday night that he had sent the link of the film to all the remaining 10 jury members.

He also alleged the festival authorities were rude to him when he went to them after the High Court verdict and that he was even ordered out by a top official saying it was the ministry and not the director which would take the decision."

Nayar added the festival authorities were taking everything too personally. "We don't have any personal vengeance against them. It's about the art scenario in the country. I don't understand why they are behaving like this with us."
Kolkata: Critically acclaimed actor Adil Hussain says role models are slowly emerging from the northeast states but it would take time. He drew attention to the absence of awareness about filmmaker Haobam Paban Kumar's special mention at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards for the Manipuri movie Lady of the Lake.

"He (Kumar) got it, but we don't know about it. But we know about Rajkummar Rao's win," Adil pointed out during a session at the India Today Conclave East.

India's Oscar entry Newton secured two wins at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) in Brisbane on Thursday, with Rajkummar Rao winning the best actor and Mayank Tewari and Amit V. Masurkar claiming the best screenplay honour. Manipuri movie Lady of the Lake won a special mention.

Asked about role models emerging from the northeast states, the "Parched" actor responded positively, citing examples.

"It's happening with Papon from Assam. He is becoming famous across India for singing in Hindi films. I come from a small town called Goalpara in Assam... When they see Adil is doing films across the globe, (people feel) if he can do it, then we can do it... There is amazing amount of talent in the region," he said.

"The discourse has just started a few years ago... (the Look East and Act East policy). It will take a few generations, but with the help of information technology, it will go faster," added Adil, who has acted in English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Norwegian and French films.

He added that the "narrative" of reverse racism needs to change and in today's day and age, he sees that evolving in the northeastern states with more exposure.

"When people from this part of the country go to northeast, when they go they can be asked 'Oh, you have come from India'... I have experienced that, but it was long back. I haven't faced that recently," said Adil.

He also said dark actors always being typified as villains also needs to change.

"We need to find ways to evolve from this narrative of reverse racism. A dark actor will always get to play negative characters," the 54-year-old added.

Assamese author Mitra Phukan urged the authorities to help develop infrastructure in the northeastern states so that more people can visit and tourism is enhanced.

"Everybody wants to go to the northeast. But the problem is infrastructure. The roads are not good enough. Except larger towns, there aren't enough good hotels. There is a threat of insurgency. Who will want to go like that?" she questioned.

The writer of "The Collector's Wife" added food bridges barriers and the fact that 'momo' is so popular across the country shows that. She also informed, conversely, that South Indian delicacy 'idli' is a favourite of many Meghalayans.

"Naga food is becoming very popular, Assamese food is also very popular and there is, of course, momo everywhere. Conversely, idli is becoming more popular in Meghalaya for instance," she said.

Meiyang Chang, who is of Chinese descent, born in Dhanbad, said he takes the catcalls of "Chinki" in his stride, and added that the situation has improved recently.

"I am not called a 'Chinki', but an assortment of sounds which sound like many things. I get offended when I hear that. I reply with a smile. Only when it gets beyond a limit, I react.

"For the longest time, I didn't think I was different. I had a Bihari accent as I am from Dhanbad. I used to tell people I look like you. I started realising later I look different after people asked me out of curiosity and not some malice. It's not always out of malice that people call you stuff," said the 35-year-old singing reality show "Indian Idol" contestant.
Ahmedabad: With Hardik Patel raising the banner of revolt against the BJP-run state government in Gujarat, there is speculation over whether Patidars, the community the young leader claims to represent, will switch from being BJP voters to Congress supporters.

Patel recently declared support for the Congress after the partys proposal for reservations was found to be acceptable by his Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS).

But if theres one district which will be a litmus test for both political parties, its Surat.

OBCs and Patidars will be the deciding voters in the districts 16 Vidhan Sabha seats. And tempers in Surat have certainly not been calm. So intense has been the battle for Patidar support that BJP and PAAS workers even came to blows as the battle spilled out onto the streets of Surat.

The drama unfolded in Varacchha area of Surat on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday as a protest by PAAS turned ugly. PAAS workers, who were protesting at the local BJP office, clashed with policemen and had to be carted away in police vehicles. This has been a recurring pattern in Surat with Patidar youth interrupting BJP events.

In September this year, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese PM Shinzo Abes visit to the Diamond City, Patidar activists had clashed with BJP workers. The clashes resulted in buses being torched and Patidar activists being detained.

In another incident in November last year, a BJP event being addressed by party chief Amit Shah was disrupted when a few Patidar men flung chairs at the venue.

Thursday nights protests began around 11:30 pm when PAAS workers gathered outside a newly-inaugurated BJP office. According to reports, PAAS workers even pelted stones at the BJP office, which led to an altercation with BJP workers present at the office. This was followed by more anti-BJP sloganeering by PAAS workers and soon, the police came and took five PAAS workers into custody. They were taken to the Varachcha police station.

The protesters then marched to Varachcha police station and held demonstrations against the police for detaining their colleagues. PAAS workers then proceeded to pelt stones at the police station, which prompted the police to retaliate.

Policemen responded with lathicharge, leading to clashes. Police detained a total of 45 people, including Congress candidates Dinesh Kachadiya (Surat North), Dhirubhai Gajera (Varachcha Road) and Bhavesh Rabari (Karanj), and PAAS Surat district convener Alpesh Katheria.

Surat district has over 60.79 lakh voters, spread across 16 Assembly constituencies. Patidars form a substantial chunk of the electorate in the district and are, in many seats, the deciding bloc. This is, perhaps, most evident in Varachha Road constituency. A largely urban seat, it has nearly 1.96 lakh voters, with 1.11 lakh men and over 85,000 women. Over 1.5 lakh voters here are Patidars. The community forms over 77% of the entire electorate and no candidate can hope to win without their support. The election in Varachha will boil down to this  will Patidars vote as a single united bloc this time? If yes, who will they pick?

As one would expect, both BJP and Congress have fielded Patidar candidates from the Varachha Road seat. The Congress has fielded Patidar activist Dhirubhai Gajera, a former two-time BJP MLA who had been a vocal critic of then chief minister Narendra Modi even when he was in the BJP. This led to Gajeras expulsion from the party and he has been fighting on a Congress ticket ever since. The BJP has fielded another Patidar, Kumarbhai Kanani.

The Varachha Road assembly seat was created following the delimitation exercise in 2008. In the 2012 elections, BJP candidate Kishorbhai Kanani defeated Gajera by a massive margin. The vote share difference between the two was nearly 16%, with the BJP polling 53.78% of the votes and Congress securing just 37.80%. This indicates that local Patidars in 2012 had reposed their faith in the BJP. This time, the BJP would hope that the equation in Varachha Road remains unchanged.

On Monday, as Kumarbhai Kanani made his way to the election office to file his nomination papers, he was accompanied by hundreds of Patidar youth on motorcycles and in cars, waving the BJP flag. The demonstration of strength, Kanani later told the press, was proof that Patidars were very much with the BJP and would not support his Congress rival.

But the violent events of Thursday night, have once again cast doubts over whether Patidars would remain steadfastly behind the BJP. Both parties have been reaching out to the community.

In October, barely two months before the elections, the state government and the district administration withdrew cases against over 600 Patidar youth from Surat district. Meanwhile, Congress V-P Rahul Gandhi, during his visit to Surat in early November, had lashed out at the Modi government for destroying the textile and diamond industry, both of which employ Patidars in large numbers.

Owing to their large presence here, the Patidars of Varachha are being seen as a test for the larger debate over which way the community would lean in the rest of the state.
Ahmedabad: BJP MP from Gujarats Panchmahal Lok Sabha constituency Prabhatsinh Chauhan has chosen to side with his wife after the partys fifth candidates list for upcoming Assembly polls triggered a family feud by picking their daughter-in-law for the Kalol seat.

Chauhan on Saturday wrote a letter to BJP chief Amit Shah, urging him to change the partys official candidate and accused his son Pravinsinh Chauhan of being a bootlegger who sold illegal alcohol in the dry state of Gujarat.

Chauhan went so far as to tell Shah that if the candidate was not changed, he would not be able to guarantee a win for the party from Kalol, an assembly segment which falls in his Lok Sabha constituency.

The BJP on Friday released its fifth list of candidates for the upcoming Gujarat assembly polls. The list, which features the names of 13 candidates, pertains to seats that go to the polls in the second phase of elections on December 14.

While Chauhan had been lobbying hard for a ticket for his wife Rangeshwari Chauhan, the party surprised him and the family by nominating his daughter-in-law Suman Chauhan instead.

Writing to Amit Shah in Gujarati, Prabhatsinh Chauhan said, Praveen is a bootlegger and he still carries out his illegal liquor business. Both Pravin and Suman have also been to jail. If the current situation persists, I will not be able to win the Kalol and Godhra seats for the party. Ever since I have joined BJP, the party has won both municipal and Lok Sabha elections. I am a senior leader and yet, I have not been given any position in the party organisation.

Hours after the first list came out, the MPs wife Rangeshwari Chauhan wrote a scathing Facebook post in Gujarati against her husband Prabhatsinh and stepson Pravinsinh. Prabhatsinh, if you have ever had your mothers milk then try and campaign in Kalol, I challenge you! she wrote.

Speaking to Network 18 after her Facebook post, Rangeshwari Chauhan said, Prabhatsinhs son Pravin is a bootlegger who sells alcohol. Both father and son are known to put undue pressure on innocent people in the area. As far as Suman is concerned, she is a candidate who has been parachuted onto this constituency. She was earlier with the Congress and has joined BJP only recently.
New Delhi: Actor Prakash Raj, who has shown no reluctance in criticising the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, self-proclaimed cow vigilantes, and internet trolls, on Saturday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi "why the Winter Session was not happening."

The National Award-winning actor took a swipe at Modi asking if he was busy somewhere else. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah are currently campaigning in Gujarat ahead of the assembly elections.

Furthermore, Prakash also asked if the PM was avoiding the session because it might get "too hot or embarrassing to answer before elections", alluding to mounting criticism over a number of issues, including the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

The Opposition had frequently targetted the government over the delay in the winter session, with Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge accusing the Prime Minister of "destroying" the temple of democracy for Gujarat election.

"Modi is Brahma. He is the creator... only he knows when parliament will be convened," Kharge had said.

Prakash had on Thursday said that he had sent a legal notice to BJP MP Pratap Simha seeking an apology for "trolling" him on social media.

The actor had come out in support of Padmavati questioning the "silence" of the Centre after a plethora of threats against Deepika Padukone, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and other actors. He also added that such targetting had become recurrent now.

"How can a person from the ruling party issue such threats?" Raj said referring to the BJP's chief media coordinator in Haryana, Surajpal Amu, offering a bounty on the heads of actor Deepika Padukone and director Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

"Why is the Central government silent? We have given you a big mandate, won't you stop all these threats...If you can't handle law and order then get out," the actor had told CNN-News18.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi was held "solely responsible" for creating a "mess" of the economy by the Congress on Friday. The comment came after Standard & Poor kept its sovereign rating for the country unchanged.

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma the government was taking shelter under these "dubious" certificates from rating agencies.

Rating agency Moody's had on last Friday raised India's sovereign rating from the lowest investment grade of Baa3 to Baa2 - the first upgrade in almost 14 years.

Sharma accused Modi of being solely responsible for creating a "mess" of the economy and charged him with being in "arrogant denial".

"Mr Prime Minister, the ground is shaking, and people feel betrayed. People have downgraded the government on its economic performance, these dubious upgrades don't matter," Sharma tweeted.

Mr Prime Minister, the ground is shaking, and people feel betrayed. People have downgraded the government on its economic performance, these dubious upgrades dont matter. Anand Sharma (@AnandSharmaINC) November 24, 2017

He said that a "sudden flurry" of certificates from credit rating agencies is the "only fall back" of a government which has derailed India's economy.

Sharma alleged that GDP has sharply fallen, jobs have been "destroyed" in millions and business have shut down.

The leader also further raised questions over the ratings agencies waking up when all the parameters of the Indian economy are "in the red".

"About 3.72 crore jobs have been lost in the MSME/unorganised sector. Investment rate has plunged by 7%, credit offtake falling to a 65-year low. This calls into question the very credibility of these rating agencies," he said on the micro-blogging site.

About 3.72 crore jobs have been lost in the MSME/unorganised sector. Investment rate has plunged by 7%, credit offtake falling to a 65-year low. This calls into question the very credibility of these rating agencies. Anand Sharma (@AnandSharmaINC) November 24, 2017

Declining to follow Moody's recent India rating upgrade, Standard & Poor's today kept its sovereign rating for the country unchanged at the lowest investment grade of 'BBB- minus' citing high government debt and low-income levels.

Lauding it, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the rating is a reflection of the agency's appreciation of the steps taken by the government to keep the economy stable and ensure a high growth trajectory.

"The S&P had inferred that over the next two years, growth in India will remain strong and the country will maintain its sound external accounts position," Sitharaman said.

Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi lauded it, saying "After Moody's, S&P gives Narendra Modi govt thumbs up, keeps India's outlook stable."

(With PTI Inputs)
New Delhi: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying his hugplomacy with US President Donald Trump had failed in keeping 26/11 terror attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed under arrest in Pakistan.

Narendrabhai,   . Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed, the Congress leader tweeted in the run-up to Gujarat Assembly elections next months.

Narendrabhai,   . Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed.https://t.co/U8Bg2vlZqw Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 25, 2017

His tweet comes a day after Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder Hafiz Saeed was freed from house arrest in Pakistan. Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The fire-brand cleric's release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

The US has asked the Pakistan government to re-arrest and charge Saeed for his crimes.

Saeeds release, however, has given the Congress ammo to attack the BJP-led Centre ahead of Gujarat Assembly elections next month.

This is the second time that Rahul Gandhi has mocked Modis bonhomie with Donald Trump.

In October, the Gandhi scion had posted a snapshot of Trumps tweet on improving ties with Pakistan, and the US President needed another hug.
Ahmedabad: Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday hit back at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for questioning the Rafale fighter aircraft deal, saying unlike during Congress regimes when middlemen ruled the roost, there was no "Quattrocchi" in the contract for the fighter jet.

Jaitley, who is the BJP's election in-charge for Gujarat, was referring to Ottavio Quattrocchi, the Italian businessman believed to be involved in the Bofors scam which came to light when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister.

"It (Rafale deal) was a government-to-government transaction, between two governments. It wasn't like what used to happen during Congress governments, when middlemen used to be there in every transaction. There wasn't any Quattrocchi in this transaction," Jaitley told reporters here.

The Rafale deal was made to boost the combat ability of the Indian Air Force, he said.

"I wonder why the Congress leader is raising this issue now, as the transaction was done almost two-and-a-half years back. The very fact that it is being raised after two-and-a-half years indicates it is a motivated campaign linked to the election," Jaitley said.

Responding to Gandhi's allegation that a certain industrialist was favoured and due procedures were not followed, Jaitley implied that Gandhi may not understand such issues because he has no experience.

"Since it was a government-to-government transaction, the procedure was different. Another procedure is of tendering. He (Rahul Gandhi) is not having any experience of running a government. And, it is up to the company (Rafale) to choose its partner (in India). Government of India does not decide that," Jaitley said.

Rahul Gandhi today alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not want the "truth" behind the multi-crore Rafale deal to come out before the Assembly election, therefore delayed the winter session of Parliament.

"I would ask Modiji three questions. First, is there a difference in the cost of planes in the first and the second contracts (signed with the French firm) and did India pay more or less money as per the second contract? And, has the industrialist (whose company has formed a joint venture with the French firm), who was given the contract, ever manufactured planes?" Gandhi asked while addressing a rally in Gandhinagar district in the morning.

"And a more important question, did you follow the due government procedure? Why the (then) defence minister was seen catching fish in Goa? And, was an approval from the Cabinet Committee on Security taken (for the mega deal)?," he asked.

Meanwhile, responding to the Congress vice president's Twitter jibe at Modi over the release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan, Jaitley advised Gandhi to refrain from such "immature behaviour".

"He is a big leader and such immature behaviour and use of such immature words do not suit him," Jaitley said.
Mumbai: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Saturday hit out at NCP chief Sharad Pawar, saying that Pawar 'served' Sonia Gandhi for 15 years despite being kicked out by the Congress president from her party in 1999.

Thackeray addressed a rally at Sangli in western Maharashtra, ahead of the Sangli Miraj Kupwad municipal corporation election.

"Today Pawar said he had not seen a coalition government such as ours (Sena-BJP) where we criticise the BJP but stay in power. He should know that both the parties are separate since inception. It was you, who back-stabbed then Congress chief minister Vasantdada Patil to become chief minister of Maharashtra. I haven't seen a leader like you.

"Shiv Sena criticises BJP if there is a mistake and we both are capable of sorting it out. Pawar should not worry about it. Pawar did not leave the party, in fact he was kicked out of the Congress by Sonia Gandhi, still he served her for (the next) 15 years," the Shiv Sena leader said, in reference to NCP's subsequent alliance with the Congress.

Pawar, while paying tributes to the first chief minister of Maharashtra late Yashvantrao Chavan at Karad this morning, took potshots at the Sena. "Shiv Sena is stuck to the power as if by adhesive. I have not seen such coalition government where one party continues to criticise another," he said.
Portugal's retail-focused conglomerate Sonae plans to buy more cybersecurity firms as it builds a portfolio in Portugal, Spain, the United States and Germany, a company official said. Carlos Silva, executive board member of the conglomerate's corporate venture arm Sonae IM, told Reuters it was looking for more companies to integrate with its Spain-based cybersecurity business S21Sec, acquired in 2014 and dealing with web fraud protection, data-leak detection and cyber threat alerts.

Sonae, which runs a stable of Continente-brand hypermarkets, electronic appliances stores Worten and other outlets, has a growing online retail business that needs cybersecurity. Sonae IM also offers these services to clients and had sales of 123 million euros ($147 million) in the first nine months of 2017. Sonae IM has recently announced its entry into the capital of German startup Secucloud which specialises in cloud-based security solutions for mobile networks, and U.S. firm Arctic Wolf, providing concierge security engineering services.

"We are looking for 'buy and build' opportunities to integrate with S21Sec ... There are also other segments for us to bet on like those where Arctic Wolf and Secucloud operate," Silva said.

Tech And Auto Show | EP21 | Apple iPhone X, Suzuki Intruder 150 & More
. To do so, first type the original number into the text box. Then click on the "Scientific Notation" option located at the top of the floating window. Finally, click on the "Standard" button found beneath the text box to display your result. This program is useful for scientists and engineers working with decimal-based numbers. It provides easy access to those who need to convert those numbers into more compact forms without having to do heavy math calculations first.

Scientific notation is a way to express very large or very small numbers. It is used in physics, chemistry and other fields where large numbers are common. Those numbers are written as a power of 10 followed by a number with an exponent. For example, 1,000,000 (one million) is written as 1  103. The exponent shows how many zeros are after the first digit. For example, 1,000,001 is written as 1  102. Scientific notation is a useful tool for making calculations easier. You can use it to write down very big or very small numbers in one step instead of writing out both the large and small numbers separately. You can also use it to express large or small numbers in terms of other units like centimeters or millimeters.

Scientific notation solver is an online tool that can be used to convert any number into scientific notation. Simply enter any number to the left of the decimal point and it will automatically convert it into a scientific notation equivalent. This web tool can be very helpful when you need to convert a large number into scientific notation. However, please note that this online tool can only convert numbers that are in scientific format. For example, it cannot convert a non-scientific number like "1,085" into a scientific notation equivalent. It is also important to keep in mind that this web tool only works when converting numbers from one particular format to another. For example, if you want to change a non-scientific number like "1,085" into standard format, then you will have to use another online tool like NumberFormatting.com.
Islamabad: As 200 armed men surrounded their house on a hot August night in 2005, Nazo Dharejo and her sisters grabbed their Kalashnikov and puny stock of ammunition and climbed to the roof.

The gunfight which followed earned her the moniker "Pakistan's toughest woman", and became the subject of a film which has been entered in next year's Academy Awards, vying for glory alongside heavy-hitters such as Angelina Jolie's First They Killed My Father and Joachim Trier's Thelma.

A world away from Hollywood's red carpet, at the ancestral home Dharejo fought for in Pakistan's rural Sindh province, she described the night which could lead to Oscar glory.

"I will kill them or die here but never retreat," Dharejo, now in her late 40s, recalled saying as assailants attacked her home.

Her husband begged her to stand down but she refused, facing down her own relatives  who were armed and had long sought to take her family's property after her father died leaving no male heir, she said.

Her grandfather had several wives, and the male heirs in other branches of his family were laying claim to her inheritance.

But her family had defied rural Pakistani cultural norms of the time to educate their daughters and teach them they were as good as boys, and the sisters were willing to give their lives to prove it.

From their position on the roof their tiny army  the three sisters, Dharejo's husband, and some loyal friends and neighbours  held off the onslaught, with household staff making daring runs for more ammunition until daylight broke.

A five-year legal battle over the land eventually saw her foes pay half a million rupees ($4,800) in compensation and offer a public apology  an act of utmost disgrace in rural Pakistan.

The Waderi

Born in a conservative feudal family, Dharejo was entitled to learn the Koran at home  and that was all.

She persuaded her father to allow her and her sisters to study English, which paved the way for her to gain her Bachelor of Arts in economics at Sindh University, where she could study at home and appear in public only for the exams.

But the modern justice system has made few inroads into rural Sindh, where little has changed for centuries in a society dominated by feudalism, and the bloody years-long fight over her family's land threatened many times to derail her progress.

"It kept intensifying. Five, six murders took place and in 1992 my brother was also murdered," she explained.

When her father died that same year, the women who visited to pay condolences taunted her mother and sisters that their family line had ended.

But Dharejo's determination  particularly her defiant stand over her family's property years later  slowly turned the tide.

Soon neighbours began to speak of her as "Waderi", a new feminine version of the male honorific "Wadera" meaning something akin to a feudal "Lady".

"She has become such a huge tree spreading soothing shade to the people around her," commented Zulfiqar Dharejo as his wife, draped in a traditional printed Sindhi shawl, rocked gently on a nearby swing bed in their sparse drawing room, hung with more guns.

Heat, hospitals and gunfire

In 2013 Dharejo's story came to the attention of a British-born Pakistani filmmaker, Sarmad Masud.

Fascinated, he got in touch. The result is My Pure Land, the 98-minute Urdu-language film version of Dharejo's story starring Suhaee Abro, which became the UK's official entry in the Oscar's foreign language category.

It faces tough competition: a record 92 countries have entered this year. Other contenders include Jolie's film on the Cambodian genocide.

Nominations will be announced in January, with the ceremony held in March.

Masud told AFP: "I was immediately inspired by (Dharejo's) courage and heroism."

But he conceded making the movie, filmed in some 30 days around Lahore, had been tough.

Temperatures touched 40 degrees during filming; both he and his wife, the production designer on the film, were briefly hospitalised; and the set was attacked.

Much to his frustration, they also never met their heroine in person, though they spoke often.

Despite its labelling by some critics as a "feminist Western", My Pure Land has only a few action scenes in it, Masud said.

Ultimately it is a drama about a father's loving relationship with his daughters, he explained.

"It was important to shine a light on characters and a part of the world which is very rarely accurately represented on screen," he added.

Dharejo said she was "very happy" with the the final film, adding that the triumphant story belongs to Sindh and Pakistan".

She said: "That is an honour for me."
Karachi: At least five people, including a child, were killed and 19 others injured on Saturday in a suicide attack on security forces in the restive Balochistan province of Pakistan, police said.

The attackers targeted the convoy of security forces on the Sariab road in the provincial capital Quetta, they said. The police confirmed that it was a suicide bomb attack on security forces convoy, the Geo News reported, adding five people were killed in the incident.

"The target was the vehicle of the Frontier Corps commander, but he was not present in the vehicle when the bomb attack took place," a government official said.

Earlier Saturday, Civil Hospital Quetta Spokesperson Wasim Baig said they had received four dead bodies while 19 persons, including a child, were injured in the bomb explosion. The fifth person is believed to have died later at the hospital.

"Some of the injured are still in critical condition as they were hit by shrapnels in the attack," Baig said. The attack came a day after senior police official of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Ashraf Noor was killed in a suicide attack on his vehicle in the upscale Hayatabad neighbourhood of Peshawar.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Taliban militants and Baloch nationalists often target security forces in the area.

A senior Pakistani police officer and his three family members were killed by unidentified, motorcycle-borne militants in Balochistan on November 15.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Muhammad Illyas who was on his way to market when he was killed in a targeted attack along with his wife, son and five-year-old granddaughter.

A suspected suicide bomber killed Additional Inspector General Telecommunications Hamid Shakeel and three other police officers in a targeted attack in Quetta on November 9. Balochistan has been rocked by a series of attacks which raised concerns about a growing militant presence, including those affiliated with Islamic State, which has claimed several bombings in the restive province.

The unrest has raised security concerns for projects in the USD 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link from western China to Pakistan's southern Gwadar port.

At least six police commandos and a civilian were killed last month when an explosives-laden vehicle rammed into a security force's convoy on the Quetta-Sibi Highway. In August this year, a massive suicide explosion, targeting Pakistan Army personnel in Quetta, left 15 people dead including seven civilians and injured at least 20 people.

In June this year, 14 people, including seven policemen, were killed and 21 others were injured in a suicide car bombing on Gulistan Road in Balochistan.
Dhaka: Bangladesh police said on Saturday they had arrested an Islamist militant wanted in connection with the 2015 killing of a U.S. blogger critical of religious extremism.

Deputy police commissioner Masudur Rahman said the man, identified as Arafat Rahman, 24, a member of al Qaeda-inspired militant group Ansar Ullah Bangla Team, was suspected of taking part in the killing of writer Avijit Roy.

Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin, was hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants in February 2015 while returning home with his wife from a Dhaka book fair. Roy's widow, Rafida Ahmed, was seriously injured.

Police official Rahman said the detainee, who was identified after analysing CCTV footage, was arrested by the counter-terrorism police unit on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka, on Friday night.

"In the primary interrogation, he confessed his involvement in the killing of four other secular activists," he told Reuters.

It was not possible to contact the detainee to comment as he was in police custody.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh of 160 million people has had a string of deadly attacks targeting bloggers, foreigners and religious minorities.

The most serious recent attack came in July 2016, when gunmen stormed a cafe in the diplomatic quarter of Dhaka and killed 22 people, most of them foreigners.

Police say the Ansar Ullah Bangla Team militant group is behind the murders of more than a dozen secular bloggers and gay rights activists. They believe a sacked army major, who is still at large, was the leader of the group and masterminded the killings.

Al Qaeda and Islamic State have also claimed responsibility for a series of killings over the past few years, including that of Roy.

The government has denied the presence of such groups, blaming domestic militants instead. But security experts say the scale and sophistication of the cafe attack suggested links to a wider network.

Police and army commandos have killed more than 60 suspected militants and arrested hundreds since the cafe attack.
Dhaka: Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed to take assistance from the UN refugee agency for the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali said on Saturday.

The two governments signed a pact on Thursday settling the terms for the repatriation process, and the return of the Rohingya to Myanmar is expected to start in two months.

Uncertainty over whether the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would have a role had prompted rights groups to insist that outside monitors were needed to safeguard the Rohingya's return.

More than 600,000 Rohingya sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after Myanmar's military launched a brutal counter-insurgency in their villages across the northern parts of Rakhine State following attacks by Rohingya militants on an army base and police posts on August 25.

The signing of the deal is a first step. The two countries will now have to work on more steps, Ali told a news conference.

"Both countries agreed to take assistance from the UNHCR in the Rohingya repatriation process," he said. "Myanmar will take its assistance as per their requirement."

A joint working group of the three parties will be formed within three weeks and the group will fix the final terms to start the repatriation process, said Ali.

"Our priority is to ensure their safe return to their homeland with honour," the minister said.

After repatriation, Rohingya Muslims will be kept at makeshift camps near to their abandoned homes, he said.

"Homes have been burnt to the ground in Rakhine, that need to be rebuilt. We have proposed Myanmar to take help from India and China for building camps for them," the minister said.

The UN and United States have described the military's actions as "ethnic cleansing", and rights groups have accused Myanmar's security forces of atrocities, including mass rape, arson and killings.

Under the deal, Myanmar will take measures to see that the returnees will not be settled in temporary places for a long time and Myanmar will issue them an identity card for national verification immediately on their return.
Berli: Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday welcomed the prospect of talks on a "grand coalition" with her Social Democrat (SPD) rivals and defended the record of the previous such government, saying it had worked well.

Merkel's fourth term was cast into doubt when the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) walked out of three-way coalition talks with her conservative bloc and the Greens last Sunday, causing a political impasse in Europe's biggest economy.

But on Friday, the SPD reversed a previous decision and agreed to talk to Merkel, raising the possibilities of a new "grand coalition" which has ruled Germany for the last four years, or of a minority government.

Addressing party members on Saturday, Merkel argued voters had given her conservatives a mandate to rule in the Sept. 24 election which handed her party the most parliamentary seats but limited coalition options. Her conservatives bled support to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

"Europe needs a strong Germany, it is desirable to get a government in place quickly," Merkel told a regional party meeting in northern Germany, adding, however, that her acting government could carry on day to day business.

"Asking voters to go to the polls again would, I think be totally wrong," she said. On Monday, Merkel had said she would prefer new elections to a minority government in which her party would be only held in power by others.

Without even mentioning the option of a minority government, Merkel said she wanted to look ahead after the setbacks of the last week. Sounding self-assured and drawing applause during her speech, she turned her attention fully to the SPD.

Welcoming the prospect of talks with her former partner, she defended the record of the last coalition.

"We worked well together," she said, adding under the grand coalition, Germany enjoyed the strongest labour market for decades, a balanced budget and pensioners and families had benefited, she argued.

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is to host Merkel, SPD leader Martin Schulz and the leader of her conservative CSU sister party for a meeting on Thursday. Steinmeier had exerted considerable pressure on Schulz to change course for the sake of stability in Germany.

SUBSTANCE

However, no one is saying things will be easy and the two former partners are already jostling over policy.

Merkel said her aims are to maintain Germany's solid finances, cut some taxes and expand the digital infrastructure.

In a nod to her CSU conservative allies, she also said she aims to limit the number of migrants entering Germany to 200,000 per year.

This, however, may be hard for the SPD to swallow.

"A cap, which may not be called that, breaches the constitution and the Geneva Convention. With the SPD there will be no limit put on family members who want to join asylum seekers," SPD deputy leader Ralf Stegner told the Funke media group.

Schulz, who had until Friday rejected any deal with Merkel, said there was nothing automatic about the outcome and promised party members a vote on talks.

The SPD is split as many members fear that renewing a grand coalition would be political suicide. It scored its worst result since 1933 in the September election.

Several other leading SPD members have called for other commitments, such as investment in education and homes.

Some senior SPD members have made clear that they will not let Merkel hold them hostage. "Mrs Merkel is not in a position to be setting conditions," Malu Dreyer, premier of the state of Rhineland Palatinate, told the Trierscher Volksfreund.
Washington: Lawyers for former national security adviser Michael Flynn have halted communications with US President Donald Trump's legal team, a potentially critical step in the probe into contacts between Trump's election campaign and Russia, sources familiar with the investigation said on Friday.

Flynn's lawyer, Robert Kelner, called John Dowd, Trump's private lawyer, on Wednesday to say the matter had reached a point where the two could no longer could discuss it, two people familiar with the call told Reuters on Friday.

The New York Times first reported that the two sets of lawyers had stopped communicating.

Flynn, a retired Army general, is a central figure in a federal investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into whether Trump aides colluded with alleged Russian efforts to boost his 2016 presidential campaign.

It was not clear whether Kelner made the call because he had negotiated a plea agreement with Mueller for Flynn to cooperate in the probe, or because Flynn had decided to engage with Mueller, said two other sources.

"No one should draw the conclusion that this means anything about General Flynn cooperating against the president," Jay Sekulow, another attorney for Trump, said on Thursday.

Dowd on Friday declined to comment on the matter, as did Peter Carr, Mueller's spokesman. Kelner also declined to comment. White House officials also have declined to comment.

The cooperation of Flynn, who was a top campaign adviser before becoming Trump's national security adviser in the White House, would be a major asset in Mueller's investigation.

In March, as he unsuccessfully sought immunity for his client to testify to House and Senate investigations into the issue, Kelner said, "Mr. Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he certainly wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit."

Two sources familiar with Mueller's investigation said Flynn may be able to provide insight into three major areas of inquiry.

These are: any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 campaign; money laundering and other possible financial crimes by Trump aides; and whether Trump sought to obstruct justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey in May, as Comey was probing the Trump campaign's dealings with Russia.

Russia has denied interfering in the election. Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia by his campaign and has called the inquiry a witch hunt.

QUESTIONS FOR FLYNN

Two congressional officials involved in separate probes into the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia said one key area of investigation is whether Flynn or other advisers to Trump ever suggested US economic sanctions on Russia could be lifted in exchange for favorable business deals.

Possible deals include a proposed commercial nuclear power project involving Russian firms that Flynn in recent years worked to promote to potential clients in the Middle East, sources familiar with the project told Reuters.

"At this point, there is no evidence of an effort to negotiate that kind of deal, but Flynn is near the top of the list of people who probably would know if there was any such effort," said one of the congressional officials, also speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Trump fired Flynn on Feb. 13, after disclosures that Flynn had discussed US sanctions on Russia with then Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in December, the month before Trump took office, and later misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

Flynn has acknowledged contacts with Kislyak dating back to 2013, but beyond saying they covered a variety of subjects has said nothing about the content of their conversations during Trump's campaign and after his election.

Flynn has been under scrutiny by the special counsel in a number of areas, sources familiar with the investigation have said.

Mueller has been investigating whether Flynn knowingly made false statements to the government about his foreign travels, income, and contacts on his security clearance form.

Flynn also has come under scrutiny for work on behalf of Russian clients, and over whether his work for a businessman with ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was lawful.

Mueller has been investigating Flynn's son, Michael Flynn, Jr.'s, involvement in some of his father's business dealings in Russia, Turkey, and elsewhere, the sources said, and that could provide a potent additional incentive for Flynn to cooperate.

Barry Coburn, a lawyer for Flynn's son, declined to comment.
Brussels: British Prime Minister Theresa May failed on Friday to make any breakthrough in Brexit talks with the European Union, as time runs out to move the negotiations into a critical second phase before the end of the year.

At a summit in Brussels, May met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leaders of Belgium, Denmark, Lithuania and European Council President Donald Tusk, seeking to move the talks onto future relations between Britain and the EU, especially their trade ties.

"There are still issues across the various matters that we are negotiating on," May told reporters after her meetings.

"But there has been a very positive atmosphere in the talks and a genuine feeling that we want to move forward together," she added.

Britain is set to leave the bloc on March 29, 2019, but the negotiations must be wrapped up in less than a year to leave parliaments time to ratify the agreement.

EU leaders are set to decide in three weeks if the negotiations have made "sufficient progress"  on Britain's financial settlement, the status of Irish borders and the rights of citizens hit by Brexit  for the talks to be expanded.

Currently, it seems unlikely that will happen.

After his meeting with May, Tusk tweeted that "sufficient progress" by the December 14-15 EU summit could yet be made, "but still a huge challenge. We need to see progress from UK within 10 days on all issues, including on Ireland."

May refused to say how much progress was made on the future of the border between EU member state Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, or on the size of the divorce bill.

On the latter she said only: "we have been talking about how we can progress the issue in relation to the financial settlement."

Britain has suggested that it would be willing to pay around 20 billion euros (USD 24 billion) to settle the divorce bill, while the Europeans are seeking anywhere from 60-100 billion euros (USD 72-120 billion) to clear London's tab.

Asked by British reporters whether their country should pay more, Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said: "Yes, of course, you should, it's an easy answer."

More generally, Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said "there is still some work to do to bring us closer on certain points" by the next EU summit in Brussels.

The big sticking point for Ireland is to ensure that no barriers to trade are set up after Brexit between it and Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, especially given the sectarian tensions that have long simmered in the region.

"We are not going to allow a border to remerge on the island of Ireland, and we have a shared responsibility with Britain to make sure that doesn't happen," said Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney.

"If progress isn't made in terms of more clarity, and more credibility in terms of how these issues can be resolved in a way that prevents a hard border on the island of Ireland, well then we cannot move on to phase 2," he said.

Coveney said that Ireland has the firm backing of its 26 EU partners.

"We have seen no suggestion that other countries are moving away from that position of solidarity, absolutely not," he added.

After the meetings, May said only: "we have the same desire. We want to ensure that the movement of people and trade across that border can carry no as now and that we don't create any new barriers."
On the eve of the biennial Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Myanmar, Wang Yi, China's foreign minister, made a short trip to Bangladesh to discuss the Rohingya crisis. At the time, his objectives were unclear; in recent months China has largely supported Myanmar's hardliner stance that the Rohingyas are illegal immigrants and pose a national security threat.

On Monday, as diplomats from over fifty Asian and European nations descended upon Naypyidaw for the start of ASEM, they received some clarity on the visit  Wang announced a Chinese-led plan to resolve the Rohingya crisis.

Guidelines for Reconciliation

China's proposed framework consists of three distinct stages for the repatriation and long-term safety of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

First, in an attempt to address the immediate issue, China has demanded an end to the violence in the Rakhine State. Minister Wang has indicated that a ceasefire is in place. Second, China has encouraged bilateral negotiations between Bangladesh and Myanmar over the repatriation of the refugees. In this regard, the two sides have signed a tentative agreement. Third, China has called for global investment in the Rakhine State, the Rohingyas' home, in order to foster a safe, prosperous environment for their return.

The broad proposal clearly recognises the violence in the Rakhine State as the initial obstacle to the Rohingya's return. It also emphasizes the need for major investment in the region. While the attacks against the Rohingya have been especially virulent since August, in reality, they have been ongoing for years and have devastated the local communities in the Rakhine State

While cognizant of the issue, China's plan does not contain any particularly novel propositions. It doesn't, for example, recommend how the repatriation process would work, or suggest specific policies for Myanmar to adopt to ensure the safety of the Rohingya once they return. It largely places the burden on Myanmar and Bangladesh to resolve these matters bilaterally.

Despite this lack of specificity, China has managed to establish itself as a vital mediator in what has often seemed to be an irresolvable humanitarian disaster. While other stakeholders have tried to facilitate peace, China has emerged as the only entity to bring Bangladesh and Myanmar together on this divisive issue.

China has a vested interest in the Rakhine State since it serves as a geographical gateway to the Bay of Bengal, a coveted resource hub. Beijing has already established itself as the infrastructure and economic provider in the region, and through this intervention, it also assumes the role as the primary broker of peace.

China's Emerging Soft Power

The viability of Chinas proposition rests on Beijing's relationship and influence with the involved parties, particularly with Myanmar. China serves as Myanmar's primary trading partner and weapons supplier, which has led to a strong relationship between Beijing and Myanmar's influential military. Where other international actors like the U.N. have struggled to sway Myanmar's outlook on the crisis, China has a unique advantage. For Bangladesh, China's involvement lends an air of credibility to the talks and instills confidence in a sustainable resolution.

While China's intervention is a valuable boost to the resolution of the crisis, larger geostrategic interests are also at play. Through its involvement, China is making a strategic decision to gain moral authority in the region, while other powers, such as India, are sidelined.

As China has built up its economic and security capacity in the Bay of Bengal, its strategies have often been perceived as expansionist. Now, as an arbiter in this crisis, China also asserts itself as the primary norm maker and peacekeeper in the Bay of Bengal. By designing its own peace proposal, it is clear that China wants to determine the conditions of stability in the region, as well as influence the dynamics of regional relationships.

The timing of the announcement is also worth noting. Instead of introducing this proposal at the APEC or ASEAN summits, China waited until other potential mediators, like the United States, had tried and failed to resolve the conflict.

Minister Wang's visit to Bangladesh and Myanmar come on the heels of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's trip to the region last week. While Secretary Tillerson exercised significant pressure on the peaceful resolution to the conflict, he was unable to secure a commitment from Myanmar on the future of the Rakhine State and the Rohingya. Within just a week of its involvement, China has brought both sides to the table to agree on an end to the crisis. This is a stark contrast of diplomatic authority.

Through its role in the crisis, China's interests in the Bay of Bengal are clear  it is determined to consolidate its soft power in the region and establish itself as the unilateral voice not only for security and development but also for peace and stability.

The practicality of the proposal will play out in the coming months, but if successful, it would prove to be a master class in diplomacy  where every stakeholder, particularly the arbitrator, benefits.

 The author works with The Observer Research Foundation
Harare: Former Zimbabwe finance minister Ignatius Chombo, among those detained by the military before Robert Mugabe resigned as president, was charged on Saturday with corruption, including trying to defraud the central bank in 2004.

The court appearance was the first time Chombo had been seen in public since being detained after the military seized power in "Operation Restore Legacy", which it said was meant to remove the "criminals" around Mugabe.

Chombo, a Mugabe ally who had been promoted to finance minister in October, told the court that he was kept blindfolded for nine days after being arrested at his home on Nov. 15.

His lawyer has said he was beaten in detention, although Chombo made no mention of that and had no injuries visible as he stood before magistrates in Harare.

Several members of a group allied to Mugabe and his wife Grace were detained and expelled from the ruling party, including Chombo, the ousted head of the influential ZANU-PF youth league Kudzanai Chipanga and a deposed leader in the party's youth wing, Innocent Hamandishe.

Some supporters of the new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, have been calling for unspecified action against the so-called G40 group that backed Mugabe and his wife. Chombo, Chipanga and Hamandishe were allied to the G40.

Before his inauguration, Mnangagwa on Thursday urged citizens not to undertake any form of "vengeful retribution".

The state prosecutor said Chombo was charged three counts of corruption, including attempting to defraud the Zimbabwean central bank in 2004, when he was local government minister.

He was not asked to enter a plea by the state. Chombo showed no emotion while the charges were read. The court ordered Chombo detained until Monday when his bail application will be heard.

Describing his arrest, when his wife had also been present, Chombo told the court: "While we stood in the room, there rushed in between five and six people wearing masks and all of them had guns. The guns were pointing at us."

He said he suffered lacerations on his left side when he fell as the soldiers led him out of his house to a car.

Chombo's lawyer, Lovemore Madhuku, said on Friday Chombo was admitted to hospital with injuries sustained from beatings he received in military custody.

Chombo had no visible injuries and appeared calm, chatting with the police guarding him when the court took a break.

Chombo was handed over to the police by the military. The police said they had no information on Chombo's injuries when asked to comment.

A former university lecturer and Mugabe's ally, Chombo was promoted in an October cabinet reshuffle from the interior ministry to the finance portfolio, against the backdrop of a severe shortage of the U.S. dollar used by Zimbabwe.

In his main act as new finance minister, Chombo told parliament on Nov. 9 that Zimbabwe's budget deficit would soar to $1.82 billion or 11.2 percent of gross domestic product this year from an initial target of $400 million.

In the same court, Chipanga faced charges of making statements aimed at undermining public confidence in the defence forces and was also detained until Monday when his bail application will be heard. Hamandishe faced six counts of kidnapping and one of publishing falsehoods and was detained in custody until Dec. 8.

MDC DEMANDS ACTION

Mugabe's fall after 37 years in power was triggered by a battle to succeed him that pitted Mnangagwa against Mugabe's much younger wife Grace, who is 52.

Mnangagwa, 75, the former vice president sacked by Mugabe this month, was sworn in as president on Friday.

The 93-year-old Mugabe, who had led Zimbabwe from independence in 1980, stepped down on Tuesday after the army seized power and the ruling party turned against him.

On Friday, Zimbabwe's Judge President George Chiweshe nullified Mugabe's decision to fire Mnangagwa as his deputy - a move that triggered the military intervention.

In his inauguration speech, Mnangagwa laid out a grand vision to revitalise Zimbabwe's ravaged economy and vowed to rule on behalf of all the country's citizens.

The main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said Mnangagwa's speech "sounded like he was reading from the MDC policy documents", it said in a statement.

"As a party, we are flattered to note that President Mnangagwa seems to have radically departed from the usual ZANU-PF drivel such as hate-filled language, empty sloganeering and the rabid promotion of racism and retribution against perceived political foes, both domestically and internationally," it said.

The MDC demanded concrete action to investigate human rights abuses, steps to tackle corruption, plans for free and fair elections next year and assurances that the military would return to their barracks and stay out of politics.

In the early hours of Saturday, armoured vehicles and soldiers that had been stationed outside government buildings, parliament and the courts returned to Inkomo Barracks outside Harare, one of the soldiers manning the vehicles said.
Islamabad: Pakistan's government called on the powerful military to deploy in the capital Islamabad Saturday after deadly unrest broke out when police moved to dislodge an Islamist protest that has brought the city to a near-standstill.

At least one person was killed and and 190 injured -- some 137 of whom were security personnel -- when police moved in to disperse the demonstration earlier Saturday, sparking fierce clashes.

Security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets but the demonstrators blocked roads and burned police vehicles around the site of the sit-in. As the violence intensified, protests sprouted in the major cities of Lahore and Karachi, as well as smaller towns across the country.

Authorities had been attempting to clear a small protest by the little-known hardline group called Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah Pakistan (TLYRAP) that has blocked a main highway into Islamabad since November 6, causing hours-long traffic snarls and enraging citizens.

It was not clear how many protesters remained in the streets of the capital late Saturday. There had been roughly 2,000 as the operation began, but AFP reporters said dozens more were arriving throughout the day.

Police and paramilitary forces retreated following the clashes, with the Islamabad Capital Territory authorities making the request for the army to step in soon after.

An interior ministry order said the federal government had authorised the deployment of "sufficient troops" to "control law and order" in the city until further notice. There was no immediate comment from military officials.

The demonstrations have threatened the beleaguered Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) government ahead of a general election due to be held next year.

Analysts and critics accused it of bungling its response, which authorities hesitating for days over fears of violence as the city's commuters seethed in the traffic choked streets.

The TLYRAP are demanding that Pakistan's law minister Zahid Hamid resign over a hastily-abandoned amendment to the oath that election candidates must swear.

Demonstrators have linked it to blasphemy -- a highly contentious issue in Muslim Pakistan -- and claim the oath was softened to enable the participation of Ahmadis, a long-persecuted Islamic minority sect.

Alarmed residents

Earlier, police in Karachi said some 200 protesters had blockaded a major road in the southern port, with at least nine people injured -- including three with gunshot wounds -- brought to hospital, according to doctors.

Markets and shops were closing in the megacity, Pakistan's commercial hub, as alarmed residents stayed inside while hardline clerics urged more people to take to the streets.

An AFP journalist in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, said Mall Road, the main artery in the eastern city, had been closed by police due to protests, while a deployment of paramilitary rangers was being sought by city officials. Smaller rallies were reported in other towns across the country.

Earlier in the day Pakistan's powerful military chief phoned the prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi to urge the situation be handled "peacefully".

General Qamar Javed Bajwa called for both sides to avoid violence "as it is not in national interest", army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor said on Twitter.

Pakistan's media regulator barred local TV channels from broadcasting live images from the scene, though protesters were still using Facebook Live and other social media to galvanise support across the country.

'Explosive' situation

The protesters come from the Barelvi sect of Islam that has strong ties to Sufism, a mystical branch of the religion that is seen as moderate.

However the execution in 2016 of Barelvi follower Mumtaz Qadri -- who assassinated liberal Punjab governor Salman Taseer over his stance on the country's blasphemy laws -- led members of the group to take a more hardline stance against any moves to reform the legislation.

"These people already had a grudge against the government and the government just provided them the opportunity to vent out their anger," said political analyst Hasan Askari.

The demonstrators had vowed to die for their cause. But weeks of inaction from authorities sparked the wrath of Pakistan's judiciary, with the Supreme Court issuing a blistering statement earlier in the week and the Islamabad High Court threatening to hold government officials in contempt over the official response.

The chaos in the capital comes as the government is facing severe challenges.

The Supreme Court had already dealt a blow to the PML-N by ousting its leader, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, over a graft investigation in the summer. Finance minister Ishaq Dar, also embroiled in corruption allegations, has taken indefinite medical leave.

Analysts said the government had allowed a minor issue to grow into a headline-grabbing and potentially dangerous situation.

Even before Saturday's clashes the sit-in had cost the life of an eight-year-old child whose ambulance could not reach a hospital in time due to the blocked roads.

"Politically driven procrastination has its own costs and this is what the government is paying," analyst Imtiaz Gul told AFP, adding that the situation was "explosive"
Oostkamp (Belgium): Catalonia's deposed leader Carles Puigdemont Saturday launched his campaign for regional elections from Belgium by calling on Catalans to make known their desire for independence.

"We Catalans demonstrated to the world that we have the capacity and the will to become an independent state. And on (December) 21, we must ratify this," he said in Oostkamp in Belgium, where he fled to after the Catalan parliament declared unilateral independence.

Puigdemont was sacked as Catalan president after that declaration on October 27 as was his entire regional government, and Madrid imposed direct rule on the once semi-autonomous region to stop the independence drive.

At the time, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also dissolved the Catalan parliament and called regional elections for December 21 in a bid to "restore normality" to the region.

The crisis began in earnest on October 1 when separatist leaders held an independence referendum despite a court ban, in which they said 90 per cent opted to break from Spain even if less than half of eligible voters turned out in the deeply divided region.

Puigdemont, who is awaiting possible extradition to Spain, is running at the head of the Junts per Catalunya ("All for Catalonia" in Catalan) grouping.

It is unclear whether he will still be in Belgium when the elections take place.

But if Belgium decides to extradite him to Spain where he is wanted on charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds, he faces jail pending the probe.
Washington: Days ahead of what should be a major moment for Ivanka Trump on the world stage, CNN has learned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson isn't sending a high-level delegation to support her amid reports of tensions between Tillerson and the White House.

Multiple State Department officials, as well as a source close to the White House, have told CNN Tillerson's decision not to send senior State Department officials to this year's Global Entrepreneurship Summit, being held in India next week, is not related to his key project of slashing the Department's budget, and is more to do with the fact Ivanka Trump is leading the US delegation this year.

Trump was invited by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June, and this year's theme is supporting women entrepreneurs.

The State Department puts on the large yearly event, which Secretary of State John Kerry and even President Obama attended multiple times. But this year, according to one senior State Department official: "No one higher than the deputy assistant secretary is allowed to participate. The secretary and his top staff have insisted on approving all travel-- even the most minute details."

"They (Tillerson and his staff) won't send someone senior because they don't want to bolster Ivanka. It's now another rift between the White House and State at a time when Rex Tillerson doesn't need any more problems with the President," the official added.

A source close to the White House speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the thinner-than-past-years State Department delegation was absolutely being perceived and felt -- by several key people there -- as a snub, and that Tillerson's management style and extremely tight inner circle have rubbed some in the administration the wrong way.

The source said the feeling among some within the White House, is that Tillerson and his team are far from eager to throw the support of the State Department behind Ivanka Trump on this trip, which will be her highest-profile appearance yet representing the United States.

"Rex doesn't like the fact that he's supposed to be our nation's top diplomat, and Jared and now Ivanka have stepped all over Rex Tillerson for a long time," the source said. "So now, he's not sending senior people from the State Department to support this issue. He's not supporting Ivanka Trump."

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told CNN that: "The Department is committed to supporting women's economic empowerment and entrepreneurship, and the Summit is a prime opportunity to showcase the importance of these themes."

Last year's summit, which was held in California's Silicon Valley and made travel easier, included Secretary of State Kerry, a State Department undersecretary, two assistant secretaries, and other staff. President Obama attended with a large delegation when it was held in Kenya in 2015, as did Kerry when it was in Malaysia in 2013.

This year's event, though, falls just as the White House has directed Secretary Tillerson to slash his agency's budget. There is currently no permanent Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs. Also, the Entrepreneurship Summit was an Obama-era creation that started in 2010, so some change in approach would have surely been expected.

Still, State Department leadership has lately emphasized a commitment to forging a stronger relationship with India. And the President's daughter is going, being billed in the Indian press as the "star attraction."

The Acting Assistant Secretary for the central Asia region, Alice Wells, was originally slated to be at the Summit -- but has since been pulled off by Tillerson's team, according to a source.

Another official did say there are many State Department staffers involved and who will attend, but didn't have an explanation for why no higher-level people will be going this year. The official added that he was unaware of tensions or the internal chatter over supporting the first daughter, who serves as a senior White House advisor.

A spokesperson for the State Department who provided a list of senior government officials attending did not include any senior State Department officials. He did include US Treasurer Jovita Carranza, USAID Administrator Mark Green and Neomi Rao, the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The US Ambassador to India will join the delegation in Hyderabad.

Ivanka Trump's spokesman declined to comment on the story.
London: Britain has officially abandoned its claim to be the world's fifth largest economy.

Treasury chief Philip Hammond acknowledged the slide on Wednesday, noting the new ranking in a series of statements meant to highlight the economy's strength.

"Britain is the world's sixth largest economy," Hammond said in his closely-watched budget speech.

While there are several ways to measure the size of an economy, the UK Treasury pointed to GDP forecasts published by the International Monetary Fund in October to back up his statement.

The numbers show that France will narrowly squeak ahead of Britain in the group's 2017 ranking of global economies, with its advantage predicted to widen considerably in 2018.

This year will be the first time since 2013 that France has topped the UK in the ranking, according to the IMF.

The slide reflects a sharp deceleration in Britain's economic growth since it voted to leave the European Union in June 2016. The pound has weakened dramatically, consumer spending has slowed and prices have spiked.

On Wednesday, the Office of Budget Responsibility slashed its UK growth forecasts for 2017 from 2% to 1.5%. It expects a 1.4% expansion next year, followed by 1.3% in 2019 and 2020.

The loss of its top five spot to an EU rival is more bad news for politicians who argue that Britain will be stronger outside the bloc.

David Davis, Britain's lead negotiator in Brexit talks, mentioned as recently as September that his country's economy was the fifth largest in the world.

The UK is expected to slide further. India is forecast to power past both Britain and France in 2019.

The world's top seven economies, according to the 2017 IMF forecast are  US ($19.4 trillion), China ($11.9 trillion), Japan ($4.9 trillion), Germany ($3.7 trillion), France ($2.575 trillion), UK ($2.565 trillion) and India ($2.4 trillion).
Washington: The White House has said there would be repercussions for US-Pakistan relations unless Islamabad took action to detain and charge Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

"(Hafiz) Saeeds release, after Pakistans failure to prosecute or charge him, sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistans commitment to (combating) international terrorism and belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil," the White House said in a statement.

"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistans global reputation," it added.

The JuD head, who carries a bounty of $10 million announced by the US for his role in terror activities, was set free after a Judicial Review Board of Pakistan released him for the lack of evidence.

He had been under detention since January this year.

The Judicial Review Board of Punjab province comprising judges of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Thursday unanimously ordered Saeed's release on the completion of his 30-day house arrest which expired at night.

Saeed, after his release, said he was detained when he announced a month of solidarity for Kashmiris this January. He used the release order to buttress his claims of "innocence".

"I am very happy that none of the allegations against me proved as three judges of the LHC ordered my release ...India had levelled baseless allegations against me. The LHC's review board decision has proved that I am innocent," Saeed said.
More than 50 vendors and 500 people piled into Centertown in Bedford on Saturday for the third annual Christmas Market.

The market, hosted by the Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce, is meant to bring awareness and business to local shops, artisans and crafters, BACC President and CEO Susan Martin said.

The small businesses are the heart of our community and the heart of our economy, Martin said, adding that supporting small businesses has a positive cyclical impact that creates a vibrant community.

The market offered more than just vendors, bringing together food trucks, carriage rides, a free hot cocoa stand and opportunities to pose with Santa for photos. It used to be held at the Bedford County Country Club, BACC Chair Patti Jurkus said.

But we outgrew the space, she said. So we thought by bringing it into Bedford, we would be able to showcase small business owners  as well as create more business in the small town.

The event itself takes about a year to plan and the BACC normally starts planning for the next one as soon as the event ends, Martin said.

It costs about $5,000 to $8,000 to throw the event, but a large portion of the costs are offset by sponsors, Martin said.

HumanKind social worker Nadine Dunton has set up shop at the market for the past two years, she said. She sells pieces from Crafts by Nadine, a home-based winter decor shop that sells snowmen, signs and more.

Throughout the year, Dunton crafts after her children are asleep or at night while shes watching TV. Dunton only sells her crafts during the winter months, attending craft shows and area events like the market, she said.

I did really well last year and Im doing well today, she said. Its something enjoyable for me  It gives me an avenue [to reach customers].

Sally Hutslar owns 10 alpacas and the Forest-based business Alpaca By Jaca, which has been featured at the market for the past two years and sells items such as socks, hats and childrens sweaters made from Alpaca fleece.

Its a chance to showcase locally-owned businesses which are [important], you know, were a mom-and-pop store, she said.  Its just a way to get people to think about instead of always going to a big box store like Target to think about the mom-and-pop places that have unique stuff.

Hutslar, a member of the BACC, said she didnt expect to make a huge amount of money Saturday, but the market gave her the opportunity to increase business awareness.

Seven-month-old Noah stood in line to meet Santa with his aunt Giffen Walters, grandmother Tina Walters and great-grandmother Barbara Dowdy.

Giffen Walters, who is sophomore on break from Concordia University in Nebraska, posed Noah on Santas lap before she said it was nice to be in her small hometown and at the event.

Tina Walters, of Bedford, said she came out because she wanted to support her community  and because its Noahs first Christmas.

It supports the whole community, she said. Its good for them and its good for us. By supporting small businesses, you support the community as a whole cause if they prosper, it just keeps growing.
Like so many women in recent days, Ive discovered a renewed interest in who and what I was at age 14.

My freshman portrait in my high school yearbook is smaller than most forever postage stamps. What a skinny, wide-eyed scaredy-cat I was back then. You could fit everything I knew about the world in one of the cups of my starter bra.

That was 1973.

Six years later, it was Leigh Corfmans turn to be 14.

She says thats when Roy Moore sexually assaulted her.

Moore was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney in Alabama at the time. Corfman says Moore pursued her  stalked strikes me as a better word for it  just days after meeting her with her mother.

From The Washington Post, which broke this story:

He picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsen, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.

I wanted it over with  I wanted out, she remembers thinking. Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.

Whatever this is.

Anyone even tempted to suggest she was a consenting child needs to absorb the meaning of those words. At 14, she didnt even know how to make sense of what this man, who was more than twice her age, was trying to do to her.

You and I know.

Look away all you want. You and I, we know.

That same Washington Post story chronicled the accounts of three other women. They told the Post that Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18. One of them, Wendy Miller, says she was a 14-year-old Santas helper when she first caught his eye. She was 16 when he tried to date her.

Moore is now 70 and Alabamas Republican nominee in the Dec. 12 special election for U.S. Senate.

He is hoppin mad at these women.

From his initial written statement: These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign.

Dont you love it when they try to swap out me with this campaign? Yeah, neither do I.

Besides, his campaign said in a later statement, if hed really gone after these minors, this would have come out years ago. Fake news, he added.

A reminder: If its news, it isnt fake. If its fake, it isnt news.

Just the other week, another woman  Beverly Young Nelson  came forward to say that she, too, was a 16-year-old victim of Roy Moores.

In an emotional televised statement, Nelson described how Moore offered her a ride home from her waitressing job but then pulled his car to the back of the restaurant.

I was alarmed, and I immediately asked him what he was doing, she said. Instead of answering my questions, Mr. Moore reached over and began groping me and putting his hands on my breast. I tried to open my car door to leave, but he reached over and he locked it.

She added this: I thought he was going to rape me. I was twisting and I was struggling and I was begging him to stop.

Moore finally gave up  with a warning. He was an important man in Etowah County, and she was just a child.

He told me, he said, Youre just a child, and he said, I am the district attorney of Etowah County, and if you tell anyone about this, no one will ever believe you.

Nelson revealed her decades-old secret after Moore mocked his other accusers. She added that she voted for Donald Trump, to make clear that she was not politically motivated in going public now. Im bone-weary of those fellow liberals attacking her for that. I dont know why she supported an admitted sexual predator for president, but I dont need to know. I hate what happened to her when she was only 16 years old.

The national Republican machine is finally pulling out of Moores race. Many GOP leaders now call for him to step aside. Quite a sight, that one, watching those Republican members of Congress discover their spines. Without anesthesia, even.

So far, Moore refuses to budge.

And so we turn to you, voters of Alabama. Your country needs you.

Imagine the message for every girl in America if Roy Moore is elected to the U.S. Senate.

You know the right thing to do here.

You and I, we know.

Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State Universitys school of journalism. Email her at con.schultz@yahoo.com.
IMPLEMENTATION of consistent policies, which has been the glaring missing link in the past, is required if plans set up by President Emmerson Mnangagwa are to succeed.

President Mnangagwa, who took office last Friday, said the countrys economic turnaround would be anchored on high agricultural production and foreign direct investment (FDI).



Since Government embarked on the land reform programme in 2000, yields, mainly for the staple maize and tobacco, have been plummeting due to lack of experience by the beneficiaries and absence of massive and consistent funding.





Maize output only rose exponentially in the last cropping season after Government instituted an import substitution programme, Command Agriculture, and yields are expected to surpass two million metric tonnes this season. Tobacco has also been doing well, averaging 170 million kgs, especially since 2009.





However, President Mnangagwa, who is under no illusion of the task confronting him, announced that there will be more agriculture facilities to support farmers going forward, if economic turnaround is to be achieved.





I have to hit the ground running to make sure that I lead in stupendous efforts we all need to summon and unleash in concert, towards taking this great nation beyond where our immediate past President left it.





The task at hand is that of rebuilding our great country. It principally lies with none but ourselves. Therefore, I exhort beneficiaries of the land reform programme to show their deservedness by demonstrating commitment to the utilisation of the land now available to them for national food security and for the recovery of our economy.





They must take advantage of programmes that my Government shall continue to avail to ensure that all land is utilised optimally. Our economic policy will be predicated on our agriculture, which is the mainstay and on creating conditions for an investment led economic recovery that puts premium on job-creation, said President Mnangagwa.

With indications that agriculture can be revived, predicated on the resounding success of Command Agriculture last season, the new dispensation has to also focus on creating a conducive environment for foreign direct investment.





President Mnangagwa said key choices would have to be made to attract FDI so as to tackle high levels of unemployment while transforming the economy, which has been in the doldrums for almost two decades now.





FDI has been coming down in recent years, plunging 30 percent last year to US$294,66 million from US$421,2 million in the year earlier, against a target of US$2 billion in 2020. In 2014, the countrys FDI peaked at US$545 million with the energy and mining sectors being the biggest magnets.





While Zimbabwe is struggling for FDI, mainly because of alleged bad investment policies dramatised by the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act, and high cost of registering and doing business, other regional countries such as Mozambique and Zambia have been doing fairly well.





In 2015, Zambia and Mozambique attracted FDI worth US$1,6 billion and US$3,7 billion driven by friendly investment laws and implementation.





Market watchers have urged Government to expedite the ease of doing business reforms, which were kick-started in August 2015.





Government, through the Office of the President and Cabinet, has been engaged in efforts to transform the doing business environment.

Eight laws out of 14, including the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Act and the Movable Property Securities Interests Act, have so far been gazetted as part of addressing the doing business environment.





Despite the milestones achieved so far, the country has not significantly moved on the doing business standings.





It only gained two places to 159 out of 190 on the World Banks 2018 ease of doing business global rankings, suggesting that a lot still needs to be done by the incoming regime to convince foreign investors that Zimbabwe is ready to do business. Analysts also praised President Mnangagwas declaration of war against corruption, which is also contributing to the foreign investors difficulties in doing business in the country.





Corruption has been blamed for weighing economic growth in the last 20 years as politically connected individuals abused their positions to enrich themselves.





Major General Sibusiso Moyo also recently slammed corruption in high places when he addressed the nation on the day the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) begun Operation Restore Legacy.





President Mnangagwa warned corrupt elements to brace for tough times ahead if they continue prejudicing the nation.





As we focus on recovering our economy, we must shed misbehaviours and acts of indiscipline, which have characterised the past.





Acts of corruption must stop forthwith. Where these occur, swift justice must be served to show each and all that crime and other acts of economic sabotage can only guarantee ruin to perpetrators.





We have to aspire for a clean nation, one sworn to high moral standards and deserved rewards.





On these ideals, my administration declares full commitment, warning that grief awaits those who depart from the path of virtue and clean business, he said.

The President also promised to tackle cash shortages, financial sector viability, and to re-engage the international community. Sunday Mail
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A tiny village in Switzerland just asked the Italian town of Bormida to hold its beer. Earlier this year, Bormida was offering $2,175 to people willing to move there in an effort to stave off its extinction. Facing the prospect of a similar future, little Albinen may soon significantly up the ante. The Local reports the village of 240 people that overlooks the Rhone valley from an altitude of 4,200 feet will vote Nov. 30 on whether or not to pay more than $25,500 per adult and $10,200 per child to families willing to relocate there. With a lack of jobs, residentsespecially young familieshave been leaving Albinen, according to Euronews. In fact, the village's school was forced to close recently when three families moved away and took their eight children with them.

Should Albinen residents approve the proposal, the money would come with some stipulations: new residents must be under the age of 45, they must agree to live in Albinen for 10 years (or repay the money), they must buy or build property worth at least $204,000, and the property must be their primary residence. The community newsletter calls it "an investment in the village's future." Albinen authorities believe the proposal will make them money in the long run through new taxpayers, new construction, and increased shopping. And while there aren't many jobs in Albinen, there are a few villages nearby. Plus, as Curbed notes, it's on the "sunny side" of the Rhone valley. And Travel and Leisure adds that Albinen "is quite beautiful, clean, and theres even a nice spa nearby." (Read more Switzerland stories.)
A man sentenced to more than seven years in jail after he was spotted holding hands with his sister at the Muscoda Mushroom Fest two years ago won't be released early after a Wisconsin court rejected his appeal Wednesday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Because Christian Bisbach was on extended supervision in 2015 for the sexual assault of a child, his hand-holding with a young woman earned him an interview with a sheriff's deputy and his parole officer. Bisbach told them the woman was his biological sister but that he had been adopted prior to her birth and they were raised apart. He said he moved back in with his biological parents in 2015 when he 29 and started a sexual relationship with his sister, who was 18.

Bisbach was convicted of incest and sentenced to 7.5 years in prison. He has argued that the state didn't do enough to prove the woman was actually his sister and that they had a sexual relationship. Bisbach said it wasn't enough to take him at his word and that the state should have gotten a DNA test or birth certificate or had his family testify. An appeals court upheld Bisbach's conviction Wednesday, stating it's enough that he himself admitted to having a sexual relationship with his sister, that he was seen holding her hand in public, that sexually suggestive phone calls between the two were recorded while he was in jail, and that the woman told the deputy they were "in a relationship." The woman was also found guilty of incest and sentenced to three years probation. (Read more incest stories.)
A western New York woman was shot and killed while walking her dogs Wednesday nightby a hunter, police say. Deputies say Thomas Jadlowski, 34, thought he spotted a deer in a field in the Town of Sherman and fired; he told authorities he then heard a scream and went to investigate, WKBW reports. In the field, about 200 yards away, he found 43-year-old Rosemary Billquist with a gunshot wound; he called 911 and applied pressure to the wound until emergency personnel arrived, but Billquist died at a nearby hospital. Jadlowski appeared to have fired the shot after sunset, Buffalo News reports; the call came in at 5:24pm and the sun set at 4:46pm. That's after the legal limit for deer-hunting hours; it's unclear whether charges will be filed.

"Hunters have to understand there are other people using trails, using parks in areas where we as sportsmen hunt," says an instructor for the state's hunter education program. "In this case, it appears from what I gathered this was after sunset, and he shouldn't have been out there hunting after sunset. You're done. That's the law." Billquist's husband tells the Buffalo News his wife was behind their house, just 100 yards or so away, when she was shot. "There's rules. You should abide by them. ... It's disturbing. It's a two-second decision that he'll regret for the rest of his life," he says of the hunter, who lived nearby. "Supposedly it was 200 yards away. He thought it was a deer, which is hard for me to believe," he adds, per the Washington Post. "If you dont know what it is, why shoot?" (Read more shooting death stories.)
Malia Obama is now a 19-year-old freshman at Harvard, and the former first daughter is getting some high-profile support from people pleading for her privacy. Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump separately tweeted for media sites to back off after video surfaced online of Malia, gasp, blowing smoke rings, reports USA Today. "Malia Obamas private life, as a young woman, a college student, a private citizen, should not be your clickbait," tweeted Clinton. "Be better." Trump voiced a similar sentiment.

"Malia Obama should be allowed the same privacy as her school aged peers," wrote Trump. "She is a young adult and private citizen, and should be OFF limits." Rapper-actor Common put things more succinctly: "Let Malia live." Newsweek rounds up more reaction, which includes people hoping Malia surrounds herself with people who respect her privacy more, and those impressed by her smoke rings. The video was posted, then deleted, by Barstool Sports. (Read more Malia Obama stories.)
A common narrative has emerged in the wake of Robert Mugabe's ouster in Zimbabwe: His undoing can be blamed on wife Grace's greedy grab for power. Actually, this narrative is being cast as a "tale of two wives," writes Zimbabwe-born novelist Panashe Chigumadzi in a Washington Post op-ed. The idea is that if Mugabe's first wife, Sally, hadn't died in 1992, she would have kept Robert Mugabe's abuses in check. Instead, the narrative goes, Sally was replaced by Grace, who has been manipulating the now 93-year-old Mugabe for decades toward her own ends. It's a convenient tale for Mugabe's own Zanu-PF party as it seeks to rebrand itself while "sweeping all that went wrong into a Grace Mugabe-sized hole."

For one thing, the idea that Sally would have restrained her husband is a stretch. She was by his side, after all, during some horrible abuses in the 1980s, writes Chigumadzi. As for Grace, she is clearly "no saint. But she has also done nothing without Robert Mugabes endorsement (and indeed that of many others in the party)." If she went too far in trying to solidify herself as her husband's successor, that's more on him than her. No, the one true villain in Zimbabwe's tale is Robert Mugabe, who ruled by the gun and was ultimately ousted by it. To say otherwise "is at best simplistic and at worst misogynistic," writes Chigumadzi. Click for the full column. (Read more Grace Mugabe stories.)
While consumers were fighting over fancy televisions on Black Friday, the US government was fighting over consumers. The New York Times reports Richard Cordray suddenly left his position as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Fridaya week ahead of schedule. One of his final moves before heading out the door was to name his chief of staff, Leandra English, as deputy director. Cordray says that would legally make her acting director until such a time as President Trump nominates a new director and gets that nominee approved by the Senate. Instead, Trump immediately named budget director Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the CFPB, which regulates companies that lend money to consumers. It's now completely unclear which acting director will be in charge of the bureau come Monday morning.

Citing the 1998 Federal Vacancies Reform Act, administration officials tell Reuters that Trump has the power to install his own acting director and that the administration expects Mulvaney to be in charge with English working under him next week. But in a Facebook post, Sen. Elizabeth Warrenwho was responsible for the creation of the CFPBsays Trump "can't override" the Dodd-Frank Act, which states the CFPB deputy director becomes acting director until a permanent replacement is approved. The battle of who controls the CFPB has real stakes, as Trump has been on a mission to mold financial regulators to his liking and Republicans have been trying to kill the CFPB since its formation. In fact, Mulvaney once called the bureauwhich has punished banks, student lenders, and others over predatory lending practicesa "sad, sick joke." (Read more Consumer Financial Protection Bureau stories.)
Egypt on Saturday said an attack on a mosque by militants in the country's troubled region of northern Sinai has killed 305 worshipers, including 27 children, a dramatic increase in the death toll previously announced, which was 235. A statement by the country's chief prosecutor, Nabil Sadeq, said the attack Friday left another 128 people wounded, per the AP. It said the attackers, estimated at between 25 and 30, arrived at the mosque close to the small town of Bir al-Abd in five all-terrain vehicles and positioned themselves at the main door and the facility's 12 windows before opening fire. They also torched seven cars parked outside the mosque, which belonged to worshipers inside. Witnesses said some of the attackers were masked. Those who were not sported heavy beards and long hair. The militants wore camouflaged pants and black T-shirts.

The chief prosecutor's statement was the most detailed by authorities on the attack, the deadliest by Islamic extremists in Egypt's modern history. The account it gave generally agreed with what witnesses told the AP on Saturday in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, where some of the wounded are hospitalized. They spoke of horrific scenes during the approximately 20 minutes it took the militants to kill and maim worshipers, recalling how some jumped out of windows and children screamed in horror. "Everyone lay down on the floor and kept their heads down," said one witness. "If you raised your head you get shot." Friday's attack targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam. Islamic militants, including the local affiliate of the Islamic State group, consider Sufis heretics because of their less literal interpretations of the faith.

(Read more Egypt stories.)
A Virginia youth pastor has been charged in a triple murder after his wife, her daughter, and her daughter's boyfriend were found dead at a home in a Richmond suburb on Thanksgiving, the Washington Post reports. According to WWBT, the bodies of 58-year-old Jeanett Gattis and her 30-year-old daughter, Candice Kunze, were found in a house in Chester on Thanksgiving night. The body of Kunze's boyfriend, 36-year-old Andrew Buthorn, was found in the yard. All three lived at the house and had been fatally shot. Christopher Gattis, 58, was arrested at the scene. He's been charged with three counts of first-degree murder, the New York Daily News reports.

Grace Lutheran Church, where Christopher Gattis is a youth pastor, says it's "deeply saddened" by the incident and "asks for the prayers from the community as our congregation begins the process of addressing the grief being experienced by everyone involved." Jeanett Gattis' boss at Napier Realtors remembers her as a "wonderful lady," saying "it's just tragic beyond words." A neighbor of the family tells WTVR he "had no clue that they were having problems that I knew of, but behind closed doors is behind closed doors." No motive for the killings has been identified. (Read more murder stories.)
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New Delhi:

In a new development in the Ryan School murder case, Tanveer Ahmed Mir, the lawyer who appeared for the Talwar couple, accused of killing their daughter Aarushi Talwar, will now defend the teenage student accused of killing Pradyuman Thakur.



"I have had preliminary discussion with the family of the boy, I will in all probability take his case," Mir told India Today.



Mir said the student's father, who is also a lawyer, approached him through his friend, a third lawyer who practices in Gurugram.A



"We will first argue on the new amendment whether the accused boy needs to be tried as a juvenile or as an adult?" he asked, adding he would stress on international conventions on trials of underage defendants that India is a signatory to.



Pradyuman Thakur, a class 2 student at Gurugramas Ryan International School, was found murdered in the school toilet on September 8.



"I am thankful to Tanveer Mirji," the teenage student's father told India Today adding he is hopeful Mir will get justice for his son.



"They have beaten him up, he is being framed," he alleged.
New Delhi :

Pahlaj Nihalani, who was recently sacked from the post of Chairman of Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) few days ago, is back in the film industry. Nihlani, often criticised for censoring the content of the films, this time presented the bold, beautiful and blessed sequel to the 2004 Neha Dhupia's erotic film, Julie.

Released on November 24, Raai Laxmi-starrer Julie-2 is not performing well at the box-office and sunk untraced.

Herere some of the reviews for Julie 2 by some leading daily:

Times of India - Director Deepak S Shivdasani must have wanted to make a film that tells the fictional tale of the rise of a female star in cinema, but midway he seems to have changed his mind and turned it into an erotic thriller. The rise to stardom is a path riddled with 'compromise' and though initially Julie (Raai Laxmi) resists, she soon gives in to the casting couch as she realises that it's the only way to go up the ladder. While fame and money come her way, what she looks for constantly, is love from the men who cross her path. She seeks redemption in Christianity but a film offer from a politician to star in his wife's biopic takes her down a dark path.

Indian Express - Turns out, Julie 2 takes its description of erotic thriller very seriously indeed. Ms Laxmis wannabe movie star hides no voluptuous curve, freely baring back and legs and other body parts. Because her name is Julie, her ornament of choice has to be a cross. And the name of the lord is taken in vain, several times. A lecherous producer fingers her photos, lingering suggestively over her chest, while he explains the intricacies of the word compromise. Somewhere, in the depths of a mysteriously unnamed country populated by sheikhs, she sways, scantily clad, in front of shifty eyed men.

Firstpost - Julie 2 is a film full of scenes involving kissing (and much more), falling bras, and songs which call a woman tandoor garam. Just from watching the trailer of this movie, one may tend to think that Nihalanis talk about sanskaar was nothing but a stinking pile of rubbish.

Hindustan Times - When Julie (Raai Laxmi) wakes up in the morning with make-up on and yawns seductively right in the first scene, you understand she believes in the films tagline: Bold, beautiful, blessed. Even then, you dont anticipate whats coming for you till she breaks the fourth wall (doesnt look intentional though) and says, I am the best. Ok then. We still believe you, for the next 20 seconds maybe, because you have already promised a helluva lotta fun. Of course, everybody wants Julies body. Still, to remove any iota of doubt, Julie speaks in public interest, Sabko Julie ka sharir chahiye lekin use sirf pyaar chahiye. I dont think anybody other than her in the entire film actually understands it. Youre in the wrong film, Raai Laxmi.

For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

As protests against Sanjay Leela Bhansalias ambitious project Padmavati continues to escalate with every passing day, Bollywood actress Dia Mirza has raised questions on the safety of women in our country.A

The much-awaited film has been embroiled in controversy ever since the makers started shooting in Jaipur. Karni Sena members had vandalised the set and also allegedly assaulted the aBaajirao Mastania director.A

The Rajput organisation had alleged that the makers are distorting the history and are only interested in earning profits. Karni Sena members staged massive protests in different parts of the country demanding a ban against the movieas release.A

The controversy surrounding the film took a new turn when some organisations issued threats to the lead actress Deepika Padukone.A A Meerut based leader Abhishek Som had announced a bounty of Rs 5 crore for chopping off the nose of the aPikua actress.A

In an oblique reference to the same, Dia took to Twitter to express her concern over the safety of women.A

People who make violent threats against one of our women to serve a misplaced idea of honour and pride on national television walk freely. What kind of country have we become? How can we ever hope to make our women feel safe if this the way we continue to treat women? a Dia Mirza (@deespeak) November 25, 2017

Padmavati was earlier slated to be released on December 1 but it was deferred after the makers failed to secure a certificate from CFBC.A The movie also stars Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor in the roles of Alauddin Khilji and Ratan Singh.

Various other Bollywood celebs have also expressed their concern over the threats that were made to Deepika and Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

Art has d possibility of creating a climate of sensitivity in which its possible 4 change 2 occur.-only if it has d freedom 2 b expressed! a Azmi Shabana (@AzmiShabana) November 24, 2017

I sincerely hope that condemning those who offer five crore for some as head and Ten crore for some one as nose is yet not considered an anti national activity . a Javed Akhtar (@Javedakhtarjadu) November 24, 2017

For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Beyhadh actor Piyush Sahdev who has recently been seen hitting headlines for his divorce with Akangsha Rawat is under spotlight yet again.

According to reports, the popular television actor was arrested by Versova police on Wednesday for reportedly raping a 23-year-old fashion designer with whom he was in a live-in relationship for the last two months.

Mumbai police arrested Sahdev after the model lodged a complaint on November 20 and later produced him before the Andheri metropolitan magistrate court on Wednesday.

"Sahdev approached me during a fashion show event that was held a few months ago. He befriended me and promised to marry me after promising to teach me acting and also help me get into modeling. He got into a relationship with me and we both stayed together for two months," the 23-year-old lady said in her complaint.

Also Read | In pics: 'Meri Aashiqui' actors Smriti Khanna-Gautam Gupta tie knot; Dia Mirza attends wedding reception

"I also learned that Sahdev had initiated divorce proceedings against his wife," she added further.

However, according to police, Piyush will be kept in custody until November 27 and will be further moved towards the judicial proceedings.

"Sahdev has been booked under the Indian Penal Code Section 376(1) for rape," investigating officer Kiran Kale was quoted while talking about the same.

On the work front, Piyush Sahdev who was last seen in popular television series Beyhadh as an antagonist has also been part of Devon Ke Dev Mahadev, Sapne Suhane Ladakpan Ke, Geet, Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hai and others.

Also Read | Padmavati Row: Mahika Sharma comes out in support of Bhansali
New Delhi:

Sanjay Leela Bhansali's upcoming period drama Padmavati which is happened to be one of the much-anticipated movies of the year has been mired in controversy since inception. It seems like controversies and debates have refused to die down over the release of Deepika Padukone-starrer.

Amidst these ongoing protests across the country, the Indian Films and TV Directors Association (IFTDA), along with 20 other bodies of the film and television industry, is planning a 15-minute blackout in support of the film and "to protect the right to freedom of expression of creative individuals".

Talking about the same Ashoke Pandit of IFTDA said, "We will keep showing our support for Padmavati and Bhansali because it is the basic right of a creative person to tell a story in his own way. Sanjay is a responsible filmmaker, and making a film on history is not something easy for him but a big responsibility. To express our solidarity (with the film), we are gathering on Sunday for a 15-minute blackout where all shooting units in Mumbai will put off lights and no shootings will take place," reported Hindustan Time.

"We strongly protest against the non-institutional bodies who every now and then protest against movies and threaten actors and makers of films. We will keep condemning their actions in a democratic manner. We have faith in our Prime Minister...for justice to Padmavati," Pandit added.

Also Read | Padmavati Row: Body found hanging at Jaipur's Nahargarh Fort, written note nearby implies anger over period drama

"We as film industry feel hurt every time such groups target our films and try to control our freedom of expression. Unfortunately, we do not get support from any other industry, not even from the government as if we are orphans as a community," he stated.

The protestors from the Rashtriya Rajput Karni Sena allege that Bhansali has distorted historical facts to sell the film. Sources say that the character of Padmavati has been shown dancing and there is a sequence that shows Padmavati and Alauddin Khilji in intimate moments which is severely objected by Rajput organisations.

Protestors have even reached the doorstep of filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali and lead actress Deepika Padukone following which police tightened security outside their residences.

On November 17, CBFC has also sent the periodic drama back to its makers citing some technical reasons after which they deferred the release of the same beyond December 1.

Also starring Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh in key roles, the Sanjay Leela Bhansali directorial is yet to get a new release date.

Also Read | Padmavati row may discourage filmmakers: Prosenjit Chatterjee

"We are living in a democracy and I have faith in the government and its judiciary. These protesters have not watched the film, and Sanjay has already made it very clear by releasing a video that it is a tribute to Padmavati and no obscene scenes are there," Pandit stated further.

However, the members of film and television industry are gearing up to join the blackout protest, titled 'Main Azaad Hoon', on November 26 at the Film City main entrance starting 3.30 p.m.
Shimla:

The CBI filed charge sheet against eight police personnel on Saturday, including an IG rank officer, in connection with the custodial death of an accused in the rape-and-murder case of a minor in Kotkhai on July 4.

These police officers were a part of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was set up to probe the rape and murder of the girl.

They were arrested by the CBI on July 29 in connection with the custodial death of Suraj Singh, a 29-year-old labourer from Nepal.

In the 500-page charge sheet filed in the designated CBI court, the accused have been charged with murder, conspiracy, wrongful confinement to extort confession, causing grievous hurt, framing incorrect record and destroying evidence, CBI sources said.

Judge Rajinder Singh extended the judicial remand of the eight police officials and Superintendent of Police D W Negi, arrested on November 16 by the central probe agency, till December 7.

Challan against D W Negi is yet to be presented.

Suraj Singh, who was a suspect in the rape-and-murder of a minor school girl in Kotkhai area of Shimla in early July, was among six people arrested by the local police.

He was allegedly killed by a co-accused at the Kotkhai police station on the night of July 18, triggering a massive public outrage.

The CBI, which was later handed over the probe into the case by the Himachal Pradesh High Court, questioned several people before arresting IGP Zahur Haidar Zaidi and seven other police officials.

The Class 10 student had gone missing on July 4 and her naked body was recovered from Haliala forests in Kotkhai on July 6.

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New Delhi:

Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Shiromani Akali Dal Member of Parliament from Bathinda, has strongly opposed renaming Dyal Singh College to Vande Mataram College.



This is unacceptable and shocking. A person who is so keen to change the name of a college must change his own name then he can put all his wealth to create something and give it whatever name he wants. How can you take away the legacy of someone else? asked a furious Harsimrat Kaur Badal.



Even in Pakistan, they've recognized contributions of Sardar Deen Dayal Singh Majithia and colleges are being run on his name, she added.



The Governing Body of Dyal Singh College (DSC) has renamed the evening college to Vande Mataram College and passed the decision to change evening shift timings to regular college.



Amitabh Singh, Chairman of the General Body said, "The General Body passed the decision on making the evening shift as regular college. It has been renamed as Vande Mataram College. This step will help all the students on the evening shift."



Pawan Sharma, the principal of the college said, "The name inspired millions during the freedom struggle. It'll also inspire students. There mustn't be controversy on it. People opposing it haven't understood it well. We'll not reconsider it. It's final."

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New Delhi:

Kerala woman Hadiya, who has to depose before the Supreme Court on November 27 in an alleged love jihad case, on Friday said she wanted to be with her husband, as she was whisked away by her parents and security personnel to board a flight to Delhi.

Chaotic scenes prevailed as mediapersons, who tried to approach her, jostled with the policemen after she reached the airport in Nedumbassery amid tight security.

I am a Muslim. I was not forced. I want to be with my husband, the 25-year-old Hadiya, wearing a head scarf, shouted as she was being taken inside the airport.

Earlier, the woman, who converted to Islam and married a Muslim man Shafin Jahan, and her parents left from their house in a village near Vaikom in this district, accompanied by a police team which also comprised women personnel, for a two-hour long journey to the airport.

The direction by the apex court for producing the woman for an interaction came amid an assertion by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that this was a case in which the woman was indoctrinated and she may be incapable of giving free consent to marriage.

A Supreme Court bench, comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, had asked senior advocate Shyam Divan, representing the father of the woman, to ensure she is produced before them to ascertain whether she had married of her own volition.

The woman and her parents are likely to stay at Kerala House in New Delhi, sources said.

The NIA, represented by Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, had said there was a well-oiled machinery working in Kerala that was indoctrinating and radicalising society in the state.

As many as 89 cases of similar nature have been reported from the southern state, the ASG had said.

Divan, appearing for womans father K M Ashokan, claimed that Jahan was a radicalised man and several organisations like Popular Front of India were involved in radicalisation of society.

Also Read : Kerala Love Jihad case: Hadiyas father denies meeting between daughter and State Women's Commission Chairperson

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, counsel for Shafin Jahan,had opposed NIAs submission and that of the womans father.

Hadiya, a Hindu, had converted to Islam and later married Jahan.

It was alleged that she was recruited by ISIS mission in Syria and Jahan was only a stooge.

Jahan had on September 20 approached the apex court seeking recall of its August 16 order, directing the NIA to investigate the controversial case of conversion and marriage of a Hindu woman with him.

Meanwhile, the Kerala government on October 7 told the Supreme Court that its police conducted a thorough investigation into her conversion and subsequent marriage to Jahan and did not find material warranting the transfer of probe to the National Investigation Agency.

Jahan had moved the Supreme Court after the Kerala high court annulled his marriage, saying it was an insult to the independence of women in the country.

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New Delhi:

Senior inspector Damodar Choudhary, one of the officers who probed the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, has been booked for abetment to suicide after a woman allegedly killed herself while naming him in a note. Further, two of his family members were also named in the womans suicide note.

The 44-year-old woman, Riya Palande, had allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself from a ceiling fan at her residence in Mulund East on November 23.

Palande, a widow, was living with her two children and used to run a grocery store, police said.During the investigation, sleuths of Navghar police station found a message written on the wall, which said that she was committing suicide due to harassment by ACP Damodar Choudhary.

The message also said that a detailed suicide note was kept in her grocery store, an official said. A police team went to her grocery shop, from where they recovered a note, which mentioned the names of Choudhary, his wife and daughter, the official said.

On the basis of the suicide note, Navghar police registered a case of abetment to suicide against Choudhary and his two family members, he said.

Choudhary was among the policemen, who probed the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case. He has also been appreciated by his seniors for his work, he said.

Choudhary is currently posted as a senior inspector in the Local Arms division in Andheri. As the names of the officer and his family members name were found written in the suicide note, we registered an offence of abetment to suicide against them, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone-7), Akhilesh Singh, said.

We are investigating the exact reason behind the woman's suicide and the officers role in it. We will take necessary legal action in this case, Singh said.

With PTI inputs

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Ahmedabad:

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said the Congress in Gujarat has 'failed' to play the role of a responsible opposition.

The BJP leader also targeted Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi over the alleged stalling of projects in Gujarat during the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre and said he needs to answer certain questions related to that.

"Instead of replying to these questions, he keeps asking more questions. It is the responsibility of the opposition party to answer questions related to its government when it was in power at the Centre," she told reporters.

Sitharaman is here to campaign for the BJP for the next month's polls. Sitharaman said the opposition party's strength in the Gujarat assembly has gone down to 43 as the party has "failed to project an image of a responsible opposition".

"From 57 MLAs in 2012, the Congress is down to 43 MLAs on Friday. The party was rejected four times by the people of Gujarat...What have you (the Congress) done as a responsible opposition party?" she asked.

Also Read | Gujarat Assembly Elections 2017: Congress accuses BJP of circulating Bharatsinh Solanki's fake resignation online

Sitharaman rejected the Congress criticism of visits by Union ministers to poll-bound Gujarat to campaign for the BJP, saying no work of the government had been hampered due to their trips.

"We are party workers even when we are in the Cabinet.If he (Gandhi) says the work of the central government is hampered (due to our visits), then let him say so. We will say that the work there is going on without any hindrance." She criticised the Congress for taking its MLAs to Bengaluru resort to prevent alleged poaching by the ruling BJP ahead of the Rajya Sabha election in July when parts of the state were reeling under floods.

She claimed the UPA government prevented a 32 km national highway project in Gujarat on the environmental ground. Sitharaman asked Gandhi to question former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot as to why he wrote to the Centre opposing construction of a dam under the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi's pet 'Sujalam Sufalam' project for water harvesting.

Gehlot, now the party's Gujarat election in-charge,'worked against the interest of Gujarat,' she said.

Also Read: Congress urges President to summon Houses at the earliest for Winter Session

The Union minister said a Congress MP from Maharashtra had protested against the Narmada dam.

"He (Gandhi) asks questions instead of giving replies. He will ask questions to the entire world but not to his own MLAs, his own UPA government which created hurdles in the construction of dams roads in Gujarat," she said.

She attacked Gandhi for allegedly diverting Rs 2,000-crore party fund to the National Herald Trust. On the Dokalam issue, the Congress leader should have met External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to get details about the stand-off instead of meeting the Chinese ambassador, Sitharaman maintained.

It was an 'irresponsible act' on the part of the opposition party, the defence minister said. Sitharaman said the Congress when in power, did little to curb black money despite a Supreme Court orders on the issue.

The BJP leader said the Gujarat government has taken a slew of welfare measures for fishermen. Gandhi earlier had an interaction with fishermen.

Also Read | Gujarat Assembly Elections 2017: PM Narendra Modi to start campaigning on November 27

The measures include a Rs 11,000-crore 'Sagar Khedut' programme which is going on well, the minister said. She said the NDA government has also announced projects related to marine product processing and export which will benefit the fishermen of Gujarat.

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Second of a two-part series

Last week, more than 50 families residing in Arrowhead Village Mobile Home Park on Blackbird Roost got notice that they will need to vacate the park within six months.

A notice sent to residents said the park had been sold and the new owner wanted to change the use of the park from residential to commercial. Coconino County sales records show the sale was finalized on November 7 from Arrowhead Village LLC, to Kings House Inc., a Flagstaff company listed as the owner of the Travelodge on Route 66 near Ponderosa Parkway.

The property sold for $2.25 million, and on the affidavit of property value filed with the county, the property type is listed as commercial or industrial use, even though the parcel does not have zoning to allow commercial or industrial use. In order for the parcel to be used for commercial purposes, the owner would need to get a conditional use permit from the citys Planning and Zoning Commission or a zoning change from the City Council.

The letter, which directs residents to contact Keith Hammond, the attorney for the owner, tells residents that owners of a single-wide trailer may be compensated up to $7,500 and owners of a double-wide trailer could receive $12,500 through the states Mobile Home Relocation Fund if they choose to have their trailers relocated to another mobile home park within 50 miles. Owners of mobile homes who choose to abandon their homes can receive up to $1,850 for a single-wide trailer and $3,125 for a double-wide trailer, according to the letter.

Arizona law requires landlords to give notice 180 days before residents are required to move out. The park landlord must pay $500 to the relocation fund for each single-section mobile home owner that applies for assistance and $800 for each multi-section mobile home owner that applies, according to Arizona revised statutes.

City of Flagstaff spokeswoman Jessica Drum said the city will be looking into what resources can be made available for residents, and said the city is working to distribute information about its affordable housing program to residents who will need to vacate the park.

The last time Arrowhead Village residents faced possible eviction was in 2013, when Landmark Properties wanted to buy the park in order to build an apartment and retail complex on it dubbed The Standard.

During the negotiations, a representative for the tenants had asked for $35,000 for each relocation, a bid the developers rejected as "extortion."

City staff, citing state law that pre-empted municipalities from requiring higher relocation payments, instead offered to recommend more apartments in exchange for voluntary higher payments that would count as affordable housing investments.

But other neighbors petitioned against the rezoning regardless of the payments to tenants, a move under city law that required a super-majority vote of the council (6 out of 7 votes) for approval. Landmark lacked sufficient votes and withdrew its rezoning request and dropped Arrowhead Village from its plans. The Standard is now being constructed along West Route 66 without the need for a formal rezoning.

So far, no requests to change the zoning have been filed for the parcel, Drum said. Evictions are legally possible, however, even before a new development is approved.

Leases in the park are on a month-to-month basis, and a lease agreement a resident showed to The Daily Sun said the landlord has no specific plans to implement a change in use of the mobile home park during the term of these statements. However (the) landlord expects that a change in use of individual spaces within the park or all or a portion of the park could take place at any time.
New Delhi :

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhis twitter jibe targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi is at all-time high in an unprecedented manner.

On Saturday Rahul Gandhi tweeted, Narendrabhai, aaa aaaa aaa. Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently.

Rahul Gandhis tweet was like a spear with two heads. One was directed towards the great mutual relationship between US President Donald Trump and PM Modi. Second, the release of Hafiz Saeed. The brain behind the 26/11 Mumbai attack.

The tweet came as a consequence of US Congress passing a bill on Saturday to delink the Haqqani Network from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

On Friday, the bill was sent to President Donald Trump for signing, which will turn it into a law.

The National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) 2018 provides USD 700 million for reimbursing Pakistan for monitoring the Pak-Afghan border, but withholds half of the amount.

Pakistan released Hafiz Saeed on the eve of ninth anniversary of the tragic 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.

Rahul Gandhis jibe didnt go unanswered. BJP spokesperson GVL Narsimha Rao took to twitter in no time and tweeted his way out.

Rahul baba, aaaaa aaaa aaaa aaa For once, stand with the country & not with Terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks & Ishtar Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. BTW, have you congratulated your "Hafeez Saheb's" on his release yet?

Veteran Congress leader Anand Sharma said, It is shameful. It deserves to be condemned. The BJP leaders have lost their mental balance in arrogance. Gandhi is the leader of Congress, which has made sacrifices in fighting terrorism and for the integrity of India...for them to say such a thing, I will say it has hit a new low."

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New Delhi:

Senior Sangh functionary Krishna Gopal on Friday said that the RSS workers are free to join any political party including the Congress but the opposition party does not accept them.

Speaking at a panel discussion on a book on the rise of the BJP in the Northeast, Gopal said that the Congress never bothered the RSS in its works in the region.

The leader said, The Congress never bothered us in our work during the time of insurgency in Assam. But at the same time, it failed to stop killing of our workers.

He was replying to a question whether there was any understanding between the BJP and the Congress during the time of crisis in Assam.

Gopal said that the Sangh never stops its workers from joining the Congress, but the party denies them entry.

ALSO READ: Asaduddin Owaisi fumes over Mohan Bhagwat's Ram Temple remark, says RSS playing with fire

Our workers are free to join any political party including the Congress, but the party does not accept them and closes its doors for the Sangh workers, Gopal said.

He further said the opposition parties not only reject them but criticise and ridicule them for their ideological commitment.

This push them towards the like-minded political outfits, he said.

Gopal, a joint general secretary of the RSS, was participating in the panel discussion on the book, The Last Battle of Saraighat, written by Rajat Sethi and Shubhrastha, fellows of India Foundation.

(With PTI inputs)

ALSO READ | Kerala: RSS worker allegedly murdered in Thrissur

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Mumbai:

The daughter of policeman Tukaram Ombale, who was killed while trying to capture terrorist Ajmal Kasab, says her family still awaits his return, nine years after the Mumbai terror attacks.

"We feel papa will come home any moment, although deep in our heart we know that he will never be amongst us now," says a teary-eyed Vaishali Ombale, the eldest daughter of the Mumbai terror attacks hero.

"We always think that Papa has gone out on duty and will return home. We have kept his belongings at the place they used to be in our home. Our family is proud of his supreme sacrifice," Vaishali Ombale, who has completed her M.Ed. (Masters in education) and aspires to be a lecturer, told PTI.

Ombale, an assistant sub-inspector, was killed by Kasab's bullets in the early hours of November 27, 2008.

In a daring act, he had pounced on Kasab without thinking much about the consequences. His bravery had made it possible for the police to overpower Kasab, the only 26/11 terrorist to be captured and hanged.

"Not a day has gone by in the last nine years that we have not remembered him," said Vaishali Ombale, who stays at the Worli Police Camp with her mother Tara and sister Bharti, who is an officer in the state GST department.

"For how long will police or armed forces personnel continue losing their lives in the name of supreme sacrifice," she asked.

"This should stop somewhere. There should be a change in this scenario. Every citizen should always be alert and foil incidents in which we are losing our men," she said, ahead of the 26/11 attacks anniversary.

Vaishali Ombale said citizens should know their responsibilities and must understand that when policemen or armed forces personnel get killed in the line of duty, it is not only the family's loss but also that of the country.

"Satara district in Western Maharashtra from where my family hails has a long history of martyrs. Among the recent ones are CRPF head constable Ravindra Dhanawade, who was killed while fighting terrorists in Kashmir in August and Colonel Santosh Mahadik, who died while fighting terrorists in Kashmir in 2015. The list is unending, which disturbs me a lot," she said.

Also Read: After release, 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed vows to fight for 'Kashmir cause'

"We treat every member of a martyr's family like our own family and we help them overcome the grief," she said.

Vaishali Ombale gives tuitions to students from class 8th to junior college, which keeps her busy and makes her forget the pain of losing her father.

Also Read: PM Modi meets 26/11 survivor Baby Moshe in Jerusalem, asks him to visit India with family

On November 26, 2008, 10 Pakistani terrorists arrived in Mumbai by sea route and opened fire indiscriminately at people on different locations, killing 166, including 18 security personnel, and injuring several others, besides damaging property worth crores.

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Lucknow:

Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey claimed on Saturday that his party is set to win a majority of seats in several urban local bodies' elections in the state.

In an official statement issued by the state BJP in Lucknow, he said that the feedback, which the party had received from its workers, after the poll's first phase was "very encouraging".

"The BJP is going to bag three-fourth of all the seats in the urban local bodies polls," Pandey said. The party has already come up with its 'Sankalp Patra' to fulfil promises of good governance and transparency, the UPBJP chief said.

"The Uttar Pradesh public is extending unprecedented support to the party and reposing its faith in BJP," Pandey said.

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New Delhi :

Vice president M Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said functioning of parliament was important not the number of days it sat.

The Vice President's remarks come a day after opposition parties criticized the modi government for truncating the winter session of parliament.

The government had on Friday announced it's intention to hold winter session of parliament from December 15 to Jan 5 after a volley of criticism from the opposition which accused the government of avoiding winter session of parliament.

Hitting out at the opposition, the Vice President Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said that what matters is how many days the parliament functions and not sat.

Naidu said that the philosophy of life should revolve around character, calibre, compassion and conduct and not caste, community and cash.

From Kalidasa to Premchand, from Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore to present day, India has always been blessed with a strong literary lineage of writers, poets, intellectuals and thinkers, who have chronicled times, exemplified our open traditions, he said.

Speaking at a literary festival here, Naidu said that the debate on the freedom of speech and expression should go on.

He urged the pseudo politicians to leave the three Cs of caste, community and cash and go back to character, caliber, capacity, conduct and compassion as the only yardstick for measuring merit.

He said while protesting, some people go overboard and announce rewards. Whether these fellows have that much money or not, I doubt. Everyone is announcing Rs one crore reward. Is it soeasy to have Rs one crore?

This is not acceptable in a democracy. You have the right to protest in a democratic manner, go to the appropriate authorities...you cannot physically obstruct and cant give violent threats. Let us not undermine the rule of law, he said.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi:

US space agency NASA, as a part of series of wireless sensor experiments which will be the first self-powered tests, released the Technology Educational Satellite or TechEdSat-6 into low-Earth orbit from the NanoRacks platform on November 20 that aims at expanding the capabilities of sensor networks for future ascent or re-entry systems.



This bread loaf-sized satellite was launched to the International Space Station on Orbital ATKs Cygnus spacecraft from agency's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Novemeber 12 and comes under continuing series to demonstrate the "Exo-Brake" parachute device, advanced communications and wireless sensor networks.



This is fourth TechEdSat satellite carrying an updated version of the Exo-Brake that will demonstrate guided controlled re-entry of the small spacecraft to return science practices from space securely.

Read more: Mysterious 'Bama Boom' leaves scientists panic-stricken across the globe



Michelle Munk, NASAs System Capability Lead for Entry, Descent and Landing, said, "The Exo-Brakes shape can be changed to vary the drag on the satellite. With the help of high-fidelity simulations, we will demonstrate a low-cost, propellant-less method of returning small payloads quickly, and to fairly precise locations, for retrieval".



"We are excited about tracking TechEdSat-6 as it re-enters the atmosphere.", he further added.



The TechEdSat series is a collaborative activity that involves NASA early-career employees, interns and trainees from various universities.





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New Delhi:

In a first spectacle ever discovered by scientists, new bird species belonging to the 'Big Bird' lineage in the Galapagos Islands have evolved into a new species in just two generations, according to a study.



As per the pervious assumptions it was believed that formation of a new species took a very long time, but it is alltogether a new discovery in the case of 'Big Bird' lineage, which today consists of roughly 30 individuals.



A group of Darwins finches on the Daphne Major island in the Galapagos Island chain, were observed during field work carried out over the last four decades, developed closed breeding.



The observation was made by B Rosemary and Peter Grant, two scientists from the Princeton University in the US.



Scientists note that in 1981, a male large cactus finch that is believed to have come from the nearby island of Espanola, mated with a native finch on Daphne Major and produced offspring.



"We didn't see him fly in from over the sea, but we noticed him shortly after he arrived. He was so different from the other birds that we knew he did not hatch from an egg on Daphne Major", Peter Grant told Phys.org.



Researchers took a blood sample and released the bird, which later bred with a resident medium ground finch of the species Geospiz fortis, initiating a new lineage.

This gave rise to a population of finches, about 30 of them. Professors Rosemary and Peter Grant of Princeton University collaborated with Prof Leif Andersson of Sweden's Uppsala University to genetically analyze the mixed-species population, and the findings were published in journal 'Science'.



"The novelty of this study is that we can follow the emergence of new species in the wild," said B Rosemary Grant.



"Through our work on Daphne Major, we were able to observe the pairing up of two birds from different species and then follow what happened to see how speciation occurred," she said.

The various groups of finches in the Galapagos had been aptly named Darwins finches to commemorate Charles Darwin, the famous scientist who developed his theory of evolution by way of natural selection after spending time on the islands, one of the most biologically diverse places in the world.

And what makes this discovery even more interesting is that it was published on the eve of the anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwins magnum opus titled "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", which was released in 1859 and largely inspired by his time on the Galapagos Islands.

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New Delhi:

The White House on Saturday said there would be repercussions for Pakistans global reputation and bilateral relations with US if it does not take action to detain and charge recently freed Mumbai terror attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed for his crimes.

"Saeed's release, after Pakistan's failure to prosecute or charge him, sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistan's commitment to (combating) international terrorism and belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil," the White House said in a statement.

"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistan's global reputation," it added.

Hafiz Saeed, Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities. He was under house arrest since January this year but freed by Pakistan this week.

Also Read | Pakistan justifies Hafiz Saeed's release, says Indias concern 'self serving

India reacted strongly to Saeeds release and said the action has confirmed once again the lack of seriousness by the Pakistan government in bringing to justice perpetrators of terrorism, including individuals and entities designated by the UN.

"India, as indeed the entire international community, is outraged that a self-confessed and UN proscribed terrorist is being allowed to walk free and continue with his evil agenda," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said on Thursday.

Pakistan, however, justified the release of UN and US designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed, claiming that Islamabad was committed to the implementation of UNSC sanctions regime on terrorists.

Reacting to Indian External Ministrys statement, Pakistan Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said, The (MEA) spokesperson took exception to self-serving insinuations.

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New Delhi:

One security personnel was killed and over 150 others injured in Pakistan during clashes which broke out after Frontier Constabulary personnel and other law enforcement agencies launched a crackdown against protesters camped out at the Faizabad Interchange since November 8.

The operation was launched after Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday issued contempt of court notice against Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads.

The Pakistan government has blocked popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube amidst ongoing operation against protesters.

Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Caved Bajwa talked to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and urged for peaceful solution to the problem.

About 2,000 activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR) and the Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) for more than two weeks have been blocking the Islamabad Expressway and Murree Road that connect Islamabad with its only airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

The protesters were demanding the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid for changes made about Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September.

News Channels suspended after Pemra bans live coverage of the clashes:

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) prohibited private news channels from live coverage of the entire police Operation against protesters.

Most of the news channels went of air in Islamabad, Quetta and other parts of the country. A message saying "This channel is suspended on orders of Pemra," was appearing on TV screens in place of news.

MEDIA COVERAGE OF SIT-IN AT FAIZ-E-ABAD, ISLAMABAD pic.twitter.com/YqEGTWpFIR a Report PEMRA (@reportpemra) November 25, 2017

(With PTI inputs)

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Pakistan Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal on Saturday claimed that violent protesters, who blocked the countrys capital Islamabad, had contacted India and his government was investigating the matter.

However, he didnt give any further details about his claim.

In an interview to a leading Pakistani news website, Iqbal said the protesters were not simple people. We can see that they have various resources at their disposal.

"Why they did it, we are looking into it. They have inside information and resources that are being used against the state, he added.

About 2,000 activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR) and the Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) for more than two weeks have been blocking the Islamabad Expressway and Murree Road that connect Islamabad with its only airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

They were demanding the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid for changes made about Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September.

Earlier in the day, one security personnel killed and over 150 others were injured in the violent clashes which broke out after Frontier Constabulary personnel and other law enforcement agencies launched a crackdown against protesters camped out at the Faizabad Interchange.

Also Read | Pakistan: 1 killed, 150 injured in clashes over Prophet, news channels, social media blocked

The operation was launched after Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday issued contempt of court notice against Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads.

The Pakistan government has blocked popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube amidst ongoing operation against protesters.

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) prohibited private news channels from live coverage of the entire police Operation against protesters.

Most of the news channels went of air in Islamabad, Quetta and other parts of the country. A message saying "This channel is suspended on orders of Pemra," was appearing on TV screens in place of news.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) leader Tauqeer Gilani, who was addressing a rally in Muzaffarabad on Saturday has criticised Pakistan and their year-long protests over their demands on Kashmir.

Lambasting the country he said, "Where is it written that Kashmir is Pakistan's? No agreement says so. This is non-sense & is a propaganda by Muslim Conference & their paid stooges. Even on our bathroom doors, they have written 'Kashmir will become Pakistan' (Kashmir banega Pakistan).

Gilani further accused the country's terror agencies of masterminding the murder of senior separatist leaders like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.

"Pakistan was behind the killing of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Sajjad Lone's fathers, jihadis backed by them have killed over 650 people of Liberation Front," Gilani said.

The leader has also slammed India's neighbouring country for paying Rs 30,000 to use its flag to wrap the dead bodies of supposed 'freedom fighters'.

Also Read: Complaint against Farooq Abdullah, Rishi Kapoor over PoK remark

"Pakistan pays Rs30,000 to put Pakistani flag on bodies of so-called freedom-fighters," Gilani was quoted by the news agency ANI.

Where is it written that Kashmir is Pakistan's? No agreement says so. This is non-sense & is a propaganda by Muslim Conference & their paid stooges. Even on our bathroom doors they have written 'Kashmir banega Pakistan': PoK leader Tauqeer Gilani in Muzaffarabad, PoK pic.twitter.com/JKjcYp5qUh  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Japan appeals to different people for different reasons. Some visit for the history or the food. Many stay for the martial arts, while others keep coming back for a dose of manga, anime and video-game culture. Still others come to enjoy the land a the huge span of scenery from the north of Hokkaido to Okinawa in the southwest, and the sharp changes such places undergo with the revolutions of season.

Outdoor activities such as hiking and cross-country trekking are popular in the summer and autumn, and often go hand-in-hand with landscape photography, as the scenery tends toward breathtaking.

Just over 70 percent of Japan is mountainous, and each of the main islands has at least one range. Most of Japan's mountains are heavily forested, too, which makes for no end of prime hiking trails.

The Hida, Kiso and Akaishi mountain ranges --- also known as the northern, central and southern alps, respectively --- are great examples. Each contains peaks, plains and valleys with something to offer hikers of all levels, complete with a wide spectrum of scenic views across the surrounding prefectures. And then there are the 34 national parks spread across the country, each with their own flora and fauna, again great for hiking and full of photographic potential. Japan certainly isn't short of areas good for strapping on a pair of boots, throwing your camera over your shoulder and heading out for a hike, which many people do from spring through autumn.

But come the winter months, many of these places, especially in the northern part of Honshu and across Hokkaido, become inaccessible to the average hiker due to heavy snowfalls that can last anywhere from two to five months depending on the area.

Many people choose to hang up their boots during these colder months --- assuming their favorite hiking routes are all but inaccessible due to snow and sub-zero temperatures. Imagining themselves cut off from the outdoors, save a few expensive weekends spent at a ski resort, many choose instead to hibernate for the winter in the warmth of their homes, which is a shame, because winter in Japan is full of beautiful landscapes waiting to be rediscovered.

One of the keys to unlocking what this side of Japan has to offer is the increasingly popular activity of snowshoe hiking.
Railway fans have gathered in western Japan to see a steam locomotive get chugging again for the first time in 44 years.

The much-loved D-51 engine got back on track on the JR Yamaguchi Line on Saturday. It will run through Sunday as part of a tourism campaign by the railway operator and the Yamaguchi prefectural government.

About 800 people saw the train off at 10:50 AM after a ceremony at Shin-Yamaguchi Station. It was bound for the station of Tsuwano in neighboring Shimane Prefecture.

A visitor with a family said the locomotive is big and impressive and they were lucky they were able to get tickets for the event.
TORONTO, Nov. 25, 2017 /CNW/ - Protesters from across Ontario gathered at Queen's Park today in an effort to get Schedule 3 removed from Bill 174 - Cannabis, Smoke-Free Ontario and Road Safety Statute Law Amendment Act, 2017. Schedule 3 incorrectly associates vaping with tobacco use, prohibiting safety demonstrations and promotion of the products in specialty shops to people over the legal smoking age. It also bans all flavours, prohibits use in public spaces and provides unconstitutional search and seizure powers to tobacco enforcement officers.

"The Government of Ontario has an outstanding opportunity to dramatically reduce the horrendous health toll caused by cigarette smoking by facilitating rather than trying to prevent the switch to massively less hazardous alternatives," said David Sweanor, Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Centre for Health Law, Policy & Ethics at the University of Ottawa, and a longstanding global leader in smoking reduction. "Yet we are seeing an effort to ram through a measure that will protect the cigarette business at huge costs to public health and civil liberties."

Vapor Advocates of Ontario spokesman Maria Papaioannoy-Duic, said if this bill is passed as-is, Ontario will be left behind the rest of the world on offering a safer alternative to smokers.

"Bill 174, schedule 3, will collapse Ontario's vaping industry, forcing thousands out of work and thousands more back to cigarettes. What exactly were the Liberals smoking when they wrote Schedule 3?" she said.

By legislating vaping products like tobacco, they are sending a message to the hundreds of thousands of smokers in this province that vaping is the same as smoking. If Health Minister Eric Hoskins and his team took the time to understand the technology and did the research that has seen tobacco use in other countries reach record lows, this legislation would not be written like prohibition that will undoubtedly wipe out the vape industry in Ontario.

"MPP Randy Hillier wasn't wrong when he called the Liberals criminal for these actions," Papaioannoy-Duic said.

This legislation dismisses Health Canada's stand on vaping, she said, and is dismissing the research including the Royal College of Physicians' study that showed vaping is 95 per cent less harmful than smoking.

"Health Canada identifies smoking as the cause of over 100 deaths every day in Canada," she said, adding that the Ontario government is attempting to sneak through this piece of legislation with an omnibus bill that doesn't allow for the full-scale debate and consultation it deserves.

The Wynne government is violating the constitutional rights of Ontarians who use vaping as a smoking cessation strategy as well as shop owners who wish to promote and educate their customers on the safe use of vape-related products.

By arbitrarily force-fitting vapor with combustibles like tobacco, the Liberals are stigmatizing a proven harm-reduction strategy for people looking to quit smoking.

It is estimated that there are over 1,000 vape-related businesses in this province that are relied upon by more than 900,000 Ontarians currently using vapour technology as their choice to abstain from deadly cigarettes.

SOURCE Vapors Advocates of Ontario

For further information: Media contact: Maria Papaioannoy-Duic, [email protected], 647-407-7206

Related Links

www.vapingisntsmoking.com


By PTI: Kolkata, Nov 24 (PTI) The West Bengal government has seized 1.41 crore fake digital ration cards in the last five years, the Assembly was informed today.

Food supplies minister Jyotipriyo Mullick said that the department recovered 1.41 crore fake digital ration cards between June 2011 and December 2016.

Mullick told the Assembly that the department has terminated licences of 72 distributors and 771 ration shops since they were involved in corruption.

advertisement

The minister also said that the government has distributed digital ration cards to 8.42 crore people.

Around 75,000 digital ration cards were yet to be distributed, he added. PTI SCH SBN

--- ENDS ---
9mobile is currently up for sale after the initial saga that led them into changing names from Etisalat to 9mobile. The scramble to acquire 9mobile, Nigerias fourth largest network operator, has advanced to the next stage.10 bidders are left out of the 16 who expressed interest in the purchase. And the highest bidder will acquire 9mobile.Here is a List of The 10 bidders of 9mobile1. Globacom Nigeria Limited, Nigerias second largest network operator2. Airtel Nigeria3. Dangote Groups telecoms business unit4. Alheri Engineering Limited5. Smile Telecoms Holdings6. Centricus Capital and Africell7. Abraaj Capital (Based in Dubai)8. Teleology Holdings Limited9. The Carlyle Group10. Africa Capital Alliance (ACA)The 10 firms above have been pre-qualified to submit their financial bids for the acquisition of 9mobile, this will be the final process through which a winner with the highest bid submitted for 9mobile, will emerge.9mobile, formerly Etisalat Nigeria, was put on the block early this year after it defaulted on a $1.2 billion loan from a consortium of 13 Nigerian banks. Etisalat Group the mother company in Abu Dhabi backed out leaving its Nigeria arm of business to its own fate, to survive on a new name.The question is, who do you think should acquire 9mobile among the 10 bidders?
Tony Nwoye and President Muhammadu Buhari campaigning in Anambra

If the large victories of the Democratic Party in the United States of America at the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey on the 8th of November, 2017 could be used to estimate the popularity of the Republican Party chieftain, President Donald Trump; then Nigeria can also draw conclusions from the Anambra election.As the leadership of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA in Anambra State relishes its landslide victory in the recently concluded gubernatorial election; someone is focusing on the bigger picture which has been made clearer through a crystal ball. That person is the 74-year old Nigerian leader, President Muhammadu Buhari of the ruling All Progressives Congress who is surreptitiously eyeing his re-election into office come 2019.Buhari's election upset in the 2015 presidential election which democratically ousted former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan of the People's Democratic Party, PDP had its voting strength in the northern region of Nigeria with a fair victory in the South-western part of the country. President Buhari's 'Change' mantra wasn't bought in the South-south and was apparently rejected in the South-east where he only raked 198,248 votes as against Jonathan who swept the region like the Hurricane Harvey with 2, 464,906 votes. Specifically, Buhari recorded a paltry 17,926 votes in Anambra State during the 2015 election while his counterpart, Jonathan excitingly hit 660,762 votes.The 2015 general election voting pattern shows that the APC which is seen as an Islamic party (Senator Uche Ekwunife 2014) within the Igbo nation will be a tough sell. This was further confirmed by a former governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu when he decamped to the APC in November, 2016.He said;If they see us (himself) in this place, they will know that that APC is not an ethnic or religious party,It is something that we need to be explaining to the Catholic bishops, Anglican bishops, the Pentecostal churches and the rest of them.Between Sunday when I registered at Igbere and now, there are 4,000 new members already registered with the APC in Abia without making it open" Kalu said in a press briefing to announce the move.The disparity in the voting patterns in the 2015 presidential elections appeared to have prompted President Buhari to disregard treating the geopolitical zones in Nigeria equally while speaking in the U.S in 2015."(Going by election results), constituencies that gave me 97% cannot in all honesty be treated, on some issues, with constituencies that gave me 5%. I think these are political realities. While, certainly there will be justice for everybody but the people who voted, and made their votes count, they must feel the government has appreciated the effort they put in putting the government in place. I think this is really fair." Buhari said.This statement alongside Buhari's lopsided federal appointments tilting regularly towards the north according to political analysts spurred the secessionist agitations. Following the principle of politics of prebendalism and patronage, a political leader is realistically bound to compensate his cronies who invested their support in his political ambition. It could have been on this ground that Buhari felt embracing the South-east despite his fatherly role in the country as President will amount to fetching water with a well-weaved basket or compensating a prodigal son unlike the biblical provisions.So the old logic of Buharis assumed political permutations is simple; he could still be President again with a landslide victory in the northern states (setting aside the recent Abubakar Atiku factor), fair victory in the South-west, fair loss in the South-south (Edo State cushioning the effect) and predictably an abysmal performance in the South-east where the 'python had the undesired dance' to cripple a divisive pro-Biafra group, Independent People of Biafra. On the contrary, this calculation might not be necessary for the 2019 presidential election with the present trend of political alignments and re-alignments in the South-east.Gradually, the ruling APC is gaining impressive popularity among the very skeptical Igbos. Political bigwigs of Igbo extraction have continued to take refuge in the party for diverse reasons which might be admittedly far from public interest.Some notable examples are; former Governor of old Anambra State Senator Jim Nwobodo; former Ebonyi Governor Martin Elechi; immediate past Governor of Enugu State, Mr. Sullivan Chime; Anambra Senator Andy Uba; Senator Uche Ekwunife; former Senate President Ken Nnamani; Chief Emeka Ojukwu Jnr.Others are Mr Eugene Odo, the former Speaker of the Enugu State Assembly; Coordinator of the 2015 Goodluck Jonathans presidential campaign organization in Enugu state, Chief Rex Onyeabor; a former two term commissioner for health in Enugu State, Dr. Simon Idike; the wife of the former National Chairman of the PDP, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, veteran politician, Gbazuagu Nweke Gbazuagu; former member of the House of Representatives, Uchenna Ekwe amongst other crowd-pulling figures. These eminent individuals have boosted the acceptance of the APC among the Igbos.The APC's superlative performance at the 2016 re-run elections in Imo State is another indication of an increase in its popularity despite the economic uncertainties Nigeria has been plunged into.The All Progressives Congress gallantly won the three available seats in the South-eastern state. Mr Ben Uwajumogu of the APC was declared winner of Imo North Senatorial District rerun election held on July 28, 2016 by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. Similarly, Mr Nkenna Nzeruo of the APC emerged winner of Oru East State Constituency, while Mr Collins Chiji also of APC was declared winner for Isiala Mbano State Constituency.Back to the subject-matter of this piece, 98,752 votes for the APCs governorship candidate in Anambra State  Dr. Tony Nwoye in the face of threats of security breach by the Indigenous People of Biafra, their propaganda, disappearance of secessionist leader, Nnamdi Kanu; Operation Python Dance controversies, formerly potent secessionist claims, allegation of lopsidedness in political appointments and the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu factor as the founder of APGA in Anambra State portends a remarkable progress for the ruling party.The response of the APC to the outcome of the Anambra election which re-produced incumbent leader, Governor Willie Obiano shows that the party never fully anticipated victory maybe aside Dr. Tony Nwoye. The party has set up a team to look at the loopholes not exploited judiciously during the electoral exercise towards winning the hearts of more electorates in future elections.Some excerpts from the party's National Chairman, Chief Odigie John Oyegun stated;I consider that we have made a lot of gains in spite of not winning Anambra state.But it is clear if people interpret properly that the APC given the base from which we were starting, given the kind of intense propaganda that goes out there that the South East is against the APC  whether it is religion, ethnic or even historical  we have made some progress. But we are not resting on that.For people to join us at this time is a clear indication that they understand what is going on and are ready to put their names, reputation, energies, and resources behind our effort to rebuild the country and be part of this process of change.Even President Buhari strangely congratulated Obiano on his victory promising to work with him for the peace, progress and development of Anambra State. Obiano also made out time for a private meeting with Buhari at the Aso Rock Villa which has been interpreted to be an odious relationship between the lion and the sheep.Obiano's victory in all the 21 LGAs in the state is a confirmation of the slogan that indeed 'Willie is Working'. This is a governor who has embarked on numerous capital projects across the state, invested in sustainable agribusiness, effective management of local economy, maintaining adequate security, securing an airport construction deal and ultimately the prompt payment of salaries of civil servants which is becoming a rarity in Nigeria.In a recent interview, a PDP chieftain, Chris Uba humbly gave Obiano a pass mark; such sincerity is an absurdity in Nigerian politics when the biggest purveyor of untruths, half truths, post-truths and outright fake news rules.A recalcitrant Buhari appears to have woken up from his slumber and has decided to extend the olive branch to the Igbos. He enjoyed a two-day visit to the region where he was joined and celebrated by some South-eastern PDP governors namely Governor of Abia State, Okezie Ikeazu; Governor of Ebonyi State, Dave Umahi and his core loyalist from Imo State, Governor Rochas Okorocha (APC). This is beginning to change the narrative that he is a 'sectional President'.Buhari was celebrated like the New Year in the South-east during his short visit. While in Ebonyi State, he bagged the traditional title of 'Enyioma 1 of Ebonyi', meaning 'Trustworthy Friend of Ebonyis' and the the traditional rulers of South-east, as a body named him the 'Ochioha Ndigbo', meaning 'Leader of Igbo People'.According to a presidential media aide, Garba Shehu, Buhari as at May, 2017 has embarked on the rehabilitation/construction of 600 kilometers of roads across the South-east zones five states.Buhari in the budget proposals read at the National Assembly recently listed the strategic Second Niger Bridge as one of the top priority projects of his administration which an allocation of N10 billion expenditure for 2018. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo also revealed N2 billion has been released to fund the project by the current administration. The Buhari administration has also set sights on the construction of a new international terminal in Enugu State, a coastal rail line with its route alignment passing through Aba in Abia State and Onitsha in Anambra State. And also, the dredging of the River Niger to facilitate maritime access to the sea by the South-east and the North.These impressive feats will continue to endear the Igbos to Buhari ahead of 2019 regardless of the slow pace. Before his visit to Anambra and Ebonyi States, Governor David Umahi of the main opposition party  PDP ostensibly endorsed Buhari for a second term, abandoning political differences.Governor Willie Obiano's recognition of Buhari in his election victory speech for creating a level playing field during the Anambra election has further sold Buhari and the APC in the South-east as a true democrat. Even the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed admitted that Buhari fought off temptations to interfere in the Anambra governorship race with his 'federal might'.Its also worthy of note that Obiano ran to Buhari when his security aides were contentiously withdrawn by the Inspector General of Police, Idris Ibrahim ahead of the election. This is not new in Nigeria politics. Before now, politically motivated attacks of that form were targeted successfully at former Governor Chris Ngige, former Governor Ahmed Tinubu, former speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, and others in the past.Buhari's harmony with Obiano, impartiality and transparency in the largely free and fair Anambra elections has fuelled rumours that Obiano could cross-carpet to the APC in the nearest future. All these are positive indicators that would play out well in 2019 if the beacon is left on.In a nutshell, APC had a good outing in Anambra State. Tony Nwoye's support base can be improved upon in favour of Buhari with good governance and selfless leadership ahead of the 2019 presidential election. Obiano is the winner of the gubernatorial election at the moment but posterity is set to unveil Buhari as the bigger winner in the nearest future.
Africas richest man, Mr Aliko Dangote, has disclosed that one of his companies, Dangote Cement Plc, has grown its total production capacity across Africa to 45.8 million metric tonnes per annum.The Nigerian businessman said this figure was correct as at the end of May 2017, making the firm one of the biggest cement producers on the continent.Speaking on Thursday at the launch of his 1.5mtpa capacity cement plant in Mfila, Congo Brazzaville,Mr Dangote noted that his aspiration is to rank among the top 10 cement producers in the world by 2020.The new plant estimated at $300 million has potentials for about 1000 direct employment and thousands of several other indirect jobs.Mr Dangote, who is the Chairman of Dangote Cement Plc, in his address, said his company was delighted to have completed the plant on schedule, saying the addition of Dangote Cements 1.5 million metric tonnes per annum plant has more than doubled the total cement production capacity of Congo-Brazzaville, which now stands at 2.550 million metric tonnes per annum, far in excess of national demand.It is envisaged that this will contribute substantially to the availability and affordability of cement in the country and the Republic of the Congo will no longer need to depend on imports to bridge the gap between demand and supply.It is our hope that the inauguration of the plant will boost Congos economy, conserve foreign exchange that would otherwise have been spent on imports for the country, and create employment opportunities down the value chain, he stated.Mr Dangote commended the Congolese government noting that the bold economic reform measures put in place by President Denis Sassou Nguesso administration have been quite salutary. The construction industry, which is a major sector of the economy, is a beneficiary of his policies, and has been receiving the attention of investors. We believe that our investment will contribute to Congo-Brazzavilles current economic renaissance under the leadership of the President Nguesso.He pointed out that his organization received tremendous support and encouragement both from the government and the people of Congo-Brazzaville, right from the conceptualisation stage of our project, to its final completion, and commissioning.In appreciation of the good gesture of the government and the people, Dangote disclosed that without waiting to stabilise production, the Cement company had already commenced CSR projects with the construction of a road with a length of 30km around Yamba, which would have cost the local government approximately 240 million CFA to execute.He stated further we have also disbursed scholarships for students and we are also building a school and renovating a hospital within our host communities. Apart from these, we have repaired a dilapidated bridge on a major highway at a cost of $300,000, to enable heavy duty vehicles to cross the bridge. As a policy, we also ensure that we give priority to qualified indigenes from our local host communities in our recruitment drive.Also speaking at the commissioning, President of Congo, Mr Denis Sassou Nguesso, described the investment as an industrial revolution, sort of, within the Economic Community of the Central African States (CEMAC), saying his country was happy to host the investment.According to him, his government has observed the operations of Dangote Cement in other African countries and it has helped buoy their economies by sparking off other allied industries expressing the hope that Congo situation would not be an exception.The Congolese President described the coming on stream of the Dangote cement as timely and encouraging because it is starting operations at a time the total government revenues have plummeted by 31.3 percent and revenues from the oil sector have fallen 65.1 percent since 2015 due to a slide in global crude prices.On his part, President Muhammadu Buhari, who was represented at the event by the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Mr Kayode Fayemi, commended Mr Dangote and his cement company for championing economic renaissance of Africa with the construction of cement plants across several African countries saying the sterling accomplishment makes the Dangote Cement brand, and indeed Mr Dangote himself, worthy ambassadors of Nigeria.President Buhari said his government has consistently supported and encouraged the Dangote Group in its quest to contribute its quota to the economic emancipation of the African continent, which is blessed with a plethora of natural resources.I believe that it is only home-grown practical solutions that can address the myriad issues plaguing Africa today and one of such challenges that Africa has been grappling with for decades is the infrastructure deficit.I am confident that massive investments in cement production, which is a key driver of infrastructural development, will contribute in no small measure, to addressing this perennial problem, he said.President Buhari recalled with satisfaction that local cement manufacturers such as Dangote Cement, Lafarge and BUA, have exploited one of the solid minerals, limestone which is a basic input for cement production and which Nigeria has in abundance, in different parts of the country to achieve self-sufficiency in local cement production in 2015, and is now a net exporter of the product.The backward integration policy of the Federal Government in the cement sector, which was launched in 2002, has contributed to this success story by successfully substituting imports with local production, we have saved over $2billion spent on cement importation into Nigeria, annually.We have also started using cement for road construction in the country due to its numerous advantages over the more common bituminous road. Again, in this area, Dangote Cement is leading the charge, through AG-Dangote, its joint venture with Andrade-Gutierrez, a construction giant in Brazil, Nigerias President stated.Dangote Cement commissioned its cement plants in four African countries namely: Ethiopia, Zambia, Cameroun and Tanzania.The Congo-Brazzaville plant, which began operations in the third quarter of 2017, will be the fifth cement plant that would be inaugurated in the last two years.
A libyan returnee

The story has been told of the deep suffering and ultimately inhumane treatment that trafficked victims face in Libyan prisons and detention camps.

It is endless tales of deprivations and exploitation by Nigerian trafficked victims, who made their way through Libya to Europe for prostitution. Majority of the victims are Edo State indigenes. Patrick Ochoga writes on the horrible experiences of the returnees in prisons, slave and detention camps.

***

In the last three weeks, Edo State Taskforce Against Human Trafficking, the agency saddled with the responsibility of reintegrating, arresting and prosecuting traffickers had received over 400 returnees from Libya.

As the several bus loads of Libyan returnees drove into the venue of a popular hotel in Benin City, the Edo State Capital, tucked away in the government reservation area, G.R.A. The returnee victims came off in their hundreds. They were deported from various prisons, slave and detention camps in Libya through the efforts of United Nations in Libya.

Clutched to the chests of many are polythene bags containing just few belongings, which immediately informed onlookers of the sorry condition and experiences of the returnees who had hoped to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Italy in search of green pasture.

The sordid tales of suffering, prostitution, drugging, and slavery in Libyan concentration camps from the victims are endless as they recount gruesome ordeals of how unlucky illegal migrants are sold into slavery and prostitution by their traffickers while others are killed in their attempt to cross the desert to Libya.

For some of the returnees, it was like a joyous homecoming stepping foots on Nigeria soil as a part of the living having escaped the valley of shadow of death in Libya. They were full of praises to the federal and Edo State government who had shown commitment in curbing the trend and creating opportunities for the unfortunate mass returnees.

Onuwa Sunday, 27-years-old, and an indigene of Edo State from Orhiomwon local government area, whose right ankle was amputated after he was hit by a rocket in their camp limped his left leg to the reception of the hotel where officials of the task force received him and others to a hall where they were profiled and documented.

He narrated to our correspondent how they were ambushed by some deadly criminal gangs called ( Asma Boys) and taken to different camps where they eventually sold into slavery and prostitution by their captors.

He said in an attempt to cross the high sea migrants boats were ambushed by these same gangs and taken a camps where they were forced to call home for ransom ranging between N300, 000 and N700,000.

According to Onuwa It was a terrible experience, we were abducted on our way to Saba by some group they called burger boys and taken to a camp. I was charged 4, 000 dina which is about N400, 000 after spending six months in captivity. Few days later, we made attempt crossing to Italy but our boat was intercepted four hours after we departed the shore of Libya in the middle of the sea by Libyan naval patrol ship. They took us to Zaweya Prison where I spent another one month. I had to pay N170,000 before I was released. On released I got a job at a car wash so that I can save some money to pay for my crossing.





Unfortunately, after spending two months, fight broke out and that was the beginning of my greater ordeal. The Libyans say they dont want to any black so they started invading camps so I ran to another camp not knowing that the camp was marked to be invaded.





When the information got to me I immediately took a cab to escape but I was kidnapped by three men in uniform who shot me on my right hand and leg as I speak I still have bullets lodged in my thigh. I cant sleep at night.

Continuing he said, I was locked up and asked to call my family members for money for my freedom. In the camp where I was, we were over 3,000 from different countries but Nigeria are the highest in number.

On his part, 30-year-old Marley Ayodo, said he paid N700, 000 to his trafficker but was ambushed and taken to camp where he had to pay ransom for his freedom.





Majority of our people are usually kidnapped and asked to pay for ransom. Many Nigerians have spent over one year in detention camps. In Gerrian Prison there are about 1000 Nigerians dying on a daily basis due to torture and starvation. Most of the people I travelled with are dead.





They flog us every day, before and after eating; we all lost hope. I want the government to encourage our ambassador so that he can assist our people. A lot of people who have been document to come home in the last one year are in various prisons suffering.

Last week, Beauty Okoro, 20, was among the 168 girls deported, out of which 20 of them came back with pregnancy.

Amidst weeping she said: I travelled July 4th last year. My sponsor told me that within one week I would be in Italy. But when I got to Libya it was another story. These sponsors always convince you and make it look like it is easy, but I have learnt now. I feel the government should arrest them and execute them.





These sponsors are here in Edo State, and they have their links in Libya too. It is an organized trade, and I have seen it all at this my little age of 20. When I got to a place they call Ghetto, I was there with one other girl. They sold us to one man so we can be doing prostitution.





The next day another woman came to the Ghetto and bought me as her slave. She bought me for N1,700, and she asked me to pay her N450, 000, that includes my feeding and the water I will be using to bath.





I called my dad and explained to him that she said my people should send me the money or I will be prostituting to get the money. Then my father sent me N50,000 and pleaded he would sell his land to get me the remaining. The husband of my madam is in Nigeria; my father wanted to sell the land to him so they can help me. But the man said he does not like the location where the land is so he will not buy. I had no choice than to do what my madam said I should do, and that is prostitution. I was sleeping with different men. I worked with her for over two months. I was not allowed to go out, and always indoors sleeping with customers.





I told my dad that I was tired of the situation so he told me he has a friend in Libya that he will contact him to help me. He contacted the man, and the man informed him that he was staying in a different town. The man then told me to ask my madam how he could come to pick me and that he was ready to pay her off. I asked my madam, and she said the man should bring N300,000. But I reminded her that my dad had already sent me N50,000 meaning that it was a balance of N250,000. But the man (my fathers friend) said he had only N200,000 cash to give to the woman.





We pleaded with the woman, and she accepted. The man brought N220,000 including taxi money for me to come over to his place. That was how I left that woman.





Then when I got to my fathers friends house, it was the same job I was doing with the woman, that he said I should be doing. That is prostitution. And my father did not know that his friend had bought me from the woman to do the same kind of sex job. The man said I would pay him N440,000. I had no choice than to work hard and pay. By December last year I was done with the payment, then started hustling for myself so I could get money to cross the sea for Italy.





So, I made about N400,000 and gave the man N300,000 to keep for me. Knowing that I now had some money, I decided to go buy some food stuff that I will use to cross the sea. I met the man to give me my money, and he said he would not give me. I told him that that was wicked because he was sleeping with me, and then I still paid him for keeping me in his house yet he was not satisfied.

He started beating me until I fell sick. I called my mum that I want to leave that house. Incidentally, my period was delayed that month, and I told the man that it seemed I was pregnant. He said I should go and do a test but the very day I wanted to go for a test, my period started. Then he started beating me that I had gone to remove the pregnancy but I told him it was not true.

He said he would not leave me that I have gone to destroy his baby and threatened to call the bad boys of Libya for me. I was dying in that house and didnt know what to do. Then I met one pastor on Facebook and told him my problem. He said I should buy a white handkerchief and send him the mans picture. The pastor told me that the man, that is Ade a Yoruba man has taken my urine to a native doctor. I was crying, but the pastor said I should not worry. We were eight girls in that house with the man, and we all worked for him.

He sleeps with all of us, and we still pay him. So, one of the senior girls in the house advised me on what to do. She told me that any time the man is sleeping with me again and that while he is on top of me, I should ask him when he will free me. She told me that whatever the man says at that moment is what he will do. So when he came to sleep with me, and I asked him when he will free me. He replied that I should not worry that he will free me the next Wednesday. That day he promised me was July 11. So on that day, he called me gave me a battery to charge my phone and a Nokia phone. That night he told me a taxi would come and pick me up. He said my transport fare is N60,000, that is from there to Tripoli from where we were to leave by sea to Italy. So this man claimed that he has paid about N210,000 for my transportation including to help me cross the sea to Italy. But I told him that my money is still with him.





Then, I got to the camp. From the camp to Italy is about one hour thirty minutes. We were there suffering no food and no money. I called the man, and he said I should come back to the house. I said I could not go back to him. He was calling me to come back, but I said rather than go back to him, let me die. The camp was very hot. Several times we woke up to the sound of gunshots and people will be running.





In Libya, they shoot anyhow and kill people like chicken. There was a night I woke up and was running to nowhere. I fell somewhere and injured my head when a block fell on top of me. People saw me and rescued me, took me to a pharmacy and gave me drugs.





One day some people were asked to come and cross over. One of my friends, Anita joined that boat because they move people in batches. But Anita died inside the boat when the boat capsized while they were running from security agents.





That day, two boats entered the sea. I was to be in the sixth boat. One of those boats got stranded in the sea because it was leaking. Some people died while some were rescued. One of the boats before our own left around 5 a.m. that morning. It was not up to 30 minutes after they left, they saw Libyan immigration coming, the man piloting the boat jumped into the sea. And I discovered that the problem was that the man collected money from us but he did not settle the Libyan immigration officials in the sea. We heard that the man felt his father is influential in Libya, so he refused to settle those officials even though he had collected money from many people to cross them.





They call him Ginabo. So the immigration came, and they knew we were Ginabos people, and they started cursing him that Ginabo is a crook; he is a liar that he has collected our money and abandoned us because he refused to settle them. They were speaking Arabic. These people arrested us and said we should call our people to send us money or else we will be killed. In fact, our men suffered under these people. They will force them to bring money, or they will kill them.

They will beat them until some of them will die, and they will throw the persons body into the dustbin.





How I came back? What happened was that one man said we should pay N20,000. He controls another camp. We were there when the police came to that place and started pursuing everybody. We started running to nowhere. The man who owns the camp called us to a room and collected all our phones and money. We were about eight girls. The police surrounded everywhere and took us to one prison. That was where the UN people came for us. They gave us one tiny bread, they call oza bread once a day and sometimes half cooked rice that you cannot give to a dog, but we were managing.





Sometimes they will lace the food with drugs, and after eating it you will sleep off on the floor, and they will rape you. But the UN people kept us and started deporting us back. They sent back some people, but my name was not among. At a point no water, nothing. We have a lot of Nigerians in that prison. From what I saw in prison, we have thousands of Nigerians in different prisons. Each time you wake up you see five persons dead beside you because the place is tight.

Once, when I was very thirsty and no water, but I saw water where somebody died, and I had no choice but to drink the stinking water so I will not die. I closed my eyes and nose to drink the water. These people dont care (sobbing). In fact, I regret embarking on that journey. The orientation we got from my sponsor was that Libya and Italy are close. I did not know that the sea is even dangerous as I later discovered. The person that sponsored me did not tell me all these.

My advice to people is that they should not dare go to Europe through that means. I saw hell as a 20-year-old girl. I had my SSCE result before I left. I am begging government to help with any job; I will never pass this route again. And I want to advise our youths not to try it; it is better you work here in Nigeria even though you are suffering here endure it and pray to God for better days. I was not patient in life that was why. Nobody should go to Libya; the place is hell on earth. I saw people die like chicken every day and I wondered if ever I would get out of the trauma.

Igbinewo Praise, a 24-year-old lady, said she travelled with her husband. She is among the pregnant returnees. She wept repeatedly as narrates her ordeal.

I traveled together with my husband, but he is still there now. Before I traveled, I was a sales girl. I am an orphan. My husband and I paid N900,000 to our sponsor to move us. When we got to Libya, I was lucky to be the first they took to move through the sea, but my husbands set was not ready. We left, but our boat got spoilt in the middle of the sea. We stayed there without any rescue but the UN boat came and rescued us, but we were arrested. My husband now went to pay N250,000 to release me from prison. Somebody now said we should pay another N150,000 to push me across the sea; my husband paid the money. But while we were planning to move, their immigration people came to arrest us and took us to a prison. I spent months in the prison before we were taken to the deportation camp. I was not staying in the same place with my husband, but we see every day. You can imagine I am pregnant but no food. They give you one small bread per day, and you buy water. Water is very expensive there. My husband will be calling his people to send us money. What they told us before was that in two weeks we would be in Italy, but we never knew it was not like that. We spent seven days in the desert, and it was very hot. You can imagine that when we left Agadez, we were 33 in number but by time we got to a camp in Libya, we have 27 persons alive. I was lucky I was listed as one of those coming back.

Meanwhile, Edo State government has commenced agro-training for 150 returnees as part of effort to meaningfully engage the returnees in productive ventures.

The state government through the Task Force Against Human Trafficking chaired by the states commissioner of Justice and Attorney General of the state, Prof Yinka Omorogbe has been working round the clock to redirect the life of the returnees.

The government is working in collaboration with the Initiative for Youth Awareness on Migration, Immigration, Development and Reintegration (IYAMIDR) a non-governmental organization led by Comrade Solomon Okoduwa.

***

Culled from Leadership
By PTI: convention at Ramlila Maidan

New Delhi, Nov 25 (PTI) The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will celebrate its fifth Foundation Day tomorrow and hold a national convention at the Ramlila Maidan here.

The venue is special for the party as it was from this place that it began its political journey.

Senior party leader and Delhi Labour Minister Gopal Rai said the convention will see discussions on various issues, like the work done by the Delhi government and the Jan Lokpal Bill passed by the Assembly, which is awaiting clearance from the Centre.

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Apart from the "five years of revolution", farmers distress will also be discussed during the convention, he said, adding current social, economic and political developments will also be discussed.

Rai said the AAP is the only party in the Indian history to have established a national footprint within a short span of five years and is expanding rapidly across the country.

The journey of the party will be discussed at the event.

Around 10,000 AAP volunteers and representatives from 22 states are likely to attend the convention, party leaders said.

Besides the partys national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, several top AAP leaders are expected to address the convention.

Senior party leader Kumar Vishwas, who has had an uneasy relationship with the party leadership, tweeted that he would be addressing the volunteers during the convention and speak his "heart out". PTI PR NSD

--- ENDS ---
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo

Ex-president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo on Friday revealed that he has been battling Diabetes Mellitus for the past 30 years. He stated this shortly after a two kilometre awareness walk from the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library through the MKO Abiola way, in Abeokuta.

The walk was organized by the Southwest Zone of the Diabetes Association of Nigeria in conjunction with the Library to celebrate the 2017 World Diabetes Day, according to The Tribune.

He said that the disease only kills those who are careless with how they manage it.

Diabetes is not a disease that should kill. I was diagnosed to be diabetic more than 30 years ago but rather, I am growing strong, if you dont believe I am growing strong and you didnt witness this walk, come and see me at night, you will know I am growing strong, come and see me in the morning, you will know I am growing, even in the afternoon, you will know I am growing strong.





What is necessary is the management of diabetes. Some people said some diseases are incurable, but diabetes is manageable.





My headmaster in primary school was diagnosed at the age of 50 and died at age 85, you will agree with me that he tried.





What to do is that if youre diabetic, dont be nonchalant about it and dont eat carelessly. Three things are important; the food you eat, regular exercise and prescribed medication, those are the three most important things.





You can be diabetic and still lives till 100. I dont know when I would die but I am above 80 and many of the youth could not catch up with my pace during the exercise this morning, many of them were running after me.





This is my message. Whether youre diabetic or you have a family or friend with diabetic, diabetes is not a killer disease or it should not be a killer disease unless you are careless, Obasanjo said.
Robert Mugabe

Robert Mugabe's exit as the President of Zimbabwe has been described by analysts as an incident that could set off a chain of similar events in Africa, Gbenro Adeoye writes on the matter.

The letter by President Robert Mugabe stating his intention to resign as the President of Zimbabwe with immediate effect was not just a letter; it was one that set off a ripple of excitement through the streets of Harare, the countrys capital city, and beyond. It also promises changes beyond the borders of Zimbabwe.

Media reports of how Zimbabweans flooded the streets in wild jubilation have pervaded the airwaves following the exit of the 93-year-old leader from office on Tuesday. They told of how horns hooted and cheers of joy filled the air as Zimbabweans celebrated into the night on the streets of Harare. Such jubilations even extended to the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa, which has a large population of Zimbabweans.

In their euphoria, some Zimbabweans have declared November 21, 2017, the day Mugabe resigned, their Independence Day, even though the countrys independence falls on April 18.

But the logic behind such a declaration can be deduced  Mugabe is the only leader Zimbabwe has known since its independence from Britain in 1980 and a blot of allegations of election rigging, repression of dissent and causing the countrys economic collapse on his 37-year reign, made his people welcome his resignation with relief.

However, there are signs that Mugabes exit from power will have a ripple effect on other countries, particularly in Africa. Zimbabweans have already begun calling on fellow citizens abroad to return home, particularly those who had fled to South Africa.

But beyond issues related to migration and economy, political analysts are of the opinion that the development in Zimbabwe could have far-reaching effects on Africa, particularly in countries with sit-tight leaders, even though, Mugabes exit did not arise from an uprising or a revolution by the people.

Rather Mugabes exit was as a result of an internal crisis in government and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front following a feud between the Presidents wife, Grace, and his vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The feud led to the sacking of Mnangagwa by Mugabe, paving the way for Grace to succeed the aged leader instead of his vice president, who had been touted as his likely successor. The military later moved in and put Mugabe under house arrest and his eventual resignation soon followed.

However, political analysts have described the incident in Zimbabwe as one that could trigger revolution movements in Africa that will be similar to the Arab Spring. Arab Spring is often used to describe a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that broke out and spread across the Middle East in 2011.

For example, a former Nigerias Ambassador to Greece, Prof. Olu Agbi, said Mugabes exit would have sent a message to other African countries with sit-tight leaders.





How could Mugabe just feel that he would dismiss his vice president and allow his wife to take over as if it is bedroom democracy?





So the other countries where we have leaders who have been in power for so long, a message has been sent to them, their people and their defence forces. It shouldnt be a coup where people get killed, but it can be a situation where you tell such leaders that they have done so much and should leave, he said.

Africa is home to a number of sit-tight leaders, many of whom use open rigging and constitutional change to continue to remain in office.

For instance, President Paul Biya of Cameroon assumed office on November 6, 1982, following the resignation of President Ahmadou Ahidjo. The countrys parliament in 2008 passed a controversial amendment to the constitution that enabled Biya, 84, to run for a third term and in October 2011, he won another election to remain in power. The election was largely described by observers as marred by irregularities. Only Biya and Ahidjo have served as Presidents of Cameroon since the country got independence from France in 1960.

Ugandas President, Yoweri Museveni, 73, got into office in 1986. In 2005, the countrys constitution was amended to allow Museveni extend his time in office.

The countrys last presidential election in 2016, which was won by Museveni, was overshadowed by allegations of rigging and arrest of opposition politicians and activists. In 2016, Museveni appointed the first lady as the Minister of Education and Sports.

Similarly, Teodoro Obiang Mbasogo, 75, has been the President of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, amid allegations of corruption and rigging, for about four decades.

His son, Teodorin, who was named his fathers vice-president in 2016, has been enmeshed in allegations of corruption and money laundering. He has had over $70m worth of his assets seized by the US, including a Malibu mansion, a Gulfstream jet, a Ferrari said to worth more than $500,000.

Idriss Deby, 65, has been the President of Chad since 1990 following a coup detat.

In 2016, Deby won an election to remain in office for a fifth term.

Seventy-three-year-old Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has been in power since his 1989 coup that ousted the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi.

Subsequently, in 1993, al-Bashir unilaterally increased his powers when he appointed himself President of the country and disbanded the governing body of Sudan, Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation, and all other rival political parties. He, therefore, assumed the executive and legislative powers of the council.

Faure Gnassingbe became the President of Togo in 2005 after the death of his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who had been the leader for 38 years.

In September, thousands of people marched through the streets of Lome, Togos capital, protesting against Gnassingbes continued stay in power.

The protests were organised by a coalition of opposition parties and civil society organisations.

Amnesty International estimated that 100,000 people marched in Lome, with many of them wearing the red, orange and pink colours of the opposition parties as they chanted Free Togo and asked Gnassingbe to step down.

A professor of Political Science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, who described the development in Zimbabwe as good, also described it as a lesson to African leaders.

He said, It will let African leaders who want to stay in office perpetually know that if they dont leave, that is what will happen. They may be thrown out. Nobody would have believed that Mugabe would be thrown out. Leaders should leave when it is right so that there will be room for others to compete.





They should learn not to stay in office beyond when its necessary. What will happen in Africa now is what happened in the Middle East. We can have an African Spring whereby people will move to the streets to force out their leaders.





It happened in the North African countries, where leaders were forced to leave and elections were organised, so it is a good development. So there is going to be an African Spring that will force African sit-tight leaders out, not by military coup but through mass mobilisation.

Onuoha noted that leaders want to die in government because they are intoxicated by political power.





Once you have political power, you are a god and everybody bows to you; not because they like you, but because they have to do so. And once you allow that to get into your head, you are finished. So leaders want to remain in power because they get used to being worshipped and so on.





Most leaders find it difficult to leave office and that is why they wait till they get thrown out. Look at Nigerias former President Olusegun Obasanjo, he allegedly plotted to stay for another term. If it were possible for them to stay for so long, they would, he said.

Also identifying the reasons why some leaders find it difficult to leave office, Agbi said, It is because of the horrible things they do in government. When they are in government, they expose themselves to the kind of opulence they cannot get elsewhere.





The late Obafemi Awolowo (a former Premier of the defunct Western Region) said that a life you cannot live outside government, dont live it in government. But a lot of our leaders have exposed themselves to lifestyles they cannot live outside government and they dont want anyone to know what they have done, so they like to die in that office.





And when someone dies in Africa, we say we should not speak ill of the dead and so, we forget about his atrocities. Gabon is an oil-rich country but its money was in its late President, Omar Bongos pockets. He had wives all over the world. How could a leader maintain such a lifestyle if he does not continue to stay in office?

Agbi, therefore, expressed hope that with more population of youths who being politically-inclined, there would be positive changes in Africas political system.

But Onuoha noted that it was only by building strong institutions that Africa could deal with the problem of leaders wanting to remain in office at all costs.

He said, Strong institutions can be built through good governance. There was a time when people had no hope in the Independent National Electoral Commission but with the recent governorship election in Anambra State, it made people believe that their votes counted. That is how to build strong institutions, by not interfering in the affairs of institutions. In the case of Zimbabwe, the institutions were weak, but with the military, Mugabe was forced to leave.

However, a professor of Politics and International Relations and a former Ambassador to Belgium, Alaba Ogunsanwo, described the recent development in Zimbabwe as unique, saying it would be wrong to assume that what happened in Zimbabwe would happen elsewhere.

He said, What happened in Zimbabwe had nothing to do with the people. The military that initiated it was part of the ZANU-PF. It was a revolution and the armed forces were part of the group that struggled for it. There is no doubt that the countrys military sees itself as a wing of the ZANU-PF.





And when they saw things were going wrong in the party that might lead to destruction, they moved in. That was why the sacked vice president said that even while he was in exile in South Africa, he was in touch with the military chief.





So they knew what they wanted to do and when the military told the people that they could go out and demonstrate if they wanted Mugabe out, they did so. Initially, the people were not sure if they would be shot at by the police but with the assurance by the military, they went out and demonstrated.





And ZANU-PF also told the people that they could join the demonstration. We cannot see it as an example of something that others will want to copy. It was well-managed because the military understood the environment in the Southern African region, which does not tolerate coups.





And subsequently, the army was saying that it was not a coup and that was why Mugabe was allowed to go out and still do some of the things he wanted to do. So it is a unique situation and we dont have to generalise and assume that it will happen in other parts of Africa.

Ogunsanwo noted that citizens of the countries with sit-tight leaders deserve their leaders, saying: There are situations where people feel what is going on is bad but they will not want to change it because it gives them the opportunity to put the corrupt people in power. Do you think people care about corruption in Nigeria? They dont. It is a joke. If you are rich, people will vote for you; it is straightforward.

***

Culled from Saturday Punch
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has declared the federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari as the most t...

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has declared the federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari as the most transparent and open in the history of Nigeria, saying the President has been open to the extent of allowing Nigerians to make input in almost all his major policy decisions.Speaking Saturday at the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Media Dialogue in Abuja, the Minister said unlike President Buharis two predecessors, Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, information now pass more freely and speedily from the government to the people. Mohammed, who was represented by Bayo Onanuga, the Managing-Director of News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said: the Ministry of Information under this government has been hyperactive; thereby, making the administration of President Buhari the most open and transparent in the history of Nigeria. Take for instance, a few days ago, the full minute of the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting was sent to all media houses to use as content for public consumption. This shows that the federal government is trying to provide as much information as possible to the public.Also, Nigerias recent upward climb on the Ease of Doing Business Index (EDBI) is another indicator of this governments strong resolve and commitment to transparency initiatives. The Minister further encouraged the media to take advantage of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act to request for more government information that will serve the interest of the public; stressing that Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) of government who fail to provide information requested in compliance with the FOI Act can be sued.Mohammed however cautioned that while the federal government demonstrates its commitment to promoting openness in the affairs of governance, it will not carry on its business on the pages of newspapers. He said that though Press Freedom is guaranteed under Nigerian laws, the media should exercise this freedom with a sense of responsibility.The media must continue to call government and members of the political class to order when they go wrong. However, the media should remain truthful, factual and objective. It should also desist from spreading information from unverified and unverifiable sources. As professionals, try to do your work in compliance with the media laws and codes of ethics which guide the media profession, the Minister advise.
The death toll in a bomb attack on a packed mosque in Egypts restive North Sinai province has risen to 235.

The death toll in a bomb attack on a packed mosque in Egypts restive North Sinai province has risen to 235.Gunmen attacked set off a bomb, killing at least 235 people in one of the countrys deadliest attacks in recent memory, state media reported.A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque roughly 40 kilometres west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish before gunmen opened fire on the worshippers gathered for weekly Friday prayers, officials said.Witnesses said the assailants had surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles then planted a bomb outside.The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they attempted to flee and used the congregants vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque.State television reported at least 184 people were killed and 125 wounded in the attack, which is unprecedented in a four-year insurgency by Islamist extremist groups.Egypts presidency declared three days of mourning, state television reported, as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met his security ministers to follow developments.Ahmed Abul Gheit, head of the Arab League which is based in Cairo, condemned the terrifying crime which again shows that Islam is innocent of those who follow extremist terrorist ideology, his spokesman said in a statement. IS views Sufis as heretics The Islamic State groups Egypt branch has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and also civilians accused of working with the authorities, in attacks in the north of the Sinai peninsula.They have also targeted followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Sunni Islam as well as Christians.The victims included civilians and conscripts praying at the mosque.A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights IS told AFP that the mosque is known as a place of gathering for Sufis.The Islamic State group shares the puritan Salafi view of Sufis as heretics for seeking the intercession of saints.The jihadists had previously kidnapped and beheaded an elderly Sufi leader, accusing him of practising magic which Islam forbids, and abducted Sufi practitioners later released after repenting.The group has killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, forcing many to flee the peninsula.The military has struggled to quell the jihadists who pledged allegiance to IS in November 2014.IS regularly conducts attacks against soldiers and policemen in the peninsula bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, although the frequency and scale of such attacks has diminished over the past year.The jihadists have since increasingly turned to civilian targets, attacking not only Christians and Sufis but also Bedouin Sinai inhabitants accused of working with the army.Aside from IS, Egypt also faces a threat from Al-Qaeda-aligned jihadists who operate out of neighbouring Libya.A group calling itself Ansar al-Islam  Supporters of Islam in Arabic  claimed an October ambush in Egypts Western Desert that killed at least 16 policemen.Many of those killed belonged to the interior ministrys secretive National Security Service.The military later conducted air strikes on the attackers, killing their leader Emad al-Din Abdel Hamid, a most wanted jihadist who was a military officer before joining an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Libyas militant stronghold of Derna.AFP
Imo Deputy Governor, Eze Madumere, on Friday urged the Federal Government to immortalise the late former Vice-President, Dr Alex Ekwueme, to appreciate his peaceful and unifying roles in the countrys political history.Madumere made the call in an interview with the media in Abuja while speaking on why it was imperative to remember the deceased second republic vice-president.He said that Ekwueme was instrumental to the stability of Nigerias democracy with his patriotic and sportsmanship style of politics displayed in 1999 as Nigeria returned to democratic rule.We all know also the pivotal role he played in the formation of G-34 which later metamorphosed into PDP but he did not back out from the party, the deputy governor said.Madumere, who described Ekwueme as a sage, called on other politicians to emulate his style of politics for stability in the nations democracy.He noted also that it was imperative to immortalise the late vice-president for posterity to learn from his style of politics.According to him, Nigeria will not forget in a hurry the fatherly contributions of Ekwueme in the creation of the six geo-political zones, especially the South-South aimed at giving the minorities a sense of belonging.The late Dr Alex Ekwueme died on Nov. 19 in a London hospital after battling with what the family said was chest infection.
Ex-Vice President Atiku Abubakar has one more hurdle to cross in his secret deal with some stalwarts of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP...

Ex-Vice President Atiku Abubakar has one more hurdle to cross in his secret deal with some stalwarts of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by ex-President Goodluck Jonathan.It was learnt yesterday that Jonathan said Atiku must beg or apologize to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo to get the 2019 presidential ticket of the PDP on a platter of gold.Although Obasanjo has quit partisan politics, Jonathan was of the opinion that he is still a strong factor in shaping the future of the nation in 2019 because he is a force among the revered kingmakers.Former President Jonathan had in early November told the publisher of Ovation magazine in an interview that If Atiku gets our party ticket, he would compete well. But he would have to reach out to our boss, Baba OBJ, the boss of all bosses. Weve all learnt at different times that you ignore OBJ at your peril. OBJ has the magic wand. He is respected at home and abroad.It was however unclear if Atiku has either accepted the condition or opted to go it alone in seeking the presidential mandate of the PDP.But some presidential aspirants in PDP were said not to be ready to step down for Atiku, whom Jonathan is working to the answer for.The aspirants said they prefer to slug it out with Atiku during the presidential primaries.The affected aspirants are ex-Governor Sule Lamido, ex-Minister Ibrahim Shekarau, Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo and a former governor (now a Senator), who is expected to defect from APC to PDP.The fate of the Chairman of the Caretaker Committee of PDP, Sen. Ahmed Makarfi on the partys 2019 ticket was hanging in the balance as at press time.Findings by our source revealed that the secret deal, which made Atiku to resign from the All Progressives Congress (APC), was comprehensive and targeted at the ex-VP securing the PDP presidential slot.It was gathered that the package also borders on hijacking the party structure at the National Convention on December 9 to make Atikus choice as the PDP presidential candidate a reality.Following lobbying by Jonathan, some founding fathers of PDP (including a few retired military officers), have been part of the latest course in PDP.Investigation revealed that most governors of the PDP were said to have bought into the Atiku project in deference to Jonathan.A top source, who was privy to the deal, said: The unfolding script on Atikus return to PDP has the blessing of some founding fathers of PDP who are out to salvage the party. A major component is a likely waiver for the ex-VP to contest the partys presidential primaries.So far, Atiku is complying with the secret accord for his return to PDP. A formal declaration in Yola is being expected either on Wednesday or December 6 as indicated in a tentative timetable.But in one of the negotiation shuttles with Atiku, ex-President Jonathan added a caveat that the former Vice President can comfortably secure PDP ticket and win the 2019 poll if he begs ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo.We were all shocked by this condition because Obasanjo is no longer in partisan politics. But Jonathan said Obasanjo is an institution whose action or inaction could make or mar the electoral fortunes of Atiku.The former President also believes that Obasanjo may persuade any of the presidential aspirants to withdraw for Atiku after weighing all the indices. He said if Obasanjo could reconcile with him, he can also forgive Atiku.As a matter of fact, Jonathan cited cases of chairmanship aspirants in PDP travelling to Abeokuta to seek his blessing.We are expecting Atiku to comply with this proviso because we want to begin the media war (based on facts and figures) in earnest.Jonathans position on Obasanjo has been endorsed by some founding fathers of PDP, especially the military class which contrived the existence of the party.Meanwhile, there were indications yesterday that some presidential aspirants in the PDP may not step down for Atiku.These include Lamido, Shekarau, Dankwambo and a former governor (now a Senator), who is expected to defect from APC to PDP.It was not clear if the Chairman of the Caretaker Committee of PDP, Sen. Ahmed Makarfi will seek the partys 2019 ticket.A governor, who played a significant role in the pact with Atiku, said: As part of the deal, we have been trying to prevail on some of these aspirants to step down but they have chosen to contest the primaries with the ex-Vice President.Some of them queried why a politician will cross from the opposition party and just be given PDP presidential ticket.One of the aspirants said since 1999, he has never defected to any party. He said loyalty to the party and competence should be compensated by PDP.Well, we have looked into PDP Constitution, it is immaterial when you join, you can enjoy the rights and privileges which a Methuselah member enjoys. Go and look at sections 8 and 18 of our constitution.While Section 8(a) and (b) of the PDP Constitution deals with the procedure for rejoining PDP, Section 18 is on the Status of Returnee Members.Section 8 reads: A person who desires to rejoin the party after leaving it shall: (a) apply to his Ward Secretary for readmission; and (b) unless given waiver by the National Working Committee(NWC), be placed on probation for a period of not less than one year.Subject to the provision of Section 8(b), a member on probation shall have the right to attend all meetings of the party but shall not be entitled to vote at such meetings, nor shall he be eligible to contest for elective office on the platform of the party.Section 18 says: A person who has earlier decamped from the party but later decides to return to the party shall lose the seniority and privileges conferred on him by his previous status.But the PDP top shot said: As the opposition party, we are looking at the larger picture of the return of Atiku, we will give him all waivers required to ensure his readmission.Some of our leaders, who were initially opposed to the return of the ex-VP, had shown enough understanding in the past few months.Meanwhile, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Alhaji Kehinde Olaosebikan yesterday said the exit of Atiku would not have any significant effect on the fortunes of the party in the 2019 general elections.He said no serving governor, no presiding officer of the National Assembly or key national executive officer of the party was in sync with Atikus defection.Olaosebikan who spoke with journalists in Abuja yesterday said in spite of the defection, President Muhammadu Buhari would win hands down and that the party would perform better in 2019.He added: Going through the resignation letter, I found out that the Turaki did not exercise enough fortitude. He allowed politics and ambition to take control of him. He should have stayed with his avowed position in 2013 that the All Progressives Congress was his last bus stop politically, and leave the rest in the hands of Allah.What the President needs from us, particularly the big political players is love, understanding, support and prayers as already being exhibited by the National Executive of the party and our National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu who at different fora recently gave us hope and assurances of a better tomorrow.When asked of the declaration of Asiwaju Tinubu that the party would not give automatic ticket to President Buhari for a second term, Olaosebikan told journalists that the position of Tinubu was in the best interest of the President, APC and the country as a whole.Asiwaju, with the declaration of no automatic ticket was merely portraying the President as a genuine democrat who believes in due process. What Asiwaju Tinubu said was in support of strengthening our democracy and our political institution which we need to do with all seriousness.You would recall too, that he stated that all the organs of the party would support him through the processes. In a nutshell, he is in full support of his second term and you know with him, all the APC governors and the presiding officers in the National Assembly, the ticket is already in the pocket of the President.And when it comes to the general election, it is a platitude that you cannot compare the popularity and acceptability of President Muhammadu Buhari with that of any person in the country today. He will win in the North and in the South convincingly. Buhari is not loved for money or any material thing; he is passionately loved for his strong character and piousness.
A former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (retd), has told Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, to seek dia...

A former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (retd), has told Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, to seek dialogue with the Nigerian Government rather than calling for secession.

Gowon advised Kanu to engage the Federal Government in talks to address issues affecting the South-East, and stop seeking disintegration as it could lead to loss of lives.





The former military leader gave the advice while presenting his paper titled, Unity in diversity: Responding to the current challenges of nation-building in Nigeria, at the 2017 Distinguished Annual Lecture of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Jos, Plateau State.





He said, My young friend, Nnamdi Kanu, was not born during the civil war, which was declared no victor, no vanquished.





It is sad to recall what happened at that time; the best way to seek redress is through dialogue.





Kanu should pursue a healthy conversation on issues he is not comfortable with as it affects his people; this is the only way we can collaborate effectively and have things resolved amicably.









Gowon also pointed out that the activities of Fulani herdsmen had posed a threat to nation-building.




Ashley Young's first Premier League goal for 18 months, courtesy of a big deflection, saw Manchester United edge battling Brighton and Hove Albion at Old Trafford.Brighton had been the better team up until Young's attempt from the edge of the area hit Lewis Dunk before looping over keeper Mat Ryan and into the net.Earlier, Anthony Knockaert and Pascal Gross both went close after getting behind the United defence.Ryan produced a double save to keep out Romelu Lukaku's header and Paul Pogba's follow-up on the stroke of half-time.United's win cuts Manchester City's lead at the top of the Premier League table to five points ahead of their trip to Huddersfield on Sunday.Credit: BBC
President Muhammadu Buhari has described the immediate past Oba of Benin, His Royal Majesty Omo nOba nEdo Uku Akpolokpolo Erediauwa 1 as ...

President Muhammadu Buhari has described the immediate past Oba of Benin, His Royal Majesty Omo nOba nEdo Uku Akpolokpolo Erediauwa 1 as his backbone.

Buhari made this known when he met with Oba Ewuare II yesterday at the State House Aso Rock Villa.





While receiving the traditional ruler, the President spoke about his relationship with the immediate past Oba of Benin, Oba Erediauwa I, who is also the father of the visiting traditional ruler.





I cannot hold back my emotions, talking about my relationship with your predecessor, President Buhari told the monarch.





After General Murtala Mohammed was assassinated, I was moved from the North East as governor to Ministry of Petroleum. Your father was then Permanent Secretary. My relationship with him was very strong. I have lost count of the number of visits to his palace as Oba, Buhari added.





The President appreciated the efforts of the late Oba for stabilising the Delta region of the country because of his firmness, as well as the immediate past governor of Edo State, Mr Adams Oshiomhole, for stabilising the state.





He also commended Oba Ewuare II for following the footsteps of his predecessor while reiterating his support for the traditional institution.





I know and respect the traditional institution. I try as much as possible to understand why the authors of our Constitution kept silent about their role  that was probably the best thing way to preserve their neutrality, he said. 





Your Royal Majesty, you are safe where you are, Buhari added.





He further commended the stabilising roles that the Eweka Dynasty of Benin Kingdom had been playing in the affairs of the country.





According to him, Nigerians have reasons to be proud of the stabilising roles Benin chiefs had played right from the colonial era to the current period, not only in the Delta region but the entire country.





In his remarks, the traditional ruler commended President Buhari for the way he has been handling security matters in the country.




Police are trying to identify the body of a male, believed to be in his 20s, that was found in the Passaic River late Friday night.

A group of four fisherman called the Elmwood Park police at about 11:20 p.m. to report what appeared to be a body floating face-down near the eastern river bank, at River Drive near Linwood Avenue, Elmwood Park Police Chief Michael Foligno said in the press release Saturday.

The Elmwood Park Fire Department and detectives from the Bergen County Sheriff's Department BCI Unit assisted on the scene. The body was turned over to the Bergen County Medical Examiner's Office.

Anyone with information about this case can report it anonymously to the Elmwood Park Police Department at 201-796-0700.

Allison Pries may be reached at apries@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AllisonPries. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 24 (PTI) Rajiv Bansal has been given a three-month extension as the CMD of disinvestment-bound Air India, according to a senior government official.

The tenure extension for Bansal as Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) comes at a time when the government is in the process of finalising the modalities for the airlines strategic disinvestment.

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A civil aviation ministry official today said Bansal has been given an extension as CMD of Air India for three months.

An order in this regard was issued on Thursday.

During his three-month tenure, Air India launched services to Copenhagen, among others. He also initiated various steps to reduce costs and improve on-time performance of flights.

"We will plan to work on profitability with a missionary zeal, improve our on time performance and ensure customer satisfaction," Bansal had said soon after assuming charge as the CMD in August.

He was initially appointed for a period of three months.

Bansal, who is also additional secretary and financial adviser at the petroleum ministry, is a 1988-batch IAS officer of the Nagaland cadre. He hails from Haryana.

The airline, which has a debt burden of over Rs 50,000 crore, managed to eke out operational profit for the first time in a decade in 2015-16.

As part of efforts to revive the fortunes of Air India -- which is staying afloat on taxpayers money -- the government has started the disinvestment process for the airline. Under a turnaround plan approved by the previous UPA regime, Air India is to receive up to Rs 30,231 crore from the government subject to meeting certain performance thresholds. The ten-year bailout package began from 2012.

So far, the embattled carrier has received around Rs 26,000 crore under the package.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) gave its in-principle nod for the strategic disinvestment of the airline in June this year. PTI RAM IAS ABM

--- ENDS ---
By Kelly Heyboer | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

TRENTON  New Jersey's county colleges charged full-time students an average of $4,700 -- or $123 per credit -- in annual tuition and fees last year, according to state statistics.

Under a new plan, those tuition bills could all disappear.

Gov.-elect Phil Murphy campaigned on a promise to make New Jersey the fifth state in the nation to make county college tuition free for all students.

"We can and we must open the doors of opportunity, wide, for all residents," Murphy said in September, weeks before the Democrat easily beat Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno to win the governor's seat.

Now that Murphy is headed to Trenton, could free county college tuition -- which would cost the state at least $200 million -- become a reality?

Lawrence Nespoli, long-time president of the New Jersey Council of County Colleges, is optimistic. His group, which represents New Jersey's 19 two-year public colleges, has already had talks with Murphy's team about how a free tuition plan would work.

"Not a lot of us have a money tree anywhere, but the governor has a bully pulpit," Nespoli said. "I expect we'll see attention to this important priority."

Here are five reasons experts say free county college tuition could work in New Jersey -- and one big reason the idea might be nothing more than a dream:

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Gov.-elect Phil Murphy has proposed free county college tuition for all New Jersey students. (NJ Advance Media file photo)

1) Murphy has been thinking about a free county college plan for years.

Murphy first began discussing the idea of free county college tuition with state education leaders several years ago through New Start New Jersey, the non-profit advocacy group he founded with his wife. He did a podcast about the idea, long before he announced his plan to run for governor.

The former Goldman Sachs executive saw free county college tuition as a way to help jump start the state's economy. While ambassador to Germany, he saw first hand how that country's extensive system of technical and vocational training works.

His plan calls for free county college tuition for both high school graduates and adults who want to return to school for a two-year degree.

Murphy said New Jersey's $200 million free county college tuition plan could be phased in over several years.

"This won't be as costly as many critics might have you believe," Murphy said in September.

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2) The county colleges are on board.

The heads of New Jersey's 19 county colleges are supportive of the free county college plan, which could dramatically increase enrollment, said Nespoli, head of the county college association.

Under the preliminary plan, New Jersey's free county college program would be a so-called "last dollar" scholarship open to all of the state's high school graduates, no matter what their grade point average, Nespoli said.

That means students would still apply for financial aid. If they qualify for Pell Grants, New Jersey Tuition Aid Grants or other financial aid programs, that money would be applied to their tuition if they attend their county's two-year college.

Then, the free county college program would cover only the "last dollars" of the students' remaining county college tuition and fee bills.

Students would still have to pay for their own books, transportation and other college costs. They would also have to pay for their own tuition if they transfer to one of the state's four-year colleges to complete a bachelor's degree after attending county college.

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3) Other states are doing it.

Tennessee, Oregon, and Minnesota all have versions of free county college tuition, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

New York also recently started its Excelsior Scholarship program that offers free tuition at the state's two-year and four-year public colleges for families that make less than $110,000 a year.

New Jersey might be able to model its free county college program after the successful Tennessee Promise program that offers free tuition to all high school graduates using state lottery money and other state funds, New Jersey officials said.

Tennessee's Republican governor recently signed a bill to expand the program to also offer free county college tuition to a limited number of residents over age 24. Murphy has suggested New Jersey could offer the same program for residents who want to return to county college.

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4) New Jersey already has NJ STARS -- a successful, smaller version of free county college tuition.

New Jersey has experience running a free county college program.

NJ STARS, or the New Jersey Student Tuition Assistance Reward Scholarship, was started in 2004 by Gov. James E. McGreevey in reaction to the rapidly rising tuition at the state's colleges. The program offered free county college tuition to New Jerey students who graduated in the top 20 percent of their high school class.

The scholarship was popular because it was one of the only financial aid programs offered to middle-class and wealthier families in New Jersey. In 2006, the NJ STARS II program was added to give additional scholarship money to students to transfer to four-year colleges after finishing their two years at county college.

State budget problems forced NJ STARS to scale back so only students in the top 15 percent of their graduating classes were eligible. But, the program remains popular with lawmakers and students.

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5) New Jersey's county colleges have room for more students.

If county college tuition was free, could New Jersey's two-year colleges handle a surge in enrollment?

Yes, county college officials say. New Jersey's 19 county colleges enrolled about 150,500 full- and part-time undergraduate students last year. That is 30,000 less students than in 2010.

Unlike four-year colleges, county colleges are designed to be able to easily expand and contract, school officials said. Because they have no dorms and most professors are adjuncts hired on a per-class basis, it is easy to add classes quickly if enrollment climbs.

However, there is one big reason free county college might not be coming to New Jersey:

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1) Money.

When Murphy first introduced the idea of free county college tuition in New Jersey, he said the plan would cost the state $400 million.

He later reduced his estimate to $200 million, citing a study by the non-partisan Campaign for Free College Tuition that estimates New Jersey would give up $197.5 million in tuition revenue if it made its two-year colleges free.

Murphy said the money could come from several sources, including his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy and generate tax revenue by legalizing recreational marijuana.

But, it remains to be seen whether the state Legislature will go along with his plans. It is also unclear whether there will be money left over for county colleges if Murphy follows through on other campaign promises -- including increased spending for K-12 schools, affordable housing, .

Some Democrats in the state Legislature already sounded skeptical there would be enough cash for all of Murphy's priorities.

"We're not going to be able to raise enough in taxes in the first year, two years, three years, to provide free community college and everything else," state Sen. Loretta Weinberg, D-Bergen, said the day after Murphy's election. "All of these things are priorities, let's call them goals, to move forward."

During the campaign, Repubicans warned there was no such thing as free county college for taxpayers.

"There is no such thing as a free lunch, and all of the 'free' stuff Phil Murphy is promising - government-run healthcare, free college - will have to be paid for by New Jersey taxpayers, who will have to work harder and longer to pay for all of the higher taxes Phil Murphy has promised to increase on everyone," Ricky Diaz, Guadagno's spokesman, said shortly after Murphy's plan was introduced.

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Students wait to receive their degrees at Essex County College's 2017 graduation. (NJ Advance Media for NJ.com file photo)

Read more about N.J. college tuition:

7 ways to go to college tuition-free in N.J.

Tuition at N.J.'s 27 four-year colleges ranked from least to most expensive

Here's how N.J. college students can save $21K in tuition

Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer.
NEWARK -- The city paid $26,500 to a consulting company whose two principal partners were recently embroiled in tax evasion charges for underreporting profits from their marketing and fundraising business.

Kiburi Tucker and Linda Jumah, who ran Elite Strategies LLC, both pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges in federal court this month. Tucker also admitted to one count of wire fraud for taking $330,000 from The Centre, Inc., a nonprofit he ran, and using much of the money for gambling and personal expenses.

Frank Baraff, a spokesman for the city, said Newark conducted a review and found Elite Strategies provided services to the city three times between Sept. 2014 and Dec. 2015.

"Elite Strategies has not received work from the city of Newark since," Baraff said in a statement. "It should also be noted that none of the work performed by Elite Strategies for the city of Newark is related in any way to the pleas entered in federal court by the Elite Strategies principals."

Among the work performed by Elite Strategies:

$7,549

$2,450

$16,500

Baraff said the work was awarded under open market procedures which allows the purchasing officer to solicit bids and select the lowest responsible bidder.

Tucker, 43, is listed as the chief executive officer of Elite Strategies, state corporation records show. His business partner, Jumah, is listed as the president of the company.

Attorneys for Tucker and Jumah were not immediately available for comment.

Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom last week, Tucker said he let the community down through his actions. "I'm going to try and rectify the situation to the best of my ability, and I accept the consequences and take full responsibility for my actions," he said.



Elite Strategies helped plan last year's Mayor's Ball and other events for Mayor Ras Baraka's campaign.

Records filed with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission show the Committee to Re-Elect Ras Baraka paid Elite Strategies $95,000 between April 2015 through April 2017 for consulting services and coordinating a fundraiser.

A source close to Baraka's campaign said there was no plan to contract the company for future work.

Tucker, however, remains the developer on a South Ward project to erect 42 apartments with ground-floor commercial space. The city said it plans to move forward with the project and "will adjust accordingly" should his unrelated legal issues affect the development.

Tucker's late father, Donald Kofi Tucker, served on the state Assembly and on the Newark City Council until he died in 2005. Tucker's mother, Cleopatra Tucker, was elected to the state Assembly in 2008.

Tucker was also employed at the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission since 1994. He worked as a senior external relations representative earning $113,082, commission spokesman Doug Scancarella told NJ Advance Media. Scancarella said Tucker resigned on Nov. 10.

Jumah helped organize the Afro Beat Fest in July that Baraka resurrected and renamed. The city used to hold a festival to celebrate African culture since the 1980s called "Africa Newark;" the festival stopped in 2006 after it lost city support.

Karen Yi may be reached at kyi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @karen_yi or on Facebook.
NEWARK -- Police are searching for a man who burglarized two businesses on Springfield Avenue by breaking in through the roof.

Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose said the man stole cigarettes and money from K&C Nabaya African Market and the Milly Deli on Nov. 19. Both businesses are located on the 400 block of Springfield Avenue.

Th burglar was captured on surveillance camera and had a beard, was wearing gloves and a wool cap, police said. He allegedly entered the building through the roof of K&C Nabaya African Market.

Anyone with information can call the Crime Stopper tip line at 1-877-NWK-TIPS (1-877-695-8477) or leave a tip online www.newarkpd.org or through the Newark Police Division smartphone app.

Karen Yi may be reached at kyi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @karen_yi or on Facebook.
Jose M. Archeval was convicted of sexual assault in 1987 and 1994. He's listed on the New Jersey sex offender registry as a Tier 3 (high risk) offender.

The 65-year-old's last known address was in Bridgeton, Cumberland County, but the state database indicates his current whereabouts are unknown.

Archeval is one of 85 sex offenders listed as fugitives.

These "non-compliant" offenders failed to fulfill registration requirements under Megan's Law by not checking in with local police at a regular interval to confirm their current address.

Depending on their sentence, offenders must notify police of their address either every 90 days or once a year.

If they fail to do that, they are deemed non-compliant. If police cannot locate the offender at their last-known address, an arrest warrant is issued, according to police.

Overall, the online sex offender registry includes more than 4,300 people, with details including photos, physical descriptions and the charges that landed them on the list.

All sex offenders subject to Megan's Law are required to register for life. In addition to the annual or 90-day notifications, offenders must register any change of address at least 10 days prior to moving. Sex offenders convicted in another state are required to register in New Jersey within 10 days of moving to the state.

Efforts to locate non-compliant offenders depend on the threat they pose, officials previously explained. Few of those currently listed as non-compliant are high-risk (Tier 3) offenders.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of a non-compliant sex offender is asked to submit a tip on the online registry. They can also contact local police.

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
By PTI: (Eds: Adds information on arrested man)

Kolkata, Nov 24 (PTI) Kolkata Police today arrested a man allegedly linked to two terrorists of the banned Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) of Bangladesh from near a cinema hall in the citys busy Sealdah area, a senior police officer said.

Mohammed Sahadat Hossain was arrested by a team of the Special Task Force after the two ABT terrorists - Samsad Mia, alias Tanvir Saiful, and Rizaul Islam, who were arrested from the Kolkata railway station on Tuesday - provided information to them, he said.

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Hossain has confessed to the STF sleuths that he had helped two persons ? Swapan Biswas, alias Tamim, and Tanvir Saiful - in illegally entering India through the Bangladesh border.

"(Hossain) took both Tamim and Tanvir to Hyderabad where they were introduced to a group head of the banned terror outfit," the officer said.

Hossain later brought them back to Kolkata as per the instruction of the "group head", the officer said.

Tamim was introduced to Nayan Gazi here and the duo stayed for around three days at a hotel in Howrah.

"We have collected CCTV footages from the Howrah hotel and distributed photographs of the two to all police stations in the state. We need these two persons to dig more into the case," the officer said.

Anyone giving additional information about Tamim and Gazi would be rewarded, he added.

Hossain was produced before a city court during the day and was remanded to police custody till December 5.

On Tuesday, the STF had arrested Mia and Islam along with arms supplier Monotosh Dey from the Kolkata railway station and seized several fake documents and arms from them. The two are suspected to be behind the killing of secular bloggers and writers in Bangladesh. PTI SCH KK ABH

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The presumed nominee, defense attorney Peter Strasser, either pushed or poked Assistant U.S. Attorney Myles Ranier in the chest during an argument, according to the news site.(File photo)
He said that the minority community in Bangladesh would like Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to intervene in the situation.

By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: Rana Das Gupta, general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhist & Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC) on Friday claimed that many ruling party leaders are involved in property of Hindu people in Bangladesh through various MPs and ministers.

Gupta was speaking as the chief guest at the tri-annual conference of BHBCUC in Pirojpur. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is the chief of the Awami League, the ruling party of Bangladesh. The party time and again claims that Hindus are its friends.

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"We want Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's intervention to remain free from this situation. We do not want to see the Awami Muslim League of 1954, we want to see Bangladesh of 1971- the dream of Bangabandhu," Gupta said.

He added that the oppression against Hindus has been continuing since 1991, all under the state's nose. No one sees the light of justice in any of these violent attacks. He expressed his anger over the recommendations of the Justice Shahabuddin Commission in 2012 to protect the interests of Hindus.

'AWAMI LEAGUE LEADERS INVOLVED IN ATTACK'

Gupta said local Awami League leaders were involved in the incident at Thakurpara of Rangpur District in Bangladesh.

Following rumours that a Hindu youth had posted an offensive Facebook status on November 10, a mob of angry protesters had set at least 30 houses of Hindus on fire in Bangladesh. "Not just in Rangpur, an Awami League leader was involved in an attack on a Buddhist temple in Cox's Bazaar and another Hindu area at Nasrinagar in Brahmanbaria district," he added.

"Even though they (the attackers) talk about the ideology of Bangabandhu, they do not hold his ideology in their heart."

'NO VOTES FOR THOSE TORTURING HINDUS'

He said Hindus will not give votes to those leaders who have tortured minorities and occupied their land. "Because, when we are tortured, no political leader or police can see anyone next to us," He added.District Awami League adviser advocate Chandicharan Pal inaugurated the conference held at Ramkrishna Mission Ashram in Rajarhat area of Pirojpur city. Officials of BHBCUC were also present.

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The Fremont County Attorneys Office has announced dispositions from the Iowa District Court there on Nov. 20.

The man, 33, of Omaha, pled guilty to child endangerment and domestic abuse assault. He was sentenced to 25 days in the county jail with credit for time served. He was granted a deferred judgment for the domestic abuse assault charge. The man was ordered to one year of supervised probation and to complete the Batterers Education Program, obtain a mental health evaluation and follow recommendations.

Mikayla MLynn Edie, 27, of Council Bluffs, pled guilty to possession of a weapon in a correctional institution and violating her probation. She was given a suspended sentence of 10 years in jail with credit for time served. She was ordered to two years probation, to reside at a residential corrections facility and to pay court costs.
Authorities are still investigating the death of a Harlan woman who was killed Thursday morning after a car struck her while she was walking along Highway 59.

The Iowa State Patrol said the incident concerning the death of Patsey Ann Maria Nuzum, 50, is still being looked into by law enforcement.

The Shelby County Sheriffs Office said the incident occurred just before 6 a.m. in the 700 block of Highway 59. Two vehicles were southbound when one vehicle, a 2005 Chevy Trailblazer, reportedly attempted to pass the other.

During the pass attempt, the Trailblazer struck Nuzum, who was walking southbound in the northbound lane. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to several people around the world, a suspicious loud sound was heard recently. The booming sounds have left experts baffled.

By India Today Web Desk: What's creating noise these days? Well, mysterious booming sounds which have been recorded from different parts of the world. These booming sounds have left people perplexed.

People have been claiming these booms to be terrifying and have been nicknamed as Bama Boom.

Bama Boom have been recorded from the Middle East to the East Midlands to Australia, with the several people hearing them on America's eastern coast.

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According to a Daily Mail report, the terrifying boom has left experts mystified. A few suggested causes range from supersonic aircraft to meteors exploding in the atmosphere.

According to the same portal, mysterious booms have been reported 64 times this year.

The latest boom was reported from the US state of Alabama and Idaho in the last week.

"Loud boom heard: we do not see anything indicating large fire/smoke on radar or satellite; nothing on USGS indicating an earthquake," the Birmingham National Weather Service said in a tweet.

Re: loud boom heard: we do not see anything indicating large fire/smoke on radar or satellite; nothing on USGS indicating an earthquake. We don't have an answer, and can only hypothesize with you. 1) sonic boom from aircraft; 2) meteorite w/ current Leonid shower?- NWS Birmingham (@NWSBirmingham) November 14, 2017

WHAT TRIGGERS BAMA BOOM?

While the cause remains unknown, suggested explanations include a sonic boom from an aircraft or a meteorite from the Leonid shower. But NASA has since cast skepticism on these explanations.

The loud boom could have been caused by a supersonic aircraft, a ground explosion, or a bolide -- a large meteor that explodes in the atmosphere unrelated to the Leonid shower, Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, was quoted as saying to ABC 3340.

The noise, which was also picked up by the US Geological Survey, noted that the boom was not the result of an earthquake.

The boom may have been caused by a military flight by a supersonic jet, they said, although the US Air Force is yet to confirm this.

BAMA BOOM RETURNS

The Bama Boom is just one of many mysterious booms heard worldwide this year.

This is not the first time the mysterious sound has been heard. In 2017 alone, 64 booms have been heard worldwide, in locations including Michigan, Lapland, St Ives, Swansea and Yorkshire.

This was heard across multiple counties this afternoon? doesn't appear to be related to a geological event https://t.co/34O9kGgjJH https://t.co/3fTtYDOies- James Spann (@spann) November 14, 2017

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On October 10, a similar loud sound left Cairns locals confused. Many people suggested it was an FA-18 Hornet plane was heard flying, news.com.au reported.

Two weeks later, another boom was heard over the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia at the same time a blue meteor passed across the sky.

"It just got bigger and bigger and it was just this big flash across the sky and there were sparks coming off it," Port Lincoln local Lisa Watson was quoted by News Corp.

"I pulled up home and I heard two massive bangs, maybe a second apart, and then the sky lit up again

I just felt the whole earth shake twice," he added.

According to Cooke, NASA's meteor scientists will continue to analyse new data in hopes of determining the cause of the boom.

--- ENDS ---
Since the rise of the Patidar agitation led by 24-year-old Hardik Patel's Patidar Anamat Aandolan Samiti (PAAS) in 2015, their support base has eroded slowly.

By Poulomi Saha: Its going to pour rallies in Gujarat come this weekend. The BJP has charted out a gameplan to carpet-bomb Saurashtra and South Gujarat regions of the state that go to polls on December 9.

The saffron party today released a detailed plan of the top faces of the Union Cabinet, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will be descending on Gujarat to give the party's campaign for the first phase a last-ditch push. Its expected to be a campaign blitzkrieg.

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Bharatiya Janata Party's 50 star campaigners, including Unions Minister Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Irani and Piyush Goyal will address rallies across the 89 constituencies of the state that vote on December 9. These rallies will be addressed simultaneously on November 26 and 27.

However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rallies across the region is expected to steal the show. Starting his campaign on November 27 from Bhuj, the Prime Minister will address 15 rallies and inaugurate a hospital in Ahmedabad over 4 days - November 26, 27 and December 3, 4. Each day the Prime Minister is expected to address 4 rallies.

This leg of the campaign is going to be extremely crucial for the BJP because the Saurashtra region, that covers roughly 60 of the 89 seats that go to polls in the first phase, is considered to be a Patidar stronghold.

Patidars have been known to be BJP supporters but since the rise of the Patidar agitation led by 24-year-old Hardik Patel's Patidar Anamat Aandolan Samiti (PAAS) in 2015, that support base has eroded slowly.

The death knell to this erstwhile association was sounded yesterday when Hardik announced that he has accepted the Congress' formula to provide reservation for Patidars in jobs and educational institutions, if voted to power.

Hardik said Congress assured they would introduce a bill in the Gujarat assembly to that effect and it would not disturb the current 49% reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs in Gujarat. How that would not overrule the Supreme Court's cap on reservations at 50% is not known.

Patidars account for roughly 12% of the population of Gujarat and BJP banked heavily on their support in previous elections. Saurashtra had favoured BJP strongly in 2012 when the party got 37 of the 58 seats in the region while Congress scooped up 16.

This latest arrangement between the Congress and PAAS could be the Prime Minister's target as he embarks on his campaign blitzkrieg ahead of December 9. The Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi has already canvassed around the region as part of his Navsarjan Yatra. But the BJP is optimistic that launching their biggest star in the final lap will erase away all the legwork that Rahul has put in.

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The BJP has also significantly given several Patidar leaders tickets in the 134 seats where they have declared candidate names for so far. Contrary to popular speculation, the party has also repeated several sitting MLAs, including seniormost Patidar face in the party, state Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel. Congress rebel MLAs who defected to the party from the Congress at the time of Ahmed Patel's re-election to the Rajya Sabha, have also been accommodated.

It remains to be seen how this strategy coupled with the Prime Minister's popularity can dent any anti-incumbency wave that may have been created in the last year due to demonetisation and GST. Its the party's 22 year-old reign that is at stake, and the BJP is looking hopefully towards Prime Minister Modi.

--- ENDS ---
Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides for a convention of states to be called at the request of at least 34 state legislatures. Our federally elected politicians, appointed officials and unelected bureaucrats provide us daily examples of corruption and dysfunction in Washington, D.C.. Randy May, West Region captain of Nebraska Convention of States, said in the press release. Were inviting everyone in the McCook area to come to the town hall to learn how they can end their frustration and act.
Centier Bank donated $10,000 to the American Red Cross's relief efforts after Hurricanes Harvey, Maria, and Irma devastated Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.

The Red Cross would like to thank Centier Bank, its associates, and their clients in their fundraising efforts to support our hurricane relief efforts, said Kristin Marlow-Kellemen, executive director for the American Red Cross  Northwest Indiana Chapter. Donations like these have helped us to provide 1.3 million overnight stays in emergency shelters, served more than 10.5 million meals and snacks, distributed more than 6 million emergency relief items like diapers, bug spray, cleaning supplies, coolers, and comfort kits containing deodorant, toothbrushes, toothpaste and other hygiene items. We know there is still a great deal of work ahead of us, and we will continue to stand with the individuals and families impacted, for as long as it takes.

The family-owned Merrillville-based bank raised $9,000 from clients and workers at its 60 branches across Indiana. Centier's Board of Directors decided to kick in another $1,000 to bring the total to an even $10,000.

"It is humbling to witness how the Centier family rallied is this time of need. Our employees did a wonderful job of taking the lead with this great idea to support the victims of the hurricanes. I feel that this genuine gesture truly embodies the caring nature of our culture here at Centier," said Anthony Contrucci, Vice President of Community Relations and Business Development at Centier Bank. Im proud to be on a team with people who are making a positive impact on the communities that we serve as well as those communities in need.

Centier Bank also was recently named Corporate Philanthropist of the Year by the Northwest Indiana Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. President and CEO Mike Schrage said the ongoing philanthropy reflects the bank's core value of "caring."

It is no surprise to me that our associates and clients came out in full force to support the communities impacted by the hurricanes, Schrage said. The entire Centier family is dedicated to providing care and support to those in need; though we are an Indiana bank, I am proud to say that our reach extends well beyond the State and the communities we serve in times like these.
PORTAGE  A recent federal inquiry may center on a significant tax break a local business received several years ago.

FBI and IRS agents visited Portage Township Assessor Alta Neri last week to ask questions about SRH LLC, which previously owned a multiacre real estate parcel at 5900 Southport Road on which Great Lakes Peterbilt trucks has been doing business for more than 20 years.

While the federal agents didn't serve a subpoena for records, they did ask about routine practices of the township assessor's office and took copies of documents related to a decision to reduce SRH's property tax assessments.

Neri said a tax representative for SRH filed appeals of its 2011-12 assessments.

She said properties usually are assessed at values, for taxing purposes, that follow the local real estate market. On this appeal, they used an alternate method of measuring the firm's business income and arrived at a lower value.

"We honestly did our job," she said. Neri was the chief deputy assessor at the time. She was elected assessor in 2014.

Neri said the documents federal investigators asked questions about are confidential.

But public records kept by the Porter County assessor's office indicate the assessment of SRH's parcel was reduced in value by at least 35 percent  to $1.6 million from $2.5 million in 2011, and to $1.6 million from $2.6 million in 2012.

Neri said that reduction accounts for SRH's 2012 tax bill dropping by nearly $22,992. The Porter County treasurer's office records indicate SRH's taxes went to $42,170 from $65,162.

Stephen Buha, listed as SRH's president in state business records, said this week no federal agents have questioned him about what he considers to be a routine tax appeal. "I was the president who filed it, but I didn't do it personally. I cannot speculate what this is about."

Valparaiso attorney Russell Millbranth, who has represented SRH, said he is baffled. "People quite often find their assessment is steep. There are a lot of companies that perform appeals of tax matters."

Spokespersons for the FBI, IRS and the U.S. attorney's office in Hammond declined to comment, saying federal law prohibits them from commenting on investigations.

Neri said she suspects the federal inquiry may be connected to the long-running investigation of Portage Mayor James Snyder, who is awaiting trial next year on bribery, extortion and tax evasion charges the U.S. attorney's office filed a year ago.

Snyder is pleading not guilty to all counts. Reached Wednesday by text message, the mayor said he would respond but did not. His defense attorney could not be reached for comment.

Business records kept by the Indiana secretary of state indicates SRH was first organized as a limited liability company in January 2003 and has remained active.

SRH's principal office was listed at the Southport Road address until 2015 when it moved to the Valparaiso residence of Robert Buha, who is listed as the company's secretary.

County records indicate the property at Southport Road sold in 2015 to Larson Properties LLC for $5.3 million. Neri said that will require her office to readjust the property's value upward in future tax cycles.

In September 2014, FBI agents visited Portage's street department and requested documents related to the purchase of automated garbage trucks from Great Lakes Peterbilt, Clerk-Treasurer Christopher Stidham said at the time.

City Attorney Gregg Sobkowski also had confirmed the FBI issued a subpoena at the time for all bid packages received by the city for garbage trucks purchased from 2012 to the present.

In August 2015, FBI agents visited the offices of Porter County Assessor Jon Snyder to inquire about property tax appeals from 2012 and 2013. The county assessor is a brother of the Portage mayor.
CROWN POINT  A Lake County attorney has been elected by his fellow attorneys to serve three-year terms on the Indiana Judicial Nominating Commission and the Commission on Judicial Qualifications.

Daniel Vinovich, a partner for the Hilbrich Law Firm in Highland, was elected to represent the commissions' Third District, which is comprised of 20 counties in the upper portion of the state.

The Indiana Judicial Nominating Commission is responsible for vetting applications and submitting qualified applicants to the governor for each vacancy that occurs on the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals or Tax Court, according to the state's website. The governor then appoints an individual from that list to fill the vacancy.

The nominating commission members also serve on the Indiana Commission on Judicial Qualifications, which is responsible for investigating allegations of judicial misconduct and, when appropriate, filing judicial disciplinary charges.

The members of the commissions include three elected attorneys, three governor-appointed citizens, and the chief justice of Indiana, who is the chair of the commissions.

The attorneys-only election for the Third District seat was held Nov. 17.

Vinovich was elected to replace attorney John O. Feighner, of Fort Wayne. Vinovich's term begins Jan. 1.

Vinovich said he wanted to serve on the commissions so he could help improve the administration of justice in Indiana.

Vinovich has practiced law for 27 years and concentrates in civil trial work, primarily medical malpractice. He was president of the Indiana Bar Association in 2012 and 2013, and also served as chairman of the state bar association's House of Delegates.

He is also the former president of the Lake County Bar Association.

The other candidates for the Third District were Debra Lynch Dubovich, of Levy & Dubovich in Merrillville, and Mark W. Baeverstad, of Rothberg, Logan & Warsco in Fort Wayne.
EAST CHICAGO  The Hammond Disabled American Veterans Indiana Chapter 17 is hosting a town hall Tuesday night to discuss major policies potentially impacting local veterans in the upcoming legislative session.

Jim Tarka, finance officer at the American Legion Allied Post 369 in East Chicago, said the "Veterans Voices" event organizers are hoping for a large turnout.

"All veterans and their families are invited to attend. Anybody can come. There will be a question-and-answer period. We want input," Tarka said.

The town hall will center on major legislative priorities  such as mental health, disabled veterans' healthcare benefits and homelessness  presented by the Indiana departments of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans and American Veterans.

The event starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the American Legion Allied Post 369, 1401 W. Chicago Ave. in East Chicago.

Event organizers ask that veterans wear a Legion, VFM, DAV or military cap to signify unity.

Marty Dzieglowicz, a U.S. Army veteran and 42-year member of Allied Post 369 in East Chicago, said other priorities include the creation of tax credits for veterans and legalizing the use of medical marijuana for disabled veterans. The groups also propose creating a veterans lottery ticket to help fund American Legion veterans programs.

Several veterans, along with local, state and federal politicians have been invited to attend.

State Sens. Frank Mrvan, D-Hammond, and Lonnie Randolph, D-East Chicago, North Township Manager Frank Mrvan Jr. have all committed to attend, along with representatives from the offices of U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Merrillville, and U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Indiana.

Mrvan Jr. said he wants to continue the discussion on improving veterans' healthcare, creating sustainable employment, and cutting down on veterans homelessness rates in Northwest Indiana by creating transitional housing programs with the East Chicago Housing Authority and the Catholic Diocese of Gary.

"Our main goal is to listen and the really help identify any needs they have," Mrvan Jr. said.

Those also invited include U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, state Rep. Linda Lawson, D-Hammond, Rep. Rick Niemeyer, R-Lowell, and Rep. Mara Candeleria-Reardon, D-Munster, and Rep. Earl Harris Jr., D-East Chicago.

Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott, East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland, and Lake County Councilwoman Christine Cid, have also been invited to attend, according to event organizers.
VALPARAISO  Sandy McGuigan reached out and lifted up a small handmade Nativity scene from Peru.

"Just think about making this," she said.

As the Valparaiso resident continued making her way around the 11th annual Fair Trade Holiday Bazaar at the Valparaiso International Center, 309 E. Lincolnway, she marveled at the wide assortment of items from many different countries including Indonesia, India, Africa, Pakistan and Peru.

"They have gorgeous things here," said McGuigan, who was volunteering during the opening of the event Friday afternoon.

The bazaar will continue from noon to 7 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays through at least Dec. 9, said Frieda Davison, co-founder of the International Center.

All of the items on sale at this year's bazaar are fair trade, she said, which means fair prices are paid to the producers of the items in the other countries, she said. This allows them to earn a living wage, gain a better quality of life and have the chance to send their children to school.

"It provides good work conditions, no child labor and sustainability of the environment," Davison said.

While fair trade can be associated with higher prices, Davison said the items at the bazaar are moderately priced.

"It's a different mindset," McGuigan said. "Initially, people don't think that much about why this is a good thing to do."

But it becomes clearer once they learn about the conditions in other countries, she said. Providing this education is part of what takes place at the International Center, she said.

The center presents a Fourth Friday event, which features representatives from different countries discussing that culture, showing photos and even sharing native foods, said Valparaiso resident Lani Fisher, who was among the first to be shopping at this year's bazaar.

"We like to support fair trade," she said, explaining that it benefits those who are less fortunate.

"I think everyone wants to work and make a fair living," Fisher said.

In addition to supporting such a good cause, McGuigan said she simply likes the beautiful merchandise at the annual bazaar.

"What a marvelous gift to give somebody," she said of the items from around the world.
After the hustle and bustle of Black Friday at retail chains, mom and pop stores get the chance to shine today.

Small Business Saturday was launched in 2010 by American Express as a campaign encouraging shoppers to spend their money at local businesses. By 2012, officials from all 50 states recognized the initiative, according to the American Express website.

The movement is now in its seventh year of celebrating shopping small the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Small businesses have long been recognized as the economic engine for job growth, economic stability and preserving neighborhoods across Alabama and the nation, Gov. Kay Ivey said after signing a proclamation officially recognizing the day. Small Business Saturday shopping continues to increase each year and is achieving the goal of showcasing the importance of Main Street businesses to the local community.

There are 388,850 small businesses in Alabama. Thats 99.4 percent of total businesses in the state, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy. When consumers shop at those small businesses, they pour money back into the local economy.

I think people sometimes get wrapped up in Black Friday, said Pam Powers-Smith, Opelika Chamber of Commerce president. But we want people to not forget about small businesses. When you shop with a small business, more sales tax dollars stay in the city and help the community.

Many small businesses across the country offer special promotions on Small Business Saturday. But with Auburn hosting the Iron Bowl today, and downtowns proximity to campus, small business owners in downtown Auburn celebrated yesterday.

Downtown Auburns version of Small Business Saturday is known as Blue Friday, according to downtown coordinator Jessica Kahn.

We had a bunch of sales and specials today, Kahn said Friday afternoon. She said shopping at small businesses not only stimulates the local economy, but supports the business owners who call Auburn home.

There are a lot of people who have the misconception that because downtown Auburn is always crowded and finding a parking spot is difficult, that all the business owners here are really well-off and dont need the money, she said. But thats not the case. This is their livelihood. They really depend on patrons spending money with them, and not the big box stores.
Former Kumi Member of Parliament, Patrick Oboi Amuriat has defeated Gen Mugisha Muntu, the incumbent in the race for the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) presidency.



Muntu, a former army commander and bush war veteran was running for the second and last term garnered 463 votes (41.1 per cent) against Amuriats 641 (57.6 per cent). He was defeated at all the six polling stations at Namboole national stadium.

Patrick Oboi Amuriat is the new FDC president

Muntu ran his campaign on the approach of building party structures, accepted the defeat and apologised to those who did not vote for him for having disappointed them.

He said in the coming weeks, he has to make personal decisions about his struggle to liberate the country because he wants to operate in an environment where he is trusted.



On my side, in the next few weeks, there are decisions I have to make. We need to bear with each otherWell do our part as human beings the rest well leave to the living GodHonourable Amuriat you have taken over the seat of FDC but I can tell you it's tough. I wouldnt want you to operate in the environment that I have operated in...Continue the same path of building the party, he said.



Amuriat, a new face in the party leadership, on his part, ran his campaign on the defiance strategy (radicalism) vowing to go head-on against the ruling party, NRM.



Gen Muntu I will never stop to respect you as a president I look up to. I have listened to your remarks and I believe once the dust has settled, we shall have to meet and iron out the differences. We need each other in this party...In the near future I would like to meet all the candidates to find a way on how we can work together", Amuriat said in his acceptance speech.

Amuriat added that the liberation of Uganda will not happen in Parliament but outside with the people. Political minnows Moses Byamugisha got 3 votes while Dan Malcom Matsiko got 2 votes each.
iStock/Thinkstock(TUCKER, Ark.) -- Two correctional officers who were briefly held hostage Friday night by a pair of inmates at an Arkansas maximum security prison have been released, and their captors are in custody, officials said.



The incident took place in the housing area at the Maximum Security Unit in Tucker, located about 30 miles southeast of Little Rock.



The officers were released at 7 p.m. local time with minor injuries, including cuts and bruises, said Solomon Graves, public information officer for the Arkansas Department of Correction.



Following "a use of force," both inmates were taken into custody, Graves said.



When the hostage situation began, emergency response teams from the Department of Correction headed to the scene and Arkansas State Police were notified. notified, Solomon Graves, public information officer for the Arkansas Department of Correction, said in a statement.



It was unclear what prompted the hostage situation.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved
By PTI: Amritsar, Nov 25 (PTI) Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu today accused the Centre of delaying the process of giving the states share in GST collections.

The minister along with Congress workers also took out a protest march against the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

The state is facing problems in spending on development projects because of a cash crunch caused by the delay in disbursement of Punjabs share in GST collections, he alleged here.

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"The GST has created terror among people and it is a direct attack on the federal structure. Rs 3,500 crore has not been paid by the Centre to the Punjab government," Sidhu said.

He also claimed that traders and customers were upset with the tax slab.

"Earlier there was a six per cent tax on goods but with the implementation of the GST, tax was being charged at 18 per cent on most of goods because of which both traders and consumers are upset," the minister said.

The Local Bodies Minister alleged that the "improper" implementation of the GST had left business communities fuming as they were finding it difficult to adjust to the new tax system.

He claimed that with the Centre sharing tax proceeds with states, the latter had become "beggars" for their share of revenue.

Reportedly, two ambulances carrying patients got stuck in the traffic jam for half-an-hour because of the protest march. PTI COR CHS ANB

--- ENDS ---
Babaria, who is said to be close to Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, ruffled feathers in Bhopal by claiming that the BJP had managed the media in the state.

By Rahul Noronha: AICC General Secretary in charge of MP, Deepak Babaria, while in Bhopal on Saturday conceded that the Congress was short of funds and that funding in polls was a problem for the party.

"I am an AICC functionary and am saying this. If someone donates to the Congress, he gets a call from a big BJP leader threatening them against the contribution," he said.

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Babaria, who is said to be close to Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, ruffled feathers in Bhopal by claiming that the BJP had managed the media in the state.

"Vyapam is such an important issue, but even five lines on the issue are not discussed in the papers," he said.

Babaria made the comment while responding to a question that the Congress is not seen on the streets raising issues of public interest.

"The media creates a perception on these things," he said. However, he clarified later that he meant that the Vyapam issue was not discussed the way it should have been discussed.

Deepak Babaria has been in Bhopal for the last two days, meeting state Congress leaders to take feedback from them.

On the issue of who would lead the Congress in the next assembly polls, Babaria said that this was a sponsored issue by the BJP.

"Who leads the party, when the announcement will be made can't be stated before the media," he said.

He, however, did add that Congress was united in the state.

On being asked how he expects the Congress to do in the state in the next polls, Babaria said that MP will witness a Tsunami for the Congress and the recent election results at Chitrakoot where the Congress won, was an indicator.

He said that Congress was also bringing about changes at the organizational level to counter the BJP's booth level management.

On the Congress's chances in Gujarat- the state where he hails from- Babaria said that the BJP's confidence of large victory margins stems from EVM manipulations.

--- ENDS ---
For many kids, this time of year means narrowing down the wish list to the toys they really want. It means counting down the days till schools out, and going home to pine trees and gingerbread cookies, to warmth and wonder.

But for many others, the holidays arent so bright.

This December, Camp Fontanelle is opening its doors to kids in need of a little extra spirit over the holiday season. The fourth annual Christmas Camp will be Dec. 15 to 17 at the campground, 9677 County Road 3 in Washington County.

The camp is meant for kids ages 9 to 12 who, for whatever reason, will be facing a less-than-blessed holiday season, said Jane Van Horn, coordinator at Camp Fontanelle. Maybe they come from a low-income family. Maybe a parent or grandparent is seriously ill.

We just want to reach out to these kids that just need some fun, some light in their life, Van Horn said.

The Christmas Camp, funded through a grant from the Nebraska United Methodist Foundation, is free for families. It features a range of Yuletide activities: Campers construct gingerbread houses, re-enact the Nativity story and shop for gifts to give friends and family at a makeshift Christmas store.

Camp Fontanelle, owned by the United Methodist Churchs Great Plains Conference, hosts Christian camps and retreats throughout the year, Van Horn said. But the holiday season offers a chance to do something different.

People come to summer camp because its just fun, she said. We want to give that fun in the month of December as well. We want (campers) to leave with positive feelings, with understanding of giving and receiving gracefully.

To learn more or to register, email fontanelle@greatplainsumc.org or call 402-278-0526.
BERLIN (AP)  Workers at a half-dozen Amazon distribution centers in Germany and one in Italy walked off the job Friday, in a protest timed to coincide with Black Friday to demand better wages from the American online giant.

In Germany, Ver.di union spokesman Thomas Voss said some 2,500 workers were on strike at Amazon facilities in Bad Hersfeld, Leipzig, Rheinberg, Werne, Graben and Koblenz. In a warehouse near Piacenza, in northern Italy, some workers walked off the job to demand dignified salaries.

The German union has been leading a push since 2013 for higher pay for some 12,000 workers in Germany, arguing that Amazon employees receive lower wages than others in retail and mail-order jobs. Amazon says its distribution warehouses in Germany are logistics centers and employees earn relatively high wages for that industry.

The strikes in Germany are expected to end today.

Amazon Germany defended its position, saying it was a fair and responsible employer that offers attractive jobs.

The strikes will not affect us keeping our word to our customers, as the overwhelming majority of our workers are continuing their normal work, the company told the Associated Press.

The Italian action, a one-day strike, was hailed by one of the nations umbrella union leaders, the UILs Carmelo Barbagallo, as having enormous symbolic value because its clear that progress, innovation and modernity cant come at the expense and the interests of workers.

The chief of the CISL umbrella labor syndicate, Annamaria Furlan, called on Amazon to work with unions for proper industrial relations, employment stability and dignified salaries.

The Italian strike at the facility near Piacenza was called for permanent workers. The unions advised workers who are on short-term, work-on-demand contracts to stay on the job, so they wouldnt risk losing future gigs.

Amazon says it has created 2,000 full-time jobs in Italy, where unemployment remains stubbornly high.

Amazons head of personnel at the Piacenza-area center, Salvatore Iorio, told Italys Sky TG24 TV on Friday that despite the strike, the facility was keeping our commitment to serve our clients.

Asked about union complaints that workers there did repetitive physical tasks to the point of experiencing health problems, Iorio said the company balances positions at work areas to avoid any such problems.
Some things shoppers simply miss out on if they buy online in lieu of standing in line on Black Friday  like, for instance, a friendly wag from a skunk named Flowers.

The pet skunk was with owner Paul Messerschmidt at the front of the pack of hundreds who waited outside for Cabelas in La Vista to open at 5 a.m.

Messerschmidt has done this before: pitched a tent ahead of the holiday in front of the store, accompanied by animals he said have included geese and ferrets. He planned to shop for snow boot bargains this year, but mostly he likes to entertain.

This year was different, he admits, because Cabelas was open for the first time ever on Thanksgiving Day, and there was not as much of a buildup or down time to the climactic moment when the doors flew open.

It didnt really feel like Black Friday, Messerschmidt said.

Still, he said, Flowers made many a child smile as the two stood outside Cabelas. The store was open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday and reopened at 5 a.m. Friday.

Deneille Chamley was No. 4 in line at Cabelas, arriving about 3 p.m. Thursday. She was flanked by two couples she just met, one from St. Paul, Nebraska, and the other from the Kansas City area. Chamley usually comes with her husband, but this year he had to work.

Her solo trip turned out to be a fun bonding experience with the women. I became sisters with them overnight.

Phillip Nelson of St. Paul said he got a kick out of Messerschmidts antics, and passed other hours Thursday night and Friday morning socializing and eating. At one point, his wife held their spot in line Thursday, while he scoped out the store to pinpoint the location of a rifle he wanted.

Most of it is the camaraderie, Nelson said of why he was there.

Outside PetSmart in Papillions Shadow Lake Towne Center, before the store opened at 7 a.m., shoppers chatted it up about their common denominator, be they furry, feathered or fishy.

Leanne Braniff stood in the predawn darkness with her kids, Claire, 7, and Colby, 16. They were on a mission to buy two 36-gallon aquariums. (The family already has three cats and a bird at home.)

Colby was eager for the aquarium Christmas gift, which he plans to design with live plants and exotic fish.

A big seller at PetSmart that morning was cat litter.

T.J. and Lori Lichtas got in line at 6 a.m. to get 35-pound buckets, about two dozen of them. The price for Friday morning was cut in about half, and the couple planned to stock up.

There was a day, the couple said, when they used to rise early on Black Friday to shop for joy and adventure. Now its for stuff we need, Lori said.

Bob and Dorothy Whited said discounted cat litter would be their primary Black Friday loot as well. Not too glamorous, but practical and necessary.

Bob chuckled good-heartedly as he pointed next door to the shoppers forming a line at Best Buy.

Theyre going to get something nice, he said. All Im getting is fancy dirt.
Yes, they might have stayed home in their pajamas, shopping with the point of a cursor and a click, but what fun would that have been?

Thousands of people across the region lined up well before dawn Friday  sometimes even staking out territory on Thursday afternoon  all to get a good place in line for when retailers threw open the doors to their Black Friday deals.

Modou Nyang of Papillion was among those waiting for the one-day-only doorbusters at Nebraska Furniture Mart.

No doors actually were busted down, but there was a line of people for the stores opening at 8 a.m. Friday. Good weather  it was in the 50s in the morning and topped 70 by the afternoon  certainly didnt hurt.

Nyang said it was hectic once he got inside the Furniture Mart, but the prices were better than at Walmart, he said, where hed popped in on Thanksgiving to shop.

Was it worth facing the Black Friday crowds? Of course, he said. Ill come back again next year.

Jim Cahill, Nebraska Furniture Marts corporate security manager, said it was one of the busiest Black Fridays hes seen.

The lines were actually longer than I have probably seen in the last five years, Cahill said.

Among those who really, really wanted a good deal on some Mart goods: 15 people who camped overnight for the Black Friday morning bell.

They werent the only ones on the hunt for a start-to-the-holidays deal: A recent survey by the International Council of Shopping Centers of about 1,000 adults in the U.S. found that 84 percent of shoppers expected to head to stores sometime over the Thanksgiving weekend. Their average expected spending? $470.20.

On Friday by about 5:30 a.m. about 1,200 people stood in a line that snaked 500 feet around the Council Bluffs Menards.

They must not have gotten the memo: More shoppers told the National Retail Federation that theyd be shopping online this year than ever before, yet here they were in the Omaha area, spilling out of cars that filled parking stalls and grass islands and, in this case, seeped into nearby parking lots at Manawa Center.

Bluffs resident and Black Friday shopping devotee Angel Johnson joined the queue at about 3:30 a.m. with eyes on a collection of dishware as well as a set of pots and pans.

Fellow local Mary Bixler accompanied Johnson out the door, but not because the two were shopping partners: Bixler had staked a claim to Johnsons shopping cart.

Do you know how hard it is to find a cart? Bixler asked with the authority of a shopper who had already been at it for about 12 hours.

At the Kmart store east of downtown Council Bluffs on U.S. Highway 6, Alyssia Wiebold had already struck paydirt by 8:30 a.m. on Friday.

Wiebold, a Bluffs resident, was really only looking for an air fryer for someone on her Christmas list. Everything else, she said, was just window-shopping.

But nabbing the air fryer still required a 4 a.m. wake-up call and a trip to the local Menards, where people by then had already begun to form the line that stretched halfway around the store.

Once Wiebold got her hands on the air fryer, she headed to the Kmart, where a 10 to 50 percent store-wide discount special had already been in effect for more than 24 hours. Doorbuster specials there had kicked off at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving.

As big a draw as early promotions are for some shoppers, Wiebold and friend Steve DeSantiago said theyd be more enthused for the big shopping day if it were only that: one day.

Wiebold even hinted at a little bit of burnout from Black Friday deals that actually start on Thursday when many people are still sitting down for dinner: Wed get more crazy if it werent all opened up on Thanksgiving Day, she said.

DeSantiago agreed.

They need to stay closed and let people have the day off with family, he said.

Black Friday, though, indeed was a family affair for many.

Generations of the Gibson family set out to the Shadow Lake Towne Center in Papillion shortly after it opened Friday morning.

Jared Gibson, 22, was running out of Best Buy with a Christmas gift-to-self Oculus Rift virtual reality device.

Waiting in the running car for him was grandma Char and mom Julie Gibson. The three already had been to a couple of places Friday morning and other shops Thanksgiving Day starting about 2 p.m.

Grandma got the air fryer she had her sights set on. Mom got a copper pan, pillows and more.

I love to shop, Julie said. I like the idea of shopping at the actual stores.

Even Jared, who does most of his shopping throughout the year online, said he would spend his post-holiday morning no other way.

Its part of the Thanksgiving tradition for sure, he said of the running around and waiting in lines. I think a lot of families do it.

Grandma Char waved from the car at Jared as he exited Best Buy with the virtual reality device he went in for. He hopped in. She was ready for the next stop.

Said Grandma: At my age (71) I still enjoy this.
A 37-year-old was seriously injured Friday in a one-vehicle crash in Sarpy County.

Authorities said the crash occurred just before 1:30 p.m. near 25th Street and Fairview Road, west of Offutt Air Force Base.

The Sarpy County Sheriffs Office said a 2004 Chevy pickup truck driven by Jeremy Clark was traveling west on Fairview Road at a high speed.

The vehicle failed to stop at a stop sign at the T-intersection of Fairview Road and 25th Street, and the pickup went airborne over the ridge, overturning when it landed.

Clark, who was the vehicles only occupant, was taken to the Nebraska Medical Centers trauma center and placed in the intensive care unit.
About 500 Republicans under age 40 will be descending upon Omaha in 2019 to choose their leaders and get fired up about conservative politics.

The Nebraska Young Republicans won the bid over four other states to hold the Young Republican National Federation biannual convention here.

We really think its a great opportunity for all of our elected officials, all of our leaders statewide, to showcase what we do in Nebraska, said Nebraska Young Republicans Chairman Spencer Head.

Gov. Pete Ricketts and Omaha City Councilwoman Aimee Melton will co-chair the host committee.

The success of the Young Republicans shows that conservative values are alive and well in the next generation, Ricketts said in a press release. With Nebraskas values and Omahas national reputation as one of the best cities for young professionals, our state is the perfect place to host the Young Republican National Convention.

Melton said shes excited about the event and about seeing her political party focus on young people.

Its great for Omaha to get that kind of national exposure with young people and Republicans, she said.

The event will be July 24-28, 2019. Head said that the group hasnt finalized a location but that theyre looking into a downtown hotel.

The purpose of the event is for each states chairman and national committeeman and woman to elect the national groups leaders.

But its also a chance to show off the state.

Well typically work with local businesses, restaurants, that kind of stuff to showcase and feature the local hot spots, the local innovators and local businesses, said the national groups spokesman, Matthew Oberly.

Head said he wants to highlight Nebraskas unicameral legislature, the only one in the nation.

He said he also wants to focus on the traditional Republican message of lower taxes, less government, strong family, the free enterprise system.

Oberly said the Omaha convention will mark the first time in recent years that the convention will be held in a heavily Republican state. This years convention was held in Annapolis, Maryland. The events typically draw 500 to 700 people, he said.
Late fines for young people could go by the wayside at the Omaha Public Library.

Library leaders are considering a proposal to no longer charge youths 19 and younger who return materials late.

Library Director Laura Marlane said fines often dont encourage people to bring items back. Instead, they keep people out of the library.

Nearly 10,000 Omaha kids and teenagers are blocked from using their library cards because they owe $10 or more in fines and fees.

That has an adverse effect for children at north Omahas Washington branch, where 22 percent of young readers cant use their library cards because their fines arent paid.

I think children should always be given the benefit of the doubt, Marlane told members of the Library Board earlier this month.

The board delayed a vote on the proposed change and will consider it again at its next meeting. Thats scheduled for 5 p.m. on Dec. 20 at the Benson branch.

Some board members voiced support for the idea, while others offered tweaks including doing away with late fines for kids 14 and younger.

Waiving late fines for younger people isnt unheard of, and some systems go further. Kids 19 and younger arent charged any fees at the District of Columbia Public Library, for instance.

Meanwhile, the New York Public Library this fall took part in a one-time amnesty program to forgive all childrens fines.

For a week in October, the Omaha Public Library accepted food donations in exchange for credit toward overdue fines. It raised 5,500 pounds of food, Marlane said.

Library Board member Mike Kennedy said thats a great benefit for the community. But hed still like the late fines policy to have teeth, even if it simply required that a child read away his or her late fines.

I think you have to have some accountability at some level, he said.

Marlane said that kids ages 11 to 18 can already wipe away their overdue fines by volunteering. She said shed like to see programs like All Clear for kids who are too small to volunteer.

Currently, kids 13 and younger get a 60-day grace period. After that, the account is billed with the price of the item. If the item is returned, the fine is removed.

Even if the proposed policy is adopted, young readers would continue to face fines for not returning items or returning damaged items.

And accounts owing more than $25 would still be sent to Unique Management Services, the collections agency that contacts people with long-overdue books and materials.

Board member Adrian Suarez-Delgado said he liked the proposal and wants the library to be easily accessible. Even $5 in late fines is a lot of money for some users, he said.

The fear alone of that potential money is enough to keep them from even stepping into the library, he said.

Marlane noted that should the proposal pass, she could make the 2018 budget work without the revenue expected from such fines.
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts said his new role as vice chairman of the Republican Governors Association will allow him to better advocate for Nebraskans issues.

In fact, he said, he has already done so. At the RGA annual conference in Austin earlier this month, he said, he discussed the North American Free Trade Agreement with Vice President Mike Pence.

He said he asked Pence to pass along the message to others in the administration that NAFTA has benefited Nebraska.

He said he would, Ricketts said.

At the meeting, Ricketts was elected to a one-year term as vice chairman of the organization. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam was elected chairman.

When asked if hes seeking to elevate his national profile, Ricketts said thats more of a byproduct of his efforts to make sure Nebraskans have a voice with national leaders such as Pence.

Ricketts, who is running for re-election next year, said hell spend a few hours a month fundraising and otherwise supporting Republican gubernatorial candidates.

Its a great organization that helped me, so I wanted to give back, Ricketts said.

He called the RGA the most effective national political organization out there.

There are 36 gubernatorial races coming up next year, and Ricketts said the RGA would focus on holding on to the 26 seats currently held by Republicans.

Ricketts also said the organization allows governors to share best practices. He said he went to a panel on opioid addiction at the Austin conference and came back with more information on how other states are handling the issue.
The Congress vice-president said Rupani did not want to keep it as there was no space to keep the flag ever since Dalits moved into Gandhinangar.

By Supriya Bhardwaj: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi accepted a giant Tricolour made by the Dalit community at Dalit Shakti Kendra, Nani Devati in Sanand. The giant flag measures 125 feet in length and 83 feet in height. It was made by Dalit students of the Kendra.

Dalit Shakti Kendra officials said the flag, which weighs 240kgs, was created by 115 students from 10 states while the cloth was woven by bunkars from three villages in Sanand district.

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi accept a tricolour which weighs 240kgs, measures 125ft in length & 83ft in height. According to officials of Dalit Shakti Kendra, this national flag was first presented to Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani & he refused to accept citing space crunch pic.twitter.com/DZU2h2qCSw- Supriya Bhardwaj (@Supriya23bh) November 24, 2017

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It has been claimed that the flag was presented to Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani but he refused to accept it, saying that there wasn't enough space ever since Dalits went to Gandhinagar in August.

Slamming Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi said, "You guys made this giant Tiranga and the Chief Minister of Gujarat refused to accept this national flag because there wasn't any space to keep it. There is a difference in ideologies. Prime Minister Modi and Chief Minister Rupani don't have space to keep the Tiranga but they have given all the space in Gujarat to 5-10 businessmen. I have massive space and respect in my heart for our national flag."

Exclusive Rahul Gandhi to @IndiaToday :Any CM who has tragedy of this magnitude & some decency would hav resigned till now. Yogi shud resign pic.twitter.com/FQFy2p8hFT- Supriya Bhardwaj (@Supriya23bh) August 19, 2017

The handing over of the giant Tiranga was the highlight of Rahul's two-day tour of Gujarat. Dalit Shakti Kendra (DSK) is a vocational training institute run by dalit activists in Sanand district.

Watch: By playing caste card, Congress is attempting to rebuild its politics in Gujarat

--- ENDS ---
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By PTI: Jammu, Nov 25 (PTI) Demands ranging from rights of PoK refugees to special financial packages for border residents facing frequent Pakistani shelling were highlighted as the Centres special envoy on Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma, met delegations from different sections of the society here for the second day today.

The delegations also highlighted issues like alleged discrimination against Jammu, revocation of Article 35A of the Constitution, which gives special rights and privileges to the permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir, and deportation of Rohingya and Bangladeshi Muslims.

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Sharma, a former Intelligence Bureau chief, was appointed the Centres interlocutor on October 23 to hold talks with all stakeholders in an effort to find lasting peace in Kashmir.

After conducting a six-day tour of the state from November 6, Sharma arrived here yesterday on his second visit to the state and will leave for Kashmir tomorrow.

He visited Kashmiri pandit camps here yesterday.

Sharma met several delegations this morning and is scheduled to meet over two dozen more this evening.

"The resolution of issues in Kashmir is not possible without resolving the problems faced by the refugees of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir," senior BJP leader and MLC Charanjeet Singh Khalsa told PTI.

Khalsa, who led a six-member delegation of PoK refugees, said they are the "real victims" who have been waiting for justice for the last seven decades.

Khalsa put forward his demands for benefits at par with Kashmiri pandits, including reservation for their children in various educational institutions.

A delegation of prominent citizens of Jammu led by BJP MLC Ramesh Arora discussed various issues while suggesting that "the problem is within the state and it should not be taken as a Kashmir-oriented problem only.

"No politician should be allowed to cross limits of freedom of speech as prescribed by the Constitution," Arora said, asserting that the aspirations and problems of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh are different.

The delegation submitted a memorandum to Sharma which, among other things, welcomed the governments decision to release stone pelters but cautioned against releasing those who committed "serious offences".

After his first visit to Kashmir Valley, Sharma suggested that cases against 4,500 youths involved in stone pelting for the first time be dropped in a bid to win hearts.

Suggesting to set up a separate department for all types of refugees, Arora demanded necessary measures to put an end to illegal funding coming from outside.

He demanded promotion of local industry saying it has suffered a lot in the past three decades of terrorism.

Jammu Province People?s Forum delegation led by former districts and sessions Judge Pavittat Singh Bhardwaj alleged that the state government was intentionally changing the demography of Jammu by settling Rohingyas and Bangladeshi Muslims here.

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"The influx of anti-social and anti-national elements is posing a grave threat to the security of the region," Bhardwaj said in his three-page memorandum, demanding immediate deportation of the foreign immigrants.

The memorandum demanded for repeal of Article 35A saying "it is legally non-existent and a hurdle in development of Jammu."

The forum said the demand of self-rule by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and greater autonomy by the opposition National Conference is not acceptable to the people of Jammu.

Choudhary Kamal Singh, who led a delegation of Border Area People Welfare Forum (BAPWF), highlighted the miseries of the people living along the Line of Control and International border in the state.

He also demanded enhancement of ex-gratia relief to the victims of border firing and suggested that compensation to those killed should be raised to Rs 1 crore.

He also demanded development of Suchetgarh border in Jammu on the pattern of Wagah border as part of promotion of border and religious tourism in the state.

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Singh also called for special recruitment packages on the lines of Kashmiri pandits and allotment of land or two-room apartments in safer zones for the border residents. PTI TAS DK IJT

--- ENDS ---
Newsflare STUDIO 20 Nov 2019

British Transport Police said they were at the scene along with emergency services treating the victim, who fell in front of the..
Women and girls have been especially vulnerable to Pakistan's floods facing several challenges in the aftermath of the natural..

AFP English 22 Sep 2022
By ELIZABETH HOVDE

Rich people: They're on my "what I'm thankful for" list. Always. If it weren't for them, after all, I wouldn't enjoy so many other items on my "what I'm thankful for" list. That list exists because of our nation's generosity with their money.

When it comes to income tax, a Pew Research Center report, using Treasury Department numbers, shows people with adjusted gross income above $250,000 account for only 2.7 percent of all returns filed but paid more than half of all individual income taxes. Their average tax rate was 25.7 percent. "By contrast, people with incomes of less than $50,000 accounted for 62.3% of all individual returns filed, but they paid just 5.7% of total taxes. Their average tax rate was 4.3%."

Even when all federal taxes are factored in -- including payroll taxes, which are often higher than a person's income tax -- the system as a whole is progressive. Pew Research Center confirms, "The top 0.1% of families pay the equivalent of 39.2% and the bottom 20% have negative tax rates (that is, they get more money back from the government in the form of refundable tax credits than they pay in taxes)."

Instead of thank you cards this Thanksgiving, however, "the rich" received a cornucopia of insults and barbs. They're being treated like villains in our societal conversation about tax reform, per usual. Oregon lawmakers added to the unhealthy bounty. After the House passed H.R. 1, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, on Nov. 16, many chose to fuel rampant class envy with careless comments about the tax plan moving through Congress.

The morning after the legislation passed, The Oregonian quoted reactions from the state's U.S. House members. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon, called the tax cuts "an early Christmas gift to Donald Trump," a "monstrosity" and "stunning." He opposed the legislation for "trillions of reasons." Democratic Reps. Suzanne Bonamici and Peter DeFazio were similarly animated, throwing the wealthy under the bus. Bonamici said, "This disastrous, partisan tax plan cuts rates for wealthy corporations and billionaires while leading to tax increases for about 38 million working families." In a Facebook video, DeFazio said in part, "This is an outrageous piece of work. I can't believe that they'll get away with this."

Democrat Kurt Schrader is quoted expressing concern about the bill not having enough input from minority Democrats and worrying it will inflate our nation's debt load. Those are legitimate, though debatable, concerns. The bill's economic impact will be subject to some wait-and-see.

I was glad to see U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon, offer a different narrative than "only the rich benefit." That message is neither true nor beneficial, even if popular. Walden's take: "This is an important step forward to provide a tax code that works better for Oregonians and their families."

In another press release he points out that according to data from the Internal Revenue Service and reports from the nonprofit Tax Foundation, the act will positively impact Oregon by leading to creation of more than 12,000 jobs, raise after-tax income for middle-class families in Oregon by $2,602, increase the child-tax credit, bring tax relief to small businesses and nearly double the standard deduction -- which offsets the elimination of a state income tax deduction. Most taxpayers will also have a much simpler return to file.

Do the rich benefit from this tax plan? Yes. Tax cuts will hit people who pay the most taxes. Cutting income taxes for lower-income families, who already have no income-tax burden, isn't possible.

Asking whose taxes will go up and whose will go down is the wrong question, anyway. The right question, I think, is does this tax bill make things more fair -- knowing fair is not possible to run the country and isn't even being sought. Everyone has a responsibility to contribute to shared resources when possible, and societal safety nets provide for those who cannot contribute. Away from entitlement attitudes and class envy, it's easy to see that.

When I look at tax pie charts each year and consider my tax picture, I know I owe a lot of rich people thank you cards.

Elizabeth Hovde's column appears the fourth Sunday of the month.
GRANTS PASS  Rural Josephine County has joined much larger West Coast communities in declaring a housing emergency.

The Josephine County Board of Commissioners took the action this week, hoping to free up state assistance and suspend some state rules, the Daily Courier reported . The board asked Oregon Gov. Kate Brown to declare a two-year emergency.

A housing crunch caused by a rising population and meager apartment construction has sent vacancy rates plummeting and rents soaring. The growing city of Grants Pass has seen an average of just 10 new apartments added per year over the past decade, the Daily Courier found.

A 2015 study by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies found that 50 percent or more of households in Josephine County were rent-burdened, meaning they pay at least a third of their monthly income on rents and housing expenses.

"It's not just for face value and to get some notoriety," Commission Chairman Simon Hare said of the declaration. "It really is going to be, hopefully, used to galvanize the state into making some legislative adjustments to our cumbersome land-use process."

Hare supports a change to allow accessory dwelling units, secondary residences better known as mother-in-law apartments. Such dwellings might be a converted garage, an add-on or a new structure.

Commissioners also bemoaned the cost of new construction  costs made higher by government mandates, including energy efficiency rules and new state solar power rules.

A study by the Daily Courier found that fewer than 100 apartment units have been built in the county seat of Grants Pass over the past 10 years. During that same period, more than 1,000 homes have been built  and quickly sold to investors and retirees from outside the area.

Homes in the Grants Pass area that rented for $800 or $900 a month six years ago are now $1,200 to $1,600. The National Low-Income Housing Council estimates that to be at 30 percent of monthly income, rents in the county would need to be $536.

___

Information from: Daily Courier, http://www.thedailycourier.com
Portland Police launched a search Friday evening for the person who fired a fusillade of bullets at a Northeast Portland house, causing minor injuries to an occupant.

The incident took place at the 10900 block of Northeast 1st Avenue in the Bridgeton neighborhood at about 7:20 p.m. Police responded to a 911 call from a person inside the home, located near the intersection of Northeast 1st and Northeast Bridgeton Road. Police found evidence of multiple bullet strikes to the home's front door.

They also found one of people inside the house had suffered minor injuries but did not require medical attention.

Officers performed a canvas of the neighborhood and have not located the suspect. The suspect is described as a black male in his mid-20's, 6'3" tall, weighing 210 pounds. Based on information learned during the investigation, police said, they do not believe the suspect poses an immediate threat to the public.

The police asked that anyone with information about this shooting should contact the Portland Police Bureau Detective Division's Assault Detail at 503-832-0479.

-- Jeff Manning
The elderly driver killed in a car crash Thanksgiving night near Monmouth has been identified as William Harold Arthur.

Arthur's sedan pulled out in front of an oncoming truck just before 8 p.m. at the intersection of Oregon Highway 99 West and Parker Road in Polk County. The crash sent Arthur's car off the road into an adjoining field.

Arthur, 79, was from Carleton. The family in the truck was unhurt.

The roadway was closed for about 3.5 hours. Oregon State Police troopers investigated the crash with assistance from the Polk County Sheriff's Office and the Oregon Department of Transportation.

-- Jeff Manning
CAIRO -- In the deadliest-ever attack by Islamic extremists in Egypt, militants assaulted a crowded mosque Friday during prayers, blasting helpless worshippers with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades and blocking their escape routes. At least 235 people were killed before the assailants got away.

The attack in the troubled northern part of the Sinai Peninsula targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam. Islamic militants, including the local affiliate of the Islamic State group, consider Sufis heretics because of their less literal interpretations of the faith.

The startling bloodshed in the town of Bir al-Abd also wounded at least 109, according to the state news agency, and it offered the latest sign that, despite more than three years of fighting in Sinai, the Egyptian government has failed to deter an IS-led insurgency.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi vowed that the attack "will not go unpunished" and that Egypt would persevere with its war on terrorism. But he did not specify what new steps might be taken.

President Donald Trump denounced what he called a "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshippers."

"The world cannot tolerate terrorism" he said on Twitter, "we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!" He later tweeted that he would call el-Sissi and said the attack showed the need to get "tougher and smarter," including by building the wall he has promised along the U.S. border with Mexico.

The military and security forces have already been waging a tough campaign against militants in the towns, villages and desert mountains of Sinai, and Egypt has been in a state of emergency for months. Across the country, thousands have been arrested in a crackdown on suspected Islamists as well as against other dissenters and critics, raising concern about human rights violations.

Seeking to spread the violence, militants over the past year have carried out deadly bombings on churches in the capital of Cairo and other cities, killing dozens of Christians. The IS affiliate is also believed to be behind the 2016 downing of a Russian passenger jet that killed 226 people.

Friday's assault was the first major militant attack on a Muslim congregation, and it eclipsed past attacks, even dating back to a previous Islamic militant insurgency in the 1990s.

The militants descended on the al-Rouda mosque in four off-road vehicles as hundreds worshipped inside. At least a dozen attackers charged in, opening fire randomly, the main cleric at the mosque, Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Fatah Zowraiq told The Associated Press by phone from a Nile Delta town where he was recuperating from bruises and scratches suffered in the attack.

He said there were explosions as well. Officials cited by the state news agency MENA said the attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades and shot men as they tried to run from the building. The militants blocked off escape routes with burning cars, three police officers on the scene told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.

Abdullah Abdel-Nasser, 14, who was attending prayers with his father, said the shooting began just as the cleric was about to start his sermon, sending panicked worshippers rushing to hide behind concrete columns or whatever shelter they could find. At one point, a militant shouted for children to leave, so Abdel-Nasser said he rushed out, though he was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel and a bullet.

"I saw many people on the floor, many dead. I don't think anyone survived," he said at a hospital in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, where around 40 of the wounded were taken, including many children.

Mohammed Ali said 18 members of his extended family were killed in the attack. The mosque belonged to a local clan, the Jreer, so many of its members worshipped there.

"Where was the army? It's only a few kilometers away. This is the question we cannot find an answer to," he said.

The attackers escaped, apparently before security forces could confront them.

Afterward, dozens of bloodied bodies wrapped in sheets were laid across the mosque floor, according to images circulating on social media. Relatives lined up outside a nearby hospital as ambulances raced back and forth. The state news agency MENA put the death toll at 235.

Resident Ashraf el-Hefny said many of the victims were workers at a nearby salt mine who had come for Friday services at the mosque.

"Local people brought the wounded to hospital on their own cars and trucks," he said by telephone.

No one claimed immediate responsibility for the attack. But the IS group affiliate has targeted Sufis in the past. Last year, the militants beheaded a leading local Sufi religious figure, the blind sheikh Suleiman Abu Heraz, and posted photos of the killing online.

Islamic State group propaganda often denounces Sufis. In the January edition of an IS online magazine, a figure purporting to be a high level official in the Sinai affiliate of the group vowed to target Sufis, accusing them of idolatry and heretical "innovation" in religion and warning that the group will "not permit (their) presence" in Sinai or Egypt.

Millions of Egyptians belong to Sufi orders, which hold sessions of chanting and poetry meant to draw the faithful closer to God. Sufis also hold shrines containing the tombs of holy men in particular reverence.

Islamic hardliners view such practices as improper, even heretical, and militants across the region often destroy Sufi shrines, saying they encourage idolatry because people pray to the figures buried there for intercession.

El-Sissi convened a high-level meeting of security officials as his office declared a three-day mourning period.

In a statement, he said the attack would only "add to our insistence" on combatting extremists. Addressing the nation later on television, he said Egypt is waging a battle against militancy on behalf of the rest of the world, a declaration he has often made in seeking international support for the fight.

Islamic militants stepped up their campaign of violence in northern Sinai after the military ousted the elected but divisive Islamist Mohammed Morsi from power in 2013 and launched a fierce crackdown on Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group.

The result has been a long, grinding conflict centered on el-Arish and nearby villages. The militants have been unable to control territory, but the military and security forces have also been unable to bring security, as the extremists continuously carry out attacks.

The attacks have largely focused on military and police, killing hundreds, although exact numbers are unclear as journalists and independent investigators are banned from the area. The militants have also assassinated individuals the group considers spies for the government or religious heretics.

Egypt has also faced attacks by militants in its Western Desert.

-- The Associated Press
LONDON -- Merry olde England has had a glum run of news. The divorce from the European Union is going badly -- a lot of fuss about alimony. There's been a "sex pest" scandal in Parliament. And the British pound is getting pounded.

So, as if on cue, the flash story this week was the feverish speculation about exactly when -- never if -- Prince Harry and the American actress Meghan Markle would finally announce their engagement to wed.

The only thing better than royal babies are royal weddings -- but one must precede the other. Of course, the most momentous royal news of all is also on the horizon, another life event, this one sad yet inevitable. Queen Elizabeth II turned 91 years old in April, God save her.

On Friday, the tabloids went a little nuts. The Sun ran a salivating headline claiming that a Harry and Markle engagement announcement was "imminent."

The Daily Mail was more specific. They had a date and time. On Friday, it tweeted, "Prince Harry and Meghan Markle rumoured to be announcing their engagement at 5pm TODAY."

Today came and went. No matter.

If you've missed your latest copy of Hello magazine, Markle is a 36-year-old actress, born and raised in California, best known for playing Rachel Zane in the well-liked New York legal drama "Suits," which is filmed in Toronto.

It's rumored that she will quit her acting career and will continue her charitable work. She is a global ambassador for World Vision Canada.

The 33-year-old ginger-bearded Harry is fifth in line to the British throne. (He will be bumped to sixth place after his brother Prince William and Kate Middleton welcome their third child in the spring.) With modern medical science being what is - and the Tower of London now a tourist attraction versus a gallows - Harry's chances of sitting on the big chair are virtually nil.

Still, Harry is one of the most popular royals, said to have inherited his mother Princess Diana's mischievous side, as well as her common touch. He also has had his share of past missteps, including stirring major royal flaps in 2005 by wearing an outfit with a swastika to a costume party and in 2012 with photos showing him playing "strip billiards" in a Las Vegas hotel suite.

The last time an American married into the royal family, Britain was plunged into a constitutional crisis. In 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry the American socialite and divorcee Wallis Simpson.

There are no hard and fast rules for royal engagements, but perhaps William and Kate can offer us clues as to how it might be done this time.

William and Kate were engaged after a lengthy courtship. The tabloids called her "Waity Katie."

Palace officials announced their engagement at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday - on Nov. 16, 2010, to be exact. Kate pronounced William "a true romantic" and said he popped the question on an African safari to view wildlife. The couple held a "photocall" event with the world's media and then gave a sit-down interview to a broadcaster, which was aired later in the day. They were married five months later.

Rumors of an engagement between Harry and Markle have been swirling for some time.

In November 2016, Prince Harry revealed he was dating the actress when - in a remarkable statement from Kensington Palace - he blasted the press for subjecting Markle to a "wave of abuse and harassment."

The palace condemned "the smear on the front page of a national newspaper, the racial undertones of comment pieces, and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments."

Markle's mother is African American, and her father is white.

Her relationship with Harry has been a source of intense media speculation ever since the statement. And along the way, royal watchers wondered if the couple wasn't dropping clues that there was a wedding in the offing.

In April, Markle ended her lifestyle blog, The Tig, after three years.

"Something to tell us?" queried the Daily Mail.

The same newspaper reported that the couple had tea with the queen last month, sparking rumors that they were seeking her majesty's blessing.

Apparently the meeting went well - a good thing, too. Under ancient rules, the monarch has the right to refuse a royal marriage.

The duo made their first public appearance together in September at the Invictus Games, a sporting event for disabled veterans founded by Harry. They held hands, they kissed, they canoodled - they were snapped alongside Markle's mother, Doria Ragland.

Markle has been living in Toronto, where "Suits" is filmed. However, there are rumors she has left the show and is planning on relocating to London, where she could move into Harry's two-bedroom cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace.

"Has Harry pupped the question?" ran the front-page headline in the Sun, Britain's best-selling newspaper, making a very tabloid-esque pun after stories appeared that Markle was moving her dogs to London. The paper said that "BBC staff had been primed" to expect an announcement.

"What DO they know?" asked the Daily Mail on its front page, noting that a British bookmaker stopped accepting bets on Harry popping the question this year.

Markle has spoken about their relationship in prescient and hopeful terms.

"We're in love," she told Vanity Fair magazine. "I'm sure there will be a time when we will have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but I hope what people will understand is that this is our time. This is for us. It's part of what makes it so special, that it's just ours. But we're happy. Personally, I love a great love story."

-- Karla Adam
By PTI: Chennai, Nov 25 (PTI) The DMK today named N Marudu Ganesh as its candidate for the December 21 bypoll to the Dr Radha Krishnan Nagar Assembly constituency here, which fell vacant after the demise of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa last year.

DMK general secretary K Anbazhagan announced Ganeshs candidature in a party release.

N Marudu Ganesh, alias N M Ganesh, is a journalist- turned-politician. The DMK had fielded him for the bypoll, which was supposed to be held on April 12 earlier.

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However, it was subsequently cancelled by the Election Commission (EC) over allegations of bribing voters.

"Our candidate is in the fray with the support of our allies. We will appeal to other parties as well to extend their support to our nominee," DMK working president M K Stalin told reporters at the party headquarters, Anna Arivalayam, here.

He also exuded confidence that the opposition party would script a "major victory" in the bypoll.

The Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) are among the DMKs allies.

For the April 12 bypoll, which was cancelled subsequently, the AIADMK (Sasikala faction) had named T T V Dhinakaran as its candidate.

The faction headed by the then rebel AIADMK leader O Panneerselvam had fielded senior leader E Madusudanan and the BJP named veteran Tamil film music director Gangai Amaran as its candidate.

While Dhinakaran announced his candidature for the December 21 bypoll yesterday, the EPS-OPS faction of the AIADMK and the BJP are yet to declare the names of their nominees.

The EC had yesterday announced that the R K Nagar bypoll would be held on December 21. PTI VGN APR RC

--- ENDS ---
Donald Trump made a pretty remarkable claim this morning. It didn't take TIME magazine too long to debunk it.

By India Today Web Desk: US President Donald Trump said TIME magazine rang him up to say he would "probably" be named Person on the Year.

Trump claimed to have turned down the offer. And why?

"I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!"

Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named Man (Person) of the Year,?? like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017

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It was a pretty remarkable claim, considering what TIME said about its selection process just a couple of hours later.

The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6.- TIME (@TIME) November 25, 2017

Richard Stengel, a former editor of TIME magazine, tried to explain what might have happened. And it wasn't good news.

Hate to tell you but that PROBABLY means youre NOT Person of the Year. They just wanted a photo shoot. But Im sure you still have that fake TIME cover somewhere in storage. https://t.co/HkW1XkKxXK- Richard Stengel (@stengel) November 24, 2017

Trump hasn't taken down his tweet, or tweeted back to TIME - yet.

The US President was named TIME's Person of the Year in 2016, after his historic - and unexpected - election to the highest office in his land.

Donald Trump has criticised TIME magazine in the past. For example, when Angela Merkel was named Person of the Year in 2015, he had this to say.

I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2015

Thank you @oreillyfactor for your wonderful editorial as to why I should have been @TIME Magazine's Person of the Year. You should run Time!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2015

And in 2013, he said this.

The Time Magazine list of the 100 Most Influential People is a joke and stunt of a magazine that will, like Newsweek,soon be dead. Bad list!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2013

Just took a look at Time Magazine-looks really flimsy like a free handout at a parking lot! The sad end is coming-just like Newsweek!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2013

But when he was honoured with the title last year, there was a change in tone.

Thank you to Time Magazine and Financial Times for naming me "Person of the Year" - a great honor!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2016

And, according to NBC New York, he said: "It's a great honour, it means a lot. Especially me growing up, reading TIME magazine, it's a very important magazine. I've been lucky enough to be on the cover many times this year and last year."

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WATCH | PM Narendra Modi, US President Donald Trump meet in Manila

--- ENDS ---
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By PTI: Mathura, Nov 25 (PTI) Drones fitted with cameras would be used for the first time here during the civic body polls on November 26 to maintain law and order situation and for proper monitoring of the election process.

According to an official, 85 polling centres have been selected for web casting, while videography would be done in 95 polling booths.

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"Five drones fitted with cameras would be used for proper monitoring of election process," he said.

The official said 290 polling booths have been identified as oversensitive and 280 as sensitive.

SSP Swapnil Mamgai said polling centres would be guarded by the Provincial Armed Constabulary.

Two company CRPF, five company PAC, 300 sub-inspectors, 500 constables and 800 homeguards from Agra have also been deployed for the election process, he said.

Campaigning for the second phase of Uttar Pradesh civic elections on November 26 ended yesterday in 25 districts, including Varanasi from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a member of the Lok Sabha.

Over 52 per cent voting was recorded in the first phase on November 22 which covered 24 districts.

Polling for the third and final phase covering 26 districts will take place on November 29. Counting of votes for all the three phases will be on December 1 and results will be declared the same day. PTI CORR NSD

--- ENDS ---
BLOOMINGTON  Central Illinois Regional Airport's traditional main terminal Christmas tree will have a very meaningful roommate this holiday season.

The 'Fallen Heroes Tree of Honor' will be dedicated at the airport 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and stay near baggage claim through Jan. 2 as a reminder of those killed while serving America's armed forces.

The holidays are a joyous occasion for many, but theres also many dead. Its very sad and difficult for their families," said Patti Smith, president of America's Gold Star Families, which helped bring the tree to the Twin Cities. "Our hope is in some small way we help these grieving survivors by letting them know, not only do we honor their hero, but we support them as well by remembering their loved ones sacrifice for our freedom.

The tree, which will feature 155 ornaments representing service members from 33 states, was inspired by a similar tree erected at the state capitol in Springfield for the first time last year. Both are on display this holiday season.

The project is sponsored by America's Gold Star Families and the Sgt. Anthony Maddox Memorial, which honors a Normal native killed while serving in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. Smith said Maddox's family, especially his mother, Frances, has been instrumental in establishing both trees.

Their family makes all the ornaments. ... One tree alone is a huge project, and shes taken on two, said Smith. It's really been a great way for their family to deal with their grief. Its been therapeutic for them.

Another Twin City soldier killed in Afghanistan, Sgt. Joshua Rodgers, will be honored at the dedication. His mother, Vonda, will speak, as will state Sen. Jason Barickman and state Rep. Dan Brady, both Bloomington Republicans.

Fran Strebing, deputy director for marketing at CIRA, said the airport is honored to host the tree. Officials chose to put it near baggage claim, before the terminal's security checkpoint, so the public can come in and see it.
LINCOLN  A 22-year-old Wood River woman, who was a graduate of Normal Community West High School, has been identified as the victim of a fatal crash Wednesday night on Interstate 55 near Lincoln.

Courtney E. Littell was killed when a southbound car driven by Adriana Rodrigues, 26, of Wenona, went off the the road, traveled through the median and struck Littell's vehicle in the northbound lane, according to Illinois State Police. The 9 p.m. crash occurred near milepost 128.

Littell died as a result of blunt force trauma, Logan County Deputy Coroner Chris Sprague said on Friday.

Rodrigues, who was treated for minor injuries, was issued tickets for improper lane usage and driving without insurance, said police.

Littell was a student at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, who graduated from Normal West, said Sprague.

The accident was the second fatal crash over the holiday weekend in Central Illinois.
WASHINGTON  One Tazewell County man died and another was injured in separate gunfire incidents Friday, but sheriff's police say foul play was not seen in either incident.

Sheriff's police responded to a gunfire report about 12:55 p.m. Friday in the 22000 block of Armington Road in Delavan.

An unconscious 22-year-old man was found with a gunshot wound to the chest. Those on scene tried to resuscitate him, but he died at the scene, police said.

Although no foul play is suspected, both the sheriffs and coroners offices are investigating the incident, police said.

Delavan and Minier police and Delavan and Emden rescue workers also were called to the scene.

In a later incident, a 21-year-old Washington man suffered a gunshot wound when two bullets went through the wall of a shed and one struck him, police said.

Jacob A. Miller was in the large shed in his backyard at 26102 Schuck Road when two bullets penetrated the wall of the shed about 7:15 p.m., police said. One of the bullets hit his arm, and he was taken to OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center, Peoria, by family members for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

A nearby resident was shooting a firearm at a target on his property at the time, police said. The sheriff's department does not suspect foul play at this time, but the incident remains under investigation and criminal charges will be reviewed with the state's attorney's office.
BLOOMINGTON  Members of the Sunset Rotary Club of Bloomington-Normal are improving the health and wellness of families in Cambodia.

The club funded the installation of 10 water wells and pumps for villagers who struggle to find clean water. The project was accomplished through the Cambodian Community Dream Organization (CCDO).

The idea was introduced to Rotary by a local pediatrician, Dr. Regina Rosa, who spent a month volunteering in a childrens hospital in Cambodia this year and became acquainted with CCDO.

The working population in these communities, mostly people around 20 years old, only makes $2 a day and the majority of them are unable to build wells. The elderly and children are more susceptible to waterborne diseases from contaminated water, said Noeli Anderson, member and past president of Sunset Rotary Club.

Especially in the dry seasons, Anderson said villagers will travel long distances to find water sources and it is difficult for elderly villagers to carry much water home. Some resort to collecting water out of potholes in the road.

Each well was placed in a village near a familys house. The family is assigned to take care of it and they share the water with their neighbors, so it has a ripple-effect, said Anderson.

The wells were completed in October and CCDO recently sent photos to the Rotary Club of the families beside their new wells.

The sanitation and health of the people will steadily improve and the families overall lives will improve immensely, said Anderson.

According to www.theccdo.org, each well and filter costs $300 and provides clean water for nearly 11 people.

CCDO also organizes educational workshops for villagers to teach the importance of hygiene and personal health.

A sign giving credit to the Sunset Rotary Club was placed at every well.

Were all very delighted by the project, said Anderson. One area the rotary emphasizes is water sanitation and health. This was very well fit for the Rotarys aim to eliminate those problems in the world.

The Sunset Rotary Club of Bloomington-Normal funds other international projects each year, as well as service projects each month in the Twin Cities.
A Michigan Company by the name of Nartron is suing Apple for infringing their patent titled "Capacitive responsive electronic switching circuit." The company claims that Apple's every iDevice comprises of capacitive touch sensing devices that covers multitouch and therefore infringes their patent, even though Apple uses touch technology from Broadcom and Texas Instruments.





Nartron's lawsuit provides some background of the company's role in the history of touch technology as follows:

"The touchscreen's path to preeminence did not happen overnight. Established in 1967, Nartron was an early pioneer in touchscreen technology. Nartron is credited with inventing the electronic touch screen in 1995. For example, Nartron's "Smart Touch" sensing technology provided a breakthrough in human interface technology by giving direct access to computer power, such as with highly successful handheld devices and smartphones.

Nartron's experienced product development team located at its 200 acre complex in Reed City, Michigan has been awarded several hundred patents for exceptional innovation. Nartron's leadership in innovation was recognized by Inc. Magazine, which named Nartron as one of America's Top 50 Innovators and one of the "Top 30" firms for leading the technological, industrial, and social movement in the United States that has taken place over the past 30 years.

Apple's Alleged Infringement

According to Nartron's lawsuit, all of Apple's iDevices infringe on one or more claims of their 5,796,183 patent (the'183 patent).

They further note that "The Accused Products comprises of capacitive touch sensing devices. For example, the Accused Products allow users to make selections and move objects by moving their finger proximity to or in contact with a touch sensing surface, like touchscreens (e.g., the iPhone 6s Plus includes a 5.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen LCD Multi-Touch display). In the Accused Products, such surfaces include touch sensing points that senses a user's finger. The Accused Products recognize such touches by users, interpret the users' input, and thereafter perform actions based on the input.

On information and belief, the Accused Products use, among other things, touch controller chips such as those manufactured by Broadcom (e.g. BCM5976) and Texas Instruments (e.g., TI 343S0694) to recognize and interpret the users' input. For example, the touchscreen controller, individually or in combination of other hardware and software components, takes a periodic signal from an oscillator with a pre-defined frequency, and selectively provides a signal output frequency to each row of input touch terminals. On the touchscreen of the Accused Products, the input touch terminals define adjacent areas on a substrate for a user to provide inputs. When touched (or in close proximity) by the user, a detector circuit within the Accused Products respond to signals from the oscillator through the touchscreen controller and the presence of the user's body capacitance to ground to provide a control output signal. The Accused Products use input and output frequencies such that the change in impedance caused by the user's touch differs from any change in impedance that may create an electrical path caused by contaminates on the substrate. Based on the above, the Accused Products infringe at least, but not limited to, claim 40 of the '183 patent.

Apple has been aware of the '183 patent since at least 2007. In 2007 Nartron provided written communications to Apple in which Nartron notified Apple of the '183 patent, explained how certain Apple touchscreen products infringed claims of the '183 patent, and offered to enter into licensing discussions. Apple refused to consider a license, instead insisting that its touchscreen products did not infringe any claims of the '183 patent and asserting that all claims of the '183 patent were invalid.

Apple's infringement of the '183 patent was willful. Apple committed acts of infringement despite having actual notice of the '183 patent and a high likelihood that its actions constituted infringement. Apple knew or should have known that its actions constituted an unjustifiably high risk of infringement. Thus, Apple's infringement was deliberate and exhibited bad faith, entitling Nartron to enhanced damages."

The patent infringement case presented in today's report was filed in the Michigan Eastern District Court, Detroit Office. The Presiding Judge in this case is noted as being Judge Avern Cohn, with referring Judge noted as Stephanie Dawkins Davis. It should be noted that the infringement case was formerly filed by UUSI, LLC d/b/a Nartron ("Nartron").





Notice: Patently Apple presents only a brief summary of certain legal cases/ lawsuits which are part of the public record for journalistic news purposes. Readers are cautioned that Patently Apple does not offer an opinion on the merit of the case and strictly presents the allegations made in said legal cases / lawsuits. A lawyer should be consulted for any further details or analysis. About Making Comments on this Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit comments. Those using abusive language or negative behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.
The stress and anxieties of the holidays dissipate once you step foot into the calming, peaceful dining room at Thea.

On December 14, the lights on the 14

-

foot tree in front of Thea, the featured restaurant at

, will be plugged in, commemorating the restaurant's one-year anniversary.

"After a year, we couldn't be more thankful," said chef AnnMarie Nelms, who co-owns and operates the seed to table restaurant with Trevor Sybrandt. (He owns the nearby farm along Woods Road responsible for all of the seed-to-table fresh produce and for trees made into wooden furnishings at the restaurant. Trees grown on the farm will be available next year for purchase in the Christmas tree lot next to the building.)

Quiet and soothing, Adele croons in the background as diners are escorted from hostess station to comfortable seating arrangements spanning across the large, open dining room.

"I wanted the room to look like someone's home and to feel like you're at your best friends house for dinner," AnnMarie said. Thea is located at 1303 Saxton Way, Mechanicsburg.

Splashed with eye-catching local artwork, soft, glowing Edison lighting and tastefully decorated in warm grey and blue hues, high back cushy armchairs surround beautiful, distinct wooden tables designed and built by Sybrandt. His handcrafted walnut slab 12-seat table expands almost the length of the private room (There's another larger party room down the hall.) off of the dining room. Chef dinners, one seating per night with customized or regular menu are still available for booking in this closed off space.

Growing up surrounded by great cooks and restaurateurs, chef AnnMarie Nelms is quite at home in the kitchen. The restaurant is actually named for her great Aunt Helen (Thea is "aunt" in Greek) who passed away two years ago around Thanksgiving.

"She hosted lots of family gatherings, big Greek Orthodox family get-togethers," Nelms said.

Another of Nelms' aunts, Joanna Lembesis, owns and operates What If ... West and What If ... Hershey.

After graduating from Pennsylvania Culinary Institute in Pittsburgh in 1997, AnnMarie apprenticed at Pasta Piatta in Pittsburgh before returning to assist her mom, Sophia, at her successful bakery and cafe, Sophia's on Market in Hampden Twp. Later the mother/daughter duo opened Sophia's at Walden at Charter's Walden development at Silver Spring Twp. in 2013.

"Ever since I was 6 or 7, I knew I was meant to be in the kitchen, and when I would stay home sick from school, I would sit by the kitchen and watch my mom cook," Nelms said.

Nelms takes comfort food recipes and spins them into wholesome, creative dishes of her own; deconstructed beef Wellington, fresh-cut truffle oil fries crowned by micro greens, tzasiki sauce spiked with green onions and served with Greek meatballs (keftedes) laced with threads of mint and meatloaf sweetened by leeks and set over Gruyere bread pudding.

There are some slip-ups but they are barely noticed interspersed with the triumphs.

Crispy polenta, an item on the assorted bruschetta board ($12), are stacked like golden fence posts. The dry, under-seasoned consistency of the crumb was unappetizing. Saganaki (pan-seared Greek halloumi cheese) on the Mezza Plata ($12) had the appearance and texture of golden-flecked silicone rectangles.

German, Greek, Italian and American influences play out on the entree page. The favorites include Thea Pasticcio ($24), which is served in a piping hot crock. Rich, succulent nutmeg-infused bechamel covers cinnamon-accented rigatoni tossed in chunky sausage sauce and layered with pulpy eggplant. Salmon of the day ($26) is an oversize-fist portion of fish, napped with herbaceous remoulade verdant sauce over lumpy crab embedded quinoa. Fall Chicken Milanese ($24) has hand-breaded Parmesan and garlic-crusted chicken topped with fresh arugula and served with roasted vegetables.

Thea Pasticcio

Pastry chef Megan Seiferth and her team at Sophia's on Market make the most amazing desserts. Save room for tender, crisp apple oatmeal cookies ($3 each) the texture of meringues with chewy, moist centers or pumpkin cookies resembling mini whoopee pies filled with maple icing. Bavarian apple cheesecake ($8) has buttery shortbread crust and softened apple pieces are surprise bites incorporated into fluffy filling.

Make reservations now if you want to save a place during the holidays at this BYOB locale. You'll probably recognize one of your neighbors at another table. The place has caught on and it is the talk of the West Shore.
Decorating an evergreen for Christmas is an ingrained American tradition and one that a whole lot of Pennsylvania families will be doing in the next five weeks ... but it's not an American invention.

It's not even a German invention, as you might have heard.

According to the National Christmas Tree Association, the first recorded display of a decorated Christmas tree dates to 1510 in Riga, Latvia, a small country along the Baltic Sea between Lithuania and Estonia. The tree was decorated with fruit, cookies and candy that became gifts for family members.

Hessian troops fighting for Britain in the Revolutionary War are credited with bringing the idea of Christmas trees to America, which is where the German connection comes in.

However, the custom of decorating evergreens didn't begin gaining steam in the United States until the mid-1800s.

Three other Christmas-tree trivia tidbits:
At least 235 worshippers were killed and 109 others injured when heavily-armed militants bombed the al-Rowda mosque in Al-Arish city and opened fire on people attending Friday prayers.

Injured people are evacuated from the scene of a militant attack on a mosque in Bir al-Abd in the northern Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. (AP Photo)

By Press Trust of India: Hours after 235 people were killed in an attack on a mosque in Sinai Peninsula region of Egypt, the Egyptian Air Force gunned down several militants and destroyed their vehicles.

In a statement, Army spokesperson Tamer el-Rafei said that the air force launched retaliatory attacks on terror hideouts in the surrounding area of North Sinai, killing militants and destroying vehicles used in the deadly attack.

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He said arms and ammunition depots of the militants were also targeted.

At least 235 worshippers were killed and 109 others injured when heavily-armed militants bombed the al-Rowda mosque in Al-Arish city and opened fire on people attending Friday prayers.

Earlier, local media reports quoting sources in the security force said the army launched "immediate and wide" ground and air raids and two drones attacked two vehicles belonging to militants in Al-Resha village near el-Rouda village.

Following the mosque attack, President Abdel Fattah el- Sisi had chaired an emergency meeting with officials to review security situation.

In a statement later, he pledged to respond with "brutal force" against militants. He had said that the "vile and treacherous" activity would not pass without a decisive punishment.

The Egypt government has announced three days of mourning.

--- ENDS ---
UPDATE: Police have clarified the date of the incident since the first report.

Police say an 18-year-old man died as a result of multiple gunshot wounds early Saturday morning.

Police said officers were dispatched to the 1800 block of State Street in Harrisburg for a report of a man down inside of a residence at 2:52 a.m. Saturday.

Officers arrived to find Jashun Patton, 18, of Philadelphia. Medics were also dispatched, and determined that Patton was deceased as a result of multiple gunshot wounds, according to police.

Police continue to investigate the incident, and are asking anyone with information to contact the Harrisburg Police, or submit a tip through Crime Watch.
By Mike Folmer

So, what's next in the ongoing efforts to eliminate school property taxes as I continue to believe no tax should have the power to leave you homeless?

State Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon (PennLive file)

Article VIII, Section 1 of Pennsylvania's Constitution calls for uniformity of taxation: "All taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax, and shall be levied and collected under general laws." This provision is why Pennsylvania's Personal Income Tax is a flat tax rather than a graduated tax like federal income taxes. Pennsylvania's Constitution doesn't allow for graduated income taxes.

However, Pennsylvania's Constitution also provides some exclusions from the requirement for uniform taxation, including: churches, cemeteries, government entities, charitable organizations, and "homesteads."

A "homestead" is a person's or family's primary residence (i.e., no vacation properties) they own (i.e., no rental properties) - including farmhouses and outbuildings (i.e., no commercial, industrial, or retail properties).

On Election Day, voters approved (54 percent to 46 percent) an admittedly confusing amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution: "Shall the Pennsylvania Constitution be amended to permit the General Assembly to enact legislation authorizing local taxing authorities to exclude from taxation up to 100 percent of the assessed value of each homestead property within a local taxing jurisdiction, rather than limit the exclusion to one-half of the median assessed value of all homestead property, which is the existing law?"

The previous exemption for homestead properties allowed local taxing authorities to exclude up to one-half the median assessed values of properties located within their boundaries.

While some equate "median value" with "average value," the former is calculated by putting all the numbers in numerical order and finding the one that's in the middle - the 50th percentile. It's more difficult to calculate than an average where you simply add the numbers together and divide by how many numbers there are.

The approved constitutional change further simplifies the calculation by using 100% of the assessed value of each homestead property within a local taxing jurisdiction.

Previously, taxing jurisdictions had to first figure the median assessed value and then calculate what one-half of that value would be in order to enact a homestead exemption.

It's one of the many reasons why this exemption to Pennsylvania's uniformity clause was almost never used.

With the change in the Constitution, the calculation for homestead exemptions becomes much easier.

More importantly, it provides more options for the total elimination of school property taxes.

While I continue to believe across-the-board elimination of school property taxes, as proposed by Sen. David Argall, is the best option, we now have other alternatives to consider and I look forward to exploring them in the weeks and months ahead.

In the interim, I remain committed to the goal of ensuing no tax should have the power to leave you homeless.

State Sen. Mike Folmer, a Republican, represents the 48th Senate District, which includes parts of Dauphin, Lebanon and York counties.
Train cars are seen at the site of a derailment north of Hope, B.C. in this undated handout photo. British Columbia's Environment Ministry says a rock slide north of Hope derailed a freight train and led to a fuel spill in the Fraser River. The ministry says in a statement that a Canadian Pacific Rail (TSX:CP) train was knocked off the tracks on Thursday by the slide near Hells Gate in the Fraser Canyon. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, B.C. Environment Ministry *MANDATORY CREDIT*
Sara Wernimont, left, and Christina Wernimont, both of Dubuque, Iowa, look for deals at Theisen's Home-Farm-Auto in Dubuque, Iowa, on Friday, Nov. 24, 2017. Black Friday has morphed from a single day when people got up early to score doorbusters into a whole season of deals, so shoppers may feel less need to be out. (Jessica Reilly/Telegraph Herald via AP)
By PTI: Panaji, Nov 25 (PTI) The Portuguese-era diesel-powered ferry boats, that ply in the inland water routes of Goa, will give way to solar energy-backed vessels by June next year, a minister said today.

The proposal for the new ferry boats will be ready in the next six months and constructing them would take another six months, River Navigation Minister Sudin Dhavalikar said.

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He said the Goa government would soon release an advertisement seeking "Expression of Interest" to construct the ferry boats.

"We are yet to take the call on whether to run the services on public-private partnership basis. The solar- powered ferry boats would be ready to be pressed into service by June 2018," he said.

The minister said that officials from the River Navigation department (RND) had visited Kochi in Kerala this week where such solar-powered ferry boats are in use.

Dhavalikar said the state cant imitate the Kochi model of ferry service as the passengers are charged there (in the Kerala town)), while in Goa the services are offered free of cost.

The RND department is currently servicing 20 ferry boat routes with a fleet of 39 vessels, which run on diesel.

While bridges have been constructed across several rivers, people living in the places like Diwar and Chorao islands still rely on these boats to travel to the mainland. PTI RPS BNM RSY

--- ENDS ---
In a city growing as quickly as Philadelphia is these days, it's no easy task for developers to find sprawling lots of vacant land that can be developed in attractive neighborhoods.

Yet local developer Dan Neducsin has been sitting on one for decades.

While developers have been snatching up the last pieces of buildable land in neighborhoods stretching from South Philadelphia to Fishtown in recent years, few beyond Neducsin have paid much attention to Manayunk.

Until recently.

With the cost of building in core urban areas mounting, and with affordability concerns rising, Philadelphia's formerly "it" neighborhood, located just eight miles outside Center City, is back in the spotlight. In particular, developers in the last few years have rushed to build luxury apartments in the tiny enclave  so much so that 3,000 units are expected to be delivered within a one-mile radius of Manayunk between 2014 and 2018.

But what has been lacking in Manayunk, some say, is an influx of new housing to meet the demand of wealthier residents who have arrived in the last decade as the neighborhood has tried to shed its image as a post-college hub.

That's exactly what a pair of developers intend to bring to Neducsin's land.

After sitting vacant for more than a decade, 1 Leverington Ave.  between Green Lane and Leverington Avenue, and between the Manayunk Canal and the Schuylkill  is finally seeing some activity. Greg Hill of locally based D3 Developers and Concordia Group of Bethesda, Md., are partnering once again to transform the former industrial site into 70 high-end townhouses, each starting at $599,000. For now, Neducsin, the developer credited with reviving Manayunk in the 1990s, remains the owner of the land.

The plan for the sleek homes  which Neducsin said would include roof decks and underground parking garages  is quite the change for the nearly 400,000-square-foot parcel, which for more than a decade has sat overgrown and unkempt as a fierce legal battle between Neducsin and residents flared over the land's fate. It's also quite the change for Manayunk, a neighborhood that for decades has been defined by the aging, pre-1940s rowhouses that dot its hilly streets.

Manayunk "is going to be the next Brooklyn," said Neducsin, when talking about the vision for the site. "They are running out of spaces in the city [to build]  yet this is not the suburbs, and that is why people like living here. Because it's in the city."

"In Center City, this would be a $2 million unit," he continued, speaking about the homes planned. "They are going to see this [development] and come out here."

Still, there is a long way to go before shovels are in the ground. The developers have had initial meetings with the Manayunk Neighborhood Council, but both a formal Registered Community Organization meeting and a presentation in front of the city's Civic Design Review board are still needed. Plus, the land is zoned for smaller-scale commercial space on the ground floor and residential up top, meaning that D3 Developers and Concordia will need a change in zoning to accommodate the 70 townhouses.

Even so, the developers have reason for optimism. According to the Lower Northwest District Plan published in 2014, part of the Philadelphia2035 project, the land surrounding 1 Leverington Ave. was recommended to be rezoned to a more residential area. And initial meetings with the Manayunk Neighborhood Council were generally positive, both sides say, a reversal from years ago when a lengthy legal battle stalled Neducsin's initial plans to build 280 condominium units on the site.

Kevin Smith, president of the Manayunk Neighborhood Council, said the group generally supports the latest plan, despite having lingering concerns about residential building on the site  one that he said could be prone to flooding by the two bodies of water that surround it. (To combat that, Hill, of D3 Developers, said they plan to raise the grade of the site and install early flood warning systems.)

"In the biggest picture, it is still our belief that residential is inappropriate down by the river," Smith said. " But our approach now is obviously development.

"The development is positive, and it seems like the community would support it with adequate flood evacuation plans."

It wasn't always this way for Smith and his Manayunk Neighborhood Council. Nearly a decade ago, Neducsin  who has owned 1 Leverington Ave. for decades  proposed to develop 280 dense condominium units, which would stand nearly 90 feet tall, and require hundreds of parking places.

Immediately, residents pushed back.

"It would have been huge; it would have changed the face of Manayunk," Smith said. " There was no hardship and no justification for the variance" that Neducsin was granted at the time.

Saying that the proposed condo complex was too dense, too tall, and too vulnerable to flooding, Manayunk's residents fought back, appealing Neducsin's zoning approval to Philadelphia's Zoning Board of Adjustment, the Common Pleas Court, and the Commonwealth Court. For years, the case wound its way through the court system, as multiple appeals and remands ensued. In the end, Neducsin never built his project.

For years after, Neducsin's land remained bedraggled, as brush and trees grew over. And the only building left at 1 Leverington Ave.  which formerly housed two prominent restaurants, Arroyo Grille and then Carmella's  fell victim to trespassers, graffiti, fires, and trash.

But a few years ago, Neducsin said, his thoughts about the site changed.

"I feel that it's the wrong time to build 280 units and the right time to do this," Neducsin said. "We have a huge advantage over kind of anything  to me, it's one of the best sites in the city. You're on the river, you have the [Manayunk] towpath right there, and Main Street right there."

"You can see the influx of people coming [to Manayunk], and it's a higher income group," Neducsin said.

Indeed, in recent years, Manayunk has grown wealthier as its population has increased, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Between 2011 and 2015, the neighborhood's population surged nearly 29 percent, and its median household income jumped 27 percent, to $70,556.

Yet median home sale prices have not increased quite the same way that they have in other city neighborhoods in recent years. In the third quarter of 2017, the median price of a home in Manayunk was $234,500  less than the median price of $253,000 a decade before, according to data from Drexel economist Kevin Gillen. While Neducsin recently sold a newly constructed property for more than $900,000 on the 4500 block of Silverwood Street, it's unclear how much demand there may be for 70 properties priced at more than $599,000.

The developers and Neducsin say the site has a lot of perks working in its favor. With river and canal views, the roof decks on the four-story homes will be in high demand, Hill predicted. Developers plan to create landscaped green space on the land closest to Green Lane. And, Hill said, architecturally, they are planning for a "contemporary design that's respectful of [Manayunk's] industrial past."

"When doing townhouse work, it's challenging to find sites that really provide a sense of community  mostly, it ends up being just infill sites in the city," Hill said. "I think the intriguing aspect of Venice Island is that it's an isolated parcel of land on the waterfront, with just a great opportunity to create a sense of place."
Doug Guyer, BrandShare president and CEO, and his sister Kathie Tuoni, chief operating officer, in the product-sampling companys Berwyn headquarters with items included in tote bags being offered to first-time Walmart online grocery customers. Read more

Mott's Fruity Rolls. Tide detergent pods. Art of Shaving razors.

These are just some of the surprises e-commerce shoppers have found when their packages arrived  tucked, for instance, inside the children's pajamas from Zulily, the sheets from Bed Bath & Beyond, the men's shirts from Brooks Brothers.

The retail world no longer guarantees face-to-face opportunities to pitch new products to consumers  a taste test in a supermarket aisle, an impulse-purchase display at the checkout counter  because shoppers no longer have to leave home to buy. So the in-package free sample has become a key marketing and customer-loyalty-building tool in online commerce because of its seemingly undeniable popularity.

"Who doesn't like free? Especially when something has real value," said Craig Kapilow, senior director of brand partnerships and integrated marketing at Rue La La, an invitation-only online shop offering short-lived deals on brand-name merchandise.

The answer: No one doesn't like free, apparently, and that's meant enormous success for a Philadelphia-area family-run business founded before e-commerce was a thing.

BrandShare, based in Berwyn, is believed to be the world's first and largest media and e-commerce sampling company, providing 74 million "value-add product inserts" a month and expected to reach between $40 million and $50 million in revenue this year. Triple-digit growth since 2013 earned the company  created in 1984 by Dick Guyer and one of his nine children, Doug  a spot on the Inc. 5000 earlier this year.

E-commerce is projected to reach $700 billion in the United States by the end of 2017, and brand spending on product sampling is expected to total $34.12 billion this year, according to the Path to Purchase Institute in Chicago. The Guyer family's decision to redirect its focus to the online shopping world seems genius.

"If we wouldn't have made this change, we wouldn't be where we are today," said Doug Guyer, 55, president of the company of 54 employees, split mostly between Berwyn and New York City. BrandShare also has offices in Bentonville, Ark., and San Francisco, primarily to serve Walmart, one of its biggest retail partners, and in Chicago, home to a major brand whose products it samples, Wrigley's.

Founded initially as International Direct Response, the company was proposing a new revenue stream  media inserts, such as credit-card offers  for catalog companies Dick Guyer, now 87 and retired in Florida, had served as a list broker. (List brokers help companies get their message to the right audience.) Son Doug graduated from Boston College in 1983 with a degree in marketing.

Then came the idea to expand beyond media inserts (paperwork, basically) to actual product samples. Their first job: placing 200,000 Tylenol packets, along with coupons for the pain reliever, in catalog orders from Cabela's, Eddie Bauer, and Sportsman's Guide.

Apparently, outdoors enthusiasts have a lot of pain. So pleased with the results was Johnson & Johnson that it upped the ante five months later to four million samples, Doug Guyer said. The company has "been a great partner ever since," he added.

As retailing morphed, so did the Guyers' business, renamed seven years ago as BrandShare. By the mid- to late 1990s, that meant media and product sampling in e-commerce orders.

BrandShare pays retailers a fee, the specifics of which Doug Guyer would not disclose, to get samples included in their outgoing packages. It makes money by charging brands a fee to get their products placed, and almost guaranteed notice.

"We're going to put your product into a FedEx or UPS package that gets opened 100 percent of the time in a very positive environment," Guyer said.

"It just has to be that perfect synergistic fit," his sister Kathie Tuoni, chief operating officer, said of the product/retailer matches BrandShare makes.

The biggest opportunities are for fashion retailers, Tuoni said, whose customers are a receptive audience to the myriad beauty and skin-care products available for sampling. Mothers with young children are another prime sampling audience, she said. Hence the Mott's Fruity Rolls and Legos that have gone in Zulily orders.

Another plus about moms and millennials, Tuoni said, is that they are huge social-media users inclined to gush about their free samples on Facebook and Instagram. Advertising gold.

"Zulily customers are excited to receive an extra surprise in their shipments, which we see from social feedback and engagement with the brands whose products and/or messaging is featured," said Brian Doherty, head of Zulily's integrated marketing.

Since Zulily started sampling with BrandShare in 2015, it has increased its volume of samples about 28 percent each year, Doherty said. They have included Teddy Soft Bakes, Back to Nature's Macaroni and Cheese, Brookside Chocolates, Werther's Original caramels, and Bic 4 Color Pens.

"It's added value," Doherty said.

Currently, BrandShare provides samples in 42 lifestyle categories, said Doug Guyer, who said its client retention rate is 93 percent year after year.

Rue La La customers have been treated to tea, skin-care products, and chocolate through BrandShare-enabled sampling, said Kapilow.

"Who's not going to be excited about getting a good shrink-wrapped chocolate sample?" he said, noting that Rue La La is "always cognizant about consumer engagement.  Right now, there's just so much noise in the digital space, it's getting harder and harder to engage with customers."

Kapilow lauded BrandShare for being "hyper-respectful when we say 'no' if something is not the right fit" and for being "great reaching out to brands we want."

Ever-evolving, as the digital world demands, BrandShare has begun to offer retailers digital campaigns to provide consumers with interactive educational experiences about sampled products. For Rue La La, that includes a website tutorial on Burt's Bees lip and skin products, Kapilow said. "It's true consumer brand awareness."

E-commerce grocery shopping is "great news for us," Doug Guyer said, pulling out a Walmart tote bag stuffed with samples  including Tom's of Maine Silly Strawberry children's toothpaste, Prego tomato sauce, and V8 energy drinks. The bags are for 210,000 first-time Walmart online grocery customers.

Two other Guyer brothers work at BrandShare: Steven, as chief financial officer; and Michael, as vice president of operations. All but one of the Guyer children have worked at the company, which, a little more than two years ago, took on private-equity partner Aperion Capital Management in New York.

With all that momentum, there are still worries. A sample arriving broken, or, worse, causing damage to the ordered shirt or pants it accompanies. Or a retailer opting to bring in-house the work BrandShare does.

"That's what keeps me up at night," Doug Guyer said.

And it keeps Tuoni, a former teacher who used to run the catalog group at the old Franklin Mint museum and shop, focused on "getting that next big retail partner to work with us."

There also are many more product samples to land. Although BrandShare now works with 2,000 brands, "there are another 20,000 brands that need to know about us," Guyer said.

He acknowledged the irony of a company in the marketing business needing to be better known.

"Cobbler has no shoes sometimes," Guyer said.
Violet & Brooks Grace Earrings Gift Quint as featured in O, The Oprah Magazine Read more

The Oprah effect is real.

On Nov. 2, O, the Oprah Magazine featured a set of earrings from Wallingford jewelry company Violet & Brooks as one of Oprah's favorite things.

Already, said company owner Robbin Cook, she's sold more than 1,000 sets at $48 apiece. Traffic to her website has more quadrupled, and she's heard from at least 30 potential retailers eager to stock the line.

"It's really incredible," said Cook, the 55-year-old designer whom fashion insiders know as the silent half of the quirky Maximal Art jewelry brand founded by John Wind. "What a way to launch a brand!"

Tell me about it.

The Violet & Brooks set featured in O is the Grace Earrings Gift Quint. It includes five pairs of gold-plated and crystal studs, some with sparkle and some with pearl, which can be worn as singles or stacked in lobes with multiple holes.

The Grace is one of six quint collections. A cornflower blue stone anchors the Skylar set; a moonstone does the same for the Luna grouping. Birds are the special detail in the Birdie quint; a pave daisy is at the center of the Daisy earrings. The Opal set is heavy on the sparkle.

The Violet & Brooks line  named for Cook's children, Madison Violet, 21, and Spencer Brooks, 16  also includes chokers, necklaces, monogrammed jewelry, ringed sets, brooches, and sterling silver charms, and is available online, in Anthropologie, and in the Barnes Foundation gift shop.

Cook brought Violet & Brooks to the Atlanta Spring Gift Show & Home Furnishings and Holiday Market in March. It was there that the magazine's creative director, Adam Glassman, took notice.

Cook officially left Maximal Art to launch Violet & Brooks on Aug. 15; by Aug. 30, she'd learned Oprah's team had picked the Grace Quint to feature.

"When I learned I was selected, everything changed about my original plans to launch my company," Cook said. Thanks to the Oprah nod, Cook said, she's been able to launch the brand on Amazon. She said it usually takes months for entrepreneurs to get products on the mega-retail site.

"For 32 years, I've been behind the scenes, planning the business and creating strategy," Cook said. "Now, I stand out in front and represent the brand."

And Oprah Winfrey has just made it that much easier.
The Free Library has just renovated and expanded four branches to reflect the new ways people are using its facilities. The glass addition at the Lillian Marrero branch at Sixth and Lehigh includes an elevator that finally makes the building accessible. Read more

The gleaming, white Lillian Marrero Library on Lehigh Avenue is easily the most magnificent building in the Fairhill neighborhood. And that's long been a problem for the Free Library.

The building was a gift from Andrew Carnegie, the early 20th-century philanthropist, who believed that community libraries could help lift people out of poverty. To ennoble the experience of borrowing a book, Carnegie libraries were often modeled on classical palaces, with grand staircases, columned porticos, and hushed, wood-paneled reading rooms. At Marrero, you had to climb 23 steps to the entrance, then shoulder-open a pair of heavy oak doors. For elderly and disabled residents in the heavily Latino Fairhill section, Carnegie's great civic resource may just as well have been located on the moon.

Figuring out a better way to get people in the front door of its branches has taken on new urgency for the Free Library. As more of the world's information fits in the palm of our hands, fewer people need to check out a physical book. In the last few years, the Free Library has watched its total number of visitors dribble down, from 13.8 million in fiscal 2014 to 9.9 million in fiscal 2017.

Hoping to counter the trend, the Free Library has just renovated four branches  Lovett, Logan, Tacony, and Marrero  to make them more welcoming and flexible. In each case, it brought the doors down to where the people are, at sidewalk level, and installed elevators. The interiors have been reconfigured to appeal to a generation raised on smartphones. The transformation marks the beginning of a sea change for Philadelphia, from the library as a storehouse of books to the library as a community gathering place.

The library's response to the disruption of the internet resembles the strategies pioneered by big retailers like Apple and Warby Parker. Rather than think of their stores as outlets that exist to ring up sales, they have reimagined them as places to have experiences that reinforce loyalty to the product. They serve as clubhouses for the brand.

In a similar way, the four library branches have been outfitted with meeting and study rooms, and furnished with soft seating and cafe tables to encourage people to hang out. The number of books and bookshelves have been greatly reduced. "We've stopped talking about stuff and now talk more about the experience, being with other people," Siobhan Reardon, the Free Library's president, told me.

To prepare the branches for their new role, the library hired James R. Keller, who spent 25 years as Vitetta architects' library specialist and recently started his own firm. Since all four branches had been poorly maintained, his first job was to fix the roofs and modernize the infrastructure. Once the structures were stabilized, Keller applied the principals of universal design to ensure that the branches could be accessed and used comfortably by everyone.

It's almost unbelievable that Marrero operated without an elevator until its reopening last week. "You look at those stairs and think, 'What a terrible way to say hello to someone,' " Keller said. "It's telling people, 'You can't come in.' "

It wasn't just Marrero. All four branches had accessibility issues, partly because they date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Marrero also is historically designated, making it difficult to tamper with the exterior.

Keller developed an accessibility template that could be easily adapted to each branch. At Marrero, Tacony, and Lovett, he designed striking glass additions that have sidewalk-level entrances and house elevators that serve the older building. Because of space constraints, an exterior wheelchair ramp was installed at Logan.

At Marrero, you now enter from the corner of Sixth and Lehigh, traveling up a gently sloping ramp to a shimmering glass enclosure that has been scored with a star-shaped pattern, a riff on the Roman lattice muntins that divide the windows on the main building. The star pattern, which also deflects glare, makes the simple structure dance with life.

Besides providing elevator access to the main reading room, Keller was able to tuck in a cafe-style reading area on the second floor, with work counters and plug-ins for laptops. Because the room is elevated, the counters offer spectacular views of the rowhouse neighborhood and the distant towers of Center City. The design cries out for coffee service, but the Free Library is ambivalent.

The glass addition flows into Marrero's soaring reading room, designed by the Hewitt brothers in 1906. Along with restoring the coffered ceiling and other classical details, Keller cleared out the Sheetrock partitions that had cluttered the great room. The result could have been stuffy restoration, but Keller played against type by furnishing the immense room with brightly colored modern furniture and quirky light fixtures.

The centerpiece of Marrero's reading room  and all the branch reading rooms  is an oval-shaped seating arrangement called the "Living Room." Custom-made by Agati, a Chicago industrial design firm, the furniture solves three problems at once: The upholstered banquette allows readers to relax with a book or type at a laptop on a cafe table. The back of the seating is rimmed with shelves, lighting and a work counter. And since the arrangement is comprised of modular pieces on wheels, the Living Room can be easily disassembled to create an events space. All the shelves are kept low to ensure that children and people in wheelchairs can easily scan the titles.

Such communal seating naturally encourages chatter, which the library wants. But since many library users still need quiet places to work, each branch is outfitted with glass-walled study rooms. Every location has a communal table with desktop computers. One thing you won't find in any of the four is a circulation desk. That's been replaced by self-service check-out machines, giving librarians more time to wander the floor, offering assistance.

Reardon said the branches would ramp up their programming soon. That includes everything from movie nights to video gaming clubs to English classes for immigrants. Thanks to a grant, Marrero was able to hire a community organizer to work with Spanish speakers, particularly those who have just arrived from Puerto Rico to escape the ravages of Hurricane Maria.

None of this came cheap. It cost $28 million to renovate the four branches, and the project wouldn't have been possible without a $15 million grant from the William Penn Foundation.

Can brighter rooms and cafe counters really attract people who perceive libraries as musty throwbacks, while keeping those who still like to physically scour the stacks for information? Reardon says the early numbers are encouraging. After the South Philadelphia branch reopened last year in a new combination health-and-rec center on South Broad Street, it quadrupled the number of visitors. The Free Library predicts that 10.2 million visitors will stop in its branches in 2018. At least in the four renovated branches, they should have no trouble getting in the front door.
By PTI: of wife

(Eds: Repeating after correction in 2nd para)

Ahmedabad, Nov 25 (PTI) Unhappy over the BJP nominating his daughter-in-law instead of his wife from the Kaalol Assembly seat in Gujarat, party MP Prabhatsinh Chauhan has warned that he would not guarantee a win for the party, if the candidate is not replaced with someone of his choice.

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The BJP yesterday released its fifth list of 13 candidates for the second phase of Assembly polls in Gujarat. In the list, the ruling party dropped sitting MLA Arvindsinh Chauhan and instead fielded Prabhatsinh Chauhans daughter- in-law Suman Chauhan from the Kaalol seat in Panchmahal district.

Enraged over the announcement, Prabhatsinh Chauhan dashed off a letter to BJP chief Amit Shah yesterday, urging him to replace Suman Chauhan with a "local candidate".

Although, in the letter he did not clearly demand that his wife Rangeshwari be given the party ticket, recently he had told reporters that she was the best candidate for the Kaalol seat.

While Rangeshwari is the president of Ghoghamba taluka panchayat of Panchamahal district, Suman Chauhan is a member of Panchmahal district panchayat.

In the letter, the parliamentarian also alleged that his son Pravinsinh is a "bootlegger" and that he and his wife had even gone to jail.

"My son Pravin is a bootlegger and several cases are still pending against him. Both he and his wife Suman even went to jail in the past. This will dent the BJPs prospects of winning the seat. Further, Suman belongs to Godhra and people of Kaalol will not accept her," Chauhan said in the letter.

"Though I am senior, having spent 45 years in public life, the party has not taken my opinion while selecting the candidates. I was also not taken into confidence while selecting the candidate for Kaalol. Thus, I urge you to consider changing the current candidate with a local one of my choice," he added.

Prabhatsinh Chauhan, a prominent Rajput face in the region, who had joined the BJP in 1992, claimed that though he had single-handedly established the BJPs dominance in that district over the years, he has been ignored by the party and not given any post in the organisation.

Chauhan stressed that the BJP would not get even a single vote from tribals. While his wife Rangeshwari is a tribal, Suman Chauhan is a Rajput.

"The BJP will not get a single vote, out of the 1.10 lakh votes of tribals due to this ongoing controversy. There are huge chances that we will lose Kaalol. Thus, I want to inform you that I will not take any responsibility of ensuring the partys victory on any of the seven seats under my constituency including Kaalol," Chauhan said in the letter.

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Three days ago, Chauhan said that he had sought ticket for his wife on the ground that she had done "very good work" as Ghoghamba taluka panchayat president.

"Just go to Ghoghamba to see what kind of work she has done. She has completely uprooted corruption. Rangeshwari is the best candidate and that is why I have appealed to the party leaders to select her for Kaalol seat," Chauhan told reporters.

Yesterday, when Rangeshwari came to know that she has been ignored in ticket allocation, she targeted her husband in a fiery Facebook post, in which she even dared him to enter Kaalol for poll campaign.

However, she deleted the post today.

"I had posted that comment out of anger and disappointment. That was not against the BJP, it was against the Member of Parliament. But now, I have entered into a compromise with him over the issue," Rangeshwari told reporters. PTI PJT PD NP SMN SMN

--- ENDS ---

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Emily Wilson of the University of Pennsylvania is the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English. Read more

Many are the books given as gifts for the holidays. And a lot of those books even get read. Below is just a taste of the best of 2017 in fiction and nonfiction, things we or our reviewers really got hooked on. As gifts, they'll make you seem sensitive, knowing, and humane.

Fiction readers like good, meaningful stories, with characters whose lives work out important human themes. These suggestions do all that, with beautiful writing to power it all along.

Fiction

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry ($26). This won the prestigious Costa Book of the Year Award in the U.K. An Irish boy flees the Great Famine, travels to the United States, and signs up for the Army in the 1850s. From there, it's the Indian Wars, the Civil War, and an enduring friendship. Reviewer Frank Wilson called it "a wonder, part western, part romance, part war novel, but at every turn humane and moving."

Viking, penguinrandomhouse.com.

Five-Carat Soul by James McBride ($27). The local American Book Award-winner hits us with a zesty, original, engaging, quick-reading collection of two novellas and some standalone stories.

Riverhead Books, penguinrandomhouse.com.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward ($26). This tale of a Southern family's travels to the North won the National Book Award for fiction this year. A young boy tries to have a life during the Great Migration. A heartbreaking book full of heart.

Scribner, simonandschuster.com.

The War-Bride's Scrapbook: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston ($29.99). And postcards, letters, newspaper clippings, and doodles. Lila Jerome elopes with a soldier in tumultuous World War Two America. He ships off to war, and she goes off to Harvard. And thereby hangs an engrossing tale.

HarperCollins, harpercollins.com.

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons ($22). Strath Haven High alum Clemmons writes of growing up feeling out of place. Thandi contends with her mother's death, her mixed racial background, and the conflicting expectations of those around her.

Viking, penguinrandomhouse.com.

Nonfiction

Aging Thoughtfully: Conversations About Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles and Regret by Martha C. Nussbaum and Saul Levmore ($24.95). These paired essays really are a conversation  thoughtful, penetrating, and hopeful  between Nussbaum (one of our wisest, smartest writers) and economist and lawyer Levmore.

Oxford University Press, global.oup.com

Calder: The Conquest of Time: The Early Years: 1898-1940 by Jed Perl ($55). This big, beautifully illustrated book traces the first half of local kid Alexander Calder's career from the Philly area to being the most prominent U.S. sculptor of the 20th century.

Knopf, knopfdoubleday.com

Cartoon Country by Cullen Murphy ($27). This guy grew up in a Connecticut colony of newspaper cartoonists, among them some of the best of our time. Richly illustrated.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, us.macmillan.com

France Is a Feast: The Photographic Journey of Paul and Julia Child by Alex Prud'homme and Katie Pratt ($35). Famed chef Julia Child's spouse, Paul, took a lot of photos as they wandered through Paris and the French countryside, absorbing French culinary ideas.

Thames & Hudson, thamesandhudsonusa.com

Grant by Ron Chernow ($40). Chernow, known for his Hamilton bio, delivers what our reviewer Clayton Butler calls a mammoth reconsideration. Grant emerges as a vulnerable, humane, and accomplished leader, deserving of a place among our most celebrated Americans. For history lovers.

Penguin Press, penguinrandomhouse.com

The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone ($27.99). Longtime Philly journalist Fagone tells the story of Elizebeth Friedman, who helped invent modern cryptology, helped fight enemies in two world wars and organized crime in between, and helped found the National Security Agency. Reads like a novel, tells the truth, and gives our history a new heroine.

Dey Street, harpercollins.com

Classics

Lots of people give the great standards for the holidays. Here are two winners.

Persuasion by Jane Austen (Penguin, $17). This is a gorgeous, deluxe, reader-friendly Penguin Classics celebration of the 200th anniversary of this masterpiece. In Persuasion, Austen's last finished book, and perhaps her best, a woman thinks she's figured someone out  and then unlearns, bit by bit, what she thought she knew.

Penguin Classics, penguinrandomhouse.com

Note: The Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition series is turning out beautiful new editions of many classics, from Great Expectations to Heart of Darkness to Dubliners. They are readable, beautiful to look at, and eminently giftable.

The Oddysey, translated by Emily Wilson ($39.95). The Penn professor of classics is the first woman to bring this epic poem into English. I wrote that "Wilson has created a page-turner, spacious, direct, and light-shot, yet also  an exciting chain of adventure stories. A perfect gift for everything from Christmas to Festivus!"

W.W. Norton, books.wwnorton.com
Karen Builione, top left, watches the holiday light show with her daughters Isabella, 7, in blue, and Francesca, 4, in pink, in Macy's. Read more

On Friday morning, Lindsey Wells made the trek from Cherry Hill to Center City to show her 16-month-old daughter, Avery, Macy's Christmas Light Show for the first time. She parked Avery's stroller in the middle of the grand atrium by 11:30 a.m. for the show at noon, staking out the best possible vantage point with her husband, Shaun.

"Avery loves music and shiny things, so this should be really fun for her," Wells said.

It wasn't Wells' first time seeing the holiday lights at Macy's. Taking the train into the city to see the light show has been a family tradition since she was 5, but she stopped when she became preteen. She acknowledged, though, that the trip to Macy's wasn't just for Avery  she had wanted to see it, too.

"Because our daughter is still so young, we're trying a lot of new things," Wells said. "We'd like to create some of our own family traditions, but there are some we'd like to carry over, as well."

Read more: All the Philly holiday events kicking off this weekend

The Macy's Christmas Light Show has been dazzling kids and adults alike since 1956. Formerly called the John Wanamaker Christmas Light Show, it now uses energy-efficient bulbs and a computer system to operate the lights. Other than that, little has changed, making it a holiday tradition that has stood the test of time.

Sisters Kristin Mansfield and Karen Builione also started going to the light show with their parents when they were 5.

"They used to tell us that real Santa lived in this Macy's," Mansfield, who lives in Center City, said with a laugh. "We would also go to Bookbinder's afterwards for lunch, but we've cut that one out of the tradition."

This year, Builione brought her four daughters, ages 4 through 12, to the show for the first time.

"I didn't tell them much about it," she said. "I want them to be surprised."

For many Philadelphians, the show, with more than 100,000 lights accompanied by the Wanamaker Grand Organ, is a holiday staple and family tradition. But the show, which started its run through New Year's Eve on Friday, drew many curious visitors from out of town, as well.

Thirteen-year-old Mark Mathis traveled to Philadelphia from Indianapolis with his family to celebrate Thanksgiving, partly because of all the light shows the city has to offer during the holiday season. Mark, an aspiring light-show designer, has been putting together his own shows since he was 6.

"When I was really young, I became obsessed with light switches," he said. "I've been doing my family's holiday lights display for a while now, both indoors and outdoors."

So far, Mark has seen the Franklin Square light show and the Comcast Holiday Spectacular.

The noon show started a little later than expected because of technical difficulties, which led to some grumbling among the crowd. But Mark patiently waited on the floor of the atrium, lying down to get the best possible view. When the show finally began, his face lit up in astonishment.

"So far, I've been really impressed with Philly's light shows," he said. "There's so many of them, and they're all really elaborate."
The 150-acre landfill along Route 42 in Bellmawr, Camden County. Officials plan to redevelop the landfill with retail and commercial space, as well as a park along the Big Timber Creek. Read more

A hulking, 150-acre landfill that looms at the busy Route 42 and I-295 interchange in South Jersey would be transformed into a commercial center with a park overlooking Big Timber Creek, according to the latest round of plans for the long-dormant site.

Bellmawr officials introduced a plan this week that still needs a second vote by council as well as approval from the Camden County planning board. But borough administrator Joshua Tregear called the updated plan good news and was hopeful the park would be open some time next year.

That would be far before completion of the state Department of Transportation's $900 million "Direct Connection" road-and-ramp-reconfiguration project underway in the same area where Interstates 295 and 76 and Route 42 converge in Camden County, a project whose finish line, officials said, has been moved from 2021 to 2024.

A spokesman for the DOT said Wednesday the delay was caused by increased time needed to acquire the right-of-way for part of the project.

The DOT is planning a new access road to the Bellmawr development site in parallel with that massive road project.

"This has been a long time coming," Tregear said of the plan to transform the landfill. "The project started in 2006."

Indeed, Bellmawr's plan is the third iteration of a process that began with remediation of the landfill  actually four separate landfills that included municipal waste and a private dump. This updated version includes details on the park.

Tregear said he's optimistic the final touches on the capping and vegetation will soon be complete and that a park will be open by next year. He said the park will be a mile-long ribbon overlooking the creek, which feeds into the Delaware River. The park will comprise about 12 acres of land.

"It's going to have a very natural feel to it," Tregear said. "It would be something like you see down in the Chesapeake area."

The overall plans, drawn by Remington & Vernick Engineers in Haddonfield, call for three phases of work on the site, which has multiple owners. Those owners include the borough and Big Timber Junction LLC, the chosen redeveloper, which includes multiple investors.

The park would be built in the first phase. The next two phases include a mix of development, including retail and potential housing if required by the state's mandate on affordable housing.

"The waterfront park should provide public access to the Big Timber Creek waterfront area," the plan states, "and should include at a minimum, nonexclusive visitor parking areas, scenic vistas, improved natural trails, benches and rest areas, and also signs providing interpretative ecological information to the public."

It also "encourages" access for boating and fishing through a dock or pier.

A rendering of the park area by SR3engineers, of Bellmawr, shows a strip of green along the waterfront, stretching from Deptford Township to Runnemede Borough, both of which border Bellmawr.

The last two phases of Bellmawr's redevelopment plan are not fully detailed. But conditional uses include a retailer with at least 50,000 square feet of floor space, with walkways connecting the retail areas and the park.

The plan calls for any new development to be "walkable," "visually interesting," and with a "sense of place." Stores connecting in strip-mall fashion should have "distinctive awnings, signage, and store windows" that give the area a unique feel.

Officials also hope for a shuttle to the PATCO rail line and Philadelphia International Airport.

Previously, a Bass Pro Shops was a potential big-name store for the site. But it chose Atlantic City because of difficulty getting a direct access road for the store in Bellmawr. But officials say there is a lot of interest in the site and that more details on potential stores and anchors could come in the beginning of 2018.
During his nation's "darkest hours" in World War II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, inspired the United Kingdom  and much of the rest of the world  with his strength and certainty that the Allies would defeat the Nazis, however hard the struggle.

"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender," the 65-year-old prime minister intoned on June 18, 1940, in his "Finest Hour" speech, as the Battle of Britain was about to begin.

Few knew that as a youngster, the man whose soaring oratory would mean so much to so many suffered from a stammer, a speech disorder that is notoriously difficult to overcome. Prime example: Britain's wartime King George VI, whose own struggles to control his stammer were the subject of the Oscar-winning 2010 film, "The King's Speech."

Churchill was more successful at mastering the impediment, teaching himself to practice his speeches well in advance, and developing the art of effective, loaded pauses.

But the strains of war showed even on the man called Britain's Bulldog. He suffered a mild heart attack in December 1941 while at the White House shortly after Pearl Harbor to solidify relations with his most important ally, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Two years later, he contracted pneumonia.

Through it all, he enjoyed his trademark cigars and his favorite cocktail, whisky and soda.

Some have thought Churchill was bipolar, sometimes suffering from depression he later would call his "Black Dog," other times exhibiting vast levels of energy, working from early morning to past midnight, often from his bed wearing the pale pink silk underwear he preferred, and even from his bathtub.

After the war, in the summer of 1949, Churchill went to the south of France to rest and enjoy painting the French Riviera. While there, he suddenly lost sensation in his right arm and right leg.

The incident was handled quietly, with a sign stating only that he "contracted a chill while bathing" posted at the villa where he was staying. He rapidly recovered and returned to England.

Churchill once again became prime minister on October 24, 1951. In June 1953, at a dinner to honor the Italian prime minister, Churchill gave a speech, but then suddenly couldn't continue discussion and slumped back in his chair.

His son-in-law noticed he appeared weak on his left side, and quietly got Churchill up to his room.

The next day, after conducting a cabinet meeting, he was driven to Chartwell, his country home in Kent. The public and Parliament were told he was suffering from exhaustion.

What was really going on, and why was it hushed up?

Solution

As his son-in-law noticed at the 1953 dinner, the left side of Churchill's mouth was drooping, and his left arm and leg were weak. This was his second hypertension-related lacunar stroke he suffered; the first was in 1949. This most common type of stroke is caused by blockage of small arteries leading to the brain.

Once at Chartwell, Churchill received around the clock nurse's care and physical rehabilitation. The news blackout during these tense, Cold War times, was maintained; the nation's press barons agreed to keep the secret. The young Queen Elizabeth II was among the few who knew what was going on.

For the better part of a month, "my colleagues and I had to handle requests for decisions from Ministers and Government departments who were entirely ignorant of the Prime Minister's incapacity," his private secretary, Jock Colville, later wrote.

He didn't stay down for long. In December 1953, Churchill went to Bermuda to meet with President Dwight Eisenhower, who was not aware of Churchill's strokes.

Churchill's physician, Lord Moran, his staff and family also kept hidden other events including the "mini-strokes" he suffered in 1950 and 1951. In 1952 a fleeting speech disturbance suggested a spasm or partial occlusion of the artery supplying the speech center of the brain. By then, both the right and left sides of Churchill's brain were affected by atherosclerosis and hypertension.

Recognizing he was slowing down physically and mentally, Churchill retired as prime minister in 1955, but remained in Parliament until 1964.

On Jan. 15, 1965, the 90-year-old Churchill suffered another stroke, which was announced. He died nine days later, and was mourned by millions at a massive state funeral, televised worldwide, to say farewell to the man who may have done more than any other to stop the Nazis.

Allan B. Schwartz, M.D., is a professor of medicine in the Division of Nephrology & Hypertension at Drexel University College of Medicine
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission is encouraging electricity customers to shop for suppliers on Black Friday. Buyer beware. Read more

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission is encouraging consumers to shop for electricity on Black Friday. A quick glance at the PUC's website suggests Peco Energy customers could save an eye-popping 44 percent on their bills.

Buyer beware: Not all prices are as low as they seem.

Papowerswitch.com, the PUC's marketplace for electricity shopping, lists about 140 offers for Peco Energy customers, some of which will save customers compared with the utility's current price.

But some offers that appear to be very competitive may not be. Seven suppliers tack on additional fees that require alert customers to compute their own true comparisons for household use.

The PUC requires suppliers to disclose additional fees on the government website. But three Peco suppliers, while noting they charged monthly fees, did not disclose the amount of those fees. Visits to several supplier websites failed to reveal the details, requiring a customer to either call the supplier or to submit an online form providing the customer's contact information.

Complicating matters, the PUC's online tool did not include the monthly fee for several suppliers in its calculation of the estimated monthly cost of their offers. As a result, the deals offered by some suppliers that charged monthly fees appeared to cost less than they actually do.

The PUC corrected the problems this week, after the Inquirer pointed out the flaw.

"There was a little glitch on the back end of our site on how some offers were displayed," said Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, the commission's spokesman. Programmers fixed the glitch Tuesday, and estimated costs now include the monthly fees, which range from $3.95 to $9.95.

As for that 44 percent savings?

By far the best price posted for Peco customers is from Public Power LLC, a Connecticut company whose website acknowledges that it's neither a public utility nor affiliated with "any government owned not-for-profit utility." It is owned by Crius Energy LLC, which owns several other suppliers.

Public Power offers a rate of 3.99 cents per kilowatt hour, which is indeed 44 percent less than Peco's current price-to-compare of 7.13 cents per kWh. (Peco's price, which is adjusted quarterly, is set to go up slightly to 7.22 cents on Dec. 1.)

Public Power does not charge a monthly fee, but it is unique among suppliers in that it charges a $145 "enrollment fee." Because that upfront payment is not a monthly fee, the PUC does not include it when it estimates the cost of the deal compared to others.

The $145 fee buys a discount rate fixed for only three months. The supplier will make a new offer to the customer at the end of that term.

When customers do not take action, suppliers typically switch them to variable-rate deals. "There is no limit on how much your variable rate may change from one billing cycle to the next," Public Power discloses in the terms of its offer.

Realistically, a customer would need to recover $145 in savings in three months to justify the enrollment fee. For a typical residential customer using 700 kWh, the fee would add 6.9 cents per kilowatt hour to the 3.99 cents per kWh that Public Power charges for the electricity.

That means a typical residential customer would pay the equivalent of 10.89 cents per kWh. That's 53 percent more than Peco's price, not 44 percent less.

Public Power's deal would be attractive only for customers consuming about twice as much as a typical household, or more than 1,500 kWh a month. Electric-heating customers consume that much, as do customers with large numbers of potted plants under lamps. Alas, the price is not available to Peco electric-heating customers, who are in a separate rate class. (Your average monthly usage is listed on your Peco bill.)

In response to the Inquirer's questions, the PUC on Wednesday added a fine-print disclaimer to the web page promoting the purported 44 percent savings, saying: "These savings do not include any additional enrollment fees."

"We're constantly evaluating how to best display the data so consumers can digest it." said Hagen-Frederiksen.

The PUC also posts a list of suggested questions for customers to ask suppliers.

Evaluating electricity offers gets more complicated when a customer factors in other premiums, such as free thermostats or loyalty rewards, or if the rate varies according to the time of day.

About 2 million Pennsylvania customers, or 36 percent, buy their electricity from competitive suppliers, according to the PUC, including 541,000 Peco customers and 641,000 PPL Electric customers. Customers that don't shop get the "default rate," or price-to-compare, offered by the electric company.
Lucian Stock, 20, of Souderton, was charged with homicide by vehicle for a crash that killed a road worker and injured another in September. Read more

A 20-year-old Montgomery County woman whose car crashed into a work crew, killing one man and injuring another, in September has been charged with homicide by vehicle, prosecutors said Friday.

Luciana Stock of Souderton was driving to work shortly before 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 5 and had reached below her radio for her cigarettes when her 2000 Oldsmobile Alero plowed into a Franconia Township crew that had been painting roadway markings on the 300 block of West Broad Street, prosecutors said.

The car hit David Smith, 53, and Jeffrey Moyer, 46. Smith was transported to Grand View Hospital in Sellersville, where he was pronounced dead. Moyer, who was critically injured, was flown to Temple University Hospital.

Stock was arraigned last week before District Judge Philip J. Daly, who set unsecured bail at $75,000. Stock was released on her own recognizance. Her preliminary hearing was set for Thursday.

Stock told a detective that she was late for her job in Hatfield and "felt rushed," according to the affidavit of probable cause.

As she was driving, "she reached down for her cigarettes, which were underneath her radio, and when she looked up two people were on her windshield," according to the affidavit. Stock's car ran over a traffic cone before hitting the men.

Investigators determined that she was driving 39 mph when she crashed. The posted speed limit was 35.

She was charged with homicide by vehicle, aggravated assault by vehicle, and careless driving.
PHOENIX -- Saying 18 is plenty young enough, a Scottsdale lawmaker wants to repeal existing Arizona laws that allow children of any age to get married.

The proposal by Republican Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita would make it illegal for the clerk of superior courts in any of the state's 15 counties to issue a marriage license to anyone younger than 18. Specifically, HB 2006 would undo laws that allow anyone age 16 or 17 to marry with permission of a parent.

But the measure also addresses the fact there is no minimum age in Arizona. The only thing required is the permission of a superior court judge.

"Why do we need to allow underage marriages to happen?'' Ugenti-Rita asked. "What is the public benefit to that?''

If she can get her bill heard, Arizona would join a growing number of states looking at whether laws that may date back to territorial days make any sense. But the record also shows that Ugenti-Rita may be facing an an uphill battle.

While most states set the age of marriage at 18, the Tahirih Justice Center which works to stop violence against women, reports more than half are like Arizona. Their laws not only allow for exceptions but do not even have a "floor'' age.

The record on changing that is mixed.

Earlier this year New York changed its laws to make 17 the absolute minimum, up from 14.

Lawmakers in New Jersey voted for a measure similar to what Ugenti-Rita is proposing. But that was vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie.

And, efforts to set the minimum age in California at 18 faltered this year amid opposition from several groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Children's Law Center of California.

Ugenti-Rita, however, argues that there's no legitimate reason to allow such nuptials.

"I don't see why waiting 12 months or 24 months interferes with your ability to have a life together or marry,'' she said. Nor does she believe that the parental consent requirement is meaningful.

"The exceptions don't make sense anymore,'' she said.

Ugenti-Rita also pointed out that those younger than 18 can't buy cigarettes, even with a note from mom or dad. And the legal purchase and use of alcohol is reserved to those 21 and older, no matter what a parent says.

"So we clearly recognize that age is a big factor in being able to comprehend the magnitude of a choice and being mature enough to make a certain choice,'' she said.

Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said he hasn't considered the question. But Farnsworth said simply making marriage off-limits to those younger than 18 raises a series of questions.

One is the fact that Arizona law already allows teens 16 and older to become legally "emancipated,'' freeing them from parental oversight and giving them many of the same legal rights as an adult, including the right to contract, incur debts, and even to sue and be sued.

It's also legal for teens to have an abortion with either parental or court permission.

And there's something else: Arizona repealed its laws against cohabitation laws more than a decade ago.

But Ugenti-Rita brushed aside questions of whether her legislation could then lead to teens living together without being married. She said that's no reason for Arizona to provide "recognized status'' to couples where one or both is a minor.

Conversely, Ugenti-Rita said there are definite drawbacks.

"I think child marriage lends itself to some real problems,'' she said. "Those who are marrying before they are 18 are at an increased risk of physical or sexual violence, coercion, and other economic complications.''

Nor does Ugenti-Rita believe a pregnancy should change the equation. There is no statewide figure of how many teens younger than 18 wed each year in Arizona, as these are issued by court clerks in each of the state's 15 counties.

An analysis done for Capitol Media Services by the Maricopa County Clerk of Superior Court found that 570 minors received a marriage licenses in a five-year period ending June 23. The actual number of licenses is slightly less, at 524, as some went to couples where both parties were minors.

That's out of about 20,000 licenses issued each year.
The area around Raishina is known for large number of farm houses and poaching of leopards reportedly happens here.

The leopard was mysteriously found dead in the foothills of Aravalli in Gurugram on Friday.

By Ajay Kumar: Despite all efforts by the wildlife department, leopards frequently prowl around human population. Some of them are rescued by the department, while many die or are hunted down by poachers in Aravalli forest in Gurugram.

On Friday morning, a four-year-old male leopard was found dead under mysterious circumstances in an area between Bhango and Kharak village near Raishina forest in Gurugram. The wild cat sustained injuries in head and mouth.

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Department officials have not ruled out foul play in its death.

"We have recovered the dead body of an adult leopard and has been sent to postmortem. It will be clear only after the postmortem whether the injuries were accidental or unnatural," said Shyam Sunder Kaushik, DFO wildlife Gurugram range.

The villagers claimed that they spotted the wild animal around 2 PM on the foothills of Aravalli mountain.

"It is hard to predict the cause of death, but it looks like the leopard fell down accidentally near the foothill," said Tarif, a local resident of Kharak village.

Due to dense forest, the corridor between Maneser, and Palwal is considered a natural habitat for wild cats and hence leopards are frequently seen in the area.

According to official figures, nine leopards, including a couple of cubs, died under mysterious circumstance in Gurugram and Faridabad since January 2014.

The area around Raishina is known for large number of farm houses and poaching of leopards reportedly happens here. Two leopard cubs, three-year-old, were found dead in Gairatpur Bas village in May 2016 and September respectively.

On November 24, 2016 agitated mob of Mandawar village killed a three-year-old leopard in full public view and paraded the big cat in the area.

On October 5, a three-year-old leopard was rescued from Maruti factory in IMT Maneser. An adult leopard was rescued on April 27, 2017 from Durga colony in Sohna after five hours of effort.

A four-year-old leopard was strayed into human population in Palwal district on February 16 this year.

--- ENDS ---
Three years after retiring as president of Pennsylvania State University, Rodney Erickson is netting $477,590 a year  from a state pension.

Gary Schultz, the former Penn State vice president who pleaded guilty in the Jerry Sandusky scandal, takes home $330,699 in pension benefits. Former state lawmaker Frank Oliver, a Democrat who represented North Philadelphia, gets $286,117.

More than 127,000 former Pennsylvania state employees or their beneficiaries collect public pension checks each month, and most are comparatively paltry. The average paid out last year was $27,722.

But despite reforms in the system  which mostly affect future retirees  and a move by some states to cap retirement payments, a separate class of Keystone State pensioners will continue to receive checks that alone put them among the top tier of all income earners in the United States.

As the costs of public pensions continue to be a point of debate for struggling state and municipal governments, the Inquirer and Daily News reviewed data for hundreds of Pennsylvania's highest-paid beneficiaries, all current through August.

They showed that 20 state retirees collect more than $215,000 a year  a payout so big it exceeds an IRS mandated pension cap and must be paid from two plans. More than 500 retirees collect $100,000 or more.

Officials in the system say such retirees earned their benefits  contributing a percentage of their pay to the state's defined-benefit plan, along with their employers. Critics say the six-figure payouts reflect a policy that isn't grounded in fiscal reality.

"Professional state employees should make a good living, but they are not entitled to make a killing," said Eric Epstein, coordinator with the Rock the Capital reform group in Harrisburg and an advocate for pension changes. Some of the payouts, he said, "are excessive pockets of gluttony that are deeply disturbing" as Pennsylvania confronts a $70 billion shortfall in its retirement obligations.

Top Pennsylvania Pension Recipients Shown below are the 500 former state employees with the highest annual pension payments. Staff Graphic

Many of the best-paid retirees worked in the court system, the legislature, or academia, the records show. Of the top 500, 124 worked at Penn State, and 143 at schools within the State System of Higher Education.

The pensions traditionally are calculated using a formula that includes an employee's highest average salary over a three-year span and years of service.

The $477,590 going to Erickson, 71, flowed in part from his 37 years at Penn State and his final salary of $633,336. He also received severance, bonus, and life insurance payouts upon retirement.

Right behind him on the State Employees' Retirement System (SERS) list is Stephen Benkovic, 79, a former Penn State chemistry chair and National Medal of Honor recipient who receives $443,879. Efforts to reach him and Erickson this week were unsuccessful.

Retired Shippensburg University human communication studies professor William Kingsley, who at third on the list gets $385,819, retired in 2015 after nearly 50 years with the university. Kingsley said pension considerations played no role in his decision to work for the university.

"I wanted to do theater, I had opportunity there, and that's what I did," said Kingsley, 85, who lives in Aspers, Adams County. "I also loved teaching."

Asked whether his pension allowed him to live comfortably, he said: "Reasonably."

Schultz, 68, the former Penn State vice president, spent nearly four decades working for the university. His guilty plea to child endangerment for not reporting signs that Jerry Sandusky was a serial child-sex predator doesn't affect his $330,000 pension. (Sandusky himself won a court battle to keep his $59,000-a-year retirement benefit even as he serves at least three decades in prison.)

In the state's Public School Employees' Retirement System  which covers workers in the 499 school districts  just one pension tops $222,000. The second highest is $190,000.

Given that relatively few retirees receive them, the largest pensions aren't a significant driver of Pennsylvania's pension deficit, said Greg Mennis, director of the Public Sector Retirement Systems project at Pew Charitable Trusts.

What "really set Pennsylvania apart," Mennis said, was how significantly the state increased benefits in 2001, when the pension system was flush. Since then, its $20 billion pension surplus has turned into a nearly $70 billion deficit.

Pennsylvania has since rolled back those benefit increases for new employees. The state also has stuck to a plan to increase employer contributions into the system. And earlier this year, lawmakers and Gov. Wolf agreed on a plan to cut pension costs by shifting at least some benefits for future employees into 401(k)-style plans.

But past decisions to boost benefits continue to have an effect. One was lawmakers' decision in 2002 to create a separate plan for paying out SERS members whose pensions under the enhanced state formula would have exceeded the IRS cap.

Such plans are relatively common, said Rick Dreyfuss, a business consultant and senior fellow with the conservative Commonwealth Foundation.

The real issue, he said, are the salaries that lead to the largest pensions. "If you don't manage the base pay, then the whole thing is going to continue," Dreyfuss said.

Leonard S. Jefferson, a former Penn State College of Medicine cellular and molecular physiology professor, gets a $30,999 monthly check, which is among the top 20. He said his work as a researcher starting in 1967 was a boon for the university, bringing millions of dollars in funding for students and staff over decades.

"This extramural funding has also provided employment for numerous research support staff, and supported the training of more than 100 graduate students and fellows. All of which has contributed significantly to the economy of the Commonwealth," Jefferson said in an email.

Such retirement obligations ultimately are at least partly borne by taxpayers. Penn State receives state funding every year, as does the higher education system, and pension costs "are a very, very significant part of our annual budget," said Kenn Marshall, spokesman for the system of 14 universities. The state appropriation covers about one-fourth of the system's operating budget, Marshall said.

About half of the university system's 12,500 full-time employees, including more than half of faculty, choose a 401(k)-like defined contribution plan instead of the traditional SERS pension, Marshall said. The employer match for that plan is 9.29 percent.

In 21 states, a defined contribution plan  the traditional kind of pension  is the only retirement plan option offered to most faculty, according to Pew.

Some states have moved to cap pensions. In New Jersey, where the highest pension tops out at $195,000, pension-eligible salaries for newer members in the state's main plans are capped at the annual maximum wage for Social Security deductions, which this year is $127,200.

Some lawmakers said Pennsylvania had effectively capped pensions with the move to a hybrid defined benefit/defined contribution plan for future hires. That takes effect in 2019.

"The Commonwealth will no longer be on the hook for those exorbitant amounts," said state Rep. Mike Tobash (R., Schuylkill).

But today's retirees are still owed pensions based on past rules. "Whether you like this pension reform or not, it's going to take years for this to emerge in terms of something meaningful," Dreyfuss said.
Speaking to reporters before leaving for New Delhi, Hadiya said that she wants to go with her husband.

By P S Gopikrishnan Unnithan: As Hadiya, or Akhila Ashokan, left for New Delhi to appear before the Supreme Court in the Kerala 'love jihad' case, she said nobody forced her to convert.

"No one forced me to convert. I want to go with my husband," Hadiya said at the Cochin airport. The Supreme Court on October 30 directed Hadiya's father to produce her on the next date of hearing, November 27.

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Hadiya is being accompanied by her parents and 15 police personnel, including three woman officers, to Delhi. Shafin Jahan, Hadiya's Muslim husband, had moved the Supreme Court after the Kerala High Court annulled his marriage.

I am a Muslim. I want to go with my husband. Nobody forced me to convert: Hadiya, who will be produced before Supreme Court in Kerela 'Love Jihad' case on 27th November in Delhi pic.twitter.com/w9JzcmBw9Z&; ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

The direction by the apex court for producing the woman for an interaction came amid an assertion by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that this was a case in which the woman was indoctrinated and she may be incapable of giving free consent to marriage.

A Supreme Court bench, comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, had asked senior advocate Shyam Divan, representing the father of the woman, to ensure she is produced before them to ascertain whether she had married of her own volition.

The woman and her parents are likely to stay at Kerala House in New Delhi, sources said.

Hadiya had converted to Islam and later married Jahan.

It was alleged that she was recruited by ISIS' mission in Syria and Jahan was only a stooge.

Jahan had moved the Supreme Court after the Kerala high court annulled his marriage, saying it was an insult to the independence of women in the country.

The Supreme Court on Monday will also deal with the plea filed by Hadiya/Akhila's father for an in-camera hearing of the case.

The court had said that before examining the issue, it would like to ascertain if she had voluntarily converted to Islam and got married. "We will have the lady before us and ask her if she has consented voluntarily" to conversion and marriage, the bench had said.

In another development, Hadiya's husband Shafin Jahan has filed a complaint alleging efforts are being made to reconvert her to Hinduism.

In the complaint filed with Kottayam Police chief, Shafin Jahan alleged that attempts are being made by Hadiya's family in cahoots with RSS activists to get her to do ghar wapsi. He alleged that she was also counselled for more than three hours by a Hindu religious leader recently.

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-With PTI inputs

ALSO WATCH | Kerala love jihad 'victim' Hadiya first time on camera: Forced conversion or choice?

--- ENDS ---
Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deputy director, Michael Morell opines that JuD chief Hafiz Saeed's release will only spell doom for mainstream Pakistan politics.

By PTI, Press Trust of India: 26/11 Mumbai attacks mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed has "blood on his hands", and wants to bring extremism into the mainstream politics of Pakistan, a former top American spymaster said today.

The JuD head and LeT founder, who has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan on Friday.

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"Saeed is a terrorist. Worked with the LeT, a Kashmiri militant group, and al-Qaida on attacks," Michael Morell, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deputy director, who has also served twice as its acting director, said in a tweet.

"He has blood on his hands. Now wants to bring extremism into the political mainstream in Pakistan," he said after Saeed, a UN and US designated terrorist, was released from house arrest in Lahore.

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The fire-brand cleric's release came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

A deeply concerned US has asked the Pakistan government to re-arrest and charge Saeed for his crimes. It also asked Pakistan to ensure that the LeT leader is behind bars.

NBC news said Saeed's release could once again sour US relations with Pakistan.

The New York Times said, for decades, Pakistan has cast a benign eye on groups like LeT- which is perceived as an asset because its attacks target Indian soldiers in Kashmir . Even as the government battles jihadist groups like the Pakistan Taliban that directly threatens the country.

"But despite its pressure on Pakistan to move against militants like Saeed, the United States has also sent mixed messages. Just a month ago, the United States Senate struck down a provision tying American government funding to Pakistan to the country's efforts to curb Lashkar-e-Taiba's operations.

"The provision, part of a broader Pentagon-funding legislation that Congress introduced this past summer, would have forced the secretary of defence to certify that Islamabad was thwarting Lashkar-e-Taiba's activities inside Pakistan or risk USD 350 million in American assistance," the Times wrote.

Meanwhile, in an op-ed, The Washington Examiner said the Trump administration "should work with India" to "capture or kill" Saeed.

"Trump should call Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and offer to work with him to capture or kill Saeed," the daily said, adding that Saeed intends to lead a new Muslim theocratic political bloc in next years parliamentary polls.

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"Although Pakistan's electoral commission has refused to certify the bloc, Saeed's populist power should not be understated. Charismatic and determined, if left unchecked in his political party or terrorist activities, Saeed could destabilise the region," the daily added.

The JuD is believed to be the front organisation for the banned LeT which is responsible for carrying out the Mumbai terror attack.

--- ENDS ---
14 Top-Rated Attractions & Things to Do in Nicosia

Written by Jess Lee

Updated May 26, 2022

We may earn a commission from affiliate links ( )

The Cypriot capital of Nicosia is literally a tale of two halves. The southern half of Nicosia (also called Lefkosia) belongs to the Republic of Cyprus, while North Nicosia (also known as Lefkosa) is the capital of the UN-unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).

Since 2003, the logistics of visiting both sides of the city have loosened up considerably, and popping over to Northern Cyprus and back again requires just a quick flash of your passport as you stroll through the Ledra Street green-line crossing that divides the old city district in two.

This means that the tourist attractions of North Nicosia's old town can be just as easily visited as the museums in Nicosia.

The city is also a fantastic base for launching yourself out on sightseeing trips into north Cyprus, which is home to some of the island's most important historic places to visit such as the fairy-tale castle of St. Hilarion and the extensive ruins of Ancient Salamis.

To help plan your time here, use our list of the top attractions and things to do in Nicosia.

See also: Where to Stay in Nicosia

1. Admire Nicosia's Venetian Fortifications

Venetian Fortifications

Nicosia's most defining features are its impressive Venetian walls, which encircle the old city. Although crumbling significantly, much of their original three-kilometer length is still in place.

Famagusta Gate is the best preserved and is decorated with numerous coats of arms. The passage here leads out from the old city to the old city's empty moat area.

Paphos Gate and the Roccas Bastion beside it are more interesting for their role in modern history. Here, the UN Buffer Zone between the Republic of Cyprus and northern Cyprus dwindles to less than 200 meters, and until 2003, this was the only place on the island where Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots could get close up.

Today, flags for all four countries in the unresolved dispute (Greece, the Republic of Cyprus, Turkey, and north Cyprus) flutter in the breeze as a reminder of this island's unresolved woes.

2. Visit the Cyprus Museum

Cyprus Museum | Sergey Galyonkin / photo modified

This exceedingly well-thought-out museum should be top of your things to do in Cyprus list if you are interested in getting to grips with the ancient history of the island. Its extensive collection of artifacts swoops from the Neolithic period right up to the Byzantine era.

Room One contains excavated finds from the Neolithic age, including a large number of Steatite idols.

Room Two covers the Bronze Age, with many vases and jugs decorated with rather endearing animals. Mycenaean artifacts from Ancient Kourion are displayed in Room Three.

Head to Room Four to view the museum's highlight: a collection of votive figures (including Minotaurs, warriors, and charioteers) from 7-6 BC, found at Ayia Irini, near Morphou.

Rooms Five and Six are sculpture galleries with artifacts from a wide range of periods, while Room Seven contains a limestone female statue from Soli and a huge bronze statue of the Emperor Septimus Severus.

Continue on to Room Eight for exhibits of bronze tools and assorted weaponry, as well as some statues of gods. The tiny stone seals are interesting as are the Egyptian amulets and the green-horned god from Engomi.

You'll find representations of rock-cut tombs (2500 BC - 400 BC) along with the objects found in them, votive inscriptions, and other artifacts from tombs in Rooms Nine and 10.

Afterwards, check out the marble statues from Salamis in Room 13 and the terra-cotta figurines in Room 14 before heading for the exit. Address: 1 Leoforos Mouseiou, Nicosia Accommodation: Where to Stay in Nicosia

3. Shop for Crafts inside the Buyuk Han

Buyuk Han

This han (a caravanserai) was constructed in 1572 and is an excellently preserved example of the architecture of that period.

Hans were used as accommodation and storage places for merchants as they passed through town, often including stabling facilities for their horses (or camels) and sometimes recreation facilities such as restaurants and hamams (Turkish baths) as well.

The Buyuk Han is one of the city's finest historic buildings and has been painstakingly restored to its former glory.

Today the former sleeping quarters, now home to a variety of shops, cafes, and local artisan ateliers, are perfect for a spot of shopping to break up your old city sightseeing.

It's in North Nicosia, just a short stroll from the Ledra Street pedestrian green line crossing.

4. View the Byzantine Art inside Makarios Cultural Foundation

The Byzantine Museum

For anyone interested in Cypriot religious artwork, the Byzantine Museum contained within the Makarios Cultural Foundation is an important stop in the city.

Here, you'll find a staggering collection (220 pieces) of Christian icons that range in age from the beginning of the Byzantine era up until the 19th century.

For many people with a special interest in this artwork though, the highlight of the museum is the Kanakaria Mosaics on display.

These important art pieces were stolen from a church in the Karpas Peninsula after the 1974 Turkish invasion. In a story that could have been ripped straight from an art world thriller novel, involving dodgy art dealers and an Interpol sting operation, they were returned to the Republic of Cyprus in 1991. Address: Plateia Archiepiskopou Kyprianou

5. Admire the Architecture of the Selimiye Mosque

Selimiye Mosque

The most recognisable landmark in North Nicosia, the Selimiye Mosque began life as the Church of Agia Sofia and was finished after a 78-year construction process in 1326.

It has been a mosque since the 16th century, when the Ottomans took control of the island.

This merging of elaborate medieval church architecture and the simplicity of mosque design has created a fascinating space with the soaring interior of this typically Gothic structure having been whitewashed and any icon details long taken away.

If you'd like to enter, bring a headscarf (for females) and dress modestly (no shorts or shoulder-less tops).

The mosque is a five-minute walk from the Ledra Street green line crossing. Address: Selimiye Meydani, North Nicosia Cathedral of St. Sophia (Selimiye Mosque) Map (Historical)

6. Stroll Nicosia's Old Town Neighborhood

Building in Nicosia's Old Town

Although Nicosia doesn't have a huge amount of big-hitter tourist sights, the true attraction of a visit here is simply strolling the narrow lanes of the old town district.

Ledra Street is the main drag through the old town and is lined with cafes, restaurants, and shops, leading right up to the Ledra Street Green Line crossing-post to North Nicosia.

To explore the northern section of the old city, you will need to bring your passport to cross here.

Skirt off Ledra Street into the tumble of alleyways to check out the Ottoman mansion architecture of the House of Hatzigeorgakis Kornesios (20 Patriachou Grigoriou Street), who was the island's dragoman during the late 18th century and the Omeriye Mosque (Trikoupi Street), which has a 14th-century Lusignan entranceway.

Plenty of the old town's small churches have lavish interiors that merit a peek inside.

Two of the best are the Panagia Chrysaliniotissa (Archiepiskopou Filotheou Street), considered the oldest church in Nicosia and believed to have been built in 1450, and the Agios Ionnis (Plateia Archiepiskopou Kyprianou), which holds colorful 18th century frescoes.

Among the old town's many private museums that are worth seeking out, don't miss the photography and document collection at CVAR (Ermou Street), which focuses on the island's period under British colonial rule.

Afterwards cross into North Nicosia to continue your old town tour.

Along with the two main attractions of the Selimiye Mosque and the Buyuk Han, make sure to visit the Bedesten (Arasta Sokak), which first served as the Church of St. Nicholas of the English and then became a market in the Ottoman era; the Mevlevi Museum (Girne Caddesi), which offers a series of well-thought-out exhibits on the whirling dervish Sufi order; and the Arabahmet neighborhood.

While wandering Arabahmet's alleys, rimmed with Ottoman-era mansions, don't miss the finely restored Armenian church Sourp Asdvadzadzinare (Sehit Mehmet Huseyin Sokak), which dates from the 13th century.

7. See the Leventis Museum Collection

Recently renovated, Nicosia's Leventis Museum is housed in a beautiful old city mansion and presents the history of Nicosia through a carefully selected collection of ethnographical displays and artifacts.

For history lovers, this is not to be missed, and the museum has won European Museum of the Year for its brilliantly curated exhibits that trace the city's long and eventful past.

Among the displays, you'll find items dating from 2300 BCE right up to the Ottoman and colonial era with some of the most fascinating exhibits being the wonderful traditional costumes on show.

The museum also helps you understand the impact of British rule on Cyprus and the city's modern history with the island's division in 1974. Address: 17 Ippokratous Street, Nicosia

8. Day Trip to the Ruins of Bellapais Abbey

Bellapais

One of the island's most famous tourist attractions  thanks to writer Lawrence Durrell  Bellapais is a wonderfully old-fashioned village of humble whitewashed cottages that sprawl down the hillside ending at the evocative ruins of Bellapais Abbey below.

British author Lawrence Durrell wrote the book Bitter Lemons of Cyprus while living here, immortalizing Cypriot village life at the end of the British colonial period.

Although the village is incredibly picturesque itself, the main sight is Bellapais Abbey, an old Augustinian monastery full of intricately carved arches and cypress trees surrounding its cloister.

There are panoramic views across North Cyprus' coastline from the refectory roof.

Bellapais is 25 kilometers north from North Nicosia but there's no direct public transport to the village from the city.

If you don't have your own transport, hop on one of the frequent minibuses from North Nicosia heading to Kyrenia and then take a short taxi ride to the village from there.

9. Road Trip through the Mesaoria Region

Mesaoria Region

Just west of Nicosia is the Mesaoria region, scattered with tiny villages and ancient monasteries and churches. If you've got your own transport, this region is great for a day trip, exploring the historic highlights and rural scenery in easy reach of the city.

Of the villages here, Peristerona (30 kilometers west from Nicosia) is a quaint place, which deserves a visit for its 10th century five-domed Church of St. Barnabas and Hilarion, which towers over the surrounding traditional stone houses. Inside, the church contains important and well-preserved 16th century icon paintings depicting the presentation of Christ.

Head south from here to visit Maheras Monastery, sitting in splendid isolation on a craggy hill.

Then head northeast for a trip to the Monastery of Agios Irakleidios and the archaeological site of Ancient Tamassos, an old copper-working town that dates back to the 6th century BCE, both near the village of Pera.

10. Explore the Sights of Kyrenia (Girne)

Kyrenia

The atmospheric harbor town of Kyrenia (also known as Girne), 30 kilometers north of Nicosia, is northern Cyprus' vibrant seaside hub. It's one of the best places to visit if you are looking for day trip options from Nicosia.

The small harbor is overlooked by a grand Byzantine-era castle and backed by an old town district of tangled alleyways and Ottoman-period houses that are fun to explore.

Visit the castle first with its Shipwreck Museum, and then stroll harbor-side to see the Folk Art Museum in a restored carob warehouse.

Later, wind through the narrow lanes to the Church of Archangel Michael (Cambulat Caddesi), with its collection of religious icons that come from churches across northern Cyprus.

Frequent minibuses run from North Nicosia to Kyrenia, so it's very easy to day trip to the town by public transport.

11. Climb up to the High Towers of St. Hilarion Castle

St. Hilarion Castle

St. Hilarion Castle looks like it fell straight off the pages of a storybook. With its ramparts climbing up the jagged hilltop, this is the epitome of a fairytale castle (and it's said the castle in Disney's Snow White is based on St. Hilarion).

Built in the 10th century by the Byzantines, the castle sits in a lofty position that has been a strategic asset right up to the modern era.

Follow the path (wear good walking shoes) from the lower enceinte, where the garrison were housed, up to the middle enceinte, with its church and barrack rooms, and then climb higher to the upper enceinte, with a tower and royal apartments.

From here, a series of staircases lead you to Prince John's Tower, with amazing views across the countryside.

Located 36 kilometers northwest of Nicosia, St. Hilarion Castle is best visited with your own transport, as there's no public transport to the site. If you haven't rented a car, though, taxi drivers in North Nicosia are happy to run return trips to the castle.

12. Day Trip to Famagusta

Famagusta

The old town of Famagusta (also called Gazimagusa), riddled with crumbling Gothic buildings, is the most beautifully evocative town on the island.

Ringed by a mighty border of well-preserved Venetian fortifications, the old town is stuffed full of golden-stone ruins of basilicas and remnants of palaces that sit incongruously between rows of dilapidated houses.

Right at the center is the glorious Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque (Main Square), which was once the Cathedral of Agios Nikolaos and is a beautifully-preserved example of Gothic architecture.

Nearby are the roofless ruins of St. George of the Greek Church (Istiklal Caddesi), where faint traces of frescoes still remain on the apse.

On a grassy bank just inside the city walls are the haunting remnants of St. Mary Church and the Carmelite Church (Server Sokak).

From here, it's possible to climb up onto the Venetian fortifications at the Pulacazara Bastion. You can stroll along a segment of the walls here for commanding views across the town.

Famagusta is 58 kilometers east of North Nicosia, and there are regular minibuses between the two towns if you don't have a hire car. For a day trip, though, your own transport is best, as then you can easily fit in a visit to Ancient Salamis and other historic tourist attractions around Famagusta in one day.

13. Wander through the Ruins of Ancient Salamis

Ancient Salamis

Along with Ancient Kourion, Ancient Salamis is Cyprus' most important ancient-kingdom archaeological site, with a wealth of ruins to explore.

The gymnasium and baths complex, with its fine statuary and grandly columned courtyard, is the main attraction, but further into the sprawling site are vast remnants of two basilicas, an agora and a huge reservoir complex.

Nearly all the remains date from the city's Graeco-Roman and Byzantine eras, but Salamis' history stretches much further back.

It's said to have been founded just after the Trojan War and has been variously under Assyrian, Persian, Greek-Ptolemaic, Roman, Byzantine, and Arab command, which mirrors the island's own classical history.

There's no public transport to the site, so it's easiest seen with your own wheels, or you could catch a minibus from North Nicosia to Famagusta and hire a taxi for the short ride to the site.

The ruins are located about 73 kilometers east of Nicosia.

14. Visit the Remains of Buffavento Castle

Buffavento Castle

Less visited than St. Hilarion Castle and more dilapidated, Buffavento Castle is a windy, rugged outpost of a ruin atop a craggy mountain summit to the east of Kyrenia. The ruins here are not extensive but they lie in a picturesque location, towering over the forested slopes below.

Hike from the lower enceinte to the upper enceinte for the best views across the coast.

Buffavento is thought to have been built during the Byzantine era, and Crusader Richard the Lionheart once took ownership of it. Strategically, it played an important role in guarding the coastline along with St. Hilarion Castle to the west.

Located 52 kilometers northeast of Nicosia, the castle is best visited with your own transport as part of a day trip including St. Hilarion.

Where to Stay in Nicosia for Sightseeing

We recommend these great hotels and guesthouses with easy access to the town's top attractions: The Landmark Nicosia : At this 5-star luxury, guest will find spacious rooms, an excellent breakfast, an indoor pool, and a health club.

: At this 5-star luxury, guest will find spacious rooms, an excellent breakfast, an indoor pool, and a health club. Gul Hanim House : An intimate family-run boutique hotel with welcoming owners, this property has atmospheric old-world interiors and is conveniently located in the old town.

: An intimate family-run boutique hotel with welcoming owners, this property has atmospheric old-world interiors and is conveniently located in the old town. Centrum Hotel : This 3-star hotel has an old town location, air-conditioned rooms, and tea and coffee-making facilities.

: This 3-star hotel has an old town location, air-conditioned rooms, and tea and coffee-making facilities. Asty Hotel : This family-run budget hotel is like a home away from home. It offers free city shuttle, mini-golf and fitness center, and complimentary use of bikes.
16 Top-Rated Attractions & Places to Visit in Cyprus

Written by Jess Lee

Updated Mar 22, 2022

We may earn a commission from affiliate links ( )

This island has a grand history. Coveted by empires across the centuries, Cyprus' enviable position has made it a prized possession for all who rose to power in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Today, people still flock here, but it's now to seek out the island's beaches rather than to gain power and glory.

For travelers interested in more than sand and sun, you're in for a treat, as Cyprus has archaeological sites, fine Byzantine churches, and monasteries and museums galore among its historic tourist attractions.

It's also a wonderful place to go hiking, with an incredible wealth of unique flora and fauna. Best of all, it's so small that you can easily base yourself in one town and head out on sightseeing day trips from there.

Make sure you don't miss any of what's on offer by using our list of the top attractions and places to visit in Cyprus.

1. Ancient Kourion

Ancient Kourion

There's no shortage of ancient sites in Cyprus, but Kourion is the pick of the bunch. Exploring the grand monuments and mosaics here is one of the best things to do in Cyprus.

Romantically situated across a coastal cliff, with tumbling views of the countryside and Mediterranean below, it's a magical place.

The entire site is vast, but the most famous places to visit while here are the theater and the House of Eustolios, which holds a clutch of fine, well-preserved mosaics.

For those with more time up their sleeves, the large Byzantine basilica area is wonderfully picturesque with its tumbled columns and scraps of mosaic floor. Accommodation: Where to Stay in Limassol Read More: Top-Rated Tourist Attractions in Limassol

2. St. Hilarion Castle

St. Hilarion Castle

One of the Mediterranean's most beautiful castle ruins, St. Hilarion is an old Crusader bastion and home to many myths and legends.

Local lore claims the castle itself was built by a fairy queen, who used to charm local shepherds on the slopes here.

The castle's extensive ramparts and chambers snake up the mountain and are explorer heaven. A trail runs through the lower castle buildings of soldier barracks and stables, up to the remnants of towers, royal apartments, and chapels.

For those that climb right to the top, the views across the hills and down to the coastal plain are phenomenal.

St. Hilarion is in north Cyprus, so you need to cross the Green Line to visit. The north has three major castle ruins, but St. Hilarion is by far the best preserved. This is the one to visit if you're only on a day trip to the north.

3. Larnaca

Larnaca

Easygoing Larnaca, on the island's southeast coast, may be a seaside resort, but it's kept its local soul.

This is by far the most laid-back base for holidaymakers here. All the facilities for sun- and sand-based fun can be found, but the old crumbling Turkish Quarter (called Skala) and ornate Agios Lazaros (Church of St. Lazarus) give the town an interesting historical edge, while the center itself has retained the atmosphere of a proper workaday town rather than just a summer resort.

Even better, the salt lake, just to Larnaca's west, is packed full of flocks of pink flamingos during spring, and plenty of hill villages and cultural tourist attractions lie in the surrounding hinterland. Accommodation: Where to Stay in Larnaca Read More: Top-Rated Tourist Attractions in Larnaca

4. Karpas Peninsula

Golden Beach on the Karpas Peninsula

The most beautiful region in Cyprus is the lonely and rugged Karpas Peninsula, which stretches out in a long finger of golden beaches backed by rugged hills in the northeast of the island (in north Cyprus).

It's Cyprus' least trodden area with sublime hiking, quaint villages, and hidden historical sites in abundance.

This is the place you need to head if you want to experience the undiscovered and undeveloped island life of old.

Agios Filon church

Venture out for the day in a car (the area has virtually no public transport) and visit the mosaics of Agia Triada at Sipahi village before heading further northeast to remote Dipkarpaz village and the small ruin of Agios Filon church.

Afterwards, move on to the peninsula's famous Golden Beach, a vast swath of sand that sums up the Karpas' rugged appeal.

5. Ancient Salamis

Ancient Salamis

This huge archaeological site is home to a wealth of marble ruins and ranks up there with Ancient Kourion as the top historical site on the island.

Wandering along the dirt tracks of Salamis between sets of ruins from a muddle of different time periods is a lesson in the vast history of Cyprus.

Grand Hellenistic statuary  missing their heads, which were lopped off by over-zealous Christians  sit amid the ruins of the Gymnasium.

Two substantial ruins of Byzantine churches stand amid fields of wild fennel and weeds, and a humongous reservoir area showcases the engineering ability and management of what must have once been a grand ancient city.

Ancient Salamis is in north Cyprus and is easily combined with a day trip to Famagusta.

6. Kolossi Castle

Kolossi Castle

If castles had cuteness competitions, Kolossi would surely come up trumps. This tiny but perfectly formed castle just outside of Limassol is an old Crusader stronghold and a reminder of Cyprus' importance for the Europeans during the Holy Land Crusades.

First held by the Knights of St. John, the castle was used as a commandery for the area, with an excellent location looking out over the coast line.

Today, the castle's appeal is mostly down to its dollhouse proportions and its tranquil position amid snoozy Kolossi village. Accommodation: Where to Stay in Limassol

7. Cape Greco

Cape Greco

Even along Cyprus' buzzing south coast, there are regions where you can escape the crowds.

Cape Greco is a rugged and rocky coastal national park covering the promontory that makes up the island's southerly tip. There's a variety of walking trails here that start just east of the resort of Agia Napa.

The longest trail winds across the rocky headland, with staircases at points along the cliff, where you can descend to swim by the sea caves, and ending at the tiny cove of Konnos Beach, where you can cool off with another swim after your walk.

There is a wonderful variety of local flora here, particularly many of Cyprus' endemic wild orchids that bloom in early spring but the real highlight is the absolutely gorgeous coastal scenery with azure blue sea beyond.

8. Troodos Villages

Agros village in the Troodos Mountains

The Troodos Massif (Troodos Mountains), in the hill region of the southwest, are packed full of pretty villages full of stone-cut traditional houses and cobblestone alleys.

They're also home to some of Cyprus' most amazing churches and monasteries that hold vibrant frescoes and wall paintings that date from the medieval era.

The Troodos churches are so important historically that nine of them have been given UNESCO World Heritage status.

Hiring a car and tootling around this area, searching out stone cut chapels is a great day out but if you only have time to view one, the Church of Archangelos Michail in the little village of Pedoulas should be top of your things to do list.

For self-drive day trip potential, the Troodos Mountains are easiest accessed using Limassol or Nicosia as your base.

To cut down on the driving there are also plenty of small boutique-style hotels in the main Troodos Mountains villages themselves. Accommodation: Where to Stay in the Troodos Mountains Region

9. House of Dionysus

House of Dionysus

The big-hitter site in the resort of Paphos is the House of Dionysus, home to an incredible collection of mosaic floors that are feted for their excellent preservation and vibrant coloring.

Part of the larger Paphos Archaeological Site which contains the excavated remains of ancient Paphos, the area is home to a variety of Greco-Roman ruins, as well as several other mosaic houses.

Mosaic at the House of Dionysus

The House of Dionysus remains the most visited part of the site because it contains the best examples of intricate mosaic artistry.

The house is named after the god Dionysus who crops up in many of the mosaics throughout the house, which mostly depict scenes of Greek mythology. Accommodation: Where to Stay in Paphos Read More: Top-Rated Tourist Attractions in Paphos

10. Cyprus Museum

Cyprus Museum | Sergey Galyonkin / photo modified

With so many archaeological sites, Cyprus is packed full of museums, but the Cyprus Museum in the capital Nicosia is where you go to pull together all of the island's history.

Extremely well-curated, the museum takes visitors on a journey from the Neolithic age right up to the Ottoman era using beautiful artifacts to show the sophisticated artistry of each period.

The standout exhibits are the huge collection of terra-cotta votive statues that date from the 7th century BC.

Even if you're based on the coast, you should definitely make a half-day trip to the capital just to view the museum. Read More: Top-Rated Tourist Attractions in Nicosia Accommodation: Where to Stay in Nicosia

11. Nissi Beach

Nissi Beach

A swath of white sand loveliness that rolls onto the turquoise sea in Agia Napa, Nissi Beach is Cyprus' most famous strip of sand.

Yes, it gets crowded in summer (a beach this gorgeous doesn't stay a secret), but even with rows of sunbeds, there's no denying Nissi's beauty.

The water is very shallow at the shoreline and very calm within the bay as a whole, making it a great spot for families with young children, and in the summer high season, bags of facilities are on offer, meaning you can make an entire day at the beach.

12. Kyrenia

Kyrenia

Kyrenia (Girne) is north Cyprus' prettiest town having clung to the old Ottoman character of its harborside district.

Kyrenia Castle overlooks the quaint harbor on the eastern side, and climbing up onto the castle's ramparts rewards you with fantastic views across the town.

A squiggle of narrow lanes meander back from the waterfront area, full of wooden-shuttered houses in various states of disrepair. It's a great place for strolling and soaking up the timeless atmosphere and there are plenty of cafes overlooking the harbor for when you want to put your feet up. Accommodation: Where to Stay in Kyrenia

13. Underwater Museum

MUSAN Museum of Underwater Sculpture Ayia Napa | Rob Atherton / Shutterstock.com

Opened in 2021, the underwater museum park (officially called MUSAN Museum of Underwater Sculpture Ayia Napa) is an underwater forest featuring 130 sculptures created by reef artist Jason deCaires Taylor.

As well as being a major new tourist attraction, the forest has been created to help the local marine environment, with the sculptures (all made from PH neutral cement that will eventually attract coral) set between kelp, which will grow to become a dense forest attracting marine life to the area.

Both snorkelers and scuba divers can explore the underwater museum, though divers will be able to head down to the farthest depths of the park.

MUSAN is situated off the coast of Pernera Beach in Ayia Napa. Official site: http://musan.com.cy/en/home

14. Famagusta Old City

Famagusta old city

In north Cyprus, don't miss the old city of Famagusta, surrounded by sturdy, high Venetian-era walls and inside, scattered with the crumbling ruins of Gothic churches.

In the center is the Lala Mustafa Pasa Mosque, which was originally the Cathedral of St. Nicholas, built in the early 14th century during the reign of the Lusignans.

Sprinkled throughout the old city's lanes are several other churches in various states of ruin or disrepair, mostly dating from the 14th century and built in the Gothic style but also some earlier Byzantine examples.

Famagusta's biggest tourist attraction, though, is its 16th-century Venetian walls, with its bastions and gates, which can still be climbed up and traversed across at some sections.

15. Protaras Beaches

Beautiful beach in Protaras

In the island's southeast corner, the coastline running north from Cape Greco up to the Green Line (which separates the Republic from the north) is speckled with beaches.

This stretch of coast is a summer resort haven, with the little town of Protaras the central base for family-friendly holidays devoted to sun, sea, and sand.

Protaras Beach and Fig Tree Bay are the two most popular strips of sand, with plenty of water sports on offer and facilities for a full day of beach time, though the small white-sand cove of Konnos Beach, on the northern edge of Cape Greco, comes a close third.

To the north of Protaras, the little sand strips of Agia Triada Beach and Skoutari Beach are great options if you want to escape the biggest crowds, but during mid-summer, don't expect any patch of sand along this coast to be empty.

16. Nicosia Old City

Nicosia old city alleyway

Nicosia is Europe's last divided capital. Nicosia (Lefkosia) is the capital of the Republic of Cyprus, and North Nicosia (Lefkosa) is the capital of UN-unrecognized north Cyprus.

The Green Line slices right through the center of the walled old city district, and you will need to have your passport (and fulfill any of the current border requirements, which change regularly) if you want to cross.

In Nicosia (Lefkosia), the old city lanes are home to several excellent small museums, including the Makarios Cultural Foundation Byzantine Museum, and some fresco-covered churches, such as the Agios Ioannis Church.
9 Top Highlights of Pergamum (Bergama) & the North Aegean

Written by Jess Lee

Updated Sep 24, 2021

We may earn a commission from affiliate links ( )

From the hilltop Hellenistic ruins of ancient Pergamum that loom over the town of Bergama to quaint coastal villages of cobblestone streets lined with pastel-hued houses, the North Aegean region is packed full of sights.

Despite its historic tourist attractions and coastal scenery, this area tends to be overlooked by foreign travelers in their rush to get to Turkey's big-hitter ruins farther south along the coast. If you have time up your sleeve, though, the North Aegean doesn't disappoint.

Pergamum (Bergama) itself is reason enough to add the North Aegean into your itinerary with its mighty hill summit ruins one of the best places to visit in Turkey to capture a sense of the Classical era.

The North Aegean is also where many city Turks come for their holidays, in sleepy beachfront towns that burst into life every summer. They have no idea why international tourists seem to miss the North Aegean either, but they're happy to keep it Turkey's best-kept coastal secret for a while longer.

For ideas on things to do, read our list of the top highlights of Pergamum (Bergama) and the North Aegean.

1. Admire Pergamum's Acropolis (Bergama Akropol)

Pergamum's theater in the Acropolis

The ancient site of Pergamum (also often known as Pergamon and called Bergama in Turkish) should win an award for its stunning location alone.

Rolling across the hillside, five kilometers from the modern town of Bergama (there is a cable car if you have no car and don't fancy the steep ascent), Pergamum's Acropolis area was once the beating heart of a powerful Hellenistic city.

The most striking feature is the 15,000-seat theater, set into the steep southwest slope of the hill and reached by a narrow flight of steps from the Temple of Athena.

Adjoining the temple are the ruins of Pergamum's famed library, built around 170 BCE and once home to one of the largest libraries in the ancient world with 200,000 volumes (later carried off to Alexandria by Mark Antony as a gift to Cleopatra).

The Temple of Trajan in Pergamon

To the west of the library is the Temple of Trajan, built in the Roman era, with its marble colonnaded terrace.

Below the theater, you can see the remnants of the Great Altar (Altar of Zeus) dating from the 2nd century BCE.

You'll have to imagine what the altar looked like when it was covered with its original elaborate friezes depicting scenes from the Gigantomachy (the great battle between the Olympian gods and the Gigantes) as it was all carted off to Berlin by German archaeologists in the 1870s.

Today the friezes are known as the Altar of Pergamon and form the highlight exhibit of Berlin's Pergamon Museum.

Despite the ruins here being nearly wholly from the Hellenistic era, for Christian visitors traveling in Turkey, Pergamum's Acropolis is often an important stop on a biblical tour, as the Pergamum church was one of the seven churches of the Revelation (along with Ephesus and Laodikeia).

For a guided tour that offers a full roundup of the archaeological site, a good choice is the small-group full-day Pergamum tour from Izmir, which covers all the highlights of this classical city. It visits both the Acropolis and Asclepion areas, as well as Bergama Archaeological Museum. Lunch in Bergama and pickup and drop-off from your hotel in Izmir are included. Accommodation: Where to Stay in Bergama Official site: https://muze.gov.tr Pergamon - Acropolis Map (Historical)

2. Explore Pergamum's Asclepion (Bergama Asklepion)

Pergamum's Asclepion area

This ancient spa is a two-kilometer uphill hike from the modern town of Bergama.

During the 2nd century, it thrived as a major healing center, with mud bath treatments and the use of herbal remedies, and many of its remaining buildings date from its Roman-era glory days rather than the earlier Hellenistic period.

The physician Galen was born in Pergamum and returned to practice medicine here after his studies in the great centers of the Roman world. The work he did here would go on to become the founding elements of Western medicine.

An imposing colonnaded street leads you into the main complex, which holds a sacred well, library, Roman theater, and the Temples of Asclepius and Telesphorus. These temples are where patients would pray for recovery to the gods of medicine. Official site: https://muze.gov.tr

3. View Bergama's Red Basilica

Red Basilica

This massive red-brick ruin, which sits in Bergama town, was originally built by Hadrian (CE 117-138) as a temple dedicated to the gods Serapis and Isis.

Later, in the Byzantine era, it was converted into a church and dedicated to the Apostle John, who had earlier named Pergamum as one of the seven churches of the Revelation (also sometimes known as the seven churches of Asia Minor).

During the time of John writing the letters that would become the Biblical book of Revelation (around CE 96), Pergamum's Christian congregation (referred to as the Pergamum church) suffered great persecution and were regarded as a seditious sect, which is why Pergamum is referred to in Revelation as the place "where Satan has his throne."

Red Basilica

Some people believe that John could be referring specifically to this grandiose pagan temple as the throne of Satan, while others believe it could be a reference to the Altar of Zeus.

Although the interior of the Red Basilica is severely ruined, the building is definitely worthy of a visit just to witness the sheer bulk of the remaining walls, which give a great idea of how foreboding and impressive the temple must have looked when fully standing.

The interior was divided into three aisles by two rows of columns. The central aisle ended in a semi-circular apse, with a crypt underneath. Address: Knk Caddesi, Bergama Official site: https://muze.gov.tr

4. Visit Bergama Archaeological Museum

Lion's head from the Pergamum altar of Zeus |Alex Lovell-Troy / photo modified

When you've finished your sightseeing around the ruins of Ancient Pergamum, don't forget to poke your head in Bergama's small but well laid out museum.

Excellent exhibits here display finds from both the Acropolis and Asclepion, including intricately detailed Hellenistic friezes and Roman mosaics and statuary. Of particular note is the display of "Pergamum School" statues of gods dating from the 4th century.

Inside the museum, you can also see a replica of the Altar of Pergamon that today sits in Berlin's Pergamon Museum.

A less interesting ethnography section has some rather sad and dusty looking dioramas displaying typical scenes from Ottoman-era life. Address: Cumhuriyet Caddesi, Bergama Official site: https://muze.gov.tr

5. Relax on Bozcaada

Ayazma Beach on Bozcaada

Tiny Bozcaada is a sun-worshiper's paradise, with glorious beaches backed by vine-covered green slopes.

It's one of Turkey's most famous island summer escapes and a hugely popular vacation destination with city-siders from Istanbul and Izmir, who come here to relax, soak up the sun and sand, and hang out at the many chichi cafes.

Little Bozcaada town is the island hub, with a warren of cobblestone alleys wrapped around a Byzantine-era castle that looks across the harbor.

Two of the most popular stretches of sand are Ayazma Beach and Ayana Beach.

Ferries to Bozcaada run regularly throughout the day from Yukyeri ferry terminal on the mainland, near the town of Geyikli. During the summer months, there are also daily ferry departures from Canakkale.

6. Soak Up the Holiday Scene in Alacat Village

Alacat village street scene

One of Turkey's chicest summer vacation destinations, Alacat is a boutique-hotel haven with a burgeoning foodie scene. It's the prime beach town of Turkey's Cesme Peninsula, sitting 77 kilometers west of Izmir.

The beautifully restored, traditional stone houses of the village host cafes and restaurants specializing in local Aegean dishes, and if Turkey's famed culinary scene is high on your reasons for visiting then an Alacat stop should be on your itinerary.

Alacati Village

Alacat is also a major windsurfing spot with an annual international windsurfing competition. Whether you're a complete beginner or seasoned pro, this is a great place to learn or improve your windsurfing skills, with plenty of windsurfing companies offering lessons on the beach.

7. Stroll the Historic Lanes of Ayvalk

Ayvalik

One of the North Aegean's prettiest towns, Ayvalk is all crumbling, vine-draped stone houses in pretty soft pastels, which lead down to a bustling harbor, where fishing boats jostle with excursion vessels and yachts.

If you're here on a Thursday, don't miss the huge and lively market on Nese Sokak, where you can get a real vibe of local life. Otherwise this is a top place to head out onto the sea for some sunbathing and swimming (or diving) action.

Down at the harbor dozens of excursion boats head out on cruises during the summer months for trips around the bay.

8. Check Out the Ruins of Assos

Assos Temple of Athena

The Temple of Athena, with its panoramic views across the Aegean Sea, is a reminder of the glorious past of ancient Assos which was founded in the 8th century BCE on Turkey's Biga Peninsula.

Once home to philosophers such as Aristotle, today the modern village of Behramkale, beside the ruins, is a quietly charming place to sit back and marvel at the former splendor.

Assos Amphitheater

The temple is the major tourist attraction, but the Assos ruins also include a theater, necropolis and remnants of much later medieval walls to explore.

Assos is 148 kilometers northwest from Bergama and 86 kilometers south of Canakkale, so it makes for a good stop-off on a drive down the Aegean Coast between the two towns.

9. Enjoy a City Break in Izmir

Izmir

One of Turkey's most vibrant cities, Izmir is a bustling port with a history that stretches back to the 11th century BCE, when a settlement of Greeks founded the colony of Smyrna here.

Over the centuries, Smyrna grew into one of the Mediterranean's most important cities, surviving and thriving through countless empirical changes up to and through the Ottoman era.

Izmir

During Turkey's War of Independence in 1922, much of old Smyrna was burnt to the ground, which is why the city today is so strikingly modern.

This means that despite its long and illustrious past, historical attractions are few and far between within the city, although the vast Kemeralt Bazaar area in the city center is one of the surviving historic areas and is a fascinating district to wander in.

Izmir Map - Attractions (Historical)

More Related Articles on PlanetWare.com

Aegean Itinerary Ideas: You can make a great itinerary starting from Istanbul that combines visiting Pergamum and this area with visits to Canakkale for the WWI memorials of the Gallipoli Peninsula and the famed ruins of Troy.

From Izmir: If you want to use Izmir as a base, you can easily visit the huge and well-preserved ruins of Ephesus from here, and the charming village of Selcuk, with the excellent Ephesus Museum and its clutch of atmospheric Byzantine ruins in the center of town.
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The internet had a hard time holding it together after Donald Trump posted a bizarre tweet on Friday, claiming that Time Magazine called him and said he would probably be named Person of the Year  but only if he agreed to an interview and photo shoot.

In a tweet, Trump said he turned down their offer, saying probably is no good.

Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named Man (Person) of the Year, like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017

As Jason Easley wrote a short time ago, Time Magazine quickly debunked Trumps claim that they contacted him discussing the possibility that he would be named Person of the Year, saying in a tweet that they dont discuss their choice until publication.

The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6.  TIME (@TIME) November 25, 2017

Other social media users had priceless reactions to the presidents tweet, with some even giving the magazine a few suggestions as to who really should be this years Person of the Year.

Time should give it to Hillary, just to mess with him  David Frum (@davidfrum) November 24, 2017

If Time Magazine really wants to mess with Donald Trump, it should give Person of the Year to Robert Mueller.  Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) November 24, 2017

Hate to tell you but that PROBABLY means youre NOT Person of the Year. They just wanted a photo shoot. But Im sure you still have that fake TIME cover somewhere in storage. https://t.co/HkW1XkKxXK  Richard Stengel (@stengel) November 24, 2017

I dont know who the Person of the Year is, but I know that the rightful President of the Year is Hillary Clinton.  Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) November 25, 2017

I dont know wholl be Times 2017 Person of the Year, but I must say it would be nice if Robert Mueller turns out to be Times 2018 Person of the Year.  Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) November 25, 2017

We live in polarized political times, and we have a president who has only added fuel to the flames of already-existing divisions, whether they be racial, religious or political. These certainly arent laughing matters.

The dangerous policy proposals, the gross incompetence, the petty effort to overturn every measure enacted by President Obama, and the increasingly explosive developments in the ongoing investigation into Trumps ties to Russia  this is all serious stuff.

But every so often, Donald Trump says something so ludicrous that its impossible not to laugh at how buffoonish he is.
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On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill that would allow his government to register U.S. media as foreign agents. The move comes not long after multiple Russian officials threatened retaliatory action in response the U.S. governments recent decision to force Russia Today, a state-owned Russian media company, to register as a foreign agent.

The Foreign Agent Registration Act was passed in the United States shortly before the start of World War II. It was established to insure that the U.S. Government and the people of the United States are informed of the source of information (propaganda) and the identity of persons attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws.

After evidence of the Russian governments efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election mounted, RT and Sputnik, another state-owned media company, were specifically mentioned in a January report conducted by U.S. intelligence agencies as having made deliberate efforts to influence the American publics opinions on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton:

Russias state-run propaganda machinecomprised of its domestic

media apparatus, outlets targeting global audiences such as RT and Sputnik, and a network of quasi-government trollscontributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences. State-owned Russian media made increasingly favorable comments about President-elect Trump as the 2016 US general and primary election campaigns progressed while consistently offering negative coverage of Secretary Clinton. The Kremlins principal international propaganda outlet RT (formerly Russia Today) has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks. RTs editor-in-chief visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in August 2013, where they discussed renewing his broadcast contract with RT, according to Russian and Western media. Russian media subsequently announced that RT had become the only Russian media company to partner with WikiLeaks and had received access to new leaks of secret information. RT routinely gives Assange sympathetic coverage and provides him a platform to denounce the United States.

In September, Maria Zakharova, director of Russias Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that the U.S. should anticipate pushback for its actions against state-funded Russian media.

Russia is dedicated to all international statues and norms regarding the freedom of speech and proved that on many occasions, she said. When it comes down to a fight with no rules when the law is twisted and turned into an instrument for the destruction of a TV company, every step against a Russian media outlet will be met with a corresponding response. And whom this response will be aimed at, that is what Washington needs to figure out well. The clock is ticking.

In October, the UK-based Russian embassy published a threatening tweet conveying the same message.

.@MFA_Russia: ready to impose restrictions on US-owned media in Russia, no matter, state or private, in response to what is done vs @RT_com pic.twitter.com/TuWclZCXbk  Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) October 9, 2017

Earlier this month, Zakharova suggested that a practical phase of these response measures against U.S. media in Russia were set to begin within a week.
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Straight No Chaser is celebrating its silver anniversary with a three-month tour that would exact a physical toll on any performer  vocalists especially. Yet despite the grueling schedule (they are almost exactly in the middle of more than 60 performances), SNC performed an outstanding show Nov. 13 at the Charleston Gaillard Center. Read moreReview: Straight No Chaser delights young and old on a cappella tour
By PTI: Chennai, Nov 24 (PTI) The Madras High Court today decided to compare former chief minister J Jayalalithaas thumb impression on documents relating to a bypoll last year, with the late leaders fingerprints available with the Parappana Agrahara jail at Bengaluru.

Justice P Velmurugan also asked the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to furnish Jayalalithaas thumb impression details to the court.

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The superintendent of central prison at Parappana Agrahara and UIDAI regional officer, who handles Aadhaar, should give fingerprints details to the court by December 8, the judge said.

The matter relates to a petition filed by P Saravanan, DMK candidate for the November 2016 Thirupparankundram Assembly bypoll, challenging the election of AIADMKs A K Bose.

During the pendency of the case, Saravanan had filed an additional affidavit, questioning the validity of the election documents.

He contended that the thumb impression of Jayalalithaa was obtained without her consent and knowledge while she was unconscious, with the "connivance" of the doctors who attended to the former chief minister and others.

Jayalalithaa was lodged in the jail after her conviction in the Rs 65.66 crore disproportionate assets case in 2014.

She subsequently secured bail from the Supreme Court and was released on October 18, 2014, after spending 21 days in prison.

The Karnataka High Court later acquitted her and three of her associates of all charges, but the Supreme Court on February 14 this year set aside the order.

However, since Jayalalithaa passed away on December 5 last year, the apex court abated the proceedings against her.

The apex court convicted Sasikala, deposed AIADMK general secretary, and her two relatives in the case and had restored the trial courts order awarding four year jail term to them. She is at present in the jail.

In his petition, Saravanan had also questioned the ECs decision to accept the left-thumb impression of Jayalalithaa affixed on the documents filed in support of Boses nomination papers.

He further submitted that following the attestation, the AIADMK candidate (Bose) was allowed to contest on the two leaves symbol under the "defective form A and form B" of the documents, which had materially "affected the outcome of the election".

The Election Commission (EC) had last month submitted that it had accepted the left-thumb impression of the late leader, affixed on documents relating to the bypoll, based on a letter from AIADMK presidium chairman E Madhusudhanan.

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The letter stated that Jayalalithaa was not in a position to sign as she was unwell and hence, her left-thumb impression attested by the doctor could be taken on file, K F Wilfred, Principal Secretary of the EC, said.

The court had summoned the official for giving evidence on the election plea. PTI COR BN ZMN

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The trial for Russell Laffitte, a former top executive for Palmetto State Bank, continues this week in Charleston's U.S. District Court. He stands accused of helping Alex Murdaugh defraud his former law clients, while using money from his family's bank to prop up the disbarred attorney's shaky finances. Read moreBank official reported Russell Laffitte's handling of Murdaugh client checks as suspicious
There was a combination of superlative hysteria and political opportunism behind the warnings about the end of democracy leading up to last weeks elections, but it wasnt inconceivable that wed have flare-ups of violence and intimidation, that people who embrace the fantasy that the 2020 e Read moreEditorial: Election 2022 gave everybody something to celebrate
State Circuit Judge DeAndrea Benjamin appears poised to join a powerful federal appeals court bench following a U.S. Senate hearing in which Republicans repeatedly questioned her handling of two cases out of thousands she'd handled in South Carolina over two decades. Read moreSC Judge Benjamin praised by Clyburn, questioned by Republicans during US Senate hearing
The boss is coming on to you. You do want to be promoted, don't you?

Your co-worker won't take no for an answer when it comes to drinks after work. Why is it that your supervisor can't seem to pass you in the corridor without brushing against your breasts?

Every day is a fresh headline. Sen. Al Franken. Comedian Louis C.K. Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore. Those are the high-profile cases, but what should you do if the harassment is happening to you?

Maya Raghu, director of workplace equality and senior counsel at the National Women's Law Center in Washington, has this advice:

As soon as you have an inkling that what you are experiencing may be harassment, start documenting incidents. Write a memo to yourself, with dates, times and descriptions of what happened. Were there any witnesses? Make a note of them. Save hard copies of emails, texts and tweets. Transcribe voicemails and date them.

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Don't go it alone. "So many people are suffering in silence, and that's a lot to carry around," Raghu said. Before you decide to take any action, talk the incidents over with trusted friends, family members, and, if possible, trusted co-workers. Gain their perspective and their emotional support. You also might uncover helpful information about a serial harasser at work.

Sometimes, stopping the harassment might be as simple as telling the person to knock it off. But that, too, has its risks. Rehearse your actions, consider the possible consequences, and most important, make sure you are physically safe  a key consideration in workplaces such as factories and warehouses, or when people work shifts when there are fewer co-workers in the vicinity.

Before you complain, do research. Does your company have a policy? What is the reporting procedure? What are the potential outcomes? Does it say anything about retribution?

As you prepare to complain, "think of what outcome you'd like," Raghu said. "Most people simply want the harassment to stop and to get on with their jobs." This is another time to talk over strategies with friends, family and trusted co-workers.

Longtime Philadelphia employment lawyer Alice Ballard said in an interview that the human resources department "is not your friend" because it is charged with protecting the interests of the company. Friend or not, Raghu said, HR is the place to start. Because of the way the law has developed, it's important to show the proper procedures were followed, even before contacting agencies such as the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

If you are considering litigation, mentally and financially prepare yourself for a long haul with no guarantee of success. You might be counting on a settlement, but there's no guarantee of that either.
By PTI: Udupi (Ktaka), Nov 25 (PTI) A senior Hindu seer today said Hindus must bear at least four children till the Uniform Civil Code is implemented to check "demographic imbalance". Swami Govindadev Giriji Maharaj of Bharat Mata MandirAin Haridwar said the two-child policy should not be restricted to Hindus alone, noting that India had lost those territories wherever Hindu population reduced, resulting in demographic imbalance. He was speaking to reporters on the second day of the three-day Dharma Sansad organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, in the temple town of Udupi of coastal Karnataka. The Swami said the government was insisting on a maximum of two children, but till the time the Uniform Civil Code isA implemented, Hindus should have at least four children.AIndia lost many of its territories wherever Hindu population reduces, he said. "We have seen that India lost those territories wherever Hindu population reduced, resulting in demographic imbalance. The two-child policy should not be restricted to Hindus alone."

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On cow-vigilantism, the seer said some criminals were settling personal scores under the guise of Gau Rakshaks. "Gau Rakshaks are peace loving people. They haveAbeen defamed by some vested interests. Some criminals areAsettling scores under the guise of Gau Rakshaks," said GirijiAMaharaj. The mega religious event is being attended by over 2,000 Hindu seers, matt heads and VHP leaders from all over the country. PTI GMS RA APR APR MVV

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We all know Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, but among the other famous characters of Walt Disney are Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

According to Collectors Weekly , "At the end of the 1930s, Disney began modernizing its familiar characters with contemporary outfits and softening their physical features to achieve a more human silhouette. The market for Disneyana really went wild after the 1937 release of Disney's first full-length animated fantasy musical film, 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' with the princess and her little friends appearing on every imaginable household product. The film was originally released by RKO Radio Pictures and based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm."

Today, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs can be found, along with other Disney toys, with little to no effort at flea markets, garage sales, local antique and toy shows as well as online and through auction houses and specialty catalogs. Disney material from the pre-war 1930s through the 1960s is by far the most desirable. Local collector Ramona Metz, of Rushford, got started about 32 years ago.

"I always loved seeing the 'Snow White and Seven Dwarfs' movie," Metz said. "Once I realized Snow White and I are the same age, I decided to start a collection. I now have about 200-plus pieces to my collection. My oldest pieces and the most valuable are my three dwarf dolls, Sleepy, Happy and Bashful, with 1937 Ideal tags attached."

What's it worth?

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There are many manufacturers of these items. They include, from Lenox, a complete set selling for around $479. A Lladro #07555 Disney Snow White with Birdie, made in Spain, sells for about $425.

Then we have a set of Schmid Snow White and all seven of the Dwarfs music boxes selling $230. But looking back with the Antique Trader 2017 Price Guide, we see the value on an original art piece of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1936 around $2,151 and by Marx, 1938 Dopey walker tin litho wind-up with original box around $278.

A 1937 Dwarf Doc celluloid holding a lantern followed by Bashful and Sneezy, applied to airbrush background valued around $605. We are seeing the value and the selling prices jumping around. Of course, condition is everything, and some rubber items have deteriorated, making it hard for collectors to find those from 1937. Reproductions, including reproduced tin dolls, are also on the marketplace, so be aware.

Snow White Matryoshka Dolls  vintage nesting dolls  would make a fabulous gift for Christmas. They are selling on the market for around $40 on up. For Madam Alexander dolls, the selling prices and values jump, mainly because so many are on the market and finding the right individual to purchase may take some time.

More collectibles came out in the 1960s. Even McDonald's came into the act, with Snow White and the Dwarfs clip-ons in Happy Meals. Metz took advantage of that deal to add to her collection. These are going as low as $14 for a complete set, including the queen and witch, unopened.

Starting a collection

I asked Metz what a beginning collector needs to know. She said, "When a person decides to collect something such as mine, you need to have time to search out items at antique stores, auctions and in my case, stores carrying Disney items. They should also have a place to display the collection.

"I consider my collecting a hobby and I suppose it is a 'true love' and also exciting when finding items," she said. "Some friends and family have also contributed to my collection."

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Since Metz displays her items and folks have given her items, I would say they are probably impressed with all.

"Yes, they are very impressed, and I have received lots of satisfaction and enjoyment from the challenge of adding to my collection," she said. "When the time comes that it is necessary to move to smaller living quarters, I will consider selling some items and passing some on to family members."
So you've grown out your beard and mustache this month to support a better awareness of men's health  but Movember is more than half over, and you're starting to look, well, scruffy. How can you ensure this new look of yours is presentable this holiday season? We talked to Alex Masi, senior hair stylist and barber at Le Reve Salon & Barbershop in Philadelphia, for grooming tips.

KEEP THE 'STACHE TRIMMED

A lot of guys come in with mustaches that grow over the lip, Masi said. That's just wrong (not to mention gross.) "The beard looks so much better if you take a trimmer and trim right above your lip so that all the hair isn't curling in the mouth," Masi said.

COVER A DOUBLE CHIN

Commonly, men stop their beard at the point where the jaw meets the neckline. In some cases, that's too high, because it exposes double chins  and that gives a puffy look to the face. "You always want the beard to look like it's hugging the jaw," Masi said. "This way, you cast a shadow over the fuller parts of your face, and that slims your face down."

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BE MINDFUL OF THE SHAPE

Though you want the hair on the cheeks to be filled in as much as possible, keep the hair there trim. But let it be fuller in the chin. The thicker the hair is in the cheek area, the rounder your face looks, Masi said. In other words, pies are for Thanksgiving dinner tables, not our faces.

THIS IS HOW YOU CLEANSE IT

Some guys are tempted to wash their facial hair every day. That's not a good idea, Masi said, because that strips the hair of its natural oils. Instead, Masi said, use a gentle cleansing shampoo  clarifying ones are too harsh  every third day. "If you go any longer than three days," Masi said, "the natural oils will build up too much, (and your beard) will look greasy and weighed down."

MOISTURIZE

Facial hair is really coarse and needs a lot of moisture to keep flyaways at bay. Massage a cream- or oil-based product into your beard every day, Masi said, suggesting V76 Vaughn styling cream to keep facial hair looking its freshest.
"I grew up in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and my first introduction to the Midwest took place during my college years," Olia Richter said, explaining she spent two years at the University of Northern Iowa. "After a bit more traveling around the globe, life eventually planted me in Minnesota 10 years ago.

"Up until now, I have lived outside of Rochester and commuted to Mayo for work," Richter said, adding this fall she purchased a home here.

Having recently completed a degree in health care administration from St. Mary's University, Richter said, "In my heart, I am still a literature girl with an English degree. I am really looking forward to setting up a proper library room in my new house  walls lined with books, a cozy fireplace and leather chairs, and no TV  that definitely goes with my style!"

Richter has a daughter, Sophia, 8, and a son, Leo, 5.

Please tell us a bit about your style.

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I really like British style with a twist of retro and a nod to pop art. My sartorial choices tend to be classic because I work in a rather conservative organization, but I like to spice things up with fun accessories, statement jewelry and a dash of animal print. I wear a bit more of the latter on the weekends with a pair of jeans and fun shoes.

I would describe myself as "The Style Investor." My current wardrobe took me years to build. Fashion is a constant hunt for me, and I enjoy it. When I am looking for something new, I think of how it would pair with my existing pieces.

Sources of inspiration?

Probably my love for fiber arts and decorative arts in general. (Mexican self-portrait artist) Frida Kahlo is my alter ego. I also love classic black and white cinematography so always found that expression of femininity and classic beauty very appealing.

Progression of your style?

It took me years to learn to express it, and it is still shaping itself. In my younger days, I just couldn't afford much of what I liked and let's just say my sewing attempts could have been more flattering. I grew up during the Soviet days of Russia when shopping didn't exist in a form of pastime for most women. The stores were empty, and the fashion was closer related to politics than art. Those who could sew often looked more stylish than those who couldn't.

And since becoming a Minnesotan?

I think I have adapted well. I never even owned a pair of jeans before moving to the States. Never wore running shoes outside of gym -- and still refuse to do so! Given our weather patterns, Minnesota style is very practical and well made when it comes down to fashion  and that practicality resonates with my Russian roots. However, I do think that my upbringing in Saint Petersburg instilled a bit more need for flair in me. I dress up just for a quick run to the grocery store.

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What should every well-dressed woman have in her wardrobe?

At least a few very high quality and well-tailored pieces in her wardrobe that make her feel confident and joyful. Compliments on the outfit can brighten a tough day.

Do you have priceless sentimental pieces?

My mother's jewelry. I am very close to my parents, but we live so far away now. My mother's style can be easily defined by her love for jewelry, so I feel a strong connection to her when I am wearing something she gave me.

Something surprising in your wardrobe?

I have even more leopard print clothes than they suspect.

Parting thoughts?

I will share advice from probably the most stylish writer of all times  the fabulous Oscar Wilde himself: "It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

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WABASHA  An area man has been charged with a single felony after authorities say he spent about $140,000 of a relative's money  as she sat in her own feces in a filthy apartment.

Keith Harlan Novak, 63, of Wabasha, will make his initial appearance Tuesday in Wabasha County District Court, where he faces one count of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult.

The investigation began in March 2016 with a report of adult maltreatment of a 90-year-old woman who lived alone in an apartment in Wabasha.

The report raised concerns about her hygiene, physical health and lack of supervision  specifically, that she was hardly able to walk and her apartment had "an odor."

Novak was serving as the woman's power of attorney and primary caregiver, but was not bathing her very often and was asking other people in the building to shower her.

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He was heard yelling at her, "You're a ball and chain around my neck. Pick up your feet," the report says.

After the March report, authorities met with the woman and Novak; the victim allegedly had difficulty processing conversation, but Novak said he'd work with public health officials to determine services that would ensure the woman's safety.

Though she didn't qualify for in-home services, Novak agreed to pay for private care.

In June 2016, Wabasha County Social Services received another adult maltreatment report about the woman, who still was living alone in the same apartment.

The report was almost identical to the first, raising concerns about her hygiene, physical health and lack of supervision.

The day before the report was filed, paramedics responded to the apartment; the woman had fallen, and other residents heard her screaming for help.

The apartment smelled like urine, the report says, and alleged there was feces in her bed, on her chair and on the back of her pants; there was moldy food sitting on the table and the brakes on her walker were broken.

Neighbors heard Novak swearing at the woman, and claimed he refused to take her to the hospital after an earlier fall.

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When authorities went to the apartment to investigate, the woman answered the door wearing only a shirt and an adult diaper. She had difficulty standing, and the residence was as dirty as the maltreatment report alleged.

There were multiple medication bottles lying around, but the victim couldn't answer any questions about her medicine, the criminal complaint says. She didn't know what or when she last ate, and couldn't answer questions about her finances.

The woman was taken to an adult foster care facility, cleaned up and evaluated; it was there officials requested her medical records and learned she had dementia, court documents say.

She was transferred to a nearby nursing home; she died four months later.

Novak's guardianship was terminated, and law enforcement opened an investigation of financial exploitation with the help of social services and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

Officials discovered the victim had a home in St. Louis County; when she moved to Wabasha, Novak "signed the property over to himself and then used her funds to continue paying for services on the property," the complaint says.

From July 2013 until her death in October 2016, the woman's bank account disbursed a total of $178,252. Out of that, a total of $139,057.91 was "attributable to the benefit of (Novak) and not for the benefit of" the victim, court papers say.

The total included about $33,000 for coins/metals, $7,000 for vehicles, $8,000 for the St. Louis County home and $83,725 for "self," the report says.

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When interviewed a month after the woman's death, Novak said he went to her apartment every morning for breakfast, took her to lunch every day and fixed her supper or brought her a plate of food.

He said he took her to dental and medical appointments, didn't consider her to be a vulnerable adult, the documents say, and claimed much of the money was "gifts," because the woman was "a generous person."

An investigator asked Novak specifically about a withdrawal of $37,030 in October 2014; he said the money went "oh, her and for the kids and what and me."

Novak allegedly said it was permissible to issue himself such an amount of money during the three years because "he took care of (the victim) and she just gave him money."

If convicted, the charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, a $100,000 fine, or both.
Authorities are investigating after a man apparently shot himself Friday afternoon in Mayo Park , the green space directly southeast of Mayo Civic Center.

The call came in shortly before 4 p.m., sending Rochester police to the park for a report of a man with a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Two events were being held at the facility at the time: A performance by the Allegro School of Dance and Hiawatha Homes ' Festival of Trees .

Both events proceeded as planned.
Danielle Hutton has seen patterns repeat themselves.

"My life that I've been going through is basically a repeat of my mom's," said the working single mother of two.

Hutton moved to Rochester in 2015 after a five-month stay in a St. Cloud women's shelter. She said it was the start of an effort to get on the right track.

"My life has changed for the better," she said. "I'm a lot happier; I'm not depressed; I'm not stressed; I'm not angry; I'm not bitter.

"I used to be two years ago."

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She said she's learning to acknowledge her mistakes, which include letting her temper keep her from earning a high school diploma and making a choice that resulted in a misdemeanor theft charge on her record. Those decisions have stood in the way of employment opportunities.

"I made some messed-up decisions and now those messed-up decisions are catching up to me," she said, noting she also spent too much time in an abusive relationship.

Working with a social worker from Olmsted County Community Services is helping her understand her destructive path and showing her opportunities to take a new one. She's putting past issues behind her and working to earn her GED, with the hope of eventually landing a job in health care.

"Me, being a mom, I just want to show my kids there is way more in life," she said. "You don't need to settle for less, and you should always reach higher for a goal and have faith.

"I didn't do that, and I didn't have anyone to tell me that."

She said it's time to make some changes.

A new approach

Paul Fleissner, director of Olmsted County Community Services, also sees a potential for changes that could help people similar to Hutton, who are stuck in a multigenerational cycle of poverty.

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He's hoping a planned pilot program will bring that change.

The program will include at least four counties  Olmsted and Dakota counties in Minnesota and two counties in Colorado  and stems from a Harvard gathering of community service directors and others seven years ago. Fleissner said he and others were told change was needed.

"We were told we hadn't moved the poverty needle in 40 years," he said, noting the comment was unsettling after about 25 years in the field.

Follow-up discussions brought new ideas for tackling what Fleissner calls the national "poverty prison," which sees generation after generation of families facing repeated struggles.

Creating a pathway

From the early conversations, the Pathways to Prosperity pilot program emerged. With plans to start next spring, the program aims to identify root causes of poverty for individual families and create programs to address the entire family, rather than sticking with efforts that frequently focus on parents and children separately.

The approach isn't entirely new for Olmsted County. John Edmonds, the county's supervisor of family support programs, and his staff have been working to motivate young mothers in recent years, hoping to guide them down new paths with their children.

The pilot program will build on local efforts by focusing on single mothers with young children. It will aim to ensure they have housing, child care, health care, education, food and other support needed for a path out of poverty.

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Edmonds said that path often can be hidden from young mothers in economic despair, who typically don't see a possibility for anything better. As a result, they frequently seek to simply maintain the status quo, which at the best means paying rent, putting food on the table and getting by.

He said social workers need to show them options exist.

"These folks cannot see the possibilities," he said, noting it takes time to show them the cycle of poverty can end.

"You have to have some belief that you have control over your future," he said. "For people living in generational poverty, they don't believe they have control. It isn't part of their repertoire of possibilities."

Hutton's story is an example of that. She followed in her mother's footsteps before discovering there might be a different way.

Barriers to opportunity

From providing dedicated county staff to help keep clients on track to creating computer programs to identify potential pitfalls, the pilot program seeks to address a variety of issues that often keep people in a cycle of poverty.

Chief among the problems are limitations on how state and federal support can be used. Fleissner said it can be precarious when people try to pull themselves out of poverty because adding a paycheck or changing jobs can jeopardize support for day care or other needed services.

Olmsted County social worker Briana Satzke said that's exactly what has happened to one of her clients in the county's Bright Futures program, which helps teen mothers in their children's early years.

She said the young mother sought to improve life for herself and her child by seeking a better-paying job after graduating high school. Unfortunately, the pay increase took her out of the Minnesota Family Investment Program, while also forcing her to pay an extra $400 per month in child care.

"She actually ended up leaving two different jobs because she was making too much and couldn't afford living on her own," Satzke said.

She's now back to making $12 to $13 per hour instead of $16 to $17.

Hutton said she can relate. She's forced to watch her hours to make sure she doesn't lose the assistance she needs to support her children.

She said the loss of child care support would be devastating.

"It's like dominoes," she said. "Everything's going to collapse.  You need child care to be able to work. You need a job to pay your bills. If I lose child care, I have no one to watch my kids."

Bridging the gaps

Part of the Pathways to Prosperity effort will be creating a way to recognize when programs such as child care support are in jeopardy so options can be found.

Fleissner said parents in poverty might have supports elsewhere that reduce reliance on one program, which could provide funds to be used elsewhere. He's hoping the planned pilot program will allow flexibility in funding that doesn't currently exist.

"We can't do that now or I go to jail," he said. "Those funding streams are not flexible."

Financial tools to track family support and forecast pitfalls are being developed with the help of the University of Minnesota and the University of Denver. Fleissner said he hopes they will show when funds can be shifted to actually stabilize families.

Stability in the existing system, he said, means a single parent with two children must earn $3,422 per month and be able to take care of the emotional and mental health needs of the family.

A way out

Fleissner said he's hoping the pilot will show there is a path toward that goal. He said he expects it to take about three years to produce the needed evidence.

"We hope they are working or finishing some sort of career pathway by that time," he said. "We hope their kids are on target in school. We hope they are out of poverty, so (that they're) over 200 percent of federal guidelines. Those are distinct measures we could take."

He acknowledges the policies are created to protect taxpayer dollars but points to an opportunity to reduce the long-term tax burden by supporting the whole family today and guiding two generations out of the "poverty prison."

"If we can get them out of our system, I would argue we're stopping the next generation, so we're starting to get people out of the river," he said.
STEWARTVILLE  Concerned about local families struggling to pay for school lunches, Megan Romens stepped forward and set up a GoFundMe page .

"As a parent, I think it just tugged at my heartstrings. It's like, 'Oh my gosh. These poor kids have so many other things to worry about.' In school, you are worried about academics and social things," Romens said. "I just felt like this was just something too big to put on a little kid or even a high schooler's shoulders."

Romens set up the fundraising webpage a week ago after KTTC-TV reported some Stewartville Public Schools students with negative lunch accounts might have had their lunches dumped in the trash and been given a sandwich instead. On Nov. 1, the district began enforcing a new policy that students with negative fund balances be given an alternative lunch.

In the wake of a public outcry over the reports, the district stopped enforcing the policy. It is now seeking input on its website, and the school board is slated to discuss the policy at 7 p.m. Monday in the Central Education Center Cafeteria. The district has a $10,000 deficit in its lunch fund account due to parents behind on making payments. Superintendent Belinda Selfors did not return a phone call on Friday seeking comment.

Determined to do something constructive to help solve the problem, Romens reluctantly stepped forward to create the fundraising webpage. She doesn't like being in the spotlight, but the mother of two wanted to help.

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"I just felt like we needed a positive solution to the problem," she said. "And I think it's easy for people to grumble and get upset about what's happening, but none of that really helps the situation, and the bill obviously needs to get paid."

As of Friday afternoon, the GoFundMe page had raised $7,125 toward its $20,000 goal. A total of 90 people have donated, including donors who are not from the area. Romens said she is amazed by the generosity  especially from people who live outside the community. That includes a woman from Minnetonka who donated $3,000.

Donor Rene Heimer wrote on the GoFundMe page: "The children bear the shame. That is not okay. I grew up poor and know how this feels. Chip in now. It's the least we can do. Just quit complaining and chip in."

Another contributor, Gloria Fredkove, wrote, "Glad to help with this fundraiser. Children should not be punished for poverty. Everyone deserves a healthy, balanced lunch. Hope the school adopts a kinder policy."

Romens is dismayed by all the negative attention Stewartville has received from the reports about "lunch shaming" and is eager to highlight the community's caring side. She noted if everyone who has voiced concerns about the situation on Facebook gave $10, "that would be a huge amount of money raised."

She added, "This is just my small way of helping."
Here are a few things to know about the planned Pathways to Prosperity pilot program slated to start in the spring.

1. As many as 200 single mothers are expected to benefit from the pilot.

By focusing on single mothers, 26 and younger, with children 5 years and younger, the program likely will include 35 to 40 Olmsted County families and 60 families in Dakota County.

Another 100 families will be helped in two Colorado counties.

In Olmsted County, the families helped likely will be in one of five existing programs that provide assistance to single mothers. They are:

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 Baby Steps  for first-time mothers.

 Bright Futures  for teenage mothers.

 Steps to Success  for mothers with multiple children.

 Reach  a program seeking to address equity concerns for mothers with children 5 and younger.

 Hope  Long-term case management for struggling families.

2. It's not a new idea.

Creating programs aimed at the whole family is not a new idea. The Gage East program in Rochester is an example of a two-generation approach that seeks to help parents and their children at the same time.

Likewise, the Jeremiah Program, which is planning a new location in Rochester, helped initiate efforts to focus on parents and children struggling to get out of poverty.

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Paul Fleissner, director of Olmsted County Community Services, however, said the approach is new for some tax-funded programs, which have policies established by federal and state lawmakers.

He said he hopes creating a program that provides flexibility in benefits can demonstrate a better way to provide services that could reduce taxpayer expenses in the long run.

"That's what we are trying to prove," he said.

3. State is pitching in.

To help create possibilities, the county is receiving unsolicited state support. A $200,000 grant is helping Olmsted County start work on financial tools that will help track and determine benefit needs. Another $300,000 is possible next year to support added county staff and other work as the program starts.

Jovan Perry, the Minnesota Department of Human Service's director of Economic Assistance and Employment Supports, Children and Family Services, said the state is excited about the effort because it's part of a national push to address concerns. She said state officials already were looking for partners at the local level.

"We looked across the state," she said, noting Olmsted County's efforts were recognized quickly.

4. Program can address equity concerns.

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John Edmonds, Olmsted County's supervisor of family support programs, said the Pathways to Prosperity pilot, along with its focus on the whole family, has the potential to address disparities seen in current programs, with more minorities needing to rely on help.

He said the tools will allow social workers to create level playing fields that can pull all people out of poverty, which will be required for lasting change.

"If we are truly going to embrace the concept and address the issue, we've got to address the equity issues simultaneously," he said.

5. Two-generation approach offers additional opportunities.

Dakota County also is using the two-generation approach found in the Pathways to Prosperity pilot to address concerns in juvenile corrections.

Kelly Harder, the county's director of Community Services, said the idea is to focus on parents, as well as young offenders

"We all know how well Mom and Dad are doing is what brings the kid to our door in many cases," he said, noting a juvenile offense can be a sign of other needs in the family.

Harder said the goal of the separate program is to see if it can get the whole family started in a better direction.

6. Program allows flexibility.

Social worker Kirsten Huus said the Pathways to Prosperity pilot will offer a unique opportunity to meet the needs of clients.

"Every family has different barriers and different challenges to getting where they want to be, and we are able to individualize services," she said, noting the county already has some flexibility but added opportunities will improve prospects.

She said young mothers in the Baby Steps program frequently run afoul of paperwork requirements in what can be a daunting system of multiple programs and requirements.

She said streamlining the supports and catering to the needs of the client can mean reduced anxiety for stressed parents and better paths for their children.
By PTI: Washington, Nov 25 (PTI) Flies can be more than pesky picnic crashers, they carry hundreds of different species of harmful bacteria and may help to spread disease, a study warns.

Researchers at the Pennsylvania State University in the US have warned the public to avoid eating food during picnics.

In a study of the microbiomes of 116 houseflies and blowflies, they found that these flies carry hundreds of different species of bacteria, many of which are harmful to humans.

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"We believe that this may show a mechanism for pathogen transmission that has been overlooked by public health officials, and flies may contribute to the rapid transmission of pathogens in outbreak situations," said Donald Bryant, from the Pennsylvania State University.

The researchers were able to investigate the microbial content of individual fly body parts, including legs and wings.

The legs appear to transfer most of the microbial organisms from one surface to another, said Stephan Schuster, from the Pennsylvania State University.

"The legs and wings show the highest microbial diversity in the fly body, suggesting that bacteria use the flies as airborne shuttles," said Schuster.

"It may be that bacteria survive their journey, growing and spreading on a new surface. In fact, the study shows that each step of hundreds that a fly has taken leaves behind a microbial colony track, if the new surface supports bacterial growth," he said.

Blowflies and houseflies - both carrion fly species - are often exposed to unhygienic matter because they use feces and decaying organic matter to nurture their young, where they could pick up bacteria that could act as pathogens to humans, plants and animals.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, also indicates that blowflies and houseflies share over 50 per cent of their microbiome, a mixture of host-related microorganisms and those acquired from the environments they inhabit.

Surprisingly, flies collected from stables carried fewer pathogens than those collected from urban environments.

The researchers found 15 instances of the human pathogen Helicobacter pylori, a pathogen often causing ulcers in the human gut, largely in the blowfly samples.

The known route of transmission of Helicobacter has never considered flies as a possible vector for the disease, said Schuster.

"It will really make you think twice about eating that potato salad thats been sitting out at your next picnic," Bryant said.

"It might be better to have that picnic in the woods, far away from urban environments, not a central park," he said. PTI SNE SNE

--- ENDS ---
EAGAN  When you were cooking that Thanksgiving turkey on Thursday, it might have been tempting to pour the extra grease down the drain.

But there are some gargantuan-sized reasons to avoid that temptation. From London to Baltimore, horror stories about "fatbergs"  giant globs of fat and grease mixed with disposable wipes and other debris  have made headlines in recent months.

Fatbergs wreak havoc on sewer systems, clogging pipes and forcing a costly removal. The one in London was 130 tons, the size of 11 double decker buses.

Minnesota hasn't had any monster fatbergs  yet. But the sticky combo of grease and wipes is causing plenty of problems for city sewer systems around the state.

At a sewer lift station in Eagan, Randall Mateo, an interceptor service worker for the Metropolitan Council, has the unenviable job of raking disgusting clumps of unidentifiable material from a metal grate and dumping them into a garbage can.

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He describes the mess: "Some rags and wipes, and anything that's big enough to get stuck in the screen here. And there's some pieces of grease."

This is all the stuff people pour in their drains or flush down their toilets that they shouldn't. It ends up here, where it can clog up city sewer pipes and jam equipment if it's not removed.

Conditions for fatbergs get the worst around holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, said Cathy Rofshus, public information officer with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

"We're all enjoying these big turkey dinners, and then people have those roasting pans with the drippings in the bottom," she said. "For decades, we've just washed that down the sink with lots of hot water and sudsy soap."

Once the fat and grease reach the sewer, it congeals and coats the inside of the pipe, said Cynthia Finley, director of regulatory affairs for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies.

That's where the trouble starts.

"It's just like a person who eats too many fatty foods, and it clogs up their arteries and blood vessels with the fat," Finley said. "The same thing happens in sewer pipes."

The problem got a lot worse about a decade ago, when the popularity of disposable wipes exploded. They're marketed for everything from cleaning to removing makeup to bathroom hygiene.

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Many of these products are labeled flushable. But that's misleading, Finely said. They don't break down in water the way toilet paper does, so they get stuck in pipes or in sewer equipment.

"Every time you flush a wipe or flush dental floss or feminine hygiene products or pour fats, oils and greases down the drain, it's not going to disappear," Finley said.

When wipes combine with fats and grease, they can form concrete-like masses. Removing them is difficult and expensive.

Doug Kammerer, utility superintendent in Watertown, said grease has stopped up sewer pipes in his city, forcing workers to use high-pressure hoses to scour the insides and remove the blockages.

"How we tell it's grease is when you pull the hose out, it's very slick, very slimy," Kammerer said. "You know then it's grease that's causing the backup right there."

Restaurants also contribute to the problem but not as much as people might think. Many cities require them to install a trap that catches most of their grease before it reaches the sewer pipes.

That's where Art Kallenbach saw an opportunity. Kallenbach owns a company called Drain King. He empties those traps and takes the grease to a wastewater treatment plant in St. Paul.

But Kallenbach says grease traps have to be maintained and emptied regularly to work correctly.

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"Some of these stores will put in a grease trap and then forget about it and never pump it," he said. "I've been to stores 5 years old and they didn't even know they had a grease trap."

Most people don't have grease traps at home. Rofshus advises pouring that grease into a container, then putting it in the trash. Wipe out those greasy pots and pans with a paper towel before you wash them, and don't flush anything but toilet paper.

"What we're trying to tell people is even if it says flushable," Rofshus said, "put it in the trash."
As you read this, President Trump's tax plan is being debated. Congress will change it. Where this ends, no one knows.

I want two things:

1. Simplification.

2. More money in private hands.

Trump offers some of both.

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His cuts would leave more money in private hands, where it will be used more efficiently. Politicians' spending decisions already put us $20 trillion in debt; they shouldn't be trusted with more money.

Cutting the corporate tax rate isn't popular (rich people!), but a cut is needed. Economic growth is really important. It's stifled when America's taxes are higher than other nations'.

Trump also offers some simplification. Good. The more complex the rules, the more time we waste hiring accountants and the more time lawyers spend fighting over who qualifies for what. Trump would double the personal exemption (fewer people will itemize) and kill the "death tax," deductions for local taxes and the alternative minimum tax.

It's a start. But that's not nearly good enough. Heck, the "simplification" bill itself is 400 pages long.

Americans spend about 7 billion hours trying to comply with today's tax rules. That's the equivalent of 3.7 million people working 40-hour weeks. What a waste.

I spend hours filling out forms and forwarding paperwork to an accountant. I distort my spending and investments because of tax rules. What a waste.

America's first 1040 form was four pages long. Today's code is more than 3.7 million words. No one understands it.

Even the tax specialists get things wrong.

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Yet parts of Trump's plan make taxes more complex: He increases the child tax credit and creates a new credit for nonchild dependents. It may be fair to help people who care for helpless adults, but each new deduction creates complexity and parasites who feed off it. As usual, some rich people will game that credit, and some poor people will never figure it out.

Far better to lower everyone's taxes to, say, 15 percent, by getting rid of all deductions. Then we could focus on creating wealth instead of filling out forms. But good luck with that, President Trump.

Today's tax deductions are the main reason we've got a huge culture of lobbyists.

One of the most unfair tax breaks is the mortgage interest deduction. It encourages rich people to buy more homes than we need. It exacerbates housing bubbles.

Trump merely proposed cutting the maximum deduction to half-a-million dollars. But even that has the swamp creatures screaming, "Unfair!"

Jerry Howard of the National Association of Home Builders says he will fight that "tooth and nail." He claims it "is a direct assault on the American dream of homeownership."

Bunk. Canada has no mortgage deduction, yet Canada's homeownership rate is higher than the United States'. The big mortgage deduction is welfare for the rich.

But people like Howard have clout. Homebuilders and mortgage bankers give politicians money.

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Likewise, even some Republicans in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey now are whining about losing state tax deductibility. They fear voter backlash in their districts.

Once again, Congress ends up fighting over who gets the biggest cuts instead of the overall tax haul and size of government.

Ideally, tax cuts should be accompanied by even larger spending cuts to avoid expanding that $20 trillion debt. But that's not happening.

How about a variation on Trump's two-for-one regulation rule (cut two regulations for each new one you propose)? Cut two dollars from the budget for every dollar in tax reduction. That way we won't end up deeper in the hole.

The best way to avoid Washington's spending getting out of balance is to avoid giving them our money in the first place.

I'm rooting for a tax law so simple that everyone understands it, and one that will keep as much money as possible out of government's hands.

That's the best formula for a growing economy.
I want to take the liberty of drawing attention to weekend reading of special interest without commentary from me. I recommend:

 Douglas Murray, The Russian Revolution, 100 years on. Murray looks back at what Communism wrought and decries its continuing appeal. NRO has posted Murrays recent cover story along with sidebars by Anne Applebaum, David Pryce-Jones, Noah Rothman, Roger Scruton, and Radoslaw Sikorski assigning notable books for extra credit reading.

 Clifford May (Foundation for the Defense of Democracy), Came the revolution. The New York Times has more or less celebrated the centenary of the Russian Revolution this year. The celebration expresses a nostalgia for Communism. Former Timesman Cliff May is not amused.

 Seth Barron (City Journal), Autonomy in the UK. A salute to Nick Cave for tebelling against the BDS crowd, with cameos by Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr.

 Victor Davis Hanson (Defining Ideas), A Thanksgiving toast to the Old Breed. Dr. Hanson draws on his family background and his scholarly work to raise a toast to those who are gone.

 Ben Cohen (Wall Street Journal), A chess novice challenged Magnus Carlsen. He had one month to train. Max Deutsch is a self-described extreme learner. In the words of the song, there are such things:

Max [Deutsch] was not very good at chess himself. Hes a 24-year-old entrepreneur who lives in San Francisco and plays the sport occasionally to amuse himself. He was a prototypical amateur. Now he was preparing himself for a match against chess royalty. And he believed he could win. The unlikely series of events that brought him to this stage began last year, when Max challenged himself to a series of monthly tasks that were ambitious bordering on absurd. He memorized the order of a shuffled deck of cards. He sketched an eerily accurate self-portrait. He solved a Rubiks Cube in 17 seconds. He developed perfect musical pitch and landed a standing back-flip. He studied enough Hebrew to discuss the future of technology for a half-hour. Max, a self-diagnosed obsessive learner, wanted his goals to be so lofty that he would fail to reach some. At that, he failed. Max was 11-for-11. He knew from the beginning of his peculiar year that the hardest challenge would come in October: defeating Magnus Carlsen in a game of chess.

The article is behind the Journals paywall. The companion video, however, gives the short version of this compelling and  educational? inspirational?  story (below).
I cant think of a single political figure in recent American history who has been hated as deeply, or for as long, as Hillary Clinton. From the moment she emerged on the national stage in 1992 as a distinctly feminist prospective first lady, she has been the target of right-wing wrath woefully out of proportion to anything she has ever said or done.

2. Hillary Clinton being elected president (at last) would monumentally piss off misogynistic trolls, and whats not to like about that?

This is where Clinton offers a quality that no politician in America can beat. While Republicans are trying to tar her with a bogus scandal connecting her to Russia (and anyone who believes Clinton did something wrong in the Uranium One deal lacks credibility on all matters political), the reality is that no candidate can be better described as Russias nemesis than Clinton. Putin has always hated Clinton because of his innate sexism , which has manifested in his policies , and she certainly didnt endear herself to him by publicly criticizing Russian corruption in 2011. As the ample connections between the Trump campaign and Russia or its water-carriers like WikiLeaks clearly demonstrate, the one person we know we can trust more than anyone is the candidate who Putin very obviously did not want to see as Americas president.

I agree with the basic principle of Godwins Law: The first person to invoke Hitler in a political debate should normally lose. The exception, of course, has to be when someone has genuine Hitler-like qualities. A foreign despot who has invaded neighboring countries and has a right-wing nationalist agenda is about as Nazi-like as you can get.

The reason for this is sexism. Its not the chic thing to say right now, but no other explanation really makes sense. Yes, Hillary Clinton is more centrist than either party likes these days, but why is she singled out for opprobrium here when her husband  who actually served as president  remains popular despite holding the exact same views? The same point can be made about the claim that she is corrupt or too establishment. To the extent that these accusations are valid, they are no more true of Clinton than of the vast majority of politicians from both parties (especially Trump).

Theres much more, but you get the idea. I really cant tell whether this piece is an attempt at droll satire, but Salon isnt very good at satire, so I expect this is meant seriously.

I hope she runs. My long position on popcorn futures will come in yuuge.
The session covered the issues faced by the people in the fashion industry, at all levels.

By India Today Web Desk: At the India Today Conclave East 2017, during a session called Cutting Edge Fashion: The Eastern Style, designers Dev R. Nil, designer Madhu Jain, supermodel Ketholeno Kense Vihienuo, jewellery designers Eina Ahluwalia and Raj Mahtani discussed the issues of the fashion industry. The session was moderated by News Editor Padmaja Joshi.

Talking about the aesthetics of Kolkata fashion, designers Dev R Nil said, "I am trying to be Eastern style, and I want to be proud of our fashion. We don't have the support from our government to revive our fashion. I see the actual sensibility of Kolkata aesthetics are getting lost."

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Textile designer Madhu Jain talked about the support from government, and said, "My entire career has been textile- based, and I have supported myself. I haven't taken any aid. Our Minister is very receptive and supportive. Things are changing. I think a woman is always interested in handicrafts."

Dev R Nil also added, "From our perspective it might look easy, but the small textile-based families are getting lost. They are struggling with the cost of material. Things are not happening fast enough. The government is interested in Make in India, but they're not concerned with Make in Bengal. For the beginners, it's chaos. The young ones are lost. They don't know what to do in an industry that has 4-5 levels of taxing."

Madhu then objected, and said, " Over the past 15 years, I have been working on several projects. The present Textile Minister is different. She wants to sit across the table and address weavers and their problems."

But Dev R. Nil added, "Your geographical location (New Delhi) is the reason."

Talking about compartmentalisation, Ketholeno Kense Vihienuo said, "I am the only North- Easterner, but its only because of the fashion. My look is not commercially acceptable, I am not a market face. They think I am very oriental."

Dev responded, "We love exotic-looking models. Clients think North-Easterners won't work, they compartmentalise."

Talking about the change in fashion industry, Raj concluded, "I honestly think fashion needs to change. Couture Week is all about Iehengas and more lehengas. There is no fashion happening in the country."

Ketholeno then added, "The buyers want this. They are not ready to change."

Talking about change, Eina Ahluwalia also added, "The responsibility for making the change lies upon us. Our jewellery is unlike the others, ours is aggressive. We've subverted the idea of jewellery, to assert our own identity of Kali and Durga. It is our responsibility."

Talking about the stagnation in the fashion industry, Raj said, "I think the fault lies with bodies. The bodies that appoints counsels, they are the ones making these stereotypes. They want representation. At the end of the day, you need a very responsible body. The government choose the right people for the body. "

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Nil responded to Raj, and said, "We're the highest selling bridal designers in the country. Our fashion affects the national market. But we don't have a voice, so we sit here and let the madness happen."

Bringing up the topic of aesthetics, Dev said, "By and large, there is a downright fall of aesthetics. It's the advent of mass media that is encouraging the downfall of aesthetics."

Eina Ahluwalia also said, "A large part of responsibility is ours. We have to choose between business and aesthetics. Change happens when you try to normalise new things."

--- ENDS ---
New Jersey is becoming more racially diverse, but its schools are becoming more segregated, according to the latest report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project.

The report released this month, New Jerseys Segregated Schools: Trends and Paths Forward, says racial and economic segregation in schools is mostly the result of segregated communities. This sort of segregation can have a detrimental impact on minority student outcomes, studies have shown.

I think theres pretty much no question that, overall, students benefit from being in a diverse setting, said Paul Tractenberg, a national expert in public education, a former professor at Rutgers University and founder of the Education Law Center.

The latest report, which includes data through 2015, is an update of a 2013 report that drew attention statewide after it pointed out racial and economic segregation patterns from 1989 to 2010. Tractenberg collaborated with Civil Rights Project co-founder Gary Orfield and his team on the 2013 report, sparking his interest in the topic.

People have put it off the table for discussion, but the reality is that were getting more and more powerful data showing its a life-changing problem, said Orfield, who co-authored the report.

Orfield is a professor at UCLA and co-director and co-founder of the Civil Rights Project. He said the organization has been consistently looking at this topic on a national level for its 21 years of existence but a few years ago started delving into state data.

Data from the report show that school population in New Jersey is becoming less white and more Hispanic. Despite the increase in minority populations, schools continue to be segregated in urban areas, mainly along the New Jersey Turnpike corridor, the data show, but also near Atlantic City. The proportion of schools serving less than 1 percent white students  8 percent  has nearly doubled in the last 25 years. At the same time, the exposure of black and Hispanic students to white students is decreasing.

Not all schools suffer from a diversity problem. In South Jersey, analysis of enrollment data from the New Jersey Department of Education from the 73 school districts in The Press coverage area shows a diverse population with small concentrations of segregated school districts, mainly near Atlantic City.

Tractenberg said he was hopeful when he saw about 15 percent of school districts in the state actually do mimic the racial makeup of the state. He said Atlantic County is home to five of the 19 most proportional districts in the state: Buena Regional, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Greater Egg Harbor Regional and Somers Point.

Thats 26.3 percent, the highest percentage of any county, he said.

Last month, the Egg Harbor Township School District held a strategic planning meeting where more than 100 community and faculty members were tasked with coming up with the pros and cons of the school district. Many of the groups in the meeting pointed to the districts diversity as a positive.

The district is 46 percent white, 25 percent Hispanic, 14 percent Asian and 10 percent black. Superintendent Kim Gruccio said the diversity is great exposure for all students.

Were in the business of education, but were very fortunate to be diverse, and thats education right there, she said. They embrace it, and we coexist with a mutual respect for one another.

Egg Harbor Township High School Principal Terry Charlton said the diversity also helps spur conversations and lessons that may not have otherwise happened.

Students bring up things in class that really make the students engage because of their cultural backgrounds, Charlton said.

Tractenberg said the biggest educational benefits from diverse schools are for minority and low-income students, but theres also evidence that white and Asian students, who dont suffer a disadvantage, may also achieve greater. Then there are the cultural and social benefits of a diverse school.

To function at maximum effectiveness in that multicultural world is experience in doing it, Tractenberg said. The earlier they start that process, the better off well all be.

There is hope for New Jersey if more focus can be put into diversifying communities, improving school-choice options and better training for educators, students and community leaders, the report states.

Orfield said it was true that not everything can be desegregated, but there are options to help integrate students, including school choice, county technical schools and regional magnet programs. He said school districts and towns should be intentionally pursuing integration.

Tractenberg said New Jersey has to make a plan to deal with segregation in schools, and that should start with housing. He said much of the housing segregation that exists is not happenstance but the result of government and legal intervention through housing policies and zoning rules.

Another way to address segregation might be the most controversial: Taking away home rule of school districts.

The state has chosen to assign responsibilities for carrying out education to local school districts, but thats not part of the constitutional structure, Tractenberg said. The Legislature of N.J. tomorrow could abolish all school districts and say were running everything out of Trenton.

Whats the likelihood of change? That depends, Tractenberg said.

I believe (Gov.-elect) Phil Murphy has a lot of progressive instincts. Hes identified school desegregation as something hed like to see happen under his administration. Is he going to bite some of these bullets that are going to be explosive? Tractenberg asked.
Blue Acres demolitions in the Bay Point section of Lawrence Township began this past week, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The Blue Acres program buys properties that have experienced repeated flood losses, removes structures and cedes the land to a wildlife management area operated by the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife. The area can then provide habitat for wildlife and a buffer in future storms for properties located farther inland.

A total of 20 homes on a peninsula in Cumberland County jutting into the Delaware Bay are being demolished in the $10 million effort, funded by state and federal funds. Piling or docks will be removed from another 14 vacant lots, according to DEP.

Delaware Bay gets first artificial reef on New Jersey side The states first artificial reef in the Delaware Bay will be centrally located for recreati

Demo work is being done by Site Enterprises and includes approaches from both land and water, DEP said.

Due to wildlife habitat restrictions, work can only be done in the water through Feb. 28, 2018. Work must be completed by April 14, DEP said.

Ventnor scores bigger flood insurance discount: Ventnor property owners who have flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program will start to receive a 25 percent flood insurance discount next May, up from the 20 percent discount they had been receiving, the city announced last week.

The city has done what is needed to be certified as a Class 5 community by the NFIPs Community Ratings Program, which encourages towns to take steps to reduce their flood-loss risk.

There are 4,747 property owners in Ventnor with flood insurance covering more than $1 billion in property. Policyholders paid $4.2 million in premiums in 2017 alone, according to the city.

Public hearing at Stockton to discuss solar energy market in N.J. GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP  The state Board of Public Utilities is holding public hearings on the so

A 25 percent discount will save $1.06 million next year, and the savings will grow as rates increase, the city said.

Rutala Associates, the citys planning consultant, led the reclassification efforts, the city said.

Cape May County grants fund Avalon park, bike path: The Borough of Avalon will use almost $2.07 million in grants from the Cape May County Board of Chosen Freeholders for a new park and expansion of its bike path.

About $2 million will be used to create a new Surfside Park at the Boardwalk at 30th Street and the beach. It will replace an old playground and skateboard park with new playground equipment, a gazebo, a play lawn and a small performance stage. It will also include new bathrooms, rinsing stations and a changing station. Water will be reused for irrigation, and bicycle racks will be added.

The $70,000 expansion of the bicycle path, currently on Dune Drive outside of the business district, will use parts of First and Avalon avenues, with more signage and street markings added for public safety.

Pinelands protection also about culture, history The 1.1 million-acre Pinelands National Reserve may be the largest body of open space betwee

Pheasant season underway: The 2017 pheasant season is underway and thousands of birds are being distributed throughout the state, DEP said.

The birds are distributed by a formula that includes proximity of stocked wildlife management areas to stamp buyers home zip codes. More information on the formula can be found at njfishandwildlife.com/ artpheasallocation16.htm.

The northern region receives 41 percent of the pheasants stocked as part of the Pheasant Stocking Program, compared with 27 percent for the central region and 32 percent for the south.

Pheasant stocking maps can be found at njfishandwildlife.com/pheasmaps.htm.

DEP asks for help tracking exotic tick species

The NJDEP Division of Fish & Wildlife is asking deer hunters in Hunterdon County for help locating an exotic East Asian tick species known as the longhorned tick or bush tick that was recently found on a farm there.

The initial identification was done by Rutgers University and the Hunterdon County health department. This tick is not known to occur in the U.S., although there are records of at least a dozen previous collections of this species on animals and materials presented for entry at U.S. ports.

This tick is a serious pest to livestock, as well as wildlife, pets and humans, so DEP is doing targeted surveillance on deer that are harvested around the area where the tick was found. For questions on the divisions surveillance and deer check, call Carole Stanko at 609-984-6295.

Eagle rehabbed in N.Y. doing well in N.J.

In October, NJ Eagle Project volunteer Randy Lubischer spotted a banded adult bald eagle near his home in Monmouth County, according to Conserve Wildlife Foundation wildlife biologist Larissa Smith.

A New York state band on the bird held a number W34. The New York Division of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources said it found the eagle as a hatch-year bird on the side of the road in Onondaga County with tissue damage and worms. The division rehabilitated the bird and banded it Oct. 7, 2011.

It was observed in Darlington, Maryland, on Nov. 18, 2016, then in northeastern Maryland on March 1.

Now, W34 looks to be staying in New Jersey to nest as he has found a mate, a sub-adult female, who still has dark feathers on her head. They have started to build a nest and have been copulating.

Its possible W34 fledged in New Jersey, since recent N.J. fledges outfitted with transmitters have taken long flights north after leaving their nest areas, said Smith.

CWF also said many New Jersey banded eagles return to the state to nest. For more, visit conservewildlifenj.org/blog/2017/11/20/w34-a-ny-banded-eagle-in-nj.
By Malini Banerjee: Woman power shone bright at the India Today Conclave East 2017 in the session 'Kanyas Show The Way'. It was the first session with West Bengal's minister for Woman and Child Development and social welfare Dr. Shashi Panja in attendance. Six young girls who benefited from the 'Kanyasree scheme' of West Bengal state government spoke up and left the audience inspired.

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One of them was an acid attack survivor Paramita Bera who couldn't have finished her education if not for the kanyasree program. The gutsy girl from West Midnapore survived 12 surgeries to reconstruct her face.

'I may have been a victim before but now I am a survivor. Earlier I'd hide my face. Now I don't. My face is the mirror of the society today', said Paramita proudly.

Kuheli Basak had another of such an inspiring story to tell. 19-year-old Kuheli was not going to be allowed to take her higher secondary examinations.

A difference of a INR 1000 helped her complete her plus-two examinations. With a donation of Rs.25000, she opened a photocopy and printout centre that now employs two more people. All of 19, she's a micro entrepreneur who's funding her own organisation. West Bengal's Woman and Child development minister Dr. Shashi Panja pointed out the figures which helped 'Kanyasree Program' bag the UN award for public service.

"We have sanctioned nearly 5000 crores for 42 lakh girls. Among 663 projects from 62 countries that were considered for the award, this program had the most impact on the most disempowered," she said.

Here is the full coverage of India Today Conclave East 2017.

WATCH | We appreciated Bengal Chief Minister's move of declassifying Bose files, says BJP's Chandra Bose at India Today Conclave

--- ENDS ---
LOWER TOWNSHIP  A Thanksgiving night crash ended in police charging a 17-year-old township resident with driving while intoxicated.

At 9:10 p.m., officers responded to Breakwater Road and Route 9 for a report of a car striking a light pole. The Erma Volunteer Fire Department, AtlantiCare medics and Lower Township Rescue also responded.

Police said they found a black 2015 Chrysler 200 at the scene. An investigation revealed the car was headed east on Breakwater when it crossed the intersection and ran off the road. The car struck the utility pole and a fence. The pole landed on top of the car.

Authorities said the driver, later identified as a 17-year-old boy from the township, had gotten out of the vehicle prior to police arriving. First responders evaluated the boy at the scene. He was then flown via helicopter to Cooper University Hospital in Camden for further medical evaluation.

Police said an investigation, as well as the drivers statements, led to the DWI charge. The driver also was issued summonses for reckless driving, failure to maintain a lane and disregard of a traffic control device.

Atlantic City Electric crews responded to the scene and repaired the utility pole. Officers Stephen Flitcroft, Eric Coombs and Kenneth Walker and Sgt. Kevin Lewis are investigating the crash.
TORONTO, November 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Graham G. Clow, Chairman, is pleased to announce the appointment of Arthur G. Graham, MBA, P.Eng., as Vice President, Corporate Development (New York), Avakash Patel, P.Eng., as Vice President, Metallurgy (Toronto), and Grant Malensek, P.Eng./P.Geo., as Principal Engineer - Valuations (Denver).

With over 37 years of experience as a financial institution mining expert with experience in operations, project development and business development, Art Graham will lead the continued growth of RPA's New York office. Prior to joining RPA, Mr. Graham was the Managing Director of Kingsteps Mining Advisory, LLC (Kingsteps) where he provided risk assessment and project evaluation services to capital providers and financing advice and corporate development guidance to companies in the mining sector. Prior to joining Kingsteps, Mr. Graham held senior mining finance positions with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Citigroup, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Behre Dolbear Capital, Bankers Trust, and the Bank of Nova Scotia. Mr. Graham's project evaluation experience includes over 150 projects and mine sites covering 15 different commodities in 20 countries in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australasia and central Asia.

Avakash (Akoo) Patel joins RPA with over 24 years of senior professional experience, including 15 years in operations and nine years in consulting and construction. Prior to joining RPA, Mr. Patel was Corporate Manager - Mineral Processing and Metallurgy for Kinross Gold Corporation (Kinross) where he was responsible for process leadership on operations and capital projects from scoping studies, testing programs, feasibility studies, to construction and EPCM projects. Prior to joining Kinross, Mr. Patel held senior positions with two large engineering firms. Mr. Patel's experience includes project management, mineral processing, extractive, hydro, and pyrometallurgy, capital projects, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate development. Mr. Patel will be based in RPA's Toronto office.

Grant Malensek is a Geological Engineer with over 20 years' experience preparing project finance models, mineral property valuations, and valuations for the international arbitrations in the mining industry. Prior to joining RPA, Mr. Malensek was a Mineral Project Evaluation Consultant for a consulting firm where he carried out fatal flaw, due diligence and Independent Engineer reviews for equity and project financings. Earlier in his career, Mr. Malensek spent 10 years as a mineral exploration/development geologist for several major mining firms in Canada, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, USA, and Peru. Mr. Malensek's consulting experience includes scoping level to feasibility studies, capital cost estimates and reviews, mine strategy, and options analysis and project evaluations in connection with mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Malensek will be based in RPA's Denver office.

RPA has been providing independent geological and mining consulting services to the international minerals industry for over 30 years from offices in Toronto, London, New York, Denver, Vancouver, and Quebec City. The company recently celebrated 10 years of serving the UK and European markets from its City of London office.

Through the strength and experience of its team, RPA has gained a worldwide reputation for independent, innovative, and practical advice on investments, project development, and operations at all stages, in all mineral commodities.

http://www.rpacan.com

Contact: Arthur Graham, RPA USA Ltd., Three Times Square, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10036, USA, +1(646)485-0577, arthur.graham@rpacan.com; Avakash Patel, Roscoe Postle Associates Inc., 501 - 55 University Ave., Toronto, Ontario, M5J 2H7, Canada, +1(416)642-1424, avakash.patel@rpacan.com; Grant Malensek, RPA USA Ltd., 143 Union Boulevard, Suite 505, Lakewood, Colorado 80228, USA, +1(303)330-0952, grant.malensek@rpacan.com

SOURCE Roscoe Postle Associates Inc.
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
Speaking on Day 2 of the India Today Conclave 2017 in Kolkata, the Jharkhand CM said the police along with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has cracked down on those funding Naxal terror.

By India Today Web Desk: Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today said that the state will be "Naxalism-free" in 2018.

Speaking on Day 2 of the India Today Conclave 2017 in Kolkata, the Jharkhand CM said the police along with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has cracked down on those funding Naxal terror. As a result, many Naxalites have surrendered, he said.

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Simultaneously, Raghubar Das said, the government is working towards developing Naxal-hit regions. "I have visited many of these Naxal-hit areas," he said, and added that "people have supported development".

Asked about why Raman Singh, chief minister of Naxal-hit Chhattisgarh, has not been able to declare the state Naxalism-free despite being in power for three tenures, Das maintained that both Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are together fighting Red terror in the region.

ON GUJARAT ELECTION

Raghubar Das said he is confident that people in Gujarat will give a befitting reply to the Congress in the upcoming Assembly election.

"Those who called Narendra Modi a merchant of death (maut ka saudagar) were given an apt response by the people of Gujarat in 2014," the Jharkhand chief minister said. "This time too, they (Congress) will be defeated," he said.

Raghubar Das said that post 2014, people have voted for politics of development. In Uttar Pradesh too, people voted against dynasty politics and gave a thumping majority to the BJP, he said.

ON ANTI-CONVERSION BILL

Asked about the contentious anti-conversion bill, Raghubar Das said that everything has been done in the ambit of Constitution. "Congress governments in Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have enacted similar laws," he said.

The Jharkhand Assembly recently passed the anti-conversion bill which prohibits forceful conversion and prescribes a fine of Rs 50,000 or up to three years in jail, or both for the same.

Refuting allegations that the bill targets a particular community, Raghubar Das said, "No one has the right to take benefit of someone's poverty and lure them into conversion" and maintained that this was not an effort to divide tribals on the basis of religion.

Here is the full coverage of India Today Conclave East 2017.

+++

WATCH | Police, Enforcement Directorate have cracked down on Naxal terror funding: Jharkhand Chief Minister at India Today Conclave

--- ENDS ---
New Delhi, Nov 20 : Emphasising on the growing importance of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu has said that the legal community should make use of this mechanism for enhancing ease of doing business.

Prabhu conveyed the message through video conferencing at the Bar Leadership Summit held here recently.

The agenda of the Summit, organised by Indian National Bar Association (INBA), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Centre for Trade and Investment Law (CTIL) and Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, was 'Reforms in the Indian Legal Sector'.

The Summit explored issues and concerns surrounding the liberalisation of the Indian legal services sector.

"The Summit on the whole agreed on the need to reform the legal sector to align itself with the new global realities in the profession," the Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Minister of State for Human Resource Development (Higher Education) Satya Pal Singh, in his inaugural address, stressed on the importance of law as an enabler of justice and spoke on the importance of the impartiality and neutrality of the judicial system in India.

He noted that the justice system should focus on the difficulties faced by victims in particular.

Secretary General of INBA Kaviraj Singh highlighted the dramatic changes that have taken place within the legal sector in India in the last two decades and identified the three major areas which need focus - conduct of arbitration in India, reforms in the Indian legal regulatory sector and liberalisation of legal services.

Law Secretary Suresh Chandra said India has huge potential to increase the size of the legal market, which is around $9 billion at present. He suggested that reforms in this sector could tie in with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's agenda of 'reform, transform and perform'.

Additional Economic Adviser, Department of Commerce, Sangeeta Saxena, highlighted the need for diversification of services exports and the particular importance of the legal services sector in boosting India's overall performance in services.

President of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) R.S. Suri noted that the "gulf of understanding between the Bar Council of India, State Bar Councils and the government needs to be bridged" and that frequent consultations and deliberations are needed in reforming this important sector.
Moscow, Nov 25 : Progress has been made in achieving a political settlement in Syria and it is urgent to advance the process of intra-Syrian negotiation, representatives of Russia and the United Nations said on Friday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov exchanged views with visiting UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura about the latest international contacts on the Syrian issue and its possible political settlement, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Xinhua news agency reported.

On Wednesday, presidents of Russia, Iran and Turkey agreed to continue their joint efforts to facilitate a possible transition to a political settlement in Syria and restore peace and stability to the war-torn country.

"Particular emphasis was placed on the importance of building up international efforts to launch a comprehensive intra-Syrian negotiation process with the leading role of the United Nations based on the UN Security Council resolution 2254," a ministry statement said.

The two sides agreed to maintain close contact on the whole complex of Syrian issues, it added.

Later on Friday, the UN special envoy talked with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in a separate meeting and they discussed the organization of the Syrian National Dialogue Congress.

De Mistura said Russia has made many efforts to create the basis for the political settlement of the Syrian crisis.

They agreed that it is necessary to "arrange a political dialogue as soon as possible" as well as organise and conduct a political settlement process in Syria.

The Syrian National Dialogue Congress, proposed by Moscow in late October at Astana talks in Kazakhstan for Syrian settlement, is expected to bring together opposition and pro-government forces, as well as representatives of all Syrian ethnic and religious groups to work for the peace process in the country.

The date and participants of the congress have not been confirmed yet.
Washington, Nov 25 : US President Donald Trump told his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he will stop arming a Syrian Kurdish militia the Turkish government considers a terrorist organisation, Turkey's Foreign Minister has said.

The decision would cut the flow of weapons from the US to the YPG, the Kurdish militia fighting with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, just six months after Trump approved the plan over Turkey's strenuous objections.

"Our discomfort regarding the provision of weapons to the YPG was conveyed to Trump once again," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference Friday, CNN reported.

"Trump very clearly said he had given instructions to not provide weapons to the YPG."

The White House did not dispute the top Turkish diplomat's account of the Friday morning call between Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but suggested there were no impending plans to stop supplying weapons to the YPG.

Trump told Erdogan "of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria, now that the battle of Raqqa is complete and we are progressing into a stabilization phase," the White House said in a statement.

Pressed about the US's specific plans, National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton told CNN the US' supply of weapons to the YPG will be "winding down over time, as the physical caliphate is destroyed."

It was not immediately clear whether Trump had overpromised in his conversation with Erdogan or if the Turkish foreign minister had oversold Trump's pledge to the US, but the lack of clarity could leave the YPG and other US-backed allies in Syria uncertain about the future of US involvement in the region.

But Cavusoglu was emphatic, saying Trump "repeated by the end of the conversation before they hung up that he ordered generals and National Security Adviser (Lt. Gen. H.R.) McMaster not to give arms."

Trump approved a plan to supply weapons to the YPG in May to help bolster the effort by US-backed forces to capture Raqqa, the self-declared capital of IS.

The YPG is closely affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK, which has carried out terrorist attacks against Turkey, prompting concerns from the NATO ally that weapons supplied to the YPG could wind up in the hands of the PKK.

US-backed forces captured Raqqa from IS last month in a major milestone in the fight against the terrorist group, but the Trump administration has offered no signals it would stop arming the Kurdish militia after the city's fall.

Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, said Turkey welcomes Trump's "promise of not providing weapons to the YPG" and is waiting for the pledge to be "implemented practically."

Trump's call with Erdogan had been expected to focus on the Syrian conflict, coming days after Erdogan met Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to discuss Syria's future.

Trump also spoke earlier this week with Putin to discuss Syria.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday and termed the latter's relationship with US President Donald Trump as failed "hugplomacy".

"Narendrabhai, baat nahi bani (this is not done). Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed," Gandhi tweeted on Saturday morning.

On Friday, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed, accused of masterminding the 26/11 Mumbai massacre in 2008, was freed after 10 months of house-arrest in Pakistan.

Earlier this month, the US Congress also passed a bill which dropped action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) as a condition for Pakistan to receive hundreds of millions of dollars.
Madrid, Nov 25 : Venezuelan opposition leader and former metropolitan Mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, has submitted a request for political asylum in Spain.

Even though Ledezma himself, who arrived in Spain a week ago from Colombia after fleeing Venezuela, had stated he had no intention of seeking asylum, Spanish government spokesman IAigo Mendez de Vigo announced on Friday that he had changed his mind, Efe news reported.

"It's another indication of the Venezuelan people's struggle to recover their freedom and a normal democracy," the Spanish spokesman said, after noting that the opposition leader himself stated after landing in Madrid, that "today upon arriving in Spain, I feel free".

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy received Ledezma last Saturday. The Venezuelan opposition leader had been under house arrest in his country since 2015, accused of conspiracy and criminal association.

Ledezma met Rajoy and the latter told him that Spain will continue working bilaterally and in collaboration with its European and Ibero-American partners to help reach a fully democratic solution for Venezuela.

Ledezma censured the situation his country is going through and has called on other opposition leaders to forget about the "personal issues" and certain "inconsistencies" of recent times.

Earlier this week, the opposition majority at Caracas City Hall cancelled Ledezma's title of metropolitan Mayor after he fled the country.
Kolkata, Nov 25 : Emphasising the anti-corruption drive initiated by his government, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Saturday said nobody will be spared and even he is ready to go to the jail if he commits something wrong.

"Our CID or vigilance department questioned several former ministers in regards to corruption charges on social welfare, public health. It is not that we have stopped the investigation and it has been continuing. Even I am ready to go to jail, if I commit something wrong," he said at the India Today Conclave East.

He said those sincere in fighting against corruption would admit there was no bias from the Chief Minister's Office to Panchayat Office.

"There would no discrimination," said Sonowal.

"We have started acting against corruption from the first day of our government and we decided in the cabinet meeting to crack down on all the illegal segments and strengthen the revenue collection department and for which, the revenue collection grew by 21.6 per cent in our regime," he said, adding that once actions against corruption were taken, it would send a message to the people that one "has to work with commitment" otherwise, one "has to face penalty" .

When asked about whether his government would act against Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was with the Congress, and is now a minister in his government, the Chief Minister said: "We do not take any initiative out of prejudice. We cannot act without having any proof against corruption... If anything is proved against anyone, he would be brought to book."

Speaking on the issue of updating Assam National Register of Citizens, Sonowal said: "This is under the supervision of the apex court. Whatever direction will be passed on us, we will carry out. The matter would be again heard on November 29. We want to ensure an error-free, correct National Register of Citizens."
Santiago, Nov 25 : Thousands of people gathered in the centre of the capital to protest violence against women to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

The UN designated November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to commemorate the Mirabal sisters, who were assassinated on the same day in 1960 for opposing the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

A crowd of around 5,000 joined the two-hour march on Friday organised by the Chilean Network against Violence towards Women, bringing traffic along one the city's main arteries to a standstill.

Protesters were pleased by the large turnout, calling for an end to gender-based violence both in Chile and around the world, Efe news reported.

According to the protest organisers, 61 femicides have been recorded in the country so far this year, in addition to the 36 women who have committed suicide.

Women in Chile have called on authorities to amend the law on gender-based violence as the current legislation only accounts for violence within marriages and relationships.
Cairo, Nov 25 : The death toll in a horrific terror strike on a mosque in Egypt's northern Sinai region has climbed to 300 as the military kicked off a hunt for the attackers and responded with airstrikes at "terrorist" locations and vehicles.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed to respond to the gory attack on Al Rawdah mosque, affiliated with Sufi groups, with "brute force". More than 100 people were injured, the BBC reported.

The mosque in the town of Bir al-Abed was bombed during Friday prayers and fleeing worshippers were then gunned down.

No group has yet claimed the massacare, one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the country.

"What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism," Sisi said in a televised address. "The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force."

Hours after the massacre, "terrorist spots", where weapons and ammunition were reportedly stocked, had been bombed by Air Force jets in response. An Army spokesperson said that several vehicles used in the attack had been located and destroyed.

Dozens of gunmen surrounded the mosque in vehicles and opened fire on those trying to escape after bombs were set off. The militants were reported to have set parked vehicles on fire in the vicinity to block off access to the mosque and fired upon ambulances trying to help victims.

A witness told the Guardian he had heard calls for help emanating from other nearby mosques after the attack.

"I went with my family and friends to the scene of the mosque and found ambulances loading bodies and injured," he said. "What happened in al-Rawdah is a massacre against peaceful civilians."

"In the Ber al-Abd hospitals, there was chaos," he said. "Blood and screaming were everywhere."

There was also international condemnation for the attack. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called "for those responsible for today's horrific attack to be swiftly brought to justice".

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: "Strongly condemn the barbaric terrorist attack on a place of worship in Egypt. Our deep condolences at the loss of innocent lives."

US President Donald Trump called it a "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless" and said terrorism and its ideology must be defeated.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron also gave their condolences.

Landmarks and government buildings across the globe paid tribute to the victims. In Israel, which borders the Sinai peninsula, Tel Aviv's city hall was lit up with the Egyptian flag.

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower went dark to honour victims of the attack. In England's second largest city, The Library of Birmingham was lit up in the colors of Egypt's flag.

And in Canada's most populous city, Toronto, the CN Tower was also lit to honour of the victims.
San Francisco, Nov 25 : A fake advertisement reportedly led some users searching for "Amazon" on Thanksgiving to a scam website just before the Black Friday shopping frenzy, media rpeorted.

"Some Google users searching for "Amazon" on Thanksgiving were shown a phony ad that redirected to a scam website, one day before the biggest shopping day of the year," CBS News reported late on Friday.

"The advertisement appeared at the top of search results on Google for an unknown number of users for at least part of the day on Thursday," the report added.

Meanwhile, the search engine giant has said that the advertisement violated its policies and has been removed.

"This was an abuse of our platform. We strictly prohibit advertising of illegal activity and have removed these ads and suspended the account," a Google representative was quoted as saying.

The app which redirected users to a scam site purporting to be run by Microsoft's support team with a message saying the computer was infected with malware, according to CNET.

However, the site's URL suggested that it was not affiliated with Microsoft.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday hit back at Rahul Gandhi for his "failed hugplomacy" jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the release of LeT founder Hafiz Saeed, saying the Congress Vice President should stand with the country and not with the mastermind of the Mumbai massacre.

"Rahul baba, Aadte nahi badli (Habits have not changed). For once, stand with the country and not with Terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks and Ishrat Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. By the way have you congratulated your 'Hafeez Saheb' on his release yet," BJP spokesperson G.V.L Narsimha Rao said in a tweet.

Accusing the Congress of showing sympathy with Pakistan, the BJP leader said "Congress Ka Haath, Aatankivadiyon ke Saath" would be a more appropriate slogan for the grand old party.

"While Manmohan Singh's government treated Pakistan as a victim state and let it off lightly, Narendra Modi has succeeded in isolating and cornering Pakistan as terroristan not just in the region but globally and in all international fora like the UN, G20, BRICS, ASEAN etc," Rao said.

He said that the Congress and Rahul Gandhi have repeatedly betrayed the country by pandering to anti-India elements.

"The manner in which they questioned the surgical strikes against the terror launch pads across the LoC and the utterly disgraceful attacks against the army chief as a 'Street thug (Sadak Ka Goonda)' and Rahul Gandhi's joining the groups shouting "Bharat ki barbaadi" slogans are symptomatic of Congress party's support for anti-India sentiments.

"The statements of Congress leaders eulogising and praising Burhan Wani and their solidarity for separatists clearly show their sympathies for pro-Pakistan elements. It is a tragedy that a party which ruled India for six decades has compromised with the terrorist groups that have bled India for the sake of appeasing a minority vote bank. They have abused Hindu religion with terms like Hindu Terror and Saffron terror for appeasing minorities. In no other country, terror is politicised as the Congress sought to do in power," he said in a statement.

Earlier, Rahul Gandhi took a dig at the Prime Minister and termed the latter's relationship with US President Donald Trump as failed "hugplomacy".

"Narendrabhai, baat nahi bani (this is not done). Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed," Gandhi tweeted on Saturday morning.

On Friday, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed, accused of masterminding the 26/11 Mumbai massacre in 2008, was freed after 10 months of house arrest in Pakistan.

Earlier this month, the US Congress also passed a bill which dropped action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) as a condition for Pakistan to receive hundreds of millions of dollars.
Derek O'Brien took a dig at PM Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah saying two people shouldn't be able to decide when the Parliament will function while having breakfast in Ahmedabad.

Parliamentary calendar is the need of the hour

By Vivek Surendran: Derek O'Brien, Rajya Sabha MP, in a session at the second day of the India Today Conclave East titled 'Inside Parliament: Question Hour', decided that instead of him taking questions from the four young students on the dais, he will ask them questions.

Ujaan Ganguly from Jadavpur University, Aastha from Loreto College, Dr (in the making) Sain from National Medical College, and Prithviraj from St Xaviers College joined O'Brien.

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Joking about not promoting his new book named 'Inside Parliament' by repeating the sessions' name, Derek said the students could ask him questions, and do the talking, and that politicians are not listening to young people.

Talking about a minimum qualification being mandatory to be an MP, Aastha and Prithviraj said it should be a norm while Ujaan, Sain and O'Brien said qualification doesn't matter.

What do you expect from your representatives in the Parliament?

Prithviraj: Honesty and integrity are two values politicians should have, given the number of corruption charges coming to light.

Ujaan: Transparency and clarity from each and every MP.

Aastha: Discipline - the kind of language MPs use and mannerisms.

Sain: MPs should be dynamic. And I feel MPs from West Bengal are more dynamic than from other states.

Any MP you look up to as a good Parliamentarian?

Aastha: Arun Jaitley, because in a recent debate on cow slaughter, he was the only one who did not bring in a communal touch to his argument.

Ujaan: Mamata Banerjee, because she's got a mother's touch when she approaches issues. That's exactly what the Bengali soul needs.

Sain: Derek O'Brien.

Prithviraj: Shashi Tharoor, because he reflects the thoughts of today's youth. He's been championing the cause of LGBT rights and I think that's very admirable.

Dinesh Trivedi, a four-time MP, joined the conversation and when asked what MPs owe to the young generation, said, 'environment'. He also extended a warm welcome to youngsters saying, "for heaven's sake, join politics."

On being asked what they would choose to be -- a journalist or a Parliamentarian -- Prithviraj replied saying he'd like to be "happy" 15 years down the line; Aastha said she'd become a journalist so that she could be impartial and neutral; Sain said he'd choose to be an MP because he'd be at a position where he can help more people; Ujaan said he'd initially be a journalist and later go on to become a Parliamentarian.

Talking about making the functioning of the Parliament better, Derek O'Brien said there should be a Parliamentary calendar with fixed dates for winter, budget and monsoon sessions, and took a dig at PM Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah (without naming them) saying two people shouldn't be able to decide when the Parliament will function while having breakfast in Ahmedabad.

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Here is the full coverage of India Today Conclave East 2017

WATCH | India Today Conclave East 2017: Derek O'Brien takes dig at PM Modi, Amit Shah

--- ENDS ---
Agartala, Nov 25 : Four employees of Tripura Gramin Bank were kidnapped by unknown persons from southwestern Tripura, police said here on Saturday.

The miscreants kidnapped the four Tripura Gramin Bank officials, including branch manager Tanumoy Bhattacharjee, 30, while they were returning to Agartala in a vehicle on Friday night, southern Tripura's Gomati district police chief Bijoy Debbarma told IANS over phone.

He said police not sure whether they were abducted by armed miscreants or any terrorist group.

Bhattacharjee was driving his car and Sujit Chandra Dey, 28 and Raktim Bhowmik, 31, were in the car. Another bank official Subrata Debbarma, 32, was driving his bike along with the vehicle. "The car and the bike were also remain untraced," the police official said.

"The exact location from where the bank officials were kidnapped is not yet known," Bijoy Debbarma said.

Meanwhile, families of the captives said an unidentified person called them up and demanded Rs 20 lakh each for release of the bank employees.

Troopers of Tripura State Rifles and other Security forces led by senior police officials launched a massive combing operations on Friday night in Khowai, Dhalai and Gomati districts to rescue the bank employees.

Police officials said there was not a single extremist related incident in Tripura since 2015.

Police and intelligence officials had earlier apprehended that terrorist activities might resurface in the state ahead of the crucial assembly elections in February 2018.
Dhaka, Nov 25 : Following repatriation from Bangladesh, Myanmar will send Rohingya refugees to temporary shelters before moving them back to their original villages or new neighbourhoods of their choice, an official said on Saturday.

Bangladeshi Foreign Affairs Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali said that the two governments have agreed that the repatriation of the refugees to Rakhine should start within the next two months and will be conducted in phases, although he did not specify a start date, Efe news agency reported.

Myanmar will also carry out a verification process before accepting the refugees back in the country, according to a Memorandum of Intentions signed by the two countries that was made public on Saturday.

The document, signed on Thursday, specifies that the final decision about the repatriated refugees will rest with the Myanmar government but stipulates that the Myanmar authorities will not persecute or punish the refugees for fleeing the country illegally, except in specific cases involving terror links or criminal activities.

The agreement added that both countries will assist the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in the process of repatriation as and when necessary. The UNHCR had warned on Friday that conditions were not conducive for the safe return of the refugees to Rakhine.

The current Rohingya exodus started when the Myanmar Army had launched a military offensive -- described as "ethnic cleansing" by the UN -- in the region on August 25 following multiple attacks on government posts by Rohingya rebels.
Islamabad, Nov 25 : At least five people were killed and another 20 were wounded in a suicide bomb attack targetting a security forces vehicle in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta on Saturday.

The suicide bomber had detonated near a bus terminal when the Frontier Corps vehicle was passing by, Quetta police spokesperson Abid Mengal told Efe news. The Taliban claimed the attack in a statement.

"We accept responsibility of the suicide attack on Saryab Road, Quetta," Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesperson Mohamed Khurasani said.

The wounded included several members of the security forces.

Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, is among the most conflict-ridden areas in Pakistan, with armed separatists, Taliban factions and terrorist groups operating in the region.

Attacks against the security forces are common in the city and have intensified in recent weeks.

On November 9, a senior police official of the city was killed in an attack and six days later, a superintendent of police was shot dead, along with his wife, son and brother.

On Friday, two people were killed and another five were wounded in a suicide bomb attack against the vehicle of a senior police official in Peshawar.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : A Union Minister and Chief Justice of India on Saturday crossed swords over judicial activism at a conference on the occasion of National Law Day with CJI Dipak Misra saying it was their sacrosanct duty to protect the fundamental rights of the citizens.

Addressing the conference, Minister of State for Law and Justice P.P. Chaudhary said judicial activism is an outcome of judiciary's independence and should be lauded as long as it stays away from the realm of policy. But when judicial activism and review wade into policy making, its consequences can be disruptive, he added.

"Judicial activism by itself is a necessary outcome of judicial independence, and may be lauded, especially when it is undertaken to protect those who may not otherwise have ready access to justice," Chaudhary said.

"But quite apart from this, is another species of judicial activism where the judiciary is also stepping into areas which are strictly speaking in the realm of policy," he added.

He said that as a "fundamental principle" of governance decisions "should, as far as possible, be predictable and not disruptive".

"When judicial activism and review wades into policy making, sometimes its consequences can be disruptive. This needs to be avoided if possible," he said.

The Minister emphasised that while judicial independence is a pillar of democracy, judicial accountability "is the base of that pillar".

"Without accountability there can be no legitimacy. Those in government and those outside it are both fully aware of the fickle nature of power, and are fully aware that a strong and independent judiciary is necessary for everyone. We must do everything possible to preserve the moral authority and legitimacy of our judiciary," he said.

Taking the floor after the Minister, the CJI dismissed the perception of judicial activism, saying protection of fundamental rights of citizens is the "sacrosanct duty of the judiciary" and it is obliged to stand with citizens if government entities "encroach" upon their fundamental rights.

"The citizens have been guaranteed fundamental rights and the governing entities are not expected to encroach upon it. The moment they encroach upon it or there is an apprehension that there is an encroachment, the judiciary is obliged to stand by them," he said.

Justice Misra defended courts taking a pro-active position on the fundamental rights of citizens and expanding their scope.

"There is a perception that there is a judicial activism... I must clarify protection of fundamental rights of each and every citizen is the sacrosanct duty of the judiciary which has been conferred on by the Constitution. Fundamental rights have been expended from the date the Constitution came into existence," he said.

The CJI also said the judiciary has no desire to make policy.

"Nobody intends, nobody desires to enter upon the policy making areas. We don't make policies but we interpret policies and that's our job," he said.

The prime task of the three wings of the state is to defend the Constitution, its values, morals and philosophy, Chief Justice Misra said.

Pointing out that there was a direct co-relation between Directive Principles of State Policy and the fundamental rights, Chief Justice Misra called for a quality governance and said, "Cooperative constitutionalism is the responsibility of the three organs of the State to protect the Constitution which is the source of their origin."

Referring to the protection of women at work place by framing Vishaka guidelines and rescuing children working in industry, Chief Justice Misra said, "What you see today may be relevant tomorrow."

The two-day conference on the occasion of National Law Day was also addressed by President Ram Nath Kovind, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : On the eve of the ninth anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Israel on Saturday expressed its condolences and solidarity with the people of India.

In a statement, the Israeli Embassy expressed "deep condolences and solidarity with the people of India on the anniversary of the harrowing terror attack" that was launched on November 26, 2008.

"The tragic events of that day are ingrained in our collective memories. Israel stands by India in remembrance and grief over the senseless loss of life at the hands of terrorists," it stated.

Israeli Ambassador to India Daniel Carmon said in the statement: "Together with India, the people of Israel mourn the victims from countries all over the globe including Israel, embrace their loved ones and the survivors. India and Israel, along with nations of the world, must do everything in their power to eradicate extremism and terrorism for a better future."

Over 160 people were killed and over 300 were injured a when terrorists of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba launched a series of attacks on India's commercial capital.

During his visit to Israel in July this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Moshe Holtzberg, whose parents, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, were killed when the terrorists attacked the Chabad House in Mumbai. Moshe was two years old then.

Moshe, who was invited by Modi to visit India, has been granted a visa and he is expected to accompany Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to India next year.
Shimla, Nov 25 : The CBI on Saturday filed a charge sheet in a local court against eight policemen, including Inspector General Zahur H. Zaidi, over the custodial death of an accused in the sensational gang rape and murder of a school girl in Shimla district.

They were arrested on August 29.

The 500-page charge sheet mentions the evidence of more than 50 witnesses, including the four rape accused.

Superintendent of Police D.W. Negi, the ninth accused in the custodial death who was arrested on November 16, is in judicial custody along with eight others till December 7.

"Since investigation against D.W. Negi is on and additional charge sheet will be filed later in the court," a police official investigating the case told IANS.

Both the gang rape and custodial death cases are being monitored by the High Court that has directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to file the charge sheet in the custodial death case by November 30.

Police said the 16-year-old girl victim was offered a lift in a vehicle by the accused on July 4 when she was returning home from her school in Kotkhai town, 56 km from the state capital.

On the way, they raped and murdered her in a nearby forest. Her naked body with injury marks was found two days later.

The arrested persons include prime accused Rajinder Singh, who offered her the lift, Ashish Chauhan, Subhash Bisht, Deepak Kumar, Suraj Singh and Lokjan. They are believed to have been drunk at the time of committing the crime. Currently all the rape accused are on bail.

However, a new twist in the case came after Rajinder Singh allegedly murdered a fellow accused Suraj Singh in the police lock-up on July 19.

Inspector General Zaidi was heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the gangrape-cum-murder case before the CBI took over the case.

At that time, Negi was posted in Shimla as the Superintendent of Police where both the crimes occurred.
Cairo, Nov 25 : The death toll in a terrorist attack on a mosque in Egypt's northern Sinai has risen to 305, with 27 children among the dead, Egypt's state prosecutor said on Saturday.

Another 128 people were injured as the Al Rawdah mosque, affiliated with Sufi groups, in the town of Bir al-Abed was bombed during Friday prayers by 25 to 30 armed men and fleeing worshippers were then gunned down.

Though no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, the state prosecutor said that the militants were carrying Islamic State flag, state news agency MENA reported. The case will be tackled as "an emergency supreme state security case," he added.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed to respond to the massacre -- believed to be the deadliest terror attack on the country's soil -- with "brute force". He also ordered the armed forces to build a memorial for those killed at the mosque.

Egyptian warplanes conducted airstrikes on "terrorist outposts" and vehicles following the attack, the military said on Saturday. "The Egyptian Air Force pursued the terrorist elements, discovered and destroyed a number of vehicles that carried out the brutal terrorist killings and killed all terrorists inside those vehicles," military spokesman Tamer Rifai said.

It also targeted a number of terrorist outposts containing weapons, ammunition and radical elements, Rifai said.

"What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism," Sisi said in a televised address. "The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force."

Dozens of gunmen surrounded the mosque in vehicles and opened fire on those trying to escape after bombs were set off. The militants were reported to have set seven parked vehicles on fire in the vicinity to block off access to the mosque and fired upon ambulances trying to help victims.

A witness told the Guardian he had heard calls for help emanating from other nearby mosques after the attack.

"I went with my family and friends to the scene of the mosque and found ambulances loading bodies and injured," he said. "What happened in al-Rawdah is a massacre against peaceful civilians."

"In the Ber al-Abd hospitals, there was chaos," he said. "Blood and screaming were everywhere."

Friday's attack prompted wide international condemnation, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump among the leaders expressing their condolences.

Landmarks and government buildings across the globe paid tribute to the victims. In Israel, which borders the Sinai peninsula, Tel Aviv's city hall was lit up with the Egyptian flag.

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower went dark to honour victims of the attack. In England's second largest city, The Library of Birmingham was lit up in the colors of Egypt's flag.

And in Canada's most populous city, Toronto, the CN Tower was also lit to honour of the victims.
Ghaziabad, Nov 25 : Police in Ghaziabad have arrested a criminal involved in the killing of a city trader on Tuesday, a senior police officer said on Saturday.

Unravelling the murder mystery at a press conference, Superintendent of Police-City (SP-City) Akash Tomar said three persons were involved in the crime and the trader was murdered over a financial dispute.

According to Tomar, during patrolling near Sihani Gate area in the city, the police team spotted a person moving around in a suspicious manner. They caught hold of him and questioned him, but he failed to come up with satisfactory replies to their queries. He was then taken to the police station.

On sustained interrogation, he revealed his name as Mintu Tyagi alias Kuldeep Tyagi -- a resident of Siddique Nagar locality in Ghaziabad. He confessed to killing the trader on November 21, along with two of his accomplices. On his information, the police recovered a country-made pistol of .315 bore.

Mintu gave the names of two other persons involved in the crime as Bunty Tyagi and Rajiv Sharma.

They killed the trader following a dispute over Rs 2.5 lakh. The deceased was demanding the money back that he had lent to the accused. Irritated with his reminders, the criminals eliminated him.

Earlier, the traders' organisations had given the police a 24-hour ultimatum to work out the killing.

Trader Gagandeep Khanduja was killed when he was on his way back to home on his two-wheeler after buying a cake to celebrate the birthday of his son. The assailants shot him twice in his head near Nehru Yuva Kendra in the city.

Khanduja was rushed to hospital, but he was declared dead.

"The deceased trader and the accused persons had business relations and money-lending between the two sides would happen every now and then. But this time, reminders to return the money proved fatal for the trader. We are trying to nab the absconding two other criminals," said Tomar.
Chennai, Nov 25 : Two teachers of a government school in Panapakkam in Vellore district were suspended on Saturday in connection with the suicide of four girl students of the school.

Tragedy struck the Panapakkam village on Friday when four girl students committed suicide by jumping into a well as their teacher scolded them and wanted them to bring their parents to the school.

All the four students were studying in Class XI and were identified as Deepa, Sankari, Revathi and Manisha.

Following the death of students, the District Education Officer held an inquiry and suspended the school Principal and the students' class teacher.

Offering his condolences to the families of the deceased girls, PMK Founder S. Ramadoss said education should be made enjoyable for school students with games and without burden. "Only then suicides by students can be put an end to."
Panaji, Nov 25 : A day after IFFI reached out to "S Durga" director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan following a Kerala High Court rap over screening of the controversial film, a Goa-based NGO on Saturday appealed to the festival's organisers not to screen the film, saying it may hurt sentiments of Hindus.

The Goa-based Rashtrapremi Nagrik, in its memorandum to Sunil Tandon, the director of the 48th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), said that IFFI would face ridicule if the "provocatively titled" movie if screened.

"You can't censor imagination. In the film, the rituals of appeasing Goddess Durga walking over burning coal and piercing their skin with metal have been shown as bizarre rituals when they are very much a part of worship of the Goddess," the memorandum read.

"The court may have given the direction to show this film in IFFI. We respect the court, but you can't ignore the sentiments of crores of Hindus who worship Goddess Durga. Currently, there are issues going regarding the film 'Padmavati'. So, showing this film at IFFI will add in more controversies," the statement added.

The last few days had seen a standoff between the makers of "S Durga" and the festival authorities over screening of the controversial film, which was one of the two films to be dropped from the screening schedule of IFFI's Indian Panorama section.

Tandon reached out to the "S Durga" makers late on Friday, only after the Kerala High Court, despite a request from the Union Ministry for Information and Broadcasting, also refused to stay its earlier order, which had directed festival authorities to screen the film.

The cast of the film, which is present at the festival, had also accused IFFI organisers of harassment and succumbing to political pressure, which they said was the reason why the film was not being screened at the festival.
The U.S. Supreme Court will soon consider taking a case that challenges Arizonas death-penalty law on the grounds that it fails to narrow the punishment to the worst offenders. Regardless of whether the court accepts it, the case raises serious questions about the death penalty that the Arizona Legislature needs to come to grips with.

As the attorney general, I was responsible for overseeing dozens of appeals from sentences of death. Six people were executed during my tenure. It was critical for me that we imposed the ultimate sanction only on those most deserving.

Tragically, our state has failed in this undertaking in fundamental ways. The breadth of our statute, capturing nearly every first-degree murder, makes it unconstitutional. But more than that, Arizonas use of the death penalty is bad policy.

Arizona does not have a good track record for getting it right. At least nine times our death penalty has swept up the innocent in its net. Nationwide, 160 people have been exonerated from death row. Getting it wrong once is one time too many. Death, in its finality, means correcting a wrongful sentence is not an option. Sentencing the innocent to die undermines the publics confidence in the entire criminal justice system, and is reason alone to abandon the death penalty.

Moreover, Arizonas death penalty scheme has unsettling racial disparities in its application. People in Arizona who are accused of murdering white victims are more likely to receive the death penalty. Hispanic men who are accused of murdering whites are more than four times as likely to be sentenced to death as white defendants accused of murdering a Hispanic victim. Any other state policy with that sort of disparity would be quickly repudiated. The Legislature should end this horrible death penalty malfunction.

The spiraling costs of seeking and imposing a death sentence are further reason to abandon the policy. These costs have caused the location of the crime to take precedence over its heinousness. Several counties simply cannot afford to pursue the death penalty, creating imbalances having nothing to do with the crime. Maricopa County imposed the death penalty at a rate 2.3 times higher than the rest of the state between 2010 and 2015. The increased use of the death penalty was driven, in part, by an overzealous County Attorney, Andrew Thomas, who later lost his law license for abusing his authority.

The costs associated with defending Arizonas statute (never mind the cases themselves) have been substantial. Dozens of convictions have been set aside because Arizona, unlike almost every other state, did not provide for jury sentencing in capital cases. Arizona was one of two states to extend the death penalty to felony murders, leading to a rebuke by the Supreme Court and further reversals. The Arizona Supreme Court narrowly interpreted our states prohibition on executing the intellectually disabled until they were recently forced to reconsider. And case after case has been reversed because of flaws in the instructions given in capital sentencing proceedings.

The case now before the Supreme Court is only the latest example of these problems. But the case itself highlights stunning breadth of Arizonas statute. Virtually every first-degree murder is eligible for the death penalty, leaving imposition of the death penalty to the unfettered discretion of prosecutors and juries, causing an intolerable risk of arbitrariness in its administration.

Weve been here before. In 1972, the court struck down every states death-penalty statute because they operated to execute a capriciously selected random handful, rather than the worst offenders. Similar to other states efforts, then-state Sen. Sandra Day OConnor and Rudy Gerber (who later became an Arizona judge) rewrote Arizonas statute to comply with the courts narrowing requirements by obligating the prosecutor to prove one or more aggravating factors before the death penalty could be imposed.

More than four decades have passed and we are back to square one. Despite the efforts of OConnor and Gerber, Arizona has failed to narrow the application of the death penalty and has been unable or unwilling to provide the guidance necessary to ensure that the death penalty is only imposed on the worst offenders.

Finally, 31 states have abandoned the death penalty. In light of its myriad problems, Arizona should join the rising tide against imposing it.
Harshvardhan Neotia said that the natural inclination of people from the East is to indulge in activities that involve emotional quotient.

By India Today Web Desk: The sixth session at the India Today Conclave East titled 'Starting Up from the East: Making It a Business Destination' was moderated by Rahul Kanwal, Managing Editor, TVTN and had Shitanshu Jhunjhunwalla, Director, Turtle, CS Ghosh, Managing Director and CEO, Bandhan Bank, Harshvardhan Neotia, Chairman, Ambuja Group, Hemant Kanoria, Chairman and Managing Director and Srei Suvankar Sen, Executive Director, Senco Gold as speakers.

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How can the East of India compete and beat the West of India?

Neotia: People in the West India worship Lakshmi (wealth), South India worship Saraswati (learning) and East worship Durga (talent, energy). Natural inclination of people from the East is to indulge in activities that involve emotional quotient. Tourism is one industry we should focus on and all areas that require handcrafted skills, jewellery, textile for example.

Kanoria: Kolkata should be the headquarters for anyone who wants to tap the Northeastern market. Quality of life in Kolkata is much better, people are more relaxed and there is a potent talent pool. Service based activities should be based out of Kolkata. Even manufacturing sector should setup plants in Kolkata because power is cheap. No labour problem.

Jhunjhunwalla: What we are lacking is marketing. The demand is there, it's a question is about marketing. Weavers etc. are working with designers from abroad, they should be able to get through to their customers.

Sen: Agriculture is one key area we should focus on. Food processing - so much farming happening here, we form the food belt of India and we should play a major role in providing to the nation on the whole. Next is mid-sized companies. The key is not running behind setting up huge industries but to setup many. We could become Barcelona.

Is there enough land?

Neotia: It's a bit of a problem, yes, to get acres of land. Bengal's land area ratio to population is twice more dense than the rest of the country. Convincing people to move could be problematic. But you don't need that kind of land for new industries. You can't bulldoze people in Bengal, that's something people have understood the hardway.

Sen: Service sector is booming and that doesn't need land. You build up, like Japan. It's about using the intellectual capacity to invest in service sector.

Kanoria: We are very poor in marketing, and it's true for the entire country. But in last three years, PM Modi has marketed India like never before. Money is flowing to India. Land is not an issue, let me tell you.

Jhunjhunwalla: We ourselves think we are one step back. Creative pool is just amazing. It's a question of vision and marketing. Why can't a Kolkata-based brand pull off a Zara?

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On utilising the geography, the neighbours, Neotia said, The world is becoming more interconnected, trade is increasing. Infrastructure connectivity in Bengal is increasing as well.

CS Ghosh, joining the discussion, said, "There are peak opportunities in eastern region. 5.1 million MSME is here. When banking penetrates, jobs will be created, exports will increase.

How to setup a startup culture?

Kanoria: Free-flowing guidelines and rules and regulations are key. The ones there now keep changing. If the government steamline processes and create a good environment, people will startup.

Neotia: Most enteprises here are owned by non-Bengalis. We have setup Neotech hub which is an incubation hub. Gradually, the ecosystem is getting built, we will catch up.

Jhunjhunwalla: I am part of Calcutta Angels, we evalaute two to three startups every three months and we fund them. Young, budding entrepreneurs are really talented.

Sen: East has been weak in getting finance. Moral support, mentorship is what is important.

Ghosh: Convincing others, even family members, to take the plunge and startup is difficult. Getting a loan was so tough. But now that I am successful, people are happy.

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Watch the full session video here:

--- ENDS ---
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Veteran actor Kamal Haasan, who earlier came out in support of "Padmavati" actress Deepika Padukone amid protests and death threats hurled at her for being a part of the film, says people are being "over-sensitive" on the issue.

"We are being over sensitive. I am saying so in the capacity of being an Indian. In a country where politicians wanted citizens to come upfront in the past... that doesn't mean I am dismissing off a whole group of people... There are enough Kamals not enough podiums," said Kamal during a discussion at the Times Delhi Lit Fest on Saturday.

Bhansali's attempt to bring alive the story of Rajput queen Rani Padmavati on the silver screen with his movie "Padmavati" hasn't gone down well with Hindu groups backed by the BJP. It features Deepika as Rani Padmavati, Shahid Kapoor as her husband and a warrior king and Ranveer Singh essays Alauddin Khilji.

Bhansali faced many hiccups while shooting the film, but the protests escalated as the film neared its release date. There are conjectures that it "distorts history" regarding the Rajput queen, and Bhansali has denied it repeatedly.

The movie's release date has been deferred from the original December 1 date, but there are efforts from Hindu groups to have it banned.

Kamal, whose films too have faced threats on the same level be it for "Hey Ram" or "Vishwaroopam", says the current clamour around "Padmavati" is a "problem", but it is not new.

"There is a problem but it's not new. When my film 'Hey Ram' was to release, somebody in Congress (political party) thought it should be banned just by looking at the poster. But they did not know what was in the film. Censors were being extra careful. Certification board behaved like censor board," said Kamal, who has been a part of the film industry for almost five decades.

"All my films had a problem for reasons I am still trying to understand. Same goes for rumours when you send an sms and it distributes. We are always ready to believe the negativity first. It (protests) is wrong. After it ('Padmavati') comes out and then people have problem... that I still understand," he added.

Speaking on the slamming culture on social media like Twitter where individuals are free to opine, Kamal says "those who want it regulated have some logic of their own".

"They shouldn't do it but... some are far exceeding their freedom which is why they are slammed perhaps," he said.

"Everyone blames it on youth. It's not age talking it is the lack of reverence talking. Deeper and hurtful things come from the grown up," he added.
Islamabad, Nov 25 : Violent protests erupted across Pakistan on Saturday after security forces launched an early-morning crackdown on thousands of religious demonstrators camped on a highway in the capital in which a policeman was killed and 200 hundred people were injured. The authorities ordered private television channels to go off the air.

Roughly 8,500 elite police and paramilitary troops in riot gear were seen throwing rocks and using slingshots in the bid to followers of the cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi of the Tehreek-e-Labaik party who began rallying near Faizabad interchange soon after dawn.

The protests had erupted after the Pakistani Parliament approved an amendment to the electoral law earlier, removing an oath public servants had to take before assuming office, reiterating their belief in Prophet Muhammad.

The amendment was deemed a "clerical error" by the government and was rectified. But the protesters still demand the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid for his alleged role in the controversy. They attacked his home in Pasrur but the minister and his family were not present at that time.

Security forces resorted to rubber-bullets after the protesters put up the resistance. The law enforcement agencies lobbed tear gas shells and used water cannons to disperse the crowd. In return, the demonstrators pelted stones on the security personnel.

Amid the furoure, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal claimed that religious parties protesting in Islamabad had "contacted India", and that the government was investigating the matter.

"Why they did it, we are looking into it. They have inside information and resources that are being used against the state," he was quoted as saying by Dawn online.

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) prohibited all satellite TV channels from covering the operation at Faizabad. The authority advised media houses to ensure the safety and security of their field staff.

Social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were blocked on web browsers across the country.

Protesters broke the gate of former Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar's residence. They set the gate, a building and a mobile satellite van located near Nisar's residence ablaze.

He and his family were not at the residence at the time of the incident.

The protesters had been camping since November 8 on the main highway that connects Islamabad to the city of Rawalpindi causing huge traffic snarls that led to the closure of some schools in the capital.

The Islamabad High Court on November 18 directed the local administration to clear protesters from Faizabad, within 24 hours. However, the government did not carry out the orders and initiated several rounds of talks with the protesters to disperse them peacefully, but failed each time.

The operation on Saturday came a day after the court issued a show-cause notice for contempt of court to the Interior Minister over his failure to take steps ordered by the court to end the sit-in.

According to reports, the operation against protesters was suspended at 1.30 p.m. At least 370 protesters were taken into custody, said police officials. At least 10 motorcycles and two vehicles were torched during the operation.

Ninety police and Frontier Constabulary personnel were among 200 injured. An Islamabad police spokesman confirmed that a policeman was killed in the clash with protesters after he was struck in the head by a rock.

The crackdown also sparked protests in other parts of the country. In Karachi, people supporting the sit-in took to the streets and blocked several roads, causing disruption in traffic flow.

Clashes also erupted between supporters of sit-in and police after they burned tires and blocked roads and railway tracks in the country's eastern cities of Lahore and Daska.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been elected President of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA).

IDSA was set up in 1965 by the Ministry of Defence as an autonomous think tank, and it is customary to have the Defence Minister as its President. The Minister chairs the Executive Council which governs the Institute.

Sitharaman's election, held November 23, was unanimous.

The Executive Council includes Prof Charan Dass Wadhwa, Air Marshal M. Matheswaran, G.K. Pillai, Lt. Gen. Prakash Menon, Ambassador Swashpawan Singh, Gulshan Luthra and Vice Admiral Anup Singh.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, Defence Secretary Sanjay Mitra, Director General Jayant Prasad and Deputy Director General Maj. Gen. Alok Deb are ex-officio members. The staff representative in the Council is Ashok K. Behuria.

The previous Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar, had resigned from the post after shifting to Goa as Chief Minister.

IDSA is funded by the Ministry of Defence and its faculty conducts research in military, foreign and strategic affairs. Significantly, the Government has sought its views before taking major policy initiatives, like conducting nuclear tests, as in 1974 and 1998. IDSA also executes specific assignments from the Ministry of External Affairs.
Bengaluru, Nov 25 : With services driving the economy, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu on Saturday advocated quality revolution in the lead sector as it also provided more jobs.

"A quality revolution in the services sector is a priority for us, as the economy is increasingly driven by it... it also provides more jobs than other sectors," he said in a video address to the 25th National Quality Summit of the Indian industry here.

According to a joint report of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and global audit services firm KPMG, the services sector contributed 61 per cent to India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in fiscal 2015-16.

"Quality movement has been the cornerstone of the competitiveness of India's economy. Businesses in services and manufacturing must benchmark their quality performance with the best in the world and serve the domestic and global markets," said Prabhu.

Echoing his call for quality benchmarks even in the services sector as in the manufacturing sector, Karnataka IT and Biotech Minister Priyank Kharge said skill development played a key role in promoting quality and innovation.

"Our government is training 1.1 lakh students in developing skills to provide software and hardware services in emerging technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data, animation and block chain," he said at the inaugural session of the two-day summit on "Quality Evolution - Journey through Innovation".

Export-Import Bank of India Managing Director David Rasquinha said lack of quality culture was proving to be a non-tariff trade barrier for the Indian industry.

"In a competitive environment, quality is the only way to gain market share. Exports should invest not only in their brands, but also in the quality of their products," he said in his special address at the event.

Highlighting the importance of quality in customer service, ASI Consulting Group Chief Technical Officer Shin Taguchi said there were three types of quality in such a service - basic quality, without which a customer would be upset; performance quality, which would surprise a customer; and excitement quality, which excites a customer.

"Successful companies are good at innovating to create the excitement quality in the market by focusing on robust design of products and services," he said in his keynote address.

CII Institute of Quality Chairman & Tata Chemicals Managing Director R. Mukundan said as technology was at the heart of doing business, it must be harnessed for improving the quality of goods and services.

"Developments like data driven quality, self-organising productivity, robot assisted productivity and predictive maintenance should make progress in quality improvement," he said.
Kolkata, Nov 25 : No government should intrude into anybody's kitchen or infringe upon people's freedom to eat in their personal space, panellists at a discussion said here on Saturday.

The panel comprising a politician, a bureaucrat, a restaurateur among others, dwelt on a host of issues which have in recent times sparked controversy in relation to people's eating habits, particularly beef.

Stating that the Congress regime was far less intrusive that the present BJP government at the centre, Congress' Tripura unit Working President Pradyot Bikram Manikya DebBarma said while a government may ask people to be sensitive about slaughter of animals, it cannot ask them to stop eating a certain dish as it would be an intrusion in the private space.

"The government may tell us to be sensitive about how you slaughter an animal because a section of the society might worship them. But it cannot have any job entering our kitchen," DebBarma said while discussing the politics of food in India Today Conclave East here.

"The party I know of, never infringed into our kitchens. There may been a figure where some individuals tried to propose a restriction in their personal capacity during the reign of Congress, but as a party we are far less intrusive than what you see now at the centre," he argued.

DebBarma termed the Central government's stand on consumption of beef as "hypocritical" as it is allowing this meat in Christian, tribal-populated Northeast while imposing a ban on it in rest of the country.

"Their Union Minister says in the Northeast that he loves beef and when the same person comes to Delhi, he says it will not be allowed. This is nothing but hypocrisy," the Congress leader said.

He claimed there are far bigger issues at present than fighting over what one should or should not eat.

Echoing DebBarma, bureaucrat Atri Bhattacharya said the only thing that people should worry about is if the food is hygienic or not.

"The only thing that matters is what you eat should be hygienic. Beyond that what you cook or eat in your own kitchen or own home is nobody else's business," he said.

About cow vigilantism, he questioned if the 'Gaurakshaks' are officially allowed and claimed there are no cow vigilantes in West Bengal.

"Gaurakshaks are officially allowed... There are specific law and order problems in the country, but not in Bengal. I haven't seen cow vigilantes, you bring them to me. Let's see how I deal with them." he added.

City-based Bengali restaurant Kewpie's owner Rakhi Dasgupta also said she feels the government should not direct people on what to eat.

"Food is also a form of expression. Therefore we have different types of cuisine throughout India. There is no reason why a government should tell us what to eat," she said, adding she refrains from serving beef or pork at her eatery as those meat do not go well with the cuisine it offers.

The speakers also agreed that serving of food in a public place is different from what one can have in their personal space.

"If there is government that tells me what to eat. I would not vote for them," Bhattacharya added.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Amid a raging row over "Padmavati", Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said that nobody has the right to take law into their hands, but at the same time nobody has the right to hurt others sentiments.

Speaking at the inaugural session of the Times Litfest, Naidu emphasised that inciting violence or unlawful activities as a way of protest such as announcing bounty on some people's heads was "unacceptable".

"Now this new problem has come related to some film. Some people feel that it is hurting the sentiments of this community or that community and then they protest. Some of them go out of the way and announce rewards. This is not acceptable," he said, without naming anyone.

"You have a right to protest in a democratic manner. Go to appropriate authorities and complain to them. Take the recourse in a democratic way but you cannot physically obstruct. And you cannot give violent threats," he said.

"You don't have a right to take law into your hands. At the same time you don't have the right to hurt the sentiments of others. That is a reality," he said, adding that some people are quite "selective" in their criticism.

He said respecting others' sentiments and feelings is the "essence of our culture".

A controversy has been raging over Sanjay Leela Bhansali's period drama "Padmavati" with several organisations, mainly from the Rajput community, opposing release of the movie on the grounds it "distorts history". Fringe elements have also announced rewards on the heads of actress Deepika Padukone and film director Bhansali.

The Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor starrer was scheduled to be released on December 1, but it has now been deferred.

Referring to an article in a newspaper, Naidu said in the past too films have faced bans and obstructions and mentioned "Aandhi" and "Garam Hava" as some examples.

"Aandhi" (1975) whose protagonist had striking similarities with the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was banned after 26 weeks of release. "Garam Hava" was held up by the censor board for eight months."

Speaking on Parliamentary democracy, Naidu said that it was not important as to how many days Parliament meets, the important thing was for how many days "it functions".

Naidu said people have a right to disagree but first they "must learn to respect the majority and the people's mandate".

Naidu also said that while dissent was agreeable, "disintegration is not acceptable".

"That is the bottom line and any attempt to undermine integrity and unity of India by forces inimical to growth of India must be nipped in the bud," he said in reference to last year' Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) controversy.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday expressed India's gratitude to the international diplomatic community based here for helping get Indian candidate Justice Dalveer Bhandari re-elected to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague.

Stating that it was a historic moment, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted that Sushma Swaraj, addressing the diplomatic corps here, "conveyed gratitude to the international diplomatic community for their support for election of Justice Dalveer Bhandari to ICJ".

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday congratulated Bhandari saying: "His re-election is a proud moment for us".

Congratulating the efforts of the External Affairs Ministry officers, Sushma Swaraj specifically complimented India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Syed Akbaruddin.

Bhandari will start his term from February 2018. He received all 15 votes in the UN Security Council and 183 out of the 193 votes in the UN General Assembly.

"The extraordinary support from the UN membership is reflective of the respect for strong constitutional integrity of the Indian polity and the independence of the judiciary in India," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement following the reelection.

Bhandari's election upset what had become a traditional balance in the ICJ. Besides a permanent member going unrepresented, four Asian countries will be represented on the ICJ bench instead of the usual three.

Three incumbent judges of the ICJ -- President Ronny Abraham of France, Vice President Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf of Somalia and Antonio Augusto Cancado Trindade of Brazil -- were elected in the first four rounds of voting on November 9.

Bhandari's election was a dramatic face-saving turn of fortunes for India as he lost the Asian seat on the ICJ to Lebanese lawyer-turned-diplomat Nawaf Salam, who had been campaigning for two years and had the backing of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation with 55 UN members.

He got a second chance only because an unpopular Britain could not get an Assembly majority for a remaining judgeship requiring a runoff where the two chambers of the UN split in their voting.

Justice Bhandari was reelected on Monday after the UN General Assembly rallied behind him in a show of strength that made Britain bow to the majority and withdraw its candidate Christopher Greenwood.

India lauded Britain's decision.
Chandigarh/Kolkata, Nov 25 : Haryana BJP leader Suraj Pal Amu on Saturday threatened West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee that she would meet the same fate as "Surpanakha", a demoness from the Ramayana whose nose was cut off by Lakshman, a day after she said her state was ready to welcome Sanjay Leela Bhansali's controversial film "Padmavati" and its crew.

Amu's comments drew flak from Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, as also writers and cultural personalities of Bengal, who described the remarks as "shameful" and "unfortunate".

But Trinamool's controversial leader Anubrata Mondal went a step further, matching Amu's hate speech by threatening to cut off his tongue if he dared to make the comments in Bengal.

Addressing a public meeting, Amu refered to the mythological character "Surpanakha".

"I have come to know that Mamata Banerjee is saying Sanjay Leela Bhansali, come to Kolkata. We will welcome you. I say, this is the village of Ramchandra Ji's brother Lakshmanji. And what Lakshmanji did to Surpanakha, I don't have to tell you," Amu said, making a gesture of cutting one's nose.

Further egging on the crowd, Amu, also a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Kshatriya Mahasabha, repeated: "Do I need to say? What Lakshman had done, will you do or not?"

In Valmiki's Ramayana, Surpanakha - the sister of Ravana - had proposed toRama and Lakshman, but was spurned by both. In retaliation, she tried to attack Ram's wife Sita, but Lakshman rushed to protect his sister-in-law, and cut off Surpanakha's nose.

Hours after Amu's speech, Mondal - Trinamool's Birbhum district unit president - went ballistic.

"The Haryana leader has threatened to cut Didi's nose, make her Surpanakha. Poor BJP, it is easy to say such things in Haryna, but it is not easy to make such comments standing here in Bengal.

"If you utter such words here, people will chop of your tongue," Mondal, equally infamous for his inciting speeches, told a public meeting.

Amid the raging controversy over the period drama, Banerjee on Friday had promised to make special arrangements for the screening of "Padmavati" in her state.

"Yes, we would welcome them. They are welcome here if they can't do it in other state. We can make special arrangements. Bengal will be very happy," she said, in response to a query whether her state would welcome the film's crew for a premiere here at a time when a number of states have banned the movie.

Trinamool Secretary General Partha Chatterjee demanded Amu's apology.

"The language, and the content of his remarks cannot be condoned. Either he should apologise, or else the people of the state would keep a watch on him, and launch proper protests," Chatterjee said.

Eminent Bengali writer Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay described Ammu's comment as "unfortunate". "I do not know how to protest. Such comments create despair among us. As politicians, they should be more careful about using their words. I do not know why police are not taking any action. Police must take action against such comments," he said.

Theatre personality Debesh Chattopadhyay said threatening people was part of agenda of the BJP and the RSS.

"The more they talk like this, the more their hidden agenda will be exposed. History assures us the people of India would reject and protest such attempts," he said.

Poet Srijato Bandyopadhyay said through such comments, people like Amu were ensuring the "democratic right of cutting of nose".

Bhansali's attempt to bring alive the story of Rajput queen Rani Padmavati on the silver screen with his movie "Padmavati" hasn't gone down well with Hindu groups backed by the BJP. It features Deepika as Rani Padmavati, Shahid Kapoor as her husband and warrior king and Ranveer Singh essays Delhi Sultanate ruler Alauddin Khilji.

Bhansali faced many hiccups while shooting the film, but the protests escalated as the film neared its release date. There are conjectures that it "distorts history" regarding the Rajput queen, though he has denied it repeatedly.
New Delhi/Gandhinagar, Nov 25 : In late night raids on Friday, a Gujarat Police team seized Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) worth Rs 2.2 crore and five vehicles worth Rs 24.15 lakh from Khoraj village, the Election Commission said on Saturday.

Police seized 75,968 bottles of IMFL, including those of brandy, from a premises taken on rent by Rohit Yadav, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Jaunpur who was into metal scrap business.

Police said it was being illegally used as godown for bootlegging activities. The seizure is one of the biggest in recent times, police said.

"A criminal case has been registered vide Adalaj PSCR No.6266 /2017 under Section 66B, 65A C, 98(2), 116B etc of the Gujarat Prohibition Act, 1949 in this regard and investigation is being carried out into the ownership of vehicles seized during the raid and to identify various people associated with the transportation, storage and sale of liqour," the EC said in a statement.

The Gujarat Police has launched a special drive against the bootlegging activities in coordination with neighbouring states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Diu, Daman, Dadra and Nagar Haveli in view of the forthcoming assembly elections, scheduled for December 9 and 14.
New York, Nov. : New York, Nov. Nov 26 (IANS) United States President Donald Trump has warned Pakistan that failure to take action against Jammat-ud-Dawa leader Hafiz Saeed "will have repercussions for bilateral relations".

The US "strongly condemns" his release from house arrest and "calls for his immediate re-arrest and prosecution," Trump's Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement on Saturday.

"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistan's global reputation" the statement said.

Trump's latest warning is more specific focusing on Saeed's release on Thursday in the face of Pakistan's defiance of his admonishment in August that Pakistan had "much to lose" by harbouring terrorists.

"Saeed's release, after Pakistan's failure to prosecute or charge him, sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistan's commitment to combating international terrorism and belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil," Sanders's statement said.

"As President Donald Trump's South Asia policy makes clear, the US seeks a constructive relationship with Pakistan, but expects decisive action against militant and terrorist groups on Pakistani soil that are a threat to the region," she said. "The release of Saeed is a step in the wrong direction."

The statement pointed out that that the US has designated the LeT as a foreign terrorist organisation "responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent civilians in terrorist attacks, including a number of American citizens."

It added, "Saeed himself is a notorious terrorist who stands accused of having masterminded the November 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, including six American citizens."

On Friday, the State Department had condemned the release of Saeed, who carries a $10 million bounty from the US, and demanded his re-arrest.

Saeed was let go by Pakistani authorities in Lahore after a court refused to extend the detention that ended Thursday and ordered him released from house arrest.

When Donald Trump, who had taken a strong stand against terrorism during his campaign, assumed the US presidency in January, Islamabad put Saeed under house arrest. Pakistan has failed so far to prosecute him on terrorism charges.

In 2008, the US Treasury Department declared Saeed a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and put sanctions on him.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
The protesters have called for Pakistan's law minister Zahid Hamid to resign for changes made about Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September. The oath was later restored to its original form.

Police stand in their staging area and watch demonstrators near the Faizabad junction in Islamabad (Photo: Reuters)

By India Today Web Desk: Islamabad police have launched a clearance operation against protesters from the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan who've camped at the Faizabad interchange for weeks, and have been demanding the resignation of Pakistan's law minister, Zahid Hamid, Pakistani news reports said.

A policeman was killed, and 63 people were injured, The Nation reported. "At least" 150 protesters have been taken into custody since November 8, when the agitation began, Dawn reported.

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There are protests in Karachi and Lahore, too, the report said.The Express Tribune also reported protests in Faislabad, Peshawar, and the Silakot-Wazirabad road in Punjab province.

Protesters have been blocking the Islamabad Expressway and Murree Road at Faizabad interchange that connect Islamabad with its only airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

They want Zahid Hamid to resign for changes made about Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September. Dawn's report said "there is no proof that Hamid was responsible for the amendment."

Meanwhile, Dawn reported that the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's premier spy agency, told the country's supreme court that the original protests in Faizabad were politically motivated.

Later in the day, the Pakistan military spokesperson Major General Asif Ghaafoor tweeted that the Pakistan Army chief had spoken to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and urged that "both sides" avoid violence and deal with the situation peacefully.

COAS telephoned PM.Suggested to handle Isb Dharna peacefully avoiding violence from both sides as it is not in national interest & cohesion.- Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor (@OfficialDGISPR) November 25, 2017

A demostrator detained by police gestures after being hit by a policeman as he is led to a police van near the Faizabad junction (Photo: Reuters)

Today morning, police began dispersing the protesters after "several rounds of negotiations" initiated by Prime Minister Abbasi's administration failed, and after the supreme court, the Islamabad High Court, and several religious parties "repeatedly" called for the end of a protest they considered to be unlawful, Dawn reported.

As government launches crackdown on the goons of Labbaik in #Islamabad, Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority takes all TV channels off-air. pic.twitter.com/Xll1L1DYO3- Naila Inayat (@nailainayat) November 25, 2017

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority told TV channels not to broadcast footage of the operation.

MEDIA COVERAGE OF SIT-IN AT FAIZ-E-ABAD, ISLAMABAD pic.twitter.com/YqEGTWpFIR- Report PEMRA (@reportpemra) November 25, 2017

Several private news channels went off air, Dawn reported. Here's a photograph taken today in a newsroom.

The Islamabad High Court, which reports said called the protest an act of terrorism, had set November 23 as the deadline to remove the protesters.

The government had deployed hundreds of security personnel in riot gear to take action against the protesters but had been dilly-dallying, fearing a backlash from extremists.

It had restored the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat to its original form recently after National Assembly passed the amendment in the Elections Act 2017.

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(Inputs from PTI)

--- ENDS ---
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Global Girls Film Festival Banner By the conclusion of the program, the girls noticed a dramatic change in the way they viewed not only films, but the whole world.

Tickets to the festival are $15 and may be purchased by calling 847-297-8540 or at the door on the day of the event. There is a reception at 2 pm prior to the 3 p.m. screening lasting about 80 minutes. Attendees may vote for their favorite films immediately following each program. A "Best of Fest" prize will be awarded to the film that receives the greatest number of votes.

For the premiere of the Global Girls Festival, the residents of The Harbour have curated "Films for Life," which highlights short films that embody messages of diversity and empowerment. The Global Girls Festival showcases nine culturally rich and stimulating films from seven different countries.

"Made by girls, for girls, and about girls, the Global Girls Fest aims to rouse discussion about female related topics, and inspire women to question and engage with the media they consume," said ICMC Executive Director Nicole Dreiske.

This is the second year in which residents of The Harbour have curated the Global Girls Festival.

It's truly "films for life" because, as one Harbour resident and Global Girls curator, Nicole, pointed out, "This program is meant to look at the lives of others and "grade" them personally and connect them to my [sic] own life. What I want the audience to get out of the program is that life isn't easy, there will be ups and downs, but you can overcome them if you try hard enough and put your mind to it."

The Global Girls Festival was created by the ICMC as a 14-week film immersion program and is led by ICMC Executive Director Dreiske. It is designed to prompt thought-provoking discussion of 40-50 short films screened by participants that culminates in the final selection of films curated by residents themselves.

One resident at the Harbour exclaimed, "Watching these films, I was able to gain new perspectives, and I hope that others who watch them find a new way to view the world. Everyone in the world is connected through laughter and pain and that is exactly what they bring--human emotion."

"By the conclusion of the program, the girls noticed a dramatic change in the way they viewed not only films, but the whole world, said Kris Salyards, Executive Director, The Harbour, based in Park Ridge.

Harbour resident Shanika hopes to see the same change in the audience: "These films and program mean the absolute most to me, not even that, it means the world to me. Ever since I came to the first meeting I was drawn into it. It changed my perspective on life and made me think more about the stuff I can do going forward. That's what I want my audience to also get out of it."

The Global Girls Festival showcases films from around the world to expose viewers to an array of diverse backgrounds. Another resident, Jessica stated, "This means a lot to me because it really relates to me and other people in America. I hope our audience can relate to us so we can show how life is."

Global Girls 2017 Schedule: Saturday, December 2, at 3:00pm (79 min)

The screening of "Films for Life" includes nine powerful short films from seven different countries, and the chance to see uplifting stories for, by and about girls from around the world.

Celebrate the courage of the abuelas of Argentina as they search for their stolen grandchildren (Abuelas, Argentina/UK). Join Joppe, a young transgender girl as she talks about her life and dreams (I Am A Girl, Netherlands.)

Cheer for Anna who learns that inner beauty eclipses media images (Plastic, Australia.) The program includes two Chicago premieres and one world premiere. Miss Devine (US), I Am a Girl (Netherlands), Farewell (France), Reflection Day (US), Cupcakes (UK), Abuelas (Argentina/UK), Plastic (Australia), #Selfie (Germany), Birthday (U.S.).

About ICMC: International Children's Media Center

The ICMC is a nonprofit cultural and educational organization dedicated to transforming the way children use, view and engage electronic screens. Visit: http://icmediacenter.org/

The Global Girls Festival is supported by Academy of Motional Picture Arts and Sciences, The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund, the Polk Bros. Foundation, The Richard H. Driehaus Fund at the MacArthur Foundation and the Conant Family Foundation.

About The Harbour: Empowering Youth. Developing Futures.

The Harbour is a 501(c)3 organization providing emergency shelter, transitional housing, and supportive services to youth aged 12-21 and who are experiencing homelessness in the north and northwest Chicago suburbs.

The organization is committed to offering services rooted in the belief that youth must have their basic needs met before they can begin to build a promising future for themselves.
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Speaking Saturday at a Unity Walk organised by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Tarkwa in the Western Region, the ex-president noted that when the Rawlings administration wanted to implement the GETFund policy, a national stakeholders conference was organized to gather ideas for a smooth implementation.

READ MORE: Ayariga says Free SHS has increased teenage pregnancy

Today, he added, GETFund is responsible for many school projects, especially at the secondary level, across the country.

Citing another example, Mr Mahama said before the implementation of the National Health Insurance Scheme, former President Kufuor organized a stakeholders' conference on how to implement the policy.

However, in the case of President Akufo-Addo and the implementation of the free SHS, the ex-President said the implementation was hurriedly done.

This, he observed, has created a lot of challenges in many schools.

According to him, if the policy, which was started with only first-year students, should cover all students in the next three years, the challenges associated with its implementation now will more than double.

He, has, therefore called for a national dialogue on the funding and sustainability of the programme which he claims was not originated by the NPP and that it a provision in the 1992 constitution.

Meanwhile, the government has assured that it will work to address all the challenges associated with the implementation of the policy.

READ MORE: Nungua SHS to be shut down over lack of toilet facilities

According to a Deputy Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, the government is aware of the problems secondary schools are facing but said children cannot wait until the challenges in the education sector are fixed.
The Council of the University said it has become necessary for the broadcaster to go into the University's Hall of Fame having considered his "strong advocacy role in support of infant health delivery services and your outstanding career in journalism, among several other roles being played to promote good governance in the country.

In a statement, KNUST Vice Chancellor Prof. Kwesi Obiri Danso lauded Mr. Sefa Kayi for being a role model to several Ghanaians and serving as a check on successive governments towards economic progress.

Speaking at the 51st Congregation and 2017 Founders Day Special Congregation Ceremony and graduation of the university, he noted that the University, over the years, has keenly noted his good works in diverse ways, hence the need for him to be acknowledged and recognized in the historical books of the school.

A citation in his honour, read as follows:"Multiple award-winning broadcast journalist, KNUST salutes you. An astute and experienced broadcast journalist, your style of presentation has endeared many to the famous Kokrokoo morning show. Every day of the working week, you capture the sense and sensibilities of your patrons, facilitating their opinion and decision making in the process. You make optimal use of the medium at your disposal to influence change at various levels.
He died at the Korle-bu Teaching Hospital after he was rushed there following a short illness.

The actual cause of his death has not been confirmed but sources say he was diabetic.

His death broke many hearts among Ghanaians and across the political divide.

He has been eulogized for his starling career as a radio host who showed great interviewing skills, exhibited neutrality and a firm moderator.

Reactions

President Akufo-Addo expressed shock at his death saying he was "undoubtedly one of the most talented journalists of his generation."

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia also expressed shock at his demise asking God to give his widow, family and the media fraternity fortitude to bear his painful loss.

READ MORE: Bawumia reacts to death of radio presenter

On his part, former President John Mahama expressed grief at his death.
There, he threatened journalist Philippe Antoine with a shotgun, and said: "Next time, I won't miss."

Three days later, still on the run, he managed to stage a shooting attack at the offices of left-wing newspaper Liberation, also in Paris, that left a photographer's assistant seriously hurt.

There was also a separate incident where shots were fired at the headquarters of the Societe Generale bank.

The court found him guilty of attempted murder of Philippe Antoine, now chief editor at BFMTV, and Cesar Sebastien, the wounded photographer's assistant at Liberation.

Prosecutor Bernard Farret had argued that "spite" had been Dekhar's main motive, adding that the shooter harboured "resentment against society, the state and capitalism".

Dekhar, sentenced on Friday, was considering filing an appeal, his lawyer Hugo Levy said.

Of the total, Dekhar will only be eligible for parole once he has served two thirds of his sentence.

During his trial, Dekhar repeatedly evoked political arguments, raising topics such as France's colonisation of Algeria and social problems in the French suburbs.

He had also claimed he was suicidal and "desperate" for the police to end his life.

Dekhar had been jailed in the 1990s for his role in a "Bonnie-and-Clyde" style multiple murder and left rambling letters denouncing conspiracies and media manipulation.

The case predated the January 2015 jihadist attack on the premises of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which left 12 people dead.

On November 13 that year, gunmen and suicide bombers left 130 people dead in a coordinated attack targeting several Paris locations including a concert hall.
"These laws will put an end to democracy in Poland. They're moving us towards a dictatorship where power will be concentrated in one place," one of the protest organisers, Michal Wawrykiewicz, told AFP.

Earlier this week parliament began to debate new versions of the reforms of the Supreme Court and the National Council of the Judiciary that in July sparked massive street protests, concern from the US State Department and threats of EU sanctions.

Polish President Andrzej Duda surprised the country by vetoing the measures at the time, as he is a close ally of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party that pushed the legislation.

Saying that the legislation gave too large of a role to the attorney general, who in Poland is also the justice minister, Duda vowed to table his own versions -- which parliament began debating this week.

Opposition lawmakers expressed their disappointment in the president, with Barbara Dolniak from the Nowoczesna party saying on Wednesday that the legislation "continues to go against the constitution".

Since tabling his versions, Duda also promised PiS party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski to add certain amendments, the contents of which remain secret.

The PiS, which began making changes to the judiciary after coming to power in late 2015, says the reforms are indispensable to combat corruption and streamline the judicial system.
By PTI: camp

Jammu, Nov 25 (PTI) The Centres special envoy on Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma, today met the migrant families living at Talwara camp in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir who appraised him about their problems and demands.

Over 2,200 migrant families are living at Talwara camp since 1996 when they were forced to flee their homes in Udhampur, Reasi, Doda, Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu region at the height of militancy.

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Sharma, who visited Srinagar and Jammu earlier this month, met Kashmiri pandits at Jagti township yesterday and would be in the state for four days.

The Centres special representative today visited Talwara camp and met militancy-affected people of Jammu region and heard their issues, officials said, adding Sharma also took stock of the amenities at the camp.

According to the residents of the Talwara camp, this was for the first time that an interlocutor visited the camp in the last two decades.

The residents said they welcome the visit of Sharma and hope that all their grievances would be addressed in a time- bound manner.

Accusing the successive central and state governments of meting out "step-motherly treatment" to them, the residents said their demands included construction of flats, better living facilities, renovation of government school building and an employment package for the jobless youth.

They demanded the same facilities being provided to Kashmiri Pandits living in different parts of Jammu. PTI TAS NSD

--- ENDS ---
"Nuclear scientists have created a commission to discover the origin of ruthenium-106," Rosatom said in a statement, also released by the country's Nuclear Safety Institute.

The commission will include representatives of "Russian and European scientific organisations," according to the statement.

"Rosatom will offer all necessary assistance to this commission and will inform the public of the results."

On Monday, Russian meteorologists said a station close to the Mayak nuclear facility in the Chelyabinsk region detected "extremely high pollution" of the ruthenium-106 isotope during tests in late September.

The radioactive isotope is created by splitting atoms in a reactor and does not occur naturally.

Rosatom previously said there were "no incidents" at nuclear infrastructure facilities in Russia and that the concentration detected posed little threat.

Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia's agricultural safety watchdog, on Friday denied "possible radioactive contamination" of land in the area, in response to concerns.

The Mayak facility in the southern Urals, which is under Rosatom's umbrella, has said the contamination "has nothing to do with Mayak's activities".

The facility, which reprocesses nuclear fuel, said it has not produced Ru-106 for several years.
"There are still issues across the various matters that we're negotiating on to be resolved, but there's been a positive atmosphere in the talks and a genuine feeling we want to move forward together," May said after talks with Tusk on the margins of an EU summit in Brussels.

The British premier met Tusk, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders on the sidelines of the summit with ex-Soviet states as part of a bid to unlock negotiations on a future trade deal.

May said they were making progress on all of the major issues -- Britain's exit bill, the rights of EU nationals living in Britain and the Irish border, which has flared up as a major sticking point in recent weeks.

"In relation to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, we and the Irish government continue to talk about the solutions for that," May said.

"We have the same desire. We want to ensure the movement of people and trade across that border can continue as now and we don't create any new barriers to trade or the movement of people across that border."

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he was more confident than before about a deal but added nothing would be decided before he had dinner with May on December 4.
The special counsel, Robert Mueller, is examining former national security adviser Michael Flynn's role in producing a documentary about an exiled Turkish cleric at the height of the 2016 presidential race, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Mueller is eyeing Flynn as part of his investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election and whether members of President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Moscow to tilt the race in his favor.

Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser in February after it emerged that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian officials during the transition period.

Mueller's focus on Flynn has to do primarily with those interactions, as well as his lobbying firm's activities and his failure to register as a foreign agent when the firm began lobbying on behalf of a businessman with ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the latter half of 2016.

Flynn's firm, Flynn Intel Group, was paid

Flynn Intel Group was tasked with fomenting dissent inside Turkey and with lobbying the US government to extradite the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who currently resides in Pennsylvania and whom Erdogan believes is responsible for planning last year's attempted coup.

Flynn and his son, Michael Flynn Jr.  who is also a subject of scrutiny in Mueller's probe  are believed to have been offered $15 million to extradite Gulen, according to media reports. Flynn's lawyers said those reports were false, calling them "outrageous" and "prejudicial."

The documentary Alptekin paid Flynn Intel Group to produce was never completed, but it was meant to focus on the supposed dangers Gulen posed. Alptekin told The Journal in May that he hoped the documentary would be "a small, '60 Minutes' kind of a thing, where these conclusions are brought to the public."

"We thought that might have a good effect," he said.

We dont want anyone to know the Flynn Intel Group has anything to do with this

Flynn Intel Group did not want anyone to know about its involvement in the film's production, according to David Enders, a former VICE News correspondent who was hired to work on the documentary. He told The Journal that Bijan Kian, a partner at the now-defunct group, told him, "We don't want anyone to know the Flynn Intel Group has anything to do with this."

Sources familiar with the matter told The Journal on Friday that prosecutors have contacted Enders as well as former CNN anchor Rudi Bakhtiar, who was hired to work on the film, to question them about their involvement in the project.

Kian has also become a focus for Mueller, NBC News reported this week. The special counsel is seeking to gauge what role, if any, Kian played in securing the Inovo contract for Flynn Intel Group.
President Donald Trump wants his daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, to leave Washington, DC, and head back to New York, Vanity Fair reported on Tuesday.

The president reportedly advocates the move because he wants the couple to avoid negative news coverage.

"He keeps pressuring them to go," a source told Vanity Fair.

Kushner is a central figure in the special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election.

Mueller is reportedly investigating the president's role in crafting a misleading statement his son Donald Trump Jr. released after it emerged that he met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016. Mueller is also examining whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice by firing James Comey as FBI director in May.

Kushner attended the June 2016 meeting, and multiple news reports have said he strongly urged Trump to fire Comey.

Kushner was also with Trump in Bedminster, New Jersey, during a weekend in early May when Trump put together a draft letter laying out the reasons he wanted to fire Comey.

He never sent it  White House counsel Don McGahn had advised him against doing so  but he fired Comey days later, ultimately leading to Mueller's appointment as special counsel.

The Vanity Fair report also said that Trump was becoming frustrated with Kushner's political advice, including that Trump back Luther Strange in the runoff for the GOP nomination for a US Senate seat in Alabama.
As things unravelled people started to pay attention to this bizarre story. It might be complicated if you don't know all the details so here is a breakdown of all the drama.

The beginning of the Burna Boy and Mr. 2Kay beef

In October, Mr 2Kay reacted to the negative things Burna Boy said about Nigerian pastors. Mr. 2Kay during an interview with Hip TV let it be known that he didn't approve of what Burna Boy said.

Mr 2Kay said Burna Boy shouldnt have spoken ill of pastors because they are anointed men of God so he cant be talking about them in that manner.

Burna Boy, saw the interview and allegedly sent a threatening DM to Mr. 2Kay.

"You better have that energy when I come for you because Im coming for you," he allegedly threatened.

Mr. 2Kay gets beaten and robbed at Buckwyld 'n' Breathless concert

On, October 22, 2017, 2face Idibia and Tiwa Savage headlined Buckwyld 'n' Breathless at Eko Hotel & Suites. Mr. 2Kay performed at the event and after his performance he would go up to his room in the hotel and relax.

Unfortunately he was attacked and robbed in his hotel room. Most of his possessions were gone and he was left with bruises all over his body.

Eko Hotel and Suites say the incident is under police investigation

On October 24, 2017, Pulse reached out to Eko Hotel & Suites to shed more insight on the incident. According to a duty manager in the hotel, the case was under police investigation. "Since yesterday, the police and the security officials of the hotel have been working round the clock to investigate what really happened" she said.

Mr 2Kay sues Eko Hotel and Suites for N500M

On November 7, 2017, it was reportedly revealed that hit the management of Eko Hotel and Suites with a N500M lawsuit.

Burna Boy wanted for questioning

On November 20, 2017, it the police announced that Burna Boy was wanted for questioning over the Mr 2Kay robbery incident.

On the same day, the police paraded three robbery suspects who claimed that Burna Boy along with his road manager sent them to attack Mr. 2Kay

The police arrested four suspects including the road manager of Burna boy, Joel. During interrogation, the robbers confessed that they were hired by Burna Boy through his manager.

Photos of suspects involved in Mr 2kay's attack surface

According to the Lagos state commissioner of police, Edgal Imohimi, the suspects confessed to receiving a part payment of 50,000 Naira before the job and another 50,000 was paid to the robbers directly by Burna Boy when the job was done.

After this revelation, the police declared Burna boy wanted, it was also announced by the police later on that they sent a letter to Burna boy to come for questioning so as to explain what role he played in the attack and robbery of Mr 2Kay, an invitation he is yet to respond to.

Burna Boy releases statement

On November 21, 2017, Burna Boy released a statement via his record label which claimed he had honoured the police's invitation and was never declared wanted by them in the first place.
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The representative, Mr. Biodun Kupoluyi who spoke in an interview with Encomium News claimed it would have been obvious if she indeed delivered new babies. According to the spokesperson, her body will have manifested signs that she was expecting.

Dont mind those people. Theyre only imagining. You can not hide a pregnancy for long. And when you deliver, people must surely know. So, delivering a set of twins in London is not something one can hide at all.

Akindele got married to rapper and filmmaker, JJC Skillz, in the year 2016 at a private wedding held in London, England, attended by close circle friends. This came after a failed marriage to former husband, Adeola Kehinde Oloyede.

Skillz also has three children from earlier relationships. His marriage to Akindele was welcomed by some prophecies of doom by some clergymen who advised her to pray vigorously if she hopes to have children.
A statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said Buhari condemned the "dastardly act" on innocent people.

He said the attack further reinforced his position that terrorism has no relationship or respect for any religion, and should be visited with the full wrath of the law.

"The President reiterates that the workable panacea to such mindless and irresponsible attacks on citizens would be a global joint action that continually shares intelligence, simulates scenarios and regularly updates on both local and international threats.

"President Buhari prays that the almighty God will receive the souls of the departed, and comfort the families of those directly affected."
"Well, I cannot and should not blow my own trumpet. My music teacher in secondary school said you have to blow your own trumpet because if you dont, no one will blow it for you until it gets rusty. But I will like to be remembered as someone who came into public office to render service and rendered that service selflessly," he was quoted.
According to the complaint, Jyothika uses a cuss word that puts women in a bad light in Naachiyaar teaser.

By Akshaya Nath: A case has been filed against actress Jyothika and director Bala for a dialogue in the upcoming Tamil film Naachiyaar. The case has been filed by a man called Rajan. In his complaint, he has written that the dialogue in the film is derogatory and is putting women in bad light.

In an interrogation sequence in the film's teaser, Jyothika says, "Thevediya payala" which translates to bastard.

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"Using such a cuss word, not only puts women in bad light, but it is derogatory term for derivative of the word 'Devar Adiyar' and is not only insulting the women of that community, but also of any women in the society. We want action against the team so that similar usage is avoided in the future," said advocate Rahamanthula.

The case has been registered at Mettupalayam, a pace 35 km from Coimbatore, and will be heard by the Mettupalayam court on November 28. At present the case has been registered in section 294 (b) of IPC (which states that singing, reciting or uttering of any obscene word in a public place shall be punished with imprisonment of three month or fine or both) and section 67 of IT Act (which talks about punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form and the punishment will be imprisonment for five years of fine or both).

Naachiyaar is Jyothika's first collaboration with award-winning director Bala. Before this, Jyothika acted in Magalir Mattum .She will also act in a Mani Ratnam film , next year.

ALSO WATCH: Five best jalliktattu scenes from Tamil films

--- ENDS ---
In a statement by lawyer and human rights activist on Saturday, November 25, 2017, Falana responded to reports which quoted Abubakar Malami, attorney-general of the federation (AGF) as saying the said property worth N1 billion was sold to a Lagos lawyer.

Falana said: Hence, I have decided to join issues with Malami over his false claim that the EFCC had sold the property in question to me. Contrary to Malamis claim I never bought any property from the EFCC."

Explaining what he posited as true facts, the senior advocate of Nigeria said the property was one of the assets used as collateral of a loan obtained from Bank PHB by A Group Properties over 10 years ago.

He (Malami) would also have found that the property is a subject matter of a suit which is currently pending before the federal high court sitting at Abuja. (See Suit No /2015 between Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria v A Group Properties Limited).

The suit was instituted by AMCON due to the failure of the company to liquidate the loan. In granting the ex parte application filed by AMCON in the matter the court ordered an interim forfeiture of the assets of A Group Properties Limited including No 42, Gana Street, Maitama District, Abuja. The said order was granted on November 11, 2015.

However, in a bid to pay the loan, A Group Properties Limited decided to sell some of the properties. The sale of the property in question to me was made subject to the setting aside of the order of interim forfeiture which had been obtained by AMCON.

Up till now, the case has not been concluded as the parties have asked for time to resolve the dispute amicably and file terms of settlement. To that extent, the transaction on the property remains inchoate.

Falana further said order of interim forfeiture was granted in favour of AMCON over two years ago.

"Malami has not deemed it fit to disclose to the federal high court that the property at 42, Gana street, Maitama District, Abuja was recovered by the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforn.

Having regard to the facts and circumstances of this case, Mainas allegation that the management of the EFCC sold the property at No 42, Gana Street, Maitama District, Abuja or any property to me is a figment of his fecund imagination for mischief.

Instead of engaging in a cheap campaign of blackmail Malami should have taken steps to recover the alleged N1 billion property for the federal government if he is convinced that it is a proceed of crime, he said.

Malami's allegation

Malami allegedly said a lagos lawyer bought the property in contention when he appeared before the senate committee probing ex-boss of Pension boss, Abdulrasheed Mainas recall into service after he was declared wanted over alleged fraud.
The Lagos monarch said this in a remark during his courtesy visit to the Emir of Zazzau, Alhaji Shehu Idris.

More than 21,000 teachers had failed the primary four examinations in Kaduna State recently.

For instance, this issue of teachers failing examinations in Kaduna, for me, there should be training and retraining of teachers.

This will make us get the best of them that can compete anywhere with their counterparts, the royal father said.

Monarch urges Nigerians to pray

Akiolu urged Nigerians to imbibe the culture of genuinely praying for the country as this would help solve a lot of problems in the country.

My opinion on the government of the day is that we should support them.
The former army sergeant, Solomon Abel, was paraded, alongside four other suspects, on Thursday, November 23, 2017 by the state's Commissioner of Police, Mr. Lawan Ado.

The other suspects paraded are Dedeigbo Olabiyi, Raymond Anyam, Sunday Shakede and Kingsley Chijoke.

The suspects had allegedly attacked Daramola's residence at the Tanke area of Ilorin on Tuesday, November 21, at about 5:45am.

The commissioner said after the police command was tipped off about the attack, operatives of the Federal Special Anti Robbery Squad and Safer Highway teams were alerted and directed to block all the entry and exit routes to Ilorin.

The suspects were arrested when a green LandRover vehicle, with number plate IWA-01, was flagged down along Ajase-Ipo Road by policemen.

He said, "On interrogation, it was discovered that the occupants were robbers that attacked the minister's house in the Tanke area. The five suspects, who include a military man, were members of an inter-state armed robbery gang. They confessed to have come from Abuja to carry out the robbery operation."
The Commissioner of Police (CP) in the state, Mr Austine Agbonlahor, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Minna that they were rescued during joint operation by Kagara police and a vigilance group from Birnin Gwari Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

He explained that the command was taking proactive security measures to deal with any form of security threat.

He added that we have deployed sufficient security personnel to identified areas prone to criminal activities across the state.

We will continue to adopt proactive security measures to confront any form of threat to enable residents to move on with there legitimate businesses.

He called for more cooperation from the public to enable the police to rid the state of criminals.
The National Publicity Secretary of the committee, Mr Dayo Adeyeye, made this known at a news conference at the partys National Secretariat in Abuja on Friday, November 24.

Adeyeye alleged the move was a "sabotage" by some persons who have allowed themselves to be used by All Progressives Congress (APC) to cause divisions in the PDP.

He added that the attempt is totally uncalled, noting that those making such plans are honest members of the PDP.

The party's spokesman added that the caretaker committee has been working very hard to carry all party members and supporters along towards organising a successful convention.

"We are also putting our resources in place to address all the fears earlier reported by some national chairmanship aspirants.

"One of the steps taken by the leadership is to make available and in good time, the comprehensive names of all the delegates for the national convention to all the aspirants before the convention.

"We therefore see no reason for any honest member of this great party to want to disrupt our programmes, except they are of course working for the ruling party, the APC," Adeyeye said.

He assured that the committee will address all concerns of members regarding the convention.

Adeyeye, however, urged all party members to take advantage of the committees open-door policy to "ventilate their opinions, concerns and grievances."

He pointed out that as part of subtle plans to weaken the PDP, some of its high profile members were recently arrested on "Trump-up charges of corruption."

He particularly identified recent arrest of former governor of Taraba, Mr Abubakar Danladi and former Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF), Sen. Anyim Pius Anyim, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The spokesman recalled that the party had few weeks ago alerted that there was a list of 50 of its top leaders pencilled down for "arrest and incarceration".

"In the last one week, Danladi and Anyim, two prominent members of our party, were arrested by the anti-graft agency, the EFCC.

"These are all part of the agenda to create an atmosphere of fear and insecurity around PDP members before and after the national convention.

"It is also part of the overall strategy of the ruling party to turn Nigeria into a one-party state," he alleged.

On the resignation of the former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, from the APC, Adeyeye said that PDP's door is wide open for him.

He said Abubakar, who was one of the founding fathers of PDP, became Governor of Adamawa and Vice President under the partys platform, adding that "he is a PDP man to the core".

According to him, Abubakar was deceived into believing that the APC is a platform that would correct all the ills in the PDP.

Quoting from the Bible that "and you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free", Adeyeye said "I believe that Atiku has seen the truth and the truth has now set him free and we thank God for that.

"Therefore, being a founding father and because we have an umbrella that is big enough to accommodate everybody, he is welcome to PDP, the democratic party.

"PDP is a free party and was conceived for all Nigerians and is free from all religious, ethnic and geographical divisions.

"It has capacity to accommodate everybody. Our doors are open for him to come back to his home without any pre-condition."
Saeed's freedom came despite months of pressure by Washington on Islamabad over its alleged support for militants.

Freeing him "belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists," President Donald Trump's press secretary said in a statement.

"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistans global reputation," the statement said.

Saeed had been under house arrest since January following a government crackdown on JuD, but a spokesman for his party said authorities had failed to provide evidence.

Trump seeks "a constructive relationship with Pakistan, but expects decisive action against militant and terrorist groups on Pakistani soil that are a threat to the region," the White House said.

"The release of Saeed is a step in the wrong direction."

On Friday the US State Department expressed deep concern at Saeed's release and called for him to be arrested and charged.

Six Americans were among 166 people killed in 2008 during the three-day siege in Mumbai when gunmen who arrived by sea sparked battles with Indian commandos.

The drama, played out on live television around the world, nearly brought nuclear-armed enemies India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

JuD is considered by the US and India to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the militant group blamed for the attack on India's financial capital.

In October, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Washington is concerned that extremist groups are threatening the "stability and security" of the Pakistani government.

Trump has accused Islamabad of harboring "agents of chaos" who could attack US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Washington and Kabul have long accused Islamabad of supporting Afghan militants including the Taliban. They are believed to have links to Pakistan's shadowy military establishment.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied the charge.
Troops and paramilitaries had advanced into the desert from the east and north on Thursday at the start of an offensive aimed at inflicting a final defeat on the jihadists.

On Saturday, troops and tribal militia pushed north from Al-Qaim and Rawa, two Euphrates Valley towns recaptured from IS earlier this month, in a pincer movement against retreating IS fighters, one of the operation's two commanders told AFP.

"It's a matter of linking up with the forces advancing from Nineveh" province in the north, the commander said, asking not to be identified.

"The aim of the operation is to clear the desert right up to the Syrian border and hunt down the terrorists who fled into the desert from the towns that have been liberated."

The Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary force, which has played a key role in the offensive, said 100 villages and hamlets had already been cleared of IS fighters.

"The battle for the desert is very important because it's from there that Daesh fighters coming from Syria can attack our defence lines," said Hashed number two Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

In a video posted by the Hashed, Mohandis said the desert was "the last region where Daesh still has a military presence."

He said operations against it were under away over an area of 27,000 square kilometres (10,400 square miles)

But he warned that their completion would not spell the end of IS.

"We must hunt them down in areas that have been liberated and we must arrest them before they slip back into urban areas," said Mohandis, who is widely regarded as the strongman of the Hashed, which is largely composed of Iran-backed Shiite militias.

"We must remain in a state of alert," he added. "Security will not be fully assured until we have complete control of the border with Syria."

At the peak of its power in 2014, IS ruled some seven million people in a territory as large as Italy, encompassing large parts of Syria and nearly a third of Iraq.
Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a repatriation agreement on Thursday which would pave the way for the return of the refugees at the "earliest" opportunity, according to the deal, which Dhaka released on Saturday.

"Primarily they will be kept at temporary shelters or arrangements for a limited time," Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali told reporters in the capital.

The comments come after the UN refugee agency UNHCR on Friday raised concerns over the agreement, saying conditions to enable refugees to safely return to Rakhine State were not in place.

Under the deal, Yangon will "encourage those who had left Myanmar to return voluntarily and safely to their own households" in Rakhine State or "to a safe and secure place nearest to it".

However most of the Rohingya villages were burnt during the violence, Ali said, and refugees would have no choice but to live in temporary shelters there.

"There are no houses. Where they will live? It is not possible to physically (return to their own homes)," he said.

Under the terms of the agreement, Myanmar will ensure temporary shelters are only a short-term option and that refugees' "freedom of movement in the Rakhine State will be allowed in conformity with the existing laws and regulations".

More than 100,000 Rohingya have been living in grim camps for internally displaced persons since violence erupted in Rakhine in 2012.

Rohingya activist Mohammad Zubair told AFP that "Rohingya people will never agree to voluntary repatriation if they are not taken back to their villages and their land returned to them".

He said Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a similar repatriation agreement in 1992, which led to the return of some 200,000 Rohingya to Rakhine, but unresolved problems, including the issue of citizenship, continue to fester.

The stateless Rohingya have been systematically oppressed by Myanmar, which has stripped the minority of citizenship and severely restricts their movement, as well as their access to basic services.

Myanmar's government says Rohingya are interlopers from Muslim-majority Bangladesh, even though many can trace their roots in Myanmar back generations.

"Unless we get citizenship in Myanmar, no way the Rohingya will this time return to Rakhine," Zubair said.

UNHCR has echoed the concerns of the Rohingya, saying all returns must include "the informed consent of refugees".

According to the agreement, some 700,000 Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh since October 2016 will be considered for repatriation.

But that still leaves hundreds of thousands of Rohingya -- some of whom fled Myanmar years or decades ago -- in Bangladesh.

"The repatriation of residents who crossed over to Bangladesh earlier will be considered separately on the conclusion of the present arrangement," the newly-signed deal said.

Impoverished and overcrowded Bangladesh has won international praise for allowing the refugees into the country, but has imposed restrictions on their movement and said it does not want them to stay.
The UN humanitarian affairs office had said on Friday that it had been given clearance by the Saudi-led coalition that has been fighting the rebels since 2015 to resume flights into Sanaa.

But it added that desperately needed shipments of food and medicines to the rebel-held Red Sea port of Hodeida remained blocked.

The UN Children's Fund said Saturday's flight was carrying more than 15 tonnes, or 1.9 million doses, of vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and other preventable diseases.

The World Health Organization confirmed earlier this week that diphtheria was spreading as children went unvaccinated and doctors in Hodeida reported three deaths.

More than 2,000 people have died of cholera in Yemen this year, adding to the 8,600 who have died in the conflict between the Saudi-backed government and the rebels since 2015.

The aid blockade, put in place after the rebels fired a missile which was intercepted over Riyadh airport, has tightened the stranglehold on Hodeida, the conduit for UN supervised deliveries of food and medicine to rebel-held territory.

The United Nations has warned that unless the blockade is lifted, Yemen will face "the largest famine the world has seen for decades".
Kamaal R Khan is back on Twitter with a new account, and holds Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, and Aamir Khan responsible for the suspension of his old one.

By India Today Web Desk: If you were breathing a sigh of relief, that self-styled critic Kamaal R Khan was off Twitter, well think again. He's back on the micro-blogging site, after his account was suspended last month.

After threatening to commit suicide , he is now back with a new account.

Of course, being KRK, he can't not say anything non-controversial. He has accused Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan of being instrumental in getting his account suspended.

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KRK tweeted saying, "SRK + Salman Khan + Aamir Khan forced #Twitter to suspend my account, but still, they can't stop me from reviewing films to save public from watching their crap films. Better, they should make good films instead to stop me."

He also went on to allege that, "Yesterday, SRK told to one of the top directors that he will finish all these idiot critics within next 2 years. Thank you SRK. Let's see if you will finish Critics or You will finish yourself within next 2 years."

SRK + Salman Khan + Aamir Khan forced #Twitter to suspend my account, but still they cant stop me from reviewing films to save public from watching their crap films. Better, they should make good films instead to stop me.- KRK (@KRKActor) November 24, 2017

His account was suspended on October 18, after he revealed the climax of Aamir Khan's Secret Superstar.

KRK is known to spew lewd comments at actresses, like Alia Bhatt and Bipasha Basu on Twitter, and offend filmmakers immeasurably.

Vikram Bhatt even slammed a legal case on him, for his defamatory comments, and KRK had to meekly apologise on Twitter.

ALSO WATCH: FIR against KRK for posting obscene tweets on women

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MCCOMB, Miss. (AP)  On June 18, ex-Special Forces missionary David Eubank was on the front lines in Mosul when a private with the Iraqi federal police got word of five civilians trapped in a building controlled by ISIS.

Eubank had already participated in numerous death-defying rescues. One, in which he dashed through ISIS gunfire to pull out a little girl, made international news this summer.

But this situation seemed hopeless. Eubank admitted to his colleagues he was afraid.

"I've never told people I was afraid 'till later. This day was different," Eubank recounted to supporters  including many from southwest Mississippi  at a reception in Covington, La.

But the private, a man named Zuhair, said he would not leave the people there to die. So off they went toward the building, the ruins of a Pepsi plant surrounded on three sides by ISIS.

They got inside only to encounter a floor covered in empty Pepsi cans. Not even the most skillful Green Beret could get across that without making a racket.

Eubank took a deep breath and prayed silently, "ISIS, you cannot see, hear or stop us." Then, "I ran across  and they never saw us."

Eubank, Zuhair and their companions found four wounded people in the building  including a woman with a compound leg fracture and a little girl in a state of shock  but ISIS fighters were so close they could hear their voices.

Outside in a courtyard flanked by a low wall were more than 70 dead civilians  and one live one, a woman who mouthed to them for help.

Since the courtyard was guarded by ISIS sniper fire, Eubank prayed to God to take the woman since rescue appeared hopeless. But Zuhair insisted he would not leave her to die.

Eubank prayed again, and Zuhair noticed wire running along the ceiling. They cut a length of wire and sent the little girl, who was small enough to keep behind the wall, to take it to the immobilized woman, who had been lying amid carnage for three days and nights without food or water.

The woman wrapped one end of the wire around her wrist and her rescuers dragged her slowly across the rubble to the building. Eubank and his partners then managed to remove all five wounded people from the rubble and take them to safety.

At the Covington gathering, Eubank showed a video of the rescue. The moral, he said, was that God could use a Muslim Iraqi private and a traumatized little girl to accomplish His will even when it seemed impossible.

In service of God

Dr. Shannon Allison, who hosted Eubank's reception at his Covington home, is also a former Green Beret who served in the Army Rangers with Eubank and later with his mission organization, the Free Burma Rangers.

The Free Burma Rangers have operated in Burma for 20 years, providing "help, hope and love" to internally displaced people in conflict zones.

Allison recalled his first mission in Burma with Eubank. When they arrived, they learned the Burma Army had put out a contract on Eubank's head. Allison suggested they retreat for a week or so to regroup.

Eubank told him, "There's no better way to die than in the service of God. We're all going to die, so there is no better way to die."

The question, Allison said, is this: "Are we doing what we're supposed to be doing in the service of God?"

Allison went with Eubank into Burma then and on countless missions since  missions where the Rangers sometimes came under fire from the Burma Army.

A few years ago Eubank was asked to help out in Sudan, and then in Kurdistan, Syria and northern Iraq.

After the Kurds drove ISIS out of their territory in November 2016, Eubank prayed for guidance. An hour later he got a call from a Christian charity asking him to deliver 17 tons of food into Mosul.

Soon he, his family and some fellow Free Burma Rangers were headed to Mosul, where the Iraqi Army was trying to drive out ISIS and civilians were fleeing by the thousands.

The Rangers had two Land Cruisers and a truckload of food but none of the permits required to get through the numerous checkpoints. Nevertheless, guards let them through, including one who said, "You guys are Americans. I love Michael Jackson!"

As they approached Mosul, they saw plumes from explosions going up across the plain. They came to a line of rocks across the road and, not sure what to do, turned and drove toward an Iraqi flag. ISIS, positioned not far away, opened fire with .50-caliber guns and mortars, but Eubank's group made it to the Iraqi Army outpost safely.

"The Iraqis said, 'Who are you? Who sent you?' " Eubank said. "I said, 'God sent us.'"

As it turned out, the commanding general hated Americans  until three nights later when Eubank joined an Iraqi team to rescue some of their men pinned down by ISIS.

Eubank's participation impressed the Iraqi general, and the Iraqis' bravery impressed Eubank.

"The Iraqis were all willing to die for those three, and they were all cooks," he said.

Time and again he saw Iraqis risk their lives  and sometimes lose them  to rescue people of other tribes and faiths, whereas ISIS fighters killed their own people when they tried to flee.

"Jesus changed my heart to love Iraqis," Eubank said.

"I didn't hate ISIS, until ..."

Eubank even viewed ISIS through the lens of Christianity, reflecting Jesus' command to love our enemies.

"I didn't hate ISIS. I prayed for their souls  till one day they killed this 3-year-old kid," he said.

Eubank had met an Iraqi family, chatted with them and prayed over them. They drove away on a tractor, only to hit an ISIS land mine, wounding the family and killing the girl.

"All of us were crying. We saw dead bodies every day. Nobody cries in combat," Eubank said.

He told a colleague, "We will hunt them down till they are all dead."

But he prayed that night and the next morning opened his Bible to this verse: "Vengeance is mine, said the Lord. I will repay."

"I said, 'Jesus, I reject vengeance. I give it up.' He lifted off my shoulders a burden I didn't even know I was carrying."

Meanwhile the action came thick and fast. A hand grenade detonated 4 yards away from Eubank but left him with only minor shrapnel wounds. He and an Iraqi soldier were sitting by a road in a supposedly safe area when an ISIS vehicle rounded the corner and its men opened fire as close as 2 yards away  Eubank saw the hatred in their faces  but missed.

The worst wound he sustained was a through-and-through gunshot through his forearm. He got it bandaged up and carried on.

Others weren't so fortunate.

"I lost 30 close friends in Mosul," Eubank said. "In one day I lost three guys who were close to me."

The Free Burma Rangers helped feed 50,000 people and carried countless people to the casualty collection point.

One of the most dramatic incidents came when they spotted some civilians huddled behind a wall amid 150 dead bodies.

At that moment, "a friend of mine called me and said, 'What can I do for you?' I said, 'Pray.' That's the power of the praying church," Eubank said.

He borrowed a tank from the Iraqis and called in smoke from the Americans. With two other Free Burma Rangers providing cover fire, "I said, 'Jesus, help me,' " and he dashed through ISIS fire to retrieve the girl.

The video went viral and played on news channels around the world.

In August, Eubank and his family returned to the States to visit supporters around the country. His plan is to return to Iraq this month, go to Burma for the 20th anniversary of the Free Burma Rangers in December, then back to Iraq and Syria.

After Eubank spoke, Allison tried to put his stories in perspective.

"That's the mission God has given David," Allison said. "We need to do what God has got for us."

He compared Eubank to his namesake in the Old Testament.

"David is like the David in the Bible. He talks to God," Allison said.

Eubank's story should inspire those who hear it to do better in their own field of endeavor, Allison said.

"I'm hoping that it empowers all of us to take one extra step, to say, 'I can,' not 'I can't.'"
Sunday, Nov. 26

--Gloria Dei Presbyterian Church, 420012th St., Rock Island: 4:30 p.m. Celtic music session; 5 p.m. Celtic Vespers; advent focus;service; 309-788-8986 or gloriadeipresbyter@att.net.

Friday, Dec. 1

--Christ United Methodist Church, 3801 7th St., East Moline; 7 p.m., "Come Celebrate the Christmas Season with Music!" concert; donations accepted to benefit church's ministries; performers are Common Threads, Josie DeWitt; Fishermens Holler; Shaun Easton, and The Called.

Saturday, Dec. 2

--9th Annual Congregation of the Humility of Mary Holiday Gift Swap: 2-4 p.m., at the Humility of Mary Center, 820 West Central Park Ave., Davenport; free; presented by the CHM Care of Earth committee; bring new or gently used gift items for re-gifting; leftover items will be donated to shelter programs; share enjoy homemade goodies.

--First United Methodist Church, 9412 228 St., N., Port Byron: 9 a.m.-2 p.m., 18th annual "Christmas Traditions; tour decorated homes, $10; 11 a.m.-1 p.m., luncheon, Christmas crafts, woodworking items, silent auction, bake sale items, cookies, candies, jellies, jams, salsa, pickles; Christmas wreaths, toys, treats sold; 309-738-3906, 309-523-2244.

Sunday, Dec. 3

--Heritage Church, 4801 44th St., Rock Island: Two "Divorce Care & Grief Share : Surviving the Holidays" seminars; 2-4 p.m.; for people facing the holidays, facing grief, separation or divorce during the holidays; register by calling 309-732-0033 or judy.sawkins@heritageqc.com; walk-ins welcome for those not able to register before class; no seminary fee; no childcare available.

Friday, Dec. 8, and Saturday, Dec. 9

--Buffalo Prairie Presbyterian Church, 0320 183 Ave W, Buffalo Prairie; 6-8:30 p.m., Friday; 5:30-6 p.m. Saturday; "Walk Through Bethlehem Live Nativity" event; People with accessibility needs are invited for an exclusive visit from 5:30-6 call the Rev. Marc Shefelton at 309-537-3113 or email him at mshefelt@ashland.edu.

Saturday, Dec. 9

--Broadway Church, 710 23rd St., Rock Island; 11 a.m.-1 p.m.; Cookie/Candy Walk $8 per pound; get $1 off by bringing a container; coffee or cocoa available; volunteers welcome; csll or e-mail 309-786-2631 or broadway@broadwayqc.org.

Sunday, Dec. 10

--Messiah Lutheran Church, Aledo, 509 NE 2nd St., Aledo: 10 a.m. service; 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Smorgasbord; donations accepted for the meal; proceeds support church's the ministries; 309-582-5261.

Miscellaneous

--Churches United of the Quad City Area recently received a $1,750 Theisens More for Your Community Grant for Winnies Place.
One hundred years ago there was a shortage of pennies during WWI.

War revenue taxes were one of the reasons, according to Daily Dispatch articles in November 1918.

The government put higher consumption taxes on such items as alcohol, tobacco, chewing gun, movie tickets and luxury items.

War revenue taxes amounted to one or more odd cents in theater admissions and other items. This created an enlarged demand for the penny.

The U.S. Mint's output of three million copper coins a day was considered insufficient. The government was not ready to resort to issuance of paper money of denominations less than a dollar, similar to the shin plasters of the Civil War days.

But Raymond T. Baker, director of the mint, had given consideration to making paper money worth less than a dollar. Shin plasters were fractional currency introduced between Aug. 21, 1862 and Feb. 15, 1876. They were issued in 3-, 5-, 10-, 15-, 25- and 50-cent denominations across five issuing periods, according to Wikipedia.

Baker declared, the country is threatened with a severe shortage of cents, dimes and other small change, for the approaching holiday season," The Dispatch reported.

He appealed to persons who collect small coins as a savings hobby to exchange them for coins of larger denominations or for currency, to relieve the shortage. Children particularly, were asked to do their bit, said the newspaper. New York, Chicago and many other cities report shortages of small coins and have appealed to the mint to rush shipments of pennies."

A local banker in Moline felt the shortage of pennies was not only due to the war tax. That banker, according to The Dispatch, felt the shortage was partly due to the thrift of the people in the U.S.

In days gone by, whenever anybody boosted the price of something he had to sell, he advanced the price five cents because the American people would rather pay the nickel than bother with pennies, the newspaper said. But times have changed. Now people are not only willing to bother with pennies but they kick like blazes when they have to pay a cent more. This is natural when many have so few cents left.

A Moline banker told The Dispatch he had written to Chicago and asked for $200 worth of dimes, $200 worth of nickels and $10 worth of pennies We were lucky to get the $10 worth," he told the newspaper.

In New York, the newspaper reported, the shortage is so acute that the U.S. sub-treasury is appealing to the kiddies to open their banks and get the pennies there exchanged into larger coinage.

Then relief came from Denver, Colo.

From now until some undermined time in the future, the Denver mint will turn out nothing but pennies - 600,000 of them a day - to relieve the need for great numbers of coppers caused by the war tax bill, the newspaper said.

In addition to the tax on consumer goods, the income tax was changed under the War Revenue Act of 1917. Income tax rates were raised, while exemptions were lowered.

The 2 percent bracket had previously applied to income below $20,000. That amount was lowered to $2,000. The top bracket (income over $2 million) was raised from 15 percent to 67 percent.

There are more one-cent coins produced than any other denomination. The coin has weathered two world conflicts and more. Maybe we should reach down and pick up that penny on the sidewalk.
Once again, in celebration of the traditional Christmas season kickoff, we bring you our Thanksgiving week all-cheers edition of Cheers & Jeers.

Cheers to Arconic's announcement that it will invest $137 million more at its Davenport Works. The new heat-treat furnace coming to its Riverdale plant is expected to create 30 jobs and retain 250 jobs at a wage of $18.30 per hour.

It also represents the global aluminum giant formerly known as Alcoa Inc.'s continued commitment to our region.

"This is the second time in less than a decade that Arconic, as a global corporation, has chosen the Quad-Cities for a significant investment, Liz Murray Tallman, chief economic development officer for the Quad Cities Chamber, said Monday. Arconic is a driver of new jobs and economic growth in the Quad-Cities. We thank them for their continued investment here, and have been honored to support their expansion efforts.

Cheers to the reopening of John Deere Road to four lanes in time for Black Friday and the Friday reopening of the intersection of 7th Avenue and 19th Street. The latter is a welcome early holiday gift for motorists trying to navigate downtown Moline. It also signals continued progress on the reshaping of Moline's downtown in preparation for the new Interstate 74 bridge.

Cheers to this year's army of teens representing 17 Quad-Cities area high schools for collecting 424,845 pounds of food for the needy in our community. The 2017 Quad Cities Student Hunger Drive total is 46,000 pounds heavier than last year, and will provide more than 354,000 meals to hungry children, families, and seniors in eastern Iowa and western Illinois.

We were especially pleased to see that the students continued to focus on collecting good for that's also good for the food insecure in our community.

Please join us in thanking the young people who took part and the schools, teachers, staff, volunteers, and Hunger Drive staff who keeps the drive going year after year.

If you're looking for a more tangible way to show your support, donate to your local food pantry, not just during the holidays but throughout the year. Hunger is, after all, a year-round problem.

Cheers and thank you to all who put others before themselves this Thanksgiving. That starts, as always, with Mr. Thanksgiving, Bob Vogelbaugh, who once again packed SouthPark Mall with people, pie, poultry and good cheer during his 47th annual community dinner. A standing ovation, too, to his hand-picked successor, who was announced at the 2017 event's kickoff news conference.

After the dinner celebrates its golden anniversary, Mr. Vogelbaugh expects to hand the reins to Isaac Rumler. The third-grader at Seton Catholic School will be 12 by then, with some mighty big shoes to fill. But his parents, Matt and Amber, are ready to help, Mr. Vogelbaugh sahs. It's amazing to see someone so young so committed to serving his community every Thanksgiving Day.

Cheers also to volunteers from churches, organizations, agencies and charities for sharing Thanksgiving meals and providing holiday gift baskets for those in need.

For many, such as the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, it's a holiday tradition. Last Sunday, thanks to efforts of many, it hosted its 28th Annual Thanksgiving Holiday Dinner for the community.

Others laid the groundwork for new traditions, including the St. Ambrose Occupational Therapy students that provided a Thanksgiving meal for 50 refugee families from eight countries. The event, held in conjunction with The Spring Forward Family Reading Night, also offered these newcomers a taste of hospitality and an introduction to a wonderfully American holiday. Salute!
The body of an Indian Army jawan who was abducted Friday from his home in Kashmir's Pulwama, has been recovered. No militant group has taken responsibility yet.

By India Today Web Desk, Shuja-ul-Haq : In yet another incident of abduction and murder of security forces personnel, a bullet-ridden body of an army jawan was found in Shopian district of south Kashmir on Saturday morning.

The deceased jawan has been identified as Irfan Dar, a resident of Sanzan village, confirmed SSP Shopian Ambarkar Shriram to India Today. The body was found under mysterious conditions in Wuthmulla village of Shopian.

BREAKING: Bullet-riddled body of Army soldier Sepoy Irfan Ahmed Dar recovered in Shopian, south Kashmir this morning. He was 23. Probe on. pic.twitter.com/wIWAvLMWFI- Shiv Aroor (@ShivAroor) November 25, 2017

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Locals who found the body had informed the police. Following the incident the police have launched an investigation to track down the culprits.

"He was perhaps kidnapped by militants. His bullet-riddled body was recovered today morning," Shriram said, adding that the soldier was posted in Gurez.

Sources said that Dar was posted in Gurez area. No militant outfit has come forward to claim responsibility of the murder.

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah condemned the murder and condoled the family of the soldier in a tweet.

The murder of young Irfan Dar is a very tragic & reprehensible act. My unqualified condemnation & heartfelt condolences to his family. https://t.co/fzwlInBjtg- Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) November 25, 2017

This is the third incident of murder of security forces personnel in the recent times. In September, a young Border Security Force (BSF) jawan was shot dead by terrorists when he and his family tried to thwart an abduction attempt.

The terrorists opened fire on the family following the tussle. The deceased BSF jawan was identified as Constable Mohammad Ramzan Parray (31).

In a similar incident in May this year, another jawan identified as Ummer Fayaz was shot dead by about four terrorists in Shopian district. The incident later triggered protests in the valley.

(Inputs from Ashraf Wani)

--- ENDS ---
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The NIA has said that there is a pattern in the interfaith marriage trend in Kerala.

By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: Ahead of the hearing on the 'Kerala love jihad' case on Monday, it is learnt that all the parties in the Akhila alias Hadiya controversy will maintain their original stance.

Last week, the National Investigation Agency had submitted its report to the Supreme Court in a sealed envelope. The third such report filed by agency.

While Hadiya was questioned at her residence for two consecutive days, it is learnt from sources that she stated that she married out of her own free will.

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Hadiya's father KM Ashokan, who had approached the Kerala HC, leading to the annulment of her marriage to Shafin Jahan, was questioned earlier by the agency slueths. He claimed that his daughter was "brain washed".

The NIA has said that there is a pattern in the interfaith marriage trend in Kerala. Stating further that an indoctrinated person is not capable of giving free consent in marriage.

But, Hadiya vehemently denied the allegation that she was forced to marry Shafin. Her marriage was arranged without the consent of her father.

She has reportedly said she converted to Islam out of her own free will. The statement is part of the sealed envelope that will be the crux of the court hearing on Monday.

Out of the 89 cases of interfaith marriages, 23 were found to have PFI connections.

No direct case of 'love jihad', indoctrination, conversion, or recruitment to terror outfits has been found in the case. Though, the NIA has hinted at indoctrination and lure -- both making voluntary conversion illegal.

Earlier this week, NIA also recorded statement of AS Sainaba, National President, Women's Wing of PFI.

Incidentally, she was caught on the India Today sting, talking about conversions in Kerala, a charge she denied later. As per the sources, she was interrogated on Sunday.

Sources say, based on the questioning of several key persons including parents of the young woman have been examined.

The agency is reportedly maintaining its stand that there is a systematic pattern to convert non-Muslim girls and marrying them off to Muslim men which appears to be a larger conspiracy of conversion.

Meanwhile, Akshara Bose, a 25-year-old Hindu woman from Kerala has also approached the court alleging that her husband Sajjad Rehman had forced her to convert to Islam, and was trying to sell her as a sex slave while he went to Jeddah on work assignment.

The matter is expected to be heard on November 30.

ALSO WATCH | Kerala love jihad 'victim' Hadiya first time on camera: Forced conversion or choice?

--- ENDS ---

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'The stage is set for increasing tensions in a highly volatile region as crucial as ever from a geopolitical standpoint,' predicts Claude Smadja.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is not only trying to reorient Saudi Arabia, but also endeavouring to reshape the geopolitics and balance of power in West Asia. And he is in a hurry.

While MbS, as he is nicknamed, is a very shrewd, ruthless and bold individual as well as a risk-taker -- evident from his breaking away from the traditional mindset of Saudi rulers -- yet successfully tackling domestic and international challenges will require his utmost capabilities.

Since elevated as co-crown prince by his father, King Salman, MbS has systematically established himself as the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, without waiting for the abdication or death of his octogenarian father.

Becoming rapidly the key decision-maker for the kingdom's economic, foreign and defence policies, he eliminated the other co-crown prince, his cousin Prince bin Nayef, snatching also from him the control of the security services.

He has restricted the pervasive power of the religious police and allowed Saudi women to drive -- a very potent symbol of change -- scoring points with the country's middle class bristling at the strait-jacket imposed on Saudi society by the Wahhabi clergy and the ultra-conservatism of the monarchy.

MbS knows that these kind of moves -- and similar ones that will have to follow -- are absolute prerequisites if his ambitious programme of economic reform to wean the kingdom away from an unsustainable over-dependence on oil is to stand a chance of success.

The latest step, three weeks ago, has been the most spectacular -- the arrest of more than 200 top personalities (princes, business leaders, former top officials) considered until now as untouchable on the accusation of corruption.

This was the perfect way of killing three birds with one stone: Neutralising potential opponents as he prepares to ascend to the throne; showing to the middle class and other segments of the population that he is serious about fighting endemic corruption, creating a modern economy and making the country enter the 21st century; and, last but not least, taking from Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, now in prison for corruption, the control of the National Guard, the elite unit in charge of the protection of the monarchy, and thus bringing the whole military and security apparatus under his control.

Many Saudis and foreign observers have been worrying at MbS' brashness and the destabilisation risks that his moves are creating for Saudi Arabia and, indeed, West Asia.

However, he might not have any other choice than moving fast and taking the risks given the daunting challenges he is facing and the fact that he needs to 'lock in his power before his father King Salman's abdication or death.

And there is some systematic approach behind the brashness and impatience as, in the past few months, MbS has been putting people loyal to him in a number of key positions in Riyadh as well as in the kingdom's provinces.

Transforming an economy based on oil rent and corruption and a society whose acquiescence has been either bought by subsidies or ensured by the Wahhabi obscurantist propagated not only requires major structural changes but also a radical cultural and societal transformation.

Since the launch of the Reform 2030 programme, deadlines for achieving some objectives have now been pushed back as unrealistic and some previously abolished subsidies had to be reinstated because of the social unrest their abrogation had created.

In the same way, the fight against corruption, which has been an intrinsic part of the system, is bound not only to be a difficult process but also to create many enemies waiting for the first opportunity to strike back.

There will be no shortage of members of the royal family, not speaking of rent-happy businessmen, willing not only to limit the scope of reforms but also to do whatever they can to bar the crown prince from ascending the throne.

This is where the international challenge undertaken by MbS comes into play.

The crown prince, in alliance with UAE leaders, is determined to draw a line against the expansion of Iranian power and influence in the region, and to reassert Saudi Arabia as a number one regional player.

He intends to reverse the strategic gains achieved by Tehran in Iraq and Syria with the defeat of ISIS and the consolidation of regimes in Baghdad and Damascus ever more closely allied to Iran and acting as its proxies.

MbS and the UAE rulers' decision to strangulate Qatar and force the regime there to distance itself from Iran has illustrated the decision to actively contain Iranian influence.

But the Saudis have also been very alarmed by the growing encroachment of Hezbollah -- another Iranian proxy in Lebanon and by the rapprochement between the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas and the Iran-supported Hamas.

Hence the bringing back to Riyadh of Prime Minister Saad Hariri who had been unable to stop Hezbollah's advances, and the announcement, from the Saudi capital, of his resignation (Hariri has since returned to Lebanon and withdrawn his resignation).

Ditto for the summoning of Mahmoud Abbas to Riyadh to let him know in no ambiguous terms that Saudi Arabia will not allow the rapprochement between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to be a cover for Tehran gaining more influence in Palestinian affairs.

MbS and his Gulf allies consider the expansion of the Shiite -- Iranian -- crescent of power encompassing Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon a lethal threat to their regimes and seem ready for an open confrontation with Tehran.

They feel supported by the Donald J Trump administration which does not believe in any possibility of a 'grand bargain' between the US and Iran -- as the Barack Obama administration implicitly did -- and has taken a much more confrontational policy toward the Iranian regime.

All these moves may be taking Mohammed bin Salman into uncharted waters: The war in Yemen is going nowhere with ever higher casualties and the increasing desolation inflicted to the country. Not to speak of the drag on the Saudi finances already under stress.

Iran will continue to support the Houthi, Shia-led insurrection in Yemen and will not abandon its broader goal of asserting its prominence in the region.

The missile launched from Yemen, which landed close to Riyadh airport a few days after the Hariri's resignation, and the blasting of an oil pipeline in Bahrain look like warning shots from Tehran about the risks Saudi Arabia would run in case of a direct confrontation with Iran.

So far Tehran's response to the Saudi counter-offensive has been shaped by the desire to preserve its nuclear agreement.

However, neither Iran will renounce its objective of prominence in the region nor will Saudi Arabia, under MbS' leadership, backtrack on its will to block and reverse the Iranian/Shiite power grab.

The stage is thus set for increasing tensions in a highly volatile region as crucial as ever from a geopolitical standpoint.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has embarked on a course that, beyond his own personal future, will define the evolution of West Asia, with massive repercussions beyond the region.

Don't expect quiet moments in the period to come.

Claude Smadja, president, Smadja & Smadja, a strategic advisory firm, tweets @ClaudeSmadja

IMAGE: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, with his father King Salman. Photograph: Saudi Press Agency/Reuters
The Egyptian air force on Saturday gunned down several militants and destroyed their vehicles, hours after over 230 worshippers were killed in a terrorist attack at a mosque in the country's restive North Sinai region.

Army spokesperson Tamer el-Refai said in a statement that the air forces launched retaliatory attacks on terror hideouts in the surrounding area of North Sinai, killing militants and destroying vehicles used in the deadly attack.

He said arms and ammunition depots of the militants were also targeted.

At least 235 worshippers were killed and 109 others injured when heavily-armed militants bombed the al-Rowda mosque in Al-Arish city and opened fire on people attending Friday prayers.

Earlier, local media reports quoting sources in the security force said the army launched "immediate and wide" ground and air raids and two drones attacked two vehicles belonging to militants in Al-Resha village near el-Rouda village.

Following the mosque attack, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had chaired an emergency meeting with officials to review security situation.

In a statement later, he pledged to respond with "brutal force" against militants.

He had said that the "vile and treacherous" activity would not pass without a decisive punishment.

The Egypt government has announced three days of mourning.

Representative image
MP Prabhatsinh Chauhan has sent a letter to BJP chief Amit Shah after his daughter-in-law was given a ticket instead of his wife.

Unhappy over the Bharatiya Janata Party nominating his daughter-in-law instead of his wife from the Kaalol assembly seat in Gujarat, party MP Prabhatsinh Chauhan has warned that he would not guarantee a win for the party, if the candidate is not replaced with someone of his choice.

The BJP on Friday released its fifth list of 13 candidates for the second phase of assembly polls in Gujarat. In the list, the ruling party dropped sitting MLA Arvindsinh Chauhan and instead fielded Prabhatsinh Chauhans daughter-in-law Suman Chauhan from the Kaalol seat in Panchmahal district.

Enraged over the announcement, Prabhatsinh Chauhan dashed off a letter to BJP chief Amit Shah, urging him to replace Suman Chauhan with a local candidate.

Although, in the letter he did not clearly demand that his wife Rangeshwari be given the party ticket, recently he had told reporters that she was the best candidate for the Kaalol seat.

While Rangeshwari is the president of Ghoghamba taluka panchayat of Panchamahal district, Suman Chauhan is a member of Panchmahal district panchayat.

In the letter, the parliamentarian also alleged that his son Pravinsinh is a bootlegger and that he and his wife had even gone to jail.

My son Pravin is a bootlegger and several cases are still pending against him. Both he and his wife Suman even went to jail in the past. This will dent the BJPs prospects of winning the seat. Further, Suman belongs to Godhra and people of Kaalol will not accept her, Chauhan said in the letter.

Though I am a senior, having spent 45 years in public life, the party has not taken my opinion while selecting the candidates. I was also not taken into confidence while selecting the candidate for Kaalol. Thus, I urge you to consider changing the current candidate with a local one of my choice, he added.

Prabhatsinh Chauhan, a prominent Rajput face in the region, who had joined the BJP in 1992, claimed that though he had single-handedly established the BJPs dominance in that district over the years, he has been ignored by the party and not given any post in the organisation.

Chauhan stressed that the BJP would not get even a single vote from tribals. While his wife Rangeshwari is a tribal, Suman Chauhan is a Rajput.

The BJP will not get a single vote, out of the 1.10 lakh votes of tribals due to this ongoing controversy. There are huge chances that we will lose Kaalol. Thus, I want to inform you that I will not take any responsibility of ensuring the partys victory on any of the seven seats under my constituency including Kaalol, Chauhan said in the letter.

Three days ago, Chauhan said that he had sought ticket for his wife on the ground that she had done very good work as Ghoghamba taluka panchayat president.

Just go to Ghoghamba to see what kind of work she has done. She has completely uprooted corruption. Rangeshwari is the best candidate and that is why I have appealed to the party leaders to select her for Kaalol seat, Chauhan told reporters.

On Friday, when Rangeshwari came to know that she has been ignored in ticket allocation, she targeted her husband in a fiery Facebook post, in which she even dared him to enter Kaalol for poll campaign.

However, she deleted the post on Saturday.

I had posted that comment out of anger and disappointment. That was not against the BJP, it was against the Member of Parliament. But now, I have entered into a compromise with him over the issue, Rangeshwari told reporters.

Image: Prabhatsinh Chauhan, a prominent Rajput face in the region, said he was not taken into confidence while selecting the candidate for Kaalol.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Pakistan released 2008 Mumbai attacks mastermind and Lashkar-e-Tayiba chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest, saying that the formers hugplomacy with United States President Donald Trump failed.

Ribbing Modi, Gandhi on his Twitter handle said more hugs were urgently needed between PM Modi and Trump.

Narendrabhai??? ???? ???. Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed (sic), he tweeted.

Earlier on November 24, Saeed was released from house arrest in Lahore.

Police guards were removed from his residence where a large number of supporters gathered to celebrate the end of his house arrest.

In his first address after being released, Saeed blamed India and the United States for his detention and raked up the issue of Kashmir.

Saeed was declared a global terrorist by the United Nations and the US for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which claimed the lives of 166 people and maimed over 300 others.

Image: Rahul Gandhi shakes hands with his supporters during a rally ahead of Gujarat state assembly elections, at a village on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters
Pakistan has justified the release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, claiming that Islamabad was committed to the implementation of United Nations Security Council sanctions regime on terrorists.

The JuD head and Lashkar-e-Tayiba founder, who has a $10 million bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan on Friday.

He is a UN and US designated terrorist.

Indias ministry of external affairs said Saeeds release confirmed once again the lack of seriousness by the Pakistan government in bringing to justice perpetrators of terrorism, including individuals and entities designated by the UN.

It also appears to be an attempt by the Pakistani system to mainstream proscribed terrorists. Pakistan has not changed its policy of shielding and supporting non-state actors and its true face is visible for all to see, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in New Delhi on Thursday.

Responding to the comments made by the MEA, Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan was committed to the implementation of UNSC 1267 sanctions regime and has taken several steps in this regard.

The (MEA) spokesperson took exception to self-serving insinuations, he said in statement issues late Friday night.

Faisal said that courts in Pakistan, pursuant to their constitutional duty, were determined to uphold rule of law and due process for all citizens of Pakistan.

Legal processes were anchored in rule of law, not dictates of politics and posturing, he said.

It is in the interest of all states to speak and act in a manner that is consistent with the imperatives of adhering to rule of law at the national and international levels, Faisal said.

He said that Pakistans resolve, actions and successes in the fight against terrorism, terrorist violence and terrorists are unmatched in the world.

Pakistan condemns and opposes all forms of terrorism by any individual or group, the FO spokesperson said.

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The firebrand clerics release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

Saeed was individually designated by the UN under the Security Council Resolution 1267 in December, 2008.

Image: Hafiz Saeed with his supporters after attending Friday Prayers in Lahore, Pakistan on the day that he was released from house detention. Photograph: Mohsin Raza/Reuters
Clashes on Saturday broke out between security personnel and protesters belonging to a hardline religious groups in the Pakistani capital following a government crackdown, leaving one person dead and over 150 others injured and triggering violence in other cities.

IMAGE: Police fire tear gas during clashes with protesters at Faizabad junction in Islamabad.

Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

The government blacked out all TV channels and blocked popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stem the spiralling violence.

The police and paramilitary personnel tried to disperse the protesters who have been blocking main highways leading to the capital Islamabad for more than two weeks to press for the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid.

The protesters are objecting to changes made in the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September, alleging the action undermined Islamic beliefs and linked it to blasphemy.

The operation was launched after the Islamabad high court on Friday issued contempt of court notice against Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads.

IMAGE: A supporter of the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, an Islamist political party, gestures after blocking the main road leading to the airport in Karachi. Protests have spread from Faizabad to other parts of the country. Photograph: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters

The protesters belonging to Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah and the Sunni Tehreek Pakistan attacked the house of former interior minister Nisar Ali Khan in Faizabad area of Rawalpindi.

They damaged the gate of his house and tried to enter the premises, but were prevented by police, official said.

Khan is a former minister and his house is located very close to Faizabad interchanged which has been occupied by the protesters for almost three weeks.

It was not known whether he was present inside the house at the time of attack.

At least one security person was killed and over 150 persons, including protesters and security personnel, were injured, police said.

IMAGE: More than 8,000 security personnel took part in the operation against around 2,000 protesters. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

TV footage showed police firing teargas and security personnel in riot gears charging at the protesters.

Dozens of them were arrested and shifted to various police stations.

Some of the security personnel were injured due to stone pelting by protesters.

According to a security official, more than 8,000 security personnel took part in the operation against around 2,000 protesters.

The operation was still going on and police were facing stiff resistance from the protesters, they said.

Meanwhile, violence also erupted in many parts of Karachi, Pakistans biggest city and financial hub, where normal life was paralysed by protesters who forced shut down of markets, shops and petrol pumps. At least 15 people were injured in the violence.

Security forces fired in the air and baton-charged the protesters who came out in many areas after a crackdown was launched at the Numaish roundabout on the M A Jinnah road.

The protesters had also gathered at Al-Asif square and tried to block the roads leading to Hyderabad, traffic police officials said.

IMAGE: Supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan chant slogans as they walk to join the sit-in protest in Karachi, Pakistan. Photograph: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters

A military spokesman said that army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa talked to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on telephone and urged for peaceful solution to the problem.

As authorities struggled to contain the violence, the government sources said the decision to shut down private news channels and social networking sites was taken in view of the experience of the military operation against extremists holed up in the Lal Masjid in Islamabad in 2007.

At that time some media channels glorified suspected terrorists and vandals and there was a backlash due to this, a source said.

In such a delicate situation there was also concerns that social networking sites would be used to spread unverified and false news/information and create panic and fear among the people, another source said.

IMAGE: In addition to a blackout to all TV channels, the Pakistan government has blocked popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Photograph: Caren Firouz/Reuters

About 2,000 activists of TLYR and ST have been blocking the Islamabad Expressway and Murree Road that connect Islamabad with its only airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi for more than two weeks.

Islamabad city magistrate on Friday issued a warning to protesters to disperse by midnight or face the consequences.

Earlier, IHC last Friday had given a 24-hour deadline to the government to clear the roads which was later extended till Thursday.

However, the court on Friday expressed strong displeasure at the government for failing to take action against the protesters
Officials suspect Islamic State to be responsible for the attack.

IMAGE: Other than the 305 people, including 27 children dead, another 128 have been injured in the attack. Photograph: REUTERS TV

The death toll from the deadliest terror attack on Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Egypts restive North Sinai region has risen to 305, the state prosecution said on Saturday.

Among the deceased are 27 children, Egypts General Prosecutor Nabil Sadek said in a statement.

Sadek said 128 people were injured in the attack, the deadliest terror attack in the country.

Heavily-armed terrorists bombed al-Rowda mosque in Al-Arish city during the Friday prayers.

The number of terrorists involved in the attack vary from 25 to 30, the statement said, adding that they had raised the Islamic State flag.

IMAGE: Damaged vehicles are seen after a bomb exploded at Al Rawdah mosque in Bir Al-Abed, Egypt. Photograph: Mohamed Soliman/Reuters

They took their positions facing the door of the mosque and its 12 windows before opening fire on the worshipers, it said.

The terrorists used five vehicles in the attack and torched seven vehicles owned by worshippers, the statement added.

The prosecutor said that according to the injured people, some of the terrorists were masked and others were not and all of them were dressed in military-like outfits.

After the bomb ripped through the mosque, the gunmen on four off-road vehicles opened fire on the worshippers who tried to escape from the site after the explosion, it said.

Speaking to state-run Masriya TV station, Egyptian health ministry spokesman Khalid Mujahid described the incident as a terrorist attack.

One report said the target appeared to be supporters of the security forces who were praying at the mosque.

Local people were also quoted as saying that followers of Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, regularly gathered at the mosque.

Islamist jihadist groups, including so-called Islamic State, see Sufis as heretics.

About 50 ambulances were rushed to the attack site to shift the injured to hospitals.

IMAGE: People stand outside the l Rawdah mosque, where a bomb exploded, in Bir Al-Abed, Egypt. The attack is now being considered at the deadliest in the history of Egypt. Photograph: Mohamed Soliman/Reuters

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack and there is no word yet on what happened to the terrorists involved.

There have been regular attacks blamed on militants on the Sinai peninsula since the January 2011 revolution that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak, but this is the deadliest assault of its kind.

The attacks targeting police and military increased after the ouster of Islamist ex-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by military following massive protests against his rule.

Over 700 security personnel have been reported killed since then.

The military has launched security campaigns in the area, arrested suspects and demolished houses that belonged to terrorists, including those facilitating tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip.

The Egypt government has announced three days of mourning, even as President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi chaired an emergency meeting with officials to review security situation after the deadly attack.

Egypt has witnessed a series of terror attacks this year claiming scores of lives.

On May 26, gunmen attacked a bus carrying Coptic Christians in central Egypt, killing at least 28 people and wounding 25 others.

On April 9, two suicide bombings at Palm Sunday services at churches in the northern cities of Alexandria and Tanta left 46 people dead.
In a gesture that touched many hearts, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday hugged a part-time woman lecturer after listening to her plight during an interactive session with the teaching community of Gujarat.

IMAGE: Ranjana Avasthi wept as she explained the plight of part-time lecturers, prompting Rahul Gandhi to walk of the dais and console her. Photograph: @INCIndia/Twitter

Ranjana Avasthi, a PhD holder, was among the lecturers, professors and schoolteachers invited to attend a session with Gandhi, who is on a two-day campaign tour of Gujarat ahead of the first phase of assembly polls next month.

After Gandhis address to the guests at the Thakorbhai Desai Hall, Avasthi, nearing retirement, poured her heart out when she was handed over the mic to ask a question. She sought to know the Congress plans to solve the problems faced by her fraternity if the party comes to power in Gujarat.

With a choked voice, Avasthi, who claimed to be a part-time teacher, explained how several lecturers in Gujarat like her are being denied their basic right, be it adequate remuneration, medical leaves or pension.

Ever since I completed my PhD in Sanskrit in 1994, we have been living in a miserable condition. Even after 22 years of service as a part-time lecturer, our salary is just Rs 12,000 per month.

We were not even granted maternity leave. We have seen some of the worst days of our life during this service, said Avasthi with a heavy heart.

Now, the government is planning to annul our entire service by offering us Rs 40,000 salary under a fixed-pay regime. Like others, we also wanted to retire with pension benefits to be able to live a respectable life.

But now, there is no hope. Only we know what kind of struggle we did and what kind of pain we have gone through, said a teary-eyed Avasthi.

IMAGE: The Congress vice president was addressing lecturers, professors and schoolteachers at an interactive session at Thakorbhai Desai Hall ahead of the Gujarat polls. Photograph: @INCIndia/Twitter

She then urged Gandhi to ensure people like her do not suffer if his party comes to power in Gujarat after the next months polls. Avasthi appealed to Gandhi to make sure even part-time teachers get pension after retirement.

Moved by Avasthis representation, Gandhi, who was holding his mic and listening to her plight, paused for a moment and said, Sometimes, you cant answer some questions with words.

The 47-year-old Congress MP then put down his microphone on the dais and walked towards the lecturer, sitting on the middle row of the hall, to console her.

Gandhi spoke with Avasthi for a while and then hugged her before returning to the stage, surprising the audience with his impromptu gesture which must have touched many hearts.

He promised the teaching fraternity that if the Congress comes to power, it will focus on building a robust public education and healthcare system in Gujarat.

Gandhi termed the fixed-pay system of the Gujarat government as unfair and promised to change it.

The policy was introduced by the Gujarat government in 2006, wherein such direct recruits were only entitled to get a fixed salary for a period of five years.
Nine years after he sacrificed his life to capture 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab, Tukaram Ombles daughter says that citizens must realise that losing security personnel is not only the familys loss but also that of the country.

IMAGE: Tukaram Omble's wife Tarabai and his two daughters (pictured right) Vandana and Vaishali. Vaishali says that they have kept his belongings untouched and not a day goes without thinking of him. Photograph: Rediff Archives

The daughter of policeman Tukaram Omble, who was killed while trying to capture terrorist Ajmal Kasab, says her family still awaits his return, nine years after the deadly Mumbai terror attacks.

We feel papa will come home any moment, although deep in our heart we know that he will never be amongst us now, says a teary-eyed Vaishali Omble, the eldest daughter of the Mumbai terror attacks hero.

We always think that papa has gone out on duty and will return home. We have kept his belongings at the place they used to be in our home. Our family is proud of his supreme sacrifice, said Vaishali Omble, who has completed her M Ed (Masters in education) and aspires to be a lecturer.

Omble, an assistant sub-inspector, was killed by Kasabs bullets in the early hours of November 27, 2008.

In a daring act, he had pounced on Kasab without thinking much about the consequences. His bravery had made it possible for the police to overpower Kasab, the only 26/11 terrorist to be captured and hanged.

Not a day has gone by in the last nine years that we have not remembered him, said Vaishali Omble, who stays at the Worli Police Camp with her mother Tara and sister Bharti, who is an officer in the state GST department.

For how long will police or armed forces personnel continue losing their lives in the name of supreme sacrifice, she asked.

This should stop somewhere. There should be a change in this scenario. Every citizen should always be alert and foil incidents in which we are losing our men, she said, ahead of the 26/11 attacks anniversary.

IMAGE: A cop stands guard at the bust of Tukaram Omble in Mumbai's Marine Drive area.

Photograph: Sahil Salvi/Rediff.com

Vaishali Omble said citizens should know their responsibilities and must understand that when policemen or armed forces personnel get killed in the line of duty, it is not only the familys loss but also that of the country.

Satara district in western Maharashtra from where my family hails has a long history of martyrs. Among the recent ones are Central Reserve Police Force head constable Ravindra Dhanawade, who was killed while fighting terrorists in Kashmir in August and Colonel Santosh Mahadik, who died while fighting terrorists in Kashmir in 2015. The list is unending, which disturbs me a lot, she said.

We treat every member of a martyrs family like our own family and we help them overcome the grief, she said.

Vaishali Omble gives tuitions to students from class 8 to junior college, which keeps her busy and makes her forget the pain of losing her father.

On November 26, 2008, 10 Pakistani terrorists arrived in Mumbai by sea route and opened fire indiscriminately at people on different locations, killing 166, including 18 security personnel, and injuring several others, besides damaging property worth crores.
Laura Purcell's first novel The Silent Companions backfires and the result is more dreadful rather than dread-full.

THE SILENT COMPANIONS follows in the path of Gothic ghost stories which pile on the gloom and doom

By India Today: When Elsie Bainbridge arrives at The Bridge at the beginning of Laura Purcell's first novel, The Silent Companions, the stage is set for an eerie story along the lines of The Others.

The Bridge is a ghostly, half-derelict mansion where "everything was dead". Elsie is dressed, appropriately, in widow's weeds, and the weather obliges too: "The sky was iron grey, the monotony broken only by crows." So far, so Gothic.

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With her elements in place-young widow, hostile villagers, crumbling mansion house, mist and mud and rain - Purcell's story unfolds in a series of unfortunate events told in three different times. The main story, set in 1865, follows Elsie's discovery of an antique painted figure in a long-locked attic room-one of the "silent companions" of the book's title. This sets in train ghostly, ghastly and gruesome happenings that lead to a Tarantinoesque body count and Elsie's incarceration in St Joseph's Hospital for the insane.

The asylum is the setting for the second strand of the novel, where a doctor tries to piece together the events that have led to her incarceration. Is his patient mad? Is she a fantastist? Has she succumbed to what the villagers describe as an attack of the "morbs"? Is she a criminal, or is there something out there? beyond the understanding of mere science?

The third strand is the back-story for the companions. Rewind to 1635, and Josiah Bainbridge, lord of the manor, and his wife Annie, are preparing for a visit from the King and Queen. Annie decides that life-like figures painted on freestanding wooden boards will be just the ticket to amuse and delight the visiting royals. The 'companions' turn out to be less a harmless divertissement than malevolent harbingers of evil.

Unfortunately, the pastiche of elements from great gothic ghost stories fail to deliver on the promise made by the eerie eye peeking out of a die-cut keyhole on the book's cover. In so relentlessly piling on the gloom and doom, Purcell's book backfires and the result is more dreadful rather than dread-full.

--- ENDS ---
Hassan said CPI(M) is always trying to engage with the youth but accepted that the young leadership in the party is "not up to the mark".

By India Today Web Desk: CPI(M) leader Moinul Hassan today said that the "Left should relook theoretical and ideological premises".

Speaking on Day 2 of the India Today Conclave East 2017, Hassan said the party is always trying to engage with the youth but accepted that the young leadership in the party is "not up to the mark".

On whether the Left has been left behind in West Bengal, Prasenjit Bose, an economist who was expelled by the CPI(M) in 2012, said the Left has suffered from two critical problems-not being able to adapt to the changes, and imitating other political parties.

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Bose said that the party that once attracted some of the most intelligent people is today not able to reinvent and innovate.

Akhil Ranjan Dutta, a professor in Gauhati University, said that the Left had organised cadres but did not try to "negotiate with people" in the state. Many Left sympathisers, he said, condemned the Singur incident. "Medha Patkar came and sat with Mamata Banerjee," he said.

On why Left in West Bengal lost out while it has reinvented itself in Kerala and retained power in Tripura, Dutta said, "If there is a perception that keeping the people poor in the name of equity is the ideology of the Left, young people will not accept it".

Bose said that "they (Left) will not accept that there is a problem" and will continue to deny the mandate of the people which threatens to push them into "oblivion".

CPI(M) leader Hassan argued that "Left is a very democratic party".

What is the vision for Left's revival?

Asked about his vision for the Left, Hassan said, "The Left should relook theoretical and ideological premises".

Dutta said that while Left is the best alternative to the "kind of parties ruling the country today", it has at times "become parochial".

"They have to look at aspirations of the people," he said, adding that RSS has become Leftist than the Left as "they (RSS) will go to everyone and even the Left and try to convince them".

Bose said the Left in West Bengal needs "more representation from Dalits, adivasis, Muslims and of course youth".

Here is the full coverage of India Today Conclave East 2017.

--- ENDS ---
TORRINGTON  The Northwest Connecticut Arts Council, along with 200 guests, paid tribute to seven honorees at the 4th Annual CultureMAX Awards Event on Nov. 14 at The Warner Theatre in Torrington. This annual event once again celebrated the inspiring works and contributions that various people, organizations, and businesses have made to northwest Connecticuts cultural fabric.

The 2017 recipients honored during the evening were Susan Becker Aziz of Bantam in the Artist category - she has designed and fabricated costumes and sets for theater and dance in Litchfield County and beyond for over 25 years; Adam Atkins of Harwinton, who teaches at The Gilbert School in Winsted, in the Art Educators category - he has taught music at The Gilbert School for over 27 years, and also teaches adults through several community vocal music groups he has established; and Mark McEachern of Torrington in the Heritage Professional category - he is an historian and history advocate who leads the Torrington Historical Society and who has had a key role in valuable region-wide programs and city-wide preservation and promotional efforts
Police seized 75,968 bottles of IMFL from a premises taken on rent by Rohit Yadav, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Jaunpur who was into metal scrap business.

By PTI, India Today Web Desk: The Gujarat Police, during a late night raid, seized Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) worth over Rs 2.2 crore in Gandhinagar. The seizure, which is the biggest in recent times in the dry state, comes just days ahead of the Assembly election.

The team of Gujarat Police also seized five vehicles worth Rs 24.15 lakh from Khoraj village, the Election Commission said.

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According to the Election Commission, liquor is one of the most popular inducements used to persuade voters in the dry state.

Police seized 75,968 bottles of IMFL, including those of brandy, from a premises taken on rent by Rohit Yadav, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Jaunpur who was into metal scrap business.

According to police, it was being illegally used as godown for bootlegging activities.

"A criminal case has been registered vide Adalaj PSCR No 6266 /2017 under Section 66B, 65A C, 98(2), 116B etc of the Gujarat Prohibition Act, 1949 in this regard and investigation is being carried out into the ownership of vehicles seized during the raid and to identify various people associated with the transportation, storage and sale of liqour," the EC said in a statement.

The Gujarat Police has launched a special drive against the bootlegging activities in coordination with neighbouring states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Diu, Daman, Dadra and Nagar Haveli in view of the forthcoming assembly elections, scheduled for December 9 and 14.

-With agency inputs

ALSO WATCH | EXPOSED: How Gujarat's high stakes polls are funded on black money

--- ENDS ---
Jimmy Rebick worked for the former Ukrops Super Markets chain for 34 years and stayed on when the Martins Food Markets grocery chain bought those stores in 2010.

But on July 17, after about seven years with Martins, he said goodbye to his co-workers at the chains store near Chesterfield Towne Center. The store and 18 other Martins locations in the Richmond area closed for good between November 2016 and August of this year.

Its been humbling, said Rebick, 57, who started working at Ukrops while in high school and who had worked his way up to produce department manager at Martins.

I never thought back in the days with Ukrops, in the beginning of my career, that something like this would have ever happened, he said. You felt like being in the grocery business was a pretty secure job format. In this day and time, you find out differently.

In all, more than 2,700 employees at the 19 Richmond-area stores and one store in Williamsburg were laid off when the Martins chain exited the region to comply with antitrust conditions tied to the merger of the parent companies of Martins and Food Lion chains.

Ten of the Martins stores were bought by Florida-based Publix Super Markets, which has since remodeled seven of the stores and reopened them.

Former Martins employees had to apply for jobs at Publix just like any other new employee. Publix did not have any information on how many former Martins employees it had hired.

The nine other Martins stores in the Richmond area and the one in Williamsburg were closed after no buyer was found.

Its been almost a year to the day when the layoffs began last Nov. 28 when the first of the divested stores closed. The Virginia Employment Commission could not readily say how many of the former Martins employees were still without jobs or how many were collecting unemployment payments.

Some of those workers have found work with other local grocery stores. Kroger, which has 18 area stores, has hired about 151 former Martins employees for hourly, department manager and store manager jobs, a spokeswoman said.

Food Lion did not respond to a request for similar information.

Walmart hired some former employees but did not have an exact number.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch interviewed former employees, such as Rebick. They talked about the impact of losing what, for many, had been stable, long-term careers and what they are doing now.

***

On Monday, Rebick starts a class to train for a commercial drivers license.

Like many of the other former Martins employees, he qualified for help finding a job and retraining programs offered through the VEC. Martins provided 12 weeks of severance pay, he said, and unemployment payments kicked in. He is married and has two adult stepchildren.

He has been working with ResCare Workforce Services, a company contracted to help laid off workers.

There were some government grants and some different opportunities available for a person of my age and a person put in my position. I decided it was time for a career change, said Rebick, who lives in Powhatan.

The commercial drivers license program is a four-week course to earn Class A commercial drivers license credentials, which would make him eligible to drive tractor-trailers. He has hauled trailers and campers in the past, so he has some familiarity with driving big vehicles.

Im going for the complete thing. Its a four-week course to receive the Class A, which is the top tractor-trailer class that you can receive, he said.

Im not going to be going from coast to coast. Im basically just taking advantage of what the government allows me to take advantage of. If they are willing to pay for this class, then I am willing to take it. ... Basically what I am trying to do is, Ive got to start over at the bottom no matter where I go. So I dont think I want to get back into the retail business, he said. If Ive got to start over at the bottom, I want to start over doing something on my terms. I had two Christmas Eves off in 41 years. I dont ever want to do that again.

He did apply to Wegmans when the chain first opened stores here last year, but that was before the Martins closures were announced.

I think I am too old and made too much money for what they were looking to hire, he said.

He did not apply to Publix. When he goes into Kroger and Food Lion where the employees know him, he is asked when he is going to put in an application.

Ive got to give this a shot first. If I can get something halfway decent out of this opportunity and I can find a Monday through Friday job, then I am going to give it a shot, he said.

Some of his former co-workers have landed jobs at the other grocery chains.

It looks like people who were quite a bit younger than I am and who had families and had a lot more responsibility, I think they pretty much are the ones that stayed in the grocery business, Rebick said.

Rebick admits he was somewhat bitter initially but realized that wasnt helping. He lost a lot of time and tenure, he said.

To complicate matters, his wife was recently told she was being laid off. She works in the home health field. Rebick feels her job prospects are better than his.

You just reach a point where there was absolutely nothing you can do about it, so why get angry, why lose sleep. Hopefully, its going to be a blessing in disguise, he said of his situation.

***

Before Sherri Anderson was laid off in November 2016, she had a dual role at the former Martins at White Oak Village shopping center where she worked.

She was floral department manager but also a hiring manager.

I did the hiring, onboarding, interviewing, made sure (new employees) knew about the benefits, Anderson said.

Those skills in human resources helped her land on her feet. She had worked at Martins since 2010 and, before that, at Ukrops for seven years.

Anderson started a new job this month at Amada Senior Care, where she is working in human resources and recruiting. The national senior care company has a network of franchise locations, including locations in the Richmond area.

But even before the job with Amada Senior Care, she had landed a position in August with ResCare Workforce Services, the agency that came out to explain to her and the other displaced Martins workers some of the benefits available to them.

As she interacted with the ResCare employees, she realized they were doing the type of work that she wanted to do.

I went to their website and saw that there was a position available, and I applied, she said.

I actually had to figure out how to reinvent my life, Anderson said. I had been doing grocery store retail ever since I was 15. I had to decide what was my Plan B, she said.

After a round of interviews, she was hired in August as a business services consultant, a job in which she contacted local businesses looking for skilled employees and tried to match them up with people seeking work.

Anderson also has taken advantage of retraining and workforce programs that allow her to take classes to make her more marketable. She is taking a class at Virginia Commonwealth University to earn Society for Human Resource Management certification.

She takes the certification test on Dec. 1. The course, if she had to pay for it, would cost about $3,000.

I feel very humble and grateful because there are a lot of my team members who I see on a regular basis and they still have not found employment. ... I just want to say for everybody to continue to have faith in God and dont give up, she said.

***

Sushi maker Aung Chan Khine saw his livelihood upended when Martins stores in the area closed. Though technically not a Martins employee, he had operated a local franchise of Charlotte, N.C.-based Hissho Sushi since 2003 and had a contract to provide sushi to two Ukrops/Martins stores.

When the stores closed, there went that business.

Khine, 39, is still making sushi  only now at his restaurant Sumo Sushi Express at 1090 Virginia Center Parkway. The restaurant is in the same neighborhood as the former Martins store where he worked near Virginia Center Commons mall. He also had provided sushi to the Ashland Martins store.

Several months before the Martins store in Virginia Center Commons closed in February, he started looking for a place to open a restaurant, he said. He and his wife opened Sumo Sushi Express in March.

A lot of people lost jobs, but I had a plan before (the stores) closed, Khine said. I knew I needed to prepare. I started looking for a place.

He and his wife used personal savings to open the restaurant. It seats about 20, but Khine said a lot of the business is takeout. He and his wife are the only employees, but he is thinking about hiring a part-time worker.
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By PTI: Kolkata, Nov 25 (PTI) Union Minister M J Akbar today unveiled a Dutch plaque at the Suriname Ghat here on the banks of Hoogly river, which was the point of departure of Indian indentured labourers to the then Dutch colony in South America.

The plaque in Dutch language along with the English translations was installed by the Netherlands government.

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It was placed at the Mai Baap (mother and father) Memorial, which was unveiled in 2015 and is a depiction of the men and women indentured workers who had left the Indian coasts to work as labourers in sugarcane plantation in Suriname.

The original Baba and Mai monument is in Parimaribo, the capital of Suriname, and symbolises the first Indian man and woman to set foot in the Dutch-speaking nation.

Ambassador of Netherands to India Alphonsus Stoelinga and Suriname envoy Aashna Kanhai were also present at todays unveiling at the monument.

Congratulating Suriname on its National Day, which marks its 42nd independence day, Akbar said, "When we talk about liberation, it is not only freedom from foreign rule, but is also the beginning. Freedom comes when we achieve freedom of aspirations".

"From here people crossed the seven seas to reach Suriname. They were taken as replacement slaves and not as employees during those days of colonial rules," he said.

The present generation of Indians in Suriname, whose parents and grand parents from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh had left the country between 1873 to 1917, never forgot their motherland, the union minister said.

"They carry with them the philosophy, values, culture and beauty of the nation till this date," Akbar said.

He said, "We are celebrating the resilience of human spirit, celebrating the ability of fellow Indians to make new achievements."

"Today they are ambassadors (Indian descendants in Suriname) talking about our country. They never forgot the past, only in order to create a new future," Akbar said.

Kanhai in her speech described the memorial "solid as a historical rock" and recalled how her ancestors had been among those who left their motherland, taking with them dhotis, sarees, the Gita and the Hanuman Chalisa for the settlers in Suriname, where around 34,000 east Indians went till 1960 and 65 per cent of them stayed back.

She said that Suriname retains Bhojpuri, Maithili and Awadhi cultures along with those of Chinese, indigenous and other communities.

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The Dutch envoy recounted the history of Suriname and abolishment of slavery there.

Stoelinga said the descendants of the indentured labourers who stayed on are respected.

He thanked the Government of India for participating in the initiative. PTI SUS KK ANB

--- ENDS ---
A family escaped from a fire in a two-story house in western Henrico County on Saturday after being alerted by smoke alarms, authorities said.

The American Red Cross was called to assist four adults and three children, who were not injured. The cause of the fire remained under investigation.

The fire was reported about 10:30 a.m. in the 2300 block of Horsley Drive, where firefighters found heavy smoke coming from all sides of the house and flames coming from a bedroom.

Conflicting information from the occupants led firefighters to immediately go into rescue mode in which they searched through the heat and blinding smoke, without the protection of a hose, to locate potentially trapped civilians, the Henrico Division of Fire said in a news release. Thankfully, everyone was found to be outside and accounted for.
CHARLOTTESVILLE  The Charlottesville City Council is moving forward with a new Civilian Review Board for its police department.

At Mondays meeting, where three homicide investigations in Charlottesville  one that has led to charges and two that remain unresolved  were mentioned by either a councilor or a member of the public, the council agreed to proceed with the creation of an independent community group that will review complaints against the department or its officers.

The decision followed a lengthy debate that saw some councilors become frustrated with the proposed timeline for the groups formation.

A formal vote on the proposal  which could bring an end to the 9-year-old Charlottesville Police Citizens Advisory Panel  is expected to take place next month.

In the public comment period at Mondays meeting, representatives from the Legal Aid Justice Center and the Public Housing Association of Residents presented the council with a letter calling on it to dissolve the advisory panel and involve the community in the creation of a new independent review board.

The letter was reportedly signed by various activist groups, including Black Lives Matter Charlottesville, the Black Student Alliance at the University of Virginia, Together Charlottesville, Showing Up For Racial Justice Charlottesville and UVA Students United.

Separately, a statewide activist group has started a campaign in Richmond seeking to create a citizen review board for the citys police department.

Later in Mondays meeting, when the council started discussing the proposal, David Simmons, chairman of the Citizen Advisory Panel, presented his groups proposal, which included provisions for the creation of a Civilian Review Committee and new protocols for reviewing citizen complaints and police reports.

You charged us several years ago, (but) you did not provide us with the working tools to do the things that we needed to do; you did not provide the staff or resources, but we struggled through that. We persevered, Simmons said.

Introducing the agenda item Monday night, Assistant City Manager Mike Murphy said city staff is recommending that the council allow them to continue researching best practices and possible organizational structures so that some kind of change can be adopted soon.

I think its clear to me that some of the things (the Citizens Advisory Panel) originally did, or was intended to do, is needed as much as ever. We need to build relationships between community members and the police, Murphy said. I would point out, you did create an Office of Human Rights, and there are some parallel interests from the group about working with community members and their concerns about law enforcement.

Simmons said the proposal signed by the panel members could help strengthen the panel, which he said is often left in the dark when it comes to police-related incidents in the community, making them reliant on media reports and social media for information about police-involved incidents.

Heather Walker, a member of the panel who spoke Monday, said the panel faced hurdles recently following a comprehensive training to review the citys stop-and-frisk reports.

We were ready to go, and the police were prepared to hand over reports and documents, she said. Someone in a different department, I think it was the Commonwealths Attorney Office, said, No, that panel cant look at those. We were stopped.

Ive been on this panel for four years. And thats what happens every time.

When asked by Councilman Bob Fenwick about what difference there would be between a beefed-up advisory panel and a review board, Simmons said a new review board would set us back by a year.

Claiming that the advisory panel would continue to work collaboratively with the police department if kept together, Simmons said he thinks the new review board would likely be adversarial and create more distrust and less transparency in the community.

But the councilors seemed intent on proceeding with a major overhaul.

Im feeling compelled we need to be doing something very different, said Councilwoman Kathy Galvin. I understand your frustration, I hear it, nine years is a long time to try doing something while under-resourced, but theres a public perception issue. ... I think we need a fresh start.

Galvin suggested that a task force be impaneled for three to six months before the city moves ahead with a new Citizen Review Board. Councilor Wes Bellamy, who is part of the advisory panel, became frustrated at her proposal, seeing it as a delay for implementing a truly independent community group.

Im of the position that we dont need to create another task force for them to look at how to create a CRB. ... We can open up the process for applications and allow that body of whoever is appointed to create their own bylaws and standing, Bellamy said. The whole point of this is to be independent, he added.

When we create a task force and say, Here are the practices we saw in other places and the direction we want you to go ... it becomes a lot less independent. It becomes more like us directing another citizen advisory panel.

Simmons suggested that Bellamy had done little during his time on the panel to make changes in the past. You were privy to some information that you are sharing. You did not share that with us, Simmons said to Bellamy. You also, as a liaison to us  this is one of the things were asking for  step up to assist us. ... You have the ears that come through different channels.

Bellamy responded by saying the panel is ineffective. Ive tried to have tons of conversations about it ... about us having community meetings and being more proactive. But weve essentially gotten little in return, Bellamy said.

Galvin and Mayor Mike Signer pushed back against Bellamys desire to expedite the creation of the review board, suggesting that a more thorough vetting process needs to take place first.

We werent given a resolution to vote on and we werent prepared with all the research that Mr. Bellamy is privy to, Galvin said. It would be more helpful if we had more structure to be able to define what this initial Citizen Review Board will look like.

But Bellamy said the communitys desire for an immediate change is clear.

Weve been hearing for months that people want this. Thats why Im becoming frustrated, he responded.

Earlier in the meeting, Bellamy said he was offended by assertions that the public calls for a new review board are coming from a small but vocal section of the community.

The council tentatively agreed to create an initial Citizen Review Board and will vote on the measure next month, but details about the makeup of the board and whether it will include any specific representatives of other community groups have yet to be settled.

As for Richmond, more than 500 community members  40 percent of whom are registered city voters  have signed a petition circulated by New Virginia Majority, a grass-roots organization focused on social, racial and economic justice. The petition calls for Richmond leaders to establish an elected, independent Citizens Accountability Board with subpoena-like power and the authority to hold RPD personnel accountable for misconduct and mistreatment of citizens.
A week ago former president Barack Obama spoke at the Richmond Forum. The Times-Dispatch ran a short news story about it, but it included few details  because Obama had asked that the media be barred from the event.

Once upon a time, the Obama White House boasted of being the most transparent administration in history. The claim was a bad joke then, and it hasnt gotten any funnier now that Obama is hitting the lecture circuit.

The Forums executive director says such no-media demands are typical for immediate past presidents. He notes that George W. Bush made a similar demand in 2014, which the Forum also accommodated. But a Times-Dispatch reporter wrangled a ticket and wrote about the event anyway. The Forum wasnt too happy that the newspaper let ordinary people have a peek behind the velvet curtain. Yet given our druthers, we prefer reporting about the Richmond Forum to not reporting about what a former president said before thousands of paying customers.

This week we asked whether Obama was paid to speak in Richmond and, if so, how much he received. Confidential, we were told. No surprise there.
Our brave men and women in uniform stand ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for our safety and freedom. Each soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, and member of the Coast Guard deserves our most profound honor and respect  both during and after service.

One in 11 Virginians is a veteran. With more than 730,000 veterans, our great commonwealth ranks eighth in veteran population, a rank that is predicted to jump to fifth by 2027. These men and women made enormous sacrifices in defense of our nation; while we can never truly repay them for their service, we can and must keep the promises we have made to them.

My father was one of the many dedicated soldiers who fought for our country during the Korean War; he taught me what it means to serve. His dedication, both in war and in peacetime, showed the enormity of the commitment our service members make.

He used to tell me that service members only ask of their country what they themselves give  their best. These men and women remain just as deserving when their term of service has ended.

We owe them the best shot at finding a good civilian job when they leave the service. We owe them our best effort to end plagues like veteran suicide and homelessness. We owe them, throughout their lives, the best health care we can provide.

***

In all of my work as a congressman  from the policy decisions I make in Washington to the services my office provides here at home  I keep veterans and their loved ones at the forefront of my mind. The desire to provide the best for the veterans in the Fourth Congressional District inspired my recent Veterans Resource Fair.

Far too often, veterans are not able to get timely access to the resources they need. I was pleased to be able to gather  all in one place  information for veterans about access to services that can help improve their circumstances. My resource fair enabled many veterans and their family members to learn more about available resources  including health-care benefits, educational opportunities, help finding work, and other useful services.

The men and women who have sacrificed so much for our country deserve no less.

My appreciation for veterans service, the risks they took and the sacrifices they make  away from home and family for long periods and potential exposure in a combat zone  shaped my opposition to the short-sighted tax bill on which the House recently voted.

Unfortunately, some of my colleagues in Congress take a different view. Earlier this month, I opposed the Republican majoritys tax bill; while there were many reasons for my no vote, the ways in which that bill would hurt veterans is simply unacceptable.

Notably, the bill would end the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC)  a federal tax incentive that encourages businesses to hire members of targeted groups, including unemployed veterans.

Through the WOTC, the federal government spends perhaps $400 million per year helping thousands of former service members find good jobs and get back on their feet. That amount, $400 million, is a paltry portion of a $4 trillion dollar budget and is money well-spent. That help is urgently needed: in 2016 there were 453,000 unemployed veterans nationwide, including about 16,000 who live in Virginia. Ending the WOTC would make it even harder for those men and women to find work.

***

Supporting and helping our veterans should never be a partisan issue. Historically, the WOTC has enjoyed broad support  including from well-known veteran groups like the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The fact that it was targeted for elimination  a push that may ultimately succeed  is appalling.

Ending this successful incentive would be the very definition of not giving veterans the best of what we have to offer.

We must not sacrifice a program that supports those who have already sacrificed.

Instead of cutting taxes for big business and the wealthiest Americans, we should be investing in our veterans  reforming the VA, expanding educational opportunities, and redoubling our efforts to prevent suicide and homelessness.

I intend to keep working on behalf of the tens of thousands of veterans living in the Fourth Congressional District. I am committed to assisting returning veterans with the transition to civilian life, and I am determined to help all veterans access the resources and opportunities they have more than earned.

If you are a veteran or a military family member, thank you for your service and your sacrifices. This month we celebrated Veterans Day. Veterans Day should not be simply a designation on the calendar but a reminder to all of us to appreciate the service of our men and women in uniform and to redouble our efforts to ensure they get the appreciation and the services they have earned and deserve.
Homebuyers sometimes have inflexible items on their must-have list. For Brian Frank and his fiancee, Melissa Wilson, it came down to bedrooms. They needed a fair number to accommodate their blended family, which has four kids.

A five-bedroom house might not have been tough to find in the suburbs. But Frank and Wilson preferred the Fan District, where Frank had lived for 20 years.

Its hard to find a five-bedroom house in the Fan, said Frank, president of SkyFoundry, a Richmond-based software company.

Hard, but not impossible. While sizing up their options in the summer of 2016, Wilson, a nurse at Virginia Commonwealth University Health, stumbled onto a listing for an eight-bedroom house at 1853 West Grace Street. (It also had four full baths and two half-baths  plenty for a large family.) When she visited it, Wilson fell in love with the property.

The three-story house sat on a generously sized, double lot with a swimming pool, and it was built on a scale that could accommodate a bed and breakfast. Literally. The previous owners had converted the 7,500-square-foot property into a popular bed and breakfast called the Grace Manor Inn. Now, it was on the market as a single-family residence.

And while it had been renovated in the 1990s, much of the houses original details were still intact, including its plaster moldings, light fixtures and hardwood and heart-pine floors. (It also had a rare, Edwardian-era shower on the second floor and an early, electric refrigerator preserved in one corner of the kitchen.)

Indeed, the house encapsulated the transition that Richmonds architecture was undergoing in 1910, when the house was built for William Zimmermann, a successful Richmond businessman and civic leader. Back then, late-Victorian styles such as the Richardsonian Romanesque and Queen Anne were falling out of favor, and the Colonial Revival was rising to replace them.

In the house that Wilson found, the transition was frozen, mid-shift.

The house still has one foot in the 19th century, said Chris Novelli, an architectural historian with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. The exterior has the mass and ruggedness of the Richardsonian Romanesque, but the columns and the Palladian window are Colonial Revival. And the interior is pure Colonial Revival, except for the spindled friezes that divide the spaces on the first floor. Theyre Queen Anne.

Among the interior standouts are the first floors original crystal chandeliers and scrolled brackets in the crown molding, as well as the mantels and patterned ceramic tiles surrounding the fireplace openings in the two parlors. (The house has six fireplaces.)

I can imagine the houses original designer with a builders catalog in hand saying, Ill take one of those, one of those and one of those, Novelli said. Its quite a remarkable house.

Frank and Wilson placed a successful offer of $1.1 million on the house  the highest for a single-family residence on West Grace Street, said Chris Small, a real estate broker with Small & Associates Real Estate and the listing and selling agent for the property. They moved into the house with their children last fall.

The sale marked a high point in an ongoing renaissance for West Grace Street, which had been Richmonds second-grandest avenue for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, first behind West Franklin Street and then Monument Avenue.

Many of the larger homes on West Grace Street were turned into apartments and duplexes to meet housing demand after World War II. Then, beginning in the early 1980s, the trend began to reverse itself, with boarding homes getting converted back to single-family residences.

Today, West Grace Street is reclaiming its earlier, lofty status with significant renovations, house by house and block by block, Small said.

Frank and Wilson have no immediate plans for major renovations for their new home, although theyve undertaken a few small projects.

Its an extremely well-built house, Frank said. They built it to last forever.

And the family is settling into the home comfortably.

When the weathers good, we spend a lot of time outside, next to the pool, Frank said. We love the size of the yard, which you dont see often in the Fan.

_______________
Rumour has it that Kangana Ranaut will act in a thriller, after she wraps up Manikarnika.

By India Today Web Desk: Kangana Ranaut seems to be relentless, when it comes to her work schedules.

After she wraps up the historical drama, Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi , she is expected to take on a thriller, produced by her close friend Shailesh R Singh. According to reports, he narrated the story to her one day and she loved it and promptly agreed to do it.

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Kangana was all set for her directorial debut, Teju as well. However, it looks like that might have to be kept on hold for a while.

Meanwhile, the actress is taking a break from shooting for Manikarnika, as she sprained her ankle, after she jumped from a 40 foot wall on to a horse. Kangana returned to Mumbai, from Jodhpur, this week.

We've managed to get a few glimpses of Kangana's look from Manikarnika:

Kangana on the set of #Manikarnika in Jaipur pic.twitter.com/KbvkhJnEuy- Kangana Ranaut Daily (@KanganaDaily) October 25, 2017

Here's another one in her warrior avatar:

#kanganaranaut #manikarnika A post shared by My Life Kangna (@mylifekangna) on Oct 31, 2017 at 1:29am PDT

Meanwhile, her sister, Rangoli Chandel, just had a baby boy, and now Kangana might have more time to spend with him.

ALSO WATCH| Mind Rocks 2016: Kangana Ranaut has come to be the embodiment of feminism

--- ENDS ---
Sonowal said the Prime Minister had proposed setting up a committee to tackle the flood problem in Assam.

By India Today Web Desk: Rajdeep Sardesai, senior journalist and consulting editor of India Today, welcomed Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal for the second session at the India Today Conclave East 2017 titled 'The Northeastern Project: The New India'.

The conversation started with Sardesai asking Sonowal about the difference between 'Look East, Act East' mantra. The Chief Minister responded saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi has always been focusing on Northeast and he wants it to be a growth engine. Praising Prime Minister Modi more, Sonowal called him the first Prime Minister to discover all available resources in Northeast.

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"It's not simply a political statement," Sonowal told Sardesai.Elaborating the idea behind the slogan, Sonowal said, "North East has enough resources to benefit not just us, but the entire nation. This has urged all of us, and youngsters especially, to work hard towards development. It's generated great confidence in the people here."

ASSAM FLOOD SITUATION

Talking about how Assam gets inundated year after year, Sonowal said, "Flood's have been an issue for a long time. For this, Modi has a strategy based on the fact that water is coming from the mountains, and even other countries, along with silt. To solve this, he said a new committee must be formed with members from Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura, and that a detailed survey must be done and a comprehensive report submitted."

"Assam alone cannot solve this problem. We will have to work together," Sonowal said.

ON TWO MAJOR WATERWAYS

Talking about the two rivers, which Sonowal termed as two of the most potent waterways -- Brahmaputra and Barak - the Assam CM said, "We're trying to facilitate transportation via these two rivers, to promote trade through these."

ANTI-CORRUPTION CRUSADE

Sonowal who has been in news for his anti-corruption crusade and taking action against many officials, when asked if he'd ever put a minister behind bars, said, "No one will be spared. Even the CM will have to go behind bars if there is enough evidence."He said, "Since the first day, I've been working against corruption. We've recognised the loopholes and weaknesses in our system and tried to fix it."On asking if he's comfortable with Himanta Biswa Sarma, who has only recently joined the BJP and become Assam health minister, and if any action will be taken against him, Sonowal said, "We don't take action out of prejudice. It's impartial. If there is proof against someone, that person will be brought to book."

Mentioning PM Modi again, Sonowal said, "PM Modi has asked me not to compromise while acting against corruption. If the system doesn't change, people won't become beneficiaries."

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ON NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP REGISTER

Sardesai asked Sonowal is he's 'under pressure' to get national citizenship register ready by Dec 31, 2017 and called him the "champion of illegal immigrants'" cause.

Responding to the question, Sonowal said, "People of Assam want an error-free register. Assam is the first state in the country taking this initiative. It will be done as per the Supreme Court directive."

When asked if he roots for the Amendment in Citizenship Act which calls for welcoming Bangladeshi Hindus but not Bangladeshi Muslims, Sonowal said that is a separate issue and that all the guidelines fixed by SC will be followed when it comes to the citizenship register.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Accepting infrastructure is one of the main challenges, CM Sonowal said, "It is the first priority. From March 31 to 28 of Sept, Assam was flooded. How can we contrust roads during floods and rains?"

He also said, "Assam is blessed with 6 months for construction. Flood is a huge challenge." How do we solve this? We are all putting efforts.

Lauding PM Modi's interest in Northeast yet again, Sonowal said, "communication and connectivity are prime factors for development. PM Modi, without any hesitation, has given two lakh crores for roads and bridges. Six new bridges will be built over Brahmaputra river."Launching an attack on the Congress regime and PM Manmohan Singh, CM Sonowal said, "During Congress regime, we had to fight for money. Only three bridges were made in 55 years."

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He said, "Former PM Manmohan Singh, depsite representing Assam in the Upper House, didn't do anything. 'Dekhte reh gaye bas'.

Sonowal said doubling of railway tracks, electrification of railways are in the pipeline too.

ON ASSAM BEING THE GATEWAY TO NORTHEAST

Talking about Assam being the gateway to Northeast, Sonowal told Sardesai, "Let me tell you this - we want Guwahati to be not only a gateway toNortheast, but to the entire Southeast Asia. We are planning to build two industrial corridors on either sides of Brahmaputra."

FOCUS ON TOURISM AND INDUSTRY

We have focus on tourism and Information Technology. New policies are being drafted to attract investors. We've to create environment for businesses. We're prioritising this. We are organising a global investor summit and asking investors to come invest in Assam. My government will devote time to make them comfortable."

"We have got investment worth Rs 6,500 crore. Pathanjali wants raw materials. If we're able to provide it, it will benefit farmers as well."Talking about PM Modi again, Sonowal said, "PM Modi thinks Assam could be the oganic hub of India. We're planting 10 crore saplings per year.

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ON SABKA SAATH SABKA VIKAAS

Answering Sardesai's question if 'new Assam is for specific communities' and if 'there is a growing divide', Sonowal replied saying, "Sabka saath, sabka vikaas".

He said, "We've got four districts sharing border with Bangladesh. We're prioritising growth of these four districts. These are all Muslim majority areas. It's not about Hindu or Muslim, it's not about Assamese or Bengali. It's about everyone's growth and development."On Rohingya refugee issue, Sonowal said, "Myanmar has already said they will protect the Rohingya Muslims."Proving if Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee can draw well, Assam CM can sing will, the session ended with CM Sonowal singing a couple of lines for the audience. He said, "Guwahati and Kolkata are close to each other. We've been together for long. This is the strength of culture."

Watch: No favouritism will be tolerated in corruption cases: Sonowal

--- ENDS ---
China has signalled its willingness to emerge as a key player -- perhaps even mediator -- in tackling the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. Foreign minister Wang Yi, who visited Bangladesh and Myanmar from November 17 to 20, offered a "three-stage" diplomatic proposal after talks in Dhaka, and to underline that China's considerable financial muscle will back this initiative, also announced a new "China-Myanmar Economic Corridor" following his visit to Naypyidaw.

In Beijing, analysts have seen this diplomatic push as a precursor to a more confident Chinese diplomacy in addressing regional problems. The view is Myanmar may emerge as a test- case for what President Xi Jinping announced in October as a "new era" that would see China assume "centre stage" of the world, turning the page over the cautious "hide your brightness, bide your time" maxim that guided Chinese diplomacy so far.

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China said on November 20 that its proposal had "won approval" from both Bangladesh and Myanmar, calling for a three-step approach to restoring peace in Rakhine state, from where over 6,00,000 Rohingya refugees, according to the United Nations, have fled to Bangladesh since August.

The first stage involves an on-the-ground ceasefire to allow Rohingya people to return and to stop them fleeing across the border. The second stage, Wang said, was to encourage and support Bangladesh and Myanmar to strengthen exchanges and to find a solution "on the basis of equality", while the third step was for the international community to help develop Rakhine state.

It is no accident that China has ongoing investments worth tens of billions of dollars in both Bangladesh and Myanmar-projects it wants to protect. Wang, the foreign minister, hinted as much when the day after his proposal, he announced a plan to build an economic corridor with Myanmar following talks with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, who has grown close to China since assuming her role.

The corridor will build on an existing $1.5 billion pipeline connecting Yunnan province with Kyaukpyu port and special economic zone, which began delivering oil to China in April with the capacity of bringing 22 million tonnes annually from the Bay of Bengal. The corridor would further guarantee "access to the Indian Ocean more conveniently", Gu Xiaosong, a strategic expert, told the Party-run Global Times. "The corridor could help ease Myanmar's conflict and ensure stability along the border between China and Myanmar by providing greater employment and better living standards for Myanmar people," added scholar Chen Fengying, lest observers point out that China's strategic motivations were the real driver of this diplomacy.

There are, at this stage, more questions than answers about both the proposal and China's intentions. Asked if the Myanmar government had indeed committed to China on a ceasefire, foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang didn't give details. He also didn't say whether the proposed second stage meant China wanted to mediate between Bangladesh and Myanmar on issues such as the return of those who have fled their homes.

It may well be too early to tell whether China's plan will come to fruition, especially in the absence of clear details. But what does appear more than clear is China's new appetite to demonstrate regional leadership. And this, in of itself, could have huge ramifications for the region, particularly when its other major player, India, has shown little inclination of doing the same.

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--- ENDS ---
By Gene St. Clair

St. Clair is a computer technician living in New Castle.

All decent Southerners are against racism and hate. And all Americans should know Robert E. Lee deserves a monument in his honor. Some may not be aware Lee was against secession and against slavery. Abraham Lincoln offered Lee command of the entire Union Army. When Virginia seceded from the union Lee wrote Lincoln telling him he had to decline his offer and go the way of Virginia or his country as he called it. If anything he may have been too loyal.

During the war, Lee lost nearly everything, including his home when Arlington was turned into the National Cemetery and of course lost the war and his citizenship. Yet went on to help develop Washington and Lee University. As the war neared its conclusion Lees men, although starving, with no fit shoes or clothes urged him to not surrender out of adoration of the general. Lee could have made it a guerilla war and dragged the conflict on for many more years but wisely chose not to.

After Lees surrender Lincoln was prepared to sign papers reinstating Lees citizenship, however during the turmoil of Lincolns assassination and Andrew Johnson taking over as president, the paper work was lost. In 1970 a law clerk discovered the paperwork and President Gerald Ford signed the papers in 1975 reinstating Lee as an American citizen. President Ford stated, General Lees character has been an example to succeeding generations, making the restoration of his citizenship an event in which every American can take pride. Lets respect Fords decision and Lincolns desire and honor Lee as the American hero he was.

It disgusts me and many other Southerners to see the rebel flag in the same video as a swastika. The rebel flag is not about hate or neo-Nazis, but represents the heritage of the South which lost 300,000 lives including some 50,000 civilians in the Civil War. The War Between the States proved you cannot strip people of their heritage, not then and not now.

At the Battle of The Wilderness General Lee raced to the front of the lines on his horse Traveller to lead the rebel charge. His men stopped in their tracks thereby dramatically increasing the chances of their own horrific death. They refused to move and started chanting Lee to the rear, Lee to the rear and would not fight until their general had moved to the rear. Few men who have ever walked this earth have had other men willing to die for them, Robert E. Lee was such a man. He is as deserving as any great American to have a monument in his honor.

In a large degree because of Robert E. Lee, I am, have been, and always will be proud of my Southern heritage.
THE firm hoping to bring fracking to Rotherham has asked the Government to rule on an application to drill in Harthill.

Ineos Shale has written to the Planning Inspectorate over its plans for a 60-metre rig under land off Common Road.

The application, which would see the rig drill down 2,800 metres for shale gas on land off Common Road, was due to be discussed at a standalone meeting of the councils planning board on November 23.

But Ineos requested further talks with council officers, who were minded to recommend it be refused.

It has now requested the Government make a decision on the applcation.

See this week's Advertiser for more.
By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 25 (PTI) Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba will embark on a three-day visit to Bangladesh tomorrow for a multilateral naval exercise being held under a regional maritime forum set up by Indias initiative.

His visit was also aimed at consolidating bilateral naval relations and to explore new avenues for maritime cooperation, the defence ministry said.

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It said Indian naval ships Ranvir, Sahyadri, Gharial and Sukanya along with one maritime patrol aircraft P-8I will take part in the International Multilateral Maritime Search and Rescue Exercise (IMMSAREX) which will be inaugurated by Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday in the port city of Coxs Bazar.

The exercise is taking place under the aegis of Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) -- an initiative of the Indian Navy that was launched in 2008 to bring together littoral states in the region.

The IONS has now grown into a formidable organisation comprising 23 member nations and nine observer countries.

The ministry said apart from the exercise, an Extraordinary Conclave of Chiefs (ECoC) meeting of IONS was scheduled on November 28 which will also be attended by Admiral Lanba.

The meeting was expected to review the progress made by three IONS Working Groups on maritime security information exchange, interoperability and humanitarian assistance.

Lanba will also hold bilateral discussions with Chief of the Naval Staff of Bangladesh Navy on Monday and several other navy chiefs of other participating countries.

The defence ministry said Lanba would also be gifting War Memorabilia for the Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh. PTI MPB ASK ASK

--- ENDS ---
BJP leader Chandra Bose, grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, author and activist Anuj Dhar, and academic Prof DN Bose joined moderator Boria Majumdar for the session on Netaji titled 'Subhas Bose: The Enduring Legend'.

By India Today Web Desk: Beginning the fourth session at the India Today Conclave East, moderator Boria Majumdar, consulting editor, sports, India Today, said, "You cannot not have a conclave in this part of the world, in Kolkata, and not talk about Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose with people who either are part of the family who've been writing about, agitating, demanding justice, feeling persecuted for the longest time."

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BJP leader Chandra Bose, grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, author and activist Anuj Dhar, and academic Prof DN Bose joined Majumdar for the session on Nejaji titled 'Subhas Bose: The Enduring Legend'.

Responding to Majumdar's question, "Are we in Bengal always going to cry foul saying we did not get our due?", BJP leader Chandra Bose said, "For the last 70 years, successive Congress governments have obliterated the contribution of the liberator of India (Netaji). The NDA government, for the first time, on January 23, 2016, ushered in an era of transperancy by declassifying files pertaining to Subhas Chandra Bose." Anuj Dhar, responding to Majumdar question if Bengalis are victims and is that the reason why Netaji has not gotten his due, said, "90 per cent of Bengalis are least bothered about Subhas Chandra Bose. Had they been, things would have been different."

"He (Netaji) was forgotten the day he left this country," said Dhar.

Disagreeing with Dhar, Prof DN Bose said, "You are not aware of the number of books written in Bengali. You're ignorant of the passion people of Bengal has for Netaji."

Majumdar said the TMC government and the NDA government came together to celebrate a cause, possibly the only one - Netaji.

Chandra Bose said, "Enough distortions have taken place in the freedom history movement. What is the relevance of Netaji today? We should understand the essence of Bose's ideology - in the Azad Hind Fauj, there were no Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs - only Bharatiyas. Both the central and state governments should understand this and keep the country united."

'BELONGING TO BOSE'S FAMILY A DISADVANTAGE'

On being asked if he would have been appropriated by a ruling party if not for his Bose surname, BJP leader Chandra Bose said, "Belonging to Bose's family is, in fact, a disadvantage. People's expectations are much higher in that case. Genetic science makes me look like Netaji but people want me to perform like him, which I am trying."

"We all need a closure on the issue but the government is not ready to act," Anuj Dhar said. "To solve the Netaji mystery, the Intelligence Bureau files on Bose first need to be declassified," he said.

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Is Subhas Chandra Bose a naitonal icon or has he become just a Bengal icon, Majumdar asked.

"Only Netaji's ideology can save this nation from further disintergration, regardless of the party in power," said Chandra Bose.

"Netaji won't go away, like Aroon Purie tweeted last year. Mahatma Gandhi's 'ahimsa brand' was promoted all along, but it is Netaji who's making waves now," said Anuj Dhar.

DN Bose said, "Netaji is a national icon. I've seen the kind of recognition he gets in places like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Right from 1939, he proved he's an Indian icon."

WATCH | We appreciated Bengal Chief Minister's move of declassifying Bose files, says BJP's Chandra Bose at India Today Conclave

--- ENDS ---
People living below the poverty line in Samoa continue to fight two battles in life.

One, there is the expensive cost of living that seems to be a daily burden for families who struggle to make ends meet.

And two, there is finding the money to address the increasing cost of living in our island nation.

Leana Faamoe, 70, from Faleasiu says there is no escaping these two daily battles and families must face them in order to survive.

Mr. Faamoe was working on his plantation when the Village Voice team met him yesterday morning.

Mr. Faamoe said his plantations kept him busy every day.

This is the only work I can do here for my family, work on my plantation to provide our food, the father of five said.

Working the plantation is also an exercise for me because it helps me maintain my health and its also something I do to take my mind off the high cost of living.

Mr. Faamoe said all his children were employed and they also helped their family.

Our family survives on the money sent by my children in New Zealand and also here in Samoa.

He also compared the expensive cost of living nowadays with life in the past.

I am just surprised about the expensive cost of living we have here today in Samoa compared to previous years.

Things are all getting expensive nowadays.

I really just cant believe it because the value of $100 today is like using a $10 unlike what it was back then when $100 was like gold.

Mr. Faamoe said his family was fortunate that his children were working.

I am lucky because all of my five children are working now and they support my wife and I.

I also know and understand the struggle they are facing because things are so hard nowadays in Samoa given the expensive cost of living.

Mr. Faamoe says the high cost of living now in Samoa is a burden on most families.
The Samoa Airways booking system is currently undergoing testing and upgrades, so explained the airlines Marketing Manager, Mr Dwayne Bentley, during an interview last week.

He said the new airline recognizes that their current booking engine is inadequate to meet the expectations of their international travellers booking flights with them.

The airline has been in operation now for two weeks and has acknowledged that they have hit some complications after receiving complaints from would-be travellers.

Mr Bentley acknowledged that they were aware that their current booking system was not on par by international standards before the airline was launched, but that time constraints prohibited them from installing a booking engine at the start that was adequate enough to meet the various demands of international flight enquiries.

One of the challenges that we faced in the beginning was not having enough time to do everything that we needed to do and so what weve had to do is just move forward as best as possible with what we had but we also looking forward to the new technology and ways of doing things which is where the new booking agent comes in.

When it was announced that the international service was going to be up and running again, we knew straight away that the current booking engine was just not good enough, especially when we looked at what the other carriers around the world are offering so were working very closely with our reservations system partner.

In terms of the booking engine being a lot more user-friendly and people being able to see the different fares available a week out, we are also at the same time working on a brand new, booking engine. We are in the process of testing the different components of the booking engine and we hope to finalize and launch everything before the end of the year.

Ms Jo Mikarna, was one of the first travelers who encountered problems and was featured in an article titled Lack of flights devastate prolific visitor to Samoa.

Ms Mikarna said that she was unable to find suitable flight options available with Virgin airlines after they reduced their flight options to Samoa and she also found that flights around her preferred travelling dates were booked out with Samoa Airways, when she searched on their website.

Samoa Airways fly from Sydney but they do not run every day and all flights are booked out Ms Mikarna said a week ago.

Mr Bentley reached out to Ms Mikarna through the Samoa Observer to counter the impression that there is a lack of flights between Australia and Samoa and later assisted her with her booking.

However the misinformation and confusion did not end there.

The Samoa Observer has received further reports from the public who were also experiencing confusion with Samoa Airways booking system which showed flights were booked when they were not.

Enquiries were then put to travel agents to see if they were having the same experience.

One local travel agent confirmed that the current booking engine was causing problems for them as well as travellers wishing to book flights to New Zealand and Australia through Samoa Airways.

The agent pointed out that the current booking system is the same used previously when Polynesian Airlines serviced flights to and from Pago Pago,

On being told this, Mr Bentley acknowledged that they were experiencing difficulties with their website; initially with their banks credit card processor.

At the same time he said, they were working to address the issues with their booking engine.

The issue that we had up until recently, has been with our banks credit card processor so the booking will go through fine, but then when it got to the page where people had to enter their credit card details, thats where people were having issues.

He said that has since been resolved.

Addressing the feedback the airline was receiving about their website not being user friendly, the Samoa Airways marketing manager said, Thats something we will take on board and we will look at how that information can be better presented on our website so that people are not just clicking on any day not realizing that we only operate on certain days especially between Samoa and Sydney.

So again, just in terms of the user-experience, thats something we will feed back to our web developers and booking team just to make sure that its more obvious than what it is currently. 

Mr Bentley is confident that by the end of year, customers will not only be able to have a better online experience with the improved website and booking engine which they are expecting to launch by the end of the year but that passengers can also expect other aspects of their travel experience to improve.

When it comes to travel from 2018 onwards that booking system will be operational, were confident that it will really improve the user experience online.

Theres room for improvement  theres always room for improvement , I think thats very much where our focus is on right now and at the same time making sure that that safety component is there and our guests get the service that they paid for with regards to in-flight catering thats going to be an ongoing improvement. We will look to change that out and refresh those meal options available based on feedback not only from the passenger but from the crew just to make sure that what is being provided is the best that we can provide.
'FREEDOM IS NOT FREE; IT IS LIMITED' P.M. Tuilaepa Sa'ilele Malielegaoi. Photo / File Photo. (Photo: Samoa Observer)

'FREEDOM IS NOT FREE; IT IS LIMITED' P.M. Tuilaepa Sa'ilele Malielegaoi. Photo / File Photo. (Photo: Samoa Observer)

The reinstating of the Criminal Libel Act will be subject to approval before Parliament by December, 2017.

This is according to Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi during his weekly press conference with the media.

The Criminal Libel Act was abolished back in 2013 and the government has moved to reinstatement as part of efforts to address the growing number of ghost writers who use fake social media pages to attack members of the public.

One such page is known as Ole Palemia.

The Prime Minister was asked for a comment on the concerns raised by Acting President of the Journalists Association of Western Samoa (J.A.W.S.), Rudy Bartley, who has called on the government to find a more realistic solution to track ghost writers who use fake social media pages to attack members of the public.

He believes the move to reintroduce the Criminal Libel law, which had been removed in 2013, is not the best way forward for Samoa.

However that will not be considered according to Tuilaepa.

He stated that at the next Parliament Session in December the Criminal Libel will be approved to be enacted.

There is the mentality the reporters have; they can freely write whatever they think

And this mindset was hammered by the court as there is no such thing.

You cannot freely express what you think at the expense of others that is wrong, said Tuilaepa.

You should know that once you publicize what you think defaming another. Be prepared, as you will be struck.

Under the law, journalists are under the impression they are free to publicly publicize whatever.well that has been corrected by the court.

There is no such thing.

Freedom is not free; it is limited, said Tuilaepa.

If what you are saying is accurate then you have nothing to worry about.

According to Tuilaepa there are those reporters who report what happened.

They stick to the guidelines of their profession and report accurately and they dont input their opinions or twist the story.

This was not really a big deal back then, due to the lack of understanding of the matter. Also back then people were under the impression that members of the press have the freedom to publicize anything.

No, that is wrong.

This is why the government moved to establish a Media Council who set up guidelines for the reporters and hold them accountable.

There are two types of reporters; one who follows the guidelines and reports accurately and a reporter who would make up stories and make hefty accusations and defame people to make money, and also spruce up the headline on the paper to attract readers and make money.

Those are the ones who are furious about us bringing back (criminal libel), said Tuilaepa.

They hide behind fake names and defame people all the time - a very unChristian thing to do.

Those people, who are furious about the move, are the ones doing it.

And if you see them, they look sick. He said these types of people will never reach 60 or 70 years old and they will die early.

Earlier this week, Acting President J.A.W.S. said the re-introduction of the Criminal Libel law is of serious concern and it will have a negative impact on the work of the media in Samoa.

Freedom of the media (to do its work) is fundamental to any democracy and laws which hinder this are not acceptable.

Mr. Bartley made the comments in response to questions from the Samoa Observer.

According to Mr. Bartley, J.A.W.S. exists to help, develop and protect the work of the media and its practitioners in Samoa.

We are also concerned about the use of social media as a platform for slander and malicious attacks, Mr. Bartley pointed out.

I assume this is the reason why the government is reintroducing this law.

Those behind these attacks have tarnished the work and integrity of the media as a source of knowledge and information for our people.

He also told the Samoa Observer the government should find a more realistic, practical solution other than reintroducing this law.

He explained the reason J.A.W.S. has not made any public comment about the issue until now, is that they wanted to discuss this further with their membership at their upcoming A.G.M. scheduled for 27 November 2017.
The producers of the film, revolving around a mafia queen, starring Deepika Padukone, have confirmed that the delay of Padmavati will not affect their film schedules.

By India Today Web Desk: Despite the delay in Padmavati's release, there will be no change in the take-off schedule of Deepika Padukone's next film, which is being directed by Vishal Bhardwaj.

The film revolves around the life of a mafia queen, and also has Deepika's Piku co-star, Irrfan Khan.

In a statement, producer Arjun N Kapoor confirmed that the shooting will not be delayed. "First of all, let me clearly state this, there has been no announcement from Padmavati team's end regarding the new release date. So it's anyway premature to talk about it. We don't have an idea when it will eventually release."

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Kapoor explained, "As it is, Deepika starts our film only around January end and February next year. We plan to begin shooting towards the end of January, but that can extend to February first week.So even if the film releases around that time, and Deepika needs time off to promote the film, we will happily accommodate that. That isn't a problem."

Deepika's Padmavati has been a stuck in a religious-political rut, and fringe Rajput groups are out to obstruct its release in any way possible.

The film is based on the tale of Rani Padmini of Chittor, written by the 16th century Sufi poet, Malik Muhammad Jayasi. Rajput groups are convinced that there is a romantic dream sequence between Rani Padmini and Alauddin Khilji, are trying their best to ban the film in every state.

Not just this, they've been issuing death threats to director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Deepika.

The film has been postponed indefinitely from December 1.

ALSO WATCH: Padmavati row: Yogi Adityanath justifies threats against Bhansali and Deepika Padukone

--- ENDS ---
There are several important reasons Auckland poet and academic, Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh is returning to Samoa on Sunday.

Tusitala Marsh will be attending the Pacific Arts Association Conference which runs from 27 November to 01 December at the National University of Samoa.

With the theme, Making the Invisible Visible Dr Marsh, who is an exciting performer, will be conducting a Literature and Spoken Word Workshop from 1.00-2.30pm on Thursday at the N.U.S. fale.

For some of the prize-winning authors of the Samoa Observers national short story competition for primary and secondary students as well as adult authors who have entered the Samoa Observer Tusitala Short Story competition, this workshop presents an opportunity for them to continue to improve their literacy skills.

And as the first Pasifika woman to be chosen as New Zealand's Poet Laureate for the next two years, she will be collecting materials to be carved into her tokotoko (tootoo).

Tusitala Marsh explained, The Matua Tokotoko, the parent tokotoko that presides over each are national taonga (treasures) and each Poet Laureates own tokotoko is carved by Haumoana Maori carver, Jacob Scott from Matahiwi Marae.

After talking to each Laureate, he then carves a tokotoko to reflect their identity as the new Laureate.

During my trip to Samoa I want to collect materials for Jacob to carve into my own tokotoko.

It makes sense, as a tusitala, to mark both tusitala heritages in the tokotoko.

My grandad is Vaelei Tusitala, from Elise Foe so I will go to my grandad's house and bring something back (wood? stones?) for Jacob to honour the original Tusitala.

I will also visit the other Tusitala's residence, the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum at Vailima, and see what presents itself for inclusion in the tokotoko.

I will be composing a poetry sequence to mark this experience, she promised.

Since the inaugural Samoa Observer Tusitala Short Story competition began in 2015, Tusitala Marsh has returned to Samoa each year as one of the judges of the Samoa Observer Tusitala Short Story competition.

On her last trip in 2016, she thrilled guests at a prizegiving function at the Samoa Observer headquarters, when she performed her poem Unity. The poem had been commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretary General and performed in Westminster Abbey by Tusitala Marsh for the Queen of England earlier that year.

* To'oto'o is family heritage in the Samoan language.

Selina Tusitala Marsh, of Samoan, Tuvaluan, Scottish and French descent, is an associate professor and lectures at the University of Auckland, specialising in Maori and Pacific Literary Studies and Creative Writing.

She describes poetry as "the power of articulation.

"It's the power to be able to embody language and connect with other people."

The Waiheke Island-based poet published her first collection, Fast Talking PI, in 2009.

In 2010 she won both the NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry, and Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards. She is the author of two further poetry collections, Dark Sparring (2013) and Tightrope.

Each laureate receives $80,000 over two years from the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa to create new work and promote poetry throughout the country.

Tusitala Marsh says while she would not do anything "remarkably" different, the award would allow her to take poetry to "some pretty impressive spaces".

"I talk about 'unpoeted' spaces, where it doesn't usually have a space or is heard or made," she said.

She was also given a carved tokotoko, or orator's stick, symbolising her authority and status.

Tusitala Marsh said the post was a "wonderful opportunity to extend the poetic page and stage to this nation's multi-coloured, multi-hued voices.

"To be recognised in this way is breath-taking. To occupy the role is breath-giving  I can't wait to take the Laureate's tokotoko to the people and make poetry."

New Zealand's first poet Laureate was Bill Manhire in 1996 and the outgoing Laureate for 2015-17 is C.K Stead.
It was, Happy 84rd birthday, Emperor Akihito as the Japanese Embassy hosted a celebration to at the Tanoa Tusitala Hotel on Friday night.

The Japanese Ambassador, Maugaoleatuolo Shinya Aioki explained that his was the first time he had hosted this event because the Embassy of Japan in Samoa had now separated from the Embassy of Japan in New Zealand and has opened independently in January this year.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi paid tribute to the Japanese government and poeople, I would like to thank the Ambassador Mauaoleatuolo for the invitation to commemorate Japans National Day and to celebrate the birthday of His Majesty, the Emperor of Japan.

Since the establishment of the formal ties in 1973, those 44 years ago, Japan and Samoa have developed a strong friendship over the years. Samoa has benefited significantly through development co-operations programs in the range of many key sectors but mainly in the transport and infrastructure, health, education sectors, he said.

I would also to acknowledge Japans International grassroots human security programmes.

The occasion was celebrated in traditional Japanese fashion with great food and lots of sake, a traditional Japanese drink made from fermented rice.

Everything from the decorations that were fuchsia teuila and hand-made origami swans, to the exquisite cuisine which consisted of fresh sashimi and hand rolled sushi, strongly reflected the combination of both cultures.

Tuimaugaoalii Kazumasa Shibuta greeted every guest personally at the door alongside his stunning wife who was dressed in a beautiful, silk, kimono.

In attendance were fellow ambassadors, cabinet ministers and special guests.

Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoiwas was called on stage alongside His Excellency to crack open the barrel.

After the opening and when everyone was served, the entire room raised their glasses for a special toast in honour of the Emperor.
A retired nurse, Simolo Reupena was amongst those recognized during the celebration of 100 years of service of the Samoa Nurses Association Incorporated.

Mrs Reupena 94, missed out on the celebrations as she was bed ridden but that did not stop her from getting dressed up for a picture and showcasing her award of recognition for her service in Papa Sataua, Savaii.

This is according to her daughter Atalua Tanielu, who attended the award ceremony and received her mothers award.

My mother was one of the first, few nurses who served in Papa, Sataua, where they were pastors at the church.

She kept occupied by serving as a nurse in Papa, Sataua, said Atalua.

Masinaoso Leniu Auseugaefa Bell was also honoured on the day and despite being in a wheelchair, she was delighted to attend with the assistance from her daughter Valasiologo.

At the celebration earlier this week, the President of the Samoa Nurses Association Taulapapa Faamanatu Nielsen gave a brief history of the Association and paid tribute to those who started the work of nursing in Samoa and those who have since passed on.

The Samoa Nurses Association was founded in 1917 with just four girls from Papauta and now, in 2017, we have more than 400 registered nurses in Samoa, she said proudly.

We have come a long way with so many challenges but we have also achieved so much, she said.

This years event is about celebrating the lives of those who first established the Association and who took the necessary steps to improve the service of nurses in Samoa.

Taulapapa said that at first it was very hard but they overcame the early difficulties.

Those who first formed the Association were strong women, she said.

But now, we are just thankful for all these years because we know we have come a very long way.
Associations typically have five different documents that very much affect association living and governance. In addition to CC&Rs ( Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions), most associations have Articles of Incorporation, bylaws, operating rules and either a condominium plan or subdivision map. Unfortunately, most homeowners in common interest communities do not read these documents before they close escrow.

A corporation is created when articles of incorporation are filed with the state. In earlier years, articles of incorporation often contained significant limitations on association and board powers. However, all common interest development associations are not incorporated, and those will not have articles. Not all incorporated associations use their legal name. The bylaws will usually on the first page state the associations correct name and indicate whether it is a corporation. The Secretary of State can provide a duplicate copy of articles, and its web site will indicate if the corporation is still in good standing  visit www.businesssearch.sos.ca.gov.

Bylaws, unlike articles of incorporation, are not filed with any public agency. Bylaws address governance topics such as the powers and limitations of the board, information on membership meetings, and board eligibility. Bylaws should not address the property, but how the corporation governs.

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The subdivision map or condominium plan is the document by which a parcel of property is divided into lots or units for sale. It is filed with the County Recorder, and sometimes is attached to the CC&Rs as an exhibit. This document will describe what is common area and depicts or describes the boundaries of lots or units, and if the association has any easement areas or greenbelts over lots. Stock cooperatives and community apartments (also forms of common interest developments) will not have this document, since the form of ownership is different than in the planned development or condominium.

Declarations of Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions are typically referred to as CC&Rs. Despite the document using a different name, as long as it is recorded on all the member properties, the document is a declaration under Civil Code 4250 for the purposes of the Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act. Declarations, or CC&Rs, are probably the most important and underappreciated of the governing documents. CC&Rs, once recorded on the property, are as much a binding contract on owners as their purchase agreements  even though the purchaser did not sign it and may not have reviewed it. Under Civil Code 5975, in lawsuits to enforce the governing documents, the winner has their attorney fees paid by the loser  so CC&Rs have more teeth than most owners realize.

Association rules are at the bottom of the governing document pecking order. The law calls them operating rules (Civil Code 4340). Per Civil Code 4205, rules give way to the bylaws, covenants, and articles of incorporation. While bylaws and covenants are amended by vote of the membership, rules are modified by board vote. Rules must be written. Boards must follow a specific statutory process when adopting, changing or revoking rules. That process is set forth in Civil Code 4360. Associations are required to have in place election rules, delinquency policies, architectural application policies, internal dispute resolution rules, and a schedule of fines.

Homeowners should have a complete set of their association governing documents and should read them sooner rather than later (unless you like surprises).

Kelly G. Richardson, Esq. is a Fellow of the College of Community Association Lawyers and Senior Partner of Richardson Ober PC, a California law firm known for community association expertise. Submit questions to Kelly@RichardsonOber.com. Past columns at www.HOAHomefront.com.
The shift in shopping patterns was in full view on Black Friday as San Diegans turned from stuffing their stomachs to hunting for stocking stuffers.

As the clock struck midnight, many were in their PJs when they fired up their laptops to order super deals online.

The rise of e-commerce may be suppressing traditional Black Friday crowds. As of 7 a.m., online spending totaled $640 million, an 18.4 percent increase from the previous year, according to Adobe Analytics.

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The Target store in Mission Valley opened at 6 a.m. Friday but 45 minutes before it opened there were just two people in line  Alejandra Rodriguez, a hair stylist from Linda Vista, and Ivan Chavez, a 17-year-old from San Ysidro.

They opened yesterday, too, so I dont know, maybe thats why theres not too many people here now, Rodriguez said. I remember before there were people sleeping to get in the front of the line.

The move to online buying will be a factor as industry analysts watch closely at how the nations malls are faring for the start of the holiday shopping season.

Analysts say Amazon is expected to take half of the holiday seasons sales growth. And Amazon is the top destination for people to begin holiday shopping, according to a September study by market research firm NPD Group.

But the malls werent dead Friday morning.

Nima Fariborzi and Kevin Lo, two high school seniors from Rancho Penasquitos, showed up at 5:45 a.m. at the Fashion Valley Mall.

You plan it out so you can get the best deals possible, Fariborzi said. Last year I saved a lot of money.

Lo bought a polo shirt at Abercrombie and Fitch for $24.

Tanya Ruiz and brother George arrived at the Best Buy in Mission Valley at 1:30 a.m. Friday to get a bargain. (Rob Nikolewski / U-T )

Tanya Ruiz and her brother George camped out at Best Buy in Mission Valley at 1:30 a.m. Friday, even though the store did not open until 8 a.m.

Tanya had her eye on a 55-inch Toshiba high-definition TV on sale for $279.99. marked down from $499.99.

I love the hustle and bustle and the rush, she said. It gets me in a holiday mood  I love to go out to all the stores and I love the challenge of trying to get what I want.

Jermaine Loyce, a sound engineer from southeast San Diego, took part in his first before-dawn Black Friday experience in the hopes of getting a 50-inch Sharp TV on sale for $179.99.

Ian Ramos, a college student, said he had waited in line from 1 to 6 a.m. to nab a $1,080 laptop at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Base exchange, then spent two hours at the H&M store at Fashion Valley and arrived at the Best Buy at 10 a.m. to buy an accessory.

I think Im done, he said. Its tiring but thrilling at the same time.

Brian Field from ShopperTrak said Black Friday remains the No. 1 shopping day of the year. Online sales may be growing but so are in-store purchases.

Theres still plenty of room in both realms instore, online or mobile to take care of the customer, Field said.

Melissa Martin, who runs BlackFriday.com in Virginia, said millennials are exerting their buying power, joining each other at the malls for fun, not just buying.

Youll find retailers are going to give them an experience of a lifetime, because thats how theyre going to keep them engaged, she said.

Thats why some San Diegans lined up to see Santa (by appointment at Fashion Valley), waited patiently in line at the new regions first Shake Shake (at Westfield UTC) and streamed into multiplexes to see Pixars Coco animated flick and Warners Justice League superhero mashup.

Consumers are pooped out from shopping and instead of going home, they tend to go to movies, said Ana Serafin Smith, spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation.

Buoyed by a bubbling stock market and low unemployment, the federation expects holiday spending to reach $682 billion, up as much as 4 percent over last year. Online sales will inch up from 10 percent to 11 percent of the total.

To keep shoppers coming back, big and little stores are ramping what they call retailtainment, through product demonstrations, special events and dining options unavailable in the virtual world.

Its a chance to interact with a designer, play with new toys or test drive a new Nintendo or Xbox, she said.

At the newly expanded Westfield UTC, the No. 1 question to mall greeters was the location of the new Apple store.

It was filled with red-shirted staffers, fielding questions about the new iPhones.

Five-year-old Samantha Anger, left, and her dad, Chris Anger, right, of La Jolla, relax in one of the egg-shaped wicker chairs Westfield UTC. (Howard Lipin / U-T )

Other visitors, surrounded by their purchases, took breaks to sit in comfortable chairs around fountains and beneath trees in the summer-like weather.

Its my little break, said Clairemont resident Sean Goss, stretched out in an egg-shaped wicker lounge chair as his three kids roamed the mall.

A Westfield UTC shopper is reading (a real book) at one of the comfortable outdoors chairs. (Roger Showley/U-T )

Said George Aguilar, 56, of Carmel Valley, and his family, eating lunch at Shake Shake, Were not doing any shopping, though were crazy enough to be at a shopping mall. We just wanted to check out the burgers.

Many shoppers came with dogs in tow, including Carmel Valley resident Winford Labombarde, who sat calmly outside Nordstrom with his nine-year Havinese, Patches. His wife and two daughters were lost somewhere in the crowds. Nearby resident Kira Rivkin made an outing of walking to the mall, where she danced to guitar music by Mike Officer with her 13-month-old, Kamila Kruglyak.

I think Ill come back and buy more later, she said.

Marla Kapp, 54, of Cardiff said shed already dropped off purchases three times at her car by noon and expected to spend $700. Were nonstop shopping, she said.

The action wasnt all at the mall.

In Mission Hills, Marielle and Pascal Giai were greeting customers at their Maison En Provence boutique devoted to Frenchy country home furnishings.

They dont want to go stay in line, have that stampede, get crushed at those big sales and shops, said Marielle Giai.

Instead, she had created a shopping event for customers to enjoy.

Part of the experience is for them to come here and talk and see and smell, Giai said. Whether its here in Mission Hills or other neighborhoods like North Park, they want to make a day of it, go out to lunch, have breakfast, shop in their neighborhood and support their local community.

The Deloitte accounting firm said in its Holiday Survey: Retail in Transition report that a third of all consumers want to shop both in person and online. This year theyre projected to spend $1,226 on 15 presents, up $228 from last year.

Physical retail store formats will not disappear, the report says. However, they may need to adapt and transform in order to realize profitable growth in a highly competitive blended environment where digital has the potential to not only influence but also capture market share.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Nicole Demos, 14, left, with her sister, Courtney Demos, 13, center, and their mom, Pattey Demos, right, from Rancho Santa Fe, walk through the Westfield UTC while shopping on Black Friday. (Howard Lipin / U-T )

ShopperTrak says they account for as much as 45 percent of total shopping visits to stores. This is the first year since 2012 to have four full weekends in December before Christmas, resulting in extra days to shop (and procrastinate).

Nov. 24 (Black Friday) Dec. 23 (Super Saturday) Saturday, Dec. 16 Saturday, Nov. 25 Friday, Dec. 22 Saturday, Dec. 9 Saturday, Dec. 2 Saturday, Dec. 30 Thursday, Dec. 21

Source: ShopperTrak

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roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley
Each weekday afternoon, the tiny Indian community of Pala is overrun by frustrated commuters sick of sitting in traffic along northbound Interstate 15, looking for a shortcut to their homes in Temecula and elsewhere in the Inland Empire.

That shortcut takes them along State Route 76 to the Pala Casino and Resort, then left to Pala Mission Road where it intersects with Pala Temecula Road. From there, drivers take a winding, two-lane backcountry street for seven miles until arriving at the southeast corner of Temecula.

Starting at 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, hundreds of cars clog that intersection in the heart of Pala. On average, as many as 25 cars a minute turn north onto Pala Temecula Road during the evening commute. Near that intersection is where kids gather to play in the park. Its where the tribes cultural and learning centers are located. The post office is there.

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Its a concentrated area in the community where kids spend a ton of their time, said Shasta Gaughen, the tribes environmental director, who says shes seen the situation get progressively worse the past year.

Gaughen, others connected to the tribe, and state and county officials all agree that there is a big problem that doesnt have any obvious solutions.

The problem is Interstate 15 and, to some extent, smart phone directional traffic apps that direct motorists to alternative routes because of the daily congestion along the freeway.

Its a difficult issue, said California Highway Patrol spokesman Jim Bettencourt. We cannot stop people from driving where they want. You cant tell somebody you cant go this way. If people have figured out a good shortcut to get around stuff, they are more than welcome to take that path. Thats going to be a problem until the end of time.

Marcelo Peinado, district division chief of traffic operations for Caltrans in San Diego and Imperial counties, said it all has to do with I-15. People dont like crawling along a highway for an hour and would rather take a shortcut that probably wont save them much time, but will alleviate some of the boredom because they will be moving faster, albeit on what is probably a longer route.

Peinado said traffic volumes on I-15 from Route 76 to the Riverside County border  an eight-mile stretch of freeway -- have increased by 10 percent since 2010.

There has been a significant growth in the length of queues and the decreases of speeds, he said.

In 2011, Peinado said, traffic slow-downs usually started only a few miles south of the county line. Now they begin about six miles south. And should an accident occur somewhere along the freeway, which is common, the traffic can be much, much worse.

And the hours that constitute the afternoon commute are getting longer  much longer.

The duration of peak hours has changed, Peinado said. In 2011, the peak was from 2:45 p.m. to about 5 p.m. Today, its 2:15 to about 7 p.m.

Since 2010, Peinado said, the estimated population of Riverside County has increased by 9 percent and the population of Temecula has increased by 12 percent. Thousands of people every day commute to jobs in San Diego County along the freeway, then return in the afternoon to their homes, which cost less and are bigger than what they could afford locally.

Pala is taking the brunt of shortcut traffic, but the effects are felt all over local roads in North County near the freeway. For instance, in Rainbow, locals have been complaining about traffic along Old Highway 395 and other streets caused by drivers seeking a different route. Deer Springs Road is busier than ever as commuters drive through San Marcos over to I-15 to avoid congestion further south along the freeway. And Rice Canyon Road is experiencing much more traffic than ever before.

County road experts said they have been getting complaints from the Pala and Rainbow areas. They recently implemented large commercial vehicle restrictions on Pala Temecula Road due to tight curves, spokesman Gig Conaughton said.

Other measures taken by the county include asking Caltrans to identify potential solutions, and asking the CHP to provide additional enforcement along Rice Canyon, Pala Mission and Pala Temecula roads.

Although there are no recent traffic count numbers for Pala Temecula Road, a county official said in 2003, the total traffic volume on Pala Temecula Road was 5,858 vehicles per day. In 2013, the volume had increased to 7,836 vehicles per day. Locals says it is twice as bad in 2017.

But Caltrans told the county there isnt much that can be done for now about I-15. The San Diego Association of Governments long-term project list call for HOV lanes to be built between Escondido and the Riverside County border by the year 2035. As of now, funding isnt in place for that project.

Gaughen, who works in the tribal hall along Pala Mission Road east of the intersection, said traffic often backs up to the highway on that stretch as well. She said people trying to avoid making the left onto Pala Mission will drive another mile east, then make a sharp, hairpin turn to get to the beginning of the road on that side. She said there have been several collisions as a result.

Tim Ravago, the tribes law enforcement chief, said the situation really got bad about a year ago and has continued to get worse.

And their attitudes are bad, he said of the drivers. There is no courtesy. Ive watched them at the intersection. No one has any respect for anyone anymore. Cars will cut off other people.

He said sometimes he has to run interference for school buses.

Its hard for them to get out, Ravago said. People just wont let up and give them an opening. Theyre in a hurry to get to where theyre going.

Several times earlier this year, the tribe paid for CHP officers to conduct traffic control at the intersection. Ravago said the action may have helped a bit, but the backups were still huge. The CHP again plans on conducting several days of traffic control later this year, their overtime being paid by the tribe.

Ravago said the county has told the tribe there is little they can do about the problem and suggested perhaps a traffic signal be built at the Pala Mission/Pala Temecula intersection.

But I dont really think that would help, Ravago said. It might even create more of a problem.

jharry.jones@sduniontribune.com; 760/529-4931; Twitter: @jharryjones
North Countys busiest train station has finished its $28 million upgrade just in time for the holiday travel season.

The Oceanside Transit Center, which serves 1.2 million travelers annually, has new and longer boarding platforms, a third train track, new crossovers between the tracks, and more signs, seating and shelters after 17 months of construction.

The money was well worth it, said Oceanside resident Richard Silver, a frequent rail passenger and an advocate for ridership issues. He often volunteers as a sort of greeter at the Transit Center on weekends and holidays, where Wednesday morning he offered help to any travelers who looked a little confused.

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This was brilliant, Silver said of the improvements. It greatly increases the capacity ... and makes it easier to transfer from the Sprinter to the Coaster or from any train to another.

Anything you do to make it easier to use public transit will cause more people to use public transit, he said.

If he were to find fault with anything, Silver said, perhaps the station needs more informational signs, and the signs should have bigger letters to make them easier for older people to read.

The Transit Center, on South Tremont Street a block south of Mission Avenue, is a hub for North Countys train, bus, taxi and ride-hailing services.

Oceanside Deputy Mayor Chuck Lowery, also a frequent train rider, was there Monday when the newest platform opened to greet travelers and talk about the improvements.

Our Transit Center is one of the busiest in the state, serving more than 220 trains and buses a day, Lowery said in a news release issued by the San Diego Association of Governments, which planned and coordinated the work along with the North County Transit District.

We are reducing travel times by improving system reliability and the efficiency of freight movement, which in turn reduces car and truck traffic on Interstate 5, he said. This is a step in the right direction for each one of us: cleaner air, less traffic, and more travel options.

The most recent work, completed this fall, includes a new train-level platform that allows disabled passengers to board more quickly and easily, and new electronic signs that display real-time arrivals and departures.

The third track and crossovers, completed in June, allow freight trains that dont need to stop in Oceanside to continue on instead of idling behind trains that are stopped to disembark passengers.

This cuts down on fumes, noise and delays, Lowery said, calling the project a huge plus for the city and the region.

Travelers at the Transit Center can board Coaster trains to San Diego, Sprinter trains to Escondido, Metrolink to Orange County, or Amtrak to stations across California and beyond.

About $21 million of the funding for the project came from TransNet, a half-cent sales tax San Diego County voters approved to pay for transportation improvements.

The remainder of the money came from the Federal Transit Administration and the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @phildiehl
LimeBike  one guess what their color scheme is  planned an immediate rollout of 300 bicycles following the City Councils unanimous approval Tuesday of the business. The service was first introduced to San Diego County in September in Imperial Beach.

Users can find and unlock bikes through a smartphone app, paying $1 per half-hour of use. Theres no cost to the city government.

Unlike some sharing services, LimeBike doesnt use docking stations; users can go where they want and park the bicycles anywhere in National City when theyre done and then press a button to lock the back wheel to pause or end their ride. Its a concept imported to the U.S. from China, which has more than 2.3 million for-hire bikes in Beijing alone, according to the Xinhua news agency.

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Colin McMahon, San Diego launch manager for LimeBike, said the company expects most of its business to come from first and last mile transportation. Typical users could include trolley or other public transit passengers heading to an apartment or work, mall employees, and high school students using the service with parental permission.

Bikes flow throughout the entire city, McMahon said.

Each bicycle is equipped with GPS tracking, enabling users to fund the closest bike available and for the operations team to move any that get deposited from low-demand areas to hot zones. Users are expected to use common courtesy and sense in depositing the bikes, so they dont present trip hazards or block sidewalks.

National City, which approved the bike-share as a six-month pilot program, is LimeBikes 30th market in the U.S. In Imperial Beach  also a six-month pilot  the service logged its first 1,000 rides in just four days, McMahon told the council.
Prominent bodies from the film and television and industry plan to hold a 15-minute blackout in support of Padmavati, starring Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh.

By India Today Web Desk: Amid raging protests against Sanjay Leela Bhansali's upcoming film Padmavati, the Indian Films and TV Directors' Association (IFTDA), along with 20 other bodies of the film and television industry, are planning a 15-minute blackout in support of the film and "to protect the right to freedom of expression of creative individuals".

Ashoke Pandit of IFTDA told IANS: "We will keep showing our support for Padmavati and SLB, because it is the basic right of a creative person to tell a story in his own way. He also added that Bhansali is a responsible filmmaker, and that making a film on history is not something easy, but a huge responsibility. To express our solidarity (with the film), we are gathering on Sunday for a 15-minute blackout where all shooting units in Mumbai will put off lights and no shootings will take place."

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Pandit also added, "We strongly protest against the non-institutional bodies who every now and then protest against movies and threaten actors and makers of films. We will keep condemning their actions in a democratic manner. We have faith in our Prime Minister, for justice to Padmavati," he said.

Earlier this month, IFTDA, along with several other cine bodies, came together in solidarity of the historical drama.

"We as film industry feel hurt every time such groups target our films and try to control our freedom of expression. Unfortunately, we do not get support from any other industry, not even from the government as if we are orphans as a community," Pandit added.

Various celebrities from the industry, including Shabana Azmi, Hansal Mehta and Twinkle Khanna have voiced their support openly for the film.

Padmavati, starring Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, and has been at the heart of a fiery controversy, which is now a nation-wide debate.The film revolves around the tale of Rani Padmini, and fringe Rajput groups are less than pleased about this.

Despite several clarifications by the Padmavati team, they're convinced that there is a romantic dream sequence between Alauddin Khilji and Rani Padmini in the film. Spearheaded by the Shri Rajput Karni Sena, they've been protesting for a ban of the film in every state, and have issued death threats to Bhansali and Deepika Padukone on a regular basis.

The film has been postponed indefinitely from December 1.

ALSO WATCH: Padmavati row: Yogi Adityanath justifies threats against Bhansali and Deepika Padukone

--- ENDS ---
Authorities say a spear fisherman was badly injured Friday in a shark attack off Californias Central Coast.

State fire Capt. Josh Silveira says the man and his father were several hundred yards offshore at Pebble Beach when the son was bitten in the right thigh.

Silveira says the mans leg was intact but the bite was serious. The victim was taken to a trauma center for surgery. There was no immediate word on his condition.

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The beach has been tagged with warning signs.

Silveira says there havent been any recent shark sightings at the Monterey County beach, but in March, a great white shark attacked a kayak in Monterey Bay, knocking the kayaker into the water. He wasnt bitten.
San Diego police are searching for a man suspected of robbing a Bay Park Arco station on Wednesday then returning three days later for a second try.

A man entered the gas station on Morena Boulevard at Frankfort Street about 7:55 a.m. Saturday and pointed a gun demanding cash from the clerk behind the counter, according to police. However, the would-be robber fled with no cash when another customer walked into the store.

Described as Hispanic or Asian, in his late 50s, with a thin build and a mustache and wearing reading glasses and a dark hooded sweatshirt, the man, police say, matches the description of the person who successfully robbed the same store on Wednesday.

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Anyone with information related to the incident is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477.

Health Playlist On Now Video: Why aren't Americans getting flu shots? 0:37 On Now Video: Leaders urge public to help extinguish hepatitis outbreak On Now San Diego starts cleansing sidewalks, streets to combat hepatitis A On Now Video: Scripps to shutter its hospice service On Now Video: Scripps La Jolla hospitals nab top local spot in annual hospital rankings On Now Video: Does a parent's Alzheimer's doom their children? On Now Video: Vaccine can prevent human papillomavirus, which can cause cancer 0:31 On Now 23 local doctors have already faced state discipline in 2017 0:48 On Now EpiPen recall expands On Now Kids can add years to your life

paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1850

Twitter: @paulsisson
U.S. Border Patrol agent Ramiro Cordero has spent nearly two decades working on the border in Texas, part of the El Paso sector team responsible for intercepting migrants and drug smugglers flowing in from Mexico.

On most Fridays, Cordero sheds his green uniform and gun belt, packs the bed of his tan F-150 pickup truck and sets off with his wife across the international bridge.

Weekends find him on his ranch in Moctezuma, deep in the state of Chihuahua, tending the pecan orchard, wrestling calves for branding or building a pit fire for freshly butchered pork barbacoa.

Cordero, 46, grew up in Mexico and hopes to retire there soon. He is one of a substantial group of border agents  more than half of whom are Latino  whose family connections are in Mexico, whose professional loyalty is to the United States, whose history straddles both sides of the border.

Left, U.S. Border Patrol agent Ramiro Cordero drives south on Mexico Highway 45, which cuts through Ciudad Juarez until the city gives way to the Chihuahuan Desert. Right, Cordero prepares to drive to Mexico for the weekend. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Its not unusual to see, he says, naming at least four friends and family members from Ciudad Juarez, south of El Paso on the Mexican side of the border, who have joined U.S. federal law enforcement. Border communities are very close. The ties are very, very close.

Americas southwest border area has always been a land of its own, a place that is neither Mexican nor American, but a vibrant fusion of both.

But years of drug violence in northern Mexico and the political rift between the U.S. and Mexican governments have strained those ties  for some border residents, to the breaking point  making Corderos choice a bold one. Its also evidence of the personal bridge-building some border residents must do to reconcile their American reality with their Mexican roots.

Cordero has always blended in well with the tough law enforcement culture here in El Paso sector.

He says he never removes the gold Border Patrol ring he wears on his right hand. He doesnt favor leniency for migrants who cross the border illegally. His uniform, he says, must always be pressed. He prefers Fox News and supports President Trump, whose verbal attacks on Mexico have opened deep wounds among Mexicans.

But he grew up in Ciudad Juarez on a block of Avenida del Charro  Cowboy Avenue  near a rodeo arena less than a mile from the other side of the U.S. border. He moves fluidly between Spanish and English, knows the words to the ballads of beloved Mexican crooners Antonio Aguilar and Juan Gabriel and eats menudo religiously on Sundays.

So his dream for a new beginning at midlife, retiring to a ranch in Mexico, also represents a homecoming.

In many ways, Chihuahua is as much his home as Texas.

Cordero, a native of Arizona who moved to Mexico at a young age, began his career as a border agent in 2000. It was the year that illegal immigration from Mexico was peaking and the agency reported more than 1.6 million apprehensions at the Southwest border  a 50-year record that holds today.

Border communities are very close. The ties are very, very close.  U.S. Border Patrol Agent Ramiro Cordero

He patrolled the line east of El Paso before there was an 18-foot steel border fence, before Sept. 11, before agents routinely brought machine guns on day patrol, when he alone apprehended between 15 and 30 crossers per shift.

Both his nationality and his commitment to Border Patrol were questioned once, after his eldest brother, a former U.S. customs officer, pleaded guilty in 2010 to smuggling migrants illegally through an El Paso port of entry.

But Cordero was not implicated in his brothers crime, and today, he crosses the border both ways with a SENTRI pass, for those known and trusted on both sides.

As Cordero approached the Zaragoza international bridge one recent Friday afternoon, his work cellphone rang.

U.S. Border Patrol, can I help you? he said into the phone. Que paso, Brenda? Okay, mira, do me a favor. Shoot me an email with that. The only problem is that I wont get back to it till Monday. Reason being, Im getting ready to cross south.

Top, Claudia Cordero closes the gate behind her truck as she and her husband arrive on her family's ranch in Moctezuma, Mexico. Left, Victor Lucero herds Brangus cattle. Right, Ramiro Cordero speaks with Victor Cardona as his nephew, Santiago Gonzalez, 5, sits on Cardona's shoulders at Rancho San Isidro. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Mexicos Highway 45 cuts through Ciudad Juarez  past maquila assembly factories and strip malls  until the city gives way to the Chihuahuan Desert.

The toll road is a major artery for goods headed north to the U.S. market, including auto parts and aerospace components. Its also a key drug corridor.

About 120 miles south of El Paso, Cordero turned onto a dirt road twisting through mesquite and creosote and the half-abandoned pueblito of Moctezuma.

Rancho San Isidro stretches over 8,000 acres belonging to his father-in-law, Victor Cardona, who raises cattle and pigs. The sun was nearly gone behind a white curtain of rain in the west by the time Cordero and his wife, Claudia, arrived.

To the east, Corderos brother-in-law Miguel Cardona and two cowboys pushed some 60 head of Brangus cattle over a hill toward a corral where Cordero, ready to work, positioned himself to close the gate.

He waited with a Coors Light and a cigarette. The wind whipped up and the rain moved over the ranch. The storm poured a deafening shower on the tin roof of a carport and outdoor kitchen. Cordero, his in-laws and the cowboys drank more Coors and waited for the rain to pass.

I think life is simpler here, Cordero said. Not that I wish I was in his shoes or his shoes, nodding to the cowboys, as they did the muscular work of taking the hair off a slaughtered pig. People live just a simple life. I truly envy that life. Here, what is there to worry about?

One of the cowboys built Corderos house, and it still needs a coat of paint outside and tiles on the roof. Its a do-it-yourself, one-story, three-bedroom home with tile floors, concrete counters and cabinets that hang a little cockeyed.

Now that the house is almost finished, he has several times invited his fellow agents to make the somewhat nerve-racking drive down the drug corridor highway to his little piece of paradise.

Hardly anyone wants to come down, he said.

Clockwise from top left: Carlos de Leon jumps over the fence to rope calves at Rancho San Isidro. After working all day in the sun, Raymundo Hernandez, from left, Carlos de Leon and Ernesto Cardona take a break. Felipe Cardona, 6, plays on the swing set. Ramiro and Claudia Cordero relax at the ranch. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

The closest place to buy groceries and beer is Villa Ahumada, famous for its drive-in quesadilla joints, notorious for its role in the drug war.

In 2008, gunmen brutalized the town of 12,500 people, killing the police chief, two officers and three residents. The entire police force quit. In 2015, a Juarez Cartel leader was arrested with a semiautomatic rifle and $20,000 on him; when Mexican federal investigators searched his ranch, according to news reports, they found more high-powered weapons, ammo, numerous vehicles and two Bengal tigers.

In May, criminals sprayed a state building in Ahumada with bullets, killing one state police officer and wounding three others.

Since the era of extreme drug violence began in the early 2000s, Daniel Benavidez, spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council union, said he hadnt heard of any agents living in Mexico.

They may well be targets if they did retire there, he said.

The two most prominent attacks on U.S. agents in Mexico were the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Enrique Kiki Camarena, and the 2011 gunning down of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Jaime Zapata.

But Cordero knows he has the power of two governments behind him.

There has always been an understanding, even among the most dangerous criminals, that they should stay away from U.S. agents, said Andrew Selee, president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington. The few times something has happened, the U.S. and Mexican governments have responded with enormous force.

Cordero also has the confidence of his own training. You know, this is all I need, he says, brandishing a large pocketknife. If somebody is going to kidnap me, somebodys going down with me. Im not going down alone. And I am confident that I can probably disarm him and can have him eat his own rounds.

Saturday began at 7 a.m., first light.

Cardona heated lard in a copper pot on a propane flame. He fried the pigskin to make crispy chicharrones  a side dish to the red cow-stomach menudo simmering inside the house. In-laws began arriving to celebrate the annual branding of the calves.

Cordero pulled some PVC pipe from the back of his truck and set about repairing the outdoor kitchen sink.

At noon, everyone headed over to the corral. Claudia found the branding irons, one for Cardona and each of his five children.

Cordero doesnt rope. But when the cowboys had each calf by the hoof and neck, he watched for a chance to grab its underbelly with two hands and in one swift motion take it to the ground  knee on the neck, knee on the ribs, foreleg curled and secured.

Cordero got kicked multiple times, but took down all but two of the 15 calves, some weighing 400 pounds.

He takes off his uniform, and he completely transforms, Claudia said. He tries to wrestle down the cows like they were criminals. Its work but its not stress.

After working from dawn till dark, Cordero, his in-laws and the cowboys and their families drank beer, danced banda and sang along to Mexican tunes.

I mean, its strange, right? Cardona said of his brother-in-laws decision to make a home on the ranch. People usually like to come for a weekend or a vacation. But he works like we do. He works like he belongs here.

On Sunday, when the family was gone and the cleanup was done, Cordero and his wife packed the truck and said goodbye to Cardona and Claudias father.

Awaiting them at home were chores for the week ahead: shopping at Food King, making lunches of chicken and pasta alfredo from a packet, cleaning the backyard pool. Cordero would soon be back at the office, answering nonstop calls about border enforcement, drugs, illegal immigration.

At the end of the ranch road, Claudia made the sign of the cross. Cordero turned north.

Villagran is a special correspondent.
The bad faith shown by the California Public Utilities Commission in the aftermath of the 2012 shuttering of the San Onofre nuclear plant along the north county coast is difficult to exaggerate.

Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric jointly own the plant, with majority owner Edison responsible for its operations. In 2014, the CPUC approved a plan under which Edison and SDG&E customers would pay $3.3 billion of the $4.7 billion cost of shutting down San Onofre. Subsequently, The San Diego Union-Tribune broke the story that the deal had been secretly crafted in an unreported meeting between an Edison executive and then-CPUC President Michael Peevey in Poland in 2013. In 2016, under heavy pressure, the CPUC agreed to reopen the agreement on settlement costs.

But the CPUC has never stopped being slippery. This week, after a Los Angeles Superior Court judge unsealed documents related to the states investigation of Peevey, U-T Watchdog found fresh examples. The CPUC successfully lobbied the state Legislature in 2016 to give it $6 million more to hire private attorneys so the agency can cooperate with the two criminal investigations currently underway. Soon thereafter, the commission began its push to quash court-approved search warrants. Among its tactics: saying that how the warrants were served by state investigators was improper  even though they were carried out in the way the CPUC specified.

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Most galling of all, four months after it fined Edison $16.7 million for its executives meeting with Peevey in Poland, the CPUC argued in court filings that the meeting was legal and couldnt be used to justify search warrants.

This is inexplicable and indefensible  but from the CPUC, completely predictable. It underscores the need for the Legislature to yet again seek sweeping reforms of the states least trustworthy agency.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion
Re Concealed-carry law would be a disaster (Nov. 20): Blaze Newman objects to a national concealed-carry act on the basis of public safety. There is no threat to public safety, based on data, of open-carry and concealed-carry being more available than in California and most counties.

Today, 45 states allow open-carry under various regulations. Many states allow essentially unfettered concealed-carry. There is no link to increased violence by legally carrying people in these jurisdictions.

To postulate that legal firearm-carrying people are a threat is not borne out by the facts and is insulting. The criminally oriented among us are already carrying firearms, and ignore current law.

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Continued restrictions, if not more restrictions, will be similarly ignored. While I do think firearms carry is a states rights issue, in most of California the regulations prevent legal-carry, a practical method of self-defense.

Bill Stoops

Solana Beach

Silencers were made to hunt and protect the hearing of hunters. Unfortunately a different kind of hunter is walking amongst us and they are going after our own.

One of the key signals for a lock-down situation is the sound of a gun. Imagine the situation if that signal is not available.

Sadly thats something that needs to be considered at this time in our lives. While we have laws already in place, the Northern California shooting showed us that they are not working. The shooter had a record of domestic violence and was told to turn in any firearms in his possession. As you know, he did not.

This follows the historically tragic shootings in Las Vegas and Texas.

The U.S. regulates many things, such as alcohol, drivers licenses and tobacco, to protect people. We can pass laws that respect Second Amendment rights while taking guns away from dangerous people.

Rachel Loerch

San Diego

I saw in the paper that Congress fails to act on bump stock device (Nov. 16). Slide Fire, a leading manufacturer, has resumed selling them. Gun dealers reported that sales of bump stocks spiked after Las Vegas and some stores sold out quickly.

Where is the public outrage? I do not understand why this is not front page news. Then maybe Congress would act. Where is the moral conscience of Slide Fire and the other dealers who sell these deadly items? I fear there will be more copycat mass killings. Maybe people are just too busy to write their congressman, get involved or to insist on immediate action, until they lose a friend or family member to a mentally ill person with a rifle and bump stock device. But then it is too late, isnt it?

Marilyn Link

Pacific Beach

Re Nation seeks answers after another mass shooting (Nov. 7) Gun control advocates Michael Thaller, Emery Cummins and Tim Butler need enlightenment. Theres zero correlation between strict gun laws and lower gun deaths. Rather, the reverse is true: the states/cities with the strictest gun laws have the highest murder rates. Why would someone willing to commit murder hesitate to obtain a gun illegally?

There are an estimated 300 million guns that are legally owned in this country. Today, like every day, few of them committed murder. How is that possible if guns kill people? They only do so in the hands of a murderer. The Texas shooter was actually stopped from killing even more people by a legal gun-toting good Samaritan who shot him.

Children in the 1800s commonly carried guns to school yet never shot each other. Why? They had families who instilled good morals. This is the difference between then and now - not the availability of guns.

Julie Gilbart

Murrieta

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.

Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.
Moxie Theatres revival of The Diary of Anne Frank (U-T review, Nov. 20) is timely. Let Me Be Myself  The Life Story of Anne Frank is currently on exhibit at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. It highlights Annes life from childhood, in hiding, until her betrayal and death at Bergen-Belsen. The exhibit shows how her experience foreshadows recent forms of discrimination that affect young people with diverse identities.

I have proposed that UC San Diego designate one of our new residential colleges in her memory. Anne Frank College would inspire students to emulate her love of learning and stubborn faith in humanity. As she wrote: In spite of everything, I still believe in the essential goodness of human beings.

Readers, especially alumni, who would like to see the creation of Anne Frank College are encouraged to let Chancellor Pradeep Khosla know it has their support.

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Sanford Lakoff

Mission Hills
Two local prosecutors on Monday condemned Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggers decision on his last day in office to reduce the prison sentence for Esteban Nunez, who pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in a 2008 stabbing.

Nunez and three other Sacramento men originally faced murder charges stemming from a fight at San Diego State University that led to the stabbing death of Luis Santos, a 22-year-old Mesa College student. Nunez is the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a Los Angeles Democrat and San Diego native.

Esteban Nunez, shown at his sentencing in San Diego Superior Court in June, is trying to get his 16-year prison sentence for a fatal stabbing reduced. The judge rejected his attempt on Friday.  K.C. Alfred (K.C. Alfred)

Related Schwarzenegger reduces sentence in San Diego slaying

Commutations and pardons Prison sentence commutations by the past six California governors: Arnold Schwarzenegger: 10 Gray Davis: 0 Pete Wilson: 3 George Deukmejian: 0 Jerry Brown: 1 Ronald Reagan: 17 Pardons by the past six California governors: Arnold Schwarzenegger: 16, including one conditional and one amended. Gray Davis: 0 Pete Wilson: 10 George Deukmejian: 328 Jerry Brown: 403 Ronald Reagan: 575

San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said her office was not consulted before fellow Republican Schwarzenegger announced his decision to reduce the prison sentence from 16 years to seven years.

We were shocked to hear of the Governors last-minute commutation, which greatly diminishes justice for victim Luis Santos and re-victimizes his family and friends, Dumanis, a former Superior Court judge, said in a statement.

Schwarzenegger called the original sentence excessive and noted that co-defendant Ryan Jett had a previous criminal record and it was he  not Nunez  who inflicted the fatal wounds.

San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, a former Superior Court judge and three-term Republican assemblyman, said the governors decision will hurt his legacy.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reduced the sentence by over half to help his political cronys son. In doing so, he undermined the judicial system and has jeopardized public safety, Goldsmith said. I speak for the overwhelming majority of San Diegans in stating that we are appalled and angry over Mr. Schwarzeneggers conduct. It reflects poorly on him, personally, and on his legacy as governor.

Defense lawyer Brad Patton, who represented Nunez, said Monday that Schwarzeneggers action rectified the previous injustice of the 16-year sentence given by San Diego Superior Court Judge Robert ONeill. He said Nunez should not have received the same sentence as Jett, and that the commutation stemmed from an examination of the facts, not Fabian Nunezs political influence.

Nunez was Assembly speaker from 2004 to 2008, overlapping with Schwarzeneggers tenure as governor. Nunez now works as a partner at Mercury Public Affairs, a Sacramento-based firm. Among the agencys partners is Adam Mendelsohn, a former deputy chief of staff for Schwarzenegger.

Calls to Nunez for comment on his sons case were referred to Patton.

The state constitution gives the governor authority to grant reprieves, pardons and commutations of sentences. The governor is required to report to the Legislature each reprieve he grants and must give the reasons for granting it. The governor is not allowed to grant a pardon or commutation to a person twice convicted of a felony except on the recommendation of the Supreme Court.

A person can apply for clemency through the courts or directly to the governor. Applications can be referred to the Board of Prison Terms for investigation into the rehabilitative character of the applicant, but a governor can grant a pardon without an investigation.

The whole point behind the pardoning power was to give the executive this great power and to act in the interest of justice because its clear that the law doesnt always lead to just results, said Kathleen Cookie Ridolfi, a Santa Clara University law professor and executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project.

Ridolfi said the Nunez case seemed an unusual candidate for clemency because the appellate process hadnt been completed and because of the political ties between the governor and the defendants father.

People are suspicious of it, she said. It seems very related to who his father is, and I cant argue with that. But at the same time I never want to discourage the exercise of clemency or pardoning power. Unfortunately, it is not exercised enough.

David Steinberg, a professor of criminal law and procedure at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, said a governor typically chooses cases where there is weak evidence and real doubt as to whether the defendant committed the crime or in cases in which a defendant has received a long sentence for a nonviolent offense  such as a three-striker who gets life in prison for shoplifting.

The big concern is the perception of abuse of power, Steinberg said. There is a perception that (Esteban Nunez) got a break because his dad was a powerful politician.

The commutation of Nunezs sentence was one of three announced Sunday. Schwarzenegger also granted eight pardons and one conditional pardon.

He also reduced the sentences of Sara Kruzan, who was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 1994 shooting death of her alleged pimp, and the sentence of Alberto Magana Torres, who was convicted of second-degree murder and attempted involuntary manslaughter for shooting a man who came on his property.

Commuting sentences for those convicted in homicides is not unprecedented.

In 1998, Gov. Pete Wilson commuted the prison sentence of a woman convicted in the 1981 murder of her abusive husband, lowering the womans sentence to 20 years to life. Wilson said she had ineffective assistance of counsel.
Regarding the Padmavati row, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu has said that people have the right to protest in a democratic manner, but they cannot physically obstruct and give violent threats.

By India Today Web Desk: Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavati, starring Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor, has been in the midst of a whirlpool of controversy, and has now become a nation-wide debate.

There have been protests all over the country, and the film has been banned in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Spearheaded by the fringe Rajput group, Shri Rajput Karni Sena, there have also been death threats to director Sanjay Leela Bhansali's life, and Deepika's as well.

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The groups are convinced that Bhansali has distorted history, and shown romantic dram sequence between Rani Padmini (played by Deepika Padukone) and Alauddin Khilji, (Ranveer Singh).

At a literary festival, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said today that violent threats and announcing rewards for physical harm was not acceptable in a democracy. Not directly referring to the controversy, but films and art in general, he warned against undermining the rule of law in the country, but also pointed out that one should not hurt the sentiments of others.

"This is not acceptable in a democracy. You have the right to protest in a democratic manner, go to the appropriate authorities...you cannot physically obstruct and can't give violent threats. Let us not undermine the rule of law," he said.

He specifically mentioned that he was not talking about any film in particular. He spoke about other films such as Garam Hawa , Kissa Kursi Ka and Aandhi. "You have no right to take laws into your own hands. At the same time, you don't have the right to hurt the sentiments of others," Naidu said.

Padmavati has been postponed indefinitely from December 1.

ALSO WATCH: Padmavati row: Karni Sena threatens to behead Sanjay Leela Bhansali, chop off Deepika's nose

--- ENDS ---
The White House statement reiterated the US President's commitment in fighting terrorism and the "constructive" role that Pakistan should play.

By Geeta Mohan: In a major blow to Pakistan, the United States of America has warned Pakistan of "repercussions" on US-Pak ties if 26/11 Mumbai terror attack mastermind and Chief of terrorist network Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), Hafiz Saeed is not re-arrested.

The White House Press Secretary in a statement on Saturday said, "If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistan's global reputation."

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This comes a day after Hafiz Saeed was released from house arrest in Lahore, Pakistan and got a hero's welcome at the Jamaat-ud-Dawaa (JuD) headquarters, an internationally proscribed organisation. He also gave a sermon at the Jamia al Qadsia Masjid in Lahore the very same day.

The US administration has come down heavily on Pakistan for its "failure to prosecute or charge him" saying that it sends a "deeply troubling message about Pakistan's commitment to combatting international terrorism" and "belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil."

The White House statement reiterated the US President's commitment in fighting terrorism and the "constructive" role that Pakistan should play.

"As President Donald J. Trump's South Asia policy makes clear, the United States seeks a constructive relationship with Pakistan, but expects decisive action against militant and terrorist groups on Pakistani soil that are a threat to the region. The release of Saeed is a step in the wrong direction."

Demanding that Pakistan re-arrest the Lashkar chief else it would show lack of "seriousness" the White House said, "The Pakistani government now has an opportunity to demonstrate its seriousness in confronting all forms of terrorism, without distinction, by arresting and charging Hafiz Saeed for his crimes." Adding, "Saeed's release, after Pakistan's failure to prosecute or charge him, sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistan's commitment to combatting international terrorism and belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil."

A Review Board of the Lahore High Court had ordered him to be freed on Thursday after authorities failed to file any formal charges against him since his house arrest in January this year.

The board also rejected the request of the Punjab government for further extension of his house arrest for lack of evidence. US reminds Pakistan of the ample proof against Hafiz Saeed in attacks that have claimed American lives.

"LeT is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent civilians in terrorist attacks, including a number of American citizens.

Saeed himself is a notorious terrorist who stands accused of having masterminded the November 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, including six American citizens", the press secretary said.

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A Pakistani government lawyer on Thursday had also urged the board to extend the house arrest for another three months as the country may face cut in aid or limited sanctions for freeing a UN-designated terrorist.

"A clear international consensus exists regarding Saeed's culpability-he was designated by the United Nations under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1267 in December 2008. The Department of the Treasury has designated Saeed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and the United States, since 2012, has offered a $10 million reward for information that brings Saeed to justice", the White Hose press secretary said in his statement.

The United States strongly "condemned" the release of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) leader Hafiz Saeed from house arrest in Pakistan and calls for his "immediate re-arrest and prosecution".

--- ENDS ---
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/25/2017 -- Domestic laundry appliance is a machine or system which is used for washing cloth and clothes sheets. Use of domestic laundry appliances is not limited to washing only. These appliances are also used for cloth drying purposes. Global domestic laundry appliances market is segmented in to automatic washing machines, drying machines, other washing machines and electric smoothing irons. Introduction of new features in washing machine such large capacity, fast spin speeds, high energy consumption and digital display provides comfort and gives better experiences to user. Addition of such new features in laundry appliances further helps to boost the global domestic laundry appliances market.



Growth in garment purchasing is one of the key factors associated with market growth of domestic laundry appliances. Due to rising income level of individual, people prefer to purchase lager number of clothes and to maintain them clean and safe; their investment over various domestic laundry appliances is growing. This is one of the key factors which act as driver for global domestic laundry appliances market. The demand of domestic laundry appliances is seen more in urban market especially in high-tier cities. Growing investment over research and development on various domestic laundry appliances and introduction of innovative technology further helps in the growth of domestic laundry appliances market. Growing urbanization and product upgrading are also some of the important issue for growth of global domestic laundry appliances market.



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Asia pacific is one of the prominent markets for growth of domestic laundry appliances. Growing housed hold income level leads to investment over various domestic appliances including laundry appliances. Asia Pacific is expected to witness fastest growth rates in domestic laundry appliances market during forecasted period 2014- 2020. China and India together holds the largest market share in domestic laundry appliances market in Asia Pacific region. Asia pacific holds the largest market share in domestic laundry appliances market. Rising economy level and large population base offers huge market potential for growth of domestic laundry appliances market in Asia Pacific region. According to a report, around 73% of Chinese households had a washing machine in 2010 and this figure is expected to reach around 80% by 2015. This growing trend of washing machines helps in the growth of global laundry appliance market.



Countries such as Bolivia, Japan, Tanzania, and Vietnam are considered the highest potential markets and it is expected to witness fastest growth rates in global domestic laundry appliances market during forecasted period 2014- 2020. Europe, Germany, Italy, Russia, Turkey and United Kingdom account the major market share for domestic laundry appliances. The global domestic laundry appliances market is expected to grow in a single digit growth rate during forecasted period 2014- 2020.



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Some of the major companies operating in global domestic laundry appliances market are Sears Holdings Corp, Whirlpool Corp, GD Midea Holding Co Ltd, Haier Group, Bosch, Al Ghandi Electronics, LG Electronics, Miele & Cie KG, Electrolux, Hitachi Appliances In, Panasonic Corp, Godrej & Boyce Mfg Co Ltd, Manar SA, Fagor Electrodomesticos S Coop, Fisher & Paykel Appliances Limited, BC Hydro and Siemens and BSH Home Appliances Ltd.
Pune, India -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/24/2017 -- The Worldwide Pharmaceutical Isolator Market research report is growing with the rapid pace; mainly due the burgeoning Healthcare Sector. According to a recent study report published by the Market Research Future, The World Pharmaceutical Isolator Industry Research report is booming and expected to gain prominence over the forecast period. The Market is forecasted to demonstrate a huge growth by 2023, surpassing its previous growth records in terms of value & volume. Considering all these factors The World Pharmaceutical Isolator Market research report is expected to reach USD 39.0 billion by 2023, and the market is projected to grow at a CAGR of ~ 8.1% during the forecast period 2017-2023.



Market Research Future published new report, titled "Pharmaceutical Isolator Market -Research Report: Global Forecast till 2023".



The Worldwide Pharmaceutical Isolator Market report explores the Top Key Players in-depth analysis as: Gelman Singapore, COMECER S.p.A. cf. p.Iva, IsoTech Design, LAF Technologies Pty Ltd, Fedegari Autoclavi S.p.A, Hosokawa Micron Ltd., Bosch GmbH, MBRAUN, Chamunda Pharma Machinery Pvt. Ltd., Schematic Engineering Industries, NuAire, Inc., and others.



Market Synopsis of Global Pharmaceutical Isolator Market:

An isolator is an equipment designed to avoid contamination. Isolators are either open or closed. Open isolators allow for ingress or egress of materials while affording a level of protection from the external environment and thus protect products while allowing materials to enter and exit the workspace. Closed isolators, enable complete separation between the internal and external environment except for filtered air and they offer full protection to the substance being handled. Aseptic isolators differ from containment isolators on account of air pressure. Aseptic isolators use positive pressure to keep contamination out, while containment isolator applies negative pressure to keep contamination out of the workspace.

Isolators are commonly found in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry and are widely used for pharmacy aseptic compounding applications.



The market drivers for global pharmaceutical isolator market are rising demand due to the growing pharmaceutical and biotechnological industry, increasing regulations and cost of noncompliance, expanding the use of aseptic methods, rising bio labs, growing used of toxic and hazardous materials, advancements in isolator efficiency, and technology. However, the high cost of the isolators, high maintenance, the high cost of operation, the weak regulatory framework in developing regions and lack of inspection, increasing specifications, and stringency of quality control checks disease may hamper the growth of the market over the review period.



Market Segments:

The global pharmaceutical isolator market has been segmented on the basis of type, system, pressure differential, and end user.

Based on the type, the market has been segmented into aseptic isolators, containment isolators, bio isolators, sampling, weighing and distribution isolators, active pharmaceutical ingredient & manufacturing isolators, and other.

Based on the system, the market has been segmented into closed systems and open systems.



Based on the pressure differential, the market has been segmented into positive pressure and negative pressure.

Based on the end user, the market has been segmented as hospitals and diagnostics labs, pharmaceutical and biotechnological industries, research and academics, and others.



Regional Analysis:

The Americas account for a significant market share owing to high expenditure on the health care. Additionally, the fastest uptake of advanced healthcare products in the U.S. drives the pharmaceutical isolator market. The high concentration of the major healthcare companies, biotech labs and hospitals in the developed countries of this region coupled with stringent regulatory and inspection is adding fuel to the market growth. Moreover, high inspection rate and the growing stringency of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspections has fueled the U.S. market.



Europe is the second largest market in the world due to growing the pharmaceutical and industrial base. Countries such as Germany and France lead the European market growth. Germany is expected to be the fastest growing market over the assessment period. The active pharmaceutical industry in Germany is a strong driver behind the dominance of this country in Europe. The ever increasing research and development expenditures of the developed regions have stimulated the market for isolators in these regions.

Asia Pacific region is expected to grow rapidly; China and India are likely to lead this market due to the fast-growing pharmaceutical sector and large unmet needs over the forecast period. South East Asian countries such as China, India, and Malaysia are projected to contribute highly to the market growth. The growing penetration of medical devices industry in the Asia Pacific region is expected to drive the future pharmaceutical isolator market in the region.



Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are estimated to drive the Middle East & African market. Other Middle East nations to watch out for are Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and Iran. The African region is expected to witness a moderate growth owing to poor economic and political conditions, and poor healthcare development. The poor research and development in the Middle East and African region have restricted the growth of the pharmaceutical isolators market.



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Major Table of Contents:

Chapter 1. Report Prologue



Chapter 2. Market Introduction



Chapter 3. Research Methodology



Chapter 4. Market Dynamics



Chapter 5. Market Factor Analysis



Chapter 6. Global Pharmaceutical Isolator Market, By Type



Chapter 7. Global Pharmaceutical Isolator Market, By System



Chapter 8. Global Pharmaceutical Isolator Market, By Pressure Differential



Chapter 9. Global Pharmaceutical Isolator Market, By End User



Chapter 10. Global Pharmaceutical Isolator Market, By Region



Chapter 11. Company Landscape



Chapter 12. Company Profiles



Chapter 13. MRFR Conclusion



Chapter 14. Appendix



...CONTINUED



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MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.



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Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/24/2017 -- As the economy fluctuates, so does disposable income, consumer confidence, and the demand for discretionary jewelry and watches. With a prime focus on U.S. market for the hard luxury sector, a new study titled "Watches & Jewelry - US - October 2017" has been broadcasted to the online repository of Market Research Hub (MRH), offers an in-depth analysis of the market covering prime aspects. In the report, the reader will come across facts and figures that reveal the current market revenue and future growth of the watches and jewelry market.



Request Free Sample Report: https://www.marketresearchhub.com/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1373687



According to this comprehensive report, research experts predicts temperate growth for the watches and jewelry market in 2017 and beyond. This is an upswing and positive year for the manufacturers because in the U.S., almost all watch and jewelry retailers experienced a tough year due to a slowdown in consumption ahead of the presidential election. Since the last issuance of this report, jewelry stores have slipped behind jewelry departments in terms of where people buy items, while Amazon has risen to the top as a primary competitor.



Jewelry is something that is stereotyped as women's accessories. Analysts found that Jewelry commands a majority of sales, but watches grow at faster pace. In the initial section of the report, an overview that comprises of an apt definition of the product for the scope of the research has been explained. In the following section of the report, readers can access an executive summary, which highlights key segment analysis, drivers, issues, opportunities, and trends.



Some of the major factor influencing market growth include consumer confidence towards the product, positive growth in disposable personal income, experiences over tangible goods; and prices of precious metals remain low for the most part, therefore diamonds continue to shine in the market. The report further adds that iGens and Millennials drive the market's momentum. The percentage of smartwatch owners has grown more than doubled; and consumers show the value they place on affordability, as the percentage of fine jewelry buyers versus fashion/costume buyers has reversed with fashion/costume now the preference. Types of materials preferred by the customer in the U.S. is gold and diamonds.



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In terms of market competitiveness, Jewelry stores face tough competition and online marketplace starts to shine. The manufacturers are struggling because traditional jewelers losing some sparkle. The demand for smartwatches expected to steam again. Considering this, LG, Verizon, Samsung and Apple are looking ahead to maintain their competitiveness.



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Thierry Zomahoun is the president and chief executive officer of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), and founder and chairman of the Next Einstein Forum (NEF), which helps foster collaboration among young African scientists.

In an effort to raise Africas profile in how science and mathematics can address development challenges, Zomahoun is promoting NEFs scientific programme as a platform to connect science, society and policy.

He believes Africa is in a good position to lead the quantum tech revolution  which relies on computing that is based on quantum mechanics to advance data processing and technological breakthroughs  by harnessing its scientific talent to define solutions that address problems peculiar to Africa and the developing world.

Zomahoun talked with SciDev.Net during the 10th World Conference of Science Journalists (October 26-30) in San Francisco, United States.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.



What role can Africa play in the quantum revolution?

I believe that Africa will play a big role. We are working on it and we want to make it possible for Africa to lead this technological revolution. If you look back, we missed the analogue and digital revolution. We are still trying to catch up with the digital revolution.

We want to lead in the quantum revolution because we have the talent, the young Africans  when we take populations from other parts of the world where most people are ageing, this is a disadvantage. [This is] the second thing that made me say Africa will lead the quantum revolution.

The third reason that makes the African continent a good candidate to lead the quantum revolution has to do with political will. Our leaders are determined to provide the legal and policy framework we need to make it possible for researchers worldwide to come to Africa.

How will the quantum revolution benefit Africa, what difference will it make?

The first area that will benefit African researchers is collaboration for research. When Africa starts investing in quantum research and technology development, we will be drawing researchers from Central America to Europe and Asia. This can help build skills, strengthen research infrastructure and add value to the efforts of young African scientists.

Another benefit will [be] the increase of overall data analytical capacity building [in the region]. We have enormous data on the continent, generated since the 1960s. They have not been used yet. Positioning Africa to lead the quantum revolution will imply you have trained people in data analysis and processing data in real time.

The last area in which the continent can benefit is on the policy level. [The] quantum revolution will require another set of regulations and policies. For instance, the banking sector is talking about the confidentiality of customer and client banking data  how do you continue to keep things confidential in the age of the quantum revolution and artificial intelligence?

This change would take three generations, or within 45 years. The benefits can be measured by the small industries that would benefit from it. If you look at what we have achieved in industries we have created, thanks to the digital revolution, you can tell [how quantum revolution will benefit us].

What are the challenges in terms of using the results of scientific breakthroughs from developing regions such as Africa [considering that 1% of global research comes from Africa]?

You hear the mention that Africas contribution to global research is less than 1%, but let us not forget there is a huge hidden reality in that 1%. Twenty years ago, nobody was talking about research coming out from Africa. We were talking about scientists from Africa who are living and doing research abroad.

If you take the past 12-15 years, Africas research has more than tripledthis is something that people are not talking about. Yes, at 1% this [level of contribution] raises concerns. But when you realise that no other region has even tripled its research output in just one decade, it tells you a couple of things  that first, we are not hiding the challenge we are facing; and second, if you see the quality in that 1%, there has been a paradigm shift. If Africa can maintain and quadruple its research output every decade, you can imagine in three to four or five decades from now where we are headed.

This article was originally published on SciDev.Net's global edition.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development grant will soon help rural communities in Gage County set priorities for community facility improvements. The project was announced Wednesday by NGage, the countys economic development corporation.

Working with University of Nebraska Extension and the Heartland Center for Leadership Development, NGage will facilitate priority-setting sessions with all 13 small towns in the county, said NGage Executive Director Walker Zulkoski.

The grant, worth approximately $100,000, was awarded to the Heartland Center for Leadership Development.

The Center is a 30-year-old nonprofit organization that works with community leaders throughout the Great Plains to help them set priorities for community vitality, noted Milan Wall, co-director of the Heartland Center.

The grant awarded to them will support youth activities as well as the arrangements for and facilitation of the community sessions.

A unique feature of the project will be engaging students from schools in the region to envision their communities as they would like to see them develop over the next 10 years, Wall said. The teenagers will be invited to create three-dimensional models of their towns to share with adults from the county as part of the planning process.

Initial meetings will begin in December. Zulkoski estimated the entire process could take two or three years to complete.
PoK leader Tauqeer Gilani today while addressing a rally in Muzaffarabad lambasted Pakistan and its terror tributaries for killing about 650 people of the Liberation Front.

By India Today Web Desk: In an avalanche of blistering remarks on Pakistan and its ever-lasting stake on Kashmir, a Pakistan-occupied Kashmir leader Tauqeer Gilani today addressing a rally in Muzaffarabad roared, "Where is it written that Kashmir is Pakistan's? This is a propaganda by Muslim Conference...""

The PoK leader further breathed fire over Pakistan's sinister schemes and accused its terror agencies for plotting the murder of senior separatist leaders.

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"Pakistan was behind killing of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Sajjad Lone's fathers, jihadis backed by them have killed over 650 people of Liberation Front," Gilani said.

Liberation Front is a party committed to seeking complete independence of the region from both India and Pakistan.

Father of Sajjad Lone, Abdul Ghani Lone was a vocal proponent of peace in Valley who was assassinated in 2002. The then Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had then condemned Pakistan's role in the murder, calling it blinded by greed for Kashmir.

Gilani further added that Pakistan pays Rs 30,000 to use its flag to wrap the dead bodies of supposed 'freedom fighters'.

Snubbing India's belligerent neighbour's maneuvers to claim Kashmir, Tauqeer Gilani scoffed, "They have even scribbled 'Kashmir will become Pakistan' on our bathroom doors."

--- ENDS ---
WASHINGTON  U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina is feeling good. The Senate Finance Committee included two provisions he pushed for to help middle- and low-income families in a bill overhauling the tax code that will get a vote on the floor after Thanksgiving.

Praise ye the Lord, Scott said after the Investing in Opportunity Act, which he had sponsored but got no action on for the past two years, was included in the larger bill dubbed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. "Huge deal."

Scott, now 52, is the only African-American Republican in the Senate. He grew up with a single mother who worked 60-plus hours a week as a nurses aide and did additional odd jobs on the weekend.

She still works today, Scott told USA Today, and her salary falls in one of the lower tax brackets. When hes trying to explain the effects of a policy on working-class Americans to his Senate colleagues, Scott said, he thinks of his mother.

Im not talking about an imaginary or statistical single parent household ... Im talking about my momma and our income and her hard work and the loss of chances to do cool stuff because you dont have money to do it, Scott said.

Scott's legislation would encourage investment in low-income communities by lowering the tax on capital gains if they are reinvested long term to help those communities grow. Scott also was part of a group of Republican lawmakers who worked closely with Ivanka Trump to double the child tax credit from $1,000 per child to $2,000.

Ive been encouraging my colleagues and the Finance team to recognize the value of making up some of the distortions in the tax code in a way that benefits folks in middle-income America, Scott said in an interview in his office just before the Senate Finance Committee voted to approve the bill on Nov. 16.

He kicked up his feet  he was wearing brightly colored socks, no shoes  onto the coffee table and leaned back into the couch, relaxed.

To think of the stress of feeding the family ... I dont remember going to see a movie when I was a kid. Or the little things, you know, my aunt buying the Christmas gifts because my mother could not afford it, he continued.

His colleagues appreciate the viewpoint.

Scotts life story means he is acutely aware of the challenges facing so many Americans and the importance of economic mobility, said Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Democrats in his home state see a conflict between Scott's stated goals and some of his votes.

On his own, (Scott) is thoughtful, is deep, is policy-oriented and is what this country needs when it comes to a bipartisan passion. And so it's not out of his norm to put into this bill items which are good and sound and good for this country, said former South Carolina State Rep. Bakari Sellers, a Democrat.

Sellers said that the problem comes when "Tim would be compelled to make a party-line vote, which includes some provisions which we feel would be a detriment."

Both the Investing in Opportunity Act and the increased child tax credit could have gotten Democratic support if they were considered on their own, Scott argues. In fact, of the 14 co-sponsors of the Investing in Opportunity Act, seven are Democrats.

But for most Democrats, there are too many provisions in the broader tax bill  such as repealing the Obamacare requirement that everyone have health insurance or the drastic tax cut for corporations  that make it too hard to support.

Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., signed onto Scott's bill to encourage investment in low-income communities because it could be an engine for job creation, said her spokeswoman, Ricki Eshman.

Unfortunately, including this bill in the partisan Republican tax plan does nothing to change the fact that this tax plan puts corporate special interests and the wealthiest few before hard-working families and small businesses, Eshman said.

Spokespeople for other Democrats, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, said that despite being co-sponsors of Scott's bill, the senators had no intention to vote for the tax package that includes it.

Scott said Democrats are "going to find a reason to vote 'no'" because of the current partisan environment.

Scott worked closely with Ivanka Trump, the presidents daughter and a top adviser, as she met frequently with lawmakers about tax reform, including a focus on expanding the child tax credit.

Sen. Scott is thoughtful and sincere in his work. He listens with genuine interest to differing perspectives and is a passionate advocate for the issues that he champions, she told USA Today. I have enjoyed working closely with him on tax reform and appreciate his leadership.

A bill the House passed on Nov. 16 would increase the child tax credit from $1,000 to $1,600, while the Senate's plan would increase it to $2,000. That change is one Scott and other Republicans  including Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida  advocated for strongly, with Ivanka Trump's support.

The Senate plan also raises the income limit for couples to qualify for the full credit from the current $110,000 to $500,000 next year.

Chuck Marr, the director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the Senate plan disproportionately helps wealthy families and does very little for "the millions of low- and moderate-income working families.

Marr said low-income families cannot get the full $1,000 increase proposed in the child tax credit because the benefit phases in, with the credit increasing as income grows.

An analysis by Marr's group found that nearly half the children in South Carolina would not get the full increase provided by the Senate bill, and 19 percent would receive only $75. Marr also points out that the child tax increase is set to expire in 2025.

Even if Scott's provisions pass the Senate, the bill still has to be reconciled with the tax bill the House passed, and there is no guarantee his provisions will survive.

Still, Scott says he has heard positive things from many House GOP leaders and President Trump also seemed to like the idea.
Shame on a majority of the legislatively elected S.C. Supreme Court for letting the General Assembly off the hook on funding poor, rural schools. State leaders havent yet spent enough money or done enough work to upgrade these neglected schools so that theyre on par with urban and suburban public schools.

On Nov. 17, the court ruled 3-2 to dismiss the 24-year-old Abbeville v. State of South Carolina school equity funding lawsuit. The order, however, is premature, because state legislators only started moving these schools toward parity after a 2014 order by the court. Now without the courts oversight, theres no pressure on the General Assembly to make good on its promises.

With gazillions of dollars of state funding needs, do you really trust legislators not to continue a legacy of inattention in the so-called Corridor of Shame area where a multitude of challenges persist?

Just walk through schools in places like Ridgeland, Allendale, Marion and Dillon and compare facilities, staff and support to schools in the Upstate or metro areas. Think that you would prefer for your kids to attend school in the former group?

Carl Epps, an attorney for the school districts that filed the lawsuit a generation ago, said he was concerned about children who continue to suffer from the lack of educational opportunities that other kids in the state get.

These children are not children of legislators," he said. "Legislators children are in other schools or in other areas. If this were not the case, the problems would have been addressed generations ago.

My great fear is that the state will now content itself with passing piecemeal and clearly inadequate remedial legislation, as is its history, praise its accomplishments, and move on to another topic of another day. I pray I am wrong.

In 2005, Columbia filmmaker Bud Ferillo drew attention to these dilapidated schools, many of which are located along the Interstate 95 corridor, in a documentary, Corridor of Shame.

What kind of state intentionally maintains a 'minimally adequate education' system?" he asked after the courts ruling. I am hugely disappointed with this action, but I hope the legislature will begin to implement multi-year remedies that address the miserable conditions of many school buildings, equitable teacher salaries with bonuses to teachers willing to work in these districts and provide technology needed for 21st education.

Ferillo, who often talks about generational poverty in these areas, stressed that continuing a mostly more of the same approach in poor areas will keep South Carolina in the nations opportunity cellar.

These children are not going back to textile mills and tobacco farms of yesteryear, he said. They need high-quality education from birth to graduate school. Shortchanging public education condemns these communities to third world status and continues our 50th-place ranking.

While some GOP House and Senate leaders praised the courts decision and pledge to continue to help poor, rural school districts, others werent as congratulatory.

Simply put, the state of South Carolina doesnt seem to care about these kids, S.C. Rep. Cezar McKnight, D-Williamsburg, told the Morning News in Florence . What the General Assembly did in light of Abbeville was merely a dog-and-pony show. There was no real change. Now that there are no Supreme Court orders to mandate change, I doubt there will be any change. Were going back to the status quo.

S.C. Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Camden, said the legislature wasnt the only branch of government to blame: We make tremendous changes to education in this state when we have a governor with vision and leadership like Dick Riley and we havent had that in over a decade.

In the courts majority opinion, Justice John Kittredge wrote the order of judicial oversight was vacated after the General Assembly provided good-faith attempts and new reports on the steps they have taken to provide students with the constitutionally mandated opportunity to receive a minimally adequate education.

And theres the big rub, as Ferillo suggests. If state leaders continue to focus on doing the minimum  not what students really need to perform in the tech economy of the 21st century  well continue to be in the basement.

We must do better for all of South Carolinas students. Otherwise, we are complicit in relegating a large number of our children to continuing failure.

Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
In most parts of the world, protesters, standing up to the security forces trying to sabotage the protest, do get violent and even resort to stone-pelting. Pakistani people go a step ahead.

By India Today Web Desk: Islamabad Police launched a clearance operation against protesters from the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan who have camped at the Faizabad interchange for weeks demanding the resignation of Pakistan's law minister, Zahid Hamid, for changes made about Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September.

The situation turned violent, a policeman was killed and over 60 people were injured. There were protests reported from Karachi, Lahore, Faislabad, Peshawar and the Silakot-Wazirabad road in Punjab province.

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Latest reports from Pakistan said that at least 110 people, including 30 policemen and 14 FC personnel, have been injured in Islamabad operation.

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority told TV channels not to broadcast footage of the operation and took all channels off air. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been suspended.

As government launches crackdown on the goons of Labbaik in #Islamabad, Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority takes all TV channels off-air. pic.twitter.com/Xll1L1DYO3- Naila Inayat (@nailainayat) November 25, 2017

In most parts of the world, during protests, security forces use teargas shells to disperse the crowds. But in Pakistan, things are different.

Pakistan's Geo News reported that in Islamabad, protesters are firing teargas shells at the security forces.

Normally, Security forces fire teargas shells at protesters.In Islamabad, protesters fire teargas shells at security forces. pic.twitter.com/QeaEabukn7- Kamlesh Singh (@kamleshksingh) November 25, 2017

Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, meanwhile, claimed that the protesters in Islamabad 'contacted India' and that the Pakistan government is investigating the matter, a Dawn report said.

The same report quoted Iqbal as saying, "They are not simple people. We can see that they have various resources at their disposal. They have fired tear gas shells [at security forces], they also cut the fibre optic cables of cameras that were monitoring their protest."

Where else would PROTESTERS fire teargas shells on SECURITY FORCES?

Pakistan...

--- ENDS ---
She said the Asia-Pacific region has great potential for Celebrity Cruises and there is a high percentage of affluent travellers who are in the market for more premium cruise options.

Rzymowskas visit was ostensibly to spur development of the brand in the region.

She is keen on Celebrity getting greater visibility and giving greater support to travel partners, she remarked.

A big challenge for Celebrity Cruises and its premium offerings is brand differentiation: Royal Caribbean has been here for a while now and people think the brands are all the same, she said.

Rzymowska also paused to reflect that the parent company has been in Asia for over ten years now, and that it owes the growth and vision in Asia to the late Rama Rebbapragada.

Everything began with him and the foundations he set, she said.

During the past week Rzymowska has visited Tianjin, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.

She talked up Celebrity Edge which sets sail in 2018, as well as the modernization of the entire Celebrity fleet from 2019-2023.

She expects these to be game changers.

She revealed Celebrity had taken a calculated risk for Edge in engaging world class designers who had not been involved in cruise before. She showed the audience visuals of the transformed state rooms with 20% more convertible outward facing space, split-level villas and spacious sea-facing cabanas, among other features.

The brand will be marketing Celebrity Edges 2019 European sailings to Asians who have both the money and time to travel for longer periods, Rzymowska said.

She was clear that Asia is important as a source market for Celebrity Cruises as it builds new ships and grows. We will have five Edge class vessels with one being churned out per year - the aim is to attract Asians who want to go to destinations such as Europe and Alaska for longer itineraries and mix with different nationalities.

Celebrity Millennium and Celebrity Constellation have been sailing seasonally in Asia.

The strategy when in the region was in Asia, for Asia, commented Rzymowska.

These were short itineraries to suit trends here, she added.

There are bigger opportunities from the ever increasing outbound market in Asia.

Celebrity Edge is filling up with younger, more 40ish demographics she said and reminded that the various combinations of inter-connected cabins suitable for multi-generational family travel would suit the Asia source markets.

We will continue to increase our footprint in Asia and highlighted the work Celebrity is doing with Singapore Tourism Board and local travel partners. When asked if Celebrity would ever base a ship in Singapore she replied, I will never say never and was full of praises for Singapores great airlift and strategic location.

Meanwhile Australians are the first to enjoy the newly refurbished Celebrity Solstice which return for a fifth consecutive season.
STATEMENT OF PARTIDO LIBERAL PRESIDENT SEN. FRANCIS PANGILINAN ON PEACE TALKS CANCELLATION

The Party expresses serious concern over the President's cancellation of peace talks with the National Democratic Front. Both sides have already endured enough, and cancelling the peace talks would only mean further suffering for all, especially civilians who are caught between the seemingly endless arms struggle.

We need to have a continuous dialogue about dealing with the civil unrest. We need to continue talking about land reform, improving and ensuring workers' rights, protecting indigenous peoples, and alleviating the injustices long felt by our country's working class.

There is much that can be done without shedding more blood. War has never been the best way to settle disputes, much less one that has persisted for nearly five decades.

We hope this cancellation is only temporary, another bump in the long road to lasting peace for all.
Press Release

November 25, 2017 Returning drug war role to PNP will not solve drug menace - De Lima Senator Leila M. de Lima today asserted that President Duterte's plan to return the leadership of drug war to the Philippine National Police (PNP) will not solve the worsening drug menace in the country. De Lima, a known human rights defender, said instead of focusing who will lead the government's war on drugs, the President can do better by issuing a clear directive to stop the killings first. "The President will never solve the problem on the proliferation of illegal drugs as long as his administration's approach of killing suspected drug suspects remains the same. He can tap the PNP officials to lead his campaign again, or even ask them to combine forces with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, and the drug issue will remain unsolved," she said. "Let me reiterate that we cannot wage the war against drugs with blood, as it is not only discriminating, but also hypocritical. By promoting and tolerating the killings of suspected offenders without a day in court, the administration is only trying to 'solve' a crime by committing another crime," she added. De Lima issued the statement after Duterte announced he will eventually return the jurisdiction over his controversial all-out war on drugs to the PNP because PDEA lacks manpower to sustain his campaign. Duterte has earlier transferred the lead role in the crackdown on illegal drugs to PDEA following public outrage over the controversial death of 17-year-old student Kian Loyd de los Santos and 19-year-old Carl Arnaiz at the hands of Caloocan policemen in August. In a memorandum signed October 10, Duterte told law enforcement agencies to let PDEA "as sole agency" to conduct anti-illegal drugs campaign and operations. De Lima said "there has to be another way" in solving the drug problem in the country, which would not promote violence and not further tarnish the reputation of PNP as an institution. "We do not want another Kian de los Santos or Carl Arnaiz headlining the news. We do not want another story of police officers abusing their power. We do not want more killings and human rights abuses in our country. We want the killings to end now," she said. The President, who has unfailingly backed police-led killings, vowed to continue his deadly war on drugs that already killed an estimate of 13,000 people, up to the last day of his term in 2022. Touted as a "Prisoner of Conscience," De Lima is among the few senators who dared to oppose and criticize the President's all-out war on drugs, eventually leading to her detention.
Press Release

November 25, 2017 Be champions of human rights, De Lima tells lawyers Senator Leila M. de Lima today urged the Filipinos to continue expressing dissent over the crooked policies of the Duterte administration to pressure him and his allies into rethinking their approach to human rights and rule of law in the country. In a message at the advocacy and academic summit "Pagtugon sa Hamon: A Call to the Rule of Law, Access to Justice and Human Rights" on Nov. 24, De Lima said the public should be "champions of rights" despite the propaganda and endless lies peddled by the Duterte machinery. "Our rule of law, system of justice, and observance of human rights are indeed under attack. They are under attack by President Duterte who preys upon the fears of our countrymen and uses the same fear to seize, consolidate and expand power," she said. "Nais kong hikayatin ang lahat na patuloy na magmasid, makialam, magsalita at manindigan. Igiit natin sa Pangulo at ipaunawa sa kanyang administrasyon na hindi tayo pumapayag na ipagwalang-bahala ang ating mga karapatan at isantabi ang ating mga batas. Ipaglalaban natin ang demokrasya sa Pilipinas at ang dignidad ng Pilipino. We cannot just be victims of wrongs. We should be champions of rights," she added. De Lima noted how Duterte established a dark culture of violence against the poor and demonized dissent and ignored calls for accountability and undermined the democratic institutions and officials--like De Lima--that have dared stand in his way. She said she has suffered humiliation and persecution at the hands of the present administration after she initiated a Senate probe into the unabated spate of extrajudicial and summary killings in the government's all-out war on drugs barely two weeks since she became a senator in 2016. The Senator from Bicol said it is a challenge to the public, especially to lawyers and lawmakers, to protect their fellow Filipinos against the abuses and excesses in the state's exercise of power. "Thus, ensuring that no matter how lowly and humble we are, every Filipino is assured of access to justice and guaranteed of respect for his or her human rights," she said. De Lima maintained the darkest times--like the rule of Duterte, which is reminiscent of the fascist dictatorship--make the best heroes. "Wala akong duda na ang ating mga pagsisikap ay magbubunga ng makabuluhang pagbabago para sa ikabubuti ng ating mga kababayan," she said. De Lima further cited American anthropologist Margaret Mead to stress her point: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." The advocacy and academic summit "Pagtugon sa Hamon: A Call to the Rule of Law, Access to Justice and Human Rights" at the SMX Convention Center Aura, BGC, Taguig, was organized by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines. Attended by lawyers committed to upholding the rule of law, the conference is a two day conference scheduled from Nov.23-24.
The Pakistani interior minister told local media that the group of religious protesters linked to the country-wide unrest seen in Pakistan today had 'contacted India'.

A Pakistani police officer aims his gun towards the protesters next to a burning police vehicle during a clash in Islamabad, Pakistan(AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

By India Today Web Desk: The main group of protestors linked to the country-wide turmoil and unrest being seen in Pakistan right now were in "contact" with India, the nation's Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal has sensationally claimed.

Speaking to Pakistani news channel DawnNews Iqbal said his government has already begun investigating "why" the protestors "contacted India". "Why they did it, we are looking into it. They have inside information and resources that are being used against the state."

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"They (the protestors) are not simple people," the DawnNews's online publication quoted Iqbal, who is the Pakistani equivalent of a home minister, as further saying. "We can see that they have various resources at their disposal."

The protesters, Iqbal added, had themselves fired tear gas, usually the weapon of choice of most riot-control forces, at Pakistani police trying to quell violence that has spread to cities including Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar.

There were reports that TV channels had been ordered to go off air and that social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook had been blocked in certain parts of Pakistan.

There are reports that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube are blocked in Pakistan. Are they blocked for you? Reply and let us know. Mention your city + blocked social media site/app.- Dawn.com (@dawn_com) November 25, 2017

The violence and clashes first began in Islamabad today morning after police moved in to clear a protestors from the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, an Islamist political party, who had been camping at the capital city's Faizabad interchange for weeks, demanding that Pakistan's law minister Zahid Hamid resign.

Hamid was directly targetted by the protesters today with The Express Tribune reporting that men affiliated to the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan attacked the law minister's residence in Pasrur, Sialkot.

The protesters "broke into and ransacked the minister's haveli", the daily, citing its news serve Express News, said, adding, "They shattered windows and damaged furniture. The minister, however, is in Islamabad."

As government launches crackdown on the goons of Labbaik in #Islamabad, Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority takes all TV channels off-air. pic.twitter.com/Xll1L1DYO3- Naila Inayat (@nailainayat) November 25, 2017

The demand for Hamid's resignation was based on an unproved allegation that he was responsible for deliberately modifying the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat (or finality of prophethood) oath when a recent legislation, Elections Act 2017 was passed, according to a report in Dawn.

The daily added the modification was termed a 'clerical error' by the Pakistani government and had already been rectified, a development that did not stop the protestors from insisting on the resignation Hamid.

Protesters hurls back a tear gas shell fired by police during a clash in Islamabad, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed) Protesters hurls back a tear gas shell fired by police during a clash in Islamabad, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

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CLEARANCE OPS

So, nearly 2,000 activists of the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan camped at the Faizabad interchange in Islamabad and even blocked the Islamabad Expressway and Murree Road, both of which connect the capital city with its only airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

According to Dawn, early today morning, around 8,500 elite police and paramilitary troops in riot gear moved in to begin a clearance operation at the sit-in protest site after a number of deadlines, handed down by both the Pakistani judiciary and government, to end the protest lapsed.

As police moved in to clear the protestors, TV channels were asked not to cover operation live, following which mysterious reports came in of media channels being completely blacked out.

The crackdown in the Pakistani capital soon spilled over into other cities, with The Express Tribune reporting that countrywide protests were seen following the police operation in Islamabad. Other media outlets reported largescale stone-pelting by the protestors while the security forces were said to have resorted to firing tear gas and rubber bullets.

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Soon after reports of nation-wide protests came in, the Pakistani military spokesperson tweeted that army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa had spoken to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and urged that "both sides" avoid violence and ensure peace.

COAS telephoned PM.Suggested to handle Isb Dharna peacefully avoiding violence from both sides as it is not in national interest & cohesion.- Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor (@OfficialDGISPR) November 25, 2017

There were no immediate reports of how many people had been injured or detained, through The Express Tribune carried a story headlined, "Clashes erupt after law enforcers crackdown on Islamabad sit-in; Dozens injured; scores detained". A policeman was confirmed to be the one fatal causality of the protests in Pakistan.

Pakistani protesters gather next to burning police vehicles after setting on fire them during a clash in Islamabad, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

WATCH | Sushma responds to Pakistan PM Abbasi, slams Islamabad on terrorism at UNGA

--- ENDS ---
Press Release

November 25, 2017 PHL Successfully Concludes Participation in 2017 Venice Biennale The Philippines has successfully completed its third consecutive participation in the Venice Biennale as it concludes The Spectre of Comparison, the Philippine Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Art Biennale. The 2017 Philippine Pavilion, curated by Joselina Cruz and featuring the works of Lani Maestro and Manuel Ocampo, completed a six-month run at the Artiglierie of the Arsenale--one of the main exhibition spaces of the Venice Biennale. Senator Loren Legarda, the visionary and driving force behind the Philippines' successful return to the Venice Biennale after 51 years of absence, congratulated the curator and artists of the 2017 Philippine Pavilion. "We are thankful for yet another successful participation in the Venice Biennale. This is a proud moment for us because we have mounted a Philippine Pavilion in the Arsenale. This only proves what we Filipinos are capable of and we will continue to prove this in our succeeding pavilions. As we close another milestone in our country's history of contemporary art, I wish to express my gratitude to everyone who has made this possible, especially to our curator, Joselina Cruz, and our artists, Lani Maestro and Manuel Ocampo," Legarda said. As much as 7,000 visitors per day have visited the Philippine Pavilion since it opened last May 13, 2017. The finissage or closing ceremony will be held on November 26, 2017 at the Fava Church in Castello where the Filipino community in Venice will gather. The Senator thanked the Philippine Arts in Venice Biennale (PAVB) Coordinating Committee and the agencies involved--the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and its chairperson, National Artist Virgilio Almario, who is also the Philippine Pavilion Commissioner, and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). She also thanked the Department of Tourism (DOT) for its support. Legarda also said that The Spectre of Comparison will have a homecoming exhibition. In 2016, Tie A String Around The World, the Philippine Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Art Biennale, had its homecoming exhibition at the Vargas Museum in the University of the Philippines; while Muhon: Traces of an Adolescent City, the Philippine Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, is currently exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila until December 29, 2017. Meanwhile, Legarda ensured that the country will continue to participate in the next exhibitions of the Venice Biennale. "We hope to be in the Venice Biennale for as long as it is here. Next year, we will participate in the Architecture Biennale and while we are preparing for that, we will also launch the open call for curatorial proposals for the 2019 Art Biennale. Moreover, to ensure continuity, we hope to enact a law institutionalizing the Philippine participation in the international exhibitions of the Venice Biennale," she said. For the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Philippine Pavilion will feature Edson Cabalfin's curatorial concept, The City Who Had Two Navels. "As we continue to participate in the Venice Biennale, we hope to enlighten more Filipinos on the importance of this endeavor. Art is important in fostering patriotism and nationalism. It is an enabler of development. Through our participation in the Venice Biennale, we hope that more Filipino curators and artists will be encouraged not only in exhibiting their craft but also in promoting the relevance of arts in nation building," Legarda concluded.
Villanueva leads ceremonial turnover of land for the construction of the first public hospital in Bocaue

Senator Joel Villanueva on Friday led the ceremonial turnover of the land that will be used for the construction of JB Lingad Memorial Hospital extension in Bocaue, Bulacan.

With a total floor area of 2,968 square meters, the cost of the first public hospital in Bocaue is estimated at P250 million. The medical center will have a 50-bed capacity and can employ up to 150 medical and allied health professionals including jobs in administration, engineering, and housekeeping.

"We are extremely grateful to the national government for supporting our advocacy in bringing quality healthcare especially to the people of Bocaue. For the longest time, the municipality did not have its own hospital. Sa konstruksiyon ng ospital na ito, hindi na kailangan pang pumila at makipagsiksikan ng mga Bocaueno sa mga public hospitals sa Malolos o Sta. Maria," Villanueva said.

There are currently four private medical centers in Bocaue including St. Paul Hospital, BMMG Pharmacy and Hospital, Dr. Yanga Hospital, and Mt. Carmel Medical Center with a total of 235 hospital bed capacity.

"The construction of this hospital will provide access to affordable and quality health service to the residents of Bocaue. This project is part of our commitment to continue and improve our health programs not just in the province of Bulacan but in the entire country as well," Villanueva stressed.
Follow this live blog for all the latest updates from Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's rallies in poll-bound Gujarat.

By India Today Web Desk, Supriya Bhardwaj: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is addressing a series of rallies today in Gujarat today, days ahead of a two phase Assembly election.

Gujarat is the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and has long been a stronghold of the BJP, the Congress' main rival.

Rahul Gandhi is expected to be elected president of the Congress party - a post currently held by his mother, Sonia Gandhi.

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Today, he will visit Bayad and Sathamba in Aravalli, Lunawada and Santrampur in Mahisagar, and Fatepura, Jhalod and College Ground in Dahod, the INC (Indian National Congress) has announced.

Congress VP Shri Rahul Gandhi ji will be visiting and having interactions with people in Gandhinagar, Aravalli, Mahisagar, and Dahod today #Congress_??_?? pic.twitter.com/1ZD7yVuN7h- Gujarat Congress (@INCGujarat) November 25, 2017

LIVE UPDATES

Rahul Gandhi addressed the Khedut Adhikar Sabha in Bayad

Former CM of Gujarat Madhav Singh Solanki warmly received Congress VP Rahul Gandhi at his residence on day 2 of... https://t.co/gdaz3iaE1d- Gujarat Congress (@INCGujarat) November 25, 2017

Why don't you ask questions about Jay Shah and Rafale deal, Rahul asks media

On Rafale deal controversy, Rahul asks the following questions: 1) Is there a change in the prices in (the) first and second contract(s)? 2) Why was the contract given to a business man who has never made a single fighter plane in his life? 3) Did the entire cabinet pass this contract or not? 4) Did you take the CCS' s permission? 5) Why was your defence minister in Goa?

READ | FROM THE MAGAZINE | The Rafale dogfight: Will corruption allegations on BJP help Congress?

In Modi-Rupani model, your energy, resources are taken and given to a few businessmen: Rahul Gandhi

You gave (India) two brave sons who ensured that the British ran away from India: Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi is in Gandhinagar

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One day in 1818, a Spanish lookout in Monterey saw a pair of mysterious vessels approaching. The Spanish had been warned that enemy ships were planning to attack California, and the commander of the Presidio immediately ordered his troops to muster at a gun battery overlooking the harbor.

For the first and only time, a California fort was about to engage in a gunbattle with enemy ships.

As recounted in the last Portals, the attack on Monterey was part of Latin American wars of independence that were racking the declining Spanish empire in the early 19th century. The two ships were commanded by a Frenchman named Hipolito Bouchard, who was fighting for newly independent Argentina.

Bouchard was a privateer  a legal pirate  whose orders were to attack the Spanish in any way he saw fit. After an unsuccessful assault on the Spanish-controlled Philippines, he had sailed to Hawaii, where an Englishman named Peter Corney persuaded him to attack Monterey. Bouchard seized a second warship, put Corney in command of it and sailed for California.

The capital of Spanish Alta California, like the entire province, was easy pickings. There wasnt much to pick, but Bouchard didnt know that. Monterey had only 400 inhabitants, almost all of whom lived inside the walls of the Presidio, a walled community 385 feet square and containing about 50 adobe buildings.

Montereys garrison consisted of about 65 poorly equipped troops. Its gun battery, El Castillo, consisted of eight cannons mounted on a bluff, vulnerable to attack from its open rear.

Bouchards force of 360 men was a motley assortment of adventurers. As Peter Uhrowczik writes in The Burning of Monterey, it was composed of 80 kanakas, or Hawaiians, along with Americans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Creoles, Negroes, Manila men, Malayans, and a few Englishmen.

At midnight on Nov. 20, 1818, Corney anchored his ship, the Santa Rosa, less than a quarter mile from the fort and informed the Spanish that he and his men would deliver their papers in the morning. Meanwhile, Bouchard ordered an officer to land with 200 men and capture the fort under cover of darkness, but for unknown reasons, the attack was never carried out.

Corney left his ship anchored near the fort overnight, apparently believing its cannons would be ineffective. However, as dawn approached, he realized that the battery was fully manned and opened fire. Two shore batteries, one at El Castillo and one on the beach, answered.

During the two-hour battle, the Santa Rosa was hit repeatedly. Five men died, and Corney and most of the other crew members fled in boats. No one ashore was killed.

The Spanish commander and governor of Alta California, Pablo Vicente de Sola, ordered the Santa Rosas commander to come ashore. But only the ships second-in-command, an American named Joseph Chapman, along with a sailor from Guinea and one from Buenos Aires, obeyed. Dissatisfied with their lies and frivolous excuses, Sola had them imprisoned.

At this point, the battle came to a halt. Although most of the crew of the Santa Rosa had fled, the Spanish did not try to board it. Sola later explained that he didnt have enough men or ammunition.

The relieved Bouchard, anchored 2 miles away, tried to buy time by sending an emissary ashore asking Sola to surrender. Sola angrily refused.

That night, taking advantage of a victory dance at the fort, Bouchard sent boats to rescue the remaining crew of the Santa Rosa. Then, at 8 a.m. on Nov. 22, he led 200 men and nine boats ashore at what is now Lovers Point.

A total of 138 men were armed with muskets  the rest carried spears. The invaders advanced through low brush, passing near the current site of Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They met no resistance and by 10 a.m. occupied El Castillo. As the Spaniards fled on horseback, a group of spear-carrying Hawaiians hauled down the royal flag of Spain.

The Spanish made a feeble stand at the Presidio, but it fell after a short fight, during which neither side suffered any casualties. Sola and his troops retreated to Rancho del Rey, 13 miles away. The civilian inhabitants of the Presidio had already fled, in such haste that most were barefoot.

When Bouchards troops entered the Presidio, they found only one person, a drunken settler named Molina. He would be the only prisoner Bouchard would take in Alta California. The invaders sacked the houses in the Presidio, searching for valuables and money, mostly without success. Then they burned several dwellings, but left the Presidio church and Carmel mission unscathed.

Bouchard stayed in Monterey for about five days, then sailed to Rancho del Refugio, 23 miles north of Santa Barbara. While plundering the ranch, three men wandered off and were lassoed by the locals. The enraged Bouchard sailed to Santa Barbara, where he retrieved the three prisoners in exchange for not burning the town.

Bouchard concluded his assault on Alta California by plundering and burning San Juan Capistrano, after which he sailed back to Latin America.

Bouchards raid had no effect on the fate of Alta California, although it did increase its Anglo population from three to five people, thanks to Joseph Chapman, who remained imprisoned in Monterey, and a Scottish drummer named John Ross, who deserted at San Juan Capistrano. The Spanish viceroy sent 200 additional soldiers to the remote province, but many of them were criminals and lowlifes who became known derisively as cholos. In 1821, Alta California became part of the independent nation of Mexico.

As for Bouchard, he died as violently as he had lived. After many adventures, he ended up as commander of the Peruvian navy. He retired in his 50s and spent his last years as a gentleman farmer, growing grapes for brandy. At the age of 57, he was killed by his slaves, for reasons unknown. Bouchard is regarded as a national hero in Argentina.

Gary Kamiya is the author of the best-selling book Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco, awarded the Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction. All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: metro@sfchronicle.com

Trivia time

Previous trivia question: What did guitarists Jerry Garcia and Django Reinhardt have in common?

Answer: Garcia lost most of a finger in a childhood accident; Reinhardt lost two fingers in a fire.

This weeks trivia question: Who called WACO, the community organization created to protest the redevelopment of the Western Addition, a passing flurry of proletarianism?

Editors note

Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Gary Kamiyas Portals of the Past tells those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Franciscos extraordinary history  from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond. His column appears every other Saturday, alternating with Peter Hartlaubs OurSF.
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An Oakland school construction project is way over budget, more than a year behind schedule and being built in part by contractors under federal indictment in an unrelated bid-rigging scandal.

The rebuild of Glenview Elementary has been plagued by problems almost from the start, with delays and cost overruns angering neighbors, parents and city officials who question the competency of current and former Oakland Unified School District leaders.

The current price tag on the project is $54 million, although contractors just started the construction and costs could rise. Taxpayers were initially told it would cost about $40 million to build the new school on La Cresta Avenue in the Oakland hills.

I honestly dont think anyone at OUSD gave an ounce of thought toward thrift while this project was being planned and designed, said Donna Rolle, who lives near the school. This bothers some of us a lot  when we think of how our tax money is being squandered, and how much need there is in other, less affluent Oakland neighborhoods.

The Glenview project is yet another headache for district officials, who are facing a separate fiscal crisis requiring them to make $15 million in cuts to classrooms and central office budgets this year and $11 million more next year.

Joe Dominguez, deputy chief of facilities, said the scope and design of the new school changed over time and that various costs within the construction industry pushed up the price tag. But instead of the district adjusting the project parameters to stay within budget, the cost to rebuild Glenview continued to climb unchecked, he said.

The district is now doing everything it can to reduce costs and get the school built as quickly as possible, said Dominguez, who came to the district last year.

I am committed to making sure all of our facilities projects are on track, he said. We owe it to the students and families of OUSD to provide a safe and positive learning environment.

Dominguez said the district has reviewed the building design and recently cut about $5 million from the project, including the elimination of pricey wood panels in the schools foyer. Without the cuts, the schools price tag would be close to $60 million, he said.

The Glenview project is being funded by a $475 million bond measure that city voters approved in 2012. The school required upgrades to address seismic concerns, but rather than renovate the existing structure, district officials decided to rebuild, arguing in 2014 that the cost difference was only about $5 million.

Its unclear whether pending federal charges against the founders of Turner Group Construction, one of three general contractors teaming up to build the school, will cause further delays. A federal grand jury in April indicted Len Turner and Lance Turner on charges of conspiring to defraud the United States in connection with the renovation of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The men have pleaded not guilty.

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

Dominguez said that if Turner Group Construction is ultimately removed from the Glenview rebuild because of the legal case, the other contractors will cover the work.

This whole thing has been hard, said Bob Alten, president and chief officer of Alten Construction, one of the other lead contractors. But it really wouldnt affect the schedule or the project in terms of a negative way.

Still, theres no way to make up all the lost time. Construction on the project was scheduled to start in July 2016 and end in June 2018. Students were supposed to move back into a brand-new school in the summer, but the building site remains a vacant dirt lot.

The project is taking longer than expected because district officials decided early to separate it into three phases, initiating the demolition phase before the Division of the State Architect approved the building design, something that can take several months even under the best of circumstances. At Glenview, that process dragged because the district decided to retain part of the old buildings Art Deco facade and incorporate it into the new building.

Despite facing the lengthy approval schedule, district leaders decided to knock down the old Glenview building once they had the demolition OK in fall 2016 and moved the 440 students to an unused school on the Emeryville border. The district is paying for buses to take students to and from school, a bill that is expected to reach $2 million before the new Glenview campus is ready.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

They made a very bad decision to move the kids out of Glenview a year before they had to, said Andrea Dawson, chairwoman of the districts bond oversight committee. They didnt tell the community the truth up front.

The delays were exacerbated in January by a change in state law that increased competitive bidding requirements for school construction projects. The school board didnt finalize the last Glenview contract until October.

The best-case scenario now is for students to return in January 2020, and even that will require costly overtime and Saturday construction shifts. Rainy weather and unforeseen circumstances could add delays  and costs.

Nobody wanted this to play out in this prolonged way, said Heather Imboden, a communications consultant being paid $234,000 out of the 2012 bond money to work with neighbors and others affected by the Glenview project.

District officials acknowledged the deviation from original plans, saying they are sympathetic to community complaints about noise, work hours and dust. But they say their focus is on getting the project done as quickly as possible.

I am on the side of both the parents and the neighbors, said school board member RoseAnn Torres, who represents the district where Glenview is located. But weve got to build the school.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker
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Over the past century, the swath of waterfront east of Highway 101 in South San Francisco has transitioned from meat-packing plants to steel mills to lab and office space for the biotech industry, which employs more than 20,000 workers at more than 200 companies.

Now a developer who owns 40 acres of land on Oyster Point is looking to tweak the mix of uses in the area once more by building as many as 1,200 housing units in the biotech stronghold.

But while housing advocates favor the idea, South San Franciscos biotech players argue that residential development is incompatible with the research and development activity that has made the city of 67,000 residents one of the leading life-science clusters in the world.

The property owner, a group of investors led by the Chinese developer Greenland USA, is proposing to revise the 2011 Oyster Point Plan, which approved 2.25 million square feet of office and research-and-development space on the V-shaped property that wraps around the South San Francisco marina and harbor. The revised proposal, which calls for 4 acres of waterfront open space, would replace the third and fourth phases of that office development with seven residential buildings, decreasing the commercial development by between 500,000 and 750,000 square feet.

Paul Stein of SKS Partners, a real estate development firm that is advising Greenland USA, says the housing will help meet the needs of South San Franciscos biotech workforce, which is anticipated to grow by 18,000 workers over the next three years.

Stein said the decision to segregate biotech jobs from residential neighborhoods in the Oyster Point Plan was an 80s planning document that came at a time when the life-science field was in its infancy and there was a lot of misunderstanding about health risks that came with the research and development of drugs.

Since then, housing and biotech have been built close to each other in several places, including in Cambridge, Mass., and San Franciscos Mission Bay. The new generation of biotech researchers want to work and live in a mixed-use environment with housing, retail and recreation, Stein said.

The idea was: Its biotech, people dont know what it is, lets throw a fence around it and protect it, said Stein. Now, the reality of the world has changed, and we think housing will help enhance the biotech cluster out here.

Sara Radcliffe, president of the California Life Sciences Association, an industry group that represents many South San Francisco biotech companies, says the industry supports housing but that Oyster Point is not the place for it. Plunking a residential neighborhood down next to around-the-clock research labs will inevitably lead to discord, she said.

Much of South San Franciscos meteoric rise as a biotech center is attributable to smart planning that has avoided land-use conflict by not locating residential next to an industrial area, she said.

The successful development of the life-science cluster has really been supported and driven by that vision, she said. Allowing housing would represent a dramatic turn in the citys vision for east of 101.

While South San Francisco city staff has yet to take a position on the housing development, it was city officials who initially asked the developers to consider changing the Oyster Point approvals to include residential. City Manager Mike Futrell said a 2015 study identified two sites west of Highway 101 where housing could be desirable: Oyster Point and an industrial property next to the Caltrain station.

The study said housing might be feasible, Futrell said. We are currently weighing the risks, looking at the macro and the micro. Which is the bigger risk to the biotech sector in the long term? Is it the housing shortage and the adverse impact of long commutes, or is it some perceived disadvantage of having residential too close to biotech?

City planning staff will probably make a recommendation on the changes to the City Council by February. The City Council could vote in March or April.

Mayor Pradeep Gupta supports the housing, arguing that the change would not only create places for workers to live but also inject energy into an area that is dead at night and on weekends.

Its not only a good idea, its a critical need, said Gupta. We need the housing, and its essential that the new housing be built close to where people work so we can get them out of their cars.

Casting a shadow on the debate is Genentech, the citys largest and most powerful employer. Genentech, which has been in South City since 1978, employs 12,000 workers there. Greenland says Genentech has not directly said it opposes the plan but has been lobbying against it behind the scenes.

In a statement, Genentech said, We support the concept of residential developments in appropriate areas East of 101. At this time, we are not commenting on specific projects.

Opponents to housing at Oyster Point also say that the area lacks the transportation infrastructure to support housing. Oyster Point has a ferry terminal with connections to Alameda, Oakland and San Franciscos Ferry Building. Its about 1.5 miles from the Caltrain station. But Futrell pointed out that the alternative to housing at Oyster Point is more office space  2.25 million square feet versus about 1.5 million square feet with the residential development.

We are not comparing residential to open space, we are comparing it to more biotech space, he said. As compared to commuters going to work in biotech, the residential development will create less traffic. There will be people who live nearby who can bike or walk to work.

While municipal planners generally have moved away from separating land uses into distinct zones, there are times when it makes sense, said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the generally pro-housing urban think-tank SPUR.

Not every site in the region is appropriate for housing, he said. Where there are intact, healthy industrial and manufacturing clusters we probably want to protect those.

Meanwhile, whether or not the housing is approved, work has started at Oyster Point. Demolition of several old buildings is set to commence this year to make way for phase one  508,000 square feet of commercial space in three buildings.

Clara Tang, executive vice president with Greenland USA, said she is excited to do what her company has done on a large scale in 80 Chinese cities, as well as in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Los Angeles.

Thats what we build: industrial parks with housing next to the companies so people can live next to where they work, she said. Thats what we do all over Asia.

If approved, construction on the first phase of residential buildings could start as soon as next summer, she said. That phase would include 330 rental units, 150 condominiums and 11,000 square feet of retail.

We wanted to plant a flag here, and Oyster Point is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, she said. Its by the water. Everyone loves the water.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
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When Jerry Griffin of Russian Hill shopped for a new car last year, he wanted one that ran on electricity, not gasoline. But without a garage, it seemed impossible.

I would have, if I had a place to charge it, definitely gotten one of the battery type, said Griffin, who settled instead on a small gasoline-powered car made by Smart.

The San Francisco metro area, at the intersection of environmental concern and technological prowess, has more electric vehicles than most cities worldwide. But for many residents, buying one remains unrealistic. Even as prices for EVs fall and the cars ranges increase, the hassle of plugging them in remains daunting for those who have only street parking. It is a problem that San Francisco and other cities will have to solve as governments around the world look to cut greenhouse gas emissions (California wants to slash them about 40 percent over the next 13 years).

Obviously, we want to have significantly more charging infrastructure, not just in San Francisco but all around California, said Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, who plans to introduce a bill next year that would ban new gasoline and diesel cars cars after 2040. Ting has an electric Chevrolet Bolt that he can charge at both home and work.

Charging stations are proliferating in city and corporate garages, thanks to investment by electric utilities and private companies such as ChargePoint and Tesla. But getting to them can be a hassle, and a parking spot at work can be expensive.

More money is coming. A year ago, regulators approved plans from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to spend $130 million to install 7,500 charging stations in Northern and Central California. Its an enormous number, and at least 20 percent  but perhaps as much as half  will be used for stations serving multifamily housing.

Theres no silver bullet for sure, but I think the PG&E program is not to be underestimated, said Max Baumhefner, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

PG&E also has proposed spending $22 million for fast charging stations near multifamily buildings; this would help show whether such chargers could increase electric car usage among residents who lack garages, Baumhefner said.

California is getting about $800 million for charging infrastructure through the settlement with Volkswagen over the German automakers diesel emissions cheating devices. Another VW settlement could add millions more.

Rules are changing too. Starting in January, San Francisco will require all new buildings, both residential and commercial, to install wiring to enable 20 percent of parking spots to be electrified, with 10 percent ready to serve electric cars when the building opens.

Berkeley has gone a step further. The city is completing a pilot project that allows a small number of property owners without garages to install a residential charging station, something not previously permitted. But its expensive  participants adding curbside stations probably spend $5,000 to $10,000, estimates Sarah Moore, who administers the program  and only a handful of people have done it.

Amy Hale, a central Berkeley resident, installed a curbside charging station last year as part of the program, paying about $4,000 to $6,000 for the project, which included an electricians fees and sidewalk work along with the station itself.

Before that, she and her fiance were basically trying to survive, more or less, without a charger of our own, because its illegal to have anything across the sidewalk, she said. In their desperation, they ran an extension cord to the car  which wasnt cool, she said. It was also inconvenient, because the low voltage on her home outlet meant charging took a long time.

When they went to spots with charging stations, such as Whole Foods or Berkeley Bowl, she said, We would pay for charging and just take extra-long to shop.

Despite having installed the charger, Hale cant reserve the parking spot in front of her house. But she notified the neighbors about the stations existence, and the vast majority of the time, she is able to park by the charger.

Ultimately, San Francisco will need more charging stations if it is to persuade more residents to go electric. Among leading EV markets around the world, denser cities like Amsterdam have one public charger per about five electric cars, compared to one public charger per 25-30 electric cars in California markets, Nic Lutsey, who leads electric vehicle research for the International Council on Clean Transportation, said in an email.

In Amsterdam, many of the parking spots are public, whereas in the U.S., most electric car owners have their own garage and designated parking, said Lutsey, who noted that Europeans pushed for early public investments in charging.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

A 2013 paper by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University estimated that just 56 percent of vehicles in the U.S. have a dedicated parking spot off the street.

Without available chargers, its hard for people who want to be green to take the final step to buy a clean vehicle, said Griffin, the Russian Hill resident.

Its an irony of the situation, because I think a lot of people live in cities because deep down they want to live sustainably and live a more compact life, he said.

The city of Berkeleys Moore said many residents are finding their own solutions, like working out deals with neighbors. Another creative idea: In Los Angeles, the Department of Water and Power has installed some charging stations connected to the electricity in streetlamps and utility poles. Researchers are also experimenting with wireless charging.

The good news is that the electric grid is basically everywhere  we just have to extend it the last 10 or 20 feet, to the driveway, to the curbside, said Baumhefner, who said he used to run an extension cord out of a rental unit window to the driveway to charge his electric car, but now, after moving, has an easier setup.

Ultimately, of course, if the vision of San Francisco ride-hailing leaders Uber and Lyft comes to pass, no one will have a car: They will be shared self-driving cars that can be hailed by app.

It will be interesting to see how many people in San Francisco even continue to own their own cars, Ting said.

Kate Galbraith is the assistant business editor at The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: kgalbraith@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kategalbraith
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For major retailers, the holiday shopping season over the past few years has really been about one thing: the clearance sale.

Led by Amazon and Walmart, retailers have slashed prices to win as much market share as possible during the critical four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. By January, profit margins have all but disappeared.

The relentless discounting makes for good optics but lousy retailing. Yes, companies may have temporarily boosted sales, but over the long term, they have only conditioned consumers to expect even deeper price cuts the next time around. Instead of inspiring delight and loyalty, retailers have focused on getting the sale  literally at any cost.

This year, though, Ive detected a subtle but unmistakable shift in this mind-set. Retailers from Walmart and Best Buy to Kohls and Lowes have been more willing to experiment with pricing, technology, format and service, striking partnerships with startups and even competitors to offer consumers something more than a price cut.

Retailers have recognized (holiday discounting) has been a race to the bottom, said Doug Stephens, founder of the Retail Prophet consulting firm. They are literally in an existential battle for their survival (against online players like Amazon), and price and promotion is not the answer.

Whether this amounts to a fleeting moment or permanent change remains an open question. And retailers are no doubt still offering big discounts. But the industry is starting to innovate at a time of the year normally devoted to just clearing out inventory, Stephens said.

Retailers realize that their backs are up against the wall, said Pano Anthos, founder and managing director of XRC Labs retail incubator in New York. Retailers, he said, must start experimenting now to remain relevant in the future, even if it doesnt pay off immediately.

There is no shiny object that's going to make your sales go through the roof, Anthos said. This is about making small, incremental gains that you can apply everywhere.

Earlier this month, Best Buy, the worlds largest consumer electronics retailer, said customers can shop through voice-assisted technology from Amazons Alexa and Google Home. Kohls department stores recently rolled out a partnership with Amazon that will allow consumers to return Amazon purchases at 82 Kohls stores near Chicago and Los Angeles.

Walmart, the nations largest retailer, has been trying to drive consumers to its stores by offering shoppers online discounts on 10,000 products if they pick up their purchases at the store.

Macys and Lowes are tinkering with the most valuable asset they possess: physical store space. San Francisco startup B8ta designed special stores within a store to show off tech gadgets and smart home products at Macys flagship store in New York and 70 Lowes locations across the country.

Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle

The B8ta stores are equipped with special sensors that will allow the retailers to track consumers in the store and which products they frequent and buy. Based on that data, Macys and Lowes can adjust the stores inventory in real time to account for those consumer preferences.

Retailers normally rely on calculating sales at stores open for a year to determine performance. But B8ta co-founder Phillip Raub said companies are now looking for ways to better measure whats happening inside their stores.

Theres a lot of activity happening in this space, Raub said. Macys and Lowes want to get in front of it.

Sales are still important, but retailers need to learn to use their store space more efficiently and to do that, they need up-to-date information on consumer behavior as they shop, Raub said.

Walmart and Williams-Sonoma in San Francisco also recently made moves that will boost their competitive position in time for next years holiday shopping season.

This month, Williams-Sonoma said it will pay $112 million to buy Outward in San Jose, whose augmented reality and 3-D technology will allow consumers to digitally visualize what products look like in the home. And Lord & Taylor department store, owned by Hudsons Bay Co. in Canada, will open a virtual store on Walmart.com next year.

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Retailers wont just suddenly wean themselves off price cuts overnight. The reality is that they cant afford to lose too much market share to competitors during the holiday shopping season, which can still account for one third of annual sales.

But they need to convert that market share into real loyalty. It cant just be a one-and-done sale.

To me, the holiday season really is an opportunity to acquire, retain and grow customer relationships, said Sebastian DiGrande, executive vice president of strategy and chief customer officer at Gap Inc. in San Francisco. At the end of the day, yes, theres the immediate short-term need to strike the right balance between sales and profit margins.

But the most exciting thing about the period is that the customer acquisition opportunity is like no other, he said. And if we can give them a tremendous experience the first time around, they become a customer for life. Then I'm willing to trade off a bit on sales and profits.

Thomas Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. He is author of Rebuilding Empires (St. Martins Press), his book about the future of big box retailing in the digital age. Email: tlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByTomLee
Year-end tax planning will take on extra significance  and complexity  this year, given the likelihood that congressional Republicans will try to get a tax bill passed before Dec. 31 to claim a legislative victory for 2017.

The normal year-end tax advice goes like this: Figure out if you will be in a higher or lower income tax bracket next year.

If your tax rate is likely to go up next year, try to accelerate any income you can into this year and defer deductions until next year, so that your taxable income is higher this year and lower next year than it would be otherwise. If your tax rate is likely to go down, do the opposite.

This makes sense if you are self-employed and have some control over your income and expenses, if your income varies substantially from year to year because of bonuses or commissions, if you plan to stop working or start working next year or move into a new tax bracket for other reasons.

For most people with a steady job and consistent deductions, its usually not worth the effort. This year, however, they might want to consider grabbing some deductions before they disappear.

For example, the House and Senate tax bills would eliminate the itemized deduction for state and local income or sales tax starting next year. The Senate bill also would kill the deduction for property taxes, while the House bill would cap it at $10,000 per year.

If you are taking these deductions and not subject to alternative minimum tax, consider making the second installment of your property taxes  due April 10 in California  before the end of the year to get the added deduction in 2017. Likewise, if you are making estimated California income tax payments, consider making your final 2017 payment, due Jan. 16, before year end. This assumes you have cash to make the extra payments. Selling stock to raise cash could negate the benefit if you have to pay capital gains tax.

If you expect to be subject to the alternative minimum tax in 2017, theres no reason to prepay these taxes because they are not deductible. Both Republican tax bills would eliminate the alternative minimum tax starting next year. On the off chance that Congress kills it, but not the state and local tax deduction, you could use these deductions next year.

If you are not subject to alternative minimum tax but close to it, deducting an extra property tax payment in 2017 could throw you into it, and you could wind up paying higher tax than you would otherwise. Thats because people are required to calculate their taxes under the regular and alternative tax systems and pay whichever is higher. Taking an extra state income or property tax deduction in 2017 could bring your regular tax bill below your alternative tax bill, said Jeff Levine, director of financial planning with Blueprint Wealth Alliance.

Again assuming you are not subject to alternative minimum tax, what happens if you accelerate these tax payments and Congress ends up preserving the state and local tax deduction? This time next year, you will be short some deductions. In that case you can make up for them by prepaying your state taxes due in early 2019 by the end of 2018.

If a tax bill goes through this year, for most people there will be more of a push to defer income and take deductions in 2017, said Christine Brown, Senior Wealth Strategist at UBS Financial Services in San Francisco. Unfortunately there is no easy way for most people to know if they will be in a higher or lower tax bracket next year.

The House and Senate GOP tax bills differ in some major respects, but both would eliminate many deductions while lowering tax rates for most people.

Both would roughly double the standard deduction to $24,000 for married couples and $12,000 for individuals. Many people who currently itemize deductions would take the standard deduction instead, losing the benefit of whatever itemized deductions (such as charitable contributions) remain. Both would eliminate the $4,050 personal exemption you can claim for each taxpayer and dependent claimed on the tax return. But they would increase the child tax credit by different amounts.

The net result of these and other many other changes is that most individual taxpayers would be in a lower bracket next year, but some would move to a higher bracket because they would lose so many deductions their taxable income would goes up substantially. Virtually all of the proposed changes affecting individuals would take effect next year and not apply to this years taxes.

To figure out where you would end up, youd have to predict which provisions are likely to pass and take them all into account. Looking at one or two in isolation could give you an inaccurate picture.

That said, prepaying your taxes is a low-risk proposition for most people not subject to alternative minimum tax.

People who converted a regular individual retirement account into a Roth IRA in 2017 and think they might want to undo it should also do so by Dec. 31, said Levine.

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When you convert a regular deductible IRA into a Roth IRA, the amount converted is added to your income for that year and you owe ordinary income tax on it. After that, the Roth grows tax-free. However, if the value of your Roth IRA falls after the conversion, you will wish you had not done it because now you owe tax on some appreciation that has disappeared.

Under current law, you can undo or recharacterize the conversion as late as Oct. 15 of the following year. You essentially put the money back in your regular IRA and dont owe tax. Its kind of a heads-I-win-tails-I-win loophole.

Both bills would eliminate the ability to recharacterize a Roth conversion in 2018. If you did a conversion this year and you are thinking about recharacterizing it, absolutely I would do it by Dec. 31, Levine said.

Taxpayers still have time to contemplate their year-end moves, but shouldnt wait too long. If Congress passes a bill this year, it will be Dec. 31 or close to it, said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kathpender
The Pathway Home, an independent residential treatment facility for post-9/11 veterans with combat stress, sits amid thousands of acres of trees and lawn in Yountville. But all one Marine named Jack needed of the outdoors was the exit staircase across the hall from his room.

Hed come out of an intense group class, grab his Camel Blues, and by the time he got out on the landing, it was already packed as tight as a Humvee, with 10 or 15 others with post-traumatic stress disorder huddled together and drawing deeply on the nicotine to calm their nerves.

Devil Dog, How you doing? theyd greet Jack, using the nickname for his rifle company. Im doing, hed say.

This scene is real. But its cinematic equivalent is now out there in the film Thank You for Your Service. The DreamWorks film stars Miles Teller as Sgt. Adam Schumann in the true story of troops coming home from Iraq and struggling to adjust to civilian and family life in Fort Riley, Kan.

Thank You for Your Service, based on a book of the same name, tells the story of Schumann, a platoon leader with a gift for sniffing out roadside bombs, who is physically uninjured in three tours of duty. But the injuries to his mind are so severe that he comes in from a patrol, walks through a door marked Combat Stress, and in short order, he is standing alone on a tarmac waiting for his own medevac helicopter. His war is over, but he cannot get over the guilt of leaving his men behind, and he cannot handle the shame of being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Department of Veterans Affairs medical bureaucracy only makes things worse until finally, as a last gasp, he is accepted to the Pathway Home, an independent and under-the-radar nonprofit that serves veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. At the Sacramento airport, he is met by Fred Gusman, a social worker who left the VA to start his own live-in clinic, supported by donations and grants, with a minimum stay of four months. It occupies a redundant hospital building at the Veterans Home of California-Yountville, 9,000 Wine Country acres in the Napa Valley.

The facility came under duress during the fires in early October. At one point all 850 residents of the Veterans Home, including the Pathway, were ordered to evacuate. Residents and staff of the Pathway were sent to Napa Valley College, where they waited for three hours in the gymnasium. While on alert for a week, the campus came under no further threat.

It just feels like Im in another country, Schumann says, as the car meanders around to the two-story Spanish building. Im so damn nervous.

This dialogue, and the film itself, comes out of a two-volume history by David Finkel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the Washington Post who embedded with an Army Infantry Battalion created for the troop surge of 2007 and 2008 in Iraq. The first book, The Good Soldiers, published in 2009, follows the troops as they try to stabilize a city at the same time insurgents try to blow up the Humvees that are sent out to help the population.

Two years later, Finkel embedded again, this time at the battalions home base in Fort Riley. He narrows his focus to Schumann and follows him out to the Pathway Home, which is depicted in heroic fashion in the follow-up, Thank You for Your Service, published in 2013.

Universal Pictures

During the surge in Iraq, the most common injury was on the inside  traumatic brain injury, or TBI, suffered while riding in an armored Humvee that hits a roadside bomb. Its effects are not immediate but show up over time when victims seem to forget what they are going to say or do and are prone to snapping over the tiniest infraction.

The guilt and stigma over a PTSD diagnosis is so strong that veterans often wish theyd lost a leg or an arm in the war, or show visible scars of a head wound, just so it would not look like they are faking it.

Jack, the combat vet has not read the book but his story parallels that of Schumann. The technical differences are that Jack is a Marine and Schumann was Army. Jack was in Afghanistan, and Schumann in Iraq. Schumann served seven years and Jack six. Both were in the infantry facing the same insurgent dangers. Both came home seemingly intact but badly damaged. Both took a few years of struggle and bouncing between jobs at home before hitting the wall in their late 20s. Both arrived at the Pathway Home as chain smokers, but every combat vet has that habit. Both left the program once before returning to finish the job.

The major difference is that Schumann is literally an open book while Jack is extremely guarded. Once a Marine, always a Marine, and there is still shame in a wound that cannot be seen. As such, he will not reveal his last name and will not allow his face to be photographed.

He will not discuss what happened to him as a rifleman in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2009 and 2010 or what happened to him after the war to land him in Pathway. But it is not too hard to figure out. According to statistics quoted in the book, among those admitted to the Pathway Home, 80 percent have tried school and quit, 70 percent have been fired from a job, and 60 percent have attempted suicide.

I came home from the war and realized that I couldnt calm down, is what Jack says about his condition. It must have been serious because his father, a Vietnam veteran drove him up from his home in Southern California.

I didnt want anyone to know I was coming here, he says. What will my friends think of me. Am I weak? Thats a difficult barrier to get over.

By the time veterans in Jacks and Schumanns era reached the Pathway Home they had been through the VA treatment programs and/or those offered through private insurance. The first line of defense was heavy medication and, if that did not work, a VA residential treatment program ranging from four weeks to seven weeks.

Fred Gusman, the Pathway founder, did not want to deal with either the VA or insurance so he was perfect for this program which was funded by a private grant of $5.6 million 10 years ago. Financial independence allowed him to do it his way, which was the long way. VA treatments assumed that the veteran had no psychological issues right up to the moment PTSD hit, but Gusman knew this was too simplistic. There were childhood issues at play here, and his treatment programs emphasized these in long emotional classroom sessions called Trauma Group.

In Jacks case the day went this way  chow, class, smoke break, class, smoke break and so on. He came for four months and stayed six. Then after a failed re-entry back home, he returned for another year.

The camaraderie built here was so strong, and it wasnt built in class, it was built in the smoke pit, he says while using the nickname for the fire escape and table at the foot of the stairs.

Jack and his cohorts never mixed with the older men at the Veterans Home, most of whom served in World War II, Korea or Vietnam. The Iraq and Afghanistan vets stuck together and only under cover of darkness would they walk out of the building and up the hill to a cemetery that dates to the Civil War.

Guys would talk about the guys theyd lost, Jack says.

When Jack arrived hed emphasized the word Pathway in the name, as in a route to somewhere else. By the time he left, he accented the word Home, as if this Spanish-style building were it.

The Pathway Home used to hold a graduation ceremony, and family came from across the country. A few hundred veterans over the years walked to the podium to be handed a long-stemmed yellow rose and given a few moments to make a speech. When it was Schumanns turn, he first turned to Gusman and said, I want to thank you for saving my life. Then he turned to his wife, Saskia (portrayed by Haley Bennett in the film) and said, Im going to be home. Finally home.

Then Gusman retired. After treating 450 veterans from all over for PTSD and mild traumatic brain injury, or MTBI, the Pathway Home narrowed its mission.

In 2016, the Board of Directors refocused to serve post-9/11 veterans from California, as they transition to higher education to pursue studies at Napa Valley College, Santa Rosa Junior College and elsewhere.

Christine Loeber, 47, a social worker with her masters from Boston College, was hired away from the VA clinics in San Francisco and Menlo Park, the place Ken Kesey made famous in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.

When these people are in combat, their systems are programmed to keep them alive under incredibly stressful situations, she says. Nobody helps them understand that when they get back they have to reprogram their nervous system to operate at a different caliber so they can be successful civilians.

Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

The Pathway Home is funded by donors with an annual budget of $1 million, and VA medical records are not required for admission. A monthly fee of $700 per patient is requested, as a sign of commitment. But the fee is not a barrier to entry.

The Pathway Home has always been just for men, but Loeber plans to open it to women. A housing wing on a different floor from the men has already been secured.

When that happens the resident population is expected to ramp up to 34. For now it is staffed for 14, and there are not enough smokers to form up on the fire escape. Jack himself has quit his pack-a-day habit altogether. Now 30, he is married, lives in downtown Napa and has a job as a wine consultant. But he is available on short notice. The Pathway Home is home.

Room 4137 to be exact. On this day his old door is closed, and there is a veteran behind it dealing with issues. If Jack can be of help, all that veteran has to do is open the door.

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Instagram: @sfchronicle_art

Movie: Thank You for Your Service is expected to be released on DVD, BluRay and digital in January.

Books: Thank You for Your Service (2013, Macmillan) and The Gold Soldiers (2009, Macmillan) by David Finkel are in paperback in bookstores and libraries.

To tour the Pathway Home with Christine Loeber: http://bit.ly/pathwayhome
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Many San Franciscans wonder whether our political leaders truly see what we see: the filth, the garbage, the dirty needles, the drug use, the homeless people who sit at the same corner day after day clearly needing help.

Do the citys top dogs really see this embarrassing underbelly of our glorious city, or are they safely tucked away behind their big wooden desks, able to ignore the muck as theyre whisked from one meeting to another in a private car?

Two politicians really do see it  very, very up close. Every Wednesday morning, Bevan Dufty, a former supervisor and current member of the BART board, and Supervisor Hillary Ronen pull on blue latex gloves and grab brooms and dustpans to clean the grossness that pervades the street-level plazas at BARTs 16th Street Mission Station.

It doesnt seem to be a publicity stunt  if it is, theyre very good actors. Theyve been there like clockwork for weeks, and I watched them one morning as they got down in the depths.

They hate me at BART, they really hate me. But Ive got to do what Ive got to do, said Dufty, wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt with the hood pulled up to protect himself from the rain.

He got the idea to start these weekly cleanups a couple of months ago after getting complaints from BART passengers that the stations were in dire need of attention. Hes since written letters of complaint to BART bosses, recruited other city officials to join him on a one-off basis, and posted pictures of the mess on social media.

Its probably annoying and embarrassing to BART brass  thats a good thing. Some of the San Francisco stations have become de facto homeless shelters and shooting galleries for injection drug users. I walk through BART stations regularly and have recently seen piles of feces, dirty needles and piles of trash. God forbid you are in a wheelchair or have a baby stroller  the smell in the elevators is often unbearable.

Wielding a metal grabber and a trash can on that recent Wednesday morning, Dufty explained his quest as he picked up the detritus left from the night before. In just minutes, hed collected quite a haul.

A Burger King cup. Scraps of paper. A plastic case for a syringe. Bottle caps. A red straw. A soiled white towel. Chicken bones. Cigarette butts. A peppermint candy. A business card from Canada College. A used Band-Aid. (By the way, since when it is OK to just chuck your trash on the ground? Everybody needs to pitch in to return this city to health.)

The brass doesnt know how to handle me, Dufty said. If things are fine, Ill stay out of their business. But if things are raggedy like they are here and they dont make sense, Im going to be in it. Dont make No the answer to every question and every thought.

Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle

BART, of course, argues that No is not the answer to every question and thought. Since Dufty began shining attention on the 16th Street station in September, the agency has assigned a janitor there eight hours a day, five days a week on a temporary basis. Nighttime janitors who are responsible for several stations also have it on their rotation. The agency also started power-washing the station every night.

BARTs budget includes funding for 150 janitors, 13 more than two years ago. Four new positions will focus mainly on two of the agencys nastiest stations: Powell Street and Civic Center.

The budget approved by the BART board in June highlights the districts commitment to doing more to clean our stations, Chris Filippi, a BART spokesman, said in a statement. This is a quality-of-experience concern for many of our riders, and BART is committed to doing all it can to improve.

Dufty and Ronen say BART has a long way to go. They want the new janitor at the station made permanent. They want weekend shifts added. They want a sign installed in the elevator telling people not to use it as a restroom.

They want the citys new grant money from the state for the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, which gives low-level, nonviolent drug offenders services rather than jail time, to be targeted at the station. They want the citys Homeless Outreach Team to spend more time there.

Ronen on that morning knelt down to talk to Alice, an elderly woman whos been sitting with her huge piles of belongings outside the Burger King at the corner every day for months. She sleeps in its entryway at night in her red camping chair. Ronen left a message for Jeff Kositsky, director of the citys Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, asking for help for the woman.

It appears Alice has been offered help but is wary of staying in shelters because she fears shed have to give up all of her belongings. Kositsky did not return a request for comment for this column.

On Friday, Ronen sent a letter to the BART directors asking them to join her and Dufty in cleaning the station so they can get a firsthand look at the conditions BART riders face each morning.

While I knew the general conditions of the plaza were bad, cleaning it myself has opened my eyes to the deeply unhealthy conditions at the plaza, conditions that are unacceptable for a major transit hub, she wrote.

Ronen, who represents the Mission District at City Hall, said shes been using the station for 15 years and knew the conditions were awful, but hadnt realized just how awful until she started cleaning it on a regular basis.

Its an embarrassment, she said. Two weeks ago, it was unbelievable.

Stop reading now if youre eating your breakfast. Seriously.

There was a pile of diarrhea on the tree over there in the planter box, she said, pointing. The smell of urine was just overwhelming and hit you as you walked into the plaza. There were used needles. Bevan swept a dead pigeon in the corner into the trash. There were piles of wet clothes all over the plaza, broken glass and bottles.

As we talked, a man wearing filthy clothes and covered in dirt and sores approached, eating a pineapple through its hard, brown shell. He said he found it in the garbage can.

Where are you sleeping? Ronen asked him.

Nowhere, he replied before shrugging and walking off.

Despite all this, Dufty said the station has actually gotten a lot better since September. The company that owns the big advertising sign visible to riders on their way down the escalators cleaned the trash that had collected on the spikes intended to keep pigeons from sitting on it. The mailbox has been cleaned of graffiti and has a new, legible sign about mail collection hours.

This is the best Ive seen it, Dufty said. Its getting better and better.

One small corner of the city beginning to be addressed. So many more to go.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf
PM Modi's "hug-plomacy" has failed, Rahul Gandhi has said, pointing to the end of 26/11 attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed's house arrest, and to the passage of a US bill that requires Islamabad to help de-link the Lashkar-e-Taiba from the Haqqani Network.

By India Today Web Desk: When Narendra Modi met Donald Trump at the White House in June, the prime minister gave the US President three hugs, prompting a renowned news agency to devote a news story to that display of bonhomie. Five months later, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is still talking about it.

Modi's "hug-plomacy" has failed, Rahul said in a tweet Saturday, pointing to the end of 26/11 attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed's house arrest, and to the passage of a US bill that requires Islamabad to help de-link the Lashkar-e-Taiba from the Haqqani Network.

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"More hugs urgently needed," Rahul said.

Narendrabhai, ??? ???? ???. Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed.https://t.co/U8Bg2vlZqw- Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 25, 2017

Rahul's tweet contains a link to a news report on the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) 2018.

The Pakistani newspaper Dawn says the bill "provides $700 million for reimbursing Pakistan for monitoring the Pak-Afghan border but withholds half of the amount."

What's more, the US government can't issue a US $350 million waiver unless the American defense secretary "certifies to the congressional defence committees" that Pakistan is taking steps to deny the Haqqani network safe havens, curb the movement of its militants, disrupt its "fundraising and recruiting efforts," and detain its leaders and initiate legal proceedings aginst them, Dawn's report said.

"Policy makers in Washington feel that linking an India-specific group like LeT with the Haqqani Network could discourage Pakistan from cooperating with the US in the war in Afghanistan," it said.

Last month, when Donald Trump tweeted that he'd begun to "develop a much better relationship with Pakistan and its leaders," Rahul tweeted this.

Modi ji quick; looks like President Trump needs another hug pic.twitter.com/B4001yw5rg- Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) October 15, 2017

WATCH | Gujarat model meant to serve the rich, of no help to the poor: Rahul in Bharuch rally

--- ENDS ---
As the Trump administration threatens large cuts to the National Park Service, federal parks officials have an idea: Just charge a whopping $70 to enter some of Americas most beloved national parks, including Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Sequoia and Yellowstone.

The proposed fee increases, which were announced in October, have come under fire by nature enthusiasts, outdoors groups and, now, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and 10 of his counterparts from other states.

For every dollar the punitive fee increase raises from families, the Trump administration intends to cut more than 4 dollars from the National Park Services budget  almost $300 million, Becerra said, in a statement. That backdoor math simply does not add up. Its a cruel deception for millions of hardworking families.

In their comment letter, the attorneys general said that the National Park Services announcement had failed certain legal requirements, including data to support the criteria it must consider around the aggregate effect of recreation fees on recreation users.

But the crux of their argument is a simple one. The national parks belong to all Americans, not only the wealthy ones.

By doubling, and in some cases tripling, the entrance fees, the National Park Service would absolutely limit access to some of the countrys most majestic places.

Thats antithetical to the parks mission. Its also completely unnecessary.

Its true that the parks have a backlog of maintenance needs. But even these steep increases in fees wouldnt begin to cover those needs as long as the Trump administration is dedicated to cutting the budget for the overall agency.

Instead of limiting access to Americas public lands, Washington needs to give the park service the money it deserves.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
The torture and travail endured on the Bataan Death March is well known. What isnt is the torture and travail those prisoners of war were put through when they reached their end destination in China.

This remembrance is the mission of Forgotten Camp: Allied POWs of Shenyang, a North American premiere at the World War II Pacific War Memorial Hall, inside a Chinatown storefront. The display of 200 enlarged images, along with wall text and illustrations smuggled out by the POWs themselves, comes from Chinas Site Museum of Shenyang POW Camp of World War II Allied Forces, and this is its North American premiere.

The exhibition details the three years of incarceration forced upon troops captured during the Pacific War. Most famous were the 75,000 American and Filipino troops who surrendered on April 9, 1942, on the island of Luzon. Broken into groups of 100, they walked in the heat, without food or water, in what became known as the Bataan Death March. After five days, those who survived were dispersed to various POW camps, including those under Japanese control in Manchuria.

Twelve hundred American POWS arrived packed into the holds of cargo ships from Manila, via Korea, to enter the Mukden POW Camp in Manchuria in November 1942, according to online sources. Additional troops from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, brought the population to 2,000.

They lived in barracks partly underground and were put to work as slave labor. An estimated 200 of them did not survive the first winter in the camp. The 1,300 surviving prisoners at Mukden were rescued by Red Army troops in August 1945.

Compared with (atrocities in) the European theater of World War II, I doubt the American public has heard as much about the atrocities the Japanese Imperial Army committed in China and other Asian countries, said Chinese Consul General Luo Linquan, in an interview with China Daily USA, one of the exhibition sponsors.

The prisoners suffered a lot, and it helps the American people to know this history, said the curator, Lihong Fan, who came from Shenyang (formerly named Mukden), the capital of the northeastern Liaoning province in China, for the opening Tuesday, Nov. 21.

Since 1,200 of Mukdens 2,000 prisoners were American, operators of the museum would like to see more American visitors and San Francisco is the likeliest place to find them.

This (exhibition) is about their experiences in the camp and the fight against fascism, Fan said through an interpreter.

The Mukden POW Camp is called the forgotten camp, because its location and history were mostly unknown until 2003. Said to be the best preserved of the 200 POW camps in the Pacific theater, Mukden opened as a free historic site and museum two years ago.

If the Mukden POW Camp is unknown, so is the World War II Pacific War Memorial Hall. It opened two years ago in a narrow hillside storefront that did its part during the war. It was headquarters for for a war drive called Save One Bowl of Rice. In lieu of that one bowl, Chinatown residents were asked to donate $1 to be sent to China for the war effort against the Japanese.

More than 100 members of the Chinese community came to the opening of the exhibition. Among those attending the event was Simplicio Yoma, who served in the Philippine army and was captured during the war. He says he was on the Death March, but that he was not held at the Mukden POW Camp.

It brings back very painful memories of the occupation, said Yoma, through an interpreter, as he sat in his full dress uniform, covered in medals, waiting for the opening program to begin. Its important so that history will not repeat itself and the horror of World War II will not be forgotten.

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SamWhitingSF Instagram: @sfchronicle_art

Forgotten Camp: Allied POWs of Shenyang: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday- Sunday. Through Dec. 30. World War II Pacific War Memorial Hall, 809 Sacramento St., San Francisco.
About 1.7 million people serving in the U.S. armed forces have a big decision to make in the coming months, as the military undertakes a major overhaul of its retirement system.

Beginning in January, the military is switching from just a traditional pension system, in which retirees receive a monthly check for life based on their pay and years of service, to one that also includes investment accounts, like those commonly available to civilian workers. The new blended system is based, in part, on recommendations by the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission.

The system needed updating, the commission said, because the militarys current pension system leaves the vast majority of service members with no retirement savings when they leave. Currently, service members must serve at least 20 years to get a pension  hence its 20 or nothing nickname. More than 80 percent of service members leave short of that minimum, according to the Defense Department.

The new system still offers a monthly pension, but one calculated using a formula that reduces it by 20 percent, said Michael Meese, a retired Army brigadier general and chief operating officer of the American Armed Forces Mutual Aid Association, a nonprofit group that provides insurance and other financial services to military members. (The commissions final report noted that while its benefits recommendations werent budget driven, they would nevertheless substantially reduce government spending.)

But service members will also receive contributions to the Thrift Savings Plan, the federal governments version of an investment-based, 401(k) retirement plan. The military will contribute a minimum of 1 percent of the service members pay, even if they contribute nothing. The military will also chip in as much as 4 percent more in matching contributions, for a maximum government contribution of 5 percent.

(Service members already may contribute to the Thrift Savings Plan, known for its low-cost investment funds, but the military currently makes no contributions.)

Its no longer all or nothing, said Josh Andrews, an Air Force reservist and a certified financial planner with USAA, a financial services company focused mainly on service members and their families.

Service members will also be eligible for bonuses aimed at encouraging them to extend their time in the military.

Another new, and somewhat controversial, component gives those who reach the 20-year retirement minimum the option of taking part of their pension as a lump sum in exchange for a reduced benefit. This option must be carefully considered, Andrews said, because while it could be helpful to meet an immediate financial need  like starting a business or paying off a large debt  it provides less money in your pocket over time than a pension taken in the usual way.

Men and women enlisting in the armed forces after Dec. 31 will be automatically enrolled in the blended system. (Theyll start getting the 1 percent contribution to the Thrift Savings Plan in 60 days, but must wait two years for matching contributions.) People with 12 or more years of service at the end of this year will be grandfathered into the current system.

Service members with less than 12 years of service, however, must decide whether to move to the new system or remain in the old one. In general, the decision to switch to the blended system is irrevocable, according to the Defense Department.

Both Andrews and Meese suggested that people who knew for sure that they did not want to stay in the military for 20 years would probably benefit from switching to the blended system. Those who are committed to remaining, however, may want to stay with the current plan  although there are still risks. The military, like private employers, can go through periods of downsizing, Andrews noted, in which case staying in the old system could leave you short.

If someone is at the 10-year point, Andrews said, its much less risky to stay in the old system than if youre one to two years in.

Those who are unsure of their plans, Meese said, have some hard thinking to do. Are you likely to save 5 percent on your own to get the full matching contribution in the Thrift Savings Plan? If not, you may be better off in the old system. Merely getting the 1 percent automatic contribution is unlikely to make up for the 20 percent reduction in your pension if you do stay until retirement, he said.

To help weigh the options, the Defense Department is requiring all service members to take a two-hour online training course. We want to make sure they make an informed decision, said Henry Manning, operations officer for the assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs.

Here are some questions and answers about the militarys retirement system:

Q: When do I have to make a decision about switching?

A: Anytime in 2018. It makes sense, however, to make a decision as soon as possible because the military will begin making contributions in January to the Thrift Savings Plan for those who switch to the blended system. So those who wait until, say, July to opt in will have missed out on six months of retirement contributions. If you switch, theres a huge advantage to deciding earlier, Meese said. You might as well make a decision on Jan. 1. (Those who dont actively opt into the new system by the end of 2018 will remain in the old system.)

Q: Where can I find more information about the new system?

A: The Defense Department offers information on its website, along with a blended retirement plan calculator. Other tools include a calculator offered by USAA.

Q: Does the new system affect people serving in the reserves and the National Guard?

A: Yes. Eligibility for the new blended system is based on the number of retirement points earned by reservists and those serving in the National Guard. More information is available on the Defense Departments website.

Ann Carrns is a New York Times writer.
Santa Rosa police seized 20 grams of cocaine, a .40-caliber handgun with a large-capacity magazine and $3,500 from a 21-year-old man who was pulled over in a traffic stop Saturday.

Officers began pursuing Santa Rosa resident Christian Kekoa Bazzano as he drove west on Carillo Street. The police eventually stopped Bazzano for minor traffic violations and arrested him at Glen Street and College Avenue.
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When tourists come to San Francisco on vacation, if they opt to stay at an Airbnb, the options are as diverse and colorful as the Bay Area itself.

How an agoraphobic artist travels, only using Google Street View

The Los Altos Hills Airbnb Beyonce rented for 2016 Super Bowl triples in price to $30k

From converted cupcake trucks to self-described "hobbit huts," travelers have a wide variety of accommodations to choose from when planning a trip to the Bay.

Click through the slideshow above to see some of the quirkiest Airbnb listings in the Bay Area.

The San Francisco-based company claims it has more than 3 million listings in 191 countries.

But its emergence as a dominant player in the tourism industry is not without controversy. Many blame the vacation rental service for driving up the cost of housing in cities like San Francisco.

Now Playing: The interior is so incredible, you have to see it to believe it. Video: HouseBeautiful

San Francisco tried to regulate the growing vacation rental industry by forcing hosts to register with the city and imposing a 90-day annual limit on short-term rentals. However, an April report by the San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst's Office found that more than a quarter of San Francisco homes listed on Airbnb violated the 90-day limit.

In May, Airbnb struck a deal with San Francisco to ensure more hosts get registered, with the goal of universal registration by January 2018. The deal will help the city enforce the 90-day limit and other terms of the vacation-rentals agreement.

Despite the ongoing controversy, Airbnb's business model seems to be working. The company predicts it will earn $3.5 billion by 2020, Fortune reports.

Read Alix Martichoux's latest stories and send her news tips at amartichoux@sfchronicle.com.
By PTI: Pune, Nov 24 (PTI) Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray today came out in support of the embattled real estate developer D S Kulkarni and urged depositors to support the "Marathi" real estate developer.

Thackeray today met as many as 600 to 700 depositors, who have invested in fixed-deposit schemes of DSK Builders, the construction firm founded by Kulkarni.

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The firm has been accused of cheating its depositors.

"He (Kulkarni) is not a cheater. He himself is in trouble and there is a need to help him in his difficult times.

"There are some people who are active against Marathi builders like DSK. Some of them are associated with a political party and are conspiring against Marathi businessmen to help some non-Marathi real-estate developers," Thackeray alleged, while talking to reporters.

Fellow Marathi real estate developers should extend a helping hand to Kulkarni, the MNS chief said.

One of the depositors who was present at the meeting said MNS chief appealed them to stand by Kulkarni.

Pune police registered a case against Kulkarni and his wife on October 28 on a complaint lodged by a depositor who alleged that for the past several months he was not getting interest on his FD, nor could he retrieve the principal sum.

More complaints followed. According to police, around 1,500 complaints have been lodged against the DSK group. PTI SPK KRK

--- ENDS ---
California Highway Patrol /

A Sig-alert has been issued for southbound Interstate Highway 880 just north of Dixon Landing Road after a multiple vehicle collision blocked all lanes of traffic early this morning, according to the California Highway Patrol.

A CHP officer said that the collision resulted in at least one major injury, although it is unclear how many people were injured in the collision. The accident was called in just after 5:04 a.m. today, and the Sig-alert was issued at 5:22 a.m.
Internet services on mobile networks, except voice calls, in the districts of Jind, Hansi, Bhiwani, Hisar, Fatehabad, Karnal, Panipat, Kaithal, Rohtak, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Bhiwani and Charkhi Dadri will remain suspended for three days until the midnight of November 26

The Haryana government has suspended mobile Internet services in 13 districts for three days ahead of two public rallies by a Jat body and ruling BJP's Kurukshetra MP

By PTI, Press Trust of India: The Haryana government has suspended mobile Internet services in 13 districts for three days, fearing a law and order problem in view of two public rallies by a Jat body and the BJP's Kurukshetra MP on November 26.

MP Raj Kumar Saini, who was opposing quota for Jats, had announced a "Samanta Maha Sammelan" in Jind while All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti national president Yashpal Malik had also announced a rally in Rohtak districts Jassia on the same day.

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Internet services on mobile networks, except voice calls, in the districts of Jind, Hansi, Bhiwani, Hisar, Fatehabad, Karnal, Panipat, Kaithal, Rohtak, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Bhiwani and Charkhi Dadri shall remain suspended for three days until the midnight of November 26, an official order said yesterday.

The order, which came into force yesterday, was issued by Additional Chief Secretary (Home Department) S S Prasad.

"The order is issued to prevent any disturbance of peace and public order in the jurisdiction of state of districts as mentioned," it said.

It said there was a likelihood of tension, danger to human life and property, disturbance of public peace and tranquility in Haryana by protestors and anti-social elements during the two public rallies on Sunday.

JATS CLASH WITH POLICE

Yesterday, a group of Jats who were opposing Saini's rally at Jind clashed with the police and blocked the Jind- Chandigarh National Highway in Jind.

The police had to resort to a mild lathi-charge to disperse the protesters, and the highway was cleared for normal movement of vehicular traffic after a while.

Jat leader Sandeep Bharti, who led the protesters, was demanding the cancellation of Saini's rally.

Bharti alleged that Saini was known for his anti-Jat rants and accused him of spreading communal hatred by making inflammatory and derogatory statements against the community.

Officials said the situation remained tense in Rohtak and Jind.

WATCH | From March 2017 | Who are Jats and why are they protesting? All your questions answered

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Kolkata, Nov 25 (PTI) The revised tax treaty between Indian and Cyprus will promote bilateral investments, a diplomat said here today.

The two countries signed the revised India-Cyprus Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement in November, 2016.

"I believe with new taxation agreement, investment from both sides will increase," High Commissioner of Cyprus to India Demetrios A Theophylactou said on the sidelines of a Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry event.

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Cyprus is one of the major sources of foreign direct investment in India with a cumulative investment of about USD 8.5 billion.

However, investment from India is minimal in Cyprus, but Theophylactou is hopeful that sectors like tourism will be lucrative for Indian investors.

The diplomat also said ayurveda could be another area for Indian investment in Cyprus.

"I had gone to Kerala... and I feel Indian ayurveda holds lot of potential in Cyprus," he said. PTI BSM RBT

--- ENDS ---
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HOUSTON  Cat hair stuck in a package helped lead officials to a Houston-area woman accused of mailing bombs to former President Barack Obama and Gov. Greg Abbott, who opened his parcel but escaped injury, according to court documents.

Julia Poff of Waller County was indicted in federal court this month for a trio of 2016 mail bombs, including a botched explosive stuffed in a cigarette pack that failed to detonate when the governor opened it.

The 46-year-old was upset with Greg Abbott, Texas Attorney General, because she had not received support from her ex-husband, the federal court documents stated.

Using a salad dressing cap from a bottle purchased for an anniversary dinner, Poff allegedly cobbled together an explosive with black powder and pyrotechnic powder, then slipped it in the mail to Abbott.

RELATED: Police make arrests in Austin area after alleged threats of shootings at church, high school

Now Playing: FOX 26 News reporter Ivory Hecker Video: Fox 26 Houston

When Abbott opened the package in early October 2016, it didnt blow up because he didn't open it as designed.

Had the device exploded, it could have caused severe burns and death, according to court documents.

Agents working the case later found a damaged shipping label addressed to the mail bombing suspect, from when she originally had received the packaging through EBay.

A similar package sent to Obama was detected in screening and never made it to the intended target.

Poff had stated she did not like the President, according to court documents.

The D.C.-bound explosive which was packaged sloppily helped build the case against the accused bomber. After diverting the package, agents discovered that cat hair caught in the shipping label was microscopically consistent with the hair of one of Poffs pets, according to court records.

RELATED: Amazon 'reviewing' its website after it suggested bomb-making items

A third package was sent to the Social Security Administration in Maryland, where Poff had been denied benefits.

A search of Poffs home turned up a trove of fireworks in the garage, according to court records.

In an unsolicited Facebook message asking for prayers and PayPal donations to cover legal fees, Poff told a Houston Chronicle reporter that trash had been taken from her family's home that had our fingerprints on it and was used in some serious crimes that we did not commit and know nothing about.

She also was charged with more than $5,000 of food stamp fraud and false bankruptcy declaration. A federal public defender on Thursday declined to comment.

Court records note that Poff has been evicted repeatedly, in one case allegedly leaving a rented home with potatoes stuffed down the toilets and cement poured in the drains.

Her criminal history includes a misdemeanor theft conviction, which netted deferred adjudication and probation that later was revoked, according to court records. She also was convicted of felony fraud.

RELATED: Texas man jailed at same facility he allegedly threatened to bomb

Last year, using a Sealy mailing address but describing herself as a Waller County resident, Poff sued her leasing companys manager for allegedly calling her a purple Martian from hell, according to paperwork filed in Harris County court.

The suit also claimed that the Cypress Four Property Ventures manager verbally attacked Poff on the phone and described her as a professional squatter. A judge ultimately tossed the case.

On Friday, a federal judge ruled against releasing Poff, citing a serious risk that the defendant will flee.

The case is due for a pretrial conference early next year.
"I have had preliminary discussion with the family of the boy, I will in all probability will take his case," Tanveer Ahmed Mir told India Today.

Pradyuman Thakur (left), the Ryan International School student who was murdered earlier this year. The teenage student accused of killing him will now be represented by the man who defended Aarushi Talwars' parents (right)

By Ankit Tyagi: Tanveer Ahmed Mir, the lawyer who represented Aarushi Talwar's parents in a murder case that received national prominence, will now defend the teenage student of Gurgaon's Ryan International School who is accused of killing Pradyuman Thakur.

"I have had preliminary discussion with the family of the boy, I will in all probability will take his case," Mir told India Today.

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He said the student's father, who is also a lawyer, approached him through a third lawyer - a friend of Mir's - who practices in Gurgaon.

He said it's still too early to say what will be done, as the student is in a remand home waiting for the CBI to present its case to a competent court.

"We will first argue on the new amendment whether the accused boy needs to be tried as a juvenile or as an adult." he said.

He added he would stress on international conventions on trials of underage defendants that India is a signatory to.

CBI sources said who the defence lawyer is isn't their concern.

"Hiring a lawyer is the right of the accused. We are confident about our investigation," a source said.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PRADYUMAN MURDER CASE

Pradyuman Thakur, a Class 2 student at Gurgaon's Ryan International school, was found killed in a washroom on the school premises at around 7 am on September 8.

The Haryana Police arrested a bus conductor, Ashok Kumar, but in a sensational twist, the CBI said a Class XI student of Ryan International School had killed Pradyuman to get school exams and a parent-teacher meeting postponed.

The teenage student's father says he is innocent.

Ashok Kumar has been granted bail.

WHAT MIR THINKS OF THE CASE PRIMA FACIE

The motive put forth by the CBI (about getting exams postponed) seems to be fly in the face of common sense, Mir said.

He added he will have to see what kind of forensic evidence the agency has.

The CBI, he said, is relying too much on CCTV footage.

"CBI is relying on the CCTV footage but there are too many people in the CCTV footage. Ultimately it's about solid evidence," he said.

"How do they explain then if the boy and the conductor were in the bathroom at the same time, then why didn't either of them shout on seeing the other killing the child?"

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'OUT ON BAIL DOESN'T MEAN INNOCENT'

Mir said the CBI appears to be making a mistake similar to the one it did in the Aarushi-Hemraj case.

"Somebody being out on bail doesn't mean he is acquitted and someone arrested doesn't mean guilty. Don't want to comment on Gurgaon Police investigation. But looks like in this case CBI is also making the same blunder as in Aarushi-Hemraj case," he said.

"You see, natural course of investigation is collecting evidence and then coming to a theory What CBI seems to be doing is first coming making a theory and tweaking evidence to fit their argument."

"These are the same tricks they resorted (to) in the Aarushi case and the world knows what happened in the end, they were embarrassed," he said.

'HOPEFUL MIR WILL GET JUSTICE FOR MY SON'

"I am thankful to Tanveer Mirji," the teenage student's father told India Today. He said he's hopeful Mir will get justice for his son.

"They have beaten him up, he is being framed."

(Inputs from Munish Chandra Pandey and Tanseem Haider)

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WATCH | Cops tortured him, applied electric shock: Ashok Kumar's wife

--- ENDS ---
Two Bay Area counties are home to oil refineries, but only one has an industrial safety ordinance directed at preventing accidents that could harm workers and pollute the air  Contra Costa County. Solano County has no ordinance, but Benicia, where Valero operates a refinery, is beginning a conversation on adopting a city safety ordinance.

The push for the city ordinance comes at a time when the state recently has adopted its own industrial safety ordinance modeled on the Contra Costa County ordinance. The regional air quality board also unanimously adopted on Nov. 15 the strictest regulation in the nation to limit emissions of cancer-causing toxic air contaminants. Solano County officials say they are studying the new state regulations but question the need for another layer of governmental oversight.

The goal, said Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson, who called the Nov. 14 community meeting along with a coalition of environmental and community groups, is to get a seat at the table.

Air quality is always a concern in a refinery town, but a May 5 incident at Valero that sent huge plumes of black smoke and flames soaring into the sky reignited community worries. The flaring resulted in shelter-in-place and evacuation orders and raised the price of gasoline. It was later determined the refinery had released 80,000 pounds of toxic sulfur dioxide  a huge amount, experts said.

Two investigations (one by the state, one by the county) found Valero not at fault, but the countys findings were never forwarded to the city and only revealed through a public records act request. The regional air board is still investigating.

Valero is suing PG&E over a power failure that preceded the refinery losing control of its process.

An industrial safety ordinance would bring Benicia  and surrounding communities  into the know and give residents directly affected some say.

An ordinance also would require Valero to pay fees to the city, or Solano County if the Board of Supervisors adopts an ordinance, to contract for the engineering expertise needed to oversee prevention programs, audits and inspections. Unsurprisingly, Valero is against the idea.

Contra Costa County adopted its industrial safety ordinance in December 1998 after a series of incidents, and just days before four men were killed and a fifth seriously burned in a gruesome refinery accident. Richmond soon after adopted its own ordinance. Contra Costas ordinance is held up by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board as a model. The record shows the number of refinery and chemical facility incidents has diminished since adoption.

Industrial safety is a public concern. The public deserves to be in the know.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
It might be time to jump on the current round of cheap airfares from the Bay Area and many west coast cities to Hawaii. LINKS & UPDATES ON TRAVELSKILLS

Over the last year or so, fares to Hawaii from the west coast have remained stubbornly over $400 round trip-- most of the time inching closer to $500. But ever since last month when Southwest signaled that it would be jumping in the Hawaii market, fares have taken a tumble.

More Information Chris McGinnis tracks fares and travel news on the TravelSkills.com blog. Sign up for email alerts or follow him on Twitter @cjmcginnis See More Collapse

They've gone up and down since then, but this weekend they are back down. How low?

Well, as of today you can fly nonstop from San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose as well as San Diego, Los Angeles, Portland (mostly 1-stop) and Seattle in early December, January February and March for about $340-$380 round trip. The $337 deal is for flights departing Oakland only. SFO fares start at $357.

Even Denver has roundtrips in the low 400's. That's quite a deal for winter flights.

And the deals are good to Honolulu, Maui, Kona, and Kauai.

Plus it appears that all airlines serving Hawaii are in on the deal, with Hawaiian and Virgin America as the most aggressive discounters. MORE DETAILS & UPDATES ON TRAVELSKILLS

To get the deals, you have to be a bit flexible with travel dates-- more...

According to Google Flights, these fares are available for roundtrip in early December, January, February and early March. (Bookable Saturday, Nov 25 and subject to change).

Aloha! Will you go this year?

Dont miss out on deals like this + other important travel news! Sign up here for one email-per-day updates from TravelSkills!

Chris McGinnis is a travel blogger and editor of TravelSkills.com. The author is solely responsible for the content above, and it is used here by permission. You can reach Chris at chris@travelskills.com or on Twitter @cjmcginnis.
Southwest Airlines 2018 schedule will give East Bay business travelers new daily flights to five domestic destinations that currently have no regular non-stop service from Oakland International  including two transcon routes. [FULL STORY & COMMENTS]

In its 2018 summer schedule announcement, the airline said it will introduce daily non-stops on July 8 from Oakland to San Antonio, and on July 15 from OAK to Orlando, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Indianapolis. (Saturday-only non-stops from OAK to Orlando begin April 8.)

Earlier this year, Southwest started offering non-stop seasonal service from Oakland to Newark Liberty International, but based on the success of those flights, the airline now plans to convert that into year-round service, with daily flights due to start April 8, 2018. (The only other non-stop service from Oakland to the New York City area is on JetBlue, which goes to JFK Airport.)

The new service will give Southwest 33 non-stop destinations out of Oakland.

More Information Chris McGinnis tracks fares and travel news on the TravelSkills.com blog. Sign up for email alerts or follow him on Twitter @cjmcginnis See More Collapse

Southwest has been steadily ramping up its California operations in recent months, and it has a new promotion for Rapid Rewards members who live in the state. Called California Millions, it will give away millions of Rapid Rewards points to winners. It remains in effect through November 30. Heres a link to participate.

The airlines summer schedule for next year also includes new daily non-stops between San Antonio and Ft. Lauderdale starting July 8. On June 6, Southwest will end its daily service between Flint, Michigan and Chicago Midway.

On June 7, Southwest will resume daily seasonal service between Denver-Charleston, S.C., Chicago-San Juan and Omaha-Orlando. And on June 9, it will start new Saturday-only seasonal flights between Boise-Dallas, Denver-Panama City, Fla., and Tulsa-Orlando.

Chris McGinnis is a travel blogger and editor of TravelSkills.com. The author is solely responsible for the content above, and it is used here by permission. You can reach Chris at chris@travelskills.com or on Twitter @cjmcginnis.
ISLAMABAD  Pakistans government called in army troops on Saturday to restore order after police clashed with an Islamist group that has been camped out for the last twenty days at a key intersection near the capital Islamabad, state TV reported.

The protest inspired demonstrators to take to the streets of other cities across the country in solidarity, bringing them to a virtual standstill.

State TV reported that the Interior Ministry said Saturday that army troops had been summoned to assist the citys civil administration in clearing the Faizabad intersection.

Six people were killed and 200 others, mostly police, were injured as police tried to clear the intersection linking the Pakistani capital with the garrison city of Rawalpindi, doctors at local hospitals said. The demonstrators are demanding the resignation of a law minister over an omitted reference to the Prophet Muhammad in a parliamentary bill.

Dr. Masood Safdar of Benazir Bhutto Hospital said five civilians arrived dead from bullets wounds. Dr. Tariq Niazi of the Holy Family Hospital confirmed the death of a young man who was shot in head during the violence at the intersection and the surrounding area.

Hundreds of police in riot gear had moved in against the supporters of the Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah party early Saturday after a deadline expired at midnight. The police action and reaction from protesters sent scores of injured to hospitals.

News of the police intervention spread quickly, prompting sympathizers in cities round the country to take to the streets in a show of solidarity with the Islamabad protesters. The situation prompted authorities to take TV broadcasts off the air. Key social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were also blocked.

The government had made several attempts to resolve the stalemate through negotiations. The law minister, Zahid Hamid, apologized for the omission, saying it was a clerical error that was later corrected. But protest leaders demanded his resignation.

Anjum Naveed and Zarar Khan are Associated Press writers.
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VATICAN CITY  Pope Francis heads to Myanmar and Bangladesh with the international community excoriating Myanmars crackdown on Rohingya Muslims as ethnic cleansing but his own church resisting the label and defending Myanmars civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi as the only hope for democracy.

Francis will be walking a fraught diplomatic tightrope during the visit this week, which will include separate meetings with Suu Kyi, the powerful head of Myanmars military as well as a small group of Rohingya.

Francis has defined his papacy by his frequent denunciations of injustices committed against refugees, and he is expected to speak out strongly against the Rohingya plight. But he is also the guest of Myanmars government and must look out for the well-being of his own flock, a minority of just 659,000 Catholics in the majority Buddhist nation of 51 million.

Lets just say its very interesting diplomatically, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke responded when asked if Francis 21st foreign trip would be his most difficult.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, an American Jesuit commentator, was more direct: I have great admiration for the pope and his abilities, but someone should have talked him out of making this trip, Reese wrote recently on Religion News Service.

Reese argued that Francis legacy as a champion of the oppressed will come up against the harsh reality of blowback for Myanmars minority Christians if he goes too far in defending the Rohingya against the militarys clearance operations in Rakhine state.

If he is prophetic, he puts Christians at risk, Reese said. If he is silent about the persecution of the Rohingya, he loses moral credibility.

Francis already has been urged by the Catholic Church in Myanmar and his hand-picked cardinal, Charles Bo, to refrain from even using the term Rohingya, which is rejected by most in Myanmar. Francis has used the term in the past, when he condemned the persecution of our Rohingya brothers, denounced their suffering and called for them to receive full rights.

Myanmars government and most of the Buddhist majority dont recognize the Rohingya as an ethnic group, insisting they are Bengali migrants from Bangladesh living illegally in the country. It has denied them citizenship, even though they have lived in Myanmar for generations.

The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said Francis would likely call for a lasting solution for the Rakhine Muslims that takes into account the importance for the people of having a nationality.

The situation on the ground has deteriorated badly since Rohingya militants attacked security positions in poverty-wracked Rakhine in August. Myanmar security forces responded with a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages that the U.N., U.S. and human rights groups have labeled as textbook ethnic cleansing.

More than 620,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, where they are living in squalid refugee camps.

Bo has defended Suu Kyi as Myanmars only hope for democracy, saying criticism against her was unfair.

Nicole Winfield is an Associated Press writer.
CAIRO  Egypts security forces were on high alert Saturday after striking back at militants whose massacre of more than 300 people at a Sinai mosque raised fears of a new and bloodier phase in the countrys struggle against Islamist insurgents.

Egypts state-run Information Service tried to portray Fridays carnage  at least 305 dead, or about quarter of the male population of the village of Rawda  as a sign of weakness, despair and collapse among militants opting for easy civilian targets rather than hitting heavily armed security forces as in the past.

But the level of coordination and precision by the attackers gave no obvious suggestions of a struggling force in an area where Islamic State-inspired groups have gained a key foothold.

The assault on a mosque also raised concerns over increasing threats to the countrys minorities, including the Muslim Sufi community hit Friday.

Amr Nabil/Associated Press

Survivors and officials described five pickup trucks carrying up to 30 gunmen converging on the al-Rawda mosque as the imam began his sermon. Some worshipers died in a suicide blast; others were gunned down as they ran. The attackers would later walk among the fallen, 27 of them children, shooting those who appeared to be breathing.

Eyewitnesses said that some had carried a black flag that local residents recognized as belonging to State of Sinai, a local Islamic State affiliate that has remained largely intact even as the Islamic States main bases in Iraq and Syria have crumbled. Although no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, suspicion immediately fell on Islamic State-linked militants.

President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi pledged to avenge the bloodshed with brute force. But the contours of a tougher approach remain hazy.

Egyptian security forces have been locked in battle with the countrys Islamic State affiliate for several years. The insurgency has killed hundreds in the heavily patrolled Sinai and militants have struck further afield, including Christian Coptic churches in Cairo and Alexandria.

The Egyptian government has been describing its reaction to every attack as a harsh response since the summer of 2013, if not before. So its difficult to assess what is meant by a promise to do more than that, said Zack Gold, a fellow with the Atlantic Councils Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Louisa Loveluck and Heba Farouk Mahfouz are Washington Post writers.
Salman Khan has been paired opposite Jacqueline Fernandez in Race 3. The film will be directed by Remo D'Souza.

By India Today Web Desk: Salman Khan is known for going to any lengths to help out his co-stars. And this time, it was for Jacqueline Fernandez.

Salman,who has been paired opposite Jacqueline in Race 3, reportedly wanted to give her a more substantial role, instead of letting her just be eye-candy. He didn't want the actress to be a mere decorative piece in the film. He told Remo to give her a meaty role, so she can display her acting abilities.

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And it goes without saying, Salman's request can't be denied. So sources say that Jacqueline's role has been chalked out with a lot of care and effort.

Jacqueline has been usually relegated to being just eye-candy in films like the Race franchise previously, Dishoom and Judwaa 2 . So we hope to see more of her, in Race 3!

The big-budget action thriller, which went on floors this month, will also see Bobby Deol , Daisy Shah and Saqib Saleem in pivotal roles. It will be directed by Remo D' Souza.

The shooting for the film started this month, and Salman shared a photo on Twitter and Instagram to celebrate the moment.

Baki sab toh Theek Hai but look at how hot, cool, sweet, charming & sexy is rameshji looking in this Race 3 ke team pic mein . pic.twitter.com/mpkYOUaxOK- Salman Khan (@BeingSalmanKhan) November 10, 2017

Race 3 was all set to clash with ex-lover Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's Fanney Khan, next Eid. However, there is speculation that Aishwarya's film might be postponed now.

ALSO WATCH: Sunny Deol-Bobby Deol are back with poster boys, Salman Khan turns villain for Race 3.

--- ENDS ---
WASHINGTON  The Trump administration has backtracked on its decision to order the Palestinians office in Washington to close, instead saying it would merely impose limitations on the office that it expected would be lifted after 90 days.

Last week, U.S. officials said the Palestine Liberation Organization mission couldnt stay open because the Palestinians had violated a provision in U.S. law requiring the office to close if the Palestinians try to get the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis.

The move caused a major rift in U.S.-Palestinian relations that threatened to scuttle President Trumps ambitious effort to broker Mideast peace before it ever got off the ground.

Yet the United States delayed shuttering the office for a week while saying it was working out the details with the Palestinians, before abruptly reversing course late Friday, as many Americans were enjoying a long Thanksgiving Day weekend. State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said the U.S. had advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Vasquez said even those restrictions will be lifted after 90 days if the U.S. determines the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in serious peace talks. The White House, in an effort led by Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, has been preparing a comprehensive peace plan to present to both sides in the coming months.

We therefore are optimistic that at the end of this 90-day period, the political process may be sufficiently advanced that the president will be in a position to allow the PLO office to resume full operations, Vasquez said.

The reversal marked a serious departure from the administrations interpretation of the law only a week earlier. Officials had said then that, one way or another, the office had to close because Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a U.N. speech in September, had called on the ICC to investigate and prosecute Israelis. That same law, though, says the president can let the office re-open after 90 days despite an ICC push if serious Israeli-Palestinian talks are under way.

Asked how the Trump administration explains its new interpretation of about what must happen if the Palestinians call for an ICC investigation, Vasquez said: These actions are consistent with the presidents authorities to conduct the foreign relations of the United States.

The chaos that ensued after the announcement, with the U.S. unable for several days to explain if the office was truly closing and when, indicated it had caught much of the government off-guard.

Josh Lederman is an Associated Press writer.
By PTI: Vellore (TN), Nov 25 (PTI) Four girl students of a government higher secondary school here ended their lives by jumping into a well in a suicide pact after being allegedly chided by teachers for not being attentive in class, police said. The Class XI students of Panapakkam Government Higher Secondary School at the nearby Arakkonam town jumped into a farm well at Nangamangalam village yesterday. Fire and Rescue Services personnel fished out the bodies and sent them for autopsy to a government hospital last night. "Based on the preliminary inquiry, the headmistress and class teacher have been suspended," a district education official told reporters here today. The reason for the girls suicide is yet to be ascertained, a top district police official said.

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"Four teams of police personnel are questioning the class students, teachers, and others and only after the conclusion of the enquiry would the cause of the suicide be known," he said.

The official said no suicide note had been recovered.

He said a preliminary enquiry revealed that 11 students were chided by teachers for not being attentive in class and were asked to bring their parents on November 24. "Yesterday, out of the 11 students, seven apologised and assured the teachers that they will be attentive. The other four students ended their lives," he told PTI.

The seven girls who tendered apology too had not brought their parents, he added. Of the four girls who committed suicide, two came to school in the morning and left the premises immediately. They later joined the other two and all of them went to the farm in their bicycles. "Local people, including a cowherd, saw the girls going to the farm well," he said. Villagers alerted police and local officials after they spotted the abandoned bicycles near the farm well.

Senior police officials and a district official placed wreaths on the bodies. PTI VGN APR CHT

--- ENDS ---
He noted that India had lost those territories wherever Hindu population reduced. He added the two-child policy should not be restricted to Hindus alone

The Swami said the government was insisting on a maximum of two children, but till the time the Uniform Civil Code is implemented, Hindus should have at least four children

By India Today Web Desk: Swami Govindadev Giriji Maharaj of the Bharat Mata Mandir in Haridwar said today that Hindus must have at least four children until "demographic imbalance" can be checked by the Uniform Civil Code's implementation.

He added that the two-child policy should not be restricted to Hindus alone. He noted that India had lost those territories wherever Hindu population reduced and this had resulted in a demographic imbalance.

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He was speaking to reporters on the second day of the three-day Dharma Sansad organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, in the temple town of Udupi of coastal Karnataka.

#WATCH Udupi: Swami Govind Dev Giri says 'Every Hindu couple should have four children,so that Hindu population is stabilized ' (25/11/17) pic.twitter.com/vAkZGF6XJ1- ANI (@ANI) November 26, 2017

The Swami said the government was insisting on a maximum of two children, but till the time the Uniform Civil Code is implemented, Hindus should have at least four children. India lost many of its territories wherever Hindu population reduces, he said.

"We have seen that India lost those territories wherever Hindu population reduced, resulting in demographic imbalance. The two-child policy should not be restricted to Hindus alone."

On cow-vigilantism, the seer said some criminals were settling personal scores under the guise of 'Gau Rakshaks'.

"Gau Rakshaks are peace loving people. They have been defamed by some vested interests. Some criminals are settling scores under the guise of Gau Rakshaks," said Giriji Maharaj.

The mega religious event is being attended by over 2,000 Hindu seers, matt heads and VHP leaders from all over the country.

(With PTI inputs)

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 25 (PTI) Select edible oil prices firmed up at the wholesale oil and oilseeds market during the week on increased offtake by vanaspati millers, driven by rising demand from retailers against tight supplies.

Firm trend overseas also influenced sentiment.

Castor oil in the non-edible section showed some strength on increased offtake by consuming industries.

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Traders said increased buying by vanaspati millers to meet rising demand from retailers in view of the ongoing wedding season against tight stocks position on fall in supplies from producing regions mainly led to rise in edible oil prices.

Positive leads from overseas markets also influenced sentiment, they said.

In the national capital, groundnut mill delivery (Gujarat) oil rose by Rs 200 to Rs ,8,900 per quintal.

Mustard expeller (Dadri) and cottonseed mill delivery (Haryana) oils moved up by Rs 150 each to Rs 7,950 and Rs 6,450 per quintal respectively.

Sesame mill delivery also jumped up by Rs 500 to Rs 8,400 per quintal.

Tracking a firm trend overseas, palmolein (RBD) and palmolein (Kandla) oils too shot up by Rs 350 each to Rs 6,450 and Rs 6,500 per quintal respectively. Crude palm oil (ex- kandla) went up by Rs 150 to Rs 5,000 per quintal.

Soyabean refined mill delivery (Indore) and soyabean degum (Kandla) oils followed suit and enquired higher by Rs 200 each to Rs 7,400 and Rs 7,000 per quintal respectively.

Coconut oil quoted higher at Rs 2,650-2,700 instead of Rs 2,550-2,600 per tin.

In the non-edible section, castor oil got fresh buying support from consuming industries and ended higher by Rs 100 to Rs 8,600-8,700 per quintal.(MORE) PTI SUN KPS ABM

--- ENDS ---
The Army is currently using second generation Konkurs and Milan 2T ATGMs, which do not have night-fighting capabilities.

By Ajit Kumar Dubey: Seeking to bolster the anti-tank arsenal of its infantry troops, the Indian Army is moving ahead with a proposal to buy Spike anti-tank guided missiles from Israel which will meet the urgent requirement of these missiles for the force.

"To meet the immediate requirements of the infantry battalions of the Army, a proposal is being moved for buying Spike missiles for the force, which will be taken up for discussion at very high level in the defence ministry in the coming weeks," a government source told Mail Today.

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The requirements of the Army are so huge that they will be met with the missile systems supplied by the Israelis along with the ones to be produced by DRDO in future as it is also developing the man-portable ATGMs, sources said.

The Army needs third-generation ATGMs, with a strike range of over 2.5 km and fire-and-forget capabilities, to equip all its 382 infantry battalions and 44 mechanised infantry units, which will carry them on their Russian BMP combat vehicles.

Sources said this combination of buying from abroad and allowing Make in India at the same time will balance the need for taking care of national security requirements along with the need to promote the indigenous industry. The defence ministry has been in talks with Israel and USA for a long time to get the third generation anti-tank missiles and had ultimately zeroed in on the Spike missiles under an old deal, which would have cost around Rs 3,000 crore.

This is not the first time the defence ministry has decided in favour of Make in India projects over foreign imports as recently, one project to buy two regiments of short-range surface-to-air missiles (SRSAM) worth Rs 18,000 crore was disallowed in favour of Akash surface-to-air defence missile systems.

In the earlier competition for ATGMs, India had also tried one American fire-and-forget ATGM, but that offer was not accepted due to unacceptable terms. Spike missile is a third generation, fire-and-forget, top attack ATGM with a range of 2.5 km, which can operate both during day and night against an incoming enemy tank regiment.

The Army is currently using second generation Konkurs and Milan 2T ATGMs, which do not have night-fighting capabilities.

According to reports, the Army currently has a shortage of around 68,000 missiles, with no missiles held as War Wastage Reserves against a government stipulation to build up stocks to last for at least 10 days of intense fighting.

The DRDO has a long list of successes in the field of missile defence systems and has not only developed the strategic systems, but is also gaining expertise in air defence as well. It recently tested the quick reaction surface-to-air missile system for the armed forces within a few months of being tasked to do the development. Its small range missile NAG is also moving ahead towards acceptance by the armed forces.

--- ENDS ---

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Modi's son, Utkarsh is to get married on December 3, and all the guests who have already been invited to the wedding are being informed about the change in venue.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: Nine days ahead of his son's wedding, Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi, has changed the marriage venue following a threat from RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav's elder son and former Health Minister Tej Pratap Yadav.

Citing security concerns after Tej Pratap's threat, Modi has changed the venue from Shakha Maidan in Rajendra Nagar to Veterinary College ground, near Patna airport.

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Modi's son, Utkarsh is to get married on December 3, and all the guests who have already been invited to the wedding are being informed about the change in venue.

It may be mentioned that Tej Pratap, who has also been invited to the wedding, has threatened to sabotage the wedding and thrash Modi by entering his house forcibly.

Informing journalists about this change, Modi said that after receiving the threat from Lalu's son, he first planned on shifting the venue to 5, Desh Ratna Marg, the bungalow allotted to him as deputy CM.

However, the former deputy CM, Tejaswi Yadav, has still not vacated this house despite being allotted another bungalow.

Then, Modi wanted to change the venue to 3, Desh Ratna Marg bungalow, which has been allotted to Speaker of Bihar Council. But the former Health Minister, Tej Pratap has also not vacated this house. Though, he too has been allotted another bungalow.

It is then Modi decided to change the marriage venue to Veterinary college ground.

--- ENDS ---
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The apology statement was issued in the same way as the offending video - on Facebook.

However, the union's secretary has slammed the Liberals for the post, accusing the Liberals of misusing parliamentary privilege to play politics through unfounded allegations.

The Canberra Liberals have issued an apology over comments made on social media allegedly defaming the construction union.

The video was originally posted on the Canberra Liberals Facebook page in October this year.

The apology stated that the video "made statements relating to the ACT branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union concerning office space occupied by the CFMEU, a carpark owned by the CFMEU and the CFMEU's relationship with the Labor ACT government".

"It has come to our attention that the publication may have been interpreted as suggesting the CFMEU has a corrupt relationship with the Labor ACT government," the apology read.

"The Liberal Party of Australia - ACT division did not intend to convey any such suggestions and, insofar as the publication may have conveyed any such suggestions, the Liberal Party of Australia - ACT division withdraws them unreservedly."

The statement then went on to say the Canberra Liberals apologies for any distress and embarrassment the publication may have caused.
The two officers have been promoted. According to unrelated court documents from September this year, Finnigan has been promoted to detective; another unrelated document from May shows Hicks is now a senior constable. "Those two officers remain in the workplace with the full confidence of the commander," a NSW police spokeswoman said. Ms Litchfield resigned from the force in 2015, then telling Fairfax Media she had been driven out. Ms Litchfield was contacted for comment for this article. Mr Bevan has lodged a complaint to the NSW police watchdog, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, regarding the investigation's outcome. Although this is a lot of money to pay out, NSW Police have determined that no one is accountable Peter Bevan, the men's lawyer

A a commission spokeswoman said they were reviewing the internal report. "Once the LECC has completed this review, further information will be sent directly to the complainant about the matter," the spokeswoman said. Speaking for the first time since the settlement, Mr Caton and Mr Antram expressed frustration the two officers remained employed. "It wasn't even about the money for me, I would have rather seen them lose their jobs," Mr Caton said. "If it wasn't for Lucie we probably would be in jail."

According to court documents from the settled civil claim on December 21, 2013, police stopped Mr Caton, Mr Antram and two other friends on Morella Avenue in Jerrabomberra. They'd mistaken their car for one associated with a nearby violent home invasion when the men were in fact heading to the shops to buy more alcohol for their work Christmas party. Senior constable Finnigan asked the men if they had any weapons. Mr Caton then held his daughter's toy dinosaur out the car window and said "No weapons, but I've got a big dinosaur. Roar." According to the claim, senior constable Finnigan then opened the rear passenger door where Mr Caton was sitting, pulled him from the car, kicked his legs from underneath him, smashed his sunglasses and handcuffed him. Constable Litchfield ordered Mr Antram from the car and told him to stand by a nearby retaining wall, which he did.

Constable Hicks then tackled Mr Antram, who was standing still, causing his head to collide with the wall, knocking him unconscious. The constable later claimed Mr Antram had charged at him. "I couldn't believe it. Being charged with assaulting police, I thought I was honestly going to jail," Mr Caton said. According to the claim in January, after the incident, officers Finnigan and Hicks told Mr Caton's and Mr Antram's boss the pair were unsuitable for employment. He fired the two, who then couldn't find removalist work in Canberra. Mr Antram's partner left him and he moved to Cooma where he still finds it difficult to find work.

Mr Caton believes he could have got more from the police, but working as a concreter in Canberra, he couldn't afford to take time off for a 16-day trial in Sydney. Mr Antram said the harassment hasn't stopped. He described a night at the Cooma Hotel in August last year where he was invited to celebrate a mate's engagement. Within minutes of showing up, Mr Antram said police had arrived with sniffer dogs, including constable Hicks. "You're looking good, aren't you," constable Hicks allegedly said. There were other police who were looking at Mr Antram, one commenting "this is the guy who's taking us to court".

"I got underneath a camera straight away," Mr Antram said. NSW Police were contacted regarding the incident, they declined to comment on the scenario but said the use of sniffer dogs at venues was routine. "The use of drug detection dogs within licensed premises has been used across the command with great success and will continue into the future," a spokeswoman said. Mr Caton said he hasn't had similar encounters but refuses to go to Queanbeyan. "I'm alright with the coppers, but I won't go to Queanbeyan any more. I used to go there for pool comps, dart comps, all that sort of shit," he said.
At Newcastle Senior School, educational pathways are created for students with intellectual disability and complex, multiple disabilities which significantly limit access to regular school curriculum.

The school provides education for students in Years 9 to 12 with a program that focuses on preparing them for post-school life. Students' disabilities include autism, Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, and other behaviour, language, physical and intellectual disabilities.

Newcastle Senior School students selling their Chances products at a pop-up shop.

One of those pathways is the CHANCES work skills program, developed by school staff in 2015 to promote learning, independence, skill development and team work. Students hand-make gift products, with each student playing a vital role in the production, design process, packaging and distribution of their products.

Principal Janelle Newman says CHANCES began with six students in 2015; today all 64 of the school's students are participating in the program in some way.
Coal combustion, already one of the main sources of pollution, has also been found to release nano particles of titanium that are potentially harmful to humans and other life forms, researchers say.

US-based scientists accidentally discovered the tiny traces of the metal  in the form of titanium suboxides measuring in the billionths of a metre  when studying a coal ash spill in the Dan River in North Carolina in 2014, Science Daily reported earlier this year.

Researchers in the US discovered the titanium suboxides when examining a coal ash spill. Credit:Jim Cole

The substance had previously been considered rare, located in mudstones in a small area of western Greenland, moon rocks and in some meteorites.

It turns out, however, that forms of titanium oxides "are essentially a ubiquitous accessory phase in all coals worldwide", the researchers said in a paper published in Nature Communications.
Australia is home to a global hot spot for sea-surface temperatures, with a record burst of prolonged heat in the country's south-east helping to make conditions several degrees warmer than average.

Daily weather charts generated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show the unusual warmth is almost unmatched around the world, compared with normal temperatures.

Crossing the line: (left to right) 10 year olds Bodie Taylor, Arki George, and Frankie Parsons jump in the ocean at Clovelly. Credit:Fiona Morris

Only patches off Greenland and New York in the US are as abnormally warm compared with long-run averages. (See chart below.)

"It's clear sea-surface temperatures around south-eastern Australia, and Tasmania in particular, are well above average," Blair Trewin, senior climatologist for the Bureau of Meteorology, told Fairfax Media.
By PTI: body found

(Eds: Updating with fresh details)

Srinagar, Nov 25 (PTI) A 23-year-old Territorial Army jawan was abducted and killed by militants in Shopian district of south Kashmir while he was on leave, officials said today.

The jawans bullet-riddled body was recovered from an orchard in Watmullah Keegam area of Shopian, an Army official said.

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The deceased was identified as Sepoy Irfan Ahmad Dar, a resident of village Senzen in Shopian, the official said.

"The individual was posted in a Territorial Army unit in Bandipora district (of north Kashmir)," Srinagar-based defence spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia said.

Kalia said Dar was on leave till November 26.

"While on leave, he was possibly abducted and killed by terrorists," the defence spokesman said, adding that the matter was being investigated by the police.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti condemned Dars killing.

"Strongly condemn the brutal killing of Irfan Ahmed, a brave Territorial Army soldier at Shopian. Such heinous acts will not weaken our resolve to establish peace and normalcy in the Valley," Mehbooba said on Twitter.

Former J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah also condemned the Territorial Army jawans killing.

"The murder of young Irfan Dar is a very tragic & reprehensible act. My unqualified condemnation & heartfelt condolences to his family," he tweeted. PTI SSB ASK ASK

--- ENDS ---
Sun-safe hats aren't being worn by nearly half of Sydney's primary school students, according to a new report commissioned by the NSW Cancer Institution and Cancer Council.

Observers watched 8000 Sydney students in government schools in western Sydney over three months and found that only 60 per cent wore sun-safe hats.

Bright future: Our Lady of Fatima year 2 student Glorianna Yudhistira, 7, wears the school's uniform sunglasses. Credit:Jessica Hromas

The NSW Department of Education considers Legionnaire, wide-brimmed, and bucket hats to be sun-safe.

Previous data collected by the Cancer Council recorded 80 per cent compliance with sun-safe policies but that was based on self-reporting from principals.
The number of women undergoing lung cancer surgery in Australia is escalating faster than that of men, reflecting the tobacco industry's aggressive marketing of feminised "slim" and "light" products in the 1980s and '90s.

Health experts say this trend serves as a warning to young women who, alarmingly, are smoking more and smoking their first full cigarette at a younger age, compared to young men.

The tobacco industry has aggressively marketed "low" and "light tar" cigarettes to women, which are just as harmful as regular products. Credit:Tamara Voninski

Previously unpublished hospitalisation data reveals a 46.5 per cent increase in women undergoing lung cancer surgery between 2010 and 2015, in contrast to a 30.5 per cent rise for men.

In addition, the number of women dying each year from lung cancer has soared by 36.3 per cent to 3716 deaths in 2016 over the past decade, while the rise is less dramatic for men at 9.3 per cent.
A business associate of disgraced former deputy mayor Salim Mehajer was "sore" about being cut out of a drug importation deal when he supplied a house key to facilitate the killing of an underworld bikie figure, police have alleged.

Ahmed Jaghbir, a Sydney electrician, is facing murder charges over his alleged role in the killing of Kemel Barakat in March.

He was arrested in early November, when police executed a search warrant at his home in Guildford, less than two months after he was appointed director and secretary of Mr Mehajer's new wedding business venture.

On Thursday Parramatta Local Court heard the Crown's submission that Mr Jaghbir had provided a duplicate key to the Mortlake home where Barakat was killed, "because he had been cut out of a deal".
A Sydney woman allegedly caught driving almost nine times over the legal alcohol limit has had her licence suspended and will be heading to court.

The 42-year-old, named by the Seven Network as Susan Lung, recorded a breath analysis of 0.445, according to police, who arrested and charged her at an intersection in Willoughby on Friday afternoon.

"It's one of the highest readings that we've seen in a very long time," NSW Police chief inspector Phil Brooks told the Seven Network on Saturday.

Lung made a tearful plea to drivers, urging them to not get behind the wheel if they were under the influence.

"All the things that could have gone wrong ... it's very stupid," she said.
Thunderstorm asthma alerts and all severe thunderstorm warnings for Victoria were cancelled on Saturday night but people can expect more "tropical Queensland" weather on the way.

Health authorities had earlier warned that storms, wind and high temperatures and pollen counts meant a "high" risk of a thunderstorm asthma event in central and north-east Victoria.

Victorian health authorities have issued a high risk warning of thunderstorm asthma. Credit:Shutterstock

Asthma symptoms are especially likely during and after thunderstorms.
Police killer Jason Roberts' bid to overturn his conviction underlines the need for Victoria to adopt right of appeal laws and scrap a system that is open to political interference, according to a lawyer involved in the case.

Roberts maintains he did not murder Sergeant Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rod Miller in Moorabbin in 1998.

His legal team plan to submit a second petition for mercy to Attorney-General Martin Pakula within the next month, after claims emerged this week that a police statement had been falsified.

But Simon Moodie, who is acting for Roberts, questioned whether a politician should even have the power to decide on such appeals.
All appeals against the Environmental Protection Authority's assessment on a proposal to mine iron ore in the Helena-Aurora Range have been dismissed by the WA environment minister.

The EPA this year found that a proposal by Mineral Resources Limited to develop the Jackson 5 and Bungalbin East iron ore deposits within the Helena-Aurora Range, north of Southern Cross, was environmentally unacceptable.

The state government is being urged to protect the Helena and Aurora Range from mining. Credit:Photographer: Rob Neave

The report received nine appeals against its recommendations, which were then investigated by the Appeals Convenor.

WA Environment Minister Stephen Dawson said on Friday he had found the EPA's assessment to be rigorous and comprehensive.
Police have charged a man over an alleged crime spree in Perth's northern suburbs in which he's accused of assaulting neighbours with a brick and a pitchfork before allegedly smashed his way into a day care centre and dousing a man with petrol.

Police said the 55-year-old Karrinyup man went on the alleged rampage between 5:30am and 6:15am on Friday morning in the quiet Perth suburb.

The man has been arrested. Credit:Hannah Sinclair

He's alleged to have forced his way into a unit on Davenport Street and assaulted a 53-year-old woman by striking her in the head with a brick.

The man is then alleged to have entered another unit on the street and punched a 59-year-old female occupant to the face and shoulder, then allegedly assaulted her with a pitchfork causing injuries to her neck and ear.
Cairo: Egypt raised its security alert to the highest level on Saturday as it emerged that the Islamic State may have been behind a mosque attack in the restive north Sinai in which more than 300 people died, the most lethal single assault in the country's recent history.

Hours after the midday attack on Friday, the military said it launched overnight airstrikes that destroyed vehicles believed to have been used in the gun and bomb attack on the mosque west of the city of Al-Arish.

There has been no claim of responsibility, but analysts said it bore the hallmark of an Islamic State affiliate that operates in the area and highlighted the challenges President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi faces restoring security and reviving economic growth after years of upheaval since the 2011 Arab uprisings.

Initial investigations showed the attackers hoisted the Islamic State flag during the attack, which was carried out by 25 to 30 militants, the public prosecutor's office said in a statement.
By PTI: Chennai, Nov 25 (PTI) A Keralite mistakenly tagged his Twitter complaint about overcharging by autorickshaws in Salem in Tamil Nadu to the Salem police department at Oregon in the US, setting off an interesting exchange of tweets.

Arunanand T A, hailing from Kochi in Kerala, was tweeting about high fares charged by autorickshaws in Yeracaud in Tamil Nadu, unaware that the Salem police in the state did not have a Twitter handle.

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The complaint was followed by a series of tweets from either side of the globe that also revealed that a city by name Madras (Chennais erstwhile name) was located in another part of Oregon state, whose capital is Salem.

In a series of tweets, Arunanand complained about Rs 50 being charged by an autorickshaw driver for a 1.5-km ride on his recent visit to Yercaud hill station, near Salem, about 330 km from Chennai.

"@SalemPoliceDept are you aware that the autorickshaws overcharge tourists in #Yercaud? Rs 50 for 1.5 km. Is there a system that looks into such issues here? @CMO TamilNadu @VisitYercaud," he tweeted.

He also wanted a response from the Salem city police.

However, he unknowingly tagged the official twitter handle of Salem Police Department at Oregon in the US.

The Salem police promptly responded to his tweet, saying "We are the Salem Police in Salem, Oregon, USA."

Responding, Arunanand admitted his mistake, saying he unknowingly tagged them.

"I knew US had a Salem whilst Tamil Nadu State in India also has one. Never thought I would wrongly tag you folks. Thanks for the reply, nevertheless! Good Day," he tweeted.

But curiosity got the better of him and he dashed off another tweet asking them whether there was a city named Madras in Oregon.

"Do you guys have a Madras too in Oregon? Thats the name of the capital of Tamil Nadu State!," he tweeted.

"Yes, we do. Its in another part of the State. However, and not too close to #SalemOR," Salem Police replied.

Madras was renamed Chennai in 1996.

Before concluding, the Salem police department said, "We know @twitter account has been beneficial to our community for engagement and understanding. Best regards from our community to yours." PTI VIJ BN TVS SMN

--- ENDS ---
From left: Colin Stretch, general counsel of Facebook; Sean Edgett, acting general counsel of Twitter; and Kent Walker, senior vice-president and general counsel of Google, testify at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on November 1. Credit:New York Times Senate and House staff members, who knew of DiResta's expertise through her public reports and her previous work advising the Obama administration on disinformation campaigns, had reached out to her and others to help them prepare for the hearings. Rachel Cohen, a spokeswoman for Democrat Virginia senator Mark Warner, said in a statement that researchers like DiResta had shown real insight into the platforms, "in many cases, despite efforts by some of the platforms to undermine their research". Warner is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. A 'like' sign near the entrance to offices for Facebook in Menlo Park, California. Credit:New York Times One crucial line of the questioning  on how much influence Russian-bought advertisements and content had on users  was the result of work by DiResta and others with a Facebook-owned tool. "Facebook has the tools to monitor how far this content is spreading," DiResta said. "The numbers they were originally providing were trying to minimise it."

Indeed, at the congressional hearings, the tech companies admitted that the problem was far larger than they had originally said. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said it was a "crazy idea" that misinformation on Facebook influenced the election. Say what?: The Kremlin has denied any role in the spread of fake news through US social media, or the use of online advertising to influence the 2016 US presidential election. Credit:AP But the company acknowledged to Congress that more than 150 million users of its main site and a subsidiary, Instagram, potentially saw inflammatory political ads bought by a Kremlin-linked company, the Internet Research Agency. DiResta contended that is still just the tip of the iceberg. Minimising the scope of the problem was "a naive form of damage control", she said. "This isn't about punishing Facebook or Twitter. This is us saying, this is important and we can do better." Fabricated anti-immigrant narratives have been pushed on social media in the US and Germany, with rape a particular theme in the latter country. Credit:AP

In response, Facebook said it had begun organising academic discussions on disinformation. "We regularly engage with dozens of sociologists, political scientists, data scientists and communications scholars, and we both read and incorporate their findings into our work," said Jay Nancarrow, a Facebook spokesman. "We value the work of researchers, and we are going to continue to work with them closely." Tim Wu, professor at Columbia Law School and author of The Attention Merchants: 'As a nonprofit or public benefit corporation, Facebook could be a much better institution.' Credit:New York Times A graduate of Stony Brook University in New York, DiResta wrote her college thesis on propaganda in the 2004 Russian elections. She then spent seven years on Wall Street as a trader, watching the slow introduction of automation into the market. She recalled the initial fear of over-reliance on algorithms, as there were "bad actors who could come in and manipulate the system into making bad trades". "I look at that now and I see a lot of parallels to today, especially for the need for nuance in technological transformations," DiResta said. "Just like technology is never leaving Wall Street, social media companies are not leaving our society."

DiResta moved to San Francisco in 2011 for a job with the O'Reilly Alpha Tech Venture Capital firm. But it was not until the birth of her first child, a few years later, that DiResta started to examine the dark side of social media. "When my son was born, I began looking into vaccines. I found myself wondering about the clustering effects where the anti-vaccine movement was concentrated," DiResta recalled. "I was thinking, 'What on Earth is going on here? Why is this movement gaining so much momentum here?'" She started tracking posts made by anti-vaccine accounts on Facebook and mapping the data. What she discovered, she said, was that Facebook's platform was tailor-made for a small group of vocal people to amplify their voices, especially if their views veered toward the conspiratorial. "It was this great case study in peer-to-peer misinformation," DiResta said. Through one account she created to monitor anti-vaccine groups on Facebook, she quickly realised she was being pushed toward other anti-vaccine accounts, creating an echo chamber in which it appeared that viewpoints like "vaccines cause autism" were the majority. Soon, her Facebook account began promoting content to her on a range of other conspiratorial ideas, ranging from people who claim the Earth is flat to those who believe that "chem trails", or trails left in the sky by planes, were spraying chemical agents on an unsuspecting public.

"So by Facebook suggesting all these accounts, they were essentially creating this vortex in which conspiratorial ideas can just breed and multiply," DiResta said. Her published findings on the anti-vaccine movement brought her to the attention of the Obama administration, which reached out to her in 2015, when officials were examining radical Islamist groups' use of online disinformation campaigns. She recalled a meeting with various tech companies at the White House in February 2016 where chief executives, policy leaders and administration officials were told that US-made social media platforms were key to the dissemination of propaganda by Islamic State. It was during that time that she first met Jonathan Morgan, a fellow social media disinformation researcher who had published papers on how the IS spreads its propaganda online. "We kept saying this was not a one-off. This was a toolbox anyone can use," DiResta said. "We told the tech companies that they had created a mass way to reach Americans."
PHILIPSBURG:--- The management team of the KPSM is extending sincere words of gratitude to the community for their continued support and mainly during this very difficult time after the passing of hurricane Irma. The police force has been doing and will continue to do its utmost to give the best service possible and provide safety and security to the community of Sint Maarten and its visitors which has always been priority.

The police force will continue to inform the community via regular press releases and via our Facebook page. We invite the community to visit and follow us on our Facebook page. We thank all those persons in the community who have shared information with us, as a personal message and encourage them to continue to do so. Sharing information with the police department has been very instrumental in solving many criminal cases and resolving other problems within the community. The Police Facebook page is visited by many persons on a daily basis and our followers have soared above 5000. KPSM will continue to reach out to the community for help in the battle against crime and other illegal activities. The police cannot solve crime alone and are looking forward to the support from the community to assist. The community and police department working together can create a true feeling of safety and security for everyone on Sint Maarten.

Suspect in the SZV investigation turns himself in.

PHILIPSBURG:--- The suspect O.A. in the ongoing SZV ill-treatment investigation turned himself in at the Police Headquarters in Philipsburg on Friday, November 24th. He was accompanied by his lawyer and two local journalists. The suspect was immediately arrested and taken into custody where he will remain for questioning and further investigation. The suspect has been cooperating totally with the investigation. As part of the investigation, a copy of the security surveillance video from SZV was handed to detectives handling the case on which it is clear to see what exactly transpired during this incident at the SZV office on Thursday, November 23rd. More details regarding this investigation are not available at this time. As more details become available the media will informed.

KPSM Police Report
SIMPSON BAY:--- Customer Service Mobile Academy (CSMA) the founder of The First Annual St. Maarten Customer Service Week kicks off the event, on Monday, November 27, 2017 at the Holland House. CSMA is an affiliate company of Training Professionals International Firm, (TPI). The Holland House illustrated their commitment to the week by ensuring that all staff attend a full day training on opening day, that will introduce them to international hospitality practices and foster a renewed Service Excellence Culture within the Holland House.

The week will offer, professionals from diverse organizations an opportunity to earn accredited certificates in over 20 courses. The courses offered are: Go Above & Beyond, Future Succession Leaders, Supervisory Leadership, Attitudes for Service, Manage Customer Expectations, Overcome Obstacles, Managing Emotions Under Pressure and much more. Participants will receive instruction by certified leaders in various industries that will expose them to best practices, accredited curriculum and current trends in both the business and hospitality sectors.

Dr. Gittens, President and CEO of both TPI & CSMA stated: We have proven our commitment to the people of the Caribbean by raising the bar on how organizations should provide trainings and advocating that they must be accredited. We have made a stand that if trainings are NOT accredited, our people must not enroll. We have stressed the same sentiments to the business community. Do not hire companies or person(s) that are unable to validate their personal certifications as valid instructors or that their courses are globally accredited. Pursuing these options is a waste of time, money and the entities or person(s) has no credibility in the training field. We remain determined to enrich the Caribbean to become more competitive in the ever-changing Hospitality, Business and Service industry, placing St. Maarten as a priority.

Courses open to the public start on Tuesday, November 28, 2017. Walk-ins welcome. Please visit Academycsma.com for pricing or call 526.2052.

CSMA Press Release
~ Michael Ferrier next possible candidate Minister ~

PHILIPSBURG:--- The UP/DP/ Brownbill coalition recently pulled back George Willems as the candidate Minister for the interim position as Minister of Finance. SMN News has been reliably informed that the order to pull back Willems name came from Leader of the Democratic Party Sarah Wescot Williams and the proposed name given for screening is longtime member and former President of the Democratic Party Board Michael Ferrier. SMN News could not confirm whether or not Ferrier accepted the proposal to sit as the interim Minister of Finance since he had resigned from the Democratic Party.
"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistan's global reputation," the White House said.

By India Today Web Desk: On Saturday, the White House said there would be repercussions for U.S.-Pakistan relations unless Islamabad took action to detain and charge a freed Islamist militant accused of masterminding a 2008 assault in Mumbai, India.

"(Hafiz) Saeed's release, after Pakistan's failure to prosecute or charge him, sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistan's commitment to (combating) international terrorism and belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil," the White House said in a statement.

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"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistan's global reputation," it added.

Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, walked free on Friday after his house arrest ended without any charges. While the world reacted harshly, Saeed celebrated his release with sweets and cake cutting in Pakistan.

The JuD head, who carries a bounty of USD 10 million for his role in terror activities, was set free after the Pakistan government decided against detaining him further in any case. He has been under detention since January this year.

The Judicial Review Board of Punjab province - comprising judges of the Lahore High Court - unanimously ordered Saeed's release yesterday, on the completion of his 30-day house arrest, which expired last night.

WILL HELP KASHMIRIS GET FREEDOM, SAYS SAEED

"I was detained for 10 months only to stop my voice for Kashmir," Saeed told supporters who gathered outside his residence to celebrate his release.

"I fight the case of Kashmiris. I will gather the people from across the country for the cause of Kashmir. And we will try to help Kashmiris get their destination of freedom."

Saeed said he was detained when he announced a month of solidarity for Kashmiris this January. He used the release order to buttress his claims of "innocence".

"I am very happy that none of the allegations against me proved as three judges of the LHC ordered my release...India had levelled baseless allegations against me. The LHCs review board decision has proved that I am innocent," Saeed said.

"I was detained due to pressure from India. India pressurized Pakistan through the United States. The main reason for that was because I was carrying the case of Kashmir," he said.

"India has always tried to do propaganda against me. But we will and have to fight for the freedom of Kashmir. We will do everything to free Kashmiris from Indian occupation."

ROLE IN MUMBAI ATTACKS

The JuD is believed to be the front organisation for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) which is responsible for carrying out the Mumbai attack.

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Saeed was put under house arrest after the Mumbai terror attack in November 2008 but he was freed by court in 2009.

India has repeatedly asked Pakistan to re-investigate the Mumbai terror attack case and also demanded trial of Hafiz Saeed and LeT operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi in the light of evidence it had provided to Islamabad.

(With agency inputs)

--- ENDS ---
We asked columnist Sophie Donelson, editor in chief of House Beautiful magazine, to give us her view on the heart of the home.

Q: It seems everyone wants to be in the kitchen, especially when family and guests come over. Are kitchens still the most important room in the house and, if so, why?

Sophie Donelson: Its all about the kitchen  now more than ever. Kitchens have always been considered the heart of the home and the hearth mentality still prevails. In the last two decades weve seen the rise of in-kitchen dining  an island with stools is now a de rigueur elements of renovations  homework stations and kitchen command centers and even built-in accommodations for pets. With the continued desire for great rooms and open floor plans, the boundary between kitchen, dining and living space is stretched and the kitchen is often visible from many parts of the home, making it imperative to design an attractive and congruous space.

Q: When did the peninsula give way to the kitchen island and are islands still in demand?

SD: Kitchen design has been a focal point of our coverage at the magazine for many, many years (we are 121 years old after all). When I peruse the archives of designer kitchens, I can pinpoint the early 1970s as the moment the peninsula waned and the island emerged, but it took another decade or two to fully catch up. I asked our resident kitchens expert, House Beautiful senior market editor Carisha Swanson, about the changing role of the island. At first, they were just another work station or area for less formal dining, she says, but now islands have as many appliances as the perimeter. Theyre a great place for under-counter fridges and second dishwashers. Many have a prep sink, which helps for meal-making, but rarely a cooktop since that requires overhead ventilation, which can become a bulky eye sore.

Q: If a kitchen cant accommodate an island, whats a good alternative?

SD: If youre renovating and rethinking your kitchen, dont get hung up on island  think instead about how best to arrange your space to suit your daily needs. Unless youre a chef or cooking for weekly bake sales, you probably dont need a built-in double oven. A great 48-inch range with two ovens will do that same job, freeing up cabinet space for much-needed storage.

Q: Stainless steel appliances never seem to lose their appeal. Is that still the case or is there a cool alternative youre seeing?

SD: Yes, stainless steel is still in high demand, but in the last two years, black stainless steel has emerged as an alternative. Depending on the company, this finish can range from jet black to a more mellow graphite. Interestingly, the black can be a less harsh alternative to the shiny silvery finish of traditional stainless steel, and its a pleasing partner for different cabinet and countertop colors.

Q: Are smart refrigerators and other smart appliances becoming more affordable and more used?

SD: Connected or smart appliances are on the ascent and coming down in price point. Were excited about the advancement of an in-fridge camera, eliminating that constant uncertainty of if you have enough eggs for a recipe. In the future, the idea is that youd be able to ask your refrigerator  or your voice-activated home  What can I make in under 20 minutes? and its reply would reflect whats in your cabinets, pantry and fridge. I asked Carisha what she personally uses and the iGrill meat thermometer, which communicates to an app on her mobile device, is her current favorite. Im no longer jumping up to check the oven again and again. I can actually enjoy a glass of wine and know that the meat will get done. A small but worthwhile victory.

Q: How have kitchen fixtures, like faucets and lighting, changed?

SD: Kitchen faucets, particularly sprayers, have become more sophisticated. Kohler even offers a gentle berry spray that wont harm produce and a more forceful setting ideal for cleaning the sink. Theres also never been a better time to find kitchen lighting. Stylish, over-scale pendants, including styles youd traditionally see illuminating center halls, are now consistently chosen for hanging over an island. Youre likely to see three to five different types of lighting in a kitchen now, from task lamps to under-counter lights, and the newest trend for a homey feeling: a table lamp.
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STAMFORD  Mayor David Martin wants to hear reports of apparent illegal apartments, commercial trucks illegally parked in neighborhoods, blighted properties and other zoning complaints.

But almost no one is calling him.

Martin posted his phone number on the citys website about three months ago.

We are getting very few complaints, said Martin, who won re-election this month and will be sworn in for a second term on Friday.

Martin said he wants the calls to go to his office rather than the zoning department so he can get a handle on the scope of the problem. During the election campaigns, neighborhood groups reported repeatedly that the city fails to enforce zoning regulations, allowing housing, traffic and parking congestion to degrade the quality of life in Stamford.

Martin has questioned whether the problems are as widespread as some claim, but acknowledged that zoning complaints are difficult to track because they come through multiple departments.

So he asked his staff to post a note on the citys web page under Bulletins. The note, which rotates on the screen with bulletins about leaf pickup, flu-prevention clinics and other topics, appears in a gray box. Do you have a zoning complaint? Do you want to report a blighted property? it asks, instructing residents to call 203-977-5017 or email ZoningandBlightQuestions@stamfordct.gov.

Martin has said that not all complaints turn out to be valid, and the zoning enforcement officer has said that more than 80 percent are resolved. But residents say that, too often, they get no response.

So the mayor asked his staff to route calls to his office.

I want to hear whats going on, but if no one reports it, we cant do anything about it, he said.

Martin needs a better way to make his effort known, said Paul Longo, a neighborhood activist from High Ridge.

This is not going to get the message out to the public, Longo said. I dont think very many people visit www.stamfordct.gov, and you probably wouldnt see that bulletin if you didnt know to look for it. You have to watch and wait for it to pop up. This has to be publicized beyond a fleeting bulletin on the citys website. And Id love to know what happens when someone emails that address.

Martin has said the complaints are coming from a few loud voices, and some are motivated by a nostalgia for a Stamford that is long gone.

Neither of those is true, Longo said.

Everybody talks to everybody about this, said Longo, a retired police officer. Too many residential streets have cars parked on both sides so you can barely pass. People are renting out rooms, legal or illegal, to try to make ends meet, because everything costs so much. Then you hear about whos moving to North Carolina, whos moving to Virginia, because costs in Stamford are out of control.

The longstanding problem of illegal apartments in Stamford, where housing costs are among the highest in the nation, is complex  and getting more so, he said.

Some people would definitely report illegal apartments, if they knew how, said Longo, who began leading an effort against overdevelopment in his neighborhood six years ago. But some might not.

He counts himself among that group, said Longo, who is aware of several illegal apartments on his street. They are an open secret in Stamford, he said.

I know the owners, and Im certainly not going to destroy a neighbor relationship with them over that, he said. A lot of people feel the same way. They dont like illegal housing, but the price theyd pay to report it is so high.

He has lived on his street for many years and it has always had illegal apartments, Longo said. But there are more since the Great Recession of 2008.

Several of my neighbors almost lost their homes. You take tenants in because you cant pay your mortgage if you dont, he said. Many people still havent recovered from the recession.

Deborah Billington, of the Cove, made her first run for the Board of Representatives this year on a platform of maintaining the integrity of neighborhoods. Billington, a Republican, did not win her race on Nov. 7, but said she will work with the Cove Neighborhood Association on the same goal.

I didnt know we can call the mayors office with zoning problems, and probably a lot of people dont know, because not many go to the citys website, Billington said. What good is the message if it is not getting to the public?

After spending three years working on a still-unresolved blight case in her neighborhood, Billington said she has another question.

What good is reporting a blight situation if there is only one blight-enforcement officer? she asked. People think, Well, I reported it, and now the city will take care of it. Then months go by, maybe years, and nothing happens, so people say the system just doesnt work.

Billington said she thinks more residents will report possible illegal housing if they are assured their names will be confidential.

Some people may be concerned that if their name is divulged they will suffer some type of retaliation, or maybe they are reluctant because they know the person, she said. But some of the people who rent illegal apartments dont live in Stamford; theyre just collecting a lot of rent here.

The problem must be addressed, and city representatives are best-equipped to do it, Billington said.

If the members of the Board of Representatives hold workshops and educate people about whats legal, whats illegal, and they find one or two cases from each of the 20 districts, they can bring those cases to the city to investigate, she said. It just takes a couple of people to be fined and shut down for word to get out that you cant do this.

Longo said illegal apartments are an old problem that will be difficult to resolve, but its time.

Ive been living with it for years and years. But cars cant fit in the driveways any more, and theyre parked on both sides of the street, which is down to one lane, he said. So its getting worse.

acarella@stamfordadvocate.com.
By PTI: By K J M Varma

Beijing, Nov 25 (PTI) Two people, including a teacher, were detained in Beijing amid a nationwide uproar in China over child abuse allegations in kindergarten schools in several cities.

Two suspects in a recent child abuse case in Beijings RYB school were detained by local police, state-run Peoples Daily reported today.

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The teacher surnamed Liu was under criminal detainment for alleged child abuse. A woman also surnamed Liu was held for fabricating misleading information.

She expressed deep regret about her illegal acts, the report said.

Yesterday Chinas central Cabinet called for nationwide inspections of kindergartens following allegations of child abuse at a Beijing private kindergarten that sparked public outrage.

Kindergartens in several cities have reported child abuse. Such incidents show that some kindergartens have failed to implement measures and were poorly managed, a notice issued by the education committee of the cabinet called State Council said, state-run Global Times reported.

The media has reported alleged child abuse cases at other kindergartens as well. A teacher at a kindergarten in Zhenjiang, in east Chinas Jiangsu Province reportedly punched the heads and pulled ears of children. The local education bureau said the teacher who allegedly committed the acts has been suspended.

New World kindergarten is run by RYB Education in Chaoyang district where children were allegedly sexually molested, pierced by needles and given unspecified drugs, the report said.

A senior Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) official has denied that the kindergarten has any links with the Chinese military.

The kindergarten was not operated by the army or relatives of soldiers, and soldiers were not involved in the alleged molestation of children, Feng Junfeng, political commissar of a regiment of the PLA Army, told the PLA Daily.

Feng said the kindergartens head was a relative of a veteran of the regiment.

Audio and video recordings, in which children claimed they were forced to take pills to sleep and given physical examinations by some "uncle and grandpa doctors," with one allegedly being naked, went viral on Thursday, sparking public outrage.

Some netizens claimed that the kindergarten was allegedly run by Fengs regiment, and even soldiers from the regiment had allegedly molested children.

RYB Education responded yesterday, saying the company has provided documents and surveillance footage to police, and that the teachers allegedly involved have been suspended.

The company also told police it has been falsely accused and framed by some people.

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Founded in 1998, RYB Education is based in Beijing and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It has more than 1,300 day-care centres and nearly 500 kindergartens in 300 cities in China. PTI KJV KUN

--- ENDS ---
On Nov. 13 the Nebraska Department of Education recognized 139 outstanding students from across the state at a special recognition event for individual and team awards received at national events throughout the year.

The Commissioners Recognition is a collaborative effort between the Governors office and the Nebraska Department of Education, including the Center for Student Leadership and Expanded Learning, that provides support for all high school students engaged in Nebraska Career and Technical Education.

More than 250 students, parents, teachers, administrators, State Board of Education members and senators attended the event. Deputy Commissioner of Education Deb Frison and Lt. Governor Mike Foley recognized the Nebraska Career Education students who received first, second, or third place or finalist awards during their national leadership and skills competitions held by their respective Career and Technical Student Organizations.

The students recognized during the Commissioners Recognition are members of DECA, Educators Rising, FBLA, FCCLA, FFA, HOSA: Future Health Professionals, PBL and SkillsUSA. They represent schools from every corner of the state.

Educators Rising is an international student organization dedicated to supporting young people interested in education-related careers.

FBLA Award Winners:

Corbin Johnson, Chadron High School; Keegan Shuck, Chadron High School.

FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) provides innovative leadership and career development programs for students.

FCCLA Award Winners:

Taylee Neefe, Hemingford Public School; Mia Kegley, Kearney High School.

HOSA (Health Occupations Students of America) is an instructional program that prepares students for health care careers.

Phi Beta Lambda Award Winners:

Emily Karr, McCook Community College; Rebecca Lorens, McCook Community College; Jessica Premer, McCook Community College; Kandace Ward, North Platte Community College; Dawson Brunswick, Chadron State College; Stephanie Alfred, Chadron State College; Drew Kasch, Chadron State College; Molly OConnell, Chadron State College; Troy Fields, Chadron State College; Abi Sheen, University of Nebraska at Kearney;

Phi Beta Lambda is the collegiate division of the FBLA-PBL association, which prepares members for careers in business or business-related occupations.

SkillsUSA Award Winners:

Clayton Pavelka, Hastings High School; Garrett Beard, Hastings Senior High School; Abby King, North Platte High School; Korissa Runyan, North Platte High School; Hallie Malsbury, North Platte High School; Josline Garcia, North Platte High School; Kelsey Epp, North Platte High School; Rebecca Ady, North Platte High School; Breanna Patterson, North Platte High School.

SkillsUSA is a national organization serving high school and college students who are enrolled in training programs in technical, skilled and service occupations, including health occupations and tech prep.
TORRINGTON, Wyo.  The Eastern Wyoming College Veterinary Technology Club will have its final dog wash for the fall semester on Saturday, Dec. 2, from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Veterinary Technology building, located at 3200 W. C St. in Torrington. Walk-ins will be accepted until 10:30 a.m. A current rabies certificate is required to participate; rabies tags cannot be accepted.

Pricing for the dog wash is as follows:

Bath:

Small dog (0-20 pounds) $8

Medium dog (20.1-50 pounds) $10

Large dog (50.1-90 pounds) $12

Extra-large dog (90.1 and above) $14

Added charge for long hair: (Require additional grooming and drying time)

Small  $3, medium  $5, large  $7, extra-large  $9

Other services:

Nail trim: $5

Please be aware that the Veterinary Technology Club students do not groom past minor brushing. The students will not be doing any shaving. If the students cannot brush out the mats, they will be left.

Contact Elizabeth Wright for an appointment, email (preferred) wrighte3960@ewcmail.wy.edu or call 509-262-4517.
Scottsbluff Police Department

Oct. 16

Officers investigated the report of theft of lawn tools and other tools from a residence in the 1700 block of Avenue B.

Greg Guerra Jr., of Scottsbluff, was cited on a charge of driving under suspension.

Oct. 17

Fernando Camacho, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on a Scotts Bluff County warrant.

Tessa Mata, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on a Scotts Bluff County warrant. Deyanira Marrufo and Yovanka Cardoza were arrested on charges of possession of methamphetamine, marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

David Retzor, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on First Avenue on a charge of driving under suspension.

A juvenile male was cited on charges of criminal mischief, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

Officers investigated a report of a counterfeit bill being passed at a Scottsbluff business.

In the 1400 block of East 17th Street Alexis Gonzalez, of Scottsbluff, was cited on a charge of destruction of property.

Oct. 18

In the 800 block of West 42nd Street, Kelsie Lamb, of Walnut Springs, Texas, was arrested on a warrant from an outside jurisdiction.

Officers investigated a report of theft in the 1400 block of East 17th Street. A suspect was identified but an arrest had not been made.

Officers investigated a report of a burglary in the 2000 block of Avenue B.

Oct. 19

Alexis Gonzales, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on a charge of trespassing in the 1400 block of East 17th Street.

In the 1400 block of East Overland, Adrian Solis, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on charges of third-degree domestic assault, resisting arrest and obstructing a police officer.

On Avenue I, Hugo Sanchez, of Scottsbluff, was cited on a charge of driving under suspension and speeding.

Oct. 20

Officers investigated a report of theft by fraud.

Officers investigated a child abuse intake.

Officers investigated a report of credit card fraud.

Albert Maldonado, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on three Scotts Bluff County warrants.

Officers investigated a report of violation of a protection order.

Officers investigated a report of vandalism to a vehicle at East 15th Street and 19th Avenue.

Officers investigated a report of theft in the 100 block of LeeAnn Lane.

Two juvenile females were cited on charges of fighting by mutual consent after police were notified by school staff.

Officers investigated a report of sexual solicitation. The report was made by school officials. A juvenile suspect was identified, but no arrest or charges are noted in the media report.

Oct. 21

Officers investigate a report of a counterfeit bill passed at a Scottsbluff business.

Ruben Guerrero was arrested on a Scotts Bluff County warrant.

Michael ODonahue, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on a charge of violation of a protection order.

Jason Lefthand, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on a Scotts Bluff County warrant.

Louis Pina, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on a warrant from an outside jurisdiction.

At the Watering Hole, Charlotte Flaming, of Scottsbluff, was cited on a charge of theft by shoplifting and issuing an insufficient funds check.

Sylvester Montgomery, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on a Scotts Bluff County warrant in the 1400 block of East 17th Street.

Oct. 22

Scottsbluff Police investigated a report of theft from an apartment in the 1400 block of Third Avenue.

Anthony Nguyen, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on a charge of domestic assault.

Bradley Blaylock of Scottsbluff, was cited on a charge of driving under suspension and arrested on a Scotts Bluff County warrant.

Police investigated a report of a theft from a motor vehicle in the 1200 block of Avenue Q.

Oct. 23

Rachel Lerma, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on a Scotts Bluff County warrant and on charges of possession of a controlled substance.

Scottsbluff Police investigated a child abuse intake alleging narcotic use in the home.

Police investigated a report of equipment stolen from Murdochs.

Scottsbluff Police investigated a report of shoplifting from 5th and East O.

Oct. 24

Jesus Cruz, 22, of Gering, was cited on a charge of driving under suspension.

In the 1300 block of East Overland, Brent Abell, 31, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on a charge of domestic assault and on other charges in a separate incident.

Scottsbluff Police investigated a report of tools stolen from ABC Seamless Siding, 2000 block of 21st Avenue.

Scottsbluff Police cited Matthew Castillo, 29, of Scottsbluff, on a charge of driving under suspension.

Oct. 25

At Walmart, officers arrested Ruben Gomez, 22, of Scottsbluff, on charges of theft by shoplifting, theft from a motor vehicle, obstructing a police officer and disorderly conduct.

Officers investigated a child abuse intake.

Oct. 27

Officers investigated a report involving an individual making threatening statements. No arrests were noted in the media report.

Brandon Phillips, 36, of Gering, was arrested on charges of driving under the influence and possession of an open container at Avenue I and South Beltline West.

Quentin Bierry, 18, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on charges of speeding, learners permit violation, driving under the influence, possession of an open container, minor in possession and driving under the influence with a child passenger.

Oct. 27

At Murdochs Paige Lohman, 27, of Sidney, and Jeremy Lohman, 33, of Sidney, were arrested on charges of theft by shoplifting.

At Regional West Medical Center, authorities investigated a child abuse report.

Oct. 28

Officers investigated a report that a juvenile female had been shot several times with a BB gun and had been targeted because of race. Two juvenile males, ages 14, were cited on charges of second-degree assault, use of a firearm to commit a felony and aiding and abetting.

Germinia Solias, 30, of Scottsbluff, was cited on a charge of driving under suspension.

At the Watering Hole, 100 block of West 27th Street, police investigated a report of theft by shoplifting. Alcohol was reported stolen.

Officers investigated a report of vandalism in the 2300 block of W. 19th Street.

In the 1800 block of First Avenue, April Strom, 36, of Scottsbluff, was cited on a charge of third-degree assault.

Oct. 29

In the 00 block of Jerry Drive, Alfredo Arreola, 27, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on a charge of domestic assault.

Oct. 30

In the 600 block of East 27th Street, Taure Lame, 21, of Scottsbluff, was arrested on charges of possession of controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
On Nov. 20, Lexis Chrisman served a free turkey dinner to every one who came to her Welcome Home Cafe in Mitchell from 4-7 p.m. She was swamped by the response and ran out of food by 6:45. All the staff donated their time for a good cause. The free-will donation meal raised more than $300 in support of Skippers Cupboard, the areas animal food pantry.
Recently there has been a lot of discussion in the newspapers and around the State of Nebraska regarding the Republican River Compact. The NCORPE water augmentation project guarantees that river flow obligations are met in the Republican and Platte Rivers. NCORPE is solely funded by an occupation tax on irrigated acres; no property tax dollars are used. It is the largest project to date funded by the occupation tax, which the legislature gave NRDs the authority to levy to enhance river flows.

When the idea of NCORPE was initially presented to the taxpayers and school districts of Lincoln County, the citizens were assured that property taxes would continue to be paid. Fast forward to the Spring of 2017, when NCORPE filed valuation protests on 44 parcels of land. The County Assessor and Lincoln County Board of Equalization recognize the NCORPE project is to pump water back down to Kansas to fulfill the water obligation Nebraska has with Kansas making the water a public purpose, which is why in 2014 they removed the irrigation off the property. However, Lincoln County feels that the land is not serving a public purpose and consequently NCOPRE was asked to pay tax on the land at the Grassland rate for 2017. NCORPE had defended their stance not to pay the property taxes at all because they are a government entity.

NCORPEs purchase of 19,000 acres of Lincoln County Farmland and subsequent cessation of agriculture commodity production on that land has had a significant impact on the Lincoln County economy. The lost sale of agriculture production from the withdrawal of the 19,000 acres from farm commodity production is estimated at $7.6 million for 2017. The annual economic impact for Lincoln County during the years 2014-2016 in 2017 dollars estimates a decline in overall economic activity of $35.7 million, a cut in wages and salaries of $3.2 million and a decrease in self-employment income of $6.4 million. Between 2014 and 2021, the county economy is projected to: suffer a loss of $270.7 thousand in local option sales tax collections; sustain a reduction of $270.3 thousand in other local taxes and fees; and experience a fall of $5.6 million of property tax collections.

The losses by school district in Lincoln County between 2014 and 2021 are projected to be: Hershey District, $266,096; Maywood District, $486,339; North Platte District, $322,850; Wallace District, $2,280,681. County Assessor Julie Stenger was called to answer the question of whether Lincoln County taxing entities would be required to reimburse NCORPE for 2014-2015 property taxes. Stenger said NCORPE has paid its 2014-15 taxes, so it would be up to the taxing entities of Lincoln County to reimburse those funds to NCORPE.

Lincoln County has paid more than their fair share of this project. The logical answer for Lincoln County is for NCORPE to return the surface interest back to private ownership and allow the land to be returned to agricultural production.
Clashes broke out in Islamabad as security forces launched a crackdown on protesters belonging to hardline religious groups who were blocking a key highway to the capital.

Supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, an Islamist political party, place hurdles and block the main road leading to airport in Karachi, Pakistan. (Photo: Reuters)

By PTI, India Today Web Desk: The Pakistan Army has been called in to take control of Islamabad after the situation worsened in the violence-torn nation. Clashes broke out in Islamabad today as security forces launched a crackdown on protesters belonging to hardline religious groups who were blocking a key highway to the capital.

At least one policeman died and 200 others sustained injuries, triggering violent demonstrations in other cities.

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The government ordered suspension of private TV channels and blocked popular social media sites as police and paramilitary personnel fought pitched battles with the activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLY) and Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) who torched vehicles and attacked the houses of political leaders.

There are reports that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube are blocked in Pakistan. Are they blocked for you? Reply and let us know. Mention your city + blocked social media site/app.- Dawn.com (@dawn_com) November 25, 2017

However, the protesters regrouped again and continued their siege of the capital that started about three weeks ago, demanding sacking of Law Minister Zahid Hamid for changes in a law related to the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat (finality of prophethood) oath in the Elections Act 2017.

They alleged the action undermined Islamic beliefs and linked it to blasphemy. The government already amended the law and restored the original oath but the hardline clerics refused to go away until the minister was sacked.

The siege played havoc with the more than half million commuters who daily travel between Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

The government was reluctant to use force, but launched operation after Islamabad High Court (IHC) yesterday issued contempt of court notice against interior minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads.

Islamabad city magistrate yesterday issued a warning to protesters to disperse by midnight or face consequences.

More than 8,000 personnel of police and paramilitary Rangers and Frontier Constablary launched the crackdown to clear Faizabad interchange linking Islamabad with garrison city of Rawalpindi and the only international airport of the capital.

In the morning hours, it looked that the police would clear the roads but the protesters regrouped by mid-day to re-occupy the interchange bridge, forcing the authorities to suspend the operation temporarily.

They also pelted stones on the security personnel who used batons and teargas shells to disperse them.

According to health officials, more than 200 people, including at least 95 security personnel, were injured in the clashes and shifted to various hospital of the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

At least one policeman reportedly died due head injury, but the government has so far not confirmed the death.

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Private media reported that two protesters also died in the clashes, but it could not be independently confirmed.

TV footage showed police firing teargas shells and security personnel in riot gears charging at the protesters dozens of whom were arrested and shifted to various police stations.

Protesters also burnt some vehicles and thrashed several policemen and other security personnel.

Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) ordered media houses to stop live coverage and temporarily suspended several channels, including Geo TV, for failing to follow the directive.

Pakistan blocked popular social media site including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stop protesters from uploading their messages.

Violent protests were also reported from several other cities including Karachi and Lahore.

In the commercial hub of Karachi, at least 28 people were injured, according to local police.

Protesters attacked the house of federal law minister Zahid Hamid in Pasroor area of Sialkot district of Punjab but no one was injured as the minister and his family were not present inside.

The rioters also attacked the house of former interior minister Nisar Ali Khan in Faizabad area of Rawalpindi.

They damaged the gate of his house and tried to enter the premises, but were prevented by police.

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Mian Javed Latif, a lawmaker of ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, was thrashed by protesters in Sheikhupura area of Punjab and was being treated for injuries in the local hospital.

In the midst of challenging law and order situation, interior minister Ahsan Iqbal alleged involvement of Indian hand in the mischief and said protesters "contacted India" and the government was probing it.

"Why they did it (contacted India), we are looking into it. They (protesters) have inside information and resources that are being used against the state," he said.

Iqbal said government was implementing courts orders to disperse the protesters.

"We are trying to clear the area with minimum violence, but we also need to ensure the fundamental rights of people of twin cities," he said.

A military spokesman said that army chief General Qamar Caved Bajwa talked to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on telephone and urged for peaceful solution to the problem.

"COAS [chief of army staff] telephoned PM. Suggested to handle Islamabad Dharna (sit-in) peacefully avoiding violence from both sides as it is not in national interest and cohesion," said spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor.

Earlier, the IHC last Friday gave a 24-hour deadline to the government to clear the roads which was later extended till Thursday.

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However, the court yesterday expressed strong displeasure at government for failing to take action against protesters.

-With agency inputs

--- ENDS ---
Most voters in North Carolina and the rest of America cast ballots reliably for either Democratic or Republican politicians  even if the voters themselves dont belong to a party. Thats pretty much the definition of political polarization, and a well-established fact of current voter behavior.
Tourism is a major revenue generator in North Carolina, creating more than 200,000 jobs and contributing almost $23 billion to our economy. Our number one tourist attraction is Biltmore estate in Asheville, attracting more than 1 million visitors annually.
Zimbabwe's new president Emmerson Mnangagwa, widely known as the Crocodile, is seen as a smart, ruthless politician, but many question if he will be able to bring the change the country craves.

"We are witnessing the beginning of a new, unfolding democracy," the 75-year-old announced Wednesday upon his return to the country, two weeks after his firing by longtime mentor Robert Mugabe led to the president's downfall.

Despite the message of inclusion, Zimbabweans noted that Mnangagwa made his first public remarks outside ruling ZANU-PF party headquarters and, switching to the local Shona language, praised the party. They ask whether Mnangagwa will be adequately independent from ZANU-PF to revive the battered economy and restore democracy with the backing of the opposition and others.
By PTI: (Eds: Correcting word in para 7)

New Delhi, Nov 25 (PTI) Amid the Padmavati row, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said today that giving violent threats and announcing rewards for physical harm was not acceptable in a democracy.

Not directly referring to the controversy, but films and art in general, he warned against undermining the rule of law in the country.

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Naidu, at a literary festival here, said there is now a new problem over some films where people feel that they have hurt the sentiments of some religions or communities and that has led to protests.

He said while protesting, some people go overboard and announce rewards.

"Whether these fellows have that much money or not, I doubt. Everyone is announcing Rs one crore reward. Is it so easy to have Rs one crore?

"This is not acceptable in a democracy. You have the right to protest in a democratic manner, go to the appropriate authorities...you cannot physically obstruct and cant give violent threats. Let us not undermine the rule of law," he said.

Stressing that he was not talking about a particular film but in general, Naidu read out names of previously banned films like Garam Hawa, Kissa Kursi Ka and Aandhi.

His remarks, however, assume significance as they come amid protests by many groups against Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed Padmavati, alleging that the movie distorts history.

Historians are divided on whether Rani Padmavati even existed.

Some leaders and groups have also reportedly announced a bounty for beheading Bhansali and the female lead Deepika Padukone.

"You have no right to take laws into your own hands. At the same time, you dont have the right to hurt the sentiments of others", Naidu said.

The vice president also warned against selective condemnation and said it was wrong to link it to religion.

He said there was a difference between religion and culture. While religion was a way of worship, culture was a way of life, he said. PTI ASG AAR ASK AAR

--- ENDS ---
The 2degrees Best Growth Strategy award presented to Zespri at the 2017 Deloitte Top 200 Awards on Thursday night is welcomed recognition, says the kiwifruit marketer chief executive Dan Mathieson.

Zespri was recognised for its strong growth strategy, with the kiwifruit marketing company on track to more than double global sales to $4.5 billion by 2025.

This award is real testament to the great team we have at Zespri  passionate, dedicated people around the world who bring to life our global grower-to-consumer strategy day in and day out  and the long-term partnerships we have with our customers, says Dan.

Kiwifruit is big business in New Zealand but it only makes up 1.5 percent of the globally-traded fruitbowl so we see huge potential to grow the overall category.

How are we going to double sales in seven years?" He says, "Well continue to grow market demand for our products by building our premium Zespri brand and kiwifruit products to best meet the needs of our growing consumer base with a relentless commitment to quality, taste and safety.

The award is welcome recognition for the work done across the industry to grow a genuine global sales and marketing organisation and drive demand for Zespris premium kiwifruit, says Dan.

The kiwifruit industry invests around $35 million a year in innovation with more than half of this invested in Zespris joint new varieties breeding programme with Plant & Food Research, developing new products to attract new consumers and grow the overall category.

Ours is a collaborative industry and to hit this ambitious target, were working with growers, postharvest and our other supply chain partners to invest and build capability and capacity to achieve the significant opportunity that lies ahead of us, says Dan.

A recent report from the University of Waikato shows the NZ kiwifruit industry on track to create another 29,000 jobs and triple GDP contribution to over $6 billion by 2030, due largely to Zespris gold variety SunGold.

Doubling sales in the next seven years will mean over $3 billion returned to communities around New Zealand  our export returns were $1.6 billion to New Zealand last season and this will double by 2025. This is a vital contributor to communities in kiwifruit growing regions across New Zealand, says Dan.

Based in Mount Maunganui, Zespri is 100 percent owned by current or past kiwifruit growers, and employs approximately 450 people in New Zealand, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Zespri manages kiwifruit innovation and supply management, distribution management and marketing of Zespri Green, Zespri SunGold, Zespri Organic, Zespri Gold and Zespri Sweet Green Kiwifruit, on behalf of 2,500 growers in New Zealand and 1,200 growers based elsewhere.
Avocado growers who have surrounded their orchards with deer fencing and installed night vision security cameras will be smiling when the China avocado market opens up next year.

The Ministry of Primary Industries advises New Zealand is a significant step closer to supplying fresh avocados to Chinese consumers and opening up access to a brand new market for New Zealand growers.

A series of technical discussions and the negotiation and signing of a protocol to agree export requirements for avocados have successfully wrapped up between MPI and Chinas General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), with input from New Zealands avocado industry.

The next step before trade commences is an audit of New Zealands regulatory system for exporting avocados by AQSIQ in mid-December 2017.

"Securing export access for our avocados into China is New Zealands top horticulture priority," says MPI Director-General Martyn Dunne.

"I would like to acknowledge the extensive work, support and cooperation by MPI, industry body New Zealand Avocado and AQSIQ officials in enabling this significant progress in New Zealands trade with China."

In the 2016/17 season, New Zealands avocado industry achieved its best ever season reaching a record breaking industry value of more than $200 million from 7.9 million trays.

Avocados are still relatively unknown in China, but demand for New Zealands avocados has boomed. In 2016/17, New Zealand exported $155.5 million of avocados into markets such as Australia, Japan, Singapore, Korea and Thailand  growth of around $64 million from the previous season.

China is expected to be a significant market for New Zealand avocados.

"China is very aware of the significant global increase in avocado consumption, the associated health benefits and the strong growth and huge potential in the avocado category," says New Zealand Avocado Chief Executive Jen Scoular.

"Our conversations with Chinese importers show there will be strong interest in New Zealand avocados."

"Our aim is to create a globally competitive, high-value, sustainable horticulture industry delivering real returns to New Zealand," says Chair of the New Zealand Avocado Growers Association, Tony Ponder.

"Were well on the way towards this, and access to China for our avocados will play a big part."

Avocado exports will join New Zealands other fresh fruit exports to China that include apples, kiwifruit, cherries, plums, citrus and persimmons.

Martyn Dunne says the progress towards avocado access into China is a good demonstration of the strength of collaboration and positive, respectful relationships.

"The progress to date towards securing access for our avocados is underpinned by collaboration and the positive relationship shared by both New Zealand and China," says Mr Dunne.

"MPI and the avocado industry are committed to getting our avocado trade with China underway as soon as possible."

Growth in the avocado industry is also being enabled through the New Zealand Avocados Go Global Primary Growth Partnership programme between New Zealand Avocado and MPI.

Its a 5-year, $8.56 million collaboration that has made real progress towards goals to triple productivity and grow industry returns to $280 million per year by 2023.
Temperatures and gas emissions are increasing at Mount Ruapehu.

Recent fine weather allowed GeoNet to take readings over the volcano in the middle of the North Island.

Carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide were all found to be at record-high levels.

The carbon dioxide emission rate on Thursday was 2290 tonnes per day, one of the largest values recorded in recent years.

GeoNet says the data suggests the open vent volcano is degassing - which has been observed in the past outside eruptive periods.

The lake temperature was 37 degrees celcius, which was near the top of its usual range.

Volcanic seismic tremor remained at moderate levels.

However, duty volcanologist Tony Hurst says they decided to keep the alert level at 1.

The volcanic alert levels define the current status of volcanos in New Zealand, with 1 indicating minor unrest and 5 an eruption.

"This is something that happens every few years, we get higher temperatures and higher gas concentrations, but its been sustained for a certain amount of time so we thought we would inform the public," says Tony.

"Its reasonably likely it will settle down soon."

The fine weather also allowed for water samples to be taken from the crater, and analysis of those was underway.

The volcano is being closely monitored.

-Additional reporting from Stuff
The people of Malaga took to the streets last Saturday to raise their voices and demand an end to violence against women, a problem that has caused the deaths of 45 women and eight children this year. Over a thousand men, women, families and young people, many of them representing charities, political parties and companies, joined the demonstration called by the organisation against the mistreatment of women, Violencia Cero, to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Protesters wore purple scarves as they walked through main streets in Malaga city centre to condemn the humiliation, emotional and sexual abuse as well as cyber bulling suffered by thousands of women daily.

Several slogans, that could be translated as Sexism Kills, We Want to Live. No More Deaths, We are Together in the Fight, We Want to be Free, not Brave, Sexism is Terrorism, More Education and Less Violence, We don't Want to be Catcalled, We Want to be Respected or More Punishment for Murderers, were written on placards carried by the participants in the protest, headed by a banner carrying the words Ni una menos. Nos queremos vivas! (Not one more. We want to live!)

Protesters condemned violence against women as the most widespread form of terrorism in the world, and the most serious consequence of inequality, described by the United Nations as the most covered up crime in the world, according to Violencia Cero.

The leader of left-wing coalition IULV-CA in Andalucia, Antonio Maillo, took part in the demonstration and called for a cross-party state pact which will have a zero tolerance policy against not only 'macro' sexist attacks but also 'micro' sexism. He also stressed the important role of schools in teaching respect and gender equality.

A group of protesters shouted cutbacks also kill at the mayor of Malaga, Francisco de la Torre, who stressed the importance of education and working with society and administrations to fight against this type of violence.

The demonstration culminated in the Plaza de la Constitucion with a reading out of the names of all the victims of violence against women this year. SUR journalist Ana Barreales read Violencia Cero's manifesto which stressed the recent statistics the figures revealing that in the first six months of this year in Malaga over 4,000 cases of domestic violence were reported and criticised the patriarchal system.

On the same day, another organisation, Malaga Feminista, held a silent march, in which over 100 women took part to remember the women killed by their partners over the past year.
The potential economic cost of the Catalonia issue has been discussed exhaustively since the illegal independence referendum on October 1st. The more constructive task now is trying to work out whether there is a solution to the economic aspect of the Catalonia saga - a task to which the Spanish government has finally turned its attention. Apparently, it is now prepared to discuss granting Catalonia a greater degree of fiscal autonomy. Yet a fiscal solution, even if proposed by Madrid and accepted in Barcelona, would still only address one aspect of a problem that goes much deeper than economics.

Economics is a substantial part of the Catalonia crisis, of course - or at least it's said to be by separatists. It is a long-held grievance amongst secessionists in Catalonia that the region pays more in taxes to the central government than it receives back in public funding, and it is this complaint that the Spanish government is apparently now willing to address.

According to the UK's Guardian newspaper, a senior source in Rajoy's administration has said that if the Catalans ask for a fiscal pact, we are ready to discuss this. The minister indicated that a situation like that in Navarre and the Basque Country could be negotiated for Catalonia, whereby it collects its own taxes and decides on how much it wants to contribute to national defence and foreign policy.

But if Catalonia - a region that already enjoys a high level of autonomy - is handed yet more independence from Madrid, then why should the same not be granted to every Spanish region (even though most them are not asking for it)? And how can Madrid ramp up Catalonia's levels of self-governance without effectively awarding it full independence? These are formidable questions, but an even more complex one is whether a fiscal solution alone is enough to resolve the Catalonia crisis. The political divides that the issue has uncovered and inflamed suggest that such measures would not go to the heart of the matter.

That there is a deeper problem at the centre of the Catalonia issue was also suggested by speakers at this week's Espana 40-40, a series of debates discussing the history and future of Spanish democracy organised by El Pais newspaper.

Manuel Valls, a Barcelona-born former French prime minister, suggested that Spaniards have yet to ask themselves what it means to be Spanish, in part because displays of patriotism are still associated with the Franco regime: The Spain narrative is missing... A new patriotism needs to be consolidated in Spain.

It is difficult, especially for non-Spaniards, to imagine how a nationally-unifying Spain narrative might read, but perhaps something like one is needed before fiscal solutions to the Catalonia problem have a chance of bearing fruit.
New River Community Action (NRCA) has announced the receipt of a $12,000 grant from the New River Valley Health Foundation. Funding from the foundation will purchase food for the NRCA Floyd County BackPack Program (FCBPP).

This program would not be possible without the support of the NRV Health Foundation and the community. Without the grant, we would be required to close the program early due to increased enrollment and rising costs,  stated Glenda Vest, NRCA Community Services Programs Director.

The NRCA Floyd County BackPack Program has been helping low-income children receive the nutritious and easy-to-prepare food they need over the weekends since 2007. Parents who wish their children to participate in the program complete a permission form and provide information on their childs food allergies, if any. Each week volunteers purchase, pack, and distribute the food to the schools and NRCAs Head Start Program. School staff then ensure the children discretely receive the food, stated John Getgood, NRCA FCBPP Volunteer Team Leader.

According to information available from the Virginia Department of Education Office of School Nutrition Programs, 48.69% of the Floyd County Public Schools enrollment is eligible for the free or reduced-cost meals program, representing 987 school children. During the 2016-2017 school year, the NRCA FCBPP served a total of 177 children. The program is currently serving 281 children; a 59% increase.

The NRCA FCBBP now costs approximately $800 per week, stated Vest. The New River Valley Health Foundations grant will provide us the necessary support to meet the programs increased enrollment as well as help address hunger in Floyd County.
A Big Week in Austria In 1944 the Consolidated B24 Liberator 'Leaky Tub' crashed over Austria. 73 years later, the town by the crash site invites the relatives of the downed crew to see where it all happened. Share their experience. U.S. Embassy Vienna U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa Bad Wimsbach-Neydharting, Oberosterreich, Austria Red Bull #WWII #Austria #B24 #b24liberator #AirForce Posted by Aviano Air Base on Tuesday, October 31, 2017

To the Editor:



I read with interest the lesson in patriotism you published in the Commentary section of The Post Standard on Nov. 19, 2017 ("John McCain, David Ifshin and the power of forgiveness"). I want to share with you and your readers a very small historical event that took place at the end of October in a little village in Austria called Bad Wimsbach-Neydharting, which demonstrated a degree of moral courage and caring for others profound enough to elicit the participation of their federal government, their army and veterans, three branches of the United State military (Army, Air Force and Marines) and many local dignitaries, including the mayor and town council.



An Austrian engineer named Christian Arzberger has had a lifelong interest in World War II American bombers which had crashed near his home. On Feb. 23, 1944, a US B-24 bomber called the Leaky Tub was shot down over that Austrian village. My husband's uncle, S/Sgt. Kenneth Grant King, was killed in that crash in a farmer's field halfway around the world. So were all members of the crew, except one, a substitute crewmember named T/Sgt. Alphonse Lanteigne, who, though injured, parachuted out and became a prisoner of war. The local government, after speaking to Arzberger, decided to invite relatives of the crew of this plane to their village, which is about the size of Fleming, where my husband and I live. They decided to invite the surviving relatives of these airmen to be their guests and a central part of the celebration of their annual National Day, which is like our Veterans Day.





A memorial to an American B-24 crew that crashed near the Austrian village of Bad Wimsbach-Neydharting is made from 10 World War II-era guns from which roses sprout.

During this time, there would be a memorial dedicated to our airmen and full military honors would be accorded to them. There was a considerable degree of risk for the mayor and the town council members in doing this. Villagers wondered why they would honor people who were their enemies. Still, the mayor and others were dedicated to recognizing the Americans as fellow human beings, and the mayor said, "The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend." Strange words for us to hear in a time of such intense polarization in our world and in our own country. And yet, that is exactly what happened.



For three days, we were housed and fed and involved in a parade, a military convoy of World War II jeeps, speeches, a historical presentation, and the inspection of a museum housing artifacts and photos of the event. We saw a glorious flyover of World War II planes above the site of the crash, did interviews for the media and the military, and were a part of the dedication of a wonderful memorial that contains a plaque with the names of the airmen and a memorial sculpture made by the local blacksmith in which 10 rifles from the World War II era were melted down into a bush. From the barrel of each gun, a rose erupted. When I asked the blacksmith about this, he told me he did it because, "Roses are stronger than guns." Perhaps it is no mistake that the much loved Christmas carol "Silent Night" was written not far from this place.



As those airmen now sleep in heavenly peace, perhaps we should all try to remember that the efforts of a few can impact many and to let peace begin with each one of us. Those of us who were there saw it happen with our own eyes.



Nancy J. Corl

Auburn
Facebook will show users if they've liked or followed Russian propaganda pages on the social network, responding to a request from the congress to do something about Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election.

Facebook Wants You To Know If You've Been Exposed To Fake Russian Trolls

Facebook said on Wednesday, Nov. 22, that it will roll out a new tool later this year to help users determine if the pages they like or follow on Facebook or Instagram is secretly being run by Russian trolls.

Users will find the tool via a newly created portal on their Facebook on Instagram page. Facebook said in a blog post that the tool is part of an effort to "protect our platforms and the people who use them from bad actors who try to undermine our democracy."

In recent years, Facebook and other social networks like it have become breeding grounds for fake news, the unfortunate result of a huge number of people depending on it as their primary news source.

There's currently no way to tell if a page or account was created by a troll, such as the Internet Research Agency, the Russian firm that created fake U.S. accounts to spread misinformation and prompt controversy by engaging in hot-button topics such as gun laws and immigration.

With the new tool, users will see if they've followed or liked such a page from January 2015 through August 2017. This comes as Facebook's most direct effort to address its fake news/accounts problem, or more specifically, how normal users may have been affected by the IRA's make-believe accounts.

"It is important that people understand how foreign actors tried to sow division and mistrust using Facebook before and after the 2016 US election," said Facebook.

Russian interference is now known to be widespread, going beyond Facebook and affecting Twitter and Google as well. Both those companies appeared before the congress in early November to explain how Russia used their platforms to manipulate U.S. citizens. Then they vowed to do more to prevent similar interferences from happening in the future and said they would look into potentially informing their users if they've been exposed.

How About Google And Twitter?

Social media companies are currently being criticized for their role in the 2016 presidential election and the unintended consequences of their technology. Facebook has confirmed that 29 million Americans saw Russian propaganda content on their newsfeed, while 126 million shared posts. On election day, about 10 million saw ads purchased by the Kremlin, the company has said.

U.S. senator Richard Blumenthal hopes Google and Twitter follows Facebook's lead and create their own tools too. The companies have yet to respond to similar requests, according to Blumenthal.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A Darwin's finch immigrated to an island in the Galapagos archipelago and began a new line of finch species with the local finch. Researchers found that evolution of the new species developed in just two generations.

'Big Bird'

In 1981, a graduate student working in Daphne Major in the Galapagos Islands noticed a new bird singing an unusual song and was much larger in beak and body size compared to the three resident finches of the island. The research team, immediately recognizing that it was not native to the island because he looked quite distinct from the others, took blood samples which revealed that the bird was a cactus finch of the G. conirostris species originally from Espanola Island.

Because the G. conirostris was so far away from home, he was unable to return to his home island and instead mated with one of three native finch species in Daphne Major. Soon, their offspring resulted in a hybrid species that is distinct from the three resident species in beak size and shape. Because of their difference in size and song from the other species, they had no other choice but to reproduce among themselves, thus creating the "Big Bird" species line.

Evolution Of Darwin's Finches

It is assumed that the process of evolution and the creation of new species take a long time but in the case of the Big Birds, researchers found that the new species was created just after two generations. They are distinct from the three original residents of Daphne Major in beak size and structural features, giving them a unique and competitive edge.

All 18 species of Darwin's finches came from a single species in the Galapagos Islands about 2 million years ago. Since then, they have diversified in the same way that the Big Birds did, and resulted in different species with different beak sizes and features, allowing them to utilize the different food sources with the other species.

Species Survival

Researchers believe that this kind of development has happened among Darwin's finches many times during the course of the species' evolution, though a majority of such lineages have since gone extinct. In the case of the Big Birds, researchers believe that the new line has a good potential for success. As it stands, there are now 30 Big Birds in Daphne Island.

"Charles Darwin would have been excited to read this paper," said Leif Andersson of Uppsala University, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and Texas A&M University, coauthor of the study.

The study is published in the journal Science.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Conservationists are asking for a hand to revive sick swamps.

The Ten Thousand Trees for Louisiana campaign is seeking volunteers to plant native trees throughout the winter in wetlands ravaged by logging and saltwater intrusion.

A coalition of environmental groups known as Restore the Mississippi River Delta submitted a report in mid-November to the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority asking the state to fast-track several Coastal Master Plan projects deemed especially vital.

+21 Conservationists urge action by Louisiana to restore, protect critical Maurepas Swamp MANCHAC  In the distance, a few wading birds drifted over the tree stumps in the Maurepas swamp; others perched in the bleached and broken bo

One priority is digging diversion canals from the Mississippi River to bring more fresh water to the Maurepas Swamp to speed its recovery. They're also seeking volunteers who aren't afraid to get dirty to do some planting.

Years ago, the landbridge between Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas was logged, and infrastructure like the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet allowed saltwater to permeate into the swamp, preventing trees from growing back. However, the outlet has since been closed, and the soil is once again capable of supporting hardwoods.

Scientists planted 25 bald cypresses near Pass Manchac in 2014 and they were able to survive, said coastal scientist Eva Hillman of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. Since then, teams have planted 25,000 trees, with an 83 percent survival rate. Another 5,000 are scheduled to go in the ground by spring, she continued.

The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana has scheduled events throughout the winter for volunteers who want to lend a hand at the landbridge as well as at a site near Caernarvon in St. Bernard Parish. Details are available at crcl.org/calendar/events.

Workers head out on a boat, bring saplings to the planting sites by sled, dig the holes and install devices to keep nutria from eating the small, still-vulnerable trees, explained CRCL Restoration Program Director Deb Visco Abibou.

"Be prepared to get DIRTY," organizers warn on their website.

With so much work to do, efforts are still focused on easy-to-reach areas along the canals, said John Lopez, director of the Basin Foundation's coastal sustainability program. It's also expensive, as each tree can cost up to $40; and it would take 1,000 years to plant everything by hand, he said. That's why he's already thinking of the future, which could involve dispersing seeds via helicopter or with drones. It may also be worthwhile to team up with hunters to cull the nutria, which eat young trees, he said.

More than 1,500 volunteers have pitched in with planting so far, Hillman and Abibou said. They singled out high school groups as especially eager helpers.

The scientists hope the project shows volunteers that they can have a tangible impact on the environment. The swamps are important both because they support diverse plant and animal life and because they provide a buffer against tropical storms, especially when strong trees are in place that can stand up to buffeting winds and storm surges.

The trees planted in the past three years are growing, if slowly. Should the state build diversions to deliver more fresh water into the Maurepas Swamp, the cypresses will be able to sprout faster, Abibou said.

The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority was receptive to the conservation groups' recommendations, which include Master Plan projects all along the Louisiana Coast.

...(T)here is great agreement on what we need and want to do. Its always nice to receive affirmation and validation, especially when it comes from such distinguished and knowledgeable organizations as Audubon, the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Wildlife Federation and the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. With such agreement as a foundation, we can move forward to get the funding to make it all possible and turn plans into reality," CPRA executive director Michael Ellis wrote in a statement.
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I tried to whip up some interest in folks to get them to the polls in my neck of the woods last week. Even my wife joined in on Facebook, telling folks that she had voted that morning and that they should follow her to the polls.

I started early in the week on Facebook pushing the idea that everyone should vote. It didnt matter who was running or what else was on the ballot. Even seemingly insignificant stuff can have significance.

That was part of my universal pitch. You needed to vote.

I tried a different, more aggressive tactic with my African-American friends. I used pictures of people that were beaten on Bloody Sunday at the Edmond Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., along with a photo of the four little girls blown apart while at Sunday school in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., and the police dogs attacking black folk seeking civil rights and the right to vote in the same city.

How could you look at the baton beating taken by men, women and teenagers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus bridge by law enforcement officers and not feel compelled to vote, no matter what your ethnic background? That incident was shown worldwide and cast our nation into shame around the globe.

I hoped that my Facebook post would be shared by friends and ignite some excitement. I kind of knew it was going nowhere, but it was at least something. Well, blah. Folks were, I guess, too darn busy, disinterested or just found voting a pain.

Turnout statewide was 12.5 percent.

Whats worse, I dont know what happened on my street. Almost every house has two cars in the driveway. They didnt have to walk to the precinct.

When I went to vote, I was number 38 to cast my ballot in the precinct. And, that was at 4 p.m. There was no tidal wave of voters to follow me. By the way, there are over 100 registered voters on my street alone.

I was disheartened to see the low numbers. Even the poll workers said it was sad. An older gentleman, voting at the same time, said I hope my vote helps. I was proud and happy to see him.

I heard a political commentator say during a TV interview after the polls closed that the voters didnt find much out there that interested them so they stayed at home. Heartbreaking.

Really, I dont get it. Every election is important.

I feel extra committed because I come from a time when the media carried stories of African Americans being lynched, blown up, intimidated, drowned, fire bombed, shot and beaten just for mentioning the right to vote, let along actually trying to register themselves or others to vote.

Those photographs I showed on my Facebook page happened during my lifetime.

Every time there is an election, those stories along with the recollection of those tragic pictures and the horrid videos from those days gets me to the polls. I come from a time when I knew of black political groups having to meet in secret to try to discuss political voting strategy, fearing the establishment political power structure would come after them.

It is difficult to reconcile this laissez faire relationship with the signature freedom that was so hard fought to obtain. I look at photographs from war torn countries where people stand in line for hours and hours, their lives threatened, to cast a ballot.

Shame on us for what we have become. The presidential, governors and mayors race should not be the only race for which we feel the need to get to the polls. Its the smaller elections that mean so much and can have a lasting effect on our daily lives.

There is a great quote about not voting from George Jean Nathan, an early 20th century drama critic and magazine editor. Bad officials are the ones elected by citizens who do not vote.

Email Edward Pratt, a former newspaperman who writes a weekly Advocate column, at epratt1972@yahoo.com.
The AFL national draft throws up surprises every year and the 2017 version was no different. Draft Quirks First off the rank

Victorian Cameron Rayner became the seventh Victorian in succession to claim the honour of being the first selection in a national draft. Gold Coast's David Swallow, who hailed from East Fremantle, was the most recent No.1 to come from outside Victoria when taken first in 2010. Fremantle went hard at the draft, with Andrew Brayshaw (left, No.2) and Adam Cerra (No.5) the highest of their eight selections. Credit:AAP Drafts like Noah's Ark

Four clubs had two picks within the top 16 as Fremantle, St Kilda, Carlton and Western Bulldogs doubled up on first-rounders. This happened in 2015 when Essendon, Carlton, GWS and the Brisbane Lions all had at least two picks inside the first 16 and will become common as future picks facilitate trades.

Eight is enough

With eight selections the Dockers dipped into the draft pool more than any other team. It repeats their 2008 strategy, which yielded Stephen Hill, Hayden Ballantyne, Nick Suban, Zac Clarke and Michael Walters among their eight picks. Essendon ran down the clock

You could be forgiven for thinking the Bombers had fallen asleep when they finally got the chance to make a pick at pick 49 when they called for extra time to make their decision. The settled on marking forward Jordan Houlihan. Father-son bids accepted

Richmond took father-son prospect Patrick Naish at pick 34 after St Kilda bid on him while Port Adelaide made an unsuccessful bid for Collingwood's Tyler Brown at pick 50. Which Brayshaw is bragging?

The Brayshaw brothers will move to the same state after Fremantle picked Andrew at pick two and West Coast took Hamish at 68. Andrew also claimed bragging rights over his older brother Angus, who Melbourne selected at pick three in 2014, and dad, Mark, who was No.6 in the 1989 draft. Recycled prospects

Three players with previous AFL experience were selected as North Melbourne gave former Hawk Billy Hartung a lifeline. Port Adelaide picked ex-Demon Dom Barry and Carlton rebooted the career of former Sun Jarrod Garlett, despite both being out of the system in 2017.
Paris: A tiger that escaped a Paris circus, roamed the streets of the capital for "some time" on Friday evening before being shot dead.

French police said the big cat was "neutralised" by a Bormann Moreno circus employee near a bridge over the River Seine, about two kilometres from the Eiffel Tower.

Yasha plays with his offsprings in an animal park in Hamburg, Germany. Credit:DPA/File

Paris police tweeted the animal had been found in the 15th arrondissement and the danger had been eliminated. It asked residents to "not relay false information" on social media.

A Paris police official said the tiger was on the loose for "some time" but there had been no reports of injuries or casualties.
Saint Jamie Oliver has been speaking about refusing to let his daughters post provocative selfies.

He told the podcast The Lifestyle News Hound: "The kind of pictures girls are putting up, from what I have seen, are split 50/50  a normal young girl and then this weird hybrid of, dare I say it, quite porno, luscious, pouty lips, pushing boobs out. I'm like, 'My God!' I don't even want to look at some of the things my daughter shows me. I'm like, 'Really? Aren't their parents all over that like a rash?' We banned Daisy from doing selfies."

And yet, as critics have pointed out, Mr Oliver shows no restraint about publishing pictures of his children online. Six out of his wife's nine latest social media posts have featured their offspring, while only last week Oliver shared a clip of his youngest.

But the Olivers are by no means alone. These days we are all guilty of divulgence incontinence. We live in a postlapsarian age and the fall in question was from reticence to exhibitionism; a pre-social media stiff upper lip to a virtual letting it all hang out. The clinical term for this would be "disinhibition" and, as a culture, we've got it bad. Celebrities, in particular, appear to feel that no aspect of their lives remains unfascinating, nothing too intimate to be imparted.
The inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and refugees under the mandatory offshore detention policy of Australian governments  bastardry escalated by the court-ordered closure of the shabby camp on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island  will come to be seen as one of the most shameful sagas in Australian political history.

The forceful removal of the men in the Manus Island camp, and the arrest of some, including a journalist who used social media to show the world the heavy-handed intervention, is the latest disgrace in a litany that has sullied our record as a nation that respects human rights. Politicians  well aware they have, through dog-whistling, manipulated fear and misunderstanding in some sections of our community  seek to place an ethical fig leaf over the draconian policy.

An asylum seeker who collapsed at the Manus Island detention centre.

They claim the sole motivation is to prevent people dying at sea, which is a noble aim. But it is insufficient to justify persecuting and harming many innocent children, woman and men. It is wrong to seek to deter desperate asylum seekers elsewhere by cruelly treating desperate asylum seekers for whom Australia is legally and morally responsible and who have done nothing wrong.

To be sure, the issue is complex, and people smugglers are despicable opportunists. Were there a ready solution, it would have been deployed long ago. But, as the United Nations, medical experts, community and church leaders, mental-health professionals, teachers, social workers and others argue, mandatory offshore detention coupled with a blanket ban on anyone arriving by boat ever being admitted to Australia is appalling.
Labor's Annastacia Palaszczuk is edging towards retaining government in Queensland and becoming the first woman in Australian history to claim a second term as Premier, while One Nation has flopped and could miss out on winning any seats despite a surge in the party's vote.

The election result was on a knife edge on Saturday evening and, although Labor looked like winning the highest number of seats, it could be days before the final count is declared and it was not clear the ALP would secure a majority of 47 seats in the expanded 93 member Parliament, with a hung parliament and minority government in prospect.

In a disappointing night for the Liberal National Party and its leader Tim Nicholls - and one that could have significant federal implications for the Turnbull government too - the opposition saw big swings against it and votes bleed away to One Nation.

Ms Palaszczuk addressed her supporters at about 10.30pm in Queensland, and admitted "it was unlikely a result would be confirmed on Saturday evening". A high number of postal votes are still to be counted.
As a child she fled a war in Sudan, spent three years in a Kenyan refugee camp where her mother died of malaria and moved to Australia with her seven siblings as a refugee  and while Ajak Deng has gone through more in her 27 years than most should ever have to endure in a lifetime, she has a wholly "glass half full" approach to life.

Now one of Australia's top models, having walked for the likes of Givenchy, Lanvin, Chloe, Jean Paul Gaultier and Valentino, Deng has signed on to be the face of this year's The Body Shop Christmas campaign, Play for Peace, that aims to raise $440,000 to help refugee children affected by war in Syria heal through play.

Each gift purchased from the store's seasonal gift collections will go towards the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon to help children deal with the trauma they have experienced during war and displacement.

Deng jumped at the chance to star in the campaign because she feels it is her duty to pass on the same acts of kindness shown to her by Australians.
Every year feminists speak out about their discomfort with White Ribbon's awareness raising celebrations and the millions of dollars solicited to promote "brand recognition" when so many women are turned away from refuges. And every year White Ribbon defend their work with the entirely valid point that men must speak out about men's violence against women.

They're right. As Jackson Katz said so well, violence against women is a men's issue.

White Ribbon Day Cabramatta Police Station. Promo shot for of DV officers. Picture Chris Lane Credit:Chris Lane

But when advocates on an issue that affects women so deeply are routinely criticised by women with personal experience of that issue, something more than defensiveness is required. This is not about telling men to stay silent on men's violence, it's about the difference between asking for accolades and earning them. We've seen many examples of leadership from men on this. Most recently, from police in Scotland.

Last week, Lochaber and Skye Police posted a series of tweets about domestic violence. They weren't pompous, jargon-filled statements about how "we take violence against women very seriously". They were a direct, personal connection to women being abused. They demonstrated a nuanced understanding of how difficult it can be for women to report a man they love or fear (or both) to police.
The Liberal deputy mayor of the Inner West Council, installed with the support of local Labor politicians, compared the rainbow flag to that of ISIS when a neighbour hung it outside his house, the neighbour says.

The councillor, Julie Passas, was elected deputy mayor in September. Following the announcement of the results of the same-sex marriage postal survey last Wednesday, her neighbour, Daniel Comensoli, hung the rainbow flag outside his home to celebrate.

Deputy Mayor of the Inner West, Julie Passas Credit:Inner West Council

Mr Comensoli said he was then subjected to homophobic abuse by Cr Passas, who lives across from him.

Mr Comensoli said she shouted that he should not be afforded the right to marry until he could "breastfeed and have children".
Most of Victoria's major hospitals are refusing to say whether they will allow their clinicians to prescribe euthanasia drugs when the practice is likely legalised in June 2019.

While the Epworth has revealed the private hospital service is considering participating  and big Catholic providers have ruled it out  it is unclear whether patients at public hospitals will be able to seek an assisted death from willing hospital doctors.

Epworth's working group will consider a number of issues around "end of life".

A vote in the state's upper house this week paved the way for Victoria to become the first state to legalise voluntary euthanasia. The bill is to be sent back to the lower house, which has already voted in favour of the legislation once, for final approval.

The bill will give some terminally-ill Victorians who are suffering intolerably and have less than six months to live the right to end their lives. Doctors can conscientiously object to being involved, or refer patients on.
Franco Missaglia's livelihood is the road. As a tow truck operator, he's out there every day picking up the pieces when things go wrong.

But more and more he's worried that it will be him or one of his drivers at Code 12 Towing Service that will need recovering from the side of a freeway.

Franco Missaglia wants to stay safe on the roads so he can come home to his son Jordan. Credit:Darrian Traynor

Like everyone else in the industry, he just wants to come home to his family.

"If the coppers aren't there, we're not safe. It's as simple as that," he said.
President Emmanuel Macron poses with workers before meeting construction businessmen in Paris in October. Credit:AP And when a country is more open to change, it sees the world not in terms of threats but opportunities, Lecourtier says. Losing its grip Since the 1980s, when Germany reuinified and the Eastern European countries were accepted into the EU, there has been the impression in France that they were "losing grip on globalisation, on what's going on; that they don't know how to compete, they don't know how to win in a more global world. "We were almost paralysed," Lecourtier says. "I am not saying it's all done and it's in the pocket, but for the very first time there's a sort of turning point."

Macron is determined but he is also lucky. Europe as a whole is bouncing back from the financial crisis in industrial production, unemployment is decreasing, the competitiveness of its companies is better. There is stable ground on which to build. And he is building on it, at astonishing speed. The President has already pushed through new labour laws seeking to energise entrepreneurship, to rewrite France's social pact and allow companies the right to hire and fire more freely, wiping away rules that made them overly cautious in expanding, reducing the influence of unions on workplace conditions. Unions protesting against labour law reforms in France this month. Credit:AP He has abolished a wealth tax that encouraged the rich and successful to leave the country with their assets and warded off speculators and investors.

Macron is financially constrained  the state is highly in debt  but he hopes that his work so far will bring in more money, more projects, more foreign investment. And as the deficit falls he hopes to find wriggle-room to ratchet down company tax and continue the virtuous cycle of economic growth, lifting all boats. Next he plans huge welfare and training reform, along with a project of re-investing in poorer suburbs, re-opening public services and improving schools and hospitals in the unemployment-ravaged "banlieue" suburbs where crime  and Islamist extremism  breeds. "It's a revolution," says Lecourtier. "Now there is a huge demand from the people, and Macron knows he will have to work hard not to disappoint them." Macron is working hard not to lose momentum. "As many decisions as possible have to be taken before next summer," Lecourtier says. "He has to do as much as possible in the first 12 months." Beauty contest

Agnes Romatet-Espagne, director of communications at the foreign ministry, says Macron believes "we should not even take a breath between legislation". "There is not one aspect of political life which is not going to go through changes in the next months or years. The speed is pretty quick. Typically the French are anxious about changes but for the time being there are not major protests," Romatet-Espagne says. "They were aware of what to expect, it hasn't taken anyone by surprise." The universe seems to be conspiring to favour Macron. Brexit has created a growing crisis of confidence on the other side of the channel, and business is looking south. There is a beauty contest between Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid and Dublin to lure bankers and corporate headquarters into Europe, and Paris is putting on an impressive show.

Arnaud de Bresson, head of Paris Europlace, the equivalent of the City of London, says there was going to be a rebalancing anyway after a two-decade obsession with London, and Paris sees itself as the financial centre of the European Union, the only global city of the EU, with the culture, the allure, the stability and the infrastructure to win corporate hearts. This week's announcement that Paris would be the new headquarters for the European Banking Authority was the icing on the cake. "I am sometimes dazed by the [amount] of good news we are receiving," says Romatet-Espagne. She adds that Macron has grand plans on the world stage, too. His headline-grabbing handshake battle with Trump was a signal of intent. Macron recently gathered his ambassadors and gave them a new mission: their priority is France's safety and security. This translates into an imperative to work to fix problems in the Middle East and Africa, to take control of both France and Europe's borders.

Why the hurry? "Look at the state of the world," Romatet-Espagne says. "Don't you have a feeling of emergency? Look at the mood of Europe before the elections in France and the Netherlands. Don't you feel a sense of emergency? "Really we missed [dodged] a bullet here. It was a close call, we have to be aware of that. Not acting would be a big mistake." 'Climbing Everest without oxygen' Macron's most audacious foreign policy is to remake Europe. He wants to head off the populist, nationalist wave with a "Europe that protects": one that reassures and re-empowers its citizens; one that is more sceptical of and cautious in supporting Brussels' international trade deals (bad news for Australia, which is in the first stages of pushing for a free trade agreement with the EU).

At the Sorbonne in September, Macron said Europe was "where our battle lies, our history, our identity". But "today it finds itself weaker, exposed to the squalls of today's globalisation and, surely even worse, the ideas which offer themselves up as preferable solutions". While Brexit inspired some European solidarity, it arose from a distrust of Brussels and a retreat from globalism that is not unique to the British Isles. Macron's answer is to bring Europe together on defence, with new shared military and intelligence capabilities that complement NATO's, and to more effectively police its borders and "preserve our values". This means faster asylum processing and the expulsion of those who do not need protection. He wants to reform the common agricultural policy, to deepen co-operation on the environment, to more closely co-ordinate European education, economic policies and national budgets. The plan has already met push-back. Slovakia's Europe minister, Ivan Korcok, said Macron's long-term vision for the EU was "like climbing Everest without oxygen. We need to go with the team, start in the first camp."

And Macron has a big problem: Germany. He needed a friendly, influential Merkel on board, but instead there is paralysis across the border, as Merkel seems unable to pull together a ruling coalition after a disastrous election. Macron needed a strong ally in Angela Merkel in Germany. Credit:AP More ritual than revolt But Macron cannot afford to take his eye off the domestic ball, either. In France the gap between rich and poor has been growing for years, and Macron's plans will not obviously reverse that, at least in the immediate future. He has already been dubbed in some quarters the "president for the rich".

He plans to cut spending by 16 billion next year, including a civil servants pay freeze, making their first day of sick leave unpaid, and the loss of nearly 1600 public jobs  with 120,000 to go by 2022. Especially in France, where the social model is a matter of faith, this doesn't sound like progress. "In the space of a few weeks, Macron has gone from being Jupiter to Thatcher without any warning," said state sector union leader Pierre-Marie Ganozzi. Macron still has little effective opposition. The socialist left is subdued, distracted by its internal squabbles. The right is fractured by the success of Le Pen's National Front, which itself is starting to bicker and fragment. Jean-Luc Melenchon, the radical-left rabble-rouser who caused a stir with his surprisingly lively presidential run, tried to regain momentum this northern autumn with a call for a "casserolade", a saucepan-banging protest like the ones that echoed across Barcelona this summer.

"This would tell Macron that his economic reforms "ruin our life and keep us from dreaming, so we stop you from sleeping," Melenchon declared. But the turnout was minuscule, and France slept on. French unions have four times tried to rally street protests against Macron's labour law reform, with some success. But in the most recent, the turnout fell. The obligatory scuffles amid the tear gas looked more like a ritual than revolt. A man wearing a mask of of French President Emmanuel Macron attends a demonstration in Paris this month. Credit:AP Macron's biggest political opponent, for now, is himself. He can lapse into contemptuous anger at those hurt by his reforms  he caused an uproar in October when he told workers at a factory protesting against job losses to stop "wreaking f---ing havoc" and look for work elsewhere. He called opponents of reform "slackers".

Guy Sorman, a respected public intellectual and French-American professor in politics and economics, wrote earlier this year that "Macronism" has its roots in a particularly French mindset: a longing for an enlightened despot. Macron is another in the mould of Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle, Sorman said in Le Monde: a philosopher-king who appeals to the French scepticism of democracy and romantic longing for an unapologetically powerful ruler who forces change through revolution rather than consensus. But reality always hits, sooner or later. And the people realise they have to take to the streets to depose their idols. "The despots, at first enlightened, change as they get older," Sorman said. "They disappoint, or they are drunk on power. Loading
Sunday

Faith United Church (UCC), 2901 Austin's Colony Parkway in Bryan, welcomes you with 9:15 a.m. Sunday study, 10 a.m. fellowship and 10:30 a.m. worship. Guest Pastor Cynthia Miller's message is "I Don't Want to be a Goat - Nope!" Faithuccbryan.org.

St. Francis Episcopal Church, 1101 Rock Prairie Road in College Station, will have morning prayer at 8 a.m. and will celebrate Holy Communion at 10:30 a.m. (Rite 2). Coffee and snacks will be served after the 10:30 a.m. service, and the Book Group will also meet to discuss Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck. For information on weekday services and events, contact the church at 696-1491 or stfrancisbcs.org.

Covenant Presbyterian Church, 220 Rock Prairie Road in College Station, will celebrate Christ the King Sunday in worship at 10:30 a.m. Pastor Jonathan Murray will preach on "The King's Banquet." Classes for all ages meet at 9:15 a.m., followed by coffee and fellowship. 694-7700 or covenantpresbyterian.org.

Unitarian Universalist Church of the Brazos Valley, 800 George Bush Drive (Texas A&M Hillel), will meet at 10:30 a.m. Artist-in-residence Joe Daigle will lead a service on "Singing Our Faith" 696-5285.

First Christian Church, 900 S. Ennis St. in Bryan, will meet for worship at 10:45 a.m., followed by coffee time at 10:30 a.m. Child care is available. Youth groups meet at 3 p.m. 823-5451 or firstchristianbcs.org.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 217 W. 26th St. in Bryan, will host services at 7:30, 9 and 11:15 a.m. www.standrewsbcs.org.

Unity Spiritual Center of the Brazos Valley, 4016 Stillmeadow Drive, Bryan, will have services at 10:30 a.m. Call 324-9857 or unityspiritualcenterbv.org.

Spirit of Faith Church, 900 E. 29th St. in Bryan, will have Sunday school classes for all ages at 10 a.m., followed by morning worship at 11 a.m. 436-6910.

Mount Nebo Missionary Baptist Church, 3610 Plainsman Lane in Bryan, will have Sunday school classes for all ages at 9:15 a.m. and worship service at 10:30 a.m. 846-4753.

CBS Religious School is offering Sunday morning classes. Students are invited to learn about and experience Judaism in a welcoming and egalitarian environment. For more information or to register, contact religiousschool.cbs@gmail.com.

Tuesday

Eagle's Nest Praise and Worship Ministries will staff a free prayer line from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. The prayer line number is 775-1513, and calls will be answered by a trained prayer ministry associate. The prayer line is coordinated by pastors Gary and Sheila Jones.

Wednesday

Faith United Church, 2901 Austin's Colony Parkway in Bryan, invites men of all ages to Wednesday morning coffee and guy talk at 10 a.m. Faithuccbryan.org.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 217 W. 26th St. in Bryan, will have evening prayer at 5:30 p.m. www.standrewsbcs.org .

Covenant Presbyterian Church, 220 Rock Prairie Road in College Station, will host a "Onederful Wednesday" dinner at 6:15 p.m., followed by the Hanging of the Greens, to get ready for Advent. All are welcome. 694-7700 or covenantpresbyterian.org.

Friday

Journey through Bethlehem will take place from 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at the Walker County Fairgrounds on Texas 30 West in Huntsville. Journey through Bethlehem is a multidenominational event that re-creates the town on the night Jesus was born. Learn about the people and shops in the town, pay taxes ($1 per person), try the food, learn to make baskets and pottery and see the stable. 936-291-5920.

Upcoming

Caldwell Brethren Church, 401 S. Main St. in Caldwell, will host a Cantata concert celebrating the birth and life of Jesus at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 2.

Snook Brethren Church, 9882 F.M. 2155 in Snook, will host a Cantata concert celebrating the birth and life of Jesus at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 9.

Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church, 1007 Krenek Tap Road in College Station, will host a Christmas for Kids event from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Dec. 9. The event is open to all kids between age 4 and fourth grade. There will be a program featuring the Christmas story from the Bible, songs, games, and crafts, followed by lunch. Please register at www.beautiful-savior.net. 693-4514.

Spirit of Faith Church, 900 E. 29th St. in Bryan, will host "A Night in Bethlehem" from 6 to 8 p.m. on Dec. 16. There will be a live Nativity, Christmas caroling, photo booth, and food. Free.
Long before I heard of my good friend St. Teresa of Avila and threw myself into Carmelite spirituality, I met a really weird guy named Morton T. Kelsey in a book called The Other Side of Silence. If I hadn't met Kelsey in his books, I'm not sure I could have ever taken to the Holy Mother of Carmel's teachings.

I think St. Teresa may have been guiding me to Kelsey. At that point in my new spiritual life, I was still pretty uncomfortable with Jesus. However, I was unwillingly drawn to the Catholic faith to the point where I was attending daily mass. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I ended up at St. Anthony's every day with all these old people who said the prayers really fast. I didn't even understand anything that was going on and sometimes I was offended. And sometimes I left. Always I wondered what I was doing there again and told myself I didn't belong there.

I had learned some practical spirituality about a year before that was necessary to keep me from going crazy through a difficult time in my life and I believed in God by then. I knew how to pray and ask for what I needed and to say thank you for what I received each day. I knew how to go on long walks and talk to God like a friend. I knew the Our Father well enough to say when other people were saying it. But I didn't really understand it very much.

Anything more than that was going to be really hard because, first of all, I was allergic to Christianity because of bad experiences with Christians. I was ignorant about the faith, plus having been raised atheist, I had a lot of prejudice about it. And Jesus freaked me out.

I read this book The Other Side of Silence, and also Adventure Inward by Kelsey somewhere around that time. I was 20 years old, I think. I had kept a journal since I was 10. I loved to write. I had seriously bad ADD, but when I wrote, I felt a sense of flow and focus I didn't have normally.

I had heard of "meditation" of course, but I didn't know Christians did anything like that. I certainly did not know of any type of prayer that was more than what I was doing, and the idea of "contemplative prayer" was completely unknown to me.

I was most intrigued by the idea that one could pray by journaling and also by the suggestion that God can "talk back," that I could actually encounter God in a personal way and that He would respond to me.

Kelsey's suggestions about prayer journaling helped me with some of my problems with Christianity and prayer. This prayer method turned out to be profoundly healing for me and to be the launching pad for my learning to do what St. Teresa called going within oneself to be with God. Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. The Lord is within us. And I love how Teresa says, "We aught not to leave him there alone." I didn't know it but I had found a way to consciously make my way inward for the first time in my life.

In this method of prayer I could use my abundant imagination to create an image of Jesus I liked. St. Teresa advises getting a picture of Jesus to look at, "One that you like," to talk to and facilitate prayer in the beginning. I created a picture in my mind and on the pages of my journal of a Jesus resembling the kind of people my young college student parents had around when I was growing up in the early '70s: a long-haired hippie guy in jeans and a faded blue button-up shirt, a kind face, a big smile, sandals. I could ask Him anything and He wouldn't freak out.

He usually brought food and he liked walking on the beach like I did. He laughed easily. He cried easily, too.

My imaginary conversations with Jesus often surprised me by their depth and content. I began to draw wisdom and comfort from reading over these pages when I was upset. Sometimes He said things I didn't' like, but I knew were true. Sometimes I received deep inner healing from these encounters that changed my life.

I became able to study the faith, and study the Scriptures without getting so offended. If I didn't understand something, I was able to pray about it and ask for light and study the reasons behind the Church teaching I was having trouble with or the Bible verse that upset me. When it came time for me to deal with some traumatic memories from my childhood and adolescence, praying in this way made it possible for me to do the inner work and receive the inner grace necessary to face the damage and to heal. All I was really doing was using writing as a way to go within myself and encounter the Lord in the "little heaven" of my soul. And I liked that guy. In fact, I fell in love with Him and He became the center of my life.

Once I was a Catholic (as of 1990), I had spiritual mentors and priests I knew that I could read these writings to and have them reflect for me about them, helping me keep perspective. Keeping proper perspective is important if this type of prayer or any other is to be a source of growth in the love of God.

This prayer has the same danger spots as any other mental or interior prayer form. One must remember that even the most authentic encounters with Christ are not literal messages to be taken as prophecy or to be put on the level with the Word of God or the magisterium of the church. They are the traces of prayer -- usually part us and part God.

Receiving great consolation from God in prayer does not make one a holier person than anyone else. And we are all capable of fooling ourselves, of being subtly influenced by evil and by the various forms of pride and selfishness we are infected with in our hearts that can mislead us. We can all become so attached to the experiences the Lord gives us we can hold ourselves back from the giver because of our fascination with the gifts we receive. It is important in the interior life to have experienced people to share with who can keep us on track in our growth.

Still, the Holy Spirit is at work as the prayer within and you can trust that if you are earnestly praying and attempting to make contact with God that in His mercy and grace, He responds to that intention. Also when we encounter ourselves, we encounter God because truly He is in us in a very real way.

This way of prayer also helped me as a single widowed mom of two wonderful but particularly challenging kids. I did not have a lot of time for prayer and solitude. So I created an inner chapel where I could retreat to pray and be with God within myself. At first, I would have my journal open on the kitchen counter and I can remember writing in it as I also did dishes or made dinner. Often I didn't need the journal, I just went within myself while I was sweeping or doing something else. Late at night I could be found writing, praying, pouring out my heart, being nourished and strengthened by the Lord within. I could never have made it through without having recourse to praying like that. I filled up many a journal. I think my closet has more journals in it than clothes.

The way I did this prayer is to just start writing, creating first a landscape or scene that reflected my mood or else was a place I was comforted by. Pretty soon, as I scribbled away about the scene I could see inside myself in a symbolic way, I was quiet inside and focused, and before too long, into the eye of my imagination, would come that long-haired guy in sandals to see me. The interior images and words would begin to flow easily and I have no doubt I was in my interior castle developing my relationship with our "friend who we know loves us," as St. Teresa said.

I used this method of prayer for years. Strangely enough, I don't use it anymore. It just went away about 10 years ago or maybe more, as if the pen fell out of my hand. My prayer became much more passive, simple, silent and dark. I just sit in the cave of my heart, if you will, nowadays, and God is there, too.

Sometimes the Lord seems to take away one kind of prayer and lead you another way. We must all be docile to that and trust it as long as it is not really that we are being lazy or flighty. Prayer requires discipline and before we give up a kind of prayer we are committed to we should be discerning about what that's really about, what our real reason is. It is always tempting to turn our hand from the plough. Sometimes continuing to pray is hard work, or an issue has come up. And we want to quit. Other times it is that God is leading us in a new path, and we should go with that.

Imaginative journaling is a great way to pray and it can be powerful and transformative. To me, it has much in common with the more active types of prayer Teresa suggests for beginners. Though I think she might have been amused by what I was doing, I don't think she would have had a problem with it.

I found out Morton T. Kelsey died some years ago. I hope someone told him how helpful he was when he got to heaven. I hope he and St. Teresa were able to have tea or something and some good discussions. Maybe she would say, "Thank you for helping my little wayward daughter to find her heart when she was wandering lost." And maybe he would say, "You're welcome. I'm sure glad you took over trying to teach her anything though. Better you than me." And maybe they laugh. And they toast their tea cups to wayward little souls that God leads in whatever way He can get them to go to find Him.

If you decide to read Morton T. Kelsey remember he isn't a Catholic but an Episcopalian priest. Also, he talks a lot of Jungian psychology, having found some of Jung's ideas helpful to his own prayer journey. You can either not read him or take what you like and leave the rest if that sort of thing bothers you. Adventure Inward is more specifically about prayer journaling. It is also simpler and shorter.

Or you can just sit down with your journal, get quiet inside and start writing. Maybe you're walking along the beach, the waves are choppy and the wind is cold. It's about to storm. You see someone coming to meet you, his long hair peeking out from his raincoat hood, flashlight in hand. "Hey come on, I made breakfast." He slips his arm around you and you're off on an adventure inward with the best friend possible, the Lord within.

 Bryan resident Shawn Manning Chapman, a twice-widowed mom of two daughters, is a Secular Discalced Carmelite, a Catholic community in the Diocese of Austin. She is a private caregiver.
With below average rainfall in the Brazos Valley in the past few months, firefighters warn that dry conditions can lead to campfires, bonfires and controlled burns getting out of hand quickly.

On Friday afternoon, volunteer firefighters from various agencies in Robertson County battled a 75-acre grass fire near the Brazos River in the northern portion of the county. No injuries were reported, but it took first responders two hours to extinguish the blaze. According to the Bremond Volunteer Fire Department, the fire was caused by a spark from an all-terrain vehicle.

While there are no burn bans in effect for any county in the Brazos Valley, much of the area is considered abnormally dry, according to the U.S. drought monitor, and other eastern and central parts of the state are experiencing moderate to severe drought. Texas Forest Service firefighters have responded to 74 wildfires across the state since the start of November, with six of those fires occurring Friday, according to Forest Service spokesman Phillip Truitt.

Because of Hurricane Harvey, precipitation records were shattered in August. According to the Texas A&M Climatologist records, the 21 inches of rain received made for the wettest August on record. However, there hasn't been much rain lately. September's precipitation was more than two inches below normal, and October's total rainfall was almost two inches below normal, records showed.

According to the National Weather Service, there's not a big chance for rain in the next week, either. There's a 20 percent chance of showers Tuesday night into Wednesday.

Frost has caused the grass to dry out, and the humidity is low, noted South Brazos County Volunteer Fire Department Chief Chet Barker.

"When conditions get like it's going to be over the next few days, there will be no burn ban, but it's still dry," Barker said. "People will continue to burn these brush piles anyway."

Barker said he and his team generally encounter trouble during the winter, when land owners start intentional controlled burns without properly preparing for the dry conditions outside. He stressed that anyone starting a fire outside, whether a large brush burn or a small campfire, should prepare the burn on bare mineral soil, not grass. Grass and brush should be cleared in a perimeter that is three times larger in width than the expected height of the fire.

"Personally, I'll go out that distance and use my tractor's implements like a disc, and I'll clear out the area [around the planned burn] a good distance away," Barker said. "Then I burn the grass inside the perimeter."

By burning grass in the area surrounding a planned fire, Barker said he destroys any kindling that could cause a controlled burn to spread once the pile itself is lit. Regardless of how the area surrounding a planned fire is cleared, Barker said that those lighting outdoor blazes should always be present at the site of the fire, and should always keep a bucket of water on hand. Though campfires and bonfires can be lit at night, it is against the law to burn trash or brush at night, he added.

As winter approaches, the dying plants and grasses are going to cause more problems for firefighters. So those planning fires outside need to be extra careful, Barker said. To learn more about how to prevent fires, visit texasforestservice.tamu.edu/PreparingForWildfires/.
The 27 Texas A&M students who have been learning how to make their own wine in the first course in a new certificate program recently presented the first bottles of wine they created, and their instructor couldn't be happier with the results.

"There was a lot of excitement and focus by this first group on producing successful bottles," Andreea Botezatu, instructor of the inaugural enology course and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service enology specialist, said in a statement. "I'm very pleased with the students' work this semester; now we're looking forward to 2018."

Launched in September, the enology course -- part of a new certificate program in winemaking from the department of horticultural sciences-- is giving students a chance to learn the skills necessary for making their own wine.

Botezatu said the program offers the ability to learn an exciting new set of skills.

She said 27 students are taking the enology course this fall, 12 of whom are also enrolled in the full certificate program as well.

Botezatu said she is "very pleased" to have had 12 students enroll in the certificate program in the first semester.

"I hope people will learn about [the course] and keep enrolling," she said.

Gregory Guidry, who is one of the students in the enology course, said he greatly enjoyed learning about winemaking "in detail and then immediately applying it by making wine in the lab."

Throughout the five-course certificate program, Botezatu said students are expected to learn a broad variety of skills and information related to wine-making, ranging from etiquette and sensory evaluation to the organic chemistry behind it.

The program's available courses to choose from include: Understanding Wine: From Vines to Wines and Beyond; Concepts of Wine Production; Viticulture and Small Fruit Culture; Fruit and Nut Production; Enology; Elements of Organic and Biological Chemistry; and Sensory Evaluation of Foods.

She was clear, however, that the program is much more than about just wine-tasting. Using the Sensory Evaluation of Foods course as an example, she explained that science plays a big role in the what students learn.

"It's not a wine-tasting course -- it's a very science-based course about perception and the sense of taste and smell," Botezatu said. " Sensory science is learning how to taste the wine, but more than that it's about sensory perception and how we perceive taste and smell and what's involved in these processes."

Botezatu said she got her education in enology at a university in her home country of Romania where she worked professionally before moving to Canada to continue her work and studies. She said she went on to earn her doctorate in enology and performed post-doctorate research into wine quality.

"I have wine-making experience in a temperate climate, in a cold climate and now in a hot climate," she said.

Botezatu said she hopes the program's current students, as well as those to come, will be able to use their new knowledge and skills to become a part of the budding Texas wine industry.

"I think people realize how big of a need we have for trained wine professionals in Texas," she said. "The industry is booming and we need to educate the proper specialists to be able to go out there and work in the winemaking field."

Nearing the end of the enology course, Guidry said it has "truly been a 'full-bodied' experience and I could definitely see myself working with wine one day."

Looking forward, he said he hopes to either expand upon his future enology certificate with graduate studies or by "combining it with my food science degree one day to be a part of the wine industry."

To learn more about the enology certificate program, which is open to students of all majors, visit hortsciences.tamu.edu.
Texas A&M University has received two of the latest grants from Gov. Greg Abbott's Governor's University Research Initiative.

Under the program, which seeks to help bring world-class researchers to Texas institutions, Roderic I. Pettigrew and M. Cynthia Hipwell will receive additional support in their move to join Texas A&M. Each grant provides $3 million in funding each for the use of purchasing new research equipment and constructing or renovating facilities to support future work.

"The Governor's University Research Initiative provides a tremendous investment in human capital and gives us a competitive edge so that we can attract top scholars like Cynthia Hipwell and Roderic Pettigrew to Texas A&M," said M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of Texas A&M Engineering, in a statement. "Scholars of this caliber attract other top faculty, researchers, students and new funding opportunities, which are critical to our success as a public university."

Pettigrew, who belongs to both the National Academy of Engineering as well as the National Academy of Medicine, will serve as the inaugural leader of Texas A&M's new Engineering Health program, integrating health-related disciplines with engineering education.

Hipwell is set to join A&M's Department of Mechanical Engineering as a Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station distinguished research professor. She,too, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
The suspect in the shooting death of a state trooper during a Thanksgiving Day traffic stop in East Texas was charged Friday with capital murder of a law enforcement officer.

Dabrett Black, 32, was being held in the Brazos County Jail. He is accused of fatally shooting Trooper Damon Allen on Thursday.

According to Brazos County Sheriff Chris Kirk, Black was treated for non life-threatening injuries at CHI St. Joseph late Thursday and was booked into the local jail around 5 a.m. Friday. It was not clear how long Black would be held in the Brazos County Jail before he is transferred.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said in social media posts late Thursday that Allen initiated a traffic stop shortly before 4 p.m. on Interstate 45 near Fairfield, about 90 miles south of Dallas. DPS said Black shot Allen with a rifle after the trooper walked back to his vehicle.

Allen died at the scene, DPS officials said. He had been with the department since 2002 and was married with three children.

DPS said Black, of Lindale, fled the scene in a car and was spotted about three hours later more than 100 miles south of Fairfield, in Waller County. The Waller County Sheriff's Office posted on Facebook that deputies were attempting to take Black into custody when shots were fired. It was not clear from the statement who opened fire.

Black fled on foot and was taken into custody after a police dog found him in a nearby field. He had been hiding among hay bales, authorities said.

"Our DPS family is heartbroken tonight after one of Texas' finest law enforcement officers was killed in the line of duty," DPS Director Steven McCraw said. "Trooper Allen's dedication to duty, and his bravery and selfless sacrifice on this Thanksgiving Day, will never be forgotten."

Allen was the second Texas trooper to be killed while on duty this month and the first trooper in the state to be shot in the line of duty since 2008. Trooper Thomas Nipper was struck and killed by a vehicle during a traffic stop on Interstate 35 in Temple earlier this month.

Court and jail records show Black has a history of evading arrest and violent run-ins with law enforcement officers.

A magistrate judge who heard official charges against Black declined to hold a bond hearing Friday. Black will likely be transferred to one of the three counties where there are open charges against him. Jail officials said a bond hearing on the capital murder charge would probably have to happen in Freestone County, where the charge originated.

Smith County court records show Black was indicted last month after he led police on a chase and rammed his car into a police cruiser in July. Court records show he was charged with aggravated assault of a public servant and evading arrest or detention with a vehicle. Brazos County jail records show that he was out on bond on those charges and that the bond had been recalled as insufficient because of the new charges.

Black was charged in 2015 with assault on a public servant and attempting to take a weapon from an officer, according to Smith County court records. Those charges were dismissed in 2016, but the records didn't explain why.

Brazos County jail records also show Black was facing a charge of evading arrest with a vehicle in Anderson County, east of where the shooting occurred Thursday. Details of the charge, including the date of the alleged offense, were unclear from those records that said his bond had been forfeited. A call to Anderson County court officials was not immediately returned Friday.

A call to a court-appointed attorney representing Black in the Smith County charges was also not immediately returned Friday. It was unclear from Brazos County records whether Black has an attorney representing him in the capital murder case.

Several Texas officials reacted to Allen's death. In a tweet Thursday, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz offered "prayers for the family and loved ones" of the trooper.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the fatal shooting of Allen a "heinous crime" in a statement Thursday. Abbott also expressed his "most sincere condolences" to the trooper's family.

Allen's body was taken to the Dallas County medical examiner's office late Thursday night. A DPS spokesman said law enforcement officers on Friday escorted Allen's body to a funeral home in Teague.

Eagle reporter Rebecca Fiedler contributed to this report
[Provisional translation]

Shinzo Abe

Prime Minister of Japan

Your Excellency Mr. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt,As a friend of Your Excellency, I cannot help but be immensely outraged and deeply saddened at the extremely high number of Egyptian casualties that resulted from the tragic terrorist attack that recently occurred at a mosque near the city of El-Arish.On behalf of the Government of Japan and the Japanese people, I would like to express my sincere condolences to the families of the victims and extend my heartfelt sympathies to the injured.Terrorism cannot be justified for any reason. Japan resolutely condemns this heinous act of terrorism. We will stand with Your Excellency and the Egyptian people at all times as Egypt mourns the victims and works to overcome this tremendous hardship.
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NORWALK  The old, the young and the underprivileged stand to benefit from the 2018 Mayors Ball next month.

Mayor Harry Rilling has chosen The Marvin and Norwalk Community Health Center as recipients of proceeds from the ball, which is Jan. 26 in Darien.

The Marvin

Mary Bennett, a lifelong Norwalk resident, has lived at The Marvin on Gregory Boulevard for eight years and enjoys a corner unit with bedroom, kitchen and a living room that lets in abundant sunshine. She said she likes the security and friendliness at The Marvin.

The very friendliness and taking care of us  feeding us, thats very important, Bennett said. And the security here is so nice because when you come in at night and lock the door, its secure.

Bennett is one of 50 residents of Under One Roof/The Marvin, which opened as a congregate-housing facility at 60 Gregory Boulevard in 1997 and since has expanded to include a pre-school center for children and assisted living services for seniors.

We have an agency here, Masonicare, which has nursing on staff, said Marvin Executive Director Mary Windt. It keeps people out of nursing homes.

Jane Staff, another lifelong Norwalker, followed her sisters footsteps by moving into The Marvin a year ago.

Other people had come here that I know and I had visited here and I saw how everything was so nice, Staff said. So thats why I came.

Staff said she likes the freedom afforded residents at The Marvin. Dinner is cooked in house for all, but residents can leave the facility as they please or stay inside for activities such as exercise classes, musical performances, bingo or painting. A library is also available. The Marvin issues a monthly newsletter that keeps residents abreast of the offerings and celebrates residents birthdays.

Windt said proceeds from the Mayors Ball will go toward programs and operations at the facility.

The money will come as The Marvin undergoes a $3.5 million state-funded overhaul that will replace windows, upgrade lighting, install a new heating system and otherwise make the building more energy efficient.

Norwalk Community Health Center

Craig Glover, Norwalk Community Health Center CEO, said the center is excited that Rilling has chosen it as a recipient of proceeds from the Mayors Ball.

On any give day, the health center on Connecticut Avenue handles 250 appointments for medical services and assistance, such as signing up for Medicaid and Medicare or connecting with food pantries.

Norwalk Community Health Center provides medical, dental, and behavioral health services for approximately 14,000 patients annually, Glover said. With a patient population that spans newborn to elderly, the focus is on continuity of care and wellness designed with and for each patient, regardless of their ability to pay.

Nearly three quarters live at or below the federal poverty level. Half rely upon Medicaid, one in five are uninsured, one in 10 have private insurance and about 6 percent pay with Medicare. The center employs bilingual staff as many patients do not speak English.

The patients come to the health center for adult medicine, pediatric care, behavioral health, womens health and most recently dental services.

Dr. Jennifer Marrone, a clinical team leader, has worked at the center for nearly a decade in the womens health department. She said shes giving back to the community by seeing patients, hearing their concerns and treating them mentally, physically and emotionally.

Ive had patients that have seen me for the last nine years and I see their mothers and I see their daughters and its like a whole life cycle of family, Marrone said. Thats why I really do truly love Norwalk Community Health Center. I love my patients and this is why were here every day.

Not all are served in house. In 2013, the health center introduced its Medical Mobile Unit, which travels throughout greater Norwalk and provides adult, pediatric, dental hygiene and womens health services to the areas most vulnerable and least-mobile residents.

The health center opened in 1999 and grew steadily. In 2010, under CEO Larry Cross, it moved from cramped quarters on Water Street into the 24,500-square-foot facility at 120 Connecticut Ave.

Were trying to find more space, Glover said. Were going to keep this (space), but were looking to add additional space.

Mayors Ball Jan. 26

The 2018 Mayors Ball is at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 26, at the Waters Edge at Giovannis in Darien. Reservations with payment will be accepted until Jan. 17 or until the venue sells out. Tickets are $125 per person. Tables of 10 can be reserved.

Checks should be made payable to the Norwalk Community Benefit Fund. For more information, call Maritza Alvarado at 203-854-7950. Silent auction donations produce the bulk of the ball proceeds. To donate a silent auction item, call Sally Johnson, executive assistant to the mayor, at 203-854-7707.
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NORWALK  Although not pristine, the Norwalk River is cleaner than it was a year ago and its faring better than many other waterways in Fairfield County, according to an environmental group.

Most of our sites along the length of the river, which runs from Ridgefield all the way down into the harbor here, most of them were not meeting state criteria for bacteria concentrations, said Nikki Cantatore, associate director of research at Harbor Watch. But with that being said, they werent exceeding by a lot. We have plenty of other rivers in the county that are not meeting the state criteria by far more than what Norwalk is.

This month, Cantatore and Harbor Watch Associate Director of Education Peter Fraboni provided the Norwalk Harbor Management Commission, during its Annual State of the Harbor Meeting at City Hall, an overview of the organizations 2017 Fairfield County River Report.

Decades of testing

Harbor Watch, a water-quality research program based out of Earthplace in Westport, has monitored water quality throughout Fairfield County since 1986.

Covering 18 towns, the 2017 monitoring season was Harbor Watchs largest to date. The report contains data for 16 rivers that were monitored from May through September.

The goal of the monitoring is to identify sources of sewage pollution entering local waterways using E. coli as a yardstick.

Water quality in the Norwalk River in 2017 was improved over 2016 results and had the second fewest exceedances in the last five years, according to Harbor Watch.

Although more than half of the sites exceeded one or both of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protections criteria for E. coli, the majority met the dissolved oxygen criterion.

In addition to in-stream monitoring, Harbor Watch tracked down sources of pollution entering the river and remediated all in 2017.

It definitely looks like the water quality is improving, so thats definitely a testament to the employees that you have working for you, Cantatore said.

Cantatore credited the Norwalk Department of Works and the citys Water Pollution Control Authority for helping resolve sources of sewage infiltration into the river.

Local cooperation

Harbor Watch partners with municipalities to identify and remediate sources of sewage pollution into the Long Island Sound watershed.

Alexis Cherichetti, Norwalks senior environmental officer, said Harbor Watch and the city have worked well together to track down sources of sewage pollution.

A lot of times the city just doesnt have the resources to track it down, Cherichetti said. Thats what Harbor Watch does and it allows the city to respond to the problems once theyre brought to light. So its been a fantastic, cooperative existence.

Overall, many of the Fairfield County rivers monitored as part of the 2017 report did not meet state criteria for bacteria concentrations and are channeling bacteria into Long Island Sound.

Sixty-one percent of sites exceeded the DEEPs mean criterion of 576 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters. The Saugatuck River, which flows through Redding, Weston, and Westport, had the fewest exceedances. The Bruce Brook, which flows through Stratford and Bridgeport, had the most exceedances of the DEEP criteria, according to Harbor Watch.

Homework continues

Fraboni provided the harbor commission a history of the Harbor Watch program. Dick Harris launched the program in 1986 after discovering low dissolved oxygen levels at the bottom of Norwalk Harbor and sharing his findings with the University of Connecticut. The university advised Harris to form a volunteer group to delve deeper into the problem, Fraboni said.

So he came back home and said, I went to get an answer and I came back with a homework assignment, Fraboni said. And that homework assignment blossomed into the Harbor Watch program.

In December 2014, the harbor commission presented Harris, who was then retiring as director of the Harbor Watch program, a plaque for his passion and vision for a more healthy harbor.

Harris mission continues and dissolved oxygen remains a problem in Norwalk Harbor, according to Cantatore.

The upper end of the harbor, closer to Wall Street, we are seeing some low levels of oxygen at the bottom, which is unpleasant just because we have a lot of great fish species that are in the harbor, Cantatore said. And if theres no oxygen, then were going to start losing our fish species.

Cantatore said Harbor Watch has seen a decline in winter flounder numbers over the last 30 years. The trend, however, is not unique to Norwalk, she added.

There may be other conditions such as rising water temperatures, Cantatore said.
Alex von Kleydorff / Hearst Connecticut Media

WILTON  The Schneerson Center of CT will host several local area Menorah lightings for the festival of Chanukah, including a giant outdoor Menorah lighting at the Wilton Town Green at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 13.

The event will include live music, Chanukah gelt and dreidels, and is perfect for the whole family. The event is free and open to all, and will be led by Rabbi Levi Stone of the Schneerson Center.
CENTRAL CITY  Nebraska Christian Schools will present Love Divine, a Festival of Lessons and Carols, at 6:15 p.m. Friday, Dec. 15, in the schools gymnasium.

The Festival, now in its 12th year at Nebraska Christian, will once again be directed by international conductor Maestro Eric Dale Knapp of New York City.

Linda Sweetman-Waters, a piano soloist, organist, chamber musician and accompanist, is also returning to perform as part of the concert.

Great music, wonderful people, marvelous message, Knapp said. This is a rare event in time when young people and adults collaborate to create the magic of Christmas. This will be the shinning star in your Christmas season. Please join us for this glorious celebration.

The festival choir will be comprised of 150 voices and includes students from Nebraska Christian, Central City, High Plains and Elba, as well as area home schools. Approximately 40 elementary students will be in the Childrens Choir, which will be directed by Mike Flynn, Nebraska Christian music director.

The 40-piece orchestra will include musicians from Kearney, Hastings and the surrounding area.

Choir members will participate in an all-day choral workshop with Knapp prior to the evening performance.

School Superintendent Josh Cumpston said, This event has greatly blessed our school and community and we would like to have the opportunity to share it with you.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and courtesy valet parking will be available. The program will begin at 6:15.

Tickets are $15 each and may be purchased by calling the school office at (308) 946-3836 or stopping in between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The 2017 Festival of Lessons and Carols is sponsored in part by Nebraska Christian Schools, Nebraska Arts Council, the Merrick Foundation and Nebraska Christian Schools Foundation. Established in 1959, Nebraska Christian Schools is a Pre-K through 12th grade Christian day and boarding school located in Central Nebraska.
At the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), we celebrate small business success daily to inspire more people to go in to business for themselves. When entrepreneurs start a business that does well, the return of jobs and revenues directly to our communities makes a powerful impact.

Small businesses are still the engines of our national economy and about 96 percent of all businesses in our region are actually considered small.

As part of SBAs annual pre-holiday tradition, we are asking you join us and millions of other Americans who shop small on Small Business Saturday  the Saturday after Thanksgiving. On November 25th you can impact your community by finding small businesses for gift ideas at www.sba.gov/saturday.

Also at SBAs website, owners can find out how to be listed as a participating Small Business Saturday business; customize marketing materials and encourage customers to stop by. SBA further lists holiday marketing tips for use right now.

A Small Business Saturday Consumer Insights Survey estimated that 112 million consumers aware of Small Business Saturday in 2016 spent an estimated $15.4 billion with independent merchants. Thats a lot of impact.

As the SBA acting regional administrator for Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa, Ive seen firsthand how small businesses escalate our economy, boost our quality of living and create local jobs.

So, I will Shop Small in a big way on Small Business Saturday. And Ill remind others to Shop Small in tweets using the hashtag #SmallBizSat. I hope you will do the same.
Chester Goode is a connoisseur of fine coffee.

Viewers of Gunsmoke almost get the idea its the only thing he cares about.

In his quest to make the perfect cup, Chester is anxious to hear what other people think.

People in Dodge dont drink caramel macchiato. One man who tasted his coffee said its stout enough for shoe leather.

Another day, Chester asked Marshal Dillon what he thought of the days brew. Nothing wrong with that coffee, the marshal said.

Well, I made it good and strong. Theres nothing like a bellyful of powerful coffee to keep you in the saddle all day, Chester said.

Yeah, thisll keep me all the way to Hays, Dillon said.

One day Dillon and his sidekick were visiting some soldiers, sipping java while they waited.

You know Mr. Dillon, if Id known I could get coffee like this for breakfast every morning I think Id join the Army again, Chester said.

You better find out how they make that stuff, Chester. That coffee of yoursll singe the hair off a buffalo hide, Dillon said.

Yeah, Chester admitted. I figure its that Dodge City water.

The harshest judge of Chesters coffee is Doc Adams.

On one episode, Chester was proud because hed given the coffee a real good cold soak before making it. Doc said that must be the reason it tastes a little bit more like embalming fluid.

I noticed that you kept your mouth shut long enough until you drunk three cups of it, Chester said.

Oh well, I couldnt help that, Doc said. My throat was paralyzed after the first cup.

I wish itd just stayed that way, said Chester, played by Dennis Weaver.

On another show, Chester pointed out Docs behavior seemed to belie his criticism.

You know you bellyache, Doc, Chester said. But I notice you stagger over here the first thing every morning.

Well certainly. I figure if I can survive a cup of your coffee in the morning, I can face anything the day has to bring, Doc said.

Another day, Dillon told Doc not to finish the coffee. Not very likely. I dont think I can finish what I got, Doc said.

Chester just glared at him.

Even Chesters most loyal friend mocks his morning brew.

One day, Chester said two prisoners were as surly as could be when I took them coffee this morning.

Well, I cant say as I blame them for that, Marshal Dillon said.

But Chester thinks hes got a real knack, Im kind of an expert on coffee, he says.

Hes always tinkering with the recipe. Sometimes, he thinks the key is the right amount of chicory. But thats not the only secret ingredient.

One woman, sipping Chesters coffee with Matt, said it stays hot after you swallow it.

Thats the cayenne. Chester swears that the pepper gives it body. Last week he was using egg shells and salt, Dillon said.

You tell him chicor is good enough, she said.

Ill tell him, but I doubt itll do much good, the marshal said.

One day, Dillon spotted Chester putting egg shells in the coffee pot. Arent you going to put the egg in the coffee? the marshal said.

Well, Mr. Dillon, aint no need to waste a whole egg, Chester said.

Talking about the perfect cup, Chester can get almost rhapsodic.

Youd think a restaurant like this could at least make good coffee, Chester said one day, sitting at Delmonicos.

Yeah, I know. Youve always got to find fault with everybodys coffee but your own, the marshal said.

Well, thats only because most people just dont know how to make good coffee, Chester said. In the first place, they boil the water before they put the coffee in. Any fool knows that youve got to put the coffee in the cold water and bring them both to a boil together. That way, you get all of the flavor.

The worst thing people do is throw grounds away after only using them once. What they dont know is theyre throwing away the best part. Youve got to keep them old grounds, Chester said.

You add a little fresh coffee every morning and let her boil. Shoot, you dont make a cup. You build a pot. You dont really get a good pot until youve been using it a week. Then its coffee.

Either thats the dumbest thing Ive ever heard, or its brilliant. I just cant decide.

Jeff Bahr is a reporter for The Independent. He may be reached at jeff.bahr@theindependent.com.
Interstate 55 proved deadly over the Thanksgiving holiday for four individuals.

On Friday, Illinois State Police District 11 announced that a third person died as a result of the accident Nov. 21 on Interstate 55 south of Hamel.

Vivian Vu, age 19, of Joplin, Mo., passed away at approximately 12:40 p.m. on Thursday, at a St. Louis hospital according to a statement by the ISP.

Vu was a passenger in a 2016 Chevrolet Express Van that was involved in the eight-vehicle collision.

Madison County Coroner Steve Nonn issued a statement Wednesday stating that the first two victims were Madisen Bertels, 17, and Hailey Bertels, 20, both of Staunton.

The victims were in a 2010 Kia Forte four-door sedan when it was struck by a semi-tractor trailer at approximately 6:14 p.m. Tuesday in the southbound lanes of I-55.

The Bertels sisters, according to Nonns report, were wearing seat belts. Hailey Bertels was in the backseat.

The ISP stated in its news release on Friday that the accident appears to have been caused by a semi-tractor trailer that was being driven by a 53-year-old male.

The 18-wheel truck was traveling at a high rate of speed when it rear-ended the Kia the Bertels sisters were in.

Traffic had slowed due to construction just south of the crash site.

The ISP reports a third passenger in the Kia was listed in critical condition as of Nov. 24.

Meanwhile, 22-year-old SIUE student Courtney Littell was killed in a two-car accident at 9:01 p.m. on Wednesday on Interstate 55 just outside of Lincoln, the ISP reports.

According to an SIUE spokesman, Littell was a senior in the School of Arts and Sciences.

She had a Wood River address, according to the SIUE spokesman.

Littell was traveling northbound on I-55 when a southbound vehicle driven by Adriana Rodrigues, 26, of Wenona, crossed the median and struck Littells vehicle.

Rodrigues was transported to a hospital in Springfield with minor injuries. She was cited for improper lane usage and no proof of insurance.

The Logan County Coroners office stated blunt force trauma caused Littels death.
New research has unveiled some of the reasons why men and women gossip and suggests that the activity is actually good for us.

Adam Davis of the University of Ottawa in Canada, who carried out the research, suggests that gossiping is actually a highly evolved social skill, rather than a character flaw.

Through gossiping members of the opposite sex have an opportunity to show off their desirable characteristics to each other, also known as intrasexual competition.

Daviss new study is now the first to provide verifiable evidence for a positive link between intrasexual competitiveness, the amount of gossip that people take part in, and whether they believe it is OK to gossip.

Researchers recruited at 290 heterosexual students between the ages of 17 and 30 years old and asked them to complete three questionnaires.

One questionnaire measured how competitive the participants are towards other members of their own sex, especially if they see them as a potential competitor for a mate.

The other two questionnaires measured how likely people were to talk about others and if they think gossiping is acceptable.

Read also: Three simple exercises you can do with a friend
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Linkedin Olivia Hampton (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States  Sat, November 25, 2017 16:03 1817 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2ab6638 2 Books photography,photography-book,animals,endangered,Tim-Flach Free

Can you love an animal to death?

A new book by British photographer Tim Flach documents some of Earth's most treasured species pushed to the brink of extinction by manmade crises, from pangolins hunted for their scales to Brazil's pied tamarin threatened by urbanisation.

"Most of the changes in the past have been driven by natural forces, but on this occasion, it seems to be driven by us," Flach told AFP on a visit to Washington.

London-based photographer Tim Flach poses with his book 'Endangered' November 13, 2017 in Washington, DC. As a child, Tim Flach would immerse himself in the outdoors, becoming so attuned to the natural world that he could feel a bee's energy as it streaked by while he sketched in a corn field. This same sense of hyper-awareness of the natural world drove the British photographer to document some of the most threatened species across the globe, from pangolins hunted for their scales to great white sharks swimming off the Galapagos Islands. (AFP/Brendan Smialowski)

"My real question is: 'Why am I here doing it? Why am I here taking a picture of the last male white rhino?' It's the question of how we got to that point, rather than simply one of wonderment."

Coral, insects and even some ecosystems are included alongside some of the most recognizable threatened mammals such as polar bears and lesser-known creatures like harlequin toads.

The panda is one of the least vulnerable species found in the more than 150 images of "Endangered," whose release coincides with a new exhibition of Flach's photos in London's Osborne Samuel Gallery.

Flach, known for his highly stylized photographs of dogs and horses, captures the animals' almost human expressions.

Read also: Newly discovered orangutan species is most endangered great ape: study

A crowned sifaka lemur hugs his knees toward his chest on the book cover of Tim Flach's 'Endangered', Flach used a black velvet backdrop in many of his prints 'because I want you to focus on the animal,' he explained to an AFP journalist in Wahington on November 13, 2017. The collection of more than 150 images featured in 'Endangered,' a tome released by US publisher Abrams, spans the spectrum of International Union for Conservation of Nature rankings from not evaluated and vulnerable to critically endangered and extinct in the wild. (ABRAMS / AFP/Tim Flach)

On the book's cover, a crowned sifaka lemur hugs his knees toward his chest, his bright yellow eyes betraying a worried yet inquisitive look, like a reprimanded schoolboy.

Flach, 59, often uses a black velvet backdrop and his lighting captures colors in such detail that one can almost feel the softness of the lemur's black, orange and white fur.

In the summer, Flach trekked to Russia's Caspian Sea, hiding in a "fly-infested hole" in search of the saiga antelope, an Ice Age survivor that once roamed alongside woolly mammoths but could soon be wiped out by poachers preying on its twisted horns.

Flach could only get a good sighting of the females, so he returned in the dead of winter with the longest lens he could borrow from Canon and got just one shot.

A Shoebill looks straight into Tim Flach's camera in this picture part of the book 'Endangered'. Flach used a black velvet backdrop in many of his prints 'because I want you to focus on the animal,' he explained to an AFP journalist in Wahington on November 13, 2017. The collection of more than 150 images featured in 'Endangered,' a tome released by US publisher Abrams, spans the spectrum of International Union for Conservation of Nature rankings from not evaluated and vulnerable to critically endangered and extinct in the wild. (ABRAMS / AFP/Tim Flach)

Other encounters during a two-year odyssey included staring the last male white rhinoceros in the eye and swimming with great white sharks off the Galapagos Islands.

He hopes that others share his passion for wildlife.

"If we care about something, we are more likely to take action," said Flach.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 08:00 1818 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2aa87e3 1 City city-budget,flower-board Free

Dear City Council, the PDIP [Indonesian democratic Party of Struggle], the PPP [United Development Party], the Democratic Party, the Hanura Party, the PKB [National Awakening Party] and the Nasdem Party. [We] reject the wasteful spending in the 2018 city budget, reads a flower board found in front of the City Council headquarters in Central Jakarta on Friday.

The flower board was sent by a group of Jakartans, who wanted to give a reminder to the councilors, especially the political parties that supported former governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama in Jakarta's gubernatorial election. Ahok was well-known for his thorough monitoring of budget planning, including scrapping allocations he considered irrelevant to the public.

In the draft 2018 city budget, the current administration under the leadership of new Governor Anies Baswedan has allocated Rp 345.6 billion (US$25.58 million) to the city council, which is almost double this years allocation of Rp 107.7 billion.

The Rp 346.6 billion includes Rp 620 million to revamp a fountain in front of the council headquarters and some Rp 346.7 million for purchasing automatic air freshener dispensers. The total budget allocation for city councilors working visits also increased significantly to Rp 107.7 billion next year, from Rp 28 billion previously. (vny)
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Linkedin (AFP) Cairo  Sat, November 25, 2017 18:34 1817 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2ab8fc4 2 World Egypt,EgyptAttack,mosque,death-toll Free

The death toll from an attack on a mosque in Egypt's Sinai rose to 305 including 27 children, the state prosecution said Saturday in a statement detailing the gruesome massacre.

It said there were between 25 and 30 attackers with long hair and beards, dressed in camouflage and flying a black banner with the Muslim profession of faith on it, which could be a description of the Islamic State group's flag.

They surrounded the mosque and opened fire on the worshippers on Friday, it said.

The attackers had arrived in five all-terrain vehicles and later set fire to seven cars belonging to the worshippers.

The statement said witnesses recounted hearing gunshots and explosions before some of the assailants entered the mosque.
The world faces the prospect of more tension with China over trade, security and human rights after Xi Jinping awarded himself another five-year term as leader of the ruling Communist Party and called for self-reliance in technology, a stronger military and protection of core interests abroad. At a party congress, Xi gave no sign of plans to change the "zero-COVID strategy that has frustrated Chinas public and disrupted business and trade. He called for faster military development and announced no change in policies that strain relations with Washington and Asian neighbors. Xi is tightening control at home and trying to use Chinas economic heft to increase its influence abroad.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 25 2017

Authorities in Depok, West Java, have rounded up and whisked away 11 dogs after reports that the pets had shredded the body of their deceased owner, a 50-year-old woman, at her home in Beji district.

The boarding house keeper was found dead in her bedroom with her dogs early on Friday morning. She had not been seen around the neighborhood for five days, residents reported.

She lived in her room with her 11 pet dogs, without any other companion, wartakota.tribunnews.com reported.

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Linkedin (AFP) Washington  Sat, November 25, 2017 10:55 1818 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2aaf12d 2 Politics Donald-Trump,finance-chief,US Free

US President Donald Trump on Friday appointed White House budget director Mick Mulvaney to head a financial watchdog that the administration has sought to overhaul as part of its deregulation push.

Mulvaney, who described the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as a "sick, sad joke" in a 2014 interview, will serve as acting director until a permanent head is nominated and confirmed, according to a White House statement.

Since the start of his presidency Trump has decried financial rules and regulations, put in place through the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation, to combat the excesses that led to the 2008 financial crisis.

Richard Cordray, the first director of the CFPB who had long been in the banking industry's crosshairs, announced last week he would step down by the end of the month, several months early.

Trump's Treasury Department has produced three reports calling for a whittling down of rules imposed on mid-size banks, a scaling back of stress tests and a restructuring of the CFPB.

Republicans have long deemed the bureau, which was founded in 2011 under the administration of former president Barack Obama, too far outside political control.

Last month, the US Senate voted to terminate a rule created by the agency that would have allowed class-action suits against banks or credit card companies.

The rule would have addressed fine-print clauses that bank and credit card consumers must agree to which bar them from seeking redress through litigation.

The vote was criticized by many Democrats as a sop to Wall Street.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 06:18 1818 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2aa8289 2 SE Asia ASEAN,change Free

The 10-nation ASEAN will not be enacting any drastic reforms aimed at strengthening its institutional capacity in the near future, a diplomat has revealed, as the regional bloc seeks out a clear direction for the next 50 years.



Responding to a question on the state of the organizations internal reform agenda, Indonesias lead diplomat on ASEAN affairs, Jose Tavares, said that ASEAN member states saw little need for change. In particular, the Foreign Ministrys ASEAN director general said there would not be any changes to the budget or the decision-making principles anytime soon unless there is a strong stance taken by the leaders.



I dont see any reforms undertaken soon in ASEAN at this point in time, Jose said Friday during discussions at an event in Jakarta hosted by the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI).



Separately, ASEANs deputy secretary-general overseeing budgetary affairs, AKP Mochtan, told The Jakarta Post that there would be a slight increase in the secretariats 2018 budget from the 2017 figure.



The ASEAN Secretariat (ASEC) in Jakarta employs around 300 staff and had an annual budget of US$20 million in 2016 derived from equal contributions from its member states. With that budget, it must organize more than 1,000 meetings every year. Often touted as the second most successful regional organization after the European Union, ASEANs budget pales in comparison to the 185 billion ($220 billion) that its European counterpart enjoys.



The secretariat also lacks in decision-making authority, unlike the EU, which has several implementing bodies. The 10 members of ASEAN rely instead on consensus to move its collective agenda forward, basing it on the principle of dialogue and consultation at a common level of comfort.

Topics : ASEAN change
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 15:08 1817 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2ab5512 4 News si-pitung,Rumah-Si-Pitung,Museum,jakarta Free

Rumah Si Pitung (Pitung's House), located on Jl. Kampung Marunda Pulo in Cilincing, North Jakarta, is the most popular attraction among the three museums overseen by the Jakarta Maritime Museum.

As reported by Antara news agency, Jakarta Maritime Museum head Husnison Nizar said the house museum was a favorite during weekends and holidays, especially among visitors from Bekasi and Karawang.

The Jakarta Maritime Museum, which also consists of the Onrust Island Museum in Thousand Islands and the Maritime Museum in Penjaringan, North Jakarta, set a target of earning an income of Rp 650 million (US$48,034) in 2017. Husnison said that so far it had received Rp 500 million.

"The biggest contributor is Rumah Si Pitung. Even though the three museums on average are visited by almost three thousand people per month, Rumah Si Pitung has the highest number of visitors. On weekends there could be over 500 visitors," Husnison said in Jakarta on Monday, as quoted by Antara news agency.

Si Pitung of Rawabelong village (now a subdistrict in West Jakarta) is a legendary Betawi bandit figure from the 19th century who was skilled in martial arts and used his talents to defend the poor.

Read also: Jakpost guide to Kota Tua

Although the wooden-stilt house in North Jakarta is believed to have belonged to his fish vendor friend Haji Safiudin, Si Pitung reportedly resided there. Kept intact, the house has been made into a museum.

Husnison said the house also contained the bed Si Pitung slept on. The museum also has displays on Betawi culture and history, including Betawi cultural expert Ridwan Saidi's musical instrument collection. (liz/asw)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 19:37 1817 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2abcd31 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Batik-Air,Silangit-airport,Lake-Toba Free

Beginning Dec. 1 Batik Air offers a daily flight from Soekarno Hatta International Airport, Cengkareng to Silangit International Airport, North Sumatra.

An Airbus A320 airplane that can accommodate 180 passengers will be used for this route.

Every day, with flight number ID 6832 [the plane departs] from Cengkareng at 09:35 a.m. and arrives at Silangit at 11:45 a.m. For the return trip, the flight number is ID 6833, departing from Silangit at 12:20 p.m. and will arrive in Cengkareng at 02:30 p.m., said Lion Group public relations, Ramaditya Handoko.

Ramaditya added that Silangit International Airport is surrounded by eight regencies and Lake Toba is an iconic landmark in Indonesia.

There will be five flights for the Jakarta  Silangit route every day, its equal to 776 seats per day, said Lake Toba Tourism Authority Board president director Arie Prasetyo. (asw)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 11:35 1818 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2ab06b7 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,ecotourism,geopark Free

Indonesia has officiated five geoparks located all across the nation as National Geoparks.

These five places are Aspiring Geopark Belitung, Raja Ampat Geopark, Tambora Geopark, Maros Tangkep Geopark dan Bojonegoro Geopark.

The inauguration ceremony was conducted during the Belitung National Geopark Seminar on Nov. 24 in Belitung.

These five geoparks deserve to get a certification from the Indonesian National Committee. The certificate will be submitted to the UNESCO for cultural heritage and world heritage categories.

Geopark Indonesia Taskforce head Yunus Kusumabrata said that these National Geoparks had to undergo the evaluation process from 12 judges.

The evaluation process was conducted on Oct. 31 and divided into three categories: Category A was for geoparks that earned the score above 70 percent, category B was for geoparks that earned between 60 to 70 percent and category C was between 50 to 60 percent.

Those that belonged in the category C will be put on probation period for six months.

If in the six months time the geopark doesnt do any of the improvements requested by the judging panel, then we will re-evaluate its status, said Yusuf.

From the evaluation process, Aspiring Pulau Belitung, Raja Ampat and Tambora Geoparks were listed in the B category, Geopark Maros was in the C category and Geopark Bojonegoro was in the D category which means that Geopark Bojonegero needs to make improvements based on the recommendation from the judging panel within one year time. (asw)
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 17:19 1817 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2ab8175 1 Guide To Jakpost-guide-to,Korea,Korean-wave,food,beauty Free

The prevalence of South Korean lifestyle products in Jakarta continues to be on the rise, as it also follows the popularity of music and television series among Indonesian audiences.

South Korean skin care products, makeup, cuisine and cooking ingredients are becoming increasingly easier to obtain.

Those who are keen to try all things Korean, or maybe just Koreans who are missing a taste of home, may want to check out the guide below.

What to eat

Most know Samyang as the flaming-hot South Korean instant noodle that took over the internet last year as people took on a spicy challenge. The noodles are easily found at local supermarkets across Jakarta.

Read also: Jakpost guide to Pasar Modern BSD City

Meanwhile, head into most large malls across the capital city, and it won't be hard to find several South Korean fast food restaurant chains available.

Those in search of a more traditional culinary experience, however, would be better off heading to one of the many restaurants around the capital city that serves more upscale Korean food.

The area just south of Sudirman Central Business District (SCBD) in South Jakarta is home to a number restaurants providing authentic Korean cuisine.

A number of favorites located on Jl. Wolter Monginsidi include the familar Korean BBQ chain Bornga and also an independent favorite, Tobak. (JP/Wienda Parwitasari)

A number of favorites located on Jl. Wolter Monginsidi include the familiar Korean BBQ chain Bornga and also an independent favorite, Tobak.

A standout in the vicinity, meanwhile, is Seorak Chueotang (Bumbu Satu), which is located on Jl. Senopati in South Jakarta.

The restaurant's interior is comfortable with plush seating, as well as Asian-style decor and indoor greenery.

"Ppyeo Da Gui Hae Jang Guk," (pork bone soup) at Seorak Chueotang on Jl. Senopati. (JP/Wienda Parwitasari)

Ppyeo Da Gui Hae Jang Guk, or pork bone soup, at Seorak Chueotang comes at Rp 95,000 (US$7). The serving is generous and the flavor is rich. The meat is well seasoned and cooked until tender, leaving a satisfying taste after each bite.

What to buy

Those who prefer to eat in, or just want to try to cook Korean food at home, can go to several groceries stores located around Jakarta to stock up on ingredients.

Some of them include New Soul on Jl. Wijaya I and Hanil Mart on Jl. Kramat Pela, both in Kebayoran Baru.

Other items to look for are cosmetics and skin care products.

The Korean beauty routine has been getting noticed more and more by international audiences, especially with its lavish 10-step routine. The sheet mask, one of the steps, has probably become one of the favorites, as it provides instantaneous results.

Products to complete the routine are offered from many Korean beauty brands, ranging from the luxurious Sulwhasoo, which can be found in the Sogo department store in Plaza Senayan, South Jakarta.

Read also: Five premium Korean skincare products to try

In the more affordable range, there are Etude House and The Face Shop, both of which have an established and familiar presence in Jakarta. Branches of the brands can be found in many large shopping malls.

A post shared by innisfree Indonesia (@innisfreeindonesia) on Oct 25, 2017 at 4:23am PDT

Most recently, Korea's natural cosmetics brand, Innisfree, has also entered the Indonesian market with a store in Senayan City mall in South Jakarta.



What to do

Inspired by Korean celebrities' hairdos, there is the Ando and Yun salon in Gandaria City shopping mall, which specializes in Korean-style haircuts and styling.

The salon applies special techniques and even conveys tips and tricks for clients to maintain their hair.

Meanwhile, to learn more about all things Korean in general, you can visit the Korean Cultural Center Indonesia (KCCI), which is located in Equity Tower in SCBD.

It holds various events, including film screenings, Korean language classes, as well as a "K-Pop academy" for fans of the music genre to learn how to sing and dance like their favorite Korean pop stars. The center also has classes for traditional Korean dance and musical instruments.

Tips

- In Korean cuisine, some dishes come in a set and in large portions, so make sure to ask how much food is reasonable to order.

- For skin care, it is recommended to get to know the benefits of each product in the 10-step beauty routine before investing in a whole set.

- Check out the website of the KCCI to see the schedule and for further information on classes and events.

(asw)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 17:32 1817 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2ab823b 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Jambi,Batanghari Free

Jambi Province officiated the opening of Batanghari River Festival on Nov. 22 at Tanggo Rajo, the festival is one of the top 100 national events.

The festival will run until Nov. 25, featuring plenty of activities such as the Jambi art show, dance competition, band competition, exhibition and bazaar, stage performances and traditional food cooking competition.

Jambi Governor Zumi Zola said that Batanghari is the longest river on Sumatra Island. He also highlighted the activities in the festival, Theres also going to batik carnival from designers and communities in Jambi, said Zumi.

Moreover, 1,000 lanterns will be released during the festival as well as laser light performance, poem reading, violin performance and Jambi coffee demo from 16 coffee entrepreneurs in Jambi.

Jambi Province is the home of Muaro Jambi Temple Compound. The Buddhist temple has been named as a world heritage by the UNESCO. The province is also home to Mount Kerinci, the highest mountain in Sumatra and has the highest summit in Indonesia, excluding Papua. Kerinci is 3,805 meters above sea level and from the top of the mountain, you can see Jambi, Padang, Bengkulu, even the Indian Ocean.

Behind Mount Kerinci is Mount Tujug that is known for its beautiful crater. (asw)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 15:32 1817 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2ab64b9 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,IORA,Padang,music-festival Free

The Padang City Administration is set to hold Padang Indian Ocean Music Festival (PIOMFest) on Dec. 8  10.

This festival will be joined by members of Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA).

PIOMFest is a music festival held to bring together members of IORA and their partners.

The event is also one of the ways for Padang to increase its number of tourists.

PIOMFest will become an annual event because it adds more attraction to Padang City that is focusing on tourism development and attracting tourists interest, said Padang tourism department head Medi Iswandi.

Additionally, Padang was once chosen as the host of the annual IORA Conference.

PIOMFest curator Edy Utama said that the event is similar with Sawahlunto International Music Festival that puts the spotlight on ethnic music.

Padang is one of the important locations from 21 countries that are adjacent to the Indian Ocean, plus six more partner countries such as Japan, China, France and addles. This network is called IORA and one of its main goals is to develop a cultural partnership. Gradually, we hope that members of IORA or partner countries will perform at PIOMFest, Edy said.

There are 21 countries and six partner countries that are invited to come to PIOMFest.

The first PIOMFest event will showcase musicians from four countries: India, Singapore, Japan and Indonesia.

From Indonesia, musicians who will perform at the event are Brevin Tarigan from Medan, Dol Arastra from Bengkulu, Taufik Adam from Jakarta, Riau Rithym Chamber from Riau and Talago Buni, Nan Tumpah Community, Sanggar Dayung-Dayung, Musik Gamad Music Group and Grup Gamang Long Se Tong from West Sumatra. (asw)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 10:30 1818 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2aaf017 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Jokowi,#Jokowi,Silangit-airport Free

Silangit International Airport in North Sumatra officially became an international airport on Nov. 24. The inauguration was conducted by President Joko Widodo.

In his remark, the President asked for the runway to be extended from 2,650 meters to 3,000 meters, so that larger airplanes carrying local and international tourists can land there. Additionally, the President wanted the extension to be completed before 2020.

The latest is in 2020, that means it could be done in 2018 or 2019. The terminal should also be expanded from 3,000 square meters to 10,000 square meters, he said.

President arrived at the event at around 10:35 a.m. and was welcomed by State-Owned Businesses Minister Rini Soemarno and Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi.

In the occasion, the President also visited the airports development project and one of the coffee shops in the waiting room area.

Also in the inauguration event, the President beat a traditional gondang to officiate the Silangit International Airport.

Bukka ma pittu, bukka ma harbangan. Ai nunga rade labuan ni hopal habang internasional, he said in the native language of Toba that means Prepare yourself to change because now theres an international airport available. (asw)
Illinois is the French spelling of the Indians that inhabited this state between three rivers and part of Lake Michigan, an Indian name for the land surrounded by three lakes. The French settled the southern half of Illinois and put their capital on Kaskaskia Island.

Some years ago, I met a girl from Centralia whose family still has the land grant signed by the King of France before the Jacobins of Paris deposed him by chopping off his head and declaring a republic which Napoleon resurrected. He and Thomas Jefferson became great friends and that is how Jefferson got Louisiana from him for a good price to double the size of America without war.

Jefferson was brilliant but the women of France loved Benjamin Franklin for his intelligence. French women said, A woman has to be intelligent, have charm, and be kind. It is the same I require from men.

Maurice Chevalier came to America and sang to Jeannette McDonald the song Mimi, you funny good for nothing, Mimi, am I the guy. He said, Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternative.

Charles Boyer made films in Hollywood and was always cast in the role of a suave, sophisticated, in most movies. But in the classic 1936 movie, Algiers, he played the part of Pepe le Moque, a thief sheltered by the people of the Cazbah from the police. Pepe tourist, Hedy Lamar, falls in love when he steals her jewels. The police tell her Pepe is dead and Pepe is caught when he goes to tell her hes alive.

Always surrounded by beautiful women, his marriage to British actress Pat Paterson until her death was without any infidelity. He committed suicide the year she died.

Mr. Chirac learned his English working as a young man at an American chain restaurant in Paris. When I visited Paris on a leave from the Army in 1954, I think he was the counterman who served up my hamburger. When invited to dine in Berlin with Gerhard Schroeder he asked to meet the chef who prepared the meal and told him that his meal was like the very best of French gourmet cooking. Schroeder and the chef were charmed.

Charles de Gaulle was formidable. He fought in WW I, was wounded, captured by the enemy and escaped. He observed that Politics is too serious a matter for politicians. His feud with Churchill was no secret. He said, When I am right, I get angry. When Churchill is wrong, he gets angry. We spend much time angry with each other.

The plane that was to carry him to Scotland to inspect French troops broke in the middle on take-off. Inspection showed the steel rod that held the plane together was eaten by acid. He got on the next plane and flew to Scotland with a few words saying he didnt doubt Churchill was behind it.

He said, War stirs in mens hearts the mud of the worst instincts. It puts a premium on violence, nourishes hatred, and gives free rein to cupidity. Crushes the weak, exalts the unworthy, and bolsters tyranny. Time and time again it has destroyed all ordered living, devastated hope, and put the prophets to death.
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 13:35 1817 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2ab37fa 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,putri-indonesia,Miss-Universe,pageant Free

Recently, the first runner-up of Putri Indonesia 2017, Kevin Lilliana, was crowned as Miss International 2017.

Putri Indonesia 2017 Bunga Jelitha Ibrani is currently in Las Vegas, the United States, competing for the Miss Universe 2017 beauty pageant.

On Nov. 20, Bunga along with other 92 contestants competed in the preliminary show where during the evening gown round Bunga showed up in a fuschia dress by Andreas Odang.

Prior to that, Bunga wore a costume called Warrior of Orang Utan by Rinaldy A. Yunardi during the national costume competition that was held on Nov. 18.

Bunga is currently competing for the top 16, the support from the Indonesian people will increase her chance, said Tourism Minister Arief Yahya.

The grand finale will be held at The Axis, Planet Hollywood on Nov.26. On this night, the judges will choose the top 15 contestants along with one contestant who has the highest online votes.

Thats why Im asking [everyone] to vote to help Bunga get into the top 16 list at the grand finale, he added.

The voting is done through this website vote.missuniverse.com, the voting period is available from Nov. 21 to the 25th. (asw)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 16:28 1817 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2ab7060 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Arief-Yahya,North-Sumatra Free

While traveling to North Sumatra to attend the inauguration ceremony of Silangit International Airport, Tourism Minister Arief Yahya made time to visit the homestay area in Bakara Valley, Humbang Hasundutan Regency.

The people of Bakara Valley welcomed Arief by giving him an ulos clothing and escorted him to Sisingamangaraja Castle.

The Minister said that Lake Toba is a priority destination that is developed by the government, also known as the New Bali.

With Silangit International Airport accepting international flights from Singapore, tourists from Singapore is beginning to show interest in Lake Toba and this is why new attractions are needed to support Lake Toba and one of them is Bakara Valley.

The Sisingamangaraja Castle is a magnet in Bakara, the access is currently being worked on whilst for accommodation, Tourism Ministry is ready to give support, Arief said.

Other than the Sisingamangaraja Castle, Bakara Valley is also known for its Masiripa traditional farming culture and Batak art studio.

The valley is surrounded by hills, one unique thing about this place is the presence of volcanic rocks in the middle of paddy fields. Bakara Valley is also directly adjacent to Lake Toba and has a beach and several waterfalls.

In this place there are 153 houses that can be turned into homestays, the Ministry is going to provide beds, blankets, beddings and guestbooks.

The locals will act as the owner of the homestays, but the management will be handled by professional staff with help from Tourism Ministry.

Next year, the development will be handled by the Ministry of Public Works and Housing. (asw)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 12:37 1817 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2ab2567 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Lake-Toba,homestay,Arief-Yahya Free

While attending the inauguration ceremony of Silangit International Airport in North Sumatra, Tourism Minister Arief Yahya made time to visit Sigapiton Village located on the eastern side of Lake Toba.

Sigapiton is a small village that has been made into a pilot project village for homestay development.

The last time the minister visited the place was on July 8 this year.

Since Oct. 15, two Jabu Na Ture Homestay units have been established in the area. These homestays were initiated by the Minister himself who was inspired by the designs at Archipelago Homestay Contest and Homestay Ecopod thats made of bamboo material.

The design for Jabu Na Ture Homestay itself was inspired by Batak Toba traditional house called Jabu Bolon. Additionally, Jabu Na Ture units were built using the bamboo material.

The construction was funded by Tourism Ministry, however, the next homestay development in the area will be offered to other investors.

During his visit, Arief also went to Souvenir Market, Sigale Gale cultural site located in front of the traditional houses and met with Tourism Awareness Group (Pokdarwis).

During the meeting, Pokdarwis requested the support from the government to help in homestay development. Currently, there are 14 homestay units that need to be revitalized.

The Ministry is going to support 20 homestay interior revitalization packages that will be delivered by the latest this December.

Meanwhile, for toilet and building revitalization, the Ministry is set to coordinate with the Ministry of Public Works and Housing. (asw)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 20:29 1817 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2abd134 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,morotai Free

The Tourism Ministry held Morotai Tourism Network Reinforcement meeting on Nov. 6  8 at Grand Dafam Bela Ternate Hotel, Ternate.

The formula is ABCGM: Academician, Business, Community, Government and Media. These five elements need to work together and support each other in order to build a professional and conducive tourism industry, including in Ternate and Morotai, said the Ministrys network reinforcement department head Hidayat.

The government has targeted to welcome 20 million international tourists by 2019, meanwhile, Morotai is aiming to welcome 11,000 international tourists in 2017 and 500,000 international tourists in 2019.

As one of the 10 Priority Destinations, at least by 2019 Morotai should already have a world-class attraction that covers nature-based, culture and man-made tourism, said the Ministrys person in charge of Morotai Working Group (Pokja), Ari Surhendro.

Ari also mentioned that Morotai is set to have an international airport before 2020.

Ministry is supporting Morotai in providing these three facilities: Airport entryway, airport security and passenger terminal building. These facilities are expected to be completed by the end of 2017.

Meanwhile, the airport runway is set to be developed in either this year or in 2018.

By 2019, Morotai will also have international hotel chains and other accommodations. (asw)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, November 25, 2017 08:52 1818 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2aaa563 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Banyuwangi,Ijen-crater,mount-ijen Free

Tourism Minister Arief Yahya together with Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Cultural Affairs Puan Maharani attended the Banyuwangi Ethno Carnival (BEC) 2017 event that was held At Blambangan Park, Banyuwangi on Nov. 11.

This is an honor and something that BEC participants can be proud of, said Banyuwangi Regency administration spokesperson Djuang Pribadi about the ministries visit.

Through this event, Banyuwangi Regency administration is trying to portray the cultural richness as something that connects modernity with traditional art and culture, told Djuang.

Both Arief and Puan were greeted with a fashion parade consisting of 160 youngsters.

This year marked the seventh year of BEC event and it brought up the theme of Majestic Ijen.

Several things that were highlighted at the event include sulfur from Mount Ijen that are manually mined by around 100 people, Blue Fire and Mount Ijens landscape.

The last one is flora and fauna, a group of elementary school kids, aged between eight to 12 years old, will be taught about the environment in and around Mount Ijen that has Javan hawk eagle and edelweiss flowers, explained Banyuwangi culture and tourism department head M Yanuarto Bramuda. (asw)
An ex-convict who now lives in Oklahoma is the latest to sue Nebraska over a 2015 riot at the Tecumseh prison that left two inmates dead.

Timothy Schrader's attorney, Joy Shiffermiller, says he risked his own safety saving a third inmate from being beaten to death May 10, 2015, at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution.

She said Schrader, a 44-year-old who was released in July, and other protective-custody inmates were left to fend for themselves when other inmates set off on a violent, destructive riot.

Two and a half years later, no charges have been filed in the deaths of Shon Collins and Donald Peacock, who were found beaten to death when prison staff regained control the next morning.

In a lawsuit filed last week in Lancaster County District Court, Shiffermiller said Schrader stopped three inmates from killing a third inmate, "who was almost beaten to death."

She said the inmate, who was in the same pod as Schrader, had his eyeball forcibly popped out and was bleeding from gouges on his cheeks. Schrader picked him up and carried him outside the housing unit, then got shirts and other fabric to stop the bleeding, and ice from a cooler in an attempt to save his life.

Shiffermiller said other inmates threatened Schrader for tending to the other man's injuries, and he feared he would be beaten or killed. When night fell, Schrader carried the injured man to his cell and shut the door.

"As a result of the negligence of the state, plaintiff suffered physical and severe mental distress that no person ought to have to endure," the attorney said.

Following the riot, she said, Schrader had to stay in protective custody because of threats to his life for what he did.

Shiffermiller said Schrader's mental health deteriorated significantly because of the strain of protective custody and the continued threats.

She said he also suffered smoke inhalation from the fires started by other inmates. A medical exam showed he had a spot on his lung, but he received no treatment for it.

He was transferred to the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln on Feb. 21, 2017.

Shiffermiller alleges, among other things, that the state was negligent for failing to use reasonable care to protect Schrader from general-population inmates, to properly staff the prison and to maintain security over the inmates.

She said as a result, Schrader suffered physical, mental and emotional distress.

Schrader was in prison on a 14-21-year prison sentence for false imprisonment, terroristic threats, use of a weapon and attempted second-degree sexual assault in Lancaster County.

His lawsuit is far from the first filed over the riot. Many have failed, though in federal court in May, U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf allowed Brian Guerry's pro se lawsuit to go forward on claims alleging the state failed to protect him from gangs and fires during the riot and that he was exposed to burning plastic and blood in water in his cell for days after the riot.

The state doesn't comment on pending lawsuits. But in April 2016, a Johnson County grand jury found no wrongdoing on the part of the state.
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When Lincoln didn't get a Smart Cities $50 million grant to create a citywide driverless shuttle service in 2016, city staff didn't give up.

Public Works is still hoping to make sure Lincoln is at the forefront of the driverless car movement that many believe will change the country's transportation system.

The city has signed a $99,470 contract with HDR Inc. to give Lincoln an edge as private companies perfect driverless vehicles of the future.

The study will look at the latest technology, describe a potential pilot project, provide business models for future service, and look at insurance and necessary law changes.

The consultant will also provide information about current vehicle providers and facilitate meetings with industry leaders.

The consultant will also develop a PowerPoint presentation for briefing others and a short video summarizing the concepts.

"Technology in this area is changing so rapidly, we wanted to get our arms around what is the latest and greatest," said Lonnie Burklund, assistant director of transportation for the Public Works and Utilities Department.

The study will help Lincoln determine the best software and hardware for intersections now being upgraded as part of what is called Green Light Lincoln, said Burklund.

"I am hoping we can sort of future-proof our signal upgrades ... learn how vehicles will talk to each other, how they will talk with the infrastructure," Burklund said about the way the study might help with Green Light Lincoln signal upgrades.

"We want to know the practices of other cities and states, the legislative and legal impacts," in order to move forward with a potential pilot project, Burklund said.

The result of the study should be a report that can be given to the Legislature, which is looking at driverless vehicles, often called autonomous vehicles (AVs) or micro-autonomous vehicles.

A legislative resolution (LR215) appears to be specifically aimed at Lincoln, proposing to "study the feasibility of a pilot project to allow a city of the primary class to operate autonomous shuttles." A legislative research division report on AVs notes Lincoln did not get the Smart City Challenge grant "but city officials say they are seeking private and University of Nebraska partners to move a version of the plan."

Lincoln's Smart City grant application was a big idea  a fleet of driverless vans and cars that would offer rides across the city. This study is a little more focused, looking at what it would take to create a driverless downtown shuttle, Burklund said.

Lincoln is hoping to become a pilot project, Burklund said. There is no money available from the state, but there is interest from the private sector and there are possibilities of public-private partnerships.

"After all, Lincoln is the Silicone Prairie. We have some smart folks here, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, at local firms," Burklund said.

"We want to be proactive and not reactive. We want to have some documentation and a thorough analysis of what does this new technology mean for Lincoln. We want to be able to future-proof our own system and be ready for this potential wave of the future."

The Legislature's Research Division report on AVs says "the potential for how this technology will alter our lives is mind-boggling. AVs stand to alter how society views disability, uses its time, develops infrastructure and provides jobs."

The report points to the rapidly changing developments in the AV world and the difficulty in keeping up. "Summarizing the status of AVs is like trying to catch a speeding bullet in your softball mitt  just too fast and dangerous."

The Lincoln study, which should be completed by spring, is being led by the company and the individual who worked with Columbus, Ohio, the community that won the Smart City grant, Burklund said.

"We have the best working on this," he said.
After carving the Thanksgiving turkey and spending time with family Thursday, Ken Almquist and his 10-year-old grandson headed to Holmes Lake on Friday to go fishing.

The good weather was on the long list of things Almquist was thankful for this year.

Temperatures reached 71 degrees on Thanksgiving, setting a record for Nov. 23 and nearing Lincoln's record for the warmest Thanksgiving.

"I'm not used to it," Almquist said. "Being born and raised in Nebraska, this is really nice weather. I was expecting there to be some ice already."

The heat wave is because of a change in air patterns, National Weather Service lead meteorologist Van DeWald said. Nebraska typically has cold air coming from Canada, but right now the flow is coming from the southwestern part of the country and through the Rocky Mountains.

"It's a mixture of not getting any cold air in from Canada, combined with the luck of the draw, allowing us to have a couple of warm days," said DeWald of the NWS office in Valley.

The previous record for Nov. 23 was set in 1914, when the temperature reached 68 degrees.

Friday's 75-degree high was also a record for Lincoln. Previously, the warmest Nov. 24 was 72 degrees in 2011, which also fell on Thanksgiving and marks the city's warmest Thanksgiving.

The weather is expected to cool over the weekend, with temperatures settling in the 50s, but they'll rise again Monday, when DeWald said there's potential for record highs again.

Almquist and his grandson, Max Jasper, fish together frequently. This year is the longest they've been able to wait before preparing their gear to go ice fishing.

Max said he caught 10 fish Thursday, so they decided to head back to the lake Friday afternoon to see if their luck would continue. After hooking a few crappie, it was clear Friday, too, would be a good day for fishing.

"I'm really happy we're able to be out here and really happy the fish are biting," Max said as he cast his line back into the water.
Why are so many women now speaking out about the sexual abuses they've experienced for years? Is there anything unique about the time we're now living through that has encouraged them to end their silence?

I can't help but think that their decisions are part of something that's happening throughout much of American society right now -- a backlash against what has been the growing domination of America by powerful and wealthy men (and a few women) who came to believe they can do whatever they want to do, to whomever they choose.

"When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the p----," said Donald Trump in the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape from 2005.

Sexual assault is one obvious assertion of dominance. Other forms include economic bullying and the stoking of bigotry to gain political power.

Trump epitomizes it all. As a businessman, he stiffed contractors, used bankruptcy to avoid paying creditors, and wielded lawsuits to threaten critics.

As a politician, he gained traction by alleging that Barack Obama was born in Africa, that Mexicans are rapists and murders, and that Muslims must be kept out of America.

As president, he has bullied everyone who disagrees with him -- journalists, judges, members of Congress, his own staff and Cabinet.

He's bullied the vulnerable and innocent -- "Dreamers," who came to the U.S. as small children but could face deportation because of him; the elderly and sick, who may lose their health coverage because of him; needy families, who will no longer receive assistance because the massive corporate tax cuts he's pushing will require cuts in programs they depend on.

But the days of Trump and the bullying he represents are numbered.

Soon after the 2016 election, millions of women marched against Trump, and the Resistance was born. Since then, a growing number of Americans have been rising up against the bullies.

It is paying off.

On Nov. 7, Virginia Republican Ed Gillespie's hate-filled, Trump-style campaign for governor of Virginia collapsed in a nearly nine-percentage-point loss to Ralph Northam. Democrats swept statewide elections in Virginia, won the New Jersey governor's race, and achieved other victories across the nation.

Another consequence of Trump's presidency has been a sharp increase in the number of women directly engaged in politics. More than 20,000 women have declared themselves candidates for public office so far, according to Stephanie Schriock, the president of Emily's List -- an unprecedented number.

This should be the Democrats' hour -- especially if they stand up against the bullies of America and stand for the millions who have been humiliated, intimidated, disenfranchised and disempowered.

Democrats will need to gain 24 seats to take control of the House in 2018. It will be difficult, given the amount of gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression imposed by Republican legislatures.

Nevertheless, last month, the Cook Political Report shifted 12 House districts in favor of Democrats, a full year ahead of the 2018 midterms.

A poll released at the beginning of November showed Democrats with an 11-point lead over Republicans on a generic House ballot. The Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 51 percent of registered voters said they would vote for the Democrat in their district, while 40 percent said they would vote for the Republican.

The revolt against Trump is a backlash against bullying in all its forms. Powerful and wealthy men who have felt free to impose their will on others, regardless of the pain they cause, are in for a rude awakening.
After nearly a decade of twists and turns, the Nebraska Public Service Commission threw yet another curveball at the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

However, the commissions divided, 3-2 vote to follow the little-discussed mainline alternative route, which enters in northern Nebraska before jogging east where it would largely parallel the existing Keystone pipeline, appears to be the best option if the long-delayed project comes to fruition.

Raging debate over the pipeline always centered on trade-offs and the best interest of Nebraskans. Economy or environment? Eminent domain or landowner rights?

Any decision would be a delicate one with a large impact  and many unhappy parties  regardless. The Public Service Commission issued a nuanced, thoughtful statement on the pipeline proposal that demonstrated it had weighed the myriad concerns of both opponents and supporters, ranging from jobs to soil.

In its ruling, the PSC correctly stated: It is impossible to complete such a project without impacts. There is no utopian option where we reap the benefits of an infrastructure project without some effects. We are tasked with weighing those impacts against the potential benefits.

With the state lacking the authority to change the entry point in Keya Paha County because of a decision by South Dakota, Keystone XL couldnt run entirely alongside the smaller pipeline of the same name. If approved, it would have to cross the ecologically fragile Sandhills somewhere. By pushing east as soon as possible, concerns about the Sandhills and Ogallala Aquifer are at least somewhat mitigated.

Yes, the decision adds yet more uncertainty to the pipeline. TransCanada would need to negotiate easement terms with roughly 40 new landowners, by the Journal Stars count. In particular, the mainlines corridor through Madison County has not undergone the environmental and other reviews that land along the companys preferred path already had.

By no means is the approved route a slam dunk, but the largest regulatory hurdle to TransCanada is out of the way. That is, if the company decides to go ahead with the $8 billion, 1,184-mile project  something it has not yet committed to do.

As Papillion Sen. Jim Smith, an ardent supporter of Keystone XL, accurately noted, Its a very expensive decision to make for TransCanada.

The Journal Star editorial board originally supported the pipeline project, and backers accurately cite its construction would likely bring a much-needed infusion of tax dollars. Since then, however, new concerns that have arisen about its economic viability, job creation and the environment linger.

Though those questions must still be answered, the Keystone XL faces its share of hurdles  not least of which is a possible rehearing or appeal. If this project indeed comes to pass, the route approved by the PSC makes the most sense for Nebraskans.
Once a year Racine American Association of University Women meet in small groups in members homes for what they call candlelight dinners/lunches.

This small group setting provides members the opportunity to get to know each other better as they discuss a common topic.

This years topic was What is the place/thing to do that you think is not well known  your favorite secret about Racine County? I attended a lunch that was co-hosted by Mary Androff and Carla Wilks where we had excellent food and lively conversation.

Here is our groups list of secrets: Eco-Justice Center, Belle City Magazine, the Ruff Reader program, the Taylor Orphanage monument, Lavender Acres in Kansasville, Serendipity Farms near Waterford, Wilsons in Racine, the flat rocks near the Wind Point Lighthouse and Lake Michigan. We also jumped the border into Walworth County and listed Green Meadow Farms and a small independent bookstore in East Troy.

Our dinner/program meetings are held at various venues. While the programs can be attended free of charge, we do ask that you notify us in advance at aauwracine@hotmail.com, if you plan to come so we can have enough chairs available.

The American Association of University Women advances equity for all women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and research. By joining AAUW, you belong to a community that breaks through educational and economic barriers so all women have a fair chance.

Membership in AAUW is open to women and men holding an associate, bachelor or an advanced degree from an accredited institution of higher learning.

A complete list of the programs can be found on the AAUW website, racineaauw.org, or send email to aauwracine@hotmail.com.

Book sale

Thank you to everyone who donated to or shopped at our Fall Used Book Sale. The spring sale will be May 4-7 and 11-13. Donations for that sale can be left in the box at the bottom of the inside stairway at the CVS Pharmacy on West Boulevard.

Community involvement

More than 200 AAUW members are very involved in the Racine community, both individually and as an organization. The Community Issues Committee recently met to finalize plans for a fall event at Bethany Apartments, a nonprofit agency that provides transitional housing for women and children who are victims of domestic abuse.

The event includes providing a buffet dinner and various activities for the residents. Other activities AAUW Racine has participated in include ringing bells for the Salvation Army, and volunteering at the Monument Square Art Fair and the Empty Bowls fundraiser.

December meeting,

craft fair

Attendees at the December meeting will have the opportunity to shop at the annual craft fair. Crafts are created by AAUW Racine members. There will also be dinner and a fashion show featuring clothing styles of 16 former first ladies which is sponsored by Goodwill Industries.

For information about registering for this program, email aauwracine@hotmail.com. There is a $23 cost for the dinner which must be paid in advance.
Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI) today said its flagship scooter brand Activa has crossed 20 lakh unit sales mark in just seven months this year.

The company sold 20,40,134 units of the Activa from April to October 2017, HMSI said in a statement. The Activa, which was launched in 2001, had taken seven years to cross the first 20 lakh unit milestone in 2008, it added.

HMSI Senior VP Sales and Marketing Yadvinder Singh Guleria said Activa continues to lead as the highest selling two-wheeler of India.

Now, as scooterisation has started making rapid inroads in semi-urban and rural areas, Honda is confident that Activa will continue to grow as the number one choice of India, he added.

HMSI had launched 102cc automatic scooter Activa in 2001 and sold 55,000 units in the first year itself. The brand crossed 10 lakh unit mark in December 2005.
There is a wall mural in the compound of a rundown textile mill located in the Hindu-majority Mahalaxmi area of Mumbai that carries a haunting verse penned down by Urdu poet Muqtida Hasan Nida Fazli in the aftermath of Partition: Hindu bhi sukoon se hai Musalmaan bhi sukoon se, Insaan pareshaan yahaan bhi hai wahaan bhi (Hindus are at peace, Muslims are too, its the humans who are worried here [India] and there [Pakistan] too).

While it is rare to come across such reminders of coexistence on the streets of India and Pakistan, it is even less common to chance upon the Urdu nastaliq script in the Hindu-dominated areas of India. Recently, however, artists Zeenat Kulavoor in Mumbai and Sanki King in Karachi, intent on bringing the language to the fore, initiated the project Pehle Aap to convey messages close to their hearts using the art form of murals, and in the process, draw their communities together.

Using their distinct forms and perspectives, the two artists began a conversation in Urdu through murals on four walls  two each in Mumbai and Karachi. You get to see the Urdu script in India only in Muslim-clustered areas and, that too, as part of signage holders for stores or outside a masjid. With the location of my wall, I wanted to break this Muslim-centric aspect and use Urdu in a neutral and artistic manner in a space where the younger minds can relate to the message and appreciate it, Kulavoor told Dawn.

To begin the conversation, Kulavoor painted Pehle Aap in her first mural in the compound of Shakti mills. She began the conversation with the phrase which translates to after you, as a sign of respect towards popular street artist Abdullah, commonly referred to as Sanki King. Sanki, a close follower of Pakistani poet Jaun Elias work, responded to Kulavoors mural with a series titled Inqilaab, which has been inspired by a poem by Elia.

Both of my walls are painted in North Nazimabad in Karachi, where I live. One of my murals reads: Pak o Hindustan ke funkaro; Aqal o deewangi ke dildaro; Bin tumhare hai shauq ke rumna; Tum se hai aab e Jhelum o Jamna (O artisans of Pakistan and India, the ones enamoured by wisdom and insanity, zest amp and zeal go astray without you, the flow of Jhelum and Jamuna is there because of you), Sanki King said, adding that he had already planned two other murals in a different area to keep the conversation going.

Given Urdus dying popularity and influence in India and other parts of the world, and the cultural disconnect among the youth, what inspired the two artists to begin this conversation?

Recently, Sanket Avlani  the curator of the project  got the chance to tag along with a friend to meet artists who specialised in Urdu calligraphy in purani Dilli (old Delhi). The katibs (calligraphers) not only gave them a glimpse into their writing styles but also shared the reason why Urdu script was fading out in the region.

They believe the language has suffered because it is often linked to a particular people, religion or agenda. And thats what needs to be changed, Avlani told Dawn, emphasising the languages role as a vehicle of peace.

In order to explore the origins and history of the nastaliq script, and to re-introduce it to aspiring artistes, Avlani and his team at Design Fabric  a Mumbai-based arts and design publication  produced the Urdu Issue, an audio-visual exhibition involving photography, the work of calligraphers, poetry recitals, short films, and murals  inspired by Urdu.

Among the various projects introduced under the Urdu Issue, the collaborative aspect of Pehle Aap stood out the most. We [the team and Sanki] got to know each other through Skype calls and Facebook, and never expected the output to be this meaningful, said Madhuvanthi Mohan, community manager and creative producer at Design Fabric. The organisers have announced an open call to other artists based in India and Pakistan to join in and continue the mural conversation in their respective cities in order to keep alive the universality of language.

Dawn/ANN
Acclaimed as a renowned expert in Apiculture, Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry (UHF), Nauni scientist Dr Raj Kumar Thakur has been honoured with Distinguished Scientist in Apiculture at the Venus International Research Awards (VIRA) held at Chennai.

Dr. Thakur is presently working as Joint Director (Communication) at Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry (UHF), Nauni.

The VIRA scheme was instituted in the year 2015 by the Centre for Advanced Research and Design (CARD) of Venus International Foundation to honour the individuals for extraordinary achievements and significant contributions in the field of Agriculture, Engineering, Medical Science, Management, and Humanities and Social Science. The award carries a citation, bronze medal and memento.

An alumnus of UHF Nauni, Dr Thakur completed his post doctorate from the Humbold University, Berlin. He has also served as the Project Coordinator, AICRP (Honey bees and Pollinators) in the Indian Council for Agricultural Research where he provided leadership to 26 AICRP Centres for implementation of research and programme, organisation of tribal sub-plan trainings on bee keeping in various states of the country.

At UHF, he is focussed on reaching the farmers of the state through various mediums of communication in order to solve the problems faced by them.
Depending on the methods of counting, as many as three hundred versions of the Ramayana are known to exist. The oldest version is generally recognised to be the Sanskrit version attributed to the sage Valmiki. The Ramayana has spread in many Asian countries outside of India including Burma, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Mongolia, Vietnam and China. The original Valmiki version has been adapted or translated into various regional languages, which have often been marked more or less by plot twists and thematic adaptations. Some of the important adaptations of the classic tale include the 12th century Tamil language Ramavataram, 14th century Telugu language Sri Ranganatha Ramayanam, the Khmer Reamker, the Old Javanese Kakawin Ramayana, and the Thai Ramakien, the Lao Phra Lak Phra Lam and the Burmese Yama Zatdaw.

The manifestation of the core themes of the original Ramayana is far broader than can be understood from a consideration of the different languages in which it appears, as its essence has been expressed in a diverse array of regional cultures and artistic mediums. For instance, the Ramayana has been expressed or interpreted in Lkhaon Khmer dance theatre, in the Mappila Songs of the Muslims of Kerala and Lakshadweep, in the Indian operatic tradition of Yakshagana, and in the epic paintings still extant on, for instance, the walls of Thailands Wat Phra Kaew palace temple. In Indonesia, the tales of the Ramayana appear reflected in ballet performances, masked danced drama, and Wayang shadow puppetry. Angkor Wat in Siem Reap also has mural scenes from the epic Battle of Lanka on one of its outer walls.

The present book under review, The Thiri Rama ~ or the Great Rama was written for court performance and is the only known illustrated version of the Ramayana story in Myanmar. Based on palm-leaf manuscripts and scenes carved on 347 sandstone plaques found at the Maha Lawka Marazein pagoda (built between 1846 and 1849) in a remote area of north-west Myanmar, this book presents an original translation of the Thiri Rama rendered in prose. It is a script written in court language in the mid-19th century to be performed for Myanmar royalty. The rich dialogue includes stage directions such as cues to the actors as when to enter and exit, names of songs to sing, and what instruments to play as musical accompaniment. Thus the text of the Thiri Rama and the depiction of the story on the plaques come together to provide a previously unknown history of the performing arts in the Myanmar Royal Court. It is interesting to note that the story or drama of the Ramayana spread in Myanmar more through oral versions than literary works. The stage could teach thousands of people about the story within a short time.

The Myanmarese have known the Ramayana narrative for at least over a thousand years. The people of Bagan (11thto 13th centuries) knew the story and there was certainly an oral tradition which they received either directly from India or through the Mon people of Lower Myanmar. There is evidence to prove that the Rama story, both as an incarnation of Vishnu, the Hindu God, and as a Buddhist Jataka story was known at the time. But the court drama form made the dissemination of the story easier. The Myanmar people loved the story because basically it is about a conflict between the Good as represented by Rama, Sita (Thida), Lakkhana, Hanuman, and the monkeys on one side, and the Evil represented by Dathagiri (Ravana) and the ogres on the other.

At the end of the narrative Rama, the Good defeats Dathagiri, the Bad. As the Myanmar people used to talk much about the characters of the drama with praise or scorn, they learnt the lessons of the themes on the stage. They would comment on the courage, restraint, and diligence of Rama; the faithfulness, obedience and modesty of Sita (Thida); the gratefulness and selflessness of Lakkhana; the farsightedness and righteousness of Vibithana; the abiding love, mightiness and sincerity of Dathagiri; and the fierceness and benevolence, cleverness, and dutifulness of Sugriva (Thukrit) and Vali (Bali).

The composition of the Thiri Rama has many of the same episodes as those in Valmikis story, but the placement and order of some events differ as does the role of several characters and their names, and the story includes a few scenes that are not in Valmiki. What stands out, above all, is the reworking of the epic to reflect the enduring religious, cultural, and social environment of Myanmar and its people.

Divided into three volumes, namely Before the Exile (nine chapters), During the Exile (21 chapters) and After the Exile (20 chapters), the story opens in the kingdom of Lanka Dipa where aggressive demons have arrived and threaten to take over the kingdom. Alarmed, the king summons the Hindu god Brahma, the creator, to ask his advice. He tells him that the only way to prevent the demons from settling in the kingdom is the birth of a son who is powerful enough to overcome the demons. So the king and queen send their daughter to a revered hermit and through his divination she gives birth to three boys and a girl. The first born son is named Dathagiri, a mighty demon with ten heads and twenty arms, who is destined to subdue the demons. The story moves forward in rapid sequence and the final chapters of Volume One relate the births of Rama and Thida, two principals of the story.

In Volume Two, Thida, who was born as a twelve-year old girl, has come of age and her father holds a bow contest to see who will win her hand in marriage. Rama is victorious and marries Thida. After Rama is banished to the forest for 14 years, a series of action-packed adventures, ordeals, and deceptions involving encounters with aggressive monsters and demons follow. Then Dathagiri in disguise abducts Thida and takes her to Lanka where he keeps her captive. After a long search Hanuman reaches Lanka and after ferocious battles between the demons and monkeys, Hanuman succeeds in taking Thida back to Rama. But all is not well. Thida has to prove her innocence by descending into a fire and rising unharmed. Rama then returns to Ayodaya and plans for his coronation.

The third and last volume begins with an extraordinary hone ritual to make offerings in preparation for the multiple fights that ensue. Magic arrows fly, powerful mantras are chanted and demons and monkeys attack each other. Rama chops off all ten heads of the demon king with his powerful arrows and he dies. Soon though, Rama exiles Thida to the forest again where she gives birth to twin boys Kutha and Bala. Later when Thida is asked to repeat the fire ordeal she is uncontrollably upset and descends into the earth a final time to go back to her mother from whence she came. This tragic happening signals that the end is near. Lakkhana is desolate at Thidas disappearance and he commits suicide by jumping into the river. Rama sees no use in staying on Earth and decides to follow his brother. He walks into the river and drowns. Then, in a surprise ending, Rama appears in the sky as a deity with six arms showing himself as Narayana, the incarnate of Vishnu. Ramas eldest son, Kutha, is crowned the King of Ayodaya and enjoys a powerful and glorious reign.

This book also includes essays on the history and tradition of the Ramayana in Myanmar as well as the cultural context in which the play was performed. It contains many helpful resources, incorporating a glossary and a list of characters and their corresponding personae in Valmikis Ramayana. With over 250 fascinating visuals and core text contributions by distinguished Burmese scholars, U Thaw Kaung, Tin Maung Kyi, and U Aung Thwin, the book will greatly interest scholars and researchers of South and South-east Asian culture, literary forms, epics, art and art history, theatre and performance studies, religion, as well as folklorists.

The reviewer is professor of English, Visva-Bharati University
RACINE  Next year, Racine Unified plans to begin to phasing out the general elementary program at Goodland Elementary as it expands its popular Montessori program there.

On Monday, the Racine Unified School Board approved boundary changes for Janes and Giese elementary schools that will facilitate the expansion of the program. Six board members voted in favor of the changes, while Julie McKenna voted against it and John Heckenlively abstained. Steve Hooper was absent from the meeting.

This vote changed the boundary for Giese Elementary, 5120 Byrd Ave., to include the area surrounding Goodland, 4800 Graceland Blvd. It also changed the boundary for Janes Elementary, 1425 N. Wisconsin St., to include what was formerly a Goodland pocket boundary in Downtown Racine. Students who attend the Montessori program at Goodland, which the district started last year, will be chosen through a lottery process, not by school boundaries.

The plan is to phase out the general education program at Goodland at a rate of one grade level per year. As the 3-, 4- and 5-year-old students who are currently enrolled in the Montessori program age, each grade-level-equivalent in the general program will be phased out, up to the equivalent of fifth grade. This means that next fall, no regular kindergarten students will attend the school. Depending on where they live within the boundaries, they will attend either Janes or Giese elementary schools.

I just want to remind everyone, the students who are at Goodland will be able to stay at Goodland their entire school career; no child will be asked to leave their school, Superintendent Lolli Haws said during Mondays School Board meeting.

Teacher concerns

During the meeting, some Goodland teachers expressed concerns about the change.

We see important decisions being made with no stakeholder participation in the decision-making process, said Sonali Knotek, a Goodland teacher.

Jenalee Mooney, a first-grade teacher at Goodland, spoke of how hard she and other teachers there had worked to help students improve their skills in math and reading, and wondered why the school is being phased out after this.

I believe the district is making a huge mistake by phasing out Goodland, she said.

Haws said this change had nothing to do with the performance of the teaching staff at Goodland and that she hopes the current teachers would stay with their students as the general elementary program is phased out. Teaching in the Montessori program requires special teaching credentials, so general elementary teaching positions at Goodland will be phased out as well.

Stacy Tapp, chief of communication and community engagement at Racine Unified, said the district would love to hire from within for the Montessori program, but that teachers would need to obtain the proper credentials. Tapp added that there are always openings throughout the district. She said the district would work with teachers to ensure they find new placements.

Board member perspectives

McKenna, who lives a half block from Goodland, said voting against the boundary change was a tough decision.

Im very, very torn, she said.

She liked what she saw when she visited the school and saw the Montessori program in action, but she still has reservations about the change.

No longer will their neighborhood school be their neighborhood school, she said.

Heckenlively expressed concern about the pacing of the change and School Board member Michael Frontier said he wondered how the change would affect diversity at the schools.

The schools that theyre going to will be no more or less diverse than the school that theyre in right now, Haws said. The change will only affect a few students each year. One class, one grade at a time and your vote of no will literally stop the Montessori program from being able to expand.

The Montessori program

According to the Racine Unified website, the Montessori method of education is based on self-directed learning activities that emphasize learning through five senses and with multi-age classrooms. Children in Montessori classes learn at their own, individual pace and according to their own choice of activities from hundreds of possibilities.

The Montessori program is exceptionally popular and the families in it are extremely happy, Tapp said.

The school choice enrollment window is open Dec. 1 through Jan. 15.
International Film Festival of Indias (IFFI) festival director Sunit Tandon has asked S Durga filmmaker Sanal Kumar Sasidharan to submit the censored version of the movie in 35mm print.

In a letter written to Sasidharan yesterday, Tandon, who has been avoiding talking to the media on the controversy, also asked the filmmaker to submit a copy of the censor certificate, along with two DVD copies to IFFI.

The move comes after the Kerala High Court on Friday declined to stay a single bench order to screen the Malayalam film, which is mired in controversy, at the Indian Panorama section of the ongoing festival.

In the appeal, the government had stated that the film, though selected by the jury, had not secured the exemption as required by the Panorama regulation in the absence of any certification from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).

It was also contended by the Centre that the inclusion of the film is likely to upset the arrangements of the 48th IFFI, which comes to a close on November 28.

Sasidharan had moved the court after the film was dropped from the festivals Panorama section, along with the Marathi film Nude.

S Durga narrates the horrifying experience of a hitchhiking couple.
Bollywood actress Sunny Leone and her husband, Daniel Weber, took to Twitter today to complain about delays experienced on four Jet Airways flights this week.

Seriously, its crazy the amount of delays @jetairways is having everyday. Was on a plane all week and usually only with Jet (Airways) but everyday was delayed at least by 1 hour. Ruined my week of sleep (sic)! Something needs to be done, Leone wrote in a tweet.

Seriously its crazy the amount of delays @jetairways is having everyday. Was on a plane all week and usually only with Jet but everyday was delayed at least 1hr. Ruined my week of sleep! Something needs to be done. https://t.co/nkS76ct2Ui  Sunny Leone (@SunnyLeone) November 24, 2017

Her husband, Daniel Weber, posted that he received a call from the airlines customer care who sought to blame the airport instead.

Call from @jetairways this morning to me after a complaint about 4 flight delays this week  sir, it is the airports fault , not the airlines, dont be mad at us ! Good response @jetairways, Weber wrote.

Well at least they called  https://t.co/aLFsnaOTBL  Sunny Leone (@SunnyLeone) November 24, 2017

Weber told PTI that the four flights included two from Delhi and a flight each from Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

Jet Airways is always late, he claimed.

Jet Airways, however, did not comment on the matter.

A three-week long protest by Jet Airways pilots last month severely affected the airlines punctuality.

The protest against the managements alleged failure to clear salary dues saw pilots refuse to operate flights beyond their roster.

The Naresh Goyal-owned full service carrier also registered the lowest on-time performance (OTP) last month with only 64 per cent of its flights arriving and departing on time.

Its OTP was the worst for Mumbai (56.9 per cent) and Delhi (64.1 per cent), which account for most of its flight operations.
Actor Mark Hamill paid a tribute to late actress Carrie Fisher on the occasion of Thanksgiving.

As Star Wars: The Last Jedi is getting closer to hitting the big screen, Hamill posted a green-tinted photograph of him and Fisher as their characters in the Star Wars film series on Twitter on Thursday, reports aceshowbiz.com.

Thankful for the memories, Hamill captioned the image.

Previously, Hamill commemorated Fishers 61st birthday in October by posting a black-and-white image of young Fisher dancing with Hamill.

He earlier said that he was terribly shaken when he heard about Fishers death news on December 2017 last year.
An army soldier on vacation was kidnapped and shot dead by militants in Jammu and Kashmir, officials said on Saturday.

The 23-year-old martyred jawan, Irfan Ahmad Dar had gone missing on Friday and his bullet riddled body was found in Shopian district on Saturday morning, officials said.

The cowardice attack has an eerie resemblance to the death of Border Security Force (BSF) jawan Ramzan Parray who too was shot dead by terrorists while on vacation at his residence in September.

The police have launched an investigation into the murder and the hunt for the unidentified gunmen is on, officials said.
The Congress on Friday alleged that a company owned by Union Minister Nitin Gadkaris personal secretary Vaibhav Dange has been getting funds from his own ministry and other PSUs and demanded he come clean on it. The BJP rejected the charges as baseless.

The Congress also alleged that this scam was linked to other alleged irregularities by BJP leaders, including its president Amit Shahs son Jay Shah and conflict of interest in (National Security Advisor Ajit Dovals son) Shaurya Dovals India Foundation.

It also targeted Union Ministers Gadkari and Suresh Prabhu, accusing them of conflict of interest for allegedly being part of the national executive committee of the Indian Federation of Green Energy (IFGE), owned by Gadkaris aide.

The Congress asked how Gadkari had permitted the Shipping Ministry as well as PSUs to participate in and financially contribute to IFGE, partly owned by Dange, who floated it on October 9, 2014, and owns a 50 per cent stake in it.

It also questioned how a company, which started in October 2014 with a capital of Rs 1 lakh only and zero cash and zero corpus, has built up a corpus of Rs 1.33 crore.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh asked: The IFGE organises conclaves and programmes in tandem with PSUs and ministries under Gadkaris control and receives financial contributions. The firm also receives contributions from private individuals, corporate entities sponsoring these events and those who deal directly with ministries under Gadkari.

This becomes even more serious as Dange deals directly with all ministries and public sector undertakings related issues as also private entities in his capacity as private secretary to the Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Minister.

Even today (November 24) IFGE is organizing a conference on Ethanol As a Transport Fuel in partnership with Centre Institute of Road Transport under Ministry of Transport at Pune.

Noting that even earlier similar conferences were organized in league with the Transport and other ministries, Ramesgh asked whether this was not a conflict of interest and if Dange had not violated the Central Civil Service Conduct Rules, which prohibit a public servant from accepting contributions and associating with raising of any funds or collections or cash.

BJP spokesperson G. V. L. Narasimha Rao rejected the allegations, saying that Congress was rattled by the ever-rising popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and has been repeatedly trying to malign the governments image by making baseless allegations.

Terming these allegations one such futile attempt, he said Dange himself has refuted these allegations in a detailed written statement rejecting imagined conflict of interest formulation of the Congress.

Terming the Congress repeated attempts in making allegations in the hope that something would stick a sign of its desperation, he said the only effect would be the erosion of the opposition partys credibility.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday filed chargesheet against eight members of Special Investigation Team (SIT) in the custodial death of one of the accused in Gudia gangrape and murder case.

The CBI has filed 600-page challan against SIT members, IG Zahur H Zaidi, DSP Theog Manoj Joshi, the then SHO Kotkhai Rajender Singh, ASI Deep Chand Sharma, Head Constables Surat Singh, Mohan Lal and Rafiq Ali and constable Ranjit Singh.

The investigating agency had charged the cops for voluntarily causing hurt with an intention to extract confession from Suraj, one of the accused in Gudia case.

In its investigation, the CBI officials have found many discrepancies and had concluded that Suraj had died due to police torture.

Suraj, a Nepalese national, was allegedly beaten by cops with belt, stick and baton on the intervening night of 18-19 July that resulted in his death, though the police had claimed he died after a scuffle with co-accused, Rajender Singh.

In the chargesheet, the CBI had claimed that there were 32 injury marks over Surajs body while the postmortem report of the HP Police has only mentioned 22 injury marks.

The cops have also been charged for destroying evidence in the case and providing wrong information to divert the case.

Apart from listing inconsistencies in the medical report of the SIT, the CBI has listed 50 persons including five accused, who were arrested by police, as witness in the case.

The CBI has booked the arrested cops under Sections 302, 120 B, 348, 323, 326, 218 and 201 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) in custodial death case.

Gudia, a tenth standard girl from Kotkhai, had gone missing while returning home from school on 4 July. Her body was found in the woods on 6 July with multiple injuries on her body. Her autopsy had confirmed that she was gangraped and later, strangulated to death.

Following public outrage over the incident, the government had constituted a SIT which had arrested six persons, Ashish Chauhan, Rajender Singh alias Raju, Deepak, Subhash Singh Bisht, Suraj (who later killed in police custody) and Lokjan for the ghastly crime on 12 and 13 July.

On 19 July, the Himachal Pradesh High Court had directed the CBI to probe the Gudia case, along with custodial death case.

On 29 August, eight members of Special Investigation Team (SIT) were arrested for custodial death.

The CBI had taken five accused in Gudia gangrape and murder case to Ahmedabad lab to conduct narco test but no incriminating evidence was found against four accused (Rajender Singh, Deepak, Subhash Singh Bisht, and Lokjan).

As per reports, the CBI had reportedly got hold of some voice recordings on the basis of which former Shimla SP, D W Negi was arrested.

There were allegations that the HP Police had tried to hush-up the Gudia case.

The investigating agency is now trying to track alleged money trail, as huge payout (around Rs 3-10 crore) is suspected to have been made to shield accused who, reportedly, belonged to influential families.
A team of Enforcement Directorate on Friday interrogated Indrani Mukerjea, inside the Byculla womens jail, in connection with a money laundering case lodged against her, official sources said.

A Special CBI court  conducting the trial in the sensational Sheena Bora murder case, in which Indrani, her husband Peter Mukerjea and former husband Sanjeev Khanna are the prime accused  on Thursday granted permission to the ED to question her for two days.

The interrogation by the ED pertains to a case it had registered in May this year under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act against several persons, including the Mukerjea couple, their company INX Media, former Union Minister P. Chidambarams son Karti Chidambaram and others.

Charging them of financial misappropriation, the ED had contended that the Mukerjeas had allegedly siphoned off 90 million pounds and the money is suspected to have gone to foreign countries through the unauthorized route of hawala.

Following the Foreign Investment Promotion Board clearance, the INX Media had received Foreign Direct Investment for Rs 46.20 million, but it actually received FDI of Rs 3,053.60 million between August 2007 and May 2008, the ED had said.

Accordingly, this excess foreign exchange equivalent to Rs 3,004.40 million, beyond the disclosed the permitted foreign investment, was received by INX Media from three Mauritius-based investors, according to the ED.

While Rabin, Peters son from a previous marriage, was managing the funds in the form of bonds in New Zealand, the trio of Peter, Indrani and Rabin laundered money and were involved in transactions in Britain linked with illegal funds generated from India, said the ED.

The next round of ED interrogation will be conducted on December 6, as per the court orders.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi will on Saturday address four rallies in poll-bound Gujarat before culminating his two-day visit to the state, the party said.

In a tweet, the Congress party said that the Gandhi scion will begin campaigning from Dahegam, Gandhinagar at 11.15 am and will cover the districts of Gandhinagar, Aravalli, Mahisagar, and Dahod.

Day 2 of Gujarat Yatra takes Congress VP Rahul Gandhi to the districts of Gandhinagar, Aravalli, Mahisagar, and Dahod to meet citizens, the Congress tweeted.

Day 2 of Gujarat Yatra takes Congress VP Rahul Gandhi to the districts of Gandhinagar, Aravalli, Mahisagar, and Dahod to meet citizens. #Congress__ pic.twitter.com/caz9TedZrg  Congress (@INCIndia) November 25, 2017

Rahul Gandhi will leave Gujarat from Vadodara concluding his fifth visit after Assembly polls were announced in the state.

On Friday, Rahul Gandhi engaged with fishermen, Dalits, and public health and teaching communities in a series of meetings in Porbandar, Ahmedabad and wrapped up the days programme by meeting Patidars in Naroda.

Polling for the two-phase elections in the state, having total 182 seats, will take place on December 9 and 14 and votes will be counted on December 18.

Eighty nine seats of the Saurashtra and South Gujarat region are going to polls in the first phase, while the remaining 93 seats in the central and northern regions would go to polls in the second phase.
The Supreme Court on Friday gave the Gujarat government time till January to apprise it of action it has taken against policemen convicted in 2002 Bilkis Bano gangrape case.

The bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud was hearing the plea by Bano, a gang rape victim of post-Godhra 2002 Gujarat riots, seeking compensation and disciplinary action against the accused personnel found guilty by trial court and the Bombay High Court.

The bench gave the Gujarat government six weeks to seek instructions on the fate of six policement.

As Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta sought six weeks time, advocate Shobha, appearing for Bilkis Bano, asked why he needs six weeks to seek instructions in digital India.

Why do they need six weeks time to collect information on disciplinary action in a case where police officers have been found guilty by two courts below, Shobha said, urging the bench to hold the hearing in December.

As the bench cited difficulty in accommodating the matter in December, Shobha said that she has seen matters being heard on the same day.

I am still requesting please have it in December, the lawyer told the bench.

As ASG Mehta told the court that he has to take instructions, Shobha said that one of the convicted officers has been given a promotion.

The top court in the last hearing of the matter on October 23 had sought the Gujarat governments response on the departmental action taken by it against the convicted state police personnel.

The court had given the government four weeks to respond.

Bano was given a meagre amount of compensation though she was entitled to more.

She was 19 years old and pregnant when she was subjected to the horror during the riots.

The horrifying incidents occurred in Randhikpur village near Dahod on March 3, 2002 when Bano and around a dozen of her family members were attacked by a mob. Many of those attacked were killed.

Only Bano and two relatives, Saddam and Husain, survived the savagery. Her mother, sister, minor daughter and other relatives were killed.
TWIN LAKES  Police have identified the two victims killed in a Friday shooting in Twin Lakes.

Richard Samuel, 28, and Kenneth Samuel III, 31, both of Twin Lakes, died Friday after a shooting near the Beach Bar, 402 S. Lake St.

Police were called to the Kenosha County site at about 2 a.m. for a shooting that occurred outdoors and behind the establishment, according to a news release. The officers found Richard Samuel dead in the parking lot with multiple gunshot wounds.

Kenneth Samuel III was found in the same location, also with gunshot wounds. He was taken to Memorial Hospital of Burlington, where he later died, the release states.

A 25-year-old suspect fled the scene before police arrived, according to the release. He was later located by the Monroe County Sheriffs Department and Wisconsin State Patrol near Tomah and taken into custody.

Witnesses at the scene told police there was an altercation between the victims and suspect before the shooting occurred. The incident appears to be isolated, the release states.
The Congress on Friday held Prime Minister Narendra Modi solely responsible for creating a mess of the economy, after Standard & Poors kept its sovereign rating for the country unchanged.

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma the government was taking shelter under these dubious certificates from rating agencies.

Rating agency Moodys had on last Friday raised Indias sovereign rating from the lowest investment grade of Baa3 to Baa2  the first upgrade in almost 14 years.

Sharma accused Modi of being solely responsible for creating a mess of the economy and charged him with being in arrogant denial.

Mr Prime Minister, the ground is shaking, and people feel betrayed. People have downgraded the government on its economic performance, these dubious upgrades dont matter, Sharma tweeted.

He said that a sudden flurry of certificates from credit rating agencies is the only fall back of a government which has derailed Indias economy.

Sharma alleged that GDP has sharply fallen, jobs have been destroyed in millions and business have shut down.

The leader also further raised questions over the ratings agencies waking up when all the parameters of the Indian economy are in the red.

About 3.72 crore jobs have been lost in the MSME/unorganised sector. Investment rate has plunged by 7%, credit offtake falling to a 65-year low. This calls into question the very credibility of these rating agencies, he said on the micro-blogging site.

Declining to follow Moodys recent India rating upgrade, Standard & Poors today kept its sovereign rating for the country unchanged at the lowest investment grade of BBB- minus citing high government debt and low income levels.

Lauding it, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the rating is a reflection of the agencys appreciation of the steps taken by the government to keep the economy stable and ensure a high growth trajectory.

The S&P had inferred that over the next two years, growth in India will remain strong and the country will maintain its sound external accounts position, Sitharaman said.

Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi lauded it, saying After Moodys, S&P gives Narendra Modi govt thumbs up, keeps Indias outlook stable.
Mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modis bear hugs to US President Donald Trump, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said the PMs hugplomacy has failed to prevent Pakistan from releasing Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed from house arrest.

In a tweet, the Gandhi scion said: Narendrabhai,   . Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed.

Narendrabhai,   . Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed.https://t.co/U8Bg2vlZqw  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) November 25, 2017

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head, who carries a USD 10 million American bounty for his role in terror activities, was freed after the government decided against detaining him further in any case. He was under detention since January.

Coming out of house arrest, the JuD chief spewed venom against India and said he would gather people across Pakistan for the cause of Kashmir and try to help Kashmiris get their destination of freedom.

Hours later, the US demanded that Pakistan must arrest Saeed and charge him for his crimes.

Saeed was the mastermind of 2008 Mumbai attacks that left 166 people dead. Ten terrorists, including Ajmal Kasab, had gone on a killing spree in the financial capital after reaching the city from Karachi by sea.
At least 235 people were killed and 109 others injured in a gory terror attack on a mosque in Egypts northern Sinai region on Friday, reported state media, making it one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the country.

The attack on Al-Rawdah mosque, affiliated with Sufi groups, took place during Friday prayers.

The assailants planted home-made explosive in the mosque in the town of Bir al-Abd, near Arish, and detonated them as worshipers were leaving after prayers. They also shot at anyone who tried to escape, a security official told Efe news.

The gunmen also fired at ambulances transferring the injured to hospital, eyewitnesses said.

Pictures from the scene showed rows of bloodied victims inside the mosque. The blasts from improvised explosive devices caused considerable damage to the mosque, said state-run Al Ahram Online.

Speaking to state-run Masriya TV, Egyptian Health Ministry spokesman Khalid Mujahid described the incident as a terrorist attack.

One report said the target appeared to be supporters of the security forces who were praying at the mosque. Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi was meeting with a security committee to discuss the bloodbath.

Egypt declared three days of national mourning. No group has claimed responsibility for the massacre.

In a statement, El-Sisi said that Egyptians will derive hope and determination from such pain to triumph in the war against black terrorism.

The statement offered condolences to the families of the victims, stressing that the vile and treacherous activity will not pass without a decisive punishment and that the perpetrators will be brought to justice, said Al Ahram Online.

The President also ordered compensation of EGP 200,000 and EGP 50,000 to the families of the dead and injured, respectively.

US President Donald Trump condemned the attack as horrible and cowardly. The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence! he tweeted.

Egypts security forces have been fighting an Islamist insurgency based in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula which has gained pace since the 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

The insurgency has mostly targeted security forces, with attacks on military and police checkpoints common place.
Sustainable exploitation of aquatic resources and co-operation potential for exploiting ocean energy are among key topics being discussed at an ASEAN-India workshop in Nha Trang City in Vietnam.

The two-day workshop, which began on Friday, is titled Blue Economy: From Concept to Action.

The workshop is jointly organised by the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry, Indias External Affairs Ministry, and the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA).

It was initiated by Vietnam as part of activities to celebrate the 25th anniversary of establishment of dialogue partnership between ASEAN and India.

Speaking at the event, Vietnams Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Dung emphasised the importance of blue economy in regional and global growth.

Recalling maritime co-operation activities in ASEAN and between the bloc and its partners, Dung asked participants to make specific proposals to build common agenda for protecting and preserving the marine environment and building suitable economic cooperation mechanisms to facilitate sustainable development.

Indian Ambassador Parvathaneni Harish also said that ASEAN and India should step up sustainable economic collaboration on the basis of international law and the advantages and potentials of each side.

He recommended conducting joint studies on blue economy, exploiting aquatic resources sustainably and considering the possibility of co-operation in ocean energy.

Other representatives from participating countries also stressed the significance of regional and inter-regional collaboration in blue economy, especially in the context of increasingly exhausted marine resources, declining biodiversity, increasing environmental pollution and climate change.

Blue economy refers to sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ensuring a healthy ocean ecosystem.
Pakistan has condemned the terror attack at a mosque in Egypt that killed at least 270 people and injured over 300.

The people and government of Pakistan condemn in the strongest terms the heinous terrorist attack against innocent worshipers at Al-Rawdah mosque in the northern Sinai region of Egypt, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said on late Friday, Xinhua reported.

The people of Pakistan are deeply grieved at this senseless and barbaric act and stand in full solidarity with their Egyptian brethren in this moment of anguish and tragedy, a Foreign Ministry statement said.

At least 270 people were killed and 300 others injured in a terror attack on a mosque in Egypts northern Sinai region on Friday making it one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the country.

The attack on Al-Rawdah mosque, affiliated with Sufi groups, took place during Friday prayers.

The assailants planted home-made explosive in the mosque in the town of Bir al-Abd, near Arish, and detonated them as worshippers were leaving after prayers. They also shot at anyone who tried to escape, a security official told Efe news agency.

The gunmen also fired at ambulances transferring the injured to hospital, eyewitnesses said.
British authorities re-opened Londons Oxford Circus subway station on Friday after armed police responding to reports of a shooting found no evidence of gunplay or any suspicious activity.

The incident, which began at 4.38 p.m., was treated as a potential terrorist attack, the Metropolitan Police said, Efe news agency reported.

Police acted after receiving a spate of emergency calls from people saying that shots had been fired on Oxford Street and at the Oxford Circus underground station, the Met said.

Given the nature of the information received, the Met responded in line with our existing operation as if the incident was terrorism, including the deployment of armed officers, the force said in a statement.

Passengers fled from the station and onto the surrounding streets, spurring panic.

Officers working with colleagues from British Transport Police carried out an urgent search of the area. No causalities, evidence of any shots fired or any suspects were located by police, according to the statement from the Met.

Once police gave the all-clear, the underground station resumed operation and riders and pedestrians who had taken refuge in nearby pubs and shops re-emerged.


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Family runs tree stand after dads death

CALEDONIA  Jeff Longo thinks of his father like the keystone of an archway, especially when it came to family businesses like their annual Christmas tree stand.

John Longo Sr., or Poopa as he was affectionately nicknamed, was in charge. He was the boss of the familys businesses, and he kept his family close-knit.

John Longo Sr. died Sunday after battling pulmonary hypertension. The patriarch is survived by his wife, Shirley, four sons, siblings, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

In passing, the 78-year-old left behind a web of businesses for his children to run, including a car wash, storage units and, of course, their Caledonia Christmas tree lot in the 4500 block of Douglas Avenue.

Hes the biggest part of our world, Jeff Longo, 52, said. Up until practically the day he died (he) handled everything, was in charge of everything. Even the last two years where he was so sick, it didnt matter.

John Longo Sr.s father opened the business to start earning money after he left the military in 1945. The business started at a house on Randolph Street, Jeff Longo said, and has changed locations a few times since, settling now on Douglas Avenue. Their trees are always from a Wisconsin farm, this year from Antigo.

The trade has passed from generation to generation, with John Longo Sr. taking over the business from his father and teaching his own four boys, John Jr., Troy, Jeff and Dean Deano Longo how to run the lot.

Ever since I could walk, Ive been around the Christmas trees every year, Jeff Longo said. When I was old enough to drag a tree, which probably was about 7 or 8 years old, they had me working.

On Friday, the Longo boys faced a new challenge: With about 420 Christmas trees in tow, the brothers opened for sale for the first time without their father at the helm.

Although John Sr. wasnt present, the brothers drove his van to the lot to keep him a part of the enterprise. The van, Jeff Longo said, is his fathers favorite color: blue.

The Longo family will honor John Sr. by wearing blue flannel shirts to his viewing on Monday. His funeral service is scheduled for Tuesday.

The brothers said they plan to continue operation at the Christmas tree farm and other family businesses.

He left us a lot, Jeff Longo said. He said if his boys dont take care of it, Im going to haunt you  now its up to us to not screw it up and try and keep things going.
RACINE  As the first veteran to move into the James A. Peterson Veterans Village at 1624 Yout St., Mike Lueck had his pick of which house he wanted to occupy.

Before the village was ready to take in residents, Lueck helped with the construction. He spent three days helping build the first house on the west end of the lot with a big American flag painted on the side.

Now its his home.

At 63, Lueck, a former mechanic and truck driver, is disabled. During a six-month period in late 2015 through early 2016, he went to the hospital three times: once for blood clots in his lungs, another for pneumonia and third because he passed out without his oxygen tank.

Before moving into the village, hed been living with his son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters. They didnt have a spare room for him, so he was sleeping on the couch.

They were real good about it, but I felt like I was intruding because theyve got their family, said Lueck.

Lueck moved in on Monday but he was joined by two other veterans on Friday. One was 72-year-old army veteran Sharon Harris who had been living in a motel.

Harris joined a group of Veterans Outreach staff, volunteers and their families for a Thanksgiving feast in the common area on Thursday.

I usually go into an apartment but Im kind of into this, she said. Im eager to get moved in and get stuff straightened out.

She said she was also looking forward to spending time in the common area, which in addition to having shower, laundry and a kitchen, also has an area for socializing, including a pool table, couches, tables, chairs and a television.

If I was home alone, Id get very depressed, she said. Christmas is the worst part for me.

Alex Hill, a 61-year-old Army veteran facing eviction, also was at the dinner so he could have some company.

I dont have to sit at home alone on Thanksgiving and get in my head with a poor me attitude. Thats not good, he said. Coming to Veterans Outreach, it gives you hope.

Hill was stabbed in his right eye in March and, due to health complications, hasnt been able to get the surgery he needs to restore his sight. Because his disability is only temporary, hes been stuck in limbo, where he cant work but doesnt qualify for disability assistance.

He went without electricity or gas for six months and worked for his landlord to pay off his rent. But now hes facing eviction. Hill submitted an application for one of the tiny houses and is hoping he can move in soon.

On Friday morning, a young man was brought to the center because he had been sleeping on a park bench in Kenosha. He was scheduled to move in Friday evening.

In addition to having access to the facilities, the veterans will be served three meals a day in the common area. They can also use the shared kitchen to cook their own food.

Theyll also have access to Veterans Outreach services, such as career and financial counseling. Lueck said in an initial conversation with some counselors, theyd said they could help him lower his bills and maybe get a part-time job.

I feel like they can help me find something to do so I can get enough saved up so I can get into my own place, he said.

Harris and Hill, if he gets in, also saw their stay in the village as temporary, until they could get on their feet and find something long term. For now, its home.
Patnaik's close aides say that to understand him, one has to understand his empathy

By Pratul Sharma/Photos Sanjay Ahlawat
Hadiya, alias Akhila, who had converted to Islam before marrying a Muslim man in Kerala said on Saturday that she wanted to live with her husband. Her comments came at a time when she is set to appear in the Supreme Court in the sensational religious-conversion case on Monday.

Talking to media persons at Kochi airport on her way to Delhi, Hadiya said she wanted justice and that nobody had forced her to marry a Muslim man.

The top court had earlier directed Ashokan, Hadiya's father, to produce her on November 27. She will fly to Delhi under tight security with five police personnel accompanying the father and daughter. She is expected to stay at the Kerala House in the national capital.

The 24-year-old Hadiya has been in the headlines after she became a Muslim following her marriage to Shafin Jahan. Shafin moved the apex court after the Kerala High Court annulled their marriage.

As of now, Hadiya is with her parents, who have alleged that her marriage to the Muslim man is a case of 'love jihad'. The case is under the consideration of the apex court, which had ordered the NIA to look into it.

The NIA had alleged in the court that there was a 'well-oiled machinery working in Kerala' indulging in indoctrination and radicalisation.
A Union minister and the chief justice of India on Saturday crossed swords over judicial activism at a conference on the occasion of National Law Day, with Chief Justice Dipak Misra saying it was the sacrosanct duty of the judiciary to protect fundamental rights of the citizens.

Addressing the conference, Minister of State for Law and Justice P.P. Chaudhary said judicial activism was an outcome of the judiciary's independence and should be lauded as long as it stays away from the realm of policy. But when judicial activism and review waded into policy making, its consequences could be disruptive, he added.

"Judicial activism by itself is a necessary outcome of judicial independence, and may be lauded, especially when it is undertaken to protect those who may not otherwise have ready access to justice," Chaudhary said.

"But quite apart from this, is another species of judicial activism where the judiciary is also stepping into areas that are strictly speaking in the realm of policy," he added.

He said that as a 'fundamental principle' of governance, decisions "should, as far as possible, be predictable and not disruptive."

"When judicial activism and review wades into policy making, sometimes its consequences can be disruptive. This needs to be avoided if possible," Chaudhary said.

The minister emphasised that while judicial independence was a pillar of democracy, judicial accountability 'was the base of that pillar.'

"Without accountability there can be no legitimacy. Those in government and those outside it are both fully aware of the fickle nature of power and are fully aware that a strong and independent judiciary is necessary for everyone. We must do everything possible to preserve the moral authority and legitimacy of our judiciary," he said.

Taking the floor after the minister, Chief Justice Misra dismissed the perception of judicial activism, saying protection of fundamental rights of citizens was the 'sacrosanct duty of the judiciary' and it was obliged to stand with citizens if government entities 'encroach' upon citizens' fundamental rights.

"The citizens have been guaranteed fundamental rights, and the governing entities are not expected to encroach upon it. The moment they encroach upon it or there is an apprehension that there is an encroachment, the judiciary is obliged to stand by them," he said.

Chief Justice Misra defended courts taking a proactive position on the fundamental rights of citizens and expanding their scope.

"There is a perception that there is judicial activism....I must clarify protection of fundamental rights of each and every citizen is the sacrosanct duty of the judiciary, which has been conferred by the Constitution. Fundamental rights have been expanded from the date the Constitution came into existence," he said.

The chief justice also said the judiciary had no desire to make policy.

"Nobody intends, nobody desires to enter upon the policy-making areas. We don't make policies, but we interpret policies and that's our job," he said.

The prime task of the three wings of the state was to defend the Constitution, its values, morals and philosophy, Chief Justice Misra said.

Pointing out that there was a direct correlation between the Directive Principles of State Policy and the fundamental rights, Chief Justice Misra called for quality governance and said, "Cooperative constitutionalism is the responsibility of the three organs of the State to protect the Constitution, which is the source of their origin."

Referring to the protection of women at the workplace by framing of the Vishaka Guidelines and rescuing children working in industry, Chief Justice Misra said, "What you see today may be relevant tomorrow."

The two-day conference on the occasion of National Law Day was also addressed by President Ram Nath Kovind, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Over 1,200 people from Myanmar's restive Arakan state have crossed the border and taken shelter in Mizoram's Lawngtlai district, officials said on Saturday.

The people who crossed over recently were mostly Buddhists and Christians and speak the same tribal language as the local residents. They fled their homes after the Myanmarese Army clashed with 'Arakan Army' militants recently.

The government officials, on condition of anonymity, said 500 people took shelter in Laitlang village while Zochachhuah, Hmawngbuchhuah and Dumzautlang villages hosted 420, 200 and 120 people, respectively.

"Several of them have put up at their relatives' place, while the others were provided accommodation in village community halls and school classrooms," an official said.

The official said that this is the fourth instance in recent months of Myanmarese refugees entering the state.

Village leaders informed officials that the Arakanese people said they heard gunshots even on the night of November 23 and expected more people to pour into the district.

The local residents volunteered to provide food to the Arakanese people and arranged shelter for them.
From the window of a US Navy P-8A Poseidon airplane taking part in an international search for a missing Argentine submarine, the glistening vastness of the South Atlantic stretches in every direction.

Yet onboard the modified Boeing 737, the nine-man crew spends much of the flight bent in silence over tracking devices. They listen to signals sent by buoys deployed on the ocean surface and watch video from the planes heat-seeking camera on five sets of double screens at the center of the plane.

More than 30 aircraft and ships from Argentina, Britain, Brazil, the United States, Chile and other countries are participating in the effort to find the ARA San Juan submarine, which disappeared on November 15 with 44 crew members on board.

In all, more than 4,000 personnel from 13 countries are assisting the search, scouring some 500,000 square km (193,051 square miles) of oceanan area the size of Spain.

Its great to be able to utilise everything we haveall the training we have, the equipment we havein order to come down here to Argentina to help find this submarine, said mission commander Lieutenant Zachary Collver, a 32-year-old pilot from Washington state.

However, hopes dimmed of finding the submarines crew alive on Thursday when Argentinas navy raised the possibility the submarine suffered an explosion, after an international agency with listening posts to check for secret atomic blasts detected an unusual signal near where the vessel went missing.

Midway through its seven-hour flight, the US plane changed course, picked up speed and descended toward the ocean surface.

Collver alerted the crew that a satellite image had picked up something near the area where the submarine last reported its position, according to a witness aboard the flight on Wednesday.

The plane turned south toward the Patagonian city of Puerto Madryn, after taking off from an Argentine base in Bahia Blanca, some 650 km (400 miles) south of Buenos Aires. Data analysis would later show the object was just a big rock.

The episode was one of several false leads in the international search operation, which has involved more than a dozen boats but has not yet produced any solid clues about the fate of the missing vessel.

But the P-8A Poseidon crew insisted they would not diminish their search efforts.

Its rewarding to know we can help out the best that we can, Collver said. It was the first time the Florida-based crew participated in an actual aerial search mission, rather than just a drill.

Argentina has thanked the countries that have participated in the search.

-Reuters | Over the south Atlantic
Blasts continue, explosive devices defused

Ahead of Sundays voting, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were found in various parts of the country on Friday.
High-street bank NatWest has launched a fully regulated robo-advice proposition charging 10 for customers seeking to invest sums as low as 500.

The new online investment advice service will pit the bank against the likes of Nutmeg, MoneyFarm and Scalable Capital in the battle to win funds from individuals with modest sized nest eggs.

The launch follows a growing trend of established banks returning to the investment advice arena following a string of fines for unsuitable recommendations several years ago.

NatWest's robo adviser levies 10 for lump sum investments as low as 500 or 50 per month

What NatWest is offering

Unlike some rival robo-advisers that offer guidance based on responses to just a few questions, or simplified advice that doesn't factor in your complete financial position, NatWest said its process will offer full-fat advice akin to the traditional face-to-face process but online.

The service questions users on their financial situation, attitude to risk and what they hope to achieve by investing.

The answers are then processed through its algorithms, which are based on accepted investment principles, generating a personal recommendation outlining how much they should invest, which funds may be right for them, and how to use their Isa allowance.

The personal recommendation element makes the service fully regulated. So if the advice turns out to be wrong, customers can seek recourse through the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Customers will be able to track their investment performance through their normal online banking account.

Phil Northey, managing director of premier banking at NatWest, said while there is no minimum term a customer needs to hold the investment for, the service is aimed at those who can afford to leave their money untouched for at least five years.

He added the robo would suggest alternative financial products to customers it deems unsuitable for investments.

Who's it for?

The service can be used by customers of the bank with as little as 500 to invest as a one-off or 50 per month.

What do you get?

The service is essentially an add-on to the bank's pre-existing NatWest Invest online service that offers a range of five funds, each with a different portion in stocks, bonds and cash.

How much does it cost?

Theres no charge for the advice, unless customers decide to invest. If the user chooses to do so, the service levies 10 plus fees for the investment - which are capped at 0.6 per cent a year.

This is Money Verdict

Robo advisers have been tipped by both the Financial Conduct Authority and the Treasury to be to a solution to the so-called 'advice gap', which has seen investors with modest sums priced out from the traditional advice route with a flesh and blood adviser.

Some major banks offered investment advice to such individuals in the past, but left the space around four years ago after a string of high-profile fines and regulatory upheaval to clean up the financial advice sector.

A Financial Conduct Authority review published in 2013, which involved 231 mystery shopping exercises across six major firms in the retail banking sector, found that investment advice was inadequate in a quarter of all cases.

The launch of NatWest's proposition comes as other banks, including HSBC, prepare to unveil their own variant. Many see it as an opportunity to add another revenue stream to bolster profit margins.

However, this is not always the case.

NatWest's robo adviser can be used by customers of the bank with as little as 500 to invest as a one-off or 50 per month

Losses at Nutmeg, the most established and arguably Britain's best known robo-adviser, have underlined the challenges that low-cost investment management services face in creating a businesses that actually generates cash.

Moneyfarm, another popular robo-adviser, recently introduced a fee where there was none before for investors with less than 10,000 and ramped up costs for those with larger sums.

News of the price revision came just two months after Moneyfarm posted a loss of 6.4million from an income of just 168,000 in 2016, but the firm said the changes have been made with a 'broader suite of services in mind'.

Whether NatWest's scale means it will not suffer the same fate as its robo competitors remains to be seen.

Charging just 10 for advice, NatWest's robo is cheap compared to others in the market, but it's important to stress that you aren't comparing apples with apples here.

The bank's proposition is restricted to its customers so you'd need to open up a current account with the bank to use it. What's more, investors are restricted to a range of five diversified funds each with a different risk-rating - which is not particularly comprehensive.
Baroness bra: Michelle Mone is returning to the lingerie industry

LINGERIE RETURN Entrepreneur and Tory peer Michelle Mone is returning to the lingerie industry after leaving Ultimo  which she founded  three years ago.

Mone will launch her brand in 2018 which she said will be will be bigger than all the others including Ultimo.

SLOTS BID Travel firm Thomas Cook has bid for Monarch airport slots at London Gatwick, two sources have said, after administrators of the failed airline retained the rights to the slots.

DUTCH MOVE Shipping insurer UK P&I Club is setting up a Netherlands office so it can cope with possible disruption from Brexit.

Chief executive Hugo Wynn-Williams said: We are putting arrangements in place that will allow the UK Club to continue to provide cover for our members regardless where their ships are registered.

LASER LAUNCH Defence technology firm Qinetiq has opened a laser development and testing centre at its headquarters in Farnborough, Hampshire.

The Dragonworks facility will include the UKs only tool designed to examine how laser energy is reflected from different surfaces.

PORTFOLIO PLAN Investment fund Residential Secure Income has bought 1,341 retirement homes for 100million.

Operated by Places for People, the portfolio is focused on one and two-bedroom flats in 250 housing blocks.

MINERAL QUEST Miner Rio Tinto has agreed with China Minmetals Corporation to collaborate on minerals exploration around the world.

WIND DEAL Energy regulator Ofgem has picked Transmission Capital Partners to own and operate the high-voltage transmission link to the Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm off the coast of Norfolk.

HOMES DEAL Landlord Grainger has bought 192 private rented homes in Manchester for 26million from Cabot Square Capital.
Investor: John Ayton and wife Annoushka Ducas

Links of London founder John Ayton has invested in ethical water company Dash which plans to launch in the United States.

Ayton  who is also an investor and chairman at watch company Bremont and swimwear brand Orlebar Brown  has led a round of investment by the firm that has raised 250,000.

Dash Water uses infusions of wonky veg  misshapen vegetables often rejected by supermarkets  to create water with flavours including cucumber and lemon.

It was founded by entrepreneurs Alex Wright and Jack Scott and launched in Selfridges in May. The product is now sold in over 400 stores, including Planet Organic.

The unsweet, flavoured water category is worth about 1.5 billion in the US.

Its backers insist that Dash was ahead of the market which has already seen explosive growth in the US where, Ayton said, products combating obesity are taking off. He added: A normal fizzy drink gives you 20 per cent of your sugar intake for the whole day.

That combined with the up and coming sugar tax means there is a big focus on more healthy drinks.

The next wave will look at artificial sweeteners, which are not good for you. These guys have come up with this idea of using recycled fruit and vegetables because 30 per cent of what is grown never even makes it on to peoples plates because it is damaged or the wrong shape.

Ayton set up jewellery company Links of London with his wife Annoushka Ducas, a designer who has a jewellery brand in her own name.
Bomb explodes targeting NC candidates in Nawalaparasi

A powerful bomb exploded targeting Nepali congress (NC) candidates at Jhirubhangyang in Nawalparasi on Saturday. No casualties have been reported so far.
MBABANE  Two public entities intend to award tenders worth over E37 million to two companies.



The entities are the Swaziland Water and Agricultural Development Enterprise (SWADE) and the Swaziland Revenue Authority (SRA). SWADE intends to awards T&S Enterprises a tender worth E2 954 642.88 for the procurement of building materials for construction of Ferro-cement tanks.



T&S Industries overcame seven other companies who were vying for the same tender. The others which were interested were ERG Swaziland (PTY) LTD, Foot the Bill and Once Always Investments Afritool, Boab Investments, Hancy Construction and Madusizwe Investent.



In results issued by the Chief Executive Officer Samson Sithole and published by the Swaziland Public Procurement Regulatory Agency (SPPRA), it has been stated that T&S stands to be granted the tender. Madusizwe Investments, ERG Swaziland, Boab Investments, Afritool and Foot the Bill were disqualified during the tender evaluation exercise.



It must be noted that in terms of Section 45(20 of the Act,) the above contract award decision does not constitute a contract, Sithole said. SWADE is a government company established by the Government of Swaziland in 1999 to facilitate the planning and implementation of the Komati Downstream Development Project (KDDP) and Lower Usuthu Smallholder Irrigation Project (LUSIP) and any other large water and agricultural development project that government may assign. Meanwhile SRA intends to award a South African company, IDI Technology Solutions a tender worth E785 500 for the supply and installation of an Enterprise Risk Management System.
MBABANE  A strike action could be in the offing for Public Sector Associations (PSAs).



PSAs are Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT), Swaziland Association of Government Accounting Personnel (SNAGAP), Swaziland Nurses Association (SNA), and the National Public Services and Allied Workers Union (NAPSAWU).

Government and the sector associations have failed to reach common ground on the formers demand for a cost of living adjustment (COLA).



They are demanding 7.85 per cent. Their initial demand was 9.15 per cent but government maintains its offer of zero per cent.

The Industrial Court yesterday dismissed the PSAs application for the court to determine the cost of living adjustment matter after they reached a deadlock with government at the negotiating table.



Judge Nkosinathi Nkonyane said the parties were both aware as to which steps to follow in terms of the Industrial Act after they reached a deadlock during negotiations. The judge said this was acknowledged by the PSAs in their founding affidavit.

This matter as it stands now is at a deadlock and the only option available under normal circumstances would be to embark on a strike, reads part of the PSAs founding affidavit.



In dismissing the PSAs application, Judge Nkonyane, who sat with the members, Simon Mvubu and Gilbert Ndzinisa, mentioned that the associations had acknowledged in a clear language that the next step was to engage in a lawful strike.

This was after they reached a deadlock with the Government Negotiation team (GNT).



At the time they, however, said they were deliberately not exercising their right because of their own reasons.

The PSAs recently warned government about the consequences of a nationwide strike should push come to shove in the negotiations process.

In their application at the Industrial Court, the PSAs outlined the damage that would allegedly befall the country should they be pushed to a corner where they find themselves with no alternative but to strike.



SNAT Secretary General Zwelithini Mndzebele said since they were at a deadlock, the only option available under normal circumstances would be to strike, the effects of which would be devastating to the public.



Among other things, Mndzebele said if the associations were to strike, investors would have to consider the security of their loans and the investment they have made in the country.
MBABANE- The taxi man who stabbed to death a petrol attendant at Engen Filling Station in Mbabane over E40 said he acted in the heat of the moment.



Ntokozo Mazwi Dlamini made these submissions when motivating his application for bail at the High Court yesterday.

He also confirmed that he stabbed the deceased in the neck.



His application for bail was not opposed and he was subsequently admitted to E15 000 bail by Judge Mbutfo Mamba.

Dlamini (27) of Dlangeni under Chief Nsukumbili was ordered to pay E3 000 cash and provide surety for the balance.

The conditions attached to his bail were that he should surrender his passport or other valid international travel document to the investigating officer at the Mbabane Police Station and that he should not apply for a new one.



He was also ordered to report to the Mbabane Police Station monthly and also refrain from speaking with or communicating or interfering with any of the prosecution witnesses in the case against him.



In the charge sheet it is alleged that he wrongfully, intentionally and unlawfully stabbed Kwanele Mngcini Dlamini with an Okapi knife next to the right ear and in the process inflicted a fatal wound which he (Kwanele) died of.

He allegedly committed this offence on October 31, 2017.



The accused mentioned that he was arrested after surrendering himself to the police in the company of his mother Delisile Nompumelelo Dlamini.

This was subsequent to a fight which I had with the deceased, the result of which I stabbed him in the neck in the heat of the moment, submitted the accused.



He also undertook that he would not abscond trial in particular because he surrendered himself to the police after being told that the complainant had died.

The accused was represented by Sabelo Chicken Dlamini.




MBABANE  Desperate times call for desperate measures as a financially strapped University of Swaziland student has had to do the unthinkable by selling her body in order to put food on the table.



*Patience, a Bachelor of Education student, says she charges E300 for one round of sex.

The light-skinned woman who could be mistaken for a top executive of a reputable company was not shy to confess that she is desperate to have money to meet her needs.



Well spoken, indicative of her education, *Patience said she had a debt to settle stating that bengisangene, but bangibhadalele. So I dont need any money, she responded when asked later through WhatsApp.

In a bid to attract clients, she sent pictures of herself to different men through social media.



In one of the pictures, the woman, estimated to be in her mid-twenties, is showing her breasts while in another, she is lying on her side, showing her backside. In this picture, her private parts are clearly visible.

And the other is a facial picture. During a telephonic interview, *Patience, who was not aware that she was speaking to a journalist who posed as a client, confined that she does not engage in unprotected sex.



However, when she was called later for the services, she said she had since quit, advising the journalist to try someone else.

She said her financial problems had been sorted because someone had settled her debts.



*Patience is one of many students who have resorted to trade in sex to meet some of the financial challenges she faced.

Ironically, *Patience, who has love for finer things, is a member of her churchs praise and worship team.
MBABANE  These women work in small groups in their communities providing healthcare to those in need but nobody seems to care about their health and needs.



The women, community caregivers, place themselves at risk of contracting diseases from the people they assist as they are not provided with latex gloves and are forced to use their bare hands.



This has resulted in the deaths of two community caregivers at Herefordds, Northern Hhohho.

At Lubulini, an elderly woman is said to have also died after contracting a sickness from her bedridden granddaughter whom she was forced to care for.



They have been forced to devise new strategies in dealing with the sick within their communities as they are without a number of amenities that make their service delivery easier.



This, they said, was done in a number of methods which include the use of plastic bags to bathe the sick, mostly who are bedridden and are unable to care for themselves.



They also lamented how they are also without diapers, medication such as painkillers and dehydration salts yet the people they normally attend to are those who are HIV positive, have TB and are bedridden.

A caregiver from Herefords Constituency was at pains explaining how in her area, they get about 20 painkillers two sachets of oral dehydration salts.



This is despite that the community has a number of affected people.

Toby Shabangu said they neither get gloves nor diapers for those who are bedridden.

Given the tough conditions they work under, Shabangu said two caregivers she worked with contracted HIV/AIDS and later died.



She explained that they worked under trying conditions that required that they should be protected but it wasnt the case.

We attend to people who are bedridden and use plastic bags for wrapping bread to cover our hands. Dont you think we expose ourselves trying to help others, she asked rhetorically.



Sharing Shabangus sentiments was Khombisile Mamba from the Lubulini Constituency.

She was close to tears when she elaborated the deficiency in the supply of resources they needed when going about their duties.

Mamba said they get four pair of gloves, a few packets of dehydration salts, a sachet with 20 pain killers and condoms.

With these items, she said she administers home care to 24 homesteads with an average of seven people apiece.

She noted that given that they get four pairs of gloves, it was hard for them to be protected throughout the course of the month. Instead, they reuse the gloves so that they could last them.



Most of my patients are HIV positive and are bedridden, so attending to them exposes me to the virus.

She said given their trials when offering basic health care, they end up using old clothes as diapers for those who are bedridden.



From this, Mamba said, one elderly woman died as she ended up washing the linen to change her bedridden granddaughter.

She did not have gloves to protect herself and there were no disposal diapers, she would wash the linen and got infected at the end.

These issues are not unique to the rural areas as Tsekla Gwebu, from the Mbabane West Constituency, shared testimony of how frustrated they were due to the lack of resources.
CEC appeals to all sides to respect silent period

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Ayodhee Prasad Yadav has called on all political parties, candidates, voters, and media persons to respect the election silent period.
Chand-led Maoist cadres abduct ward chairman in Jajarkot

Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) on Friday abducted Gopal Bahadur Nepali, Chairman of ward no. 1 in Kushe Rural Municipality, Jajarkot district.
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Cairo

Islamist militants detonated a bomb inside a crowded mosque Friday and then sprayed gunfire on panicked worshippers as they fled the building, killing at least 235 people and wounding at least 109 others. Officials called it the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypt's modern history.

The scale and ruthlessness of the assault, which occurred in a small town in the insurgency-racked Sinai Peninsula, sent shock waves across the nation, not just for the number of deaths but also for the choice of target. Attacks on mosques are rare in Egypt, where the Islamic State group has targeted Coptic Christian churches and pilgrims but avoided Muslim places of worship.

The attack injected a new element into Egypt's struggle with militants because most of the victims were Sufi Muslims, who practice a mystical form of Islam that some extremists deem heretical. And it underscored the failure of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who has insisted he needs to crush political opposition to combat the threat of Islamist militancy, to deliver on his promises of security to Egyptians.

"The scene was horrific," said Ibrahim Sheteewi, a resident of Bir al-Abd, the north Sinai town where the attack took place. "The bodies were scattered on the ground outside the mosque. I hope God punishes them for this."

A Sinai police officer said the dead included at least 15 children. A witness put the toll even higher, saying he had helped gather the bodies of 25 children.

The Egyptian military, which has been battling a local affiliate of the Islamic State in northern Sinai for years, carried out several airstrikes in the area targeting militants fleeing in four-wheel-drive vehicles, an Egyptian military official said.

Violence in Sinai surged after 2013, when el-Sissi came to power in a military takeover that deposed the democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Even by recent standards in Egypt, where militants have blown up Christian worshippers as they knelt at church pews and gunned down pilgrims in buses, it was an unusually ruthless assault.

"I can't believe they attacked a mosque," a Muslim cleric in Bir al-Abd said by phone, requesting anonymity for fear he could also be attacked.

In recent months, the Islamic State had threatened and killed a number of Sufis there but it had not attacked a place of worship, the cleric said.

The attack started midday during Friday prayers when a bomb  most likely set off by a suicide bomber, according to security officials  ripped through Al Rawda mosque in Bir al-Abd, a small town 125 miles northeast of Cairo. As worshippers fled, they were confronted by a group of gunmen who, witnesses said, had pulled up outside in four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Some of the gunmen rushed into the mosque, where they opened fire on worshippers. Others waited outside, picking off those who had managed to flee.

Several women were wounded when they heard the gunfire and rushed to see what was happening, a Sinai police detective said. "When they saw the bodies, they started screaming and calling for help, so the terrorists shot them," he said.

The gunmen lingered at the scene even as emergency workers arrived to treat the wounded, opening fire on several ambulances, Ahmed el-Ansari, a senior government health official, said on state television.

El-Sissi convened an emergency meeting of top security officials, including the interior minister, spy chief and defense minister.

"We will respond to the terrorist attack in Al Rawda," he said in a televised speech, referring to the name of the mosque as well as the district that includes it. "The military and the police will take revenge."

President Donald Trump, writing on Twitter, denounced the attack as a "horrible and cowardly." In a later tweet, he said the attack explains why the United States needs a border wall with Mexico and restrictions on immigration, which he referred to as "the ban."

The United Nations Security Council, in a statement, condemned the "heinous and cowardly terrorist attack." U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for those responsible "to be swiftly brought to justice."
[November 24, 2017] RIO TINTO SHAREHOLDER ALERT by Former Louisiana Attorney General: Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC Reminds Investors with Losses in Excess of $100,000 of Lead Plaintiff Deadline in Class Action Lawsuit against Rio Tinto PLC - (RIO)

Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF") and KSF partner, former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until December 22, 2017 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Rio Tinto PLC (NYSE: RIO), if they purchased the Company's American Depositary Receipts ("ADRs") between October 23, 2012 and February 15, 2013, inclusive (the "Class Period"). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. What You May Do If you purchased ADR's of Rio Tinto and would like to discuss your legal rights and how this case might affect you and your right to recover for your economic loss, you may, without obligation or cost to you, contact KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn toll-free at 1-877-515-1850 or via email ([email protected]), or visit http://ksfcounsel.com/cases/nyse-rio/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in this class action, you must petition the Court by December 22, 2017.



About the Lawsuit Rio Tinto and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.

On October 17, 2017, an SEC (News - Alert) complaint charged that as early as August 2012 the Company knew that various developments had rendered its coal assets in Mozambique ("RTCM") worthless (reportedly - $680 million), yet did not publicly disclose that fact, continued to publicly tout RTCM's value to investors, and continued to significantly overvalue it. Later, on February 15, 2013, the Company reported an 80% write-down, or $2.86B, for the asset. On this news, the price of Rio Tinto's shares plummeted. About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC KSF, whose partners include former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is a law firm focused on securities, antitrust and consumer class actions, along with merger & acquisition and breach of fiduciary litigation against publicly traded companies on behalf of shareholders. The firm has offices in New York, California and Louisiana. To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171124005007/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
By Azernews





By Kamila Aliyeva

Attraction of investments for the transit of Iranian gas to Tajikistan can be a turning point in improving economic relations between the two countries.

This was stated by the Iranian parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, on the sidelines of the 10th plenary meeting of the Asian Parliamentary Assembly (APA), Iranian media outlets reported.

Larijani told Vice-Speaker of the Tajikistans Parliament Khairiniso Yusufi that investments could be attracted, in particular, for electricity generation and water transfer from Tajikistan to Iran and sending gas from the Islamic Republic to the countries of Central Asia.

Commenting on the high scale of Iranian companies presence on the Tajik market and assistance in improving the economy of this country, he said that the relations between Iran and Tajikistan can be strengthened taking into account the commonality between the two states.

The APA meeting began in Istanbul on November 21 and will end today, on November 24. The meeting is devoted to the theme of maintaining peace and development in Asia. The ninth APA meeting was held in Cambodia in November 2016.

Iran has vast energy resources  the worlds largest proven natural gas reserves and the second-largest trove of oil in the Persian Gulf, according to BP.

Iran's proven gas reserves amount to 33.5 trillion cubic meters of gas. However, the country lacks necessary export infrastructure to realize gas sales. Under sanctions, Iran was banned from the global financial system, preventing the development of its oil and gas fields and necessary infrastructure.

Irans gross gas output stands at 285bn m3/yr. The country plans to increase this volume to about 440 bcm/y by 2021 after full operational of South Pars and starting gas production from other projects like Kish gas field.
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EC bars two EU observers from poll monitoring

The Election Commission (EC) has barred two international election observers from monitoring the upcoming elections.
Attorney for man charged with dismembering wife files motion saying Justin Rey is unfit to withstand trial OLATHE, Kan. -- The attorney for the 35-year-old man charged with dismembering and abandoning the corpse of his wife has filed a motion saying that their client is unfit to withstand trial. Justin Rey's attorney, Courtney T. Henderson, filed a motion Tuesday that argued that Rey is unable to fully understand the gravity of the charges against him.

A plea for mercy in the case of a man who was living in a box with his children and a wife that he allegedly diced up . . .
KU's William Allen White Foundation Board of Trustees has voted to rescind the National Citation award that was presented to journalist Charlie Rose. A statement from the university's journalism school sent out on Friday said: "Since 1950, the William Allen Foundation National Citation Award has honored American journalists who exemplify William Allen White's ideals in service to their profession and community."
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A woman accused of trying to run over a KCK police officer led police on a chase across the state line, authorities said. According to KCK police, the woman tried to hit the officer outside The Legends Shopping Center. Police pursed the woman driving a red Nissan Altima from KCK into KCMO.
INSIDERS NOTICE THE JACKSON COUNTY EXEC NO SHOW AT THE RECENT "CHRISTMAS IN THE SKY" CELEBRATION AS A SIGN OF FRANK WHITE LOSING TOUCH WITH VOTERS!!!

"He's losing touch with voters. This kind of thing is where you get a chance to talk with constituents and make connections on a personal level beyond politics," one Courthouse Insider said. "But his ego is getting the better of him. He doesn't like to get tough questions that might come up at these events and he doesn't seem to be interested to attend functions where he won't be treated like a hero. This was missed opportunity . . ."

We've got more on the crisis at the Courthouse but for tonight we offer a quick note at shifting public perception of Jackson County Exec Frank White.To wit . . .For those who don't know,- It has aloyal following and voters have made it one of the very best Kansas City metro low-key community traditions.Exec Frank White skipping the party was seen as an affront to this block of voters and was certainly noticed by JaxCo insiders.Again, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes in Jackson County but this Christmas party snafu offers just a bit of insight into the bitter political feud that continues into the holiday season.Developing . . .
"This past summer, our Missouri Legislature proudly enacted Senate Bill 43, and Gov. Eric Greitens cheerfully signed it into law. What does it do? It completely shields sexual predators at work . . . Under Missouris new law, predators like Weinstein and OReilly will bear no responsibility for their actions at work, because they simply cant be sued any more. And if you are an employer who checks court files before you hire someone, there wont be any record you can check because individual harassers cannot be sued."
Terrorist attack on Friday at a mosque in Bir Al Abed in North Sinai that claimed the lives of at least 235 people and injured another 120

Greek political leaders responded with abhorrence and messages of support to the terrorist attack on Friday at a mosque in Bir Al Abed in North Sinai that claimed the lives of at least 235 people and injured another 120, at latest count.

President Pavlopoulos

Greek Ambassador to Egypt Michael Diamessis conveyed the condolences and solidarity of Greek President Prokopios Pavlopoulos to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.

The Greek president also expressed his condolences to victims' families and his wishes for a fast recovery of those injured.

Foreign ministry

The Greek Foreign ministry condemned "in the strongest terms" Friday's "hideous attack" at the Al Rawdah mosque.

"Greece condemns terrorism in the strongest terms, whatever its origins," a ministry statement said, and expressed solidarity with the Egyptian people and the condolences of the Greek people and government to the victims' families. It also expressed "concern over the continuing attacks against religious minorities in the Middle East and North Africa which suffer the catastrophic consequences of terrorism and religious intolerance."

Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias spoke by phone with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry to convey Greece's support and condolences, as did Deputy Foreign Minister Terens Quick with Egyptian Minister of Immigration Nabila Makram.

Parliament president

Parliament President Nikos Voutsis expressed his unequivocal condemnation of the attack, in a letter to his Egyptian counterpart Ali Abdel-Aal Sayed Ahmed.

"On behalf of the Greek Parliament and myself personally, I wish to express our deepest condolences to the families of the victims and our support for the injured in the terrorist attack at the al-Ruda Mosque in Bir al-Abd," he said.

"We condemn categorically and unequivocally this bloody attack and express our abhorrence for this brutal act," he added.

SYRIZA party

Senior ruling coalition party SYRIZA expressed its abhorrence on Friday for the terrorist attack.

"We express our abhorrence and sorrow at the deadly terrorist attack at the Al Radwah mosque," it said in a statement. "We stand against such actions that sow death and raise the sense of fear in the area," it noted.

"Our heart and thought is with the Egyptian people, to whom we express our solidarity and support," SYRIZA said, adding its condolences to families of the victims.

ANEL party

The Independent Greeks (ANEL) party, the junior member of the ruling coalition, expressed its abhorrence "in the strongest terms possible".

"Acts of terrorism aim at disturbing the sensitive balances in the region and at perpetuating the foul cycle of violence and blood," the party said through its spokeswoman Mantalena Papadopoulou, who also expressed solidarity with the Egyptian people and condolences to the victims' families.

Main opposition ND party

New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he is "shocked" by the attack by militants.

"I feel shocked. The tragedy in Sinai leads us to give put all our strength in fighting terrorism. [We must bring] an end to the blood brought by hatred," he tweeted.

PASOK leader Fofi Gennimata

The murderous attack against defenseless people who were praying creates feelings of horror and indignation, PASOK leader Fofi Gennimata said on Friday in response to a deadly attack on a mosque in Sinai, Egypt.

"We are all united against terrorism, together with the Egyptian people who are suffering," she added.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: NASA/JSC License: CC-BY-SA

Source: ANA-MPA
Tensions between the two countries , Greece and Turkey, have been going on for years but their cooperation has also been extensive enabling tourism to benefit significantly and reach very high levels lately

Turkish online news site Daily Sabah lauds the Mayor of Thessaloniki, Yiannis Boutaris for his plan to promote the Ottoman heritage of the Greek city, including mosques and baths.

The article says Mr. Boutaris told Anadolu Agency that he also plans to build an Islamic art museum. From the Daily Sabah:

Greece's second-largest city is getting ready to uncover more Ottoman heritage -- including mosques and baths -- and plans to construct an Islamic art museum, Thessaloniki's mayor has told Anadolu Agency.

Yiannis Boutaris, the 75-year-old mayor of the northern Greek city, noted in an interview this week: "You cannot build the future without knowing your past."

"What we did was to make this history visible again. This history was hidden. It was hidden because the Greeks were misinformed about the Turks," Boutaris stressed.

The mayor is now demanding the Greek Ministry of Culture take over five historical buildings dating from the Ottoman period in the city to attract tourism.

The Alaca Imaret Mosque -- which dates back to the 15th century -- was among the buildings the mayor aims to rehabilitate.

He also said he intended to build a permanent exhibition of Islamic arts, describing it as an Islamic art museum, to underline "the existence of the Ottoman traces".

"I always say we are brothers with the Turks. We have the same history and the same culture. We fought each other a lot of times, but the past must be left behind," Boutaris added.

Greece, especially its northern part, is rich with Turkish heritage. Nevertheless, some local authorities have neglected to protect and rehabilitate many of these treasures.

During recent years, Islamic heritage in Greece, including mosques, were vandalized by far-right groups or caught fire for unknown reasons.

Ibrahim Serif, chief of the Western Thrace Turkish Minority Advisory Board, told Anadolu Agency last month that many Ottoman monuments in Greece are doomed to disappear.

Serif underlined that while the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) repairs many Ottoman monuments in the Balkans, they are barred from doing so in Greece.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Zweifussler License: CC-BY-SA

Source: newgreektv.com
A team of medical specialists from Greece, headed by Giorgos Patoulis, president of the International Health Tourism Center, presented Greece's potential in health tourism and the investment opportunities the country offers

Greece's new growth course and the great interest expressed by Australian businessmen in Greek investments dominated a special event held in Sydney, Australia, organised by the International Health Tourism Center and the World Institute of Greek Doctors, in collaboration with the Greek Club of Sydney, under the aegis of the Athens Medical Association and the Central Union of Municipalities of Greece.

A team of medical specialists from Greece, headed by Giorgos Patoulis, president of the International Health Tourism Center, presented Greece's potential in health tourism and the investment opportunities the country offers. The event was attended by the Consul General of Greece in Sydney, Stavros Kyrimis, the Economic and Commercial Affairs Advisor of the Consulate General of Greece in Sydney, Katia Gikisa, Greek Australians and Australian businessmen and physicians from both countries who set up "bridges" for the development of medical tourism in Greece.

As speakers at the event pointed out, Australia is a "reservoir" of potential investors. On her part, Gikisa announced that the consulate plans to include "health tourism" as a new category in Australia's travel agent information campaign, highlighting the possibilities offered by Greece.

Greece offers important investment opportunities, Greek businessmen living in Australia said, and sent a messages to support the improvement of the business climate.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report

Source: ANA-MPA
Eco and agro tourism gains steam in Ilam

Products ranging from agriculture and handmade fabric have been attracting foreigners to the eastern hilltop of Ilam. The area is popular for tea, cardamom, ginger, red round big chilli (dalle khursani), milk product, broom and handmade fabric.
Government to build Budhi Gandaki project on its own

The government on Friday decided to develop the Budhi Gandaki Hydropower Project on its own, nearly two weeks after it terminated the contract agreement with the China Gezhouba Group Corporation (CGGC) to build the countrys largest hydroelectric project.
Jammu, November 25

A minor girl, who was abducted on Thursday, was rescued and the accused was arrested in Jammu and Kashmirs Rajouri district, police said on Saturday.

During the investigation, the police raided a suspected location in Rajouri on Friday evening and rescued the girl, arresting the accused, Arshad Mehmood, from the spot, a police official said.

The 15-year-old girl, a resident Dhandkote village, was abducted from Darhal in Rajouri on Thursday, the official said.

The girl was later handed over to the family after legal and medical formalities, he said.

A case had been registered at Darhal police station and the probe is on, he added. PTI
Washington DC, November 25

Yet, another celebrity couple has come to the end of the road.

Emma Watson and her boyfriend of nearly two years, William Mack Knight, have called it quits, Us Magazine reported.

A source told the outlet that the Ivy League-educated pair split earlier this year, but kept the breakup under wraps.

The 27-year-old actress and the 37-year-old tech entrepreneur were first spotted together back in October 2015, when they attended the Broadway musical Hamilton.' After shooting to fame as a child star playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter' franchise, Watson graduated from Brown University in May 2014.

Knight received a Bachelor's in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton in 2003, as well as an MBA from Columbia Business School in 2011.  ANI.
Khamano: The Khamano police claimed to have recovered 22-kg of poppy husk from a truck and have arrested one person in this regard. The driver of the truck, however, managed to escape. The one arrested has been identified as Rajinder Singh, a resident of Jatana Ucha village, while the truck driver, who escaped, was identified as Surmukh Singh, a resident of Manela village. SHO Khamano Navdeep Singh said a tip-off was received and the police laid a naka near Jatan Ucha village last night. The police stopped a truck coming from Samrala side. The driver turned the truck towards a link road and escaped under the cover of darkness after stopping the truck, as per the SHO. The police impounded the truck and arrested the truck cleaner. During search, the police recovered 22-kg poppy husk from it. A case under the NDPS Act was registered. The accused was presented in court, from where he was sent in judicial custody. Further raids were on to arrest the truck driver. OC

STF nabs 2 with 10-kg opium

Ludhiana: The STF wing of the Ludhiana police led by in-charge Harbans Singh claimed to have nabbed two drug peddlers and recovered 10-kg opium from them. The accused have been identified as Jatinder Singh (29), a resident of UP and Raghuvinder Singh, alias Raghu (38), also a native of UP. Harbans Singh said acting on a tip-off, a naka was laid at Mattewara on Rahon Road. After intercepting a car, it was stopped for checking. Two occupants were rounded up and during search, narcotics was recovered from it. During preliminary questioning, the accused told the STF that they were farmers and had been bringing consignment of liquor from one Maqbool Ali Khan of UP for Rs 80,000 per kg and were selling it in Punjab at Rs 2 lakh per kg. TNS

Raids at chemist shops

Ludhiana: The Health Department conducted raids at various medicine shops on Tibba Road today under the supervision of Dinesh Gupta, zonal licensing authority, Ludhiana zone, and Drug Inspectors Sukhbir Chand, Ravi Gupta, Rooppreet Kaur and Rupinder Kaur. Raids were conducted at Shri Bala Ji Medicos, Goel Medicos, Malik Medical Store, Simmi Medicos and Cosmetics and Abbat Medicos. No pharmacists was available at these shops neither the sale record was available. The sale record of Simmi Medicos was incomplete. None of the shops kept the record of the sale of H1 drugs. Two types of samples were taken from Shri Balaji Medicos, two from Goel Medicos and 12 types of medicines worth Rs 18740 were seized from the shop. TNS
Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, November 25

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet Aadhaar scheme, seen as a major weapon against corruption, is likely to get a quick burial in Maharashtra with the state government clearing waiver of farm loans not linked to the UID numbers.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

According to state government sources here, the move to junk the requirement to link all accounts of beneficiaries with their Aadhaar number has been taken by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis after data provided by banks carried fake numbers in many accounts.

While several accounts were linked to single Aadhaar numbers, many had random numbers like 012345, etc, says a source from the state co-operation department.

After the discrepancies came to light, the Maharashtra government ordered the waiver of loans to be halted till the entire list of applicants was verified. This, however, has proved to be a mammoth task with the government having received 1.05 crore applications from farmers while lending institutions came up with a list of 77.29 lakh farmers from about 56.59 lakh families who have defaulted on their loans.

State officials and executives of a private firm engaged to collate the details of farmers eligible for waiver of their farm loans have told the government that it would take at least six months to clean up the list.

The opposition parties and the ruling BJP's troublesome ally, the Shiv Sena, are using the occasion to put the government on the mat.

Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar accused the Fadnavis government of not trusting the data provided by the banks. Pawar felt that the government should ask for the list of beneficiaries from the banks and simply waive their loans off without waiting for too many formalities.

On the other hand, supporters of Fadnavis allege that many of the loans have been availed by bogus account holders from co-operative banks in the earlier years when the Congress-NCP coalition was in power.

But what seems to have made up the government's mind to expedite disbursal of the farm loan waiver without Aadhaar verification is the sudden spurt in suicide by farmers.

Data provided by the state government says 1,254 farmers have committed suicide between June and October after the farm loan waiver was announced.

The total number of suicides in the first ten months of this year is pegged at 2,414. Activists say they are getting reports of more suicides in the month of November.

The state government estimates the farm loan waiver amount at Rs 37,000 crore.
Thane, November 25

A 35-year-old man from Wada has been sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment by a Thane court for kidnapping a 14-year-old girl in 2015.

District Judge SC Khalipe also slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on the convict Radheyshyam Jagdish Chaurasiya, originally from Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh.

Upon realisation of the fine the same will be paid as compensation to the victim, the Judge said in his order.

Prosecutor Rekha Hiwrale informed the court that on July 22, 2015, the accused kidnapped the girl and took her to Shirdi and later to Haridwar with an intention of marrying her.

Chaurasiya, along the girl, was caught at the Haridwar railway station by the local police and handed over to the Wada police, the court was informed.

A case was then registered at the Wada police station.

Defence counsel S J Patankar contested the claim, saying the accused was victim's cousin brother and had taken the girl to Haridwar for religious purposes.

However, the judge, in his order, said, "I conclude that the prosecution has proved beyond all reasonable doubt that the victim was below 18 years and she was taken by the accused without her father's consent to Shirdi and Haridwar". PTI
Islamabad, November 25

Pakistan has justified the release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, claiming that Islamabad was committed to the implementation of UNSC sanctions regime on terrorists.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder, who has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan on Friday.

He is a UN and US designated terrorist.

Indias Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Saeeds release confirmed once again the lack of seriousness by the Pakistan government in bringing to justice perpetrators of terrorism, including individuals and entities designated by the UN.

It also appears to be an attempt by the Pakistani system to mainstream proscribed terrorists. Pakistan has not changed its policy of shielding and supporting non-state actors and its true face is visible for all to see, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in New Delhi on Thursday.

Responding to the comments made by the MEA, Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan was committed to the implementation of UNSC 1267 sanctions regime and has taken several steps in this regard.

The (MEA) spokesperson took exception to self-serving insinuations, he said in statement issues late last night.

Faisal said that courts in Pakistan, pursuant to their constitutional duty, were determined to uphold rule of law and due process for all citizens of Pakistan.

Legal processes were anchored in rule of law, not dictates of politics and posturing, he said.

It is in the interest of all States to speak and act in a manner that is consistent with the imperatives of adhering to rule of law at the national and international levels, Faisal said.

He said that Pakistans resolve, actions and successes in the fight against terrorism, terrorist violence and terrorists are unmatched in the world.

Pakistan condemns and opposes all forms of terrorism by any individual or group, the FO spokesperson said.

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The fire-brand clerics release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

Saeed was individually designated by the UN under the Security Council Resolution 1267 in December, 2008. PTI
Smita Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 25

Adding to the alarm bells on air crisis, a top UNICEF (United Nations Childrens Fund) official has said pollution is stunting childrens growth in India. Justin Forsyth, Deputy Executive Director Partnerships, UNICEF, was in India to release a multi-country survey report on childrens concerns.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Speaking exclusively to The Tribune, Forsyth said pollution today not just creates health risks like asthma but also directly impacts development of brain in babies and young children.

We now know that particles from pollution have disproportionate impact on the brain. Worrying thing is pollution combined with malnutrition and violence could have big impact on a childs life forever, said Forsyth.

Violence, sexual assault within families, child marriages, poverty, healthcare are the other big worries. These concerns along with child pornography and trafficking were discussed in a meeting with Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi.

The survey conducted among children in 14 countries highlights 96% of Indian respondents worried about violence against children. 94% of the children surveyed were also worried about mistreatment or bullying.

The survey also says 96% children worry about access to quality education, including little or no access to schools , teachers , archaic curriculum and lack of infrastructure. Despite a sample size of 1,000, UNICEF claims the data combined with continuing work the world body does in India is truly reflective.

Forsyth also met with several children in Jharkhand and state Chief Minister Raghubar Das. With the Jharkhand CM we talked specifically about the challenge of malnutrition because figures for Jharkhand are higher than the national average, said Forsyth.

Safe environment in Rakhine must before Rohingya repatriation

At a time when a deal has been inked between Myanmar and Bangladesh towards repatriation of Rohingya refugees, UNICEF has expressed deep concerns about children affected in the crisis.

Justin Forsyth recently visited Rakhine state in Myanmar, the seat of exodus and Cox Bazaar in Bangladesh, one of the largest Rohingya refugee camps. He emphasises that any repatriation must be voluntary.

We work with a lot of the children and lot of them that have come across the border into Bangladesh unaccompanied. Many of them saw their mothers raped, brothers and sisters burnt alive, their fathers killed. The level of violence has been truly shocking. Our concern is that nobody gets forced back into Myanmar. There must be a voluntary repatriation and safety in Rakhine state, said Forsyth.

Advocating that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees be involved in any repatriation process, the UNICEF top official also appealed for increased aid and support from India and the global community.

Challenge for Rohingya children both in Rakhine and at refugee camps is very high levels of malnutrition. Also outbreak of measles, diarrhoea. They are also deeply traumatised, added Forsyth.
Income from high export potential products drops

Export earnings from nine high export potential products identified under Nepal Trade Integration Strategy (NTIS) declined by 15 percent in the first three months of the current fiscal year, largely due to exports hurdles and too much involvement of middlemen.
New Delhi, November 25

President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday expressed concern over the unacceptably low representation of women, OBCs, SC/STs in the higher judiciary and called for steps to remedy the situation.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

"There is unacceptably low representation of traditionally weaker sections such as OBCs, SCs and STs especially in the higher judiciary," he said, also noting that only one in four judges is a woman.

Asking the judiciary to walk in pace with other public institutions in being truly representatives of society's diversity, the President said: "Like our other public institutions, our judiciary too has to be judicious in being representative of the diversity of our country, and the depth and breadth of our society.

"Of the 17,000 judges in our subordinate courts, High Courts and the Supreme Court, only about 4,700 -- roughly one in four -- are women," he said. We need to take long-term measures to remedy this situation."

Telling the higher judiciary that it was its "sacred duty" to "groom" District and Sessions judges and raise their skill so that more and more of them can be elevated to High Courts, Kovind said: "This will also enhance trust in our lower courts and their judgments and serve to declog our High Courts." However, he also made it clear that the long-term solutions would be "without in any manner compromising on quality" of the judges and the judicial system.

The President was speaking at the inaugural function of the two-day meet organised jointly by the Law Commission and Niti Aayog on the National Law Day.

Pointing out that "India has acquired a reputation of an expensive legal system" coupled with delays and constraints of the "affordability of fees", he said, "While we take pride in our courts and their independence, it is a paradox that poor often shy away from a legal battle, worried about duration and cost ... while the "well-off sometimes use the judicial process and its intricacies to delay resolution to issues they simply do not want to be resolved".

This "paradox", has to be addressed including the issue of adjournments "used for tactical delay of proceedings by one or the other party".

Kovind also called for simplifying the laws and repealing outdated laws thereby decongest the statute book and promote ease of governance.

The President said the judiciary, the executive and the legislature were "obligated to be models of good conduct" and cautioned that "they also need to be careful not to cross into each other's finely-defined spaces. Or give the opportunity to read transgressions even when none is intended.

This overstepping of the each organ's defined space can occur in many circumstances, including when "extraneous comments and obiter dicta come to dominate public debates, crowding out a substantive understanding and deliberation of a well thought-out judgement, he said.

Referring to technology outpacing the law, the President said we are entering fourth industrial revolution and "Our legal system and judiciary must continue to be responsive".

Minister of State for Law and Justice P.P. Choudhary in his welcome address, said: "It is a fundamental principle of governance that decisions should, as far as possible, be predictable and not disruptive. When judicial activism and review wades into policymaking, sometimes its consequences can be disruptive. This needs to be avoided if possible." "If judicial independence is a pillar of our democracy, then judicial accountability is the base of that pillar. Without accountability there can be no legitimacy," he added.  IANS
New Delhi, November 25

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Pakistan released 2008 Mumbai attacks mastermind and Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest saying that the former's 'Hugplomacy' with US President Donald Trump failed.

Narendrabhai,   . Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed.https://t.co/U8Bg2vlZqw  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 25, 2017

Gandhi said, "More hugs were urgently needed between PM Modi and Trump.

Narendrabhai, ??? ???? ???. Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed (sic)," he tweeted.

The JuD leader, who has a US$ 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, walked free after his 10-month detention as the Pakistan government decided against detaining him further in any other case, in a setback to India's efforts to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attack.

In his first address after being released, Saeed accused India and the US for his detention and raked up the Kashmir issue.

In May 2008, the US Department of the Treasury had designated Saeed as a global terrorist.

Saeed was also individually designated by the UN under the Security Council Resolution 1267 in December, 2008 following the November 2008 Mumbai attack in which 166 people, including six American citizens, were killed, Nauert said.

LeT and several of its front organisations, leaders, and operatives remain under both state department and Treasury department sanctions.

Since 2012, the US has offered a US$ 10 million reward for information that brings Saeed to justice, she said. Agencies
Smita Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 24

The United States today condemned the release of Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest and asked Pakistan to ensure that the mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks was arrested again and charged for his crimes.

Expressing deep concern over the Lahore High Court Judicial Review Boards release order, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) is a designated foreign terrorist organisation responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent civilians, including a number of American citizens, in terrorist attacks.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Saeed is a specially designated global terrorist under executive order 13224 of the US Treasury Department since May 2008. In 2012, the US Justice Department announced a $10 million reward for actionable evidence against Saeed. However, LeT was recently de-linked from the Congressional certification process for providing aid to Pakistan. Saeeds detention was considered a damage-control move under pressure from the Donald Trump administration.

New Delhi, meanwhile, has termed Saeeds utterances after his release as re-articulation of the agenda of terrorists. Saeed said he would gather people for the cause of Kashmir.
Mumbai, November 25

The daughter of policeman Tukaram Ombale, who was killed while trying to capture terrorist Ajmal Kasab, says her family still awaits his return, nine years after the Mumbai terror attacks.

"We feel papa will come home any moment, although deep in our heart we know that he will never be amongst us now," says a teary-eyed Vaishali Ombale, the eldest daughter of the Mumbai terror attacks hero.

"We always think that Papa has gone out on duty and will return home. We have kept his belongings at the place they used to be in our home. Our family is proud of his supreme sacrifice," Vaishali Ombale, who has completed her M Ed (Masters in education) and aspires to be a lecturer, told PTI.

Ombale, an assistant sub-inspector, was killed by Kasab's bullets in the early hours of November 27, 2008.

In a daring act, he had pounced on Kasab without thinking much about the consequences. His bravery had made it possible for the police to overpower Kasab, the only 26/11 terrorist to be captured and hanged.

"Not a day has gone by in the last nine years that we have not remembered him," said Vaishali Ombale, who stays at the Worli Police Camp with her mother Tara and sister Bharti, who is an officer in the state GST department.

"For how long will police or armed forces personnel continue losing their lives in the name of supreme sacrifice," she asked.

"This should stop somewhere. There should be a change in this scenario. Every citizen should always be alert and foil incidents in which we are losing our men," she said, ahead of the 26/11 attacks anniversary.

Vaishali Ombale said citizens should know their responsibilities and must understand that when policemen or armed forces personnel get killed in the line of duty, it is not only the family's loss but also that of the country.

"Satara district in Western Maharashtra from where my family hails has a long history of martyrs. Among the recent ones are CRPF head constable Ravindra Dhanawade, who was killed while fighting terrorists in Kashmir in August and Colonel Santosh Mahadik, who died while fighting terrorists in Kashmir in 2015. The list is unending, which disturbs me a lot," she said.

"We treat every member of a martyr's family like our own family and we help them overcome the grief," she said.

Vaishali Ombale gives tuitions to students from class 8 to junior college, which keeps her busy and makes her forget the pain of losing her father.

On November 26, 2008, 10 Pakistani terrorists arrived in Mumbai by sea route and opened fire indiscriminately at people on different locations, killing 166, including 18 security personnel, and injuring several others, besides damaging property worth crores.  PTI
Thane (Maharashtra), November 25

The overnight toll in a building collapse here on Friday shot upto four, with the body of a woman recovered from the debris on early Saturday, an official said.

The official from the city police control said with the recovery of the woman's body, the toll has risen to four. On Friday, the body of 18-year-old Ruksa Ahmed Khan was retrieved from the rubble.

Besides, nine others were injured when the three-storey building collapsed in Maharashtra's Bhiwandi town.

According to the Disaster Management Unit of Thane, the seven-year-old building named 'Tahir Dinjore', where seven families lived, collapsed around 9 a.m. on Friday trapping several people beneath the debris.

Among the injured, a few were taken to the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital and the rest to Thane Civil Hospital.

Maharashtra PWD Minister Eknath Shinde on Friday evening visited the injured at the hospital and spoke to the medical authorities about their condition.

Few more victims are still believed to be trapped in the debris and rescue works continued on Saturday morning for the second day.

Though the building was a recent construction and allegedly unauthorised, it is not known if it was included in the list of dangerous constructions. However, the owner, Tahir Ansari has been detained.

The building was located in congested K.G. Nagar area of Navi Basti area in this powerloom town and rescue teams had to demolish adjoining structures to clear the narrow lanes for passage of fire brigade and other vehicles.

Two teams of Thane and Bhiwandi fire brigade, two teams of National Disaster Response Force, along with more than 60 workers are engaged in rescue operations.

IANS
Tribune News Service

Ropar, November 25

Three youths of Mawa Khurd village near Nurpur Bedi were forced to work as bonded labourers in Saudi Arabia, soon after they landed there last week. A travel agent had sent Ajay Singh, Jasvir Singh, and Suresh Kumar to work as truck drivers.

In a video sent to their family members yesterday, the youths alleged that their employer kept them in confinement in a camp and made them feed camels and goats and chop wood. They said they had fled the camp and were now staying in a desolate area.

Denying the allegations, the travel agent, Tarsem Saini, said the youths had initially met their relatives based there. The employer had taken them to the camp, where they handed over their passports to him. Later, the employer showed them the vehicles to be driven, but the trio left the place within hours, he claimed.

Ajay Singhs father Sagli Ram said he had lodged a complaint with the police. Ropar SSP Raj Bachan Singh Sandhu said he had asked Anandpur Sahib DSP to investigate the matter.

Jaswant Singh and Manohar Lal, relatives of the youths, said they had informed Indian Embassy officials about the contact details of the trio.
Amit Sengupta

Keralas articulate society has refused to paint a love story in communal colours. The Malayalis have argued that inter-faith relationships and marriages are legitimate in a mature and democratic society, and any move to brand the wedding of two adults, Akhila Ashokan turned Hadiya and Shafin Jehan, as love jihad wont be accepted.

It was a packed audience in Calicut on October 30 as the premier of filmmaker Gopal Menons documentary was screened: I am Hadiya. That night, regional channels were full of debates on the controversy. Next day, the Malayalam papers gave the film full display; indeed, more than the film, how the campaign against Hadiya by fledgling Hindutva forces and the vicious rhetoric of love jihad was vitiating the pluralist, secular, mature and enlightened social fabric of gods own country.

Gopal Menon has always had the reporters instinct of picking up newsy and breaking news themes, even as it becomes a running story and a controversial public narrative. His film, Hey Ram, shot quickly with heart-wrenching shots from ground zero in a difficult and violent terrain, was a current affairs documentary on the Gujarat genocide of 2002. When it was first screened in open air at the Constitution Club in Delhi, by Sahmat, in front of a huge audience, including editors and academics, almost everyone had tears in their eyes, even as the wounds of mass murders, the gang-rapes, the dying and the survivors in the camps were in transparent glare as a tragic and brutal public spectacle of a state-sponsored carnage. The film was later screened all over Delhi, and across the globe, and became a living testimony of the horror that was Gujarat in 2002. He is now off to Cox Bazaar in Bangladesh to shoot a film on the Rohingyas.

The film sparked off a debate in Kerala. Across the spectrum of religion, communities, civil society and womens groups, people have argued that inter-faith, inter-caste and inter-religious relationships and marriages are legitimate in a mature and democratic society, and any move to brand it as love jihad, as the Hindutva forces tried in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh before the 2014 elections, leading to mass exodus of thousands of Muslim families, killings and rapes, will not be allowed in secular Kerala. No wonder, despite the massive efforts by Amit Shah, BJP chief, and his rank and file, to rake up the issue as a case of conversion and to create communal phobia, has come a cropper in the state. So much so, Shah had to return back quickly, even as the BJPs long march against the communists, refused to take off in Kerala.

You see, Kerala is a different cultural entity. The RSS has tried very hard for decades, but they have always been marginalised. Now they are trying to create fissures and fears among communities, which does not work here. For instance, our food habits across communities, are almost the same. That is a reflection of our cultural unity. Let the BJP come out against the culinary delights of beef (buff), which they too consume, said a human rights activist.

Others argued that Hadiya is a qualified homeopathic doctor, she is 24, an adult, and she married and converted willfully and with complete knowledge of her identity. How can then she be branded as weak, unsure and a case of psychological kidnapping, as is the term being used by the Hindutva brigade, which is being gleefully picked up by certain news channels in Delhi, without an iota of evidence or objectivity. It is not a case of compulsory conversion. She has not been enticed, or psychologically pressurised. They are adults and they decided to marry, so why are the Hindutva forces so unhappy about it, said a woman activist.

A young filmmaker, Ashfaque, who is making a film on mob-lynching with crowd-funding, told this reporter that even in the Muslim community, inter-faith marriages are not happily accepted. In that sense, both the Kerala High Court observation that all inter-faith bonds need not be interpreted as love jihad, and the affirmative position of the civil society on breaking orthodox and conformist barriers is a welcome development. It is a positive debate. Hadiya should have the choice to live her own life, he said.

I am Hadiya is a non-partisan, objective documentary, which takes into account all versions and puts them in a perspective. The power of rationality finally scores over blind fanaticism, and the film speaks for itself. Hopefully, the film, as much as the public narrative of the Hadiya isssue, will mark a turning point in the beautiful and green Kerala, and show the way to the rest of the country where the poison of hate politics, violence against dissent and alternate views and mob-lynching seems to have become the order of the day.
Cairo, November 25

Egyptian air force on Saturday gunned down several militants and destroyed their vehicles, hours after over 230 worshippers were killed in a terrorist attack at a mosque in the countrys restive North Sinai region.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Army spokesperson Tamer el-Refai said in a statement that the air force launched retaliatory attacks on terror hideouts in the surrounding area of North Sinai, killing militants and destroying vehicles used in the deadly attack.

He said arms and ammunition depots of the militants were also targeted.

Read: 235 worshippers die in Egypt terror strike

At least 235 worshippers were killed and 109 others injured when heavily-armed militants bombed the al-Rowda mosque in Al-Arish city and opened fire on people attending Friday prayers.

Earlier, local media reports quoting sources in the security force said the army launched immediate and wide ground and air raids and two drones attacked two vehicles belonging to militants in Al-Resha village near el-Rouda village.

Following the mosque attack, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had chaired an emergency meeting with officials to review security situation.

In a statement later, he pledged to respond with brutal force against militants.

He had said that the vile and treacherous activity would not pass without a decisive punishment.

The Egypt government has announced three days of mourning. PTI
Washington, November 25

US President Donald Trump on Saturday said the international community cannot tolerate barbaric terrorist groups as he called his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to offer condolences after militants killed over 200 people in Egypts North Sinai region.

The international community cannot tolerate barbaric terrorist groups and must strengthen its efforts to defeat terrorism and extremism in all its forms, the White House said after the phone call between the two leaders.

During the phone call, Trump offered condolences to the people of Egypt.

Trump condemned the attack and reiterated that the United States will continue to stand with Egypt in the face of terrorism, the White House said.

At least 235 worshippers were killed and 109 others injured when heavily-armed militants bombed the al-Rowda mosque in Al-Arish city and opened fire on people attending Friday prayers.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in a statement said, said he was shocked and horrified by the terrorist attack.

On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the friends and families of the victims of todays attack.

We hope for a complete and rapid recovery for all those injured, he said.

Trudeau said, This senseless attack targeting people praying at their place of worship  a place where they should have felt safe and secure.

He said Canada condemns this attack and stands shoulder- to-shoulder with the people of Egypt in this difficult time.

Trudeau said Canada will continue to work closely with allies and the international community to counter violent extremism that leads to such appalling acts.

We must stand against these acts of terrorism and counter hate by promoting the values of diversity, inclusion, and peace, he said.

The UN Security Council, while condemning the heinous and cowardly terrorist attack, in a statement underlined the need to bring perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism to justice.

It urged all states to cooperate actively with the government of Egypt and all other relevant authorities in this regard.

Any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed, the Security Council said.

The UN Secretary General also condemned the terrorist attack.

The Secretary General extends his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and to the government and people of Egypt and wishes a swift recovery to those who have been injured, said a statement attributable to the spokesperson of the Secretary General.

The murder of innocent people in the midst of prayer is an especially cruel and devastating form of terror, compounded by the purported attackers waiting around to spray fleeing victims and arriving medical and security personnel with gunfire, said Senator Ben Cardin, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

This criminal act was perpetrated within a sacred place of worship where people of faith seek peace and comfort and share the values of compassion and tolerance, said High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC).

Noting that the news of the terror attack on the Sufi mosque in Egypt is deeply saddening, the Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi, said murdering hundreds of worshippers at prayer is a vile act of brutality.

We are horrified by these terrorists assault on people simply gathering in community to practice their faith in peace, she said.

Our hearts and prayers go out to all the families who have lost loved ones and all those wounded.

We must be strong and smart to defeat terror, and Americans stand in solidarity with the Egyptian people in this terrible time, Pelosi said. PTI
Washington, November 25

US President Donald Trump on Saturday called his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and discussed implementing a UN Security Council resolution for the peaceful settlement to the Syrian crisis and defeat of the ISIS terror group, the White House said.

Trump reaffirmed the strategic partnership between the United States and Turkey, particularly in combating terrorism in all its forms and fostering regional stability, it said in a readout of the phone call between the two leaders.

On Syria, the two leaders discussed the importance of implementing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254 and supporting the United Nations-led Geneva Process to peacefully resolve the civil war in that country, the White House said.

It said Trump and Erdogan underscored the need to end the humanitarian crisis, allow displaced Syrians to return home, and ensure the stability of a unified Syria free of malign intervention and terrorist safe havens.

Consistent with our previous policy, President Trump also informed President Erdogan of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria, now that the battle of Raqqa is complete and we are progressing into a stabilisation phase to ensure that ISIS cannot return, the White House said.

It said the two leaders also discussed the purchase of military equipment from the United States. PTI
Khotangs 8-yr wait for bridge ends

A bridge connecting Khotang and Okhaldhunga came into operation on Friday, after eight years in limbo.
BRISTOW  One could easily drive past Unitherm Food Systems and have no idea that inside the nondescript buildings on the south side of Bristow is a high-tech, international corporation.

More than 60 percent of the processing units built here are shipped overseas. Unitherm has similar plants in Meerssen, Netherlands, and Bangkok, Thailand.

When it comes to food processing equipment, we would be one of the largest in the world, said Todd Olmstead, a sales rep for the company. We work with our customers to design and manufacture to their needs.

We build anything to heat or cool a food product to fully finished ready meals.

What does that mean? Unitherm produces machines for some of the largest food companies in the world  most of them designed and produced at the plant in Bristow.

Theres a good chance if youve eaten out, just about anywhere, you had some food that at some point touched a Unitherm machine.

The company started out by making butcher blocks, said Olmstead. Over the years, the business just grew. As the needs of food processing grew, so did our business.

Now, we produce just about anything that heats up or cools a food product.

About 75 people work at the Bristow plant.

The walls of the front offices are covered by dozens of patents awarded by the U.S. and many other countries around the world.

Unitherm is a high-tech, innovation-driven company that often partners with Oklahoma State University researchers from the Robert M. Kerr Food and Agricultural Products Center in the Department of Science.

Peter Muriana, a food microbiologist for the Kerr Center, has worked with Unitherm on a number of new processes.

We work to validate the process, to make sure it does what it is intended in a safe and healthy process, said Muriana. We often have students involved on these industry projects.

They learn different things in there  the routine research needed in industry. It gives them a great degree of experience. It makes them more marketable in the job market. So its good for us, too.

Recent innovations at Unitherm include a new process for peeling and pasteurizing onions. The company helped develop a process to flame peel onions, which made a huge difference in yield for processors.

Weve been working with Oklahoma State for a long time, said Adam Cowherd, vice president of sales for Unitherm. Weve put a lot of equipment at their research labs, and theyve provided us with help in research.

Its been a fabulous partner for the growth of our company. They help us validate new processes as we search for new and better ways of building food processing machines.

Unitherm was awarded a process patent for onion safety with its gas-fired flame grill to help reduce bacteria. Onions are moved along a conveyor belt and exposed to flames to burn the outer layer where bacteria would reside. A secondary system, with a wet scrub brush, removes the ash residue.

The result? A healthy and safe onion made possible by Unitherms technology and OSUs research.

Unitherm, which was founded in the United Kingdom in 1985, moved to Oklahoma in the 1990s. It moved from Ponca City to Bristow in the early 2000s, hoping to be closer to international markets through Tulsa.

Founder David Howard, who developed many of the revolutionary machine processes, recently sold the company to Kansas City-based Marlen International.

David was very innovative, said Muriana. He would get an idea, and you could just see the wheels turning in his head.

Thats how you get to cutting-edge technology like Unitherm.

Unitherm builds grills, ovens, chillers and freezers, as well as food processors in all sorts of sizes. Its mini processors handle about 500 pounds of food per hour.

By contrast, one of the major projects underway in Unitherms plant is a system capable of processing 100,000 pounds of chicken per hour.

Much of the companys equipment has to be built, tested and then disassembled to fit into containers for shipment overseas.

The size and the capacity of everything we build is up to the customers, said Olmstead. We find out the needs of our customers and then we bend and mold our technology to their needs.
Former Arrow Trucking Co. executive James Douglas Doug Pielsticker has asked a judge to consider reducing his prison sentence, citing recent changes in federal sentencing guidelines.

Pielsticker, 49, has served about a quarter of his 90-month prison term after pleading guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion charges in February 2015.

Pielsticker was CEO during the 2009 implosion of the Tulsa-based freight hauling company that he took over after his father, who started family business, died in 2001.

A reduction in his sentence, whether significant or slight under the guidelines, would be of significant importance to Mr. Pielsticker, a motion filed on his behalf states. The sooner he can reunite with his family and begin piecing their life back together, the better.

Federal prosecutors are opposing the request, saying the sentencing guideline changes do not apply to Pielsticker because they are not retroactive.

Pielsticker has been imprisoned since he was sentenced Oct. 9, 2015.

This is not the first time he has asked that consideration be given to a lesser sentence based on changes in sentencing guidelines.

At his 2015 sentencing, Pielsticker cited the then-upcoming changes in sentencing guidelines as a factor that should be considered when determining his prison term.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district courts decision to ignore those upcoming sentencing guideline changes when fashioning his prison term.

Pielsticker is scheduled to be done serving his sentence on Aug. 18, 2022, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons website. He must also serve three years of post-custody supervised release. He was also ordered to make restitution totaling $22 million.

In his request for a sentence modification, Pielsticker cites changes in the federal sentencing guidelines that took effect Nov. 1, 2015.

Pielsticker is arguing that the monetary loss attributed to him for purposes of sentencing  $11.5 million  is much closer to the minimum threshold sentencing range that he was sentenced under.

However, prosecutors point out that Pielstickers sentence-reduction request mirrors a similar request that was rejected by the appellate court, noting that after the guideline changes, the loss attributed to him still falls within the same range utilized at his sentencing.

The Court observed this when denying defendants motion for variance based upon the then-impending guideline change, prosecutors state in a court filing.

Arrow Truckings financial troubles began in 2008 with the company bouncing checks to its lenders, employees and vendors.

Despite Arrows financial problem, Pielsticker continued to receive a $1.2 million annual salary and used company funds to pay personal expenses totaling $3.5 million for items that included payments for Porsche, Bentley and Maserati automobiles, according to court records.

The company abruptly closed days before Christmas in 2009, stranding truckers across the nation.

Federal prosecutors later established that Pielsticker and two other Arrow executives participated in a conspiracy to defraud one of the companys lenders and the federal government out of payroll taxes.
American political alliances are reshuffling, and future political coalitions could fall under two broad umbrellas: patriots vs. transnationalists.

Thats according to Mike Gonzalez with the Heritage Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based conservative think tank, who will speak here next week.

Gonzalez will speak at the Presidents Performing Arts & Lecture Series at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Global Learning Center on the Oral Roberts University campus.

His topic will be: A Democracy Needs a Demos: A Global View of Why National Identity is Essential for America and Also Good for the World.

The public lecture is free, but participants are asked to go to oruglc.com for a ticket. Dress is business professional.

Gonzalez expressed concern in a phone interview this week about the effect multiculturalism is having on America.

America has always been multi-ethnic, but the sense of multiculturalism, that were a nation of groups, militates against social solidarity, he said.

He said conservatives are not the only ones concerned that an over-emphasis on multiculturalism is damaging national solidarity.

The left is having a debate about this, too, he said.

He said he would like to see a conservative coalition, not necessarily Republican, of people who believe in free markets, who believe in trading with the world ... but nevertheless understand that we live in a nation-state ... anchored in patriotic feeling, in the sense that you and I are in this together.

At the end of the day, Americans owe each other a shared responsibility and social solidarity, he said.

One of the reasons we should be patriotic is because the nation-state is the best vehicle we have for democracy, and for the defense of our rights.

He said civil rights are protected when citizens of nation-states can vote people out of office who make laws they dont like.

That doesnt happen in places like the European Union, which has laws made by people who cannot be fired, he said, one reason the British people voted to leave the European Union.

Transnationalism, the sharing of governance, sharing of sovereignty with transnational institutions, I think, is heading in the wrong direction, he said.

But an even bigger reason for patriotism, he said, is that America is awesome. Liberals dont get the awesomeness of America. Its a place that deserves our affection because it has produced more freedom and prosperity than any other experiment on Earth in history.

Gonzales talked about what he sees as a growing anti-Americanism in the nation.

What weve been doing is to denigrate America, to say were not so great, to denigrate our history, our foundation, our making. And Im speaking as an immigrant. Im an American by choice, said Gonzalez, who came to the United States from Cuba when he was 12.

That doesnt mean America has not made mistakes, or that it has achieved perfection.

He said he thought government should follow the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm.

He thinks public education does a lot of harm by what it is teaching about America.

The government ... pushes Howard Zinn down their (students) throats from a very early age. (Zinn wrote A Peoples History of the United States, a book widely read in public schools.)

Its an outrageous book which teaches that America is an awful place, and the whole founding was a conspiracy for these rich, white men to maintain their wealth and privilege, Gonzalez said.

It paints America in very unlovely light, and its taught in high schools and colleges.

We can stop teaching children to dislike their country. That doesnt mean you dont teach history. Bad stuff happened. The founders compromised when they accepted slavery. It took a very bloody war to correct this wrong.

And it took another 100 years, the civil rights movement, for all Americans to get their civil rights.

But the one thing that helped Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, was the fact that the founders put all men are created equal in the Declaration of Independence, he said.

America is not perfect, but the founding was something really special.

Gonzalez, who is fluent in three languages, joined the Heritage Foundation in 2009. Before that he was a journalist for nearly 20 years  15 as a foreign correspondent in Europe, Asia and Latin America  and was a speechwriter in the President George W. Bush administration.
Who are we? This existential question is being asked with increasing intensity throughout the Western world.

In Spain, people are taking to the streets over it; the region of Catalonias attempt to break away has awakened patriotic sentiment. In France, some third-generation descendants of North African immigrants say they have no attachment to their country of birth.

In Hungary, the government says the electorate comprises all Hungarians, no matter where they reside. And so, ethnic Hungarians who have been in what today is Romania since time immemorial are now encouraged to vote in next years Hungarian election.

Here in America, since the late 1960s, we have seen a rise in identity movements based on race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Such identity groups rob the nation-state of the pre-eminent loyalty to which it is entitled.

Over the past few years, however, we have begun to see a backlash against identity politics. Sociologist Samuel Huntington wrote a bestseller, Who Are We? in 2003. Last year, a backlash against identity politics helped propel Donald Trump to electoral victory.

Defining the nation has thus taken on new urgency. Yet the U.S. Census Bureau, a federal agency that exists largely to help us understand who we are, has subdivided us into official  though artificial  groups for decades. And now it is asking to subdivide us further.

The attempts to divide the American policy started in the late 1960s, when a coalition of activists with separatist tendencies, bureaucrats and private foundations  funded by the liberal Ford Foundation  sought to create pan-ethnic groups based in neither anthropology, biology, culture nor language.

The two leading examples of pan-ethnic entities were Hispanics and Asians, which were finally codified in the 1980 census. Today the census wants to add yet another ginned-up pan-ethnic group: MENA, or Middle East North Africa. This designation would encompass Americans with ancestors hailing from Morocco to the Iran-Afghan border, people as varied as Arabs and Berbers, Persians and Kurds.

But theres good reason to do the opposite. Democracy, which is rule by the people, needs a demos. The nation-state here in America  defined not ethnically, but through attachment to American values and institutions, and geographically confined within strong borders  has been the vehicle for that democracy.

Since antiquity, governments have organized regularly scheduled censuses to determine not just who the electorate is, but to answer the more fundamental question of who exactly the people are. Ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy, created a census. It was one of the first things the statesman Solon did after abolishing the Draconian Laws in the early 6th century B.C.

That first census made participation in Athenian politics dependent on wealth, a requirement that rightly makes our 21st Century eyes wince. But prior to Solons innovation, participation in civic life was based on birth. Solons census allowed for social and economic mobility.

The Roman Republic also introduced a census in the 6th century. The Roman census included an important innovation: it promoted virtue, civics and patriotism, by asking citizens questions on these matters. This adherence to virtue propelled Rome to its greatest successes.

In America, the Founders created the census in 1790 to help democracy function. As the Census Bureau tells us:

The Founders of our fledgling nation had a bold and ambitious plan to empower the people over their new government. The plan was to count every person living in the newly created United States of America, and to use that count to determine representation in the Congress. Is it wise for our government to divide us according to artificial categories designed to foster identity politics?

As George Washington put it:

We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.

Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
This Page Is Under Construction - Coming Soon!

Why am I seeing this 'Under Construction' page?
Labour agreement with UAE soon

After signing a labour agreement with Jordan last month, Nepal is gearing up to finalise a similar deal with another Gulf nation-the United Arab of Emirates, one of the most preferred destinations among Nepali migrant workers.
Hi, my name is Scott C. Waring and I wrote a few books and am currently a ESL School Owner in Taiwan. I have had my own UFO sighting up close and personal, but that's how it works right? A non believer becomes a believer when they experience their first sighting. You witnessed it, your perceptual field changes, so now you need to share it.





I created this site to help the UFO community get a little bit organized. I noticed that there was a lot of chaos when searching for UFO sighting reports, so I hope this site helps. I wanted to support those eyewitnesses who have tried to tell others about what they have seen, yet were laughed at by even closest of friends.





More and more each day the governments of the world leak bits and pieces of UFO information to the public. They have a trickle down theory in hopes of slowly getting citizens use to the idea that we are not alone in universe and never have been. The truth is being leaked drop by drop until one day we look around and find ourselves neck high in it.





The discovery of alien species in existence is the most monumental scientific event in human history, suppression of that information is a crime against humanity.





About me:

I live in Taiwan. I OWN MY OWN ENGLISH SCHOOL, AND ONCE HAD 5 SCHOOLS.

Am Former USAF at SAC base (flight line).

Age: 42

Educ: BA in Elem ed. Masters in Counseling ed.





I had two UFO sightings, (30+bus size orbs) in military and in 2012 personally saw the UFO over Taipei 101 building on New Years Day (and recored it).
9 narcotic smugglers arrested; narcotics worth crores, Rs 24.23 lakh in cash seized in J&K

Jammu, Nov 24 (UNI) Terming it surgical strike on drug peddlers, Jammu and Kashmir Police on Friday claimed to have seized narcotics worth crores alongwith cash of Rs 25 lakh and arrested nine persons in separate incidents across Jammu region.

"Jammu and Kashmir Police have achieved a major success in its fight against drugs when during a series of raids in different parts of Jammu city and its surrounding areas, four persons were arrested with 15.3-kg heroine and Rs 24.23 lakh cash," S D Singh Jamwal, Inspector General of Police, Jammu Zone, told reporters here this afternoon.

He said that besides cash, two cars have also been seized during the raids and added, the total value of the seized heroine is more than Rs 75 crores in international market.
At least 25 dead after migrant boat sinks off Libya

TRIPOLI, Nov 25 (Reuters) At least 25 migrants died after their boat sank off Libya's western coast on Saturday and survivors were being brought back to port in Tripoli, Libyan coastguard officials said.

Libya is the main departure point for mostly African migrants trying to cross to Europe. Smugglers usually pack them into flimsy inflatable boats that often break down or sink.

Most migrants are picked up by international vessels and taken to Italy, where more than 115,000 have landed so far this year, although an increasing number are intercepted by Libya's European-backed coastguard and returned to the North African country.
Bangladesh says agreed with Myanmar for UNHCR to assist Rohingya's return

DHAKA, Nov 25 (Reuters) Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed to take assistance from the UN refugee agency for the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali said on Saturday .

The two governments signed a pact on Thursday settling terms for the repatriation process, and the return of Rohingya to Myanmar is expected to start in two months. Uncertainty over whether the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would have a role had prompted rights groups to insist that outside monitors were needed to safeguard the return of the Rohingya to Myanamar.

More than 600,000 Rohingya sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after Myanmar's military launched a brutal counter insurgency in their villages across northern parts of Rakhine State following attacks by Rohingya militants on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25.
Bangladesh says agreed with Myanmar for UNHCR to assist Rohingya's return

DHAKA, Nov 25 (Reuters) Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed to take help from the U.N. refugee agency to safely repatriate hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who had fled violence in Myanmar, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali said on Saturday.

More than 600,000 Rohingya sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after the military in mostly Buddhist Myanmar launched a brutal counter-insurgency operation in their villages across the northern parts of Rakhine State following attacks by Rohingya militants on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25.

Faced with a burgeoning humanitarian crisis, the two governments signed a pact on Thursday agreeing that the return of the Rohingya to Myanmar should start in two months.
Srinagar, Nov 25 (UNI) A bullet-riddled body of a 23-year-old Territorial Army soldier, who was abducted by unidentified persons on Friday, was recovered from an orchard in south Kashmir district of Shopian, official sources said on Saturday.

Panic gripped Wothmula Nad area of Keegam in Shopian, when some locals saw the body of a youth lying in a pool of blood in an orchard on Saturday morning.

The locals immediately informed the police, they said, adding a team was rushed to the spot and the body was taken away.

The deceased was later identified as Irfan Ahmad Dar, an Army Jawan, who was visiting home on vacations.

Dar, a resident of Sanzan in Shopian, was abducted by unidentified persons yesterday. His bullet riddled body was recovered at around 1000 hrs from the orchard, they said.

Defence Ministry spokesperson Rakesh Kalia told UNI that Dar was posted in the border town of Gurez in Bandipora district and was coming home on vacations. The Jawan was on leave till November 26, he said, adding Dar was possibly abducted and killed by militants.

He said the matter is being investigated by police.

The killing of the Jawan on vacation was condemned by Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and National Conference working president Omar Abdullah.

Strongly condemn the brutal killing of Irfan Ahmed, a brave Territorial Army soldier at Shopian.

Such heinous acts will not weaken our resolve to establish peace and normalcy in the valley, Ms Mufti wrote on micro-blogging site twitter.

The murder of young Irfan Dar is a very tragic & reprehensible act. My unqualified condemnation & heartfelt condolences to his family, Mr Abdullah tweeted.

This is not the first such incident. In the past, security force personnel, including Army and policemen, who were visiting home, were killed by militants.

Following the killings, police issued an advisory asking its officials to avoid visiting their homes in south Kashmir. Army didnt issue a similar advisory, but asked its jawans to report to the nearest camps to their residences so that security could be provided to them.

UNI ABS PS AE 1606/1612
INS Kadmatt in Cambodia to build India-ASEAN trust

Visakhapatam, Nov 25 (UNI) Indian Navy Ship Kadmatt has arrived at the Cambodian coastal city of Sihanoukville to commemorate the 25th anniversary of India-ASEAN dialogue and in consonance with Indias Act East policy.

According to Eastern Naval Command spokesman here, the visit is also aimed at showcasing Indias shipbuilding capability, long sustenance and global reach of the Indian Navy.

INS Kadmatt, an anti-submarine warfare corvette has been deployed in the region since early September 2017 and is visiting Cambodia on completion of the ASEAN IFR held at Pataya, Thailland last week.
Islamabad, Nov 25 (UNI) The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in Pakistan is likely to initiate a probe into the offshore companies named in the Panama Papers, according to a report in The News International on Saturday.

According to the report, the initial discussions within NAB in respect to the apex courts latest intervention into the matter have taken place, and there appears to be a consensus developing that NAB should look into the entire case of Panama Papers concerning Pakistan.

The decision is expected to be taken any time, a senior NAB official told The News International when approached on Friday to know how the Bureau will respond to the Supreme Courts of late notice seeking report from the anti-corruption body on action taken against 436 Pakistanis named in the Panama Papers.
NA defuses bombs in Dhading

A bomb disposal squad of Nepal Army has defused an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) planted near the voting centre at Jeevanpur Kormayela Danda in Dhading district on Saturday morning.
Kathmandu, Nov 25 (UNI) Nepal has closed its border with India and China as it is getting ready for the provincial and parliamentary polls.

The borders with the two mighty neighbours were closed on Friday.

Land-locked Nepal is holding provincial and parliamentary elections in two phases on November 26 and December 7.

More than 300 thousand members of the security forces are being deployed for the two-stage election. The northern provinces are voting on Sunday, while the southern provinces and Kathmandu will go to the polls on December 7, the media reports here said.

The elections are being seen as a historic step in Nepal's transition to a federal democracy following a decade-long civil war till 2006 that claimed more than 16,000 lives.

UNI XC-SNU 1519
Delhi's 'Dexter': Experts analyse Shraddha's alleged killer 17 Nov 2022 | 9:23 AM Kozhikode, Nov 17 (UNI) Following the horrific Delhi murder case where a 28-year-old man, Aaftab Ameen Poonawalla was arrested for allegedly killing and butchering his 27-year-old live-in partner Shraddha Vikas Walkar, experts pitched possible reasons for the heinous crime. see more..

Sabarimala temple opens for Mandalam-Makaravilakku festival 17 Nov 2022 | 8:49 AM Sabarimala (Kerala), Nov 17 (UNI) The world famous Lord Ayyappa temple here opened on Wednesday evening for a two-month long Mandalam-Makaravilakku annual festival begining on November 17, the first day of Malayalam month 'Vrichikam. see more..

Death penalty: HC hears yug murder case 16 Nov 2022 | 11:50 PM Shimla, Nov 16 (UNI) Himachal Pradesh High Court Wednesday heard the criminal appeal filed by three convict who are awarded death penalty in yug murder case in 2018. Division bench of justice Ajay Mohan Goel and justice Sandeep Sharma heard the matter for time and adjourned hearing for tomorrow. see more..

Two labourers dies in landslide 16 Nov 2022 | 11:47 PM Shimla, Nov 16 (UNI) Two migrant labourers died Wednesday afternoon after an under-construction wall caved in over them at Bada-Khaich village of Dharmpur Subdivision of Solan district, senior police officer confirmed. During the construction of St Mary School Kasouli building, three persons came under the debris. see more..
Situation on Aus offshore processing facility at risk, UN warns

United Nations, Nov 25 (UNI) Stating that the beating of refugees and asylum-seekers at the former regional processing centre on Manus Island by uniformed officers is both shocking and inexcusable, the United Nations refugee agency has urged the Australian Government to take immediate action to ensure their safety and protection.

The situation still unfolding on Manus Island presents a grave risk of further deterioration, and of further damage to extremely vulnerable human beings, said Thomas Albrecht, the Regional Representative for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the Australian capital, Canberra, in a news release.

[We] renew [our] call for all Australian parliamentarians and leaders to take immediate action to provide protection and safety for all refugees and asylum-seekers transferred to Papua New Guinea, he added.
South Africa to outline "decisive" policy in 2018 after debt rating cut

JOHANNESBURG, Nov 25 (Reuters) South Africa will use its annual budget next year to outline "decisive" policy to strengthen its fiscal framework, the finance ministry said on Saturday after S&P Global Ratings cut its local currency debt to "junk" status.

"The 2018 Budget will outline decisive and specific policy measures to strengthen the fiscal framework," the finance ministry said in a statement, without giving more detail.

S&P announced the downgrade on Friday, citing a further deterioration in the country's economic outlook and public finances, and Moody's placed South Africa on review for a downgrade.
United Nations, Nov 25 (UNI) Concluding a two-day visit to Iran, the top United Nations humanitarian official said the Organisation was ready to fill any gaps in the relief efforts following the devastating earthquake on 12 November that struck the Iran-Iraq border.

I commend the Governments efforts to save lives and alleviate the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people in the earthquake zone, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock said on Thursday.

During my visit, I also reiterated the UNs readiness to support the Government by providing humanitarian aid if it is required to fill any gaps in the response.
UN aid workers return to Yemen on flights to Sanaa - UN

GENEVA, Nov 25 (Reuters) Humanitarian aid workers arrived in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Saturday, after a nearly three week blockade by the Saudi-led military coalition, an official at the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said.

"First plane landed in Sanaa this morning with humanitarian aid workers," WFP's regional spokeswoman Abeer Etefa told Reuters in an email on Saturday.

Officials at Sanaa airport said two other UN flights had arrived on Saturday.
NC, left alliance cadres clash in Khotang

Cadres of Nepali Congress (NC) and left alliance clashed in eastern hill district Khotang on Friday.
Pear is one of the key items Belgium wishes to export to Vietnam

At the fourth joint economic commission between Vietnam and Belgium on November 24, 2017, Belgian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dirk Achten expressed Belgian interest in exporting agricultural products, including beef, veal, and fresh pear, to Vietnam.

A representative of the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade said that related to the fresh pear, a Vietnamese delegation visited Belgium to evaluate the system of disease control in August 2017. As for beef and veal, Vietnam is currently carrying out technical assessments on food and disease safety, as well as review the status of imported cows and beef from EU countries.

Belgium now ranks sixth out of the 27 members of the EU in two-way trade turnover with Vietnam, having reached $2.44 billion in 2016. Up to the end of September 2017, export turnover between the two countries hit $1.63 billion, up 15.44 per cent over the same period last year and import turnover hit $328 million (down 6.4 per cent).

This growing exports and falling imports has been a trend for many years now. However, export goods are still focusing on low added-value segments (agricultural products, apparel), while imports involve high added-value items (machinery, pharmaceuticals).

According to the Foreign Investment Agency of the Ministry of Planning and Investment, as of November 2017, there were 62 valid Belgian projects in Vietnam with total registered investment capital of $595 million, ranking 29th among the 126 nations and territories investing in Vietnam. Belgian projects focus on real estate, processing and manufacturing, as well as logistics services.

The two countries will celebrate the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations in 2018.

Belgium brewer to expand in Binh Duong Belgium-based brewer Anheuser - Busch InBev (AB InBev) is considering investing nearly US$7 million to expand production at two breweries in Viet Nam.
NMC turns down KUs request to add up quotas

The Nepal Medical Council has turned down the request of the Kathmandu University to increase quotas for the Biratnagar-based Birat and Nobel medical colleges, saying that the existing seats were allocated after proper study with no prospect for increment.
Veteran actress Kim Xuan (centre) and other actors take part in the opening ceremony of the 20th Vietnamese Film Festival yesterday in a Nang. - VNA/VNS Photo Van Son

Veteran actress Kim Xuan (centre) and other actors take part in the opening ceremony of the 20th Vietnamese Film Festival yesterday in a Nang. - VNA/VNS Photo Van Son

The event, which officially opened yesterday, has drawn the participation of young and old actors, actresses, directors and filmmakers from across the country.

Vietnamese filmmakers have made unforgettable films that have enriched the countrys national heritage, deputy Prime Minister Vu uc am said during the event.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the 20th Vietnamese Film Festival, he called it a significant event that marks the 50th anniversary of ASEAN, strengthening friendship and solidarity among different nationalities.

Generations of artists have made great contributions to the development of filmmaking and national culture. Despite difficulties, Viet Nams cinema industry has still produced unforgettable films to enrich the countrys cultural heritage, am said.

The renewal process, market economy and open door policy have created more opportunities for the countrys cinema industry to change itself, he said, adding that the industry should renew its quality to win audiences.

The Deputy PM also urged ministries and relevant agencies to boost co-operation with international friends and artists in fostering innovation and creating new development mechanisms.

Stiff competition

Director ang Nhat Minh, who chairs the jury for the feature category, said members struggled to choose the best among the 16 award-winning films this year.

Le Thi, who chaired the jury for the documentary category, was glad that this years festival attracted many young directors with different styles, breathing new life into the countrys film industry.

Ngo Phuong Lan, head of the Viet Nam Cinematography Department, said the festival viewers would appreciate the diverse topics of films at the festival.

We have to offer a fresher festival to satisfy the local audience, Lan said, adding that the Video category was not included in the 20th festival. We have included the ASEAN Film Awards for the first time at the festival, and its an important event to mark the 50th anniversary of ASEAN this year.

Lan said young audiences and students will have the chance to talk with actors, actresses, directors and famous artists at cinemas after the film screenings.

Vice Minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism, Vuong Duy Bien stressed the ASEAN Film Awards will highlight the identities and cultures of 10 ASEAN countries. He said the festival will also mark the 65th anniversary of Viet Nam Cinematography.

Also yesterday, a photo exhibition honouring 64 film directors, actors and actresses who made great contributions to the countrys Cinematography opened at the citys library.

Scriptwriter oan Minh Tuan said directors of animated cartoons should be honoured at the festival as they are relatively unknown to Vietnamese audience.

He noted that directors, producers and writers of cartoon films are often honoured biennially, which is not sufficient.

Roger Garcia, director of the International Film Festival Hong Kong, said he knew relatively little about Vietnamese film, but was impressed with a documentary film event in Ha Noi.

He suggested Viet Nams and ASEANs film industries have a rich tradition but are not well-known in the world.

ASEANs film industry has strong potential with a huge market of more than 600 million people. However, its also a challenge for the regional film industry to integrate into the world, Garcia said. The regional film industry can take opportunities in co-production and co-finance with not only in the region but other countries like Japan and Kong.

He added that the ASEAN Film Awards mark the first step towards fully establishing the regional film industry.

The film Da Co Hoai Lang (Night Drumbeats Cause Longing for Absent Husband), a production about traditional Vietnamese culture by director Nguyen Quang Dung, has been chosen as the old Vietnamese film to be screened at the ASEAN Film Awards.

As planned, 16 feature films began screening at the citys cinemas yesterday, along with 32 scientific and documentary films and 18 animated films that will run from 10am to 4pm until next Tuesday.

Film screenings and outdoor fashion shows are staged at Trung Vuong Theatres Park on Monday and Tuesday.

The film award winners will be announced at the citys Trung Vuong Theatre beginning at 8pm on November 28th.
Mitsubishi Materials said its subsidiaries falsified specification data before shipping some of its products to clients. (Photo: AFP/Toshifumi Kitamura)

Affected products included rubber sealing materials used for packing and gaskets, often used to prevent leaks of liquid or gas from pipes in a wide variety of industries including aerospace and automobiles, the company said in a statement.

The scandal also affected brass strip products for cars and other products, it said.

Mitsubishi Materials said its subsidiaries falsified specification data before shipping some of its products to clients.

It added the company is working with affected clients to ensure the safety of their products.

The admission came after Japanese consumers saw a series of quality control and governance lapses at major firms including Kobe Steel, Nissan and Subaru.

Kobe Steel has admitted falsifying strength and quality data for a string of products shipped to hundreds of clients, from automakers to plane manufacturers.

Nissan recalled some 1.2 million vehicles after admitting in October that staff without proper authorisation had conducted final inspections on some vehicles intended for the domestic market before they were shipped to dealers.

Subaru also recalled nearly 400,000 vehicles from its domestic market after admitting that it also allowed uncertified staff to conduct vehicle inspections.
This file photo taken on August 29, 2016 shows Russian shoppers carrying bags at a supermarket in Braniewo, a town near Poland's border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. (Photo: AFP/Damien Simonart)

First presented last year by Poland's Solidarity trade union as a citizens' initiative bill, the new legislation limits shopping to the first and last Sundays of the month as of March 2018.

Trade will only be allowed on the last Sunday of the month in 2019 before a wider ban takes effect in 2020 that will allow shopping on seven Sundays per year, including two before Christmas and one before Easter.

The move applies to foreign-owned hypermarket chains as well as other non-Polish players, but will still allow online shopping as well as smaller locally owned shops including bakeries and petrol stations to do business.

Lawmakers in Poland's right-wing dominated 460-seat parliament passed the ban with 254 votes in favour to 156 against and 23 abstentions.

The Solidarity trade union says it sought the move to ensure retail staff get free weekends, but opposition politicians and other critics argue that it will limit job opportunities for students and cramp cross-border shopping from the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and Slovakia.

Solidarity is allied with Poland's governing conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, which is closely tied to the powerful Roman Catholic Church, long an advocate of shutting shops on Sundays for religious reasons.

Sunday shopping became a popular family pastime in Poland with the advent of the free market after the 1989 collapse of communism, but surveys published this week suggest that consumers have mixed feelings.

The independent Kantar TNS pollsters found that 76 percent of respondents supported a compromise that would allow Sunday shopping, but also give retail workers two free weekends per month.

However, the Warsaw-based CBOS agency found that 58 percent of respondents supported a blanket Sunday shopping ban, while just 37 percent were opposed. It also found that 52 percent of respondents said they shop on Sunday.

Switzerland and Norway limit Sunday shopping, while Austria has a blanket ban.

Up to now, stores in Poland have remained closed for 12 days a year for major national or religious holidays.
ECV Business Forum 2017 was a resounding success for participants and organisers alike

More than 70 participants from a multitude of sectors gathered at the event, including economists, governmental officials, media organisations, and diplomats. The forum was co-sponsored by Savills Vietnam, NS Blue Scope, and Green Shoots International School, with support from KPMG.

At the event, experts and officials covered cross-cutting business topics from a site-specific perspective, including investment practices, tax incentives, local talent management, real estate development, green building, and smart cities.

Aymar de Liedekerke Beaufort, CCO of BNP Paribas Vietnam and EuroCham Executive Committee Member, opened the event and officially launched EuroChams new project, the Greenbook and the Greenbook website (www.greenbookvietnam.com). The two platforms aim to be the ultimate portal on green business in Vietnam.

After Aymars opening remark, Phuc Nguyen, director at KPMG, delivered content related to the economic outlook for Central Vietnam, as well as tax incentives for businesses and investors in the area.

Also at the forum, EuroCham announced three representatives of EuroCham in Central Vietnam for the tenure of 2018. These representatives will be responsible for co-ordinating activities in the region.

Gellert Horvath, co-chairman of EuroCham, highlighted: Outside of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, Danang and with it Central Vietnam are a leading trade and investment destination for European businesses. What we have heard from our nearly 50 members doing business in the region is that they are very satisfied with their growth and they are here to stay. EuroCham realised this promising outlook and the potential of Central Vietnam when we became the first large foreign chamber of commerce to launch a representation in Danang in November 2016. We are certain that areas such as ICT, tourism and hospitality, infrastructure, green technologynamely renewable energy and sustainable buildingand education will remain strong here in the coming years.

ECV Business Forum is a good example of how companies with an interest in important projects can ask questions directly from the investment authorities in cities and provinces, while also being able to establish contacts for future partnerships. I am happy with the success of this event, and I am certain that it will continue to grow every year, he said.

Since our Danang office was opened in 2015, we have made significant progress in regional trade promotion activities, such as participation in the APECs side-lines events, investor relations, and working with local partners in promoting the investment environment in Central Vietnam at events and in publications," Phuc Nguyen, partner of KPMG Vietnam, said. "Over the years, we quickly recognised that EuroCham Central Vietnam Chapters initiative to assist in the regions socioeconomic development is a perfect fit to KPMGs strategy and core values. We will work shoulder-to-shoulder with EuroCham, its members, and the provincial authorities of Danang, Quang Nam, and the surrounding areas, to make the initiative a great success.
Nguyen Dieu Linh (Hanoi) was punched in the face by an Uber driver over a minor disagreement

According to newswire Anninhthudo, after being swatted by an Uber Vietnam taxi driver, Nguyen Dieu Linh from Dong Da district, Hanoi expressed her desire to receive a public apology from Uber Vietnam to show its sense of responsibility towards customers.

However, after the incident, Uber Vietnam only commented that it was a regrettable incident, and Uber Vietnam has absolutely no tolerance of violent acts. Uber Vietnam immediately blocked the drivers access to the application.

Regarding the customer, on November 20, Uber Vietnam called Linh to ask about her health condition and has yet to contact her again. Meanwhile, after the incident went public, Linh received numerous calls from unknown numbers to intimidate as well as ridicule.

People raised questions whether these calls came from other Uber Vietnam taxi drivers or competitors. Before peoples wonder, Anninhthudo contacted a representative of Uber Vietnam to clarify information and provide an objective coverage of the incident, approaching it from various angles.

However, to date, Uber Vietnam has yet to issue comments to Anninhthudo. Simultaneously, Linh has yet to receive a public apology from Uber Vietnam.

Previously, on November 19, Nguyen Dieu Linh from Hanoi went to police to tell that she was manhandled by an Uber Vietnam taxi driver due to a small misunderstanding, leading to bruising.

After the incident, Linh announced that she did not need compensation from Uber Vietnam, she just needed a public apology. However, Uber Vietnam has yet to respond.

It is not the first time that an Uber taxi driver assaults a customer. Earlier in August, according to newswire Dailymail, a 42-year-old Uber driver tried to rape a passenger in her sleep and washed his genitals with a bottle of water after she told him she had HIV.
The decree will make sure less buyers get their fingers burnt

Among the big projects to be launched is An Khanh New City Developments sale of its first phase this quarter. The mega $2 billion project is developed by South Koreas Posco E&C and Vietnams Vinaconex, located in Hanois Hoai Duc district, along the Thang Long Boulevard.

Scheduled for completion in 2013, the city is expected to supply 6,440 apartments, equivalent to 392,319 square metres of accommodation, enough for 30,000 people.

Even though Hoa Phat Group, the investor in a more than 1,000 apartment Mandarin Garden in Cau Giay districts Tran Duy Hung road, refused to release its launching time, real estate experts predicted the project would be soon launched.

At the beginning of this month the CT7D, located in Le Van Luong street and invested by Nam Cuong Group and the FLC Landmark Tower of FLC Group will also be launched, with a total of 200 units and prices ranging from VND23 million ($1,200) to VND28 million ($1,470) per square metre.

In Gia Lam district, over the Red River, the second lot of Rung Co Residentials belonging to the Eco Park is also being launched, with around 1,500 apartment units.

In addition, Victoria Van Phu, Star City, Diamond Tower and Song Da City View will also add apartments to the mix.

Real estate consultant CBRE Vietnam expected that there would be 3,000 units in Hanoi launched this quarter, compared to 1,950 units in the third quarter. There were more than 4,600 units launched in the second quarter.

This decline, according to CBRE Vietnam, could be due to the Decree 71, effective on August 8, 2010 providing guidance on the Housing Law, which caps the proportion of units sold via capital contribution contracts at 20 per cent with the remaining 80 per cent sold on transaction floors.

This decree, CBRE Vietnam said, had put a pressure on developers with low financial capabilities and enhanced market transparency.

However, CBRE Vietnam executive director Richard Leech said new project launches would continue trending towards more affordable options.

With the opening and improvement of major infrastructure routes, the capitals western and southern districts are attracting new residents with easier access for commuting into the core urban districts, Leech said.

He said that the Decree 71 was expected to benefit the market by enhancing transparency, placing pressures on developers with low financial capabilities, lessening the threat of price bubbles and limiting speculative forces.

Tran Nhu Trung, Savills Vietnam associate director, said the Decree 71 had showed off its advantages to clearly regulate five types of mobilising capital investment. However, Trung said the procedures to implement Decree 71 were still complicated and wasted customers time and energy.

The more simple it [decree] regulates, the more it is practical in the real life, Trung said.
Pack mentality

hen Wonder Womanstarring Gal Gadot as the iconic lasso-hurling, metal-cuffed, super-strong Amazonian herocame out earlier this year, it seemed like DC Comics films had finally managed to put an end to a long-running bad spell.
Oscar Pistorius leaves the High Court in Pretoria, South Africa, in 2016 after his sentence in the death of Reeva Steenkamp, who was killed in 2013.
Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan greets people after Friday prayers at a mosque inside his presidential palace in Ankara, Turkey, on Friday. Erdogans office says the Turkish leader has discussed the Syrian crisis and other regional issues with President Donald Trump.
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., addresses delegates during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in July 2016 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Franken has been accused by four women of inappropriate contact.
Parties clash in different districts ahead of polls

Just as the law enforcement agencies are trying to curb anti-election activities launched by the Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal and other unidentified groups/ individuals, clashes between parties participating in the polls have added to security challenge.
Among the kettle corn and funnel cake, 'Know Islam' booth aims to elevate farmers market discussion
Service dog is the 1st to join student in class at LifeLink PSU
Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Two more women have come forward to accuse Senator Al Franken of inappropriate touching, the Huffington Post reports.

The women, who spoke anonymously out of fear of retribution, allege that Franken grabbed their butts at two separate events. These are the third and fourth allegations against the senator. Last week, radio host Leeann Tweeden alleged that Franken groped and kissed her without consent in 2006. On Monday, another woman, Lindsay Menz, told CNN that Franken groped her at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010. Leading Senate Democrats have since called for an ethics investigation.

One of the women told HuffPost that Franken groped her when they posed for a photo in June 2007, at the Minnesota Womens Political Caucus in Minneapolis. My story is eerily similar to Lindsay Menzs story, the woman said. He grabbed my buttocks during a photo op. The other woman alleges Franken touched her butt during a Democratic fundraiser in 2008. I shook his hand, and he put his arm around my waist and held it there, the woman said. Then he moved it lower and cupped my butt. The woman says that Franken then suggested they go to the bathroom together.

In a statement to HuffPost at the time of publication, Franken said, Its difficult to respond to anonymous accusers, and I dont remember those campaign events. He added: I can categorically say that I did not proposition anyone to join me in any bathroom. Then, on Thanksgiving, Franken released a statement apologizing to the women he offended and his constituents. Some women have found my greetings or embraces for a hug or photo inappropriate, and I respect their feelings about that, Franken said. Ive thought a lot in recent days about how that could happen, and recognize that I need to be much more careful and sensitive in these situations. I feel terribly that Ive made some women feel badly and for that I am so sorry, and I want to make sure that never happens again. And let me say again to Minnesotans that Im sorry for putting them through this and Im committed to regaining their trust.
The University of Southern Californias outgoing class of 2017 had the thrill of a lifetime when Will Ferrell waltzed onstage to perform Whitney Houstons I Will Always Love You in lieu of a standard commencement address about, we dont know, starting a 401k and learning about bonds? And thank god he did, even though he was a little more keen on using those four-and-a-half minutes to see how long people would tolerate him. I thought I would inspire the graduating class by singing a Whitney Houston song to them, he explained on this weeks Graham Norton Show. I started thinking, Do I just sing a couple of lines or do I torture the students and their parents by singing the entire song? And I chose the latter.
The Annapurna rush

Kaski, Cold wind brushed through my hair. Lalupate were blooming all around. Even after a light snowfall and a drizzle, oranges continued to hang onto the trees.
Top Baylor University officials will travel the country this spring for some face time with alumni and friends of the worlds largest Baptist university.

Baylor President Linda Livingstone and board of regents Chairman Joel Allison, who both started their roles June 1, are looking to spread their message during a time of transition for the school. The two were tasked with leading the recovery from a sexual assault scandal and planting a vision for Baylor as a tier-one research university.

The events reinforce the commitment of the board and President Livingstone of open communication as they work to unify the Baylor family behind a common vision and path for the university, Baylor spokesman Jason Cook said.

Allison came up with the idea for the conversation series, Cook said.

Interim Provost Michael McLendon will attend the events as available.

The series will run between January and May, but exact dates have not been finalized, Cook said. Texas locations include Houston, Dallas and Austin.

Other cities, chosen for their populations of alumni, university supporters and parents of current students, include San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, Nashville, Denver, New York, Atlanta, Phoenix and Chicago.

Livingstone, Allison and McLendon held a conversation for faculty and staff Nov. 9, and a video of the event is posted on the Baylor website. A similar event was hosted for the Waco community this week.
Another statue original to the McLennan County Courthouse has been taken down and shipped to Alabama.

A 150-pound eagle statue that roosted above the main entrance since 1901 was removed last weekend and is being fully restored in the same metal shop that is duplicating the Themis statue pulled from the top of the courthouse dome in July.

The restored eagle, the Themis remake and the repaired Themis original are expected to return before Christmas on the same truck.

Crews inspecting the courthouse roof as they prepared to remove the 18-foot Themis statue this summer noticed the eagles left wing was about to fall off, Montgomery Construction general manager Mike Anderson said. The team reported the damage to county commissioners, who approved $28,901 to remove, repair and replace the original eagle. Anderson said it is unclear how the damage happened.

A Montgomery Construction and Citadel Metal Supply crew used a 125-foot lift to take the eagle down. The statue was sent for repairs to Robinson Iron Co. in Alexander City, Alabama, the same company building the new Themis statue.

Anderson said the eagle, like the original Themis, is hollow and made of zinc not much thicker than a soda can. The eagle will get a full restoration and a new coating to ensure it lasts 30 to 40 years.

When the three statues return to Waco, the new duplicate Themis will be first lifted back to its 150-foot high perch on the courthouse roof, Anderson said. Montgomery Construction has offered to donate a display case to the county to house the original 5,900-pound zinc Themis statue, which is being refinished and having its arm reattached. County commissioners have not decided where or how they will display the original Greek goddess of divine law.

Themis arm and scales of justice were ripped off in 2014 by 65-mph wind gusts. Her left arm was found on the courthouse lawn, and the scales of justice bolted to her left hand were found in a magnolia tree nearby.

The new Themis is being constructed of cast aluminium, making it far stronger and far heavier than the original, about 8,500 pounds, Anderson said. Commissioners awarded Montgomery Construction a $428,388 contract for the Themis replacement, about $62,000 more than the county initially expected to spend.

Anderson said the company will not be able to lock down an installation date until work is further along. Once the statues arrive in Waco, crews will have another week of work to do before installation can start, he said.

The increased weight of the new statue will pose no problem for the crane that will lift her high above the courthouse, he said.

We just have to be more careful, Anderson said.
Mildred Feller

Dec. 9, 1925 - Nov. 21, 2017

Mildred "Millie" LaVerne Mangrum Feller passed away in her home on November 22, 2017.

The middle child of five children born to Lorene Jordan Mangrum and W.J. "Will" Mangrum, "Millie" was born December 9, 1925, in Speegleville, TX, in McClennan County.She attended public schools in Waco, graduated from Waco High School in the "famous" class of 1943, and attended Lon Morris Junior College in Jacksonville, graduating from there in 1946. She continued college at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX, graduating in 1949. It was at Southwestern that Millie met her best friend and the love of her life, Verlon Feller, the son of Lucy and E.J. Feller of San Benito, TX. Millie and Verlon married June 11, 1949 at Lakeview Methodist Church in Lacy-Lakeview and moved to Dallas where Verlon then attended seminary at SMU and she taught first grade.

Verlon was a United Methodist minister and they lived in many places where he was appointed in the Texas Conference of the UMC. Millie was a teacher by career and taught kindergarten and first grade in many of the places they called home while being the "preacher's wife" and raising three children. She often said that she loved to teach children to read because she loved to read. She was very involved in their ministry, often teaching Sunday school and always singing in the choir. She loved music and singing, whether it was a solo or an ensemble, music was one of her greatest talents and interests. She sang in church choirs, school choirs, college choirs, and community choirs, from age 12 to her death. She also sang on the radio back in "those" days and enjoyed working in community Little Theater, having studied speech and drama in college. Millie loved working with children in church and school and children's chorus, and spent eight years in children's work in the Texas conference of the UMC.

Millie and Verlon raised their three children in various parsonages, and in retirement, they bought their first home at Holly Lake Ranch in Wood County. They lived there for 20 years and then moved to Tyler to The Hamptons Retirement Community where she enjoyed the rest of her life. Millie is a member of First United Methodist Church in Gilmer, but has attended Marvin United Methodist Church since they moved to Tyler.

She was preceded in death by her parents; one brother W.D. "Bill" Mangrum; sister, Lucile "Lucy" Bone Lau; sister, Martha Meares Dees; and grandson, Jacob Mack Feller.

Those left to cherish and celebrate her life includes her loving husband of 68  years, Verlon Feller; children, Mark Feller and Peggy of Longview, Susan Feller Mollet of Dallas, Debbie Feller Durham and Russell of Bay City. She leaves one brother, Sam Mangrum and wife, JoAnne of Waco; and sister-in-law, Patsy Feller of Salado. Millie adored her grandchildren and they adored her; grandsons, Aaron and Jared Mollet, Jeremy Feller, Jacob Feller's widow, Lacy Feller, Brock and Rustin Feller; and one granddaughter, Carter Capehart. She had many nieces and nephews and as one niece put it, "she knew the names of all the generations and loved on us all". Her extended family includes "chosen" daughter, Trudy Holt Boyd; dear friend, John Mollet, Dustin Durham and family, Josh and Jacob Randol and their families; and 14 great-grandchildren.

A celebration of Millie's life, officiated by Rev. Richard Laster, will be at 2:00 p.m., Sunday, November 26, at the First United Methodist Church in Gilmer, TX. Visitation will precede the service beginning at 1:00 p.m. at the church. The graveside service will be at 11:00 a.m., Monday, November 27, at the Waco Memorial Park, Waco, TX.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that memorials be given to the First United Methodist Church, Gilmer, or Marvin United Methodist Church, Tyler.

Lloyd James Funeral Home

Tyler, TX 75701

(903) 597-6611
In a song about the plight of the leftists in the Spanish Civil War against General Francisco Franco, the great musical satirist Tom Lehrer sang: Though he may have won all the battles, we had all the good songs.

That line keeps coming back to me during the tax-cut debate. The opposition to this wasteful, needlessly debt-inducing, regressive monster is serving up clear analysis of the deep shortcomings of the plan. The nonpartisan scoring agencies are doing their work quickly and efficiently, producing data that in a sane debate would have sunk the plan weeks ago. And the media is generally getting it right, regularly reporting such analysis and challenging the falsehoods asserted by the plans advocates. These dynamics appear to have turned public opinion solidly against the plan, which in one recent poll had a 25 percent approval rating, as a majority (61 percent) correctly recognized that the plan favors the wealthy.

Yet a version of the plan has passed the House and it remains alive in the Senate. True, there are more than enough Republican senators on the fence that the tax plan could go the way of the Republican health plans. If the Democrats stick together, the Republicans can afford to lose only two votes in the Senate. This isnt over.

But in the spirit of diagnosing a serious malady in the body politic, its worth examining how the will of wealthy, conservative donors and the perceived need among Republicans to post a win, any win, are thwarting the will of the majority. Its an especially timely question given that many who will be hurt by the plan are middle- and moderate-income households that helped elect President Trump, who, in a lie echoed by many in his administration, calls the plan a middle-class miracle.

Let me quickly review the facts as to why, if theres a miracle here, its that were still arguing about trickle-down economics and that supposedly moderate conservative senators still think the cuts have merit.

Surely the most remarkable finding is this: According to nonpartisan analysis, by the time its fully phased in, the Senate plan increases taxes, on average, on most taxpayers, including all households with incomes under $75,000. This is partly because the individual tax cuts for moderate-income folks phase out, while the corporate and estate tax cuts for the wealthy live on.

The plan will raise the national debt by $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion. And, in regard to the point made above, when Republicans say future Congresses wont allow planned phaseouts to occur, theyre also saying the deficit impact will be even more negative than current scores show.

The large growth effects advertised by the administration  large enough, by some of its claims, to more than offset the cost of the plan  have at least two fundamental problems. First, theyre implausibly large, with not an iota of evidence to support them, and second, they imply much larger trade deficits. Note that this latter fact is widely agreed upon, even by

advocates

of the plan.

The damage to household incomes shown in the above figure tells only the first part of the story. The play among cynical conservatives is to use the deficits theyre creating to insist on spending cuts later (and later is almost here). So low- and moderate-income families get hit twice: They get dinged by the plan itself and then again by the spending cuts it enforces down the road.

When I listen to some of the Republican fence-sitting senators  including Susan Collins of Maine, Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska  I often hear rational, thoughtful voices that would not be willing to provide the marginal vote to support the outcomes noted above. Supporting the plan is simply inconsistent with many things theyve said and with the visions theyve espoused.

Of course, the central point of this little essay is that we live in an era in which such inconsistencies are the norm, an era characterized by a constant fuselage of lies from those in power, amplified by social media, where facts are just as unwelcome as a deliberative process that could, at least in theory, deliver real tax reform. These senators, thus, have a unique opportunity to walk their talk, to stand up to these forces that are so quickly eroding treasured institutions.

I dont mean to be melodramatic, but thats what is at stake here, and any politician who shoves these realities aside to meet the demands of their donors or the exigencies of party politics must question whether thats what they came here to do. If the answer is yes, then I humbly submit that they are serving neither their constituents nor the country.
WAVERLY  Waverly Middle School Counselor Ruth Schmidt went to the home room teachers with an idea that students could take part in between Veterans Day and Thanksgiving.

The idea was to raise money to provide dishes for the new apartment complex that recently opened up for homeless veterans in Lincoln.

My husband had the flyer and when I read about what they were trying to do, I thought it would be a good project for the students, she said.

For over two years, the Marine Corps League Cornhusker Detachment in Lincoln has been operating a homeless veterans program, working to see that those veterans get into an apartment.

Fifty of the 70 new apartments recently opened on the veterans campus near 70th and O streets. Now, they are asking for the general public to help furnish those apartments.

They are asking for everything, she said. But I thought since we didnt have a whole lot of time to raise money that we concentrate on raising money to purchase dishes.

By the end of last week, students had raised over $400 and Schmidt had begun to price out what a set of dishes would cost, with the goal of purchasing as many sets as she could.

The students really got into it, bringing change and all, Schmidt said.

She said that more help is needed to furnish the apartments.

They need 70 of everything, she said.

Everything from beds to chairs to kitchen tables to slotted spoons she pointed out saying that the long list was on the web at www.heroesintohomes.org.

Somebody went and provided 70 toasters and 70 coffee pots, Schmidt said. But so much more is needed.

She said she was happy that the school could help.

It all happened rather quickly, but our students got on board with it, Schmidt said. Its was all for a very good cause.
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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Installation in central Rome represents female victims of violence.

100 white silhouettes have been installed in Rome's Piazza S. Marco, just off Piazza Venezia in the city centre, to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25 November.

Entitled Senza Parole (Without Words), the installation's statues represent women who have been murdered, and each figure has a personal story attached.

The installation has been organised by Italian trade union UGL whose secretary Ornello Petillo says: "We have no more words in the face of such a tragedy."

The Non Una di Meno (Not One Less) rally, designed to recall the victims of feminicide and male aggression as well as demanding greater rights for women, will begin in Piazza della Repubblica at 14.00 on 25 November.

Photo La Repubblica
Rodney Miller with his wife Carmel Arthur. Briefly, the background. In 1998 there were 10 armed robberies involving a middle-aged and younger offender who were targeting suburban restaurants. As a result the Armed Robbery Squad set up Operation Hamada that identified a list of 60 possible targets  with a plan to stake out the restaurants and catch the bandits in the act. The Silky Emperor on Warrigal Road was in the top 10  and it was while on stake-out duty that Gary Silk and Rod Miller were murdered. Sergeant Gary Silk aspired to be a policeman from an early age. As a schoolboy, Gary knew he would be a policeman and he lived within sight of the Police Academy. He joined at 21 and was a natural.

At his wake a colleague talked of going out on the town with "Silky" hoping to meet girls (Gary referred to such nights as "Chasing Princesses" ). As a bachelor living alone, Gary was never too fussed on what he wore and so his mate was relieved that night to see he was wearing a pair of jeans and a shirt. Senior Constable Glenn Pullin pictured making an arrest in 1992: his statement about the shooting was later amended and backdated. Later at a nightclub his police mate was talking to a girl who expressed concern at Gary's attire (as he was making a rare sojourn to the dance floor). It was only then he noticed that Silky was wearing a pair of rented ten-pin bowling shoes  complete with the No.9 on the back. Rod Miller was deeply in love with his wife Carmel, who had just had their baby son. Before the stake-out shift the couple completed thank you notes to the 90 friends and relatives who had sent cards welcoming the birth of their boy James. By the time the cards arrived Rod was dead. Bandali Debs is led into the court by security. Credit:Vince Caligiuri

The case that would be eventually be put to a Supreme Court jury was that after spotting a suspect car near the restaurant turning in Cochranes Road, Miller activated the portable blue light in the unmarked police car. Silk, the senior man, pulled in behind the dark Hyundai. Debs, the driver, hopped out and stood next to the door and was approached by Miller. Silk called on Roberts to get out of the car to a grassy verge on the side of the road. Both police had their guns holstered. Silk stood about a metre from Roberts when Miller headed to the police car to radio in the details of the Hyundai. Roberts fired from point-blank range with his .38 revolver, shooting Silk in the chest. Miller, caught between the two cars and lacking immediate cover, unbuttoned his revolver and fired at Roberts, but Debs dived back into the car, grabbed his .357 Magnum and fired repeatedly through the rear hatch, shattering the glass and hitting Miller in the chest. Inspector Paul Sheridan headed the Lorimer taskforce. Credit:Sebastian Costanzo But here is the sticking point. Another police unit saw the suspect car and only saw the driver in the vehicle. Lorimer detectives say this was because Roberts was hiding in the passenger well. In Iddles' subsequent review he argues there is no evidence to support the two gunmen case and the facts have been massaged to fit the theory.

The Crown case is supported by claims from police who found the fatally wounded Rod Miller, who say their dying colleague said: "Two. One on foot  dark Hyundai  I'm f----d, I'm f----d  I'm having trouble breathing  get them." One of those present was Senior Constable Glenn Pullin. This week the Herald Sun revealed Pullin did not mention those words in his first statement but a version of Miller's observation was later inserted and backdated. Iddles says this is proof of corruption and that evidence was concealed from the defence. What should have happened is that if Pullin's statement was to be updated, it should have appeared as a new document and not presented as the original. The claim a Lorimer investigator doctored documents is now the subject of an IBAC investigation. The statements of other police at the scene were updated with Miller's words. As Iddles says: "Beware of the witness whose memory improves with the passage of time."

So does this mean that Debs acted alone and Miller did not say there was a second offender? Certainly the scene was chaotic but police tapes show that at 12.32am Cheltenham 206 reported a "Member shot twice . . . He said two offenders, two on foot." The then head of the Armed Robbery Squad, Detective Senior Sergeant Ray Watson, told The Age: "Two offenders were mentioned from the beginning." The most compelling evidence of two gunmen (the police were shot with two firearms) comes not from the scene but 18 moths later through Debs' bugged conversations with his father where he appears to recall the shooting. "Those were the ones [Silk/Miller] that were sittin' there, when we drove in just to quickly look [at the restaurant], they seen us so they drove behind us, and drove down the street to stop us, they stopped us. Then it's not good. . . . Cause we heard it on this, we heard it on that, they said oh one is gone [Silk] we can't find the other one [Miller]. After we left they come in 30 or 40 seconds. Thirty or 40 seconds they were there, that means they had a few [police] cars in the area." And there was another damning statement  this time by Roberts who bragged, "I kill Ds"  words the prosecution claimed meant detectives or police.

Roberts' first attempt for a review was rebuffed. His lawyers approached then Chief Commissioner Simon Overland looking for a deal. In exchange for information implicating Debs in cold case murders he wanted his case reviewed. Overland's response was short and Anglo Saxon. If Roberts had information he could provide it, and if it panned out police may support a move to reduce sentence. The offer was rebuffed with equally blunt language by his lawyers. Years later a similar file ended with Iddles in circumstances that remain unclear. Regardless of personalities, the investigation should not have stayed with him for as a senior sergeant he was not in a position to interview Superintendent Sheridan  a superior officer and former squad mate. (Sheridan was not initially given the chance to respond to the Iddles report  a fact that irks many of his colleagues). The investigation should have been handed to a senior officer with homicide experience, or even better an interstate team to avoid claims of bias. What we do know is Debs and Roberts committed 10 previous armed robberies as a team and there is no known reason why Debs went to the Silky Emperor that night on his own armed with two guns.
@ EgyArmySpox/Twitter(CAIRO) -- The Egyptian military unleashed a flurry of airstrikes against suspected terrorist targets in the wake of the horrific terror attack at a mosque that killed at least 305 people.



In a Facebook post, the country's armed forces said that it was hitting targets in Northern Sinai with the help of intelligence that had been gathered.



The targets included weapons caches, the military officials said.



On Friday, the military said it had "chased down terrorist elements, discovered and destroyed a number of vehicles that carried out the terrorist attack, and killed those inside them in the vicinity of the attack in addition to targeting a number of terrorist outposts containing weapons and ammunitions."



"The North Sinai law enforcement forces, in cooperation with the Air Force, continue to sweep terrorist strongholds and search for the rest of the Takfiri elements to eliminate them," the statement added.



The attack on the al-Rawdah mosque Friday left at least 305 people dead, including 27 children, officials said. It also left more than 100 injured.



Some 25-35 militants brandishing ISIS flags carried out the attacks, prosecutors said.



Some were wearing masks and military-style uniforms, and carrying black flags emblazoned with, There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God," the prosecutor's office said.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
By WestKyStar & MainStreet Staff Nov. 24, 2017 | 08:00 PM | PADUCAH, KY

Downtown Development Specialist/Paducah Main Street Director Melinda Winchester says, Each year, the event seems to grow with more businesses eager to participate and celebrate the holidays. For the public, our Small Business Saturday event is a chance to spend the day with family and friends while getting a jumpstart on Christmas shopping. Plus, you are supporting your local businesses by keeping your dollars in this community.





Santa and Mrs. Claus make their grand appearance down Broadway in the carriage to the gazebo at 10 am. There will be special appearances by Anna and Elsa from "Frozen," Cinderella, the Grinch, and characters from Whoville.





Winchester adds, I encourage everyone to explore historic downtown Paducah. Many of the stores and restaurants will have specials. Plus, we have new events this year in the Lower Town Arts District including a holiday market with artisan-made items at Ephemera Paducah and art vendors at the Smedley Yeiser. Plus, Paducah Beer Werks will host a Village Pub Tent with Beers of Christmas Past and a beer cheese and potato soup.





This is the fourth year for the City to host Dickens of a Christmas. Sponsors for this years event are Paducah Bank and Paducah Economic Development. Partners include Paducah Tilghman High School, Graves County High School, local scouting troops, Daughters of the American Revolution, Paducah Symphony Youth Chorus, and many talented local vocalists.





Small Business Saturday is a day dedicated to supporting small businesses across the country. Founded by American Express in 2010, this day is celebrated each year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.



On this Saturday after Thanksgiving, historic downtown Paducah is bustling with holiday shoppers and Christmas cheer. Enjoy the Dickens of a Christmas Small Business Saturday event organized by Paducah Main Street.From 10 am until 4 pm, downtown Paducah is transformed into a Dickens atmosphere with free Victorian carriage rides, dancers, carolers, and characters in costume. Enjoy free coffee, wassail, and s'mores at the fire pit near the gazebo.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 25, 2017 | 09:35 AM | MCCRACKEN COUNTY, KY

A traffic stop early Saturday morning led to a fugitive's arrest.

According to the McCracken County Sheriff's Office, just after 2:00 am, deputies stopped a vehicle for traffic violations on Oaks Road. Deputies made contact with the occupants and identified the passenger in the vehicle as 26-year-old Ryan Mayfield, of Paducah.

According to police, Mayfield had warrants for his arrest out of Kentucky and Tennessee. When deputies searched the vehicle, they reportedly found a set of digital scales containing a quantity of methamphetamine.

Mayfield was arrested and transported to the McCracken County Regional Jail. He's charged with possession of methamphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia. He was also arrested on a mandatory reentry supervision violation warrant and on a Tennessee warrant for three counts of aggravated robbery, three counts of aggravated kidnapping and three counts of aggravated assault.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 20, 2017 | 06:16 PM | PADUCAH, KY





A teenager has been reported missing for the fourth time in five days.According to Paducah Police, 14-year-old Dusty Jackson was reported missing just before 7 pm Friday night. He was last seen about 6:30 pm at his home on Old Mayfield Road.Jackson is described as white, 5'10" tall, and weighing 175 pounds. He has brown hair and brown eyes. He has a diamond earring in both ears, and his bottom lip is pierced.He was last known to be wearing a gray and orange Nike hoodie, black pants, and no shoes.Anyone who knows the whereabouts of Jackson should call Paducah Police at 270-444-8550 or call local law enforcement.Jackson was reported missing on Monday evening and found Tuesday morning. He was reported missing again that night and was found Wednesday morning. Late Wednesday night, police were told Jackson was missing again, and he was found Friday morning.
Christmas comes to the Homeplace 1850s Saturday after Thanksgiving
Welcome to The Independent Herald E-Edition! Check back each week on Tuesday to see our[Read More]
John Sulla, 59, of Jim Falls, Wis., was sentenced to three years in state prison after pleading guilty to a felony charge of seventh offense operating while intoxicated. Two years of extended supervision after release from prison. The sentence runs concurrent to other offenses in Barron and Chippewa counties. Drivers license revoked for 24 months and ignition interlock device required for 12 months. Charges of tampering or failure to have an ignition device installed on vehicle and operating after license revocation were dismissed.

Ronald J. Baldridge, 41, of Buffalo City, was sentenced to two years of probation and 30 days in jail after a deferred sentencing agreement was revoked on a charge of possessing methamphetamine. Baldridge pleaded no contest and was found guilty of second offense possession of THC. No possession or consumption of alcohol intoxicants and no entry to bars or taverns without written permission from the state Dept. of Corrections. Ordered to pay court cost assessments totaling $518. A charge of bail jumping was dismissed.

Louis J. Malinoski, 55, of Alma, case status hearing continued to Jan. 18 on charges accusing him of endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon, operating a firearm while intoxicated, possessing drug paraphernalia and bail jumping. Malinoski has pleaded not guilty to charges.

Kari J. Sell, 34, of Alma, court hearing adjourned to Dec. 6 on charges accusing her of third offense operating while intoxicated, operating while license revoked, failure to keep vehicle under control, ignition interlock device violation and possession of THC and drug paraphernalia.

Timothy E. Nygard, 40, of Mondovi, case status hearing continued to Jan. 18 on misdemeanor charges accusing him of disorderly conduct and two counts of battery. Nygard allegedly assaulted two women in Mondovi in June. He pleaded not guilty in September.

Wyatt D. Thrasher, 40, of St. Paul, Minn., case status conference scheduled Dec. 6 on drug charges accusing him of possession with intent to deliver more than 50 grams of amphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia. Thrasher has pleaded not guilty.

Kenneth Curtis-Simon Gady, 24, of Houston, Minn., court arraignment hearing Dec. 7 on charges accusing him of burglary and theft at a cabin in rural Fountain City in November 2016. He pleaded not guilty in August.

Charles J. Thomas, 31, of Cochrane, arrest warrant issued Nov. 9 for failure to appear in court as scheduled on charges accusing him of third offense operating while intoxicated, possession of THC and bail jumping.

Kristen M. Langowski, 19, of Winona, arrest warrant issued Nov. 13 for failure to appear in court as scheduled on charges accusing her of possessing THC and drug paraphernalia.

Makwon D. Thompson Davis, 20, of Minneapolis, court hearing adjourned to Dec. 6 on charges accusing him of possessing THC and drug paraphernalia.

Nicholas S. McMahon, 37, of Eau Claire, pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of domestic abuse battery and disorderly conduct. Case status hearing scheduled Dec. 6.

Marty L. Monhead, 30, of Mondovi, preliminary court hearing scheduled Jan. 19 on charges accusing him of possessing methamphetamine, THC and drug paraphernalia.

James B. Smith, 45, of La Crosse, case status hearing scheduled Dec. 6 on charges accusing him of theft in a business setting and theft by false representation. Smith pleaded not guilty in August.

Arin M. Dehnke, 28, of Cochrane, arrest warrant issued Nov. 13 for failure to appear in court as scheduled on charges accusing him of possessing methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.

Kassandra J. Dahl, 32, of Cochrane, arraignment court hearing scheduled Dec. 7 on a felony charge accusing her of possession with intent to deliver up to 200 grams of THC.

Sarah J. Katula, 34, of Mondovi, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of criminal damage to property. Katula entered a one-year deferred sentencing agreement.

Anthony J. Bahr, 53, of Haugen, Wis., court hearing adjourned to Dec. 6 on charges accusing him of disorderly conduct and felony battery.

Jesse A. Hestekin, 34, of Eau Claire, court hearing adjourned to Dec. 6 on charges accusing him of disorderly conduct and two counts of battery.

Susan M. Hinze, 29, of Eau Claire, court hearing adjourned to Dec. 20 on charges accusing her of possessing methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.

Anthony T. Shannon, 33, of Taylor, court hearing adjourned to Dec. 6 on a misdemeanor charge accusing him of disorderly conduct.

Brandon D. Ottum, 32, of Arcadia, pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance. Fine and costs totaling $443.
Winona Senior High Schools marching band will start its journey to Florida early Saturday morning.

When they arrive, they will march through Disney Worlds Magic Kingdom in front of an audience assembled from all over the globe.

Myron Hauge, one of the band directors, looks forward to sharing another great experience with another generation of young musicians.

Happy. Thats what this group is, Hauge said. Whenever we are around them, this group just makes you smile.

The song theyll be playing is a piece composed from Justin Timberlakes tune Cant Stop the Feeling and Rihannas We Found Love.

Theyre just so fun, and so we dont want a serious tune, not with these guys! Hauge said.

The entire effort takes teamwork between the students, the school faculty, and parent volunteers.

Laura Behling was helping to organize uniforms so that band members will be ready to get on the bus and leave at 5 a.m. Saturday morning. Shes also coming along to help chaperone and is excited to see her son, Andrew, a senior trombone player, play alongside Mickey Mouse.

We know the kids play great; we just want to make sure that they look great, Behling said.

After they finish loading up the buses, the band will embark on a 29-hour trip, until they reach their destination, Clearwater Beach, Florida.

Layna Rutkowski, a senior, plays the tenor saxophone and went on the Florida trip two years ago as a sophomore.

Being younger, it was a little bit more nerve wracking being in front of all those people there, Rutkowski said. But it was still a lot of fun, I think this year it will be even better. Mr. Gleason and Mr Hauge have worked very hard to keep this Florida thing in the program, and I just hope that we can just make them proud and continue on the tradition.

Rutkowski also added that Everyone should join band.

Jacob Simmons, a senior trombone player, also went on the trip his sophomore year and is excited to embark yet again.

I didnt really know what to expect because it was my first time doing it, Simmons said. This year, I know whats happening, Im looking forward to it more. I think were all ready to go down to Florida.

This is the 12th time that the band will go to Disney World. They apply every two years, and their consistent acceptance shows the caliber that the marching band upholds.

Other high school groups are sometimes not permitted to march or are rejected altogether.

Were part of their show  were part of their cast, Hauge said. We fit in perfectly.
Laura Reisdorf never really gave much thought about coming back to St. Charles permanently after college. She had enjoyed her childhood but hadnt really had any intention of staying put.

But when you fall in love with a third-generation dairy farmer, the cows have already decided where youre going to live.

So, she stayed.

Shes has been a pool rat and a student, racing around town on her bicycle. She has lived as both a townie and a country bumpkin. Her work life has spanned corporations, an auto shop, the church and public schools. She raised her kids on the farm and inadvertently became a farmer herself.

Yet the constant in the midst of all these designations and life changes for Laura has been St. Charles.

Laura and her family moved into the town of St. Charles when she was in third grade. The former country kid had grown up in St. Charles near Utica, Minn., but soon she found herself among neighbors and a bike ride away from her friends.

She and her childhood friends would eat early lunches to make sure waiting an hour before swimming wouldnt cut into too much pool time. Eventually hopping on their banana seat bicycles, her days were spent at the pool, with evenings finished watching softball games.

Jump rope in the street and cops and robbers around town were daily activities for Laura as she grew up at 243 Richland St. She navigated through St. Charles on her bicycle seat, while the communities surrounding the town felt like a world away.

A trip to Winona, a trip to Whitewater, a trip to Rochester was an event, and very rarely did we go to the Twin Cities, Laura recalled.

When they did make it up to near the Twin Cities, Laura recalled visiting the Como Zoo for its free tour of the animals and the Minnesota State Fair. Laura remembers parking on the fairgrounds, their picnic basket packed and munching on food outside of their car.

The scene is a bit curious, Laura said, as today the fair is all about the copious amounts of food people can consume.

That is so weird that we could drive in there and park, and then we would eat on a picnic blanket, Laura said with a laugh. And we didnt even get to enjoy what the state fair is now all about.

Back home, her father, Don Tlougan, hauled propane, worked part-time as a bartender and also did construction. He was part of the group who helped construct the Interstate 90 and Hwy. 52 interchange.

Yet the addition of a new interchange isnt the biggest update Laura has seen in the area.

Her mother, June Tlougan, was a paraprofessional with the School District of St. Charles, and in her 33-year career, June would go on to assist Hispanic and Hmong populations that were moving into the community learn English.

With English being the first and only language of her own, June was patient and understanding with families acclimated to their new American life, Laura recalled.

Shes patient, and still today those students will still recognize her, Laura said.

Through her mothers work, a growing local economy and an influx of more people of color, Laura said she has watched her little town grow into a diverse hub of cultures.

I really feel that were a blended community. I just feel like everybody gets along pretty well here, and I dont know that thats the case in some other small towns, Laura said. Its just my opinion.

In 1982, Laura graduated from high school and went to college at University of Wisconsin-Stout, where she studied applied math and computer science.

Despite moving away, Laura would still visit St. Charles and her parents, partying and reminiscing with old friends when she would return. It was at a party back home during her junior year that Laura met her future husband, Paul Reisdorf.

Through their church the couples families had met before, but at the party the duo hit it off. And he eventually made the idea of settling down in St. Charles an easy one.

He was just fun to be with, had a lot in common, easy to talk to, Laura said. And probably just knowing that were both from the St. Charles area, just, you know, felt right.

The couple was married on Aug. 8, 1987, and Laura found herself back where she originally began: out in the St. Charles countryside.

It seemed lonely at first, Laura said, missing the quick trips around town and the community just outside of her doorstep. She became more involved in community outreach and civic engagement to combat this loneliness and was one of the few people in the country limits of St. Charles to help save the community pool. She also got more involved with her three boys schooling and the families that attended them, making lifelong friends.

Suddenly she was in a role reversal in her community. The streets that were once her childhood kingdom were the same streets where she would take her kids to school and community gatherings. She was seeing St. Charles from a parents eyes  but she continued to gain a passion for the town she had always known.

This feeling and role change became more apparent as her kids made their way through school and were subject to parent teacher conferences, Laura said, recalling the first time she walked into the same gym she had grown up in to chat with some of the same teachers who had taught her.

The first time I had to come back to conferences as an adult it was just like, Wow, Laura recalled. That was just a weird feeling.

Back home, Paul and his brother had a partnership with the family farm, and Laura went to work at IBM. She had gained an education degree before that job, but after substitute teaching, she decided the teaching track just wasnt for her.

And when her youngest son, Lucas, was born, she decided it was time for a complete career change.

When we had our third child, thats when I said Either the cows have to go, or Im going to quit my job, because I cant be a good IBM employee, and I cant be a good mom at the same time, Laura recalled.

It became one of the happiest times Laura remembers in her family. She and her kids would visit Paul in the barn and everyone would help out with farm chores and duties. Laura learned how to drive tractors, milk cows and unload hay and straw, something the woman who grew up in town never really had to do.

Despite losing an extra income, Laura said the made do with what they had.

I think you just did what you had to do, Laura said.

Laura would eventually return to work, helping friends with an auto shop they started. After one of the co-owners was diagnosed with cancer, his wife and fellow owner had to take more care for him, leaving Laura to help keep the business floating.

She learned about engine repairs and parts, simply because she had to order them every day. That administrative job eventually led to her working for her church and then to working in the St. Charles School Districts superintendents office  something her childhood friends give her a good ribbing for.

Now known as Mrs. Reisdorf at work, Laura tasks include  among other things  coordinating bus schedules, monthly board meetings and employee contracts. She works daily with different students, parents and teachers, feeling welcomed in a school she has always known.

I feel like Ive been really lucky to work in the community I live in and then working the community where my kids have come to school, so I was really able to be active, Laura said.

In August, Paul and his brother sold the cows and the farm will primarily focus on crop farming for now. Laura still works at the school, but is hoping her husband can find some part-time work in town once hes fully done farming. He loves to talk, Laura said, joking how as a farmer he might be socially deprived all day.

She isnt sure where her sons  oldest Nathan, middle child John Paul and the youngest Lucas  will settle down one day, and while cows have yet to dictate her sons' futures like they did hers, she knows they will always have a place in St. Charles.

Home will always be here, Laura said.
Kyle Farrell Barr, 48, of Caledonia, Minn., was traveling north on Hwy. 76 just after noon Wednesday, Nov. 22 in the Pleasant Hill Township, when he struck a vehicle driven by Gach Gatluak Kuel, 36, of Winona. Kuel was traveling on the eastbound exit ramp of Interstate 90, when he drove into the intersection and was hit by Barr.
What started out as a simple homemade gift idea has turned into a small business for Kelsey Johnson.

Johnson, of southern Minnesota and owner of Sugar Creek Mittens, had her mittens, scarves and winter wear for sale at the Winona Mall Holiday Fair Saturday. The craft fair featured vendors and crafters with local and national designations, free child care, a visit from Santa Claus and a portion of the proceeds benefiting families in need.

The craft fair and sale was one of a few events in Winona Saturday that sold items in support of local businesses and handmade gifts. Local shops, eateries and establishments were also part of Winona Main Streets Small Business Saturday  an annual shopping day following Black Friday, one of the most infamous shopping days of the year.

Created by American Express in 2010, Small Business Saturday encourages shoppers to keep their money local by shopping at small businesses the day after big box stores have their large sales. The Winona Main Street Programs version of the event also encouraged shoppers to visit local shops for Black Friday deals and specials.

For Johnson, any business is good business. She uses Sugar Creek Mittens as a side job for now while working full time to pay off student loans.

The idea to sell her handmade creations came about 10 years ago when she and her sisters decided to make each others presents over the holiday season.

Five years ago, she turned the mitten-making habit into a money maker and now hosts her own Etsy shop and social media pages.

Across town, local shoppers and far away visitors were stopping by the downtown craft stores, cafes and shops to find small town deals and gifts.

Nola Morawiecki, owner of Nolas Flowers for the last 15 years, said her Saturday was full of fun and new customers, visiting and meeting with shoppers from out of town.

The attraction to Winonas businesses and her small, colorful flower shop, Morawiecki said is the desire more people have to shop small.

A lot of people from all over like to shop small and local, Morawiecki said. They want the personal customer service, and thats my passion.

For the owl lover on any shoppers list, Morawiecki said she has decorative owls, including her favorite  a winter owl with a white, shimmery finish over pine cones  for sale.

Just a block-and-a-half away, Hearts Desire was fielding customers all Saturday morning, employee Marilla Daley said. The line for the check-out had stretched halfway through the store as of midday Saturday as other shoppers milled about the stores expansive home goods selections.

Daley, who has been with Hearts Desire since March, said the impact of the long lines and filled store do not go unnoticed.

It shows the people in Winona care about shopping local, Daley said.

Just a few stores down from Hearts Desire was Yarnology, which was offering 50 percent off a pair of Darn Tough Socks with the purchase of three pairs. The store was also giving away free bags, but they were quickly snatched up as steady crowds made their way through the yarn and crafting store, Yarnologist and employee with the shop since September Ingrid Ogren said.

Despite having been a new employee at the store, Ogren has been visiting Yarnology for the last seven years. The store was also supporting another local business, Bloedows, giving away donuts and treats from the Winona-based bakery, Ogren said.

Co-owner Kelly Momsen said the energy of the store and its patrons was good and suggested anyone can visit Yarnology for gift ideas, which extend beyond yarn and knitting. Momsen said the store has reading glasses, socks and gift cards available.

A gift from Yarnology can go a long way, Ogren said, benefiting not only a knitter, crocheter or crafter but also the person giving the gift  connecting them with the strong stitches created and the local business they support.

It just feels lucky to have strong ties with the community, Ogren said. I think its an essential way to re-connect with one another.
Submit an event for Around Town by emailing calendar information to bnr-news@wiscnews.com at least three business days before the event date. For a complete listing of calendar events for the next week, visit baraboonewsrepublic.com.

Today

Sneak preview: 10 a.m., Sauk Prairie Theatre Guild, Reedsburg Public Library, 370 Vine St., Reedsburg. The new adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens will be discussed with performance of select sections.

Dinner theater: 6 p.m., Dorf Haus Bavarian Style Supper Club, 8931 Highway Y, Sauk City. Dinner theater performance of Happy Holidays from the Homefront. Tickets are $42 with dinner choice of chicken breast, stuffed pork chop, baked haddock or roulade. Reservations can be made at foodspot.com/dorfhaus.

Sunday

Dinner theater: 12:30 p.m., Dorf Haus Bavarian Style Supper Club, 8931 Highway Y, Sauk City. Dinner theater performance of Happy Holidays from the Homefront. Tickets are $42 with dinner choice of chicken breast, stuffed pork chop, baked haddock or roulade. Reservations can be made at foodspot.com/dorfhaus.

Free meal: 4-6 p.m., Open Table Community Meal, St. John Lutheran Church, 307 Sixth St., Reedsburg. Sponsored by the Rotary Club of Reedsburg.

Monday

Senior potluck luncheon: Noon to 1 p.m., Baraboo Area Senior Center, 124 Second St., Room 24, Baraboo. Mindy Lewis will explain her role as an End of Life Guide and Care Coordinator. There is no cost, but bring a side dish to pass. For more information call Diane Pillsbury at 608-356-8464.

Support group: 3-4:30 p.m., Maplewood of Sauk Prairie, 245 Sycamore St., Sauk City. Free Alzheimers Dementia Support group every fourth Tuesday. Registration not required. For more information, call Theresa Grimes at 643-3383.

Book art workshop: 6:30 p.m., Baraboo Public Library, 230 Fourth Ave., Baraboo. Artist and teacher Laurie Dummer will demonstrate how to make candles using pages from old books. All materials are supplied and there is no cost to attend. For more information, call 608-356-6166 or visit baraboopubliclibrary.org.

Tuesday

Support group: 3-4:30 p.m., Maplewood Sauk Prairie, 245 Sycamore St., Sauk City. Alzheimers Dementia Support group offers free meetings the fourth Tuesday of each month. Reservations not required. For more information, call Theresa Grimes at 643-3383.

Public hearing: 7 p.m., Baraboo Municipal Building, 135 Fourth St., Baraboo. Public hearing on the Preliminary Resolution and the Assessment Report. All interested persons or their agents or attorneys may appear and be heard concerning the matters contained in the report. For more information, visit cityofbaraboo.com.

Wednesday

CPR class: 5-9 p.m., Reedsburg Area Medical Center, lower level conference room, 2000 North Dewey Ave., Reedsburg. This Heartsaver AED course includes adult and pediatric CPR, foreign body airway obstruction, and the use of a defibrillator. Cost is $50 and includes the instruction book and two-year certification card. For more information or to check availability, call 768-6240. Class size is limited.

Thursday

Hospice training: 4-8 p.m., Agrace Hospice and Palliative Care, 1670 South Blvd., Baraboo. Volunteers are needed to visit and provide companionship to local hospice patients. For more information, an application and to schedule orientation, call 608-327-7163.

Gift wrap workshop: 6:30-8 p.m., Rock Springs Public Library, 101 First St., Rock Springs. During this free gift wrap workshop participants will learn simple ways to create wrapping paper and will make some to take home. Space is limited, to register call 608-522-5050 or email director@rockspringslibrary.com. For more information on library programs, visit rockspringslibrary.com.

Play: 7 p.m., University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County, R.G. Brown Theatre, 1006 Connie Road, Baraboo. Story Theatre a compilation of Aesops fables and Grimms fairy tales will be performed. Ticket prices are $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and students, and $5 for children 10 younger and UW-Baraboo/Sauk County students. For more information, call 608-355-5238, or visit baraboo.uwc.edu/campus/arts/theatre.

Friday

Bazaar: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Maplewood of Sauk Prairie, activities room, 245 Sycamore St., Sauk City. Maplewoods Bazaar will offer home baked cookies, bars, bread, and pies and craft items made by the residents. Proceeds go to the Resident Council for the residents use.

Holiday parade: 6-7 p.m., Downtown Spring Green. Holiday Light Parade. For more information, visit springgreen.com.

Dinner theater: 6:30 p.m., Walnut Hill Bible Church, Expeditions, E11844 Highway DL, Baraboo. Dinner theater production of The Buzz in Bethlehem will offer a unique approach to theater in which attendees play a role as travelers to Bethlehem for the census. Appetizers and dinner will be provided. Tickets are $16 each or $14 for a group of eight or more. Tickets are available online at buzzinbethlehem.com.

Live theater: 7 p.m., Sauk Prairie Theatre Guild, River Arts Center, 105 Ninth St., Prairie du Sac. A Christmas Carol will be performed. Tickets available online at sptheatreguild.org, at River Arts on Water Gallery, 590 Water St., Prairie du Sac, call 643-5215 or at the door.

Play: 7 p.m., University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County, R.G. Brown Theatre, 1006 Connie Road, Baraboo. Story Theatre a compilation of Aesops fables and Grimms fairy tales will be performed. Ticket prices are $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and students, and $5 for children 10 younger and UW-Baraboo/Sauk County students. For more information, call 608-355-5238, or visit baraboo.uwc.edu/campus/arts/theatre.

Concert: 7:30 p.m., The Village Booksmith, 526 Oak St., Baraboo. Joelle Austin will perform. For more information, call 608-355-1001 or visit villagebooksmith.com.
Doctors who let patients or their employers pay a monthly fee for primary care, outside of health insurance, could continue the arrangements free from insurance regulations under a proposed bill in Wisconsin.

In direct primary care, a national trend with mixed financial success, people pay $20 to $100 a month or more for unlimited primary care services, such as routine visits and lab tests.

Many of the patients carry high-deductible or catastrophic health insurance to cover major medical expenses.

The model helps patients with significant deductibles afford primary care and frees doctors from paperwork, said Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, R-New Berlin, who is seeking sponsors for the bill, along with co-sponsor Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield.

It cuts out any government bureaucracy, or an insurance company, from being in the middle of that relationship, said Sanfelippo, head of the Assemblys health committee.

A few doctors provide direct primary care in Wisconsin. Nationally, about 3 percent of doctors surveyed by the American Academy of Family Physicians provide direct primary care.

The bill would make it clear the arrangements arent subject to state insurance regulations and dont qualify as insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act, steps that could expand the practice, Sanfelippo said.

Twenty-three states have similar laws, according to the Direct Primary Care Coalition.

In Wisconsin, the bill would also require the state Department of Health Services to set up a pilot program for direct primary care for Medicaid recipients.

Assigning Medicaid patients to specific doctors for primary care could curb emergency room spending, Sanfelippo said.

The doctors would be able to keep a better eye on those patients, he said.

Michael Heifetz, the states Medicaid director, said direct primary care can manage costs in the private sector.

As you look at it for the Medicaid program, it becomes a bit more complicated because of numerous federal requirements  minimum benefit requirements, which are, in comparison to the private sector, quite generous, Heifetz said.

Heifetz said its not clear if the federal government would approve direct primary care in Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor.

The Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians supports the bill, saying it would be especially helpful for the 15 percent of doctors in the state who are not part of large medical practices, said Larry Pheifer, executive director of the group.

It allows those that maybe are not part of large groups ... to offer different kinds of patients an opportunity to get coverage in a reasonable way, with reasonable cost, Pheifer said.

The Wisconsin Medical Society hasnt taken a position yet, said Mark Grapentine, senior vice president of government relations.

Dr. Suzanne Gehl started a direct primary care practice in Delafield in September after working for several years in a similar, employer-based model.

She charges $20 to $100 a month, depending on the patients age, to cover basic services, including some minor procedures. Patients can also buy some medications and tests not covered by the monthly fee at bargain basement prices, she said.

She plans to take on no more than 500 patients, making herself available to them by phone call, text, email, webcam or office visits lasting at least half an hour.

In traditional clinics, family medicine doctors are typically responsible for 2,000 to 3,000 patients. Gehl said that in a previous job, she had to see 12 complex patients in three hours one day.

You cannot deliver quality, comprehensive care with a schedule like that, she said. Physicians feel like theyre on a hamster wheel.

Dr. Erica Rotondo provides direct primary care through Serenity Osteopathic on Madisons West Side, according to her website and the group Direct Primary Care Frontier. Rotondo didnt return messages seeking comment.

Dr. Will Schupp provided direct primary care in Madison for a few months in 2013 before shutting down the practice, according to The Capital Times.

Schupp, who now works at a traditional family medicine practice in Iowa, blamed the demise of his direct primary care practice on the website for the Affordable Care Acts insurance exchange. The website had many problems in late 2013 before coverage on the exchange started in 2014.

Qliance Medical Management, a Seattle-based chain of direct primary care clinics that was considered a national model for the practice, closed in May after 10 years.

The company ran up against overwhelming financial difficulties, Dr. Erika Bliss, CEO and co-owner, told The Seattle Times. The health-care system is hostile to change, and it has been literally an uphill battle the whole way, Bliss said.

Gehl said Qliance may have set its rates too low.

Dr. Aaron Dunn, an SSM Health Dean Medical Group doctor in Mineral Point who also works at the Community Connections Free Clinic in Dodgeville, said direct primary care could become an important alternative to regular medical care.

It cuts the insurance payer out of the picture, Dunn said. When you do that, you reduce your overhead and you reduce health care costs.

It allows (doctors) ... to offer different kinds of patients an opportunity to get coverage in a reasonable way, with reasonable cost. Larry Pheifer, executive director, Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians




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Spent shells and debris surround a target set up at a shooting range near Sheep Company Road near Selah, Wash., Sunday, Nov. 19, 2017. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is planning to add signage and other enhancements, while improve education and enforcement for the shooting areas. (SHAWN GUST/Yakima Herald-Republic)
Seattle is blocking off nearly two miles in Sodo under its Spokane Street Viaduct, site of two deaths and two serious RV fires this year. The WSDOT fenced off a ramp from I-90 to Rainier Avenue South. (Seattle Times Photo)
LINCOLN  One of Nebraskas problem prisoners has moved to Iowa.

Court records show that Erica Jenkins has been transferred from the Nebraska Correctional Center in York to the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville.

Jenkins, 27, is serving life in prison for the 2013 slaying of Curtis Bradford of Omaha. She is the sister of death-row inmate Nikko Jenkins, who participated in Bradfords killing and was responsible for three other murders.

Dawn-Renee Smith, spokeswoman for the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, said she cant discuss the reasons for the transfer because an inmates institutional file is not public. But Smith has previously said that out-of-state transfers can occur only with an inmates permission.

The transfer did not require Nebraska to accept an Iowa inmate in exchange for Jenkins, Smith said. Nor does Nebraska have to pay Iowa to house Jenkins under the transfer agreement, she added.

Had the transfer taken place a year ago, it might have saved Christine Bordeaux a concussion, broken forearm and fractured nasal bone.

Jenkins faces felony assault and weapons charges for allegedly using a combination lock as an improvised weapon to assault Bordeaux on Sept. 24, 2016. Bordeaux, who is Jenkins cousin, also was an inmate at the York prison, but she, too, has been transferred out of state. Officials have declined to say where.

Bordeaux, 43, testified against her cousin, helping prosecutors obtain robbery convictions. A prison investigator testified at a preliminary hearing earlier this year that Jenkins demanded that her cousin recant the testimony. The assault allegedly ensued when Bordeaux refused.

Although prison policy calls for the protection of witnesses for the state, staff members at York allowed the cousins to be placed in the same cell shortly before the assault occurred. Prison officials have not said how the breakdown occurred.

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine has lamented the assault of Bordeaux, saying it could make other co-defendants less willing to testify for the state.

Jenkins has been a handful for authorities since she was arrested. She has been convicted of assaulting guards three times.

The transfer to Iowa means Jenkins will have to travel about 260 miles from the prison west of Des Moines to attend her court hearings in York. The added transportation costs will be covered by the state and not York County, Smith said.
SATURDAY 11/25

>> Alcoholics Anonymous - Fresh Start Group meets Saturday at 11 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

MONDAY 11/27

>> Alcoholics Anonymous - Fresh Start Group meets Monday at 12 noon at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

TUESDAY 11/28

>> Sexaholics Anonymous, a 12 Step recovery group for those dealing with addiction to pornography, sex, and other forms of lust, meets Tuesday nights at 5:45 p.m. For more information please call our toll free number 1-877-889-8071 or visit sanebraska.org.

WEDNESDAY 11/29

>> Alcoholics Anonymous - Fresh Start Group meets Wednesday at 12 noon at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

THURSDAY 11/30

>> Weight Watchers meets in the basement of the York Towne House, 5th & Grant Ave., each Thursday. Weigh in 5:15 - 5:45 p.m.; Member meeting 5:45 - 6:15 p.m.

>> AL-ANON meets Thursday at 12 noon at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

>> Narcotics Anonymous meets Thursday at 8 p.m. at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in the Annex building.

FRIDAY 12/1

>> Alcoholics Anonymous - Fresh Start Group meets Friday at 12 noon at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

SATURDAY 12/2

>> Alcoholics Anonymous - Fresh Start Group meets Saturday at 11 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

>> A Childbirth Preparation class will be held on Saturday, Dec. 2 at 8 a.m. in the Medical Office Building Lower Level, contact OB Director Nancy Hengelfelt, RNC, at 402.362.0457 for more information.

MONDAY 12/4

>> Alcoholics Anonymous - Fresh Start Group meets Monday at 12 noon at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

TUESDAY 12/5

>> Four Corners Health Department and David Place invite individuals who are currently caring for a loved one with Dementia to attend a free Dementia workshop on Tuesday, Nov. 28 at David Place, 260 S. 10th St. in David City, from 1:30  2:30 p.m. The workshop will cover the basics of the brain with dementia, tips for the approaching holidays, communication tips and take home resources. Refreshments will be provided. Please RSVP to Barb Aldrich at 402.367.3144 or baldrich@vhsmail.com.

>> Sexaholics Anonymous, a 12 Step recovery group for those dealing with addiction to pornography, sex, and other forms of lust, meets Tuesday nights at 5:45 p.m. For more information please call our toll free number 1-877-889-8071 or visit sanebraska.org.

WEDNESDAY 12/6

>> Alcoholics Anonymous - Fresh Start Group meets Wednesday at 12 noon at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

>> Hands Only CPR Class: On Dec. 6, at Fillmore Central High School, there will be a hands only CPR class to educate all the students. Rotary District Governor Gary Brin issued the challenge to teach 200 people in the community hands only CPR. This is made possible by a Fillmore County Foundation Grant, firefighters and EMT personnel and Geneva Rotarians. The assembly to teach students will begin at 1 p.m.

THURSDAY 12/7

>> Weight Watchers meets in the basement of the York Towne House, 5th & Grant Ave., each Thursday. Weigh in 5:15 - 5:45 p.m.; Member meeting 5:45 - 6:15 p.m.

>> AL-ANON meets Thursday at 12 noon at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

>> Narcotics Anonymous meets Thursday at 8 p.m. at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in the Annex building.

>> Breastfeeding Preparation Class will meet Thursday, Dec. 7 at 7 p.m. in the Lower Level of the Medical Office Building. For more information contact OB Director Nancy Hengelfelt, RNC, at 402-362-0462.

FRIDAY 12/8

>> Alcoholics Anonymous - Fresh Start Group meets Friday at 12 noon at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

SATURDAY 12/9

>> Alcoholics Anonymous - Fresh Start Group meets Saturday at 11 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

MONDAY 12/11

>> Alcoholics Anonymous - Fresh Start Group meets Monday at 12 noon at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York.

WEDNESDAY 12/13

>> Immunization Clinic: The Polk County Health Department will hold immunization clinics at the Polk County Health Department in Osceola on Wednesday, Dec. 13 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.,

MONDAY 12/18

>> Immunization Clinic: The Polk County Health Department will hold immunization clinics at the Polk County Health Department in Osceola on Monday, Dec. 18 from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.

TUESDAY 12/19

>> Immunization Clinic: The Polk County Health Department will hold immunization clinics at the Polk County Health Department in Osceola on Tuesday, Dec. 19 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.
YORK  Officials with the Food Bank of Lincoln say that 12.2 percent of the people living in York County are food insecure.

The definition of food insecure is lacking reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.

These statistics were provided to the York County Commissioners this week by John Mabry and Michaella Kumke, representatives of the food bank.

We are here to remind everyone that we serve 16 counties in Nebraska, including York County, Kumke said.

She said the agency partners with a number of local entities, including Blue Valley Community Action.

In the last 12 months, the Food Bank of Lincoln has connected folks in York County to 197,845 meals, Kumke said. According to Feeding Americas Map the Meal Gap, the estimated value of that food is $536,159.

She outlined the local need, saying that 1,690 of the 13,825 people who live in York County are food insecure. Of that total, 580 are children under the age of 18.

Mabry acknowledged that York Public Schools Pride Pack program is extremely successful in helping to bridge that gap for children who might not otherwise know where their next meal will come from, outside of school.

The food bank is not involved in that program, we just want to say we are so happy that is happening, Mabry said.

He did note that the Lincoln Food Bank partners with the McCool School District to provide services there to fight child hunger.

We have great partners here with Blue Valley, Mabry said.

They said the food bank delivers produce to Blue Valley in York the second Thursday of every month.

We are just here to say thank you and that we are grateful for the partnerships we have here to do this work, Mabry said further.
The following questions were asked recently on the Wonderline:

Q: Why do we eat pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving?

A: Likely, this is because it is a fall produce item.

Also, it became a popular dish on 17th Century American tables and has been a tradition ever since.

Q: Why does the president pardon a turkey every Thanksgiving? When on earth did that start? And once they are pardoned, are they really not butchered? If they arent butchered, where are they taken and what happens to them?

A: According to CNN, rumors of turkey pardons go back as far as the Lincoln administration, when the presidents young son supposedly begged his father to spare a pet turkey that was destined for the dinner table.

But the turkey pardon as we know it today has its roots in the mid-20th century. The National Turkey Federation has been the official turkey supplier to the First Family since 1947, when President Harry Truman accepted the feathered sacrifice. He did not, however, show the bird mercy.

The first documented turkey pardon was given by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The pardoning didnt catch on, however. President Gerald Ford saw fit to pardon President Richard Nixon, but neither one of them saw fit to officially spare their turkeys.

According to the White House, it wasnt until 1989 that pardoning resurfaced as part of the turkey presentation. That year, President George H. W. Bush started what became a tradition upheld by every president since.

Pardoned birds have been sent to live out their lives at various locations, including petting zoos and Mount Vernon.

Q: What did the pilgrims and Native Americans really eat on the first Thanksgiving?

A: Many historical accounts indicate that venison was the main staple with geese and ducks.

Historians say the birds were likely stuffed  but with chunks of onion and herbs.

They also suggest that the first Thanksgiving guests ate dried shellfish and smoked fish.

And there were all indications that they ate dried beans, pumpkins, squash and corn (served in the form of porridge).

Q: Why is Thanksgiving on a Thursday?

A: In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln appointed a day of thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November. It is assumed he may have correlated it with the Nov. 21, 1621, anchoring of the Mayflower at Cape Cod.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date for Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November in 1939 and this was approved by Congress in 1941.

Q: In the United States, what percentage of people actually eat turkey on Thanksgiving because I cant believe that absolutely everyone does.

A: Nearly 88 percent of Americans surveyed by the National Turkey Federation eat turkey at Thanksgiving. The average weight of turkeys purchased for Thanksgiving is 16 pounds, meaning that approximately 736 million pounds of turkey were consumed in the United States during Thanksgiving in 2015.

Q. I heard that some of the Native Americans who attended that first Thanksgiving holiday were later killed by the pilgrims who were at the celebration. Is that true?

A. Descendants, if not the actual individuals, from both groups were involved in a bloody war called King Philips War about 50 years later. According to Lee Sultzman, who wrote First Nations, a history of many of the eastern native tribes, it was members of the Wampanoag tribe under their chief Massasoit who participated in the Thanksgiving Day celebration. Massasoit signed a treaty of friendship with the Pilgrims in March of 1621 giving them permission to occupy 12,000 acres of what was to become the Plymouth plantation.

However, it is very doubtful Massasoit fully understood the distinction between the European concept of owning land versus the native idea of sharing it, says Sultzman.

In any case, the Pilgrims invited Massasoit and his men to the First Thanksgiving. They brought five deer for the occasion. Massasoit continued to help the Pilgrims by bringing food when an additional ship load of immigrants arrived the following year. In fact, he remained friendly with the English throughout his life even to the extent of giving his two sons English names, Alexander and Philip.

By the time Philip was chief, however, the Wampanoags and many other tribes had become fearful of the growing number of English who were taking over the land. Later settlers also had less than a friendly attitude toward the Native Americans. They no longer needed their help to survive.

Philip enlisted the help of other tribes in what has been called King Philips war in 1675-76 in an effort to stop English encroachment. After many bloody confrontations, Philip was killed in August of 1676 and only 400 Wampanoags survived the war. Other tribes suffered similar losses. From a pre-war native population in southern New England of 15,000, only 4,000 were left in 1680, and the harsh peace terms imposed by the English placed them in total subjugation.

Q: Is it true that Garth Brooks real name is not Garth Brooks?

A: His birth name is Troyal Garth Brooks.
YORK  York County Extension educator and agent Jenny Rees received this years York County Corn Growers Outstanding Service Award at the recent annual banquet.

The evening included a review of the year by association president Clark Pickrel and other presentations preceded by the group dining together.

Rees grew up on a farm in northeast Nebraska and earned her bachelors degree in agronomy and crop protection at UNL in 2002. Her masters in plant pathology was awarded at UNL in 2004.

She became a UNL Extension crops educator upon graduation and came to serve York and Seward counties in 2016.

Corn Growers presenter Dave Dickinson said, Jenny is very passionate about agriculture and genuinely cares about people.

He said she has been very involved in the Nebraska on-farm research effort and has helped conduct the York County Corn Growers (test) plot.

Dickerson added, Jenny reaches many growers with her social media initiative that includes more than 2,500 Twitter followers and 3,000 who do likewise on her blog site.

Pickrels year-in-review of activities included: a membership drive, staffing booths at the second-annual York Ag Expo as well as Husker Harvest Days and the York County Fair, the Yorkfest Parade, attendance at Corn Congress and sponsoring a $500 scholarship for Evan Pohl.

In closing, said Pickrel, I want to thank all of the directors for their time and commitment during the year. There are many opportunities for leadership and involvement in the organization. If you have any interest in becoming more involved or have ideas that our board could incorporate, please visit with me or any of our board members. We can make a difference in the future of our industry.
Latest News

Washington, DC - President Donald J. Trump spoke today with President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi of Egypt to offer condolences to the people of Egypt after the heinous attack on worshippers in Egypts North Sinai province.

President Trump condemned the attack and reiterated that the United States will continue to stand with Egypt in the face of terrorism. The international community cannot tolerate barbaric terrorist groups and must strengthen its efforts to defeat terrorism and extremism in all its forms.
DHAKA: Bangladesh police said on Saturday they had arrested an Islamist militant wanted in connection with the 2015 killing of a US blogger critical of religious extremism.

Deputy police commissioner Masudur Rahman said the man, identified as Arafat Rahman, 24, a member of al Qaeda-inspired militant group Ansar Ullah Bangla Team, was suspected of taking part in the killing of writer Avijit Roy.

Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin, was hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants in February 2015 while returning home with his wife from a Dhaka book fair. Roy`s widow, Rafida Ahmed, was seriously injured.

Rahman said Hossain, who was identified after analysing CCTV footage, was arrested on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka, on Friday night.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh of 160 million people has had a string of deadly attacks targeting bloggers, foreigners and religious minorities.

The most serious recent attack came in July 2016, when gunmen stormed a cafe in the diplomatic quarter of Dhaka and killed 22 people, most of them foreigners.

Police say the Ansar Ullah Bangla Team militant group is behind the murders of more than a dozen secular bloggers and gay rights activists. They believe a sacked army major, who is still at large, was the leader of the group and masterminded the killings.

Al Qaeda and Islamic State have also claimed responsibility for a series of killings over the past few years, including that of Roy.

The government has denied the presence of such groups, blaming domestic militants instead. But security experts say the scale and sophistication of the cafe attack suggested links to a wider network.
Islamabad: The Pakistan government today called in the army after clashes broke out here when police and paramilitary forces cracked down on protesters from hardline religious groups who were blocking a key highway to the capital, leaving over 200 people injured.

The interior ministry issued a statutory regulatory order (SRO) authorising the deployment of the army in aid of the civil administration to control law and order in the Islamabad Capital Territory.

The army would be deployed for an indefinite period to maintain peace in Islamabad, the ministry said.

The government acted under article 245 of the Constitution to deploy the army to control the situation.

The development came hours after Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa spoke to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi over the telephone and discussed the security situation.

The government also ordered suspension of private TV channels and blocked popular social media sites as police and paramilitary personnel fought pitched battles with activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLY) and Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) who torched vehicles and attacked houses of political leaders.

However, the protesters regrouped again and continued their siege of the capital that started about three weeks ago, demanding sacking of Law Minister Zahid Hamid over changes in a law related to the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat (finality of prophethood) oath in the Elections Act 2017.

They alleged the action undermined Islamic beliefs and linked it to blasphemy. The government has already amended the law and restored the original oath but the hardline clerics refused to call of the protests until the minister is sacked.

The siege played havoc with the over half-a-million commuters who daily travel between Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

The government was reluctant to use force, but launched the operation after the Islamabad High Court yesterday issued contempt of court notice against Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads.

Islamabad city magistrate yesterday issued a warning to protesters to disperse by midnight or face consequences.

More than 8,000 personnel of police and paramilitary Rangers and Frontier Constabulary launched the crackdown to clear the Faizabad interchange linking Islamabad with its international airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

In the morning hours, it looked like the police would clear the roads but the protesters regrouped by mid-day to re-occupy the interchange bridge, forcing the authorities to suspend the operation temporarily.

They also pelted stones on security personnel who used batons and teargas shells to disperse them.

According to health officials, more than 200 people, including at least 95 security personnel, were injured in the clashes and shifted to various hospital in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

At least one policeman reportedly died of a head injury, but the government has so far not confirmed the death.

Private media reported that two protesters were also killed in the clashes, but it could not be independently confirmed.

TV footage showed police firing teargas shells and security personnel in riot gear charging at the protesters, dozens of whom were arrested and shifted to various police stations.

Protesters also burnt some vehicles and thrashed several policemen and other security personnel.

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) ordered media houses to stop live coverage and temporarily suspended several channels, including Geo TV, for failing to follow the directive.

Pakistan also blocked popular social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to stop protesters from uploading provocative messages.

Violent protests were also reported from several other cities including Karachi and Lahore.

In the commercial hub of Karachi, at least 28 people were injured, according to local police.

Protesters attacked the house of Law Minister Hamid in Pasroor area in Punjab's Sialkot district but no one was injured as the minister and his family were not present.

The rioters also attacked the house of former interior minister Nisar Ali Khan in Faizabad area of Rawalpindi.

They damaged the gate of his house and tried to enter the premises, but were prevented by police.

Mian Javed Latif, a lawmaker of ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, was thrashed by protesters in Sheikhupura in Punjab and was being treated for injuries in hospital.

In the midst of the challenging law and order situation, Interior Minister Iqbal alleged Indian involvement in the unrest, saying the protesters had "contacted India" and that the government was probing it.

"Why they did it (contacted India), we are looking into it. They (protesters) have inside information and resources that are being used against the state," he said.

Iqbal said the government was implementing the court's orders to disperse the protesters.

"We are trying to clear the area with minimum violence, but we also need to ensure the fundamental rights of people of the twin cities," he said.

A military spokesman said Army Chief General Bajwa had talked to Prime Minister Abbasi and urged for a peaceful solution to the crisis.

"COAS (chief of army staff) telephoned PM. Suggested to handle Islamabad Dharna (sit-in) peacefully avoiding violence from both sides as it is not in national interest and cohesion," spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor tweeted.

Days earlier, the Islamabad High Court had given a 24- hour deadline to the government to clear the roads which was later extended till Thursday.

However, the court yesterday expressed strong displeasure at the government for failing to take action against the protesters.

J-K interlocutor visits militancy-affected families at Talwara camp

Jammu, Nov 25 (PTI) The Centre's special envoy on Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma, today met the migrant families living at Talwara camp in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir who appraised him about their problems and demands.

Over 2,200 migrant families are living at Talwara camp since 1996 when they were forced to flee their homes in Udhampur, Reasi, Doda, Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu region at the height of militancy.

Sharma, who visited Srinagar and Jammu earlier this month, met Kashmiri pandits at Jagti township yesterday and would be in the state for four days.

The Centre's special representative today visited Talwara camp and met militancy-affected people of Jammu region and heard their issues, officials said, adding Sharma also took stock of the amenities at the camp.

According to the residents of the Talwara camp, this was for the first time that an interlocutor visited the camp in the last two decades.

The residents said they welcome the visit of Sharma and hope that all their grievances would be addressed in a time- bound manner.

Accusing the successive central and state governments of meting out "step-motherly treatment" to them, the residents said their demands included construction of flats, better living facilities, renovation of government school building and an employment package for the jobless youth.

They demanded the same facilities being provided to Kashmiri Pandits living in different parts of Jammu.
Dhaka: An international analyst has expressed concern on the repatriation process of the Rohingya refugees saying that the absence of an international body to monitor the implementation is worrisome.

Prof. Ali Riaz of the Department of Politics and Government at Illinois State University in United States emphasised that there are many hurdles to get over before the repatriation starts.

"I`m afraid that within the period stipulated in the signed instrument Myanmar may rush and eventually engage in a small-scale symbolic repatriation to fend off international pressure," The Daily Star quoted Prof. Riaz as saying in an interview with UNB.

Bangladesh and Myanmar on Thursday signed a deal on repatriation after both the countries came to a consensus following a meeting between Foreign Minister A H Mahmood Ali and Myanmar`s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Bangladesh Foreign Ministry said that the Rohingya repatriation process will start soon.

"The return shall commence within two months," Bangladesh foreign ministry said in a statement, adding, "A Joint Working Group will be established within three weeks of signing the `arrangement`."

Prof. Riaz further elaborated that "the instrument may neither ensure repatriation of all Rohingya refugees, nor allow Bangladesh to involve the international community if the process gets stalled.

"More than 620,000 Rohingya have crossed the border into Bangladesh since August, running from a military crackdown that Washington termed as ethnic cleansing.A study prepared by the New York-based Amnesty International charged the Burmese government with promoting and practicing a form of "apartheid" against the Rohingyas in Myanmar`s Rakhine state.
Kolkata: Emphasising the anti-corruption drive initiated by his government, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Saturday said nobody will be spared and even he is ready to go to the jail if he commits something wrong.

"Our CID or vigilance department questioned several former ministers in regards to corruption charges on social welfare, public health. It is not that we have stopped the investigation and it has been continuing. Even I am ready to go to jail, if I commit something wrong," he said at the India Today Conclave East.

He said those sincere in fighting against corruption would admit there was no bias from the Chief Minister`s Office to Panchayat Office.

"There would no discrimination," said Sonowal.

"We have started acting against corruption from the first day of our government and we decided in the cabinet meeting to crack down on all the illegal segments and strengthen the revenue collection department and for which, the revenue collection grew by 21.6 per cent in our regime," he said, adding that once actions against corruption were taken, it would send a message to the people that one "has to work with commitment" otherwise, one "has to face penalty" .

When asked about whether his government would act against Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was with the Congress, and is now a minister in his government, the Chief Minister said: "We do not take any initiative out of prejudice. We cannot act without having any proof against corruption... If anything is proved against anyone, he would be brought to book."

Speaking on the issue of updating Assam National Register of Citizens, Sonowal said: "This is under the supervision of the apex court. Whatever direction will be passed on us, we will carry out. The matter would be again heard on November 29. We want to ensure an error-free, correct National Register of Citizens."
Gaya: An armed squad of banned naxalite outfit CPI-Maoist attacked the base camp of an agency engaged in the construction of Jagdishpur-Haldia gas pipeline and set their many vehicles on fire in Bihar's Gaya district, police said today.

The Maoists yesterday attacked the camp located at Darna village under Aamas police station of the district and indulged in arson in which many vehicles, including three trucks, were set on fire, Patna's Inspector General of Police (IGP) Naiyar Hussnain Khan said.

"The ultras also beat up some staff of the agency," he said.

The over 2,500 km gas pipeline from Jagdishpur in Allahabad district of Uttar Pradesh to Haldia in West Bengal will pass through Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha as well as the two states.

Khan said he has asked Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) (Operations), Gaya, to camp at Aamas to carry out special operations against Maoists in the area.

"City SP Gaya has been asked to submit a report on the incident," the IG said.

"Besides, Aamas police station Station House Officer (SHO) has been suspended with immediate effect," he said.
Agartala: Two more Tripura State Rifles (TSR) personnel were arrested in connection with the killing of journalist Sudip Datta Bhowmick at the para-military force's 2nd battalion headquarters here, the police said on Saturday.

Nayek Amit Debbarma and Rifleman Dharmendra Kumar Singh were arrested last night on the charge of criminal conspiracy for killing journalist Datta Bhowmick at the battalion's headquarters in R K Nagar, DIG (Southern Range) Arindam Nath told PTI.

They were produced before the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate Sharmishtha Mukherjee and remanded to police custody for seven days.

Datta Bhowmick, a senior crime reporter of local Bengali newspaper 'Syandan Patrika', was allegedly shot dead on Tuesday inside the battalion's headquarters, around 15 km from here, when he had gone there to meet TSR commandant Tapan Debbarma, who was arrested on Wednesday.

The journalist's mobile phone was recovered from the possession of the commandant. Tapan Debbarma's personal bodyguard Nandalal Reang was arrested on Tuesday after the killing.

Editor of 'Syandan Patrika' Subal Kumar Dey had yesterday alleged that Dutta Bhowmik, who had written 11 news items about the Tapan Debbarma's misdeeds, was called by the commandant and shot inside the battalion's headquarters.

Tripura Journalist Union (TJU) secretary Pranab Sarkar had said that the Press Council of India (PCI) had taken cognisance of the killing.

Datta Bhowmik is the second journalist to have been killed in the state in two months. In September, TV journalist Shantanu Bhowmick was killed when he had gone to Mandai in West Tripura district, about 20 km from here, to cover a political event organised by the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT).
Panaji: The Portuguese-era diesel-powered ferry boats, that ply in the inland water routes of Goa, will give way to solar energy-backed vessels by June next year, a minister said on Saturday.

The proposal for the new ferry boats will be ready in the next six months and constructing them would take another six months, River Navigation Minister Sudin Dhavalikar said.

He said the Goa government would soon release an advertisement seeking "Expression of Interest" to construct the ferry boats.

"We are yet to take the call on whether to run the services on public-private partnership basis. The solar- powered ferry boats would be ready to be pressed into service by June 2018," he said.

The minister said that officials from the River Navigation department (RND) had visited Kochi in Kerala this week where such solar-powered ferry boats are in use.

Dhavalikar said the state can't imitate the Kochi model of ferry service as the passengers are charged there (in the Kerala town)), while in Goa the services are offered free of cost.

The RND department is currently servicing 20 ferry boat routes with a fleet of 39 vessels, which run on diesel.

While bridges have been constructed across several rivers, people living in the places like Diwar and Chorao islands still rely on these boats to travel to the mainland.
AHMEDABAD: Firing fresh salvo at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of upcoming Gujarat polls, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday called the Gujarat development model as Narendra Modi marketing model.

The Congress leader who is currently on a two-day visit to Gujarat  PM Modi's home turf  questioned BJP's work in the last 22 years in the state.

"Using the power of women in Gujarat, small and medium businesses and utilising the power of youth after educating them is real `Gujarat model`. What has been done by the BJP government in the past 22 years is not Gujarat model, instead it is Narendra Modi marketing model and now it has become Vijay Rupani model," Rahul said.

Asking all to re-define the Gujarat model, Gandhi said, Gujarat doesn`t just belong to 5-10 big industrialists. The state belongs to the farmers, the labourers and the small-scale businessmen."

He also criticised the BJP in Gujarat claiming that PM Modi's tenure as chief minister, Rs 33,000 crore was given away to Tata Motors for its Nano car plant.

PM Modi is expected to address eight rallies in different parts of Saurashtra and south Gujarat between November 27 and 29.

Earlier on Friday, Rahul Gandhi said that Hyderabad Dalit student Rohith Vemula did not commit suicide but he was murdered by the government.

Rohith Vemula took a brave step when he decided to join the university but his career was crushed after that letter from a minister. He was murdered by the Indian government, the Congress leader.

Gujarat elections will be held on December 9 and 14. The counting of votes will take place on December 18.

With ANI Inputs
GURUGRAM: Members of Rajput Karni Sena on Saturday launched a fresh protest against Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 'Padmavati' on Saturday.

In Haryana's Gurugram, the Karni Sena workers protested outside the deputy commissioners' office against the release of the movie.

"Have submitted a memorandum to deputy commissioner to ban 'Padmavati' in Haryana. We want a 100 percent ban and not a conditional ban on the movie," Karni Sena President Mahipal Singh Makrana said in Gurugram today.

Have submitted a memorandum to deputy commissioner to ban #Padmavati in #Haryana. We want a 100% ban and not a conditional ban on the movie: Mahipal Singh Makrana, Karni Sena, President in #Gurugram pic.twitter.com/FBwToW0pEV  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

In another incident, the Mewar Regional General Assembly and the Karni Sena called for a bandh in Rajasthan's Bhilwara today. Apart from Bhilwara, the shutdown was also observed in Mandal and Hamirgarh towns.

During the demonstration, members staged a protest outside a Bhilwara movie theatre. The Sena members, as they continued the campaign against the movie, clashed with the staff of the theatre and created a ruckus inside it.

#Rajasthan: Police baton charged members of Karni Sena while they were taking out protest rallies against #Padmavati film in Bhilwara, markets shut at various places. pic.twitter.com/BeTwMlH0T8  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

The members even took out protest rallies against the movie.

As the protest intensified, the police resorted to lathicharge the protesters and arrested several members of the fringe outfit, said a report.

A week ago, the Karni Sena had vowed to stall the release of the movie and issued a warning that they would not allow it to hit theatres even if changes are made in the film by the makers.

"My party members and I are totally against the film Padmavati's release. Even after the changes, we will not allow it to hit the theatres. We will come out on the streets along with other social organisations and protest against it if it gets a release date," Karni Sena chief Lokendra Singh Kalvi told reporters.

The warning from Kalvi came after the producers of Padmavati reportedly said that they would take a call on its release only after the Censor Board's go-ahead.

Padmavati- based on the life of a Rajput Queen Rani Padmavati - is in the eye of the storm following protests from right-wing groups over alleged tampering with historical facts, a charge which Sanjay Leela Bhansali has categorically denied.

The film features Deepika Padukone in the titular role as Rani Padmavati, alongside Shahid Kapoor as Maharawal Ratan Singh and Ranveer Singh as Sultan Alauddin Khilji.

The release of the film, which was earlier slated for December 1, has now been deferred as the filmmakers are yet to secure a censor certificate.

The Rajput Karni Sena had even called for a Bharat Bandh on December 1 to protest against the controversial film over what it calls ''blatant distortion of facts'' by its makers.
HYDERABAD: The security has been beefed-up in Hyderabad ahead of the upcoming eighth annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit from Nov 28-30.

Some 1,500 foreign delegates are expected to attend the event being organised by Niti Aayog in collaboration with the US administration.

We organised a cordon and search operation in-and-around the Golkonda fort and caught 35 unauthorised people, a senior police officer said.

The highlight of the event is the visit of Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump's daughter, who will address the gathering along with PM Modi.

She is also one of the advisors to the US President.

This is the first time the Summit is being held in South Asia.

The organisers said the Summit would empower Indian entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas, build partnerships, secure funding, and create innovative products.

The theme for this year's summit is Women First, Prosperity for All.

"While we are working at the business level which is the key, we have the resources to do other things, US Consul General Craig Hall said.

"While our economies are growing together to create wealth and prosperity, the two countries can do more together in space, in health, on inventing new technology. That kind of thing can be done," Hall had said.
New Delhi: Hitting back at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for his jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP said on Saturday that its government had succeeded in isolating Pakistan over terrorism, while the UPA treated it as a victim state and let it off lightly.

"What Modi government is facing today and trying to find a resolution to an outcome of is the cumulative acts of omission and commission committed by the Congress party government from the very first PM (Jawaharlal Nehru)," Union Minister Jitendra Singh said.

"Last 2-3 years, the Modi government has followed a very decisive policy based on clarity, conviction and consistency as far as dealing with terror is concerned. And Prime Minister successful foreign outreach has seceded in isolation Pakistan," he added.

On the other hand, BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao accused the Congress and Rahul of "repeatedly betraying the country by pandering to anti-India elements" and cited their alleged questioning of surgical strikes to make his point.

"While the Manmohan Singh government treated Pakistan as a victim state and let it off lightly, PM Modi has succeeded in isolating and cornering Pakistan as 'terroristan' not just in the region but globally and in all international fora like the UN, G20, BRICS, ASEAN, etc," he said.

Rao referred to a number of incidents, including a Congress leader's reference to the Army Chief as a street thug and Gandhi's alleged support to groups that had alleged raised anti-India slogans during the JNU controversy, and said these incidents are symptomatic of the Congress support for anti- India sentiments.

Rahul baba,    

For once,stand with the country & not with Terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks & Ishtar Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. BTW, have you congratulated your "Hafeez Saheb's" on his release yet? @officeofrg https://t.co/ynOianLLYa  GVL Narasimha Rao (@GVLNRAO) November 25, 2017

"The statements of Congress leaders eulogising and praising Burhan Wani and their solidarity for separatists clearly show their sympathies for pro-Pakistan elements. It is a tragedy that a party which ruled India for six decades has compromised with the terrorist groups that have bled India for the sake of appeasing a minority vote bank," he said.

The reaction by BJP came after Rahul took a dig at PM Modi following the release of 2008 Mumbai attacks mastermind and Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest, saying that the former's 'hugplomacy' with US President Donald Trump failed.

Narendrabhai,   . Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed.https://t.co/U8Bg2vlZqw  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 25, 2017

Gandhi was referring to PM Modi's bonhomie with US President Donald Trump during his last visit to the US when the two leaders were seen hugging each other several times.

A Pakistani judicial body had on November 22 ordered the release of Saeed from house arrest. He had been under detention since January 2017.

Rejecting the government's plea to extend his detention for another three months, the Judicial Review Board of Punjab province comprising judges of the Lahore High Court had unanimously ordered Saeed's release on the completion of his 30-day house arrest.

(With ANI and PTI inputs)
London: People who overdose on paracetamol could be helped by a blood test that shows immediately if they are going to suffer liver damage, a study has found.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in the UK say the test - which detects levels of specific molecules in blood ? will help doctors identify which patients need more intense treatment.

It will also help speed the development of new therapies for liver damage by targeting patients most likely to benefit.

The test detects three different molecules in the blood that are associated with liver damage - called miR-122, HMGB1 and FL-K18.

The study, published in the journal Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, measured levels of the three markers in more than 1,000 patients who needed treatment for paracetamol overdose.

They found that the test can accurately predict which patients are going to develop liver problems, and who may need to be treated for longer before they are discharged.

"These new blood tests can identify who will develop liver injury as soon as they first arrive at hospital. This could transform the care of this large, neglected, patient group," said James Dear, from the University of Edinburgh.
New Delhi: In a bid to defuse the situation in Myanmar`s Rakhine state where violence has triggered an outflow of Rohingya refugees, India has sent relief material consisting of 3,000 family relief packs.

"With best wishes from the people of India. Indian Air Force aircraft lands today in Yangon, Myanmar, with 3000 family relief packs consisting of daily essentials including rice, oil, salt, sugar, soap, etc. for distribution amongst the displaced persons in Rakhine state," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted on Friday evening.

More than 600,000 Rohingyas have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since violence erupted in Rakhine late in August.

The minority Rohingya community does not enjoy citizenship in Myanmar and is sparingly given refugee status in Bangladesh.

Human rights monitors accused Myanmar`s military of atrocities against the minority population during its clearance operations following Rohingya militants` August 25 attacks on multiple government posts.

On Thursday, however, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Minister for the Office of the State Counsellor of Myanmar Kyaw Tint Swe signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Nay Pyi Taw for the return of these refugees.

India has maintained that the issue should be handled in a humane manner, development activities should be initiated in Rakhine and conditions should be created for the safe and secure return of the refugees to their homes.

During his visit to Myanmar in September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi shared India`s concerns over the issue in a meeting with that country`s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

India has also sent relief material to Bangladesh to handle the Rohingya refugee crisis.
NEW DELHI: ISRO satellite imageries will soon monitor suspicious vessels and boats venturing into seas as part of the fortification of the country's coastal security, the home ministry said on Friday.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will provide 1,000 transponders by March next year as part of the coastal security ring, being set up to thwart terrorist attacks on the lines of the 26/11 Mumbai carnage.

For boats under 20 metres, satellite monitoring has been proposed, a senior home ministry official said.

India has strengthened the coastal security after the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai which claimed 166 lives. Ten terrorists reached the metropolis from Pakistan sailing through the Arabian Sea.

So far, 19.74 lakh fishermen have enrolled for biometric identity cards and of whom, 18.60 lakhs have been issued identity cards.

For monitoring of boats, automatic identification system would be installed in all boats above 20 metres, while colour coding of boats was being undertaken by coastal states and Union Territories for easier monitoring in the high seas and on the International Maritime Boundary Line, the official said.

India has a coastline of 7,516 km running through Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal and the Union Territories of Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep, Puducherry and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) were developed for dealing with the breach of the International Maritime Boundary Line and SOPs were issued for upgrading security in non-major ports and single point mooring facilities, another official said.

The SOPs were issued to coastal states and Union Territories for better coordination among stakeholders, coastal mapping started in states for entering terrain details, coastal and local police stations, bomb disposal facilities, ports railway stations, bus stands, fishing villages and fish landing points, the official said.

Security of the coastline is vital for the country as there are nuclear stations, missile launching centres, defence and oil installations along the coast.

India's long coastline presents a variety of security concerns that include landing of arms and explosives at isolated spots on the coast, infiltration/ex-filtration of anti-national elements, use of the sea and off-shore islands for criminal activities, smuggling of consumer and intermediate goods through sea, the official said.

Absence of physical barriers and the presence of vital industrial and defence installations also enhance the vulnerability of the coasts to illegal cross-border activities, the official said.
New Delhi: On the eve of the ninth anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Israel on Saturday expressed its condolences and solidarity with the people of India.

In a statement, the Israeli Embassy expressed "deep condolences and solidarity with the people of India on the anniversary of the harrowing terror attack" that was launched on November 26, 2008.

"The tragic events of that day are ingrained in our collective memories. Israel stands by India in remembrance and grief over the senseless loss of life at the hands of terrorists," it stated.

Israeli Ambassador to India Daniel Carmon said in the statement: "Together with India, the people of Israel mourn the victims from countries all over the globe including Israel, embrace their loved ones and the survivors. India and Israel, along with nations of the world, must do everything in their power to eradicate extremism and terrorism for a better future."

Over 160 people were killed and over 300 were injured a when terrorists of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba launched a series of attacks on India`s commercial capital.

During his visit to Israel in July this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Moshe Holtzberg, whose parents, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, were killed when the terrorists attacked the Chabad House in Mumbai. Moshe was two years old then.

Moshe, who was invited by Modi to visit India, has been granted a visa and he is expected to accompany Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to India next year.
Islamabad: Justifying the release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, Pakistan has claimed that it is committed to the implementation of UNSC sanctions regime on terrorists.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder, who has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan yesterday.

He is a UN and US designated terrorist.

India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Saeed's release confirmed once again the lack of seriousness by the Pakistan government in bringing to justice perpetrators of terrorism, including individuals and entities designated by the UN.

"It also appears to be an attempt by the Pakistani system to mainstream proscribed terrorists. Pakistan has not changed its policy of shielding and supporting non-state actors and its true face is visible for all to see," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in New Delhi on Thursday.

Responding to the comments made by the MEA, Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan was committed to the implementation of UNSC 1267 sanctions regime and has taken several steps in this regard.

"The (MEA) spokesperson took exception to self-serving insinuations," he said in statement issues late last night.

Faisal said that courts in Pakistan, pursuant to their constitutional duty, were determined to uphold rule of law and due process for all citizens of Pakistan.

Legal processes were anchored in rule of law, not dictates of politics and posturing, he said.

"It is in the interest of all States to speak and act in a manner that is consistent with the imperatives of adhering to rule of law at the national and international levels," Faisal said.

He said that Pakistan's resolve, actions and successes in the fight against terrorism, terrorist violence and terrorists are unmatched in the world.

"Pakistan condemns and opposes all forms of terrorism by any individual or group," the FO spokesperson said.

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The fire-brand cleric's release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

Saeed was individually designated by the UN under the Security Council Resolution 1267 in December, 2008.
NEW DELHI: President Ram Nath Kovid on Saturday expressed concern over the low representation of women judges in higher judiciary, particularly from the weaker sections of the society.

Of the total 17,000 judges in all the courts, only about 4,700 are women, and their representation is particularly low from the weaker sections, he said.

There is an unacceptably low representation of (women judges from) traditionally weaker sections such as OBCs, SCs & STs, especially in the higher judiciary, ANI quoted President Kovind as saying here.

Without compromising on quality, we need to take long-term measures to remedy this situation.

Like other public institutions, our judiciary too has to be judicious in being representative of the diversity of our country & the breadth & depth of our society, he said.
New Delhi: Ramping up his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's diplomatic posturing, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a jibe at him after Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) terrorist Hafiz Saeed was released from house arrest in Pakistan.

Hafiz Saeed was freed by a Pakistani court earlier this week after nearly a year of being under house arrest. Designated as a global terrorist by the US, Pakistan's pressure on Hafiz Saeed - mastermind of the deadly 26/11 Mumbai attacks - was seen as a result of PM Modi's diplomatic manoeuvres. Rahul Gandhi however, in a tweet, appeared to question the results of these diplomatic policies. "Narendrabhai, baat nahi bani (it did not work out). Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed," he wrote.

PM Modi has been photographed hugging leaders across the world during his foregin trips. His most noticable hugs were the then-Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif in December of 2015 and with US President Donald Trump at the White House in June this year. Just hours before the meeting, the US had declared Syed Salahuddin of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. Hafiz Saeed had already been designated a global terrorist three years before.

Despite rising pressure on Pakistan however, ground realities remain fertile for a flourishing terrorism network here. Earlier in the year, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had urged Pakistan to increase its role in cracking down on home-grown terrorism. India too continues to blame Pakistan for cross-border terrorism and had reacted sharply to Hafiz Saeed being released - calling it outrageous.
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday stressed the need for greater cooperation between central and the state governments so that any differences can be swiftly resolved.

Addressing the 12th meeting of the standing committee of Inter-State Council (ISC) here, he said a number of steps have been taken in recent years by the central government to promote cooperative federalism.

Singh said it is important for everyone to promote the spirit of cooperation with greater zeal and expressed satisfaction over the deliberations held today in a "harmonious and congenial" atmosphere for arriving at consensus on complex issues.

The home minister said the standing committee of the Inter-State Council is being periodically convened to lend speed and purpose to the process of harmonising Centre-state relations.

Singh said Volumes-I & II of the Punchhi?Commission?s report?on Centre-state relations were discussed during the eleventh meeting of the standing committee in April this year and Volumes-VI and VII will be discussed during the next meeting.

The Punchhi Commission was set up by the government under the chairmanship of Justice (Retd) Madan Mohan Punchhi, former Chief Justice of India, in 2005 to look into issues of Centre-state relations keeping in view the changes in the polity and economy of India since the Sarkaria Commission.

It submitted its report in 2010 containing 273 recommendations in 7 volumes.

Singh said the recommendations of the standing committee on Punchhi Commission?s report will then be placed before the Inter-State Council, headed by the Prime Minister.

The subjects discussed at the meeting included matters related to financial transfers from the Centre to the states, Goods and Services Tax, structure and devolution of functions to local bodies and district planning.

Special provisions for Fifth and Sixth Scheduled Areas, maintenance of communal harmony, deployment of central forces, migration issues, police reforms, criminal justice system and other internal security issues were also deliberated.

The Standing Committee at its meeting considered 118 recommendations contained in Volumes-III, IV and V and finalised its recommendations.

?Those who attended the meeting include Union Ministers of finance Arun Jaitley, social justice and empowerment Thaawar Chand Gehlot; chief ministers Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), Naveen Patnaik (Odisha), Vasundhara Raje Scindia (Rajasthan) and Manik Sarkar (Tripura).

Representatives of 30 Union ministries and departments and seven state governments were also present to assist the committee in its deliberations.
New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday accused RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat of raking up the Ram temple issue only to garner votes in favour of the BJP in the upcoming Gujarat Assembly polls and to divert public attention from the real issues concerning the country.

Speaking to reporters here, Congress leader Anand Sharma said the Ayodhya dispute, pending before the Supreme Court, must be decided by the apex court.

He also accused the RSS-BJP combine of fanning divisive issues to "vitiate the atmosphere", while the developmental issues were allegedly ignored.

"People gave votes to (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi to run the country. Modi did not contest the election on this issue (Ram temple). Since the Gujarat election is there, it has been raised.

"The case is pending before the Supreme Court and all (parties to the dispute) are saying that the apex court should decide (on the matter) and that its decision will be followed by all," the Congress' deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha said.

He added that the issue was being raked up at a time when the government should answer the people of the country on job losses and the concerns related to the economy.

"They (BJP) are running away from the real issues because they can't do anything else. Let the court decide it," Sharma said.

Addressing the "Dharma Sansad", a congregation of 2,000 Hindu seers, mutt heads and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leaders from across the country at Udipi in Karnataka yesterday, Bhagwat had said there should be no ambiguity that the Ram temple would be built at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh.

"We will construct it. It is not a populist declaration but a matter of our faith. It will not change," he had said.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief had said that after years of efforts and sacrifice, building the Ram temple seemed possible now, while also noting that the matter was in the court.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases -- on December 9 and 14. Counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.
New Delhi: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has directed all varsities to celebrate November 26 as "Sanvidhan Divas" to commemorate the adoption of the country's Constitution.

From reading out the Preamble in morning assemblies to organising lectures on fundamental duties, the varsities across the country have been asked to conduct a series of activities in the run up to the day.

"Activities like reading out the Preamble to the Constitution during a morning assembly, reading out the fundamental duties, one lecture in every educational institution on the importance of fundamental duties and putting up information on fundamental duties on notice board of colleges (should be carried out)," the UGC said in a communication to all Vice Chancellors.

"You are requested to kindly ensure that these activities are undertaken in your university and in the colleges affiliated with your esteemed university," it added.

UGC is the apex body of higher education responsible for coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of universities in the country.
NEW DELHI: The White House on Saturday strongly condemned the release of Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed from his house arrest in Pakistan and called for his immediate re-arrest and prosecution.

It said there will be repercussions for US-Pakistan relations unless Islamabad took action to detain and charge Saeed.

As President Trump's South Asia policy makes clear, US seeks a constructive relationship with Pakistan but expects decisive action against militant and terrorist groups on Pakistani soil that are a threat to the region. The release of Hafiz Saeed is a step in the wrong direction, the White House said in a statement.

"(Hafiz) Saeeds release, after Pakistans failure to prosecute or charge him, sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistans commitment to (combating) international terrorism and belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil," it said in the statement.

"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistans global reputation," it added.

Saeed, who has an American bounty of $10 million on his head, walked free on Thursday midnight after his 10-month detention ended. The Pakistan government decided against detaining him further in any other case, pushing back against India's efforts to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks to justice.

It was rare for the US government to issue a statement during the Thanksgiving holidays, but the State Department felt that the issue was urgent enough to ignore this tradition.

Hafiz Saeed on Saturday "postponed" a scheduled press conference he had called to respond to the demand by the US for his re-arrest after he was released from detention by Pakistan.

A spokesman of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), an LeT front Saeed heads, said he had "postponed his scheduled presser following riots in the country in the wake of police action against the activists of Tahreek-i-Labaik Pakistan in Islamabad."

Saeed has asked Pakistan to desist from holding peace talks with India. He has reiterated that the US pressured Pakistan to detain him on India's request.
San Francisco: A fake advertisement reportedly led some users searching for "Amazon" on Thanksgiving to a scam website just before the Black Friday shopping frenzy, media rpeorted.

"Some Google users searching for "Amazon" on Thanksgiving were shown a phony ad that redirected to a scam website, one day before the biggest shopping day of the year," CBS News reported late on Friday.

"The advertisement appeared at the top of search results on Google for an unknown number of users for at least part of the day on Thursday," the report added.

Meanwhile, the search engine giant has said that the advertisement violated its policies and has been removed.

"This was an abuse of our platform. We strictly prohibit advertising of illegal activity and have removed these ads and suspended the account," a Google representative was quoted as saying.

The app which redirected users to a scam site purporting to be run by Microsoft`s support team with a message saying the computer was infected with malware, according to CNET.

However, the site`s URL suggested that it was not affiliated with Microsoft.
SRINAGAR: In a shocking incident, a body of an army jawan was on Saturday found in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district.

J&K: Body of 23-year old Territorial Army jawan Irfan Ahmad Dar found in Shopian. Dar was on a vacation & had gone missing yesterday. pic.twitter.com/tiAZ0OH1JS  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

The 23-year old Territorial Army jawan was identified as Ahmad Dar. As reported by news agency ANI, he was on a vacation, had gone missing on Friday.

The jawan, who was found with bullet injuries, has reportedly been killed by suspected terrorists.

Dar was posted with the Engineering Regiment of the army at Gurez near the Line of Control, said a media report.

Meanwhile, the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Mehbooba Mufti condemned the jawan's killing.

Strongly condemn the brutal killing of Irfan Ahmed ,a brave Territorial Army soldier at Shopian.

Such heinous acts will not weaken our resolve to establish peace and normalcy in the valley.  Mehbooba Mufti (@MehboobaMufti) November 25, 2017

Former Chief Minister of the state Omar Abdullah also took to Twitter to express his views on the issue.

The murder of young Irfan Dar is a very tragic & reprehensible act. My unqualified condemnation & heartfelt condolences to his family. https://t.co/fzwlInBjtg  Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) November 25, 2017

Earlier in the month, the district president of BJP youth wing was killed by terrorists in Shopian.

Terrorists slit the throat of BJP's Shopian youth president Gowhar Ahmad Bhat.

Bhat had played a crucial role in organising first BJP state youth convention recently.
Jammu: Demands ranging from rights of PoK refugees to special financial packages for border residents facing frequent Pakistani shelling were highlighted as the Centre's special envoy on Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma, met delegations from different sections of the society here for the second day on Saturday.

The delegations also highlighted issues like alleged discrimination against Jammu, revocation of Article 35A of the Constitution, which gives special rights and privileges to the permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir, and deportation of Rohingya and Bangladeshi Muslims.

Sharma, a former Intelligence Bureau chief, was appointed the Centre's interlocutor on October 23 to hold talks with all stakeholders in an effort to find lasting peace in Kashmir.

After conducting a six-day tour of the state from November 6, Sharma arrived here yesterday on his second visit to the state and will leave for Kashmir tomorrow.

He visited Kashmiri pandit camps here yesterday.

Sharma met several delegations this morning and is scheduled to meet over two dozen more this evening.

"The resolution of issues in Kashmir is not possible without resolving the problems faced by the refugees of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir," senior BJP leader and MLC Charanjeet Singh Khalsa told PTI.

Khalsa, who led a six-member delegation of PoK refugees, said they are the "real victims" who have been waiting for justice for the last seven decades.

Khalsa put forward his demands for benefits at par with Kashmiri pandits, including reservation for their children in various educational institutions.

A delegation of prominent citizens of Jammu led by BJP MLC Ramesh Arora discussed various issues while suggesting that "the problem is within the state and it should not be taken as a Kashmir-oriented problem only.

"No politician should be allowed to cross limits of freedom of speech as prescribed by the Constitution," Arora said, asserting that the aspirations and problems of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh are different.

The delegation submitted a memorandum to Sharma which, among other things, welcomed the government's decision to release stone pelters but cautioned against releasing those who committed "serious offences".

After his first visit to Kashmir Valley, Sharma suggested that cases against 4,500 youths involved in stone pelting for the first time be dropped in a bid to win hearts.

Suggesting to set up a separate department for all types of refugees, Arora demanded necessary measures to put an end to illegal funding coming from outside.

He demanded promotion of local industry saying it has suffered a lot in the past three decades of terrorism.

Jammu Province People?s Forum delegation led by former districts and sessions Judge Pavittat Singh Bhardwaj alleged that the state government was intentionally changing the demography of Jammu by settling Rohingyas and Bangladeshi Muslims here.

"The influx of anti-social and anti-national elements is posing a grave threat to the security of the region," Bhardwaj said in his three-page memorandum, demanding immediate deportation of the foreign immigrants.

The memorandum demanded for repeal of Article 35A saying "it is legally non-existent and a hurdle in development of Jammu."

The forum said the demand of self-rule by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and greater autonomy by the opposition National Conference is not acceptable to the people of Jammu.

Choudhary Kamal Singh, who led a delegation of Border Area People Welfare Forum (BAPWF), highlighted the miseries of the people living along the Line of Control and International border in the state.

He also demanded enhancement of ex-gratia relief to the victims of border firing and suggested that compensation to those killed should be raised to Rs 1 crore.

He also demanded development of Suchetgarh border in Jammu on the pattern of Wagah border as part of promotion of border and religious tourism in the state.

Singh also called for special recruitment packages on the lines of Kashmiri pandits and allotment of land or two-room apartments in safer zones for the border residents.
Srinagar: Militants have killed an off-duty soldier whose body was found on Saturday in Jammu and Kashmir`s Shopian district, an official said.

Defence Ministry spokesman, Colonel Rajesh Kalia said: "Sepoy Irfan Ahmad Dar, 23, a resident of Senzen village in Shopian district, was a serving soldier. He was posted in a Territorial Army unit in Bandipora district."

"He was on leave till November 26. While on leave, he was possibly abducted and killed by terrorists. The matter is being investigated by the police."

Dar`s body, bearing bullet marks, was recovered by the police in Keegam village of Shopian district on Saturday morning.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Sheffin Jahan, the 27-year-old husband of Hadiya, has filed a complaint alleging that attempts are being made to reconvert his wife to Hinduism ahead of her being produced in the Supreme Court on November 27.

Hadiya's case is at the centre of the 'love jihad' controversy in Kerala, which is being probed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

A 25-year-old homoeopathic doctor, Hadiya had converted to Islam last year after her marriage with Sheffin Jahan.

However, her father KM Ashokan approached the Kerala High Court alleging love jihad conspiracy in the marriage of her daughter with a Muslim and claimed that Sheffin has links with terror outfits.

Her father had also alleged that she was forcefully converted to Muslim by her friends.

In May this year, the Kerala High Court annulled Hadiya's marriage to Sheffin and ordered her to return to live with her parents in Kottayam.

She has been living with her parents since then with policemen guarding her round-the-clock outside her house.

On appeal against the High Court's verdict, the Supreme Court initially roped in NIA to probe the circumstances of the marriage. In October, the apex court questioned how could the High Court annul a marriage between two consenting adults.

The court also ordered Hadiya to appear before it by November 27. It also asked the investigative agency to submit their report in this case to the apex court on Monday.

Hadiya will be presented before the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, who will ascertain her view in the open court.

Her father Ashokan said he welcomed the Supreme Court's order and that he will comply with it. "I welcome the order of Supreme Court. I will produce Hadiya before the court on November 27," he said.
KOLKATA: A wild elephant, apparently angered by human intrusion, trampled a tourist on a highway in West Bengal even as onlookers stood helpless.

The clip shows the elephant drags the man with his trunk and tramples him with his feet.

It also shows the elephant kicking the man lying motionless in the middle of the road while people in their vehicles looked on with dismay.

The incident took place in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal.

Watch the video here:
Mumbai: Various events have been organised in Mumbai on Sunday in the memory of martyrs of the 26/11 terror attack on its ninth anniversary.

The Mumbai police have organised `Salutation Ceremony' at Shahid Smarak (martyrs' memorial) at the Police Gymkhana at Marine Lines, said an official.

Maharashtra Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, DGP Satish Mathur, city police commissioner Datta Padsalgikar, ministers, senior bureaucrats, police officials and family members of martyrs would pay homage to those who were killed in the attack.

Hundreds of people are also expected to offer tributes at the city landmarks targeted by Pakistani terrorists, including the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Taj Hotel at the Gateway of India, Cafe Leopold, Rang Bhavan Lane near Cama Hospital and St Xavier's College.

On November 26, 2008 Mumbai was attacked by 10 terrorists of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.

164 people were killed in the terror attack.

(With PTI inputs)
MUMBAI: Union Minister of State (MoS) for Defence Subhash Bhamre slammed Pakistan for encouraging global terrorist Hafiz Saeed.

Bhamre`s statement comes a day after Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief Saeed was released from house arrest.

Hitting out at the Pakistan, the MoS Defence said that political and military leadership of the country is weak.

"The non-state actors like Saeed are being encouraged. He was set free in the name of High Court`s decision. This invited a negative reaction from all over the world. Our government also expressed concern over it," he said in a media briefing.

Bhamre also pitched for eliminating the terrorism and claimed that India is prepared to face the global threat.

"We want to maintain a peaceful relationship with our neighbours. Terrorism has become a global issue. Nothing is in the hand of the political leadership in Pakistan today," he added.

He further cornered the military leadership of the country and accused it of involving in double-speak.

"Their military leadership also speaks something else and does something else at the border. They talk good but the infiltration bid and cross border terrorism have been increasing by the day at the border," he said.

Saeed, accused of masterminding the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, was released from house arrest after a Pakistan judicial body ordered his release.Follwing his release, the United States called on Pakistan to ensure that the JuD chief was arrested and charged for his crimes.
Patna: Unidentified men shot two businessmen on Friday, killing one and injuring another near Chhapra bus stand, in Saran district, 80 km northwest of Patna.

The incident took place when the duo was on their way to the bus stand in Chapra after collecting some money from retailers.

In a separate incident, a 45-year-old man was shot dead in Saran`s Marhaura area.
New Delhi: Ace Indian comedian turned actor Kapil Sharma has a huge fan following not just in the country but across the globe. When the 'Firangi' actor was hosting the popular television show, many a time his NRI fans would throng the sets and take pleasure in sitting as audience members.

We are sure, you all remember his international shows as well. So, the latest buzz about the star comedian is that he is Hollywood bound. Surprised? Well, the actor is in talks to star in an international project titled Comedy Curry by Big Mama Works, a leading daily reported.

However, the deal would be finalised only when the actor flies to the US and meets the production house. Pinkvilla quoted the actor as saying, Ill let everyone know once its finalized. I have received a script from the west and they (makers) are very popular  Big Mama Works. And Ill definitely go there and meet them once since nothing major can be discussed over a telephonic conversation. But itll be a good thing if it materialises.

Kapil will next be seen in 'Firangi' starring Ishita Dutta and Monica Gill in the lead. It is hitting the screens on December 1, 2017 and is helmed by Rajiev Dhingra. On Kapil's international project, the director too has been quoted as saying, Its an internal baat. Kapil has received an offer from Hollywood. A company called Big Mama made a series and they want to make a Hollywood series with Kapil, with one Hollywood star and one Indian star, which will be apt for both the countries and name I guess is Comedy Curry.

It's only a matter of time when we see videshi's going LOL on Kapil's gags!
CHANDIGARH: The Congress workers on Saturday took to streets to protest against the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in Amritsar in Punjab.

Several Congress members including Navjot Singh Sidhu were seen protesting against Centre's implementation of GST across the country.

Congress holds protest against Goods and Services Tax (GST) in Punjab's Amritsar pic.twitter.com/cFFfzLEtQr  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

The members, seen with banners, held rallies and reportedly raised slogans against the central government.

On Friday, state Chief Minister Amarinder Singh wrote to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley seeking immediate withdrawal of 5 percent GST on food stuff in containers intended for free distribution to the economically weaker sections of the society.

Dubbing the imposition of this tax as a 'retrograde step', Amarinder stressed on the need to introduce welfare programmes for the economically weaker sections (EWS) at a time when farmers were reeling under debt and committing suicide, underlining the increasing gap between the rich and the poor.

Citing the draft notification on this new tax, the chief minister said such a tax would have the sole effect of the state government being taxed by the Centre for running welfare schemes, as the states would be required to pay CGST on such items.

Seeking Jaitley's personal intervention in the matter, the CM Singh demanded a review of the decision and rollback of the decision in larger public interest, said an official release.

Meanwhile, further details on the protest held by Congress workers on GST is awaited.
Kolkata: Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and GST Council member Sushil Modi has said the inclusion of real estate in Goods and Services Tax (GST) would take "much longer time" as it is "not that easy" though the council is slated to discuss about it in the next meeting.

"It is up to GST Council to decide. But I think it will take much longer time and it is not that easy. Let other things stabilise in the GST, then petroleum products and real estate," he said, to a query about the possible timing on the inclusion of real estate in the GST ambit, at the India Today Conclave East here.

Modi, who is also Bihar`s Finance Minister, said GST Council would discuss about the real estate issues in the next meeting. In real estate, state levies such as stamp duty, registration charges, and property tax, which is a municipal levy, are currently outside the ambit of GST.

He said every state Finance Minister is concerned to protect their state revenue and the centre assured protection up to 14 per cent of revenue.

After the GST council`s Guwahati meeting in which the GST rates of 178 items were reduced from 28 per cent, the GST is stabilising, Modi said

Refuting the argument that the decision of pruning the number of items from higher bracket of GST rate to lower rates was taken in view of Gujarat assembly elections, he said: "88 per cent of small business in Bihar fall below Rs 1.5 crore (annual turnover). It is not the case for Gujarat."

"In the earlier regime, the small businesses with below Rs 1.5 crore (annual turnover) were exempted from excise duty. Most of the small businesses were below less than Rs 1.5 crore cap. Now, all of them came to net of GST."

On the hardships that the businesses have been facing in filing GST returns, he said, it would take some time to settle in the new indirect tax regime. "Earlier in the VAT (Value Added Tax) system, 40 per cent was online based and the rest was done manually. The GST is end-to-end automation.

In terms of compliance, the system would be simplified and in the coming two-three months, the GST compliance system would be less complicated and it would be easier for small businesses.

The issues related to GST rates on items have been resolved by more than 80 per cent and very few issues are yet to be resolved regarding the tax rates, he said.
CHENNAI: Four school girls were on Friday found dead in a 65-feet deep well in Tamil Nadu's Vellore.

The incident took place near the village Panapakkam.

The girls were identified as Deepa, Manisha, Revathi and Shankari. All of them were studying in class 11 at the Government Girls Higher Secondary School in Panapaakam.

The initial investigation revealed that the girls were missing from school following lunch. The girls reportedly skipped their classes after they were allegedly scolded by their teacher.

The rescue services personnel, later, recovered the bodies of students from the well.
KOLKATA: A fourth Bangladeshi national with suspected Al-Qaeda links has been arrested by Kolkata Police Special Task Force near Sealdah station on Friday. This comes days after three persons, including two suspected members of Bangladesh-based Islamist group Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), were arrested on Tuesday from the Kolkata railway station.

The arrested person has been identified as Sahadat Hossain, 26, a resident of Benapole port, Bangladesh.

The development came after the two ABT operatives, arrested on November 21, admitted that they had illegally infiltrated into the Indian territory from the Bangladesh border.

Hossain allegedly charged a fee of Rs 5000 to crossover India  Bangladesh border. Sources in the Kolkata STF said that he would also ask for aadhaar card and voter id and would often fix a hotel or lodge or a place to stay. He also helped them procure SIM cards besides documents.

Officers of the Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police arrested one more suspected member of banned Bangladeshi group Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), also called Ansar Bangla, on Friday.

The police are on the lookout for two more persons  Shopon Biswas alias Sajol Ahmed alias Moon alias Tamim (23) and Nayan Gazi (28) alias Zafor alias Safik alias Saiful alias Ariful Gazi.

"We are now looking for Gazi. Both Gazi and Biswas are ABT members and had put up at a hotel in Howrah in the first week of October. They may be taking shelter anywhere in India and if anyone gives any lead, will be rewarded suitably," said Murlidhar Sharma, deputy commissioner (STF) told DNA.

ABT, which has direct links with Al-Qaeda network in the Indian subcontinent, is responsible for the brutal attacks and murder of atheist bloggers in Bangladesh between 2013 and 2015. The outfit is banned in Bangladesh.

The third man arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police on November 21 is a local arms dealer.

The BJP has often alleged that the Trinamool Congress's appeasement politics has turned West Bengal into jihadi terror hub providing safe haven for terrorists and extortionists.
Buenos Aires Province: President Mauricio Macri on Friday ordered an inquiry to "know the truth" about what happened to Argentina`s missing submarine, the San Juan, which disappeared with the loss of its 44 crew.

The 34-year-old submarine had gone through a refit and was "in perfect condition," Macri told reporters at the Argentine navy headquarters.

"My commitment is with the truth," he said, adding the tragedy "will require a serious, in-depth investigation that will yield certainty about what has happened."

Argentina`s navy has been fiercely criticized for the way its handling of the operation since first reporting the submarine overdue at its Mar del Plata base on November 16.

The navy took several days to say that the San Juan had reported a problem with its batteries in its final communication on November 15.

Only on Thursday did the navy confirm there had been an explosion on board, which experts said was likely linked to the battery problem.

"Until we have the complete information, we do not have to look for the guilty, to look for those responsible. First we have to have certainty of what happened and why it happened," said Macri.

The center-right leader was speaking as the search for the San Juan shifted from rescue to recovery on Friday, after navy officials lost hope of finding any of the crew alive.

"We have to find the submarine at the bottom of the sea, the area is large, the environment hostile, and the search very difficult," said Argentine navy spokesman Enrique Balbi.

Magistrate Marta Yanez has already begun preliminary investigations into the disaster. She told reporters that unlike a plane, "the submarine does not have a black box. The black box is the submarine," and it would have to be recovered before the causes of the explosion could be known.

Officially the navy has not declared the loss of the crew, but marine experts believe an explosion would have been catastrophic.

Brenda Salva, friend of crew member Damian Tagliapietra, said she had been told by the commander of the Mar del Plata naval base: "They are all dead."

The navy said one sailor escaped the tragedy because he disembarked the submarine at Ushuaia for another mission -- and was replaced by someone else.

A second sailor, aged 26, had been ready to join the ill-fated sub but was exempted because he was finalizing the purchase of a house, the Clarin newspaper reported.

For the relatives of the crew, grief had turned to anger by Friday.

"I want to tell Admiral Marcelo Srur that he is not in a position to be in charge of a force, and to the president (Mauricio Macri), to bring order," said Maria Rosa Belcastro, mother of 38-year-old Lieutenant Fernando Villarreal.

Relatives have focused their anger on the condition of the three-decade-old sub, which had undergone a seven-year refit to extend its service, and the navy`s guardedness since the start of the search operation.

In his comments at the navy headquarters, Macri also paid tribute to the "patriotism, heroism and bravery" of the San Juan`s crew.

"For all of them and their families, my greatest affection," he said.

To the relatives of the missing crew he said: "The pain is great but we are together, and we are going to travel this road all the way together."Argentine press reports on Friday said Macri`s center-right government was preparing to sack navy chief Srur as part of a purge of top brass in a country where the military is distrusted.

Memories are still fresh in Argentina of the 1976-83 military dictatorship responsible for the disappearance of an estimated 30,000 people.

The San Juan tragedy comes a month after Macri`s government was accused of a cover-up in the killing of activist Santiago Maldonado after he was arrested by security forces during an indigenous rights protest.

"The government is considering changing the leadership of the navy. They believe there was negligence in the disappearance of the ARA San Juan and criticize the handling of the situation," the influential Clarin daily said.

One newspaper reported that the navy had taken five days to inform the defense ministry of a battery problem aboard the German-built diesel-electric submarine.

Macri, however, chose Friday to pay tribute to the navy and the armed forces as a whole. "Because they are the ones who have a central responsibility in the life of this country, which is to take care of our country, to take care of all of us," he said.

Depths plummet from 200 meters (650 feet) to more than 3,000 meters on the edge of the Argentine shelf, where the sound of the explosion was picked up by hydro-acoustic sensors used by the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization.

Experts say the sub would begin to break-up once below depths of around 600 meters.

A Russian oceanographic research ship was steaming towards the area on Friday to join the multinational recovery operation involving around a dozen countries.
Ongoing unrest in Islamabad reached a crescendo on Saturday morning when security forces fired rubber bullets - injuring 17 - to disperse an Islamist sit-in that has plunged Pakistan's capital city into chaos in recent weeks. Private TV channels have been told to go off air after many were accused of showing live coverage of security operations.

The protestors have been demanding that Pakistan's law minister Zahid Hamid resign over a hastily-abandoned amendment to the oath that election candidates must swear.

Close to 8,500 elite police and paramilitary troops were deployed to bring order after a sit-in was organised by a hardline group called Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah Pakistan on November 6. A major highway has been blocked by the protestors leading to inconvenience for thousands of commuters.

Local media reports say several protestors on Saturday resorted to throwing stones at security personnel and it is this that may have triggered a retaliatory crackdown.

The sit-in protest though had previously claimed one life when an ambulance carrying an eight-year-old boy could not reach the hospital due to the blockade.

While the group has stuck to its demand, the number of protestors are relatively small. However, there have been bigger ramifications for the political establishment and many say a delay in addressing the issue at hand has resulted in the situation now propelling out of control. According to a Geo TV report, the daily cost of deploying forces to contain the protest stands at 5 million Pakistani rupees.

The protest has also embarrassed the country as a whole because the highway where the sit-in has been organised is part of a vital road network around Pakistan's capital. The inability to either get the protestors to move, or to address their issues has meant that Islamabad has been held hostage by what many in the country regard as an insignificant group.

(With AFP inputs)
CAIRO: The death toll in a devastating militant attack on a mosque on Friday in Egypt's North Sinai has risen to 305 killed, MENA state news agency said on Saturday.

At least 27 children are those among killed in the mosque attack whereas as 128 people have been wounded in the incident.

So far, no group has claimed the responsibility for the assault, but since 2013 Egyptian security forces have battled an Islamic State affiliate in the mainly desert region, and militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers.

Egypt mourned the death of 305 worshippers killed during the attack in the Sinai Peninsula.

Special prayers were planned nationwide a day after gunmen detonated a bomb and mowed down worshippers fleeing the Rawda mosque in North Sinai, where security forces are battling Islamic State group (IS) jihadists.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning and vowed to "respond with brutal force" to the attack, among the deadliest in the world since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

In a televised speech the president pledged to "respond with brutal force", adding that "the army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period".

Earlier in the day, the President held a meeting with government members on the attack in North Sinai, in Cairo.

State media showed images of bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of El Arish, the main city in North Sinai.

Witnesses said the attackers blocked routes to the site using vehicles which they set alight.

Between 10 and 20 armed attackers were involved, Magdy Rizk, who was among the wounded, told AFP.

"They were wearing masks and military uniforms," he said, adding that people living in the area had previously received threats from extremist groups.

Relatives visited victims in a hospital in the city of Ismailia near the Suez Canal where the wounded were taken for treatment, an AFP photographer reported.

The funerals of some of those killed were due to be held on Saturday.

World leaders voiced outrage at the attack. US President Donald Trump denounced on Twitter the "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenceless worshippers".

Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo`s Al-Azhar, Egypt`s highest institution of Sunni Islam, condemned "in the strongest terms this barbaric terrorist attack".There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bloodshed.

The Egypt branch of IS has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and also civilians accused of working with the authorities, in attacks in the north of the Sinai peninsula.

They have also targeted followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Sunni Islam as well as Christians.

A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights IS told AFP that the mosque is known as a place where Sufis gather.

IS views Sufis as heretics for seeking the intercession of saints.

The group has also killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, forcing many to flee the peninsula.

The military has struggled to quell the jihadists who pledged allegiance to IS in November 2014.

The jihadists have since increasingly turned to civilian targets, attacking not only Christians and Sufis but also Bedouin Sinai inhabitants accused of working with the army.

The group also claimed the bombing of a Russian plane that killed all 224 people on board after takeoff from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on October 31, 2015.

Aside from IS, Egypt also faces a threat from Al-Qaeda-aligned jihadists who operate out of neighbouring Libya.

A group calling itself Ansar al-Islam -- Supporters of Islam in Arabic -- claimed an October ambush in Egypt`s the Western Desert that killed at least 16 policemen.

The military later conducted air strikes on the attackers, killing their leader.
CAIRO: Egypt mourned on Saturday as the death toll from a gun and bomb assault at a mosque rose to 305, including children, in the deadliest attack the country has witnessed.

The state prosecution said up to 30 militants in camouflage flying the Islamic State (IS) group`s black banner had surrounded the mosque in North Sinai and proceeded to massacre the worshippers during weekly Friday prayers.

Twenty-seven children were among the dead, it said.

IS, which is conducting a deadly insurgency in the Sinai, has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but it is the main suspect as the mosque is associated with followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Sunni Islam whom it has branded heretics.

Funerals for the victims were held overnight and many were buried unwashed in their bloodied clothes, according to the Islamic burial practices for martyrs, security and medical officials said.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning and vowed to "respond with brutal force" to the attack, among the deadliest in the world since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period," he said in a televised speech.

Hours later Egyptian air force jets pursued the "terrorists and discovered several vehicles used in the terrorist attack, killing those inside near the vicinity of the attack," an army spokesman said in a statement.

The state prosecutor`s office said in a statement that 305 people were killed and 128 wounded in the assault on the mosque roughly 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish.

It said the attackers, with long beards and hair often seen on jihadists, had arrived in five all-terrain vehicles to surround the mosque.

Witnesses said they heard gun shots and explosions before the assailants entered the mosque, according to the prosecution.

One of the wounded, Magdy Rizk, told AFP assailants wore masks and military uniforms, and that extremists had previously threatened people in the area.

Relatives visited victims in hospital in the city of Ismailia near the Suez Canal where the wounded were taken for treatment, an AFP photographer reported.

World leaders voiced outrage. US President Donald Trump denounced on Twitter the "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenceless worshippers".

Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo`s Al-Azhar, Egypt`s highest institution of Sunni Islam, condemned "in the strongest terms this barbaric terrorist attack".The Egypt branch of IS has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and also civilians accused of working with the authorities, in attacks in the north of the Sinai peninsula.

They have also targeted Sufis as well as Christians.

A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights IS told AFP that the mosque is known as a place where Sufis gather.

IS views Sufis as heretics for seeking the intercession of saints.

The group has also killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, forcing many to flee the peninsula.

The military has struggled to quell the jihadists who pledged allegiance to IS in November 2014.

The jihadists have since increasingly turned to civilian targets, attacking not only Christians and Sufis but also Bedouin Sinai inhabitants accused of working with the army.

The group also claimed the bombing of a Russian plane that killed all 224 people on board after takeoff from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on October 31, 2015.

Aside from IS, Egypt also faces a threat from Al-Qaeda-aligned jihadists who operate out of neighbouring Libya.

A group calling itself Ansar al-Islam -- Supporters of Islam in Arabic -- claimed an October ambush in Egypt`s Western Desert that killed at least 16 policemen.

The military later conducted air strikes on the attackers, killing their leader.
A sit-in by hardline religious protesters in Islamabad since November 6 flared up exponentially on Saturday when security officials fired rubber bullets and used tear gas to disperse the group. One person was killed and over 130 are reportedly injured as Pakistan's capital saw one of its worst incidents of unrest in recent years.

Numbering about 2000, the protesters blocked the main road into Islamabad causing traffic snarls and public inconvenience for weeks.

What was initially regarded as an insignificant protest by an insignificant hardline Islamist group Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah Pakistan (TLYRAP) has now become a national crisis of sorts.

But what really is the group protesting about?

At the eye of the storm is Pakistan`s law minister Zahid Hamid who has been accused of a hastily-abandoned amendment to the oath that election candidates must swear. A clause in the oath has been changed, it is alleged by protesters, which is regarding belief in the finality of Prophethood. Demonstrators have linked it to blasphemy - a highly contentious issue in Muslim Pakistan - and claim the oath was softened to enable the participation of Ahmadis, a long-persecuted Islamic minority sect.

It is a charge that Hamid has denied. "God forbid, we cant even think of doing such a thing.

It is a denial protesters have charged at. They say they won't settle for anything less than Hamid's resignation.

Trees have been cut to block roads and tyres have been burnt in what appears a scene straight out of a war movie. While several rounds of negotiations have failed, analysts and critics have nonetheless accused the government of bungling its response to the protest and allowing a minor issue to grow into a headline-grabbing and potentially dangerous situation.

It set an alarming precedent, that "anytime anyone is upset with the government, the capital may be choked and the government will bend its knees," warned Zeeshan Salahuddin of the Center for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad.

Now, protests are not just on the outskirts of Islamabad but springing up in several other cities as well.

(With AFP inputs)
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK: Lawyers for former national security adviser Michael Flynn have halted communications with US President Donald Trump`s legal team, a potentially critical step in the probe into contacts between Trump`s election campaign and Russia, sources familiar with the investigation said on Friday.

Flynn`s lawyer, Robert Kelner, called John Dowd, Trump`s private lawyer, on Wednesday to say the matter had reached a point where the two could no longer could discuss it, two people familiar with the call told Reuters on Friday.

The New York Times first reported that the two sets of lawyers had stopped communicating.

Flynn, a retired Army general, is a central figure in a federal investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into whether Trump aides colluded with alleged Russian efforts to boost his 2016 presidential campaign.

It was not clear whether Kelner made the call because he had negotiated a plea agreement with Mueller for Flynn to cooperate in the probe, or because Flynn had decided to engage with Mueller, said two other sources.

"No one should draw the conclusion that this means anything about General Flynn cooperating against the president," Jay Sekulow, another attorney for Trump, said on Thursday.

Dowd on Friday declined to comment on the matter, as did Peter Carr, Mueller`s spokesman. Kelner also declined to comment. White House officials also have declined to comment.

The cooperation of Flynn, who was a top campaign adviser before becoming Trump`s national security adviser in the White House, would be a major asset in Mueller`s investigation.

In March, as he unsuccessfully sought immunity for his client to testify to House and Senate investigations into the issue, Kelner said, "Mr. Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he certainly wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit."

Two sources familiar with Mueller`s investigation said Flynn may be able to provide insight into three major areas of inquiry.

These are: any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 campaign; money laundering and other possible financial crimes by Trump aides; and whether Trump sought to obstruct justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey in May, as Comey was probing the Trump campaign`s dealings with Russia.

Russia has denied interfering in the election. Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia by his campaign and has called the inquiry a witch hunt.

QUESTIONS FOR FLYNN

Two congressional officials involved in separate probes into the Trump campaign`s contacts with Russia said one key area of investigation is whether Flynn or other advisers to Trump ever suggested U.S. economic sanctions on Russia could be lifted in exchange for favorable business deals.

Possible deals include a proposed commercial nuclear power project involving Russian firms that Flynn in recent years worked to promote to potential clients in the Middle East, sources familiar with the project told Reuters.

"At this point, there is no evidence of an effort to negotiate that kind of deal, but Flynn is near the top of the list of people who probably would know if there was any such effort," said one of the congressional officials, also speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Trump fired Flynn on Feb. 13, after disclosures that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with then Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in December, the month before Trump took office, and later misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

Flynn has acknowledged contacts with Kislyak dating back to 2013, but beyond saying they covered a variety of subjects has said nothing about the content of their conversations during Trump`s campaign and after his election.

Flynn has been under scrutiny by the special counsel in a number of areas, sources familiar with the investigation have said.

Mueller has been investigating whether Flynn knowingly made false statements to the government about his foreign travels, income, and contacts on his security clearance form.

Flynn also has come under scrutiny for work on behalf of Russian clients, and over whether his work for a businessman with ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was lawful.

Mueller has been investigating Flynn`s son, Michael Flynn, Jr.`s, involvement in some of his father`s business dealings in Russia, Turkey, and elsewhere, the sources said, and that could provide a potent additional incentive for Flynn to cooperate.

Barry Coburn, a lawyer for Flynn`s son, declined to comment.
ISLAMABAD: One person has been killed and over 130 people, including security personnel, have been injured in clashes in Pakistan. The police and paramilitary forces launched an operation on Saturday to disperse Islamist protesters who have been occupying main highways leading to the capital Islamabad.

Private television channels in Pakistan have also been asked to go off air in regions around the capital as the police and paramilitary crack down on Islamist protesters.

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority ordered the suspension for violating media regulations and showing live coverage of a security operation. State-run Pakistan Television continued to broadcast, but aired a talk show discussing politics.

MEDIA COVERAGE OF SIT-IN AT FAIZ-E-ABAD, ISLAMABAD pic.twitter.com/YqEGTWpFIR November 25, 2017

Security forces on Saturday fired rubber bullets to disperse an Islamist sit-in that has plunged Pakistan's capital city into chaos in recent weeks.

The protesters have been demanding the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid for the changes made about Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September.

According to a security official, more than 8,000 security personnel took part in the operation against around 2,000 protesters.

The operation was still going on and police were facing stiff resistance from the protesters.
Islamabad: Pakistan and European Union (EU) have wrapped up their anti-terrorism talks here with a joint statement, reiterating their resolve to jointly combat terrorism in all forms and manifestations.

Officials of both sides reaffirmed that terrorism continued to pose a threat to states and societies across the globe, the foreign ministry said in a statement late Friday after the sixth round of Pakistan-EU Political Counter-Terrorism dialogue held on November 23 under the framework of the EU-Pakistan Five-Year Engagement Plan.

Officials discussed the ongoing EU-Pakistan cooperation and collaboration in the area of counter-terrorism and agreed to explore further avenues of mutually agreed cooperation including exchange of best practices in areas such as law enforcement/security, criminal justice and rule of law, countering financing of terrorism and preventing violent extremism.

"The EU side, while reaffirming its solidarity with the victims of terrorist attacks and recognizing successes of Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, expressed support for Pakistan`s continuing efforts in this regard," it said.

The two sides agreed to enhance cooperation in dealing with violent extremism in all its aspects and addressing the root causes of these problems. They also reaffirmed their determination to work together in promoting international cooperation through forums such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Global Counter Terrorism Forum (GCTF).

Both sides also reaffirmed that terrorism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization or ethnic group. They also underlined the importance of enhancing intercultural and inter-religious dialogue and understanding to promote tolerance and harmony, the foreign ministry said.

The EU and Pakistan agreed that the next meeting of the dialogue will take place in Brussels in 2018.
Islamabad: Over 70 people, including security personnel, were injured today in clashes in Pakistan after police and paramilitary forces launched an operation to disperse protesters who have been occupying main highways leading to the capital Islamabad.

The operation was launched after Islamabad High Court (IHC) yesterday issued contempt of court notice against Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal for failing to implement orders to clear the roads

About 2,000 activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR) and the Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) for more than two weeks have been blocking the Islamabad Expressway and Murree Road that connect Islamabad with its only airport and the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

The protesters demand the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid for changes made about Khatm-i-Nabuwwat or finality of prophethood oath in the Elections Act 2017 passed in September.

More than 70 people have been injured. They were shifted to hospital of twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, a health official said.

Those injured include also more than 35 security personnel who were hit by stones thrown by protesters, the official said.

Islamabad city magistrate yesterday issued a warning to protesters to disperse by midnight or face the consequences.

TV footage showed police firing teargas and security personnel in riot gears charging at the protesters.

Dozens of them were arrested and shifted to various police stations.

Some of the security personnel were injured due to stone pelting by protesters.

According to a security official, more than 8,000 security personnel took part in the operation against around 2,000 protesters.

The operation was still going on and police were facing stiff resistance from the protesters.

Earlier, IHC last Friday had given a 24-hour deadline to the government to clear the roads which was later extended till Thursday.

However, the court yesterday expressed strong displeasure at the government for failing to take action against the protesters.
LONDON: Prisoners lodged at a British penitentiary have eaten dozens of cockroaches in a weird contest among the fellow inmates.

The unofficial contest, filmed by fellow inmates, reportedly took place in HMP Birmingham, the Metro reported on Friday.

The clip shows an inmate munching away at the insect after being encouraged by his fellow prisoners.

And after he was done, he said, Im A Celebrity, get me out of HMP Birmingham.

Watch the video here:

The prison officials were reportedly angry after the video was posted on a social media platform by one of the inmates.

Not only is it a criminal offense to be in possession of a mobile phone inside a prison, but they also pose a serious risk to the safety and stability of a prisons regime, the report quoted prison deputy director Andy Sleight as saying.

We have introduced a series measures to detect mobile phones at Birmingham and work closely with West Midlands Police to ensure that those who break the law are prosecuted, he added.
New Delhi: Fearing attacks by Islamic State (IS) on its border with Afghanistan, China is reportedly looking to increase the presence of People's Liberation Army (PLA) to thwart any such attempts by terrorists.

China is believed to be extremely worried about a possible security to its border with Afghanistan and has plans of deploying more troops to combat an apparent rise in IS presence here. According to sources, China is currently in talks with its ambassador in Kabul for border deployment of a mountain brigade on its 76-kilometre border with the country.

Beijing's apprehension comes on the back of several reports that IS is looking to expand its base of operations in Afghanistan and that it could have a detrimental impact on the border areas. The country also fears a threat of Islamist insurgency in the Xinjing region.

IS earlier this year had pledged to 'shed blood like rivers' in China. Oh, you Chinese who do not understand what people say. We are the soldiers of the Caliphate, and we will come to you to clarify to you with the tongues of our weapons, to shed blood like rivers and avenging the oppressed, an IS fighter had said in a video footage released by the group. According to security experts, IS may have put China in their list of targets because of the country's alleged mis-treatment of ethnic minority Muslims, the Uighurs. This is also why the threat of Islamist insurgency in Xinjing - where Uighurs are present in large numbers - is being feared.
Madrid: Venezuelan opposition leader and former metropolitan Mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, has submitted a request for political asylum in Spain.





Even though Ledezma himself, who arrived in Spain a week ago from Colombia after fleeing Venezuela, had stated he had no intention of seeking asylum, Spanish government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo announced on Friday that he had changed his mind, Efe news reported.



"It`s another indication of the Venezuelan people`s struggle to recover their freedom and a normal democracy," the Spanish spokesman said, after noting that the opposition leader himself stated after landing in Madrid, that "today upon arriving in Spain, I feel free".



Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy received Ledezma last Saturday. The Venezuelan opposition leader had been under house arrest in his country since 2015, accused of conspiracy and criminal association.



Ledezma met Rajoy and the latter told him that Spain will continue working bilaterally and in collaboration with its European and Ibero-American partners to help reach a fully democratic solution for Venezuela.



Ledezma censured the situation his country is going through and has called on other opposition leaders to forget about the "personal issues" and certain "inconsistencies" of recent times.



Earlier this week, the opposition majority at Caracas City Hall cancelled Ledezma`s title of metropolitan Mayor after he fled the country.


November 22, 2017

On Nov. 22, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani traveled to the Russian Black Sea city of Sochi for a trilateral meeting with his Russian and Turkish counterparts. The summit has been described as highly important for the future of Syria, particularly given the three leaders call for a Syrian congress to be formed to discuss the future of the war-torn country.

Meanwhile, Iranian parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani, who is on a trip to Turkey, said that the Sochi summit is a "turning point" in the region.

Larijani stated Nov. 21, Iran, Turkey and Russia [have formed] a good and complementary group that if they pursue [this process], [they] can play a more important role in Asia, because the performance of these countries in Syria and the work they did in Syria calmed down the atmosphere and almost destroyed the terrorists.

He added, Now it is time to establish stability in the region, and the Sochi summit is being held with the aim of stabilizing the situation in Syria and is very important.

Meanwhile, Iranian newspapers and news sites described the Sochi meeting as a process leading to a new Middle East.

In this vein, Reformist Shargh daily wrote Nov. 22, This summit indicates that the unity among Iran, Russia and Turkey is more prominent than in the past and these countries are engaged in a joint road map that is designed for Syria, and has been pursued in various summits.  Today, Iran, Turkey and Russia are drawing a road map for the new Middle East.

Moreover, Bahar, a Reformist daily, argued Nov. 22, It seems that the results of all seven rounds of negotiation and summits in Astana will be finalized in the meeting of Turkey, Russia and Irans heads of government in Sochi. In reality, seemingly the three countries are planning to reach important final agreements on the Syrian crisis in this meeting.

Quoting a source, Bahar daily added, Two goals are pursued in the trilateral meeting: First, Tehran, Ankara and Moscow are planning  to state the importance of the achieved agreements and trilateral cooperation between them on Syria. Second, they are attempting to reach a final agreement based on what they have negotiated in Astana, and then design a joint plan for the Geneva negotiations that is agreed on by all sides.

In addition, Reformist Etemad newspaper highlighted the importance of the presence of the Turkish president whose main demand has been the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since the beginning of the crisis in Syria.

[Recep Tayyip] Erdogan will meet today with Rouhani and [Vladimir] Putin, and Iran and Russias leaders will pressure him to [accept] a political solution [for Syria] and the presence of Bashar al-Assad [in the future of Syria]. But Saudi Arabia  is supposed to state its view through choosing the chairman of the Syrian opposition, reported Etemad daily Nov. 22.

Mentioning the Sochi talks, Hossein Sheikh al-Islam, an adviser to Irans foreign minister, told Shargh daily, The developments in Syria are happening [with a view] toward [reaching] a political solution. Following the military victory in Syria against Daesh [Islamic State] and after Daesh forces and terrorisms defeat, their last organized base in the region collapsed. Other opposition to Bashar al-Assad is present in Idlib, and now Syria has stepped toward the political dialogue more than before, and this victory has turned into a political solution.

Meanwhile, conservative Khorasan daily emphasized the presence of the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces in Russia, writing Nov. 22, While Daesh has no official presence in any Syrian cities, and prior to the meeting of Iran, Turkey and Russias leaders, the highest ranking military officials of the three countries  reached an agreement over increasing the cooperation for destroying the remaining terrorists in Syrias post-Daesh [era].  Enhancing the transition process and solving the crisis in Syria was one of the issues discussed. Of note, Iranian Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri left Tehran for Russia on Nov. 20.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 25, ARMENPRESS. Armenia is among the leading countries in the region in terms of the measures against climate change. UNDP Climate Change Project Coordinator Diana Harutyunyan told at a press conference at ARMENPRESS media hall that the works carried out by Armenia were presented in detail during the 23rd conference of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Germany recently.

Armenia is the 14th country that reports on its progress  what it has done for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. We record that compared to the 90s a decline in greenhouse emissions has been recorded in our country in the recent years. Today Armenia has a volume of emissions equal to 30-40% of the 1990s. The task is set so that productions have less emissions, which means that economy will develop but the volume of emissions does not rise, Diana Harutyunyan said. According to her, coal fuel is used in Armenia in a small amount, which is a progress. In addition, 70% of the vehicles in Armenia have turned to compressed gas, while gas is a cleaner fuel than petrol or diesel fuel.

Today Armenia gives great place to solar energy projects. This is also considered a step forward. Armenia has set a task to increase the volume of renewable energy to 50% until 2030, today its 36%, Diana Harutyunyan said.

The conference of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change took place in Germany on November 6-17. Over 16 thousand participants were present, including 9200 state officials, 5500 representatives from UN bodies/agencies and civil society. The main topic was the implementation of Paris agreement.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 25, ARMENPRESS. According to preliminary diagnosis the contractual soldier from the regiment of Vanadzor Garnik Petrosyan dies from heart attack. ARMENPRESS was informed from the investigative department that Garnik Petrosyan went to the medical center of the regiment at 09:30 on November 24 complaining about some problems in the area of the chest.

Garnik Petrosyan was sent to Vanadzor military hospital, but died on the way to the hospital.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 25, ARMENPRESS. Armenia-EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement solves a key issue in terms of Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement, Chairman of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs Gagik Minasyan told the reporters.

The section referring to Nagorno Karabakh in the agreement with the EU clearly states that they support the Minsk process led by the Co-chairs, they say that the conflict should be settled based on the 3 fundamental accords of Helsinki Final Act, which are non use or threat to use force, territorial integrity and right of people to self-determination. Its also recorded here that they take the UN Charter as basis, ARMENPRESS reports the MP saying.

According to Minasyan, reference to the UN Charter is important since that document records that self-determination of nations is a goal, while territorial integrity  just a means. This, according to the lawmaker, affirms the approaches of Armenia and the international community towards the NK conflict settlement, something that Azerbaijan dismisses by all means.

The MP added that the Azerbaijani authorities have poisoned their own public by the ideas that they can be guided by only one principle, while independent brokers, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have emphasized that the settlement can be reached only by applying the package of the principles, but not based only on one of them. Azerbaijanis cannot understand that the entire world sees the settlement of the conflict by the combination of the tree principles, Gagik Minasyan said.

According to Minasyan, the agreements reached in St. Petersburg and Vienna, peace strengthening and ceasefire preservation have been reaffirmed in the two documents signed yesterday, the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement and the Declaration adopted during the Eastern Partnership summit.

We had the fear that the Azerbaijani lobbying could create a situation where we would have to sign that document with reservations, but by the efforts of the foreign ministry of Armenia and personally the President of Armenia it was possible to submit and ratify that document with a content that gives no chances to Azerbaijan, Gagik Minasyan said.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 25, ARMENPRESS. Russian RBK economy-oriented website has referred to the fact that according to Armenia-EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement Armenian companies producing cognac can export drinks to the EU under the name Armenian cognac.

ARMENPRESS reports RBK has citied the section of the agreement that says that cognac is a French protected geographical indication and the agreement with Armenia assumes that the Armenian producers will be able to preserve the name cognac during the coming 25 years and export it under the same conditions as it is now.

RBK also informed that the EU will allocate Armenia with technical and financial support so as the Armenian producers are able to gradually abandon the name cognac and pass to brandy.

The EU will increase financial assistance to Armenia and will provide 160 million Euro during 2017-2020, RBK quoted from the agreement.
The Democrat leadership has made constant, profound and incredible pronouncements that one's supportive vote for Republicans is tantamount to surrendering Democracy forever. Understanding their sincere thinking in their extreme position: How will you still vote on this election day?

Democrat; because the continuance of this Democracy from the existential threat of extreme Republicans is paramount.

Republican; the process of having a choice is the democratic method within what so called "Democracy" does exists.
'He helped so many people': Beloved Edmonton sheikh laid to rest

A much loved cleric in Edmonton's Somali community is being remembered as an inspiring leader who helped countless people across Canada and in Somalia.

Sheikh Osman Barre, 71, died unexpectedly this week. On Friday, an estimated 2,500 women, men and youth packed Al Rashid Mosque for a special sermon in his honour.

"He was an amazing father and role model," said his daughter, Saida Barre, 31. "It's amazing what he's done and who he was and how he left  it touches all of our hearts."

"He helped so many people along the way. This was his life. And I was so happy to see all the people who came to show respect and appreciation for my father," she added.

Connection to community ran deep for Barre. He officiated at weddings and prepared funerals. He supported refugee families and households in crisis.

"My father would be the 911, people would call him first," said Saida, the second youngest of six children.

Taught youth, counselled young inmates

Barre's work with youth stretches back decades. He taught Islamic studies in Edmonton, and previously in British Columbia and Ottawa. He counselled young inmates and helped them reintegrate.

Overseas, people with disabilities received wheelchairs and deaf children went to school, thanks to Barre's efforts. More recently, the grandfather of six began building a school for orphans in Qardho, Puntland, near the village where he grew up.

"I feel like he's left something for us," Saida Barre said. "Going forward we want to be able to dedicate this to our father."

Family members are not the only ones inspired to continue his legacy.

Community advocate Habiba Abdulle connected with Barre through work supporting young offenders.

"He gave a lot of youth empowerment," Abdulle said. "He was the person people turned to when they are in the dark."

The list of praise for her mentor and friend is lengthy and heartfelt: wise, generous and humble. He approached situations with an open heart and mind and found solutions to problems, she said.

Story continues

"He was a person that everybody went to," Abdulle said. "He would just give you his absolute attention and words of encouragement."

It was that kind of encouragement that gave Abdulle the strength to keep going when she sought Barre's guidance through tough times. He reminded her to stay positive, and that helping others makes you strong.

"When you are strong, they're going to be strong as well," she recalled him saying.

Barre discovered his own strength early on. He grew up poor in a small village near Bosaso, Puntland. Losing his father young, he was raised by a blind mother who was "such a fighter," Saida Osman said.

As a teenager, Barre's mother instilled in him the value of education, but more importantly that faith comes first before anything.

"That's what saved him," his daughter said.

The future hurdles would be many: civil war, immigrating to a new country.

Undeterred, Barre pursued a bachelor of arts in Islamic Studies, and then later his masters degree.

"He has been exposed to so many things in his life, but he's always kept such a positive spirit." Saida said, recalling a home filled with books, and the wisdom he passed on to them.

Money was tight, but there was always enough to help someone in need.

"He would always remind us of how blessed we are and how the little things we had growing up were enough," she said. "Because the love that we got from my father, as well as my mother, was enough."

On Friday, as community members prepared to lay to rest Sheikh Osman Barre, it wasn't hard to spot evidence of his life's work blooming in the next generation.

"He was someone you could look up to," Amein Kassim, 15, said of his former mo'alin, which means "teacher" in Somali.

"He would always be there for you."

It's a example Kassim, who plans to study criminal law, is keen to continue.

"We can continue his legacy by making the right decisions and not making mistakes that he taught us not to, and chose the right path and put forth our education," he said.



andrea.huncar@cbc.ca

@andreahuncar
'The system is the same:' Zimbabwe expats gather at Yonge-Dundas Square to protest new president

A small but vocal group gathered at Yonge-Dundas Square Saturday to protest Zimbabwe's new President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The group says Mnangagwa is a continuation of Robert Mugabe, who resigned earlier this week after 37 years in power.

Event organizer Thabo Siziba says his family in Zimbabwe are terrified of their new president.

"People have been under Robert Mugabe hoping that one day when he leaves, his entire system will [crumble]," he said. "Now, like one of the South African papers said, 'Satan has been replaced by Lucifer.'"

Organizers were hoping for 100 people to "stand in solidarity" with the victims of the Gukurahundi massacres in 1983 and 1984, but about 10 showed up at the southwest corner of Yonge and Dundas streets to take part.

In the massacres, about 20,000 civilians were killed. The event gains new relevance today as Mnangagwa was in charge of state security during the mid-'80s and now begins his first days as president of Zimbabwe.

"The new president is still the same old killer," one of the protesters said. "He's not saying anything about the people that he killed."

Thamasnqa Moyo says soldiers were pushing and shoving him as a boy and beat up his grandmother with sticks.

"Now he is the commander in chief," he said. "How [are] people of my region supposed to look at him as their president?"

Mnangagwa was inaugurated as head of state on Friday and promised to work on turning around the country's unemployment numbers and return the country to prosperity.

Zimbabwe's new president was fired earlier this month as vice-president under Mugabe and now takes power after a whirlwind series of events ousted the leader.

Mugabe who succumbed to pressure to quit from the military, the ruling party and massive demonstrations amid fears his unpopular wife would succeed him. At 93, Mugabe was the world's oldest head of state.

"Mugabe left a system. The system is the same," protester Phenias Phiri said. "Nobody has lost anything it's still the same like yesterday."
Reggae in the Fields, Canada's longest running Reggae radio program (since 1976) presents on November 25, 2017, at www.ckcufm.com 3:00 pm-5:30 pm EST: Recent dancehall single releases YOU may still make a pledge online at www.ckcufm.com . active 24 hours. Support Reggae in the Fields and CKCU FM 93.1 Listen on demand by 6:00 pm same day at: https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/132/35095.html
12th meeting of Standing Committee of Inter-State Council held

Published: November 25, 2017

The 12th meeting of Standing Committee of Inter-State Council was held in New Delhi. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the recommendations of the Punchhi Commission on Centre-state relations. The meeting was chaired by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The members of the 12th standing committee include Sushma Swaraj (Minister of External Affairs), Arun Jaitley (Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs), Nitin Gadkari (Minister of Road, Transport and Highways, Shipping, Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation), and Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thaawar Chand Gehlot. The Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh, who are the members of the Standing Committee, also attend the meeting.

The Standing Committee in 12th meeting discussed 118 recommendations contained in Volumes-III, IV and V and finalised its recommendations. This includes Subjects related to centre-state relations like GST, financial transfers from the centre to the states, Police reforms, migration etc.

Volumes-I & II were discussed during the eleventh meeting of the Standing Committee which was held in the month of April 2017, and Volumes-VI and VII will be discussed during the next meeting of the Standing Committee.

Finally, all the recommendations of the standing committee on Punchhi Commissions report will then be placed before the Inter-State Council, headed by the Prime Minister.

About Interstate council

Inter State council is a constitutional body under Article 263 of the constitution. It was established by Presidential Order dated 28th May, 1990 on recommendation of Sarkaria Commission. The purpose of the Interstate council is to facilitate coordination between states and the centre.

Composition of Inter State Council

The Council is headed by Prime Minister (Chairman).

Besides, Chief Ministers of all states and UTs (having legislative Assembly) are its members.

Six Union ministers of cabinet rank nominated by the Prime Minister are also members.

About standing committee of Interstate council

The standing committee of Interstate council is constituted under the chairmanship of Union Home Minister. Apart from Home minister the committee consists of 5 union cabinet ministers and 9 chief Ministers.

The key functions of standing committee include:

To monitor the implementation of decisions taken on the recommendations of the Interstate Council an

To process all matters relating to Centre State Relations before they are taken up for consideration in the inter-State Council.

To consider any other matter referred to it by the Chairman/Interstate Council.

About Punchhi commission

Punchhi commission was constituted by the Central government on April 27, 2007 under the chairmanship of former Chief Justice Madan Mohan Punchhi to look into the new issues of Centre-state relations keeping in view the changes that have taken place in the polity and economy. The Punchhi Commission had submitted its report in 7 volumes with 273 recommendations in 2010.

Month: Current Affairs - November, 2017

Topics: Chhattisgarh  Constitution of India  Inter-State Council  Odisha  Punchhi Commission  Sarkaria Commission

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       :   MLA ,        41 
U.S. President Donald Trump highlighted the struggle of those who have lived and continue to live under oppressive communist regimes, declaring November 7, 2017 a National Day for the Victims of Communism. The date marked 100 years since the Bolshevik Revolution took place in Russia. The Revolution, led by Vladimir Lenin, paved the way for the establishment of the Soviet Union. From that day forward mass killings and purges, man-made famine and the horrors of the infamous Gulag claimed what scholars estimate as 20 to 30 million deaths in the U.S.S.R.

In an official White House statement, President Trump honored victims of all communist regimes, noting that communism is a political philosophy incompatible with liberty, prosperity, and the dignity of human life.

Over the past century, wrote President Trump, Communist totalitarian regimes around the world have killed more than 100 million people and subjected countless more to exploitation, violence, and untold devastation. These movements, under the false pretense of liberation, systematically robbed innocent people of their God-given rights of free worship, freedom of association, and countless other rights we hold sacrosanct. Citizens yearning for freedom were subjugated by the state through the use of coercion, violence, and fear.

The 100 million victims of communism include individuals who have died over the last century at the hands of communist regimes. However, the National Day for the Victims of Communism also honors survivors of communist regimes and those who continue to live under them.

Today, wrote President Trump, We remember those who have died and all who continue to suffer under communism. In their memory and in honor of the indomitable spirit of those who have fought courageously to spread freedom and opportunity around the world, our Nation reaffirms its steadfast resolve to shine the light of liberty for all who yearn for a brighter, freer future.
Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman on Friday, advised Saudi Arabias, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to learn from the assured fate of notorious dictators of the Middle East.

Bahram Ghasemi described recent comments made by Salman as Immature, inconsiderate and garish.

A day earlier, in an interview with New York Times, the Crown Prince had branded the Supreme Leader and Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Republics military forces, ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a new Hitlerin the Middle East.

Retaliating, Ghasemi labelled Bin Salman an adventurist who has even made Saudi Arabias traditional allies uncomfortable.

Now that he has decided to copycat the notorious regional dictators---he should contemplate about their fate as well, Ghasemi reiterated.

Referring to Khamenei, Bin Salman told Thomas L. Friedman, a New York Times op-ed columnist, We learned from Europe that appeasement doesnt work. We dont want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East.

The young Crown Prince who is Saudi Arabias Minister of Defense, as well, insisted that the Islamic Republic, under Khameneis leadership has been expanding its territory and, therefore, it should be confronted.

Currently, he is practically in charge of managing Saudi Arabias internal and foreign affairs.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are mainly populated by Shiites and Wahhabi Sunnis, respectively and have been confronting each other in most military and political crisis in the region.

War of words and proxy battles between the two significantly intensified in recent days following the resignation of Lebanons Prime Minister, Saad Hariri.

Hariri declared his resignation while he was visiting Saudi Arabia and, in the meantime, lambasted the Islamic Republic and Lebanese Hezbollah for their meddling and intervention in Arab countries internal affairs.

Nevertheless, Tehran, as well as a number of prominent figures close to Hariri, blamed Riyadh for his resignation.

Saudi Arabia has categorically dismissed the allegation as unfounded.

Hariri, now back to Lebanon, has shelved his resignation, at least for the moment.

Tehran and Riyadh are currently at loggerheads over Iraq and Syria, accusing each other of meddling in the internal affairs of these countries.

Yemen is another bone of contention between the two regional powers. Riyadh has repeatedly accused Tehran of supporting Houthi rebels who control Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

Recently referring to downfall of IS, Khamenei gloated that the Islamic Republic is ready to assist wherever necessary to confront blasphemy and arrogance which usually are terms used by the Islamic Republics officials exclusively for U.S.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

Trend:

Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 146 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said Nov. 24.

Armenians were using grenade launchers and 60 millimeter mortars.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

Trend:

Azerbaijans State Commission for Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons and Ministry of Defense have appealed to international organizations for returning the body of an Azerbaijani soldier, said the Commission in a message Nov. 25.

The message says that the body of the missing Azerbaijani serviceman, Bahruz Jalilbayli, was found on the contact line at the Armenia-Azerbaijan border in the direction of the Ordubad District of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, near the positions of the Armenian armed forces on Nov. 23.

Currently, the State Commission and the Ministry of Defense continue relevant measures on this issue. The public will be informed.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov.25

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

The Directorate General for Trade of the European Commission issued a warning that the commercial activities of European Union (EU) companies on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan give rise to liability, spokesperson of Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry Hikmet Hajiyev told Trend.

"According to Azerbaijani legislation, EU companies engaging in any commercial activity in Nagorno-Karabakh and/or the surrounding territories, whether directly or through business subsidiaries, risk civil and criminal penalties. It can result in criminal prosecution or other legal action being taken against individuals and businesses in Azerbaijan; it may also affect the ability to travel to Azerbaijan in the future, said the European Commission.

The reference to Azerbaijani legislation in the text of the warning means recognition of Azerbaijans jurisdiction over the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding areas, he added.

Hajiyev said this warning of the European Commission is the first step towards fulfilling Azerbaijans legitimate demands to prevent illegal activities of individuals and legal entities of the EU in the occupied territories.

Continued promotion of our principled position at all levels with the EU, including within the existing formats of dialogues, joint commissions with the EU member states on bilateral trade and economic cooperation, played an important role in achieving the initial result. Continuation of this tendency does not exclude the implementation of next and more effective measures by EU in the future, said Hajiyev.

He pointed out that when the European Union takes political decisions related to Azerbaijan in the context of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, the opinion of the office of the EU Special Representative (EUSR) for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia is taken as a basis.

EUSR gives a report and receives recommendations from the Political and Security Committee (ambassadors of EU member states), which means that regardless of where the warning is published, all EU member states must unequivocally comply with it, added Hajiyev.

Using the abovementioned warning during the discussions in European institutions where Azerbaijan is a member state, can help in promoting the countrys principled position, he said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

Trend:

The territorial integrity of Azerbaijan has the same value as the territorial integrity of any other state and it must be restored, said Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev.

President Aliyev made the remarks addressing a plenary session of the Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels Nov. 24.

The main challenge faced by Azerbaijan is the continuation of Armenias occupation of the Azerbaijani lands, said the president.

It can be said that 20 percent of the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan has been under Armenias occupation for more than 20 years, he noted.

President Aliyev added that as a result of the occupation, more than one million Azerbaijanis became refugees and IDPs, and the ethnic cleansing policy was conducted against Azerbaijanis.

The head of state noted that the UN Security Council adopted four resolutions demanding immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the Azerbaijani territories.

Armenia does not fulfill them, said the president adding that separatism and aggressive separatism are unacceptable in the 21st century.

All forms of separatism must be condemned and a single approach must be applied to all manifestations of separatism, added President Aliyev.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

Trend:

The Mejlis (parliament) of Turkmenistan ratified the agreement on transit and transport cooperation ("Lapis Lazuli") on Saturday, which was signed on the sidelines of the 7th Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan (RECCA VII) in Ashgabat in mid-November.

It is expected that the railways and motorways will connect the city of Torgundi in the Afghan province of Herat with Ashgabat, then with the Caspian port of Turkmenbashi. The corridor will continue to Baku, then through Tbilisi to Ankara with branches to Poti and Batumi, then from Ankara to Istanbul.

The cost of the project, which is aimed at facilitating transit logistics and simplifying customs procedures, is estimated at $ 2 billion.

The project is designed to increase the economic integration of the region and the volume of trade.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 25

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmenistan and Afghanistan held talks on cooperation in the fields of energy and communications, the Turkmen government said in a message Nov. 25.

Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister Maksat Babayev presented his report on the working visit to the neighboring state at a government meeting.

The two countries discussed the issues related to the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan power transmission lines (TAP) with a capacity of 500 kW and the fiber-optic communications line in the neighboring country.

Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov expressed confidence that Afghanistans participation in the implementation of major infrastructure projects is a decisive condition for the restoration of this countrys economy.

Earlier, it was reported that Turkmenistan supplies electricity at a discounted price to the neighboring Afghanistan.

The construction of the Turkmen section of TAPI pipeline began in December 2015, and preparatory work is underway in the Afghan and Pakistani sections.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

Azerbaijan has become a reliable partner, contributing to global energy security, said the countrys Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov.

He made the remarks at the fourth meeting of members of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, according to a message from the Azerbaijani Energy Ministry.

He reminded that for the first time in the world, namely Azerbaijan started producing hydrocarbons both on land and in the sea.

After gaining its independence, continued Shahbazov, Azerbaijan became an initiator of regional and global strategically important energy projects.

The minister noted that this is confirmed by such projects as the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Supsa oil pipelines.

The implementation of the Southern Gas Corridor transnational energy project will allow Azerbaijani gas to enter the European markets and play an important role in ensuring the energy security of the continent, said Shahbazov.

As part of his visit to Bolivia, the Azerbaijani minister also met with his Bolivian counterpart Luis Alberto Sanchez and other participants of the forum.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov.25

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Southern Gas Corridor projects are in the third list of the Projects of Common Interest (PCI), released by the European Commission.

Gas pipeline to the EU from Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, via Georgia and Turkey, currently known as the combination of Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCP), South Caucasus Pipeline Future Expansion (SCPFX) and Trans Anatolia Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), gas pipeline from Greece to Italy via Albania and the Adriatic Sea [currently known as Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP)], including metering and regulating station and compressor station at Nea Messimvria, Greece are in the third list of PCIs.

In total, 173 projects, including 110 electricity and smart grids, 53 gas projects, six oil projects, four cross-border CO2 network projects are included in this list.

The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for the EU. It envisages the transportation of gas from the Caspian region to the European countries through Georgia and Turkey.

At the initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.



As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans Adriatic Pipeline.

TANAP project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijans Shah Deniz field to the western borders of Turkey. The gas will be delivered to Turkey in 2018 and after completion of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline's construction natural gas will be delivered to Europe in early 2020.

The length of TANAP is 1,850 kilometers, with an initial capacity of 16 billion cubic meters of gas. Around six billion cubic meters of this gas is meant to be delivered to Turkey, with the remaining volume to be supplied to Europe.

TAP is a part of the Southern Gas Corridor, which is one of the priority energy projects for the European Union. The project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz Stage 2 to the EU countries.

The pipeline will connect to the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) on the Turkish-Greek border, run through Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Italys south.

TAP will be 878 kilometers in length (Greece 550 kilometers, Albania 215 kilometers, Adriatic Sea 105 kilometers, and Italy 8 kilometers).

TAPs shareholding is comprised of BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Snam S.p.A. (20 percent), Fluxys (19 percent), Enagas (16 percent) and Axpo (5 percent).

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

Trend:

The gas, to be produced at the Azerbaijani fields, will be the only new source of natural gas for Europe and, of course, will significantly change the energy map of the European continent, said Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev.

President Aliyev made the remarks addressing a plenary session of the Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels Nov. 24.

Energy policy is one of the issues, on which Azerbaijan actively cooperates with European institutions, said the president adding that the large-scale energy project, Southern Gas Corridor, is developing successfully.

President Aliyev noted that the cost of this project exceeds $40 billion and will allow Azerbaijan to extract additional volumes of gas and deliver them from the country to European markets.

The 3,500-kilometer pipeline will be a new route, and will transport gas to the European markets from a new source, he said.

Along with the policy of energy security, this is the policy of energy diversification, because the gas, to be produced at the Azerbaijani fields, will be the only new source of natural gas for Europe and, of course, will significantly change the energy map of the European continent, noted the head of state.

The president reminded that the proven gas reserves of Azerbaijan are equal to 2.6 trillion cubic meters and this will be enough to supply natural gas to Europe for decades.

Azerbaijan has put forward an initiative to implement the project of the Southern Gas Corridor, said President Aliyev and thanked the European Commission for its continued support to the project.

This support and funding by the European financial institutions are of great importance for the projects successful implementation, added the head of state.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23

By Leman Zeynalova -Trend:

The current OPEC ceiling is the best option for Iran now and in 2018, Francis Perrin, Senior Fellow at the OCP Policy Center (Rabat) and Senior Research Fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS, Paris), told Trend.

He believes that this is because the present OPEC ceiling does not prevent the country from producing at a high level - about 3.8 million barrels per day of crude oil - and is supporting prices.

The expert recalled that at the end of November 2016 Iran expressed its satisfaction after the OPEC decisions and did not have to reduce its production as OPEC took into account the devastating impact of Western economic sanctions on Iran's oil output and exports between 2012 and the end of 2015.

"Iran is allowed to produce 3.8 million barrels per day of crude, which is its present capacity. Let us also remind that the OPEC production ceiling and national quotas cover crude only and not natural gas liquids, of which Iran is an important producer. It is in the national interest of Iran that OPEC production reductions are maintained and extended," added Perrin.

He pointed out that in a mid-term perspective Iran will of course increase in a very significant way its oil (and gas) production and exports but, for now, the country does support the extension of the OPEC/non-OPEC deal.

As for the the upcoming OPEC meeting to be held Nov.30, the expert said he expects the extension beyond the end of March 2018.

Talking about the progress in the implementation of the OPEC deal, the expert noted that this shouldnt be taken for granted.

"One year ago, at the end of November 2016, OPEC member countries decided to react to the fall in oil prices for the first time since the summer of 2014. They began reducing their oil production in cooperation with 10 non-OPEC countries (including Azerbaijan) from 1 January 2017. These reductions did contribute to the rebalancing of the world oil market and to the rise in oil prices. The price of North Sea Brent was $63.32 per barrel (January 2018 contract) in London on 22 November at the end of the day as against less than $30/b at some point in January 2016. This is a real achievement. The cooperation within OPEC and between OPEC and several non-OPEC countries was successful," he recalled.

Perrin went on to add that after a fall in 2016 non-OPEC production is up again. Moreover, US production is increasing thanks to unconventional oil (shale oil and tight oil) and this trend is a serious threat for OPEC, the expert believes.

"I think that the organization is well aware of the market situation, of the benefits of cooperation and of the risks ahead. My feeling is that OPEC will extend its production reductions beyond the end of March 2018 and it would be a very good decision in the present market configuration," he said.

He noted that basically there are two options for this extension: until the summer of 2018 or until the end of 2018.

"Frankly, the second option would be the best one in order to send a strong message to the markets. But it is clearly not a done deal. Russia seems very cautious on this point and some Russian oil companies prefer the first option. There is some real suspense on this count for the next few days before the meeting of the OPEC Ministerial Conference in Vienna," Perrin believes.

Another interesting issue, according to the expert, is the implementation of OPEC decisions.

"The average conformity level is very high but several member countries do not respect their quotas. This situation can and must be improved," he added.

As for the possibility of considering oil export quotas along with production, the expert said it would make sense but OPEC has a long record discussing production quotas and not export quotas.

"I do not see any change on this point in the near-term, and probably also mid-term, future. The rationale is that if a country decides to reduce its production it will normally also reduce its exports because the priority is first to meet its national demand," he concluded.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov.24

By Leman Zeynalova - Trend:

The possible oil swap deal between Iran and Iraq may not affect the latters conformity with OPEC/non-OPEC oil output cut deal, Alaa K. Alyasri, director general of Iraqs Oil Marketing Company SOMO, told Trend.

"Discussions with Islamic Republic of Iran are still ongoing. However, SOMO will announce the outcome in due course," he said. "Moreover, such agreement, or any other agreement if and when it is finalized, should not affect Iraq's conformity of OPEC guidelines."

Earlier, Iraqi Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaibi through a Facebook post said that Kirkuk will supply about 30,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil to the Kermanshah refinery in western Iran. He also said that the figure may reach 60,000 barrels per day in future.

According to Iranian media reports, Alaa al-Moussawi, director of the oil marketing company Oil Marketing Company SOMO, has also echoed plans for delivering Kirkuks oil to Iran.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh earlier said that his country preferred to swap oil with Iraq. He had mentioned that Kirkuk oil would feed refineries in northern and northwestern Iran, including Arak, Kermanshah, Tehran and Tabriz. In turn, Iran will deliver the same amount of oil to Iraq through its southern borders.

According to Iraqi oil minister, Kirkuks oil will be carried by road tankers and in the meantime, the sides will take measures to construct a pipeline to transfer the Arab countrys oil to Iran.

The Iraqi official has said that the oil swap deal is capable of contributing to the economic situation of the southern ports of the Arab state, as well as strengthening ties with its eastern neighbor, Iran.

Iraq used to ship Kirkuks oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan via a pipeline owned and operated by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). However, following the recent tensions in the region, the Iraqi Oil Ministry took control of the oil filed and started talks with Iranian officials about the provinces oil exports through the Islamic Republic.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

Trend:

Azercell Telecom LLC, the official presenter of iPhone X in Azerbaijan, is pleased to launch the new iPhone X smartphone with an attractive campaign for its customers.

Thus, the subscribers will pay 129 AZN per month to obtain the most modern smartphone and get a Hedsiz pack with 30GB internet data. Those who place preorders from November 24th to November 30th will enjoy free Hedsiz tariff in the first month of purchase.

In order to join the preorder campaign, the subscribers need to place their orders at the official website of Azercell (www.azercell.com) from November 24th to November 30th and visit one of the Customer Services centers of the company from December 1st to December 8th. The number of smartphones is limited.



Notably, iPhone X is the most recent models of iPhone and stand out with new camera system and original design.

Azercell will continue to delight its subscribers with new attractive campaigns and services.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

By Nigar Guliyeva  Trend:

Representatives of railway administrations of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan discussed issues of cooperation on the organization of international passenger transportation, reports the press service of "Uzbekistan Temir Yullari".

The delegations of the JSC "Uzbekistan Temir Yollari" and JSC "Kazakhstan Temir Zholy " mulled the results of joint work in 2017.

The sides also discussed ways to improve the efficiency of work and prospects for the development of passenger communication between the two countries.

The parties reached an agreement on the application of a discount system for the purchase of a travel document (ticket), depending on the period of its preliminary acquisition.

Representatives of the railway administration also discussed a number of other issues of bilateral mutually beneficial cooperation. Following the meeting, there was signed a protocol of the meeting.

Earlier, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan agreed to provide discounts on tariffs for the export of Kazakh grain and flour and transit of Uzbek agricultural products through Kazakhstan's territory.

In 2016, there was a positive dynamics in the growth of freight transportation by rail between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The volume of transportation amounted to 19 million tons.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 25

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

The Parliament of Turkmenistan unanimiously adopted the draft law "On narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, precursors and counteracting their illicit trafficking" at its plenary session Nov.25, the Turkmen government reported.

The document defines the legal basis for the state policy in the sphere of control over the circulation of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and precursors and establishes norms for counteracting their illegal circulation with a view to protecting the health of citizens, public security.

Turkmenistan is a party to international UN Conventions on combating illicit trafficking in narcotic and psychotropic substances, as well as a number of regional and international projects.

Turkmenistan shares border with Afghanistan, the territory of which, according to the UN, is actively used for the cultivation of narcotic drugs.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

By Fatih Karimov Trend:

China, Irans traditional trade partner from the sanctions period, has maintained its position in the post-sanctions era.

China replaced the EU as Irans largest trade partner, as the international sanctions forced the Islamic Republic to shift its trade eastward, and expand economic ties with countries such as China and India.

Almost two years after removal of the international sanctions against Tehran, as a result of the nuclear deal , signed between the Islamic Republic and the six world powers in 2015, China is still Irans top trade partner.

Over 20 percent of Irans non-oil exports went to China in the first seven months of the current fiscal year(March 20-Oct. 22), according to the statistics, released  by Trade Promotion Organization of Iran (TPOI).

Irans total non-oil exports (including gas condensate) in the first seven months of current Iranian fiscal year (started March 20, 2017) stood at $24.71 billion, which indicates a fall of 2.2 percent, year-on-year.

During the period, Iran exported $5.022 billion worth of goods to China, 2 percent more, compared to the same period of the preceding year.

Iran also exported $4.013 billion worth of goods to Iraq, which marks 16.2 percent of Iran's total exports value. Irans exports to Iraq registered a fall by 11 percent.

The UAE ($3.471 billion), South Korea (with $2.444 billion), Afghanistan ($1.584 billion), India ($1.542 billion), Turkey ($1.062 billion), Pakistan ($450 million), Oman($340 million), Indonesia($295 million), Thailand ($294 million), Taiwan($282 million) and Japan($262 million) were the other top importers of Iranian goods.

The exports to Turkey, which was fourth target of Irans non-oil exports last fiscal year, had registered a huge fall by 58 percent.

The countrys exports to the UAE, Japan and Oman also registered fall of 16, 63 and 14 percent. Irans exports to India also witnessed a fall by 6 percent in terms of value, year on year.

Meanwhile, exports to Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan witnessed rise by 298, 62 and 18 percent, respectively.

Irans exports to South Korea and Afghanistan had also increased by 25 percent and 16 percent, respectively.

Five countries, including China, Iraq, UAE, South Korea and Afghanistan have imported 67 percent of Iran's total non-oil goods (including gas condensate) in terms of value, in the 7-month period.

Two European countries, Italy and Germany were also among top destination of Irans non-oil exports.

Germany imported $165 million worth of goods from Iran in the period and stood at 18th place, meanwhile Italy ranked 16th with $188 million worth of imports.

Irans exports to Germany witnessed a rise by 7 percent in terms of value, however Italys imports from the Islamic Republic decreased by 39 percent.
At least 305 people were killed when a horde of militants detonated bombs at a mosque in Egypt before unleashing a torrent of bullets at fleeing worshipers, New York Daily news reported.

The carefully coordinated assault in the Sinai Peninsula marked the deadliest terror attack in the nations modern history.

Scores of Sufi Muslims were finishing Friday prayers when a bomb ripped through the Al Rawda mosque in Bir al-Abed sometime midday, officials and witnesses said.

Panicked worshipers sprinted outside only to be met by some 40 gunmen lying in wait, some of them in four-wheel-drive vehicles.

The mosque has two exits, and both were covered by the terrorists, who were parked in cars and started firing at everyone who tried to escape, a survivor told the Los Angeles Times.

The militants blocked off the scene by blowing up cars in the road.

They also lingered outside the mosque to target first-responders, firing several rounds at the first wave of ambulances that eventually arrived, witnesses said.

They were shooting at people as they left the mosque, a witness told Reuters. They were shooting at the ambulances too.

One witness told the New York Times that he helped collect the bodies of 25 children.

The attack left a trail of corpses scattered around the grounds of the mosque.

The scene inside was just as grim. Photos showed dozens of bodies laid out on the carpeted floor, most of them covered in white sheets stained red with blood.

It was a horrible scene. There were bodies everywhere, a witness who identified himself as Mahmoud told the Los Angeles Times.

The militants appeared to have slipped away before police arrived  and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
In total, the UN estimates that more than 30,000 migrants have died in recent years trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to Europe, Sputnik reported.

"Crossing the Mediterranean to Europe is 'by far the worlds deadliest' journey for migrants, with at least 33,761 reported to have died or gone missing between 2000 and 2017," the UN said in a press release announcing the publication of the report.

"Shutting the shorter and less dangerous routes can open longer and more dangerous routes, thus increasing the likelihood of dying at sea," European University Institute Professor and author of the UN report Philippe Fargues wrote.

The report titled "Four Decades of Cross-Mediterranean Undocumented Migration to Europe" was produced by the UN-affiliated International Organization for Migration, the release said.

The document revealed that more than 2.5 million migrants have crossed the Mediterranean illegaly since the 1970s.
KYODO NEWS - Nov 24, 2017 - 22:57 | All

Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands attended a ceremony on Friday celebrating the cultural and economic exchanges that took place between her country and Japan during feudal times even when the latter closed its doors to the world.

The princess joined Japan's Prince Akishino and his wife Princess Kiko in crossing a just-completed bridge linking the southwestern Japan city of Nagasaki with Dejima, a man-made island which served as the country's only gateway to Europe for about 200 years until the mid-19th century.

"The Netherlands was the only window for Japan to access Western culture during the period when the country adopted an isolationist policy," the prince said in a ceremony prior to crossing the bridge. About 800 people attended the festivities.

The Dutch princess said the experience of crossing the bridge is a walk in the footsteps of her ancestors that also fosters the future friendship between the two countries.

The 38.5-meter bridge was built about 130 years after the original span was removed.

Dejima was built in 1636 by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Housing an office of Dutch East India Company, Dejima functioned as an exclusive economic zone from where the two countries traded products.
KYODO NEWS - Nov 25, 2017 - 15:22 | All, Feature

The government is considering proposing Japanese students in Okinawa be given allotted places at American schools located in U.S. military bases to improve their English language skills and better prepare them for university, government sources said Friday.

Tokyo is hoping the proposed step will improve the relatively high unemployment rate among Okinawa's youth and cool long-running tensions between the central and local governments over the planned relocation of a U.S. military base within the island prefecture, the sources said.

Foreign Minister Taro Kono will unveil the education plan during his two-day trip to Okinawa from Dec. 1. He will request cooperation with Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga in person and separately with Lt. Gen. Lawrence Nicholson, the top commander of U.S. military forces in Okinawa.

The idea to integrate students into the U.S. military's education system in Okinawa could see a backlash from islanders concerned that it could further entrench the U.S. bases in the prefecture, making it even more difficult for them to be moved.

Okinawa hosts the bulk of U.S. military facilities in Japan and a spate of crimes committed by soldiers and base personnel as well as accidents involving military aircraft have angered many residents.

The level of unemployment in Okinawa, especially among young people, is relatively high compared to many other prefectures across the country. The unemployment rate for those aged 20 to 24 hit 8 percent in fiscal 2016, above the prefecture's 4.2-percent average.

According to the U.S. Department of State, there are two high schools on premises controlled by the U.S. military in Okinawa while most other facilities have elementary and junior high schools for children of soldiers and military personnel.

Currently, Japanese children are permitted to study at the American administered schools if there is vacancy but few have been accepted.
We say this again and again and we are saying it yet again- we hate boring and done to death travel trails! So this time we picked Turkmenistan- a fascinating country by the side of Caspian Sea in Central Asia and a former part of the erstwhile USSR, to explore. A fellow traveller who visited this country recently opened our eyes to this part of the world..and werent we impressed! This little known country is every off-beat travellers OMG destination and has a lot to offer. Since we have so much to tell you about Turkmenistan, we better start with few compelling REASONS why you have to make it to this placelike now!

Door to Hell

How can travellers be away from drama and this led us to door to hell in Derweze that looks and sounds like it comes straight from a Sci-fi Hollywood flick! In 1971 Soviet geologists discovered what they believed to be a huge oil deposit here but as soon as the drilling began they realized it was a gas deposit. A big section of the area collapsed releasing gas from underneath. Geologists assumed it to be poisonous and set the place on fire (Yeah and you thought only you held patent for utterly moronic stunts!). Well, 44 years on and the fire is still burning. This is one sight you will not get to see anywhere in the world so it easily makes the first reason why you should be here! Also, rumors have been afloat that the government of Turkmenistan might order a closure of this crater. So hurry guys!

The Fresh Appeal

From the very new to seriously ancient times - 7th Millennium BC that is! If ever Armageddon came, it would look like the city of Gonur Tepe. Okie so dont get spooked, this one is a marvellous piece of archaeological discoveries! Gonur Tepe was the center of flourishing trade in Margiana region which covered over 3000 square Kilometres and numerous settlements on the banks of Murgab River. This place is about a three hour long drive from City of Mary. It is believed to be the birthplace of Zoroastrian religion and happens to be the 5th oldest civilisation in the world! Soak in some astonishing sites of old temples, palaces, earthenware, bronze artefacts and stone carvings strewn across this site. It was discovered in 1972 by a Greek-Russian Archaeologist.

Desert Reserve- Seriously!

Before we came across this one, we did believe that deserts were mostly dead, had a few camels here and there with lovely golden dunes that were always worth a long gaze. Repetek nature reserve changes the way you see deserts. Right in the middle of Karakum desert about 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) from Turkmenabat, this reserve is spread over an area of 135 kilometers (84 miles). And with one and half thousand species including invertebrates and other small animals, this place is teeming with life. There is vegetation of shrubs and thorny plants too to spread some colors around the dunes. With such myriad life forms thriving on desert sands this place was accorded the status of Biosphere Preserve by UNESCO in 1979. Shifting sands, dry lake beds and lot of info on climatic history of this region make it worth a definite visit. For us BTW that gazing across golden sand dunes for hours still tops the list!

Shopping at Tolkuchka- Basar

If you are someone who loves to get a close view of the local culture and lifestyle of natives on your travel then Tolkuchka Basar or Bazaar is a must-visit for you. Tolkuchka Bazaar is full of colour, sounds, smells, aroma and wonder for the first timers. This place is a mix of flea market, fair, pop up bazaar and street shopping  all in one! There is a festive mood to this place and a lot of drama with vendors putting the spread of their goods on the ground and frantic bargaining with the customers. It is also a great place for you to pick sovereigns for your friends! Right from cattle, carpets to clothing, everything is on sale here and everything finds a buyer too! Local traders, men and women dressed in ethnic clothing add to the fervor of Tollkuchka Bazaar.
Shares of C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. CHRW have performed well, outperforming the industry in a year. The stock has rallied 6.9%, as against a 5.1% decline of the industry it belongs to.





C.H. Robinson has an impressive product portfolio and aims to expand globally through mergers. To this end, the company has made a series of acquisitions in the recent past. The latest acquisition of Milgram & Company was completed in August. The buyout is likely to boost the companys global presence and will be accretive in 2018.



Last year, the company acquired APC Logistics. This deal has boosted C.H. Robinsons presence in the Australia-New Zealand region. Also, it acquired internet-based freight broking enterprise, Freightquote.com, in January 2015, besides previously acquiring the logistics service providers  Phoenix International and Apreo Logistics S.A. These buyouts are expected to boost the companys growth in the long run.



Additionally, C.H. Robinson has an impressive earnings history having surpassed estimates in three of the preceding four quarters. Notably, the company also performed well in the third quarter reporting better-than-expected revenues and earnings per share. The top line also improved on a year-over-year basis, driven by volume growth across all transportation services of the company.



Furthermore, the companys efforts to reward shareholders through dividends and share buybacks raise optimism in the stock. In December 2016, the companys board approved a 4.7% hike in its quarterly cash dividend.



In view of these positives, we believe it is wise to retain C.H. Robinson stock for now.



Zacks Rank & Key Picks



C.H. Robinson carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Transportation sector are International Consolidated Airlines Group SA ICAGY, SkyWest, Inc. SKYW and Deutsche Lufthansa AG DLAKY. While International Consolidated Airlines and SkyWest sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Deutsche Lufthansa holds a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



Shares of International Consolidated Airlines, SkyWest and Deutsche Lufthansa have surged more than 42%, 35% and 100%, respectively, in a year.



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Mr Bezos started Amazon from his basement in Seattle before it later became one of the world's biggest online retailers: Getty Images

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has become the worlds newest and only $100bn billionaire  thanks to a $2.4bn surge in his personal fortune on the run up to Black Friday.

His wealth shot into newfound stratospheres after share prices for the online retailer soared by 2pc on the back of optimism that the companys value would grow during the spending bonanza.

It came as sales over the internet overall shot up by nearly a fifth (18.4%) on the day - as shoppers snapped up bargains - compared to the same 24-hour period last year, figures show.

The hike in Mr Bezoss wealth had soared by $32.6bn this year up until Thursday, with the extra $2.4bn landing in his pocket ahead of the consumer frenzy, and secures his position as the world's richest man.

He is trailed by Bill Gates - who saw his fortune reach above $100bn in 1996, the first in the world - when the value of Microsoft surged on Wall Street.

His current wealth is estimated at $86.8bn, but analysts say he would be worth $150bn had he not given away some 700 million in shares in Microsoft and $2.9bn to charity after re-inventing himself as a philanthropist.

But Mr Bezos has to date has not given away any of his wealth, but in June he tweeted that he wanted the help people with his fortune and was looking for ideas for how to share it.

He wrote: Im thinking I want much of my philanthropic activity to be helping people in the here and now  short term  at the intersection of urgent need and lasting impact.

His post to his followers of more than 220,000 quickly turned up more than 22,000 likes and almost 50,000 comments with suggestions as to how Mr Bezos could make a difference.

To date the Amazon founder has not revealed if he has shared any of his fortune.

Mr Bezos started Amazon in his basement in Seattle 22 years ago, after he quit his job as a hedge fund manager in New York.

The company is currently one of worlds leading online retailers, and in April of this year was valued at $430bn, according to CNN.
Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) has ambitious plans. Earlier this year, founder Jack Ma compared the company to sovereign nations by noting that the e-commerce giant's goal is to become the fifth largest economy in the world by 2036. By then, Ma expects that Alibaba will have created 100 million jobs and support 10 million businesses on its platform.

While investors may not fully share Ma's vision, Alibaba has a powerful investment thesis. First, the company and its enigmatic founder are reminiscent of Amazon.com, arguably the most disruptive company ever. Second, Alibaba's home market is China, a country of over 1.2 billion people that's estimated to eclipse the United States and become the largest economy before 2030. Both demographically and operationally, the company seems destined for success.

Man grocery shopping while looking at his smartphone.

Image source: Getty Images.

Recently, the high-flying e-commerce platform did something unconventional to continue its torrid growth and to fend off current retail megaretailer Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT): It went into the boring grocery industry, and through the traditional brick-and-mortar channel, no less.

Alibaba goes grocery shopping, literally

Alibaba announced that it has a $2.9 billion stake in Sun Art Retail Group, good for a 36% share of the company. Sun Art has roughly 400 hypermarkets, a retail concept that carries both groceries and traditional department-store goods reminiscent of Wal-Mart's Supercenters.

According to a report from Bain & Company and Kantar Worldpanel, hypermarket stores have recently shown signs of strain. For fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), hypermarkets account for 20.9% of total sales -- down from 24.1% in 2012 because of an annualized growth rate of 1.1%, which is lower than the overall FMCG growth rate. Meanwhile, e-commerce has grown from 2.1% to 7% of total FMCG sales, because of 40.8% annualized growth from 2012 to 2016.

However, what this gives Alibaba are tremendous synergies and the ability to create an omnichannel experience, much as Wal-Mart has done with its grocery pickup service and as Amazon appears to be building with its purchase of Whole Foods Market.

Story continues

Wal-Mart already has an online grocery presence

While Alibaba is looking for a way to integrate its online platform with its new grocery business, Wal-Mart is already there through its partnership with Chinese retailer JD.com. During the company's third-quarter earnings call, CEO Doug McMillon noted (emphasis mine):

In China, we saw solid net sales growth of 4%. The team continues to do a nice job of improving key categories like fresh and consumables. We also further expanded the number of Wal-Mart stores in China that offer grocery delivery in less than one hour through the JD Daojia delivery platform, to nearly 140 stores.

After the quarter, Wal-Mart further aligned itself with JD.com, with my colleague Leo Sun reporting that the two allowed members to receive the same discounts and benefits in time for the important Singles Day.

China's not a winner-take-all market

Even if Alibaba is able to steal market share away from Wal-Mart, China's demographics are supportive of both retailers. In 2016, China's National Bureau of Statistics reported that retail sales increased 9.6%. However, online sales surged 26.2% year on year. At that time, only 53.1% of China was online. Look for both Wal-Mart and Alibaba to continue to post strong growth in the Middle Kingdom as more people come online and the middle class continues to expand.

More From The Motley Fool

Jamal Carnette, CFA owns Amazon.com. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon.com and JD.com. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Oil price has recovered from historical lows of February 2016. From $26.21 a barrel  the lowest since 2003  crude jumped to $58.02 yesterday. With the problem of supply glut easing, big energy players are generating more cashflows for shareholders.

One such promising stock is BP Plc BP, which has plenty of upside potential.

Lucrative Repurchase Program

Recently, the British energy giant recommenced a share buy-back program, keeping with the plans announced along with the third-quarter 2017 earnings report. This makes BP the first leading energy player in Europe to recommence buybacks after 2014, when repurchases were stalled as crude price started falling on supply glut woes.

As per the program, BP will repurchase no more than 1.96 billion shares between Nov 15 and the companys annual general meeting in 2018. The companys strong financials, supported by crude price recovery, are backing this decision.

Impressive Earnings History

During the third quarter, BP reported adjusted earnings of 57 cents per American Depositary Share (ADS) on a replacement cost basis, excluding non-operating items. The bottom line not only surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 50 cents but was way higher than the year-ago 30 cents. Moreover, the improving financial position shows that the firm has come a long way since the 2010 oil spill incident in the Macondo Prospect.

The company has an impressive earnings surprise history as it has managed to surpass the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the last four quarters, the average positive earnings surprise being 26.8%.

Strong Potential to Generate Cash Flow

Investors should also know that BP, sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), has strong potential to generate cash flow. Companies with strong operations generally have high free cash flow yield, indicating that the amount of money investors are generating is more than the amount spent to buy the stock.

Our proprietary model shows that free cash flow yield for BP, belonging to the Zacks Oil International Integrated industry, is 14.6%, way higher than 5.6% of the S&P 500 index.

Story continues

Healthy Pricing Chart

Such developments are reflected in BPs impressive price chart. Over the prior six months, the integrated energy firm has rallied 9.3%, outperforming the S&P 500 indexs 7.6%.

Other Stocks to Consider

Other top-ranked players in the energy space are China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation SNP, Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. NOG and ExxonMobil Corporation XOM. China Petroleum and Northern Oil sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), while ExxonMobil carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Headquartered in Beijing, China Petroleum is a leading integrated energy player. The company will likely witness year-over-year earnings growth of 59.1% in 2017.

Based in Minnetonka, MN, Northern Oil is an upstream energy player. The companys 2017 revenues are estimated to grow almost 44%.

Headquartered in Irving, TX, ExxonMobil is the largest publicly traded energy firm. The company managed to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the last four quarters, the average positive earnings surprise being 8.81%.

More Stock News: This Is Bigger than the iPhone!

It could become the mother of all technological revolutions. Apple sold a mere 1 billion iPhones in 10 years but a new breakthrough is expected to generate more than 27 billion devices in just 3 years, creating a $1.7 trillion market.

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Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 9, 2017) - B2Gold Corp. (TSX: BTO) (NYSE AMERICAN: BTG) (NSX: B2G) ("B2Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce positive drill results from the Fekola Property and Fekola Regional targets in Mali, West Africa. All dollar figures are in United States dollars unless otherwise indicated.

For 2017, B2Gold has budgeted over $15 million for exploration in Mali. To date, exploration programs remain on budget and set to complete over 111,000 metres of exploration drilling between the Fekola Property and the Fekola Regional program.

Highlights

This news release should be read in conjunction with the Fekola and Fekola North Extension schematic long section (see below or on our website at www.b2gold.com/news/2017/)

New drill results in the upper portion of the Fekola North Extension (formerly Kiwi zone) indicate it is part of the Fekola zone and has significantly extended mineralization to depth

New drill results above the deeper portion of the Fekola North Extension (formerly Fekola Deeps) have intersected wide zones of good-grade mineralization, closer to surface, and up to 600 metres north of the Fekola resource pit boundary

These results, combined with the deeper, mineralized intercepts in the upper portion of the Fekola North Extension area indicate that these zones are one contiguous mineralized zone that could dramatically increase the extent of Fekola mineralization. In addition, the mineralization remains open to the north beyond the new drill results

Drill results from the infill-drilling program, within the Fekola resource pit boundary, continue to convert inferred resources to indicated, confirming the potential addition of 900,000 ounces of gold

Fekola North Extension Zones:

New drilling below the upper portion of the Fekola North Extension and above the deeper portion of the Fekola North Extension in a previously untested area have significantly extended mineralization to the north and depth.

Story continues

Highlights of drill results from the upper portion of the Fekola North Extension (formerly Kiwi zone):

Target HoleID From (m) To (m) Length (m) Gold (g/t) Fekola N. Ext FSER_023 131.00 147.00 16.00 1.35 Fekola N. Ext FSER_161 97.00 114.00 17.00 1.38 Fekola N. Ext FSER_169 129.00 142.00 13.00 1.17 Fekola N. Ext FSER_186 193.00 213.00 20.00 1.09 Fekola N. Ext FSER_191 93.00 115.00 22.00 1.07 Fekola N. Ext FSER_195 198.10 213.00 14.90 1.56 Fekola N. Ext FSER_212* 24.00 48.00 24.00 1.28 Fekola N. Ext FSER_211* 25.00 46.00 21.00 1.22 Fekola N. Ext FKD_194 276.00 300.00 24.00 1.04 Fekola N. Ext FKD_195 247.75 257.1 9.35 2.06

Note: Intervals reported above are >0.6 g/t gold, with a maximum of 5 m internal waste. Intervals indicated by (*) occur within defined resource areas and are reported >1.0 g/t gold, with a maximum of 3 m internal waste. All intervals are reported as core lengths

New drilling above the deeper portion of the Fekola Northern Extension (formerly Fekola Deeps) has intercepted wide zones of good-grade mineralization in two holes, 226 and 227, 60 metres to the north of the Fekola resource boundary.

In addition, two holes, 228 and 229, drilled above the Fekola upper portion of the Fekola North Extension, and up to 600 metres to the north of the resource pit boundary, intersected wide zones of good-grade mineralization, with mineralization remaining open to the north. These holes indicate the potential to extend good-grade mineralization much further to the north of the Fekola resource pit boundary.

These results also indicate that the deeper portion of the Fekola Northern Extension zone extends closer to surface and indicate continuity with mineralization from the deeper drilling results from the upper portion of the Fekola North Extension.

New drill results to the north of the Fekola resource pit boundary above the deeper portion of the Fekola North Extension:

Target HoleID From (m) To (m) Length (m) Gold (g/t) Fekola N. Ext FKD_229 352.00 386.85 34.85 1.60 Fekola N. Ext FKD_228 318.00 355.00 37.00 2.82 Fekola N. Ext FKD_226 277.90 341.50 63.60 3.37

and 303.75 325.00 21.25 4.92 Fekola N. Ext FKD_227 216.00 239.20 23.20 1.57

and 260.60 308.00 47.40 1.92 Fekola N. Ext FKD_230 183.00 195.40 12.40 1.90

and 233.00 251.90 18.90 1.24

Previously released drill results from the deeper portion (formerly Fekola Deeps):

Target Hole ID From (m) To (m) Length (m) Gold (g/t) Fekola N. Ext FKD_148 421.30 454.30 33.00 2.90 Fekola N. Ext incl. 440.30 446.30 6.00 7.97 Fekola N. Ext FKD_179 488.60 507.60 19.00 3.88 Fekola N. Ext and 515.50 529.19 13.69 1.95 Fekola N. Ext FKD_181 425.20 470.58 45.38 4.77 Fekola N. Ext incl. 425.20 434.60 9.40 10.70 Fekola N. Ext and 438.60 444.80 6.20 9.23 Fekola N. Ext FKD_182 457.30 473.10 15.80 2.98 Fekola N. Ext incl. 467.25 472.10 4.85 4.41 Fekola N. Ext FKD_183 445.10 479.30 34.20 3.27 Fekola N. Ext incl. 463.00 471.00 8.00 8.33 Fekola N. Ext FKD_184 490.00 515.05 25.05 2.37 Fekola N. Ext incl. 499.70 508.00 8.30 3.54 Fekola N. Ext* FKD_220 465.10 505.10 40.00 2.78 Fekola N. Ext* FKD_225 351.55 389.15 37.60 2.98

Note: *Indicates two new holes drilled 50 metres north of the Fekola resource pit boundary

Fekola Resource Infill Drilling:

Infill drilling is ongoing at Fekola, to continue to convert inferred resources to indicated, within the resource pit boundary (see table of drill results below).

The resource pit boundary extends beyond the Fekola reserve pit boundary by approximately 50 metres below the reserve, 150 metres to the north, down plunge, and approximately 600 metres to the north (formerly Kiwi zone), from surface to 50 metres depth.

The resource pit extension contains 720,000 ounces in the indicated category and 180,000 ounces in the inferred category, for a total potential increase of 900,000 ounces of gold.

Highlights from Fekola Resource Infill Drilling:

Target Hole ID From (m) To (m) Length (m) Gold (g/t) Fekola Infill FSER_183 119.00 136.00 17.00 1.26 Fekola Infill FKD_231 207.00 248.00 41.00 2.31 Fekola Infill FKD_232 287.00 315.00 28.00 1.77 Fekola Infill FKD_147 397.20 479.20 82.00 3.09 Fekola Infill FKRD_054 331.20 386.20 55.00 2.28 Fekola Infill FKRD_055 295.30 347.30 52.00 2.44

Note: Italics indicate previously-released holes

To view an enhanced version of the Fekola and Fekola North Extension schematic long section, please visit: http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3906/30368_a1510224700176_72.jpg



Fekola Regional Program Drill Results  Anaconda/Adder and Mamba Zones:

Earlier this year, B2Gold announced the maiden mineral resource for Anaconda, part of the Fekola regional exploration program (see B2Gold news release, June 15, 2017). In 2017, over 56,000 metres of combined auger, aircore, reverse circulation and diamond drilling have been completed in this area in an effort to increase the saprolite-hosted Anaconda resource and to further explore for underlying zones of bedrock-hosted mineralization.

Anaconda Area:

Recent drilling has confirmed and extended the shallow saprolite inferred mineral resource and has discovered three well-mineralized bedrock (sulphide) zones (the saprolite zone) beneath the Anaconda, Adder and Mamba zones, which indicate the potential for large Fekola-style mineralized zones.

Bedrock drill holes MSD_127 (20.20 m at 6.05 g/t gold) and MSD_132 (24.50 m at 4.02 g/t gold) are indications of highly prospective structures beneath Anaconda and Mamba, respectively. The intersection in MSD_132 occurs approximately 160 metres down-dip from the saprolite-hosted intersection in MSR_360 (46 m at 1.94 g/t gold), suggesting there is significant down-dip continuity along this structure. Follow up drilling is currently underway in both target areas. These holes and other selected results from the recent bedrock drilling are presented by target area in the table below:

Target Hole ID From (m) To (m) Length (m) Gold (g/t) Adder MSD_119 45.60 66.00 20.40 2.03 Adder MSD_118 117.00 121.10 4.10 6.21 Anaconda MSR_427 90.00 115.00 25.00 1.64 Anaconda MSD_127 32.00 52.20 20.20 6.05 Anaconda MSD_114 52.00 59.50 7.50 2.85 Anaconda MSD_113 33.00 79.60 46.60 1.62 Anaconda MSD_111 89.50 95.45 5.95 7.11 Anaconda MSR_283 30.00 44.00 14.00 2.28 Mamba MSD_132 116.48 139.70 23.22 1.31 Mamba MSD_132 218.50 243.00 24.50 4.02 Mamba MSD_132 253.20 276.00 22.80 1.04 Mamba MSR_404 13.00 17.00 4.00 7.32 Mamba MSR_404 105.00 148.00 43.00 0.59 Mamba MSR_357 113.00 134.00 21.00 1.67

Note: Bedrock-hosted intervals reported above are >0.6 g/t gold, with a maximum of 5 m internal waste. Intervals reported are core lengths

Drilling is ongoing to further test the Fekola North Extension zone, infill the Fekola resource, and further test the new bedrock mineralization beneath the Anaconda, Adder and Mamba saprolite resource. The Company is planning additional, aggressive exploration drilling programs on these targets in 2018.

Fekola Ramp Up and Gold Production

On September 25, 2017, the Company announced that it had completed construction of the Fekola mill on budget and commenced ore processing at the Fekola Mine, more than three months ahead of schedule. In September, Fekola produced 6,340 ounces of in-circuit gold inventory (nil ounces budgeted). Commissioning of the mill is ongoing and is expected to ramp up quickly to achieve commercial production by the end of November 2017, four months ahead of the original schedule and one month ahead of the revised schedule.

In October 2017, the first full month of ramp up and pre-commercial production, the Fekola mill produced a total of 33,946 ounces of gold in the month (budget of 15,100 ounces). For 2017, the Company is projecting gold production from Fekola to exceed the upper range of its reforecast production guidance range of between 50,000 and 55,000 ounces. 2018 is scheduled to be the first full year of gold production at Fekola, yielding 400,000 to 410,000 ounces for the year at a cash operating cost of approximately $354 per ounce of gold and AISC of $609 per ounce of gold.

Based on current assumptions and updates to B2Gold's current year guidance and long-term mine plans, the Company is projecting consolidated gold production in 2017 of between 530,000 and 570,000 ounces. In 2018, production is forecast to increase significantly to between 925,000 and 975,000 ounces with the inclusion of the anticipated first full year of commercial production at Fekola.

About B2Gold Corp.

Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, B2Gold Corp. is one of the fastest-growing intermediate gold producers in the world. Founded in 2007, today, B2Gold has five operating gold mines and numerous exploration and development projects in various countries including Nicaragua, the Philippines, Namibia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Colombia and Finland.

B2Gold's Quality Assurance/Quality Control

The primary laboratories for Fekola are SGS Laboratories in Bamako, Mali and Bureau Veritas Laboratories in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. At each lab, samples are prepared and analyzed using 50g fire assay with atomic absorption finish and/or gravimetric finish. Umpire assays are used to monitor lab performance monthly.

Quality assurance and quality control ("QA/QC") procedures include the systematic insertion of blanks, standards and duplicates into the core, reverse circulation and aircore drilling sample strings. The results of the control samples are evaluated on a regular basis with batches re-analyzed and/or resubmitted as needed. All results stated in this announcement have passed B2Gold's quality assurance and quality control protocols.

Tom Garagan, Senior Vice President of Exploration of B2Gold, a qualified person under NI 43-101, has approved the exploration information contained in this news release.

ON BEHALF OF B2GOLD CORP.

"Clive T. Johnson"

President and Chief Executive Officer

For more information on B2Gold please visit the Company website at www.b2gold.com or contact:

Ian MacLean

Vice President, Investor Relations

604-681-8371

imaclean@b2gold.com

Katie Bromley

Manager, Investor Relations & Public Relations

604-681-8371

kbromley@b2gold.com

The Toronto Stock Exchange and the NYSE American LLC neither approve nor disapprove the information contained in this news release.

This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation, including projections, estimates and other statements regarding future financial and operational performance, events, production, costs, including projected cash operating costs and AISC, capital expenditures, budgets and growth, production estimates and guidance, including the Company's projected gold production of between 530,000 to 570,000 ounces in 2017 and between 925,000 and 975,000 ounces in 2018 and gold production at Fekola exceeding the upper range of its production guidance of between 50,000 to 55,000 ounces in 2017 and producing 400,000 to 410,000 ounces in 2018 at a cash operating cost of approximately $354 per ounce of gold and AISC of $609 per ounce of gold; and statements regarding anticipated exploration, development, construction, production, permitting and other activities and achievements of the Company, including but not limited to: achieving commercial production at the Fekola Mine by the end of November, 2017; mineralization in the upper portion of the Fekola North Extension zone being one continuous mineralized zone and the potential to increase the extent of Fekola mineralization; the potential to extend good grade mineralization much further north from the Fekola resource pit boundary; results indicating the deeper portion of the Fekola Northern Extension zone extending closer to surface and indicating continuity with mineralization from the deeper drilling results from the upper portion of the Fekola North Extension; the potential for additional large Fekola style mineralized zones; the potential for highly prospective structures beneath the Anaconda and Mamba zones; the resource pit extension containing 720,000 ounces in the indicated category and 280,000 ounces in the inferred category, for a total potential increase of 900,000 ounces of gold; the conversion of inferred mineral resources to indicated mineral resources; the projections included in existing technical reports, economic assessments and feasibility studies; the results of anticipated or potential new technical reports and studies, including the potential findings and conclusions thereof. Estimates of mineral resources and reserves are also forward-looking statements because they constitute projections regarding the amount of minerals that may be encountered in the future and/or the anticipated economics of production, should a production decision be made. All statements in this news release that address events or developments that we expect to occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, although not always, identified by words such as "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "project", "target", "potential", "schedule", "forecast", "budget", "estimate", "intend" or "believe" and similar expressions or their negative connotations, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could", "should" or "might" occur. All such forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made. Forward-looking statements necessarily involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond B2Gold's control, including risks and assumptions associated with the volatility of metal prices and our common shares; risks and dangers inherent in exploration, development and mining activities; uncertainty of reserve and resource estimates; risk of not achieving production, cost or other estimates; risk that actual production, development plans and costs differ materially from the estimates in our feasibility studies; risks related to hedging activities and ore purchase commitments; the ability to obtain and maintain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for mining activities; uncertainty about the outcome of negotiations with the Government of Mali; risks related to environmental regulations or hazards and compliance with complex regulations associated with mining activities; the ability to replace mineral reserves and identify acquisition opportunities; unknown liabilities of companies acquired by B2Gold; ability to successfully integrate new acquisitions; fluctuations in exchange rates; availability of financing; risks relating to financing and debt; risks related to operations in foreign and developing countries and compliance with foreign laws; risks related to remote operations and the availability of adequate infrastructure, fluctuations in price and availability of energy and other inputs necessary for mining operations; shortages or cost increases in necessary equipment, supplies and labour; regulatory, political and country risks; risks related to reliance upon contractors, third parties and joint venture partners; challenges to title or surface rights; dependence on key personnel and ability to attract and retain skilled personnel; the risk of an uninsurable or uninsured loss; adverse climate and weather conditions; litigation risk; competition with other mining companies; changes in tax laws; community support for our operations including risks related to strikes and the halting of such operations from time to time; risks related to failures of information systems or information security threats; ability to maintain adequate internal control over financial reporting as required by law; risks relating to compliance with anti-corruption laws; as well as other factors identified and as described in more detail under the heading "Risk Factors" in B2Gold's most recent Annual Information Form and B2Gold's other filings with Canadian securities regulators and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), which may be viewed at www.sedar.com and www.sec.gov , respectively (the "Websites"). The list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect the Company's forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, no assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do, what benefits or liabilities B2Gold will derive therefrom. The Company's forward-looking statements reflect current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's beliefs, expectations or opinions should change other than as required by applicable law. The Company's forward-looking statements are based on the applicable assumptions and factors management considers reasonable as of the date hereof, based on the information available to management at such time. These assumptions and factors include, but are not limited to, assumptions and factors related to the Company's ability to carry on current and future operations, including development and exploration activities; the timing, extent, duration and economic viability of such operations, including any mineral resources or reserves identified thereby; the accuracy and reliability of estimates, projections, forecasts, studies and assessments; the Company's ability to meet or achieve estimates, projections and forecasts; the availability and cost of inputs; the price and market for outputs, including gold; the timely receipt of necessary approvals or permits; the ability to meet current and future obligations; the ability to obtain timely financing on reasonable terms when required; the current and future social, economic and political conditions and other assumptions and factors generally associated with the mining industry. For the reasons set forth above, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements.

Non-IFRS Measures

This news release includes certain terms or performance measures commonly used in the mining industry that are not defined under International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"), including "cash operating costs" and "all-in sustaining costs" (or "AISC"). Non-IFRS measures do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS, and therefore they may not be comparable to similar measures employed by other companies. The data presented is intended to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS and should be read in conjunction with B2Gold's consolidated financial statements. Readers should refer to B2Gold's management discussion and analysis, available on the Websites , under the heading "Non-IFRS Measures" for a more detailed discussion of how B2Gold calculates such measures and reconciliation of certain measures to IFRS terms.

Cautionary Note to United States Investors

The Company has prepared its public disclosures in accordance with Canadian securities laws, which differ in certain respects from U.S. securities laws. In particular, this news release may refer to "mineral resources", "measured mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" or "inferred mineral resources". While these categories of mineralization are recognized and required by Canadian securities laws, they are not recognized by the SEC and are not normally permitted to be disclosed in SEC filings by U.S. companies. U.S. investors are cautioned not to assume that any part of a "mineral resource", "measured mineral resource", "indicated mineral resource" or "inferred mineral resource" will ever be converted into a "reserve." In addition, "reserves" reported by the Company under Canadian standards may not qualify as reserves under SEC standards. Under SEC standards, mineralization may not be classified as a "reserve" unless the mineralization can be economically and legally extracted or produced at the time the "reserve" determination is made. Accordingly, information contained or referenced in this news release containing descriptions of the Company's mineral deposits may not be compatible to similar information made public by U.S. companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements of U.S. federal securities laws, rules and regulations. "Inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Historical results or feasibility models presented herein are not guarantees or expectations of future performance.
Following the supply glut and lackluster global demand, oil prices remained low for more than three years. From 2014, crude oil went from over $100 a barrel to under $30. However, the market has recovered from these historic lows with prices finally rebounding to more than $50 a barrel.

Recently, crude prices reached a more than two-year high of above $57. The commodity-pricing environment has been improving, courtesy of tightening supplies, rising demand and OPEC-deal extension talks. (Read More)

Steady increase in oil prices and strong earnings performance has shifted focus to the energy sector. In this quarter, of the 15 oil companies that make up the broader Zacks industry, 10 have already reported earnings, with seven beating their Zacks Consensus Estimate.

The three oil behemoths, Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM, BP plc BP and PetroChina Company Ltd. PTR might be different from one another fundamentally, but all of them reported encouraging third-quarter earnings results. In this respect, we have performed a comparative analysis of the key players in the Oil International Integrated industry to pick the best investment option based on their earnings scorecard.

While, both Exxon Mobil and PetroChina have a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), BP has a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Third-Quarter Earnings

Exxon Mobil posted strong third-quarter 2017 results, courtesy of increased price realizations from liquids and gas and improved margins at the refinery business. Exxon Mobil reported earnings of 93 cents per share, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 89 cents. Also, the bottom line improved from the year-ago quarter level of 63 cents.

Total revenues in the quarter increased to $66,165 million from $58,677 million in the year-ago quarter. Moreover, the top line surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $63,508 million. (Read More)

BP reported strong third-quarter 2017 earnings, courtesy of higher realized prices of liquid and natural gas. Contribution from key upstream projects also supported the upside.

Story continues

The British energy giant reported third-quarter adjusted earnings of 57 cents per American Depositary Share (ADS) on a replacement cost basis, excluding non-operating items. The bottom line surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 50 cents and the year-ago earnings of 30 cents. Total revenues were $60,808 million, up from $48,043 million in the year-ago quarter. (Read More)

PetroChina announced third-quarter 2017 earnings of RMB 4,690 million or RMB 0.03 per diluted share compared with RMB 1,200 million or RMB 0.01 per diluted share a year earlier.

The positive comparisons of this Chinese oil giant can be primarily attributable to higher oil prices and strict cost control, which helped its biggest unit  exploration and production  to swing to profitability. Moreover, Chinas dominant oil and gas producers total revenues for the three months under consideration rose 17.1% from the year-ago period to RMB 481,795 million.

Despite a year-over-year increase in earnings per diluted share, PetroChinas earnings per ADR of 45 cents missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a cent on deteriorating results at its refining unit. (Read More)

Price Performance

In a year, Exxon Mobil and PetroChina have underperformed the industry, which has an average gain of 10.3%. Both Exxon Mobil and PetroChina have registered a decline of 6.9% and 0.1%, respectively. In contrast, BP rose 16.1%, handily beating both ExxonMobil and PetroChina, and the industry. On the price front, BP emerges a clear winner.

Earnings History and Estimate Revisions

All the three oil and energy giants delivered average positive earnings surprises. Exxon Mobil, BP and PetroChina beat by 8.8%, 26.8% and 27.4%, respectively.

In the last 30 days, Exxon Mobils current-quarter estimates increased by a cent to 99 cents per share, while that for the current year advanced from $3.56 to $3.62. NVIDIAs current-quarter estimates remained unchanged at 94 cents per share, while current-year estimates increased from $2.39 to $2.48 per share.

BPs current-year estimates climbed from $1.58 to $1.80 per share. It witnessed better current-year estimate revisions than the other two. BP also holds an edge over the other two with respect to the quarter-over-quarter earnings growth.

Valuation

EV-to-EBITDA (enterprise value to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) is often used to value oil and gas stocks. This is because of the significant debt levels and high depreciation and amortization expenses of these companies.

Coming to the three stocks under consideration, Exxon Mobil and BP are overvalued than the industry, which has an EV/EBITDA ratio of 6.46. However, Exxon Mobil is also pricier than the other two stocks, since it has an EV/EBITDA ratio of 8.88, higher than BP and PetroChinas readings of 6.89 and 4.39, respectively. Clearly, PetroChina is undervalued than Exxon Mobil and BP, as well as the industry.

Conclusion

In our comparative analysis, Exxon Mobil and BP are more expensive than PetroChina. However, when considering theprice performance, BP holds an edge over Exxon Mobil and PetroChina. Moreover, BP has witnessed quarter-over-quarter earnings growth of more than 100%, which is considerably better than both Exxon Mobil and PetroChina.

Additionally, when we take a more comprehensive look at the companies previous earnings performance and estimate revisions, BP is clearly the best among the three oil giants. Moreover, BP became the first European oil major to resume share repurchase since the 2014 oil slump. Further, BP holds better Zacks Rank than the other two. This is why we can conclude that BP is a better investment proposition than Exxon Mobil and PetroChina.

More Stock News: Bigger than the iPhone!

It could become the mother of all technological revolutions. Apple sold a mere 1 billion iPhones in 10 years but a new breakthrough is expected to generate more than 27 billion devices in just 3 years, creating a $1.7 trillion market.

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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
As if Black Friday werent already stressful enough for shoppers and retail employees, major department store chain Macys appears to be experiencing credit and debit card system failures around the United States.

UPDATE: 6:00 p.m.  Issues with the credit card system at Macys stores have been resolved, a company spokesperson told HuffPost in a statement.

The delays we experienced this afternoon were due to a capacity-related issue that caused some transactions to take longer to process, the statement read. We do not anticipate any additional delays.

PREVIOUSLY:

As if Black Friday werent already stressful enough, shoppers are saying that Macys, the major department store chain, appears to be experiencing credit and debit card system problems around the United States.

While dozens of Macys shoppers on social media said they werent able to pay at all, the company downplayed the problems in a statement to HuffPost.

It is taking longer than usual to process some credit and gift cards in our stores, but we have added additional associates to the floor [and] are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, Macys statement read.

Early Friday afternoon, social media was flooded with reports from frustrated shoppers in multiple states who said they had stood in long lines only to find out they could only pay for purchases in cash. Since its common for people not to carry much cash, that meant many shoppers effectively couldnt pay at all.

A nightmare for Black Friday customers at @Macys in St. Charles, Mo. - debt and credit card systems are not working. Shoppers are getting angry!  pic.twitter.com/w2smk06uit  Rudy Harper (@RudyKCTV5) November 24, 2017

Hey @Macys just left $300 of items on counter because your credit card machines are down at State St Chicago. Can't even look up Macy's account. What. A. Joke. #macys #blackfridayfail  Meghan McCollough (@meghan_mcc) November 24, 2017

It's #blackfriday I'm in @Macys, I have $300+ items in my hand. They're only accepting cash or Macy's credit card... Let the riots begin.  Sophie Mitchell (@ShePrevails1) November 24, 2017

Consumers attempting to buy things from the Macys website or the app appeared to be experiencing similar issues.

Story continues

The @Macys app is spazzing and throwing lots of errors in checkout. Not a good day for app failure, Macy's. pic.twitter.com/v8qIXEL9La  Amanda Tenedini (@AmandaTene) November 24, 2017

Though some social media users reported that the outages were happening nationwide, the full extent of the problem was unclear. Macys responded to several customer complaints via Twitter on Friday.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is among the world leaders who have spoken up in support of net neutrality this week in the wake of the U.S. Federal Communications Commissions announcement that it plans to throw out regulations that require internet providers to treat all online content equally.

Trudeau told Motherboard on Wednesday that the Trump administrations plan to repeal net neutrality does not make sense.

I am very concerned about the attacks on net neutrality, Trudeau said. Net neutrality is something that is essential for small businesses, for consumers, and it is essential to keep the freedom associated with the internet alive.

He added that hell look into ways to defend net neutrality for the internet as a whole.

Speaking at the Global Conference on Cyberspace held in New Delhi on Thursday, Indias minister of law and justice, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said that right of access to the internet should be non-negotiable.

Internet is supposed to be democratic. It is a big global platform, but must be linked the local ideas and concepts, Prasad said, according to The Indian Express.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who also attended the event, similarly expressed his support for net neutrality, saying that the protection lowers the barriers of entry by preserving the internet as a fair and level playing field and helps businesses and entrepreneurs to thrive online.

Open internet facilitates the marginalized and oppressed segments that are not adequately represented in the mainstream media, to tell their stories and to mobilize justice, as we have seen in recent times, he added.

In the U.S., tech giants including Facebook, Google, Reddit and Netflix have expressed their disappointment and opposition to the FCCs plan.

Netflix supports strong #NetNeutrality. We oppose the FCC's proposal to roll back these core protections.  Netflix US (@netflix) November 21, 2017

Opponents of net neutrality, including Comcast, AT&T and Verizon  which owns HuffPosts parent company, Oath  have also been vocal, arguing that services such as Netflix that use more bandwidth should have to pay more.

Story continues

On Wednesday, a top FCC official urged the American public to stop us from killing net neutrality.

Reach out to the rest of the FCC now, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed. Tell them they cant take away internet openness without a fight.

Related Coverage

Net Neutrality in 2017 - What You Should Know

FCC Announces Plans To Repeal Net Neutrality

FCC Commissioner Pleads: 'Please Stop Us From Killing Net Neutrality'

Also on HuffPost

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
The entrepreneur and TV star Mark Cuban has weighed in again on the subject of net neutrality, this time arguing that a continuation of the rules in the U.S. effectively puts Donald Trump in charge of the Internet and its future.

Cuban has long been against the idea of federally-mandated net neutralitya term that describes forcing Internet service providers to treat all online content equally. He argues that having net neutrality rules gives the government control over the Internet.

Net neutrality advocates say the rules stop cable companies from being able to pick and choose who gets to deliver online services at a reasonable quality, and from being able to charge consumers more for full Internet access.

Ajit Pai, a former Verizon lawyer whom Trump put in charge of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), plans to rescind an Obama-era decision that gave the commission the power to regulate Internet service providers like public utilities. His proposal will go to a mid-December vote that willwith Republicans currently dominating the FFCs boardalmost certainly pass.

Cuban seems to agree with Pai, judging by tweets he published late Wednesday.

Do #NetNeutraility proponents realize that continuing the rules as is effectively puts @realDonaldTrump in charge of the Internet and it's future ?  Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 22, 2017

Do you want @realDonaldTrump and the same organization that felt the need to rule on and take 8 years to evaluate Janet Jackson's Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction in charge of the internet ? Here is why I don't :https://t.co/NDsUmFYue9  Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 22, 2017

The core of Cubans (and the cable companies) argument is that, without regulation, cable companies will be able to invest more in their infrastructure. This would presumably be the result of charging customers more than they currently do to access the full Internet, and offering cut-down packages of websites at low prices.

Story continues

Net neutrality advocates, meanwhile, point to the U.S.s relative lack of competition among fixed-line Internet services providers and argue that without competitive pressure, the cable companies will be able to treat their customers as they please.

In his Twitter session, Cubans retort was that dominant Internet service providers are dominant because of regulation, not in spite of it.

Actually dominant ISPs are dominant because of regulation, not in spite of it. No one takes advantage of the rules better than incumbents. Isn't that the underpinning of much of what you've been saying ? https://t.co/vtMT0SWx2J  Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 23, 2017

As for Cubans claim that net neutrality puts the president in charge of the Internet (at least, the American Internet), this appears to be a ploy to change the minds of net neutrality advocates who dislike Trump. However, the logic of his argument would imply that any federal regulations are bad, simply because of who the president is.
After signaling that it would for months, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday revealed its plan to dismantle regulations that ensure equal access to the Internet, a concept known as net neutrality.

The regulations classify broadband access as a telecommunications service, which subjects it to common carrier provisions that bar Internet service providers from discriminating against how broadband is used. The regulations were passed in February 2015 by the FCC, then led by chairman Tom Wheeler. Wheelers successor Ajit Pai, a vocal critic of that move even while serving under Wheeler, has vowed to revisit the issue.

Pais position is that the common carrier provisions used to ensure net neutrality is last-century, utility-style regulation that injects uncertainty into a market now dominated by broadband. Pai, who says he supports an open Internet, believes that less regulation in this area is more beneficial to market growth.

The Internet is the greatest free-market success story in history, Pai wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Tuesday. Regulations designed in the 1930s to tame the Ma Bell telephone monopoly are hurting investment, he argued. In short, Pais view is that broadband shouldnt be regulated like a utility.

Proponents of the 2015 regulations say Pai is merely clearing the way for Internet service companies to charge users more to see certain content and to curb access to some websitesa fast lane and slow lane for the Internet. Its not an unfounded concern. In 2008 the FCC sanctioned Comcast for interfering with traffic from BitTorrent, the file transfer service. The commission eventually lost the fight, owing to a lack of legal basis for its complaintbasis it later achieved with the 2015 reclassification.

There are no toll roads on the information superhighway, President Barack Obama said in a 2014 video on the subject.

Most software companies oppose the FCCs recent moves.

Technology companiesamong them Airbnb, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Dropbox, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Snap, and Spotifyhave made their disagreement with Pais position known.

Story continues

Rescinding the 2015 regulations makes it possible for telecom companies to force consumer Internet companies to pay for faster connections, they arguesomething only the largest companies could afford. Those costs could make their way to individual users.

The move will create significant uncertainty in the market and upset the careful balance that has led to the current virtuous circle of innovation in the broadband ecosystem, a group representing many of the companies argued in a filing earlier this year. Worse, it will hurt consumers because it will eliminate restrictions blocking ISPs ability to block or throttle users access, the group argued.

The Internet should be competitive and open, Google said in an early statement on the issue. That means no Internet access provider should block or degrade Internet traffic, nor should they sell fast lanes that prioritize particular Internet services over others. These rules should apply regardless of whether youre accessing the Internet using a cable connection, a wireless service, or any other technology.

We are disappointed that the proposal announced today by the FCC fails to maintain the strong net neutrality protections that will ensure the Internet remains open for everyone, Facebook said in a statement this week following the release of Pais plan. We will work with all stakeholders committed to this principle.

Most telecommunications companies support the FCCs recent moves.

A different category of technology companytelecoms such as AT&T and Verizonsupport the FCCs move to rescind reclassification of broadband. In September, a group representing AT&T, CenturyLink, Verizon, and scores of smaller telecom companies formally petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Obama-era net neutrality rules.

The FCC is not talking about killing the net neutrality rules, said Verizon general counsel Craig Sillman in a video explaining the companys position. In fact not we nor any other ISP are asking them to kill the open Internet rules. All theyre doing is looking to put the open Internet rules in an enforceable way on a different legal footing.

That view is shared by other telecom companies. Charter, which acquired Time Warner Cable in 2016, said it would not block or throttle Internet traffic or engage in paid prioritization at the time of that deal. And Comcast says it supports net neutrality even as it rejects the FCCs 2015 reclassification of broadband as a common carrier service.

We have stated on numerous occasions that we believe legally enforceable rules should continue to include strong transparency, no blocking, and anti-discrimination provisions, wrote executive David L. Cohen on the Philadelphia companys website. We dont prioritize Internet traffic or have paid fast lanes, and have no plans to do so.

Still, various preferential treatments of Internet usage already exist today. When AT&T customers access the companys DirecTV Now video streaming service, that usage isnt included in calculations for data limits. The same goes for Verizon and its Go90 and FiOS TV services as well as T-Mobile and services such as those from HBO, Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube. The practice, known as zero rating, was scrutinized by Wheelers FCC. Under Pai, its freely practiced.

The FCC will not focus on denying Americans free data, Pai said in February.

In the end, its a political issue.

Notice something curious about the statements made by Google and Comcast? Theyre remarkably similar. Both companies say they reject blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization for Internet users. Their disagreement is over how to enforce it. Should the FCC regulate broadband Internet, or leave market players to do it? Are existing common carrier provisions the best way forward, or is new and different regulation the answer? Its as political a battle as it gets.

The FCC plans to vote on the issue Dec. 14.
By Vladimir Soldatkin MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday it is ready to support extending a deal among oil producers on cutting output, less than a week before OPEC meets in Vienna to discuss policy, although it has yet to say how long it should be for. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that Russia would discuss the details of an extension of the global deal on Nov. 30, but made no mention of how long this should last beyond its March expiry. "We see that 50 percent of oil stockpiles have been removed, the oil price has reached its balance," Novak told RBC TV. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and several other major producers have cut their combined output by about 1.8 million barrels per day since January to reduce bloated inventories and boost oil prices. "However, the targets on rebalancing the market have not been reached. Everyone supports the extension, so that the targets are finally reached," Novak said, adding that "different options are under consideration". Saudi Arabia has been pushing for an extension for nine months until the end of 2018, a position President Vladimir Putin had suggested in October that Russia backed. Russia, heavily reliant on oil revenues but wary that any sharp rise in prices may be followed by another punishing collapse, has since sent mixed signals about timing. Russia's TASS news agency reported earlier this week that oil producers and the Russian Energy Ministry had discussed a six-month extension.. Then on Thursday, Russia's Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin said Russian economic growth had been hurt by the deal because it dampened investment - the first clearly negative assessment of the pact by a senior Russian official. Novak's comments on Friday were made in Bolivia where he is at a Gas Exporting Countries Forum of leading gas producers. The Russian minister had met the Qatari and Venezuelan oil ministers in Bolivia, as well as an official from the United Arab Emirates, Russian news agencies reported. DOG FIGHT IN PROSPECT One of the stumbling blocks for extending the OPEC-led deal is a boom in U.S. oil production , which has jumped by 15 percent since mid-2016 to a record 9.66 million bpd. U.S. producers, which scaled back output with the price slump after mid-2014, have ramped up production as oil prices climbed . Higher U.S. output undermines the impact of output cuts and erodes market share for others, like Russia. "Make no mistake, expect the dog fight for the global markets once the deal expires," a source at a Russian oil major said about scenarios once the deal on curbing output expires. A key task of the agreement, lifting prices, has been achieved. Benchmark Brent crude, which tumbled from well above $100 a barrel in 2014 to about $27 in 2016, is back above $60. Russia's budget is based on an oil price of $40 per barrel, suggesting there is a good cushion against a sudden price slide. Novak said on Friday he expected the oil price to remain between $50 and $60 a barrel this and next year. But Moscow has had to deal with economic and social fallout caused by price falls in 2008-09 and since 2014, said Chris Weafer at Moscow-based Macro-Advisory. "The damage from a third collapse would likely greatly outweigh the financial gains to be made from higher oil in the meantime," he wrote. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Additional reporting by Polina Nikolskaya; Editing by Edmund Blair and Alexander Smith)
If youve been paying attention to the scientific search for extraterrestrial life youll already know that in recent months the frosty Saturn moon Enceladus is looking mighty tempting. The ice-covered ocean world has a steamy hot center and plenty of life-giving water hidden beneath its thick layer of ice, and researchers have determined that if alien life does exist here in our own Solar System, Enceladus is probably our best bet at finding it. Now, a fabulously wealthy Russian plans to beat NASA to the punch and launch a mission to explore Enceladus.

The man, Yuri Milner, is no stranger to space exploration, having already dropped a cool $100 million on plans to launch probes towards Alpha Centauri, but figuring out exactly what is hidden beneath the icy crust of Enceladus is a whole other matter. He recently announced his plans, which focus on examining the massive geysers which spew water from deep cracks on the moons souther pole, while noting that he believes he can do it well before NASA gets around to it.

Don't Miss: These are all the Black Friday iPhone deals out there (sorry, no iPhone X)

Milner, who has said that he thinks waiting for a space agency to make its move could take a decade or longer, wants to send a low-cost probe to Enceladus in the hopes of detecting something in the water being shot skyward from the frigid moon. Determining the makeup of the water  which, as has been theorized, might be a lot like the oceans here on Earth  would go a huge way towards explaining what the conditions are like closer to the moons steamy center.

At present, NASA has two potential missions on the table that would also focus on Enceladus, but funding is scarce, and the missions are competing against 10 others for a slice of the pie. If NASA ever does send hardware to the icy moon, itll be a long while before that happens. Milner hopes that his proposed mission could act as something of a supplementary effort to build up data about Enceladus before the space agency eventually gets around to checking it out.

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Its obviously impossible to predict whether or not Milners would-be mission would actually result in evidence that alien life is present on the frozen moon, and the specifics of what his probe would be capable of detecting are slim, but Enceladus is most certainly worth checking out, so lets hope for the best.

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Shoppers congregate at Macys in New York Citys Herald Square on Black Friday 2017. (Photo: AP)

Black Friday is here, and with huge masses of shoppers seeking deals in malls and big-box retailers nationwide, confrontations are expected. This years events look to be on trend, but without some of the more widespread mob violence weve seen in years past.

A Missouri teen was shot outside a mall in Columbia, Mo., receiving life-threatening injuries. According to KQFX, the unidentified 19-year-old was accidentally shot by by another man as the two sat in a car in the malls parking lot. According to police, the first man had been trying to holster the weapon when it suddenly went off.

A fistfight broke out Thursday at a mall in Alabama just before closing time. Footage of the incident shared on Facebook shows two women throwing punches as police and security step in. Police and mall management believe the dispute was personal and not over holiday deals.

The two women were treated for minor injuries by paramedics.

Mike White, general manager of the Riverchase Galleria, told Yahoo Lifestyle in a telephone interview that the fight happened 20 minutes before closing time. [Tthe fight] was not something that affected the bulk of the people who were there, said White.

The Hoover Police Department issued a statement on Facebook Friday saying the fight was of a personal nature and not over merchandise.

The police department also says it responded to calls reporting gunfire outside the mall an hour later but could find no evidence of any weapons being fired.

Aside from these two incidents, Black Friday at the Riverchase has gone smoothly this year. With crowds surging peaceably through the shops and department stores, its a further sign that the economy is on the upswing, said White.

Elsewhere in the country, footage of a tug of war over a toy car at a Walmart has surfaced:

Four men can be seen grappling over it until staff step in and break it up. Neither group ends up getting the car.

While Black Friday has become known not only for its deals and long lines but also for the dustups that inevitably happen when shopping is transformed for one day into a full-contact sport, perhaps the steady and unstoppable growth of online shopping has made deal hunting a more nonviolent pursuit.

Story continues

The deep-discount phenomenon exists not only in America. Black Friday deals were up for grabs at retailers around the globe and are marked with decorum and orderliness in places like Finland and the U.K.

Shoppers in both countries shared video footage of bargain hunters walking single file into stores in apparent parody of the free-for-all stampedes found in America.

Oh, it was terrible, writes YouTuber Toni  in the description for his video. In it, a line of shoppers calmly file into a Finnish shopping mall.

BBC reporter Frankie McCamley tweeted a video of British shoppers doing the same:

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle

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One of the biggest problems with the concept of smart homes is that there are far too many standards. Some devices are only compatible with Apples HomeKit, some only work with Alexa, and so on. The category wont be truly consumer friendly until theres a universal standard out there, and the closest weve come so far is probably SmartThings.

The Samsung-owned sells a wonderfully reliable smart home hub along with a few SmartThings branded gadgets. Then its also compatible with any ZigBee, Z-Wave, or IP device, and tons more thanks to IFTTT integration. Long story short: If youre building a smart home, this is the place to start.

Amazons Black Friday 2017 sale includes deals on every single SmartThings product, and its by far the best sale on smart home gear. The SmartThings Hub drops from $100 to $49, the awesome SmartThings Multipurpose Sensor is half off at $19.99, SmartThings Outlets are $33, and everything else has gotten great discounts as well. Check out all the deals below.

Samsung SmartThings Smart Home Hub

Your smart home needs a brain, so get started with a SmartThings Hub. It connects wirelessly with a wide range of smart devices and makes them work together.

Add smart devices and put your home to work. Choose from a wide range of compatible devices, including lights, speakers, locks, thermostats, sensors, and more.

Use the SmartThings app or Amazon Alexa to control your smart home. Teach your house new tricks by telling it what to do when youre asleep, awake, away, and back home.

Power: In-wall power adapter with about 10 hours of backup power from 4 AA batteries (included) Communication. Protocol: ZigBee, Z-Wave, IP. Range: 50-130 feet Operating Temperature: 41 to 95F. Compatible Brands: Honeywell, Philips Hue, Kwikset

Requires an Internet-connected router with an available Ethernet port Requires the free SmartThings app for iOS (8.1 or later), Android (4.0 or later), or Windows Phone (8.1 or later)

Compatible Brands: Honeywell, Philips Hue, Kwikset

A more powerful processor and local app engine means faster performance and enabled offline processing

Hub connects to your Internet router via the included Ethernet cable, the Hub has a ZigBee, Z-Wave, and Bluetooth radio and also supports selected IP-accessible devices

Replaceable batteries provide backup power that keeps the hub operating locally for about 2 hours if theres a power outage

Please reference User Guide and Specification Sheet below under Technical Specifications for instructions on how to add devices and troubleshoot connectivity issues

Kindly refer user manual and instruction video for reference.

Hub connects all of the different smart devices around your home so you can remotely control your homes security, energy usage, lighting, and more,Range: More than 50 to 100-ft, Power Source: In-wall AC (100-240V)

Story continues

Samsung SmartThings Smart Home Hub: $49.00

Samsung SmartThings Multipurpose Sensor

The versatile Multipurpose Sensor is an all-in-one sensor that can detect vibration, orientation and angle (tilt), temperature and when things open or close

Monitor secure areas of your home and be alerted if a door, window, cabinet or drawer opens unexpectedly

Get a reminder if you forgot to close your front door or garage door

Know the temperature in any room or location

Measurements (for combined sensor and magnet): 1.9 inches wide, 1.89 inches tall and 0.57 inches thick

Additional Requirements: Samsung SmartThings Hub

Range: 50-130 ft

Communication Protocol: ZigBee. Refer to the Trouble Shooting Steps available below in product description.

Samsung SmartThings Multipurpose Sensor: $19.99

Samsung SmartThings Outlet

Control lights, Electronics and small appliances from your smartphone

Trigger lights to automatically turn on when you come home and turn off when you leave

Save energy by restricting power to Electronics or appliances or receive alerts If lights or Electronics were accidentally left on

Power things like coffee machines, Crock-Pots, a/C units, portable heaters and fans using your smartphone

Acts as a ZigBee repeater, extending the range of your ZigBee devices, when plugged into a wall outlet

Samsung SmartThings Outlet, F-OUT-US-2, Works with Amazon Alexa: $32.99

Samsung SmartThings Motion Sensor

Connects to the Samsung SmartThings Hub to automate and monitor your home from the SmartThings smart phone app.

Receive an alert if theres unexpected movement in your home, or if children access dangerous or off-limit areas

Set connected lights to turn on and off automatically as people come and go

Set connected lights to turn on and off automatically if theres unexpected movement

SmartThings works with products from Samsung, Amazon, Bose, Schlage, Yale, Cree, Osram Lightify, Honeywell, First Alert, and more. Look for the Works With SmartThings logo or visit smartthings.com for a look at the full list of compatible devices.

Samsung SmartThings Motion Sensor: $29.00

Samsung SmartThings Water Leak Sensor

Get an immediate alert on your smartphone at the first sign of excess water.

Trigger a light or siren to turn on to alert you if water is detected where it doesnt belong.

Place the sensor beside the sump pump in your basement to be notified if the sump pump fails.

Additional Requirements: Samsung SmartThings Hub

Samsung SmartThings Water Leak Sensor: $29.99

Samsung SmartThings Arrival Sensor

Get alerts when people and pets approach and leave a specified area, such as a home or office.

Trigger different actions to take place when you arrive or leave home, such as automatically turn the lights on or off, or lock or unlock the door.

Be notified if someone doesnt arrive home by a certain time.

This version has a more minimal profile than the original SmartSense Presence sensor.

Additional Requirements: Samsung SmartThings Hub

Samsung SmartThings Arrival Sensor: $22.49

Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit

Everything you need to start your smart home.

Control, automate and monitor your home from anywhere using the SmartThings app.

Connect compatible appliances, lights, speakers, locks, cameras, thermostats, sensors, appliances and more.

SmartThings works with products from Samsung, Amazon, Bose, Schlage, Yale, Cree, Osram Lightify, Honeywell, First Alert, and more. Look for the Works With SmartThings logo or visit smartthings.com for a look at the full list of compatible devices.

The Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit contains: one Samsung SmartThings Hub, two Samsung SmartThings Multipurpose Sensors, one Samsung SmartThings Motion Sensor, and one Samsung SmartThings Outlet.

Get immediate alerts on your smartphone if theres unexpected entry or motion in your home.

Secure dangerous, valuable or off-limit areas of your home.

Control lamps, electronics or small appliances.

Trigger lights to automatically turn on when theres motion and turn off when people leave.

Pair the included video-ready Samsung SmartThings Hub with a compatible camera to keep an eye on things.

Z-Wave Certification ID: ZC10-15090005.

Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit: $149.00

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A flame shoots out of a chimney at a petro-industrial factory in Kawasaki near Tokyo December 18, 2014. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/Files (Reuters)

By Nia Williams

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - U.S. crude hit a two-year high in thin trade on Thursday as the shutdown of a major crude pipeline from Canada and a draw on fuel inventories pointed to a tightening market, despite rising output from U.S. producers.

West Texas Intermediate crude was up 54 cents at $58.56 per barrel by 2:00 p.m. EST (1900 GMT), close to a two-year peak of $58.58 touched earlier in the session.

Brent crude settled at $63.55 per barrel, 23 cents above its previous close.

Trading volumes were thin because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.

The shutdown on TransCanada Corp's 590,000-barrel-per-day Keystone pipeline following a spill last week has helped drive oil prices higher because of expectations it will reduce crude stocks in the U.S. storage hub of Cushing, Oklahoma.

"Inventories should drain sharply in the next few weeks given the uncertain timeline for a restart of the Keystone pipeline, a major artery for Canadian heavy oil barrels into the heart of the Cushing hub," said Martin King, a GMP FirstEnergy analyst in Calgary.

Prices also found support from a drawdown in commercial fuel inventories in the United States.

U.S. stocks fell 1.9 million barrels in the week to Nov. 17, and have dropped 15 percent from record highs in March to below 2016 levels.

The market shrugged off data showing U.S. output has risen by 15 percent since mid-2016 to a record 9.66 million bpd, helping turn the United States from the world's biggest importer to a major exporter.

Climbing U.S. output threatens efforts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and some other non-OPEC producers to reduce global supplies by limiting their production.

"Whatever OPEC will be discussing and ... agreeing upon can be made redundant by the actions of U.S. suppliers, which are likely to hike up production in a similar order," said Eugen Weinberg, head of commodities research at Commerzbank.

Story continues

He said another rise of 800,000 to 1 million bpd in U.S. output in 2018 would mean "attempts by OPEC to tighten the market may not be successful."

OPEC meets on Nov. 30 to discuss policy, with Saudi Arabia lobbying for extending cuts that are due to expire in March.

(Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore and Polina Ivanova in London; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Diane Craft)
By Catherine Ngai NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. oil prices hit their highest levels in more than two years on Friday after the continued shutdown of a pipeline running from Canada to the United States was expected to reduce supply into a major storage facility. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures (WTI) settled up 93 cents, or 1.6 percent, at $58.95 a barrel. Trading volumes were thin on Friday due to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Benchmark Brent crude rose 31 cents, or 0.49 percent, to settle at $63.86 a barrel. TransCanada Corp 's 590,000 barrel-per-day Keystone pipeline, linking Alberta's oil sands to U.S. refineries, shut on Nov. 16 after a spill was found in South Dakota. It is not clear when the pipeline would return to operation, but it carries a large portion of crude into Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for WTI futures, so its shutdown means fewer barrels going into storage. The spread between the prompt and second month WTI futures , an indicator of supply-demand balances at Cushing, also traded up to 10 cents in backwardation where prompt barrels are more expensive. "We're expecting to continue seeing draws out of Cushing, which turned the WTI market into backwardation," said Tariq Zahir at Tyche Capital Advisors, referring to a market structure where prompt prices are higher than those in the future. "But all of these gains could go right down into the tubs a week from today if Russia says they don't want to go along with any OPEC deal. Or, if we get grumblings from Iraq or Iran," he added. Markets have also tightened globally due to output cuts since January by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and several other producers. OPEC meets on Nov. 30 and is expected to extend the pact to curb supplies beyond its expiry in March, although Russia has sent mixed signals about its support for an extension. "With the majority of OPEC members endorsing an extension, Russian support is the key risk," Jon Rigby, head of oil research at UBS, wrote in a note. President Vladimir Putin indicated in October that Russia backed extending the deal to the end of 2018, but comments by officials and in the Russian media have created uncertainty since then, he said. J.P. Morgan said a decision on any extension could be delayed until next year if Brent stayed above $60. However, rising U.S. oil production has curbed crude price gains, as it fills some of the gap left by OPEC and its allies. U.S. output has jumped by 15 percent since mid-2016 to a record 9.66 million bpd, thanks largely to shale drilling. (Additional by reporting by Polina Ivanova in London; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Andrew Hay)
(BRUSSELS)  European Union privacy regulators will discuss ride-hailing app Ubers massive data breach cover-up next week and could create a task-force to coordinate investigations.

Uber faces regulatory scrutiny after CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company covered up a data breach last year that exposed personal data from around 57 million accounts.

The chair of the group of European data protection authorities  known as the Article 29 Working Party  said on Thursday the data breach would be discussed at its meeting on Nov. 28 and 29.

While EU data protection authorities cannot impose joint sanctions, they can set up task-forces to coordinate national investigations.

When a new EU data protection law comes into force next May, regulators will have the power to impose much higher fines  up to 4 percent of global turnover  and coordinate more closely.

Uber paid hackers $100,000 to keep secret the massive breach.

The stolen information included names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of Uber users around the world, and the names and license numbers of 600,000 U.S. drivers, Khosrowshahi said. Uber declined to say what other countries may be affected.

For more on the Uber data breach, see Fortunes video:

We cannot but voice our strong concern for the breach suffered by Uber, which was reported belatedly by the U.S. company. We initiated our inquiries and are gathering all the information that can help us assess the scope of the data breach and take the appropriate steps to protect any Italian citizens involved, said Antonello Soro, President of the Italian Data Protection Authority on Wednesday.

The British data protection authority also said the concealment of the breach raised huge concerns about Ubers data policies and ethics.

Long known for its combative stance with local taxi regulators, Uber has faced a stream of top-level executive departures over issues from sexual harassment to data privacy to driver working conditions, which led its board to remove Travis Kalanick as CEO in June.
By Paresh Dave and Liana B. Baker SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] plans to move ahead with a deal to bring in Japanese technology company SoftBank Group Corp <9984.T> as a major investor by disclosing the pricing early next week in formal tender offers to the ride-hailing service's investors, two people familiar with the plans said on Friday. The start of the tender follows Uber's disclosure on Tuesday that it covered up a 2016 data breach which compromised data of some 57 million customers and drivers. That revelation prompted governments around the world to launch probes into the breach and Uber's handling of the matter. The people familiar with the plans did not say how much investors would be offered for the shares, or say if the pricehad been cut do to the breach or governments' response to the disclosure. Investors will have 20 business days, or about a month, to respond, said one of the sources, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to discuss terms before they are public. SoftBank and Dragoneer Investment Group agreed on Nov. 12 to lead a group that would invest as much as $10 billion in Uber, people familiar with the deal previously told Reuters. They plan to directly invest $1 billion to $1.25 billion in Uber, then buy as much as 17 percent of shares held by existing investors and employees. Selling shareholders must be accredited investors as definedby U.S. regulations and hold at least 10,000 shares of the firm,Uber said in ads published Wednesday in the New York Times andWall Street Journal. Uber is valued at $68 billion, the highest of any venture backed company. SoftBank's $1 billion direct investment in Uber is expectedto be at the same valuation. Employees and existing investorswill be paid a lower price for their shares in a tender thatwill likely take weeks to complete, people familiar with the Nov. 12 agreement told Reuters. (Reporting by Paresh Dave in San Francisco and Liana Baker in New York; Editing by Jim Finkle and Richard Chang)
FILE PHOTO: A taxi with the logo of Russian online taxi service Yandex Taxi drives past a terminal of the Domodedovo Airport outside Moscow, Russia, November 2, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Uber [UBER.UL] and Yandex's ride-sharing businesses can merge in Russia, anti-monopoly regulator FAS ruled on Friday, but stipulated that the combined company not bar drivers from working for competitors.

Uber and Yandex, often referred to as the "Google of Russia", announced plans in July to combine operations in 127 cities in Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan.

San Francisco-based Uber has agreed to invest $225 million while Yandex will contribute $100 million into a new joint company in which Yandex will own 59.3 percent.

The two companies must allow their partners, drivers and passengers to work for or use competitors' services and fully inform users of the legal entity providing the service, the FAS said in a statement.

Yandex said consumers would be able to use both Yandex.Taxi and Uber apps, while their driver apps will be integrated, leading to shorter passenger wait times, increased driver utilization rates, and higher service reliability.

The companies aim to close the deal in January 2018, after the New Year holidays in Russia, Yandex said in a statement.

Moscow-listed Yandex was up 3.47 percent as of 1123 GMT.

It said the anti-monopoly regulator in Belarus had also approved the deal while a decision by the Kazakh regulator was pending.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; editing by Jason Neely)
The United States has called on Pakistan to arrest and charge an Islamist cleric accused of masterminding the 2008 attacks on India's financial capital.

Pakistani authorities acting on a court order freed Hafiz Saeed on November 24 from nearly 11 months of house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore. The detention had stemmed from the terrorism allegations against the firebrand cleric.

Washington has been offering a $10 million reward since 2012 for information leading to Saeed's arrest and conviction.

A judicial panel hearing the cleric's appeal against his "unlawful" detention Wednesday, however, ordered authorities to free him for lack of evidence.

In a video message released by his Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) Islamist charity, Saeed told supporters his freedom was vindication of his innocence.

"Praise be to God, it is a matter of great happiness for me that nothing has been proven against me which could be detrimental for me or for Pakistan. Thank God, we have been vindicated," the cleric said.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert promptly criticized Saeed's release, saying the U.S. was "deeply concerned." In a statement, she went on to say the cleric leads an organization that has been responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent civilians in terrorist attacks, including a number of Americans.

"The Pakistani government should make sure that he is arrested and charged for his crimes," the statement read.

The U.S. and the United Nations have both declared Saeed's JuD a global terrorist organization, calling it a front for the outlawed Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group blamed for carrying out the Mumbai carnage.

Saeed has consistently denied any link to the Mumbai violence that left 166 people dead, including U.S. nationals. He has also alleged his detention was the outcome of U.S. and Indian pressure on the Pakistani government.

India blames Saeed for masterminding the Mumbai strikes and has linked resumption of normal ties with Pakistan to putting the cleric on trial. New Delhi also alleges supporters of the Pakistani cleric are assisting armed Muslim separatists in the divided Kashmir region.

-- Voice of America
Quote:

Six months ago I won the lottery  the H-1B visa processing lottery for skilled foreign workers. I called my thrilled parents and celebrated with friends. Im from northeastern China and have an M.B.A. from Stanford, and was planning to stay in Silicon Valley to help start a company based on a promising new technology to improve the use of data. I was overjoyed because, historically, being selected in the lottery was a near guarantee that an applicant could remain in this country at least three more years.



But at the end of July, I received the dreaded Request for Further Evidence from immigration authorities. I provided the extra information that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services asked for. In September, I got another request. I complied again. Finally, on Oct. 11, half a year after my celebration, I learned I had been denied a visa.



After earning law degrees in China and at Oxford, after having worked in Hong Kong as a lawyer at a top international firm, after coming to United States three years ago for an M.B.A. and graduating and joining a start-up, I was given just 60 days to leave the country. I have 17 days left.



In the past, it was fairly safe to assume that once you were selected in the lottery, your H-1B petition would be accepted by immigration officials. In 2016, this happened about 87 percent of the time. But things began to change in April when the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice announced measures to increase scrutiny of the highly skilled applicants who use the H-1B program, and President Trump signed an executive order calling for federal agencies to suggest reforms to the program.



While its unclear exactly what percentage of petitions have been approved so far in 2017, requests for evidence like the ones I received have increased by 44 percent compared with last year, according to immigration statistics, strongly suggesting that more people are being denied than before Mr. Trump took office.



Many of my fellow international students are in situations similar to mine. Some had job offers from companies like Google, Apple and PwC when they learned that their applications had been denied or did not even make it into the lottery. For those whose employers have only United States offices, losing the lottery meant losing jobs and going home, with no real way to use the skills they were on the verge of contributing to the American economy.



Thoughts?Read the rest at NYTIMES.
Woah, I really got them all right. but took around 8 - 10 minutes.

The work of English writer Aphra Behn (1640-1689) changed markedly during the 1680s, as she turned from writing plays to writing prose narratives. According to literary critic Rachel Carnell, most scholars view this change as primarily motivated by financial considerations: earning a living by writing for the theatre became more difficult in the 1680s, so Behn tried various other types of prose genres in the hope of finding another lucrative medium. In fact, a long epistolary scandal novel that she wrote in the mid-1680s sold quite well. Yet, as Carnell notes, Behn did not repeat this approach in her other prose works; instead, she turned to writing shorter, more serious novels, even though only about half of these were published during her lifetime. Carnell argues that Behn, whose stage productions are primarily comedies, may have turned to an emerging literary form, the novel, in a conscious attempt to criticize, and subvert for her own ends, the conventions and ideology of a well-established form of her day, the dramatic tragedy.



Carnell acknowledges that Behn admired the skill of such contemporary writers of dramatic tragedy as John Dryden, and that Behn's own comic stage productions displayed the same partisanship for the reigning Stuart monarchy that characterized most of the politically oriented dramatic tragedies of her day. However, Carnell argues that Behn took issue with the way in which these writers and plays defined the nature of tragedy. As prescribed by Dryden, tragedy was supposed to concern a heroic man who is a public figure and who undergoes a fall that evokes pity from the audience. Carnell points out that Behns tragic novels focus instead on the plight of little-known women and the private world of the household; even in her few novels featuring male protagonists, Behn insists on the importance of the crimes these otherwise heroic figures commit in the domestic sphere. Moreover, according to Carnell, Behn questioned the view promulgated by monarchist dramatic tragedies such as Drydens: that the envisioned public political idealpassive obedience to the nations kingought to be mirrored in the private sphere, with family members wholly obedient to a male head of household. Carnell sees Behns novels not only as rejecting the model of patriarchal and hierarchical family order, but also as warning that insisting on such a parallel can result in real tragedy befalling the members of the domestic sphere. According to Carnell, Behns choice of literary form underscores the differences between her own approach to crafting a tragic story and that taken in the dramatic tragedies, with their artificial distinction between the public and private spheres. Behns novels engage in the political dialogue of her era by demonstrating that the good of the nation ultimately encompasses more than the good of the public figures who rule it.
As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ
New Delhi, Nov 25 (IBNS): The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday slammed Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi over his "failed hugplomacy" jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

BJP spokesperson G.V.L Narsimha Rao tweeted: "Rahul baba, aaaaa aaaa aaaa aaa

For once,stand with the country & not with Terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks & Ishtar Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. BTW, have you congratulated your "Hafeez Saheb's" on his release yet? @officeofrg."

Rahul baba, aaaaa aaaa aaaa aaa

For once,stand with the country & not with Terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks & Ishtar Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. BTW, have you congratulated your "Hafeez Saheb's" on his release yet? @officeofrg https://t.co/ynOianLLYa  GVL Narasimha Rao (@GVLNRAO) November 25, 2017

Rahul Gandhi on Saturday mocked Prime Minister Narendra Modis hugplomacy with US President Donald Trump after Pakistan released 2008 Mumbai attacks mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest.

His innuendo is directed to Modi's embraces with Trump whenever the two met.

In a tweet, Gandhi said, more hugs were urgently needed between PM Modi and US President Donald Trump as the terror mastermind is now free.

Narendrabhai, aaa aaaa aaa. Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed, he said.

Hafeez Saeed was released from house arrest on Friday following a court order.

Coming out of house arrest, the JuD chief made anti-India tirade, saying he will gather people for the cause of Kashmir and try to help Kashmiris get their destination of freedom.
New Delhi, Nov 25 (IBNS): Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland, Timo Soini is visiting India from 22-25 November 2017, the Indian government said in a statement.

He is accompanied by senior officials of his Ministry. Regular exchanges of high level visits have been a part of strong ties between India and Finland. \

The visit of FM Soini to India coincides with the historic occasions of 70 years of Indias independence and 100 years of Finlands independence, read the statement.

FM Soini had a meeting with External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, in New Delhi on 24 November.

The two Ministers held discussions on various aspects of bilateral ties as well as important regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest. Indias economic ties with Finland have strengthened with growing trade and investment from both sides.

Around 30 Indian companies have invested in Finland in IT, healthcare, hospitality and automotive sectors. Over 100 Finnish companies have operations in India in energy, textiles, power plants, electronics sectors.

The annual bilateral trade has increased to USD 1.3 billion.

The discussions between the two Ministers focused on building cooperation in the areas of trade & investment, vocational education, science and technology, renewable energy, culture and tourism.

FM Soini also participated at the 5th Global Conference on Cyber Space 2017 (GCCS 2017) on 23-24 November. FM Soini delivered an address on CyberDiplomacy4Peace at GCCS 2017 on 24 November.




New York, Nov 25(IBNS): Concluding a two-day visit to Iran, the top United Nations humanitarian official said the Organization is ready to fill any gaps in the relief efforts following the devastating earthquake on 12 November that struck the Iran-Iraq border.

I commend the Governments efforts to save lives and alleviate the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people in the earthquake zone, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock said Thursday.

During my visit, I also reiterated the UNs readiness to support the Government by providing humanitarian aid if it is required to fill any gaps in the response.

In his meetings with senior officials, Lowcock discussed the promotion of emergency preparedness efforts, international cooperation in disaster response, enhancing the capacity of the urban search and rescue teams, and exchange of technical expertise and knowledge with Iran.

He welcomed the Getting Airports Ready for Disasters exercise which will take place in Iran at the end of November.

Lowcocks discussions with the Government also covered major humanitarian crises, including in Syria and in Yemen, and the situation of the Rohingya refugees. He urged the Iranian Government to help facilitate response efforts, assistance and protection for the crisis-affected people, and humanitarian access.

Among those he met with were Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif and Deputy Minister of Interior Shojaei KIasari.

Meanwhile, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has scaled up its emergency response to meet the needs of women and girls in Iraq, in the wake of the 7.3-magnitude earthquake, which struck an area 30 km southwest of Halabja.

Access to essential, life-saving reproductive health services was also disrupted, with three health facilities damaged in Darbandixan and Halabja alone.

To provide natural delivery services around the clock, UNFPA has deployed a mobile gynaecology clinic to the Shahid Azadi Mama Alaa primary health clinic, the only functioning health facility in Darbandixan, the area that has suffered the most serious damage.

UNFPA is also distributing medicines, reproductive health kits, and dignity kits, which contain essential hygiene supplies including soap and sanitary napkins.

In addition, the agency is providing much-needed psychosocial support in Darbandixan and plans to conduct psychosocial sessions in Halabja as well.

UN Photo/Mark Garten

Source: www.justearthnews.com
New York, Nov 25(IBNS): Voicing concern that the trial of a human rights lawyer  leading to his imprisonment  fell short of international standards, a group of United Nations rights experts has appealed to the Government for the lawyers immediate and unconditional release.

According to a news release issued Thursday by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the lawyer, Jiang Tianyong, was jailed for two years after being found guilty of inciting subversion of the States power.

Jiangs trial clearly fell short of international standards and his conviction represents an unfair and arbitrary punishment of a human rights lawyer and defender, whose only crime was to exercise his rights to free speech and to defend human rights, the experts said in the release.

Domestic judicial procedures should be in compliance with Chinas international human rights obligations, they added.

According to the news release, Jiang, whose wife and daughter are in exile in the United States, was an outspoken defender of his fellow human rights lawyers who were arrested in an unprecedented crackdown in July 2015.

On Tuesday, 21 November, he was found guilty of the incitement charge by the Changsha Intermediate Peoples Court after a supposed confession in August, the release noted, adding that the UN experts had previously expressed concern that his confession may have been coerced by the use of torture, in contravention of the Chinese Criminal Procedures Law and international human rights standards.

Those adding their voice to the call on the Government are Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; Michel Forst, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; David Kaye, the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; Jose Antonio Guevara Bermudez, the Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

he release also noted that last August, during a visit to China, Alston had met with Jiang, and, in December, expressed concern that Jiangs enforced disappearance may have occurred, at least in part, in reprisal for the lawyers cooperation with the UN during his visit.

The rights experts have been in contact with the Chinese Government on several occasions to raise their concern, it added.

UN Special Rapporteurs and independent experts are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferre

Source: www.justearthnews.com
SAP operates in more than 180 countries, selling business planning software that many of the worlds top multinationals rely on to manage their far-flung business operations. It is a big supplier of corporate compliance software.

A source familiar with the matter said the departures in the Gulf region were connected to dealings in Iran but provided no further details.

SAP declined to name the officials but said that one executive in the region had resigned last Saturday and another had been put on administrative leave.

We are currently investigating business activities in the region, the company told Reuters in a statement, without specifying whether the matter concerned Iran.

SAP is committed to the highest standards of business ethics and we always strive to operate with transparency and integrity. Please understand that we cannot say more while the investigation is ongoing, the company said.

Reuters
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The Weinstein Company planned to release its new film The Current War in the United States this week. But the opening has been delayed until next year.

Disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein heads the company, and he is accused of sexually harassing and assaulting several women in Hollywood.

The film stars Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch. He plays light bulb inventor Thomas Edison who clashes with industrialist George Westinghouse in the early 20th century.

Edison prefers direct electrical current while Westinghouse, played by Michael Shannon, wants to use the more dangerous alternating current.

Originally, the two men wanted to work together, but Edison received a lot of investment money from the worlds richest man, J.P. Morgan, and decided to work alone. Westinghouse and Edison became enemies, fighting over the future of electricity.

Benedict Cumberbatch says that he played the role of Edison because it was a great challenge.

Thats kind of an exciting chapter of history no matter who youre playing in it and I just thought its a challenge to play such a titanic figure in American culture and I like a challenge.

Michael Shannon says he tried to play Westinghouse as a complex character and not let him become a great egoist.

For every success they had, they had a failure and it wasnt always easy.

In addition to Edison and Westinghouse, the film features the life of Nicola Tesla, a former assistant to Edison who goes on to work for Westinghouse. Actor Nicolas Hoult plays Tesla.

Hoult says that Tesla believed that everyone had a right to use electrical power and it would change the world dramatically. As a character, he adds, Tesla is interesting to play because he was often poor, but was always well dressed.

Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon has received some criticism for his use of special effects and odd camera angles. He says he wanted the audience to understand the importance of electricity and the way it would change the world.

He explains he had to tell a long story in a short time and he hopes it captures the feeling of the time.

I'm Susan Shand.

David Byrd reported this story for VOANews.com. Susan Shand adapted his report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

disgrace - v. to cause (someone or something) to lose or become unworthy of respect or approval

alternate - adj. occurring in or forming a repeated series

challenge - v. to be difficult enough to be interesting to someone

titanic - adj. very great in size, force, or power

egoist - n. a person who believes he is better or more important than other people

odd - adj. strange or unusual; different from what is normal or expected
For most people around the world, applying for admission to a college or university is a major event in their lives.

Many young people see it as one of their first steps toward becoming adults.

It is also a lot of work. The competition and risk of rejection can create a lot of stress, and not just for the applicants.

Parents of high school students are often very involved in the college search process. Sometimes they are even more invested in the application results than the students themselves.

Ffiona Rees is a senior associate director of international admissions office at the University of California in Los Angeles. She says most students in the United States would list their parents as the main influence on their college application decisions.

Even when the students are appearing like they dont want to listen to their parents, they clearly are, Rees told VOA. And so, its important for the parents to be supportive of the students.

Students look to their parents for all kinds of advice, she says, including where to go and what to study. But Rees argues there is also some important advice parents need to hear if they want to be as helpful as possible to their children.

First, parents must accept that there are limits to what they know about the application process, she says.

She says even parents who attended university in the U.S. themselves, must understand that a lot has changed in just the last 20 years. It is important for parents to join their children in researching the most current college and university requirements.

Working together is important for success, Rees says. And, it can be an important time for parents and students to strengthen their relationships with each other.

Rees says parents need to fully devote themselves to the process if they get involved. She describes one college admissions informational meeting in which she witnessed a parent repeatedly leave the room for phone calls. Rees says the parent may have missed important information. But, as important, is the impression such behavior creates. The parent seemed to not care about the students interest in attending the school.

Its really important that the parents take the time to tell their child how proud they are of them  and to  tell them that you love them no matter what, Rees said. Because the students need to hear that. We forget that, while theyre young adults, theyre still only usually 17, 18 years old and they need to hear that from their parents.

Rees says parents also need to be honest. They may want to protect their children and provide them with everything they want. But students need to know if there are limits to their college search.

For example, will finances restrict their choices? Rees says parents must tell their children exactly how much money they will provide for college.

What about distance? Reese says she once got a phone call from unhappy parents demanding to know why the school had accepted their child whose home was far away. They wanted their child to study closer to home. But they had never discussed that with the student, thinking the application would not be successful. Rees says it is important for parents to express such concerns before the student applies to any school.

It is a thin line to walk, Rees suggests. Parents should talk to their future college students, of course. But she says parents also must listen to them. In the end, Rees notes, it is the child who will be attending the college, not the parents. Young people may not be clear on what their educational interests or desires are. Parents may not care for some of their childs choices. But, Rees says, making such decisions is an important part of becoming an adult.

Such independence is important when it comes to completing college applications as well. Parents may feel the urge to help their children write an essay or fill out a form. Rees advises parents to fight that urge.

Young people must learn to meet deadlines and take responsibility, she says. Valuable lessons can be learned in the application process. And, schools demand the applicant be the author of his or her application.

Finally, Rees says, most students will likely be rejected by at least one college or university. Parents, she says, can greatly help their children move beyond such rejection in a healthy way.

Its much like when you have a toddler and they fall down, she said. If you rush to them and say, Oh, you must be hurt. Are you okay? the child is going to react accordingly. If  you say, Youre fine! Get up, off we go, then your child is also going to react accordingly.  They will get some letters of denial. They are not personal rejections, and it is important that you help to remind your child that they are still a good person.

Im Jill Robbins. And Im Pete Musto.

Pete Musto reported this for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor. We want to hear from you.

How involved in the college application process are parents in your country? What other advice do you think parents should listen to when helping their children apply to college? Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

apply(ing)  v. to ask formally for something, such as a job, admission to a school, or a loan, usually in writing

stress  n. a state of mental tension and worry caused by problems in your life or work

proud  adj. very happy and pleased because of something you have done, something you own, or someone you know or are related to

finances  n. money available to a government, business, or person

essay  n. a short piece of writing that tells a person's thoughts or opinions about a subject

deadline(s)  n. a date or time when something must be finished

toddler  n. a young child who is just learning to walk

rush  v. to move or do something very quickly or in a way that shows you are in a hurry

accordingly  adv. in a way that fits the facts, needs, or requirements of a situation

remind  v. to cause someone to remember something
One late night in May, Philip Mead was looking for historical objects from the American Revolution. He noticed a painting being offered for sale on the internet.

Suddenly, he felt his heartbeat speeding up.

Mead is the chief historian at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The painting is an unsigned watercolor from 1782. It shows the army tent that George Washington had used as his command center during the Revolutionary War. And, to Mead, this seemed to be the only known artwork from that period to show this tent.

The painting is the top exhibit at the museum, which opened in April 2017. And, thanks to Mead, the museum now owns the painting, which will be the centerpiece of a show next year.

Mead said the discovery seemed almost too good to be true.

Ive had this level of excitement only a handful of times in my 30 years of looking for this stuff, he said.

When Mead saw the tent painting, he immediately emailed the image to Scott Stephenson.

Stephenson serves as the museums vice president of collections, exhibitions and programming. He said his heart jumped when he realized what the painting was.

The next step was to quickly find people willing to donate money to buy the painting, which was up for auction. It was to be sold just days after Meads discovery.

He and Stephenson were concerned that they might not be the only people to have seen the rare work. And they were not sure the painting was exactly what they'd hoped. But they still followed their plan.

The painting got only one other bidder. And so, the Museum of the American Revolution easily bought the painting for $12,000. Then, museum workers studied the picture and confirmed that it shows the Continental Armys fall encampment at Verplancks Point, New York.

The painter was a French-born engineer, Pierre LEnfant. He served in the Continental Army.

LEnfant was wounded at the Siege of Savannah and taken prisoner at the surrender of Charleston, South Carolina. When released, he went back to serve with Washington for the rest of the war. Years later, he worked on planning the design for Washington, D.C.

The painting shows hundreds of military tents across the hills of New York's Hudson Valley. On the left side is Washingtons field command center, including the tent.

Most artwork about the war was created after it, historians say. So the images didnt necessarily show real events.

Mead said having a painting by L'Enfant is "like having a Google Street View look at a Revolutionary War encampment."

Although L'Enfant did not sign the painting, it is similar to one he made in 1782 of troops at West Point, New York. The family who cared for LEnfant at the end of his life gave it to the United States Library of Congress.

The appearance, the dates of both paintings, and handwriting helped to confirm L'Enfant as the painter.

Sometime in the past, the original tent painting was cut into six pieces of paper and placed into a folder. An expert is working to clean the painting and put the pieces back together so it can be shown as it was meant to.

It will be the central piece of an exhibit called Among His Troops: Washingtons War Tent in a Newly Discovered Watercolor.

The exhibition will open on January 13, 2018.

To offer visitors a more complete show, the museum is also borrowing the West Point painting from the Library of Congress.

I'm Alice Bryant.

Kristen de Groot reported this story for the Associated Press. Alice Bryant adapted her report for VOA Learning Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

tent  n. a portable shelter that is used outdoors, is made of cloth and is held up with poles and ropes

exhibit  n. a presentation or showing

handful  n. an amount that you can hold in your hand

auction  n. a public sale at which things are sold to the people who offer to pay the most

bid  v. to offer to pay a specific amount of money for something that is being sold

original  n. that from which a copy or reproduction is made

folder  n. a folded cover or large envelope for holding documents
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Enbridge Inc. operates as an energy infrastructure company. The company operates through five segments: Liquids Pipelines, Gas Transmission and Midstream, Gas Distribution and Storage, Renewable Power Generation, and Energy Services. The Liquids Pipelines segment operates pipelines and related terminals to transport various grades of crude oil and other liquid hydrocarbons in Canada and the United States. The Gas Transmission and Midstream segment invests in natural gas pipelines, and gathering and processing facilities in Canada and the United States. The Gas Distribution and Storage segment is involved in natural gas utility operations serving residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Ontario, as well as natural gas distribution and energy transportation activities in Quebec. The Renewable Power Generation segment operates power generating assets, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and waste heat recovery facilities; and transmission assets in North America and Europe. The Energy Services segment provides energy marketing services to refiners, producers, and other customers; and physical commodity marketing and logistical services in Canada and the United States. The company was formerly known as IPL Energy Inc. and changed its name to Enbridge Inc. in October 1998. Enbridge Inc. was founded in 1949 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.
Bank of Montreal provides diversified financial services primarily in North America. The company's personal banking products and services include checking and savings accounts, credit cards, mortgages, and financial and investment advice services; and commercial banking products and services comprise business deposit accounts, commercial credit cards, business loans and commercial mortgages, cash management solutions, foreign exchange, specialized banking programs, treasury and payment solutions, and risk management products for small business and commercial banking customers. It also offers investment and wealth advisory services; digital investing services; financial services and solutions; and investment management, and trust and custody services. In addition, the company provides life insurance, accident and sickness insurance, and annuity products; creditor and travel insurance to bank customers; and reinsurance solutions. Further, it offers client's debt and equity capital-raising services, as well as loan origination and syndication, and treasury management; strategic advice on mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, and recapitalizations, as well as valuation and fairness opinions; and trade finance, risk mitigation, and other operating services. Additionally, the company provides research and access to markets for institutional, corporate, and retail clients; trading solutions that include debt, foreign exchange, interest rate, credit, equity, securitization and commodities; new product development and origination services, as well as risk management advice and services to hedge against fluctuations; and funding and liquidity management services to its clients. It operates through approximately 900 bank branches and 3,300 automated banking machines in Canada and the United States. Bank of Montreal was founded in 1817 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.
Conagra Brands, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a consumer packaged goods food company in North America. The company operates in four segments: Grocery & Snacks, Refrigerated & Frozen, International, and Foodservice. The Grocery & Snacks segment primarily offers shelf stable food products through various retail channels in the United States. The Refrigerated & Frozen segment provides temperature-controlled food products through various retail channels in the United States. The International segment offers food products in various temperature states through retail and foodservice channels outside of the United States. The Foodservice segment offers branded and customized food products, including meals, entrees, sauces, and various custom-manufactured culinary products packaged for restaurants and other foodservice establishments in the United States. The company sells its products under the Birds Eye, Duncan Hines, Healthy Choice, Marie Callender's, Reddi-wip, Slim Jim, Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP, Duke's, Earth Balance, Gardein, and Frontera brands. The company was formerly known as ConAgra Foods, Inc. and changed its name to Conagra Brands, Inc. in November 2016. Conagra Brands, Inc. was founded in 1919 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
The following companies are subsidiares of TransDigm Group: 17111 Waterview Pkwy LLC, ARA Deutschland GmbH, ARA Holding GmbH, Acme Aerospace, Acme Aerospace Inc., Adams Rite Aerospace GmbH, Adams Rite Aerospace Inc., Advanced Inflatable Products Limited, Aero-Instruments, AeroControlex Group Inc., Aerosonic, Aerosonic LLC, Air-Sea Survival Equipment Trustee Limited, Airborne Acquisition Inc., Airborne Global Inc., Airborne Holdings Inc., Airborne Systems, Airborne Systems Canada Ltd., Airborne Systems Group Limited, Airborne Systems Holdings Limited, Airborne Systems Limited, Airborne Systems NA Inc., Airborne Systems North America Inc., Airborne Systems North America of CA Inc., Airborne Systems North America of NJ Inc., Airborne Systems Pension Trust Limited, Airborne UK Acquisition Limited, Airborne UK Parent Limited, Aircraft Materials Limited, AmSafe, AmSafe Aviation (Chongqing) Ltd., AmSafe Bridport (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., AmSafe Bridport (Private) Ltd., AmSafe Bridport Ltd., AmSafe Global Holdings Inc., AmSafe Global Services (Private) Limited, AmSafe Inc., Angus Electronics Co., Arkwin Industries, Arkwin Industries Inc., Armtec Countermeasures Co., Armtec Countermeasures TNO Co., Armtec Defense Products Co., Auxitrol SAS, Auxitrol Weston Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Auxitrol Weston Services China Ltd., Auxitrol Weston Singapore Pte. Ltd., Auxitrol Weston USA Inc., Aviation Technologies, Aviation Technologies Inc., Avionic Instruments LLC, Avionics Instruments, Avionics Specialties Inc., AvtechTyee Inc., Beta Transformer Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Beta Transformer Technology Corporation, Beta Transformer Technology LLC, Breeze-Eastern Corporation, Breeze-Eastern LLC, Bridport Erie Aviation Inc., Bridport Holdings Inc., Bridport Ltd., Bridport-Air Carrier Inc., Bruce Aerospace Inc., Bruce Industries, CDA InterCorp LLC, CEF Industries LLC, CMC Electronics Aurora LLC, CMC Electronics Inc., CMC Electronics ME Inc., Champion Aerospace LLC, Chelton Avionics Holdings Inc., Chelton Avionics Inc., Chelton Limited, Cobham Aero Connectivity, Cobham CTS Limited, Cobham Defence Communications Limited, Cobham Defense Products Inc., DART Aerospace, DDC Electronics K.K., DDC Electronics Ltd., DDC Electronics Private Limited, DDC Electronique S.A.R.L., DDC Elektronik GmbH, Darchem Engineering Limited, Darchem Holdings Limited, Data Device Corp., Data Device Corporation, Dukes Aerospace Inc., EST Defence Company UK Limited, Edlaw Limited, Electromech Technologies LLC, Elektro-Metall Export GmbH, Elektro-Metall Paks KFT, Esterline, Esterline Acquisition Ltd, Esterline Europe Company LLC, Esterline Foreign Sales Corporation, Esterline International Company, Esterline Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Esterline Technologies Corporation, Esterline Technologies Corporation, Esterline Technologies Europe Limited, Esterline Technologies France Holding SAS, Esterline Technologies French Acquisition Limited, Esterline Technologies Global Limited, Esterline Technologies Holdings Limited, Esterline Technologies SGIP LLC, Esterline Technologies Unlimited, Esterline do Brasil Assessoria e Intermediacao Ltda, European Antennas Limited, Extant Components Group Holdings Inc., Extant Components Group Intermediate Inc., GQ Parachutes Limited, Guizhou Leach-Tianyi Aviation Electrical Company Ltd, Harco, HarcoSemco LLC, Hartwell Corporation, Hytek Finishes Co., ILC Holdings Inc., IRVIN AEROSPACE LIMITED, IrvinGQ France SAS, IrvinGQ Limited, Janco Corporation, Johnson Liverpool LLC, Kirkhill Elastomers, Kirkhill Inc., Korry Electronics Co., Kunshan Shield Restraint Systems Ltd., Leach Holding Corporation, Leach International Asia-Pacific Ltd, Leach International Corporation, Leach International Europe S.A.S., Leach International Germany GmbH, Leach International Mexico S. de R. L. de C. V., Leach International UK Ltd, Leach Mexico Holding LLC, Leach Technology Group Inc., MarathonNorco Aerospace Inc., Mason Electric Co., Mastsystem Int'l Oy, McKechnie Aerospace, McKechnie Aerospace (Europe) Ltd., McKechnie Aerospace DE Inc., McKechnie Aerospace DE LP, McKechnie Aerospace Holdings Inc., McKechnie Aerospace US LLC, Mecanismos de Matamoros S. de R.L. de C.V., NAT Seattle Inc., NMC Group Inc., Norco, Nordisk Asia Pacific Limited, Nordisk Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, Nordisk Aviation Products (Kunshan) Ltd., Nordisk Aviation Products AS, Nordisk Aviation Products LLC, North Hills Signal Processing Corp., North Hills Signal Processing Overseas LLC, Norwich Aero Products Inc., Palomar Products Inc., Pexco Aerospace, Pexco Aerospace Inc., PneuDraulics, PneuDraulics Inc., Pressure Systems International Ltd, Schneller, Schneller Asia Pte. Ltd., Schneller LLC, Schneller S.A.R.L., Schroth Safety Products, Semco Instruments, Semco Instruments Inc., Shield Restraint Systems Inc., Shield Restraint Systems Ltd., Signal Processing Matamoros S.A. de C.V., Skandia, Skandia Inc., Skurka Aerospace, Skurka Aerospace Inc., Symetrics Industries, Symetrics Industries LLC, Symetrics Technology Group LLC, TA Aerospace Co., TA Mfg Limited, TDG Bavaria GmbH, TDG ESL Holdings Inc., TDG France Ultimate Parent SAS, TDG Germany GmbH, TEAC Aerospace Holdings Inc., TEAC Aerospace Technologies Inc., Tactair Fluid Controls Inc., Takata Protection Systems, Telair International, Telair International GmbH, Telair International Services PTE Ltd, Telair US LLC, TransDigm (Barbados) SRL, TransDigm Canada ULC, TransDigm European Holdings Limited, TransDigm Ireland Ltd., TransDigm Receivables LLC, TransDigm Technologies India Private Limited, TransDigm UK Holdings plc, Transicoil (Malaysia) Sendirian Berhad, Transicoil LLC, Wallop Defence UK Limited, Weston Aerospace Ltd, Whippany Actuation Systems, Whippany Actuation Systems LLC, XCEL Power Systems Ltd., Young & Franklin, Young & Franklin Inc., and exas Rotronics Inc..

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Exxon Mobil Corporation is the largest direct descendent of John D. Rockefellers Standard Oil and one of the worlds largest companies. Its earliest roots lie with Vacuum Oil which got its start in the 1860s. Vacuum Oils primary product was kerosene, an important advancement for heating and lighting in rural America. Vacuum Oil was later merged with Standard Oil of New Jersey which was the parent operation of the Standard Oil empire prior to its breakup. Standard Oil of New Jersey would merge with other independent operators over the next few years until settling on the brand Exxon for most of its operations.

Meanwhile, Standard Oil of New York was operating under much the same impetus, merging and growing, until it became known as Mobil. Then, in 1999, the two giants became one with a merger of equals that on paper had Exxon buying Mobil. Now, the combined company operates under the Exxon, Mobil, and Esso brands as an international vertically integrated energy and petrochemical business.

Today, the company explores and produces crude oil and natural gas and their derivative products globally. As of 2022, it was ranked 6th on Forbes Fortune 500 list and 12th on the Global 500 list but it has held positions from #1 to #10 over the years. In terms of its operations, it is the worlds second-largest oil refiner and the largest refiner outside of China. In terms of reserves, ExxonMobil claimed about 18.5 million barrels of oil and oil equivalents at the end of 2021 and was ranked 15th globally.

ExxonMobil operates through three segments that are the Upstream, Downstream, and Chemical segments. The Upstream segment explores for and produces oil and oil equivalents and represents roughly 70% of the income. The Downstream segment gathers, receives, stores, transports and refines oil and equivalents and their derivatives. The Downstream segment also markets and delivers fuel products to consumers and businesses. The Chemicals segment produces the full range of petrochemicals including plastics, resins and synthetic rubber.

ExxonMobil is committed to advancing sustainable and carbon-free energy solutions. The company is targeting 2050 for net-zero emissions and its 2030 interim targets are in alignment with the Paris Accord, the EU's Global Methane Pledge, and US Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan. The companys plans include investing $15 billion into reducing greenhouse emissions by 2028.






The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 13125882 Canada Inc., 211 E. Russell Road LLC, 4458664 Canada Inc., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES ASIA PTE. LTD., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES BORROWER S.C.A., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES LLC, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES MIDDLE EAST FZE, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES SERVICES LIMITED, ASTRUM IT GmbH, Accudyne Industries Acquisition S.A r.l, Accudyne Industries Canada Inc., Accudyne Industries S.A r.l., Air Dimensions, Air Dimensions Inc., Albin Pump SAS, BOC Edwards Global Low pressure Air business, CISA S.p.A., Cameron-Centrifugal Compression, Comercial Ingersoll-Rand (Chile) Limitada, Comingersoll-Comercio E Industria De Equipamentos S.A., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Dosatron International SAS, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Proprietary Limited, FlexEnergy Holdings LLC, Frigoblock Grosskopf Gmbh, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Investments Limited, GD First (UK) Ltd, GD German Holdings GmbH, GD German Holdings I Gmbh, GD German Holdings II GmbH, GD German Investments GmbH, GD Global Holdings II Inc., GD Global Holdings Inc., GD Global Holdings UK II Ltd., GD Global Ventures I B.V., GD Global Ventures II B.V., GD Global Ventures III B.V., GD Industrial Products Malaysia SDN. BHD., GD Investment KY, GD UK Finance Ltd., GPS Industries, Gardner Denver (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp (Canada), Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Limited, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Engineered Products India Private Limited, Gardner Denver FZE, Gardner Denver Finance II LLC, Gardner Denver Finance Inc & Co KG, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica SL, Gardner Denver Inc., Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver International Inc., Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Investments Inc., Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan Ltd., Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Polska Sp z.o.o., Gardner Denver Pte. Ltd., Gardner Denver S.r.l., Gardner Denver Schopfheim GmbH, Gardner Denver Schopfheim Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Schweiz AG, Gardner Denver Slovakia s.r.o., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH (f/k/a ILMVAC GmbH), Gardner Denver Thomas Inc., Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Ghh-Rand Schraubenkompressoren Gmbh, HASKEL EUROPE LTD., HASKEL HOLDINGS UK LIMITED, HASKEL INTERNATIONAL LLC, Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, Haskel France SAS, Haskel Sistemas de Fluidos Espana S.R.L., Hibon Inc., Highspeed Newco LLC, Hingerose Limited, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, INGERSOLL RAND ITS JAPAN LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHANG ZHOU) TOOLS CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHINA) INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND CHINA LLC, INGERSOLL-RAND COMERCIO E SERVICOS DE MAQUINAS E EQUIPAMENTOS INDUSTRIAIS LTDA., INGERSOLL-RAND DE PUERTO RICO INC., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL COMPANY B.V., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL SP. Z O.O., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL U.S. INC., INGERSOLL-RAND PHILIPPINES INC., INGERSOLL-RAND SPAIN S.A., INGERSOLL-RAND U.S. HOLDCO INC., IR HPS Holdco. Inc., ITO Emniyet, Ingersoll Rand Cyprus Investments Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Finance LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Investments LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Ventures LLC, Ingersoll Rand Hong Kong Investments Limited, Ingersoll Rand Inc., Ingersoll Rand Investments (SG) Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Investments B.V., Ingersoll Rand Schweiz Investments Gmbh, Ingersoll Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (Australia) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (China) Investment Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Guilin) Tools Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Hong Kong) Holding Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (India) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Ab, Ingersoll-Rand Air Solutions Hibon Sarl, Ingersoll-Rand Beteiligungs Und Grundstucksverwaltungs Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Colombia S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited (Uk), Ingersoll-Rand Company South Africa (Pty) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Cz S.R.O., Ingersoll-Rand De Mexico S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Equipements De Production S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Industrial Ireland Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International (India) Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Italia S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Italiana Manufacturing S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Korea Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Korea Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments II S.A R.I., Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Luxembourg Industrial Company S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Machinery (Shanghai) Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Malaysia Co. Sdn. Bhd., Ingersoll-Rand S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Services And Trading Limited Liability Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Singapore Enterprises Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand South East Asia (Pte.) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Superay Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technical And Services S.A.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Technologies And Services Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Tool Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Trading Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Vietnam Company Limited, Instrum Rand JSC, Interflex Datensysteme, Ir Canada Holdings Ulc, Ir Canada Sales & Service Ulc, Ir France Sas, Kryptonite corp, Lawrence Factor Inc., LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MILTON ROY (HONG KONG) LIMITED, MILTON ROY (UK) LIMITED, MILTON ROY EUROPA B.V., MILTON ROY EUROPE SAS, MILTON ROY INDUSTRIAL (SHANGHAI) CO. LTD., MILTON ROY LLC, MILTON ROY US PURCHASER INC., MP Pumps Inc., Maximum AG Technologies Inc., Maximus Solutions, Mb Air Systems Limited, Nash Elmo, Officina Meccaniche Industriali Srl, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Plurifilter D.O.O., Pt Ingersoll-Rand Indonesia, Robuschi, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, SEEPEX, Seepex (M) SDN, Seepex Australia Pty Ltd, Seepex Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mit Beschrankter Haftung, Seepex France S.a.r.l., Seepex GmbH, Seepex Inc., Seepex India Private Ltd., Seepex Italia SRL, Seepex Japan Co. Ltd., Seepex Nordic A/S, Seepex OOO, Seepex Pumps (Shanghia) Co. Ltd., Seepex UK Ltd., Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Shanghai Ingersoll-Rand Compressor Limited, Shenzhen Bocom System Engineering Co., Superay, Syltone, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, Tamrotor Marine Comp AS Norway, Tecno Matic Europe s.r.o., Thomas Industries Inc., Trane Technologies, Tri-Continent Scientific Inc., Vacuum and Blower Systems division, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zaxe Technologies Inc., Zeks Compressed Air Solutions Llc, Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, Zinsser NA Inc., and crayon interface.

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WSP Global Inc. operates as a professional services consulting firm in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia, and internationally. It advises, plans, designs, and manages projects for rail transit, aviation, highways, bridges, tunnels, water, maritime, and urban infrastructure for public and private clients, construction contractors, and other partners. The company also provides engineering and consultancy services, such as decarbonisation strategies, digital building design, structural and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering services; and long-term operational management support services, including first feasibility studies; and advisory services, such as technical, financial, and environmental issues, as well as engineering design and energy simulations. In addition, it works with and advises businesses and governments in various areas of environmental consultancy, including environmental, social, and governance matters. Further, the company provides engineering and environmental services to companies operating in upstream exploration and production, midstream transportation and storage, and downstream refining and distribution; and a range of consulting and engineering services, such as strategic studies, concept design, and productivity analysis to the food and beverages, pharmaceutical and biotechnology, automotive, and chemicals industries. Additionally, it offers strategic advisory services comprising planning and advisory, management, and technology and sustainability services. The company was formerly known as GENIVAR Inc. and changed its name to WSP Global Inc. in January 2014. WSP Global Inc. was founded in 1885 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.
Banco Santander-Chile, together with its subsidiaries, provides commercial and retail banking products and services in Chile. It operates through Retail Banking, Middle-Market, Corporate Investment Banking, and Corporate Activities segments. The company offers debit and credit cards, checking accounts, and savings products; consumer, automobile, commercial, mortgage, and government-guaranteed loans; and Chilean peso and foreign currency denominated loans to finance various commercial transactions, trade, foreign currency forward contracts, and credit lines, as well as mortgage financing services. It also provides mutual funds, insurance and securities brokerage, foreign exchange, financial leasing, factoring, financial consulting and advisory, investment management, foreign trade, treasury, and transactional services, as well as specialized services to finance projects for the real estate industry. In addition, the company offers short-term financing and fund raising, and brokerage services, as well as derivatives, securitization, and other tailor-made products. It serves individuals, small to middle-sized entities, companies, and large corporations, as well as universities, government entities, and local and regional governments. As of December 31, 2021, the company operated 326 branches, which include 220 under the Santander brand name, 14 under the Select brand name, 7 specialized branches for the middle market, and 22 as auxiliary and payment centers, as well as 1,338 ATMs, including depository ATMs. Banco Santander-Chile was incorporated in 1977 and is headquartered in Santiago, Chile.
Telefonica, S.A., together with its subsidiaries, provides telecommunications services in Europe and Latin America. The company's mobile and related services and products comprise mobile voice, value added, mobile data and Internet, wholesale, corporate, roaming, fixed wireless, and trunking and paging services. Its fixed telecommunication services include PSTN lines; ISDN accesses; public telephone services; local, domestic, and international long-distance and fixed-to-mobile communications; corporate communications; supplementary value-added services; video telephony; intelligent network; and telephony information services, as well as leases and sells handset equipment. The company also provides Internet and broadband multimedia services comprising Internet service provider, portal and network, retail and wholesale broadband access, narrowband switched access, high-speed Internet through fibre to the home, and voice over Internet protocol services. In addition, it offers leased line, virtual private network, fibre optics, web hosting and application, outsourcing and consultancy, desktop, and system integration and professional services. Further, the company offers wholesale services for telecommunication operators, including domestic interconnection and international wholesale services; leased lines for other operators; and local loop leasing services, as well as bit stream services, wholesale line rental accesses, and leased ducts for other operators' fiber deployment. Additionally, it provides video/TV services; smart connectivity and services, and consumer IoT products; financial and other payment, security, cloud computing, advertising, big data, and digital telco experience services; virtual assistants; digital home platforms; and Movistar Home devices. It also offers online telemedicine, home insurance, music streaming, and consumer loan services. The company was incorporated in 1924 and is headquartered in Madrid, Spain.
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.
The following companies are subsidiares of Vodafone Group Public: 360 Connect S.A., 3@ Telecom, A-ccelerator B.V., A-ccelerator Holding B.V, AAA (Euro) Limited, AAA (MCR) Limited, AAA (UK) Limited, Acorn Communications Limited, Africonnect (Zambia) Limited, Ag Mercantile Company Private Limited, Al-Amin Investments Limited, Amsterdamse Beheer- en Consultingmaatschappij B.V., Apollo Submarine Cable System Limited, Array Holdings Limited, Asian Telecommunication Investments (Mauritius) Limited, Aspective Limited, Astec Communications Limited, Autoconnex Limited, Aztec Limited, BelCompany BV, Bluefish Apac Communications Pte. Ltd, Bluefish Communications, Bluefish Communications Limited, Business Serve Limited, C&W Worldwide Nigeria Limited, C.S.P. Solutions Limited, CCII (Mauritius) Inc., CGP India Investments Ltd., CGP Investments (Holdings) Limited, COOP Mobil s.r.o, CT Networks Limited, CWGNL S.A., CWW Operations Limited, Cable & Wireless Access Limited, Cable & Wireless Americas Systems Inc., Cable & Wireless Aspac Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless CIS Services Limited, Cable & Wireless CIS Svyaz LLC, Cable & Wireless Capital Limited , Cable & Wireless Communications Data Network Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Communications Starclass Limited, Cable & Wireless Communications Technical Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd (Beijing Branch), Cable & Wireless Europe Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless GN Limited, Cable & Wireless Global (India) Private Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Business Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Holding Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Telecommunication Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Holdco Limited, Cable & Wireless Networks India Private Limited, Cable & Wireless Trade Mark Management Limited, Cable & Wireless UK Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless UK Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Waterside Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Pension Trustee Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Voice Messaging Limited, Cable & Wireless a-Services Inc, Cable & Wireless a-Services Limited, Cable and Wireless (India) Limited, Cable and Wireless (India) Limited Indian Branch Office, Cable and Wireless Nominee Limited, Cable and Wireless Worldwide South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Cavalry Holdings Ltd, Celfocus  Solucoes Informaticas Para Telecomunicacoes S.A, Cellops Limited, Cellular Operations Limited, Central Communications Group Limited, Central Telecom (Northern) Limited, Centurion GSM Limited, Chelys Limited, City Cable (Holdings) Limited, Cobra do Brasil Servicos de Telematica ltda., Commnet Cellular Inc., Complete Network Technology, Connect (India) Mobile Technologies Private Limited, Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure Limited, Dataroam Limited , Device Insight, Digital Island (UK) Ltd, Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited, East Africa Investment (Mauritius) Limited, Emtel Europe Limited, Energis (Ireland) Limited, Energis Communications Limited, Energis Holdings Limited, Energis Local Access Limited, Energis Management Limited, Energis Squared Limited, Erudite Systems Limited, Esprit Telecom B.V., Eudokia Limited, Euro Pacific Securities Ltd., Eurocall Holdings Limited, Europolitan Holdings AB (now Europolitan Vodafone AB), FB Holdings Limited, FM Associates (UK) Limited, FinCo Partner 1 B.V., FireFly Networks Limited, Flexphone Limited, GS Telecom (Pty) Limited, Gateway Communications Africa (UK) Limited, Gateway Communications Tanzania Limited, General Mobile Corporation, Generation Telecom Limited, Ghana Telecommunications, Ghana Telecommunications Company Limited, Global Cellular Rental Limited, Globe Limited, GrandCentrix GmbH, Grupo Corporativo ONO S.A.U., H3ga Properties (No 3) Pty Limited, HBO Nederland Cooperatief U.A., HBO Netherlands Channels sro, HBO Netherlands Distribution B.V., Hellas Online, How2 Telecom Limited, Hutchison Essar Ltd, Indus Towers Limited, Intercell Communications Limited, Internet Network Services Limited, Invitation Digital Limited, Ipergy Communications NV, Isis Telecommunications Management Limited, Jaguar Communications Limited, Jaykay Finholding (India) Private Limited, Jupicol (Proprietary) Limited, KABELCOM Braunschweig Gesellschaft Fur BreitbandkabelKommunikation Mit Beschrankter Haftung, KABELCOM Wolfsburg Gesellschaft Fur BreitbandkabelKommunikation Mit Beschrankter Haftung, Kabel Deutschland, Kabel Deutschland Holding, Kabel Deutschland Holding Erste Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Holding Zweite Beteilgungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Neunte Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Siebte Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabelfernsehen Munchen Servicenter GmbH & Co. KG, LG Financing Partnership, LGE HoldCo V B.V., LGE HoldCo VI B.V., LGE HoldCo VIII B.V., LGE Holdco VII B.V., LLC Vodafone Enterprise Ukraine, Le Bunt Holdings Limited, Legend Communications Limited, Liberty Global, Liberty Global Content Netherlands B.V., London Hydraulic Power Company, M-PESA Foundation, M-PESA Holding Co. Limited, ML Integration Group Limited, ML Integration Limited, ML Integration Services Limited, MV Healthcare Services Private Limited, Mannesmann AG, MetroHoldings Limited, Mezzanine Ware Proprietary Limited (RF), Mirambo Limited, Misrfone Trading Company LLC, MobiFon S.A., Mobile Commerce Solutions Limited, Mobile Phone Centre Limited, Mobile Wallet VM1, Mobile Wallet VM2, Mobile by Sainsburys Limited, Mobiles 4 Business.com Limited, Mobileworld Communications Pty Limited, Mobileworld Operating Pty Ltd, Mobilvest, Motifpros 1 (Proprietary) Limited, Multi Risk Indemnity Company Limited, Multi Risk Limited, ND Callus Info Services Private Limited, Nadal Trading Company Private Limited, Nat Comm Air Limited, National Communications Backbone Company Limited, Navtrak Ltd, Netforce Group Limited, Netgrid Telecom SRL, Number Portability Company (Proprietary) Limited, ONO, Omega Telecom Holdings Private Limited, Oni Way  Infocomunicacoes S.A, Oskar Mobil S.R.O., Oxygen Solutions Limited, P.C.P. (North West) Limited, PPL Pty Limited, PT Network Services Limited, PTI Telecom Limited, Peoples Phone Limited, Pinnacle Cellular Group Limited, Pinnacle Cellular Limited, Plex Limited, Plustech Mercantile Company Private Limited, Prime Metals Ltd., Project Telecom Holdings Limited, Quickcomm Software Solutions, Radio Opt GmbH, Rian Mobile Limited, SBC SMART CITY 1517 B.V., SMMS Investments Pvt Limited, Safaricom Limited, Safenet N.P A., Sarmady Communications, Scarlet Ibis Investments 23 (Pty) Limited, Scorpios Beverages Pvt. Ltd, Silver Stream Investments Limited, Singlepoint (4U) Limited, Singlepoint (4U) Ltd., Singlepoint Payment Services Limited, Siro Limited, Spar Aerospace (Nigeria) Limited, Sport TV Portugal S.A, Starnet, Stentor Communications Limited, Stentor Limited, Storage Technology Services (Pty) Limited, T.W. Telecom Limited, T3 Telecommunications Limited, TKS Telepost Kabel-Service Kaiserslautern Beteiligungs GmbH, TKS Telepost Kabel-Service Kaiserslautern GmbH & Co. KG, TNAS Limited, TSM NZ Limited, Talkland Airtime Services Limited, Talkland Australia Pty Limited, Talkland Communications Limited, Talkland International Limited, Talkland Midlands Limited, Talkmobile Limited, Tele2 Italia SPA, Tele2 Spain, Telecom Investments India Private Limited, Telecommunications Europe Limited, Ternhill Communications Limited, The Cobra Group, The Eastern Leasing Company Limited, The Old Telecom Sales Co. Limited, Thus Group Holdings Limited, Thus Group Limited, Thus Limited, Thus Profit Sharing Trustees Limited, TnT Expense Management LLC, Tomorrow Street GP S.a r.l., Tomorrow Street SCA, Torenspits II B.V., Townley Communications Limited, Trans Crystal Ltd., UMT Investments Limited, UPC Nederland Holding I B.V., UPC Nederland Holding II B.V., UPC Nederland Holding III B.V., Unified Communications, Uniqueair Limited, Urbana Teleunion Rostock GmbH & Co.KG, Usha Martin Telematics Limited, VAPL No. 2 Pty Limited, VBA (Mauritius) Limited, VBA Holdings Limited, VBA International (SL) Limited, VBA International Limited, VEI S.r.l., VM SA, VND S.p.A, VSSB Vodafone Shared Services Budapest Private Limited Company, Verwaltung Urbana Teleunion Rostock GmbH, Victus Networks S.A., Vizzavi Finance Limited, Vizzavi Limited, Voda Limited, Vodacall Limited, Vodacash s.p.r.l., Vodacom (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Business (Angola) Limitada, Vodacom Business (Ghana) Limited, Vodacom Business (Kenya) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa (Nigeria) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa Group (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa Group Services Limited, Vodacom Business Cameroon SA, Vodacom Business Cote Divoire S.A.R.L., Vodacom Congo (RDC) SA, Vodacom Financial Services (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Group Limited, Vodacom Insurance Administration Company (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Insurance Company (RF) Limited, Vodacom International Holdings (Pty) Limited, Vodacom International Limited, Vodacom Lesotho (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Life Assurance Company (RF) Limited, Vodacom Payment Services (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Properties No 1 (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Properties No.2 (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Tanzania Limited Zanzibar, Vodacom Tanzania Public Limited Company, Vodacom UK Limited, Vodafone (NI) Limited, Vodafone (New Zealand) Hedging Limited, Vodafone (Scotland) Limited, Vodafone 2, Vodafone 4 UK, Vodafone 5 Limited, Vodafone 5 UK, Vodafone 6 UK, Vodafone Albania Sh.A, Vodafone Alternatif Telekom Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Americas 4, Vodafone Americas Virginia Inc., Vodafone And Qatar Foundation L.L.C, Vodafone Asset Management Services S.a r.l., Vodafone Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Automotive Deutschland GmbH, Vodafone Automotive Electronic Systems S.r.L, Vodafone Automotive France S.A.S, Vodafone Automotive Iberia S.L, Vodafone Automotive Italia S.p.A, Vodafone Automotive Japan K.K, Vodafone Automotive Korea Limited, Vodafone Automotive SpA, Vodafone Automotive Technologies (Beijing) Co Ltd, Vodafone Automotive Telematics Development S.A.S, Vodafone Automotive Telematics S.A, Vodafone Automotive UK Limited, Vodafone Belgium SA/NV, Vodafone Benelux Limited, Vodafone Bilgi Ve Iletisim Hizmetleri AS, Vodafone Business Services Limited, Vodafone Business Solutions Limited, Vodafone Canada Inc, Vodafone Cellular Limited, Vodafone Central Services Limited, Vodafone China Limited (China), Vodafone China Limited (Hong Kong), Vodafone Connect 2 Limited, Vodafone Connect Limited, Vodafone Consolidated Holdings Limited, Vodafone Corporate Limited, Vodafone Corporate Secretaries Limited, Vodafone Czech Republic A.S., Vodafone DC Pension Trustee Company Limited, Vodafone Dagitim Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Data, Vodafone Distribution Holdings Limited, Vodafone Egypt Telecommunications S.A.E., Vodafone Elektronik Para Ve Odeme Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Empresa Brasil Telecomunicacoes Ltda, Vodafone Empresa Mexico S.de R.L. de C.V., Vodafone Enabler Espana S.L., Vodafone Enterprise Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Austria GmbH, Vodafone Enterprise Bahrain W.L.L., Vodafone Enterprise Bulgaria EOOD, Vodafone Enterprise Chile SA, Vodafone Enterprise Communications Technical Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Corporate Secretaries Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Denmark A/S, Vodafone Enterprise Equipment Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited  Czech Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited  DubaiI Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Finland OY, Vodafone Enterprise France SAS, Vodafone Enterprise Germany GmbH, Vodafone Enterprise Global Businesses S.a r.l., Vodafone Enterprise Global Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Global Network HK Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Global Network Pte. Ltd., Vodafone Enterprise Hong Kong Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Italy S.r.L, Vodafone Enterprise Korea Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Luxembourg S.A., Vodafone Enterprise Netherlands BV, Vodafone Enterprise Norway AS, Vodafone Enterprise Regional Business Singapore Pte.Ltd., Vodafone Enterprise Singapore Pte.Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Spain S.L.U.  Portugal Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Spain SLU, Vodafone Enterprise Sweden AB, Vodafone Enterprise Switzerland AG, Vodafone Erste Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Vodafone Espana S.A.U., Vodafone Euro Hedging Limited, Vodafone Euro Hedging Two, Vodafone Europe B.V., Vodafone Europe UK, Vodafone European Investments, Vodafone European Portal Limited, Vodafone Finance Limited, Vodafone Finance Luxembourg Limited, Vodafone Finance Sweden, Vodafone Finance UK Limited, Vodafone Financial Operations, Vodafone Financial Services B.V., Vodafone Fixed Ltd, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone Foundation Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Gestioni S.p.A, Vodafone Ghana Mobile Financial Services Limited, Vodafone Global Content Services Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise (Hong Kong) Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise (Italy) S.R.L., Vodafone Global Enterprise (Japan) K.K., Vodafone Global Enterprise (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Vodafone Global Enterprise Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise Russia LLC, Vodafone Global Enterprise Taiwan Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise Telecommunications (Hellas) A.E., Vodafone Global Network Limited, Vodafone Global Network Limited  Slovakia Branch, Vodafone Global Services Private Limited, Vodafone GmbH, Vodafone Group (Directors) Trustee Limited, Vodafone Group Pension Trustee Limited, Vodafone Group Services GmbH, Vodafone Group Services Ireland Limited, Vodafone Group Services Limited, Vodafone Group Services No.2 Limited, Vodafone Group Share Trustee Limited, Vodafone Hire Limited, Vodafone Holding A.S., Vodafone Holdings (Jersey) Limited, Vodafone Holdings (SA) Proprietary Limited, Vodafone Holdings Europe S.L.U., Vodafone Holdings Luxembourg Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Finance Pty Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Receivables Pty Limited, Vodafone IP Licensing Limited, Vodafone India Digital Limited, Vodafone India Limited, Vodafone India Services Private Limited, Vodafone India Ventures Limited, Vodafone Institut fur Gesellschaft und Kommunikation GmbH, Vodafone Intermediate Enterprises Limited, Vodafone International 1 S.a.r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone International 1 S.a r.l., Vodafone International 2 Limited, Vodafone International Holdings B.V., Vodafone International Holdings Limited, Vodafone International M S.a r.l., Vodafone International Operations Limited, Vodafone International Services LLC, Vodafone Investment UK, Vodafone Investments (SA) Proprietary Limited, Vodafone Investments Australia Limited, Vodafone Investments Limited, Vodafone Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l., Vodafone Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone Ireland Distribution Limited, Vodafone Ireland Ltd., Vodafone Ireland Marketing Limited, Vodafone Ireland Property Holdings Limited, Vodafone Ireland Retail Limited, Vodafone Italia S.p.A., Vodafone Jersey Dollar Holdings Limited, Vodafone Jersey Finance, Vodafone Jersey Yen Holdings Unlimited, Vodafone Kabel Deutschland Field Services GmbH, Vodafone Kabel Deutschland GmbH, Vodafone Kabel Deutschland Kundenbetreuung GmbH, Vodafone Kenya Limited, Vodafone Leasing Limited, Vodafone Libertel B.V., Vodafone Limited, Vodafone Luxembourg 5 S.a r.l., Vodafone Luxembourg 5 S.a r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone Luxembourg S.a r.l., Vodafone Luxembourg S.a r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone M-PESA SH.P.K., Vodafone M-Pesa S.A, Vodafone M.C. Mobile Services Limited , Vodafone Magyarorszag Mobile Tavkozlesi Zartkoruen Mukodo Reszvenytarsasag, Vodafone Malta Limited, Vodafone Marketing UK , Vodafone Maroc SARL, Vodafone Mauritius Ltd., Vodafone Mobile Commerce Limited, Vodafone Mobile Communications Limited, Vodafone Mobile Enterprises Limited, Vodafone Mobile NZ Limited, Vodafone Mobile Network Limited, Vodafone Mobile Operations Limited, Vodafone Mobile Services Limited, Vodafone Multimedia Limited, Vodafone Nederland Holding I B.V., Vodafone Nederland Holding II B.V., Vodafone Nederland Holding III B.V., Vodafone Net Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Network Pty Limited, Vodafone New Zealand Foundation Limited, Vodafone New Zealand Limited, Vodafone Next Generation Services Limited, Vodafone Nominees Limited1, Vodafone ONO S.A.U., Vodafone Oceania Limited, Vodafone Old Show Ground Site Management Limited, Vodafone Overseas Finance Limited, Vodafone Overseas Holdings Limited, Vodafone Panafon International Holdings B.V., Vodafone Panafon UK, Vodafone Partner Services Limited, Vodafone Payment Solutions S.a r.l., Vodafone Portugal  Comunicacoes Pessoais S.A., Vodafone Procurement Company S.a r.l., Vodafone Property Investments Limited, Vodafone Pty Limited, Vodafone Qatar Q.S.C., Vodafone Retail (Holdings) Limited , Vodafone Retail Limited, Vodafone Roaming Services S.a r.l., Vodafone Romania S.A, Vodafone Romania M - Payments SRL, Vodafone Romania Technologies SRL, Vodafone Sales & Services Limited, Vodafone Satellite Services Limited, Vodafone Servicios SL.U, Vodafone Servizi E Tecnologie S.R.L, Vodafone Servicos Empresariais Brasil Ltda., Vodafone Shared Services Romania SRL, Vodafone Specialist Communications Limited, Vodafone Stiftung Deutschland Gemeinnutzige GmbH, Vodafone Technology Solutions Limited, Vodafone Teknoloji Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Tele-Services (India) Holdings Limited, Vodafone Telecel-Comunicates Pessoais S.A., Vodafone Telecommunications (India) Limited, Vodafone Telekomunikasyon A.S, Vodafone Towers Limited, Vodafone UK Content Services Limited, Vodafone UK Investments Limited , Vodafone UK Limited1 , Vodafone US Inc, Vodafone Ventures Limited1 , Vodafone Vierte Verwaltungs AG, Vodafone Worldwide Holdings Limited, Vodafone Yen Finance Limited , Vodafone m-pesa Limited, Vodafone-Central Limited Vodaphone Limited, Vodafone-Panafon Hellenic Telecommunications Company S.A., VodafoneZiggo Group Holding B.V, Vodata Limited , Vouchercloud SA (Pty) Ltd, Wataneya Telecommunications S.A.E, Waterberg Lodge (Proprietary) Limited, Wayfinder, Wheatfields Investments 276 (Proprietary) Limited, Wireless Interactions & NFC Accelerator 2013 B.V., Woodend Cellular Limited, Woodend Communications Limited, Woodend Group Limited, Woodend Holdings Limited, XB Facilities B.V, XLink Communications (Proprietary) Limited, Your Communications Group Limited, ZUM B.V., ZYB, Zelitron S.A., Zesko B.V., Ziggo B.V., Ziggo Bond Company B.V., Ziggo Deelnemingen B.V., Ziggo Finance 2 B.V., Ziggo Financing Partnership, Ziggo Holding B.V., Ziggo Netwerk B.V., Ziggo Netwerk II B.V., Ziggo Services B.V., Ziggo Services Employment B.V., Ziggo Services Netwerk 2 B.V., Ziggo Zakelijk Services B.V., and Zoranet Connectivity Services B.V..

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I have words of perspective, at least, because I have the comfort of distance here.

Which means I can, without emotional engagement, treat your brain just like any other body part.

So, let's treat it like an arm, for the sake of argument.

Your family's abuse was terrible, and over time it caused you a significant injury in breaking your arm. You have known all this time your arm was injured, but for whatever reason doctors never xrayed it.

Now, you have X-ray results. Broken arm. It's bad, and it's terrible that your own damn family abused you do badly that your arm broke, but at least now you know exactly why your arm has hurt so much for so many years.

And, even better, now you and your doctors understand exactly how to treat it.

And, best of all, you can officially stop beating yourself up for feeling pain for so many years. Who would expect your arm to "fix itself" properly? It's the kind of injury that needs treatment--and it's also an injury that has a treatment protocol that has a good track record of success.

So now you *and your treatment team*--as in, not just you all by yourself--know what your jobs are and can finally do them right.

And who on earth would treat you as "fundamentally flawed" for having a broken arm? And how would the party you "blame any of this on" be any different now than it was before? Your abusers are on the hook exactly as they have always been.

Arm, brain, ____--they're injured body parts in need of medical intervention. Now go get that treatment. The sooner you start the healing process, the more of your life you will enjoy as a healed person. Take care.
South Africa has faced massive challenges over the past five years, with state-owned enterprises in ruins, unemployment rising, and the economy stagnating.

Many of these problems are thanks to poor leadership and corruption under the presidency of Jacob Zuma.

Those who stood up against corruption and state capture  notably Nhlanhla Nene, Pravin Gordhan, and Mcebisi Jonas  were fired.

Ministers who were involved in complete failures, however, like Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini with the grant payouts, remain protected under Zuma.

While Zuma has been successful in maintaining a political support base, the economy is paying a heavy price.

The South African economy moved into recession this year, with a reported decrease of 0.7% in GDP in Q1  following a 0.3% contraction in Q4 2016.

The country has also experienced numerous credit ratings downgrades from major agencies  Fitch, S&P, and Moodys  under Zumas leadership.

This includes the latest ratings from S&P, which downgraded our local currency debt to junk.

South Africa vs Kenya and Egypt

The graph of South Africas gross domestic product (GDP) in US dollars tells a tale of a struggling economy.

What is particularly worrying about the declining GDP in the country is that other prominent African economies are growing  including Egypt and Kenya.
Oil prices may reach $120 a barrel and stay at this level for 2 years

Zelenskyy receives 'signals' that Putin wants direct talks

Security Service of Ukraine puts Ramzan Kadyrov on wanted list

Unidentified men open fire at market in Izeh city in southwestern Iran

Karen Donfried tries to explain State Department's decision to exempt Azerbaijan from 907th Amendment

Philip Reeker says U.S. administration representatives have no access to Nagorno-Karabakh

Rimac Nevera sets speed record for production electric cars

Reeker: Pace and depth of current talks between Yerevan and Baku demonstrate potential to resolve conflict

FBI director considers TikTok threat to US National Security

Bob Menendez says Ukraine supplies Azerbaijan with phosphorus bombs it used in Karabakh

Delegation headed by Speaker of Armenian Parliament is in Tbilisi

Austin: U.S. intends to continue supplying weapons and aid to Ukraine during winter

Armenian politician charged with abuse of office, money laundering

Karen Donfried says Armenia and Azerbaijan have historic opportunity to establish lasting peace

Bob Menendez: How can the U.S. justify security assistance to the Baku regime?

Azerbaijan fires at residents of Sarushen village of Artsakh

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

Armenian Deputy PM: Regional electricity export opportunities significantly increased

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

Poland says Ukrainian missile could be cause of explosion

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
The Egyptian military conducted airstrikes against jihadists in Bir al-Abed, west of El Arish on Friday after an attack on a mosque in Egypt's North Sinai province, The Guardian reported.

The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force, said Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi.

He added: We will respond with brute force to combat these terrorists and deviants ... This is an attempt to deter us from fighting terrorism and to destroy our will, but we are steadfast, and I say to all Egyptians, the battle you are fighting is the most honourable.

The Egyptian military killed 30 ISIS militants. Vehicles used in the attack and hideouts full of weapons and ammunition were also destroyed.

Militants attacked a crowded mosque during Friday prayers, settling off explosives, spraying worshippers with gunfire. Overall,235 people had been killed and 109 more wounded as the result of the attack. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but since 2013 Egyptian security forces have battled a stubborn Islamic State.
Oil prices may reach $120 a barrel and stay at this level for 2 years

Zelenskyy receives 'signals' that Putin wants direct talks

Security Service of Ukraine puts Ramzan Kadyrov on wanted list

Unidentified men open fire at market in Izeh city in southwestern Iran

Karen Donfried tries to explain State Department's decision to exempt Azerbaijan from 907th Amendment

Philip Reeker says U.S. administration representatives have no access to Nagorno-Karabakh

Rimac Nevera sets speed record for production electric cars

Reeker: Pace and depth of current talks between Yerevan and Baku demonstrate potential to resolve conflict

FBI director considers TikTok threat to US National Security

Bob Menendez says Ukraine supplies Azerbaijan with phosphorus bombs it used in Karabakh

Delegation headed by Speaker of Armenian Parliament is in Tbilisi

Disney Studios starts filming The Princess Diaries 3

Austin: U.S. intends to continue supplying weapons and aid to Ukraine during winter

Armenian politician charged with abuse of office, money laundering

Karen Donfried says Armenia and Azerbaijan have historic opportunity to establish lasting peace

Bob Menendez: How can the U.S. justify security assistance to the Baku regime?

Why are almonds good for health

Azerbaijan fires at residents of Sarushen village of Artsakh

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

Media expert warns: The EURO RSCG V3.1.0 app is some kind of spyware virus

Belarusian border guards shoot down drone intruding into airspace from Ukraine

Rapper Eminem opens restaurant for 20th anniversary of 8 Mile movie

Armenian Deputy PM: Regional electricity export opportunities significantly increased

Greek authorities temporarily ban export of firewood from country

Users withdraw $1.35 billion worth of bitcoins from Binance after FTX crash: What's Bitcoin doing right now?

Azerbaijan protests to France in connection with Senate resolution

Magic Mike trailer starring Channing Tatum released

Blinken calls on Aliyev to observe ceasefire and limit provocations

Pashinyan: We're advancing rights of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Kramaric's goal brings victory for Croatia (video)

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

Barcelona will try to buy player from Bayern

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

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle doesn't Charles III a happy birthday on social media

Roberto Martinez names 8 contenders for World Cup

IRGC forces detain Mossad spy in southern Iran

Blue Verified relaunch is set to Nov. 29: Why didn't Musk listen to employee advice?

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

Poland says Ukrainian missile could be cause of explosion

Four habits that indicate high blood cholesterol

Ivanka Trump says she will not participate in her father's presidential campaign

Paulo Dybala may leave Roma if they fail to qualify for Champions League

Beckham supports Ronaldo and invites him to his club

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

Mankind may face epidemic of male infertility

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

Natalia Vodianova finds her little sister, who was adopted by couple from U.S. 22 years ago

Biden and Sunak discuss missile incident in Poland at G20 summit

Russian Defense Ministry: Elements of the Ukrainian S-300 system fell in Poland

Referees for Kosovo vs Armenia match named

NASA's unmanned lunar mission Artemis 1 successfully launched: SpaceX will land astronauts on the moon in 2025 and 2027

Erdogan: Biden administration is determined to sell F-16s to Turkey

Gold price remains stable

Is white rice good or bad?

Sandra Bullock breaks up with her boyfriend after seven-year relationship

Armenia's final national team bid announced

Copper falls in price

Microsoft to leave Azerbaijan

Ronaldo: Portuguese squad for this World Cup is a great mix of experienced players and young rising stars

G7 and NATO leaders say they are ready to support Poland in investigation of bombings

Joe Biden asks Congress for new funding for Ukraine

Sergio Aguero names his favorites for World Cup 2022

Finance Minister: Capital expenses will greatly increase in Armenia in 2023

Grammy nominees announced in US

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

Amazon plans to lay off 10,000 people: What issues is company facing?

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
The Egyptian parliament will hold an emergency meeting on November 27 in connection with Sinai mosque attack, TASS reported quoting Al-Youm Al-Sabia.

Egypt's House of Representative deputy speaker Mahmoud El-Sharif noted that during the meeting the parliament will announce support for the steps taken by the country's political leadership to eradicate terrorism and will confirm the fundamental postulate, according to which national security of Egypt is above everything.

According to him, the bill on nuclear power plants will also be discussed at the meeting.

On Saturday, President Abdel Fattah Sisi ordered the construction of a mausoleum in memory of the people killed in the attack.

Egypt said an attack on a mosque by militants in the country's troubled region of northern Sinai has killed 305 worshippers, including 27 children, a dramatic increase in the death toll previously announced, which was 235.

A statement by the country's chief prosecutor, Nabil Sadeq, said the attack Friday left another 128 people wounded.

It said the attackers, estimated at between 25 and 30, arrived at the mosque close to the small town of Bir al-Abd in five all-terrain vehicles and positioned themselves at the main door and the facility's 12 windows before opening fire. They also torched seven cars parked outside the mosque, which belonged to worshippers inside.
Head Transplant Research in China Raises Serious Concerns

Controversial research only taking place in China

The announcement of the first head transplant has met with skepticism from scientists and stoked fears of Frankensteins monster.

But two pressing questions are being overlooked, say experts: Where are the bodies for this research coming from? And why is head transplant research happening only in China, where the bodies of death row prisoners are known to have been used for transplant without consent.

Italian researcher Sergio Canavero announced that he had carried out the first successful head transplant on Nov. 11, albeit between two corpses. The details of that research were published on Nov. 22.

Canavero, who likens himself to Victor Frankenstein, says the experiment is the precursor to the next stage of transplanting between brain-dead subjects. The step after is a full head transplant for a living person.

After Canaveros research was rejected on ethical grounds in the United States and Europe, it found a home in China with a collaborator, Xiaoping Ren.

The Americans did not understand, Canavero told a press conference on Nov. 11.

No Transparency

Professor Karen Rommelfanger is senior editor of the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience. She said that given Chinas history of using executed prisoners for transplants there are questions that need urgent answering.

Whats very importantthat no one has spoken aboutis where the bodies are coming from, and who consents.

Theres been no response from any of the Chinese collaborators about a very fundamental piece of this whole enterprisewhich is consenting individuals to participate.

She said she is surprised that people have been distracted by the other issues and missed what she sees as the most important issue.

Everybody has seen the pageantry around the head transplant, and weve seen a couple of responses. One is to attack Sergio Canavero himself and just to say what a wacky character he is. The other is to say that this is gross and hard to stomach and to think that this will just go away if we stop looking at it.

Rommelfanger said that there has been no transparency.

Id like to know what the participants were told and what they were they promised. What were the costs and benefits explained to them? Id like to know what kind of data will be collected along the way.

Head transplant is perhaps more usefully understood as a body transplantthe aim being that when the health of someones body fails, they can simply swap it for a healthier, perhaps younger one.

The current edition of the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience is dedicated to the issues around of head transplants, stirred up by Canavero and Rens research.

Rommelfangers concerns are explained in an editorial article in the journal, co-authored with Paul Boshears, Professor of Philosophy at Kennesaw State University.

Canavero said he has carried out the procedure twice, which would require four bodies.

The use of the bodies of political prisoners for transplants in China has been well-documented. For decades, China openly admitted to using organs of executed prisoners without consent.

In 2006, investigations revealed that China had a thriving industry harvesting of organs from prisoners of consciencekilled on demand so their organs could be sold for profit.

The report Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update, published in June 2016, said the main targets of organ harvesting are those who practice the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong. Uyghurs, Tibetans, and House Christians have also been killed in order to obtain organs for transplants, sometimes sold to foreigners, the report said.

The investigators estimate that up to 1.5 million organ transplants may have taken place in China since 2000, without any verifiable source for the organs. Transplants cost $60,000 for a Kidney, $100,000 for a liver, and up to $150,000 for lung and heart transplants, according to official Chinese sources, cited in the report. The industry is worth over $1 billion a year, according to Leon Lee, the maker of the award-winning documentary film, Human Harvest.

Research Carries On Despite Objections

The prospect of a head transplant has been raised by Canavero since 2015. Initially, he had a living subject lined up for the first live surgery, who later withdrew.

On Nov. 11., he made an announcement in Vienna that he had successfully accomplished the first ever head swap between cadavers.

Everyone said it was impossible, but the surgery was successful, Canavero told a press conference in Vienna, which was filmed and posted to YouTube.

A full head swap between brain-dead organ donors is the next stage, he said.

And that is the final step for the formal head transplant for a medical condition which is imminent.

Many in the medical community say the fundamental premise is unethical. Others reject Canaveros claims, saying it simply isnt possible.

Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist and psychiatry lecturer at the Center for Medical Education at Cardiff University, said what Canavero wants to do is impossible.

To be able to say you can just stick someone elses head on someone elses body is not really feasible based on current medical understanding, said Burnett, reported National Post. Id be very keen to hear his explanation about how weve got around these issues, he said.

Professor Jan Schnupp, from the University of Oxford, described the proposals as disturbing.

The chances that a person who has their head transplanted onto another body will be able to gain any control over, or benefit from, that grafted body are completely negligible, Schnupp told The Sun.

Macabre PR for China

Just because news of the research fades away it wont mean that the experiments have stopped, or the questions have gone away, said Rommelfanger.

I think we wont hear about this again until they have something positive or a positive spin to report. There will be a lot of failures before we hear anything.

Rommelfanger said that despite its shortcomings and the stomach-churning potential, this project is acting as a gruesome PR platform for China to ply its no-holds-barred research.

This is China saying: If you want to do gene editing or make other edgy, perhaps controversial, technological advancement, weve got the resources.

If you feel this topic is important, please consider sharing this article. Thank you!

Watch China Uncensoreds investigation into the Chinese militarys involvement in organ harvesting:
i think you mistyped Ruin the Friendship.

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Ruin the friendship is such a good song. I was upset tell me you love me was the next single.

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I really hope she does. My friend--who isn't really into Demi's music--listened to her album for me and SDL is the one track that really stuck out to her. So, yeah, she should totally release that. It is one that may not be my favorite (I do like it a lot, though), but damn, does that chorus stick in my head. It's hella catchy.

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i love this song but it sounds like a finished '08 gaga demo

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sis said take it to capital hill and stands by what she says.

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i thought demi was bi...not that i want her to be

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i think we're doing that thing where we call closeted people allies for their protection

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i thought she actually said she was tho, i could be wrong

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she didn't specifically say she's bi in her doc but said she's got the option set for guys and girls on raya and it's all about human connection, male or female doesn't matter to her.

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she is bi.

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Are bisexual people allies now?

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Yeah, I thought it was weird how Billboard labeled this. At the source, they even mentioned how she "joined the ranks," but I'm just posting the article because it was a nice reminder to me of the stuff she's done.

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She did, and at the source Billboard even mentioned that so it was weird that they called her and "ally." :shrugs:

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lmao, and she says so too, but Billboard decided that even though she "joined the ranks" she's an "ally" too. Whatever.

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lmfaooo right tho??

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she's always tinged my bi-dar so much

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my god lmao

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She is, but Billboard weirdly decided that even though they acknowledged that she recently openly "joined the ranks" in her documentary, they still called her an "ally."



Thank you, bb.

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No

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I am sorry. Have a pleasant weekend.

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She's serving looks. She's serving body. She's serving vocals. She's serving bops.

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no but I'll probably still feel really bad when she inevitably self-sabotages again

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LOL I wanna just answer with WAIT



For the reason you listed above

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Sucks for you!

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of course

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yes and I am very surprised

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i need flawfreesince93 your Demi stanning is cute OP. <3i needup in this bitch to complete this "Warm for the Winter" approved post.

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ONTD, have you embraced Demetria this era?



nope





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Ah well, enjoy your Demetria-free life.

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ty <3

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delete it, fat

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Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

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You can be an ally and part of the LGBTQ community? This queen does it all.

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lol mte

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i swear there's going to be low-res instagram pictures of her making out with a girl in a club and the headline will be like, 'Woke Demi Showing Support!'

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But there are a lot of other great ones...



Daddy Issues, Sexy Dirty Love, Only Forever,



And there are a few other songs too. Again, *I* think it's her best album. I think it's awesome, her best imo. (Of course, I'm admittedly biased, lol.) I will say that while I love SNS now, it took a bit of time to grow on me. Here were the songs that were faves right away from the album for me:But there are a lot of other great ones... Concentrate and Ruin the Friendship And there are a few other songs too. Again, *I* think it's her best album.

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cry baby is my fave

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it's her best imo as well

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Yes! I think it's her best one yet tbh. The album is different/better than what you would expect after hearing SNS. The only song I skip is Concentrate but I love Cry Baby, Daddy Issues, Lonely, Ruin the Friendship, and Only Forever.

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bless, using her voice for good ~



i hope she really is sober.

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Milwaukee may not be known for its hot weather, but that doesn't mean that the Brew City can't bring the heat  namely from the kitchen. That's why Senior Developer Nick "Power Palate" Barth and Pop Culture Editor Matt "Powder Puff Palate" Mueller are on a journey, burning their buds and torching their tongues across town to find the city's spiciest dishes. Grab your fork and a fire extinguisher  this is Burning Through Brew City.

The next stop on their capsaicin-rich quest?

Bistec en Chile de Arbol

Guadalajara

901 S. 10th St.

(414) 647-2266

milwaukeemexicanfood.com



In our last blazing bite through Brew City, Nick and I received a challenge from a familiar face: Hot Head Fried Chicken, where we had already given its tongue-roasting rendition of Nashville hot chicken a run. Apparently the Bay View eatery was not content with merely low-key torching our taste buds and concocted a new, even spicer sauce: the 414 Fire, which brought all the scorching heat of Nashville hot chicken but with none of the mercy. Safe to say I was giving thanks for the invention of milk afterwards.

This week's new spice adventure, however, brought a challenge recommended to us from an even more familiar face  one right from our very own office.

In the middle of a recent OnMilwaukee editorial meeting, food writer extraordinaire Lori Fredrich handed me a list of places to add to our Burning Through Brew City quest. And when a professional food expert hands you a list of restaurants to try, you listen. So today takes us to the first location on her list, Guadalajara, for this signature spicy dish: bistec en chile de arbol.

Located a block off of National at 901 S. 10th St., Guadalajara has been a Mexican food staple in town for three decades, opening in 1987 when Genoveva and Felipe Losada brought themselves and their freakishly flavorful family recipes to Milwaukee up from  you guessed it  Guadalajara, Mexico. 30 years later, their modest but mesmerizing Mexican cooking is still a quiet culinary gem in Milwaukee, especially their green salsa, steak tacos and easily some of the best flan in the entire city.

But we were not at Guadalajara to sate my sweet tooth (though we definitely got flan for dessert). We were there to put its bistec en chile de arbol to the test, a delicious plate featuring thinly sliced steak simmered until tender in a sauce made with chile de arbol, a popular Mexican chili pepper that scores around the same Scoville scale rating as Serrano peppers (and above the jalepeno). Guadalajara serves this spicy stewed meat with a helping of rice and refried beans, plus some authentic warm tortillas to assemble some tasty tacos for yourself.

Just before sitting down in the restaurant's homey dining room, however, I got a twist via text message from Lori. In addition to the bistec, Lori advised that we should also order Guadalajara's chile de arbol salsa, a secret off-the-menu spicy treat that would add a bonus challenge to our trip  as long as we knew the secret code to get it. Spoiler alert: The secret password ... is politely asking your waitress, so we ordered a small stone bowl of the blisteringly red salsa to go with our meal. Because apparently one spicy heat challenge is just not enough torture in a week for Pobre Mateo.

So did the two devilishly spicy dishes spell double trouble for Nick and me? Let's dig in!

Heat

Nick: The bistec's chili de arbol sauce is pretty mild, more chili flavor than chili heat. It builds a little as you make your way through the meal to a pleasant warmth, just enough to make itself known. The salsa, though, has a sharp bite that kicks in immediately.

Matt: The bistec is delicious  the steak slices are delectably meaty yet tender, and the sauce is rich with flavor  but in terms of Burning Through Brew City, it's more spice flavor than actually spicy. It builds up over the meal to a decent taste bud sizzle, but still nothing horribly potent, as I was able to scarf down the entire plate with pretty much no hesitation or issues  and then wipe the plate clean with my soft tortillas like some idiotic Mexican food noob.

This salsa, however, brings the fire. According to our very friendly waitress, the salsa condenses the chile de arbol flavor much more than the bistec dish  and you can tell, as it comes in immediately with a sharp heat. No wonder they keep this stuff secret: It's a surprisingly sinful burn.

Longevity

Nick: Chili de arbol is not a burn-through-your-whole-life kind of pepper. It burns quick and bright, then fades. No belly burn or long-term discomfort to speak of.

Matt: To be honest, it's hard to judge the longevity of the bistec versus the salsa since we were gobbling both down at essentially the same time. But either way, I left Guadalajara as comfortable and cool as I did coming in  just with a much more full and satisfied stomach.

Flavor

Nick: Both the salsa and the sauce have a pretty straightforward chili flavor. They're each well-matched to their use. The salsa is a bright and lively way to snack while you look over the menu. The sauce comes a little more rounded and serves as a good pair to the steak without overwhelming it.

Matt: As I noted before, the bistec is more about the chili and spice flavors rather than being merely spicy. So what it lacks in burn, it makes up for with a lot of rich, flavorful and complementary heat in the steak's sauce. Meanwhile, the salsa definitely cranks up the heat but also the flavor. It doesn't have the satisfying meatiness of the bistec, but that chili fire flavor is all the more present. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I liked them both a lot, and why are they not in front of me right now?

Overall

Nick: Sometimes you don't want a spectacle, just good food with a little heat. Guadalajara's chili de arbol offerings fit right in that spot. The flavor is good and the heat satisfying enough while maintaining balance with the rest of the meal. Paired with a glass of horchata and some friends, it makes for a satisfying meal.

Matt: If you're looking for a soul-scorching meal, Guadalajara isn't your stop. But if you want a really scrumptious and flavorful plate of food  with some salsa on the side for a bonus surprise kick  you can't go wrong here. The bistec, plus the salsa for a bonus surprise kick, won't give you a burn to remember for the ages, but you will certainly remember it next time you've got a craving come lunch time.

Oh, and make sure you order the flan. If you forget the flan, you will have burned yourself.

Burning Through Brew City heat index
An investigation into a former Albanian interior minister and his alleged links to international cannabis trafficking is ill-timed for the Balkan country bidding to join the European Union. A candidate for membership in the bloc since 2014, Albania intends to convince Brussels to open accession negotiations early next year. But the scandal involving Saimir Tahiri, 38, interior minister until March and a close ally of socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama, has forced the country to defend its history with drug trafficking. "Albania has a problem with the connection between criminal groups and politicians," US ambassador to Albania Donald Lu said earlier this month. "This is a problem not of one party," he said. The ambassador's outspokenness contrasts with the cautious silence of European embassies which have been supporting Rama since he took over in 2013. In an open letter to European leaders earlier this month, Rama defended his record. "Albania is no longer Europe's cannabis capital, as some media have enjoyed calling it," he said. But right-wing opposition leader Lulzim Basha claimed "we have a government of drug traffickers that must fall and give space to an anti-mafia government". They claim Rama's Socialist party has made Albania the "Colombia of Europe". - Cumbersome cousins - Rama hit back that it was his government which dismantled the "Cannabis kingdom", a trafficking ring in the village of Lazarat, which he claims the right ignored when they were in power. However, six months after an electoral triumph at parliamentary elections, the prime minister appears weakened. The scandal exploded in mid-October, after the arrest of an Albanian trafficker in Italy. Local papers then revealed the existence of tapped phone conversations that appear to compromise Tahiri. "Two criminals, my 10th cousins, arrested for drug trafficking, mentioned my name," Tahiri said on television, defending himself. "Criminals use to brag to each other, quoting the names of a particular minister in their dirty business." He said his "only mistake" was to sell a car without checking the credentials of the new owners, who allegedly used it for trafficking. But Albanian judiciary, itself considered deeply corrupt, asked prosecutors to lift Tahiri's parliamentary immunity in order to arrest him. The Socialist parliamentary majority rejected the request. Rama insists he was not protecting his political ally, who was suspended from the Socialists. "If the accusations against Tahiri are proved, I will applaud justice." "There is no evidence" against Tahiri, said Interior Minister Fatmir Xhafaj. "Some segments of the prosecutor's office let themselves be used politically to serve well-defined political interests." "The majority wants at any price to make the investigation fail, cover up the evidence and intimidate witnesses," accused Basha. - Production down? - For years Albania has been the largest exporter of cannabis to the EU, notably Italy, according to Europol reports. The trade would make up one-third of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) or more, Western diplomatic sources estimate. In its latest progress report, Brussels said the authorities have "failed in the identification of criminal groups." Small farmers are regularly prosecuted, but never the drug lords. Only about 20 police officers, three of whom are facing an arrest warrant issued on Wednesday, were charged for corruption linked to cannabis trafficking. Tahiri is the first senior official to be investigated. The government recently presented a plan "against organised crime and in particular, against the links between crime and senior officials or state leaders." "I am well aware that some people, if you mention Albania, think of crime and drugs," Rama wrote in an open letter to the Financial Times. "For years labelled the cannabis capital of Europe, Albania has had enough and we have fought back." This year, 88 plantations were identified and destroyed compared with 2,086 in 2016, said Rama which he said showed a collapse in production. Albanian cannabis is a "European problem," said the prime minister who is appealing for help from the international community.
Two tries by Jacob Stockdale helped Ireland beat Argentina 28-19 in their one-off rugby union Test at Lansdowne Road on Saturday to record their seventh successive win. The 21-year-old wing -- who scored a try in the opening November Test victory over South Africa -- scored a try in each half to leave Argentina still seeking a first win in Ireland in eight visits. The Pumas, though, could look back on a stirring second-half performance, having trailed 20-0 after 42 minutes, in which they scored three tries. Agustin Creevy, captaining the Pumas for the 40th time, was penalised for going in on the side and Johnny Sexton, who had to fall out of the line during the anthems and receive treatment, slotted over the penalty to give Ireland the lead in the fourth minute. Sexton added another penalty as the quarter hour approached and with the visitors unable to get out of their half. Sexton had seemingly shaken off any fitness worries as he was at the heart of the hosts' try, bursting through the Pumas line -- after a superb offload by Chris Farrell -- and then passed to Stockdale who ran in under the posts for his second try of the series having scored against South Africa. Sexton converted for 13-0. Sexton and Stockdale combined again to devastating effect two minutes into the second-half, the former's pass being seized on by the young wing who broke through the centre of the Pumas line and outpaced the defence to touch don in the corner. Sexton converted brilliantly from the touchline for 20-0. The Pumas though didn't drop their shoulders but came back strongly and deservedly scored a try in the 55th minute Joaquin Tuculet running on to Nicolas Sanchez's clever grubber kick -- the creator then converting to pass the 600 point mark in Test rugby. Ireland, though, pulled themselves together and Sexton boldly kicked to the corner off a penalty paying off as from the ensuing line out the Irish pack drove to the line and Stander touched down sparking some pushing and shoving with French referee Mathieu Raynal telling both sets of players to grow up and behave. Sexton's perfect day was slightly blemished when his conversion came back off the post. The Pumas battled away and didn't look like a side that was looking forward to a deserved holiday as veteran Juan Manuel Leguizamon, found by Tuculet, went in in the corner for their second try with 10 minutes remaining -- Sanchez failed to convert. Sexton ended any hopes of a late rally as he went for goal with a penalty and slotted it over before trotting off with his day's work done. The Pumas had the final laugh as another clever kick by Sanchez into the Irish try area saw Ramiro Moyano touch down and the metronomic Sanchez converted the extras. The match was preceded by a minute's silence for the 44 crew members from the Argentinian submarine San Juan which went missing 10 days ago. Argentina coach Daniel Hourcade said of the tribute: "For us it was a very important way of supporting the families. "It's a really hard moment they are experiencing. The passion the players showed it was part of that emotion."
The Greek government has come under fire over a planned arms sale to Saudi Arabia that fell through amid accusations of incompetence against the defence minister, a key ally of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Opposition lawmakers say the botched deal for surplus military stock cost Greece 66 million euros ($78 million), while ruling party officials have questioned the sale of munitions to Saudi Arabia owing to its involvement in the Yemen conflict. "Perhaps it's better that this deal was not concluded," Nikos Xydakis, a former junior foreign minister, told Skai TV on Friday. The previous day one of Tsipras' top ministers and two other prominent lawmakers also expressed unease. "Obviously, every country has a right to exploit its surplus munitions, but we need to be much more careful," Interior Minister Panos Skourletis told state TV ERT. "A country of Greece's size (cannot) sell weapons without caring how it will be used," he said. There are fears that the missiles could have been used in Saudi Arabia's fight against rebels in Yemen. More than 8,750 people have been killed in the conflict and the country also faces a deadly cholera epidemic and millions stand at the brink of official famine. Tsipras, whose coalition government depends on the nationalist ANEL party headed by defence minister Panos Kammenos, says the accusations are "baseless" and plans to address the issue in parliament on Monday. Kammenos' office has released a document showing that the Greek defence ministry in June had agreed to sell 300,000 tank shells at a cost of 66 million euros to a Greek contractor claiming to represent Saudi Arabia. But on the day the deal was signed, Greece's Riyadh embassy wired to say that the Saudi military had no knowledge of the Greek contractor's activities. The opposition has also accused Kammenos of trying to bury the issue by transferring the officer who oversaw the attempted sale. An opposition lawmaker investigating the case has also been threatened with prosecution after submitting to parliament documents which the government says are covered by state secrecy laws. The opposition says the government's refusal to shed light on what was supposed to be a legal bilateral deal is suspect. "What is the government trying to hide? Why are lawmakers unable to access documents pertaining to the sale?" New Democracy spokeswoman Maria Spyraki said Friday.
Iraqi forces thrust north from the Euphrates Valley into the desert on Saturday, opening up a new front in the drive to flush out fugitive Islamic State group fighters, a commander told AFP. IS has already been driven from all the towns it once held, but Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said he will not proclaim victory until the jihadists have been cleared from the western desert bordering Syria. Troops and paramilitaries had advanced into the desert from the east and north on Thursday at the start of an offensive aimed at inflicting a final defeat on the jihadists. On Saturday, troops and tribal militia pushed north from Al-Qaim and Rawa, two Euphrates Valley towns recaptured from IS earlier this month, in a pincer movement against retreating IS fighters, one of the operation's two commanders told AFP. "It's a matter of linking up with the forces advancing from Nineveh" province in the north, the commander said, asking not to be identified. "The aim of the operation is to clear the desert right up to the Syrian border and hunt down the terrorists who fled into the desert from the towns that have been liberated." The Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary force, which has played a key role in the offensive, said 100 villages and hamlets had already been cleared of IS fighters. "The battle for the desert is very important because it's from there that Daesh fighters coming from Syria can attack our defence lines," said Hashed number two Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, using an Arabic acronym for IS. In a video posted by the Hashed, Mohandis said the desert was "the last region where Daesh still has a military presence." He said operations against it were under away over an area of 27,000 square kilometres (10,400 square miles) But he warned that their completion would not spell the end of IS. "We must hunt them down in areas that have been liberated and we must arrest them before they slip back into urban areas," said Mohandis, who is widely regarded as the strongman of the Hashed, which is largely composed of Iran-backed Shiite militias. "We must remain in a state of alert," he added. "Security will not be fully assured until we have complete control of the border with Syria." At the peak of its power in 2014, IS ruled some seven million people in a territory as large as Italy, encompassing large parts of Syria and nearly a third of Iraq. It is now being flushed out of its last desert hideouts in Iraq at the same time as its final pockets of control in Syria face simultaneous operations by Russian-backed government forces and US-backed Kurdish-led fighters.
A policeman was killed and over 100 people wounded as Pakistani forces fired rubber bullets and lobbed tear gas in a bid to disperse an Islamist sit-in that has virtually paralysed the country's capital for weeks. Smoke and tear gas filled the air as the roughly 8,500 elite police and paramilitary troops in riot gear were also seen throwing rocks and using slingshots in the ongoing bid to clear 2,000 or so hardline demonstrators which began soon after dawn. AFP reporters at the site said more protesters were arriving, though it was difficult to tell how many. Trees had been cut down to block roads, and protesters were burning tyres. Pakistan's media regulator barred local TV channels from broadcasting live images from the scene as violence intensified. At least 110 injured people have been taken to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad, a spokesman from the hospital told AFP, adding that 66 of them were members of the security forces. An Islamabad police spokesman confirmed that a policeman was killed in the fighting after he was struck in the head by a rock. Television footage showed a police van and demonstrators' tents on fire. The sit-in by the little-known hardline group called Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah Pakistan (TLYRAP) has blocked a main highway used by thousands of commuters since November 6, causing hours-long traffic snarls and enraging commuters. The protesters are demanding that Pakistan's law minister Zahid Hamid resign over a hastily-abandoned amendment to the oath that election candidates must swear. Demonstrators have linked it to blasphemy -- a highly contentious issue in Muslim Pakistan -- and claim the oath was softened to enable the participation of Ahmadis, a long-persecuted Islamic minority sect. Local media reported that small protests -- each with several dozen TLYRAP supporters -- were breaking out in other cities, including Karachi and Lahore, as the Islamabad operation dragged on through Saturday. An Islamabad police official had said before the violent clashes that the operation sought to avoid any loss of life on either side. The sit-in has also cost the life of an eight-year-old child whose ambulance could not reach a hospital in time due to the blocked roads, a statement from Pakistan's Supreme Court confirmed this week. Despite the protest's relatively small intial size, authorities have hesitated to act against it, citing fears of violence as the demonstrators have vowed to die for their cause. But government inaction has drawn the fury of the courts as well as millions of residents in Islamabad and neighbouring Rawalpindi. The Supreme Court and the Islamabad High Court have issued blistering criticism and threatened to hold officials in contempt for their inaction. Analysts and critics have accused the government of bungling its response to the protest, and allowing a minor issue to grow into a headline-grabbing and potentially dangerous situation. It set an alarming precedent, that "anytime anyone is upset with the government, the capital may be choked and the government will bend its knees," warned Zeeshan Salahuddin of the Center for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad.
The Islamic State group may be on the run from its last bastion in Syria but the United States is gearing up for a longer stay in the country. And if US forces are to counter Iranian and Russian influence as Syria struggles to emerge from civil war, they will need Turkey's help. But Washington's relations with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's testy government have been strained of late, posing a diplomatic challenge. So when US President Donald Trump called his counterpart Friday, he needed to make a significant gesture -- and he seems to have delivered. Tensions remain high, but Trump's apparent promise not to send any more weapons to the YPG Syrian Kurdish militia was a key concession to Ankara. Without it, a major NATO ally might have moved closer to Iran and Russia, who are battling to save Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime. Some in Washington and the region may see it as a betrayal of a battlefield ally that was instrumental in capturing the IS capital Raqa. But the Kurds now have the strength to hold their own in northeastern Syria, and Washington is turning to the bigger picture. "We can't operate in the long term in Syria without Turkish bases and Turkish airspace and to some degree Turkish diplomatic support," said former US ambassador James Jeffrey. "So that's what the call is all about," Jeffrey, a former senior US national security adviser and envoy to both Ankara and Baghdad, told AFP in Washington. Syria has been ensnared in civil war between Assad and an array of armed groups since 2011, and the chaos allowed IS to seize part of the east. US commanders mobilized a coalition -- including the YPG -- to take on the jihadists, and the Kurdish Syrian fighters were in the vanguard when Raqa fell last month. Turkey, a NATO ally, was nominally part of the US-led coalition, but in led its own intervention into northern Syria, battling extremists but also the Kurdish forces. The YPG is an offshoot of the same movement as the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is waging a separatist insurgency inside Turkey. - Driving Erdogan crazy - According to Jeffrey, who as a fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy is still in touch with senior Turkish figures, "nothing drives Erdogan more crazy" than US backing for the YPG. But at the same time, Ankara and Washington share an interest in countering Russia and Iran's influence in Syria and in shaping the country's future as peace talks loom. After Friday's call, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Trump had promised arms supplies would halt and "essentially he said this nonsense should have been ended earlier." The White House was less explicit, but confirmed Trump "informed President Erdogan of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria." The White House also underlined that both leaders had discussed the importance of the upcoming United Nations-backed Syrian peace talks due to start next week in Geneva. This is important because Turkey is now also party to a parallel and potentially rival political process being conducted under Russian auspices in the Kazakh capital Astana. On Wednesday, Erdogan met presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Hassan Rouhani of Iran -- Assad's key allies -- in the Russian resort of Sochi, to discuss both sets of talks. This could explain the timing of Friday's call, explained former Turkish member of parliament Aykan Erdemir, in an interview with AFP. "There seems to be a greater convergence between NATO ally Turkey's Syria policy and Russia and Iran's Syria policy," said Erdemir, a scholar at US think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. In the early years of the Syrian conflict, Erdogan like then US president Barack Obama was rhetorically a staunch foe of Assad, despite frequent US-Turkish diplomatic spats. But Russia's dramatic military intervention and steadily more powerful Iranian support saved the Syrian strongman's regime, and both Ankara and Washington confront a new reality. For Erdemir, Erdogan is edging towards accepting that Assad's regime will cling on in some form, and is seeking a tactical accommodation with Moscow and Tehran. He noted Turkey had allowed Assad to fly across its airspace for talks with Putin in Russia -- while Russian military transports brought war supplies in the other direction. "Erdogan recently referred to Assad as the central administration, the central government in Syria, and many saw that as a landmark statement," he said. - Radical U-turns - But he predicted the shift would not last; Erdogan has much invested in painting Assad as a war criminal, and Russian forces will eventually want to edge Turkish troops out of Syria. "I have serious doubts about the sustainability of Erdogan's game with Iran and Russia," he said, describing Turkish foreign policy in recent years as "a series of radical U-turns." It might not yet be a U-turn, but after Trump's called Jeffrey said: "Are we better off now than we were 24 hours ago with the Turks? Probably." Last week, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis stirred surprise when he announced US military presence in Syria would remain even after the Islamic State's defeat. "We are going to make sure we set the conditions for a diplomatic solution," he said. The solution Washington seeks would ideally lead to an elected government -- without Assad -- in Damascus, despite the effort invested by Iran and Russia to protect him. But if that proves impossible, the priority will be stability and curtailing Iran's growing power. To wield influence, the US will need the longer-standing military presence that Mattis envisages -- and to maintain that, Turkish support. Turkey, for Jeffrey, is posing Washington a legitimate question: "We want a policy. What is your policy?" Washington is now, perhaps, moving closer to an answer.
A hiker found a skull, attached to a skeleton, in archaeologically rich Kostolec.

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Hikers were stepping on a skull sticking out of the ground on marked hiking terrain for several days in the town of Kostolec, between the villages Ducove and Hubina. The skull was full of soil and thats why it was able to resist thousands of feet stepping on it. Nobody paid attention to the shape of stone, until one tourist, Stefan Kubovcik, stopped and wondered why the stone was so regularly shaped and had sutures.

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He notified the Regional Monument Institute (KPU) Trnava and his suspicion that he found mortal remains was confirmed. Archaeologists first dug out the skull and then the whole skeleton from an untouched grave, where the human was buried in a crouched position.

We are thankful to the attentive visitor to Kostolec for this finding. Its interesting from a number of points of view, said archaeologist from KPU Trnava Peter Grznar for the TASR newswire. Archaeologists cannot say with certainty from what era the skeleton originates because there was nothing in the grave to help to identify its age.

Kostolec used to be a place for burials in the younger Bronze Age (from 1300 to 1900 BC) during the time of a settlement of the Velatice culture. After a long break, it was also used during the Middle Ages from the second half of the 9th century until the middle of the 15th century, and in the new age from the end of the 16th century until the beginning of the 19th century. In the case of this grave, two options are most probable.

It could be a prehistoric grave from the Bronze Age, which would explain the crouched position of the skeleton. If that is true, the area of the prehistoric settlement was bigger than we thought, said Grznar for TASR.

The second possibility is that the skeleton is of Middle-Age origin and in this case would be a human buried at the edge of a proper burial ground, proof of the social expulsion of the buried person, continued Grznar for TASR.

Rarity

Finding graves this way is considered to be a rarity, according to archaeologist Matus Sladek from KPU. In 2017, four citizens reported finding a skeleton to KPU.

In Kamenny mlyn in Trnava, Modranka, Senica and now in Kostolec, he said as cited by TASR. In previous years, there was usually only one just finding.

He thinks that the increase could be caused by better education and the fact that a finder may get one hundred percent of the assessed value. However, it is not possible to assess the value of a skeleton.

Stefan Kubovcik wont get a finders fee either. But he was present while research was underway, together with his daughter, added Sladok for TASR.
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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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The first-ever direct flight connecting Vietnams Central Highlands city of Da Lat and the Thai capital of Bangkok will be commenced next month to celebrate the 2017 Da Lat Flower Festival, low-cost carrier Vietjet said Friday.

Commencing on December18, the new service will be operated by an Airbus A320 with four return flights per week on every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, Vietjet said in a press release.

The flight departs at 10:30 am from Bangkok and returns at 12:55 pm from Da Lat with a flight time of one hour 45 minutes.

Booking is already available at the airlines website, with one-way fares starting from only VND68,000 (US$3), excluding taxes and charges.

The new service will be launched just before the Da Lat Flower Festival and I am delighted that people from [Vietnam and Thailand] now can travel conveniently to enjoy their neighboring countrys sceneries even more through our expanding flight network, Vietjet vice president Nguyen Thi Thuy Binh said.

The Da Lat-Bangkok service totals the number of direct routes between Thailand and Vietnam, operated by Vietjet and Thai Vietjet, to six. The existing routes are Bangkok to Hanoi/Hai Phong/Ho Chi Minh City/Da Lat and Ho Chi Minh City to Phuket/Chiang Mai.

The Da Lat Flower Festival will be held from December 23 to December 27.
A top official of Samsung Electronics Vietnam has refuted allegations that the South Korean company is mistreating its employees at two factories in the country, as claimed in a report released earlier this week.

Speaking to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Friday, Bang Hyun Woo, vice general director of Samsung Electronics Vietnam, asserted that the report, authored by Hanoi-based Research Center for Gender, Family and Environment in Development (CGFED) and nonprofit organization IPEN, contains many groundless accusations.

The report combines industrial sector research and qualitative narratives of 45 workers at two Samsung Electronics factories in Vietnam and claims that female workers there are victims of health and workplace violations by the South Korean electronics giant.

Bang Hyun Woo, vice general director of Samsung Electronics Vietnam

False and inaccurate information

Bang told Tuoi Tre that he had read through the IPEN report and asserted that it was done without adequate scientific grounds, as the authors had jumped into conclusion after interviewing only 45 out of 160,000 employees of Samsung Vietnam.

The report claims that extreme fatigue, fainting, and dizziness were reported by all workers in its sample, and miscarriages amongst the Samsung Electronics factory workers were reported as extremely common and even expected.

According to the report, workers at the two factories are expected to stand throughout their 8-to-12-hour shifts and many are kept on alternating day and night shift schedules, regardless of weekends.

The report also claims that salary deductions were taken from workers who take breaks, including pregnant workers, and that during the few short, limited breaks allowed by the company, workers must request special passes to use the restroom.

The report also proposes the need for further research regarding chemical exposure, considering that assembly line workers are stationed in open factory settings where other workers use a variety of substances.

All of these allegations, according to Bang, have been made on shaky grounds.

Samsung factory workers in Vietnam leave work. Photo: Tuoi Tre

He said it is inaccurate to accuse Samsung Vietnam of not signing contract with its employees, as the South Korean can provide written records to prove the otherwise.

Bang said the allegation that employees must request special passes to use the restroom is a false accusation made from manipulating Google search results.

In 2016, Vietnams Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs conducted a study at 17 electronics companies, excluding Samsung, and discovered the so-called restroom permission at some of the surveyed firms, according to Bang.

The IPEN appeared to find that information from Google and end up wrongfully linking the phenomenon to Samsung, where no such thing exists, Bang underlined.

The Samsung Vietnam leader also dismissed allegations that the company forces pregnant employees to work standing through their shift. He said pregnant employees can ask to switch into other tasks where they can sit while doing their job and the company will support those requests.

Bang said other claims in the report, such as poor-quality meal, dangerous exposure to chemicals and common miscarriage among female employees, are all groundless and inaccurate.

While Samsung does use chemicals in some parts of production, the situation is not as hazardous as the report claims, he said.

The report alleges that some female employees could not become pregnant as they have to pass X-ray security screening to enter and leave the factory. Bang said if the scanning system is so dangerous, all employees at airports must have been similarly affected.

A worker goes through security scan before leaving a Samsung factory in Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Sweden-based IPEN is a global network of environment and health non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working to reduce the use of harmful chemicals throughout the world.

The Vietnamese labor ministry said earlier this week it would work with the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Hanoi to investigate the IPEN report.

However, the ILO in Hanoi said on Friday it had been briefed of the report but would not start discussing the issue with the Vietnamese government at the moment, as it has received no official request from the labor ministry.
Twenty-three Vietnamese nationals, including vocational teachers and in-company trainers, were awarded the Certificate of Equivalence to the German standard of sewerage engineering technicians at an event in Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday.

The certificate recipients are six teaching staff of the College of Technology II (HVCT) in District 9, Ho Chi Minh City and 17 in-company trainers of wastewater companies in southern Vietnam. The companies are based in Ho Chi Minh City, Can Tho, Binh Duong, Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Dong Nai and Khanh Hoa.

These 23 individuals have attended a training program to meet the German standards of sewerage engineering technicians from 2014 to 2017, the German development agency GIZ said in a press release on Saturday.

The intensive further training was conducted by German experts from the Chamber of Industry and Commerce Dresden (IHK Dresden), the Dresden Sewage Company (SEED Dresden) and the Pirna Vocational Training Centre of Technology and Economy.

In September and October 2017, after three years of receiving further training, these teaching staff and in-company trainers took the final proficiency examination and all passed the test.

This means they have a qualification equivalent to the one of a trained and recognized technician in Germany, according to GIZ.

The certificates were handed over to them during a ceremony at the HVCT by Le Quan, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Labor-Invalids and Social Affairs and Dr. Horst Sommer, program director of the Vietnamese-German Program Reform of Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Vietnam (TVET Program).

Important recognition

Wastewater drainage and treatment is an important field of green economic development in Vietnam, with only ten percent of the countrys total wastewater currently treated.

In order to achieve the Vietnamese governments ambitious goal of increasing the share of treated wastewater to 60 percent, a skilled workforce for the wastewater sector is needed, according to GIZ.

By 2020, it is estimated that Vietnam will need more than 8,000 qualified technicians to operate and maintain the infrastructure in the wastewater sector.

The training program given to the 23 Vietnamese getting the certificate today is part of a project known as TVET for Skilled Workforce in the Wastewater Sector under the TVET Program, which supports the Vietnamese government in developing the new occupation sewage engineering technicians.

The involvement of six companies and the sector association ensures the demand- and practice orientation of the training and thus the employability of the graduates.

Le Quan, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Labor-Invalids and Social Affairs, speaks at the event. Photo: MC

The equivalence to the German standard regarding the quality and the procedure of the training, including examination and evaluation and therefore also in occupational competence has been officially certified by the IHK Dresden, one of the public corporations that are responsible for vocational training in Germany.

The equivalence to the German standard is also certified by the SEED Dresden, which is a German recognized company offering vocational training and was directly involved in the examination and assessment process.

This event marks a new progress of vocational training in Vietnam, which is a huge effort to meet the needs of high quality skilled workforce for business sector and environment protection in order to timely respond to the challenge of global climate change.

As the umbrella institution for vocational education and training, the Vietnamese labor ministry highly appreciates the model of collaborative training, according to deputy minister Quan.

[The recipients of] the Certificates of Equivalence to the German standard today will be the core teaching staff and in-company trainers of vocational schools and businesses to contribute to the development of skilled workforce in the wastewater sector in the future, Quan said at the event.
Hundreds of students and people gathered on Friday night to pay tribute to Le Thanh Thuy, a cancer patient who died young but had inspired many with her spirited battle to the deadly disease, at her resting place in Ho Chi Minh City.

People gave sunflowers and sang various Vietnamese songs to the Thuy, a high school girl who had led a long and hard fight against her bone cancer before her death at the age of 19 on November 2, 2007.

Thuy was laid to rest at the Cu Chi Cemetery in Ho Chi Minh City, and this year marks the tenth anniversary of her passing away.

Since the stories of Thuy were widely known, she has become a symbol of endurance and strong spirit in the fight against cancer.

At Fridays commemorative event, Nguyen Van Cai, vice principal of Cu Chi-based Quang Trung High School, recited emotional stories written by Thuy during her long and enduring fight against the devastating disease.

Many students could not hold back their tears when listening to Thuys stories read by a teacher named Nguyen Thi Mong Tuyen.

A group of students of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry sings a song during the ceremony.

Two teachers Nguyen Van Cai and Nguyen Thi Mong Tuyen share stories written by Thuy.

A book written in Vietnamese and named Xin hay cho con them thoi gian (Please give me more time) was published at the end of 2007 following her death. The book featured emotional stories taken from Thuys diary and articles written by others who knew of the young cancer patient. The following lines were written by Thuy in her diary. One day, if my illness goes away, that will be Gods miracle bestowed on me. I will begin my new life in a more positive and meaningful way. However, if I pass away, that will not be anything of great sadness. I accepted my fate on June 9 four years ago [2003] when I was diagnosed with cancer. Everyone shall pass away in the end. It is just a matter of time.

Following her death, Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper established the Uoc Mo Cua Thuy (Thuys Dream) Foundation to support children with cancer across the country.

The annual Sunflower Festival is jointly held by the newspaper in collaboration with the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City Chapters of the Vietnam Youth Federation as a fund-raising activity for the foundation.

On Sunday, the 10th Sunflower Festival will be held in both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.

In Ho Chi Minh City, the event is scheduled to take place at the municipal Childrens House from 7:00 am to 9:00 pm.

The event will feature a wide range of activities including paper sunflower making, hand-made sunflower sales, an exhibition displaying paintings drawn by children with cancer, and the awarding of scholarships to children with cancer.

In the capital, a similar event will also be held at the Hanois Children Place from 8:00 am to 11:00 am.

Le Thanh Thuy was born in 1988 in Ho Chi Minh City. She attended the Thuc Hanh High School  Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy in 2003. In 2003, she was diagnosed with bone cancer and had 2/3 of her right leg amputated. From 2003 to 2007, Thuy continued to attend classes despite her disability. In 2007, Thuy had to stop her study as her condition exacerbated. During her time in the hospital or at home, Thuy wrote various blogs and organized several events to help cancer patients in Ho Chi Minh City. In 2006, she was awarded Citizens of the City certificate for her charitable work. Thuy passed away on November 2, 2007 with two legacies Thuys Dream Foundation and the Sunflower Festival established the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.
The Vietnam Heritage Photo Awards 2017, organized by Vietnam Heritage Magazine, welcomed over 3,400 submissions from Vietnamese and foreign photographers.

Participants were encouraged to submit photos around the topics of nature, tangible heritage, intangible heritage, life and markets in Vietnam to earn 16 prizes including Canon cameras, printers and vouchers for package tours and stays at resorts.

One-hundred photos are displayed at the award ceremony of the Vietnam Heritage Photo Awards 2017 in Ho Chi Minh City, November 21, 2017. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Opening on July 10, the contest in October shortlisted 100 of the best photos by 66 photographers to be put on public display in museums and universities across the country.

On Tuesday, the award ceremony was held in Ho Chi Minh City to honor the 16 best photos that captured the most stunning moments of Vietnamese nature, culture and architecture.

The 100 photos on display were also donated to a charitable program to be auctioned for money that will fund the building of anti-flood housing for people in disaster-prone areas of Vietnam.

First-prize winner Dinh Cong Tam (R) explains his photo. Photo: Tuoi Tre

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Vietnams lawmaking National Assembly adopted a resolution on Friday to pilot special mechanisms and policies for the development of Ho Chi Minh City next year.

The legislature entered the last working day of its month-long sitting in Hanoi on Friday, with 93.69 percent of lawmakers voting yes to the resolution on piloting the special mechanisms and policies, in terms of land management, investment, and finance - state budget, for the southern metropolis.

The resolution also covers the mechanism on delegating power among administration levels and the income of officials, public employees and civil servants managed by the citys authorities.

These particular mechanisms and policies are applied to state agencies, political organizations, socio-political organizations, socio-political and professional organizations, social organizations, socio-professional organizations, and other relevant organizations and individuals, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

This resolution will come into effect on January 15, 2018, with the government required to report its implementation at the National Assembly sessions in late 2020 and late 2022.

Once implemented, the special mechanisms mean Ho Chi Minh City authorities can make decisions on issues that are currently within the authority of the prime minister.

The Ho Chi Minh City delegates are seen at the National Assembly session in Hanoi.

On Friday morning, the National Assembly also adopted a resolution on a feasibility study report on land seizure, compensation and relocation projects for the development of the Long Thanh International Airport in Dong Nai Province.

This resolution, receiving 91.45 percent of approving votes from lawmakers, approves some targets set in the feasibility study report, such as a total investment of VND22.938 trillion (more than US$1 billion) and nearly 4,400 hectares of land set for revocation.

The land seizure, compensation, support, and resettlement will be carried out in one time and finish by 2021.
FILE PHOTO: Children protest against the Saudi-led coalition outside the U.N. offices in Sanaa, Yemen November 20, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah - File Photo

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen has given the United Nations permission to resume flights of aid workers to the Houthi-controlled capital on Saturday, but not to dock ships loaded with wheat and medical supplies, a U.N. spokesman said.

The coalition fighting the armed Houthi movement in Yemen said on Wednesday it would allow aid in through the Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif, as well as U.N. flights to Sanaa, more than two weeks after blockading the country.

About 7 million people face famine in Yemen and their survival is dependent on international assistance.

The coalition has given clearance for U.N. flights in and out of Sanaa from Amman on Saturday, involving the regular rotation of aid workers, said Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"We're of course encouraged by the clearance of this flight which may be followed soon by clearances of flights from Djibouti to Sanaa," Laerke told a news briefing on Friday.

But no green light have been received for U.N. requests to bring humanitarian supply ships to Hodeidah and Salif ports, he said.

"We are particularly talking about one ship which is offshore Hodeidah with wheat from WFP (the U.N. World Food Programme) and another boat which is waiting in Djibouti with cholera supplies and that is also destined for Hodeidah," he said.

"We stress the critical importance of resuming also commercial imports, in particular fuel supplies for our humanitarian response - transportation and so on - and for water pumping, Laerke said.

The largest fuel importing companies in Yemen have indicated they will no longer be able to supply the consumer market at the end of this week, OCHA said in a report dated Nov. 23.

UNICEF is also waiting to send vaccines, aid sources said.

The charity Save the Children said an estimated 20,000 Yemeni children under the age of five were joining the ranks of the severely malnourished every month, "an average of 27 children every hour".

Story continues

The commercial blockade is aggravating the food crisis, "leading to a significant increase in child deaths from acute malnutrition and preventable diseases", it said in a statement.

The U.S.-backed coalition closed air, land and sea access on Nov. 6, in a move it said was to stop the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. The action came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired towards Riyadh. Iran has denied supplying weapons.

Jan Egeland, a former U.N. aid chief who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, speaking to Reuters in Geneva on Thursday, said of the blockade: "In my view this is illegal collective punishment."

"After more than two weeks of blockade of these ports, there are various kinds of supplies essential for fighting famine, for fighting cholera and other types of humanitarian threats that millions of people are facing in Yemen today," Laerke said.

(Reporting and writing by Stephanie Nebehay; additional reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Gareth Jones)
A British couple kidnapped and held to ransom in Nigeria have described the moment one of their fellow missionaries was shot dead after singing a hymn to lift their spirits.

Christian charity workers David and Shirley Donovan (pictured above) were abducted from their accommodation in Delta State in the south of the country in the early hours of October 13 alongside fellow missionary medics Ian Squire and Alanna Carson.

The couple, who have since been freed, have described their horrific ordeal including the moment Mr Squire was shot dead after playing Amazing Grace on a guitar to cheer them up.

Dr Donovan told the Daily Telegraph: It was the perfect song, and at that point things began to look not quite as bad.

But then, after Ian finished playing, he stood up, and a salvo of gunshots killed him instantly. We didnt see who did it, but it was obvious that someone in the gang had shot him. It was terrifying to see.

Killed  Ian Squire was killed three weeks after being kidnapped in Nigeria (Pictures: PA)

Mr Donovan, who started medical charity New Foundations with his wife in 2003, described how he and the others jumped out of the bamboo hut they were being held in, thinking they would also be killed.

We jumped out of the shack and into the water as we thought they were coming for us next, he said, but a member of the gang came and put us back in there with Ian for the rest of the day.

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During their kidnapping, the group kept their spirits up by playing a version of BBC Radio 4 quiz The Unbelievable Truth, where contestants have to tell fact from fiction, the couple have revealed.

They were freed after the kidnappers told them a ransom had been paid.
FILE PHOTO: Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy answers questions during an interview with Reuters at a hotel in metro Manila, Philippines June 29, 2016. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco/File Photo

Thomson Reuters

By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) - Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen will be driven from power like President Mugabe in Zimbabwe, veteran opposition chief Sam Rainsy told Reuters on Thursday, adding that Western states should impose targeted sanctions after his party was dissolved.

The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was banned at the government's request last week, deepening Hun Sen's fight with Western donors who accuse him of demolishing democracy in the country he has ruled for over 32 years.

Rainsy resigned in February from the party, saying he feared it would be banned if he did not. Defamation convictions that he calls politically motivated drove him to flee Cambodia for France in 2015.

"Cambodia is at a tipping point. The people are fed up with Hun Sen and what is happening in Zimbabwe is inspiring," Rainsy told Reuters in an interview.

"Mugabe has fallen and it will soon be the turn of Hun Sen, who has become unacceptably anachronistic."

Mugabe, who had led Zimbabwe from independence in 1980, stepped down on Tuesday after the army seized power and the ruling party turned against him.

Hun Sen's government called for the CNRP ban after arresting its leader Kem Sokha on Sept. 3. It charged him with treason for an alleged plot to take over the Southeast Asian country with the help of the United States.

His opponents say the charges were intended to eliminate Kem Sokha from next year's election so the strongman, who is currently the world's longest serving prime minister, can extend his rule.

Rainsy, who announced his return to politics on Nov. 15, described the party ban as "just on paper".

He said the opposition needed to demonstrate that it continued to garner "strong support" after winning some 3 million votes in the 2013 elections, and push Cambodia's main western donors to shy away from the Phnom Penh government.

"What is important is to show Hun Sen that what he did was unacceptable. The world is not going to do business as usual with this government ... and needs to tell him it would never recognize a government that came out of these elections," he said.

Story continues

According to a recording leaked online on Thursday, Hun Sen has warned his party it could still lose the vote even after the CNRP was banned, and he demanded that it improve its image.

SANCTIONS

Western countries have condemned the government's crackdown on the opposition, civil rights groups and independent media and have called for the release of Kem Sokha to allow credible elections.

Washington has said it is cutting planned aid for holding elections and will take further steps.

France, which ruled the country for almost a century before its 1953 independence, on Thursday said the government needed to abide by a democratic process.

Hun Sen, a former commander in the ultra-leftist Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot which is blamed for the deaths of around two million people in the 1970s, has brushed off Western criticism, and warned that trade sanctions will hurt the people first.

Rainsy said the U.S. and European Union should initially withdraw all assistance for the elections and impose targeted sanctions ranging from visa bans to asset freezes.

He stopped short of calling for economic sanctions, saying that this could be used further down the line.

"We need personal sanctions that target individuals so that it won't hurt the people, but (hurt) the leaders who have hidden their ill-amassed fortunes abroad. They react when their personal interests are hurt," he said.

When asked about Hun Sen increasingly turning to China, Cambodia's biggest donor, Rainsy said he believed the relationship would eventually unravel.

"China looks beyond Hun Sen. No government is stupid enough to continue to bet on him. What is happening in Cambodia now is reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge era. Pol Pot was isolated from the world and relied on China, but ... when it didn't need him it threw him out."

(Reporting by John Irish; editing by Andrew Roche)

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Holidays nearly werent a-coming for one town after the iconic Coca-cola truck got stuck in a muddy field when the driver took a wrong turn.

The famous lorry was snapped stuck in an empty field in Lincolnshire  20 miles from Gainsborough, where a festive crowd had gathered waiting for free cans of the fizzy pop.

Sharing the hilarious picture on Facebook, Molly Watson wrote: The Coca-Cola truck is stuck. But for all you tight gits, Wilko sell a can for 50p. Any excuse to miss Gainsborough out.

The 21-year-old added: I was on my way to work when I saw the Coca-Cola truck stuck in the mud.

It must have followed the Sat Nav into the field. The driver looked like he was pretty stressed out.

Long wait  hundreds of thirsty fans were forced to wait hours for the iconic Coca-Cola truck after the driver got stuck in a field (Pictures: SWNS)

The picture prompted a host of comments from baffled users. Andrew Davies wrote: Typical of Gainsborough luck.

Becky French, said: The truck is stuck! Issues with lorry basically means its stuck in a field.

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Alison Hall, manager of Marshalls Yard, said: We are disappointed for the people who had arrived at 11am waiting to see it.

We are sorry that it was late but its one of those unfortunate things. I do know the team have worked really hard to get it here as soon as possible.

Festive fizz  the truck eventually arrived to give everyone their free cans of pop

On the disastrous day, a spokesman for Coca-Cola Great Britain said: Unfortunately our driver took a wrong turn earlier today and had to turn on a very narrow road.

We apologise to the fans who have been waiting since earlier today.
James Bulger's mother has said she predicted her son's killer Jon Venables would reoffend, after he was taken back into custody.

Venables, who was 10 years old when he murdered the toddler in 1993, has been caught with child abuse images on a computer for a second time.

Denise Fergus told Sky News: "Venables has now proved beyond any doubt what a vile, perverted psychopath he has always been."

Venables was previously returned to jail in 2010 for downloading and distributing dozens of indecent images of children.

In a statement read out by a friend, Mrs Fergus went on to say she felt the probation service have been "trying to keep this quiet".

"What hurts me most," she said, "is the way the probation service has tried to cover this up.

"Venables was taken back into custody a week ago, yet I was only informed hours before it hit the press."

She said the late notice has left her feeling extremely upset, angry and insulted.

"I hope finally I might get some justice for my son, James," she said.

"I predicted Venables would reoffend unless they kept a very tight rein on him and I pray that now please someone from the UK government will finally listen to me."

The Ministry of Justice has issued an apology for "additional distress" caused by the probation service.

It said: "We want to reassure Mrs Fergus and Mr Bulger that a liaison officer will continue to stay in regular contact with them as the case progresses."

Venables, now in his 30s, was detained after the images were discovered during a routine check at his home by probation officials, The Sun reported.

He was originally jailed for life alongside 10-year-old classmate Robert Thompson for the abduction, torture and murder of two-year-old James in Bootle, Merseyside, in 1993.

The two boys were released on licence with new identities in 2001.

Venables went on to offend again, including arrests for affray and possession of cocaine in 2008.

Story continues

In 2010, he was jailed for two years after pleading guilty to downloading images of child abuse.

Venables, who was reportedly given a second new identity after his first alias was revealed, was granted parole in 2013.

:: James Bulger killer Venables 'still a danger'

A post on the James Bulger Memorial Trust's Facebook page encouraged people to leave messages of support for Mrs Fergus.

"It will obviously mean the world to her, and Stuart and all the family," a spokesperson for the charity said.

"A bit of love to get them through this never ending nightmare!"

A Ministry of Justice spokesman told Sky News: "We do not comment on individual cases."
TOKYO (Reuters) - The mayor of Japan's western city of Osaka plans to cut ties with U.S. sister city San Francisco after the latter accepted the donation of a "comfort women" statue from a private group there.

The issue of "comfort women", as those forced to work in Japan's wartime military brothels were euphemistically known, has long embittered the ties of neighbors, such as China and South Korea, with Japan.

"This is highly regrettable," Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura told reporters, describing Wednesday's endorsement by San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee of a city council decision. "The relationship of trust has completely been destroyed."

Yoshimura aims to complete the procedures necessary to snap ties by the end of the year, he said in a statement on Thursday.

No officials at the San Francisco mayor's office were immediately available for comment.

"Erecting comfort women statues in the United States and other countries is in conflict with our country's stance and extremely regrettable," Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news conference on Friday.

"We plan to continue making every effort so that things like this won't happen again."

In January, Japan temporarily recalled its ambassador to South Korea over a "comfort women" statue put up near its consulate in the southern city of Busan.

In 2015, Japan and South Korea agreed the issue of "comfort women" would be "irreversibly resolved" if both sides fulfilled their obligations, including a Japanese apology and a fund to help victims.

But South Korean President Moon Jae-in has said many South Koreans did not accept the deal reached by his conservative predecessor and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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TOKYO, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei recouped early losses and ended slightly higher on Friday as expectations that the Bank Of Japan would buy more exchange-traded funds offset drops in automakers.

Mitsubishi Materials slumped, however, after it said its subsidiaries had falsified product data, the latest in a series of quality assurance scandals involving Japanese manufacturers.

The Nikkei share average ended up 0.1 percent at 22,550.85 points after trading in negative territory in the morning. If the index falls in the morning, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) often buys ETFs to support it.

For the week, the index rose 0.7 percent.

Also supporting sentiment was a Reuters news story in early afternoon that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was meeting Etsuro Honda, Japan's ambassador to Switzerland, and Koichi Hamada, Abe's economic adviser, for lunch at the prime minister's office, according to sources.

Honda is seen as a potential candidate to succeed BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda when his five-year term ends in April next year.

"The news that Abe is meeting Honda in person, a believer of ultra loose monetary policy, triggered speculation about the prospect of the next BOJ governor," said Norihiro Fujito, a senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.

Index heavyweigts rose, with SoftBank Corp gaining 1.4 percent and KDDI Corp advancing 2.6 percent. Tokyo Electron soared 2.2 percent and Shin-Etsu Chemical surging 2.0 percent.

Automakers were hit by selling, with Toyota Motor Corp dropping 0.8 percent and Honda Motor Co falling 0.7 percent.

Mitsubishi Materials Corp dived 8.1 percent after the company said its subsidiaries had falsified data.

The broader Topix rose 0.2 percent to 1,780.56. (Reporting by Ayai Tomisawa; Editing by Kim Coghill)

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By Patrick Rucker

WASHINGTON, Nov 24 (Reuters) - A leading U.S. consumer watchdog is preparing to sue Santander bank alleging that the Spanish bank overcharged borrowers on auto loans, two sources familiar with the plans said on Friday.

The action by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) could come as early as Monday, said the sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the matter.

A Santander spokeswoman, Raschelle Burton, on Friday declined to comment. A spokesman for the CFPB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the sources, the lawsuit centers on a financial product, known as 'guaranteed auto protection' (GAP), that can shield a car buyer from some of the expense of a serious collision.

If a driver's auto insurance only covers replacement cost, GAP coverage may cover the entire balance of the loan.

Consumers often purchase GAP insurance in the dealer showroom and the costs are built into the car loan.

Federal and state officials have been looking into whether consumers have been paying for unneeded GAP insurance or have seen their loan rates climb too high when GAP coverage was added.

In 2015, Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc. agreed to pay $5.4 million to Massachusetts drivers who state officials said faced unfair loan terms when GAP coverage was included.

Last month, Reuters reported that a leading bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, was examining how Wells Fargo administered its auto loan business.

The bank has said previously that it was trying to help any customers who were wrongly charged for car insurance. (Reporting By Patrick Rucker; Editing by Andrew Hay)

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HSBC upgraded UK and Swiss equities following the UKs decision to leave the European Union, but cut its growth estimates for the UK.

It upped its stance on UK stocks to overweight from neutral and on Switzerland to overweight from underweight noting both markets have relatively high non-EU defensive exposure.

We see these attributes as very much in demand in the heightened risk-off environment that we expect to persist.

However, it cut its rating on Spanish equities to underweight from overweight', maintaining its underweight on Italy, as it said peripheral eurozone countries were the most at risk.

HSBC also downgraded France to underweight from overweight highlighting its greater exposure to domestic European growth.

In terms of sectors, it maintained its defensive bias and reiterated its overweight positions on food & beverages, household products and utilities. HSBC added to this by upgrading pharmaceuticals to overweight from underweight and further cutting its financials exposure by downgrading insurance to neutral from overweight.

Given uncertainty on the timing of an agreement on the UKs future terms of trade with the EU and other trading partners (note the Canada-EU trade negotiations took seven years and the deal has yet to be ratified by the European Council and Parliament), the risk is that businesses and consumers postpone investment/purchase decisions and GDP growth takes a hit. This likely economic inertia could affect not just the UK but also the wider EU.

The banks economists now expect UK growth to be hit hard, cutting their forecasts to 1.5% from 1.8% for this year and to just 0.7% from 2.1% for next year.
Online retailer Boohoo.com upgraded its guidance for full-year 2017 on the back of a strong trading performance, as it announced the acquisition of a majority stake in fashion brand PrettyLittleThing.

The company said it has continued to perform well since the interim results at the end of September, with strong trading across the Black Friday weekend and encouraging peak season trading.

As a result, the group now expects to deliver revenue growth of between 38% and 42% in full-year 2017, up from previous guidance of between 30% and 35%.

In addition, Boohoo said it continues to benefit from improved operating leverage in the business and now expects an earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation margin of 11% to 12% in FY17, compared to previous guidance of 11%.

Boohoo also said on Wednesday that it has bought 66% of rival PrettyLittleThing for 3.3m in cash, in a deal that is expected to complement its presence in the UK and internationally.

In the year ended 29 February, PrettyLittleThing revenue grew more than 400% to 17m and it is expected to achieve revenue growth in excess of 150% in the year ended 28 February 2017.

Chairman Peter Williams said: PrettyLittleThing was always going to be a natural fit with boohoo.

We believe this is an excellent opportunity to extend the group's overall customer appeal through two distinct, complementary brands while further enhancing the group's strong growth trajectory. We look forward to building on PrettyLittleThing's success and we welcome Umar and his team to the group."

Shore Capital said: "Todays statement gives us confidence to reiterate our bullish stance around the group. We feel the business is delivering revenue and profit growth simultaneously and has acquired a fast growing business at what we would view is a significant discount to its intrinsic value. We reiterate our 'buy' recommendation on boohoo."

Meanwhile, Peel Hunt said it expects PrettyLittleThing to add around 1-2m to EBITDA next year.

"Taken in conjunction with trading upside, we upgrade 2018FY pre-tax profit to 34m from 31.8m. We reiterate our 'buy' stance and see more upgrades to come."

Investec upgraded Boohoo to buy from add on the news and lifted the price target to 150p from 130p.

"Boohoo continues to deliver top line growth ahead of expectations, with ongoing operational leverage gains driving double-digit upgrades.

In addition, the long-awaited acquisition of PrettyLittleThing (PLT) is a further welcome development in our view, adding to the groups long-term growth potential, the brokerage said.

At 1430 GMT, the shares were up 11.6% to 132p.
Natural Gas Services Group, Inc. provides natural gas compression services and equipment to the energy industry in the United States. It fabricates, manufactures, rents, and sells natural gas compressors and related equipment. The company primarily engages in the rental of compression units that provide small, medium, and large horsepower applications for unconventional oil and natural gas production. As of December 31, 2021, the company had 2,023 natural gas compression units in its rental fleet with 418,041 horsepower. The company also engages in the design, fabrication, and assembly of compressor components into compressor units for rental or sale; engineers and fabricates natural gas compressors; and designs and manufactures a line of reciprocating compressor frames, cylinders, and parts. In addition, it is involved in the design, fabrication, sale, installation, and service of flare stacks and related ignition and control devices for the onshore and offshore incineration of gas compounds, such as hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, natural gas, and liquefied petroleum gases. Further, the company offers customer support services for its compressor and flare sales business; and exchange and rebuild program for small horsepower screw compressors. Its primary customers are exploration and production(E&P) companies that utilize compressor units for artificial lift applications; E&P companies that focuses on natural gas-weighted production; and midstream companies. Natural Gas Services Group, Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Midland, Texas.
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Ltd., Altima Asia Ltd, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Altius Consulting Limited, Altius Data Solutions Private Limited, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Apis Group Pty Ltd, Appaloosa Technology SASU, AppsPro, AppsPro, Arca, Arca Ingenieros y Consultoria S.L., Arca Telecom S.L., Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Artio People (Payroll) Pty Ltd, Artio People Pty Ltd, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Automation Partners Pty Ltd, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc, Avanade Consulting Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Limited, Avanade Europe Services Limited, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SASU, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade Inc, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy S.r.l., Avanade Japan KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Middle East Limited, Avanade Netherlands B.V., Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain S.L., Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Limited, Avanade do Brasil Ltda , Avanade Osterreich GmbH, Avenai, Avieco, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCS Consulting, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BENEXT, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, BRIDGEi2i, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Beijing Zhidao Future Consulting Co. Ltd, Benext, Berico Technologies LLC, Bionic, Bionic Solution LLC, Blue Horseshoe, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Bow & Arrow, Bow & Arrow Limited, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, Byte Prophecy Private Limited, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CS Technology (Australia) Pty Ltd, CS Technology (UK) Limited, CS Technology Group LLC, CS Technology LLC, CadenceQuest Inc., Callisto Integration Europe B.V., Callisto Integration Europe Limited, Callisto Integration LLC, Callisto Integration Ltd, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc, Certus Solutions Consulting Services Limited, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cirrus Connect Australia Pty Ltd, Cirrus Connect Limited, Cirruseo, Clarity Insights, ClearEdge Partners, Clearhead, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas Japan G.K., Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Limited, Cloudeasier SAS, Cloudpoint Limited, Cloudsherpas Inc, Cloudworks, Cloudworks Consulting Services Inc, Cloudworks Technology LLC, Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda, Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda, Context Information Security, Context Information Security LLC, Context Information Security Limited, CoreCompete LLC, CoreCompete Limited, CoreCompete Private Limited, Corliant Inc., Creative Drive LLC, Creative Drive US LLC, CreativeDrive, CreativeDrive Digital Content Services (Shenzhen) Co Ltd., CreativeDrive EMEA Limited, CreativeDrive Singapore Pte Ltd, CreativeDrive UK Group Limited, Cutting Edge Solutions Limited, Cygni AB, Cygni Norrsken AB, Cygni Stockholm AB, Cygni Syd AB, Cygni Vast AB, Cygni Ost AB, Cygni Ostersund AB, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Limited, DI Futures Corporation, Data Essential SARL, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings LLC, Decora Marketplace LLC, Decorado Marketplace Ltda-EPP, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digital Results Group LLC, Double Digit Limitada, Double Digit Pty SA, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Limited, Duck Creek Technologies, ESR Labs, ESR Labs AG, EdenOne Solutions Limited, Edenhouse ERP Holdings Limited, Edenhouse Solutions Limited, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting LP, End to End Analytics LLC, End-to-End Analytics, Endorphin Medici (M) Sdn Bhd, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Limited, EnergyQuote JHA, Enimbos, Enimbos Global Services S.L., Enkitec, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions LLC, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V., Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enthusian Pty Ltd, Entropia, Entropia (M) Sdn Bhd, Entropia Holdings Pte Ltd, Entropia Intercraft Sdn Bhd, Epylon, Ergo, Espedia S.r.l., Ethica Consulting Group, Ethica Consulting S.p.A., Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Experity, Exton Consulting, Exton Consulting Spain Strategy&Management S.L., Exton Germany GmbH, Exton International SAS, Exton Italia S.r.l., Exton SAS, FGM LLC, Fairway Technologies Inc, Farah BidCo Limited, Farah MidCo Limited, Farah Topco Limited, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Formicary, Founders Intelligence, Fruendo S.r.l., FusionX, Future State Consulting LLC, FutureMove (Beijing) Automotive Technology Co. Ltd., FutureMove Automotive, FutureMove Automotive Co. Ltd., GRA Supply Chain Pty Ltd, Gagel Group S de R.L. de C.V., Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gevity, Gren utvikling AS, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., HRC Retail Advisory, Hagberg Consulting Group, Hahntel Ltda, Halo Partners LLC, Hamilton Holding Company S.A, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Happen GP Limited, Happen Limited, Headspring, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl A/S, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn Bhd, IBB Consulting, ICM.S S.r.l., IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INSITUM, IQSP Consulting LLC, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Icon Integration (NZ) Limited, Icon Integration Pty Ltd, Imagine Broadband (USA) Limited, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Imaginea Technologies LLC, Industrie IT (Hong Kong) Ltd, Industrie IT (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Industrie IT Group Pty Ltd, Industrie IT Pty Ltd, Industrie&Co, Infinity Works Consulting Limited, Infinity Works Holdings Limited, Infinity Works Management Limited, Infinity Works Midco Limited, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Innotec International EAD, Innotec International S.p. z.o.o., Innotec Marketing GmbH, Innotec Marketing International Ireland Limited, Innotec- Marketing Spain S.L, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., International Biometric Group LLC, International Biometric Group UK Limited, Intrepid, Intrepid Futureworks Sdn Bhd, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Technology Ltd, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, ItSafer Continuity Services S.L., JKD Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, K Comms Group Limited, KSC Studio LLC, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, King James Group, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Limited, Kogentix Singapore Pte Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon US LLC, LEXTA, LINKBYNET, LINKBYNET Indian Ocean (L.I.O) Ltd, LabAnswer, Lexta GmbH, Lexta UK Limited, Lien par le reseau Inc, Lien par le reseau infrastructures Inc, Lin Bo (Shanghai) Network Technology Co. Ltd., Link By Net SAS, Link By Net SRL, Link By Net Vietnam Company Limited, Linkbynet East Asia Ltd, Linkbynet Singapore Pte Ltd., Loud & Clear Creative Pty Ltd, Lumenup S.A., MAXIM Systems Inc., MCG US Holdings LLC, Mackevision CG Technology and Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Mackevision Japan Co. Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision LLC, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte Ltd, Mackevision UK Limited, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd, Maihiro, Matter, Maud Corp Pty Ltd, Maxamine International, Measuretek LLC, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing LLC, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mistral Wind Operations  Servicos Empresariais Unipessoal Lda., MobGen, Mortgage Cadence LLC, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, Mudano Limited, Myrtle Consulting Group LLC, N3, N3 (Dalian) Business Consulting Co. Ltd., N3 Brazil Consultoria em Marketing Ltda, N3 Germany GmbH, N3 LLC, N3 North America LLC, N3 Results Australia Pty Ltd, N3 Results Ireland Limited, N3 Results Japan G.K., N3 Results Limited, N3 Results Malaysia Sdn Bhd, N3 Results Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., N3 Results S.A.S., N3 Results Singapore Pte Ltd, N3 Results Unipessoal Lda, NYTEC, Nanjing Demeng Advertising Co. Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., Nell'Armonia Israel Ltd, Nell'Armonia SAS, Nell'Participation SAS, NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda, New Energy Group, News Imaging LLC, NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage Pte Ltd, Northstream, Novetta Holdings LLC, Novetta LLC, Novetta Solutions LLC, Novetta Topco LLC, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Olikka Pty Ltd, Olympus Systems Corporation, Openmind, Openmind S.r..l., Openminded, Openminded SAS, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium AG, Orbium Consulting Limited, Orbium Inc., Orbium Ltd, Orbium Pte Ltd, Orbium Pty Ltd, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PLM Systems S.r.l, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, PacificLink Group, Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production A/S, Pegasus Production K/S, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pollux Automation Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pollux Canada Inc, Pollux S.A.S., Pollux USA LLC, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Limited, Pramati Technologies Europe Limited, Pramati Technologies Private Limited, Presence of IT Workforce Management North America LLC, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Limited, Procurian Inc., Prof. Homburg GmbH, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co. Ltd., RBCP Fund 1-A Vapor Blocker LLC, RBCP Platform Vapor Blocker I LLC, REPL Consulting LLC, REPL Consulting Limited, REPL Digital Limited, REPL Group K.K., REPL Group Pty Ltd, REPL Group Worldwide Limited, REPL Pte Ltd, REPL Software Limited, REPL Technology Limited, Radiant Services LLC, Random Walk Computing Inc., Reactive Media Pty Ltd., Real Protect, Realworld OO Systems Ltd., Redcore, Redcore (New Zealand) Limited, Redcore Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Redcore Pty Ltd, Revolutionary Security, RiskControl, Root LLC, Rothco, Rothco Limited, S3 TV Technology Ltd., SALT Solutions GmbH, SEC Servizi, SOPIA Corp., Sagacious Consultants, Salt Solutions, Sandbox Studio LLC, Sapling Bidco Limited, Sapling Midco Limited, Sapling Topco Limited, Schlumberger Business Consulting, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace (UK) Limited, Seabury Consulting, Seabury Corporate Advisors LLC, Seabury Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Search Technologies BPO Inc, Search Technologies International LLC, Search Technologies LLC, Search Technologies Limited, Securiview SAS, Sentelis, Sentor Managed Secuirty Services AB, Servicios Tecnicos de Programacion Accenture S.C., Seven Seas Business Ventures LLC, Shackleton, Shackleton Chile S.A., Shackleton S.L.U., Shanghai Baiyue Advertising Co. Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. Ltd., SigInt Technologies LLC, Silveo, Silveo Consulting India Private Limited, Simian Pty Ltd, SinnerSchrader, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, SinnerSchrader Praha s.r.o., Sirvart S.A., Sistemes Consulting S.L., Skylink SAS, Soltians Limited, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Somers Ventures Ireland Limited, Somers Ventures LLC, Spacelink SAS, Storm Digital, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Synership LLC, Systor AG, T.A. Cook, TXF LLC, Tambourine, TargetST8, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Ltd, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Tquila, Trivadis, Trivadis AG, Trivadis Austria GmbH, Trivadis Denmark AS, Trivadis Germany GmbH, Trivadis Holding AG, Trivadis Partner AG, Trivadis Services AG, Trivadis Services SRL, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Vector Acquisition Company LLC, Vector Topco LLC, Verax Solutions, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd, Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd, Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, WaveStrike LLC, White Cliffs Consulting LLC, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wise Partners SAS, Wolox, Wolox Colombia S.A.S, Wolox LLC, Wolox Mexico S.R.L de C.V., Wolox S.A., Wolox SpA, Workforce Insight, Workforce Insight LLC, Yesler, Yesler LLC, Yesler Limited, Yesler Singapore Pte Ltd, Zag, Zag Australia Pty Ltd, Zag Limited, Zag USA LLC, Zebra Worldwide Australia Pty Ltd, Zebra Worldwide Group Limited, Zebra Worldwide Media Pty Ltd, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines Inc, Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc, Zestgroup, Zielpuls, Zielpuls (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zielpuls GmbH, avVenta, designaffairs, designaffairs Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., designaffairs GmbH, designaffairs group China Co. Ltd., dgroup, i4C Analytics, iDefense, solid-serVision.com GmbH, and umlaut.

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Arch Resources, Inc. produces and sells thermal and metallurgical coal from surface and underground mines. As of December 31, 2021, the company operated seven active mines. It also owned or controlled primarily through long-term leases approximately 28,292 acres of coal land in Ohio; 952 acres of coal land in Maryland; 10,095 acres of coal land in Virginia; 306,033 acres of coal land in West Virginia; 81,470 acres of coal land in Wyoming; 234,543 acres of coal land in Illinois; 33,047 acres of coal land in Kentucky; 362 acres of coal land in Montana; 248 acres of coal land in Pennsylvania; and 19,018 acres of coal land in Colorado, as well as smaller parcels of property in Alabama, Indiana, Washington, Arkansas, California, Utah, and Texas. The company sells its products to utility, industrial, and steel producers in the United States, Europe, Asia, Central and South America, and Africa. The company was formerly known as Arch Coal, Inc. and changed its name to Arch Resources, Inc. in May 2020. Arch Resources, Inc. was incorporated in 1969 and is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.
Toyota Motor Corporation designs, manufactures, assembles, and sells passenger vehicles, minivans and commercial vehicles, and related parts and accessories. It operates in Automotive, Financial Services, and All Other segments. The company offers hybrid cars under the Prius name, fuel cell vehicles under the MIRAI name; and conventional engine vehicles, including subcompact and compact cars under the Corolla and Raize names. It also provides mini-vehicles, passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, and auto parts under the Toyota name; mid-size cars; luxury cars; sports cars under the GR Yaris, Corolla Sport, Corolla Cross, and Supra names; and recreational and sport-utility vehicles under the Highlander name. In addition, the company offers pickup trucks under the Tacoma name; minivans; and trucks and buses. Further, it provides financial services, such as retail financing and leasing, wholesale financing, insurance, and credit cards; and designs, manufactures, and sells prefabricated housing. Additionally, the company operates GAZOO.com, a web portal for automobile information. It operates in Japan, North America, Europe, Asia, Central and South America, Oceania, Africa, and the Middle East. The company was founded in 1933 and is headquartered in Toyota, Japan.
Events this week include an opera at NSU, Winterfest and Miss Aberdeen

Looking for something to do this week, check out an opera at NSU, Winterfest or the Miss Aberdeen coronation.
MINSK, Belarus  A senior separatist official in eastern Ukraine on Friday announced the resignation of the beleaguered rebel chief in an apparent palace coup, ending a four-day showdown between rivaling factions.

Leonid Pasechnik, state security minister of the self-proclaimed Luhansk Peoples Republic, said in a statement on Friday evening that the republics chief Igor Plotnitsky has resigned on health grounds. Pasechnik said he would be the acting chief until an election is called.

More than 10,000 people have been killed and a million displaced in a long-simmering conflict between government troops and Russia-backed separatists in Luhansk and in parts of the neighboring Donetsk region since 2014. The region has been plagued with infighting between various armed groups and warlords. Political and military leaders in Luhansk have been unseated and died in suspicious circumstances.

Pressure mounted on Plotnitsky earlier this week after he fired Interior Minister Igor Kornet. The influential minister refused to resign and enlisted help from the separatists in the neighboring Donetsk region to deny Plotnitskys order. Dozens of armed people loyal to Kornet blocked the access to the main administrative buildings in the regional capital, Luhansk, on Tuesday. A convoy of armed vehicles entered the city in the middle of the night in a show of support.

Plotnitsky in a video message on Wednesday accused Kornet of trying to unseat him while the minister himself lashed out at Plotnitsky, suggesting in a televised statement that the republics leadership is under the influence of Ukrainian spies.

Plotnitsky came to power in August 2014 after he unseated a warlord who later fled to Russia.

There was no immediate statement from Plotnitsky who has not appeared in public since Wednesday. The 53-year old former Ukrainian bureaucrat was spotted arriving at a Russian airport on Thursday with a carry-on bag.

Several high-profile commanders have been killed in the Luhansk region in suspicious circumstances in recent years in what was widely viewed as power struggle. While the unruly commanders were dying in car bombings, the leadership of the rebel-controlled parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions came to be dominated by bureaucrats with ties to ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The rebels originally sought to join Russia but the Kremlin stopped short of annexing the area or publicizing its military support for the rebels. It is widely assumed that Moscow provides the rebels with weapons and funding.

Fighting has intensified in the Luhansk region this week. The press office of the Ukrainian armed forces said on Friday that at least five Ukrainian troops had been killed there in the past 24 hours in what it called the biggest loss of life since July.

The European Union on Friday blamed Russia for the deaths, calling it just the latest proof of the tragic consequences of Russias aggression in Ukraine.

The EU condemns Russias aggression and will never recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea, EU Council President Donald Tusk said after a summit with six eastern European nations, including Ukraine.

____

Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow and Raf Casert in Brussels contributed to this report.
Police arrested a suspect they said shot a man in the neck, injuring him, outside a southeast Albuquerque drug treatment center in late October.

Joshua Sanchez, 27, is in custody and charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, two count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and shooting at or from a motor vehicle.

Police say Sanchez shot his ex-girlfriends new boyfriend in front of the Albuquerque Treatment Center, near San Mateo and Central SE, after the two men got into a fight, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.

Officers were dispatched to the center on Oct. 28 where an employee told them he had kicked out two couples who were fighting just before the shooting.

While on scene, police say the University of New Mexico Hospital contacted officers to tell them the victim of the shooting, Albert Romero, had showed up to the hospital.

At the hospital, Romeros girlfriend told police Sanchez, along with his girlfriend, assaulted the couple at the treatment center before all four were kicked out by employees.

Once in the parking lot, she told police Sanchez pulled up next to Romeros car and started to fire into the vehicle, hitting Romero in the neck.

Romeros girlfriend told police her and Sanchez dated earlier this year.

She broke up with Sanchez after a few months because he abused her, according to the complaint. Sanchez repeatedly tried to reconnect with her because he fell in love.

Romeros girlfriend told police Sanchez, on multiple occasions, would try to start a conflict with the couple and shot at their car once while driving on the freeway.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.  A Colorado pastor arrested for multiple counts of sexual assault on a child is accused of having sex with a 14-year-old girl.

According to arrest documents, the girl became pregnant and gave birth to a child which 22-year-old Romello Leach admitted was his.

Authorities say Leach is associated with several churches that met at a Colorado Springs hotel.

The El Paso County Sheriffs Office began investigating him in May after getting a tip from the pregnancy center where the girl and her mother sought help.

In a recorded call with an unidentified person, authorities say Leach admitted his actions were wrong but said that he was full of lust at the time.

Leach was arrested Wednesday and is being held in jail. Its not known if he has a lawyer.
A rescue team found a man dead in his vehicle after it went into the Chama River on Friday in northern New Mexico, according to a NM State Police spokeswoman.

Lt. Elizabeth Armijo said 85-year-old Fred Brand was found dead inside his vehicle.

She said Brand was headed east on Forest Road 151, in Rio Arriba County, when the vehicle went off the road and down an embankment, ending up in the middle of the river.

The vehicle was found submerged in approximately 3 feet of water, Armijo said.

She said a swift water rescue team recovered Brands body from the vehicle.

Armijo said State Police are still investigating the crash.

At this time it is unknown why the vehicle left the roadway, she said. Alcohol does not appear to have been a factor in the cause of this crash.
ISMAILIA, Egypt  They arrived in five SUVs, took positions across from the mosques door and windows, and just as the imam was about to deliver his Friday sermon from atop the pulpit, they opened fire and tossed grenades at the estimated 500 worshippers inside. When the violence finally stopped, more than 300 people, including 27 children, had been killed and 128 injured.

As the gunfire rang out and the blasts shook the mosque, worshippers screamed and cried out in pain. A stampede broke out in the rush toward a door leading to the washrooms. Others tried desperately to force their way out of the windows.

Those who survived spoke of children screaming as they saw parents and older brothers mowed down by gunfire or shredded by the blasts. Some marveled at their narrow escape from a certain death. Some families lost all or most male members in the massacre.

So composed were the militants that they methodically checked their victims for any sign of life after the initial round of blazing gunfire. Those still moving or breathing received a bullet to the head or the chest, the witnesses said. When the ambulances arrived they shot at them, repelling them as they got back into their vehicles and fled.

Fridays assault was Egypts deadliest attack by Islamic extremists in the countrys modern history, a grim milestone in a long-running fight against an insurgency led by a local affiliate of the Islamic State group. Al-Rawdah Mosque was in a sleepy village by the same name in Egypts troubled northern Sinai, near the small town of Bir al-Abd.

A statement by the countrys chief prosecutor, Nabil Sadeq, said the attackers, some masked, numbered between 25 and 30. Those with bare faces sported heavy beards and long hair, it added. Clad in military-style camouflage pants and black T-shirts, one of them carried a black banner with the declaration of the Muslim faith  there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. The banner matched those carried by IS, which has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

They also torched seven cars parked outside the mosque that belonged to worshippers, the statement added.

The chief prosecutors statement was the most detailed account given by authorities and it generally agreed with what witnesses told The Associated Press on Saturday in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, where some of the wounded are hospitalized.

We knew that the mosque was under attack by (militants), said witness Ebid Salem Mansour recalling the intense gunfire. Mansour, a 38-year-old worker in a nearby salt factory, said he had settled in Bir al-Abd three years ago to escape the bloodshed and fighting elsewhere in northern Sinai. He suffered two gunshot wounds to his legs on Friday.

Everyone lay down on the floor and kept their heads down. If you raised your head you get shot, he said. The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning and then became more deliberate. Whoever they werent sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead.

The militants were shouting Allahu Akbar, or God is great, as they fired at the worshippers and the children were screaming, Mansour added. I knew I was injured but I was in a situation that was much scarier than being wounded. I was only seconds away from a certain death, he said. Amid the shooting many worshippers recited their final prayers, he added.

Fridays attack targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam. Islamic militants, including the local IS affiliate, consider Sufis heretics because of their less literal interpretations of the faith.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi vowed that the attack will not go unpunished and that Egypt would persevere with its war on terrorism. He did not specify what new steps might be taken. On Saturday, he ordered that a mausoleum be built in memory of the victims of Fridays attack and cancelled a visit to the Gulf Sultanate of Oman that was scheduled for next week.

The military and security forces have already been waging a tough and costly campaign against militants in the towns, villages and desert mountains of northern Sinai, and Egypt has been in a state of emergency since April. Across the country, thousands have been arrested in a crackdown on suspected Islamists as well as against other dissenters and critics, raising concerns about human rights violations.

Seeking to spread the violence, militants over the past year have carried out deadly bombings on churches in the capital of Cairo and other cities, killing dozens of Christians. The IS affiliate is also believed to be behind the 2016 downing of a Russian passenger jet that killed 224 people over Sinai, an incident that decimated the countrys already ailing tourism industry.

Fridays assault was the first major militant attack on a Muslim congregation, and it eclipsed past attacks, even dating back to a previous Islamic militant insurgency in the 1990s. The death of so many civilians in one day recalls the killing of at least 600 in August 2013, when Egyptian security forces broke up two sit-in protests in Cairo by supporters of Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist president ousted by the military the previous month.

Another witness to Fridays attack said worshippers tried to jump out of windows as soon as the militants opened fire. The small door that leads to the corridor for the wash rooms was about the only one where worshippers rushed to escape, said a 38-year-old government employee who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation.

There was a stampede. I fell down and then bodies piled up on top of me, he said.

The local IS group affiliate has targeted Sufis in the past.

Last year, the militants beheaded a leading local Sufi religious figure, the blind sheikh Suleiman Abu Heraz, and posted photos of the killing online. Islamic State group propaganda often denounces Sufis. In the January edition of an IS online magazine, a figure purporting to be a high level official in the Sinai affiliate of the group vowed to target Sufis, accusing them of idolatry and heretical innovation in religion and warning that the group will not permit (their) presence in Sinai or Egypt.

Millions of Egyptians belong to Sufi orders, which hold sessions of ritual chanting and dancing to draw the faithful closer to God. Sufis also hold shrines containing the tombs of holy men in particular reverence.

Islamic militants stepped up their campaign of violence in northern Sinai after the military ousted the elected but divisive Morsi. Authorities followed up with a fierce crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood group, jailing thousands.

The result has been a long, grinding conflict centered on el-Arish and nearby villages and towns in north Sinai. The militants have been unable to control territory, but the military and security forces have also been unable to bring security, as the extremists continuously carry out surprise attacks, mostly targeting outposts and convoys.

The attacks have largely focused on military and police and, more recently, Christians. Hundreds have been killed, although exact numbers are unclear. The militants have also assassinated individuals the group considers to be spies for the government or religious heretics. Egypt has also faced attacks by militants in its Western Desert.

___

Hendawi reported from Cairo.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

The Air Force is conducting a pilot test on groundwater contaminated by a decadeslong jet fuel leak in hopes naturally occurring bacteria can join the fight against toxic chemicals.

The ethylene dibromide (EDB) in-situ bioremediation pilot test being performed near the source of the leak on Kirtland Air Force Base involves pumping groundwater up and adding sugar that will serve as food for bacteria  potentially increasing their activity and encouraging them to gobble up more EDB  then injecting it back underground.

EDB is a toxic chemical once found in jet fuel.

Its like giving performance-enhancing drugs to an athlete, said Brian Reneghan of the Air Force Civil Engineer Center at the Nov. 14 public meeting on the fuel leak.

The pilot test began in October.

In December, nutrients  sodium lactate, diammonium phosphate and yeast extract  will be introduced to the water before it is returned, when they hope bacteria activity will be stimulated.

Researchers will monitor EDB and other fuel constituent levels for three months.

If the project isnt progressing as well as hoped, additional food and bacteria will be added.

Diane Agnew of the New Mexico Environment Department said the microorganisms that would be introduced are already present in the soil.

It will not be anyone new, it will just be getting more of those players on the field, she said.

While the project will focus on levels of EDB, Agnew said the bacteria may also feed on other chemicals in the fuel, such as benzene.

The bacterias carbon-based waste is harmless and once the food source is gone, theyll disappear as well.

Kathryn Lynnes, the Air Forces senior adviser on the remediation, said the process worked extremely well in a lab.
When Damon Martinez learned Friday that 235 worshippers were killed in an attack on a mosque in Sinai, Egypt, his mind processed alarm and sadness, then drifted to memories of a remote U.S. military outpost in the region.

It was there on the Sinai Peninsula  near the Straits of Tiran by the Red Sea  where Martinez and more than 400 other New Mexicans serving in the National Guard spent most of 2012 helping to keep peace in the longstanding buffer zone between Egypt and Israel.

Martinez recalled gleaming mosques dotting the horizon and exotic sounds of Islamic prayer calls drifting toward the U.S. military base where he and the others were stationed. The former Guardsman, who went on to serve as New Mexicos U.S. attorney and who is now a Democratic candidate for Congress, also remembered the gracious Egyptians he met during his tour of duty and feeling proud to be welcomed as an American.

Its sad and its disturbing to me, Martinez said of Fridays attack in a phone interview. These were people who were in a place of worship practicing their religion and trying to live in peace.

Martinez said the New Mexico National Guard battalion was part of a rotating, multi-national military contingent that has served as a continual peacekeeping operation on Sinai peninsula since the late 1970s, when former President Jimmy Carter, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin reached a peace agreement that demilitarized the Sinai. The agreement marked the first time an Arab state officially recognized Israel.

When we were there, it was the New Mexicans turn to represent the United States, said Martinez, who served as the New Mexico Guards Judge Advocate General, or JAG, officer during the assignment. We worked with New Zealanders, Fijians, Hungarians and Colombians. This was a perfect example of countries keeping the peace and showing how to go forward.

Martinez said Fridays tragic news was especially disturbing because the peninsula has generally maintained a peaceful veneer, even if an Islamist insurgency has percolated near the surface in recent years.

With the support of the Americans over the decades theyve been able to keep a peaceful border there, Martinez said. Its strategically crucial for not only the United States but for peace in the Middle East.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for Fridays attack, but affiliates of the Islamic State have mounted large-scale attacks against Egypts security forces and Coptic Christians in the area. The attack on a mosque, however, is rare, and the staggering body count sent a collective shudder across Egypt. Even if peace has largely prevailed in Sinai, its a precarious peace.

This is a region that can be lawless, Martinez explained. Bedouin tribes are now working with these radical groups that are trying to affiliate themselves with the Islamic State and create instability for the government of Egypt. If they can create instability, in turn they would try to create instability between Egypt and Israel. Its a stepped process but you can see what they are trying to do.

Martinez said he worries that the State Department under Rex Tillerson is pulling back resources in the region when he believes more  not less  diplomacy is needed.

Right now we have a military presence in every country or next to every country in the Middle East, he said. We also have intelligence there. My concern is whether we have our Secretary of State and the State Department (engaged). In addition to the military, you have to have our State Department involved so we can help keep the peace, or negotiate the peace. Were abandoning certain areas and this area, the Sinai, is absolutely crucial.

Martinez, now 51, said he and his fellow Guardsmen and women  many of whom were soldiers and much younger than the mid-40s he was at the time  were honored to help maintain peace in a war-torn region. They wore muted orange helmets to differentiate them from combat soldiers as they went about observing flight patterns, vehicular traffic and submarine activity to ensure adherence to peacekeeping practices.

I was so proud of the New Mexicans we had there, he recalled. They were doing something greater than themselves. Representing not only New Mexico but the United States and literally keeping the peace in a region that has had so much war. I was so proud of them and so proud to have been a part of this.

UpFront is a regular Journal news and opinion column. Comment directly to Washington correspondent Michael Coleman at mcoleman@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
ISLAMABAD  Pakistan called in the army to restore order on Saturday, hours after a violent clash between police and crowds protesting an omitted reference to the Prophet Muhammad in a parliamentary bill left six dead and many dozens wounded, state TV reported.

The Interior Ministry did not specify when the troops would be deployed, and no soldiers were visible on the streets late Saturday.

Supporters of an Islamist group have been camped out at a key intersection outside the capital for the last 20 days, and the protest has triggered similar demonstrations across the country.

Hundreds of police in riot gear moved in to clear the intersection linking Islamabad with the garrison city of Rawalpindi after a deadline expired at midnight, doctors at local hospitals said.

The violence sent scores of police and protesters to hospitals with injuries caused by stoning and respiratory problems from tear gas. Hospital officials said near 200 people were hurt, most of them police.

Dr. Masood Safdar of Benazir Bhutto Hospital said five civilians were shot and killed. Dr. Tariq Niazi of the Holy Family Hospital confirmed the death of a young man who was shot in head.

News of the police intervention spread quickly, prompting sympathizers in cities round the country to take to the streets in a show of solidarity with the Islamabad protesters. The situation prompted the countrys regulatory body for electronic media to take TV broadcasts off the air. Key social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were also blocked. Government officials were not immediately available for comment.

The supporters of the Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah party, who have been camped out at the intersection for the last 20 days, are demanding the resignation of a law minister over an omitted reference to the prophet in a parliamentary bill. The minister, Zahid Hamid, apologized for the omission  a phrase saying that Muhammad is the last prophet in Islam  saying it was a clerical error that was later corrected.

But protest leaders were adamant and refused to clear the intersection unless the law minister resigned.

Saturdays action came after a court ordered an end to the protest because it was disrupting daily life.

Television footage showed police initially taking control of the bridge where the demonstrators were camped out. Some protesters could be seen throwing stones at police. The images showed an area engulfed in thick smoke from tear gas and black smoke from burned tents.

Later in the morning, seminary students from Rawalpindi reinforced the demonstrators who pushed back police and Frontier Constabulary forces. Witnesses said a group of baton-carrying protesters snatched a tear gas gun and a few shells from a constable and lobbed them at police.

Enraged protesters also torched three police vans, two civilian vehicles, three two motorcycles and damaged two television station vehicles. They also ransacked a newly built metro bus terminal near the venue.

Later in the day, more supporters joined protesters at the site, and civil administrators met to come up with a solution.

Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, meanwhile, told state television that the government had shown patience in dealing with the protesters.

The administration is taking action under court order but still we are open for talks with them, he said, referring to the protesters. Ahsan said that some among the protesters wanted to create chaos and destabilization in the country.

Some protesters who escaped the operation later gathered at a main street in Rawalpindi blocking it and suspending traffic by throwing stones at moving vehicles.

In Karachi, groups gathered at three crucial venues blocking streets in protest against the police action in Islamabad. When police used tear gas to disperse them amid the traffic rush hours, protesters threw stones wounding 20 people, including two journalists.

Protesters also took to the streets in Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan, Khanewal, Layyah, Vihari, Dera Ghazi Khan and others cities in Punjab province and in the northwestern city of Peshawar, as well as in southern city of Hyderabad, to show solidarity with the Islamabad protesters.

In Lahore, an unruly mob torched a vehicle and damaged others with stoning and staged sit-ins at four key areas in the city.

Malik Mohammad Ahmed, the spokesman for Punjab government, said enraged protesters in Rawalpindi attacked the residence of the former interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar, damaging the main gate. He added that they wounded lawmaker Javed Latif in Shaikhupura, hitting him in the head with a stone, and that a furious crowd attacked Law Minister Zahid Hamids villa in Pasroor, ransacking the place.

_______

Associated Press writers Zaheer Babar in Lahore, Pakistan, Adil Jawad in Karachi, Pakistan, and Iram Asim in Multan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON  Beyond the slick, Hollywood-style cinematics, the Islamic State is targeting Western recruits with videos suggesting they, too, can be heroes like Bruce Willis character in Die Hard.

Thats the conclusion of The Chicago Project on Security and Threats, which analyzed some 1,400 videos released by IS between 2013 and 2016. Researchers who watched and catalogued them all said there is more to the recruitment effort than just sophisticated videography, and its not necessarily all about Islam.

Instead, Robert Pape, who directs the security center, said the extremist group is targeting Westerners  especially recent Muslim converts  with videos that follow, nearly step-by-step, a screenwriters standard blueprint for heroic storytelling.

Its the heroic screenplay journey, the same thing thats in Wonder Woman, where you have someone who is learning his or her own powers through the course of their reluctant journey to be hero, Pape said.

The project at the University of Chicago separately has assembled a database of people who have been indicted in the United States for activities related to IS. Thirty-six percent were recent converts to Islam and did not come from established Muslim communities, according to the project. Eighty-three percent watched IS videos, the project said.

The groups success in using heroic storytelling is prompting copycats, Pape said. The research shows al-Qaidas Syria affiliate has been mimicking IS heroic narrative approach in its own recruitment films. We have a pattern thats emerging, Pape said.

Intelligence and law enforcement officials arent sure the approach is all that new. They say IS has been using any method that works to recruit Westerners. Other terrorism researchers think IS message is still firmly rooted in religious extremism.

Rita Katz, director of SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks messaging by militant groups, agrees that IS makes strong, visual appeals resembling Hollywood movies and video games, making its media operation more successful than al-Qaidas. And IS videos can attract hero wannabes, she said.

However, these features of IS media are only assets to a core message it uses to recruit, Katz said. At the foundation of IS recruitment propaganda is not so much the promise to be a Hollywood-esque hero, but a religious hero. There is a big difference between the two.

When a fighter sits in front of a camera and calls for attacks, Katz said, he will likely frame it as revenge for Muslims killed or oppressed somewhere in the world. The message is designed to depict any terror attack in that nation as justified and allow the attacker to die as a martyr, she said.

The promise of religious martyrdom is powerful to anybody regardless of whether they are rich or poor, happy or unhappy, steeped in religion or not at all, she said.

Pape said he knows hes challenging conventional wisdom when he says Westerners are being coaxed to join IS ranks not because of religious beliefs, but because of the groups message of personal empowerment and Western concepts of individualism.

How else can one explain Western attackers loose connections to Islam, or their scarce knowledge of ISs strict, conservative Sharia law, he asked. IS is embracing, not rejecting, Western culture and ideals, to mobilize Americans, he said.

This is a journey like Clint Eastwood, Pape said, recalling Eastwoods 1970s performance in High Plains Drifter about a stranger who doles out justice in a corrupt mining town. When Clint Eastwood goes in to save the town, hes not doing it because he loves them. He even has contempt for the people hes saving. Hes saving it because hes superior, Pape said.

Thats Bruce Willis in Die Hard. Thats Wonder Woman.  Hollywood has figured out thats what puts hundreds of millions in theater seats, Pape said. IS has figured out thats how to get Westerners.

Pape said the narrative in the recruitment videos targeting westerners closely tracks Chris Voglers 12-step guide titled The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. The book is based on a narrative identified by scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama and other storytelling.

Step No. 1 in Voglers guide is portraying a character in his ordinary world.

An example is a March 25, 2016, video released by al-Qaidas Syria branch about a young British man with roots in the Indian community. It starts: Let us tell you the story of a real man Abu Basir, as we knew him, came from central London. He was a graduate of law and a teacher by profession.

Voglers ninth step is about how the hero survives death, emerging from battle to begin a transformation, sometimes with a prize.

In the al-Qaida video, the Brit runs through sniper fire in battle. He then lays down his weapon and picks up a pen to start his new vocation blogging and posting Twitter messages for the cause.

Matthew Levitt, a terrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says it doesnt surprise him that IS would capitalize on what he dubs the zero to hero strategy because the organization is very pragmatic and accepts recruits regardless of their commitment to Islamic extremism.

Heroic aspirations are only one reason for joining the ranks of IS, he said. Criminals also seek the cover of IS to commit crimes. Others sign up because they want to belong to something.

Ive never seen a case of radicalization that was 100 percent one way or the other, Levitt said.
PENASCO, N.M.  Authorities say theres been a shooting involving law enforcement officers in a remote area of northern New Mexico and that no officers were injured.

The New Mexico State Police says the shooting involved officers from that agency and the Taos County Sheriffs Department.

Its not immediately known whether anybody else was injured and what prompted the shooting.

The State Police says the shooting occurred in the small community of Penasco and that a news conference is planned Saturday to release additional information.

Penasco is 36 miles (58 kilometers) north of Santa Fe.
Whos the boss? Thats the awkward question after the departing head of a government agency charged with looking after consumer rights appointed a deputy to temporarily fill his spot. The White House then named its own interim leader.

One job, two people  and two very different views on how to do it.

The first pick is expected to continue the aggressive policing of banks and other lenders that have angered Republicans. The second, President Donald Trumps choice, has called the agency a joke, an example of bureaucracy run amok, and is expected to dismantle much of what the agency has done.

So come Monday, who will be leading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?

Senior Trump administration officials said Saturday that the law was on their side and they expect no trouble when Trumps pick for temporary director of the CFPB shows up for work. Departing director Richard Cordray, an Obama appointee long criticized by congressional Republicans as overzealous, had cited a different rule in saying the law was on his side.

In tendering his resignation Friday, Cordray elevated Leandra English, who was the agencys chief of staff, into the deputy director position. Citing the Dodd-Frank Act that created the CFPB, he said English, an ally, would become acting director upon his departure.

Cordays move was widely seen as an attempt to stop Trump from shaping the agency in the months ahead.

The White House cites the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998. Administration officials on Saturday acknowledged that some other laws appear to clash with Vacancies Act, but said that in this case the presidents authority takes precedence.

Who prevails in the legal wrangling is seen as important even though this involves just a temporary posting. Getting a permanent replacement approved by the Senate could take months.

The presidents pick for temporary appointee, Mick Mulvaney, had been widely anticipated. Mulvaney, currently director of the Office of Management and Budget, has been an outspoken critic of the agency and is expected to pull back on many of Cordrays actions in the six years since he was appointed.

Trump announced he was picking Mulvaney within a few hours of Cordrays announcement on Friday.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, has been a total disaster as run by the previous Administrations pick, Trump tweeted Saturday from his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is spending a long Thanksgiving weekend. Financial Institutions have been devastated and unable to properly serve the public. We will bring it back to life!

The Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel had already approved Trumps appointment of Mulvaney, administration officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the White Houses thinking.

In issuing a memo about its opinion Saturday, the Office of Legal Counsel said the president has the power to appoint an acting director of the agency. Steven A. Engel, newly confirmed head of the office, wrote that, while the deputy director may serve as acting director under the statute, the president still has authority under the Vacancies Reform Act.

Even when the Vacancies Reform Act is not the exclusive means for filling a vacancy, the statute remains an available option, and the president may rely upon it in designating an acting official in a manner that differs from the order of succession otherwise provided by an office-specific statute, he wrote in a memo.

The clashing appointments raise the question: What happens when the two new heads show up and try to sit at the same desk and give orders?

One of the administration officials said Mulvaney was expected to start working Monday and that English was expected to also show up  but as deputy director.

The agency has been tangled in partisan politics since its creation, with the two competing appointees a reflection of that.

English is a trusted lieutenant of Cordrays who has helped investigate and punish financial companies in ways that many Republicans, Mulvaney in particular, think go too far. In his announcement Friday, Cordray highlighted Englishs in-depth knowledge of the agencys operations and its staff. Before joining the CFPB, English served at the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management.

Leandra is a seasoned professional who has spent her career of public service focused on promoting smooth and efficient operations, Cordray said in the statement.

Mulvaney was a South Carolina representative to the House before becoming head of the budget office. A founder of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, he was elected in 2010 as part of a tea party wave that brought many critics of the U.S. budget deficit to office. He has taken a hard line on federal spending matters, routinely voting against increasing the governments borrowing cap and pressing for major cuts to benefit programs as the path to balancing the budget.

He also has been unsparing in his criticism of the CFPB. In a widely quoted comment, he once blasted the agency as joke, saying its lack of oversight by Congress and its far-reaching regulations had gone too far.

The place is a wonderful example of how a bureaucracy will function if it has no accountability to anybody, he told the Credit Union Times in 2014. It turns up being a joke in a sick, sad kind of way.

U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee and a longtime critic of Cordray, said Mulvaney would fight not only to protect consumers from force, fraud, and deception but will protect them from government interference with competitive, innovative markets and help preserve their fundamental economic opportunities and liberties.

Democrats have seized upon Mulvaneys words in criticizing his appointment to the agency.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters of California, the top Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, issued a statement Saturday calling Mulvaney unacceptable to lead the CFPB because of his noxious views toward its mission to protect consumers.

He was also the original co-sponsor of a bill to completely eliminate the Consumer Bureau, she wrote, and supported other legislation to harmfully roll back Wall Street reform.
WASHINGTON  The crush of unfinished business facing lawmakers when they return to the Capitol would be daunting even if Washington were functioning at peak efficiency.

Its an agenda whose core items  tax cuts, a potential government shutdown, lots of leftover spending bills  could unravel just as easily as advance in factionalism, gamesmanship and a toxic political environment.

Theres only a four-week window until a Christmas deadline, barely enough time for complicated negotiations even if December stays on the rails. And thats hardly a sure bet in President Donald Trumps capital.

Trump and congressional leaders plan a meeting Tuesday to discuss how to sidestep a shutdown and work though the legislative to-do list.

For the optimistic, its plain that Democrats and Republicans have reasons to cooperate, particularly on spending increases for the Pentagon and domestic agencies whose budgets otherwise would be frozen. An additional round of hurricane aid should be bipartisan, and efforts to reauthorize a popular health care program for children seem to be on track.

Republicans are advancing their cherished tax cut measure under special rules that mean Senate Democrats cannot use delaying tactics. The measure passed the House just before the Thanksgiving break and moves to the Senate floor this coming week.

After the Senate GOPs failure on health care this summer, the majority party is under enormous pressure to produce a victory on taxes. Still, GOP deficit hawks such as Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona remain uneasy about the overhaul.

While Democrats are largely sidelined on taxes, they hold leverage over a mix of budget-related issues.

First, theres the need to avert a government shutdown after a temporary spending bill expires on Dec. 8. The most likely scenario, congressional aides say, is for an additional extension until Christmas. On a parallel track are talks to raise spending limits that are keeping agency budgets essentially frozen unless those caps are raised. If that happens, then negotiations could begin in earnest on a massive catchall spending measure in hopes of having it signed into law by years end.

Taxes have gotten all the attention so far, but the showdown over a potential shutdown right before Christmas could soon take center stage. Democrats are counting on GOP fears of a holiday season closure to ensure Republican concessions during December talks.

Both sides would have to make concessions that may upset partisans in either party. Just as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., fears a revolt on the right, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California risks an uprising on her left. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., round out the quartet of top negotiators.

Everybodys got complicated politics. The chance of short-term failure is pretty high  short-term failure being a shutdown, said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist. But the four of them, assuming they dont want to shut the government down for a long time, are going to have to come to an accommodation.

Talks on the spending caps are stuck, however, aides say. A GOP offer to lift the Pentagon budget by more than $54 billion next year and nondefense limits by $37 billion was rejected by Democrats demanding balance between the two sides of the ledger.

Long-delayed battles over immigration and Trumps promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border are huge obstacles. Many Democrats whose votes are needed on the spending bills insist they wont vote for any legislation that includes the wall. Trump remains dead set on his $1.6 billion request for a down payment on the project.

Those same Democrats also insist that Congress must act by years end to protect immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and whose protected status is set to lapse next year. Trump backs the idea despite issuing an executive order reversing the Obama administration protections, starting next spring. Conservatives oppose drawing in the immigration issue to legislation to keep the government running.

Hurricane relief is adding one more wrinkle.

Congress has approved more than $50 billion in aid in response to a series of devastating hurricanes. The most recent request by the White House is the largest yet at $44 billion, but its not nearly enough to satisfy the powerful Texas delegation, which is pressing behind the scenes for more.

Completely inadequate, said Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas. We must do far more to rebuild, repair and allow Texans to return to normal as quickly as possible.

Trump is a wild card. He warmed to the idea of cutting deals with Democrats after a September pact with Schumer and Pelosi to lift the governments debt ceiling.

He promised Democratic leaders that he would sign legislation to give the young immigrants legal status  provided border security is addressed as well.

But that demand on border security came with a long list of conditions subsequently added by the White House. Among them: building his Mexico border wall, overhauling the green card system and strengthening measures against people who stay after their visas expire.

Trump has not really engaged on the year-end agenda, however, and his impulsiveness could be a liability. He almost disowned an omnibus spending bill in May after media accounts portrayed the measure as a win for Democrats.
Aiken, SC (29801)

Today

Some clouds in the morning will give way to mainly sunny skies for the afternoon. High 53F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Clear skies. Low 26F. Winds light and variable.
November 22, 2017

Iraq's Ministry of Health and Environment released 20 falcons back into the wild Nov. 17. The falcons had been smuggled earlier in the month to Kuwait, which returned them to Iraq. This incident is but one example of the systematic smuggling of rare birds and animals out of the country, and the authorities are working to better enforce existing laws and adding security measures.

The lack of surveillance on the vast, open borders as well as the rampant corruption at the ports make such operations both possible and profitable for smugglers and merchants, an officer in the Iraqi Ministry of Interior told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.

Smugglers are encouraged by traders in the Gulf states who pay huge sums of money to purchase rare, ornamental or hunting birds. There's an anecdote circulating that a rare breed of pigeon recently sent bird fanciers in Kuwait into a bidding war, driving the final price for the birds to $33,000.

Many trade transactions are conducted illegally, away from any environmental or security controls, Manal al-Muslimawi, a member of the Iraqi parliament's Environment Committee, told Al-Monitor. The Iraqi laws [are supposed to] protect the environment and its biological diversity, but they are not being enforced."

The falcon incident, Muslimawi said, "is one out of hundreds of smuggling cases of Iraqi birds and rare animals, and the parliamentary committee is aware of that. She added, The environmental police in Iraq are not up to the challenge, given the lack of the needed personnel."

Some markets in Baghdad even sell protected species in plain sight.

"Some well-known smugglers are buying rare animal and bird species from the market to selling them through cross-border networks," bird trader Sheikh Ali told Al-Monitor.

"There is a trader who managed last year to get seven rare and desirable hawks from the desert of Ramadi and [offered to sell them to us] for a good price," which he declined. "I subsequently learned that this trader [sold them] to the Gulf traders, he added.

It's well-known that smugglers are moving Iraqi livestock to neighboring countries. Several operations smuggling sheep and cattle were reported in February in Anbar province. There have also been numerous reports of the Islamic State (IS) smuggling livestock to fund their operations. In June, IS took rugged and bumpy roads to try to sneak stolen thoroughbred Arabian horses from Kirkuk to the border between Diyala and Salahuddin, authorities said. In September, Iraqi military intelligence in Anbar foiled an IS attempt to smuggle out 1,332 livestock of various species.

Abdul Hadi al-Saadawi, a member of parliament's Committee on Health and Environment, told Al-Monitor that smuggling cattle and rare birds and animals has become common. The committee has asked the federal government to issue more stringent laws and tighten security controls, he added. Special security detachments are being dispatched along routes from the desert of Najaf to Basra in the south, near the border with Iran, for the first time since 2003.

The government also is trying to curtail smuggling by restricting the transport of cattle, birds and rare animals from one province to another, he said.

These new measures may have helped security officials arrest Iraqi rare bird hunters in the Samawah desert. Over the past few years, Iraq has lost a great deal of its rare biological wealth because of the turbulent security situation and political developments. Even the Mosul zoo was completely looted when IS controlled the city.

Haider al-Zamily, a veterinarian at Zawraa Park, told Al-Monitor there is a plan to open a center there for wild animal rehabilitation "in a bid to return them to their natural habitat.

While this project is an important step toward preserving Iraq's environmental diversity, it is necessary to enforce laws that deter smuggling and indiscriminate hunting, prepare programs that increase environmental awareness and provide job opportunities for poor young people who smuggle animals and birds for money.
Two real-life images that seem to be depicting the upcoming Gionee S11 appeared online earlier this week, showing a device that appears to be identical to the one featured in the Chinese phone makers first official teaser for the smartphone. The two photographs that can be seen above carry the watermark of one tech blog but no evidence of them being shared through any of its channels has yet emerged. The front shot of the handset shows its Settings menu which lists a number of its connectivity options like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, in addition to confirming that the Gionee S11 will boast dual-SIM capabilities. Its still unclear whether the company opted for a hybrid SIM setup or if its next smartphone will ship with a dedicated microSD card slot, though all previous rumors suggest that microSD card support will be part of the package one way or the other.

The Gionee S11 features an 18:9 screen with relatively thin bezels and lacks a physical Home button, with its circular fingerprint scanner residing on its back, being centered near the top of its body. A dual-camera setup with two horizontally arranged lenses is also present on the rear plate of the upcoming Android handset, with Gionee previously confirming that the smartphone will take advantage of a 16-megapixel sensor with autofocus support and a secondary 5-megapixel module that will presumably be used for adding a bokeh effect to images. The slim top bezel of the Gionee S11 will also sport a dual-camera setup that can be seen in the newly sighted photographs, with the main sensor being the same 16-megapixel one found on the other side of the phone but its support being of the 8-megapixel variety, Gionee said earlier this month. As such, the Gionee S11 will be a relatively selfie-focused device, much like many other Android handsets that have recently been released in the Far Eastern country.

The Chinese companys first teaser for the Gionee S11 revealed that its next offering will sport 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage space but made no mention of the SoC powering it, with one recent benchmark sighting pointing to MediaTeks MT6763 (Helio P23) as its silicon of choice. The handset will be officially announced in China tomorrow and should go on sale by early December, though Gionee has yet to confirm it plans on bringing the device to markets outside of its home country.
Google and South China Morning Post partnered on a new project dedicated to cataloging the evolution of Hong Kong in virtual reality, having shared some details of their collaboration earlier this month. The initiative was meant to encompass both historical archives and modern-day images and videos taken with 360-degree cameras on the streets of Hong Kong, as well as aerial footage recorded by drones. SCMP is the leading partner in the project and seeks to retell the history of the fourth most densely populated region in the world from its days under the British crown that started in the mid-19th century to the modern era of Chinas autonomous territory.

The result of the partnership is a 360-degree video series and an interactive timetable of Hong Kongs history, both of which can be accessed below. SCMP optimized its offerings for both smartphones and tablets, as well as traditional computers, with all of the videos also being viewable and explorable even without a VR headset at the expense of additional immersion. The project itself faced many difficulties ranging from bad weather to changes in the local regulatory framework, having ultimately taken several months to be completed. Besides Google, drone and camera manufacturer Veldt360 and local Apple product training center Fatbart also contributed to the initiative.

The Mountain View, California-based tech giant said the project was its Google News Labs first foray into VR storytelling in Asia-Pacific, suggesting that more similar collaborations are to be announced in the near future. Googles focus on VR has been intensifying in recent years, with the companys first truly global effort on this front coming in the form of the Google Cardboard platform in mid-2014. The tech giants initial success led it to introduce an improved VR platform in the form of Google Daydream which celebrated the first anniversary of its commercial availability earlier this month. Googles endeavors related to promoting VR technologies largely come down to financing innovative content in order to draw more attention to such solutions and its collaboration with SCMP is yet another such partnership that the company is hoping will help grow the VR ecosystem in the long term.
A new image depicting whats said to be the upcoming OPPO A79 appeared online earlier this week, having been shared by one industry insider from China. The photograph that can be seen below reveals the alleged Ice Blue Flame variant of the OPPO A79 that hasnt been seen so far, with previous leaks only showing the gold, black, and rose gold color options of the Android mid-ranger. Other than sporting a dark blue finish that appears to be extremely glossy, the device looks virtually identical to the previously leaked models, sporting an oval fingerprint reader on its back plate and having a single-lens camera setup situated in its top left corner, accompanied by what appears to be a dual-LED (dual-tone) flash unit. A single bottom-facing speaker also seems to be part of the package, as does a 3.5mm headphone jack. The handset appears to feature a USB Type-C port and volume keys alongside its left edge when looked from the front, opposing a power button on the right.

The new leak doesnt show the front side of the supposed OPPO A79, but previous sightings indicated that the Android-powered device will ship without a physical Home button despite having a regular-sized bottom bezel. The top bezel and sides of the phone flanking its screen were previously shown as being fairly minimal, with the display panel itself having a tall aspect ratio of 18:9, i.e. 2:1. According to reports that surfaced earlier this month, the OPPO A79 will launch with MediaTeks MT6763T (Helio P23) system-on-chip clocked at up to 2.3GHz and 4GB of RAM, in addition to sporting 64GB of internal flash memory. A microSD card slot is presumed to be part of the smartphone, with insiders claiming that both its front and rear cameras will take advantage of 16-megapixel sensors, though its still unclear whether theyll use identical lenses. The screen of the handset supposedly has a 6.01-inch diagonal with an FHD+ resolution of 2,160 by 1,080 pixels, with sources alleging that OPPOs upcoming offering will be 157.3 x 76 x 7.2mm in size and weigh 140g.

The Chinese original equipment manufacturer is rumored to launch the OPPO A79 on Thursday, November 30th, with the smartphone being said to run Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box and debut with a 2,399 yuan price tag, which translates to approximately $363. Provided that the handset truly exists, its likely to eventually make its way to India at a similar price point.
BarcelonaOn Thursday the mayor of Reus and six town councillors were summoned to give evidence before the Reus Magistrates Court. The hearing was in relation to a court case involving the councillors and six others, following charges brought by Spains National Police on suspicion of incitement to hatred, for having signed a petition against police violence on 1 October. According to the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (HCJC), of the seven elected officials that were summoned this Thursday, only four have appeared: the mayor of Reus, Carles Pellicer (PDECat), and the councillors Montserrat Vilella (PDECat), Noemi Llaurado (ERC) and Jordi Cervera (Ara Reus).

Pellicer stated that "signing a petition should never be a crime. Our intention at every stage of the [independence] process has been to make peoples freedom compatible with peace, coexistence and civic behaviour". Speaking for the Catalan News Agency, he added that this coexistence was shaken on 1 October and that there were people "upset" as a result of the police violence on the day of the referendum. "The petition was in response to the wishes of our voters", added the mayor, who says he fails to understand how they can be under investigation for the crime of incitement to hatred. Pellicer stated that if he were to find himself in a similar situation to the aftermath of 1 October "he would do the same again in order to promote peaceful coexistence".

As for the other town councillors, Councillor Mariona Quadrada (CUP) was not called to give evidence as her lawyer was due in court on another matter, while Marta Llorens and Oriol Ciurana (also belonging to the CUP) failed to give evidence as well, since neither of them appeared in court. The court usher called the names of the councillors in the waiting room and the judicial office without success, while their lawyer waited for them in court. The three CUP councillors did actually appear at the doors of the court building at the appointed time in order to declare that they would not enter "a Spanish court". "It is not the justice system which we answer to" stated Ciurana.

The four councillors who gave statements this Thursday only agreed to respond to questions put to them by their own legal counsel. A total of 13 people are under investigation in the case which has been opened by the Court of Reus: the mayor, six councillors, four firefighters and two managers of a gym. The firefighters are also accused of misuse of public funds. Those who are not elected officials have been called to give evidence this Friday.

The case is the result of charges brought by Spains National Police against Reus political representatives, who on 3 October signed a petition objecting to the police violence during the referendum and calling for the Spanish Police and Guardia Civil officers stationed in Catalonia to be withdrawn. The charges also include the demonstrations outside the Spanish Police headquarters in Reus and Hotel Gaudi, where several police officers were staying.
BarcelonaSeparatists mark home of Catalan judge behind referendum probe was the headline on El Mundos front page the same day when they could have run a story about the school in Valencia that was vandalised after a private Spanish TV network, Antena 3, claimed the schoolchildren there were being indoctrinated because they were shown a video about the history of Catalonia. This is the sheer bias of Spanish media: they dont bother to cover the very real, palpable instances of physical violence by far-right groups, whose actions are either excused by media or simply ignored. Instead, only the graffiti allegedly drawn by independence supporters who have so far never been responsible for any physical assaults (lets hope it stays that way) are regarded as newsworthy.

Meanwhile, the fascists who attacked Blanquerna [the Catalan governments office in Madrid several years ago], including one who is related to several Partido Popular officials he is the defence ministers cousin and the brother-in-law of the Spanish deputy minister for EU affairs have dodged their prison sentence, once again, thanks to the gracious grace of the oh-so-graceful (and Popular!) Spanish Constitutional Court. Of course, no ardent editorials, no outraged headlines have been printed in condemnation. Unsurprisingly, the HQs of pro-independence parties in Catalonia have also fallen prey to faceless, spray-painting cowards, but that hasnt got the attention of the Madrid-based papers, either.

The efforts to impose a certain sectarian political narrative have definitely corroded the basic principle of journalism, which states that you must present the different angles and reasons behind a conflict.

These days there has been much talk as to whether there would have been a clear and present threat of violence by the Spanish state against independence supporters, had they been urged to engage in peaceful resistance to defend the Catalan Republic. While we wait for further details to emerge, it is obvious that, for months, certain newspapers have been preparing their (Spanish) readers for that sort of violence. In doing so, they were either reckless or foolish.
AMG

And now that the uber-5er is ready to reach its first owners, the German automotive producer is making efforts to spread the word on the super-sedan's dancing skills.The latest stunt dedicated to the said purpose involves BMW works driver Timo Glock, who was asked to leave mercy outside the generous cabin of the 2018 M5 The result can be checked out in the piece of footage at the bottom of the page, which shows the pro driver sliding the hell out of the four-door missile.Not only does Glock deliver glorious slip angles, but he also drifts the Bimmer at overly generous velocity levels. Keep in mind that we're talking about a machine that can easily serve continent-blitzing purposes, so seeing it running sideways in such fashion is even more amazing.Those of you who are focused on the financial side of such shenanigans can talk about drifting the hell out of a $100,000-plus machine. We'll remind you that the price of the F90 M5 has recently leaked online, with the thing starting at $102,600. For the record, this places the Bavarian machine extremely close to its Affalterbach rival, since the Mercedes-E63 S kicks off at $104,400.Hit the "play" button below to see what happens when the 600 hp, 516 lb-ft twin-turbo 4.4-liter V8 heart of the 2018 BMW M5 is asked to flog some rubber - we don't even want to think about how quickly a pair of rear tires will be sent to rubber heaven via such hooning.
The Air Force has released the names of the two pilots involved in the T-38 Talon crash at Laughlin Air Force Base on Monday. Captain Paul Barbour, 32, from Van Nuys, California, was killed in the crash of the twin-engine supersonic trainer. The Air Force identified the surviving pilot earlier this week as Captain Joshua Hammervold. Hammervold successfully ejected and was released from the Val Verde Regional Medical Center on Tuesday in good condition. The Air Force has not released any information on the purpose of the fatal flight. Both pilots were instructors in Laughlins 87th Flying Training Squadron.

Tragic events like this are difficult for everyone  family, friends, co-workers, supervisors and our entire Air Force, said Colonel Charlie Velino, commander of the 47th Flying Training Wing. Every day, our pilots take a risk as they step into the cockpit, and every day they operate with the utmost skill, professionalism and dedication to train the next generation of flying airmen and to ensure the safety of this great nation. Rest assured, we are doing everything we can to support the investigation and prevent future incidents. Official determinations on the cause of accidents by an Air Force accident investigation board generally take six to nine months.

The T-38 is used primarily by the Air Force as an advanced trainer to introduce pilots who have been selected for fighter/bomber training to the flight characteristics of high-performance jet aircraft. The 1960s-era supersonic trainers are due for replacement as part of the Air Force T-X contract. A winner has not yet been selected for the many-billion-dollar contract.
Armenians will feel the benefits of their new accord with the European Union with time, President Serzh Sarkisian said hours before the planned signing of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) in Brussels.

The signing ceremony due today is expected to become one of the focal points of the current EU Eastern Partnership Summit that brings together leaders of six Eastern European and South Caucasus countries that are members of the program launched in 2009.

RFE/RL Armenian Service Director Harry Tamrazian, who is reporting on the summit from Brussels, asked Sarkisian late on Thursday about what an ordinary citizen of Armenia would get from the planned accord.

Perhaps [ordinary citizens] will not feel its benefits immediately, but with time they will, because we are able to carry out reforms quickly with the help of the European Union, said the Armenian leader.

We dont want to invent a bicycle, there are absolute truths, and we should be guided with these truths. But in addition to internal freedoms, Armenian citizens will get an opportunity of free travel to Brussels, to Paris, to other European countries.

The CEPA, which was initialed by Armenia and the EU in March, commits Armenia to reforming its institutions and strengthening human rights protection with the assistance of the EU. The 350-page document does not make Armenia part of a deep and comprehensive free trade area, but still commits Yerevan to approximating Armenian economic laws and regulations to those of the EU.

Some analysts believe the CEPA will also provide Armenia with an alternative security direction.

The word alternative is not correct here, said Sarkisian when asked to comment on such opinions. But, of course, especially in the case of the main challenges threatening our security, the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group [on Nagorno-Karabakh], and especially the United States and Russia, have the same positions, and this is one of the few issues on which they fully cooperate, as they declare themselves. This, of course, is an achievement for us.

In 2013, Armenia was on track to sign a more ambitious association agreement with the EU, but several months before the initialing of the document, President Sarkisian stated about Yerevans desire to become a member of a trade bloc led by Russia, which effectively aborted plans for a deep and comprehensive free trade area with the EU. Sarkisian announced that decision during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, but denied any Russian pressure was involved.

Last week the Armenian president also met with Putin in the Russian capital. No references to the planned EU-Armenia deal were made at that meeting, according to official publications.

In an interview with RFE/RLs Armenian Service (Azatutyun.am) Sarkisian again denied that Russia has ever meddled in Armenias dealings with the EU.

Soon it will be ten years that I have served as president and before that I occupied different [government] posts. I have never heard even half a word from any Russian leader, especially from President Putin, that would contain any reproach in terms of our cooperation with the European Union, the Armenian leader underscored.

Sarkisians second and final term as president expires in April 2018. According to constitutional changes approved in a 2015 referendum, Armenia has switched to a parliamentary form of government, which potentially creates an opportunity for Sarkisian to continue to govern the country as prime minister. Before the constitutional reform Sarkisian pledged not to seek a top government post after the expiry of his presidential powers, but in his later public statements he has been less categorical on this account.

Asked whether he had any ideas about where he will be after the end of his presidential term, Sarkisian said: If I had an idea, I would have already stated about it. I will speak about it when I do have an idea.
25 November 2017 09:54 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The Directorate General for Trade of the European Commission issued a warning that the commercial activities of European Union (EU) companies on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan give rise to liability, spokesperson of Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry Hikmet Hajiyev told Trend.

"According to Azerbaijani legislation, EU companies engaging in any commercial activity in Nagorno-Karabakh and/or the surrounding territories, whether directly or through business subsidiaries, risk civil and criminal penalties. It can result in criminal prosecution or other legal action being taken against individuals and businesses in Azerbaijan; it may also affect the ability to travel to Azerbaijan in the future, said the European Commission.

The reference to Azerbaijani legislation in the text of the warning means recognition of Azerbaijans jurisdiction over the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding areas, he added.

Hajiyev said this warning of the European Commission is the first step towards fulfilling Azerbaijans legitimate demands to prevent illegal activities of individuals and legal entities of the EU in the occupied territories.

Continued promotion of our principled position at all levels with the EU, including within the existing formats of dialogues, joint commissions with the EU member states on bilateral trade and economic cooperation, played an important role in achieving the initial result. Continuation of this tendency does not exclude the implementation of next and more effective measures by EU in the future, said Hajiyev.

He pointed out that when the European Union takes political decisions related to Azerbaijan in the context of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, the opinion of the office of the EU Special Representative (EUSR) for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia is taken as a basis.

EUSR gives a report and receives recommendations from the Political and Security Committee (ambassadors of EU member states), which means that regardless of where the warning is published, all EU member states must unequivocally comply with it, added Hajiyev.

Using the abovementioned warning during the discussions in European institutions where Azerbaijan is a member state, can help in promoting the countrys principled position, he said.
By Moses Ndhaye

The Uganda medical association has suspended industrial action until December 16th to allow the national executive committee to engage with government on the agreed positions so far.

The over 100 doctors voted during a meeting held with state minister for planning David Bahati in Bugolobi, Kampala.

However, the president of the association Dr. Ekaro Obuku has warned that if government fails to honor its commitment they will resume the strike.

He has asked government not to harass any doctor but instead urgently address the plight of all medical workers.

Earlier, Bahati said government now recognizes the association as a strong institution to work with.

Recently the health minister Dr.Jane Acheng said the Uganda Medical Association was not mandated to lead the on-going negotiations with government over the doctors strike, calling it illegal.

However, while addressing the doctors this afternoon, Bahati said the association is strong and therefore government is ready to work with it.

The doctors laid down their tools three weeks ago over poor pay and welfare.
25 November 2017 10:26 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev and Head of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration Ramiz Mehdiyev discussed the current issues of the Russia-Azerbaijan security cooperation.

The parties signed a plan of cooperation for regular exchange of information and consultations at the level of security councils, law enforcement and special service experts of the two countries.

Patrushev and his Belarus and Uzbek counterparts, Stansilav Zas and Viktor Mahmudov, also signed cooperation plans.

Secretary of Moldovas Supreme Security Council Artur Gumenyuk and Nikolai Patrushev signed a protocol on cooperation between the security councils of the two countries.

During a meeting with the Secretary of the Security Council of Tajikistan Abdurahim Qahhorov, the sides discussed interaction between the security forces and special services of the two countries.
25 November 2017 10:44 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

About 250 Azerbaijanis have held a protest rally in front of the building of the European Parliament in Brussels, Azerbaijans State Committee on Work with Diaspora told Trend.

The rally was organized by the Congress of European Azerbaijanis.

The main purpose of the rally was to convey to MEPs the concern of Azerbaijanis living in Europe over the long-standing Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Holding Azerbaijani flags, protesters strongly condemned the genocide acts and terrorist acts committed against Azerbaijanis by Armenia and called for the liberation of 20 percent of Azerbaijani lands occupied by Armenia.

At the end of the two-hour protest rally, participants adopted a statement urging the EU and the entire world community to give a fair assessment to this problem in order to ensure the return of Azerbaijanis to their native lands and the liberation of the occupied Azerbaijani territories.

The statement stresses that Armenias aggressive policy caused killing of tens of thousands of people and at the same time, poses a threat to peace and stability in the region.

Representatives of the Azerbaijani diaspora organizations in Europe expressed deep concern about the activities of Armenia, as well as the Armenian diaspora and lobby which inspire ethnic hostility and ethnic hatred, and called on world countries to take adequate steps against such initiatives.
25 November 2017 11:07 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Azerbaijan and the European Union have inked the indicative maps of the Trans-European transport network, Spokesperson for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend.

The document was undersigned by Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Elmar Mammadyarov, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan in Brussels Nov.24.

The Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) is a network which comprises roads, railway lines, inland waterways, inland and maritime ports, airports and rail-road terminals throughout the EU Member States.

This characteristic is a key factor for the network's efficient, safe and secure operation, using seamless transport chains for passengers and freight. It builds on existing and planned infrastructure in these States which has been identified on the basis of a single methodology and which has to comply with common requirements/standards.
25 November 2017 12:04 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

European companies are ready to invest huge financial resources to support Azerbaijan's economy, said President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev addressing the Plenary Session of the Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels Nov. 24.

Since Azerbaijan gained its independence, the investments of the European Union to the Azerbaijani economy have exceeded $20 billion, said President Aliyev.

This demonstrates the presence of a good investment climate, he added.

The head of state noted that the partnership with the European Union is one of the main priorities of Azerbaijans foreign policy.

The two sides started active negotiations on the new agreement in February 2017, said the Azerbaijani president.

He expressed hope that these negotiations will be finalized soon.

This will create an opportunity to continue cooperation between Azerbaijan and the European Union, added President Aliyev.

He noted that the European Union is the major trade partner of Azerbaijan. The president added that 50 percent of the countrys trade accounts for the share of EU member countries.

At the same time, Azerbaijan is actively developing relations with the member countries in a bilateral format, said President Aliyev.

Azerbaijan adopted a declaration on strategic partnership with nine countries that are members of the European Union, he continued, this means that one third of the EU member states consider Azerbaijan as their strategic partner.

This is very important for a young independent country and, of course, Azerbaijan considers the future agreement with the European Union as another important stage in strengthening strategic relations, added President Aliyev.
25 November 2017 12:55 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

As of now, there are no citizens of Azerbaijan among the victims of fire in Batumis Leogrand Hotel, Azerbaijans Consul General in Batumi Rashad Ismayilov told Trend Nov. 25.

We are at the scene together with the staff of the Consulate General. Identification of fire victims has been completed. Referring to the information from the Ministry of Health of Ajara, I can say that at the moment there are no citizens of Azerbaijan among the victims. However, we continue to contact hospitals, and are clarifying the information, said Ismayilov.

Eleven people died in fire in the Leogrand Hotel in Georgias Black Sea resort city of Batumi, the Georgian Interior Ministry said late on Friday, TASS reported.
Far right group Britain First is planning another rally in Belfast city centre in support of their deputy leader Jayda Fransen two weeks before Christmas.

Ms Fransen was last week charged with using "threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour" over speeches made at a protest in August.

She is to appear at Belfast Magistrates' Court on Thursday, December 14.

The 31-year-old said that she was prepared to go to prison: "I will come back out and pick up exactly where I left off.

"None of this is going to deter me and the state should bear that in mind."

She claimed that anyone concerned with freedom of speech should support the rally on Sunday, December 10.

But anti-fascist groups say they will hold a counter-demonstration.

Davy McAuley from Belfast Against Fascism says society must not "give ground to racist, fascistic ideas".

"We are seeing racism moving into the mainstream," he said.

"The far right have made significant gains throughout Europe. In America, Nazis are on the streets, seig heiling, and are empowered by a racist in the White House.

"We must not allow the vicious hate of Britain First to appear normal."
Theresa May has been given 10 days to offer further concessions on issues including the Brexit divorce bill and the complex matter of the Northern Irish border if she wants European Union leaders to agree to trade talks.

The Prime Minister hopes a crunch summit in Brussels next month will give the green light to move on to the next stage of the Brexit process, covering future trading arrangements and a possible implementation period to avoid a cliff-edge for businesses.

Talks on trade will not be allowed to begin until European Union leaders are satisfied that "sufficient progress" has been made on the first round of issues being discussed including the divorce bill the UK will pay to Brussels and the Northern Irish border.

After talks with the Prime Minister, European Council president Donald Tusk said it was "possible" sufficient progress could be made at the December summit but remained a "huge challenge".

"We need to see progress from UK within 10 days on all issues, including on Ireland," he said.

As she left a gathering of European leaders in Brussels, Mrs May said: "There are still issues across the various matters we are negotiating on to be resolved but there has been a very positive atmosphere in the talks and a genuine feeling that we want to move forward together."

On the border issue, Mrs May is coming under intense pressure from Dublin for fresh assurances there will be no "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic, with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar warning that deadlock in Brexit negotiations cannot be broken until the issue is resolved.

The Prime Minister insisted "we have the same desire - we want to ensure that movement of people and trade across that border can carry on as now".

Mrs May's comments came after Downing Street backed away from suggestions that Northern Ireland's continued membership of the EU customs union could be up for negotiation in Brexit talks.

A Number 10 spokesman told reporters on Friday the UK continued to look for "an innovative way forward" on the issue.

Asked whether Northern Ireland could remain in the customs union following Brexit, the spokesman said: "That is a matter for negotiations."

But a Downing Street source later insisted the Government's position that the whole of the UK will leave both the customs union and single market after Brexit has not changed.

Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said on Friday it was difficult to see how border checks could be avoided if the UK's departure from the customs union and single market resulted in "regulatory divergence" between the North and the Republic.

Mr Varadkar has previously suggested a "bespoke" arrangement, similar to that operated on the Isle of Man, under which Northern Ireland, or the whole of the UK, would continue to observe the rules of the single market and customs union without necessarily remaining a member of them.

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier discussed the situation with Mr Coveney in Brussels ahead of the European Council meeting on December 14-15 which will decide whether talks can progress as Mrs May hopes.

Mr Barnier said there was "strong solidarity" with Ireland, adding that "Irish issues are EU issues".

The Prime Minister said: "In relation to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, we and the Irish government continue to talk about the solution to that.

"But we have the same desire - we want to see that movement of people and trade across that border can carry on as now and that we don't create any new barriers to trade or the movement of people across that border.

"That's the outcome that we are both agreed on and that is what we believe is in the best interests of Northern Ireland."

As well as talks with Mr Tusk and Mrs Merkel in Brussels, the Prime Minister also had meetings with Danish premier Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Belgium's Charles Michel, and Lithuania's Saulius Skvernelis in the margins of the Eastern Partnership summit.

One of the issues under discussion was thought to be the amount the UK is prepared to offer Brussels following reports that Cabinet ministers agreed to double the sum originally put on the table by Mrs May to around 40 billion.

However it is thought she does not want to name a precise figure until she has a clear idea of what kind of trade deal is available with the remaining EU member states in the phase two negotiations.

The Prime Minister said: "We have been talking about how we can progress the issue in relation to the financial settlement. I have set out the position. I did so in the Florence speech.

"I said that we would honour our commitments. I said that no member state of the European Union need worry that they would receive less or have to pay more in the current budget plan."
Arlene Foster and deputy leader Nigel Dodds during the DUP's annual conference at the La Mon hotel in Belfast

Democratic Unionist leader Arlene Foster has warned Sinn Fein to "get serious" about the terms of a deal to restore Stormont powersharing.

Accusing republicans of using rights issues as a cloak to "break unionists", Mrs Foster told her party conference in Belfast she was committed to resurrecting devolution, eleven months on from its collapse, but insisted any agreement between the DUP and Sinn Fein had to be balanced.

The former Stormont first minister got a rousing reception from Union flag-waving party faithful at the DUP's first conference since it became political kingmakers at Westminster.

She used her speech to restate her party's determination to see powersharing restored, insisting the party blocking its return was Sinn Fein.

Mrs Foster also warned European leaders the DUP would not accept a Brexit deal that forced Northern Ireland to adopt a different customs arrangement from the rest of the UK - Europe's preferred way of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland.

Reflecting the party's new-found influence at Westminster since it struck a confidence and supply deal with Theresa May's minority government, senior Tories Damian Green and Julian Smith were among guests at the event in the La Mon hotel.

Mrs Foster told delegates: "It's time Sinn Fein got serious.

"This party will conclude a balanced deal but we will not be party to a one-sided arrangement that rewards intransigent behaviour.

"Northern Ireland needs a government and we cannot continue without ministers.

"Time is short and those in Sinn Fein blocking the restoration of local decision-making need to decide whether they want to do business with us or have direct rule ministers in place.

"I still believe that devolution is the best way to govern Northern Ireland but to do that in a way that delivers for all of our people we need serious partners in government."

Significant issues still stand in the way of a deal between the DUP and Sinn Fein that would see them return as coalition partners in a devolved executive.

A return to Westminster direct rule looks a more likely prospect at present.

One of the key sticking points is a Sinn Fein demand for a stand-alone piece of legislation to protect Irish language speakers in the region.

The DUP will countenance such laws, but only as part of a wider Act that also protects British culture in Northern Ireland.

"The Irish language is spoken and enjoyed by thousands of people in all parts of Northern Ireland," said Mrs Foster.

"It does no damage to our unionism or the Union we cherish.

"I respect the Irish language and those who speak it.

"However, respect isn't a one-way street. Respect works both ways.

"It is time that Sinn Fein started to respect our British culture.

"For too long they have shown nothing but disdain and disrespect for the national flag, the royal family, the armed forces, British symbols, the constitutional reality and the very name of this country.

"So we are up for respect. And we're up for rights. Republicans like to lecture us about rights. They're fond of rights now. They weren't so concerned about that most fundamental of rights - the right to life - during the Troubles.

"We are for rights. We respect rights. What we oppose is using the cloak of rights as a Trojan horse designed to break unionists."

During the address, Mrs Foster reflected on a rollercoaster year for her and her party.

From facing down intense calls to quit amid a furore about a botched green energy scheme that ultimately torpedoed the Stormont executive, to standing on the steps of Downing Street with the fate of the Prime Minister in her hands, 2017 will not be one Mrs Foster forgets in a hurry.

"If the last year has proved anything, it is that we live in an uncertain world," she said.

"We've been through a lot together over these past 12 months."

Responding to Mrs Foster's speech, Sinn Fein's Stormont leader Michelle O'Neill insisted her party was committed to the restoration of powersharing.

But she said it could only be restored on the basis that people in the region were afforded the "same rights enjoyed by citizens across these islands".

"Locally-elected ministers are best placed to run local public services and fight back against the austerity imposed by the British government," she said.

Mrs O'Neill also criticised the DUP's support of Brexit and Mrs May's government.

"Tory austerity measures have had disastrous consequences for communities across the north of Ireland," she said.

"This will be further exacerbated by the threat which Brexit will bring.

"The DUP support for these policies is against the interests and wishes of the majority of people in the north."
Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 25th November 2017 DUP leader Arlene Foster and Deputy Leader Nigel Dodds MP at the DUP annual conference with new member Councillor Vasundhara Kamblein the La Mon House Hotel near Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye

Former Alliance party councillor Vasundhara Kamble has joined the DUP.

The announcement was made at the party's annual conference on Saturday, when it was unveiled former UUP councillor John Scott had also joined.

The pair were given a standing ovation by the crowd gathered at the La Mon House Hotel in Belfast.

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Mrs Kamble quit her former party back in January alongside long-serving councillor Geraldine Rice.

She had been the Alliance party's only elected representative from a minority ethnic background, and alleged she experienced an "under-current of racism" in the party.

Councillor Kamble, who came to Northern Ireland from Mumbai in India, in 1995, had been an Alliance councillor for six years.

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph at the time of her resignation, she accused the party of "snobbery" and said it was "a tight clique of elitist individuals".

Since then she has been serving as an independent councillor.

Councillor John Scott, formerly of the UUP, quit his party in September after declaring his unhappiness at the way it was being run to a gathering of Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council.

Speaking to the North Belfast News at the time, he said his issue was with the grouping within the council rather than the wider UUP.
Northern Ireland pork producers were celebrating yesterday as the industry got the green light to export Northern Ireland pork to China - business worth around 10m a year to the local economy. (Owen Humphreys/PA)

Northern Ireland pork producers were celebrating yesterday as the industry got the green light to export Northern Ireland pork to China - business worth around 10m a year to the local economy.

It's the culmination of five years of effort to build a strong trading relationship with one of the world's largest markets for pork products.

Chief Veterinary Officer Robert Huey welcomed the news, saying: "This is a wonderful opportunity for the Northern Ireland pig industry. This is a ringing endorsement for our rigorous standards which guarantee high-quality, safe and wholesome pork. Because we place a clear emphasis on traceability at the heart of production and processing, we are gaining a global reputation for delivering a joined up, safe and efficient food supply."

Industry sources see the Chinese link as the first of many opportunities for our agri-food industry and hope beef, poultry and other producers will also seize opportunities to sell into China.

Deirdre McIvor, Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Pork and Bacon Forum said: "The potential for growth in this market is vast. The local pig farming industry makes a significant contribution to the agri-sector, sustaining 400 farming families and 2,000 local jobs."

Ms McIvor was bullish about the prospects opened up by the China export link.

"If we doubled our production and sold every last scrap of pork to China, it would just be a drop in the ocean, their market is so huge," she said.

The new agreements will support around 1,500 jobs across the UK, 400 of them in Northern Ireland. Demand for British food and drink is growing in China, with the total value of exports rising by a third to 438m in 2016. Demand for UK pork has doubled in terms of value over the last three years. Nine UK producers already export to China and generated 43m last year.

The Ulster Farmer's Union also welcomed the opening up of China to Northern Ireland pork.
The old logo...... and the new one

Queen's University is under fire after spending almost 300,000 on a rebranding exercise

Queen's University is under fire after spending almost 300,000 on a rebranding exercise.

A new "brand identity" was introduced in October to "better reflect" the university and its place in the international marketplace.

The redesign, which includes a revamped logo and mission statement, follows an 18-month consultation process.

Now it can be revealed that the cost of the rebranding totalled 278,790 - including a consultancy bill of almost 70,000. The details were revealed after a Freedom of Information request.

The Taxpayers' Alliance spending watchdog slammed the expenditure.

James Price, campaign manager at the watchdog, said: "It is baffling how anyone thought that hundreds of thousands of pounds was considered an appropriate amount to spend on a logo rebranding exercise.

"Citizens in the UK are suffering under the highest tax burden in decades, and grossly excessive spending like this is an insult. This is money that should be spent on essential services, or left in peoples' pockets."

The new rebranding was launched at the start of October following what Queen's said was "extensive internal research and consultation over an 18-month period".

The new identity replaces the 'Q' logo with an identity based on the university crest, which Queen's said reflects its "heritage and place in Belfast and Northern Ireland".

Asked why the rebranding was undertaken, a spokeswoman said: "Higher education exists in a rapidly changing and highly competitive landscape.

"In order for us to meet our objectives, it was agreed that the university required to significantly raise its profile and reputation locally, nationally and globally.

"Based on the university's crest, the new identity showcases Queen's distinctive education and research strengths, and will be used across a variety of communication platforms. In so doing, it will also enhance the global standing of Northern Ireland."

Details released after a Freedom of Information request show the cost of changing signage amounted to 172,056, consultancy fees were 69,234, new uniforms cost 30,000 while rebranding vehicles cost 7,500.

A spokesman for the University College Union, which represents academics, lecturers and other staff, said: "University largesse is rightly under the spotlight at the moment and institutions need to understand that students are more interested in substance than style.

"New logos and shiny buildings are no match for properly rewarded staff."

However, Queen's said the new brand identity is "strong, consistent, distinct and visually impactful". It said the new brand "better reflects the university and its core values" and "better positions Queen's in the international marketplace".

The new brand was developed by the university's Marketing, Recruitment, Communications and Internationalisation Directorate in partnership with an external consultancy firm which remained anonymous.

The style of the university's new logo attracted some online criticism with one describing it as a "poor man's university logo".

Another said: "Consistency breaks in the execution. The lines of the hand come to a point, the lines in the book are squared-off, the seahorse is too big, the harp is too small. It's a little all over the place for me."

However, another said they "enjoyed" the new logo.

"The older version was a poor attempt at an identity whereas the newer one at least has a place of referential status with the shield and wordmark," they wrote. "The type could have been improved but overall I like the revision."
People around Britain have been warned to brace themselves for a second night of freezing temperatures following an icy start to the weekend.

The mercury could dip to minus three degrees in sheltered spots, while health watchdogs have urged people to prepare for a prolonged cold snap.

Figures earlier this week showed there were more than 34,000 "excess deaths" across England and Wales over the last winter period, the second highest level in eight years.

Public Health England has now warned those most at risk to take precautions.

Dr Thomas Waite, of the body's Extreme Events team, said: "We're well used to winter in this country so most people know what to do to protect their health before and during cold spells.

"But there are people who may not take precautions and who are at a very real risk.

"We know that every winter thousands of people fall ill and many die because of exposure to cold both in the home and while outdoors.

"Those most at risk include older people, very young children and those with conditions like heart and lung disease."

On Saturday there were smatterings of snow in parts of Scotland and the West Midlands, with more forecast for higher parts of Wales, the Pennines and parts of Northern Ireland overnight.

A yellow weather warning has been issued for the length of the western side of Britain and Northern Ireland from 10pm on Saturday until 10am on Sunday, alerting people to the risk of ice.

Steven Keates, a meteorologist with the Met Office, said: "We're looking at a cold start for tomorrow morning with bands of showers coming in from the north-west.

"There will be a few showers around at first but it will be brighter later in the day and it will be dry for most places."

"As the wind eases off it shouldn't feel quite as cold as Saturday, but it will still be cold."

A milder day is expected on Monday, before a prolonged period of low temperatures throughout the coming week and the following week.

Rail travel was disrupted on some southern and south eastern services on Saturday morning and National Rail advised passengers to check their routes before travelling on Sunday.

A Network Rail spokesperson said: "During low temperatures electrical third rails, which power trains in parts of the country - mainly the south of England - can become icy, preventing trains from getting power.

"De-icing trains run overnight to keep the rail free of ice but services can be affected."
Gina Murray with a photograph of her daughter Leanne who died in the bombing

Relatives of people murdered in the Shankill bomb have spoken of their "disgust" after a joke apparently referencing the IRA atrocity was made in an American sitcom.

US comedy Black-ish made the link in an episode where two parents are discussing their son's political identity.

It faced a backlash after Channel 4's On Demand service All 4 posted a clip of the programme on its Facebook page.

Michelle Williamson, whose parents were killed in the bombing, said: "I feel totally sick to the stomach and absolutely disgusted."

And Gina Murray, whose 13-year-old daughter Leanne was among the dead, said she had been left "very upset".

The bombing was one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles.

Nine Protestant civilians, including two children aged seven and 13, were killed in the attack at Frizzell's fish shop on October 23, 1993.

The IRA claimed their intention was to assassinate the UDA leadership, due to be meeting in a room above the fish shop.

Instead, the bomb exploded prematurely, killing 10 people in the shop and wounding 50 more.

Bomber Thomas Begley was the tenth person to be killed in the blast. His partner in the two-man IRA team was Sean Kelly, who was badly injured and later jailed for his part in the attack.

The programme at the centre of the row aired in the US in 2015 but was shown on E4 in the UK only last week.

In the clip parents Dre and Bow are discussing that they "have a problem" because they believe their son has become a member of the American Republican party.

They discuss the definition of it before the mum misunderstands and asks, "A member of the Irish Republican Army?" to which the dad responds "What the hell!"

The mum adds: "Okay, Okay, If you got to take down a couple of fish and chips shops to be free of British Rule, Dre you gotta do what you gotta do."

The clip was posted on the All 4 Facebook page with the heading 'When politics splits your family'.

There was a barrage of comments under the post which was later taken down. Channel 4 apologised "if there was any offence caused" and said the clip posted was "out of context".

A spokesman said: "The clip was taken from the long-running American sitcom Black-ish and was posted on social media, out of the context of the episode, in error and has since been removed.

"We apologise if any offence has been caused by this clip."

But relatives of the Shankill bomb victims have been left furious.

Michelle Williamson said she will never do an interview for Channel 4 again. She said: "I feel totally sick to the stomach and absolutely disgusted.

"This time of year is always hard, just before Christmas - I can't put into words how they could even air that.

"I want to take this further. I think all victims of the Shankill bomb should get an apology for this and the writers have to send an apology as well.

"I felt as though I was slapped in the face this morning and it's an attempt to get viewing figures on the backs of our loved ones, with no consideration for the nine innocent victims that lost their lives that day.

"I hope the writers of this 'sick-com' never have a policeman come to their door and tell them their mother and father have just been murdered in a terrorist bomb.

"If Mrs Brown or Give My Head Peace or The Blame Game made a joke about 9/11 in bad taste - do you not think we'd have to answer for that? They should hang their heads in shame.

"They are giving the IRA credibility again.

"It's not just hurting me, it gives them credence.

"I have done many interviews with Channel 4 over the years but I for one will never do another interview for Channel 4 ever again."

Gina Murray told the Belfast Telegraph she couldn't watch the clip, but was left "very upset" when she learned its content.

"I couldn't watch it or listen to it all but I know the gist of it. I was disgusted," she said.

"It just seems to be one thing after another. I didn't think it was funny and neither did my son and neither did any of my family - they were disgusted.

"It's not at all funny, not from our point of view and not for a lot of people in Northern Ireland - it's not funny at all."

Belfast councillor Julie-Anne Corr-Johnston made an official complaint to Channel 4 and called for it to escalate the complaint to the show's producers.

"There is no comedy to be found in the loss of life, let alone one of the most notorious incidents of the Troubles in Northern Ireland," she said.

"This isn't a case of a sensitive audience or a loss in a sense of humour, this is quite simply moral bankruptcy. There is dark humour and then there is downright ignorance. This show crossed the line."

She added: "It's completely irresponsible. Removing the post won't make it go away. It's irreparable hurt and damage to families suffering for a considerable long period of time."
A Northern Ireland health trust has apologised to a family after cancelling the early morning surgery of a little girl who made a 50-mile round trip in sub-zero conditions despite a high vulnerability to chest infections.

Two-year-old Abigail Reaney, who is from Portadown, suffers from serious medical conditions including bulbar palsy and epilepsy.

Her parents, Stephen and Jane, have been told she has a limited life expectancy and that getting a chest infection could prove fatal.

Abigail also struggles with swallowing, with the planned surgery yesterday at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children intended to stop her producing too much saliva.

Her parents were left furious after the operation was cancelled at the last minute.

Mr Reaney (37) told the Belfast Telegraph: "We had a call to come down to have some surgery done (on Friday) at 7am, we said it was a bit tight but we could do it.

"The ward didn't open until 7.30am, which was fine, but then we found out they gave her bed away.

"It's a joke. We've been told a bad chest infection could kill this child and she was brought out in minus one this morning to be told there's no bed, just go home.

"I had to put her on to her ventilator this morning - a nasal mask - just to make it down to Belfast safely.

"Last week we were told to keep her health at 100% and we've been turning family members with a cold away from the house before her surgery."

A spokesperson for the Belfast Health Trust said: "We regret most sincerely when a child has their surgery or treatment cancelled or postponed for any reason, we understand that this can be a very distressing time for patients and their families."

They continued: "However, we receive emergency admissions to the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children from across the region and they have to take priority due to their clinical need. We are working closely with the Reaney family to offer a new date as soon as possible and we again offer our apologies to the family."

Mr Reaney describes his daughter as a playful girl who loves cartoons just like any other child her age, but her poor health often dictates what she can do. He added the 50-mile round trip to Portadown on a bus costs the family 27 each time.

"The transport isn't free for us. We have to stop off in Lurgan to leave our other daughter, one-year-old Amber, off with her grandmother," he added.

"Because Abigail has a limited life expectancy both parents always want to be there for her. We don't know for sure what this surgery could do for her, but if there's a chance it extends her life then we have to fight for her.

"She's just out of a long hospital stay a few weeks ago, so we're making that expensive trip a lot.

"There's no financial help for travel, if not for us then I think other families in that situation should be getting some support."
Ulster University is set to face critical funding cuts, according to its Vice-Chancellor.

In a letter to politicians, Professor Paddy Nixon says the university has been advised by the Department of Economy it faces a 3.5% cut in 2018/19, and a 4.5% cut in 2019/20.

Taking account of the 2% cut in 2017/18, it works out at a 10% cut in funding over three years.

The letter, which was seen by the BBC, has been sent to the leaders of Sinn Fein, the DUP, the SDLP, the UUP and the Alliance Party, as well as Secretary of State James Brokenshire and the UK Universities Minister Jo Johnson.

In the letter, Professor Nixon said: Whilst the current situation is unsustainable, the prospect of further cuts communicated by the department has turned a serious situation into a critical one.

For 2016/17 Ulster University received core funding from the Northern Ireland Executive of 70.8m.

The cuts come at a time when Ulster University is already facing the potential loss of 17.5m in EU funding after Britain leaves the European Union.

Earlier this week it was revealed the development of a 250m Belfast campus by Ulster University had been put back by a year, with the predicted completion date for the building work now the end of 2019.

Sinn Fein Further and Higher Education spokesperson Caoimhe Archibald has said universities should be sustainably resourced.

Ms Archibald said: Since the Tories came into power we have seen over a billion pounds cut from the Norths block grant and students and young people are paying the price for this.

These cuts to public services are set to continue, supported by the DUP.

Any cuts to universities is a threat to our highly educated workforce and the future opportunities of our young people.

Sinn Fein will continue to fight for proper resources for universities.
Police in Belfast have appealed for witnesses after three men were stabbed.

A 20-year-old woman has been bailed pending further investigation after an incident in which three men were stabbed in north Belfast.

She had earlier been arrested on suspicion on attempted murder.

At 12.45am on Saturday morning police were called to a disturbance at a property in the York Park area of north Belfast.

On arrival they found a man in his 20s who had suffered stab wounds to his head.

Detective Inspector Thornton said: "Two other men with knife injuries were located a quarter of a mile away, near retail premises on the Shore Road. They are both aged in their 20s.

"One man underwent surgery in hospital for abdominal injuries and the other suffered a head injury and stab wounds to his neck. All three men are now in a stable condition in hospital.

"We would like to hear from anyone who was in the York Park area between 12.15am and 1.15am this morning and saw anything that could help us with our investigation. Please contact detectives at Musgrave on the non-emergency number 101.

"Alternatively, information can also be provided anonymously to the independent charity, Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111."
Ireland's Taoiseach has told the country's deputy premier she should not even consider quitting amid a furore that has brought his administration to the brink of collapse.

With Leo Varadkar's Fine Gael government and the Dail's main opposition party Fianna Fail on a collision course over Frances Fitzgerald's future, there has been speculation the Tanaiste may fall on her own sword to avert a general election.

Mr Varadkar said he wanted there to be no ambiguity over his public declarations of support for Ms Fitzgerald, who is under intense pressure over her handling of a 2015 email that revealed attempts to discredit a Garda whistleblower.

The Fine Gael leader rejected any suggestion he was privately hoping his party colleague would walk away to quell the crisis.

"I don't want there to be any ambiguity about this, there is no subtle message being sent out there to the Tanaiste that she should even consider resigning," he said.

"I won't be seeking her resignation, I don't want her to offer it to me."

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are set to continue talks over the weekend in a bid to find a resolution to the row over Mrs Fitzgerald's position.

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin, whose party is keeping Mr Varadkar's minority coalition government alive through an 18-month-old confidence and supply agreement, has refused to budge on a motion of no confidence in the Tanaiste.

It is scheduled for next Tuesday and, if Fianna Fail follow through with it, the confidence and supply agreement would be broken and the government would fall, forcing a pre-Christmas election.

The threat of an election has caused turmoil in government and political circles, with the biggest fear that it would be fought in the teeth of Brexit negotiations which could determine the future of the Irish border.

Attending an event in Dublin on Saturday focused on role models for young women, Mr Varadkar reiterated his view that Mrs Fitzgerald had done nothing wrong.

"I think there is a real injustice here in people calling for her to resign in these circumstances," he said.

"I don't want to see a good woman who I think has done enormous service in Irish public life, who has been a real asset to Irish politics, brought down in this way.

"I just don't think it would be fair, I don't think it would be right and I don't think the majority of the Irish people would like that to happen."

He added: "I am not willing to sacrifice a good person just so the government can continue its work in these circumstances."

Earlier, Mr Varadkar used his speech at the opening of the FemFest conference in the city's Liberty Hall to publicly signal his support for the embattled Tanaiste, hailing her as an "honourable and distinguished politician".

The crisis centres on Mrs Fitzgerald's knowledge of a legal strategy to be employed by lawyers for the Garda Commissioner that was designed to discredit whistleblower Garda Sergeant Maurice McCabe at a private inquiry into his allegations of bad policing.

The information was contained in an email sent to the Tanaiste by a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Justice in 2015. It also advised that legally she had no grounds to intervene.

The Taoiseach has said Mrs Fitzgerald had been advised not to intervene in the legal strategy. He said that has since been backed up by advice from the Attorney General.

The Tanaiste has faced days of allegations from opposition parties that she was aware of the campaign by lawyers for the Garda Commissioner and took no action.

She has said she cannot remember getting the email in 2015. It alerted her that "a serious criminal complaint", which had always been denied by Sgt McCabe, was raised at the inquiry.

Sinn Fein were first out of the blocks earlier this week with plans for a motion of no confidence, with Fianna Fail then declaring its intention to follow suit.

On Saturday, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams made clear his party would press ahead with its motion, regardless of the outcome of the crisis talks between the Dail's two main parties.

"The only thing that will prevent this is the Tanaiste stepping down," Mr Adams said in Drogheda.

"This is nothing personal against Frances Fitzgerald. This is Sinn Fein doing our job - holding the government to account."
The money will have to be spent on road and cycle safety improvement projects (HS2)

Thirteen councils are to be given a share of 30 million for road and cycle improvements ahead of HS2s arrival.

The Department for Transport said councils can use the money to improve pedestrian crossings or junctions for cyclists, pedestrians and drivers.

Three London councils along the route of the new high speed line will receive more than 1 million  the Borough of Camden will get 2.43 million, Westminster 1.56 million and Ealing 1.01 million.

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Other places to benefit from the funding include Staffordshire County Council (2.98 million), Buckinghamshire County Council (3.95 million) and Warwickshire County Council (8.05 million).

HS2 minister Paul Maynard said: This money will see areas up and down the route benefit from high quality road and cycle safety projects to ensure that Englands roads remain among the safest in the world.

This significant investment will mean a legacy of road and cycle safety improvements for people who live and work along the HS2 route between London and the West Midlands.
Richard Ratcliffe, husband of Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe who is detained in Iran, with Emma Thompson (Jonathan Brady/PA)

A British mother jailed in Iran has spoken from prison in Tehran to thank those campaigning for her release.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe addressed those attending a rally and march, including actress Emma Thompson, through a phone and loudspeaker to thank everyone for their support.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been imprisoned in Tehran since April 2016, when she was arrested at the citys airport after a holiday with her then 22-month-old daughter Gabriella.

She told the rally near her home in north London: Im so grateful for everybodys support and love I am so overwhelmed and moved.

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All that is on my mind is to be back home and to be back with my family.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of spying and seeking to overthrow the Tehran regime, and has been held in solitary confinement.

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Her family has led a long-running campaign for her release, saying she is innocent and raising fears for her physical and mental health.

At the protest a tearful Thompson hit out at the bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster and urged the Government to do more to bring her home.

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The Love Actually actress, who was suffering from pneumonia, called on Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to get on a plane, after his suggestion earlier this month that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran exposed her to the threat of her five-year sentence being doubled.

The Oscar-winning actress said: We are a net of compassion and love for Nazanin and her family. This is what we human beings do best, in stark contrast to the bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster.

If I can get out of bed with pneumonia to support a horribly abused member of our community then our Foreign Secretary can get on a plane and go to Iran and deal with the problem hes so seriously exacerbated.

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Thompson added: The screw is twisting more and more and her physical and mental health is deteriorating to such a degree now that I think we are in a very urgent situation.

I cant imagine the effect of being separated for 19 months from your child. I would have gone bonkers if that had happened to me.

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Im just so passionate about getting her back, its a sort of physical feeling of anguish for her.

Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq spoke to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and later said: We discussed how we would take both our daughters to Peppa Pig World when shes released.

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Mrs Zaghari-Racliffes husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said: It is profoundly moving to see so many people here.

I can really feel the love, and Nazanin can feel the love, and in the end thats the most important thing, thats what keeps us going.

An online petition calling for her to be returned to Britain has had more than 1.3 million signatures.
A Heathrow security worker who was arrested in an airport toilet after 700,000 worth of cocaine was seized has been charged with conspiring to import drugs.

Farhan Iqbal, 30, was detained alongside 37-year-old Colombian national Camilo Alec Pulido Suarez in the Terminal 5 bathroom on November 23, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.

Officers said the Colombian had recently disembarked a flight from his countrys capital Bogota.

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About seven kilograms of cocaine were seized, which is said to have a value of about 250,000, but could be sold for more than 700,000 if cut and sold on the street.

Colombian national Wilmer Salazar-Duarte, 43, was separately arrested in the arrivals area of the airport, while 46-year-old Alexander Salazar-Duarte, also from Colombia, was arrested after a search at an address in east London.

All four were charged with conspiracy to import cocaine and appeared at Uxbridge Magistrates Court on Saturday.

They were remanded in custody until their next appearance at Blackfriars Crown Court on December 22.

Senior investigating officer Darren Barr said: Heathrow Airport provided invaluable assistance in this operation, and working with partners such as the Metropolitan Police Service, Border Force and the Heathrow authorities we are determined to target those who may be involved in criminality at the airport.
There were reports of people running out of the Tube station (PA)

Police are investigating what caused panic among thousands of rush-hour commuters and Black Friday shoppers in the heart of central London.

Armed police raced to Oxford Circus Tube station and Oxford Street after receiving 999 calls reporting that shots had been fired.

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But around 90 minutes after responding, police said there was no evidence of any shots, casualties or suspects.

Oxford Circus Tube and Bond Street stations have reopened, most cordons have been removed and the area has returned to normal.

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This includes the Royal Variety Performance at the nearby London Palladium going ahead as planned, although the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge has been delayed.

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British Transport Police received reports at 4.37pm of gunfire on the westbound Central Line platform. Shortly afterwards the Metropolitan Police also took similar calls.

The Met said: Given the nature of the information received, the Met responded in line with our existing operation as if the incident was terrorism, including the deployment of armed officers.

Officers working with colleagues from British Transport Police carried out an urgent search of the area. No casualties, evidence of any shots fired or any suspects were located by police.

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Passengers fled the station on to Oxford Circus and Regent Street causing a minor injury to one woman.

BTP said there was a significant level of panic, adding that it was examining the circumstances of the incident which resulted in the station being evacuated.

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Describing the panic, BBC producer Helen Bushby said: I was just walking down from the BBC towards the Tube and there was a mass stampede away from the Tube as fast as they could.

They were crying, they were screaming, they were dropping their shopping bags. It was a very panicked scene.

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People said they heard a gunshot and panic was just spreading.
Carles Puigdemont gives a speech during a presentation of the candidate list for the Catalan regional elections (AP)

The fugitive leader of Catalonia's separatist movement has launched his campaign for the upcoming Catalan elections from Belgium, where he is awaiting extradition.

Carles Puigdemont, who wants to be re-elected as regional president, launched Together for Catalonia in Bruges.

Spanish media reported that 90 of the candidates he chose travelled from Catalonia in north-eastern Spain to the Belgian city for the launch.

Mr Puigdemont and four former members of his government fled to Belgium following a declaration of independence by Catalonia's parliament on October 27 and a swift crackdown by Spanish authorities, which included firing his government and calling regional elections for December 21.

His extradition could take several weeks or longer, meaning he can run his campaign from abroad. He faces arrest if he returns to Spain.
A view of a packed car park at a popular shopping mall in Lomianki, near Warsaw, in Poland, on Black Friday. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Polish politicians have approved a law that will phase out Sunday shopping by 2020 despite criticism that it may eliminate thousands of jobs.

Proposed by trade unions that want shop and trade workers to spend more time with their families, the bill got support from the ruling party that adheres to Catholic values.

Critics say it would negatively affect the country's economy, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs, and hurt supermarket chains, which are mostly western.

The lower house, dominated by the ruling party, voted 254-156 with 23 abstentions to limit Sunday shopping to the first and last Sunday of the month from March 1 until the end of 2018.

The prohibition would be widened to only on the last Sunday in the month in 2019, and Sunday trading would be banned totally starting in 2020.

There will, however, be some exceptions that will allow Sunday shopping before major holidays like Christmas and Easter, and on the last Sunday in January, April, June and August.

Online shops and bakeries are to be exempted from the ban.

The bill still needs approval from the Senate and from President Andrzej Duda.

Poland's influential Roman Catholic bishops said in a statement they were not fully satisfied and insisted that all Sundays should be free from work for everyone.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government banned Sunday shopping in 2015 but lifted the prohibition after 13 months because it was highly unpopular with voters.

AP
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A Sydney-based small business has been left sharing one phone among six staff members after struggling to get connected to the national broadband network.

Big Splash Media managing director Peter Lynch's small multimedia business is currently without internet or a landline, leaving staff to rely on a neighbouring business' Wi-Fi connection, amid confusion about who is responsible for the delay.

Darren Williams, Peter Lynch, Dean Farrow and Teresa Ooi at Big Splash Media are among six members of staff using one phone and without the internet due to delays in getting connected to the NBN. Credit:Brook_Mitchell

He shifted his company into its new Pitt Street offices on November 17, but has been unsuccessfully trying to line up his NBN connection for weeks in preparation for the move.

The temporary solution provided by Telstra was a pre-paid handset, where landline calls would be redirected. This phone is now being shared by his staff.
Emily Joyce was at a yoga retreat when she realised her memory was not what it used to be.

"I was with a group of friends and we were trying to remember the name of a restaurant," says Joyce. "None of us had our phones and it took us so long to remember it."

Digital dementia can result in the deterioration of cognitive abilities such as short-term memory. Credit:Stocksy

For 38-year-old Joyce, from NSW, this wasn't simply forgetfulness but a deeper indication of how her reliance on technology was affecting her. "I started to wonder whether being connected all the time reduces our brains' ability to work out complex things  or even answer easy questions," she says.

"Digital dementia" is the idea, coined by a neuroscientist, that constant use of digital technology can result in the deterioration of cognitive abilities such as short-term memory.
Counterfeiting is a crime of our times and one facilitated by modern technologies. It is now easier than ever for the unscrupulous to replicate a product and pass it off as the genuine article. Only this month it was reported that police in Shanghai had seized 14,000 bottles of fake Penfolds wine being sold by counterfeiters. A wine dealer, now detained, was selling fake Penfolds for 200 yuan ($40) per bottle online, while the genuine article should retail for 600 to 3000 yuan ($120 to $595).

Also following a counterfeiting scandal, baby milk formula manufacturer Fonterra in April announced it was spending $20 million on new technology that allows infant formula customers to track product contents and ensure they are buying from a trusted retailer. Fonterra's new traceability system will allow customers to see where the ingredients have come from and know more about the retailer selling the product. A QR code shows immediately whether the product is from a recognised manufacturer and whether the shop you bought it from is an authorised dealer.

Credit:Fiona Morris

There may well be lessons here for the producers of Indigenous artworks who, as we report today, are also facing considerable problems with counterfeiting. As much as 80 per cent of the arts and crafts promoted to tourists as Indigenous are fake, leading arts organisations have established.

That pottery or painting in The Rocks or Melbourne's Flinders Street may not be a carefully handcrafted item. The reality is you may be handling, and unwittingly paying for, something mass produced that owes nothing to Aboriginal heritage. Reputable galleries provide documentation of a work's provenance as well as its history if it has been sold more than once but, it seems, there are no such safeguards in the tourist-focused arts and crafts industry.
Police have declared schoolies celebrations on the Gold Coast "seem to get better every year" after fewer arrests and no assault charges during the past week of partying.

However, as Queensland school-leavers head home, interstate schoolies descend on the Gold Coast, presenting a new challenge for emergency services.

As one load of schoolies leave, another batch arrives, meaning no rest for emergency services. Credit:Nathan Richter - Fairfax Media

Gold Coast District Inspector Greg Baade said only three school-leavers were arrested on Friday, the final night of celebrations.
One Nation candidate Malcolm Roberts has lost his bid for the seat of Ipswich, with the party's chief of staff throwing his support behind the former senator's possible return to federal politics.

Despite claiming a fantastic response at the polling booths on Saturday, Mr Roberts lucked out in his bid to take Ipswich, which remains in the hands of Labors Jennifer Howard.

Former One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts. Credit:AAP

About 7.30pm, Mr Roberts conceded, thanking candidates and staffers.

We have also had a big swing for us ... we have eaten into the Labor vote and we have eaten into the LNP vote, he said.
High Street in Thornbury, part of the electorate of Northcote. Credit:Ken Irwin While the Green tide has been lapping at the terraces and cafes of the inner city for the past few years, the sheer force of the wave that recently crushed Labor in Northcote surprised many observers. One reason for the gnashing of teeth is that Northcote was once a jewel in the Labor crown, the seat of party royalty like John Cain Snr. When Steve Bracks came to power in 1999, the ALP had a primary vote in the seat of more than 66 per cent. On two-party preferred, it sat third on the ledger as the party's safest. The Greens MP for Northcote, Lidia Thorpe. Credit:Paul Jeffers In nearby Brunswick and Richmond, seats that look likely to turn Green at the next state election, the picture was similar.

The Greens were invisible before the turn of the century, winning just over one per cent of the vote statewide. Ellen Sandell celebrates with supporters after winning Melbourne in 2014. Credit:Wayne Hawkins "It was part of your self identity, it was tribalism in those suburbs to vote Labor," said Monash University politics lecturer Paul Strangio, who wrote Neither Power Nor Glory: 100 Years of Political Labor in Victoria. "Those seats were working class, Catholic, industrial areas. "If anything else what we see in these electorates is just a window into that dramatic socio-demographic transformation of the inner city that's gone on for decades now."

By now, everyone is fully aware of the rapid gentrification sweeping once poor tough suburbs. Brick factories making way for concrete apartment blocks, as the middle class moves in and the working class shifts further out. Far and away, the biggest change 10km from the CBD has been the influx of wealthy professionals. In 2001, weekly household income in Northcote was lower than the state average. Now, the area earns $300 a week more on average than Victorian households. Professionals once made up less than 20 per cent of jobs in the seat, 15 years later it is closer to 40 per cent. The changing class make-up of Brunswick and Richmond has been just as substantial. All three boasted strong migrant populations, particularly Northcote and Brunswick, where Greeks and Italians represented significant chunks of the community. Those numbers have diminished as the average mortgage has skyrocketed. And fifteen years ago, before the rush to live closer to the city, people who owned their homes outright outnumbered renters and mortgagees in Northcote and Brunswick. Not any more. Rent, meanwhile, has risen by at least 140 per cent in all three seats.

Aaron Martin, senior lecturer in political science at the University of Melbourne, said the new inner-city voters were post-materialists; comfortable in their economic situation, they become more concerned about social issues such as refugees, race and the environment. In Northcote, as Labor campaigned hard on a platform of housing affordability, posters for Lidia Thorpe emphasised that she would be the first Indigenous woman in state parliament. Local Greens policies addressing development and schools sat alongside the creation of a Great Forest National Park. "When people voted along class lines, it was much easier for parties. It was 'are on the side of capital or are you on the side of labour?'. It was more complicated than that but it was the basic dichotomy," he said. "In the past few decades, that's been fractured." While Northcote, Brunswick and Richmond have shared similar trajectories, other seats that have already turned Green have taken a different path. In Melbourne, which elected Ellen Sandell in 2014, household income is lower than the state average. Brunswick resident Eric Butler, 26, said he's happy with the rise of the Greens, but was not sure why it's happening.

"There are definitely more apartments and people are definitely getting whiter and richer," he said. Brighde Sullivan, also from Brunswick and also aged 26, said the Greens' values were aligned to her own, particularly on refugees, the environment and same-sex marriage. "They've supported those (issues) all the way through which has been important," she said. Eric Butler lives in Brunswick and is happy with the increasing Greens vote. Credit:Joe Armao Meanwhile, in the seat of Melbourne, the ethnic make-up has increased, with 19 per cent speaking Mandarin at home, according to the 2016 census. Crucially, however, the seat is flush with university students, who make up more than a quarter of people who live there. The average age of the seat is 27 - 10 years younger than the Victorian average.

The other seat belonging to the Greens in parliament is Prahran. The seat is wealthy, has a high proportion of renters, nearly 60 per cent of properties, and almost the same amount of couples without children. That seat appears likely to continue as a three-cornered contest between all three parties. Nearby Albert Park, older and wealthier than the rest, might be the hardest of the lot to crack. The Greens keep "detailed analysis" on the demographics of their voter base but are not keen to make them public. Other factors believed to manifest in a Greens vote included high levels of education, being in a defacto couple and not following a religion. Older baby boomers who came of age voting for socially progressive Labor leaders like Whitlam are prime targets for the Greens, as are the tens of thousands of millennials that signed up to take part in the same-sex marriage survey. The next decision facing Labor is whether to abandon their once impenetrable heartland and focus on other seats further from the city. "These seats are deeply important to the Labor psyche," said Mr Strangio. "Just to shrug their shoulders and concede them is awfully difficult."
Clive Palmer's Mineralogy has won its long-running court battle against its estranged Chinese joint venture partner in Western Australia.

The companies have been embroiled in legal warfare for many years but the main dispute related to calculations for royalty payments from the multi-billion dollar Sino Iron project, which CITIC built and operates, drawing ore from Mineralogy-owned land.

Clive Palmer's Mineralogy claims it is owed money by Sino Iron. Credit:AAP

On Friday, WA Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Martin concluded CITIC's wholly owned subsidiaries Sino Iron and Korean Steel must pay Mineralogy a total of $US149.4 million ($196 million), but he needs further submissions before reaching his final position regarding CITIC being their guarantor.

In August, CITIC used its half-year results to lash Mineralogy, saying its uncooperative and adversarial approach" posed a threat to the future of Sino Iron, which employs some 2600 workers and contractors.
The Turnbull government has avoided an all-out brawl with the states and territories over its signature power policy, securing agreement from most energy ministers that more work will be done on the proposed national energy guarantee.

But South Australia's Labor government says coal is not part of Australia's future and the federal government is "clinging to the past".

The national energy guarantee forces energy companies to meet mandated standards of reliability and emissions reduction, but critics say it thwarts growth in renewable energy, props up ageing coal-fired power plants and will fail to sufficiently drive down dangerous carbon emissions.

The federal government needs the support of the states and territories to implement the guarantee. Rather than reject the policy entirely, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania - along with the Commonwealth - voted in favour of the Energy Security Board conducting more analysis of how it would operate. South Australia and the ACT opposed the move. Queensland is in caretaker mode ahead of the state election and did not cast a vote.
NSW Greens MLC Mehreen Faruqi has soundly defeated Senator Lee Rhiannon in a preselection ballot to be lead Senate candidate at the next federal election, a result expected to have far-reaching ramifications inside the party.

Dr Faruqi received 1301 votes compared with Senator Rhiannon's 843, delivering her 60.7 per cent of the vote after the distribution of preferences.

"I am really humbled and overwhelmed by the support the members have given me," Dr Faruqi told Fairfax Media.

"We are going to run the biggest senate campaign the party has ever run. My whole pitch was growing the party and reaching out to the community, and that's what we're going to do."
Just hours into the ballot count in Queensland, Labor looked likely to retain power, with One Nation stealing conservative votes but failing to replicate its 1998 success.

However, the final results of several seats were on a knife edge on Saturday night, and could be days away.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk casts her vote in the state's election at Inala State School on Saturday. Credit:AAP Image/ Dan Peled

A Nine Network-Galaxy exit poll of 1700 people across 18 seats in metropolitan and regional Queensland tipped Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk's Labor party would be re-elected with 51 seats, clear of the 47 needed to win a majority.

The exit poll suggested Labor led the LNP 52-48 in the two-party preferred vote, which mirrored the results of polls held in recent days.
Pauline Hanson still believes her party can form the balance of power in the Queensland Parliament, with 13 seats undecided and Labor four seats short of the 47 seats it needs to win a majority.

Senator Hanson, One Nation's founder and a fixture of the party's campaign in the weeks leading up to the election, last night directed Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuks words back at her.

One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson and former member for Buderim Steve Dickson address the media at their election-night party in Buderim. Credit:AAP

She has made it quite clear she has no intentions of working with One Nation; she is quite happy to go on the opposition benches, she said.

But after the counting stopped on election night, the Premier said she was quietly confident of forming government.
The leaders of Queensland's major and minor political parties have headed to the polls, casting their votes in their local electorates.

Liberal National Party Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls was swamped by anti-Adani protesters as he arrived at a church in his inner-Brisbane seat of Clayfield.

Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls is surrounded by anti-Adani protestors as he arrives to vote in his electorate of Clayfield on Saturday.

The group heckled Mr Nicholls and wife Mary with 'stop Adani' chants as they stopped outside St John's Anglican Church in Hendra, where he took a final dig at Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

"I'm feeling really positive, we've got a great message, we're talking about cheaper power, we're talking about jobs, and jobs for regional Queensland that Annastacia Palaszczuk doesn't want to deliver," he told reporters.
The fate of Queensland's Parliament hangs in the balance, with the count in several seats too close to call.

After Queensland voters delivered a swing against the LNP and towards One Nation, Labor looked likely to hold power but had not yet secured the 47 seats needed to declare a majority by the time counting stopped on election night.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk thanks supporters at the Oxley Golf Club on Saturday night. Credit:AAP Image/ Glenn Hunt

Predictions orange-shirted One Nation candidates would storm into Queensland Parliament proved misguided, with the minor party yet to clearly win a single seat.

The final count would not be known for days, with booth workers wrapping up the count about 10.30pm on Saturday.
Washington: The terror in Egypt on Saturday is only the latest grim reminder that Muslims are often the first victims of Muslim fanatics.

The massacre of at least 235 people attending a Sufi mosque in Bir al-Abd on the Sinai coast is being attributed to a local affiliate of the Islamic State, known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis. This slaughter was particularly venal. Gunmen waited for ambulances and first responders to come to the mosque after an initial detonation and sprayed bullets into the survivors and those dispatched to save them.

An anonymous Muslim cleric told the New York Times that he was shocked the killers would attack a mosque. Prior targets for the terrorists in the Sinai included Coptic Christian churches and a Russian airliner in 2013.

But the killing of Muslims should surprise no one. Just look at the trail of blood in Iraq. Sunni terrorists attacked the al-Aksari mosque in both 2006 and 2007 in Samarra. The site is one of the holiest in Shiite Islam and was known for its golden dome. While it was rebuilt in 2009, the attack sparked pledges of sectarian reprisals.
"When I got to DC, I came with an understanding that the problems here are so complex  and if they were easy problems, they would have been fixed before  and so I became more like the hedgehog, where it was more taking issues you care deeply about, going deep and devoting the time, energy and resources to trying to drive change." This portrait of Kushner comes from interviews with Kushner himself, as well as 12 senior administration officials, aides, outside advisers and confidants, some of them demanding anonymity to offer a more candid assessment. Allies say Kushner's subtle shift into the background of the West Wing reflects his natural inclination to work hard and eschew the limelight, while his enemies gloat that it stems from a series of avoidable missteps that are the result of his political naivete. Following recent reports, which the White House denied, that the President privately blames Kushner for Mueller's widening probe, Breitbart, the conservative website, snarkily dubbed him, "Mr Perfect." Some aides scoff at the notion that Kushner isn't still whispering to the President about official business. But one of Kelly's conditions for taking the job was that everyone, including Kushner and his wife, had to go through him to reach the President, and Kelly has made clear that Kushner reports to him, aides said. The new hierarchy is part of Kelly's effort to sideline Kushner, said one Republican in frequent contact with the White House, though others say the order Kelly has imposed has simply liberated Kushner to focus on his own portfolio - and eased some of the animosity his colleagues felt toward him.

Kushner said he welcomes the change. "The order allows this place to function," Kushner said. "My number one priority is a high-functioning White House, because I believe in the President's agenda, and I think it should get executed." He still maintains the broad portfolio he took on at the beginning of the administration that made him a punchline among aides on Capitol Hill: Peace in the Middle East, as well as Canada, Mexico and China, and overseeing the Office of American Innovation, an in-house group that focuses on tackling longer-term government challenges. He attends meetings of his innovation group once a week, often on a Tuesday or Wednesday for an hour-long check-in and progress update. The innovation office launched with great fanfare in March, but some aides recently said they could not pinpoint exactly what it has accomplished.

Kushner and his allies reject that assessment, saying the office is focused on long-term projects. They say, for example, that the group helped the Department of Veterans Affairs launch their electronic medical records initiative in June, with Kushner expediting the process by calling Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and asking him to send over people from his department to help. "If I ever get into a roadblock, we just elevate it to Jared," said Chris Liddell, a senior White House official who works in the innovation office. "He's great at saying, 'Can't we get so-and-so to come over?' and we get it done on the spot." Kushner is one of the advisers helping on negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement, and he accompanied Trump on the first half of his Asia trip earlier this month. But the main focus for Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, is working to bring peace in the Middle East  a task that has bedeviled negotiators far more experienced in the region for generations. What Kushner brings to the effort, say several senior White House officials, is personal relationships with players on all sides and a willingness to bet on long shot outcomes. Before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Trump at the White House in September, Kushner and Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt met him at the Mandarin Oriental for a two-hour breakfast.

More recently, on Halloween, Kushner suggested that he and Greenblatt visit Saeb Erekat, the lead Palestinian peace negotiator, at the apartment in Virginia where he is recuperating from a lung transplant. After briefly considering, and then nixing, wine  Erekat is Muslim  Kushner ultimately brought chocolate. "This is very much a human conflict and a human-to-human relationship," Greenblatt said. "When you're able to touch somebody and talk about it, it's a meaningful engagement. It takes a certain personality and Jared has that touch." Yet snags persist. A week ago, the Palestinians threatened to freeze all contact with the Trump administration after the State Department said the Palestine Liberation Organisation's office in Washington could not remain open - a decision it backtracked on Friday. And Kushner's friendship with Mohammed bin Salman raised questions after the crown prince's anti-corruption campaign  which critics paint as an attempt to consolidate power, but devotees say is part of his efforts as a reformer - as well as concerns from some that Saudi Arabia now feels further emboldened within the region. The Mueller probe, meanwhile, is entering a new phase, with the special counsel announcing two indictments at the end of last month  including for Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort  while investigators begin to interview people close to the President's inner circle.

Kushner has turned over documents to the House and Senate committees investigating possible collusion between Russia and Trump's campaign, though in a letter, the Senate Judiciary Committee recently complained that Kushner had not been fully forthcoming - a charge his lawyer denies. So far, Mueller has filed no court documents to suggest Kushner is in legal jeopardy, but people close to the case say investigators have been looking at his meetings with Russians before and after the election, as well as his role in discussions that led to the firing of FBI director James Comey. The news on Thanksgiving that former national security adviser Michael Flynn's lawyers had notified Trump's legal team that they could no longer share information about the Russia probe prompted speculation that Flynn may now be cooperating with Mueller  a potentially perilous sign for the President and his associates. But friends say Kushner is even-keeled about the investigations. For him, they said, the most stressful moments came in May, amid news reports that he had tried to establish a secret back-channel with Russia during the transition, and that the FBI was probing his actions. He was frustrated, a White House official said, that he couldn't respond to the allegations until he went to be interviewed by Congress. "Jared is an extraordinary calm person," said H.R. McMaster, the White House national security adviser.

"I have never seen him distracted." He huddled with his lawyers for hours in the run-up to his testimony before Congress but is in less frequent daily contact now unless something from Mueller's probe specifically requires his attention, one White House official said. Kushner's detractors point to his role in the Russia probe as another sign of his poor political skills and continued risk to the President. A Republican close to the White House said that Kushner "has no judgment  never has and never will." But in some ways, Kushner appears more protected from the daily sniping that plagued the early months of Trump's presidency. Over the summer, a trio of advisers who were rivals to Kushner were pushed out of the West Wing: Stephen Bannon, then the President's chief strategist who now runs Breitbart; Reince Priebus, the chief of staff; and Sean Spicer, the press secretary. "He no longer is in an environment where he has an actual predator," said one White House official, likening Kushner to Bannon's regular prey. "That has probably helped his working environment some."

Kushner, with his whispery voice, has also proven one of the few people adept at absorbing Trump's anger. He can speak to Trump in a shared language of transaction from their days in the New York real estate world. "I don't try to manage him," Kushner said. "I try to give him my honest feedback. If he asks my advice on something, sometimes I'll give it, sometimes I'll say, 'Let me go call a few people,' and then I'll give it." McMaster said Kushner sometimes acts as a translator between his father-in-law, the President, and his senior advisers. "He helped a lot of us learn faster what's important to the President," McMaster said. "His relationship with the President makes Jared valuable as an adviser to the President, and also as an adviser to the President's advisers." When Kushner's family first arrived in Washington, they agreed they would assess after six months whether they intended to stay. Trump himself has mused privately about the hit his daughter and son-in-law's reputation is taking because of their White House roles and about what a great and easy life they had back in New York. Others have questioned why someone like Kushner would put himself in Mueller's crosshairs by remaining in government.
ONTARIO  The Ontario Community Club will host its Old Fashioned Christmas from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9., at Ontario Community Hall.

The event includes cake walks, door prizes, kids crafts, Santa Shop, horse drawn wagon rides and lefse making. Santa will arrive at 11:30 a.m. Admission is free and lunch will be available for purchase.

Ontario Love Lights can be purchased in honor of loved ones for $2 at the Ontario Bank, public library and Milk Jug Cafe, and names will be read at 2 p.m. before being placed on the Love Light Tree outside the Community Hall.
Chinas state asset watchdog is moving to tighten oversight on projects where major state-owned companies are partnering with private investors amid rising concerns over financial risks arising from such cooperation.

State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has specifically barred big state companies under its jurisdiction from entering into Private-Public Partnership (PPP) projects not deemed economically viable or lack guaranteed funding, Yicai.com, a Chinese business and financial news site reported Saturday, citing a recent SASAC directive.

However, the powerful central government agency that control close to 100 top SOEs in China, stopped short of detailing the criteria to evaluate the economic and financial soundness of such projects.

The commission also listed six other requirements to consider when large SOEs enter into partnership projects with private companies. For instance, a large state-owned enterprise group, required by SASAC to exert prudent risk controls, should cap their overall spending on PPP programs to below 50% of its total net assets recorded in the previous year. Neither should it push up its debt ratio as a result of excessive spending on PPP projects, SASAC said in the document.

The heightened control of big SOEs and their PPP undertakings came after a flurry of moves by central government agencies including the Ministry of Finance, to curb PPP programs by state-owned firms amid growing concerns that such projects were abused to raise money through illicit channels.&

Contact reporter Li Rongde (rongdeli@caixin.com)
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The Forensic Science University will be open to general students too. "It will be like any other university but entirely dedicated to forensic technology with advanced equipment.

It will also offer courses besides supporting the home department in detecting some of the complex cases. Police personnel, from the ranks of constables to IPS officers, will be sent to the University for training in modern-day forensics," Reddy said.

In Bengaluru, police are increasingly relying on forensics to crack crimes and build a watertight case against criminals. In 2009, the forensic laboratories in Bengaluru and five other ranges dealt with 1,373 cases that had 63509 exhibits; by 2016, the corresponding numbers had zoomed to 20,031 cases with 1,19,307 exhibits.

The university is likely to come up in Bengaluru, Mysuru or Hubballi. Money for the proposed university will be allocated in the 2018-19 state budget.

Home minister Ramalinga Reddy said experts and senior police officers had suggested that a full-fledged forensic university is set up in Karnataka. "Of late, there have been changes in the nature of crimes and conmen have been increasingly adopting technology to escape from the clutches of the law. If we equip and train our police personnel in similar technology, such culprits can easily be traced and brought to book.

They had an informal meeting with the DG&IG about setting up the forensic university. We are working out on the cost and required infrastructure for the project so that it can be included in the forthcoming budget for the year 2018-19," said Reddy.

While many universities (like Osmania University, Hyderabad, Amity etc.) offer a degree in forensic sciences, there are institutes (like Institute of Forensics, Mumbai, and Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science, Delhi) which offer specialized courses as well.

In 2008, Gujarat Forensic Sciences University became the first university in the world dedicated solely to forensic science and crime investigation.

During a discussion on the proposed university in the legislative council, BJP MLC Thara Anooradha drew the attention of the government to the lack of technical expertise among state police. "Our police can crack a crime only if the criminal is carrying a mobile. If the criminal hasn't used a mobile, the police fail to investigate the case. Many officials have also forgotten the traditional techniques of investigation. It is high time that the police must train them in the latest technology and help crack modern day crimes," she said.

What is Forensic Science? Scope and Career Opportunities
The Franciscan Spirituality Center invites women to leave behind their responsibilities for a few hours to enjoy the companionship of others during the third annual Womens Christmas: An Epiphany Celebration for Wise Women from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 4.

The Franciscan Spirituality Center is located at 920 Market St., and women of all faith backgrounds are welcome.

Womens Christmas is rooted in an Irish tradition. On the Feast of Epiphany, Irish women left the care of their households to the men for a few hours so they could enjoy each others company away from their domestic responsibilities, especially after the busyness of Christmas preparations. Epiphany is also the day many Christians celebrate the coming of the Wise Men to the infant Jesus.

Each years event the at the Spirituality Center features a new theme. This years program will begin with a simple meal, and then participants will reflect on and receive the gifts of three Irish saints: St. Gobnait and her healing honey, St. Ita and her three stones for dreams and vision, and St. Brigid and her fire of protection for the coming year.

Cost is $30, which include the meal and Wise Women gifts. To register, call 608-791-5295 or go to www.fscenter.org.
Move Over, Queen Elizabeth: Meet Other Royal Families From Around the World

From Prince Harry and Meghan Markles whirlwind courtship to Duchess Kate and Prince Williams wedding and Netflixs The Crown, its glaringly evident that we have an obsession with Queen Elizabeth II and the Windsors. However, we would be remiss if we didnt acknowledge all of the other royals that reign around the world.

In total, there are 26 monarchies around the globe that rule in over 43 countries. Admittedly, some are more intriguing than others. However, many of these royal families still have some pretty fantastic stories to tell. Beyond Queen Elizabeth, her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, here are some of the other royal families who slay around the world.

Sweden

Since Sweden is one of the few monarchies across the globe that allow female succession, Princess Victoria Ingrid Alice Desire will become Queen of Sweden once her father King Carl XVI Gustaf ends his reign.

The princess stirred up controversy when she married her trainer, who is now Prince Daniel, Duke of Vastergotland. The couple has two small children together.

Its pretty legendary that the princess threw old marriage rules in the trash.

Next: A massive royal family

Saudi Arabia

Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz is currently the king and prime minister of Saudi Arabia. Since Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, the cabinet is stacked with family members. Though the current monarchy is hereditary, future Saudi kings will be chosen by a committee of Saudi princes.

This may cause a bit of infighting because the royal family consists of 30,000 people.

Next: Illegitimate heirs



Monaco

Prince Albert II, the son of Princess Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III, has ruled Monaco since his fathers death in 2005. Though Monaco has an elected legislature, Prince Albert still holds a large political role and can choose the minister of state  but only from a selected list of candidates.

Prince Albert has four children with three different women. Unfortunately, his two eldest arent in line for the throne because they were born out of wedlock.

Next: A country of sultans

Malaysia

The monarchy in Malaysia likes to keep this super interesting. Every single state in the country has a hereditary leader called a sultan.

Every five years, the sultans elect one of their leaders to become king. Its a pretty cool way to distribute power if you ask us.

Next: The bachelor king

Cambodia

King Norodom Sihamoni is pretty much only a leader in name. He was picked to succeed his father back in 2004 by Thailands Royal Throne Council. Before becoming king, Sihamoni did have some political experience serving as Cambodias ambassador to UNESCO.

Its also interesting to note that the king is a bachelor, which is super rare when it comes royal families. The kings father once stated, He loves women as his sisters. We wonder who will succeed him.

Next: A family coup

Oman

If you thought the British royal family had drama, you havent heard what went down in the Middle Eastern country of Omen in the 1970s. Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who currently rules Oman, overthrew his own father in a coup.

Talk about broken family bonds.

Next: A country united

Belgium

Though King Philippes role as the King of Belguim is just symbolic, its very important. Hes advocated for greater unity between the Flemings and Francophones, who have been at odds for some time. Though the country he inherited was divided, King Phillippe has worked to change that.

King Philippe is married to Queen Mathilde, and they have four children.

Next: Some indirect ruling

The Netherlands

The Netherlands is ruled by King Willem-Alexander who took the throne in 2013 after his mothers 33-year long reign. Though the monarchs in The Netherlands dont rule directly, King Willem-Alexander is the president of the Council of State. All laws must go through his council before they are passed.

The king is married to Queen Maxima, and they have three daughters.

Next: Tons of power

Jordan

Though King Abdullah II has been in power since 1999, he also has a prime minister. However, that doesnt mean that King Abdullah doesnt have any control. In fact, he has a ton of it  including the ability to veto any law and dissolve Parliament at will. Talk about a true king.

King Abdullah is married to Queen Rania, and they have four children.

Next: Billion dollar royals

The United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates consists of a federation of seven different districts. However, the region is helmed by the emir of Abu Dhabi, who also serves as the nations president. The current amir Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan has been in power since his fathers death in 2004.

It is said that hes worth an outstanding $5 billion.

Next: A king with 14 wives.

Swaziland

As the head of one of the only monarchs in Africa, King Mswati III reigns as the absolute monarch of the southern country Swaziland. King Mswati has been ruling since he inherited the crown from his father in 1986, when he was just 18 years old.

The 49-year-old king has 14 wives and 32 children. His most recent wife is just 19 years old.

Next: Apparently, women cant rule here

Japan

If you thought the British monarchy was old, then you must not realize that Japans Yamato monarchy is the oldest in the world, dating back to 660. Emperor Akihito has ruled since 1989, and he is expected to abdicate in 2019.

However, because his oldest child, Crown Princess Masako, is a woman, and women cannot rule, the line will be passed to his younger son, Crown Prince Naruhito.

Next: A true symbol

Luxembourg

Henri Grand Duke of Luxembourg is primarily a symbol because Luxembourg has a Grand Duchy. He is called a symbol of stability, a single figure at the head of state, above the daily political business.

When he retires his eldest son, Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg will fill his shoes. He has two other sons and a daughter.

Next: Some modern royalty

Spain

King Felipe VI came to power in 2014 when his father abdicated the crown. He is now the head of state and commander-in-chief of the Spanish Armed Forces. It was King Felips father, King Juan Carlos I, who was instrumental in bringing democracy to Spain after he succeeded the dictator Francisco Franco.

King Felipe is married to Queen Letizia of Spain, a former CNN journalist. The couple has two daughters, one of whom will eventually be queen.

Next: Checks and balances

Norway

King Harald V sounds pretty important, but his importance is pretty much in title only. He does a ton of ceremonial things, like appointing the Norwegian cabinet and the prime minister, but he cant do any of that without first getting approval from Parliament.

Once King Harald steps down, Crown Prince Haakon Magnus will take over for his father.

Follow Aramide Tinubu on Twitter @midnightrami.

Read more: Royal Pet Peeves: The 1 Word Queen Elizabeth Wont Ever Use and Other Things She Cant Stand

Check out The Cheat Sheet on Facebook!
'Dragon Ball Super' spoilers 2017: Episode pays tribute to late Bulma actress, Hiromi Tsuru

Several days had passed when actress Hiromi Tsuru, who voiced Bulma, passed away. However, the fans of the Japanese animated television series "Dragon Ball Super" are still mourning. To give tribute to Tsuru, the latest episode of the anime featured a scene showing Bulma cheering on the Universe 7 warriors as they leave for the Tournament of Power.

The last words of Bulma are fitting to the recent demise of Tsuru. Bulma was bidding farewell to the fighters including her husband, Vegeta. She was waving her arms saying, "Everyone, do your best! I'm counting on you all." The line is indeed touching since the anime will now run without Tsuru.

A short message also appeared at the end of the latest episode of the anime to pay homage to the legacy of Tsuru in the "Dragon Ball" fandom. After announcing her death, the message also says, "From children to adults, Tsuru gave many people courage and happiness."

As of now, no one has taken Tsuru's place, and Toei Animation will recast for Bulma's character. Tsuru has been the only voice actress for the said character since the introduction of her role. She had been voicing the Capsule Corporation's Bulma for 31 years. Aside from Bulma, she also worked on other favorite anime and video game franchise such as "Metal Gear Solid."

Some of her notable works include Ukyo Kuonji in "Ranma 1/2," Reiko Mikami in "Ghost Sweeper Mikami," Meryl Stryfe in "Trigun," Dokin-chan in "Soreike! Anpanman" and Madoka Ayukawa in "Kimagure Orange Road."

Tsuru, who is from Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan, passed away on Nov. 16 at the age of 57. She was found unconscious and unresponsive inside her car. She was rushed to a hospital in Tokyo but was declared dead on arrival. Tsuru's agency, Aoni Production, revealed that the cause of her death was aortic dissection.
Evangelical Lutheran church in Sweden urging clergy to use gender-neutral words when referring to 'God'

After an eight-day meeting at the "Evangelical Lutheran Church" in Sweden, the church is encouraging its leaders to refer to God as the deity beyond gender and human. This indicates that the clergy will no longer consider God as a man and the pronoun "he" is off the table.

According to reports, Evangelical Lutheran Church's Archbishop Antje Jackelen told TT news agency that their decision is justified theologically. Jackelen made it clear that God is not a boy or a girl and that is he beyond gender.

The Archbishop explained, "Theologically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human."

The decision of the church is part of their mission to modernize its 31-year-old guidelines during services for God. The decision was finalized on Nov. 23 and will be monitored on May 20, 2018 or Pentecost Sunday.

During an interview with The Telegraph, Church of Sweden spokesperson Sofija Pedersen Videke said that many members of the church made their decision according to the book. "We talk about Jesus Christ, but in a few places we have changed it to say 'God' instead of 'he'" she said. "We have some prayer options that are more gender-neutral than others," Videke added.

The decision was of course met with criticism. Lund University's associate theology professor Christer Pahlmblad made a comment through the Kristeligt Dagblad publication in Denmark. The professor said, "It really isn't smart if the Church of Sweden becomes known as a church that does not respect the common theology heritage."

Videke nor Jackelen has not commented on Pahlmblad's statement.

According to the Bible, God did not present his physical form to anyone unlike his son Jesus Christ. As written in the bible verse John 4:24, "God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth."
Faith helps protect women against domestic violence: Tearfund survey

Research carried out by aid and development agency Tearfund has shown that having a faith affects the likelihood of men behaving violently toward their partner.

The charity found that men who are actively engaged in a faith group are more than twice as likely to think violence towards their partner is never justified, compared to those who are not engaged at all.

The study was carried out in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and found that nearly 40 per cent of women reported that they had suffered sexual violence from an intimate partner in the past year.

The country has also endured years of conflict, with sexual and gender-based violence used as a weapon.

The research was highlighted today, November 25, as it marks the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). It says: 'One of the most striking findings was that faith engagement was consistently shown to correlate with more empowering attitudes for both men and women, and also showed a protective correlation in terms of women's experience of Intimate Partner Violence.'

It was carried out as part of the UK government-funded project called What Works to prevent violence against women and girls. As part of this project in DRC Tearfund runs 'Transforming Masculinities', a course examining how harmful norms around gender roles perpetuate sexual and gender-based violence. The project works with faith and community leaders to remove stigma, and change behaviours.

Transforming Masculinities is now being piloted in neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR). Tearfund, with the help of UK Aid Match, has launched a fundraising campaign to help people in CAR. Money raised through the campaign will build on work with vulnerable women and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, helping them to rebuild their lives through economic activities as well as access to counselling and other support. The UK government has pledged to match pound for pound every donation made by the public as part of its Aid Match programme.

Tearfund ambassador and Olivier Award-winning actor Tamsin Greig visited the charity's sexual and gender-based violence projects.

She said: 'I met women and young girls in the DRC who had suffered so much as a result of rape. This is still going on and this is another chance to help the courageous women that I was privileged to meet along with others in the Central African Republic.

'I was shocked to discover that in some countries up to 70 per cent of women will have experienced some physical and/or sexual violence from their intimate partner.'
Robert Mugabe's 'miracle' resignation: 'The hand of God is at work'

Robert Mugabe's exit as Zimbabwe's president is being hailed a 'miracle' by a longstanding campaigner in the country.

Ben Freeth, who rose to prominence after taking Mugabe to court  a battle that featured in the documentary Mugabe and the White African  was speaking to Christian Today from Harare as the 93-year-old president's successor was sworn in on Friday.

'It's incredible. It is unbelievable what has taken place,' he said.

The army swept to power early last Wednesday and took control of the state broadcaster as well as key institutions. Mugabe, known as the 'grand old man' of African politics, clung to the presidency and initially refused to quit before eventually resigning earlier this week.

The peaceful transition is a surprise to many who expected Mugabe's departure after 37-years in power to be bloody. Freeth hailed it a 'miracle'.

He told Christian Today: 'There has not been a drop of blood split in this whole coup. There has been process. There has been constitutionality.'

He said: 'God's hand has been so unbelievably present in this whole thing that has taken place right the way through.'

Mugabe's resignation prompted scenes of wild excitement as Zimbabwe saw the back of the only president it has known since British colonial rule left in 1980.

'There has just been joy. Absolute joy. People have been completely bowled over about the fact that after 37 years Mugabe has walked out voluntarily,' said Freeth.

'People have just been jubilant but already there is a slight fear of the future,' he added, referring to the former vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is due to be sworn in as the new leader on Friday.

'He has a background of being part of the oppression, part of the system, part of the genocide. But we remain hopeful. He has said there will be a free and fair elections next year.'

Mnangagwa, nicknamned the 'Crocodile' returned to Zimbabwe on Wednesday after he fled for his life when Mugabe fired him last week.

'We hope and pray,' said Freeth. 'People are uncertain at this stage.'

But he went on: 'This is God. The world must know that this is God. God is able to work his miraculous way in nations. This really is an instance of God's hand.'

Military rulers have agreed to give Mugabe immunity from prosecution and insisted he can live safely in Zimbabwe.

A government source confirmed to Reuters that Mugabe had told negotiators he wanted to die in Zimbabwe and had no plans to live in exile.

'For him it was very important that he be guaranteed security to stay in the country ... although that will not stop him from travelling abroad when he wants to or has to,' the source said.

A second source added: 'The outgoing president is obviously aware of the public hostility to his wife [Grace], the anger in some circles about the manner in which she conducted herself and approached Zanu-PF party politics.

'In that regard, it became necessary to also assure him that his whole family, including the wife, would be safe and secure.

'It was very emotional for him and he was forceful about it.'
Samsung to reveal Galaxy S9 and S9+ in January 2018

Samsung will be showing off their upcoming flagship phones a little earlier than expected. The Galaxy S9 and S9+ will reportedly be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, which will take place sometime in January 2018.

News of the preview was disclosed to an anonymous informant who claimed to have been briefed on Samsung's plans. The informant, in turn, told VentureBeat about the upcoming display.

Avid Samsung users will not see too much of a difference between the upcoming phones and their predecessors, the Galaxy S8 and S8+, at least in terms of appearance. This is because the S9 and S9+ will be more like upgrades instead of complete redesigns.

The S9 and S9+ will differ in screen size. Much like the previous model line, the "plus" model will sport a larger 6.2-inch screen compared to the regular one's 5.8-inch. The display itself will be using Samsung's Super Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode (AMOLED) Infinity display.

The S8 and S8+ were identical in specifications save for their screen size, but the same cannot be said for the S9 and S9+. The S9+ will have a larger random access memory (RAM) of 6 GB compared to the regular's 4 GB. The plus version will have a secondary rear camera as well, similar to the Note 8.

Samsung will also be releasing a new version of the DeX Dock. This gadget, which allows the phone to be used as a virtual keyboard, can be a useful complement for the Galaxy S9 and S9+

The CES display will count as the first public appearance of the Galaxy S9 and S9+ phones, but there is no word about how much information will actually be revealed at the CES. Samsung still plans to hold an official product launch for the said phones in March, similar to what they did with the Galaxy S8 and S8+ in 2017.
WASHINGTON (TNS)  Sen. Al Franken plans to stay in the U.S. Senate and try to win back Minnesotans trust.

The Minnesota Democrat, who has been accused by four women  two of them anonymously  of inappropriate contact, issued a Thanksgiving afternoon apology and pledge. He wrote that he feels terribly that Ive made some women feel badly. He called himself a warm person who likes to hug people when theyre being photographed with him, but clearly, his embrace crossed a line for some women.

Although his statement did not directly address the question of whether he might resign, he vowed to move ahead with an effort to regain the trust of his constituents. A spokesman for Franken said Thursday that the senator has no plans to resign.

The accusations, which have left Franken facing a Senate ethics investigation, have touched off a fierce debate among his progressive supporters over what level of sexual misconduct should force a politician with a record of support for womens rights to resign from office.

Because he happens to be a good guy on some other issues, people are confused, said Erin Vilardi, head of VoteRunLead, a national group that aims to elect more women to public office. It held a national convention in Minneapolis last weekend.

Vilardi spoke after the first two accusations against Franken and before Wednesdays Huffington Post report of the third and fourth allegations. The website cited two unidentified women who said he grabbed their buttocks in separate incidents. Each spoke on condition of anonymity about events they said occurred during Frankens first Senate run.

The first said Franken groped her when he posed for a photo with her after a June 2007 event hosted by the Minnesota Womens Political Caucus in Minneapolis. The second told HuffPost that Franken cupped her butt with his hand at a 2008 Democratic fundraiser in Minneapolis, then suggested the two visit the bathroom together.

The accusations against Franken have emerged in a charged atmosphere of accusations and denials in a broad swath of American life  politics, the arts, media and business. In Minnesota, accusations by several women against state Sen. Dan Schoen, a DFLer, and state Rep. Tony Cornish, a Republican, led both to say theyll resign.

The first accusation against Franken came last week, when Los Angeles radio broadcaster Leeann Tweeden tweeted that he forcibly kissed and groped her during a 2006 USO tour. He apologized to her but added that he remembered their encounter differently.

On that same tour, the former Saturday Night Live cast member also mugged for a photo with his hands hovering over Tweedens breasts as she slept.

On Monday, a second woman accused Franken of unwanted sexual touching. Lindsay Menz, 33, contacted CNN to say that Franken grabbed her buttocks while they posed together for a photo at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010. Menz now lives in Texas.

Franken told CNN that he did not remember posing for the photo with Menz.

I take thousands of photos at the State Fair surrounded by hundreds of people, and I certainly dont remember taking this picture. I feel badly that Ms. Menz came away from our interaction feeling disrespected, Franken said in a statement to CNN.

Speaking after the Tweeden and Menz accusations, Vilardi described participants at the VoteRunLead convention as torn over what to think about Franken. Just because women know a man in one light, she said, that doesnt make it impossible that theyve treated other women like crap.

Many Democrats and progressives have argued that other politicians, including President Donald Trump and Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, have been accused of worse misconduct. More than 50 women who worked with Franken have spoken out in support of him, saying he treated them with respect at workplaces ranging from the Senate to the SNL soundstage.

But Minnesota Republicans have jumped on the allegations. Jennifer DeJournett, a GOP activist, started a petition demanding his resignation after the first allegation. Signatures spiked further after the other accusations.

If Franken were to step down, Gov. Mark Dayton would appoint a temporary replacement, and a special election would be held next November for his seat.

In Thursday evenings statement, the senator wrote:

Ive met tens of thousands of people and taken thousands of photographs, often in crowded and chaotic situations. Im a warm person; I hug people. Ive learned from recent stories that in some of those encounters, I crossed a line for some women  and I know that any number is too many.

Some women have found my greetings or embraces for a hug or photo inappropriate, and I respect their feelings about that. Ive thought a lot in recent days about how that could happen, and recognize that I need to be much more careful and sensitive in these situations. I feel terribly that Ive made some women feel badly and for that I am so sorry, and I want to make sure that never happens again.

And let me say again to Minnesotans that Im sorry for putting them through this and Im committed to regaining their trust.

A spokesman said Franken will speak with the media on Sunday.
For an increasing number of students at prestigious California universities and others around the country, food is becoming an expense too tough to pay for out of pocket. As a result, some are turning to food stamps for help, according to a report in the SFGate. The publication reported that over 500 University of California at Berkeley students have applied to receive food stamps since January, an increase from just 111 applications for the entirety of 2016. In 2015, only 41 students applied for the service, also known as CalFresh, which can provide as much as $192 per month for food at grocery stores.

In an interview with SFGate, Berkeley student Esteban Vasquez summed up just how much food stamps have eased the strain on his wallet. "It's a huge sigh of relief knowing I can walk into a grocery store," he told the publication, "and purchase the items I need." The publication reported that there is an acceptance rate of approximately 73 percent to obtain food stamps as part of the CalFresh program, an increase from 62 percent in 2015. But U.C. Berkeley students aren't the only ones in need of assistance to afford food. The SFGate article noted the following: A University of California survey of 9,000 students across all 10 campuses shed light on the need in 2015: Nearly 1 in 5 students, 19 percent, said they had too little to eat "due to limited resources." Another 23 percent routinely ate substandard food with little variation. According to a document for CalFresh on UC Berkeley's website, students must meet a number of requirements in order to be eligible for food stamps. These include meeting a maximum monthly income, being a U.S. citizen, being enrolled as a student (at least half-time) and working a minimum of 80 hours per month. The Alameda County Social Services Agency listed $1,980 as the monthly maximum gross income for an individual to be eligible for the benefit.
The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form
The Port of Townsville team has announced a new cruise-welcome uniform for staff, designed in collaboration with local silk artist Pip Earl of fashion label Pipsilk. The uniforms will debut ahead of the port's biggest-yet cruise season.

The design features silk panels and scarves in a pattern inspired by the images and colons of the tropics and Great Barrier Reef, according to a statement.

Townsvilles cruise season kicks off on Nov. 29with the arrival of Seabourn Encore.

Port of Townsville Acting Chief Executive Officer said that the Port of Townsville team had set itself a goal of having the best welcome experience of any cruise destination in Australia.

I look forward to welcoming Seabourn Encore next week and will be very proud to watch Port staff wearing this fantastic uniform and welcome passengers as they disembark the vessel.

Incorporating the colours of our region into the design provides a unique flair to the uniform and its distinctive look will mean passengers and crew can easily identify Port of Townsville staff, she said.

Pipsilk designer Pip Earl said that the opportunity to get exposure of her designs to such a huge international audience was very exciting.

As an independent and local designer at Textile Collective based at Castletown, I am thrilled at the chance to partner with the Port of Townsville, said Earl.

The pieces I make are influenced by the environment and landscape of the Townsville region.

As a self-taught silk painter, images of my art are digitally printed on high quality fabrics. The images are mostly North Queensland flora and fauna but a few surprises too.

I produce silk paintings, scarves, prints, dresses, tops, leggings, cushion covers, tote bags and fabrics.

Port of Townsville will update the cruise ship uniform at the start of each season, giving more local designers the opportunity to feature their work.
Here's where to find deer on public hunting grounds in Pennsylvania

Whenever guys tell me theres no deer, I just say yep, youre right, said one hunter, with a laugh.
BALTIMORE (TNS)  The link between addiction and mental health disorders may be firmly established in scientific circles, but treatments designed to address them together are uncommon.

Some University of Maryland researchers may be taking a promising step to tackle two such intractable, but often related conditions: alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dr. Bankole Johnson, an addiction and brain science expert and professor of psychiatry in the University of Maryland School of Medicine, is leading a team launching a five-year study of the effectiveness of a drug called pregablin for treating alcoholism and PTSD together.

Known commercially as Lyrica, pregablin is now used to treat epileptic seizures, nerve pain and anxiety. Past studies also suggested it helps treat alcoholism, but that use has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

There is a lot of suffering among people with PTSD and people with alcoholism, and they are at extreme risk for harming themselves, Johnson said. So this could be particularly important for treatment.

Johnson said doctors use drugs to treat anxiety or to detox a patient, but there is little research into what works for both. Researchers are recruiting people in Baltimore who served in combat roles in the military or were victims of domestic abuse, for example, and turned to alcohol, perhaps to self-medicate.

Johnson said pregablin is promising because it modulates over-active neurotransmitters, or chemical signals, from nerve cells that control the drive to use alcohol and the effects of anxiety. Some users say it has Valium-like effects, but Johnson said its far less addictive.

Any discovery of a medication to treat alcoholism and a severe mental health disorder could help reduce a persistent problem, he said.

While opioids such as heroin and fentanyl have grabbed most of the headlines because of a surge in related overdose deaths, alcohol continues to kill people.

Nationally, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that alcohol use led to about 88,000 deaths each year from 2006 to 2010.

A new report from the Trust for Americas Health counted more than a million deaths tied to alcohol, drugs and suicide in the past decade, with alcohol deaths up 37 percent and suicides increasing 28 percent from 2010 to 2015. The group says it points to an epidemic of pain, despair, disconnection and lack of opportunity and the need for a national strategy to improve resilience.

Benjamin F. Miller, chief policy officer for the Well Being Trust and a contributor to the report, noted that in 2016, 44.7 million U.S. adults experienced a mental health problem, 20.1 million had a substance use disorder and 8.2 million had both. He said the numbers are likely undercounted by far.

He said only 1 in 10 who need treatment for a substance use disorder got it and 4 in 9 who need mental health services get them. Frequently treatment isnt coordinated, significantly dampening its effectiveness, said Miller, also a senior adviser in the University of Colorado School of Medicines department of family medicine.

I applaud the researchers for their work; this is tremendously important for people on the ground, said Miller about the Maryland teams study. It is a wonderful step in the right direction. Though people need a whole lot more help.

Too often, Miller said, the approach in research, as well as health care delivery, is treating each disease a person has independently.

Researchers even tightly control participation in studies to get a clear picture of how a drug works on a single condition, Johnson said.

But patients rarely have only one condition. Even if each is initially addressed medically, with mental health and substance use disorders, a need remains for ongoing counseling and support services for the long term.

Thats especially true with the most complex and severe cases involving PTSD, said Dr. Lawrence V. Tucker, medical director of the Laguna Treatment Hospital in California, one of several facilities operated by American Addiction Centers, which specializes in co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders.

Tucker said he uses medications related to pregablin now on patients with dual diagnoses but said hell be looking for results of the Maryland study. New evidence of effectiveness could inform his decisions on which drugs he uses and for how long.

Still, he agreed that these cases call for long-term therapy  sometimes just to understand the root of the disorders.

Young men, he said, are especially resistant to discussing trauma. Left alone, these patients will most certainly begin using alcohol again.

Someone can get 30 or 60 or 90 days of treatment, but if the root of evil isnt addressed, if you dont address the PTSD, guess what happens? They relapse, he said. People need to learn how to be sober.

Nationally, the CDC reports that alcohol

use led to about 88,000 deaths each year

from 2006 to 2010.
When I was in high school, there was one film I, along with other children, was not allowed to watch: Insaf Ka Tarazu, and even in my late teens, the film remained R-rated (restricted rating) to us. The explicitly shot scenes of Zeenat Aman and Padmini Kolhapuri were considered too risque for their time, and in a way, they still remain some of the most boldly executed scenes on a subject that makes any decent human being cringe: rape. The film dealt with the aftermath of rape, the futile legal battles, and the ultimate end: revenge. By the victim.

Then there was the Jodie Foster- and Kelly McGillis-starrer The Accused that I watched in college, and it remained in my mind for ages; it was that disturbing. That was one film in which the victim gets retribution the way she should have, and like all rape victims should: through court.

Dimple Kapadias Zakhmi Aurat had multiple victims-turned-vigilantes and multiple castration of perpetrators, opening a new debate. What is the right punishment for the very wrong act of rape?

Mahira Khan in Verna

As per media reports at that time, the rape of the character played by Monica Bellucci in Irreversible was said to be the most violent rape scene in the history of cinema. Her rapist also meets a very violent end, and that too out of court.

Sridevis Mom deals with ordeals of a young rape victim, her familys failure to get legal justice, and finally revenge vigilante-style by a family member.

Pakistans Shoaib Mansoors Mahira Khan-starrer Verna is not different from most films dealing with one of the most brutal crimes against humanity: rape. Watching a 10:30pm show yesterday in Lahore in which there was pin-drop silence in the cinema during most of the film, my 23-year-old niece and I both had the similar reaction: how eerily realistic the film was in its treatment of general male behaviour and societal ethos of Pakistan.

Contrary to some negative reports I had read online, Verna, excluding a few structural flaws, is well-made, well-directed, well-acted and well-written, except for the over-the-top ending, and that is also because of my categorical opposition to capital punishment in any form - court-decreed or as a result of vigilantism. What makes Verna a film to be watched attentively is the very powerful dialogues. Like strategically placed punches, most dialogues of Verna hit hard, laced with heavy dollops of reality of sexism, misogyny and treatment of women in general, and that of rape victims in particular. Mansoors Khuda Ke Liye, Bol and Verna deliver one message: For Gods sake speak up or...

Review after review of Verna focus on and bash the film among other things on one aspect: how Sara - Mahira Khans character - should have reacted to rape, how a rape victim is supposed to feel, react and act. Some accuse Verna of trivialisation of rape. Why? Because Sara doesnt break down and hide in a corner? She does all that, and more. And then she stops, outwardly at least.

Is there a manual that I missed? A self-help book that sells the most effective way to overcome the trauma of rape? A tried and tested remedy to lessen the scars of a violent sexual act? A one-fits-all set of actions that aid in normalisation of life after your body has been violated?

No two women react the same way to any act of violence, sexual or otherwise, and no film would ever truly depict how you, she, he, they, anyone or me react to rape. Rape affects in a deeply personal way, and subjective are responses and ways to deal with it.

A victim or a survivor, one rape, one tag. Life cant be that simple, it never is. There is no black and white here, what there is: a multitude of greys.

One rape survivor may retreat into a shell never to move out of it. Another one may lock it all deep within her and never talk about it. One may scream hard for justice and not stop until she gets it. Another one may live a normal life fighting demons no amount of love and sense of security ever exorcise. Life of one victim may be marked with the memory of that one brutal experience, as she recoils inwardly each time a man touches her, in an act of love.

Verna is one of the most potent films Ive seen on the very sensitive subject of rape, and interestingly, there is no rape scene in the film, not even one violent touch. Between Saras kidnapping and return there is nothing more than her husband and familys pain, yet you feel what happened to her when she is reunited with her family. Mahiras portrayal of a rape victim/survivor is powerful, and without any histrionics that dont gel with the theme.

It is easier said than done. How many rape victims do we actually see and interact with in our tight-knit cliques, our protective families, our privileged educational, work and social circles? You hear stories, but they are what they are: stories. Rape is still hushed up, and rape is particularly hushed up in affluent families whose lives work on one simple line: log kya kahenge?

Verna is "power di game" as the opening song states. It is about the treatment politicians, law enforcement and other agencies mete out to ordinary people, the immunity they take for granted, the sense of entitlement their positions attach to them like a medal of honour bought in a pawnshop. Nothing and no one can touch them in their cocoon of invincibility, their bubble of omnipotence.

Verna challenges it all, and then some.

Men in Verna are males I see all around me. In Pakistan that is patriarchal, misogynistic, sexist - even when it doesnt mean to be. While they dont boast of raping women, they behave with a sense of entitlement like Zarar Khans villain Sultan, react like Haroon Shahids Aami, threaten like goons of the powerful scion of a very powerful political family, subvert the system like the police officers who handle Saras case, and mock the very edifice of humanity like all politicians except one do in Verna. Saras husband Aami is not a "weak loser". Aami is every man: rape is shame. For the victim. Rape is not to be dealt with.

Verna is not simply about the hell the victim/survivor goes through. The emphasis of Verna is on the reality of the aftermath: hiding of the crime, victim-blaming, victim-shaming, adding falsehoods and a blatant effort to brush it all away as nothing. Rape is not considered a barbarity that must be punished. Rape is viewed as an act of shame that must never be talked about.

In Verna, it is not about Saras reaction to rape, it is about her fight for justice. When all legal doors close, retribution comes from the victim/survivor and her loved ones. What is termed as an unrealistic, oh-come-on-who-does-this, over the top ending of Verna, I - barring my above-mentioned repudiation of certain punishments - looked at it as something that is meant as a punch in the gut, something meant to force you to keep your eyes fixed on the screen, something hard, ugly and distasteful to jolt you out of your apathy.

There will always be a woman who will make sure her "NO" is heard. Whose fight for justice never ends. Who doesnt live by familial and societal yardstick of accepted behaviour. Who gets justice in her own way. Verna is about expectation of silence and submission, and it is about the exact opposite of that. Verna is about the depths of pain the victim and her loved ones suffer and how they say: enough.
Last evening, I turned up at the Constitution Club for a book launch I was originally not planning to attend. During the panel talk at the event, Delhi chief minister Arvind kejriwal sounded skeptical about Opposition unity while Arun Shourie, the former BJP minister turned bitter critic of PM Modi, batted passionately for it.

"If you really think the country is in peril, that you personally are in peril with investigative agencies putting false cases, then you must get together. There has to be one candidate in every seat against the BJP, said Shourie. You don't need to fool all the people all the time to win. As the previous polls showed, you need just 31 per cent. The 69 per cent did not succeed because they were split," he added.

Image: PTI photo

In Indias "first-past-the-post" (FPTP) system, the fragmentation of opposition parties can effectively ensure the domination of the strongest party. From 1952 to 1977, the Congress was able to win seats anywhere between 60 per cent and 75 per cent in Parliament and most state legislatures with just 40 per cent and 50 per cent of the total votes. The Opposition was polarised, with the Socialists, Communists, Hindutva forces all fighting separately.

Although opposition parties made an effort to unite against Indira Gandhi in 1971, it was unsuccessful with Indira at the height of her popularity. But 1977 was a watershed as the unity of the opposition parties ensured the defeat of the Congress, unbeaten till then.

It was David Butler, widely regarded as the worlds first psephologist, who pioneered the concept of "index of Opposition unity", later popularised by Prannoy Roy and Ashok Lahiri in India. The index of Opposition unity measures the overall level of Opposition unity by an index on a scale of 0 to 100. The higher the level of unity, the better the chances of victory are for the Opposition.

Although Shourie and Kejriwal might have their reasons for disagreeing on the Opposition coming together against the BJP, the varying results in 1971 and 1977 show that if there is a concrete plank on which the Opposition can unite over, even the seemingly invincible can be brought down.

If it was Emergency that brought the disparate opposition parties together in 1977, corruption (in the wake of the Bofors scandal) was the plank on which they converged in 1989 to bring down a government that had won 400-plus seats.

Image: PTI photo

The Assembly elections of Bihar in 2015 and Uttar Pradesh, early this year are contrasting examples of what Opposition unity can achieve. It is another matter that this experiment in Bihar fell apart later due to internal contradictions. In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party polled 4 per cent more votes than what the BJP got, and if you add the Congress votes, these three parties polled 10 per cent more votes than the eventual winner despite the landslide in favour of the BJP when it came to distribution of seats (325/403). So, a three-cornered contest helped the BJP to secure that kind of majority.

A robust Opposition is a very important part of any democracy, whether they are predominantly two-party systems like in the US or the UK or multi-party democracies like India. Many people today find fault with Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) for mainstreaming the Hindutva forces in 1977, despite the noble cause they united for. But Narayan was always consistent in his position on the importance of a sound Opposition right from the days after Independence. Even as early as the 1957 election, JP had tried (and failed) to get the opposition parties to avoid three- and four-cornered contests in individual constituencies. It was not because of his strident opposition to the Congress or any sympathy towards the right-wing forces that he advocated a stronger Opposition.

In a correspondence with Nehru in 1957, Narayan wrote that he was not guided by dislike of or hostility towards the Congress, but merely by certain dispassionate principles. According to parliamentary democracy theory, it is not necessary for the Opposition to be better than the ruling party. Equally bad parties in Opposition are a check on one another and keep the democratic machine on track....

At a time when the Modi government has been riding roughshod over parliamentary principles, betraying autocratic impulses and even holding Parliament hostage to state elections, there is even more reason for the opposition parties to unite under an umbrella. Shourie even suggested in jest that he and former Indian ambassador to Iran and the UAE, KC Singh, (who was in the audience) could actually write a common minimum programme for this alliance in a matter of minutes.

The other day, while speaking about his recently released book, Trinamool Congresss Derek O'Brien spoke about Opposition unity and the significance of Mamata Banerjees meeting with Shiv Senas Uddhav Thackeray.

If even an avowedly Hindutva party and traditional BJP ally like the Shiv Sena can ponder upon joining the Opposition bandwagon, it wont be tough to get traditionally hostile parties such as the SP and the BSP and the Left and the Trinamool in a larger alliance against the threat of a second term for Narendra Modi. The slow disintegration of the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and the likely sweep of the state in 2019 by the DMK will also add strength to the opposition numbers.
It is often said that sometimes "bad examples serve as good warning signs". You are not supposed to make all the mistakes yourself to learn in your lifetime. It is wiser to learn from others' mistakes. The political leadership of India has a lot to learn from Turkey as to how adventurism of any sort should be avoided in statecraft.

The Muslim-majority Turkey, before the rise of political Islam, was a model secular democratic state in the Arab world. Democratic political life was in full swing in Turkey. It had nurtured a democratic Constitution that guaranteed freedom of religion, thought and expression. A vigorous press, radio and television had multiplied and seemed to know no bounds.

However, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rise to power and subsequent ascension through constitutional manipulation changed the political perspective of the once-westernised state. His lust for absolute power destroyed democracy in Turkey. British politician Lord Acton had rightly said: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely Authority that does not exist for liberty is not authority but force."

Erdogan forced the Turkish Parliament to amend the Constitution to codify his dictatorial powers to allow him to remain in power till 2029. The democratic authorities under him lashed out with virulence that were perceived to be threats. The opponents of Erdogan, those who raised their voices against the oppression, were declared as enemies of the republic. They fell victims to concerted government campaigns.

Image: PTI photo

The Turkish government continues its crackdown on detractors. In an unprecedented move, his administration has detained nearly 1.14 lakh people since the unsuccessful coup in July, 2016. Those arrested include police personnel, military officers, and judges as well as civil servants and journalists. Even Parliamentarians have been stripped of the immunity from prosecution which they were constitutionally entitled to.

However, Erdogans crackdown on the media has been the severest. As many as 179 media outlets were shut in 2016 alone. Scores of journalists have been arrested, charge-sheeted and are facing severe excesses. The Turkish democracy has been weakened to the maximum by Erdogan's regular interventions. People of Turkey are now deeply concerned about the revival of xenophobic nationalism.

What lessons Turkey has for India?

After 70 years of Independence, the old certitudes of Indian politics appear to be crumbling. A new political grammar is trying to gain prominence that does not fit with the idea of a nation-state that India historically stands for. The political system of India is at a crossroads. A concerted effort is gaining momentum to create obedient herds instead of informed citizens.

The model of nation-building committed to protecting cultural and religious differences is being sacrificed for the sake of imposing a uniform "Indian-ness".

The thrust for homogeneity is, in fact, a negation of the Indian nationalism which is based on the idea of an ancient civilisation, united by a shared history and sustained by a pluralist democracy. We need to introspect on the very basic issues - who are we and where do we want to go from here?

Ever since the Narendra Modi government has come to power in May 2014, a sense of discomfort has prevailed among the intellectuals, and that's not unfounded. Starting from the Rohith Vemula incident in Hyderabad University to JNU and IIT, thinking minds have been the targets of this government.

Whether you question the declining GDP figures, foreign policy matters, the war preparedness of our Army or the most basic issue of price rise, you are being tagged as an "anti-national". The BJP government and their ideological patrons have inexorably reduced intellectuals from being objects of reverence to objects of popular repugnance.

Secondly, even though the BJP fought elections on the anti-corruption plank, it is the transparency laws and the mechanisms to deal with corruption that are at the receiving end of the Modi government.

On the one hand, transparency laws like the Right to Information Act are being diluted, and on the other, whistleblowers and anti-corruption activists are silenced while the corrupts are being shielded.

Thirdly, the Modi government's systematic crackdown on the civil society is a clear signal that it hates any kind of alternative views that may be incongruent to the worldview that it projects. Nobody will advocate for dubious NGOs, but it needs to be understood that a section of the civil society works for strengthening of democracy by holding governments and institutions accountable and standing up for the rights of people.

By constricting their space, we are disempowering the marginalised and the voiceless.

The fourth and the most important point is that the Modi government has become paranoid about a free press. Those who are familiar with the Gujarat model of development will know that Narendra Modi never allowed freedom of expression to thrive. At present, the attempt is to suffocate the voice that raises uncomfortable questions about the BJP and its government.

The government at the Centre and BJP-ruled states such as Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are either using saam, daam, dand, bhed (all possible means) against the media to suppress the truth or have transformed certain TV news channels into loudspeakers for the present regime.

Therefore, there are enough reasons to doubt the ability of the BJP, a political party which does not believe in the principle of inclusive politics to operate within the framework of a secular democratic system while respecting the boundaries between religion and state.

After all, the BJP-led government at the Centre is being run by the RSS, and it is no secret that the ideologies of the RSS are incompatible with democratic principles.
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Biglari Holdings Inc., through its subsidiaries, primarily operates and franchises restaurants in the United States. It owns, operates, and franchises restaurants under the Steak n Shake and Western Sizzlin names. As of December 31, 2021, it operated 199 Steak n Shake company-operated restaurants, 159 franchise partner units, and 178 traditional franchise units, as well as 3 Western Sizzlin company-operated restaurants and 38 franchised units. The company also engages in underwriting commercial trucking insurance; selling physical damage and non-trucking liability insurance to truckers; and providing property and casualty insurance. In addition, it operates oil and natural gas properties in the Gulf of Mexico; and publishes and sells magazines and related publishing products under the MAXIM brand name. Further, it licenses media products and services; and engages in the investment activities. The company was formerly known as The Steak n Shake Company and changed its name to Biglari Holdings Inc. in April 2010. Biglari Holdings Inc. was founded in 1934 and is based in San Antonio, Texas.
The Rev. David Hawley will be the guest minister at the 7 p.m. service on Wednesday, Nov. 29, at Living Word Christian Church, 2015 Ward Ave.

Hawley, principal of Williams Bay (Wis.) High School, and his wife, Marcia, began to minister in their home several days a week to the discouraged, emotionally bound and those with physical maladies. After seven years, he founded Christian Life Church, Delavan, Wis., in 1980.
CNO Financial Group, Inc., through its subsidiaries, develops, markets, and administers health insurance, annuity, individual life insurance, and other insurance products for senior and middle-income markets in the United States. It offers Medicare supplement, supplemental health, and long-term care insurance policies; life insurance; and annuities, as well as Medicare advantage plans to individuals through phone, online, mail, and face-to-face. The company also focuses on worksite and group sales for businesses, associations, and other membership groups by interacting with customers at their place of employment. In addition, it provides fixed index annuities; fixed interest annuities, including fixed rate single and flexible premium deferred annuities; single premium immediate annuities; supplemental health products, such as specified disease, accident, and hospital indemnity products; and long-term care plans primarily to retirees and older self-employed individuals in the middle-income market. Further, the company offers universal life and other interest-sensitive life products; and traditional life policies that include whole life, graded benefit life, term life, and single premium whole life products, as well as graded benefit life insurance products. CNO Financial Group, Inc. markets its products under the Bankers Life, Washington National, and Colonial Penn brand names. The company sells its products through agents, independent producers, and direct marketing. CNO Financial Group, Inc. was founded in 1979 and is headquartered in Carmel, Indiana.
Designs for the proposed improvements to the Fred Funk Boat Landing were presented to the Onalaska Town Board in 2015 but the improvements have yet to get underway.

The Onalaska Town Board received an update at its Nov. 14 meeting on the project to give the Brice Prairie boat landing a makeover. The supervisors were told progress is being made, but the submission of a grant to help fund the improvements is on hold until a stormwater assessment is completed.

The towns engineering firm, General Engineering, currently has the plans and must provide the stormwater calculations to be submitted with the grant application.

The DNR (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources) needs to know how successful the stormwater flow is, said Marc Schultz, a member of the Lake Onalaska Protection and Rehabilitation District.

LOPRD has been spearheading the plan to improve the landing built in the early 1960s. A proposed design of the improvements was presented to the OTB in 2015. The town hopes to submit the Recreational Boating Facilities matching grant application to the DNR to meet next Aprils deadline.

Although, the landings launch pad was upgraded in the 1980s, the concrete planks are now worn and need to be replaced.

Its an old landing and its going downhill, said Schultz.

Along with the launch pad, other improvements planned for the landing include repaving the parking area and the launch staging areas as well as installing additional lighting and stabilizing the shoreline to prevent erosion and damage by burrowing animals.

The design presented by MBA Architects, Inc. two years ago showed other amenities such as a launch site for canoes, kayaks and other nonmotorized watercraft, a picnic area and a donor patio. At last Tuesdays meeting, the OTB learned a gazebo planned at the landing wont be constructed because it would be located in the flood plain.

The town leases the boat landing on County Hwy ZB from the on US Army Corps of Engineers. According to the lease agreement, the town is responsible for maintaining the landing as one of its parks.

The landing is named in honor of Fred Funk, a former member of LOPRD and conservation supporter, who passed away in 2012.

If the grant is approved, the town, through the LOPRDs fundraising efforts, would cover the other half of the amount needed with donations and in-kind contributions. Schultz estimated the project might run around $300,000, but the actual amount still needs to be determined.

The county is supporting the project by designating $40,000 of a contribution its received from the CAPX2020 power line project. Those funds are stipulated to be used on parks and conservation projects.

Heritage Hills resident oppose annexation

Residents in the Heritage Hills subdivision took proactive action to indicate their desire to remain in the town of Onalaska. Despite the lack of a proposal to annex the subdivision by the city of Onalaska, 83 Heritage Hills residents signed a petition indicating their opposition to being annexed to the city.

We would like to maintain the integrity of our neighborhood, said Heritage Hills residents spokesperson Leanne Boebel.

The residents concerns stemmed from improvements underway on an access road to the First Evangelical Free Church. The church is in the city of Onalaska, but its property borders the town line.

The residents were concerned that (annexation) might happen when they saw the emergency access improvement from the church parking lot, said town of Onalaska clerk Mary Rinehart.

The access has temporary barricades blocking use by motorists. However, a subdivision resident whose property abuts the churchs property reported motorists have traveled across his lawn to exit the churchs parking lot.

In order to get around the barriers, you have to drive on our yard, said Thomas Heiderscheit.

The city of Onalaska is requiring the church to put up gates to prevent further use of the access roadway except in emergencies. In the event of an emergency, the Onalaska Fire Department would have a key to unlock the gates.

The OTB agreed to have its crew put up barricades on the towns right-of-way after checking with the city of Onalaska about any plans the city might have for addressing the issue.

We need to contact Onalaska to see what theyre going to do, said OTB supervisor Jerry Monti. The city is requiring the church to put something there.
Global Payments Inc. provides payment technology and software solutions for card, electronic, check, and digital-based payments in the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. It operates through three segments: Merchant Solutions, Issuer Solutions, and Business and Consumer Solutions. The Merchant Solutions segment offers authorization services, settlement and funding services, customer support and help-desk functions, chargeback resolution, terminal rental, sales and deployment, payment security services, consolidated billing and statements, and on-line reporting services. This segment also provides an array of enterprise software solutions that streamline business operations of its customers in various vertical markets; and value-added services, such as point-of-sale solutions, and analytic and engagement tools, as well as payroll and human capital management services. The Issuer Solutions segment offers solutions that enable financial institutions and retailers to manage their card portfolios through a platform; and commercial payments and ePayables solutions for businesses and governments. The Business and Consumer Solutions segment provides general-purpose reloadable prepaid debit and payroll cards, demand deposit accounts, and other financial service solutions to the underbanked and other consumers, and businesses under the Netspend brand. It markets its products and services through direct sales force, trade associations, agent and enterprise software providers, referral arrangements with value-added resellers, and independent sales organizations. The company was founded in 1967 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., through its subsidiaries, produces, markets, and distributes fresh and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Fresh and Value-Added Products, Banana, and Other Products and Services. It offers pineapples, fresh-cut fruit, fresh-cut vegetables, melons, and vegetables; non-tropical fruits, such as grapes, apples, citrus, blueberries, strawberries, pears, peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries, and kiwis; other fruit and vegetables, and avocados; and prepared fruit and vegetables, juices, other beverages, and meals and snacks. The company also engages in the sale of poultry and meat products; and third-party freight services business. In addition, it manufactures and sells plastic and box products, such as bins, trays, bags, and boxes. The company offers its products under the Del Monte brand, as well as under other brands, such as UTC, Rosy, Fruit Express, Just Juice, Fruitini, Mann's Logo, Arcadian Harvest, Nourish Bowls, Broccolini, Caulilini, Better Burger Leaf, RomaLeaf, and other regional brands. It markets and distributes its products to retail stores, club stores, convenience stores, wholesalers, distributors, and foodservice operators. Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. was founded in 1886 and is based in George Town, Cayman Islands.
A 35-year-old Tomah man was referred to the Monroe County District Attorney on drug charges after police responded to a single-vehicle crash in the town of Byron Oct. 10.

A witness told police he helped a visibly intoxicated Adam Lee Drew-Puent, exit his vehicle, which skidded into a ditch on Highway 173. The witness said Drew-Puent asked him not to call police before fleeing into a field.

The report said police located a light bulb in the center console of the vehicle that police believe was used as drug paraphernalia. The report says the bulb contained white powder that was later identified as methamphetamine. An open can of beer was also found inside the vehicle, according to the report.

Drew-Puent was referred to the district attorney for possession of methamphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia.

In other Monroe County Sheriffs Office news:

Kayla Michelle-Condoleo, 29, Ontario, and Robert Vernon Hansen, 29, Wilton, were referred to the district attorney after a Sept. 27 incident in the town of Sheldon.

Police were called to a Highway 33 residence, where Condoleo had reportedly been struck by a car operated by Hansen. A witness told police that she and Condoleo had gotten into an argument and that Condoleo directed threatening and abusive language toward her and challenged her to a fight. The witness said she and Hansen got into a car to leave and that Condoleo ran after the vehicle when she was hit.

Another witness told police that Condoleo went out to remove a cat that was on the front hood of the car to set it down when Hansen floored it in reverse. Condoleo, who was taken to Viroqua Memorial Hospital, was fitted with a cast and told police she and a broken knee and ankle.

Condoleo was referred for disorderly conduct, and Hansen was referred for negligent operation of a motor vehicle.

Two 16-year-old juveniles were referred to the district attorney for disorderly conduct after a Sept. 5 incident in the town of Lincoln. The two are accused of getting into a fight that involved punching and hair pulling before police arrived to break it up.

Kenneth J. Palms, 42, Sparta, was referred to the district attorney for obstructing an officer. He is accused of misidentifying himself to police during an Oct. 11 traffic stop in the town of Sparta.

Rachael M. Pleet, 40, and Joshua J. Spaulding, 33, both of Wisconsin Rapids, were referred to the district attorney for theft after an alleged shoplifting incident at Loves Travel Stop in Oakdale.

A witness told police the two browsed for 20 minutes in the store before Pleet was observed stuffing a handful of items into her purse. When confronted about the merchandise, the witness said Pleet tossed some of the items on the floor and sidewalk, got into a vehicle with Spaulding and drove away.

Pleet and Spaulding were both referred for theft, and Pleet was also referred for bail jumping.

Dustin E. Downing, 29, Kendall, was referred to the district attorney for disorderly conduct after a Sept. 9 incident in the town of Wellington.

According to the report, Downing was yelling and throwing items at a Hwy. V residence. A witness said Downing threatened to shoot her cars tires out and then fired a round from a .45 caliber handgun.

The woman told police she locked Downing out of the house, but Downing removed a window air conditioning unit and entered through the open window. She said Downing pushed her on the bed and twisted her arm before she was able to crawl away and call police. She said Downing then left the house on foot.

Police recovered the handgun inside the residence.
USANA Health Sciences, Inc. develops, manufactures, and sells science-based nutritional and personal care products. The company offers USANA nutritional products that comprise essentials/CellSentials, such as vitamin and mineral supplements that provide a foundation of total body nutrition for various age groups; optimizers comprising targeted supplements that are designed to meet cardiovascular, skeletal/structural, and digestive health needs; and foods that include meal replacement shakes, snack bars, and other related products. It also provides Celavive, a skin care regimen for various skin care types and ethnicities; and other products for prenatal, infant, and young child age groups. In addition, the company offers materials and online tools to assist associates in building their businesses, as well as in marketing products. It offers its products directly in the Asia Pacific, the Americas, and Europe, as well as online. The company has a research collaboration agreement with Beijing University of Chinese Medicine for research in the field of traditional Chinese medicine; and National Sports Training Bureau. USANA Health Sciences, Inc. was founded in 1992 and is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Telefonica Deutschland Holding AG provides integrated telecommunication services to private and business customers in Germany. It offers mobile and stationery voice and data services; very high data rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) internet services; fiber-to-the-home lines; broadband services, consisting of VDSL, cable, fiber, and fixed mobile substitution services; and machine to machine communication and managed connectivity services. The company also distributes various terminal devices, such as mobile phones; and offers digital products and services in the fields of Internet of Things, as well as O2 Tv, O2 cloud, and O2 Select & Stream. In addition, it provides access to infrastructure and services for its wholesale partners. The company provides its products and services through a network of independently operated franchise and premium partner shops, and online and telesales channels, as well as indirect selling channels, such as partnerships and co-operations with retailers. It markets its products and services under the O2, Blau, AY YILDIZ, Ortel Mobile, Telefonica, and Geeny brand names. As of December 31, 2021, Telefonica Deutschland Holding AG served approximately 45.7 million mobile accesses and 2.3 million fixed-line customers. The company was formerly known as Telefonica Germany Verwaltungs GmbH and changed its name to Telefonica Deutschland Holding AG in September 2012. The company is based in Munich, Germany. Telefonica Deutschland Holding AG is a subsidiary of Telefonica Germany Holdings Limited.
Ashford Hospitality Trust is a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on the hospitality industry. The companys portfolio is concentrated in upper upscale, full-service hotels across the US. The portfolio strategy seeks to optimize total returns by maximizing the value of new acquisitions while paying dividends over time. The company boasts a geographically diversified portfolio of dominant branded full-service hotels. Ashford Inc externally advises Ashford Hospitality Trust.

Ashford Hospitality Trust is the culmination of decades of real estate experience dating back to the 1960s. Now based in Dallas, TX, the company was founded and went public in 2003. The company is geared to withstand the ups and downs of the hospitality and hotel cycles. The company is committed to disciplined capital market activities, has a successful transaction track record, and brings value-added asset management to the table.

Ashford Hospitality Trust is guided by five principles that best describe the company. These are Ethical, Innovative, Profitable, Engaging, and Tenacious and all key components of its reputation for integrity.

The companys portfolio is well-diversified across brands and includes but is not limited to Courtyard, Crown Plaza, Embassy Suites, Hampton Inn, Hilton, Marriot, Ritz-Carlton, and Sheraton. Properties are located in 25 of the 50 US states and Washington, D.C. targeting the top 25 markets in the nation. The company also owns a number of private and boutique names as well.

Ashford Hospitality Trust was founded by Monty J. Bennet who is the Chairman of the Board as well as Chairman, CEO, and President of Ashford, Inc which also trades on the NYSE. Mr. Bennet has more than 25 years of experience in the hospitality industry including owning and operating major hotels.
Crestwood Equity Partners LP develops, acquires, owns, controls, and operates assets and operations in the energy midstream sector in the United States. It operates through three segments: Gathering and Processing North; Gathering and Processing South; and Storage and Logistics. The Gathering and Processing North segment offers natural gas, crude oil, and produced water gathering, compression, treating, processing, and disposal services to producers in the Williston Basin and Powder River Basin. This segment owns and operates natural gas facilities with approximately 0.4 Bcf/d of gathering capacity and 0.5 Bcf/d of processing capacity; crude oil facilities with approximately 150,000 Bbls/d of gathering capacity and 266,000 Bbls of storage capacity; and produced water facilities with approximately 130,000 Bbls/d of gathering and disposal capacity. The Gathering and Processing South segment provides natural gas gathering, compression, treating, and processing; and produced water gathering and disposal services to producers in the Marcellus, Barnett, and Delaware basins. This segment owns and operates natural gas facilities with 2.5 Bcf/d of gathering capacity and 0.7 Bcf/d of processing capacity; and produced water facilities with approximately 75,000 Bbls/d of gathering and disposal capacity. The Storage and Logistics segment offers natural gas liquids, crude oil, and natural gas storage, terminal, marketing, and transportation, including rail, truck and pipeline services to producers, refiners, marketers, utilities, and other customers. Crestwood Equity GP LLC serves as the general partner of Crestwood Equity Partners LP. The company was formerly known as Inergy L.P. and changed its name to Crestwood Equity Partners LP in October 2013. Crestwood Equity Partners LP was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
AbbVie Inc. discovers, develops, manufactures, and sells pharmaceuticals in the worldwide. The company offers HUMIRA, a therapy administered as an injection for autoimmune and intestinal Behcet's diseases; SKYRIZI to treat moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in adults; RINVOQ, a JAK inhibitor for the treatment of moderate to severe active rheumatoid arthritis in adult patients; IMBRUVICA to treat adult patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), and VENCLEXTA, a BCL-2 inhibitor used to treat adults with CLL or SLL; and MAVYRET to treat patients with chronic HCV genotype 1-6 infection. It also provides CREON, a pancreatic enzyme therapy for exocrine pancreatic insufficiency; Synthroid used in the treatment of hypothyroidism; Linzess/Constella to treat irritable bowel syndrome with constipation and chronic idiopathic constipation; Lupron for the palliative treatment of advanced prostate cancer, endometriosis and central precocious puberty, and patients with anemia caused by uterine fibroids; and Botox therapeutic. In addition, the company offers ORILISSA, a nonpeptide small molecule gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist for women with moderate to severe endometriosis pain; Duopa and Duodopa, a levodopa-carbidopa intestinal gel to treat Parkinson's disease; Lumigan/Ganfort, a bimatoprost ophthalmic solution for the reduction of elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) in patients with open angle glaucoma (OAG) or ocular hypertension; Ubrelvy to treat migraine with or without aura in adults; Alphagan/ Combigan, an alpha-adrenergic receptor agonist for the reduction of IOP in patients with OAG; and Restasis, a calcineurin inhibitor immunosuppressant to increase tear production, as well as other eye care products. AbbVie Inc. has a research collaboration with Dragonfly Therapeutics, Inc. The company was incorporated in 2012 and is headquartered in North Chicago, Illinois.
The following companies are subsidiares of American International Group: AGC Life Insurance Company, AIG APAC HOLDINGS PTE. LTD., AIG Aerospace Insurance Services Inc., AIG Asia Pacific Insurance Pte. Ltd., AIG Asset Management (Europe) Limited, AIG Asset Management (U.S.) LLC, AIG Assurance Company, AIG Australia Limited, AIG Brazil Holding I LLC, AIG CIS Investments LLC, AIG Canada Holdings Inc., AIG Capital Corporation, AIG Capital Services Inc., AIG Claims Inc., AIG Credit Management LLC, AIG Egypt Insurance Company S.A.E., AIG Employee Services Inc., AIG Europe Holdings S.a.r.l, AIG Europe S.A., AIG Federal Savings Bank, AIG Financial Products Corp., AIG General Insurance Co. Ltd., AIG Global Asset Management Holdings Corp., AIG Global Operations Inc., AIG Global Real Estate Investment Corp., AIG Global Reinsurance Operations, AIG Holdings Europe Limited, AIG Insurance (Thailand) Public Company Limited, AIG Insurance Company China Limited, AIG Insurance Company JSC, AIG Insurance Company of Canada, AIG Insurance Company-Puerto Rico, AIG Insurance Hong Kong Limited, AIG Insurance Management Services Inc., AIG Insurance New Zealand Limited, AIG International Holdings GmbH, AIG Investments UK Limited, AIG Israel Insurance Company Ltd, AIG Japan Holdings Kabushiki Kaisha, AIG Kenya Insurance Company Limited, AIG Korea Inc., AIG Latin America I.I., AIG Latin America Investments S.L., AIG Lebanon SAL, AIG Life Holdings Inc., AIG Life Limited, AIG Life South Africa Limited, AIG Life of Bermuda Ltd., AIG MEA Holdings Limited, AIG MEA Limited, AIG Malaysia Insurance Berhad, AIG Markets Inc., AIG Matched Funding Corp., AIG PC Global Services Inc., AIG Philippines Insurance Inc., AIG Property Casualty Company, AIG Property Casualty Inc., AIG Property Casualty International LLC, AIG Property Casualty U.S. Inc., AIG Re-Takaful (L) Berhad, AIG Resseguros Brasil S.A., AIG Seguros Brasil S.A., AIG Seguros Mexico S.A. de C.V., AIG South Africa Limited, AIG Specialty Insurance Company, AIG Technologies Inc., AIG Travel Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., AIG Travel Assist Inc., AIG Travel Assist Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., AIG Travel EMEA Limited, AIG Travel Inc., AIG Uganda Limited, AIG Vietnam Insurance Company Limited, AIG WarrantyGuard Inc., AIG-FP Pinestead Holdings Corp., AIG-Metropolitana Cia. de Seguros y Reaseguros S.A., AIGGRE Europe Real Estate Fund I GP S.a r.l., AIGGRE Europe Real Estate Fund II GP S.a r.l., AIGGRE U.S. Real Estate Fund I GP LLC, AIGGRE U.S. Real Estate Fund II GP LLC, AIGGRE U.S. Real Estate Fund III GP LP, AIGGRE U.S. Real Estate Fund IV GP LLC, AIU Insurance Company, AM Holdings LLC, Ageas Protect, AlphaCat Managers Ltd., American General Corporation, American General Life Insurance Company, American Home Assurance Co. Ltd., American Home Assurance Company, American International Group UK Limited, American International Realty LLC, American International Reinsurance Company Ltd., American International Underwriters del Ecuador-Holding S.A. en Liquidacion S.A., Arthur J. Glatfelter Agency Inc., Blackboard Insurance Company, Blackboard Specialty Insurance Company, Blackboard U.S. Holdings Inc., C.A. de Seguros American International, Commerce and Industry Insurance Company, Crop Risk Services Inc., Eaglestone Reinsurance Company, Ellipse, Franklin Life Insurance Company, Fuji Fire and Marine, Glatfelter Insurance Group, Glatfelter Underwriting Services Inc., Globe and Rutgers Insurance Group, Grand Isle SAC Limited, Granite State Insurance Company, Illinois National Insurance Co., Inversiones Segucasai C.A., Johannesburg Insurance Holdings (Proprietary) Limited, Laya Healthcare Limited, Lexington Insurance Company, Lexington Specialty Insurance Agency Inc., National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh Pa., National Union Fire Insurance Company of Vermont, New Hampshire Insurance Company, PCG 2019 Corporate Member Limited, PT AIG Insurance Indonesia, Pine Street Real Estate Holdings Corp., Risk Specialists Companies Insurance Agency Inc., SAFG Capital LLC, SAFG Retirement Services Inc., Service Net Warranty LLC, Stratford Insurance Company, SunAmerica Asset Management LLC, Talbot Holdings Ltd., Talbot Underwriting Holdings Ltd., Talbot Underwriting Ltd., The Insurance Company of the State of Pennsylvania, The United States Life Insurance Company in the City of New York, The Variable Annuity Life Insurance Company, Travel Guard, Travel Guard Group Canada Inc./Groupe Garde Voyage du Canada Inc., Travel Guard Group Inc., Tudor Insurance Company, VALIC Financial Advisors Inc., Valic Retirement Services Company, Validus Holdings, Validus Holdings (UK) Ltd., Validus Holdings Ltd., Validus Reinsurance (Switzerland) Ltd, Validus Reinsurance Ltd., Validus Ventures Ltd., Volunteer Firemen's Insurance Services Inc., and Western World Insurance Company.

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Snap-on Incorporated manufactures and markets tools, equipment, diagnostics, and repair information and systems solutions for professional users worldwide. It operates through Commercial & Industrial Group, Snap-on Tools Group, Repair Systems & Information Group, and Financial Services segments. The company offers hand tools, including wrenches, sockets, ratchet wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers, punches and chisels, saws and cutting tools, pruning tools, torque measuring instruments, and other products; power tools, such as cordless, pneumatic, hydraulic, and corded tools; and tool storage products comprising tool chests, roll cabinets, and other products. It also provides handheld and computer-based diagnostic products, service and repair information products, diagnostic software solutions, electronic parts catalogs, business management systems and services, point-of-sale systems, integrated systems for vehicle service shops, original equipment manufacturer purchasing facilitation services, and warranty management systems and analytics. In addition, the company offers solutions for the service of vehicles and industrial equipment that include wheel alignment equipment, wheel balancers, tire changers, vehicle lifts, test lane equipment, collision repair equipment, vehicle air conditioning service equipment, brake service equipment, fluid exchange equipment, transmission troubleshooting equipment, safety testing equipment, battery chargers, and hoists, as well as after-sales support services and training programs. Further, it provides financing programs to facilitate the sales of its products and support its franchise business. The company serves the aviation and aerospace, agriculture, construction, government and military, mining, natural resources, power generation, and technical education industries, as well as vehicle dealerships and repair centers. Snap-on Incorporated was founded in 1920 and is based in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Under Armour, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the developing, marketing, and distributing performance apparel, footwear, and accessories for men, women, and youth. The company offers its apparel in compression, fitted, and loose fit types. It also provides footwear products for running, training, basketball, cleated sports, recovery, and outdoor applications. In addition, the company offers accessories, which include gloves, bags, headwear, and sports masks; and digital subscription and advertising services under the MapMyRun and MapMyRide platforms. It primarily offers its products under the UNDER ARMOUR, UA, HEATGEAR, COLDGEAR, HOVR, PROTECT THIS HOUSE, I WILL, UA Logo, ARMOUR FLEECE, and ARMOUR BRA brands. The company sells its products through wholesale channels, including national and regional sporting goods chains, independent and specialty retailers, department store chains, mono-branded Under Armour retail stores, institutional athletic departments, and leagues and teams, as well as independent distributors; and directly to consumers through a network of 422 brand and factory house stores, as well as through e-commerce websites. It operates in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. Under Armour, Inc. was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland.
Bancolombia S.A. provides banking products and services in Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. The company operates through nine segments: Banking Colombia, Banking Panama, Banking El Salvador, Banking Guatemala, Trust, Investment Banking, Brokerage, International Banking, and All Other. It offers checking and savings accounts, fixed term deposits, and investment products; trade financing, loans funded by domestic development banks, working capital loans, credit cards, personal and vehicle loans, payroll loans, and overdrafts; financial support to real estate developers and mortgages for individuals and companies; factoring; and financial and operating leasing services. The company also provides hedging instruments, including futures, forwards, options, and swaps; and brokerage, investment advisory, and private banking services, including selling and distributing equities, futures, foreign currencies, fixed income securities, mutual funds, and structured products. In addition, it offers cash management services; foreign currency transaction services; life, auto, commercial, and homeowner's insurance products; and online and computer banking services. Further, the company provides project and acquisition finance, debt and equity capital markets, principal investments, M&A, hedging strategies, restructurings, and structured financing; money market accounts, mutual and pension funds, private equity funds, payment and corporate trust, and custody; internet-based trading platform; inter-bank lending and repurchase agreements; managing escrow accounts, and investment and real estate funds; and transportation, securities brokerage, maintenance and remodeling, and outsourcing services. As of December 31, 2021, it operated 1,015 branches; 28,676 banking correspondents; 529 PAMs; 210 kiosks in El Salvador and 187 in Colombia; and 6,094 ATMs. Bancolombia S.A. was incorporated in 1945 and is headquartered in Medellin, Colombia.
Manulife Financial Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides financial products and services in Asia, Canada, the United States, and internationally. The company operates through Wealth and Asset Management Businesses; Insurance and Annuity Products; And Corporate and Other segments. The Wealth and Asset Management Businesses segment provides mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, group retirement and savings products, and institutional asset management services through agents and brokers affiliated with the company, securities brokerage firms, and financial advisors pension plan consultants and banks. The Insurance and Annuity Products segment offers deposit and credit products; individual life, and individual and group long-term care insurance; and guaranteed and partially guaranteed annuity products through insurance agents, brokers, banks, financial planners, and direct marketing. The Corporate and Other segment is involved in property and casualty insurance and reinsurance businesses; and run-off reinsurance operations, including variable annuities, and accident and health. It also manages timberland and agricultural portfolios; and engages in insurance agency, portfolio and mutual fund management, mutual fund dealer, life, annuity, long-term care, and financial reinsurance; and fund management businesses. Additionally, the company holds and manages provides investment management, counseling, advisory, and dealer services. Manulife Financial Corporation was incorporated in 1887 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.
CRH plc, through its subsidiaries, manufactures and distributes building materials. It operates in three segments: Americas Materials, Europe Materials, and Building Products. The company manufactures and supplies cement, lime, aggregates, precast, ready mixed concrete, and asphalt products; concrete masonry and hardscape products comprising pavers, blocks and kerbs, retaining walls, and related patio products; and glass and glazing products, including architectural glass, custom-engineered curtain and window walls, architectural windows, storefront systems, doors, skylights, and architectural hardware. It also offers precast concrete and polymer-based products, such as underground vaults, drainage pipes and structures, utility enclosures, and modular precast structures to the water, energy, communication, transportation, and building structures markets; and construction accessories, such as anchoring, fixing, and connection solutions, as well as lifting systems, formwork accessories, and other accessories used in construction applications. In addition, the company offers network access products, which include composite access chambers, covers, passive safety systems, retention sockets, sealants, and meter boxes; and paving and construction services. Further, it provides building and civil engineering contracting, contract surfacing, operates logistics and owned railway infrastructure; sells and distributes cement; and supplies access chambers and ducting products. It serves governments, contractors, homebuilders, homeowners, and sub-contractors. The company operates primarily in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the rest of Europe, the United States, and internationally. CRH plc was founded in 1936 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.
Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. provides investor communications and technology-driven solutions for the financial services industry. The company's Investor Communication Solutions segment processes and distributes proxy materials to investors in equity securities and mutual funds, as well as facilitates related vote processing services; and distributes regulatory reports, class action, and corporate action/reorganization event information, as well as tax reporting solutions. It also offers ProxyEdge, an electronic proxy delivery and voting solution; data-driven solutions and an end-to-end platform for content management, composition, and omni-channel distribution of regulatory, marketing, and transactional information, as well as mutual fund trade processing services; data and analytics solutions; solutions for public corporations and mutual funds; SEC filing and capital markets transaction services; registrar, stock transfer, and record-keeping services; and omni-channel customer communications solutions, as well as operates Broadridge Communications Cloud platform that creates, delivers, and manages communications and customer engagement activities. The company's Global Technology and Operations segment provides solutions that automate the front-to-back transaction lifecycle of equity, mutual fund, fixed income, foreign exchange and exchange-traded derivatives, order capture and execution, trade confirmation, margin, cash management, clearance and settlement, reference data management, reconciliations, securities financing and collateral management, asset servicing, compliance and regulatory reporting, portfolio accounting, and custody-related services. This segment also offers business process outsourcing services; technology solutions, such portfolio management, compliance, fee billing, and operational support solutions; and capital market and wealth management solutions. The company was founded in 1962 and is headquartered in Lake Success, New York.
Diebold Nixdorf, Incorporated provides connected commerce solutions to financial institutions and retailers in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Latin America. It operates through Eurasia Banking, Americas Banking, and Retail segments. The company offers cash recyclers and dispensers, intelligent deposit terminals, teller automation tools, and kiosk technologies, as well as physical security solutions; and front-end applications for consumer connection points and back-end platforms that manage channel transactions, operations and integration, and facilitate omnichannel transactions, endpoint monitoring, remote asset management, customer marketing, merchandise management, and analytics. It also provides banking product-related services comprising proactive monitoring and rapid resolution of incidents through remote service capabilities or an on-site visit; first- and second-line maintenance, preventive maintenance, and on-demand services; managed and outsourcing services, such as business processes, solution management, upgrades, and transaction processing; and cash management services. In addition, the company offers DN Vynamic software suite to simplify and enhance the consumer experience; mobile point of sale and self-checkout terminals; printers, scales, and mobile scanners; and banknote and coin processing systems. Additionally, it provides retail customer's product-related services, such as on-demand and professional services; maintenance and availability services; implementation services; managed mobility services; monitoring and advanced analytics; and store life-cycle management services. The company was formerly known as Diebold, Incorporated and changed its name to Diebold Nixdorf, Incorporated in December 2016. Diebold Nixdorf, Incorporated was founded in 1859 and is headquartered in Hudson, Ohio.
Associated Banc-Corp, a bank holding company, provides various banking and nonbanking products to individuals and businesses in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota. The company operates through three segments: Corporate and Commercial Specialty; Community, Consumer, and Business; and Risk Management and Shared Services. Its Corporate and Commercial Specialty segment offers lending solutions, including commercial loans and lines of credit, commercial real estate financing, construction loans, letters of credit, leasing, asset based lending, and loan syndications; deposit and cash management solutions, such as commercial checking and interest-bearing deposit products, cash vault and night depository services, liquidity solutions, payables and receivables solutions, and information services; specialized financial services such as interest rate risk management, foreign exchange solutions, and commodity hedging; fiduciary services such as administration of pension, profit-sharing and other employee benefit plans, fiduciary and corporate agency services, and institutional asset management; and investable funds solutions such as savings, money market deposit accounts, IRA accounts, CDs, fixed and variable annuities, full-service, discount and online investment brokerage; investment advisory services; and trust and investment management accounts. The company's Community, Consumer, and Business segment offers lending solutions, such as residential mortgages, home equity loans and lines of credit, personal and installment loans, auto loans, business loans, and business lines of credit; and deposit and transactional solutions such as checking, credit, debit and pre-paid cards, online banking and bill pay; and money transfer services. As of December 31, 2021, the company operated 215 banking branches. Associated Banc-Corp was founded in 1861 and is headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Juniper Networks, Inc. designs, develops, and sells network products and services worldwide. The company offers routing products, such as ACX series universal access routers to deploy high-bandwidth services; MX series Ethernet routers that function as a universal edge platform; PTX series packet transport routers; wide-area network SDN controllers; and session smart routers. It also provides switching products, including EX series Ethernet switches to address the access, aggregation, and core layer switching requirements of micro branch, branch office, and campus environments; QFX series of core, spine, and top-of-rack data center switches; and juniper access points, which provide Wi-Fi access and performance. In addition, the company offers security products comprising SRX series services gateways for the data center; Branch SRX family provides an integrated and next-generation firewall; virtual firewall that delivers various features of physical firewalls; and advanced malware protection, a cloud-based service and Juniper ATP. Further, it offers Junos OS, a network operating system; Contrail networking, which provides an open-source and standards-based platform for SDN; Mist AI-driven Wired, Wireless, and WAN assurance solutions to set and measure key metrics; Mist AI-driven Marvis Virtual Network Assistant, which identifies the root cause of issues; Juniper Paragon Automation, a modular portfolio of cloud-native software applications; and Juniper Apstra to automate the network lifecycle in a single system. Additionally, the company provides software-as-a-service, technical support, maintenance, and professional services, as well as education and training programs. It sells its products through direct sales, distributors, value-added resellers, and original equipment manufacturers to end-users in the cloud, service provider, and enterprise markets. The company was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
KeyCorp operates as the holding company for KeyBank National Association that provides various retail and commercial banking products and services in the United States. It operates in two segments, Consumer Bank and Commercial Bank. The company offers various deposits, investment products and services; and personal finance and financial wellness, student loan refinancing, mortgage and home equity, lending, credit card, treasury, business advisory, wealth management, asset management, investment, cash management, portfolio management, and trust and related services to individuals and small and medium-sized businesses. It also provides a suite of banking and capital market products, such as syndicated finance, debt and equity capital market products, commercial payments, equipment finance, commercial mortgage banking, derivatives, foreign exchange, financial advisory, and public finance, as well as commercial mortgage loans comprising consumer, energy, healthcare, industrial, public sector, real estate, and technology loans for middle market clients. In addition, the company offers community development financing, securities underwriting, brokerage, and investment banking services. As of December 31, 2021, it operated through a network of approximately 999 branches and 1,317 ATMs in 15 states, as well as additional offices, online and mobile banking capabilities, and a telephone banking call center. KeyCorp was founded in 1849 and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.
Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. provides technical, professional, and construction services. The company's Aerospace, Technology, Environmental and Nuclear segment offers scientific, engineering, construction, nuclear, environmental, and technical support services to the aerospace, defense, technical, and automotive industries. Its Buildings, Infrastructure and Advanced Facilities segment develops/rehabilitates plans for highways, bridges, transit, tunnels, airports, railroads, intermodal facilities, and maritime or port projects; develops or rehabilitates critical water resource systems, water/wastewater conveyance systems, and flood defense projects; and provides engineering design, construction management, design build, and operations and maintenance. This segment also designs and constructs buildings; offers consulting, engineering, procurement, construction management, and delivery services for life sciences clients; and provides services relating to modular construction and other consulting and strategic planning services, as well as offers services in containment, barrier technology, locally controlled environments, building systems automation, off-the-site design, and fabrication of facility modules. The company's Energy, Chemicals and Resources segment offers services relating to onshore and offshore oil and gas production facilities, processing facilities, gathering systems, and transmission pipelines and terminals; feasibility/economic studies, technology evaluation, conceptual engineering, front end loading, detailed engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance, and commissioning services; and engineering, procurement, and construction solutions. This segment also provides services, such as manufacturing complex, expansions, modifications, and management of plant relocations; construction management and field construction services; and services to operate and maintain facilities. The company was founded in 1947 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
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 Illinois Tool Works: A V Co 1 Limited, A V Co 2 Limited, A V Co 3 Limited, ACCU-LUBE Manufacturing GmbH - Schmiermittel und -gerate -, AIP/BI Holdings Inc., Accessories Marketing Holding Corp., Advanced Molding Company Inc., Allen France SAS, Alpine Engineered Products, Alpine Systems Corporation, Anaerobicos S.r.l., AppliChem GmbH, Avery Berkel France, Avery India Limited, Avery Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avery Weigh Tronix, Avery Weigh-Tronix Finance Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix International Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix LLC, Avery Weigh-Tronix Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Properties Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Suzhou Weighing Technology Co. Ltd., Azon Limited, B.C. Immo, Beijing Miller Electric Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Berkel Ireland Limited, Berrington UK, Brapenta Eletronica Ltda., Brooks Instrument B.V., Brooks Instrument GmbH, Brooks Instrument KFT, Brooks Instrument Korea Ltd., Brooks Instrument LLC, Brooks Instrument Shanghai Co. Ltd, Buell Industries Inc., CCI Realty Company, CFC Europe GmbH, CS Australia Pty Limited, CS Mexico Holding Company S DE RL DE CV, Calvia Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnosci, Capital Ventures Australasia S.a r.l, Capmax Logistica S.A. de C.V., Celeste Industries Corporation, Coeur, Coeur Asia Limited, Coeur Holding Company, Coeur Inc., Coeur Shanghai Medical Appliance Trading Co. Ltd, Compagnie Hobart, Compagnie de Materiel et d'Equipements Techniques-Comet, Constructions Isothermiques Bontami C.I.B., Crane Carrier Company, Denison Mayes Group Limited, Despatch Industries, Diagraph Corporation Sdn. Bhd, Diagraph ITW Mexico S. de R.L. De C.V., Diagraph Mexico S.A. DE C.V., Dongguan Ark-Les Electric Components Co. Ltd., Dongguan CK Branding Co. Ltd., Duo Fast de Espana S.A.U., Duo-Fast Korea Co. Ltd., Duo-Fast LLC, E.C.S. d.o.o., E2M Production B.V.., E2M Technologies B.V.., E2M Technologies Inc.., ECS Cable Protection Sp. Zoo, ELRO Grosskuchen GmbH, ELRO Holding AG, ELRO-WERKE AG, Elro Group, Eltex-Elektrostatik-Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Envases Multipac S.A. de C.V., Eurotec Srl, Exhibit 21, FEG Investments L.L.C., Filtertek De Mexico Holding Inc., Filtertek De Mexico S.A. de C.V., Filtertek SAS, GC Financement SA, Gamko B.V., Gun Hwa Platech Taicang Co. Ltd., HOBART Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Hartness International, Hobart Andina S.A.S., Hobart Belgium B.V., Hobart Brothers International Chile Limitada, Hobart Brothers LLC, Hobart Dayton Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Hobart Food Equipment Co. Ltd., Hobart International Singapore Pte. Ltd., Hobart Japan K.K., Hobart Korea LLC, Hobart LLC, Hobart Nederland B.V., Hobart Sales & Service Inc., Hobart Scandinavia ApS, Hobart Techniek B.V., Horis, ILC Investments Holdings Inc., ITW AEP LLC, ITW AOC LLC, ITW Aircraft Investments Inc., ITW Ampang Industries Philippines Inc., ITW Appliance Components EOOD, ITW Appliance Components S.A. de C.V., ITW Appliance Components S.r.l.a, ITW Appliance Components d.o.o., ITW Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, ITW Australia Property Holdings Pty Ltd., ITW Australia Pty Ltd, ITW Automotive Components Chongqing Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Components Langfang Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Japan K.K., ITW Automotive Korea LLC, ITW Automotive Parts Shanghai Co. Ltd, ITW Automotive Products GmbH, ITW Automotive Products Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Bailly Comte, ITW Befestigungssysteme GmbH, ITW Belgium B.V., ITW Brazilian Nominee L.L.C., ITW Building Components Group Inc., ITW CER, ITW CP Distribution Center Holland BV, ITW CS UK Ltd., ITW Canada Inc., ITW Celeste Inc., ITW Chemical Products Ltda, ITW Chemical Products Scandinavia ApS, ITW China Investment Company Limited, ITW Colombia S.A.S., ITW Construction Products AB, ITW Construction Products AS, ITW Construction Products ApS, ITW Construction Products CZ s.r.o., ITW Construction Products Italy Srl, ITW Construction Products OU, ITW Construction Products OY, ITW Construction Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Construction Products Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW Construction Services Manila Inc., ITW Contamination Control B.V., ITW Contamination Control Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Covid Security Group Inc., ITW DS Investments Inc., ITW DelFast do Brasil Ltda., ITW Denmark ApS, ITW Deutschland GmbH, ITW Diagraph GmbH, ITW Dynatec, ITW Dynatec Adhesive Equipment Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Dynatec GmbH, ITW Dynatec Kabushiki Kaisha, ITW EAE B.V., ITW EAE Mexico S de RL de CV, ITW EF&C France SAS, ITW EF&C Selb GmbH, ITW EU Holdings Ltd., ITW Electronic Business Asia Co. Limited, ITW Electronic Components/Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Electronics Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Epsilon Sarl, ITW Espana S.L., ITW European Finance Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance II Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance III Co. Ltd., ITW FEG Hong Kong Limited, ITW FEG do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW Fastener Products GmbH, ITW Fluids and Hygiene Solutions Ltda., ITW Food Equipment Group LLC, ITW GH LLC, ITW GSE ApS, ITW GSE Inc., ITW Gamma Sarl, ITW German Management LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings Y Compania Sociedad en Comandita por Acciones, ITW Global Investments Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Europe GmbH, ITW Global Tire Repair Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Japan K.K., ITW Graphics Asia Limited, ITW Graphics Thailand Ltd., ITW Great Britain Investment & Licensing Holding Company, ITW Group France Luxembourg S.ar.l., ITW HLP Thailand Co. Ltd., ITW Holding Quimica B.C. S.L. Sole Shareholder Company, ITW Holdings Australia L.P., ITW Holdings I Limited, ITW Holdings II Limited, ITW Holdings III Limited, ITW Holdings IV Limited, ITW Holdings IX Limited, ITW Holdings Inc., ITW Holdings V Limited, ITW Holdings VI Limited, ITW Holdings VII Limited, ITW Holdings VIII Limited, ITW Holdings X Limited, ITW Holdings XI Limited, ITW ILC Holdings I Inc., ITW IPG Investments LLC, ITW Imaden Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW India Private Limited, ITW International Holdings LLC, ITW Invest Holding GmbH, ITW Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, ITW Ireland Unlimited Company, ITW Italy Holding Srl, ITW Japan Ltd., ITW Korea LLC, ITW LLC & Co. KG, ITW Limited, ITW Lys Fusion S.r.l., ITW Materials Technology Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Meritex Sdn. Bhd., ITW Metal Fasteners S.L., ITW Mexico Holding Company S. De R.L. de C.V., ITW Mexico Holdings LLC, ITW Morlock GmbH, ITW Mortgage Investments II Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments III Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments IV Inc., ITW Netherlands Administration BV, ITW Netherlands Beta B.V., ITW Netherlands Finance Alpha BV, ITW New Universal LLC, ITW New Zealand, ITW Ningbo Components & Fastenings Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Novadan Sp. Z.o.o., ITW PPF Brasil Adesivos Ltda., ITW Packaging Technology China Co. Ltd., ITW Participations S.a r.l., ITW Pension Funds Trustee Company, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Japan Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Korea Limited, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids OOO, ITW Performance Polymers ApS, ITW Performance Polymers Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers and Fluids Group FZE, ITW Peru S.A.C., ITW Poly Mex S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Polymers Sealants North America Inc., ITW Pronovia s.r.o., ITW Pte. Ltd., ITW Qufu Automotive Cooling Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Real Estate Germany GmbH, ITW Residuals III L.L.C., ITW Residuals IV L.L.C., ITW Rivex, ITW SMPI, ITW SPG Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Simco-Ion Shenzhen Co. Ltd., ITW Slovakia s.r.o., ITW Spain Holdings S.L., ITW Specialty Film LLC, ITW Specialty Films France, ITW Specialty Materials Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Sverige AB, ITW Sweden Holding AB, ITW Test & Measurement Equipment Shanghai Co. Ltd, ITW Test & Measurement GmbH, ITW Test and Measurement Italia Srl, ITW Test and Measurement Services Industry and Trade Ltd., ITW Texwipe Philippines Inc., ITW Thermal Films Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW UK, ITW UK Finance Beta Limited, ITW UK Finance Delta Limited, ITW UK Finance Gamma Limited, ITW UK Finance Limited, ITW UK Finance Zeta Ltd., ITW UK II Limited, ITW Universal II LLC, ITW Welding, ITW Welding AB, ITW Welding GmbH, ITW Welding Products B.V., ITW Welding Products Group FZE, ITW Welding Products Group S. DE R.L. De C.V., ITW Welding Products Italy Srl, ITW Welding Products Limited Liability Company, ITW Welding Produtos Para Solgdagem Ltda., ITW Welding Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW de France, ITW do Brasil Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Illinois Tool Works Chile Limitada, Illinois Tool Works ITW Nederland B.V., Illinois Tool Works Inc., Impar Comercio E Representacoes Ltda., Industrie Plastic Elsasser GmbH, Inmobiliaria Cit. S.A. de C.F., Innova Temperlite Servicios S.A. de C.V., Innovacion y Transformacion Automotriz S.A. de C.V., Instron Brasil Equipamentos Cientificos Ltda., Instron Foreign Sales Corp. Limited, Instron France S.A.S., Instron GmbH, Instron Japan Company Ltd., Instron Korea LLC, Instron Shanghai Ltd., Instron Thailand Limited, International Leasing Company LLC, Isolenge - ITW Sistemas de Isolamento Termico Ltda., Itw Spraytec, KCPL Mauritius Holdings, Kester, Kleinmann GmbH, Krafft S.L., Loma Systems, Loma Systems BV, Loma Systems Canada Inc., Loma Systems sro, Lombard Pressings Limited, Lumex Inc., Lys Fusion Poland Sp. z.o.o., M&C Specialties Co., MAGNAFLUX GmbH, MEHB Holdings Limited, MGHG Property LLC, MTS 2 LLC., MTS 3 LLC., MTS China Holdings LLC, MTS Europe Holdings LLC, MTS Holdings France S.a.r.l., MTS Japan Ltd.., MTS Korea Inc.., MTS Systems China Co. Ltd., MTS Systems Corporation, MTS Systems Danmark ApS., MTS Systems Europe B.V., MTS Systems Finance C.V.., MTS Systems Germany GmbH, MTS Systems Holding B.V.., MTS Systems Hong Kong Incorporated, MTS Systems Limited, MTS Systems Norden Aktiebolag, MTS Systems S.r.l, MTS Systems., MTS Systems.., MTS Sytems Do Brazil, MTS Testing Solutions India Private Limited., MTS Testing Systems Canada Ltd., Manufacturing Avancee S.A., Meritex Technology Suzhou Co. Ltd., Meurer Verpackungssysteme GmbH, Miller Electric Mfg. LLC, Miller Insurance Ltd., NDT Holding LLC, NOVADAN APS, North Star Imaging Inc., Nova Chimica S.r.l., Orbitalum Tools GmbH, PENTA-91 OOO, PR. A. I. Srl, PT ITW Construction Products Indonesia, Pacific Concept Industries Limited Enping, Panreac Quimica S.L., Paslode Fasteners Shanghai Co. Ltd., Peerless Machinery Corp., Polyrey, Premark FEG L.L.C., Premark HII Holdings LLC, Premark International, Premark International LLC, Prolex Sociedad Anonima, QSA Global Inc., Quimica Industrial Mediterranea S.L., R&D Engineering A/S., R&D Prague s.r.o., R&D Steel ApS., R&D Test Systems A/S., R&D Tools and Structures A/S., RDGDK Engineering Private Limited, Ramset Fasteners Hong Kong Ltd., Rapid Cook LLC, Refrigeration France, S.E.E. Sistemas Industria E Comercio Ltda., ST Mexico Holdings LLC, Sealant Systems International Inc., Sentinel Asia Yuhan Hoesa, Shanghai ITW Plastic & Metal Co. Ltd, Simco Japan Inc., Simco Nederland B.V., Societe de Prospection et dInventions Techniques  SPIT, Speedline Holdings I Inc., Speedline Holdings I LLC, Speedline Technologies GmbH, Speedline Technologies Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Speedline Technologies Mexico Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Stokvis Celix Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Stokvis Danmark ApS, Stokvis Holdings S.A.R.L., Stokvis Promi s.r.o, Stokvis Prostick Tapes Private Limited, Stokvis Tapes B.V., Stokvis Tapes Benelux B.V., Stokvis Tapes Deutschland GmbH, Stokvis Tapes France, Stokvis Tapes Hong Kong Co. Limited, Stokvis Tapes Italia s.r.l., Stokvis Tapes Limited, Stokvis Tapes Limited Liability Company, Stokvis Tapes Norge AS, Stokvis Tapes Oy, Stokvis Tapes Polska Sp Z.O.O., Stokvis Tapes Shanghai Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Sverige AB, Stokvis Tapes Taiwan Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Tianjin Co. Ltd., Stolvis Holdings II S.A.R.L., Subsidiaries, Technopack Industria Comercio Consultoria e Representacoes Ltda., Teknek China Limited, Teknek Japan Limited, Teksaleco Ltd., The Miller Group Ltd, Thirode Grandes Cuisines Poligny, Tien Tai Electrode Co. Ltd., Tien Tai Electrode Kunshan Co. Ltd., Unichemicals Industria e Comercio Ltda., VR-Leasing Sarita GmbH & Co. Immobilien KG, VS European Holdco BV, Valeron Strength Films B.V., Veneta Decalcogomme S.r.l., Versachem Chile S.A., Vesta, Vesta Global Limited, Vesta Guangzhou Catering Equipment Co. Ltd, Viltronics Soltec, Vitronics Soltec B.V., Wachs Canada Ltd., Wachs Subsea LLC, Weigh-Tronix Canada ULC, Weigh-Tronix UK Limited, Wilsonart International Holdings LLC, Wynn Oil South Africa Pty Ltd., Wynn's Automotive France, Wynn's Belgium BVBA, Wynn's Italia Srl, Wynn's Mekuba India Pvt Ltd, and Zip-Pak International B.V..

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Matson, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides ocean transportation and logistics services. The company's Ocean Transportation segment offers ocean freight transportation services to the domestic non-contiguous economies of Hawaii, Alaska, and Guam, as well as to other island economies in Micronesia. It primarily transports dry containers of mixed commodities, refrigerated commodities, packaged foods and beverages, building materials, automobiles, and household goods; livestock; seafood; general sustenance cargo; and garments, footwear, e-commerce, and other retail merchandise. This segment also operates an expedited service from China to Long Beach, California, and various islands in the South Pacific, as well as Okinawa, Japan; and provides container stevedoring, refrigerated cargo services, inland transportation, container equipment maintenance, and other terminal services to ocean carriers on the Hawaiian islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Maui, and Kauai, as well as in the Alaska locations of Anchorage, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor. In addition, the company offers vessel management and container transshipment services. Its Logistics segment provides multimodal transportation brokerage services, including domestic and international rail intermodal, long-haul and regional highway trucking, specialized hauling, flat-bed and project, less-than-truckload, and expedited freight services; less-than-container load consolidation and freight forwarding services; warehousing and distribution services; supply chain management services, and non-vessel operating common carrier freight forwarding services. The company serves the U.S. military, freight forwarders, retailers, consumer goods, automobile manufacturers, and other customers. The company was formerly known as Alexander & Baldwin Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to Matson, Inc. in June 2012. Matson, Inc. was founded in 1882 and is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The following companies are subsidiares of Arrow Electronics: A.E. Petsche Belgium BVBA, A.E. Petsche Canada Inc., A.E. Petsche Company, A.E. Petsche Company Inc., A.E. Petsche Company S De RL, A.E. Petsche SAS, A.E. Petsche UK Limited, ACI Technology, AKS Group Nordic AB, ARROWECS Portugal Sociedade Unipessoal, ARROWECS Sociedade Unipessoal LDA, ARW Electronics Ltd., ARW Enterprise Computing Solutions S.A., ARW Portugal Unipessoal LDA, ASI Dedicated Services LLC, ASI Electrical Services LLC, ASI Managed Services LLC, ATM Electronic, ATM Electronic Corp., ATM Electronic Corporation (HK) Limited, ATM Electronics Hong Kong Limited, ATM Electronics Technology (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd, Addex Distribution AS, Adilam Pty. Ltd, Aiqi Xinxing (Beijing) Information Technology Co. Ltd., Altimate Belgium BVBA, Altimate Group, Altimate ND Belgium BVBA, Altimate Netherlands B.V., Annuity Systems Pty Ltd, Arrow (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Arrow Altech Distribution (Pty) Ltd., Arrow Altech Holdings (Pty) Ltd., Arrow Argentina S.A., Arrow Asia Distribution Limited, Arrow Asia Pac Ltd., Arrow Brasil S.A., Arrow Capital Solution BVBA, Arrow Capital Solutions Inc., Arrow Capital Solutions Nederlands BV, Arrow Capital Solutions SAS, Arrow Capital Solutions UK Ltd, Arrow Central Europe GmbH, Arrow Central Europe Holding Munich GmbH, Arrow Chip One Stop Holdings GK, Arrow Componentes ACCR S.R.L., Arrow Components (M) Sdn Bhd, Arrow Components (NZ), Arrow Components Mexico S.A. de C.V., Arrow Components Sweden AB, Arrow Denmark ApS, Arrow Denmark ApS, Arrow ECS (Ireland) Limited, Arrow ECS (NI) Limited, Arrow ECS AG, Arrow ECS ANZ Limited, Arrow ECS ANZ Pty Ltd, Arrow ECS Asia PTE. Ltd, Arrow ECS Australia, Arrow ECS B.V., Arrow ECS Baltic OU, Arrow ECS Brasil Distribuidora Ltda., Arrow ECS Canada Ltd., Arrow ECS Central GmbH, Arrow ECS Denmark A/S, Arrow ECS FZCO, Arrow ECS Finland OY, Arrow ECS GmbH, Arrow ECS Internet Security AG, Arrow ECS Internet Security S.L., Arrow ECS Kft., Arrow ECS Ltd., Arrow ECS New Zealand Limited, Arrow ECS Nordic A/S, Arrow ECS Norway AS, Arrow ECS Pty Ltd., Arrow ECS SA/NV, Arrow ECS SAS, Arrow ECS SPA, Arrow ECS Sarl, Arrow ECS Services Sp.z.o.o., Arrow ECS Singapore Pte. Limited, Arrow ECS Sp.z.o.o., Arrow ECS Support Center Ltd., Arrow ECS Support Center Morocco S.A.R.L.A.U, Arrow ECS Sweden AB, Arrow ECS a.s., Arrow ECS d.o.o., Arrow Eastern Europe GmbH, Arrow Electronice S.R.L., Arrow Electronics (CI) Ltd., Arrow Electronics (China) Trading Co. Ltd., Arrow Electronics (Jersey) Limited, Arrow Electronics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Arrow Electronics (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Arrow Electronics (Sweden) KB, Arrow Electronics (Thailand) Limited, Arrow Electronics (U.K.) Inc., Arrow Electronics (UK) Ltd., Arrow Electronics ANZ Holdings Pty Ltd., Arrow Electronics Asia (S) Pte Ltd., Arrow Electronics Asia Limited, Arrow Electronics Australia Pty Ltd., Arrow Electronics B.V., Arrow Electronics Canada Ltd., Arrow Electronics China Ltd., Arrow Electronics Components (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Arrow Electronics Czech Republic s.r.o., Arrow Electronics D.O.O., Arrow Electronics Danish Holdings ApS, Arrow Electronics EMEA Group GmbH, Arrow Electronics EMEASA S.r.l., Arrow Electronics Estonia OU, Arrow Electronics FC B.V., Arrow Electronics Funding Corporation, Arrow Electronics GmbH & Co. KG, Arrow Electronics Hellas S.A., Arrow Electronics Holdings Vagyonkezelo Kft, Arrow Electronics Hungary Kereskedelmi Bt, Arrow Electronics India Ltd., Arrow Electronics India Private Limited, Arrow Electronics International Holdings LLC, Arrow Electronics International Inc., Arrow Electronics Italia S.r.l, Arrow Electronics Japan GK, Arrow Electronics Korea Limited, Arrow Electronics Labuan Pte Ltd., Arrow Electronics Ltd., Arrow Electronics Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Arrow Electronics Norwegian Holdings AS, Arrow Electronics Poland Sp.z.o.o., Arrow Electronics Russ OOO, Arrow Electronics Services S.r.l., Arrow Electronics Slovakia s.r.o., Arrow Electronics South Africa LLP, Arrow Electronics Taiwan Ltd., Arrow Electronics UK Holding Ltd., Arrow Electronics Ukraine LLC, Arrow Elektronik Ticaret A.S., Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions Inc., Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions India Private Limited, Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions Ltd., Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions S.A., Arrow Finland OY, Arrow France S.A., Arrow Global Asset Disposition Inc., Arrow Global Supply Chain Services Inc., Arrow Holdings (Delaware) LLC, Arrow Iberia Electronica Lda., Arrow Iberia Electronica S.L.U., Arrow International Holdings L.P., Arrow International Holdings Limited, Arrow Nordic Components AB, Arrow Norway A/S, Arrow S-Tech Norway AS, Arrow SEED (Hong Kong) Limited, Arrow Systems Integration Inc., Arrow UEC Japan KK, Arrow United Holdings LLC, Arrow United International Holdings LP, Arrow Value Recovery ApS (fka Greentech Denmark ApS), Arrow Value Recovery Belgium BVBA, Arrow Value Recovery Czech Republic sro, Arrow Value Recovery Denmark ApS, Arrow Value Recovery EMEA BV, Arrow Value Recovery Finland Oy (fka Greentech Finland OY), Arrow Value Recovery France SAS, Arrow Value Recovery Germany GmbH, Arrow Value Recovery Netherlands BV, Arrow Value Recovery Norway AS (fka Greentech AS), Arrow Value Recovery Sweden AB (fka Greentech Sweden AB), Arrow Value Recovery UK LTD, Arrow eCommerce B.V., Arrow/Artlink Technology (Hong Kong) Limited, Arrow/Components (Agent) Ltd., Arrow/Rapac Ltd., Artlink Technology Co. Ltd., Aspen Labs LLC, Aspencore China Investment LLC, Aspencore LLC, Aspencore Media GmbH, Aspencore/IDG China Investment LLC, Asplenium SA, Asset Recovery Corporation, B.V. Arrow Electronics DLC, Beijing AIQI Technology, Beijing Arrow SEED Technology Co. Ltd, Beijing Canon Advertising Co. Ltd., Broomco (4184) Limited, COMPUTERLINKS, COMPUTERLINKS (UK) Ltd., COMPUTERLINKS Belgium BVBA, COMPUTERLINKS Denmark A/S, COMPUTERLINKS Nederland B.V., COMPUTERLINKS S.A., CSS Computer Security Solutions Erwerbs GmbH, CSS Computer Security Solutions Holding GmbH, CSS Computer Security Solutions Ltd., CT3 Europe Limited, Centia Group Ltd, Centia Ltd., Channel Support Pty Ltd, ChiWan Electronics (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Chip One Stop, Chip One Stop (Hong Kong) Ltd., Chip One Stop (Shenzhen) Ltd., Chip One Stop Inc., Commtech Solutions (UK) Limited, Components Agent (Cayman) Limited, Components Agent Asia Holdings Ltd., Components Distribution Business - Achieva, Conrac Asia Display Products Pte. Ltd., Conrac MENA FZE, Converge, Converge (Shanghai) International Trading Co. Ltd., Converge Asia Pte Ltd., Converge Electronics Trading (India) Private Ltd., Converge France SAS, Converge Netherlands BV, Converge Scandinavia AB, Cross Telecom, Data Modul, Data Modul AG, Data Modul Electronics Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Data Modul FZE, Data Modul France S.a r.l, Data Modul Hong Kong Ltd., Data Modul Iberia S.L., Data Modul Inc., Data Modul Italia S.r.l., Data Modul Ltd., Data Modul Shanghai Ltd., Data Modul Suisse GmbH, Data Modul Weikersheim GmbH, Diasa Informatica, Dicopel Inc., Distribution Business - Seed International, Distribution Central (MY) Sdn. Bhd., Distribution Central HK Pty Limited, Distribution Central Limited (NZ), Distribution Central Pte Limited (SG), Distribution Central Pty Limited, E-InfoChips KK, EC America, EDN Asia Advertising Pte Ltd., ETEQ Components Pte Ltd., Electronics Products Technology Co. Ltd., Embedded Developer LLC, Erf 211 Hughes (Pty) Limited, Eshel Technology Group Inc., Eurocomponentes S.A., Excel Tech, Excel Tech Inc., Firewall Systems Pty Limited, Fusion Distribution FZCO, Gates - Arrow Distributing, Gates - FA Distributing, Global Link Technology, Greentech Holding AS, Gross Telecom, ICC Global Media GmbH, IP Vista A/S, IPVista A/S, ITM USA Enterprises Inc., Intechra Holdings, Intex-semi Ltd., KeyLink Systems Group, LED Franchise LLC, LED Source Holdco LLC, LED Source LLC, LOGIX S.A., License Central Pty Ltd, Lite-On Korea Ltd., Marubun Arrow (HK) Limited, Marubun Arrow (S) Pte Ltd., Marubun Arrow (Thailand) Co Limited, Marubun Arrow Asia Ltd., Marubun Arrow Europe Kft., Marubun Corporation, Marubun USA Corporation, Marubun-Arrow Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Marubun/Arrow (HK) Limited, Marubun/Arrow (M) Sdn. Bhd (Malaysia), Marubun/Arrow (Philippines) Inc., Marubun/Arrow (S) Pte Ltd., Marubun/Arrow (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Marubun/Arrow (Shenzhen) Electronic Product Consulting Company Limited, Marubun/Arrow (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Marubun/Arrow Asia Ltd., Marubun/Arrow USA II LLC, Marubun/Arrow USA LLC, NIC Components Asia PTE Ltd., NIC Components Corp., NIC Components Europe Limited, NIC Eurotech Limited, NUH Electronics India Private Limted, Networld Systems Pty Ltd, Nextworth Solutions Inc., Nu Horizons Electronics, Nu Horizons Electronics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Nu Horizons Electronics Asia PTE Ltd., Nu Horizons Electronics Hong Kong Ltd., Nu Horizons Electronics Malaysia SDN BHD, NuHo Singapore Holdings LLC, Observatory Crest, Openway Group SA, Openway SAS, PCG Parent Corp., PCG Trading LLC, PT Marubun Arrow Indonesia, Pansystem S.r.l., Pax8 Inc., Power and Signal Group GmbH, R.D. Trading Limited, RDC, RF Wireless & Power - Richardson Electronics, Rack Systems Pty Ltd, Red Education Pty Ltd, Redemtech, Renewal Systems Pty Ltd, Richardson RFPD (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Richardson RFPD (Thailand) Limited, Richardson RFPD Australia Pty. Ltd., Richardson RFPD Canada Inc., Richardson RFPD Electronics Trading (China) Co. Ltd., Richardson RFPD France SAS, Richardson RFPD Germany GmbH, Richardson RFPD Hong Kong, Richardson RFPD Inc., Richardson RFPD Israel Ltd., Richardson RFPD Italy Srl, Richardson RFPD Japan KK, Richardson RFPD Korea Ltd., Richardson RFPD Netherlands BV, Richardson RFPD Singapore, Richardson RFPD Spain SL, Richardson RFPD Sweden AB, Richardson RFPD Taiwan, Richardson RFPD UK Ltd., Richey Electronics, San Systems Pty Ltd, Schuylkill Metals of Plant City Inc., Seneca Data, Seneca Data Distributors Inc., Shared Technologies, Silicon Frameworks LLC, SiliconEgypt Technologies LLC, SiliconExpert Holdings LLC, SiliconExpert Technologies, SiliconExpert Technologies Inc., Sphinx CST Limited, Sphinx CST Networks Limited, Sphinx Group, Sphinx Group Limited, Sphinx Professional Services Limited, Spoerle Hungary Kereskedelmi Kft, Sun Chain Technology Corp., TLW Electronics Ltd., TechTurn, Titan Supply Chain Services Limited, Titan Supply Chain Services Pte Ltd., Trafomo AB, Trafomo ApS, Transim Technology, Transim Technology Corporation, U.S. Micro Operating Company LLC, UBM Tech Electronics Network, Ultra Source Electronics (SZ) Co LTD, Ultra Source Technology Corp., Ultra Source Trading Hong Kong Limited, United Technical Publishing Division - Hearst Business Media, Universe Electron Corporation, Verical, Verwaltungsgesellschaft Arrow Electronics GmbH, Wireless and Infrastructure Business Unit - Waching Company, Yongming Xincheng (Beijing) Technology Co., e-InfoChips, e-Infochips Private Limited, eInfochips, eMedia Asia Limited, immixGovernment Inc., immixGroup, immixGroup Inc., immixSolutions Inc., and immixTechnology.

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LEXINGTON  Five pharmacists who graduated from the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Pharmacy in May, out of a class of 54, are now working in Dawson County.

Abby Grieser, formerly of Lincoln, and Paige Swanson, of Holdrege, work at U Save Pharmacy in Lexington.

Grieser said she knew she wanted to go into the medical field as a high school student. During college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln she looked into optometry and dentistry before deciding to be a pharmacist.

"Pharmacy felt like the right fit for me, especially as pharmacists are being integrated to be part of the medical team" she said.

She said working in Lexington is a good fit since she joined her boyfriend, Josh Lydic, in Gothenburg. He moved back to take over his familys ranch.

Swanson said both she and her husband are from Holdrege so they came back to the area to be close to family.

"It just feels like home," said Swanson of working in Lexington. "I like the small town feel, getting to know your patients on a more personal level." She said she always wanted to work in a small town.

"It shifted for me," said Grieser. She said she thought she wanted to work in a hospital until she realized the job would lack as much patient interaction. Thats when her focus changed to retail.

"One thing I like about here, is independent pharmacists are thriving, have a market," said Grieser.

She said she feels fortunate to have found her position. "Out here, pharmacists, once they get a job, they stick with it for a very long time. There arent a lot of openings," said Grieser.

She said job satisfaction comes from feeling like she is making a difference in peoples lives which comes from interactions with patients as they come in and ask questions.

Swanson said pharmacists are getting more and more involved in the overall healthcare picture. "Doctors are getting a lot better at working with pharmacists to find out what is the best care plan for our patients," she said.

Matt Klinginsmith, who was born and raised in Kearney, works as a pharmacist at Lexington Regional Health Center, while commuting from Kearney.

He said his mother and aunt are both pharmacists. While in college at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, he worked at the same pharmacy as his mother. He said he was already thinking of something in the medical field, but was swayed to pharmacy through watching his mother at work and her relationship with patients.

Klinginsmith said during his fourth year of pharmacy school he did a rotation at LRHC and "just loved it" for the community and the work community.

He said he worked in hospitals before in Omaha, but they werent nearly as transparent.

"I like the small family feel (of LRHC). There are no hoops you have to jump through to talk to different providers. It makes things run very smoothly," he said.

Adam Lee said he decided he wanted to be a pharmacist while in high school and stuck with that choice all the way through the various levels of subsequent schooling.

After graduating from Sutherland High School, he attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln followed by UNMC College of Pharmacy.

He worked at a pharmacy during college as an undergraduate to ensure it was a good match before he applied to get in to pharmacy school.

Lee said of his choice to attend UNMC, "I was good to be in state. I felt it would be a good school to be able to come back to rural Nebraska," he said.

As graduation from UNMC approached he also considered working in North Platte, but chose Gothenburg because "it seemed like a better fit."

Lees wife Holly is now working as a radiologist in Gothenburg and the couple is in the process of moving there.

Lee said he enjoys the work he is doing. "It seems like were always busy. I like that part of it. It feels like you got something done at the end of the day," he said.

He said he also likes that every day is different.

Maria Mendoza said she was a non-traditional student when she attended UNMC College of Pharmacy.

Mendoza was born in Mexico, and grew up in Oregon. As an adult, she moved to Omaha 15 years ago with her then husband.

Mendoza said her desire to become a pharmacist came while working as a technician at a small non-profit pharmacy.

"I fell in love with the profession and how pharmacists affect the lives of patients," she said.

Mendoza said pharmacists have conversations with patients on a variety of topics such as over the counter medicine, lifestyle changes, home remedies and food choices  things that can affect a patients health care.

She decided to go back to school and enrolled at Metropolitan Community College part-time taking evening classes to complete pre-requisites. Four years later in 2011, she transferred to University of Nebraska-Omaha and graduated from there in 2013.

Mendoza said she applied to several pharmacy schools, but UNMC was her first choice because it was the least costly and closest to home. She has two children, ages 15 and 12. "Luckily I was accepted," she said.

Mendoza has worked at the Walmart Pharmacy in Lexington for a month. "I love the patients. Thats my passion, to be able to talk to people and share my knowledge with them to help them in whatever way I can. Thats what motivates me and what I like best about the profession," she said.

While she hopes to move to Lexington, she said finding housing has been an issue.
Teleflex Incorporated designs, develops, manufactures, and supplies single-use medical devices for common diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in critical care and surgical applications worldwide. It provides vascular access products that comprise Arrow branded catheters, catheter navigation and tip positioning systems, and intraosseous access systems for the administration of intravenous therapies, the measurement of blood pressure, and the withdrawal of blood samples through a single puncture site. The company also offers interventional products, which consists of various coronary catheters, structural heart therapies, and peripheral intervention and cardiac assist products that are used by interventional cardiologists and radiologists, and vascular surgeons; and Arrow branded catheters, Guideline and Trapliner catheters, the Manta Vascular Closure, and Arrow Oncontrol devices. It provides anesthesia products, such as airway and pain management products to support hospital, emergency medicine, and military channels; and surgical products, including metal and polymer ligation clips, and fascial closure surgical systems that are used in laparoscopic surgical procedures, percutaneous surgical systems, and other surgical instruments. The company also offers interventional urology products comprising the UroLift System, an invasive technology for treating lower urinary tract symptoms due to benign prostatic hyperplasia; and respiratory products, including oxygen and aerosol therapies, spirometry, and ventilation management products for use in various care settings. It provides urology products, such as catheters, urine collectors, and catheterization accessories and products for operative endourology; and bladder management services. The company serves hospitals and healthcare providers, medical device manufacturers, and home care markets. The company was incorporated in 1943 and is headquartered in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
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.
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.
Zendesk, Inc., a software development company, provides software as a service solutions for organizations in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. Its flagship product is Zendesk Support, a system for tracking, prioritizing, and solving customer support tickets across various channels. The company also offers Zendesk Chat, a live chat and messaging software to connect with customers on websites and mobile devices applications; Zendesk Talk, a cloud-based call center software; Zendesk Guide, a knowledge base that powers customer self-service and support agent productivity; Zendesk Gather, a community forum software that allows customer end-users to connect and collaborate; Zendesk Explore, which provides analytics for organizations to measure and enhance the customer experience; and Zendesk Sell, a sales customer relationship management (CRM) product solution to enhance productivity, processes, and pipeline visibility. In addition, it provides Zendesk Sunshine, a CRM platform; Sunshine Conversations, a messaging platform solution; Zendesk Developer Tools, a combination of application programming interfaces, web widget, and mobile software development kits; Zendesk APIs that allow users to build custom integrations and interact with Zendesk data; and Zendesk Apps that enable organizations to customize Zendesk product and platform solution interfaces and optimize workflow through plug-ins, as well as Zendesk Suite, an omnichannel offering, which combines its solutions. The company was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
It is likely that Saudi Arabia does not appear on the vacation list of most travelers, but its government is attempting to change that.

The Gulf Coast kingdom already welcomes Muslim pilgrims in the millions who visit Mecca annually, and it has now geared up to attract the conventional tourist.

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Prince Sultan bin Salman, who is head of the Saudi tourism and national heritage commission, said the kingdom was targeting people who want to experience the country and all the grandness it has.

Saudi Arabia is planning to issue its first tourist visas next year, said the prince. Visas previously were restricted to people who were traveling to work or visit holy sites.

However, attracting tourists has become one of the countrys central planks to lower its reliance on just oil. It is aiming to reach 30 million visitors per year by 2030, which would be up from a 2016 count of 18 million. Saudi officials hope annual spending by tourists reaches $47 million by 2020.

Because of that, several projects have been named the last couple of months.

Saudi officials are planning to build new resorts on 100 miles of the sandy coastline along the Red Sea and open by 2022 a Six Flags theme park.

The initiative for the Red Sea received the attention of Richard Branson the billionaire owner of Virgin Air while he was touring Saudi Arabia that including a trip to Madain Saleh the ancient tombs that are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The driving force behind the economic overhaul is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and he has unveiled as well plans to build a $500 billion metropolis, which will extend across the borders of Saudi Arabia into Jordan and Egypt.

Saudi Arabia has tremendous potential to be a tourist destination due to favorable temperature, cultural and historical heritage, rich marine life and natural beauty, said a tourist official.

However, some worry about the kingdom being surrounded by countries that are politically unstable where security has been and continues to be an issue.

The security situation in Saudi Arabia is the biggest challenge to its push for tourism and that was highlighted earlier this week when the U.S. State Department issued its new travel warning for the country.

The travel warning told Americans to consider all risk carefully when traveling to Saudi Arabia due to threats from different tourists groups like ISIS and the missile attacks on civilian targets by Yemeni rebels.
Amazon on Wednesday announced a new service that will allow Prime members to receive in-home delivery of packages with the help of high-tech smart locks that allow drivers to open their front doors.

Amazon Key will launch officially on Nov. 8 in 37 U.S. cities and surrounding communities, with additional locations to be added over time. The service will be available at no extra cost to Prime members, and it will work with standard, two-day, overnight and same-day deliveries.

Amazon Key gives customers peace of mind knowing their orders have been safely delivered to their homes and are waiting for them when they walk through their doors, said Peter Larsen, vice president of delivery technology at Amazon.

To use the service, Prime members must order an Amazon Key in-home kit, which includes the Amazon Cloud Cam and one of several compatible smart locks offered by Kwickset or Yale. The Amazon Key In-Home Kit starts at US$249.99. The locks can be installed professionally at no extra cost or self-installed by customers, according to Amazon.

Beyond Deliveries

When a driver requests access to the customers home, the Cloud Cam confirms the driver is at the right address through an encrypted authentication process. After the request is authenticated, the Cloud Cam starts recording the delivery and the door is unlocked.

Customers can track the delivery using the Amazon Key app on their mobile phones. They get real-time notifications and can watch deliveries live or view recordings later. The entire delivery process is backed up by the Amazon Happiness Guarantee, the company said.

The agreement is a big step for Yale. Its parent firm, Assa Abloy, also on Wednesday announced that it is testing an in-home delivery service with 100 customers in Sweden, in collaboration with delivery firm PostNord and e-commerce retailers Jollyroom, Apotea and Komplett. Yale Doorman digital locks are being used in the tests.

Its significant in that were working with Amazon, obviously a powerhouse in online retailing, and working with them on one of the most innovative programs in e-commerce and home delivery, the firm said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Terry Shea.

The Amazon Key program will provide features beyond home delivery of packages, the company said. Customers will be able to grant keyless entry for family and friends, and theyll be able to set frequency and length of time for access to the home.

Amazon plans to roll out a new program that will allow thousands of companies to access homes using the smart lock technology, including companies like housekeeping service Merry Maids and dog walking and pet sitting service Rover.

Rover is changing the way pet owners discover, book and manage personalized care for their pets, said spokesperson Brandie Gonzales.

This new integration with Amazon Key is the latest example of how we are leading the pet care revolution, she told the E-Commerce Times.

Growth Outweighs Risk

Amazon is gambling that the benefit of having secure home delivery of packages will outweigh the potential downside of the perception that its seeking an invasive level of access to the customer.

While many customers might see this capability as overly intrusive, Amazon  and Walmart  has identified an intersection of customer needs and new technologies, noted Matt Sargent, senior vice president of retail at Magid.

This capability [is] not only possible, but incredibly interesting to a subset of cutting-edge customers, he told the E-Commerce Times.

The need already exists, according to Sargent. People have been looking for a way to provide secure access to prevent package theft, and to allow entry of housecleaners and other service providers. The advent of remote security cameras and smart locks has made fulfillment of this need a reality.

The in-home delivery service is another example of Amazon inventing new ways to reach into consumer wallets without an obvious business case, said Paula Rosenblum, managing partner of RSR Research.

I think its too intrusive and too risky, she told the E-Commerce Times.

Amazon Prime has about 90 million members in the U.S., according to a report Consumer Intelligence Research Partners released last week.

About 63 percent of all U.S.-based Amazon customers belong to Prime, the firm noted. Amazon considers Prime members critical to its growth, because on average they spend $1,300 a year on purchases  nearly twice as much as non-Prime members.

From a security standpoint, smart lock technologies pose more of a physical challenge than a technology challenge, suggested William Malik, vice president for infrastructure strategies at Trend Micro.

The technology may grant access only to authorized Amazon employees, but it would be helpful to understand Amazons process for vetting delivery people, revoking their access, auditing conformance to Amazons standards, and providing warranty to misuse of that access, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Augusts Experience

August for years has been running August Access, a home delivery service that provides retailers and services of all stripes  including Sears Home Delivery and dog-walking service Wag  with the ability to get secure access to customers homes.

Years ago, when his former housekeeper had to return home to Brazil, she still had the keys to his house, recalled August CEO Jason Johnson.

What are people to do in situations such as that one, he wondered, change the locks? Although Johnson didnt feel he needed to do that, it seemed many people would value the ability to provide controlled access to their homes for certain activities,.

The desire to find a solution to that problem led Johnson and a cofounder to launch August.

From the beginning, we thought about how could we provide conditional access to the home, he told the E-Commerce Times.

The August smart locks use secure Bluetooth technology, with a layer of encryption on top, plus a third level of security that has been subjected to a white hat security audit to guard the systems against potential intrusion.

Just last month, Walmart began working with August and Deliv to test in-fridge delivery of food. The companies have been testing the service in the Silicon Valley area with a select number of customers who have August smart locks. They are provided a one-time passcode for secure access to allow deliveries to be placed inside the home.

Were interested in providing additional solutions and options for customers to make it easy for them, Walmart spokesperson Ravi Jariwala told E-Commerce Times.

Walmart earlier this month announced the acquisition of Parcel, a startup that delivers meal kits, groceries and e-commerce purchases to homes in New York City. Walmart plans to use Parcel for last-mile deliveries of groceries and packages from Walmart and Jet.
Friday, November 24, 2017

Ronn Torossian, CEO, 5WPR

Yet another media giant has been felled after multiple allegations of sexual harassment piled up to sink his career. Other than Bill OReilly, who was fired from Fox after his accusers went public, the unceremonious end to Charlie Roses media career may have been the biggest headline yet.

Both CBS and PBS parted ways with the popular news anchor after multiple women came forward with some very specific allegations against Rose. In a blunt statement, CBS said:

A short time ago we terminated Charlie Roses employment with CBS News, effective immediately This followed the revelation yesterday of extremely disturbing and intolerable behavior said to have revolved around his PBS program. Despite Charlies important journalistic contribution to our news division, there is absolutely nothing more important, in this or any organization, than ensuring a safe, professional workplace  a supportive environment where people feel they can do their best work. We need to be such a place.

Lets unpack that statement from a Public Relations perspective

First, it should be said that Rose produced his own program, which was then distributed on CBS and PBS networks. However, because the intricacies of this contract were not public knowledge, Rose was effectively a very public face for both networks. They needed to make a clean, public cut to demonstrate their independence from his brand. This is one step in the process Fox fumbled a bit with OReilly, and they are still taking hits over it.

Next, the statement clearly condemns, without specifically describing, the behavior in question. This air of mystery keeps the focus on CBS making the decision, rather than on people parsing what he did or did not do. Keeping the focus where it should be is vital to any solid PR message.

This also put CBS in the position of being able to be magnanimous, thanking Rose for his strong contribution to the network, without being accused of supporting the man who committed the intolerable behavior.

Finally, CBS detailed what they expect to have in their workplace: a safe, professional workplace and a supportive environment

This was a strong and poignant stand for CBS, and, from a money perspective, not a simple decision. While, yes, it was the right call, they are still left with a big hole to fill. CBS this morning was built on the personality interplay between Rose and his co-hosts, Gayle King and Norah ODonnell. Should the network choose to remake the show without Rose, and it succeeds, it could be a strong statement, not just about what should not be tolerated, but what is possible when those who abuse their power are left out of the equation for success.
Friday, November 24, 2017

Current Newspapers is being sued by Gannett for more than $180,000 in unpaid printing bills, reports Washingtonian, which added that the suit, which was filed in September in DC Superior Court, claims that the company hasnt paid its printing bills since January 2016.

Gannett signed a contract with Current Newspapers in December 2014 to provide the publisher, which distributes five free weekly community newspapers in Northwest Washington, with printing services on credit. The Currents tab ballooned to as much as $264,754 in August 2015, according to court records. But since early 2016, the suit says, the company has had trouble paying down its debt. Gannett no longer prints the paper; the company closed its Springfield plant, which printed USA Today along with clients of its publishing-services division, at the end of 2015.

In a letter responding to Gannett, the Currents publisher, Davis Kennedy, wrote that the partial payment is evidence that it is clear we have substantially reduced the amount owed since we were no longer able to use Gannett to print us. But Kennedys letter also reveals other troubles the Currents been facing recently. The publications advertising director and other sales staff left the company in early 2016, an exodus Kennedy attributes for a severe drop-off in advertising revenues that left the Current unable to pay its bills or make back payments. Kennedy also writes that the Current cannot afford to hire lawyers to represent it in defending against Gannetts lawsuit; the case, if it proceeds, will be conducted by a hearing commissioner rather than a judge and jury.

But Kennedys letter also claims that the Current is very slowly clawing its way back to financial health.
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A fly-tipper who dumped rubbish on a Devon farm has avoided punishment after the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency refused to reveal his details on data protection grounds.

The farm which suffered the incident, on the Ashcombe estate in south Devon, has already suffered a spate of fly-tipping problems.

Ralph Rayner, who owns the Ashcombe estate, stumbled across a receipt from a fast food outlet that was less than an hour old when he was cleaning up the waste.

A vehicle registration number was found and Mr Rayner, with the help of the local police, then went to the DVLA to query who the fly-tipper was. It couldn't release who the perpetrator was due to data protection.

A DVLA spokesman said: We have to ensure the release of information is lawful. When there is sufficient evidence to tie fly-tipping to a vehicle, we can supply that information and in the vast majority of cases when a local authority requests information, we are able to release it.

Newton Abbot MP Anne Marie Morris revealed the incident during a fly-tipping debate in parliament on Tuesday (21 November).

'Polluters pay'

She urged government to change how the law works so polluters pay, currently, they do not. She said: A constituent of mine with a large estate regularly finds people have been fly-tipping on it.

We need to consider better interagency working. It would certainly help if the DVLA were prepared to work with local authorities to identify the cars, drivers and owners. Having an evidence trail is very important.

There is a burden on individual landowners and a requirement for them to clear up the land, and they get absolutely no contribution towards doing that.

Based on everything I have seen, the polluter does not pay.

She suggested the government looks at different policies, such as getting rid of tip charges and allowing tips to be opened for longer. She said it would encourage people to rid their waste legally.

'Better collaboration'

The government has confirmed a rise in the number of fly-tipping incidents to 936,000 in 2015/16.

NFU Deputy President Minette Batters said the solution was better collaboration between all those affected parties.

"Fly-tipping is the scourge of the countryside - clearly we are disappointed that the number of fly-tipping incidents has increased," said Mrs Batters.

"Our members are fully aware of the impacts this can have on farm and the wider countryside, as well as the high costs and stress that can come along with it. This can run into thousands of pounds and can see farmers being forced to deal with the aftermath themselves."
A government minister has sparked an angry reaction from farmers' leaders by revealing that the UK would leave the Common Agricultural Policy at the end of March 2019 even if the Prime Minister succeeded in securing a two-year transitional Brexit deal.

The Prime Minister Theresa May called for a transitional deal with the rest of the European Union during her speech in Florence, Italy in September this year.

Such an agreement would delay the UK's complete departure from the EU until 2021 but, during NFU Scotland's autumn conference, Scotland Office Under Secretary of State Lord Ian Duncan indicated that the UK would leave the CAP at the end of March 2019 even if such an extension was agreed.

The Government has previously guaranteed current financial support for agriculture until 2021. However, Lord Duncan said at the Perthshire conference that the sooner the UK was free to decide how to spend this money the better.

He said Environment Secretary Michael Gove wanted to be able to leave both the CAP and the Common Fisheries Policy as soon as possible.

His comments were greeted with concern by both the NFUS and the NFU and by the Scottish Government's Minister for UK Negotiations on Scotlands Place in Europe, Michael Russell. He said: Farmers need certainty on money, labour, trade and regulation and these comments by Lord Duncan simply create extra confusion.

If true, Scottish farming would suffer greatly. We wont have the start of trade negotiations until early 2018 and its simply impossible to put in place detailed plans in just over a year, not least because we dont yet know the outcome of those talks.

It makes it difficult to do business with UK Government if this is how they behave and Lord Duncan needs to say whether this is an honest mistake, or whether he has reinvented the cliff edge and started to push Scottish farming off it.

Transitional agreement

FarmingUK sought its own clarification from the Westminster Government on its position on CAP. A spokesman simply said: "Leaving the EU and building a new partnership with the EU means that we will leave the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy.

As the Prime Minister set out in her Florence speech, we are proposing an implementation period to provide a bridge to our future relationship with the EU, providing certainty for businesses and individuals. The terms of that implementation period are a matter for negotiation.

Whilst the Prime Minister has called for a transitional agreement, her Government appears to have since hardened its position on EU departure through a last-minute addition to its Parliamentary withdrawal legislation inserting the exact time and date of withdrawal from the European Union.

The additional clause seeks to stipulate in legislation that the UK will leave the EU at exactly 11pm Greenwich Mean Time on March 29, 2019. This addition has been seen as a concession to Brexit Ministers in her Government, although it has angered many MPs in her party.

They say it will undermine Government negotiators who may need some flexibility to clinch a late trade deal with their EU counterparts.

'Increasingly alarmed'

NFU president Meurig Raymond says farmers are worried at the way Brexit negotiations are developing.

Farmers and growers are becoming increasingly alarmed at the prospect of a 'no deal' departure from the EU," he told Farming UK. "The resulting disruption to trade, access to labour and business stability would pose a fundamental threat to the viability of many of their businesses."

The agricultural industry has already reported increasing difficulty in securing the migrant labour needed both on the land and in the UK's food factories. In Cornwall, the county council recently told the Government that crops were rotting in the fields because farmers could not get the labour they needed to harvest them.

Meurig Raymond said, A transitional period will be crucial if we are to reach a Brexit settlement that backs British farming, although we await further details on exactly how such a transition will work.

We believe at least two years is needed to ensure a smooth Brexit, while also agreeing a future relationship between the EU and UK which recognises their mutual importance in terms of trade.

With over 70 per cent of our exports of food and non-alcoholic drinks being sent to EU markets, the NFU has been making the strongest case for a comprehensive free trade agreement between the EU and UK.

'Unacceptable'

NFU Scotland said it was trying to secure clarification from Westminster on the Government's exact position on Brexit and the Common Agricultural Policy.

Its director of policy, Jonnie Hall said: "Clarification and certainty is still being sought from UK Government on its position but NFUS has been crystal clear - any sudden departure from the CAP from 2019 without adequately funded fully devolved measures that meet Scotland's specific needs in place would be unacceptable.

"In reality, we need a transition to adjust properly from 2019 to at least 2022, allowing businesses to plan for operating in a new market and policy environment.

"There must be no cliff edge or other major upheaval in an era already defined by uncertainty and ebbing confidence. We want clear leadership and commitment from the decision takers - and farming will deliver."

During the NFUS autumn conference, the union's president, Andrew McCornick, said there was a great deal of frustration over the lack of political progress on Brexit negotiations.

The NFUS had pursued its three priorities of securing friction-free trade, access to skilled and competent labour and a future support package for Scotland that was adequately funded, fairly allocated and would underpin a policy framework specifically designed for Scottish farmings future needs.

Post-Brexit and post-CAP, Scottish agriculture has an opportunity to move away from area-based schemes that have incentivised inertia," he said.

"That will need the devolved delivery of schemes and measures that are fit for Scotlands needs, underpinned by a recast support package that is adequately funded, ring-fenced and properly targeted."

'Hard-won provenance'

Mr McCornick said Scottish farmers and crofters need to move forward with confidence, which means a need for friction-free trade that protects the "hard-won provenance" of the Scottish brand and recognises the "exceptional production standards" that the country has built.

He continued: For our farmers, crofters and food and drink sector to move forward with confidence we need friction-free trade that protects the hard-won provenance of the Scottish brand and recognises the exceptional production standards that we have built our reputation on.

For us, a single market and customs union, at least through transition, is a must. At the same time, future trade deals must not suck in cheaper food produced to poorer standards," he said.

Trade and labour issues are just as critical to the future well-being of both primary production and food and drink manufacturing. With a target turnover of 30 billion by 2030, food and drink will continue to generate greater returns for Scotland than areas like oil and gas, but that needs access to skilled and competent labour - both seasonal and permanent - to make it work.

The onus is on politicians to make this happen and that needs political posturing and grandstanding to end."

UK framework basis

The NFUS said it accepts that there will be overarching elements of regulation which are best-suited to be managed on a UK framework basis, such as labelling rules, animal welfare and pesticides regulation, in order to maintain a functioning UK single market.

The Scottish Government must retain the ability to manage support and implement schemes, policies and regulations as it currently does as a devolved nation delivering the CAP.

What is managed on a framework basis must be commonly agreed. NFUS has been crystal clear that any move which will drop down a Defra-centric policy on to Scotland is unacceptable."

The question of devolved powers is another issue that has caused controversy in the Westminster Government's Brexit withdrawal bill. Opposition politicians have accused the UK Government of an attempted power grab over responsibilities that will return to the UK from Brussels once the country withdraws from the EU.
Solar must go on rooftops instead of farmland, charity says
critic's rating: 3.0/5

Coco is a 3D animation film set in Mexico and maybe in a first for Pixar films, is voiced almost entirely by actors of Mexican and Latin American descents. American films often are accused of either making a caricature of the minorities or of dumbing down their culture, their traditions. Coco thankfully escapes both allegations. It's core happens to be the family is everything code that's the heart of Mexican and South American homes. The film faithfully highlights both its plus and minus points without getting preachy about either of them. Music also plays a vital part in the film. Indeed the central quest of protagonist Miguel is to be a musician and not become part of his familys flourishing shoemaking concern. He's inspired by the exploits of Ernesto de la Cruz, the greatest musician ever lived who had died an unlikely death. Indeed, it's Cruz's music that offers a narrative structure to the story and is at the heart of its conflict.The film introduces us to the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Muertos (The Day Of The Dead), where it's said the dead spirits get a chance to roam among the living and be remembered by their relatives. Indians, who have a similar tradition of Pitru Paksha, where offerings are made to the dead every year during a specific fifteen day period would relate to it. By a magical turn of events, our hero finds himself having a reverse passage to the land of the dead while still being alive. The land takes a toll on him, however. He slowly starts becoming a skeleton and must get the blessings of one of his ancestors in order to come back among the living. How he achieves that and brings about a bitter family feud to its end forms the crux of the film.3D animation is a wonderful tool and the way the feel and texture of leather or the real ripples in water is brought out in the film is extraordinary. The spirit guides, which take the form of the animals are shown to be colourful creatures, as are the painted skeletons, each having a unique set of tattoos. The effects are so smooth that you feel youre actually watching a film shot traditionally, rather than an animated product.While the afterlife is shown to be a overpopulated metropolis, its not a derelict ghost town but a fun place populated by colourful characters. For instance, Frida Kahlo makes an appearance as a choreographer for Ernesto de la Cruzs concert in the afterlife. Keeping in mind its a childrens film, the bitter elements are kept in check, though the film doesnt shy away from depicting reality either. It could easily have been turned into a melodrama as well, given the fact that films central theme is the importance of family but the director has kept a firm grip on that as well.The main film was preceded by Olafs Frozen Adventure, an offshoot of the Frozen universe. At 21 minutes, it was a tad irritating to watch. One wanted to directly sink ones teeth into Coco but the short disturbed the appetite...
The Delhi High Court dismissed a plea against the film Padmavati, observing that such petitions were encouraging those agitating against the movie.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar termed it as "hopeless" and "misconceived". The petition demanded that a committee needs to be set up prior to the release of the movie to check whether there was any distortion of history.

"Have you (counsel for the petitioner) seen the film.

Have the people, who are burning cinema halls seen the film? By this kind of petitions, you are encouraging the people who are agitating," the bench observed.

It further directed the petitioner, Akhand Rashtrawadi Party, which claims to be a political party, to approach the Censor Board as the court was not inclined to entertain it.

The plea has said that the committee was necessary as there was alleged distortion of historical facts in the film starring Deepika Padukone.

Padmavati is directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and also stars Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor. With pti inputs.
When Asked...

Whether she would like to have better protection from the state, she said, "In an ideal world, yes. I think it is too soon to tell... But yes it would be nicer to feel safer or protected at this point."

Recommended Video Padmavati controversy : Deepika Padukone gets death threat for insulting sentiments | FilmiBeat

On Protests

"It is hurtful and it is sad. Cinema has the power to bring the people together, to unite people and to spread love.''

It's Disheartening

''It is disheartening sometimes that people don't recognise that."

On Gender Dynamics Of Indian Cinema.

"I've seen that transition. In the kind of films being made, in the kind of films I'm being offered, in the roles that are being written, and with women behind the camera not just in front of the camera."
Recently, it was reported that R. Madhavan has been cast in the biopic of controversial ISRO rocket scientist, Nambi Narayanan.

To prep up for his character, the actor is taking some tips from this Bollywood superstar. Any guesses who? Well, it's none other than Aamir Khan! Madhavan told Times Of India that he is taking advice from Aamir Khan for his character in the film.

He was quoted as saying to the leading daily, "The prep is taking me through different age groups, shapes and sizes. I have to put on weight to play the character in his older days, and I consulted Aamir for tips. He told me it's better to do the heavier parts first so that I'm compelled to lose all the weight I put on. I am packing on the pounds religiously for my upcoming film, it's probably the most exciting project of my life."

We hear that Madhavan's character will be shown in three stages from the age from 27 to 75. The actor will play the older and heavier part first, as per Aamir Khan's tip.

The film was earlier offered to Mohanlal but he couldn't sign the film due to date issues. The report also stated that the movie will be a tri-lingual film and will be released in Tamil, Hindi and English.

For those who ain't aware, rocket scientist, Nambi Narayanan, was stuck in controversy when he was accused in an ISRO Espionage case. In 1994, he was arrested on charges of security leak in ISRO, though later, CBI dropped all the charges and he was acquitted by the Supreme court.

Looks like some interesting subject for the big screen, indeed!
La pubblicazione di contributi, approfondimenti, articoli e in genere di tutte le opere dottrinarie e di commento (ivi comprese le news) presenti su Filodiritto e stata concessa (e richiesta) dai rispettivi autori, titolari di tutti i diritti morali e patrimoniali ai sensi della legge sul diritto d'autore e sui diritti connessi (Legge 633/1941). La riproduzione ed ogni altra forma di diffusione al pubblico delle predette opere (anche in parte), in difetto di autorizzazione dell'autore, e punita a norma degli articoli 171, 171-bis, 171-ter, 174-bis e 174-ter della menzionata Legge 633/1941. E consentito scaricare, prendere visione, estrarre copia o stampare i documenti pubblicati su Filodiritto nella sezione Dottrina per ragioni esclusivamente personali, a scopo informativo-culturale e non commerciale, esclusa ogni modifica o alterazione. Sono parimenti consentite le citazioni a titolo di cronaca, studio, critica o recensione, purche accompagnate dal nome dell'autore dell'articolo e dall'indicazione della fonte, ad esempio: Luca Martini, La discrezionalita del sanitario nella qualificazione di reato perseguibile d'ufficio ai fini dell'obbligo di referto ex. art 365 cod. pen., in "Filodiritto" (https://www.filodiritto.com), con relativo collegamento ipertestuale. Se l'autore non e altrimenti indicato i diritti sono di Inforomatica S.r.l. e la riproduzione e vietata senza il consenso esplicito della stessa. E sempre gradita la comunicazione del testo, telematico o cartaceo, ove e avvenuta la citazione.
"We have a comprehensive reform plan for 2020, which will enable us to draw even closer to Europe"  Georgian PM - GeorgianJournal
Vandana Shah announces the launch of DivorceKart: Indias first app for legal queries around divorce News oi -Samden Sherpa The DivorceKart app is available free on both IOS and Android platforms.

Vandana Shah, an award-winning Divorce Lawyer, Author and Columnist with her team today, amongst family and friends launched "Divorcekart"- India's first legal app that focuses on answering legal queries regarding divorce instantly.

The App which is available free on both iOS and Android platform is going to serve as an online help platform for those couples who may feel that the marriage is over, and are unsure of their legal rights and process if and when they file the divorce. The app will only be a help platform to understand one's legal rights and would not recommend or advise any person to end a marriage or continue with it.

The app was formally unveiled via a live demonstration with a real litigant who posed queries to Vandana as she took the litigant through the app. Present at the launch were also Actor Ranvir Shorey - who is battling a divorce himself; 4 times National Award winning filmmaker Aruna Raje Patil, who has gone through a divorce about 3 decades ago; Padamshri Recipient Dr. Deshpande- An Oncosurgeon and Ms. Rashmi Bansal who was the moderator of the panel discussion for the evening.

Divorcekart, in English language, to begin with, will offer free immediate legal solutions, the app offers instant chat 24X7 and will guide the person who has downloaded the app about the court procedures. As the person goes through the app asking questions, the confidentiality stays intact with attorney-client privilege being applicable and no third party gets to know about personal details of the person posting queries. The App hopes that with the advice and guidance being offered free to the litigants, it would play a role in minimizing the emotional and financial turbulence a litigant may be going through.

Post-launch Vandana Shah also commented. "I am happy to have thought of this kind of an app and thankful that it has been launched today. This app was built keeping in mind the litigant's dilemma and pain and empathy I experienced in my journey through a divorce as a litigant myself then as a counselor and finally a divorce lawyer. India is witnessing significant changes across its socio-economic and cultural areas and while marriages continue, the emerging trend is to discontinue and end unhappy marriages as both women and men alike do no longer want to carry on a partnership which may not be mutually fulfilling."

Ms. Shah also said, that as the stigma is receding around divorces, one can witness a steady increase in divorce cases being filed, now what happens post-filing is a series of developments which are unexpected and leaves a litigant confused and helpless - at times such as this, she hopes that Divorcekart app would come handy and be able to offer wise and smart customized solutions.

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Nokia 8 starts getting Android 8.0 Oreo update with new features News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu

Nokia 8, HMD's flagship smartphone has received the Android 8.0 Oreo update. Last month, we saw that the smartphone was the final beta testing has been pretty successful tipping that the rollout of the update is not going to be delayed. Also, the smartphone received the November security update a few days back.

In the meantime, Juho Sarvikas, the Chief Product Officer at HMD Global took to Twitter to confirm that the company has started rolling out the Android 8.0 Oreo update starting from Friday. Given that HMD had already confirmed that all its smartphones such as Nokia 2, Nokia 3, Nokia 5 and Nokia 6 will also receive the update in the near future. The company revealed that all the Nokia Android smartphones should get the upcoming Android P update too as they support two years of OS update support.

The Android 8.0 Oreo brings picture-in-picture mode, background restrictions, smart text select bar, auto-fill frameworks, fingerprint sensor gestures for all apps, ability to adjust the intensity of Night Mode, ability to program your WiFi to turn on some locations, new and improved Emojis, the ability to customize lock screen app shortcuts, and more.

The flagship Nokia 8 smartphone was released back in August this year. The smartphone was released in India in October for Rs. 36,999 competing with the other flagships in this price range.

To refresh on is specifications, the Nokia 8 flaunts a 5.3-inch QHD 1440p IPS display with 2.5D curved glass and Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The device features IP54 splash proof certification as well. The smartphone makes use of an octa-core Snapdragon 835 SoC paired with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage space that can be expanded up to 256GB using a microSD card.

For imaging, the Nokia 8 comes with a dual camera setup at its rear with two 13MP sensors positioned vertically. One is an RGB sensor while the other is a monochrome sensor. Both the sensors at the rear are Carl Zeiss lenses as seen in the branding. The dual camera setup has f/2.0 aperture, PDAF, 76.9-degree wide angle lens, dual-tone LED flash and IR range finder.

The highlight of the smartphone is that the device features the Bothies feature that can click photos from both the front and rear cameras at the same time and stitch the same into a video. The device also features the OZO Audio for spatial 360-degree audio recording.

The goodies on the Nokia 8 include the 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, hybrid dual SIM support, a USB Type-C port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The device makes use of a 3090mAh battery to power the smartphone from within.

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Sony rolls out Android Oreo update for Xperia XZ and XZs News oi -Chandrika For both the devices, the software update carries with the build number 41.3.A.0.401.

Sony has a good reputation for sending regular updates to its devices. Notably, Xperia XZ1 and Xperia XZ1 Compact were the first smartphones to be released with Android 8.0 Oreo.

Moreover, the list of Sony smartphones that will be updated to Android Oreo is quite long. The Xperia XZ Premium has been enjoying the taste of Oreo since last month, and two more Sony smartphones have started receiving the Android Oreo update. According to Xperia Blog, the Japanese company is now rolling out the Android 8.0 update to Xperia XZ and Xperia XZs.

For both the devices, the software update carries with the build number 41.3.A.0.401. Since it includes the latest version of Android, the update weighs in at 1.2GB. So users are recommended to make sure that their device has enough charge and space. Also, it is better to use the Wi-Fi, unless one risks of exhausting their mobile data pack.

Other than the Android Oreo, the update brings along the November security patches as well. Additionally, Sony mentions that the update includes a Reminders feature that consists of "useful prompts" for unfinished tasks such as draft emails and messages. Of course, the Xperia Actions was already there, now it will gain new gaming and computing functionality.

As the software updates are usually rolled out in phases, Sony Xperia XZ and XZs owners should check in with their local operators or watch for the notification in their smartphones.

If users have not received the notification then they can always check for the update manually by going to Settings>About Phone>Software updates.

We are expecting Sony to release the same update for Xperia X Performance by the end of this year. Also, the Xperia XA1 Plus should be updated to Android Oreo shorty.

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Google now under investigation from regulators over location data collection case News oi -Samden Sherpa Google can collect location data from Android smartphones even if users take precautionary measures.

Google recently confirmed the practice of gathering location data from Android devices even when the service was disabled by users. However, with this case coming into light regulators in South Korea have now summoned representatives of the tech giant this week for questioning.

The probe in South Korea follows a report by Quartz which found that Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby mobile towers-even when location services are disabled -and sending that data back to Google.

This makes search engine giant and the unit of Alphabet behind Android to have access to huge amount of data that invades their privacy. Users cannot opt out of this even when their devices are factory reset, the report said.

Google reportedly confirmed the move which was undertaken "to improve the speed and performance of message delivery".

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) "is carrying out an inquiry into the claims that Google collected users' Cell ID data without consent even when their smartphone's location service was inactive," Chun Ji-Hyun, head of KCC's privacy infringement division, told CNNMoney on Friday.

Google said Android phones are no longer requesting Cell ID codes, and collection should be phased out this month.

Meanwhile, data protection officials in Britain are also looking into the matter, CNNMoney reported on Friday.

Source: IANS

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Sufi Islam

Salafists, such as the adherents of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [Da'esh, aka ISIL, aka ISIS] hold that Sufis are polytheists. The Salafists are fierce adherents of the unity of Allah, evident in the first phrase of the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith - "There is no God but Allah...". Sufism centers on orders or brotherhoods that follow charismatic religious leaders. Such saints, or "pirs", are objects of devotion while they are alive, and their tombs are objects of piligramage after their death [eg, Timbuktoo]. Salafists, strict monotheists, hold that such devotions detract from the adoration due Allah alone, and thus constitute polytheism.

The term "Sufi" derives from three Arabic letters sa, wa and fa. There have been many opinions on the reason for its origin from sa wa fa. The most frequently cited in Western dictionnaries suggests the Arabic word "suf" meaning "wool" in the sense of "cloak", referring to the simple cloaks the original Sufis wore. Some initiates are given a specially designed, colored wool vest which is symbolic of the woolen robes of poverty worn by ancient dervishes, and signifies the loving commitment of the dervish to serve humanity. The Sufis use letters of words to express hidden meanings, and so the word could also be understood as "enlightenment". According to some the word is derived from safa which means purity. According to another view it is derived from the Arabic verb safwe which means "those who are selected" - a meaning quoted frequently in Sufi literature.

The problem with understanding Sufism, is thus illustrated by the diversity of possible derivations of the word itself. There are many different Sufi movements, and many dimensions of Sufism. Although frequently characterized as the mystical component of Islam, there are also "Folklorist" Sufis, and the "Traditional" Sufis.

Sufis are "movements", within, and in a few extreme cases outside of mainstream Islam. Sufis in general, are complex, and cover many different "stripes" of Islam. Sufism started out as a Shia movement, but over the past several hundred years, has almost disappeared from Shia Islam, and is now, mainly a Sunni movement. Hanbalis, Shafis, Malikis and Hanafis can all belong to different Sufi "tariqas" or "brotherhoods, as they are called. In fact, the Islamic brotherhood in Egypt, and Al Qaeda, are both Sufi based movements.

The Traditional Sufis, are actually people like the Wahhabiyyah and Al Qaeda, who eschew that type of thing as apostasy, and instead, insist that Sufism is all an Internal (internal to an individual) movement/spiritualism, that should never adopt external/folkloric elements, like the Dervishes, etc.

Sufi Brotherhoods

Sufism is a movement of organized brotherhoods, who are grouped around a spiritual leader or sheik. There are no Islamic states which regard themselves as officially Sufi. Sufism is characterized by the veneration of local saints and by brotherhoods that practice their own rituals. Sufis organize themselves into "orders" or groups, called Tariqas. These groups are headed by a leader called a Shaykh who is considered the most spiritual man with the most Taqwa among them.

These orders emerged in the Middle East in the twelfth century in connection with the development of Sufism, a mystical current reacting to the strongly legalistic orientation of orthodox Islam. The orders first came to Sudan in the sixteenth century and became significant in the eighteenth. Sufism seeks for its adherents a closer personal relationship with God through special spiritual disciplines. The exercises (dhikr) include reciting prayers and passages of the Quran and repeating the names, or attributes, of God while performing physical movements according to the formula established by the founder of the particular order. Singing and dancing may be introduced. The outcome of an exercise, which lasts much longer than the usual daily prayer, is often a state of ecstatic abandon.

A mystical or devotional way (sing., tariqa; pl., turuq) is the basis for the formation of particular orders, each of which is also called a tariqa. The specialists in religious law and learning initially looked askance at Sufism and the Sufi orders, but the leaders of Sufi orders in Sudan have won acceptance by acknowledging the significance of the sharia and not claiming that Sufism replaces it.

The principal turuq vary considerably in their practice and internal organization. Some orders are tightly organized in hierarchical fashion; others have allowed their local branches considerable autonomy. Some are restricted to that country; others are widespread in Africa or the Middle East. Several turuq, for all practical purposes independent, are offshoots of older orders and were established by men who altered in major or minor ways the tariqa of the orders to which they had formerly been attached.

The four main Sufi orders are the Chishtiyya, the Naqshbandiyya, the Qadiriyya [Quaddiri] and the Mujaddiyya. Other orders include the Mevlevi, Bektashi, Halveti, Jerrahi, Nimatalahi, Rufi, and Noori. The Mawlawis, the whirling dervishes, are famous for their dancing ritual, an organized variation of earlier practices which were confined to music and poetry.

Three Sufi orders are prominent: the Naqshbandiya founded in Bokhara, the Qadiriya founded in Baghdad, and the Cheshtiya located at Chesht-i-Sharif east of Herat.

Among the Naqshbani, Ahmad al Faruqi Kabuli, born north of Kabul, acquired renown for his teachings in India during the reign of the Moghul Emperor Akbar in the sixteenth century. Sometime during the nineteenth century members of this family moved back to Kabul where they established a madrassa and a khanaqah in Shor Bazar which became a center of religious and political influence.

The Cheshtiya order was founded by Mawdid al-Cheshti who was born in the twelfth century and later taught in India. The Cheshtiya brotherhood, concentrated in the Hari Rud valley around Obe, Karukh and Chehst-i-Sharif, is very strong locally and maintains madrasas with fine libraries. Traditionally the Cheshtiya have kept aloof from politics, although they were effectively active during the resistance within their own organizations and in their own areas.

Many Iraqi Sunni Kurds belong to Sufi orders, of which the Qadiri and Naqshbandi are the largest. Both orders have followers across the Middle East, Central, and South Asia. A Qadiri Sufi shrine in Baghdad attracts annual transnational pilgrimages. While Sufi Islam has broad acceptance in Iraqi society, Sufism has frequently been viewed by orthodox Sunni Muslim theologians with some degree of suspicion because of its strong mystical components. Shia Muslims tend to be hostile towards Sufism because they believe it is heretical. Sufi orders serve to both strengthen and divide Kurdish society. Kurds of the same order feel a common bond, regardless of tribe. There is, however, tension between rival orders. Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), follows the Qadiri order. The Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), and the influential Barzani family are Naqshbandi Sufis.

The Tijaniyah (Tijaniyya) Order, founded in Morocco by Ahmad at-Tijani in 1781, extended the borders of Islam toward Senegal and Nigeria, and their representatives founded large kingdoms in West Africa. The Tijaniyah Order is strongly associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which began in Egypt in the late 1920s and later spread throughout the Arab world. Hasan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt, called for radical measures to bring about a return of Islamic government. The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood was the establishment of an Islamic state based on Shariah. It transcended the narrower sectarianism of the more traditional political parties. Moreover, the Brotherhood's superior organization made it a political force far stronger than its numbers might suggest. Many of the methods which made Sufism a succesfull occult underground helped the Muslim Brotherhood function effectively.

After World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood acquired a reputation as a radical group prepared to use violence to achieve its religious goals. The group was implicated in several assassinations, including the murder of one prime minister. The Brotherhood had contacts with the Free Officers in Egypt before the 1952 Revolution and supported most of their initial policies. The Brotherhood, however, soon came into conflict with Nasser. The government accused the Brotherhood of complicity in an alleged 1954 plot to assassinate the president and imprisoned many of the group's leaders. In the 1940s and early 1950s, the Muslim Brotherhood had appealed primarily to urban civil servants and white- and blue-collar workers. After the early 1970s, the Islamic revival attracted followers from a broad spectrum of social classes. In the 1970s, Anwar as Sadat amnestied the leaders and permitted them to resume some of their activities. But by that time, the Brotherhood was divided into at least three factions. The more militant faction was committed to a policy of political opposition to the government. A second faction advocated peaceful withdrawal from society and the creation, to the extent possible, of a separate, parallel society based upon Islamic values and law. The dominant moderate group advocated cooperation with the regime.

Bayat ("taking hand") is sanctioned by "Verily, those who give thee their allegiance, they give it but to Allah Himself" Quran 48:10. It is the initiation ceremony specific to many Sufi Orders. The Prophet Muhammad established this ceremony when he allowed his trusted companions to take his hand and commit themselves to vastly increase their love and loyalty to Allah and the Messenger: this is directly referred to in the Qur'an. Most Sufi Orders still practices some form of this sacred ceremony as a sacramental reenactment of the initiation offered by Prophet Muhammad to his companions. During the "taking hand" ceremony, the new dervish receives the blessings of the lineage, and a promise of spiritual protection along their life's journey.

Members of al-Qaeda take bayat [an oath of allegiance] to their sheik, Bin Laden, as an act of initiation. Al-Qaeda is a secret society without acclamation or public bayat to him. Bayat, the Arabic word for an oath of loyalty, means religious fealty or the submission more than personal allegiance. It means the link between the one making bayat, the shaykh and Prophet Muhammad (saws) is unbroken. This makes a Sufi connection possible during the solemn moment of taking bayat (pact) with the shaykh, who is the link in the chain - it connects to the chain and you become a recipient of the light of Muhammad (saws). Bayat is the ritual of accepting the shaykh as guide and coming under the protection of the lineage of the order. The number of actual members pledging bayat is unknown, but al-Qaida is said to have trained as many as 5000 militants in camps in Afghanistan and perhaps Indonesia.







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Military Strikes Continue Against ISIS Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Nov. 24, 2017  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, conducting 10 strikes consisting of 14 engagements Nov. 10-23, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Yesterday near Abu Kamal in Syria, coalition military forces conducted a strike that engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS vehicle consisting of two engagements against ISIS targets.

There were no reported strikes conducted in Syria on Nov. 22.

There were no reported strikes conducted in Syria on Nov. 21.

On Nov. 20 near Abu Kamal in Syria, coalition military forces conducted a strike consisting of an engagement that destroyed an ISIS vehicle.

On Nov. 19 near Abu Kamal, two strikes consisting of two engagements damaged four ISIS tunnel systems.

Strikes in Iraq

There were no reported strikes conducted in Iraq yesterday.

On Nov. 22 near Qayyarah in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted two strikes consisting of two engagements that destroyed an ISIS headquarters and a vehicle-borne bomb factory.

On Nov. 21 in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted six strikes consisting of nine engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Qaim, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS vehicle.

-- Near Qayyarah, two strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS air defense headquarters, a fighting position and 22 ISIS-held buildings.

-- Near Rawah, three strikes destroyed two ISIS tunnels, two weapons caches and an ISIS bunker.

There were no reported strikes conducted in Iraq on Nov. 20.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said.

The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted.

Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect.

For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said.

The task force does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

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Albanian patrol boat concludes navy's first NATO tour

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

24 Nov. 2017

The Albanian Navy's ALS ORIKU patrol boat on Wednesday (22 November 2017) wrapped up a full year of operations with NATO's Standing Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2), marking a major milestone in the Albanian Navy's first ever NATO deployment. Joining NATO's Aegean mission in November 2016, the ALS ORIKU monitored and patrolled the waters between Turkey and Greece, supporting international efforts aimed at curbing human trafficking.

ALS ORIKU is an Iliria-class patrol boat manned by 21 crew members who rotated every two months throughout the year. During its NATO deployment, the Albanian patrol boat worked with navies from across the Alliance, including Germany, Greece and Turkey. Albania's contribution to NATO's Aegean mission will continue and at the end of November, ORIKU'S sister ship ALS BUTRINTI is set to join the NATO fleet.

NATO launched its mission in the Aegean Sea in February 2016 to help international efforts to stop human traffickers. Since the start of the mission, the number of illegal crossings has been substantially reduced.

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High expectations as Mnangagwa takes helm of post-Mugabe Zimbabwe

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 14:49, November 24, 2017

HARARE, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe's incoming President Emmerson Mnangagwa has a mammoth task ahead of him.

As he prepares to take the oath of office as the second executive president of the republic Friday, people have expressed great expectations.

While opposition parties are clamoring for electoral and other reforms to ensure a level political playing field, ordinary citizens are more interested in bread and butter issues.

Social media is awash with a "things to do and not to do" list as Zimbabweans hope that his leadership will usher in a new era of prosperity.

Some have even written open letters to him imploring him to serve the people well and to his wife Auxillia, advising her to desist from interfering with his work as had become the norm with former First Lady Grace Mugabe.

Mnangagwa on Wednesday appealed to Zimbabweans to be united as the country works to revive its economy. He also asked for international support.

"We want peace in our country, we want jobs for our people," he said.

However, he will have to turn words into action as the country grapples with high unemployment, rising prices of basic commodities, cash shortages and a general sense of helplessness.

Motor mechanic Martin Zengeni said Mnangagwa should quickly move away from the hate language that had characterized Zimbabwe's diplomacy for a long time.

"We should court international goodwill by coming up with policies that convince the outside world that we are moving along a more democratic path.

"We also need him to come up with a leaner and more efficient Cabinet that is prepared to serve the people first and that is not bent on looting state resources. We don't want patronage and this matter of appointing relatives to Cabinet should stop," he said.

Zengeni said Mnangagwa should also push for the reduction of the size of the presidential motorcade because it was too big.

"But most important of all he should cut down on the number of foreign trips. He should not be an embarrassment to the nation by going to some international conferences and end up being the only foreign head of state attending.

"This is a waste of state resources. The former president was always accompanied by a huge entourage of hangers on and we hope this will stop under his charge," he said.

Peter Chengeta, a bank clerk in capital Harare, said Mnangagwa had less than a year to prove his worth and should, therefore, come up with policies that were investor friendly, uplifted democracy and created an air of harmony in the community.

"He should move away from hate speech. Denigrating his enemies won't take us forward. Let us see a new dispensation in which leaders do not only preach love and unity, but also one in which national healing is allowed to address issues of the past," he said.

Office orderly Amos Muduva, 61, said the government should ease problems at health institutions where patients were not getting the required treatment because of a shortage of resources.

"You go to clinics and hospitals and you do not get all the required drugs that are prescribed by doctors. And when you go to private pharmacies you realize that you cannot afford the drugs. Our hospitals also need to be refurbished because they are in a sorry state," he said.

Muduva said investors should be given a conducive environment to operate in so that industries are reopened and jobs are created.

"We want to see our university graduates getting real jobs and not the phantom 2 million jobs the ruling party promised in the last election. We don't want to see the graduates loitering in the streets selling phone recharge cards," he added.

Mnangagwa on Wednesday said he had already begun to receive pledges of support from several countries in the world.

Zimbabwe, he said, was witnessing the founding of new democracy after Mugabe was removed from power.

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Zimbabwe opposition urges incoming president to destroy Mugabe's pillars of oppression

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 08:23, November 24, 2017

HARARE, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Thursday urged the new Zimbabwean government to dismantle all pillars of repression and oppression that had been put in place by former President Robert Mugabe.

"We remain firmly convinced that all the pillars, warts and all, of the Mugabe dictatorship have got to tumble," the MDC said in a statement.

"The people of Zimbabwe are looking forward to a new and refreshing era of political tolerance and socioeconomic transformation and regeneration.

"The politics of thuggery, intolerance, intransigence, patronage and corruption that were the hallmark of the collapsed Mugabe regime should never, ever be allowed to resurface in our beloved motherland," the party added.

It said the new government must ensure the creation of strong institutions as opposed to the creation of strong personalities, adding that it remains cautiously optimistic that the Mnangagwa administration "will not mimic and replicate the evil, corrupt, decadent and incompetent Mugabe regime."

"In this respect, therefore, we shall continue to denounce the deification of individuals in our political discourse. Politicians come and go but Zimbabwe shall always remain in place," the MDC said.

The opposition party also called for an even electoral playing field during next year's elections.

Former president Robert Mugabe resigned Tuesday following pressure from the military and Zimbabweans, ending his 37 year grip on power.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's constitutional watchdog Veritas on Thursday urged Zimbabwean authorities to uphold the rights of everyone detained following the military takeover of government on Nov. 15.

"Everyone who has been arrested and detained for a crime, whatever its nature, must be brought before a court as soon as possible and in any event within 48 hours.

"We urge the authorities to accord the detained ministers their fundamental constitutional rights, rights upon which Zimbabwe itself is founded by virtue of section 3 of the Constitution," Veritas said.

Media reports have alleged that the military arrested a number of former president Robert Mugabe's associates including some cabinet ministers and that they remain in detention.

However, the military has not provided information about any arrest, location, and conditions of detention, or reasons for arrest.

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China, Djibouti agree to establish strategic partnership

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 07:27, November 24, 2017

BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- China and Djibouti on Thursday agreed to establish strategic partnership to strengthen all-round cooperation.

The announcement came as Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks with Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Guelleh is the first head of state of an African country to visit China since the conclusion of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in October.

Stressing that China attaches great importance to relations with Djibouti, Xi said the two countries have always treated each other with equality and showed mutual respect and support since the establishment of diplomatic ties 38 years ago.

China is willing to work with Djibouti to speed up the implementation of the results of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), jointly forge ahead with Belt and Road construction, and fully strengthen bilateral cooperation in all fields, said Xi.

China welcomes Djibouti to participate in the Belt and Road construction, and is ready to advance cooperation on infrastructure projects including railways, ports, water supply, liquefied natural gas pipeline, as well as building of a free trade area and cooperation in agriculture, Xi said.

Guelleh, who is on a state visit to China from Wednesday to Friday, said he was very pleased to be the first head of state of an African country to visit China since the 19th CPC National Congress and congratulated Xi on his re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.

Calling Djibouti "a good friend of China," Guelleh said his country views China as a top-priority and indispensable partner.

He expressed satisfaction with the development of bilateral ties over the past three decades and more, and thanked China for its assistance and support to Djibouti.

Djibouti would like to take an active part in the Belt and Road Initiative and enhance cooperation with China on infrastructure and areas important to people's livelihood, he said.

Guelleh said his country appreciates China's active engagement in UN peacekeeping and international anti-piracy efforts, thanking China for its role in maintaining world peace and prosperity.

China had made long-standing contribution to security and development in Africa even in the days when China itself was poor, said Guelleh, reiterating Djibouti adheres to the one-China policy and saying he is delighted to see China regain its due status in the world and will work closely with China in multilateral affairs.

"Whatever changes may take in China's development and the international landscape, China will stand by the developing countries including African countries and be their sincere friend and reliable partner," Xi said.

Xi called on both sides to maintain high-level exchanges and expand cooperation between the two governments, legislative institutions, political parties and local governments. He suggested both sides share experience in governance and development and support each other on issues concerning their core interests and major concerns.

China will continue to assist Djibouti in improving its healthcare and deepen cooperation in human resources development as well as people-to-people exchanges, said Xi.

"China supports Djibouti's role in international and regional affairs and will work with it in communicating on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and peace and security in Africa."

Xi hoped the two countries would work together to protect their own and other developing countries' interests and play a constructive role in safeguarding peace and stability of the Horn of Africa.

The two countries signed deals on economic, technological and agricultural cooperation after the talks.

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US Navy ends search for 3 missing sailors in the Philippine Sea

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 24, 2017 04:37PM

The US Navy has ended the search and rescue mission to find three sailors who went missing after their aircraft crashed into the Philippine Sea a couple of days ago, presuming they are dead.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with our lost shipmates and their families," Rear Adm. Marc Dalton, commander, Task Force 70m, said in a statement issued on Thursday.

"As difficult as this is, we are thankful for the rapid and effective response that led to the rescue of eight of our shipmates, and I appreciate the professionalism and dedication shown by all who participated in the search efforts," said the Navy statement.

Rescuer workers rescued eight people and returned them to safety south of Japan after the US plane with 11 crew and passengers crashed into the ocean southeast of Okinawa on Wednesday afternoon.

"The aircraft was en-route to the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), which is currently operating in the Philippine Sea," the Navy statement said.

The military said that "personnel recovery is under way," noting "their condition will be evaluated by" the medical staff aboard USS Ronald Reagan.

The cause of the incident is not known, but according to Japanese Minister of Defense Itsunori Onodera, who said he had been informed by the US Navy, the crash may have been a result of engine trouble.

The US Navy is withholding the names of the three missing sailors pending next of kin notifications.

The plane was a C-2 Greyhound that has been in operation for more than five decades and is due to be replaced by the long-range tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft.

The aircraft carries personnel, mail and cargo from mainland bases to carriers out at sea.

Wednesday's incident is the latest accident to hit the US armed forces in East Asia.

In August, ten US Navy personnel were killed when the USS John McCain collided with a tanker off Singapore.

Two months earlier, seven other Navy sailors were killed after the USS Fitzgerald and a cargo ship crashed into each other off Japan.

The US military has been present in the western Pacific and currently has tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of pieces of hardware stationed in Japan and South Korea.

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Taliban commander killed in Afghan airstrike in Kapisa

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 24, 2017 02:15PM

A Taliban commander has been killed in an Afghan government airstrike in the northeastern province of Kapisa.

The early Friday morning airstrike in Nijrab district killed Dilawar Khan and five of his family members, said Qais Qaderi, a spokesman for the province's governor.

Qaderi added that a search operation to locate Khan's militant brother, who remains at large, had been launched. The brother reportedly fled the scene during the airstrike.

Khan, himself, was shooting at the air force from his home before the airstrike, Qaderi said.

Kapisa, which is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, is located in the northeast of the country, about 100 kilometers north of the capital Kabul.

Taliban are mostly based in the south and east of Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan. However, the group has been behind many attacks in the north of the country, as well.

A number of local government and security officials have been killed in different incidents in Kapisa in the past few months.

The head of Kapisa Ulema Council, Gul Mohammad Hanifyar, was gunned down by unknown gunmen last week.

Last month, Taliban forces launched several attacks on a number of checkpoints and military bases across the war-ravaged country, leaving more than 100 Afghan soldiers dead and dozens more injured.

The United States and its NATO allies invaded Afghanistan as part of Washington's so-called war on terror in 2001. The US-led forces toppled the Taliban regime, but Afghanistan is still rife with violence despite the presence of foreign troops across the country.

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Emmerson Mnangagwa sworn in as Zimbabwe's president

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 24, 2017 10:36AM

Emmerson Mnangagwa, a former vice president of Zimbabwe, has been officially sworn in as the country's new president, days after long-time ruler Robert Mugabe resigned under pressure.

Mnangagwa's inauguration ceremony was held at the National Sport Stadium in the capital, Harare, on Friday. He will continue the remainder of Mugabe's term until the next presidential election due in September 2018.

Ninety three-year-old Mugabe succumbed on Tuesday after one week of nonstop pressure on him to quit, including partly by the military.

Mugabe did not attend the Friday inauguration ceremony.

Earlier this month, Mugabe had fired Mnangagwa as vice president in a power struggle between him as his wife, Grace Mugabe.

Mnangagwa, 71, had then fled the country. He returned after Mugabe agreed to cede power.

Mnangagwa has promised to maintain the former president's status as a "war hero" and provide Mugabe and his family with "maximum security," according to the state-run Herald newspaper.

He has also vowed to create jobs in a country, where unemployment is a major issue.

"We want to grow our economy, we want peace, we want jobs, jobs, jobs," he told a cheering crowd in Harare.

Mnangagwa is Zimbabwe's second president since the country gained independence from British colonial rule in 1981.

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In show of force, US to send F-22 jets to South Korea

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 24, 2017 07:38AM

The US will send six F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets to South Korea in a new show of force aimed at Pyongyang, amid heightened tensions over North Korea's missile and nuclear programs.

"Six F-22 fighters from the US Air Force are scheduled to join the joint South Korea-US exercise Vigilant Ace from December 4-8," South Korean military officials told Yonhap.

The fighters will fly to the Korean Peninsula from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan and stay at an air base in South Korea throughout the exercise, according to officials.

Up to four F-35A Lightning stealth fighters are also likely to join the deployment, they said.

This would mark the first time the US has deployed six Raptors to Korea at once.

Local media reported that the US aircraft will engage in precision strike drills with South Korean Air Force fighter jets.

The Vigilant Ace drill is held regularly by the US and South Korea to simulate wartime operations.

The move comes as the US pushes what President Donald Trump has called a "maximum pressure campaign" against the North's nuclear program.

Further escalating tensions, on Monday US President Donald Trump declared North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, a move designed to punish the Asian nation over its nuclear and missile programs.

North Korea denounced the decision, saying the move amounts to a "serious provocation" that justifies Pyongyang's development of nuclear weapons.

Experts have warned that blacklisting North Korea would have limited practical effect but makes finding a diplomatic solution to the standoff more difficult.

Meanwhile, the international push for a diplomatic solution took another blow on Tuesday, when the Trump administration imposed a series of new sanctions on a number of North Korean shipping firms as well as Chinese companies.

The move has infuriated China, which is North Korea's main trading partner.

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Kyrgyzstan Inaugurates New President In Peaceful Transfer Of Power

RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service November 24, 2017

Kyrgyzstan's new president has been inaugurated in the capital, Bishkek, in a first peaceful transfer of power between elected presidents in the region.

Sooronbai Jeenbekov replaces President Almazbek Atambaev, who was constitutionally barred from seeking a second term.

Delivering remarks in both Kyrgyz and Russian at his inauguration ceremony, Jeenbekov pledged to protect the "unity of the country."

Jeenbekov, who served as Atambaev's prime minister from April 2016 to August 2017, also vowed to tackle rampant corruption in the Central Asian state of 6 million.

"A ruthless fight against corruption has begun. Conditions have been created to purify society," he said.

According to official results, Jeenbekov won the October 15 election with 54 percent of the vote -- enought to avoid a runoff -- after a campaign in which critics said the outgoing president used the courts, law enforcement, and other levers of power to put his former prime minister in power.

Jeenbekov's main rival, Omurbek Babanov, gained just short of 34 percent of the vote and has alleged that the voting was marred by violations.

International observers praised the vote as competitive and transparent, but said that "numerous and significant problems were noted" during the count and that "misuse of public resources, pressure on voters, and vote buying remain a concern."

Atambaev defended the results of the election in comments following the November 24 inauguration ceremony, calling the ballot "transparent and competitive." He said he was confident Jeenbekov would "continue Kyrgyzstan's chosen path toward development and prosperity."

Jeenbekov's inauguration marks the first peaceful handover of power from one elected president to another in any Central Asian country since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Presidents were driven from power by street protests in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010, and for more than two decades only the death of a president in office has ushered in a new leader in any of the other four countries in the region.

With reporting by AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/kyrgyzstan/28873791.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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Turkmenistan's Iron Lady: A Strange Tale Of Corruption

Bruce Pannier November 24, 2017

You could say Gurbanbibi Atajanova was born with a set of jailer's keys in her hand.

She served as the country's prosecutor-general for an astonishing 10 years under Turkmenistan's first president, Saparmurat Niyazov, a leader known for constantly shuffling officials.

If you were accused of crimes and were brought before Atajanova, your life was about to take a serious turn for the worse.

She wore a dark-blue uniform with golden epaulettes, a blue cap with a gold badge and gold trim, and seemed to always have a sour expression on her face.

Atajanova was already an employee of the Prosecutor-General's Office when the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991. She was promoted to assistant prosecutor-general right after Turkmenistan became independent, and was named prosecutor-general on April 3, 1995.

Atajanova spearheaded the Turkmen government's efforts to root out corruption for 10 years. She sent thousands of people to prison, among them scores of officials convicted of corruption.

Charging officials with corruption was one of the ways Niyazov perpetuated a turnstile policy when it came to officials, an approach many believe was used to prevent any one person from becoming too powerful or too popular.

State TV often showed Atajanova speaking to fallen, disgraced officials charged with crimes, usually some form of corruption. Atajanova coldly listed the state's charges against the accused or just as coldly recounted punishments already meted out to the guilty -- including confiscation of all property, prison, or internal exile to remote areas of Turkmenistan.

After the reported November 25, 2002, attempt on President Niyazov's life, Atajanova led the investigation, rounding up not only suspects but their family members as well.

Simultaneously, Atajanova went after government officials. In March 2003, Atajanova announced that 34 former government officials, including two deputy prime ministers, a defense minister, and an energy minister and his deputies were found guilty of corruption and embezzlement and sent to internal exile in remote settlements.

30,000 Buckets?

There were rumors in December 2003 that Atajanova herself had been placed under house arrest for involvement in illegal narcotics trafficking, but at the end of that month she appeared on state television attending a cabinet meeting. However, there was some truth to the rumors.

At the end of 2005, Atajanova retired at age 58. Shortly after, the tables turned.

She was taken into custody in April 2006 and charged with involvement in the illegal narcotics trade. Soon after the authorities said they had seized from Atajanova 13 homes, a brick factory, a rice mill, five cars, three tractors, a bulldozer, two construction cranes, 40 hectares of land, more than $6 million, more than 2,000 cattle, and, mysteriously, more than 30,000 buckets.

I know. That last one is really strange. Even President Niyazov made a point of mentioning the buckets when Atajanova appeared before him, weeping and begging for mercy. Niyazov asked, "For what reason did you steal 30,000 buckets?"

The reason for the buckets was never explained, but they sparked some interesting rumors about their purpose, including that they were filled with gold, or heroin.

Atajanova was taken into custody and quickly tried and convicted.

But the story was not over.

Nikolai Gavrilov was a senior employee in the National Security Committee's counternarcotics department. He is believed to be the person who discovered and reported Atajanova's involvement in the illegal trafficking of narcotics.

Gavrilov and his wife were killed in Ashgabat on November 8, 2006. The perpetrators have never been caught.

Gurbanbibi Atajanova's case says much about fighting corruption in Central Asia. She supposedly led the fight against corruption, helping to imprison scores of officials on corruption charges. But even the partial list of Atajanova's seized assets shows she accumulated her wealth over many years; some of it apparently was taken from people she helped send to prison.

It is doubtful no one noticed what Atajanova was doing.

The December 2003 rumor of Atajanova's house arrest was not true, but it appears that her brother and adopted son were apprehended at that time for drug smuggling.

When Atajanova was finally sent to prison, most of her family, including her brother and adopted son, seem to have been imprisoned also.

Atajanova was incarcerated in the women's prison in Dashoguz in 2006. That was the last credible information about Turkmenistan's Iron Lady.

RFE/RL's Turkmen Service contributed to this report. The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/qishloq-ovozi-turkmenistan- corruption-iron-lady-atajanova/28874935.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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EU, Armenia Ink Partnership Pact As Eastern Partnership Summit Concludes

Rikard Jozwiak November 24, 2017

BRUSSELS -- European Union leaders and six former Soviet republics on November 24 swiftly agreed on a final joint declaration of their Eastern Partnership summit in Brussels, avoiding a repeat of the squabbling that triggered delays at the last summit two years ago.

In addition, the EU signed a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with Armenia.

"This agreement is the first of this kind that is concluded with a party that is also a member of the Eurasian Economic Union," EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini said. "It will now be very important to implement it."

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said, "Armenia is determined to further develop and strengthen comprehensive cooperation with the EU in all areas of mutual interest based on this agreement."

Officials in both Brussels and Yerevan have stressed the agreement does not impinge upon Armenia's close relations with Russia, which leads the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The EEU includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia.

Russian pressure is believed to have scuttled a broader Association Agreement that Armenia and the EU had nearly finalized in 2013. Yerevan precluded completion of that deal when President Serzh Sarkisian unexpectedly announced the decision to join the EEU just three months before the Association Agreement was set to be inked.

Speaking at a news conference after the summit, European Council President Donald Tusk praised the Eastern Partnership program.

"This is not a geopolitical beauty contest between Russia and the EU, but a real partnership between sovereign countries without political, economic, and military threats and coercion between the EU and our partners," he said.

The summit's final declaration, published on the European Council's website, does not mention any specific conflicts in the region, including Ukraine's with Russia-backed separatists in the east of the country that has killed more than 10,000 since April 2014.

But it states that the "summit participants remain deeply concerned about the continued violations of principles of international law in many parts of the region."

It adds that they welcome "the EU's strengthened role in conflict resolution and confidence building in the framework or in support of existing agreed negotiating formats and processes, including through field presence, when appropriate."

That language that was enough to secure approval from Armenia and Azerbaijan. The two neighbors, who have been locked in a decades-long standoff over the breakaway Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh, clashed over the final text of the declaration at the 2015 summit in Riga.

The final text of this year's declaration features the same language as the Riga declaration concerning the potential future EU-accession of Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, each of which have signed association agreements with the 28-member bloc.

It states that "the summit participants acknowledge the European aspirations and European choice of the partners concerned, as stated in the association agreements."

Russia's envoy to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, told journalists that the summit showed that "the European Union's landmark political and economic initiative, the partnership, is losing momentum."

He argued that only a "propagandistic shell and a set of bilateral projects" remain from the high expectations of the project's launch.

The run-up to this year's summit has otherwise been dominated by speculation about whether authoritarian Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka would show up. Minsk said on November 21 that Foreign Minister Uladzimer Makey would lead its delegation.

In October, EU sources told RFE/RL that Lukashenka had received an invitation "without restrictions," just like the leaders of the other five Eastern Partnership states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

This was a U-turn compared to the previous four summits, when he was blocked after being hit with EU sanctions following a violent crackdown on protesters after the Belarusian presidential election in 2010.

Most of the sanctions, including those on Lukashenka, were lifted in February 2016.

Based on reporting by Rikard Jozwiak and RFE/RL's Armenian Service Director Harry Tamrazian in Brussels

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/eu-eastern-partnership-armenia- azerbaijan-belarus-ukraine-georgia-moldova/28872395.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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US F-22, F-35 Aircraft Marshalled to South Korea For Massive War Games

Sputnik News

22:00 24.11.2017

The US military is sending the most advanced aircraft in its arsenal, F-22 Raptors and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, to South Korea to take part in a massive show of force next month that will feature at least 230 warplanes.

The drill, Vigilance Ace, is to run from December 4-8 and will incorporate US military assets from the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, the US Air Force said November 24. At least six F-22s and three or four F-35s will take part in aerial drills, Yonhap reports.

The "realistic" combat exercise is tailored to "enhance interoperability between US and Republic of Korea forces and increase the combat effectiveness of both nations," the Seventh US Air Force, which operates out of South Korea, said in a Friday statement.

Working from eight US and South Korean military installations across South Korea, more than 12,000 US personnel will be involved in Vigilance Ace.

North Korean officials have frequently condemned US and South Korean war games as preparations for an invasion, but the US insists they are part of routine, business-as-usual operations and not influenced by current events.

The US has moved to increase pressure on Pyongyang since US President Donald Trump traveled across Asia in the first two weeks of November. On Monday, Washington placed North Korea on a list of nations classified as state sponsors of terrorism. One day later, the US Treasury slapped new sanctions on the nuclear-armed state.

Pyongyang blasted the sanctions as a "serious provocation" Wednesday while doubling-down on its vow to continue developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

The tensions on the Korean Peninsula have escalated over the past year due to repeated ballistic missile launches and a nuclear test conducted by North Korea that were followed by United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed on Pyongyang. The US and South Korea, sometimes joined by fellow ally Japan, have also continued conducting land, sea and air military drills, which North Korea considers provocative, on and around the peninsula.

 Sputnik

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Asia Code for Sea Peace Expected to Tilt Toward China

By Ralph Jennings November 24, 2017

A code of conduct aimed at avoiding mishaps in the contested South China Sea is likely to sidestep concerns that are offensive to the chief claimant, Beijing, analysts forecast.

China and 10 Southeast Asian Nations agreed at summits in Manila this month to start negotiations on a code of conduct for the resource-rich sea, where sovereignty is contested by six governments.

Beijing claims about 90 percent of the sea from its south coast to the island of Borneo. It has alarmed rival claimants, including Taiwan and four Southeast Asian states, since 2010 with its construction of artificial islands for fighter jets and radar systems.

Other claimants also value investment and development aid from the $11.2 trillion Chinese economy, making it harder for them to speak out.

"The discussion (on a code of conduct) should revolve around basically crisis prevention and crisis management," said Jay Batongbacal, director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea at the University of the Philippines. "I don't think it will be very specific."

From goodwill to nonviolence

Leaders from Beijing and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed November 13 to open negotiations that will convert a framework code of conduct into a set of rules for the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea.

The go-ahead followed more than a year of building goodwill between ASEAN and China, including pledges of Chinese aid for the Philippines plus a deepening of economic cooperation in Indochina. China in turn expects no challenge to its maritime sovereignty, analysts believe.

Code of conduct negotiators will assure the document "indeed doesn't have any implication on questions of sovereignty," said Oh Ei Sun, international studies instructor at Singapore Nanyang University.

"So-called experts from various countries are really trying to look at it from various angles so as not to imply something disadvantageous toward them," he said.

Claimants want the code to head off clashes among a million-plus fishing boats, coast guard vessels and naval ships that use the South China Sea. About one-third of the world's marine shipping traffic passes through the same sea.

But Vietnam and China have sparred at least three times. Sailors died in naval clashes in 1974 and 1988. Beijing's placement of an oil rig sparked boat ramming in 2014.

Rehash of older documents

The code will probably rehash milder parts of existing, non-binding agreements, said Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. "It's not going to have any law enforcement power," he added.

Among the older deals from which the code may borrow language is a China-Southeast Asia Declaration of Conduct signed in 2002, Koh said. The declaration calls for peaceful settlement of disputes, notification of military exercises and humane treatment of people in distress.

Parties may also borrow from the Code of Unplanned Encounters at Sea, a voluntary 2014 agreement followed by China and the United States, Oh said. China and the Southeast Asian bloc agreed last year to observe this code so they would improve what Beijing's official Xinhua News Agency calls "operational safety of naval ships and naval aircraft in air and at sea."

A third document they might consult is the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which covers rights of merchant ships, transit passage and "innocent" passage.

The code of conduct is expected further to enshrine use of a China-Southeast Asian nation hotline for foreign ministry use in case of maritime problems.

Code of conduct omissions

The code is likely to omit references to specific parts of the sea, especially occupied shoals, reefs and islets, analysts believe. It may also shun mentions to freedom of navigation or the use of outside dispute resolutions.

Beijing resents passage of U.S. ships through the sea and lost a world court arbitration to the Philippines in 2016 over the legal basis of its claims, which it backs with historical fishing records. Some countries worry China will declare an air defense identification zone over the sea to restrict foreign aviation.

China prefers to work things bilaterally instead through formal, international dispute resolution.

Today the maritime claimants normally protest diplomatically rather than with force over perceived sovereignty breaches. They also do not seize occupied islands from one another.

The code will probably consecrate today's reality in the South China Sea, said Alan Chong, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. The relatively weak Southeast Asian states are unlikely to violate it, he said, putting the "onus" on China.

"The code of conduct, I think (is) de facto forcing China to recognize the existing boundaries," Chong said. "So China will play along as long as it leaves the door open for its ultimate claim of everything."

Signing by 2018

China and Southeast Asia agreed to open negotiations on the code of conduct early next year with an expected aim of signing it by the end of 2018.

China may want the code sooner than later to look like a good Asian neighbor, said Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan. Without a glow from the code of conduct, Huang said, attention could shift to China's internationally controversial support for Communist ally North Korea, he said.

But China has more freedom to use the sea without a code, Koh said.

"In the first place, China will be always trying to play for time," Koh said. "The longer it takes the more leeway China will have to do whatever it wants."

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Officials: Russia Seeking to Exploit Catalonia Secessionist Movement

By Martin Arostegui November 24, 2017

Covert attempts by Russia to support Catalonia's independence bid using disinformation and cyberattacks to support separatists may be part of a long-term strategy to penetrate and gain control not only of Spain's wealthy northeastern region but also other parts of Europe, Spanish officials tell VOA.

Spain and NATO are investigating allegations that thousands of social media trolls or robot accounts were set up in Russia to amplify distorted or "fake news" items aimed at influencing a referendum for independence held October 1 in Catalonia.

No direct link has yet been established between the Russian government and the cyberattack, but much of the activity has been traced to a property near the city of St. Petersburg that is owned by a close business partner of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to testimony presented at a Spanish congressional hearing Thursday.

The cyberattack also has involved attempts to hack email accounts of opponents of the independence movement, according to the victim of such an attempt, Erik Encinas, who told VOA that Google traced an attempt to intercept his emails to a Russian source.

Russian crime organizations have been trying to gain leverage in the region for years and recently came close to taking control of the Catalan security ministry, a high-level intelligence officer operating in Catalonia who requested anonymity told VOA.

Russian money laundering

The intelligence officer, working for one of Spain's main security services, participated in an investigation known as Operation Clotilde, in coordination with the U.S. Treasury Department. The investigation targeted money laundering by Russian crime syndicates through Catalonian banks, shell companies and real estate investments.

The intelligence officer told VOA some of the Russian money went to the Catalan nationalist Convergence and Union (CiU) party.

The Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT), a radical CiU faction, joined the leftist ERC and CUP parties to form a regional governing coalition that held the October referendum for independence, which was ratified by Catalonia's parliament.

Money laundering investigations were centered in the Catalan seaside resort of Lloret de Mar, whose former CiU mayor, Xavier Crespo, was indicted in 2014 for taking bribes from alleged Russian crime boss Andrei Petrov.

In 2013, Catalonia's regional government appointed Crespo to the key post of security secretary, equivalent to a ministerial position, and one in which he would have controlled the Catalan police.

"His appointment was overturned when we reported our investigation to the regional government," the intelligence officer told VOA. The officer pointed out, however, that Crespo's association with Russian crime figures was well-known: In 2008, Crespo had made a much-publicized trip to Moscow and was hosted by Petrov, who took him on a helicopter ride.

Crespo was celebrating his security appointment in Lloret de Mar's city hall when a unit of Spain's Civil Guard gendarmerie "met with the Catalan regional government to inform them of our findings," the Spanish intelligence officer said.

Taking control of police

Spain, which imposed direct rule in the region after last month's independence vote, now faces the delicate task of taking control of Catalonia's police force.

Most members of the regional government have been arrested, including security chief Joaquim Fom, who has been accused of supporting the independence bid.

Catalan police also failed to prevent the escape of regional President Carles Puigdemont to Belgium, where he is trying to establish a government in exile.

"The Russians would be looking to fill the void left by Catalan and Spanish companies that are leaving due to the instability," the Spanish intelligence source said. More than 2,000 companies have transferred their headquarters out of Catalonia since October, including major multinational firms.

Spanish Intelligence analysts say that Russians see an independent Catalonia as a possible base from which to penetrate other parts of Europe, where their business activities are restricted by sanctions enforced by the United States and the European Union.

Russian officials have denied Spanish and NATO accusations.

But Putin has made no secret of his desire for revenge against the West for recognizing the 2008 unilateral independence of Kosovo, which caused the dismemberment of Serbia, a close Russia ally.

A Kremlin operative who acts as the virtual foreign minister of South Ossetia, which separated from the former Soviet republic of Georgia and came under Russian military protection in 2008, visited Barcelona last month to establish an "interests office" and meet with local businessmen, according to Spanish press reports.

The Kremlin operative also traveled to the Italian region of Lombardy, which is holding a referendum for greater autonomy from Rome.

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Analysts, Leaders Say Returning IS Foreign Fighters Are Concern for N. Africa

By Noor Zahid, Mohamed Elshinnawi November 23, 2017

As the embattled Islamic State terror group has lost much of its territory and strength in Syria and Iraq, governments in North Africa fear many returning fighters from the Mideast battlegrounds could trigger instability in the region.

"The region is threatened ... with the return of foreign fighters," Algeria Foreign Minister Abdul Qader Messahel told reporters in Cairo last week.

"The signs and reports indicate that the [foreign fighters'] return will be in our region," Messahel added.

Thousands of foreign fighters

Recent reports indicate at least 5,600 foreign fighters have left the battlefield following IS defeats in Syria and Iraq. Hundreds of fighters from North African states, including Tunisia and Morocco, have already returned to their home countries, according to a recent report by the Soufan Center, a New York-based think tank following the developments in the region.

North Africa has been a major source of foreign fighters for IS and other terror groups in Iraq and Syria, with thousands of fighters from the region having reportedly joined the conflict in the two troubled countries since 2012.

Analysts think that while some fighters might settle down and join the mainstream in their respective communities, others might move on to the next conflict after the one in the Middle East.

"Foreign fighters returning from ISIS is a very great concern in the West and in the Middle East and North Africa region," David Des Roches, an associate professor at the National Defense University in Washington, told VOA, using an acronym for the militant group.

"This group of radicalized people do not view themselves as defeated, but rather feel they are returning to carry on jihad on a different battlefield," Des Roches added.

Ongoing conflicts

There is also growing concern that the ongoing conflicts in several North African countries provide a fertile ground for the re-emergence of IS in the region.

In Egypt, several militant groups, including Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which has pledged allegiance to IS, are controlling large swaths of the Sinai Peninsula, which borders the Gaza Strip and Israel, and have established their own rule over the areas under their control.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis' local affiliates are posing a threat in the neighboring Sahel region of Africa. Last month, IS-linked militants killed four U.S. soldiers in Niger.

Libya is another location that analysts think IS might use as a breathing space and a hub from which to send fighters to neighboring countries in an effort to expand its sphere of influence.

Leaders in North African countries and analysts say the political and military crisis in Libya is providing a springboard for IS fighters moving to North Africa.

"There is every likelihood that squeezed IS fighters will seek to move to a more permissive security environment, and that would be Libya and the states of the Sahel," Jennifer Cooke, director of Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told VOA.

IS in Libya

Ismael Meraf, an Algerian analyst, told Alhurra, a U.S.-based public Arabic-language satellite TV channel that broadcasts to Middle East and North African audiences, that Libya "has become a fertile land for terrorist groups."

U.S. officials and lawmakers also have warned of IS's growing threat in Africa.

"The more we succeed on the Middle East, the more we are going to see the snakes run to Africa," U.S. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said last month following a classified briefing on the attack on U.S. troops by an IS-affiliated group in Niger.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has warned that "there is no doubt" the fight against IS is now moving to Africa.

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers last month that IS aspires to establish a larger presence "from Libya to Egypt's Sinai to West Africa."

U.S. Africa Command spokeswoman Robyn Mack recently told VOA that the U.S military had launched new airstrikes against IS militants in Libya.

Mack said the strikes occurred November 17 and 19 near Fuqaha "in coordination with the Libyan Government of National Accord."

Several IS militants have been reportedly killed in the airstrikes.

"We are committed to maintaining pressure on the terror network and preventing them from establishing [a] safe haven," Mack said.

Battling IS presence

IS has a presence in Libya's coastal city of Sirte. The U.S and Libyan governments have been battling the terror group to try to prevent it from establishing a hub in the war-torn country.

The military carried out about 500 airstrikes last year against the IS fighters in Sirte.

Experts, however, charge that IS is looking to establish a hub not only in Libya but also in other vulnerable countries.

Des Roches, of the National Defense University, maintains that a comprehensive strategy is needed to counter the threats posed by the returning IS fighters in Africa and elsewhere.

Other than military measures, combating IS and other militant groups in the region requires addressing other factors that enable extremist groups to expand in the region, he added.

"There is a need to create more jobs, fight corruption, and provide services and better governance in Africa," Des Roches told VOA. "To win the ideological battle, the governments should focus on teaching moderate Islam."

VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report.

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235 killed in attack on mosque in Egypt's Sinai

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 24, 2017 11:52AM

At least 235 people have been killed and over 130 others injured in a shooting attack and bombing at a mosque in the restive Sinai Peninsula, state TV says.

Police officers said militants attacked al-Rawdah mosque in the town of Bir al-Abd, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the North Sinai provincial capital of el-Arish, during Friday prayers.

The attack, the deadliest single incident in the country's recent history, reportedly targeted the supporters of Egyptian security forces attending prayers there.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, which had the hallmarks of the Daesh-affiliated Velayat Sinai terrorist group.

A security source was quoted by Sky News as saying that Egyptian military drones killed 15 perpetrators of the Friday attack. The source, however, did not provide further details on the attackers' affiliation or where the airstrikes were carried out.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi convened an emergency security meeting soon after the attack, state television reported. The Egyptian president announced three days of national mourning.

"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period," Sisi said.

The Sinai Peninsula has been under a state of emergency since October 2014, after a deadly terrorist attack left 33 Egyptian soldiers dead.

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.

Velayat Sinai has claimed responsibility for most of the assaults. The group later expanded its attacks to target members of Egypt's Coptic Christian community as well as foreigners visiting the country. That has prompted the government to impose the state of emergency and widen a controversial crackdown, which critics say has mostly targeted dissidents.

Iran condemns 'brutal' attack on worshipers

Meanwhile, Iran condemned the "brutal" terrorist attack in el-Arish, offering condolences to the families of the victims and the Egyptian nation.

In a statement released on Friday, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said "Takfiri terrorism" will spare no effort to make up for its crushing defeat in the region.

He also called on all governments and nations to be vigilant in the face of the plots hatched by the "defeated bloodthirsty" terrorists.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad also condemned the deadly attack on his Twitter page, saying terrorists show no respect even for places of worship.

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Czech Court Rules Russian Hacking Suspect Can Be Extradited to U.S.

RFE/RL November 24, 2017

PRAGUE -- A Czech court has ruled that a suspected Russian hacker at the center of a tug-of-war between Washington and Moscow can be extradited to the United States.

Prague's High Court on November 24 upheld a lower court's ruling allowing the extradition of Yevgeny Nikulin, whom the United States accuses of hacking computers and stealing information from major Internet companies including LinkedIn and Dropbox.

Moscow, which has repeatedly denounced U.S. efforts to extradite its citizens from third countries, has sought Nikulin's extradition on separate Internet-theft charges.

A final decision will be in the hands of the Czech justice minister, who can approve extradition to one country and block the other.

Nikulin initially appealed his extradition to both the United States and Russia, but later withdrew the appeal against extradition to his homeland.

Nikulin was arrested by Czech authorities in October 2016 based on an Interpol warrant requested by the U.S. government.

The latest ruling on his extradition comes amid ongoing U.S. investigations into an alleged Russian campaign to influence last year's presidential election.

U.S. intelligence has concluded that Russia used computer hacking, e-mail leaks, and propaganda in an effort to influence the November 2016 presidential election that swept President Donald Trump into the White House. Moscow rejects the allegation.

A lawyer for Nikulin claimed earlier this year that FBI agents tried to get his client to confess to hacking the U.S. Democratic Party before the election.

The issue came up briefly during the May 30 hearing at the Prague Municipal Court, which ruled that Nikulin could be extradited either to Russia or the United States.

Nikulin said during that hearing that he was not involved in cyberattacks targeting the Democratic Party, and he has insisted he is innocent of the charges he faces in the United States.

With reporting by Oksana Kapinos of Current Time TV in Prague, AP, Reuters, and Lidovky.cz

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-czech- court-rules-nikulin-hacking-suspect-may- be-extradited/28874803.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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Suspected Militants Kill 235 in Sinai Mosque Attack

By VOA News November 24, 2017

Egyptian security officials said 235 people were killed Friday by suspected militants in an attack on a packed mosque in the volatile northern Sinai Peninsula.

The government's MENA news agency said extremists targeted the al-Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of the provincial capital, el-Arish.

A man claiming to have been inside the mosque during the attack told Arab media that militants in four-wheel-drive vehicles opened fire inside the house of worship following an explosion.

Eyewitnesses also said the militants fired on ambulances as emergency personnel tried to evacuate the wounded to hospitals. The state news agency said 109 people were wounded in the attack.

The attack targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but an Islamic State affiliate has been carrying out attacks in the region since 2013.

Egyptian government warplanes reportedly attacked terrorist targets in the Sinai following the carnage at the mosque.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi vowed that the attack "will not go unpunished" but did not specify what steps might be taken.

U.S. President Donald Trump reacted to the violence, calling it a "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshippers."

Trump added, "The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!" in a tweet sent from Florida, where he is staying over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Neighboring Israel sent condolences to Egypt following the attack. Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979 and maintain close security cooperation.

Egypt's security forces are battling an Islamic State insurgency, mostly in the northern region of Sinai, where militants have killed hundreds of police officers and soldiers since fighting there intensified in the past three years.

Militants have targeted security forces, but have also struck beyond the Sinai by hitting Christian churches and civilians in other parts of Egypt.

Egyptian media reported that Sissi met with top security officials, including the defense and interior ministers, immediately after the attack as security was stepped up around government buildings.

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China further develops new navigation satellite system

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 24, 2017 05:45AM

China has further developed an advanced navigation satellite system, called Beidou, which can be used in search and rescue missions.

"China has mastered the core technology of space payload and ground systems for medium earth orbit search and rescue systems. The time is ripe for China to develop its own self-controlled search and rescue system with Beidou," the Chinese Ministry of Transport announced on Thursday.

The ministry's spokesman, Wu Chungeng, said Beijing's next goal was to rapidly expand Beidou to the global level.

"In the next step, we will work with related departments to push forward the related work in order to make Beidou better serve the global search and rescue system as soon as possible," Wu said.

By 2020, China aims to expand its satellite navigation system globally with a network of 35 satellites.

Currently, Beidou is the world's fourth navigation satellite system.

The American Global Positioning System (GPS) is the world's No. 1 navigation satellite system, followed by Russia's GLONASS and the European Union's Galileo.

By establishing its own global navigation system, Beijing aims to cut its reliance on US-based GPS services.

Wu said Beidou would be part of the International Cospas-Sarsat Programme, jointly developed by the United States, Canada, and the former Soviet Union.

The International Cospas-Sarsat Programme cooperates with UN-affiliated agencies, such as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), to ensure the compatibility of the Cospas-Sarsat distress alerting services with international needs and standards.

The Programme is best known for detecting and locating emergency beacons activated by aircraft, ships, and hikers in distress.



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U.S. Introduction of Strategic Assets Flayed

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)

Date: 24/11/2017 | Source: KCNA.kp (En)

Pyongyang, November 24 (KCNA) -- Jong Nam Hyok, researcher at the Institute for American Studies of the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK, in a commentary Friday disclosed the danger of the U.S. move to send its strategic assets towards the Korean peninsula.

Saying that centuries-long nuclear blackmail and intimidation of the U.S. against the DPRK have now reached the zenith, the commentary noted that the U.S. introduction of its strategic assets has got more provocative and dangerous in the estimation of its round, size and content than before, though it is less than 1 year since Trump took office. It went on:

No one can vouch that the U.S. moves will not lead to a preemptive nuclear attack and total war against the DPRK any moment.

The above-said U.S. actions were prompted by its strategic calculation to keep a firm hold on Japan and south Korean puppet forces, speed up the triangular military alliance with them and militarily pressurize and contain potential foes, China and Russia.

Such moves are further fanning up arms race in the Northeast Asian region as they are destabilizing the region.

The U.S. increasing nuclear blackmail and threat have made the DPRK keenly feel the justness of its line of simultaneously developing the two fronts and compelled it to speed up the beefing up of its nuclear force for self-defense. -0-

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KCNA Commentary Urges U.S. to Stop Nuclear Threat to DPRK

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)

Date: 24/11/2017 | Source: KCNA.kp (En)

Pyongyang, November 24 (KCNA) -- The U.S. has gone mischievous nowadays to stop the DPRK from making advance as the nuclear force of Juche Korea has almost reached the phase of completion.

As the DPRK's action for completing its state nuclear force is becoming a fait accompli, the Trump group is floating the story of "nuclear attack" on the DPRK, trying to make it sound plausible.

By putting forward those soldiers who retired from service of the nuclear force, the U.S. is opening to public every procedure for executing the nuclear attack. The group is getting vocal that "President Trump would choose a plan already existing on table when he see it as a moment to use a nuclear weapon against north Korea" and that "it is almost impossible to stop the decision".

Meanwhile, the U.S. is setting afloat information that it is making actual preparations for a nuclear war with the DPRK as evidenced by the report about the August nuclear bombing drill targeting the DPRK which B-52 of its air force conducted with Japan Air "Self-Defense Force" in areas around the Korean peninsula.

Such movement of the Trump group is aimed to pressurize the DPRK from taking a measure for completing the building of a nuclear force at the final phase.

In conclusion, the U.S. had better clearly understand who its rival is.

If the U.S. is finally going to inflict a nuclear war on the DPRK, by finding fault with the DPRK's self-defensive measure for completing the national nuclear force, the DPRK will not hesitate to respond to it with the nuclear attack to wipe out the U.S., empire of evil, from the earth.

It seems that the U.S. has lingering attachment for the Caribbean crisis in the 1960s. It will be a grave miscalculation for the U.S. to think that it can revive the Caribbean crisis on the Korean peninsula and bring down the DPRK.

The Korean peninsula is not the Caribbean region and the Korean People's Army is not such a weak one who would put down its nuclear weapon at the nuclear threat and blackmail of the U.S. The KPA is the invincible and ever-victorious powerful army full of the spirit of annihilating enemies.

The KPA is a heroic army which wrested surrender documents from the U.S. without nuclear weapons in all forms of confrontation with the U.S. including the 1968 Pueblo incident and the 1976 Panmunjom case.

No force on the earth can bring into submission the DPRK whose leader, army and people have formed a harmonious whole and it is truth proven by the history of the DPRK-U.S. stand-off that the DPRK will always emerge victorious.

The DPRK is a dignified nuclear power and a world-level military power and gone are the days never to return when the U.S. used to threaten the DPRK with nuclear weapons.

Trump had better ponder over the saying that "Give measure for measure". -0-

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DPRK People Enraged at Another Provocation Made by U.S.

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)

Date: 24/11/2017 | Source: KCNA.kp (En)

Pyongyang, November 24 (KCNA) -- The army and people of the DPRK are severely condemning the shameless act of Trump group that re-listed the DPRK as a "sponsor of terrorism".

Choe Sun Yong, a department director of the State Science and Technology Commission, told KCNA that it is another hideous provocation against the DPRK to re-list it as a "sponsor of terrorism".

All the tragic events the international community has witnessed in different parts of the world are the products of the U.S. high-handed practice and plot. Therefore, the humankind has denounced the U.S. as the ringleader of terrorism and the world's biggest sponsor of terrorism which wrecks the global peace and security.

Even a U.S. newspaper termed its homeland as the world's biggest sponsor of terrorism.

Nevertheless, the U.S. re-listed the DPRK as a "sponsor of terrorism", which can be construed otherwise than a revelation of inveterate repugnancy and hostility of the U.S. to stifle the ideology and system of the DPRK, the one and only fortress of socialism in the world.

The U.S. persistent moves to stifle the DPRK drive the situation on the Korean peninsula to an extreme pitch of tension and sweep all the army and people of the DPRK to angry to make thousand-fold revenge upon it.

Kong Myong Song, director of the Folklore Institute under the Academy of Social Sciences, said:

Old lunatic Trump's made a false charge of terrorism against the DPRK again. It is an unethical crime to deprive the DPRK of its sovereignty and rights to existence and development.

The re-listing of the DPRK as a "sponsor of terrorism" is no more than a last-ditch effort of Trump and his clique who were taken aback by the vigorous advance made by the DPRK despite of sanctions.

The DPRK will never forgive the reckless U.S. keen on terminating the peace-loving sovereign country for its dirty political ambition. -0-

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Breaking Barriers: India Gets First Woman Naval Pilot

Sputnik News

13:51 24.11.2017(updated 13:55 24.11.2017)

Shubhangi Swaroop from the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh will fly the maritime reconnaissance aircraft, paving way for more women to be deployed as naval officers.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  In yet another attempt by India to promote sexual equality in the armed forces, the Indian Navy has received its first female pilot. Two other female officers have been inducted into the Naval Armament Inspection (NAI) branch, which has so far been dominated by men.

The Indian Navy's aviation branch has had women officers in the past but their role was limited to serving as air traffic control officers and as observers in the aircraft who are responsible for communication and weapons. Presently, the Indian Navy has approximately 600 women serving as medical and supporting staff.

The Indian Armed Forces had been skeptical about introducing women in a fighting capacity but promises to reverse the trend have been made by the administration in the last few years. Last year the Indian Air Force allowed women to fly fighter jets on an experimental basis. India's Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the first woman to hold the post full-time, had promised to ensure gender equality in the armed forces when she took the oath of office in September this year.

 Sputnik

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Iraqi volunteer force hints will return weapons to army after Daesh battle

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 24, 2017 07:42AM

An Iraqi volunteer military force, which heeded a government call to arms in 2014 to join the fight against Daesh, says it respects the decisions of the national army, hinting that it will act on an order to hand heavy arms back when the counter-terrorism battles end.

"The heavy weapons belong to the Iraqi government, not us. We are not rebels or agents of chaos and we do not want to be a state within a state," the spokesman for Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Hashim al-Mousawi, said at a Thursday news conference.

Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, which has about 10,000 fighters, is a branch of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (Hashd al-Sha'abi).

Hashd al-Sha'abi is an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization composed of some 40 groups, which are mainly Shia Muslims. The force reportedly numbers more than 100,000 fighters. Iraqi authorities say there are between 25,000 and 30,000 Sunni tribal fighters within its ranks in addition to Kurdish Izadi and Christian units.

The volunteer force was formed in 2014, when the Daesh terror group managed to make sweeping territorial gains in Iraq's western and northern parts, helping the government forces regain their strength and speed up their counter-offensives.

The volunteer fighters have been on the forefront of the fight against Daesh and played a major role in the liberation of militant-held areas to the south, northeast and north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

"[Al-Hashd al-Shaabi] is under the command of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and naturally when the war is over and victory is declared, the final decision will be his," Mousawi said.

The comments came after Iraqi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool announced that tanks, armored vehicles, and machine guns should be returned to the army after the ongoing battles end.

Hashd al-Sha'abi fighters are paid by the Iraqi government and officially report to the prime minister, who is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

On Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Daesh has been defeated from a military perspective but Baghdad will only declare final victory after the militants are purged from the desert areas.

Harakat al-Nujaba has strongly condemned Washington's plans to designate the groups as a terrorist organization.

Earlier this month, US Republican lawmaker Ted Poe proposed a bill to the House of Representatives that would place Nujaba on a list of terrorist groups over accusations of having links to Iran and give President Donald Trump 90 days to impose sanctions on it once the bills is passed.

The bill has sparked widespread condemnation in Baghdad, with Prime Minister Abadi saying he would not allow anyone who fought Daesh to be treated as criminals.

"Accusing us of terrorism is not new or surprising. It is not a coincidence, and does not shock us, because we have never been part of the American bloc or project," Mousawi pointed out.

He noted that his group receives support in the form of "advice" from Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement.

Iran has been providing advisory military assistance to the central government in Baghdad and the regional government in the Iraqi Kurdistan, helping them both maintain ground and win back territory lost to Daesh.

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Conditions in Myanmar's Rakhine not in place to enable safe returns - UN refugee agency

24 November 2017  Amid reports of an agreement between the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar on return of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, the United Nations refugee agency has underscored that the returns must be voluntary, and take place in safe and dignified conditions.

"At present, conditions in Myanmar's Rakhine state are not in place to enable safe and sustainable returns. Refugees are still fleeing, and many have suffered violence, rape, and deep psychological harm," Adrian Edwards, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told journalists at a regular media briefing in Geneva Friday.

"It is critical that returns do not take place precipitously or prematurely, without the informed consent of refugees or the basic elements of lasting solutions in place," he stressed.

Over the past three months, widespread inter-communal violence in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state resulted in some 622,000 people fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh. Prior to this latest crisis, Bangladesh was already hosting well over 200,000 Rohingya refugees as a result of earlier displacements.

According to the UN refugee agency, some of those who fled witnessed the deaths of family and friends, and most have little or nothing to go back to with their homes and villages destroyed.

"Deep divisions between communities remain unaddressed," added Mr. Edwards, underscoring that progress towards addressing the root causes of flight, including lack of citizenship for members of the Rohingya community, as recommended by the Rakhine Advisory Commission, will also be crucial.

Furthermore, humanitarian access in northern Rakhine state remains negligible.

At the briefing, the UNHCR spokesperson also noted that the UN agency looks forward to seeing details of the agreement between the two countries, and that it stands ready to help both governments work towards a solution for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh that meets international refugee and human rights standards.

"Refugees have the right to return [and] a framework that enables them to exercise this right in line with international standards, will be welcome," he said.

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US Asks Pakistan to Arrest Freed Cleric, Charge Him with Terrorism

By Ayaz Gul November 24, 2017

The United States has called on Pakistan to arrest and charge an Islamist cleric accused of masterminding the 2008 attacks on India's financial capital.

Pakistani authorities acting on a court order Friday freed Hafiz Saeed from nearly 11 months of house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore. The detention had stemmed from the terrorism allegations against the firebrand cleric.

Washington has been offering a $10 million reward since 2012 for information leading to Saeed's arrest and conviction.

A judicial panel hearing the cleric's appeal against his "unlawful" detention Wednesday, however, ordered authorities to free him for lack of evidence.

In a video message released by his Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) Islamist charity, Saeed told supporters his freedom was vindication of his innocence.

"Praise be to God, it is a matter of great happiness for me that nothing has been proven against me which could be detrimental for me or for Pakistan. Thank God, we have been vindicated," the cleric said.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert promptly criticized Saeed's release, saying the U.S. was "deeply concerned." In a statement, she went on to say the cleric leads an organization that has been responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent civilians in terrorist attacks, including a number of Americans.

"The Pakistani government should make sure that he is arrested and charged for his crimes," the statement read.

The U.S. and the United Nations have both declared Saeed's JuD a global terrorist organization, calling it a front for the outlawed Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group blamed for carrying out the Mumbai carnage.

Saeed denials

Saeed has consistently denied any link to the Mumbai violence that left 166 people dead, including U.S. nationals. He has also alleged his detention was the outcome of U.S. and Indian pressure on the Pakistani government.

India blames Saeed for masterminding the Mumbai strikes and has linked resumption of normal ties with Pakistan to putting the cleric on trial. New Delhi also alleges supporters of the Pakistani cleric are assisting armed Muslim separatists in the divided Kashmir region.

Hours after his release from house arrest, the cleric addressed a massive Friday congregation of supporters at a Lahore mosque, urging that the government not engage in talks with India until the rival country withdraws its troops from Kashmir.

Saeed credited Pakistan's independent judiciary for his freedom, saying he was put under house arrest for highlighting the Indian "atrocities" against Kashmiris.

"I want Kashmir's freedom from India and this is my crime. I was arrested for it," he told worshippers, who chanted, "God is Great."

Regional tensions

Saeed's release angered India, where a Foreign Ministry spokesman said that a "self-confessed and U.N.-proscribed terrorist was being allowed to walk free and continue with his evil agenda."

A statement quoted Raveesh Kumar as alleging the cleric "was not only the mastermind, he was the prime organizer of the Mumbai terror attacks in which many innocent Indians and many people from other nationalities were killed."

The foreign ministry in Islamabad, while responding to the criticism, said the country's courts are determined to uphold rule of law and due process for all citizens of Pakistan.

"Legal processes are anchored in rule of law, not dictates of politics and posturing," stated the ministry spokesman. He reiterated that Pakistan condemns all forms of terrorism by any individual or group.

The cleric is a major irritant in Pakistan's traditionally uneasy relations with the U.S., and has developed as a main source of historically strained ties with India. New Delhi has linked resumption of peace talks with Islamabad to putting Saeed on trial for planning the Mumbai bloodshed.

Islamabad maintains that neither Washington nor New Delhi has offered any evidence substantiating their allegations.

Senior Pakistani officials in background interviews maintain that Pakistan has, under its international obligations, imposed travel restrictions on Saeed and frozen his assets and bank accounts. His arrest and successful prosecution in a court of law, however, would require solid evidence linking him to the Mumbai attacks, they maintain.

Saeed's organization, meanwhile, continues to collect financial and other donations to support its charity work around Pakistan, causing a major embarrassment for the country, officials acknowledge. They say the cleric's attempts to also associate himself with the Kashmir issue "are also not helping the cause of Kashmiris."

The divided Kashmir region has sparked two of the three wars between India and Pakistan, and continues to be the primary source of regional tensions.

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Sechin's Evidence In Former Russian Minister's Bribe Case Reportedly Leaked

RFE/RL's Russian Service November 24, 2017

Igor Sechin, CEO of the Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft, has told investigators that then-Economy Minister Aleksei Ulyukayev asked him for a $2 million bribe during a BRICS summit in Goa, India, in October 2016, the BBC has reported.

The British broadcaster reported on November 23 that it had obtained copies of the protocols of Sechin's three interviews with prosecutors in the investigation leading up to corruption charges being filed against Ulyukayev.

According to the documents, Sechin stressed that no one besides himself heard Ulyukayev name the figure.

Sechin also reportedly told investigators the Ulyukayev telephoned him and asked for a meeting at Rosneft's offices on November 14, 2016. However, that testimony appears to contradict a leaked recording of the telephone call that emerged earlier this month, in which Sechin can be heard inviting Ulyukayev to that meeting.

Sechin has ignored three summonses to testify at Ulyukayev's trial, most recently failing to show up on November 22. At that hearing, his lawyer read a statement suggesting that Sechin's interviews with investigators could be read in court in lieu of his personal testimony.

The court rejected that suggestion and issued a fourth summons ordering Sechin to appear on November 27.

Ulyukayev is charged with extorting $2 million from Rosneft in exchange for government approval of Rosneft's acquisition of the Bashneft oil company.

He was arrested on November 14, 2016, after allegedly accepting the bribe in Sechin's office. He has denied the charges and said he believed the box with the money contained wine.

He has said the case against him was a provocation perpetrated by Sechin and his allies in the Federal Security Service (FSB).

According to the documents obtained by the BBC, Sechin was questioned on November 15, 2016 and on January 17 and May 31, 2017.

The BBC reported that Sechin's spokesman, Mikhail Leontiyev, declined to comment on the leaked protocols.

With reporting by BBC

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/sechin-russia/28873795.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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Erdogan does not rule out contact with Assad

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 24, 2017 11:37AM

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not ruled out possible contact with Bashar Assad, signaling a break with his long-held opposition to the Syrian president's role in the Arab country's future.

"The political doors are always open until the last minute," Erdogan said when asked about a possible contact or cooperation with Assad.

Erdogan's comments were reported by Hurriyet newspaper and other Turkish media on Friday, made on board his plane returning from a trilateral meeting with Russia and Iran to promote a peaceful settlement in Syria.

Even though Russia and Iran have backed Assad's government since the start of the Syrian conflict in March 2011 and Turkey has supported his foes, the three countries have teamed up to help mediate a peace settlement.

Ankara has toned down its anti-Assad rhetoric, and the climbdown was clear during the trilateral meeting with Russia and Iran in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on Wednesday.

Turkey made clear its "reservations" about Assad having any future role in Syria, Mahir Unal, the spokesman of the Justice and Development Party, told reporters.

Unal said Turkey emphasized that there must be negotiations between Assad and the opposition.

"It's not within the logic of negotiations to have a precise position today on the political solution and on whether the transition will be with or without Assad," he said.

Both Syria and Turkey are suspicious of US intentions in the Arab country's north where Washington is supporting Kurdish militants.

Ankara considers the militants, which control a significant stretch of territory in Syria, a terror group and an extension of the Kurdish insurgency with Turkey's own borders.

Erdogan met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Wednesday to discuss an end to the conflict in Syria.

The Syrian government welcomed the closing statement of the trilateral summit which called for a political settlement of the conflict.

Putin called for a congress of the Syrian government and opposition to draw up a framework for the future structure of the Syrian state, adopt a new constitution and hold elections under UN supervision.

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China says to help with reconstruction of Syria

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 24, 2017 11:08AM

China says it will help with reconstruction efforts in Syria, which has seen massive destruction as a result of over six and a half years of armed conflict.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a visiting senior aide to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad on Friday that dialog was important in resolving the conflict and that the world must support the reconstruction of the Arab country.

"The international community should emphasize and actively support Syria's reconstruction. China will put forth its own effort for this," Wang told Bouthaina Shaaban, according to a statement by China's Foreign Ministry.

According to the statement, Shaaban welcomed China playing a greater role in the political process to resolve the Syrian conflict.

Two parallel peace processes have been going on for Syria, one in the Kazakh capital of Astana and the other in the Swiss city of Geneva. The Astana peace process has been launched by Iran, Russia, and Turkey, and the Geneva talks are held on the auspices of the United Nations (UN).

On Wednesday, the presidents of Iran, Russia, and Turkey invited all countries to contribute to peace in the Middle East region, including in Syria, and help with the reconstruction of Syria and the return of Syrian refugees to their homes.

Syria has been fighting different foreign-sponsored militant and terrorist groups since March 2011.

At Damascus' request, Iran has been providing military advisory support to the Syrian military in its counterterrorism operations.

Russia has been carrying out an aerial campaign in Syria also on a request from the Syrian government since September 2015.

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Russia to reduce forces in Syria by year-end: Military chief

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 24, 2017 03:02AM

Russia is set to reduce its troops in Syria by the end of the year after finishing up the remaining "few" missions there, says Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov.

"There is very little left to do before the completion of military objectives. Of course, a decision will be made by the supreme commander-in-chief and the deployment will be reduced," Gerasimov said Thursday, on the sidelines of a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and military top brass in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

When asked about the extent of the drop in the level of troops, Gerasimov said it would "depend on the situation."

"But, obviously, it will be a considerable reduction, with only the reconciliation center, two military bases and a number of structures needed to maintain the current state of things being left," he said.

Russian jets have been conducting air raids against Daesh and other terrorist groups inside Syria at the Damascus government's request since September 2015.

The airstrikes have helped Syrian forces advance against anti-Damascus militants, who have been wreaking havoc in the Arab country since 2011.

Russian military personnel have been operating from the Russian naval facility in the western Syrian port of Tartus as well as the airbase in Hmeimim.

Earlier this week, Putin met his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in Sochi, telling him that the years-long conflict in Syria was entering "a new stage" after the country had "been saved as a state."

Felicitating Assad on his government's many victories against terrorist groups like Daesh, Putin also told him that the Russian mission was nearing its end.

"A lot should be done to achieve a complete victory over terrorism," Putin said. "But as far as our cooperation in the fight against terrorists in Syria goes, the military operation is really coming to an end."

In March 2016, Putin ordered the bulk of the Russian military forces in Syria to withdraw from the Arab country, arguing that the withdrawal could serve as a stimulus for peace. The troops returned after several rounds of UN-brokered peace talks involving anti-Assad terrorists failed.

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Syrian Kurds 'Determined to Retaliate Against Turkish Invasion of Afrin'

Sputnik News

18:05 24.11.2017(updated 18:54 24.11.2017)

Amid the military buildup on the Syrian-Turkish border near Kurdish-controlled Afrin, Foza Yusuf, executive council co-chair of the self-proclaimed Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS) and Nuri Mahmud of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) signaled that the Kurds will defend the city against "the Turkish invasion."

Kurdish political and military forces are determined to retaliate against any aggression towards the Syrian city of Afrin, Foza Yusuf, executive council co-chair of the self-proclaimed Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS), told Sputnik Turkey.

"In Afrin we will stand on the defensive and oppose invaders like we did in Kobani," Yusuf said referring to Ankara's threats to invade the Kurdish enclave in northwestern Syria.

Nuri Mahmud, an official representative of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), echoed the politician: "We will defend Afrin, based on the inalienable right to defense. There is nothing more natural than protection against aggression. Nobody gives flowers in response to being shelled."

According to Sputnik sources in the region, there is an increase in military activity on the Turkish-Syrian border and on Syrian territory, related to Turkey's preparations for an operation in Afrin, which is currently controlled by Kurdish self-defense units.

It has been reported that groups of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) are making the final preparations for the forthcoming advance. In response, the YPG and the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which are comprised of fighters from Kobani, Qamishli, Manbij and al-Hasakah are amassing heavy weapons and further reinforcements in order to defend the city.

On November 17 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that the northwestern Syrian province of Afrin "must be cleared" of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and YPG, which Ankara regards as affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) outlawed in Turkey.

In his op-ed for Hurriyet Daily News Turkish journalist Serkan Demirtas explains that Ankara seeks to establish 12 observation spots inside the Idlib region.

"Turkey's first two observation spots have been established along the line separating Idlib and Afrin, which also allows Turkey to monitor the YPG's activities," the journalist wrote, stressing that "Afrin is a strategically sensitive area in Turkish eyes."

Previously, in October, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag told private broadcaster Haberturk, that "Turkey will not allow the establishment of a terror corridor" in northern Syria emphasizing the utmost importance of Afrin: "We know the PKK, PYD and YPG presence there and in case of a threat and danger aimed at the Turkish border."

Meanwhile, the Kurdish news outlet Rudaw wrote Monday that Turkish and Kurdish forces exchanged fire across the Afrin-Idlib border, adding that no casualties had been reported.

Currently, Kurds control two large areas in northern Syria. The first is the area spanning from Manbij in western Syria to the Turkish border in the north and Raqqa in the south. The second is Afrin Canton in northern Syria, one of the four cantons of Rojava, a unilaterally proclaimed autonomous Kurdish region in Syria. The area between Afrin and the rest of the so-called "Syrian Kurdistan" is currently controlled by the Turkish military.

The creation of Democratic Federation of Northern Syria also known as Rojava was announced by the Syrian Kurds in 2016. Damascus said at the time the move had no legal power. In late September 2017, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said Damascus was ready to discuss the issue of the Syrian Kurds' self-governance once the fight against the Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) terrorist organization is over.

"This topic is open to negotiation and discussion and when we are done eliminating Daesh, we can sit with our Kurdish sons and reach an understanding on a formula for the future," Muallem said as quoted by Reuters.

 Sputnik

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Turkish Official: Trump Has Agreed to Stop Arming Syrian Kurdish Fighters

By VOA News November 24, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump has told his Turkish counterpart that the U.S. will no longer supply weapons to Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria, according to a Turkish official's summation of the call on Friday between the two world leaders.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Trump made the comment Friday after speaking by phone with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

According to Cavusoglu, Trump said he had given clear instructions that the YPG not be given arms. Cavusoglu also quoted the U.S. president as saying, "This nonsense should have ended a long time ago."

A White House statement issued Friday evening said Trump informed Erdogan of "pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria." The statement described the change as "consistent with our previous policy," and said it reflects the new phase of the battle after the fall of Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State's self-described caliphate.

"The battle of Raqqa is complete and we are progressing into a stabilization phase to ensure that ISIS cannot return," the White House statement said, using an acronym for the militant group.

The statement did not specifically name YPG.

Erdogan and Trump also discussed the purchase of military equipment from the United States by Turkey, according to the White House.

Turkey has been pushing to persuade the U.S. to abandon support for the YPG as the militia fights the Islamic State group.

The U.S. considers the Syrian Kurds its best fighting force on the ground against Islamic State, but has to balance that interest with maintaining good relations with Turkey, a NATO ally.

Ankara considers the YPG a terrorist organization linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in Turkey. The PKK has been fighting Turkey since 1984 in a conflict that has left about 40,000 people dead. Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union consider the PKK to be a terrorist group.

Relations between Ankara and Washington also have been strained over issues that include the U.S. refusal to extradite a cleric wanted by Turkey in connection with a failed coup last year. The cleric, Fethullah Gulen, denies involvement.

Additionally, Ankara has been critical of U.S. plans to try Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab and Mehmet Hakan Atilla, an executive with Turkish state bank Halkbank, on charges of defying sanctions against Iran. Ankara describes the case as political. The defendants are scheduled to go on trial next month in New York.

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Turkey-US Relations an Issue in Sanctions Evasion Trial

By Dorian Jones November 24, 2017

An Iranian sanctions-busting case in New York threatens to further strain Turkey-U.S. relations.

The trial of Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab and Mehmet Hakan Atilla, vice president of Turkish state bank Halkbank, is due to start December 4. Ankara has slammed the case as political, but fears are growing it could have severe financial consequences for the Turkish economy.

The defendants are accused of violating the U.S.-Iran sanctions act involving billions of dollars in alleged illicit trade. The case threatens to implicate key political figures closely linked to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"Very ugly truths could emerge about the former cabinet ministers," warned political consultant Atilla Yesilada of New York-based GlobalSource Partners, an analysis service for investors. Former Finance Minister Zafer Caglayan, known to be close to Erdogan, also is under indictment.

Erdogan assails trial

The Turkish president has repeatedly attacked the pending trial. "How can a nation that legitimizes all kinds of attacks on our nation's interests, from bankers to businessmen, from arms sales to energy investments, from TV series to think tanks, be our friend?" Erdogan asked Saturday at a political rally.

"Several times the [Turkish] president has picked up on this case, so obviously this is a matter that he finds terribly important," said international relations expert Soli Ozel of Istanbul's Kadir Has University.

Ankara claims the case is the latest attempt by the U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen to bring down Erdogan.

"They [Gulenists] are using the U.S. system to launch attacks against Turkey, and the Reza Zarrab case is part of this," Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said in a TV interview Monday. "It's a political case by the U.S. prosecutors. This is a very politically motivated case. This case was originally brought by the Gulenists in Turkey."

Ankara accuses Gulen of being the mastermind behind last year's failed military coup. Followers of Gulen were also accused in 2013 of trying to bring down Erdogan's government by judicial probes into alleged high-level corruption involving Zarrab and senior ministers. The government shut down the probe, claiming it was a judicial coup, and all those involved were either dismissed or arrested.

Use of previous evidence

Ankara has been infuriated by reports that New York prosecutors will use some of the evidence gathered in the 2013 probe in the current case. "The fact files collected by Gulenist prosecutors and police against the then prime minister [Erdogan] are likely to be used in the Zarrab case. Obviously, [it] rubs the government the wrong way," said international relations expert Ozel.

During a visit to Washington this month, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim reportedly lobbied hard in meetings with senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, for the evidence to not be allowed in the forthcoming case. Ankara argues the evidence, which includes embarrassing telephone conversations between former ministers and Erdogan, was illegally gathered and should not be admitted. Turkish prosecutors have opened an investigation into a federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Joon Kim, into how evidence was obtained for the Zarrab case.

Critics claim Ankara's lobbying fails to understand the limitation of political power in Washington.

"The executive, in accordance with the principles of the independence of the judiciary, has little influence on how this procedure will unfold, and that's something that Turkey's policymakers should take into consideration," said political scientist Cengiz Aktar.

Such lobbying by Ankara is seen as an indication, however, of how serious and potentially damaging the Zarrab case could be for Turkey's political leaders. The Zarrab case already has hit financial markets, with the Turkish lira suffering steep drops over speculation that Turkish banks could end up facing heavy fines.

More jeopardy for lira

"The [financial] markets made the connection between the Zarrab case and fines on Turkish banks, especially Halkbank," said economist Inan Demir of Nomura Bank. "If the headlines coming out of the trial are negative for Halkbank, markets will almost immediately jump to the conclusion of large fines, and that could lead to further falls on the currency."

Several European banks in recent years have been hit by multibillion-dollar penalties for violating U.S. Iranian sanctions.

A combination of political and economic factors has resulted in the Turkish lira hitting record lows this week. Financial investors and the eyes of the Turkish nation are expected to be firmly fixed on the New York courthouse when the Zarrab trial begins, the implications of which could be far reaching.

"Even if he [Erdogan] is not hit personally by these accusations, the repercussions of the Zarrab case for the Turkish economy, and therefore for Turkey's political stability and the grip of the president on the country, can really be very serious," Ozel said.

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HMS Sutherland to deploy to Asia Pacific, Defence Secretary announces on-board

24 November 2017

The UK will send a second warship to the Asia Pacific region to strengthen relations with allies in the area.

Addressing the crew on HMS Sutherland this morning, the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson announced that the ship will leave Her Majesty's Naval Base (HMNB) Devonport in the New Year to represent UK interests across the Indian Ocean and into the Pacific.

In a period of ongoing tension in the Korean peninsula, the Type 23 Frigate will be available to work closely with our regional partners, including US, Japanese and South Korean, and participate in joint training and exercises.

This follows an announcement made by the Prime Minister that HMS Argyll will deploy to Japan to take part in exercises in December 2018 following participation in a Five Power Defence Arrangements exercise with Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia earlier in the year.

Speaking during a visit to the Devonport Naval Base, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said:

"Our already strong defence ties with allies in the Asia Pacific area will be deepened further by this deployment."

"At a time when North Korea's illegal weapons programme is causing global concern, the deployment of these two Royal Navy ships is a clear demonstration of the UK's commitment to the peace and prosperity of the region."

As well as addressing the crew of the ship during his visit to the Naval Base, the Defence Secretary watched operational sea training on board another Type 23 frigate, HMS Westminster, met with staff and saw facilities at the Submarine Support complex.



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Secretary General and President Poroshenko discuss NATO-Ukraine cooperation

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

24 Nov. 2017

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met on Friday (24 November 2017) to discuss ongoing security challenges in Ukraine, international efforts to find a settlement to the crisis, and the partnership between the Alliance and Kyiv. Mr. Stoltenberg reaffirmed NATO's strong political and practical support for Ukraine.

The Secretary General stressed that NATO Allies remain concerned by the ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine, including recent incidents in Luhansk. NATO calls on all parties to honour their commitments under the Minsk Agreements, and Russia has a special responsibility in that regard.

Mr. Stoltenberg also encouraged Ukraine to continue implementing key reforms, including in the defence and security sector. He stressed that NATO Trust Funds are helping to modernise Ukraine's defence sector, as part of the Alliance's strong support to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

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Separatist Leader In Ukraine's Luhansk Resigns Amid Power Struggle

RFE/RL November 24, 2017

The head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine, Igor Plotnitsky, has stepped down amid a fierce power struggle among the Russia-backed separatists that has unfolded over the last several days.

The website of the Luhansk-based separatists announced on November 24 that Plotnitsky had resigned for health reasons.

The website also said Leonid Pasechnyk, the self-proclaimed security minister of the separatist formation, had been named acting leader "until the next elections."

Shortly afterward, the same website announced that Plotnitsky had been named the separatist's representative to the Minsk process, aimed at resolving the conflict.

On November 21, armed men in unmarked uniforms took up positions in the center of the provincial capital, Luhansk, in what appeared to be part of a power struggle among the separatists.

Shortly after annexing the Ukrainian region of Crimea in March 2014, Moscow began fomenting unrest in parts of eastern Ukraine. Moscow provided political, military, and economic support to separatists who gained control over parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk, sparking a war that has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014.

Moscow denies involvement in Ukraine's internal affairs, despite compelling evidence to the contrary.

Luhansk has been under the control of Russia-backed separatists since spring 2014. Very few outsiders and journalists have been allowed access since autumn 2015. No independent, objective media exists within the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk areas.

Russian reporters are granted access more frequently, but they often work for Russia's state-run or pro-Kremlin media and provide a restricted view of events.

With reporting by Gazeta.ru, RIA Novosti, and TASS

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russia-luhansk-separatist- leader-plotnitsky-resigns/28875414.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Ukraine's Tymoshenko Urges 'Different Negotiating Format' On Eastern Conflict

RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service November 24, 2017

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has said the Minsk process for resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine has failed to produce results and needs to be accompanied by a parallel peace process based on the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

In an interview in Brussels with RFE/RL, Tymoshenko said the Budapest document -- under which Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Kyiv's renunciation of nuclear weapons -- should be "the basis of diplomatic negotiations on the establishment of peace in Ukraine."

She criticized the government of President Petro Poroshenko for "forgetting" about the existence of that document.

Tymoshenko, who heads one of Ukraine's largest opposition parties and who is currently nearly even with Poroshenko in public-opinion polls for the 2019 presidential election, emphasized that "Ukraine and Russia are warring countries today" and "Russia is in a state of war against Ukraine."

After Russia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea in March 2014, Moscow began fomenting unrest in regions of eastern Ukraine. Since then, Russia has provided military, political, and economic support to separatists in parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

Moscow denies interfering in Ukraine's internal affairs, despite compelling evidence to the contrary.

Tymoshenko told RFE/RL that "the path to peace" lies through establishing a "completely different negotiation format" involving all the Budapest Memorandum signatories. There is no point, she said, in negotiating with the leaders of the Russia-backed separatist units, because "they are absolute marionettes."

At the same time, Tymoshenko said, Ukraine must step up its military response to Russian aggression "by every minute and every second strengthening our army."

She urged the United States to "enable Ukraine to acquire" high-tech defensive weapons.

Tymoshenko confirmed that her Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party intends to contest both the parliamentary and the presidential elections scheduled for 2019.

According to a poll conducted this month, Tymoshenko had 14.4 percent support, compared to 16.1 percent for Poroshenko.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russia- tymoshenko-interview-urges-different-negotiating- format-minsk-failure/28875312.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Ukraine Says Five Soldiers Killed, Four Wounded In East

RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service November 24, 2017

Ukraine's military says that five of its soldiers have been killed and four wounded in clashes with Russia-backed separatists in the east of the country.

The military said in a November 24 statement that four of the soldiers were killed in a gunfight the previous day near the village of Krymske that lasted around eight hours.

Krymske lies around 30 kilometers west of Luhansk, where tensions have escalated this week between separatist factions that control the city.

A total of four Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in clashes with separatists on November 23, the military said. It said eight separatists were killed and nine were injured.

"Five of our soldiers have died over the past 24 hours," Oleksandr Turchynov, chief of the National Security and Defense Council, said in televised remarks on November 24. "It is a very serious problem for us."

He added that "a conflict situation is under way between various criminal groups that make up the occupational administration on the occupied territories."

Fighting between Kyiv's forces and the Russia-backed separatists who hold parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014.

Moscow denies involvement in the conflict, despite compelling evidence to the contrary. Moscow also says it respects Ukraine's territorial integrity although it annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea in March 2014 and controls part of Ukraine's border over Kyiv's objections.

Several cease-fire deals announced as part of the Minsk accords -- September 2014 and February 2015 pacts aimed to resolve the conflict -- have failed to hold.

The latest cease-fire was agreed on August 22 in a phone call between the leaders of Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine. Kyiv and the separatists regularly trade accusations of cease-fire violations.

The spike in violence overnight comes amid an apparent power struggle among Russia-backed separatists in Luhansk. Rumors have swirled for days that the separatist leader in the region, Igor Plotnitsky, has fled to Russia.

Plotnitsky had previously fired the region's so-called interior minister, Igor Kornet, and then accused him of organizing a coup against the separatist leadership.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on November 22 that Russia was closely following the situation in Luhansk, where armed men in unmarked uniforms have taken up positions in recent days.

But Peskov declined to comment on Plotnitsky's whereabouts on November 24, saying that "this is not an issue that the presidential administration deals with," Russia's state-run TASS news agency reported.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and TASS

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine- soldiers-killed-wounded-fighting -krymske/28874390.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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Separatist Leader Says He Is Taking Power in Ukraine's Luhansk Region

By VOA News November 24, 2017

A senior separatist official of the Ukrainian region of Luhansk says he is taking over power from regional chief Igor Plotnitsky, who said earlier in the week that a coup attempt was trying to force him out of office.

Security Minister Leonid Pasechnik said Friday that he was taking over after Plotnitsky resigned for health reasons. There was no verification of the claim from Plotnitsky.

Both men are part of a pro-Russian rebel group that has ruled Luhansk for several years but has recently been troubled by infighting.

"Today, Igor Venediktovich Plotnitsky resigned for health reasons. Multiple war wounds, the effects of blast injuries, took their toll," Pasechnik said in a video posted on pro-rebel news sites.

Earlier this week, armed men blocked the central streets of the Luhansk region's main city, also called Luhansk. Plotnitsky said it was a coup attempt by supporters of Igor Kornet, the rebel region's interior minister, whom Plotnitsky had recently fired.

Plotnitsky later said he had the situation under control.

Luhansk and the neighboring Donetsk region rebelled against rule from Ukraine's government, based in Kyiv, in 2014 and declared themselves independent.

Russian officials say they are monitoring the situation, but deny they have any influence over the rebels.

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Texas Company Reports Selling Lethal Weapons to Ukraine

By Iryna Matviichuk, Oksana Bedratenko November 24, 2017

A U.S. company says it has been selling lethal weapons to Ukraine since last year, ahead of an expected decision by the Trump administration on whether to provide such weapons to Ukraine.

"We started delivering our product to Ukraine last year and we are continuing deliveries up until now," said Richard Vandiver, Chief Operating Officer at the Texas company AirTronic, USA, in an interview with VOA's Ukrainian service.

Vandiver said the sales have been limited to short-range defensive weapons, principally Precision Shoulder Fired Rocket launchers (PSRLs), which are a redesigned and updated version of the widely deployed Soviet RPG-7 anti-tank weapon. Ukraine is engaged in a struggle against Russian-trained and funded separatists in its eastern region and fears an armored assault.

"The ability to stop armored vehicles is essential for Ukraine to protect itself," said General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 26.

Vandiver told VOA the PSRL should be considered a defensive weapon because of its limited range.

"Obviously, PSRL is a lethal system, but it's a defensive lethal system," Vandiver said. "The RPG-7 has the effective range of under a thousand meters.

"As long as the weapon system stays [in government-controlled territory], it's not an offensive weapon, but if armor starts to cross the river than I would assume that the Ukrainian defense forces would employ our systems to stop the armor."

The U.S. Congress has approved $350 million in security aid for Ukraine in its most recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including $47 million for defensive lethal weapons. The act awaits final approval in the House of Representatives before going to President Donald Trump for his signature.

Trump is reported to be considering a recommendation received from his National Security Council this week to provide lethal weaponry to Ukraine. The weapon considered most likely to be included is the shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank missile, which features a sophisticated self-guidance system and a range more than four times greater than the PSRL.

'De facto embargo'

Any sales of lethal weaponry to Ukraine marks a reversal of a non-binding policy implemented under the administration of former president Barack Obama.

"In the formal sense, there is no embargo on Ukraine, but you could say that there is a de facto embargo," said Michael Carpenter, senior director of the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania. "Formally speaking, [Obama] did not make a decision on sending weapons to Ukraine, so de facto that became an embargo."

Any such U.S. military sales must be licensed by the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, which says it is restricted under federal regulations from commenting on commercial sales export licensing activity.

However, the department issues a list of defense articles and services that have been authorized as direct commercial sales each year. The most recent list shows that more than $26.9 million in military sales to Ukraine were authorized in 2016, with more than $17.6 million of that having been shipped.

More than $5 million of the authorized sales comprised lethal weaponry, mainly comprising firearms and ammunition. The report does not show how much of that was actually shipped.

AirTronic, US coordination

Vandiver declined to discuss exact details of the AirTronic supply contract with Ukraine, but he emphasized that the activities are conducted in "very close coordination with the U.S. Embassy, with the U.S. State Department, with the U.S. Pentagon and with the Ukrainian government."

"It took quite a bit for us to secure authorizations that we needed, because of the sensitivity of the issue under Minsk II," Vandiver said, adding that the lethal system is not banned by the agreement. The Minsk II agreement  brokered by Germany and France in negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko in February of 2015  was aimed at limiting the fighting in the East of Ukraine, but has had only limited success.

"We are very familiar with the accords that were reached in Europe under the treaties  and we abide by those," he said. He added that AirTronic obtained an export license for the sale, "following the same application process as any defense contractor would follow."

The Ukrainian government hopes to expand its purchases of lethal weapons from the U.S. substantially, and attaches great hope to the possibility that the White House will approve financial assistance for those purchases.

The $47 million in possible lethal aid for Ukraine included in the NDAA would allow Kyiv to obtain more powerful defensive weapons, Ukraine's Ambassador to the U.S. Valery Chaly told VOA.

"We hope that the bill [NDAA], which has been already approved by Congress, will be signed by President Trump. This would allow to unlock about $50 million in lethal defense assistance for Ukraine. The decision is with the U.S. president and then we will be talking about more powerful weapons," Chaly said.

During his visit to Ukraine in August this year, U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis rejected any suggestion that the provision of such weapons may be considered provocative by Russia. "Defensive weapons are not provocative unless you are an aggressor, and clearly Ukraine is not an aggressor since it is their own territory where the fighting is happening," Mattis said.

Still, some analysts doubt that the Trump administration is willing to abandon the self-imposed restriction on lethal arms sales to Ukraine.

"I remain a pessimist on this," said Carpenter, director of the Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania. However, he said, "I've long supported providing defensive arms to Ukraine. I think this is the right thing to do. It's the moral thing to do and also the strategic thing to do for the United States, because it would deter further Russia aggression."

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Haiti - FLASH : Avalanche of taxes to Port-de-Paix





The Port-de-Paix City Council published in the official newspaper "Le Cappoisien" of the commune of Port-de-Paix in November 2017, a Municipal By-law regulating inter alia taxation in the transport sector and the installation of two toll booths in Port-de-Paix.



"[...]



Article 1 - It is instituted two toll booths and fixed points in Port-de-Paix, located in the following areas: Trois-Rivieres Police Station and the Grigris Bridge to collect a daily contribution from any public transit vehicle that circulate inside the city and the one that enters the city.



Article 2 - An hour of departure is instituted for any bus carrying passengers to another department of the country, especially for those departing for Port-au-Prince: 3h30 am for non-air-conditioned buses and 6h00 am for passengers. air-conditioned buses



Article 3 - All buses, vans, sailboats and commercial aircraft are required to pay a daily contribution according to the cost of transport.



Article 4 - This requested contribution is distributed as follows :



a - The air-conditioned buses will pay one thousand (1,000.00) gourdes, accompanied by the passenger register;

b - Non-air-conditioned buses will pay six hundred (600.00) Gourdes, accompanied by the passenger register;

c- The containers will pay a thousand (1,000.00) Gourdes, accompanied by the copy of the manifest of materials that they transport;

d - Trucks carrying gasoline will pay one thousand (1000.00) Gourdes;

e - Ouanaminthe transport trucks will pay one thousand (1000.00) Gourdes for each trip;

f - The vans carrying the Port-de-Paix route to Saint-Louis du Nord will pay twenty-five (25.00) Gourdes for each trip;

g - The vans carrying the Port-de-Paix route to Gonaives will pay three hundred (300.00) gourdes per day;

h - The vans carrying the Port-de-Paix route to Jean-Rabel will pay one hundred (100.00) Gourdes per day;

i - The sailboats will pay seventy-five gourds (75.00 gourdes) each time they enter or leave the boat port;

j - Trucks carrying materials such as sand, gravel, rock, etc... will pay two hundred (200) Gourdes on each trip and they will commit to give a day of service for the cleanliness of the city;

k - Vessels coming from abroad are subject to paying a shipping fee of twenty five thousand (25,000.00) Gourdes on behalf of the City Council;

l - All boats abandoned in the coastal area of the municipality of Port-de-Paix are obliged to pay a maritime fee of one thousand gourdes (1000.00) Gourdes per day;

m - Airplanes will pay the price of one passenger for each flight.



Article 4.1- All motorcycles that circulate throughout the municipal territory must be registered and identified by an AUTHORIZATION CARD issued by the City Council and all motorcycle taxi drivers must wear a suit clearly identified by a number given by the traffic service of town hall. The 125cc and 110cc motorbikes will pay two hundred and fifty (250) gourdes each month to the city's traffic and transportation bureau.



Article 4.2- It is strictly forbidden for any taxi-motorcycle driver to drive without the suit given by the city hall duly numbered.



Article 4.3- No 125cc motorcycle shall carry more than passengers.



Article 4.4- The number of passengers is two (2) people for motorcycles typo 125cc is one (1) only person for all other types.



Article 5 - It is strictly forbidden for any vehicle overloaded or in bad condition to circulate on public roads.



Article 6 - This measure is taken to regulate transport within the city and control this sector, therefore, drivers must contribute daily.



Article 7 - The offender, who for one reason or the other refuses to pay these contributions, is liable to a fine of five thousand gourdes (5,000.00 Gourdes). In case of recidivism, his vehicle or other will be confiscated. The restitution will be made after the payment of a value of ten thousand gourdes (10,000.00 Gourdes), without prejudice to the damages concerned.



Article 8- The collected funds will feed the account of the Municipality of Port-de-Paix for:



1 - Build Modern and Sustainable Road Stations;

2 - Maintain interurban roads, etc. ;

3 - Install signs;

4 - Facilitate the cleaning of the city and the cleaning of the canals.



Article 9 - The municipal administration is called upon to give a monthly report with transparency on the funds.



Article 10 - This decree will enter into force on the day of its publication in the official gazette of the Municipality of Port-de-Paix 'Le CAPPOISIEN'"



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - DR : More than 100 Haitians arrested at the border, including 15 pregnant and 16 minors





In 72 hours, members of the 10th Battalion of the Dominican Army have apprehended on Dominican territory during several control operations, 108 undocumented Haitians, including 16 minors and 15 pregnant women, said military sources.



It is in the community of Palo Blanco de Dajabon, adjacent to Haiti, that the largest number of pregnant women and minors accompanied by their parents were arrested. Pregnant women said their intentions were to give birth in hospitals in the Dominican Republic, because in Haiti in addition to the limitations of access to health care, they have to pay for maternity services. They said that in Haiti one known that in Dominican maternities and public hospitals, there is good care for women about to give birth and that they have nothing to pay.



The military authorities said that since the minor children and adolescents were accompanied by their parents or other relatives, they will be returned together to Haiti. Recall that when a Haitian child minor is arrested without any family members to accompany him, the Dominican authorities are hosting them at the National Council for Children and Adolescents (CONANI) which is responsible for finding a member of their family in order to give them the child... https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-18137-icihaiti-social-arrest-of-24-women-37-children-and-13-men-in-the-dr.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-12738-haiti-social-haitian-women-abandon-their-children-in-dominican-hospitals.html



On the other hand, members of the army accompanied by a representative of the public prosecutor's office and immigration agents, following a judicial intervention order, arrested in a private property located in the North sector, near the Hospital Matias Ramon Mella in Dajabon, 38 undocumented Haitians who hid in two huts.



Among the Haitians apprehended during operations, many said they came from Fort Liberte, Trou Du Nord, Limonade, Cap-Haitien, Gonaives, Millot and Port-au-Prince among others. They indicated that they intended to travel to Santiago, Valverde and Puerto Plata and paid between 4,000 and 5,000 pesos to smugglers to drive them to their destination. They also admitted to paying other smugglers in Haiti the equivalent of 5,000 to 7,000 pesos to transport them and illegally cross the border.



All these Haitians have been entrusted to the service of migration, which will be responsible after identification to return them to Haiti.



SL/ HaitiLibre


























Haiti - Economy : 3 companies run by Haitian, laureates of the Clinton Foundation





The Clinton Foundation and the J/P Haitian Relief Organization organized in New York in mid-November, an investment pitch competition through the Women's Economic Participation Consortium (WEPC) featuring Haitian entrepreneurs from the craft sector, textiles, manufacturing, cosmetics and agribusiness.



Six companies were competing for a bonus of 100,000 US dollars, were presented before a jury composed of CEOs, representatives of the Haitian Government, Paul Altidor Haiti's Ambassador to the United States and Ms. Tessa Jacques Director General of the Center for Investment Facilitation (CFI).



The 3 laureates companies :



Papillon Enterprises : Employs nearly 300 artisans, exported pottery, jewelry and metal art for $ 1.5 million. Visit : www.papillonmarketplace.com/



Deux Main Designs : Craftsman's shop buys from local leather and reuses the tires to make beautiful handmade sandals. Visit : www.deuxmains.com/



Belzeb : Production from plants of Haiti among others: massage oils, anti-mosquito creams, soaps made of palma christi, soaps and beauty balm.



HL/ TB/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Godson Orelus in court

In the case of the large seizure of weapons at the Customs of St. Marc in September 2016 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19168-haiti-flash-new-discovery-of-firearms-in-a-container.html Godson Orelus, the former Director General of the National Police, responded to the invitation of Dieunel Lumerant investigating judge, in St-Marc, as a donor of information (and not as an accused), in order to provide explanations on this case.



TPS, reaction of the American journalist Dan Rather

American journalist Dan Rather, former anchor of CBS Evening News, reacts to DHS decision to end TPS for Haiti https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22759-haiti-flash-tps-more-than-50-000-haitians-will-have-to-leave-the-usa.html declared "Haiti is the poorest country in Western Hemisphere - devastated by disease and an earthquake that killed 230k people. Now we tell 60k Haitians to "GET OUT"? We're better than this. And I think most Americans know it [...]" https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22781-haiti-flash-tps-reactions-multiply-against-the-decision-of-the-trump-administration.html



Distribution of agricultural equipment

On Wednesday the Senator Dieudonne Luma Etienne realized a distribution of agricultural equipment to the various leaders and personalities of the peasant sector of the commune of La Victoire.



Project of irrigation in the Plain des Baconois

This week, the Ministry of Agriculture launched the small-scale irrigation development project in the Plaine des Baconois (Nippes department).



CFI Platform Haiti Digital Service

The Investment Facilitation Center (CFI) will launch the "Haiti Digital Service", at the first forum BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) Ayiti Smart Talent, scheduled for 29 November.



Laureates of the body Administrators of State

On Thursday, President Jovenel Moise, accompanied by Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant, attended the official presentation ceremony of the laureates of the National Executive Recruitment Competition for State Directors body https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-22136-haiti-politics-first-day-of-the-state-administrators-competition.html . a historic event to the extent that marks a break with poor governance practices that affects the regular functioning of the state, said President Moise.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















DOT to scale back Kanuga widening

Elected officials from Hendersonville, Flat Rock and Henderson County said they were encouraged at the willingness of the top NCDOT engineer for the county to take a look at numerous compromises in response to residents opposition to the Kanuga and Highland Lake road widening projects.

Related Stories

County Commissioner Bill Lapsley, Hendersonville City Councilman Steve Caraker and Flat Rock Village Councilman John Dockendorf met on Thursday with Brian Burch, the acting top engineer for Division 14, which includes Henderson County.

The Kanuga Road project, a $20 million improvement from Church Street to Little River Road, would expand the road to as wide as 64 feet  from Hebron Road to Erkwood Road  counting a 5-foot sidewalk, a 4-foot bike lane and 11-foot center turn lane. Residents along Kanuga have filled meeting rooms and NCDOT public input sessions to oppose the project, saying it would take down too many trees, threaten rock walls that line parts of the road and destroy large chunks of homeowners front yards.

Basically, we kept negotiating and negotiating and they kept giving and giving so the right of way has shrunk 20-feet overall going out, Caraker said. Lapsley and Dockendorf and I are going to invite the anti leaders to a meeting and show them what weve done. Weve done everything we can do to save every rock wall, every significant tree. Weve got turn lanes put in where we need them at Crooked Creek and places that have heavier traffic.

Weve pretty much eliminated bike and sidewalks all the way out to save property. I talked to Joe Sanders (of the Blue Ridge Bicycle Club). His group does not think Kanugas a bike-friendly place anyhow. That made that easy. (Most bicyclists use lightly traveled Old Kanuga Road, which runs parallel to Kanuga to ride south.)

Although Lapsley was slightly less confident that the NCDOT would be able to reduce the impact in the way residents hope, he agreed the officials made progress with the NCDOT engineer.

Were working on it, he said. I dont want to jinx. Were keeping it low profile at the moment. Im encouraged. We got three elected officials working with DOT trying to come up with a way to adjust the project to meet the public concerns and also have a safe road.

All three elected officials are on the county Transportation Advisory Committee, representing the boards they serve on, and Lapsley is chair of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which sets highway improvement priorities. The part of the road in the city had the widest footprint, including 5-foot sidewalks, 4-foot bike lanes and 2-foot curb and gutter.

We made a lot of progress in a very short period of time, Caraker said. We went over section by section what wed like to see happen. Theyre going to do 11-foot wide lanes with a turn lane. Instead of putting in regular curb-and-gutter theyre going to do a rollover curb and gutter that if you need to you can travel with your two wheels and get around somebody. I was very very encouraged. It was probably the most worthwhile two hours Ive spent with local government and DOT in a long long time.

The narrower roadway also greatly reduces the number of power poles Duke Energy will have to move, he said.

Dockendorf met with Burch on Wednesday about the Highland Lake Road widening project and on Thursday about Kanuga.

We went over and looked at all the possible compromises and I feel like we were able to come up with compromises that will keep the residents happy, he said of the Kanuga project. Well, who are we to say the residents will be happy? Some wont be. But I feel like we moved the needle significantly in the residents direction.

As for Highland Lake Road, Dockendorf said Burch was similarly open to changes that will reduce the impact. That project, too, has triggered intense opposition from residents, park users and Historic Flat Rock members. Dockendorf, Rick Merrill, of Historic Flat Rock, and the Rev. Rhett Carson, minister at Pinecrest Presbyterian Church, met with Burch.

The big takeaway from that is I feel like the process is working exactly like its supposed to be, he said. From a lot of the residents the perception the bulldozers are circling. To quote Brian Burch, if you look from getting on the SPOT (the DOT construction list) to the bulldozers, were 25 percent there.

Residents complain they werent consulted, Dockendorf said, but thats what is happening now. The DOTs view, he said, is were not circling the barn. Were taking your ideas and were going back to the drawing board.

Carson was able to show Burch the churchs objections, which include losing its septic tank, parking and a line of evergreens that serves as a sound and sight buffer.

Protecting the church is a huge priority of every single member of the Flat Rock council, he said. Theyre an integral part of Flat Rock. They serve an incredibly important spiritual purpose to the people of Flat Rock and the community. Theyre really good people there and we want to make sure theyre protected. But at the same time weve got to make sure that the 225 intersection is safe.

We represented to DOT our concerns, he said. Were advocating for primarily a smaller footprint. Were working towards a compromise that will minimize the impact.

We asked them to come up with a design with a 10-foot (greenway) plan and without the 10-foot plan, he said. Were looking at reducing the need for retaining walls and going back to a guardrail but a much more attractive guardrail than what we have now.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin at Leinster House after the partys submission of a no confidence motion in Frances Fitzgerald

A snap election will be called next Tuesday unless Fianna Fail backs off embattled Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

Voters may be going to the polls before Christmas - and at a crucial moment in the Brexit negotiations.

Mr Varadkar is due to travel to Brussels on December 14 to hammer out a deal with the UK for the future of the Border region. However, he is now likely to be in the middle of an election campaign at home.

In his first public comments since Fianna Fail tabled a motion of no confidence in the Tanaiste, Mr Varadkar said he will stand by her in the days ahead.

He accused opposition TDs of trying to carry out a "summary execution" without knowing all the facts.

Decapitation

"I don't believe the decapitation of the Tanaiste based on the trumped-up charges is fair," he said.

Asked on RTE's Six One News why he would not ask Ms Fitzgerald to step aside in the national interest, Mr Varadkar said that would be "throwing a good woman under the bus for political expediency, to save myself and my Government".

The Taoiseach confirmed that if the massive gulf between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail cannot be resolved by Tuesday, then the country will go to the polls.

"We still have opportunity for the next few days to avoid an election," he said.

"Certainly I don't want there to be a general election."

However, he gave no indication that he would cede ground to Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin in the dispute.

"I think fundamentally this had to be about truth, justice and fairness," the Taoiseach added.

He described the case against Ms Fitzgerald - that she did not act on an email alerting her to legal rows at the O'Higgins Commission - was "flimsy".

According to well-placed sources, a meeting between Mr Varadkar and Mr Martin yesterday was "more civil than some previous ones" but ultimately made no progress.

Having failed to convince Mr Varadkar to ask his deputy to step down, Fianna Fail is expected to now turn up the pressure on Ms Fitzgerald to offer her resignation.

She continues to argue that she acted appropriately at all times when dealing with whistleblowers and could not have intervened on foot of an email to stop gardai adopting an aggressive legal approach at the O'Higgins Commission.

However, Fianna Fail finance spokesman Michael McGrath said the Tanaiste "has a hugely important personal decision to make".

"If the Taoiseach isn't going to ask her to resign, it's a decision she'll have to make herself and it will have national consequences," he said.

Mr Varadkar's hand was strengthened by support from the Independent ministers in Government, who met him in Government Buildings to discuss the growing crisis last night.

Transport Minister Shane Ross raised concerns that the country was being forced into a "needless and costly general election".

Mr Ross said it would be "disproportionate" for the Tanaiste to be removed from office because of an email.

"Going to the country in the weeks before Christmas is not what the country either needs or wants," he said.

"It seems possible, even likely, that it could take months for another government to be formed."

The minister was flanked by Kevin 'Boxer' Moran, Finian McGrath, John Halligan and Sean Canney, as he warned the upcoming Brexit talks were more important than the current controversy.

Mr Moran launched a blistering attack on Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein, which have both tabled motions of no confidence in Ms Fitzgerald.

He said the group has 100pc confidence in her and suggested the two opposition parties were merely trying to set up their own government.

"Look at the papers from last week, you had people from Fianna Fail looking to go into government with Sinn Fein," Mr Moran said.

"Now they're pushing for that and they put pressure on Micheal Martin here today. We are on the brink of a Fianna Fail/Sinn Fein new policy document, new government. Is this what they are planning?

"This is wrong. We deserve to give the people leadership."

Prepare

Mr Moran went on to question why Fianna Fail was taking such a hard line when this month seven years ago "they were the party that told the people of this country that the IMF wasn't in this country".

Despite all sides saying they wished to avoid a general election, massive efforts are being made behind the scenes to prepare for one.

Fianna Fail has already held a substantial number of selection conventions around the country and is well positioned to launch an early campaign.

Fine Gael has only formally selected candidates in Dublin Rathdown, Dublin North West and Longford/Westmeath. Its National Executive is ready to fast-track conventions nationwide.

Sinn Fein confirmed yesterday that Mary Lou McDonald would lead its election campaign in the wake of Gerry Adams's decision not to put his name forward in Louth.

Labour leader Brendan Howlin said his party was "election ready".
Oscar Pistorius' prison sentence was more than doubled to 13 years and five months yesterday.

The extension was a surprisingly dramatic intervention by South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal in the Olympic athlete's fate after the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

Supreme Court Justice Willie Seriti said a panel of judges unanimously upheld an appeal by prosecutors against Pistorius' original six-year sentence for shooting Ms Steenkamp multiple times in his home in 2013.

Lenient

Under that initial sentence, which the court called "shockingly lenient", the double-amputee runner could have been released on parole in mid-2019. Now, the earliest he will be eligible for parole is 2023.

The ruling could bring an end to the near five-year legal saga surrounding Pistorius, a Paralympic champion and record-breaker who was the first amputee to run at the Olympics and one of the most celebrated sportsmen in the world.

Ms Steenkamp's parents, Barry and June, were "emotional" as they watched Mr Seriti deliver the verdict live on television at their home, the family's lawyer said.

Pistorius killed Ms Steenkamp in the pre-dawn hours of Valentine's Day 2013 after shooting four times through a closed toilet cubicle door with his 9mm pistol.

He claimed he mistook the 29-year-old model and reality TV star for an intruder.

Pistorius was initially convicted of manslaughter by trial judge Thokozile Masipa.

That conviction was overturned and replaced with a murder conviction by the Supreme Court in 2015.

Pistorius was then sentenced to six years for murder by Ms Masipa, a decision also now rejected by the Supreme Court.

Prosecutors called the six-year sentence much too lenient and the Supreme Court agreed, saying in a full written ruling released later that "the sentence of six years' imprisonment is shockingly lenient to a point where it has the effect of trivialising this serious offence".

Backdated

The new sentence of 13 years and five months took into account the one year and seven months Pistorius served in prison and under house arrest after his manslaughter conviction.

The new sentence was backdated to start on the day he began his murder sentence, on July 6 last year.

Pistorius must serve at least half of the 13 years and five months - nearly seven years - before he can be considered for parole.

His lawyers have the option to appeal the new sentence at the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa.
Men convicted of the manslaughter of a partner are likely to serve nearly three years less in prison than if they had not been intimately involved with a female victim, research has found.

Advocacy group Women's Aid has called for killing within an intimate relationship to be considered an aggravating factor as it launched its Femicide Watch 2017 report.

It showed that, on average, a man who killed an intimate or formerly intimate female partner received a 7.8-year jail term, while the average for killing a woman with no romantic connection was 10.6 years.

The group has also called for the State to set up domestic homicide reviews (DHRs) of cases to learn from them in order to prevent killings in the future.

Statistics published in the report showed 216 women had been killed since the Women's Aid Femicide project was established in 1996.

The report also showed 88pc of women killed in Ireland were killed by a man known them.

Protect

Women's Aid director Margaret Martin said it was time to act to protect women.

"Women should be safe in their homes and in their relationships," she said.

"We must recognise the strong connection between the killing of women and domestic violence."

Speaking at the launch of the report yesterday, Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty said she believed an intimate relationship should be an aggravating factor in crime against women.

"There are times we see cases with sentences being handed down, not least of which for violent crimes of murder against women, and it leaves you absolutely bewildered," she said.

"It shouldn't be a mitigating factor that somebody was living in a loving environment, it should be an aggravating factor."

Ms Doherty also said that the Government had agreed to complete a new report, work on which will begin in January, on sexual abuse and violence in Ireland (SAVI).

The last SAVI report was published in 2002.

Maria Dempsey, whose daughter Alicia Brough (20) was murdered in Newcastle West, Co Limerick, in November 2010, also spoke out at the event.

"I want to advocate for counselling and sentencing," Ms Dempsey said.

"Sentencing isn't good enough."
Taylor Swift is set to headline Croke Park next summer, marking her first performance on Irish soil since her sold-out 3Arena gigs in June 2015.

She will play the gig on Friday, June 15 in support of her latest studio album Reputation, which became the biggest selling album in the US this year when it sold 1.23 million copies in its first week of release.

Tickets will go on sale next Friday.

Subscribers to TaylorSwift.com will have access to tickets in advance, beginning next Wednesday, while those who pre-ordered her new album will also be given preference.

An email sent to fans read: "Do you want to get advanced access to pre-sale tickets to the forthcoming soon to be announced Taylor Swift UK and Ireland 2018 concert dates?

"Pre-order Reputation from the Official Taylor Swift-UK and Ireland store and you will get a unique code that grants you exclusive access to the forthcoming pre-sales for the UK and Ireland 2018 concert dates."

Crumbled

The Dublin performance will be part of the UK and Ireland leg of Swift's tour, which includes dates in Manchester and London.

The star is known for writing about her personal life in many of her songs.

Fans have been speculating about the real-life references that might be included in some of the tracks on her new album.

In Call It What You Want, she sings that her "castle crumbled overnight", which fans believe is a reference to her busy 2016.

She had high-profile break-ups from former flames Calvin Harris and Tom Hiddleston and also reignited her feud with Kanye West.
How good are these two guys, Penn State fans? It may surprise you ...

football
Located in Pakistans Punjab province, the Katas Raj Temple complex, also known as Qila Katas, houses several Hindu temples linked to one another by walkways. The Supreme Court of Pakistan called the Katas Raj a national heritage and said, This temple is not just a place of cultural significance for the Hindu community, but also a part of our national heritage. The temples are considered to be the second most sacred site for Hindus in Punjab.

The Katas site houses the Satgraha, a group of seven ancient temples, remains of a Buddhist stupa, five other medieval temples, havelis scattered around a pond considered holy by Hindus. The temples here are mostly constructed on square platforms. The elevation of the sub shrines seems to form a series of cornices with small rows of pillars, crowned by a ribbed dome. The seven temples were built in an architectural style similar to Kashmiri temples, with dentils, fluted pillars, trefoil arches, and rooflines that are pointed.

The complex surrounds a pond named Katas which is regarded as sacred by Hindus. The complex is located in the Potohar Plateau region of Pakistans Punjab province. The name Katas (Raj temple) is derived from Kataksha, a Sanskrit word meaning tearful eyes. According to legend, the pond was formed after lord Shiva wept upon the death of his wife Satti.

The temples play a role in the Hindu epic poem, the Mahabharata, where the temples are traditionally believed to have been the site where the Pandava brothers spent a significant portion of their exile. It is also traditionally believed by Hindus to be the site where the brothers engaged in a riddle contest with the Yakshas, as described in the Yaksha Prashna. Another tradition states that the Hindu deity Krishna laid the foundation of the temple, and established a hand-made shivling in it.

The site is believed to be a complex popular for its pilgrimage site for Hindus prior to the 1947 Partition. However, until the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, the Indian pilgrims were barred from visiting again until 1984. The temples fell into disrepair over the decades and suffered neglect. Pakistani Hindus would continue to occasionally visit the site, but were unable to maintain the expansive complex. The pond was polluted with litter. Veteran leader Lal Krishna Advani had visited the temples in 2005 and expressed displeasure at the sites dilapidated state.

In 2005 Pakistan proposed to restore the temple complex, while in 2006 the restoration project began in order to clean the sacred pond, paint and restore some temples, and installation of informational blue boards around the temple complex. 300 Indian Hindus visited the site for the Shivratri festival in 2006. 2,000 Pakistani Hindus resumed the tradition of celebrating Shivratri at the temple in 2010, and another 2,000 in 2011 with visitors coming from as far as Karachi. A wedding for Hindu couples was arranged during that years Shivratri festival for couples from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province whose families had lost much of their property in the 2010 Pakistan floods.

In January 2017, Pakistans government began installation of shikharas on the temples. In February 2017, 200 pilgrims from India traveled to the temple to participate in the Katas Raj Dham festival. However, on November 23, Pakistans Supreme Court flayed the government for failing to protect the sacred pond in the historic Katas Raj temple complex revered by Hindus and ordered setting up of a high-level committee to probe the matter.

The sacred pond is receding as the underground aquifer feeding it is under stress due to industrial activity in the area. The issue was taken up by Chief Justice Saqib Nisar on the basis of media reports that the Katas Raj pond in Chakwal district of Punjab was drying up because cement factories nearby were drawing a large amount of water through a number of borewells, severely reducing the sub-soil water level.

Idols of Hindu gods were placed in the seven temples, at a cost of Rs 51.06 million. A three-member archaeological team visited India, Sri Lanka and Nepal to collect murtis of various Hindu gods.

Source : Indian Express
After 27 years in power, Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore stepped down on Friday after mass protests against his efforts to extend his rule. The Washington Post reports that three generals are vying to fill the presidency, raising the troubling specter of a military takeover.

Rallies against the president had been building all week. They crescendoed on Thursday when protesters stormed the parliament, blocking voting on a bill that would have allowed Compaore to serve a fifth term. Just days after the crisis broke out, one of the longest-serving presidents in Africa resigned from office.

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After a nearly three-decades rule, Compaore's fall may seem sudden. But as Vox points out, discontent in the African nation is also driven by longstanding issues, including corruption and economic inequality.

See how events unfolded in the dramatic images from Burkina Faso this week:

Burkina Faso opposition supporters protest in Ouagadougou on Oct. 28, 2014 against plans to let the long-serving president extend his rule beyond 30 years.(ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

Burkina Faso opposition supporters take part in a protest on Oct. 28,2014 in Ouagadougou. (ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

Women protest during a rally against the president seeking another term in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Oct. 27, 2014. (AP Photo/Theo Renaut)

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Protesters shout near the parliament building in Burkina Faso, Oct. 30, 2014. (AP Photo/Theo Renaut)

A car burns outside the parliament building in Burkina Faso as people protest against President Blaise Compaore in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Oct. 30, 2014. (AP Photo/Theo Renaut)

Protesters stand outside the parliament in Ouagadougou on Oct. 30, 2014 as cars and documents burn outside. (ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

Protestors pour water on a injured man near the parliament building in Burkina Faso as people protest against President Blaise Compaore in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Oct. 30, 2014. (AP Photo/Theo Renaut)

A crowd gathers on Oct. 31, 2014 in front of army headquarters in Ouagadougou, demanding that the army take over following the resignation of the president. (ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

A Burkinabe soldier listens to a Lieutenant-Colonel reading a press release by the army chief after the resignation of Burkina Faso's president in Ouagadougou on Oct. 31, 2014. (ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

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People gather near a government building as they await the announcement of a new interim leader in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Oct. 31, 2014. (AP Photo/Theo Renaut)

Looters search for useable goods from ruins of burned goods of resigned President Blaise Compaore's relatives' houses and hotels in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on Oct. 31, 2014. (Lougri Dimtalba/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Panel of Guinean Judges Concludes Investigation Into 2009 Conakry Stadium Massacre

Washington, DC - The United States welcomes the progress made by the panel of Guinean judges investigating the September 28, 2009 massacre of more than 150 protesters and rape of 100 women by security forces during a peaceful protest in Conakry, Guinea. On November 9, 2017, the domestic panel reached an important milestone when the judges formally concluded their investigation and brought charges against more than 14 suspects.

We are encouraged by this impressive progress  including the hearing of testimony from more than 450 victims and extensive witness interviews  but stress that there is still important work to be done in order to ensure justice for victims and accountability for those responsible for this atrocity. We stress that the Government of Guinea is primarily responsible for administering justice for its people. We call on Guinea to guarantee a fair trial for those accused, ensure the safety and security of all involved, and keep Guineans informed of the trials progress, as appropriate.

We continue to stand with Guineans, and people of all backgrounds and nationalities, as they strive for justice, accountability, and the prevention of future atrocities.
Efforts to Address Burma's Rakhine State Crisis

Washington, DC - Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson: "I visited Naypyitaw, Burma on November 15, where I met separately with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. I reaffirmed the United States strong commitment to Burmas successful democratic transition as the elected government strives to implement reforms, bring peace and reconciliation to the nation, and resolve a devastating crisis in Rakhine State. Our first priority is to relieve the intolerable suffering faced by so many. In response to the dire situation, I announced last week an additional $47 million in humanitarian assistance for those affected by the Rakhine State crisis, bringing the total amount spent in response to this crisis to more than $87 million since August of this year.

"Burmas response to this crisis is vital to determining the success of its transition to a more democratic society. As I said in Naypyitaw, the key test of any democracy is how it treats its most vulnerable and marginalized populations, such as the ethnic Rohingya and other minority populations. Burmas government and security forces must respect the human rights of all persons within its borders, and hold accountable those who fail to do so.

"I reiterate the United States condemnation of August 25 attacks on security forces by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). Yet no provocation can justify the horrendous atrocities that have ensued. These abuses by some among the Burmese military, security forces, and local vigilantes have caused tremendous suffering and forced hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to flee their homes in Burma to seek refuge in Bangladesh. After a careful and thorough analysis of available facts, it is clear that the situation in northern Rakhine state constitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.

"Those responsible for these atrocities must be held accountable. The United States continues to support a credible, independent investigation to further determine all facts on the ground to aid in these processes of accountability. We have supported constructive action on the Rakhine crisis at the UN Security Council and in the UN General Assemblys Third Committee. The United States will also pursue accountability through U.S. law, including possible targeted sanctions.

"We support the Burmese governments commitment to create the conditions necessary for all refugees and internally displaced people to return to their homes safely and voluntarily, and welcome recent exchanges between the governments of Burma and Bangladesh on repatriation. Support by Burmas military for these government efforts is crucial. This is a difficult and complex situation. Many stakeholders must work together to ensure progress."
Bengaluru Woman Gets Her Lost AirPods Back in no Time as Auto-Driver Tracks Her Down
There will be severe consequences if a customs and border solution for Ireland is not designed and developed now to be ready for Brexit, according to a report by a former head of Swedish Customs.

There will be severe consequences if a customs and border solution for Ireland is not designed and developed now to be ready for Brexit, according to a report by a former head of Swedish Customs.

In a detailed study, Lars Karlsson argues that with the UK outside of the customs union and single market, a customs and border solution will be required for March 2019, regardless of any political solution or the outcome of the negotiations.

The Border has emerged as the most contentious issue in the Brexit talks with just weeks to go until a crucial December summit of EU leaders during which it will be decided whether sufficient progress has been made to allow the Brexit talks move on to the next phase.

So far, the Government here has said more clarity is needed from the UK on how a frictionless border without controls or customs can operate.

All the while, businesses and exporters selling their goods into the UK are plagued by uncertainty.

Maintaining as smooth a border as possible is necessary, given the costs and the integrated supply chains, the former director of Swedish Customs adds.

For example, in the course of production of Guinness, 13,000 border crossings between north and south are made each year, the report states. Bombardier, one of Northern Ireland's biggest employers, engages more than 60 suppliers in Ireland.

But he argues there will have to be some form of Border - a claim backed up by Sweden's Europe Minister Ann Linde who told Sky News that it was not possible to have frictionless trade outside of the single market and customs union.

Documentation and compliance requirements at a border can increase transaction costs by 2pc-24pc, Mr Karlsson says, and the total cost of obtaining a certificate of origin could be more than 450 per consignment.

Border controls can add 30-60 minutes to the border crossing time of a truck and 10-20 minutes for a car, he argues.

"The introduction of border controls along the Border will impact a large number of companies that have never previously made an export and/or import declaration. There are a number of studies that point to the time and cost impacts of border controls and compliance requirements, for example the need to obtain a certificate of origin for exporters," the report notes.

The study, prepared for the European Parliament's policy office, suggests the only way to minimise disruption as a result of a border is through the use of technology - even though this has been expressly rejected by the Government - securing a bilateral agreement with the UK on customs co-operation, and the use of mobile technology and patrols.

"Regardless of any form of agreement reached by the UK and the EU, the UK and Ireland, as the only European Single Market land border with the UK, will need to put in place some form of border and customs compliance procedures," the report notes.

The study points to the Swedish/Norwegian border, and describes it as "the most advanced customs solutions in the world".

In that case regulations allow for a 15km control zone on either side of the border where customs controls can take place, by either state on either state's territory.

There are, however, 14 customs border posts, despite heavy investment in technology.

"A small percentage of goods are selected for documentary control or physical control by customs.

"The approach to controls taken by Swedish and Norwegian customs is heavily risk-based, relying on risk-management technology to identify those vehicles to undergo documentary or physical checks."

The report states that elements of this, tuned to meet the requirements of the Irish border, can be rolled out.

The report states that domestic and cross-border coordinated border management as well as trusted trader and trusted traveller programmes can significantly reduce compliance requirements and make borders "almost friction free".

The docuement states that there needs to be a greater use of so-called Authorised Economic Operators (AEOs). In those cases, checks are carried out in the facilities owned by those operators by customs officials, rather than at a border or port.

The UK currently has 604 AEO companies, while Ireland has just 139. By comparison, Germany has 6,000, France 1,453 and Italy 1,238.

"Customs and other border control practices that keep the border open, such as release before clearance, deferred duty payments and clearance away from the border, also help keep the border free of traffic and speed up or even remove the need for processing," the report adds.

"Technologies such as automatic number plate recognition, enhanced drivers' licences, barcode scanning and the use of smartphone apps can also have a significant impact by reducing paperwork and allowing pre- or on-arrival release, which can reduce or even eliminate the need to stop or undergo checks."

The report states that at both the Norway-Sweden and the Canada-US frontiers, "low friction" borders have been created through a focus on sharing of both data and facilities, the creation of electronic environments for trade and travel and the use of modern technologies.

Of course, the Government has stressed that it will not accept a situation where what has been detailed in the report would occur.

Both Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney have said they want either the UK to remain in some form of customs union with the EU, or ensure there is no regulator divergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The clock is ticking though and there appears to be little in the way of progress towards acheiving that.

The coming weeks will be crucial.
Are you happy, boys, now that you've finally taken the women out? Which one of us is now in your sights and where can we next see those virile, manly snipers at work?

To be fair, the destructive knotweed of successive Garda controversies has been something of an equal opportunities killer that has felled the career of many a leading man, including former Justice Minister Alan Shatter and former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan.

Now it has stolen a death march on the careers of former Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan, our first female garda commissioner, as well Tanaiste and Jobs Minister Frances Fitzgerald.

It may yet even collapse the Government, weeks before critical European Council talks on Brexit: it's a fine, macho mess we are in lads.

But before you choke on your cornflakes, I am not for one nanosecond absolving Noirin O'Sullivan, Frances Fitzgerald or any agency of the State that features in the Maurice McCabe saga.

The Supreme Court ruling in the Frank Shortt case is the high watermark, or perhaps, more appropriately, the lowest one, for the abuse of citizens by the State.

Shortt was wrongfully convicted on drug charges in 1995 after being framed by gardai for a crime that never was.

The Donegal publican secured a landmark award of 4,623,871 against the State after a 14-year legal battle to clear his name in the face of "egregious" Garda conduct.

By that yardstick, the State will surely be paying damages north of 10m to Mr McCabe - and rightly so, although no amount of money could ever compensate Sgt McCabe for his trauma.

As the Irish Independent's Legal Editor for many years, there once was a time when I would have pored over every twist and turn in the Sgt McCabe saga.

Set apart from the main politico-legal fray in my current role as Group Business Editor, I need as much of a crash course in the details of this election crisis as any other punter.

But what is unmistakeable from my (admittedly) balcony view about the latest iteration of this seemingly permanent crisis, is a misogynistic undercurrent directed towards the female protagonists by some in this justice horror.

It isn't even an undercurrent: it is manifestly overt and speaks to the still-pervasive obstacles many women face en route to, or when they reach, the upper echelons of their chosen fields.

In the case of Noirin O'Sullivan, her historic appointment as Ireland's first female Garda Commissioner was over before it began.

A small, internal cohort of gardai appeared determined to take O'Sullivan out - they had ample external support with dedicated cheerleaders for their cause in the media. And regardless of O'Sullivan's flaws, and these will no doubt be robustly interrogated by Supreme Court Judge Mr Justice Peter Charleton, the manner in which she was overcome, and the glee which accompanied her resignation, was disturbing to this female mind.

For her part, Frances Fitzgerald is one of Irish politics' great survivors, and has served as a critical, near standalone voice for women in the current Cabinet that often resembles a junior infants class in a boys school after a sugar crash.

Her fate may already be sealed by that overlooked but critical email, and no doubt the Charleton Tribunal will also have its say.

But the vitriol directed towards her in the Dail, and the intensely personal campaign directed against her elsewhere, seems disproportionate, notwithstanding the critical nature of this political crisis.

But then again, what more can we expect when we have such a low bar of political engagement? When this culture comes from the very top of our political pyramid?

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, in my view, has a problem with women, and not just the one woman - Frances Fitzgerald - who near single-handedly ensured his smooth path in to the history books as the first gay man and son of an immigrant to ascend into the prestigious role of Taoiseach.

I hold no candle towards Sinn Fein deputy leader and leader-in-waiting Mary Lou McDonald - or her party.

Indeed, my namesake and I have engaged in some fairly robust debates, and at least one of those unedifying spectacles - Mary Lou and I might agree at least on that description - can be seen at the mere click of a mouse.

But the supercilious treatment of Mary Lou McDonald in the Dail earlier this year by Leo Varadkar went beyond the bounds of robust political engagement.

For her audacity in coming to the Dail prepared for a debate on historic losses that banks could write off, our urbane and urban leader transformed into a street gurrier, dismissing his able opponent in a manner that was unnecessary - and ungentlemanlike.

The Taoiseach, who actually reduced the number of women in his Cabinet, was back on the attack last September, when he compared Mary Lou McDonald to far-right French leader Marine Le Pen, despite their different politics, because "she always goes back to her script".

No amount of llama selfies, novelty socks or svelte runners' high shoots with world leaders can take the glaze off a home grown political culture that is one of the many reasons why we cannot attract more women into politics and public life.

Men are also victims of this locker-room culture which, as we've seen with the needless sword fight in recent days, is an insult to the electorate crying out for a strong, cohesive government.

It's time to grow up, learn some manners - and put the snipers out of work.
Commenting on the 2016 figures, Communicorp chairwoman Lucy Gaffney said investment into the business and currency swings linked to Brexit had had an impact on the results.

Irish revenues were up last year at radio group Communicorp, although overall sales were down compared to 2015.

Financial accounts just filed show revenues of 83.76m in 2016 were drawn roughly evenly from the Irish business (42.8m), and from the rest of Europe (40m).

Revenues in 2015 had been 85.6m.

Across the group losses after tax, financing costs and currency translation increased in 2016 to 4.5m, as the broadcaster was hit by currency movements on its UK income and as it absorbed the costs of launching new ventures including online retail business Appliances Delivered in Ireland.

Commenting on the 2016 figures, Communicorp chairwoman Lucy Gaffney said investment into the business and currency swings linked to Brexit had had an impact on the results.

"Despite a difficult year for the entire media industry, we are very happy that we increased the revenue of our Irish business by 4pc," Ms Gaffney said.

"However, this revenue growth was offset by the considerable investment in AppliancesDelivered.ie, which was established to capitalise on the consumer shift to online shopping, and in a number of new business initiatives in our radio stations."

The business is "very confident of a strong 2018", she said.

"The radio sector remains a cornerstone of Irish society with over 90pc of people tuning in every week," Ms Gaffney added.

"However, the industry shift towards digital revenue has put pressure on all traditional media. As a result, we have reorganised the very core of our radio business, consolidated our sales force and invested further in creative solutions for our advertising partners such as the recent launch of Offtheball.com.

"These changes will help us to capture a more significant market share of a very competitive and evolving media industry."

Denis O'Brien-owned Communicorp's Irish operations include Today FM, Newstalk, 98FM and SPIN 1038.

In the UK, where it is the fourth-largest commercial radio group, its brands include Capital and Heart. In Bulgaria, BG Radio broadcasts in 18 cities and is the country's biggest commercial broadcaster.

The accounts show staff numbers in 2016 were 540, little changed from the previous year.

Communicorp this year overhauled its internal structures, including centralising all of its advertising sales to the agency Media Central, merging some senior roles and elimination of CEO posts at Newstalk, Spin and 98FM.

That followed the appointment of new CEO Adrian Serle at the end of 2016. Upfront costs linked to those changes will be reflected in this year's financial results.
Biddy White Lennon, Anna Nolan and Executive Pastry Chef Paul Kelly, at the launch of TV3s The Great Irish Bake Off in 2014. Photo: Brian McEvoy

The Great Irish Bake Off has been shelved after only three series.

TV3 has decided not to run the Irish version of the popular BBCs show Great British Bake Off this autumn.

The show, hosted by Biddy White Lennon and Paul Kelly, has had its run, a TV3 source told the Irish Daily Mail.

Every show has a run and this was just it. It was just felt that after three series that Great Irish Bake Off had run its course.

That is not to say that down the line we wont have a rethink and come back to it. But for now it is not being brought back for a fourth series, the TV3 source told the newspaper.

An average of 200,000 viewers tuned in to The Great Irish Bake Off in its first two years to watch the amateur bakers battle it out in the kitchen.

Last year, Monaghan dessert-queen and finalist Cathy McKenna spoke about how she was inundated with wedding cake orders for this year after appearing on the show.
Louise James with her solicitor Robert Anderson leaving the Lake of Shadows Hotel in Buncrana, Co Donegal following the inquest on Thursday. Photo: Niall Carson/PA

Down at the pier in Buncrana, a heart-wrenching shrine of teddy bears and holy medals still remains.

It is the sole indicator of the catastrophic blow that struck here 20 months ago - aside from a sign on the gate that bears the tersely worded sign: "Slipway temporarily closed."

At this time of the year, waves lash bleakly onto the shores of Lough Swilly - a world away from the balmy summer-like conditions that had brought Sean McGrotty, his children and extended family down to enjoy the sunset on March 20, 2016.

The small poignant figure of Louise James stood by her solicitor's elbow as he read aloud her statement that told how her heart had been shattered by the loss of her mother Ruth Daniels (58), her sister Jodie Lee (14), her partner Sean McGrotty (49), and sons Mark (14) and Evan (8).

Only her daughter Rioghnach-Ann, who survived "this horrible tragedy", remains her "one ray of sunshine," Louise said.

Her stoicism throughout the two-day inquest at the Lake of Shadows hotel in Buncrana, Co Donegal, had been touching to observe.

But she broke down and wept as the coroner Denis McCauley told how Evan had muscular dystrophy - a condition that "should have ended his life early". Every day counted and for that to have ended prematurely was "devastating and terrible", he said.

She had again wept earlier in the hearing as her deposition was read aloud detailing how she had identified first Sean, then her "mammy Ruth", her sister Jodie Lee and then Mark and Evan.

She had last seen her beloved family on Friday at 4pm and spent the weekend in Liverpool on a hen party.

She had been in "constant contact" with them and last spoke to Jodie Lee at 6.55pm on Sunday - who had told her they were in the play park down at the shore in Buncrana.

Sean had taken everyone to dinner at the pier.

At 7.25pm, she got the feeling "something wasn't right" and tried to contact them, to no avail.

On arriving at Belfast airport, her brother Joshua phoned her, telling her to keep calm. Sean was the first to be identified, he said, adding: "They're all gone," but Rioghnach-Ann was ok and in hospital in Letterkenny.

Nobody saw the car enter the water and it was unclear why the family had been unable to open the doors of the Audi Q7 Jeep, the inquest heard. An Audi expert contended that it should have been possible.

The water was already rising up the wheels when eyewitnesses Francis and Kay Crawford first spotted it, with Sean McGrotty shouting at them to phone the coastguard. The slipway had been "slippy as ice" with algae, Francis said.

Davitt Walsh, with his then girlfriend Stephanie Knox, had then come on the scene and he swam out. Sean had handed the baby out through the window he had smashed with his elbow and Davitt had a grip on the hand of one of the young boys. But the water was gushing into the car "like a wave" and the child seemed to be stuck on something.

"I had to let go," said Davitt.

"Save the baby, save my baby," Sean had said to him.

Each of the victims were retrieved by RNLI members.

A post-mortem showed Sean to have been three times over the drink-driving limit.

The jury returned verdicts of death by misadventure, caused by drowning - with a recommendation that Irish Water Safety work with all interested parties to ensure best international practice and standards at all slipways and piers.
A National Museum of Ireland employee, currently suspended from duty amid concerns over his behaviour, downloaded hundreds of pictures of women onto his work computer.

Some of these images were manipulated by archaeologist Dr Andy Halpin to enhance the height of the women, in particular their legs, the High Court was told.

Oisin Quinn SC, a barrister for the museum, said Dr Halpin "appeared to have an obsession with tall women, and in particular women with long legs".

Details of the images were disclosed in proceedings brought by Dr Halpin seeking the lifting of his suspension, which was imposed last February. He is also seeking declarations the museum is not entitled to have him medically examined or to require him to undergo neuropsychological or psychiatric assessments.

At a hearing dealing with a preliminary issue regarding the discovery of medical records, the court heard Dr Halpin, an assistant keeper of Irish antiquities, was twice investigated over allegations of sexually harassing female colleagues.

He was disciplined in 2007 after the first of these investigations upheld the complaint against him, and attended counselling until 2011.

Mr Quinn said Dr Halpin advised the museum of his obsession with tall women and while this was something he could control when things were going well in his life, he relapsed whenever he was under stress.

Mr Quinn said a second allegation of harassment came to the museum's attention in February 2016 and Dr Halpin's computer was examined. The barrister said 700 images were found and that although three of the pictures were of naked women, the material was not classified as pornographic.

The court heard Dr Halpin cited the stress of dealing with management as a factor for his downloading of the material.

Ms Justice Deirdre Murphy was told the woman in the second case did not make a formal complaint and did not participate in the investigation. Dr Halpin also disputed the allegation and an investigation report produced in March 2016 found there was no conclusive evidence to support it. However, it said the matter "legitimately raised a very relevant concern about Andy's behaviour and reputation".

As a result of the investigation report, Dr Halpin was issued with directions by the museum that he was to have no physical contact with colleagues above a normal handshake and that he was not to work alone with female colleagues or interns.

It was also directed that his internet access be withdrawn with the exception of a small number of official websites, that he seek professional assistance and that his performance be reviewed on a quarterly basis.

However, his internet access was not withdrawn and his performance was not reviewed.

Mr Quinn said that last February information came into the public domain about complaints of sexual harassment against Dr Halpin via an online blog and newspaper articles. He was not named in the articles.

However, the museum asked Dr Halpin to take a leave of absence on February 17, which he agreed to.

After a few days he "retreated from that" and decided he wanted to return to work. The museum then formally suspended him on February 28 and he has not returned to work since.

An email from the museum's head of operations, Seamus Lynam, said: "I have no doubt that the publication of these articles will by their very nature cause stress and anxiety and therefore, I consider it necessary to suspend you in order to prevent a repetition of the conduct previously complained of and to protect individuals at risk from such conduct."

Frank Callanan SC, for Dr Halpin, told the court the decision to suspend his client came after "a media hue and cry" and was "an unimaginable injustice" and "an extraordinary decision".

He said the central plank of his client's case was that complaints against him were dealt with in 2007 and 2016 and could not be revisited or be the subject of fresh disciplinary sanctions.

Ms Justice Deirdre Murphysaid she would rule later on whether Dr Halpin should have to disclose medical records.
Three men have been sentenced to combined jail terms of nearly 50 years for "barbaric" break-ins at two rural homes in Co Limerick.

Patrick Roche (53), from Kilcronan Close, Clondalkin, in Dublin, along with his son Philip Roche (24), were jailed for 17 years and 15 years respectively. Patrick Roche's son-in-law Alan Freeman (37), from Pearse Park, Tipperary town, was jailed for 14 years.

The final three years of each sentence was suspended, reducing the total combined sentences from 46 years to 37 years.

Free legal aid was granted to the three defendants should they wish to appeal the length of the sentences.

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In May 2012, Patrick and Philip Roche broke into the isolated rural home of pensioner siblings Willie, Nora and Chrissie Creed, at Ballyluddy, Pallasgreen.

They tied up Mr Creed and his sisters, aged in their 70s, before assaulting them, and leaving them covered in blood. Mr Creed was stabbed in the head with a screwdriver during the horrific incident.

The father and son fled with 5,000 cash, which they had found hidden in a sock.

Passing sentence, Judge John Hannan described the burglary at the Creed's home as "a heinous, barbaric, and very violent attack on very vulnerable people".

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"It was a sickening episode and it indicated a complete lack of empathy for older people."

Six weeks prior to the burglary at the Creed farmhouse, Patrick and Philip Roche, along with Alan Freeman, broke into the home of Gerry and Anne Garvey, of Sunville House, Pallasgreen.

They tied up Mr and Mrs Garvey, and their four children, and assaulted them.

The gang also threatened Mr Garvey at gunpoint, before they fled the house with cash. Gardai later recovered some of the stolen money.

The three defendants, who had denied charges of aggravated burglary and false imprisonment, were found guilty of the charges by a jury at Limerick Circuit Court.

Judge Hannan said the defendants had acted "menacingly" and with "brutality", having planned the burglaries, worn dark clothing and balaclavas, and armed themselves with weapons.

He said these type of aggravated burglaries cause "great harm" to victims and to the communities in which they occur.

"It tears up the fabric of rural community life and causes suspicion and fear which spreads like a virus," he added.

The judge also said the burglaries had "shattered the tranquillity" of the lives of both families.

"To say it was terrifying for them would be one of the greatest understatements of all time."

Handing down the sentences, Judge Hannan noted "a lack of mitigating factors", adding, "they are few and far between".
A Co Tyrone woman has said she may have to move her family south of the border so her daughter can get a cystic fibrosis (CF) wonder drug.

Ayrin Armstrong hit out at the ongoing political stalemate in Northern Ireland over the funding of Orkambi while her 10-year-old daughter - and hundreds of others - are living with the condition.

The drug, which is understood to cost about 160,000 per patient, per year, was recently made available to CF patients in the Republic of Ireland following an agreement between the drug's manufacturer and the Health Department.

Now mum-of-three Mc Armstrong from Omagh has revealed that she may need to move south to get the drug for her daughter Zona. She is backing a campaign to make Orkambi available to CF patients here and has called on the parties to return to work at Stormont.

"It's heartbreaking. If Stormont was up and running they could make the decision to make Orkambi available here and that's why what is going on at the moment is so frustrating," she said.

"I am not just making a plea to the politicians as a mother, but as someone who knows the drug would help hundreds of people living with CF right now.

"It breaks my heart that there are people whose lives depend upon Orkambi, people are dying now.

"The damage is happening now and we won't stop fighting until Orkambi is available here.

"Our politicians have the power to make Orkambi available here, but they aren't even talking at the moment.

"It makes you wonder what they would do if it was their child that they were watching struggle to breathe and spending so much time in and out of hospital."

Orkambi has been hailed a lifesaving treatment that has the potential to improve the condition of CF sufferers across Ireland.

However, it has been deemed too expensive by NICE - the body that decides what drugs should be available on the NHS - so it is not routinely available here.

Ayrin (29) discovered daughter Zona had CF when she was just six weeks old after it was picked up through routine screening tests done on newborn babies.

CF is a genetic condition that affects the lungs and digestive system, and half of the people with the condition who died last year were aged under 30.

Symptoms include a persistent cough, wheezing, shortness of breath, repeated chest infections and malnutrition.

Orkambi is the only therapy that tackles the underlying cause of CF.

It has been found to reduce hospital admissions and extend life expectancy by slowing down lung deterioration.

It is estimated the drug could help just under a third of the 500 people here with CF.

In June the Cystic Fibrosis Trust held a series of protests to press the UK Government to make the drug widely available to patients.

Ayrin said: "Zona was reading about CF during the summer and saw the life expectancy and she came to us and said that it isn't very old.

"It was very difficult. We had to sit her down and talk to her about her condition and what it means, but at the same time I was able to say to her that it is a very exciting time because of Orkambi.

"The only thing is Zona can't have Orkambi until her lungs are at 40 per cent capacity, by which time they will have suffered irreparable damage.

"Our only option at the moment would be to move to the Republic, where Orkambi is available."

Ayrin added: "It is a lot for a little girl to live with, she is missing out on so much and having to fight so hard and grow up so fast."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said that without NICE approval Orkambi will not be made routinely available to cystic fibrosis patients here.

"Since 2006 the department has endorsed NICE guidance for use in Northern Ireland," she explained.

"Whilst there is a process to check the guidance for legal and policy applicability here, there is no reassessment of the clinical or cost evidence used by NICE in coming to its decisions and forming its advice."

She said the use of Orkambi to treat people with cystic fibrosis is due to be reviewed by NICE again in July 2019.

The review may happen sooner if the drug company that makes Orkambi lowers the price of the treatment, she added.
Two of the women were 18 when Ruhama began supporting them after they had been smuggled into the country as children

Twenty-six women who were victims of trafficking were found working in the sex trade in Ireland last year, a charity has said.

Ruhama, which supports prostitutes, said two of the women were 18 when it began supporting them after they had been smuggled into the country as children.

Trafficked women are most likely to come from Nigeria, with gangs targeting the Edo state in the African country, and also routinely smuggling women from Brazil, Romania and Zimbabwe.

Ruhama said its records showed women from 12 other countries were victims of smuggling including Albania, Bulgaria, Ireland, Bolivia, Portugal, Pakistan and six other African countries.

The charity said another 73 women from 18 different countries were supported through its work last year including Ireland, Brazil, Romania, Nigeria, Spain, UK, Germany, Iraq, Lithuania, Russia, Czech, Bolivia, Hungary, Ukraine, Latvia, China, Portugal and Uganda.

Sarah Benson, Ruhama chief executive, said: "The bulk of prostitution in Ireland is run by organised crime gangs who profit from the sexual exploitation of women and girls, particularly in off-street locations.

"These unscrupulous individuals make money from human misery - moving often vulnerable migrant women in a coordinated fashion from brothel to brothel across Ireland, with a view to satisfying local sex buyers' demands."

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Since March this year it has been illegal for men to buy sex. The old vice law which saw women prosecuted for selling sex was repealed with the new regime to be reviewed in three years.

A woman can legally work as a prostitute if she is indoors and working independently.

Ms Benson said there is anecdotal evidence to suggest men who use prostitution are making more of an effort to establish if the woman is genuinely independent by asking if they are native English speakers.

"The whole point of these new laws is not to target women operating independently but to clamp down on organised gangs and where you have people being pimped or trafficked," Ms Benson said.

Ruhama said demand for prostitution in Ireland is "prolific". It estimates about 800 women work in prostitution indoors every day in Ireland and less than 200 engage in it on the streets in cities.

In its report on services and supports it was involved in last year it said that four trafficked women who it helped were asylum seekers or refugees living in direct provision.

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Another four were introduced to the service by gardai and five made contact themselves.

Ruhama said 304 women from 37 nationalities were supported by its work last year including 222 women who were on its casework files, 92 of whom were victims of trafficking.

Ms Benson called on gardai to use the new vice laws properly.

"It is incumbent on gardai to ensure that they do not target vulnerable people in prostitution for criminal sanction," she said.

"The vast majority of those in prostitution are women, and there are also a small number of transwomen and men. All may be victims of many different crimes, including human trafficking.

"Garda focus should be targeted towards the buyers and those who are genuinely profiting from the prostitution of others."
A show-off chrome popping-machine spits out puffed kernels in the foyer of the Stella Theatre in Rathmines.

The 94-year-old art deco cinema reopened last month after undergoing the mother of all make-overs.

The proprietors of the boutique Dublin theatre are determined to make going to the cinema an occasion again. Something worth getting dressed up for.

You recline on day beds - which come complete with cashmere throws and individual leather ottomans to rest your feet on.

There's no sticky floors or watered-down Coke served in containers the size of KFC bargain buckets.

Instead, cocktails are poured into cut glass crystal and delivered to your seat.

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And then there's that freshly popped popcorn.

I've become used to seeing the stuff being hoiked across multiplex floors in transparent refuse sacks, and dumped into troughs of fake butter.

So the retro popping machine is both novel and as old-fashioned as men wearing sleeve garters.

The renovation of the Stella is made all the more impressive given how grotty the cinema used to be.

Many patrons remembered seeing pigeons reside in the cinema's facade as they entered - something today's customers won't be seeing any time soon.

The re-opening of the Stella coincided with confirmation that the Savoy's Screen One will be divided in three after Christmas.

While many bemoaned this decision, it seems a ginormous screen simply isn't enough of a sell for audiences.

These days we need a more enticing MacGuffin - as Hitchcock might say.

We're in a new era of cinema-going; and that's where boutique movie theatres come into play.

"With Netflix, it's a lot harder convincing people to get up off the sofa these days," Karl Geraghty, theatre manager at the Stella Theatre, said.

"You have to offer people something unique - so parents would think it was worth their while getting a babysitter in."

In many ways we're entering a new era of cinema-going that focuses on the experiential.

There are live-streamed operas in movie theatres around the country, open-air summer screenings in Galway and Cork, and the rediscovery and appreciation of celluloid - partially thanks to the work of directors such as Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino.

The Irish Film Institute (IFI) in Dublin, for example, is home to the only 70mm projector in the country, allowing it to hold special screenings of 'The Hateful Eight', 'Lawrence of Arabia', and 'Dunkirk'.

The 70mm screening of Christopher Nolan's epic World War II movie was so successful the cinema is bringing it back for a festive run.

The IFI also relies on Q&A sessions with filmmakers to enhance visitors' experience. "It's memorable and intimate. It's more personal and people like that," IFI spokesperson Daniel Anderson said.

Themed seasons and film festivals are another way to entice movie lovers to leave the comfort of their own home.

The Lighthouse Cinema, which is part-owned by film company Element Pictures, specialises in these with Halloween horrorathons, De Niro Vs Pacino runs, and 'Dear Constant Reader: A Stephen King Season'.

"It's all about making it an experience," Stella manager Karl says. "Be it Imax soundscape, or people getting dressed up to see 'Rocky Horror', or going to see a movie in a luxurious setting, you have to make sure viewers are getting more than just a black box. You need to make sure they remember the night, not just the movie."
Some women will turn to selling sex to help pay for Christmas (Stock photo)

Financial pressure will lead more women into prostitution over Christmas, an expert body has said.

There is expected to be a "surge" in women who will feel compelled to sell sex in the coming weeks to cope with the financial demands of the festive season, according to the agency.

Ruhama is a Dublin-based non-governmental organisation which supports around 300 women annually who have been affected by prostitution.

The majority of the women are involved in the so-called "indoor sex trade", and are in brothels, massage parlors, apartments and hotels, while one-third are involved in the on-street sex industry.

While it is difficult to know the amount of women involved in off-street prostitution, they said that typically more women will take to the streets to help fund financially-demanding occasions like Christmas and Holy Communions.

Ruth Breslin, Policy and Communications Manager with Ruhama, told Independent.ie: "The majority of Irish women who are involved in prostitution would be those who are on the street and some of them would be involved on and off in street prostitution for years so they might be known to us for a long time.

"If you look online there are hundreds of women advertised, so there are smaller numbers on the streets, those who are involved in street prostitution.

"Definitely over the years we would have noticed a surge at Christmas for women who might not consistently be involved in prostitution, they will go back onto the street at Christmas because they need a bit of extra cash.

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"You would often see that there might be surges at other times, like Holy Communions, when women might just need extra money, they're not really seeing it as their job but as a way to get money.

"The profile the women we meet on the street is typically that they might have a lot of issues, such as addiction, mental health issues or debt problems.

"These are women who are in quite dire circumstances, they are probably quite marginalised and impoverished."

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She also said that as it is a demand-driven industry, perhaps more men pay for sex at Christmas.

She said: "We have to bear in mind that there are buyers, it's a lucrative industry, if there's more women on the streets does that mean there's more buyers who are just hoping to treat themselves at Christmas?

"Most men don't buy sex but there are some who see it as the same as paying for any other service, they are very much treating the women as products."

Ms Breslin also spoke about the harrowing circumstances that see many women enter into the sex industry.

She said: "It's a very difficult issue, our position is that all of the women we support have been really exploited, many have been abused and experienced violence.

"Many come from marginalised backgrounds, others have been trafficked into it or pimped, so they didn't choose it as a job or a career path.

"There are a small number of women who would describe themselves as sex workers who see it as their job and how they want to make money but the women we support have been pushed into this."

She continued to say: "About a third or the women we are women we work with have been trafficked, usually from a poorer country than Ireland.

"People would have a good sense of what trafficking is but we still meet so many people who don't think it happens in Ireland.

"A lot of the women we support come from countries that are impoverished or where they faced violence and they relied on someone who promised to arrange a job for them in western Europe, working in restaurants or minding kids.

"Lots of them think it's a great opportunity for a better life and they take a chance but when they arrive here they are told by the person that in exchange for arranging things like their travel and documentation (which might be forged) they owe a vastly inflated sum.

"They may then be told that they have to pay this money back by working in a brothel."

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Ms Breslin has spoken candidly about the horrific abuse and threats that many women involved in the sex trade here face.

She said: "The vast majority of women we have worked with have told us that at some point they have experienced violence - physical, emotional and/or sexual.

"They might experience violence or threats of violence from a pimp.

"Similarly, women who have been trafficked are often told that their trafficker has pictures of their family and knows where they live and if they go against them that their children and parents will pay the price.

"Women have been told if they try to escape then their kids will be kidnapped."

New legislation introduced in March decriminalises selling sex but made it illegal to pay for it, something Ruhama hopes will help women report attacks to the gardai.

Ms Breslin said: "Women on the street have told us that if they see a guard on the street they're no longer afraid because they know they won't be trying to arrest them, they're more comfortable and this will help them to report attacks and violence to the gardai.

"Tentatively, we feel there's more confidence in the gardai and this new law will help them to go after those who organise and control prostitution and those who buy it and not to criminalise individual women who work in the industry."
St Patrick's Mental Health Services has refused to confirm if it reported a sexual assault complaint against comedian Al Porter to gardai.

Earlier this week, the psychiatric hospital in Dublin confirmed it was investigating the allegation, which was made by a patient.

The man's complaint, reported by a Sunday newspaper, refers to a visit by the comedian to the facility in October 2015.

Under current guidelines, the hospital is obliged to report a formal complaint about an alleged sexual assault to gardai.

However, despite repeated requests to confirm if St Patrick's Mental Health Services had notified gardai, a spokesperson did not respond.

The hospital is also obliged in law to notify a "serious reportable incident" within 48 hours to the Mental Health Commission, the legal watchdog for mental health services.

It has also emerged that gardai are investigating Porter (24) in relation to the alleged sexual assault of a man in his late teens.

The male teenager has alleged that the incident occurred at a social event in Dublin city centre in the last year.
Arlene Foster has accused the Irish Government of using Brexit to promote the idea of a united Ireland.

The DUP leader said that the Government was "using the negotiations to put forward its views on what it believes the island of Ireland should look like in the future".

Her comments come after Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney told a parliamentary committee that he wants to see a united Ireland in his political lifetime.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, Ms Foster said: "We've heard from the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Ireland talking about his aspiration for a united Ireland.

"He is entitled to have that aspiration but he should not be using European Union negotiations to talk about those issues.

"What he should be talking about are trading relationships moving forward."

When asked if she could imagine applying the rules of the EU customs union without being in it, Ms Foster said she "cannot accept any position after Brexit to say that Northern Ireland is any different to any other part of the union".

"I think it's wrong the Irish Government is saying it will not allow the process to move forward until it has certain things it demands," she added. "You can't have it both ways. Leo Varadkar is saying he won't allow the discussion to move to the next stage to talk about trade until he has a commitment in relation to the Border."

In a separate interview on Sky News, Ms Foster accused the Government of "cherry-picking" the Good Friday Agreement in its own interest.

"The fundamental of the agreement is that we had the principle of consent, which essentially means that it is for the people of Northern Ireland to decide whether they want to stay within the United Kingdom or otherwise," she said.
FIANNA Fail is tonight examining Department of Justice correspondence as part of an attempt to establish the extent of Tanaiste Frances Fitzgeralds knowledge of a Garda legal strategy against Sgt Maurice McCabe.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar handed over a series of documents to Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin when they met to discuss the latest Garda whistleblower scandal which is threatening to collapse the Government.

Mr Varadkar also pledged to order a fresh trawl of Department of Justice documents which would also be given to the Fianna Fail leader.

However, it remained unclear if Fianna Fail would be willing to call off their motion of no confidence if the Department of Justice documents show Fitzgerald acted appropriately.

The documents were exchanged when the two party leaders met this afternoon to discuss the escalating political standoff which could result in an election before Christmas.

Neither side have moved on their positions. Mr Martin is still insisting the Tanaiste should resign over claims she failed to act when she became aware of the legal strategy that was to be pursued against Sgt McCabe.

However, the Taoiseach is sticking by Ms Fitzgerald and is understood to have called after his meeting with the Fianna Fail leader to reassure her that she still has confidence and support.

At the meeting, the two party leaders also discussed what role the Charleton Tribunal would have in establishing the extent of the Tanaistes knowledge of the Garda legal strategy and whether she acted appropriately or not.

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Mr Varadkar and Mr Martin also discussed a major overhaul of the Department of Justice in the wake of a continuing stream of controversies.

Sources said both sides are genuinely trying to avoid an election.

The Taoiseachs spokesperson said: "There was a good exchange of views at the meeting and contact continues this weekend."

A Fianna Fail spokesperson said there would be more engagement tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Labour Party Leader Brendan Howlin called for the documents provided to Fianna Fail from the Department of Justice to be provided to all opposition parties.

"In an attempt to salvage the confidence and supply agreement it has been reported that the Taoiseach has now furnished to Fianna Fail a new trove of documents from the Department of Justice," Mr Howlin said.

"This correspondence has obviously been provided because Fine Gael believe it is relevant to recent events.

"If that is the case then this new evidence should also be provided to other opposition parties and groupings.

"If these new documents form part of the evidence trail surrounding the email released this week then we also need clarity on whether this new material has been furnished to the Disclosures Tribunal.

"At the heart of this controversy is the failure to answer questions in an honest, straight-forward manner. This correspondence should now be released to avoid further controversy."
Sitting in the Dail bar, the Fianna Fail TDs were largely unsure what Jim O'Callaghan was about to do.

The justice spokesman was no more than 100 metres away in the makeshift RTE studio at the back of Leinster House.

He looked somewhat uncomfortable but his language and intent on the 'Six One News' were very clear.

"She has to go," he declared, making what many Fianna Fail TDs believed was the closing argument in the case of 'The Opposition versus Frances Fitzgerald'.

The hope, according to insiders, was that the Tanaiste would be gone in time for the 'Nine News'.

It is worth acknowledging that Mr O'Callaghan was a "mere foot solider", sent out in front of the cavalry to open fire on the weakened Tanaiste.

Her scalp just weeks before the recess would make for a very merry Christmas among the Soldiers of Destiny.

But rather than a parting shot at Ms Fitzgerald, it turned out Mr O'Callaghan had actually started a war.

The initial reaction of the troops watching in the Dail bar was pretty positive.

"Leo will have to sack her now," said one TD confidently - but politics is rarely that simple. 'New politics' never is.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar met with his advisers and a small group of ministers in the hours after the news bulletin and made a very calculated decision to fight on. No woman left behind.

Simon Harris, Simon Coveney, Michael Ring and Eoghan Murphy were all sent out to bat. Nothing unites a party like an attack from outside.

Even the Fine Gael ministers and TDs who had been privately bad-mouthing Ms Fitzgerald in the previous days were promising to shed blood for her.

And suddenly Fianna Fail found itself on the hook for causing a general election.

By yesterday morning Jim O'Callaghan was back on the airwaves, telling Pat Kenny on Newstalk that they were not throwing the Tanaiste to the wolves.

He was correct - because in this scenario Fianna Fail clearly believed it was the wolf.

Frances Fitzgerald was tired, vulnerable and isolated. She seemed like an easy take-down until out of nowhere her Cabinet colleagues who had been so silent in the days previous rode to her defence.

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It quickly became obvious that the cheers from the Dail bar were somewhat premature.

The assumption that Ms Fitzgerald would walk away was wrong and now Fianna Fail faces an election that it doesn't want.

For Micheal Martin the next election is a final opportunity to become Taoiseach. The fact he has rolled the dice now means he must be every bit as nervous as Fitzgerald to see how this plays out.

Regardless of what happens this weekend, Ms Fitzgerald is at the end of a distinguished and well-defined career. Ironically even if Fine Gael was to win an election, she is unlikely to be returned as tanaiste in a new government.

On the other hand, the defining moment of Micheal Martin's career might now be just four weeks away.

He will either become the 14th leader of the country or he will become the first leader of Fianna Fail not to take possession of the keys to the Department of An Taoiseach.

The Cork TD must win the election, whenever it is, or his moment will have passed.

That is why it is questionable whether a cold, miserable December election suits his purposes.

Fianna Fail's s uccessful rebirth during last year's campaign was built from the grassroots up. It outsprinted Fine Gael in the boreens of rural Ireland and through the housing estates in the urban areas outside of Dublin.

The message was simple: 'An Ireland For All'. Mr Martin spotted that the country wasn't over the recession and the hardship of austerity.

So while Fine Gael bragged about how they would 'Keep The Recovery Going', Fianna Fail talked about quality of life, health and housing.

It wasn't just 'the economy stupid' any more.

Out of all the main party leaders, Mr Martin looked the fittest and most exciting. After 14 years in Cabinet that was some achievement.

But the goalposts have shifted dramatically in the interim.

Enda Kenny and Gerry Adams are gone. Step forward Leo Varadkar and Mary Lou McDonald.

And while Fine Gael is still struggling to find language that speaks to those who are struggling, it can't possibly be as numb to society's ills as last time out.

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For what it's worth, Fine Gael has also left Fianna Fail in its wake when it comes to communicating by social media.

Sources on both sides say if there is an election it will be fought through the media rather than on the ground.

There is an apprehension among TDs about knocking on doors as families are putting up their lights and stressed out by the festive build- up. Then there is the opinion polls that Mr Martin always claims to ignore.

It won't overtly worry the Fianna Fail leader that he is trailing in the polls, but you can be sure his deputies are watching them closely.

Mr Martin needs to keep the 'locker room' in the coming days.

Any hint of dissent and it's Fine Gael who will begin to smell blood.

It's an extraordinary moment for Fianna Fail to have effectively called Leo Varadkar's bluff.

With a homelessness crisis and the health system still in tatters, it's also an unexpected topic for it to take the country to the polls.

The wolves might as well be howling at the moon as trying to explain to Christmas shoppers why Frances Fitzgerald's email matters to their lives.

Micheal has rolled the dice and all bets are off.
A Cabinet minister has staunchly attacked Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin as the prospect of a snap general election edges closer.

Minister of State Mary Mitchell OConnor today insisted that Fine Gael is steadfast in its support for Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald.

And she accused Mr Martin of lacking political courage.

We haven't heard a single coherent argument that explains the reasoning behind Fianna Fail's position, the Dun Laoghaire TD told Independent.ie.

They are renegading on the supply and confidence agreement simply because they've been politically outflanked by Sinn Fein, she added.

Ms Mitchell OConnor described Ms Fitzgerald as able and competent and someone who has a track record in achievement and integrity.

But she went on to strongly attack Mr Martin.

She (Ms Fitzgerald) should not be forced to resign simply because the leader of the opposition doesn't have the political capital or courage to stand up, do the right thing and fulfil his obligations, she said.

"Fine Gael don't want an election.

"We want to continue the work of this government. We want to let the committee on the 8th amendment finish its sterling work. We want to continue to progress essential legislation such as the Appropriations Bill and the Technological Universities Bill. We want to focus on the upcoming Brexit summit.

"In short, we want to lead.

"But Fianna Fail are set on following. They are following Sinn Fein by engaging in the politics of populism, opportunism and cynical self interest.

"There is time left to avoid this, but to do so we need reasonable, strong, logical leadership from the opposition.

Leo Varadkar and Micheal Martin met earlier today.

A government spokesman said "There was a good exchange of views at the meeting and contact will continue throughout the weekend".

The Taoiseach this morning delivered a strong defence of embattled Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald.

Mr Varadkar used a speech at the National Womens Council of Ireland to again insist Ms Fitzgerald has done nothing wrong in her handling of a 2015 email relating to the Garda whistleblower scandal.

Mr Varadkar said: "I sincerely hope it wont be my last engagement as Taoiseach".

Later in his speech he went on to defend Ms Fitzgerald. He asked the crowd what kind of message the Government would send if an honourable womans career is sacrificed without a fair hearing.

He said she was a role model for him in politics and hes "proud to stand tall with her".

Mr Varadkar outlined her record over 25 years in political life in fighting for womens rights. He said he believes the "majority of the Irish public" dont want the Tanaiste to stand down.
Health Minister Simon Harris has said Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald is absolutely not considering resigning as the crisis over her handling of a policing scandal deepens.

The Government is hurtling towards a snap Christmas election after Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail tabled motions of no confidence in Ms Fitzgerald.

Fianna Fails Justice spokesman, Jim OCallaghan has said the only way to avoid an election is if the Tanaiste resigns.

And Labours Alan Kelly, the partys spokesman on jobs and enterprise, said Labour has no confidence in Government.

Speaking to Claire Byrne on RTE Radio 1, Mr Harris said: (She is) absolutely not (considering resigning), nor should she... its more about Fianna Fail trying to mark Sinn Fein than anything to do with the national interest.

Why would you plunge the country into a General Election at such a precarious time for pure political reasons? When a judge  not (Sinn Feins) Mary Lou McDonald - will assess all of these issues.

They (Fianna Fail) have breached the (confidence and supply) agreement. We make compromises all the time.

But what we wont do is compromise on basic standards of fairness. We wont go for summary justice where we have some sort of kangaroo court deciding that the Tanaiste has done something which quite frankly she hasnt.

The controversy was sparked by revelations of an email Ms Fitzgerald received when she was Justice Minister in 2015. It raised questions about her knowledge of a legal strategy regarding Garda whistle-blower, Maurice McCabe.

Fianna Fail leader, Michael Martin has called on the Tanaiste to step down but an Taoiseach Leo Varadkar insisted he wont seek her resignation.

Both parties are trying to avoid an election which Mr Harris said would be really bad for the country.

The Health Minister also added on the programme that as the Government scrambles to find a solution, they are at risk of forgetting the devastating impact this had on Sgt McCabe who, in 2007, raised concerns about senior gardai quashing penalty points.

He said: Its actually about Sgt McCabe and his wife Lorraine and their family and the way they have been treated by the State.

"The Taoiseach has made his views very clear on the way they have been treated.

Political theatrics is not going to provide the answers and thats the difficulty here.

Speaking as part of a panel alongside Mr Harris, Fianna Fails Jim OCallaghan insisted that the Tanaistes resignation is the only solution that will bring the Government back from the brink of an election.

He said: Unfortunately, if a deal isnt done and if the Tanaiste doesnt stand aside, we are heading for a General Election.

Frances Fitzgerald is a decent woman, he added. She has achieved in the Department of Justice. I believe when she comes to reflect she has to stand aside or were having a general election, shell put the country first.

He warned that the Fine Gael and Fianna Fail positions are irreconcilable but was adamant his party isnt looking for a head on a plate.

He said: I think we have two positions which are irreconcilable. My view is that it is unlikely that those positions are going to shift between now and next Tuesday. If that is the case, the only way we can prevent a general election is for the Tanaiste to consider her position.

The Labour Party hasnt tabled a no confidence motion in the Tanaiste but Alan Kelly said they would consider it.

He said: The Labour Party has no confidence in this Government but the Labour Party always puts the country first. We need to be sensible as a group of politicians.

Earlier in the programme, he said: I expect theres a lot more to this to come out. What is going on in the Department of Justice and where the hell is (Minister for Justice) Charlie Flanagan? Why arent we being given the full facts?

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said the party will go ahead with a motion of no confidence next week, irrespective of Fianna Fails decision.

Speaking in Drogheda, he said: The only thing that will prevent this is the Tanaiste stepping down. This is nothing personal against Frances Fitzgerald. This is Sinn Fein doing our job  holding the government to account.

Earlier today, an Taoiseach said he is standing firmly by Ms Fitzgerald. Hes due to meet with Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin over the weekend to hold crisis talks before the Dail reconvenes on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters at the National Womens Council of Ireland #FemFest conference, Mr Varadkar said he believes the "majority of the Irish public" dont want the Tanaiste to stand down.

He said: "I dont want there to be any ambiguity about this. Theres no subtle message being sent out there to the Tanaiste that she should even consider resigning. I wont be seeking her resignation, I dont want her to offer it to me. As I said yesterday, I dont think she has done anything wrong. I think theres a real injustice here in people calling on her to resign in these circumstances.
LEO Varadkar has a sporting chance of making strides for Fine Gael by forging ahead with a general election most voters do not want.

He is only in office since last June and the Fine Gael heartland supporters, while still hopeful he can achieve good things for party and country, rightly see him as untested.

Mr Varadkar would be a big disappointment for his party if he gave up his deputy Government leader, Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald.

The more conservative party supporters would end their charitable silence about his tweets and novelty socks.

So toughing things out and battling adversity in a winter election may arguably be his only real option here. How he would fare in such an electoral contest is still anybody's guess.

He has personally fought a total of five elections, both council and Dail, since he made his political debut as a callow 20-year-old in June 1999. He told party members at the hustings last May he learned a lot from that first bruising experience, as he bombed out with just 380 votes, way off the pace for a Fingal County Council seat.

The newly-minted Fine Gael leader will know that the "who-knew-what-and-when," around Sergeant Maurice McCabe emails, would play for just a few days in any election campaign. And he and Fine Gael could take some benefit from it by blaming Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein for causing an election most voters do not want.

At all events, the Taoiseach will be happy to know that this issue will quickly fade and the battle for votes will swiftly harden, firstly around the social issues of housing and health, before then honing in on the daddy of all the issues: Brexit and "the economy, stupid!"

Housing is a very disappointing area - even for the most loyal Fine Gael party supporters. Delivery is painfully slow and the incumbent Taoiseach, flanked by his Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, and Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy, will have to bat hard to hold their own in this matter yet again citing targets and arguing that there are some signs of progress.

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Fianna Fail, the once and possibly future "builders' pals", could talk up a better show. Leo Varadkar will have to hope his party's arguments that Fianna Fail cannot be believed will at least mitigate damage.

Sinn Fein will not pose Fine Gael much of a threat on this one, nor on other economy-related issues. It will continue to promise jam and more jam for the voters, funded by mythical extra revenue from a wealth tax and whacking so-called high earners.

Mary Lou McDonald will, however, be a formidable de facto leader in a campaign. Debates involving her and Leo Varadkar will not be dull.

As a medical doctor and former health minister he also knows that the health system is not a happy hunting ground for vote-getting. There is, however, a deep-seated pessimism surrounding the many problems afflicting the Irish health system.

This public pessimism means the other parties' elaborate promises of better times may not be believed. That includes health promises from Fianna Fail, led by Micheal Martin, himself an under-performing health minister for almost four years in boom times.

Still, a cold snap during a winter election could drive up trolley counts. That would not help Fine Gael as the leader of the outgoing Government.

But once those "social issues" play for a time, matters will move to where all elections are won and lost. As a then unknown Bill Clinton famously said way back in 1992: "It's the economy, stupid!"

An intriguing feature of a face-off between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail would be whether voters will continue to defy usual behaviour and prefer quality of services over pledges of more money in the pocket via tax cuts. In the two budgets agreed by this minority hybrid coalition, Fianna Fail has made a great virtue out of insisting on more spending on services over tax cuts.

Deft reading of the public mood last time, in February 2016, brought surprise dividends to Micheal Martin and allowed him to defy pundits and opinion polls. Fine Gael has already set out its stall with promises of tax cuts.

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So, will Fianna Fail follow suit? Will voters revert to type and prefer money in the pocket? This writer believes it is more likely - but was wrong about that last time.

One assumes that enabling legislation for the Budget, notably the finance and social welfare bills, will be passed before TDs hit the canvass trail. It would be suicide to have to include explanations in the campaign to welfare recipients as to why their 5 weekly increases are not happening as billed.

But those kinds of assumptions are based on hopes that some vestiges of goodwill persist between the two big parties and indeed the others. All of that inevitably brings us to the core issue of Brexit.

Things are gathering pace here, building to a decisive EU leaders' summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, December 14 and 15. It is no rhetorical flourish to say that this meeting is the most important in Ireland's recent history.

We already have a situation where there is no power-sharing government in Belfast and the UK government in London is totally diffuse and confused on this issue. Ironically, just last Wednesday, the Dublin Government leaked a dossier showing the widespread belief that London lacked all credibility about Brexit across the EU.

Then late on Thursday Dublin was plunged into crisis. Both big parties must walk very carefully here as voters will not thank either for playing politics with Brexit.

So, last but by no means least, what are opinion polls telling us at this juncture? Short answer is that they are a mixed bag and subject to change in any campaign.

But the surveys do offer grounds for hope to Leo Varadkar. On a good day, he could get around 30pc of the vote, suggesting seat gains in what would undoubtedly be a grim and unwanted winter election.

That, however, assumes many things as yet untold.
In Renaissance times, the arts such as music and painting were closely linked with the sciences so no one would have thought it strange when Robert Finegan decided to swap his choice of career from physics to music.

The 20-year-old Ardee musician has no regrets about that decision as he prepares to join the renowned St Peter's Male Voice Choir in the beautiful surroundings of St Peter's Church, West Street, Drogheda for their annual Christmas Concert on Saturday December 2.

The son of well known photographer Ken Finegan and Aine, Robert began playing music with the Ardee Concert Band when he was eight years of age.

'Everyone who joins the band starts on recorder,' he explains. 'After a year there, I moved on to lessons with senior band members on our chosen instrument. My choice was the alto saxophone. I have been playing alto for twelve years now and in that time I have also played the soprano, tenor and baritone saxophones, clarinet and most recently I started learning the flute.'

Robert attended Ardee Community School, and says that during his last few years at school, he intended going on to study physics.

'This all changed after going to the DIT Conservatory of Music open day when I was in 5th year. I was reluctant to go but I am very glad I did,' he says. 'I got to meet the staff and students there and even observe a lesson with the saxophone tutor Kevin Hanafin.'

'The standard of the music there amazed me and really made me think about studying music. All I wanted to do was to be as good as these amazing musicians. A while after this I was doing my grade 7 saxophone exam in the band room accompanied by Edward Holly. He asked me did I ever thought about a future in music. I told him about my experience in DIT and he said I should go to Kevin Hanafin, who is my current teacher, for a lesson. Since then, music is all I wanted to do.'

Robert's family have been very supportive of him. 'Dad played clarinet and saxophone in the Ardee Concert Band and everyone in my family has a big interest in music.'

'I grew up listening to all sorts of music from 60's to new music and funnily enough I didn't listen to much classical music except a few 'Best of' CD's which dad had.'

'My parents have always been behind any decisions I've made and they are very encouraging.

Growing up in Ardee, he says that he was very lucky to have a brilliant band facility.

'For a fairly small town we have a band room which most bands in the country would be envious of. Add to this the band supplying instruments and very affordable membership fees, it is a brilliant thing to be a part of.'

Robert appreciates all the support which he receives from the other musicians in the band from when he first began playing.

He likes most genres of music, and listens to a lot of classical and saxophone music. 'My inspiration comes from many different genres and instrumentalists, such as Charlie Parker the most famous jazz saxophone player. His determination to be the best and to keep going through hard times are hugely inspirational while on the other hand the clarinettist Martin Frost's showmanship and absolute control of his instrument have had a huge impact on me. Other classical saxophonists who have inspired me include Arno Bornkamp and Ties Mellema, both of which I travelled to Amsterdam to take lessons with.'

While he admits that practicing can sometimes be difficult, he says he loves to do it. 'I do between four and six hours a day and sometimes it can be frustrating but it is definitely worth the hard work!'

Robert has recently played in the Irish Freemasons Young Musician of the Year, in which he was runner up, and the following week he was named as the inaugural winner of the Flax Trust Music Award, which sees him performing in a concert in Belfast on December 19th.

'These were great experiences as I always love playing especially in beautiful venues as the Freemasons Grand Lodge and Holy Cross Church respectively. I couldn't believe the feedback I got from the audience and the judges especially against such excellent players in both competitions.'

Before that he was awarded the St. Peter's Male Voice Choir Scholarship in connection with DIT, funding his first year of lesson in the DIT Conservatory of Music, as well as the Macardle Classical Music Award.

He is now in the 3rd year of a four year BMus course in DIT Conservatory of Music and after this he hopes to do a Master's degree abroad.

'Next year I hope to travel to a few different teachers to make sure I select the right one as I think having the right teacher is of upmost importance for further development.

He says that his advice for anyone thinking about music as a future career 'is that, while it may be a very hard and arduous journey it can be very rewarding. If music is your passion I would highly recommend it. If you are willing to work hard for it there are many opportunities in Ireland and abroad. I love what I do, the people I meet and the music I play and that, in my opinion, is the most important thing.'
'Uptown Girl' is Billy Joel's only number one in the UK, and in Ireland. It knocked Culture Club's 'Karma Chameleon' off the top of the charts in 1983 and remained at No. 1 for five weeks, making it the second biggest seller of the year (behind 'Karma Chameleon').

Joel's inspiration for the song came from two supermodels, Elle Macpherson, who was his girlfriend at the time, and Christie Brinkley, who he would soon marry. Brinkley played the title character in the video.

'Uptown Girl' was back at number one in Ireland and the UK in 2001, this time courtesy of Westlife who released it as that year's Comedy Relief charity single. The Westlife version has sold around 800,000 copies to date, and is the group's biggest selling single in the UK. As of 2013, Billy Joel's original had sold just over a million.

1 Uptown Girl - Billy Joel

2 Say Say Say - Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson

3 Cry Just A Little Bit - Shakin' Stevens

4 Never Never - The Assembley

5 Love of the Common People - Paul Young

6 All Night Long (All Night) - Lionel Richie

7 The Sun and The Rain - Madness

8 The Love Cats - The Cure

9 Calling Your Name - Marilyn

10 Thriller - Michael Jackson
St Louis Secondary school recently held an information evening for parents on the changes involved in assessment and reporting in the new Junior Cycle, including the vital role of wellbeing.

Parents and guardians of first, second and third year students were invited to attend to receive clarification around the changes and how exactly it will affect their daughters depending on their stage in the ongoing process.

The event was hosted by the school's parents' committee who arrange an annual talk for parents based on issues raised at their monthly meetings.

The relevance of Junior Cycle reform as an issue for parents was underlined by the large number of families represented and their engagement on the night, asking questions about the vision underpinning the new curriculum and how they can actively support their daughters.

The new Junior Cycle has been up and running since September 2014 when the first cohort of first year started on the new English specification.

In June 2017 these students sat the new Junior Cycle final Assessment in English heralding the beginning of the new and end of the old in state examinations for Junior Cycle students.

These students will be the first to receive the new Junior Cycle Profile of Achievement later this year which will also report on examples of other learning experiences students have been involved with throughout their three years of Junior Cycle.

Since then other subjects have come on board and these include Business and Science for current 2nd Years and Art, Irish, Modern Foreign Languages (to include French, Spanish, German and Italian) for current first years.

The process continues until 2022 when all subject specifications in the new Junior Cycle will finally replace the old Junior Certificate.

Wellbeing has also been introduced as a compulsory component for Junior Cycle students from this year also. Students also do Classroom based assessments in all subjects in Junior Cycle which are school based and which will in time replace traditional end of term assessments.

Ms Mary Gilmore, Acting Deputy Principal and Ms Michelle Dolan, Acting Principal outlined the planned changes, the motivation for change and how positive encouragement from parents across the country could make the change more effective.

They explained how 'formative assessment would point out to students exactly what they needed to do to improve rather than just reporting a grade or level without effective feedback.'

The acting principal highlighted the 'relevance of this style of learning to the key skills required in the 21st Century and to third level study, and how these new methods of imparting knowledge and skill are excellent preparation for work and life-long learning.

Inclusive education was also explored and the central role of developing high levels of wellbeing in all students under the knowledge that 'happy students learn better.'

To further the concept of wellbeing, an area with a lot of emphasis in the new Junior Cycle, parents were given specific feedback from data gathered by Ms J Spain of the PE Dept. around levels of activity and nutrition among our students.

A whole school survey at the start of the year enabled important data to be collected about students' well-being including what they are eating and how often they are participating in the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity every day.

Ms Spain outlined the role parents play in promoting activities and supporting students to make healthy food and treat choices.

Parents in the audience suggested closer links with local sporting clubs and organisations and agreed that exercising with their daughters would be a great way to promote healthy living and keep the lines of communication open during teenage years.

There was a wonderful sense of community and partnership with all the adults present taking ownership of the work to be done to support and nurture the students on their journey through Junior Cycle and beyond.
Louth TD Gerry Adams commenced his long goodbye to his constituents at his party Ard Fheis on Saturday night, stating that he will not contest the next General Election.

The Sinn Fein Party President also stated that he wished to step down after 34 years at the helm of his party.

His long awaited speech confirmed his plans to retire from the national political stage, and not to stand for election again in Louth.

He spoke of his desire to hand over the mantle to others in the party, explaining that last year, he and the late Martin McGuinness had agreed an exit plan before Mr McGuinness died in March.

Michelle O'Neill replaced Mr McGuinness as leader in the North and it is widely expected Mary Lou McDonald will replace Mr Adams as party president.

Speaking to outline his plans, he said: 'I have always seen myself as a team player and a team builder,' he said.

'I have complete confidence in the leaders we elected this weekend and in the next generation of leaders.'

He added: 'I want to thank everyone who has welcomed me into their homes and communities, and who have made me part of countless campaigns, countless elections and countless negotiations.'

He spoke about the major issue that have arisen during his time as a TD for Louth.

'Brexit is the single greatest threat to the Irish people in generations. That is why Sinn Fein opposed it in the referendum and why we have consistently called for special status for the North within the EU.

'The government has only recently wakened up to the reality that Brexit on British government terms is not acceptable. It will be disastrous for Irish business and farming in every part of this island.

Mr Adams has gone before the Ard Fheis to seek re-election every year since 1983 and that formality was repeated on Saturday night.

In his speech, he told delegates it would be the last time he would put himself forward for the role.

Amid rapturous applause and a standing ovation, Mr Adams told delegates that a referendum on Irish unity must take place within the next five years. 'We are going to continue to go forward.'

The ard comhairle is expected to meet within the next two weeks to decide a date for the special Ard Fheis and the process for his replacement.

Mr Adams was elected as a TD for Louth in the 2011 general election, when he topped the polls in his first time running for a seat in the Dail.

'I have been enormously privileged to be part of an amazing and evolving collective leadership,'

'It has included in times past, in hard oppressive times, and in different phases, at national level,' said the Louth TD.

Surrounded by the party's leadership, he thanked his wife Colette, son Gearoid, and wider family.

Locally speculation will now centre on who the party will select to replace him as a candidate in the next General Election with Sinn Fein's north Louth councillors, Tomas Sharkey, Ruairi o Murchu, Anne Campbell, Edel Corrigan and Antoin Watters the obvious starting point.
Fr. Brendan McNally, Rita, Ronan and Fr. Jim McNally with President Mary McAleese and her husband Martin before she officially opened the Fr. McNally Recital Room in DkIT

Tributes have been flowing in for the late Fr Brendan McNally, who served in a number of parishes throughout Louth but is best known for his work in encouraging young musicians.

Fr McNally passed away on Sunday following a long illness. He had resided at Moorehall Lodge in recent years.

Originally from Co. Antrim, Fr. McNally was ordained in 1958 and began teaching music with string instrument classes while based at Ravensdale where he also established a youth orchestra and raised funds for a community centre to accommodate it.

Later, while a curate in Dundalk, he established the Redeemer Youth Orchestra which performed in the United States. While parish priest in Reaghstown, he taught violin and helped lead the parish choir.

To continually develop the skills he originally acquired from music teachers in Drogheda and Newry, Fr. McNally spent much of his annual leave attending music teaching master-classes in England.

He was a gifted teacher and many of the musicians he taught went on join the European Youth Orchestra, the RTE Orchestras and to carve careers as acclaimed musicians at home and abroad.

He was also highly regarded as a compassionate and understanding clergyman, and had served in a number of other parishes, including Tallanstown and Dunleer.

A number of his past pupils got together to form the Fr McNally Chamnber Orchestra a few years ago.

They have paid tribute saying: 'It is with deep sadness t that we mark the passing of a great man, priest, teacher, friend and musician. Fr. Mc Nally has passed away after a brave battle with ill health. It truly is the end of an era and a very sad time for all who loved him so deeply. His musical legacy is immense, with generations of musicians owing their talent passion and careers to him. His legend will live on and through his faith we commend his spirit to God.'

Dundalk Institute of Technology had honoured Fr McNally through the dedication of the recital room in his name in May 2011 by President Mary McAleese.
'I think they have suffered enough,' Judge Coughlan remarked when striking out charges against a Sweden-based husband and wife.

Alan McKenna (47), 'Adare', Bellurgan Point, Dundalk, was accused of engaging in threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour, and being intoxicated and a danger to himself and others in Bridge Street, Dundalk; and causing criminal damage to the floors and walls of the custody and cell areas at Dundalk garda station, all on 14 September, 2016.

Malin Berg, meanwhile, of Norra Vagen 21, Halmstad, Sweden, was charged with the same two counts of public order in Bridge Street.

The district court heard McKenna, a retired soldier, suffered an assault in this incident, and that he and his wife 'have spent thousands of euro' travelling from Sweden to meet the case.

Representing Alan McKenna, solicitor Frank McDonnell said the facts are not conceded by his client.

He was assaulted outside a premises in Bridge Street, when knocked to the ground, and kicked and punched, outlined Mr McDonnell, who handed in photographs of the defendant's injuries.

CCTV was not working on the night in question

When gardai arrived, they arrested McKenna in the course of carrying out their public order duty.

At the station, Mr. McDonnell continued, the accused became so unwell, he was removed to hospital.

It is alleged he was bleeding profusely at the scene, and at the station was bleeding and spitting blood.

The solicitor said his client gave 23 years' service in the defence forces, including overseas, and was a member of the army rangers.

Mr. McDonnell added the two defendants are out a lot on money, having spent thousands of euro travelling for the case, when they might have opted to 'stay away'.

Inspector Martin Beggy said the assault on Alan McKenna was investigated, and no prosecution was directed.

Malin Berg was represented by solicitor, James MacGuill, who told the court no Swedish interpreter was in court, as required by his client.

'Do you feel they have suffered enough?' the judge asked Inspector Beggy, who replied the incident was very distressing for them and the other parties.

Judge Coughlan felt so, and remarked Alan McKenna got a bad beating.

He struck out all charges against each accused.
Dundalk's Red Cross Cadets proved that they are the best in the country when they took first place in both the team and individual events at the national competition in Gormanstown recently.

They showed that they were cool headed and could react under pressure as they responded to a number of simulated medical emergencies, when they competed against finalists from around the country.

The team of Aaron Taylor (16), Red Barns Road, leader, and Cian Carroll (14), Father Murray Park, Elliot Guest (14) St Bridget's Terrace, Chloe Cumisky (14), Glenwood Close, showed that they were able to work together and communicate effectively as they responded to another number of surprise scenarios. They provided treatment to 'patients' with heart attacks, fractures, spinal injuries, bleeding, burns, seizures and administered CPR.

Cadet Amy Maguire (14) from Cluan Enda also took first place in the indivual category as she responded to a number of similar scenarios. She was assessed on how quickly she reacted to the emergency situations and on the information she provided as she called the emergency services as well as the treatment she gave while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

'It was a very challenging competition for them as they didn't know in advance what they would be dealing with,' says Cadet Unit Officer Carol Cumiskey, who was Amy's trainer. The team was trained by Dean McAleavey.

Carol, who is also vice-president of Dundalk Red Cross, praised all the Cadets for their dedication and hard work in preparing for the competition.

'We knew it was going to be a very tough competition this year as the standard seems to get higher and higher each year. They came to training four times a week in the four months coming up to the competition,' she says.

Dundalk Red Cross has forty Cadets and thirteen leaders.'We have a very good programme which deals with issues such as bullying and mental health as well as first aid,' says Carol. A group of 53, aged from four to sixteen, travelled to Athlone for the National Youth Forum last week.
Gardai are investigating a break at a business premises in the Brewery Business Park on the Ardee Road last weekend.

Thieves cut wire at the rear of the premises, and broke into the Hydro Scand brewery building, where they stole a safe in the early hours of Saturday morning. Gardai confirmed reports of the theft of the safe, and an unknown amount of cash contained within it.

Meanwhile gardai are also investigating a 'hit and run' along Jocelyn Street on Tuesday evening last at 5.45p.m, when a vehicle crashed into another before driving through red lights at a pedestrian crossing.

Witnesses reported traffic had come to a stop when pedestrian was crossing.

A silver or gold coloured Mercedes with a partial registration 'CCZ', and with two or three men on board, collided with one of the waiting vehicles before speeding through the red light.

Gardai are appealing for anyone with information relating to the incident to contact then at Dundalk on 042 93 35577 or on the confidential telephone number 1800 666111.

Investigations are also being carried out into a break in at a house on the Newry Road on Tuesday last, between 9.30a.m and 8.30pm. The owner returned home to find the house ransacked and a black mobile phone missing.

Meanwhile a hand bag was stolen from a car parked overnight in Cluain na Mara, Omeath on Thursday and Friday last, containing a purse, cash, and bank cards.
Tenants are being put out of houses in Carlingford which are then put up for short term holiday lets, it was claimed at the monthly meeting of Louth County Council.

Cllr Peter Savage said he knew of cases where people had been put out of houses they were renting and were to told that the houses were being sold, only to discover that they were being put up for short term holiday lets.

This emerged during a debate on steps which the council might take to limit the impact which holiday letting websites such as Airbnb are having on the housing rental market.

Cllr Mark Dearey had submitted a motion that, 'in light of the recent decision by An Bord Pleanala that the consistent intensive letting of a property in Dublin does constitute development, that Louth County Council should now require a change of use for properties being used in a way that is not ancillary to normal domestic use.'

He took the view that planning permission should be required in was in cases where the high frequency of guests in houses in residential areas without a full-time occupancy was affecting the amenity value for neighbours, was putting unplanned pressure on sewerage capacity, was adding pressure on road and parking capacity, increasing public health risk, and creating unaffordable house prices and rents for local residents.

He said he wanted to encourage Louth County Council to be more active where there are residential units being rented out in the 'sharing economy on social media'.

He said that the reality was this meant that residents were sharing sleepless nights, were sharing concerns about who was going to be next to them for a weekend, sharing concerns for their children, and sharing concerns around parking spaces.'

The concept of a 'sharing economy' as set out by the likes of Air B&B had now morphed into something entirely different at a cost to residents, he continued.

The revenue from such short term lets was so great that it was impossible for people to compete against them.

He cited Carlingford as an example of one area where this was causing a problem and he was sure that there was similar activity in other parts of the county.

Director of Services Frank Pentony said that a working group was being established to look at short term letting and he was expecting a report by the end of the year. He undertook to send a copy of the Department's circular in relation to the matter to councillors.

Chief Excecutive Officer Ms Joan Martin said that the legislation was one of planning and that it would be dealing with the issue of change of use and not issues such as parking or noise at night. She said that the council would have to be guided by the planning guidelines.

Cllr Dearey argued that the impact on sewerage capacity or eight or nine cars pulling up to one house were planning issues,

Cllr Savage suggested that the council engage with those involved in short term lets to see if they could find some ways of resolved these issues.

'There are people being evicted out of houses in Carlingford on the pretext that the houses are being sold but he landlords want to get into this lucrative market,' he said.

He thought that if the Council was to hold a public meeting in Carlingford to discuss the problems as well as the advantages such as employment, it might help the situation.

Cllr Dearey pointed out that people can bring a case to An Bord Pleanala themselves as individuals. That was what happened in Dublin as it was individuals who had brought the case and not the council.
Alternative rock-indie band Look To The Lady from Wicklow are set to release their second EP this week.

With powerful female vocals at the forefront of their guitar driven sound, the band have graced the stages of many prestigious music venues in Dublin including the Button Factory, the Workmans Club and most recently Whelans for 'Whelans Ones to Watch' Festival. Formed in Wicklow town in 2012, Look to the Lady comprise Kelly Bolger on vocals, Josh Meakin and John Dunne on guitar, Paul Newell on bass and older brother Michael Newell on drums.

The band achieved success with their 2014 EP 'Mechanical Lights', recorded in the studio of legendary Wicklow band Enemies. This debut release reignited Wicklow's local music scene with the critically acclaimed EP being described as 'a whirlwind journey through sound'.

Despite the band's success, Look to the Lady decided to take their time with their next release, spending three years writing, producing and promoting their follow-up offering all while completing their degrees in Commercial Modern Music in BIMM. With the release of two singles, 'My Name' and 'Distant Waves' during the summer, in hand with the success of their own music festival LTTL FEST in August, hype began to build for their new EP.

The news finally came in October when the band announced the release of their new EP, 'Delirium'. Recorded on a week-long escape to Portlaoise in 2016, Delirium promises to be an incredible milestone in these young musicians' careers. The band describe the EP as 'dramatic and driving' and are sure their audience will love it as much as they do.

Delirium is set for release on November 22, with a special launch night in the Workman's Club, Dublin. Find Look to the Lady on Facebook, Twitter and all music streaming services.
Des Douglas and Ruth Bell dishing up the mince pies.

Book lovers Lucy O'Shea, Kane Kuntz, Anna and Joseph O'Shea and (front) Matilda, Rachel and George O'Shea who stocked up at the fayre.

St Patrick's Parish Fayre took place last weekend at Temple Carrig School in Greystones.

The event was held on Saturday and was very well attended.

The fundraising event was held to raise money towards a youth cafe, Christian Aid and parish funds.

The day included a range of stalls, games, facepainting and teas. There was also an auction and raffle with a range of fantastic prizes.

Meanwhile arrangements have been made for Christmas time at St Patrick's parish.

There will be a school nativity on December 13 at 7 p.m. and carol service on December 17 at 5 p.m.

On Christmas Eve there will be Eucharist at 8.30 a.m. and 10.30 a.m., family crib service at 5 p.m., communion at 10 p.m.. On Christmas Day, there will be a family service at 10.30 a.m. and Eucharist at 11.30 a.m.
Rachel O'Hara (17) from Enniskerry was among the seven finalists at the 2017 Top Security Frank Maher Classical Music Awards at the Royal College of Physicians in Dublin, Ireland's largest competition for secondary schools, with a 5,000 top prize.

A sixth-year student at Holy Child, Killiney, Rachel plays the piano and performed two pieces on the night.

They were 'Berceuse in D Flat Major, Op.5' by Frederic Chopin and 'Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jesus:8 Regard des Hauteur' by Olivier Messiaen.

The winner was cellist Killian White, a sixth-year student at Wesley College, Ballinteer, Dublin, and he said: 'I hope to audition for the Conservatoire Nationale de Paris early next year and I will use my prize money to go towards my fees and travel costs if I am successful.'

Along with the other finalists, Rachel received a 250 bursary.

The other competitors were Fiachra de Hora (18), The High School, Rathgar, Dublin (Viola), Antonia Huang (17), Mount Anville, Goatstown, Dublin (Piano), Martina O'Connell (18), Wesley College, Ballinteer, Dublin (Flute), Zoe Nagle (17), Bruce College, Cork (Cello) and Emily Crowley (17), St. Angela's College, Cork (piano)

The awards were created in 2001 by Emmet O'Rafferty, chairman of the Top Security Group, to honour the memory of his late teacher Fr Frank Maher, who taught music at Castleknock College, his old school.

Their aim is to showcase outstanding young musical talent in Ireland and are open to sixth year post-primary students of strings, woodwind, brass and piano.

The 5,000 top prize must be used to attend a recognised place of tuition, a course of study in Ireland or abroad or on a purchase necessary for the development of their talent.

Previous winners have gone on to attend some of the world's most prominent music colleges, which includes Shenandoah University of Virginia, Conservatoire Nationale Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, Kronberg Academy in Germany, the Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas, Texas, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London to name a few.

Emmet O'Rafferty, chairman of the Top Security Group, said: 'Thirty-seven entries were received, all of a very high standard, and Dr Gerard Gillen, chair of the judging panel, had the unenviable task of selecting the final seven to compete at this year's awards. Killian White, the winner, and our six finalists join the ever-growing line of incredibly talented young people who have taken part in this competition and I wish all of them the very best in their future careers.'

Aidan Chan, the 2017 winner, returned to perform two pieces by Chopin.

The judging panel was Dr Gerard Gillen (chair), emeritus professor of music at NUI Maynooth, Dr Kerry Houston, head of academic studies at DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama and internationally acclaimed classical pianist Veronica McSwiney.
Wicklow Sinn Fein has launched a Wicklow Christmas shoe box appeal for the homeless. Deputy John Brady said he hopes as many people as possible will take the opportunity to contribute if they can.

'While many of us are starting to buy Christmas presents and buying all the trimmings for our festive dinner, it's important to remember that this is a time to give to those who might not be looking forward to the same kind of Christmas. For some people it's the roughest, toughest and coldest time of the year. With almost 9,000 people now homeless including 3,500 children, the Wicklow Sinn Fein team will be doing all we can to help those that need it the most, that's why we have launched our Shoe Box appeal.'

Items required include toiletries, chocolates and sweets, warm gloves, hats and scarves, toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorants, shower gel and shampoo.

The two main drop off points are the Sinn Fein offices in Bray, first floor 27 Main Street (01) 2762623. or the Arklow office, 18a Upper Main Street (0404) 42853. People can also contact any of the party's public representatives. For more information, contact John Brady on (085) 8546464.
A Garda who is on sick leave due to alleged bullying and racial abuse he has received from colleagues has launched a High Court challenge against a decision by the Garda Commissioner to reclassify his illness.

The action has been brought by Deming Gao, a native of China who is a naturalised Irish citizen, who joined An Garda Siochana in 2008.

He has been stationed at Dun Laoghaire and Shankill Garda Stations, where, his Counsel Mark Harty SC told the High Court on Monday, November 20, Garda Goa has been subjected to 'prolonged and persistent bullying, harassment and racial torment'.

Counsel said Garda Gao brought these incidents to the attention of his superiors, and had spoken with a welfare officer within An Garda Siochana

When his colleagues learned of this meeting, Garda Gao was branded a rat and the mistreatment intensified, the court heard.

Garda Gao was avoided, shunned and isolated by other gardai who refused to communicate in a courteous, professional and respectful manner. In addition, Garda Gao's religious beliefs ethnic background and personal and family values were ridiculed by a number of his colleagues.

He relocated to Shankill, but continued to experience mistreatment from fellow members of An Garda Siochana.

Mr Harty, instructed by Kilfeather & Company Solicitors, said that in November 2016 Garda Gao was subjected to a verbal attack by a Garda colleague.

He went to his doctor and was deemed unfit for work due to stress.

Garda Gao also attended for assessment at the Garda Occupational Health Service.

Garda Gao's injury was classified as as injury on duty, however in May 2017 he was informed in correspondence that the status of his injury had been changed to ordinary illness and backdated to the time he went out of work.

Correspondence from his employers stated that the initial classification was issued in error.

No other reason or explanation has been given to Garda Gao for the re-classification.

The Garda Commissioner has also sought the repayment of monies alleged overpaid to Garda Gao.

While no breakdown of the alleged over-payments have been furnished to Garda Gao, the Commissioner has commenced deducting monies from the nominal payments to him, it is claimed.

Counsel said his client sought to appeal the re-classification, but was informed in a letter send last month that his sick leave remains classified as that of an ordinary illness.

Counsel said the commissioner has 'no legal basis' to reclassify the injury.

The decision is outside the powers of the commissioner, and the re-classification was carried out without the views of his client, his medical advisors or the garda's own chief medical officer being taken into account, counsel added.

No adequate reasons have been given for the decision, counsel added.

As a result of the reclassification Garda Gao and his young family have suffered financially.

He is in receipt of a nominal weekly payment and is struggling to make his financial obligations.

In his action against the Garda Commissioner Garda Gao seeks an order quashing the the decision to re-classify his injury from being a work related injury to being ordinary illness, and that the original classification be restored.

He further seeks declarations that the re-classification of the injury was carried out in breach of natural or constitutional justice, and that the commissioner is not entitled to seek repayment of the alleged overpayment of wages to the Garda,

Permission to bring the challenge was granted on an ex-parte basis by Mr Justice Seamus Noonan.

The judge made the matter returnable to a date in December.
The Revd Nigel Waugh chairman of the board of management, Patricia Conran principal, Dickie O'Connor board of management, Ruth Massey former member of the board, former principal Sally Watson, Wilson Evans past pupil and Archbishop Michael Jackson.

Delgany National School's community was celebrating recently as the school's new learning support rooms, library and staff room were officially opened by Archbishop Michael Jackson.

Pupils, teachers and staff, members of the board of management and parents and the architect and builder filled the school hall as the children told of their delight with the new facilities. Later they gathered outside in glorious sunshine as the Archbishop cut the ribbon on the new rooms.

Throughout the morning pupils sang joyful songs and representatives of each class spoke about what the library meant to them. They were all delighted to have a dedicated reading space where they could relax with their favourite books and many were impressed by the comfortable furnishings.

Principal, Patricia Conran, paid tribute to everyone who had contributed to making the new facilities a reality over the last four years. She said that for the first time in seven years the library had been returned to its original use. The library, along with school corridors and other available spaces, had been used for learning support.

Special education teacher and teacher representative of the board of management, Mark Howard, outlined Delgany National School's development from 1989, when he joined the staff, to the present day. The two schools were incomparable, he said, adding that Delgany NS was blessed to have dedicated special education rooms.

The additional needs classroom must provide a relaxed, calm, safe space where pupils can learn in ways that suit them, he explained. 'During my training in special education, one term dominated. That was "inclusivity". It must permeate the whole school community. Inclusivity celebrates diversity, it celebrates individuality and it celebrates meeting the needs of all pupils and the whole school community,' Mr Howard said.

He added that children always valued fairness but fairness did not always mean everyone has the same but that everyone had equal opportunities that meet their needs. "My hope is that every child will have opportunities to inspire each other and develop as individuals,' he concluded.

Chairman of the board of management and Rector of Delgany, the Revd Nigel Waugh, paid tribute to the principal and her staff for seeing the need and appreciating that the school needs to cater for the needs of all its pupils. 'This has always been a school which puts the needs of the children first and we have seen this in the new learning support rooms,' he said.

Archbishop Jackson said that it was wonderful to see development in a school that was so happy, confident and full of life. He congratulated the principal and all who had driven the project. He spoke to the children about the importance of a sense of inquisitiveness and curiosity which could be nurtured while settling into their new library.

He also encouraged the children to read. 'Books are alive. Books are a story that you live and bring into your school day and then take home with you. My encouragement to you is to read every day and then close your eyes and remember it and go home and tell your parents what you have read. You might encourage them to read and tell you about it,' he said.
A group of fifth year students at Pres Bray were recently chosen as national finalists in The Ehealth Digital Natives Competition at Dublin Castle. The brief was to imagine healthcare in 2030 and its relation to IT.

The students chose to re-imagine a school environment through the lens of a preventative rather than a diagnostic vision.

They saw well-being as a fundamental component of healthcare into our future. The students first built a scale model of Pres Bray in Minecraft on their own server. They then researched potential innovations which might contribute to the improvement of the space as a well being centre of excellence.

The students rebuilt their Minecraft school in response to their research and created a video proposal of their innovations. Their work is on YouTube.

During the competition in Dublin Castle, the students received mentoring from expert innovator David Pollard and presented their proposal using Virtual Reality 360 degree filming. They also had the opportunity to experience cutting edge innovations in healthcare IT at the event.

The students have begun a Minecraft phenomenon within the school where a significant cohort of students from first to fifth year are now online crafting the school and all of its details to create a 3d digital model which can be used as a tool for future planning.

The school is very proud of the entire group.

The fifth Years that competed in The Ehealth Digital Natives Competition were: Reece Ronan, Pearse O'Neill, Jack Lawlor, Killian Taylor, Lochlann Megannety and Conor Kelly.
Students from Woodbrook College, Presentation College and Loreto Secondary School took part in a talk recently with Dom Ofner at Loreto for 'Let's Talk', a project involving young people in the work of peace and reconciliation in Ireland and beyond.

Tony Daly from '80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World', and Dom Offner from the Edmund Rice Centre in Sydney facilitated.

Let's Talk is an educational project which aims to give young people a chance to discuss and take action on issues of conflict, peace, reconciliation, climate change, sustainable development and justice in Ireland and beyond. As an active citizenship project, Let's Talk is stimulated by engagement with local needs, ideas and issues through a series of public 'awareness, information and public judgement' exercises delivered by young people and inviting engagement by local stakeholders in the community. The project involves students and teachers from schools in Woodbrook College, Presentation College Bray and Loreto Bray, as well as other interested stakeholders such as the National Youth Council of Ireland (for now!), led by Bray-based non-governmental organisation, 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World.

Let's Talk has been active since 80:20 was established and has supported young people to debate, discuss and mix issues across borders, towns and countries including Birmingham, Belfast, Broome, Blanchardstown, Bray, Goodooga and Lusaka, among many more. To date the project has involved over 3000 young people from a variety of locations - throughout Northern Ireland and the Republic, England, Scotland, Australia, Rwanda and the Middle East.
Mired in a protracted conflict in Yemen and threatened by the rise of the Shia crescent in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon with fears of an uprising of its own Shia population or those in neighboring Bahrain, Saudi Arabia has taken a series of aggressive foreign policy decisions that only reflect the domestic turmoil it is undergoing with the recent political shake-up.

Most analysts ascribe Saudi Arabias miscalculated actions in the region to its stumbling in the wake of the US disengagement from the region.

Alarmed by the rise of its archrival Iran, Saudi Arabia has taken moves that push analysts to deem it as an irrational actor in the region.

Were seeing a series of miscalculations  We tend to think that Saudi Arabia has become an irrational actor in the Middle East, Philippe Dauba-Pantanacce, global geopolitical strategist at Standard Chartered bank told CNBC. Every single foreign venture they (Saudi Arabia) try has reached the opposite result that they wanted. In Yemen, in Qatar, and now in Lebanon, he said.

The last blow dealt to Saudi Arabias foreign policy is the suspension by Lebanons Prime Minister Saad Hariri of his previous Saudi instigated resignation, apparently in order to open a new gateway for responsible dialogue. Whether this came with Saudi approval is not yet known.

Hariris backtracking on his resignation, announced Wednesday, comes as speculations have claimed that he was forced to resign while on an unexpected visit to Riyadh, coinciding with the massive purge ordered by the all-powerful Prince Bin Salman against Princes and multi-billionaires on charges of corruption.

Analysts see that Saudi Arabia is losing track as it sees that its military campaign in Yemen has actually worsened an already catastrophic humanitarian situation while prompting greater Iranian involvement there. Its actions to contain the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah have only contributed to bringing a fractured multi-ethnic country together.

Its actions against Qatar have not brought the tiny wealthy Gulf emirate to bow. Instead, Qatar is gathering support at the international level against the blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia and Gulf allies who accuse Doha of supporting terrorism.

Saudi Arabias policies in Yemen and Lebanon are fracturing the Middle East where authoritarian rule threatens to create an environment perfect for terrorism, Qatars foreign minister said at a recent conference in London.
Law student Ursula Quill from Bray was on the winning King's Inns team at the final of Breagchuirt Ui Dhalaigh 2017, a court competition held in the Four Courts last Friday.

Celebrating 20 years since inception, the competition is organised annually by Gael Linn, and funded by Foras na Gaeilge, in memory of the late Cearbhall O Dalaigh, former President and Chief Justice of Ireland.

First held in 1997, the competition was won by Ide Ni Riagain, now a solicitor in the European Parliament in Luxembourg, along with barrister Daithi Mac Carthaigh, who has continued his association with the event down through the years.

Teams from Trinity College, Dublin, University College Cork, NUI Galway, Maynooth University and Kings Inns took part in this year's competition and had the opportunity to display their advocacy skills in an authentic courtroom setting before practicing judges of the High Court and Circuit Court.

Competitors either defend or prosecute in an appeal against a court judgement. The case under scrutiny in this instance was complicated - a death occurs, but was it murder or suicide? The appeal involved a number of elements, such as actus reus, continuing act and chain of causation.

Preliminary rounds took place in Kings Inns on Friday morning, where all teams had to prepare and plead both sides of the case. Oral submissions for the appellant and the respondent were restricted to 20 minutes, with three minutes allowed for rebuttal by both sides. The participating teams were assessed by qualified barristers and the two of the highest standard were chosen to contest the final - Kings Inn and Trinity College, Dublin.

The final was held that evening in the Four Courts, with many former competitors in attendance. High Court judge Ms Justice Bronagh O'Hanlon, along with Circuit Court judge Sinead Ni Chulachain presided, with assistance from Cormac O Dulachain, Senior Counsel. Both teams impressed with their logical and well-constructed presentation, correct use of statutes, cases and precedents, ability to answer judges' questions and ability to deal with the opposing arguments. In the end, however, the judges' gavel came down in favour of the team from King's Inns.

Gael Linn CEO Antoine O Coileain, presented Bray lady Ms Quill and her team-mates, Tomas Mac Threinfhir and Daithi O hEoghanain, with the Gael Linn Perpetual Trophy and a cheque for 600.
A young man who threw a rock through a bus window and hit an elderly lady on the head has had his case adjourned for a probation report.

Jordan Heffernan (18), 13 Rathsallagh Park, Shankill, appeared in Bray District Court last Thursday. The court heard that Heffernan was pleading guilty in all matters.

The incident occurred at 4.40 p.m. on November 8, 2016, just half an hour after gardai had released Heffernan into his mother's custody following a public order incident.

The bus driver told gardai that, as he was driving past the petrol station, a rock was thrown and the elderly woman was hit on the side of the head. She was brought to St Vincent's hospital where she required stitches and a CAT scan. There were around 15 or 20 passengers on the bus.

A witness present in court was not required as Heffernan's barrister Eamonn O'Moore told the court that morning that his client would be pleading guilty.

The court heard that the witness was sitting at the top of the bus and saw what happened.

Earlier in the day, Heffernan was among a group of youths outside Brady's pub. They were kicking the door and attempting to use the free WiFi.

Gardai told Heffernan to leave the area but he wouldn't. They took him home and released him into his mother's custody. It was shortly after this that the incident involving the elderly victim occurred.

Mr O'Moore said that his client is a very troubled young man. He said that Heffernan had been a juvenile at the time of the offence.

He said that he struggles with impulse control, outbursts, bonding, and forming normal relationships and is highly medicated. He said that his client is no longer associating with the same group he was with on that day.

'This was a horrendous incident for the lady who was injured and everyone else who was on the bus,' said Judge David Kennedy.

He adjourned the matter to March 22 for a probation report and psychiatric report.
It comes as no surprise that Gerry Adams' announcement to step down as leader of Sinn Fein in 2018 has polarised public opinion.

On the one hand there are those who consider Adams a peacemaker, someone who saved republicanism from itself by shifting the emphasis away from paramilitary activity to peaceful politics. On the other hand is the view that Adams should reveal what he knows about the death and destruction caused by the IRA during a long and protracted era of violence in which he was a central figure, even if the Belfast man has repeatedly denied ever being in the IRA.

For over 35 years now this two-way quarrel over Adams' legacy has resulted in nothing but stalemate and there is little to suggest this is going to change simply because he is stepping down from a role he has made his own since 1983. However, many feel the loss of his Westminster seat to the SDLP's Joe Hendron in 1992 - a seat he emphatically won back at the next election - coupled with the IRA's juxtaposition between waging a war for propaganda purposes rather than its traditional platform of a united Ireland, hastened Adams in his decision to shift the republican movement towards achieving political objectives.

If nothing else, Adams must be credited with realising that the concept of 'fighting' to end partition had run out of road and was obstructing Sinn Fein's political progress. This transition was not easy for Adams but he successfully persuaded a majority of republicans that constitutional nationalism and unionist consent for a united Ireland needed to take precedence over the bomb and bullet. Adams also skilfully used the much maligned decommission of IRA weapons to gain political concessions, which also proved equally disruptive for political unionism, leading to the eventual demise of David Trimble's UUP.

The expected coronation of Mary Lou McDonald as leader is a seismic shift away from the dominance of northern personnel at the helm of Sinn Fein stretching back to the early 1980s. Mary Lou stood squarely, and visibly, by Adams' side during many of his most recent criticisms, from the Jean McConville murder to revelations of his brother Liam's sexual abuse - all of which resulted in strong public criticism. Conversely, her loyalty was considered an acid test by the many within the more furtive quarters of the republican movement's northern circle.

The announcement that Martin Ferris is also to step down at the next election came as a surprise to many. Ferris, considered a hardliner within the republican movement, spent 10 years in jail for trying to import arms aboard the Marita Ann in 1984. His successor is likely to be his daughter, Toireasa, who is currently a formidable and enthusiastic councillor on Kerry County Council.

But at the core of Saturday's SF Ard Fheis is the representation of a fundamental change of guard and a transfer of power from those who came to the realisation that armed conflict alone could not achieve a united Ireland, to a new generation wedded in the pursuit of achieving its objectives through constitutional politics, north and south. Adams has placed his own retirement within this broader generational shift.

Under the circumstances, time spent debating the merits of the past only come at the expense of hindering the progress of the future. Time will tell if the new face of Sinn Fein can draft a new script for the party's future but the passing of a motion paving the way for SF participation in government as coalition partners is a sure sign of intention.
Last week Cork County Council gave the green light for the installation of the long-awaited CCTV system in Charleville town after a delay of almost a year.

The CCTV initiative was spearheaded by Charleville Chamber in conjunction with the local steering committee, the Gardai and the Fermoy Municipal Area of Cork County Council, ably assisted by Cllr. Ian Doyle.

All the elements were in place in 2016, though the project was delayed. However, all obstacles have now been cleared and the cameras have got the go-ahead from Cork County Council during the past week and local Gardia, who will have control of monitoring the camera feed at the local Garda Station.

This initiative will provide much needed protection to local residents and businesses, and will aid in the detection of criminal activities and may be used as evidence for possible conviction of offenders in the courts.

In order to avoid any inconvenience to the public during the Christmas period, works to install the CCTV system will commence in January 2018.

P. J. McCarthy, president of Charleville Chamber, who led the input into the project for Charleville Chamber, expressed his satisfaction at this development, highlighting the benefits of following proper procedures in tendering and contracting. He thanked his colleagues in PHM Project Management for their professionalism and acknowledged the support from the Fermoy Municipal District Office.

He said that the cameras will be a huge boost to the security of the town, which will now have a monitored CCTV system. "They will play a huge role in preventing anti-social behaviour and in the detection of crime. A key feature will be that the CCTV system will have number plate detection facility," he said.

He thanked all the key stakeholders, steering committee and the Gardai for their input to the design, specifications and the location of the proposed CCTV system in order to ensure it meets their needs and requirements and to provide the best security possible for the town.

Cllr Ian Doyle also welcomed the onset of the CCTV system and he thanked his colleagues in the Fermoy Municipal Area for their assistance in getting the system up and running in Charleville. He thanked the Gardai and Chamber members for their co-operation and input into facilitating the installation of the CCTV system.

"This is a great boost to the town of Charleville in the prevention and detection of crime and will help to ensure the safety of the citizens of our town, which is one of the last in North Cork to put the CCTV system in place," said Cllr. Doyle.

Old tannery may give way to new bargain store

Another piece of old Charleville is about to disappear if Cork County Council grants planning permission to Dublin company Corajio ULC for the development of what was a former tannery and the old Emdown Bedding factory, formerly owned by John Lane of Cork, at Broad Street and Bakers Lane, Charleville.

Based in Dublin's Tallaght, where it has its registered office, Corajio ULC, which trades as Mr. Price Branded Bargains, intends to demolish what remains of the former tannery buildings that presently house a car garage on the Bakers Lane boundary, and also propose a change of use from industrial to commercial of the existing warehouse with elevation alternations and the addition of signage at the site. They also propose to widen the existing entrance and a disked kerb access off Bakers Lane, as well as providing 35 car parking spaces and a landscaped plaza.

The tannery dated from the early 1800's when it was owned by the Haines family and the curing of cow hides for leather was big business.

Horses were needed for all kinds of industry, on farms and for transport. Consequently, there was a big market for saddlery and harness and there were several outlets for leather goods in the town, when horses ruled the roads long before the advent of motorised transport.

The three storey buildings were partially demolished some years ago and will now disappear completely, should the Dublin company get the necessary planning permission from Cork County Council.
Following a spell-binding inaugural concert in Cork's Everyman theatre and another at Cork's iconic North Cathedral, St Colman's Church Macroom will play host to the sensational 'Alleluia! Hymns Celebrating the Faith of Our Fathers' this Sunday, November 26, at 7pm.

Starring Linda Kenny (soprano), Ryan Morgan (Tenor), with Macroom Church Choir, Canovee Church Choir, Briery Gap Mixed Choir and St Joseph's Primary School Choir, our Alleluia musicians (under MD Alan Carney), this promises to be a truly magical night. Early booking is advisable.

This event is supporting St Colman's new church organ, your support would be very much appreciated. Tickets 15.
After 35 years, one of the oldest traditions on the festive calendar in Newmarket, the Christmas Day Swim in the Island Wood, will not go ahead this year.

The swim is not going ahead this year mainly due to insurance reasons, which involve a complex web of terms and conditions and, indeed, costs. However, in what can only be hoped is a hiatus year, it's timely to take a look at what caused hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people to leave their cosy homes of a Christmas morning and strip off to immerse themselves in the almost freezing waters of the Dalua River in the picturesque Island Wood.

If it sounds like something of an 'off the wall' idea (there were few, if any, Christmas swims taking in place in Ireland 35 years ago) it came on the back of another, rather adventurous innovation - a swimming pool in Newmarket.

And that idea owes in genesis to what was a thriving Newmarket Youth Club in the 1970's, which was active in all sorts of areas - but not swimming. Then, in 1979, Mary Stack had the idea of organising a bus for youth club members to Mallow Swimming Pool, so club members could learn to swim and enjoy a great recreational activity.

The first bus rolled out of Newmarket in September 1979 and, indeed, they are still rolling once weekly right up to today.

Such was the initial success of the swimming trips, organisers hit on the idea of having a swimming pool of their own in Newmarket. Without a ready-made venue, and considering the mammoth task - and cost - of constructing a Mallow-like pool in Newmarket, those behind the venture hit on what was considered a more attainable prospect:

Install and outdoor pool adjacent to, and fed off, the Dalua River at the Island Wood.

Plans were made, funding was raised and help was secured from the county council, and other bodies. And the pool in the Island Wood opened in 1982.

For a number of years hundreds of locals learned to swim in the pool in the Island Wood, and every summer many hundreds enjoyed a cool dip close to home - Newmarket is at least 75km from the nearest beach, Banna in Co Kerry.

Everything went swimmingly until ... it didn't. As we all know, the rivers of Duhallow are prone to flooding, and when they do the floods carry untold volumes of flotsam and jetsam along with them, from discarded litter, to sediment to fallen trees. And amounts of this floating ooze all too regularly tended to end up in the pool by the Dalua in the Island Wood in Newmarket.

Nevertheless ... back 1982, with the pool newly opened, it was decided to go one better and hold a swim that Christmas as a fundraiser for worthy causes.

Roughly 20 hardy souls took to the waters of the Dalua that Christmas morning to raise funds for Concern and it was the beginning of a truly great annual event that went on to become a huge fund-raiser and a cherished seasonal tradition.

For perhaps the first five years the Island Wood swims raised funds for Concern but later branched out aid The Irish Heart Foundation, The Irish Kidney Foundation, Breakthrough Cancer Research, to name just a few, and, last year, Mallow Search and Rescue Unit.

For most of the past ten years, and despite the recession, the Christmas swim has raised about 10,000 annually, topping of at 16,000 for Breakthrough Cancer Research in 2011.

Meanwhile, over the years the swim also grew as a social event: from a quick, chilly dip to a festive community gathering in the open air before repairing back home for the Christmas feast.

Mary Stack, whose vision and vigour set the ball rolling all those years ago, and who has organised the event every year since, can look back with a sense of considerable achievement. However, while Mary is a well recognised organiser in the local community - from swims to bus trips and a lot more besides - she is drawing the line on negotiating the minefield of full-on public liability insurance; and that's very easily understandable.

Now, as Christmas 2017 is almost upon us, Mary looks back on the swims not so much with pride as with thanks.

"A 'thank you' to the swimmers seems totally inadequate, considering they have raised over 200,000 for numerous charities down through the years," she says. "Some swimmers have been taking part for almost 20 years and well done to each and every one of you for your efforts, especially facing the cold waters of the River Dalua every Christmas morning.

"Thanks are due also to the hundreds of supporters who came along every year and donated so generously to the various causes.

"Thank you to Jerry McAuliffe, who has been there since the start and to the Kiely family, Dromagh, the late Sean and now his son, Derry, who provided the amplification, and to SuperValu Newmarket for the mulled wine.

"Thanks to all the other helpers down through the years who made it all possible," added Mary.

It is sad to see the swim it over as it was a great meeting place and, for many, a chance to catch up with family and friends on Christmas morning. However, the organisers are very happy that the past 35 years have been accident free and that it has brought great enjoyment and happy memories to many.

Since the news of the cancellation of the annual swim broke, Mary has received a flood (pardon the pun) of regrets and well-wishes. A line from one such letter, received this past week, included the line:

'The annual swim was always a great Christmas event, but the memories will last forever'.
One of the big draws for this year's Ardee Baroque Festival will be the concert by pianist Michael McHale and cellist Brian O'Kane, taking place on Sunday, 26 November at 3pm.

A duo partnership whose most recent recordings together have been receiving 5-star reviews.

They join a line-up of top artists descending on Ardee from Friday 24th to Sunday 26th November for the fourteenth year Ardee Baroque Festival.

Unlike most baroque music concerts, for this performance Michael will play a beautiful Steinway Piano while Brian will perform on a cello made c.1690. They will each play a solo work by Bach and together join forces for the glorious and well-known Brahms Cello Sonata No. 1. Although not a baroque work, it is heavily inspired by the music and composing techniques of Bach and will be a joy to listen to by these great musicians.

Born in Belfast, Michael's interest in music began at the age of seven when he started learning the piano, soon followed by cello lessons at the City of Belfast School of Music. A varied education took Michael from Belfast to Dublin, Cambridge and ultimately London. His performing career encompasses solo recital, concerto and chamber music appearances and he enjoys playing both core and contemporary repertoire. Michael collaborates regularly with Sir James Galway, Michael Collins, Patricia Rozario, Dame Felicity Lott, the McGill/McHale Trio and Camerata Pacifica.

An award-winning graduate of both the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Brian O'Kane is quickly establishing himself as one of the finest Irish musicians of his generation and is in increasing demand as both a soloist and chamber musician. He came to prominence by taking first prize at the Windsor Festival International String Competition. In 2008, Brian performed with Camerata Ireland in the National Concert Hall under Barry Douglas and with the Philharmonia Orchestra at Highgrove before the Prince of Wales. Brian has recently been awarded the National Concert Hall's 'Rising Star' award.

Tickets for this hour-long concert are just 15, 12 conc & 5 children are available through An Tain Arts Centre 042 9332332 or www.antain.ie. Details on all concerts at this year's festival are available on www.ardeebaroque.com

Ardee Baroque Festival was initiated by Louth County Arts Office in 2004. It is funded by Louth County Council, Create Louth and the Arts Council.

Aimed at music lovers young and old, this year's Ardee Baroque Festival includes a return visit by the Irish Baroque Orchestra with leading Irish soprano Sinead Campbell Wallace; a family friendly concert from Music Generation Louth's Junior Orchestra; a solo violin recital by one of Ireland's most exciting players; a talk on Irish harp from the region, and a performance by pianist Michael McHale and cellist Brian O'Kane.

Over the years, Ardee has been host to many special musical events and seen some of the greatest performers of baroque music visit the County Louth town. As the cold and darker evenings draw in, the town gears itself up for an influx of musicians and people to support this great festival.

The Irish Baroque Orchestra remains the headline act for the Festival. Under the direction of violinist Claire Duff, this year they bring Irish soprano, Sinead Campbell-Wallace with a programme of delightful and many well-known arias from the baroque period, including pieces from Handel's Messiah. Sticking with the almost-seasonal theme, they will also perform Corelli's celebrated Christmas Concerto.

Music Generation initiatives around the country have been growing from strength to strength. Music Generation Louth's impressive youth chamber groups and Junior String Orchestra perform a family-friendly selection of baroque favourites including Winter from Vivaldi's Four Seasons and music from the Royal Fireworks by Handel. Harper Patrick Quin was one of the youngest of the 18th century Irish harpers. The Sunday lecture will feature researcher Sylvia Crawford talking about Patrick and the potential of Irish music in cultural tourism in the Oriel region.
Following on from their most recent massive success, 'Songbook', St. Peter's Male Voice Choir, Drogheda and Musical Director Edward Holly present their annual Christmas concert which for 16 years has welcomed the beginning of the festive season in Drogheda.

In the magical setting of St. Peter's Church, West Street, they'll present 'So this is Christmas' with a live 14-piece Orchestra, St. Peter's Male Voice Choir with guests both international and local, perform many Christmas favourites in a magical evening not to be missed by music lovers.

It's on December 2 at 8pm. Tickets: 25 (no booking fee). Available from: Credit Card Purchase (041) 982 9124. Reception at Westcourt Hotel, West St., Drogheda (041) 983 0965. Sacristy of St. Peter's Church, West St.,Drogheda, (041) 983 8537.


via @harrisalexc

One of Floridas most prolific Democratic donors, a bourbon-swilling, salty-tongued lawyer with his own slogan and medical marijuana as his pet cause, is out.

In a series of tweets Friday morning, John Morgan announced his flirtation with running for governor as a Democrat is over, as is his affiliation with either political party.

While its amazing to be leading the polls for Governor without being a candidate I cant muster the enthusiasm to run for the nomination, he wrote.

He said he plans to register as an independent and vote for the lesser of two evils. If he were to run, he said, he would run as an independent.

This likely isnt great news for Floridas Democratic Party, which has traditionally counted on Morgan to open his wallet for its candidates. Hes been known to host fundraising dinners for Hillary Clinton and charge thousands of dollars a plate.

But Morgan said the tweets dont mean hes out of the race altogether.

As a Democrat, yes, he said. Im not sure about what I want to do, but I know what I dont want to do.

More here.

Photo credit: Brendan Farrington, Associated Press
The Dominican community will host a special Mass of Remembrance - for those who have passed away and their families - on Sunday November 26th at noon in the Dominican Church .

The mass was held for the first time last year and it will conclude with a special 'hands across the Boyne' event jist after mass.

People will be invited to toss flowers in the Boyne to mark the boundary between the former two towns, brought together by a Dominican priest.

'Drogheda in Meath' and 'Drogheda in Oriel' were united in 1412 after a plea by Fr Bennett who was disillusioned with the fighting between the two sides of the town.

'The event is symbolic of how the tide of time has brought us together and we found the laying of flowers into the Boyne as very touching last year,' Fr Jim Donleavy stated.

'Everyone is invited to come along and be part of the occasion.'
The Drogheda Homeless Aid annual Sleep Out was launched during the week in the Barbican Centre.

This year's Sleep Out is to be held on Saturday 9th December, where 20 hardy individuals will sleep out on West Street to support Drogheda Homeless Aid's work.

According to Drogheda Homeless Aid's Manager, Maureen Ward "This is an important event to raise awareness as to the existence of homelessness in the county. The Sleep Out is also for raising much-needed funds to support the work of Drogheda Homeless Aid at a time of crisis.

'The image of homelessness that some people have unfortunately is that it is a phenomenon confined to Dublin; but it is a reality here in Louth and the problem is not going away. Drogheda Homeless Aid supported 120 individuals in their emergency accommodation facility in the past year.

'All of those residing in Drogheda Homeless Aid get resettlement support to help them back towards independent living and is one of the most important aspects of the work that we do in endeavouring to break the cycle of homelessness."

Maureen also stated that she is delighted that the Drogheda Chamber President, Paddy Callaghan also of Nature's Best is doing the Sleep Out on 9th December. He will be joined by Fr. Barry Matthews and other business people, including Dave Kavanagh of Financial Companion, as well as teachers from a number of local secondary schools, all of whom are keen to support the work of Drogheda Homeless Aid and wish to highlight homelessness in the community and the complexity of the issues which often lie behind homelessness.

State Street is also backing the Sleep Out, several of their employees involved.
A Drogheda couple, who both suffer from epilepsy, have been promised a new home by Louth County Council.

Charlotte Duffy Burns contacted the Drogheda Independent in relation to their plight, stating that the rented home she shares with husband Simon, cannot meet their needs.

They are both prone to sudden seizures and Charlotte revealed she has already fallen in her home on the Ballymakenny Road and suffered a head injury.

The house also has problems with heating.

Louth County Council confirmed that they have had a 'long term plan to build a specific unit for this family' and have been going through the approval process with the Department, but this had taken an inordinate amount of time.

However, final approval was received last Wednesday and it is hoped the new home will begin construction in early 2018.

Charlotte says she has suffered fits from two years of age and can't wait for a chance to live in a purpose built home.

'It is very hard,' she stated. 'You have no warning with epilepsy. I would love the chance to just go out each morning to work but I can't do that.'

She has a pacemaker in her chest and needs regular hospital treatment.

She admits she gets frustrated by her illness and says the new house would a dream for her.
Grace (4) with Amanda Mahon from Drogheda hoping to win a family trip to Lapland with Drogheda Retail Park and Sunway Holidays

There is a magical Christmas treat in store for one local family - and all they have to do is find a lucky elf.

Drogheda Retail Park are offering the trip of a lifetime to see Santa Claus in Lapland and to win all you have to do is find an elf and take a selfie with it.

This innovative competition will run for the next week at Drogheda Retail Park on Donore Road, and all entrants have to do to win a once-in-a-lifetime Sunway Holidays trip is visit the park and find the elf hidden in one of the retail stores.

Once readers have found the life-size cut-out they should take an 'elfie' with Santa's little helper and post it to the competition gallery on the Drogheda Retail Park Facebook page.

The Find the Elf competition will then select five finalists to compete in a grand final event.

The grand final will be held at Drogheda Retail Park on Saturday, November 25th as part of the 'Letter to Santa' event.

The 4,000 trip will give a family of four a chance to visit Santa's Lapland village and post office where they can meet old Saint Nick in person.

The winning family will also meet Rudolph and friends, as well as enjoying a husky sleigh ride and snowmobile adventure.

'Families are at the heart of all of our events at Drogheda Retail Park, so we wanted to create an activity that families could do together in the run up to Christmas,' said Freda O'Donnell, Asset Manager, Drogheda Retail Park.

'There are five places up for grabs in the grand final on November 25 and all you have to do is find the elf hidden in one of our stores to be in with a chance.

'So get the whole family together and visit us in Drogheda Retail Park on Donore Road and see if you can find the elf and win.'

For further information on the Find the Elf competition see the Drogheda Retail Park Facebook page.
Gin Ambassador Kelly Ann Woodhead with a selection of Irish gins at The Loop at Dublin Airport

The Listoke gin brand is proving popular with visitors to the country as its revealed that Irish Gin Sales have increased by 240% at Dublin and Cork Airports.

Listoke 1777 and Listoke Barnstorm Gin are just two of 26 Irish made gins that showcased at Dublin and Cork airports recently.

The Spirit of Gin Festival, which was aimed at promoting small Irish craft gin producers, generated a 240% increase in Irish gin sales during August and September.

The Listoke distillery, situated in the grounds of Listoke House near Drogheda, operates from a beautifully refurbished 200-year-old stable building. The distillery is also home to Ireland's first 'gin school', in which customers can learn about and produce their own bottle of gin.The first release from Listoke Distillery, Listoke 1777, features a beguiling wise owl on the label, which pays homage to the barn owls in the stable building at Listoke where the distillery now lies.

Inspired by exotic ingredients from various 'spice trails' around the globe, the distillery's second release, Listoke Barnstorm, is exclusive to The Loop.
A Lithuanian man in his 20s died following a boiler explosion at a rented house in Beaulieu near Termonfeckin last Tuesday night.

Two others, a 21-year-old woman and a 53-year-old man were also injured in the blast. Both were rushed by ambulance to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda for treatment.

The man had significant leg, abdominal and facial injuries.

During a routine search of the property and grounds following the tragedy, gardai discovered a sophisticated cannabis growhouse in a large industrial unit at the rear of the premises.

The cannabis cultivation and processing plant included heating and lighting equipment as well as processing and packing items.

In a press conference at the site on Wednesday afternoon, Drogheda Superintendent Andrew Watters said around 200 mature cannabis plants had been discovered at the site with an estimated street value of 150,000. He described the cultivation unit discovered at the site as 'very elaborate' and 'very professional'.

He said a full technical and forensic examination was being carried out at the scene to fully establish the cause of the explosion in the house.

The 28-year-old man pronounced dead at the scene as the result of injuries he received has since been named as Lithuanian national Edvinas Rudzinskas (28).
A meeting is being sought with the Minister for Education over the lack of secondary school places in Wexford town for boys as the county experiences a 'demographic wave' of students passing through the system.

Cllr George Lawlor raised the issue at last week's meeting of Wexford County Council and was told by council CEO Tom Enright that the local authority is trying to source two sites for new schools to be built.

Cllr Lawlor said the offers have gone out for students to attend schools in Wexford.

'We still find ourselves in the same situation where families are really suffering the stress involved in not knowing where their children will be attending secondary school next September. We have spoken about IDA projects and attracting investment, but if people are relocating to Wexford and they suddenly find there is no place for their kids to go to school, I think we are at nothing. You can build roads and put in natural gas but this is a fundamental issue.'

Cllr Lawlor said there are a number of people born and reared in Wexford town who cannot get their child into a school, while people from Gorey and other counties can.

'It's a crisis for boys. There will be 200 new places in the new Loreto which will make the problem smaller for girls but it's a very different serious issue for boys.'

He suggested the council write as a body to the minister to request a meeting.

'We are dealing with a department which is so intransigent that they built the new CBS school, not allowing one extra place for growth.'

He said there are children - mainly boys - being denied places in schools just because their father doesn't hail from Wexford town.

'We have already had a consultant at Wexford General Hospital who was not able to secure a place in Wexford for his child.'

Cllr Malcolm Byrne said the former Minister for Public Expenditure, Brendan Howlin, hails from Wexford, was in charge of the purse strings when the schools were being funded.

'That is absolutely unfair. I could tell you who was responsible. You didn't build a single school! That is ridiculous!' Cllr Lawlor said.

Cllr Byrne replied: 'When I was raising this issue two years ago you accused me of scaremongering.'

'That is a lie,' Cllr Lawlor responded.

Cllr Byrne said the problem exists across the county. 'We have a very young population. This is an issue where proper planning comes in.'

He said based on the 2016 Census planning is needed, not only to zone areas for more schools, but also for more nursing homes to cater for our ageing population.

Referring to the CBS school plan, Cllr John Hegarty said: 'That wasn't a school decision.'

Cllr Anthony Kelly seconded Cllr Lawlor's proposal.

Cllr Oisin O'Connell said: 'It's not only a Wexford town issue, it's a New Ross issue also. Students in New Ross are bussing it into Wexford and Wexford students are bussing it somewhere else. It's also at primary level.

'We are facing this demographic wave passing through the system. We can't just be thinking in terms of the next two years but in terms of the next five to ten years.'

Cllr Jim Moore said there is a bigger, longer term problem of high population growth the parts of the county.

'We, in the Wexford Borough District, have met many parents last year and the previous year in relation to this problem and a deputation from Wexford met the minister a good while ago requesting they reopen the case for an extra school in Wexford town.'

CEO Tom Enright said he attended the delegation meeting with the minister. 'We have had a number of discussions with the Department of Education. It's not a simple matter. The department will say there isn't sufficient space within schools to meet the demand needed. They will say there is a peak of students working their way through the primary system at the moment.

'They will say there will be a fall off in demand after that. However, we are trying to be more ambitious in this county and we're trying to get population growth here. Out population target is higher than the national average and we are working with the Department of Education on new schools as people tend to gravitate towards them and move away from less reputable schools.'

Mr Enright said the council is looking at two sites for post primary schools.

'We are hopeful we can find suitable locations which will increase the space capacity. It's a problem that will remain for a while with the Department of Education.'
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The people of Balbriggan may be able to look forward to a new feature of the night skyline in the town if a proposal to illuminate the town's viaduct is carried through.

The idea was agreed at a recent meeting of the council's Economic Development and Enterprise Strategic Policy Committee which also covers the area of tourism and Cllr Tony Murphy (IA) has followed the proposal up with questions on project, this month.

At a meeting of the Balbriggan/Swords Area Committee this month, Cllr Murphy asked the council to 'give a progress report on the proposed lighting of the viaduct in Balbriggan which was agreed at the most recent Economic and Tourism SPC.'

In response, the council revealed it is in discussion with Irish Rail on the project and that initial assessments of the viability of the proposal are 'favourable'.

The council explained: 'As advised at the Economic, Development & Enterprise Strategy Policy Committee an initial assessment and site visit has deemed that there is merit in pursuing this project.'

The council explained that it will need the cooperation of Irish Rail to realise the project.

It explained: 'The viaduct and the land surrounding it is in the ownership of Irish Rail. The viaduct is also a protected structure of important architectural and engineering heritage.

'An initial discussion with Irish Rail has taken place and Irish Rail's preliminary assessment is favourable, pointing to the success of a similar initiative in Drogheda.'

Council officials and representatives of Irish Rail had a meeting at the site of the viaduct, earlier this month and there are a number of issues to be worked out before the project can go ahead, according to Fingal County Council.

The council statement on the issue said: 'Matters such as the mounting of the lights, where the electricity will be drawn from, protecting the lights from anti-social behaviour, ensuring value for money and guaranteeing the lights do not interfere with train drivers' line of sight were discussed.'

The statement ends with a commitment to examine the feasibility and the costs of the project with the council stating: 'A simple feasibility including preliminary design and costing will now be completed.'
Fingal County Council is pursing an historic loan of some 70 million from the European Investment Bank to help fund its capital spending programme over a five-year period, making it only the second local authority in the country to draw down loan funds directly from the bank.

It is thought the 70 million loan would give the council access to around 180 million in total funding when matched by Government funds on specific capital investment projects.

Negotiations to fix the framework for the landmark European investment in Fingal are at an advanced stage but not completed and the council sought an endorsement from councillors this month to continue with those negotiations.

Once the terms of the loan are agreed, councillors will then be asked to approve it and will be consulted each year on the draw down of those funds.

Council chief executive, Paul Reid explained the rationale behind seeking the loan arrangement saying that Fingal was the fastest growing region in the country with the youngest population and that was placing new demands on the council's resources.

He said the council was actively seeking alternative sources of funding to 'support Fingal in terms of its growth', saying the county's growth was 'exceptional'.

The chief executive said that he and senior officials had been in talks with the European Investment Bank over 'weeks and months' and while the EIB had a long track record in investing in local authorities across Europe, it had not yet done so in Ireland until Limerick City agreed an 85 million loan from the bank, last week.

He stressed that the loan was 'still a work in progress' but wanted the endorsement of councillors to continue those discussions with the EIB to bring the loan to fruition.

Economic Development Director in the council, Ed Hearne explained that the loan would be drawn down over five years and repaid over 25 years and would be available at a very low rate because of the 'low risk profile of Ireland the low risk profile of Fingal'.

He said that from the council's perspective there was 'no risk' attached to the loan and said the local authority was not obliged to draw down all the funds and would not be subject to any penalties if it failed to draw down the full amount. Mr Hearne said the investment would allow the council put in infrastructure to enable the growth of Fingal happen in a 'sustainable' way.

He said that the money is restricted to certain areas of capital spending and would be used on transport an connectivity projects, investment that created employment, community projects and projects in the area and tourism and cultural heritage.

Mr Hearne said the council had two more stages to go through with the EIB before completing the framework for the loan and he hoped that could be done 'in the next couple of weeks'. The final step will be approval of the loan by councillors.
A study of areas of disadvantage and affluence across Ireland has found that most places in Fingal are marginally above the national average but pockets of disadvantage still exist within the county's larger towns.

The Minister for Rural and Community Development Michael Ring launched the 2016 Pobal HP Deprivation Index which outlines areas of relative affluence or disadvantage across Ireland. Commissioned by Pobal and completed by Trutz Haase and Jonathan Pratschke, the latest index is based on data from the 2016 Census.

Looking at the figures broken down by electoral district within Fingal, the index shows that most towns in Fingal are 'marginally above average', including Skerries, Lusk, Donabate, Portmarnock, Rush and a number of districts within Swords.

Balbriggan urban and rural districts came in marginally above average while at the other end of the scale, Malahide was deemed to be 'affluent' by the study.

Looking deeper into the figures and breaking down the picture into smaller areas within those districts, a handful of areas of disadvantage can be found, primarily in Balbriggan, Swords and Donabate.

Five such small areas exist within Swords to the west of the town while north of the town centre in Donabate lies a single small area of disadvantage.

Only two areas that were deemed 'very disadvantaged' are evident on the Pobal study which both lay close to the town centre of Balbriggan.

Some of these areas may benefit from new funding announced by Fingal County Council targeted at 'disadvantaged urban areas'.

Fingal County Council has been granted 64,000 of funding for disadvantaged urban areas as part of the RAPID (Revitalising Areas by Planning, Investment and Development) Scheme 2017.

Minister Michael Ring, TD announced the launch of the RAPID scheme which sees 2 million being distributed nationally across each Local Authority area.

The objective of the RAPID Scheme is to improve the quality of life for residents in disadvantaged urban areas and address the social and economic issues brought about by disadvantage. The funding will be used to support projects that create tangible benefits for affected communities in Fingal.

Mayor of Fingal Mary McCamley welcomed the scheme saying: 'I look forward to seeing the progress that can be made in tackling the problems that arise as a result of urban disadvantage. We see that some areas of Fingal have less services and resources than others and this funding will contribute to addressing this to allow residents of urban areas access greater opportunities within their own communities.'

The Scheme is being administered by Fingal's Local Community Development Committee (LCDC) who will allocate the funding to the most suitable communities.

The closing date for the scheme is November 24at 5pm. Applications can be submitted by post to Fingal LCDC, Fingal County Council, Swords, Co.Dublin, K67 X8Y2 or email to LCDC@fingal.ie.

Applications which comply with the strategic themes outlined in the Fingal Local Economic and Community Plan (LECP) will receive priority.
A man has been charged with dangerous driving causing the death of a Rush man.

Derek Keane (38) appeared before Balbriggan District Court on Thursday morning last after he was arrested and charged with dangerous driving causing the death of Callum Grimes on December 27, 2016 on the R128 at Loughshinny, Co Dublin.

Sergeant Sean Pender told Judge John Cheatle, Keane, who has an address at The Cottage, Loughshinny, was arrested at 9.05am and charged with the offence. He said the defendant replied 'No' after caution.

He said the Director of Public Prosecution has directed trial on indictment which means he will be sent forward to Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to face trial by judge and jury.

He also confirmed the DPP consents the accused be sent forward to the Circuit Court on a signed plea, if that arises.

However, the defendant has not yet indicated how he will plead.

Dressed in a navy jumper, blue shirt and blue jeans, Keane did not address the court.

Sgt Pender told the court he is seeking clarification whether the defendant is to face further charges and requested a three week adjournment.

He said there is no objection to the defendant being granted bail with the conditions he surrenders his passport and signs on a garda station every Wednesday between 9am and 9pm.

Judge Cheatle released the defendant on his own bond of 200 to appear before the court on December 7 for Sgt Pender to clarify whether further charges are to be brought against the 38- year-old.

Callum 'Cal' Grimes (27), who was from St Catherine's estate in Rush passed away at Beaumont Hospital in July - six months after he was found on the Skerries to Loughshinny Road on the night of December 27, 2016.
A man who sexually abused a vulnerable teenage girl has been refused an extension of time to appeal his conviction and sentence.

David Cashin (49), of Thornleigh Court, Applewood Village, Swords, was convicted by a jury in the summer of 2014 of sexual assault and buggery of a teenage girl on dates between October 2002 and February 2005. Cashin had denied the charges.

He was given concurrent sentences totalling seven years imprisonment by Judge Sarah Berkeley at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on July 11, 2014.

Cashin sought an extension of time in which to appeal his conviction and sentence. However, the three-judge Court of Appeal refused to extend on the basis that the justice of the case would not be served by doing so.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, represented by Anne Rowland BL, opposed the application.

Refusing the application, Mr Justice George Birmingham said Cashin claimed that his former solicitor advised him that he couldn't appeal, that he wanted and intended to appeal at all times, that he didn't know there was a time limit, that nobody would be prejudiced by allowing an extension and that a miscarriage of justice would result in not allowing an appeal.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the initial application included 21 grounds of appeal against conviction and seven against sentence. It was fair to say, the judge said, that the grounds were generic in nature and could have been filed for any conviction for sexual assault.

They were not specific to the facts of the case or the rulings of the trial judge. For example, one ground claimed the trial was unsatisfactory due to an alleged failure to direct the jury that garda witnesses lacked appropriate post graduate qualifications in DNA forensic evidence in order to be classified as expert witnesses.

However, it appeared that there was no DNA evidence in the trial, the judge noted.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the Court of Appeal had a number of concerns starting with the averment that Cashin was told by his former solicitor that he could not appeal.

The court's concerns were compounded by the fact that similar, identical averments had appeared in other applications to extend time. 'This assertion seems to form part of a template,' the judge said.

Now, almost three and a half years since the trial, Mr Justice Birmingham said no information had been put before the court which would suggest Cashin had good grounds for an appeal against conviction or sentence.

He said the court could not agree with the assertion that nobody would be prejudiced by extending time.

'Certainty and finality were objectives of any legal system' and 'to permit an extension of time would undermine those objectives'.

'The victim must have believed and was entitled to assume that the case was long since over.'

Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice Sean Ryan and Mr Justice Alan Mahon, said the justice of the case would not be served by extending time and the court refused the application.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that the child was 14-years-old and Cashin was 35 when the abuse began.

Judge Berkeley said the young woman had shown 'tremendous strength and resilience' and noted Cashin had not spared her having to give evidence.

Garda Alan Carberry told Anne Rowland BL, prosecuting, that the young girl suffered a series of tragedies in her life before coming into contact with Cashin whom she grew to trust.
A little over two weeks after it was gutted by a fire following a Halloween prank that went tragically wrong, Donabate Pharmacy has quite literally risen, phoenix-like from the ashes is in back in business just a stone's throw from its former premises.

On the Sunday night before Halloween, Nuala Mac Cinna watched 14 years of her working life go in up in flames as her pharmacy caught fire after a bin at the back of the property was set alight in an apparent Halloween prank, gone drastically wrong.

It was a devastating blow for Nuala and her hard-working staff and for the wider community in Donabate who rely on the business to fill their prescriptions and provide a vital link in their overall healthcare.

Watching the devastation the fire wrought on that Sunday night, nobody could have expected that just over two weeks later, the business could be up and running again but that is exactly what happened last Wednesday when the doors of Donabate Pharmacy were opened to the public once more just a few doors down from their former premises in Ballalease North.

The day after the business was opened, the Fingal Independent was invited to pay a visit and found the pharmacy already serving customers again and as customers filed in, the amount of good will the community has towards this business was evident.

Casting her mind back to the dark night that engulfed her business in flames, Nuala said: 'I have a monitoring company and they rang me up and said there was a fire alarm. That was about 12.30am and I thought it was a bit strange because usually it would be an intruder alarm.

'I could see the cctv on my phone on the remote that there was a fire in a bin at the back. So I thought, this is a Halloween thing and don't panic. I rang the Fire Brigade straight away and then I thought when I was driving down, I would end up apologising to them because it's only going to be a fire in a bin but by the time I got down, the fire was all up in the roof and for the next couple of hours I was just watching it burn and they couldn't put it out.'

Nuala quickly realised there was no hope of saving the business. She recalled: 'It wasn't very long before I realised that there was no going back. It was a surreal experience. I kind of thought I'm standing here watching my business literally burning to the ground before my eyes - it was very strange.'

For the next three hours she watched the Fire Brigade fight in vain to save the building and at around 3.30am, it was time to go home and think about how to pick up the pieces.

Nuala said: 'I left here at about 3.30am or something. Somebody told me to go home and there was nothing else I could do.'

The day after the night before when the sun came up and the flames of the fire were extinguished, revealing the destruction they left behind, Nuala said the scene was 'awful'.

She said: 'We I suppose reality hit when you saw the extent of the damage. We lost everything, all the stock, all our computers, all the fixtures and fittings - there was nothing left.'

But the determined business owner did not take any time to wallow in self-pity but resolved quickly to set about putting the business back on its feet.

She said: 'For the next few days it was just non-stop. I was waking up each morning and making lists of what I was going to do.'

An understanding landlord came to the rescue by allowing the business take up temporary residence just a few doors away, while the burnt out unit is being rebuilt and Nuala and her staff set to work on getting Donabate Pharmacy back on its feet again.

'That has literally saved the business and we are very grateful for that,' Nuala said.

The local pharmacist said: 'There was a flicker of doubt (about carrying on) but no, I just said we had to get back up as soon as we can to save the business because every day you will lose customers naturally because every day there are new prescriptions or repeats. The firemen asked me if there was anything I needed to keep and I managed to get all the paper prescriptions out and the hard-drive with all our records on it so that has enabled us to get back up and running more quickly. And that was a comfort to patients too that there records are still there and safe.'

In the couple of weeks since the fire, Nuala has been completely overwhelmed by the support this peninsula community has given to the business.

She said: 'The community have been unbelievable. The first day we came in here, there was nothing here and people came with Super Sers, heaters, tables, chairs, coffee, scones and that has been constant - somebody even brought in banana bread to us this morning.

'A neighbour even did our graphics on the window. Facebook has been full of offers of everything, including laptops. It's like what Ireland used to be years ago and it's still out there and sometimes it takes a crisis to see it. It's been really heart-warming.

'It's the main reason I'm talking to you today, just to thank everyone for their support and say go raibh mile maith agaibh.

'They have helped us, it's hard to talk about it without getting upset but only for them we wouldn't be here.

'People are coming in the door, even if they aren't looking for a prescription, they are coming in to wish us well. The support has been second to none - we've been spoiled with stuff.'

Nuala added: 'Another thing I would like to get across is the staff here have been terrific. They have put in extra hours to get us back to normal.'

The local pharmacist said that the last fortnight or so has made her realise just how appreciated her 14 years of dedicated service to this community has been and it's been an overwhelming realisation.

She said: 'I underestimated what people thought of us. We kill ourselves trying to do stuff for people and you do get thanked but I was overwhelmed by that side of things and that people are much more grateful than I would have ever thought. The blood, sweat and tears have been worth it because we are really seeing the reward now - it's fantastic.

'People are very good and we always knew that but they have excelled themselves this time.'

Nuala hopes the unit that fell victim to the fire will ready for fit-out as soon as Christmas and it will take some time after that to fit it out again and restock it but the pharmacist is eager to move back there as soon as possible, leaving her temporary home available to a new tenant.

Reflecting on those who set the fire that devastated her business, she said: 'The magnitude of this thing and how many people it is affected is incredible. I'd love to know if whoever did this have any idea how much disruption they have caused and stress, I don't know if they do.'

She said that the incident is symptomatic of other kinds of antisocial behaviour that is being experienced on an all too frequent basis.

Nuala said: 'This has hugely affected me but I'm thinking more about the people out there that are coming into help us every day who are dealing with stuff like this too from eggs thrown at houses or car windows smashed, if this could nip that kind of thing in the bud then that would be good.

'I hope they can wise up to the fact that they are causing so much disruption and upset in their community, it would be a great thing.

What does it take for them to realise that? Will someone have to be injured the next time?'

As to her future, Nuala said: 'I'm so busy that I haven't thought about the future much but I'm hopeful.'

She added: 'We are back and stronger and more resilient than ever - it's been a character-forming experience.'

So, if you need the services of a good pharmacist, then you could do worse than drop in on Donabate Pharmacy over the next few weeks and help get this much loved local business back on its feet and doing what it does best - serving its community.
Gorey Family Resource Centre on Charlotte Row has lined up a series events to coincide with the '16 Days of Action Opposing Violence Against Women' campaign organised by Women's Aid.

The aim of the campaign is to build better awareness and understanding of the complex nature of domestic violence in the community and online. All are welcome to call in to the centre for the following events:

Moment of Remembrance: Friday, November 24, 12.30 p.m. This is a nationwide moment of remembrance and reflection for women and children murdered by domestic violence in Ireland.

Taking Care of You. Skincare with Oriflame: Tuesday, November 28, 11 a.m.

Walk and Talk: Wednesday, December 6, 10.30 a.m. A walk in the park followed by tea and scones and a viewing of 'Women's Voices' video.

Wexford Women's Refuge information morning: Thursday, December 7, 11 a.m. Wexford Women's Refuge representatives will talk about their work and the service they offer.
Permission has been granted by An Bord Pleanala to allow Benny and Tom Ireton to extend Ireton's mobile home park in Seamount, Ardamine, by an additional 82 bays, after an appeal was lodged July last year.

The appeal was made by John and Mairead Gerrard from Dundrum in Dublin, who own the chalet immediately bounding the site to the north.

Following an inspection by Daire McDevitt from An Bord Pleanala, he recommended that permission be granted subject to conditions.

A total of 82 bays will be installed, a new western boundary wall, railings with screening to the eastern boundary, designated open space and a play area, visitor parking spaces and connection to existing foul and surface water mains. Access to the site will be through the mobile home park.

In their appeal they requested for the northern boundary fence be moved six metres away from their chalet towards the headland; two mobile homes be removed due to loss of privacy; the access road be moved 10 metres away due to noise disturbance. They also had drainage concerns as the site is two metres above the appellant's site.

The applicants, Tom and Benny Ireton, submitted a detailed response, which is refuting the points made.

They said that the Wexford County Council was being offered the six metre strip of land to allow adequate space for the coastal pathway in accordance with the Courtown and Riverchapel Local Area Plan.

Meanwhile, they further claimed there is no loss of privacy stating there was enough separation distance between the mobile homes and the chalet. They further said a report was done and a detailed design for the surface water drainage was proposed by consulting engineers and considered acceptable.
Primary school pupils from the locality were given a very good idea of the vibrancy of life at Colaiste Bhride Carnew, as the school threw open its doors for its annual open night recently.

The prospective students, parents and visitors were treated to an impressive display of students' work, and they learned more about the many extra-curricular activities on offer at the school.

They enjoyed performances by the school concert band, and the primary school pupils were invited to try their hand at science experiments and challenges in the maths and English areas.

The school's student representatives told the visitors all about their involvement in the various projects and committees such as Green Schools, development education, Student Council, library and Meitheal programme.

In her address to the assembled guests, principal Linda Dunne outlined the many curricular and extra-curricular initiatives that the school has embarked upon in recent years. She also spoke about the supports that the school offers to new students.

Some of the students acted as guides on the night, and gave the parents and students a detailed tour of the school.

The visitors also got a sneak peek at the upcoming school musical 'Rock of Ages - High School Version' which runs in Carnew from Thursday, December 14, to Saturday, December 16.
Wonderful and amazing things happen when we bring diversity together to help make our world a better place. An example of this, which our church is privileged to be a part of, is our relationship with a refugee family new to our Missoula community. I have invited one of our Refugee Mentor Team leaders to share the experiences of this team over the past year  I thank Rev. Debbie Schmidt for sharing this overview!  Rev. John Daniels, pastor, First United Methodist Church

The call came just after Easter. A motley group of us from First United Methodist Church in Missoula had tentatively volunteered to help support a refugee family. We expected them to arrive in six to eight weeks from somewhere on the African continent. Some of us on our team didnt know each other  we were old-time Missoulians and recent arrivals to the community, too. We were young, old, working, retired. Mothers, grandmothers, teachers, pastors, social workers. What united us, and still does, was a heart for people forcibly displaced from their homelands by war and persecution.

Until the call came, we thought we had time to learn how to welcome refugees and get to know one another, to trust one another on our team. But instead we had two days! Our family was arriving from Eritrea via Israel, and we had to make sure they had a home to in which to land and thrive. Not possible, we thought.

Then we remembered the roller-coaster events of Jesus death and resurrection just recalled in church. His ragtag disciples didnt think who they were called to be was possible either. And yet they became Easter people for the world. And so could we.

Scared, exhilarated, anxious, hopeful and determined, we shopped for special foods, gathered household goods, collected money, took training from the International Rescue Committee and connected with our wonderful Soft Landing organization, and readied an apartment for our family  a mother from Ethiopia, a father from Eritrea (who met in a refugee camp as teenagers) and their three children. And they arrived in Missoula  beautiful and tired, and the adventure began for us together.

Almost seven months have flown by  full of triumphs and challenges. Both parents are working, and all three children are in public school or Head Start. We are so thankful for Missoula Country Public Schools and wonderful teachers and counselors. Without exception, folks in our community have been welcoming and helpful and full of grace in working with our family. Is it easy to be a refugee family in Missoula? No, it is not. We in the mentor team get discouraged sometimes, along with our family. And we celebrate the many accomplishments too. The hospitality our family offers to us and others is extravagant. Their tea and coffee are beyond anything we can make.

And so, as we prepare to celebrate that most American of holidays Thanksgiving together, for what are we most thankful? Wherever we come from I believe that we are created from and for love. Love isnt always easy or without cost, but it is why we are here  to love, to serve and to heal. We have grown together in love, perseverance and community  all around. God called our team, each of us with unique gifts and skills and love, to welcome the stranger, the refugee  no matter their race, religion or country. And we are grateful to be a part of this adventure in saying yes to Gods call. Along the way we have become good friends with each other and our family.

As with any family Thanksgiving, there will be little irritations, some difficulties. But there will be good food, and lots of love, too, around a bigger table. New traditions will be learned and shared. For this we give great thanks.

What about you? Might you be called to become part of this lovely expansion of the table in our community of Missoula? More families from Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq and Syria are on their way, we hope and anticipate. The International Rescue Committee and Soft Landing Missoula would welcome your compassion and service. Maybe next year your Thanksgiving table will be bigger and more blessed because of it.

If you would like to learn more about becoming an IRC Family Mentor Volunteer, volunteer training occurs once a month, on the third Wednesday of each month, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the IRC (Solstice Building, 1535 Liberty Lane, Missoula, MT 59808).
Former Olympian and VHI ambassador David Gillick is calling on walkers, joggers and runners to join him at the Johnstown parkrun on Saturday, November 25, when the sponsors will host a special event to celebrate their partnership with parkrun Ireland.

Local communities are supported in organising free, weekly, timed 5k runs every Saturday at 9.30 a.m., and parkrun events are open to all ages and abilities.

In addition to the normal parkrun that will take place at Johnstown Castle, Olympian Gillick will be on hand to lead the warm-up for participants before completing the 5k course alongside newcomers and seasoned parkrunners alike.

Vhi will be helping participants refuel after their morning exercise and providing refreshments in the relaxation area at the finish line. Free massage balls will be given out on a first come, first served basis, and a qualified physiotherapist will also be on hand to guide participants through a post-event stretching routine.

Johnstown parkrun event director, John Dier, is extending a warm welcome to newcomers. 'The community at Johnstown parkrun prides itself on being welcoming to all, so if you've never completed a parkrun before or have just let your parkrun habit slip, I'd encourage you to give it a go this weekend,' he said.

'Vhi will be providing an extra level of support to participants and volunteers so Saturday is a great opportunity to get active! Just register at parkrun.ie and we'll see you at the beautiful Johnstown Castle for what should be a brilliant morning.'

'I'm really looking forward to helping and encouraging everyone in Johnstown on Saturday morning,' David Gillick said. 'This is a brilliant way to get some exercise, socialise and generally get your weekend off to a great start.

'I'm a regular parkrunner myself, completing the course with my family when I can. In Johnstown on Saturday morning you'll see walkers and runners of all ages and abilities so don't worry if you haven't run or walked 5k previously.'

Over 100,000 registered participants have run more than 3.6 million kilometres at parkrun Ireland events since it started here in November, 2012. Originally launched in the U.K. in 2004, parkrun is the single biggest participation running event globally with nearly three million registered participants and an average of 165,000 weekly participants.

To register for a parkrun near you visit www.parkrun.ie New registrants should select their chosen event as their home location. You will then receive a personal barcode which acts as your free entry to any parkrun event worldwide.
CAB and Garda officers overlooking some of the cars which were seized in the Killarney area on Tuesday morning

In one of the largest operations of its kind ever seen in the county the Criminal Assets Bureau and Gardai launched a major crackdown on a Killarney based organised crime gang in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The joint operation - codenamed 'Operation Tarmac' - began at 6am on Tuesday when a force of over 130 CAB officers and local gardai - backed by the regional Armed Response Unit - began a series of co-ordinated pre-dawn raids across Killarney.

In all, 11 houses were raided - several of them in the Ballyspillane Estate - as part of the operation which, in Kerry terms, was unprecedented in its scale.

Following extensive searches of the properties CAB officers seized nine luxury cars and jeeps; over 100,000 in Euro and Sterling cash and a large amount of jewellery including Rolex and Cartier Watches.

The seized cars included BMW X5 jeeps, which can sell for between 75,000 and 90,000 second-hand; luxury Mercedes models; Audis and at least one high end Volkswagon.

Gardai said the cars seized had an estimated combined value of close to 500,000.

A large amount of documentation, which gardai believe relates to the proceeds of crime, was also seized during the course of the searches.

Tuesday morning's operation followed a major joint investigation by CAB and the Kerry Garda Division which dates back over a year and remains ongoing.

It is understood that a number of bank accounts belonging to the targets of the operation have also been frozen as a result of Tuesday's CAB action.

Further investigations continued throughout the Killarney area on Tuesday afternoon.

No arrests were made as part of the operation.

The cash, cars and jewellery seized by CAB officers on Tuesday will now be removed to Dublin for valuation.

CAB forensic accountants will also carry out an in-depth investigation into all the financial documents that were seized.

The ongoing investigation is also expected to involve officials from the Department of Social Protection.

Information from the seized documents will be used to assess the scale of the gang's outstanding assets and seize them.

As such, further raids and searches have not been ruled out and these may not be confined to the Killarney area.

'Operation Tarmac' remains an open and ongoing investigating and it is expected to continue for several months.

Killarney Chief Superintendent Flor Murphy said the gang involved could best be described as group of rogue tradespeople who operate across the country targeting vulnerable, often elderly, people in isolated areas.

The organised gang is centred around an extended Irish Traveller family which is based in Killarney. Several of the family members are well known to gardai

Typically the gang's members target vulnerable people and get them to commit to home improvement work - such as laying tarmac on their driveways or clearing gutters - which is either not completed or done in a slipshod fashion.

The victims are then threatened and forced to hand over large sums of money, often tens of thousands of Euro.

The gang is believed to have targeted vulnerable homeowners all over the country in this manner, generating vast sums of money in the process. A legal representative of some of those targeted in the raids indicated that some of the seizures may be challenged.
At Wexford County Council on Thursday morning at the signing of the Letter of Intention to establish a UNECE Centre of Excellence in Enniscorthy were Tomas O'Leary, MD nZebra; Tom Enright, chief executive, Wexford County Council; Cllr John Hegarty, chairperson, Wexford County Council; Eoghan Murphy TD, Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government and Scott Foster, director for sustainable energy, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe

A deal which will see Enniscorthy to the absolute forefront of the sustainable energy revolution was officially signed in Wexford County Council headquarters on Thursday.

Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government Eoghan Murphy travelled to Wexford to oversee the signing of a 'memorandum of understanding' by UN Director of Economic Commission for Europe Scott Foster, Chairman of Wexford County Council John Hegarty, Chief Executive of Wexford County Council Tom Enright and Managing Director of nZEBRA (nearly Zero Energy Buildings Resource Agency) Tomas O'Leary.

The deal will see a European Centre of Excellence established on council land at Killagoley which will provide education in High Performance Buildings to students from all over the world and help develop standards that will improve energy efficiency in buildings and dramatically reduce emissions.

The centre in Enniscorthy will join with other centres scheduled to be built in New York and Vancouver and the deal was signed beneath the backdrop of US, Canadian, Irish and United Nations flags.

The design of the proposed Enniscorthy Centre is at an advanced stage and planning permission for the 37,000 sq. ft., structure is expected to be lodged with Wexford County Council in early December. It is hoped construction will commence in early March 2018 and that the Centre will be operational by the end of next year.

While in Wexford Minister Murphy also officially opened Ireland's Inaugural World nZEBRA Forum in Clayton White's Hotel, which was attended by over 200 delegates from both at home and abroad.

The Forum dealt with all aspects of nZEB (nearly Zero Energy Buildings) and the implications for the construction industry after the mandatory introduction of nZEB compliance regulations in 2018 for all public buildings and 2020 for all other forms of construction.

Minister Murphy said it was fitting the Forum was taking place in Wexford, the county where the first nearly Zero Energy Buildings local authority housing scheme was developed.

He described the scheme as an 'exemplar one' which demonstrated the very real quality of life benefits that the mandatory nZEB requirements, which his Department is currently working on, will have for tenants and homeowners.

Minister Murphy pointed out that from December 2020, all new buildings in Ireland and across Europe will require to be nZEB compliant, while new buildings owned and occupied by Public Authorities will be required to achieve this standard by the end of next year.

Affirming that the public sector is required to lead by example in all areas of energy efficiency, the Minister said he was very impressed to see that public authorities like Wexford County Council have decided to be even more proactive and to support nZEB developments well in advance of any legal requirement for them to do so.

The Minister went on to deal with a number of issues including the National Planning Framework, Climate Change and the transition to Electric Vehicles before concluding by saying he was in no doubt that, with the private and public sectors, working together Ireland will achieve a zero carbon future for the generations to come.
A New Ross man who lost his sight aged 33 as a result of Diabetic Retinopathy has joined a national campaign urging people not to place obstacles and cars in the way of people with visual impairments.

Joe McPhillips is backing the National Council for the Blind of Ireland initiative which was launched in early November.

Joe said: 'I know people mean well but they have to be aware that sometimes their actions make life hell for people with sight loss. Parking on footpaths is a practise that has to be stamped out. People need to have consideration and realise that while they may be able to get around with no bother, those of us with sight loss are experiencing huge difficulties as a result of their actions.'

Joe, who contributed to the NCBI' Clear Our Paths' campaign video, said: 'These things make our lives hell. One of the biggest barriers for people with any level of sight loss is fear and if you are impeded by obstacles as you try and get out and about, the fear only increases. Local authorities should put proper traffic management plans in place and clean up trip hazards.'

The sight loss agency video shows the difficulties that people with impaired vision face on a daily basis, as they try to navigate their way through towns and cities countrywide.

Obstacles include cars parked on footpaths, bins in the middle of paths, overhanging branches and dog litter - all of which pose huge problems and potential danger for people with sight loss.

NCBI is urging people to place specially designed stickers on offending vehicles and bins in a bid to increase awareness on the issue.

Elaine Howley, Director of Policy and Advocacy with NCBI, said: 'We are asking people to place our specially designed stickers on any offending vehicles or bins that they come across. The hashtag for this campaign is "#Clear Our Paths".'

The NCBI is also looking to the public to post photos or video footage they have on their own social media channels.
Philip Wallace from Duncannon was named the new chairperson of Hook Tourism at the body's AGM in Neville's bar in Fethard-on-Sea last week.

Past chairman David Neville was praised for his work with the body. He reflected on how far Hook Tourism had progressed since 2010 and thanked Wexford County Council for their ongoing support, highlighting the importance funding is to the success of the rural community scheme. Mr Neville also thanked the members of Hook Tourism, the DSP, TUS Programme, the Rural Social Scheme, Ballycullane Horsewood CE Scheme, past and present directors, local businesses and people in the community for their continuous support of Hook Tourism and its endeavours.

Mr Wallace of Duncannon Beach Holiday Park was then welcomed in as the new chair to the board of Hook Tourism.

Guest speakers on the night included Norma Quinsey of Visit Wexford who gave an interesting presentation outlining the importance of Wexford tourism providers working together with Ireland's Ancient East brand in order to grow visitor numbers to the region.

Emmett Stafford of Stafford McLoughlin Archaeology gave an overview of the works currently being carried out at Duncannon Fort using the 150,000 grant received from BIM (FLAG) funding. The funds are being used for restoration and structural repairs within the fort which will allow greater access for guided tours in 2018.

Signage panels are also being developed for an ecology trail. Emmet also highlighted Duncannon Fort as a significant asset to the Hook Peninsula and the importance of its continued development.

Appreciation and thanks was extended on behalf of the board and its members to outgoing directors Peter Wheeler, Chrissy Harper and Thomas Stafford. Sinead Kidd, Graham Doyle of the Irish Experience and Richard Finn were welcomed as new directors to the board. See www.hooktourism.com for Hook Tourism information.
Secondary school students across Co Wexford will celebrate College Awareness Week by attending Waterford Institute of Technology's (WIT) first 'College Awareness Day' which gives secondary school students a taste of college life.

WIT, in conjunction with the national College Awareness Week campaign will support students of all ages to become 'college ready' by raising awareness of the benefits of going to college. There will be an hourly talk/workshop on how to become college ready including presentations on college life, an expo area and a chance to explore the campus.

Claire Holden from WIT's outreach team said: 'We are delighted to be part of a nationwide campaign to promote the importance of post-secondary education. There are lots of options out there and College Awareness Week encourages people of all ages to consider further education as part of their future.

'College Awareness Day is a good introduction to campus life as Wednesday, November 22, is a teaching day for WIT and our students will be attending classes as normal. It is also an opportunity to hear about our new 'common entry' courses, which give students time to choose what they would like to specialise in.'

Overall College Awareness Week aims to inspire and inform all students about the importance of having a post-secondary education plan. It advocates for students to have the choice to pursue the course best suited to their interests, abilities and dreams.

Schools can book online at www.wit.ie/caw2017.

WIT's traditional Schools' Open Day takes place on Friday, January 19, followed by a Saturday Open Day for all. One-hour campus tours are bookable online at www.wit.ie/campustours year round. 'Try' events such as Try Nursing, Try Business, and Try Sport are also run to help prospective students discover if a certain discipline is for them.

'The difference between College Awareness Day and our Schools' Open Day is that College Awareness Day gives people a taste of college life, and helps overcome fears they may have, whereas the Open Day gives prospective students a chance to ask question is about courses they're interested in.'
Three Wexford writers, and another, a lady based in the United States but with strong connections to the county, feature in the recently-published Ireland's Own 2017 Anthology of Winning Irish Short Stories, the eighth annual collection from Ireland's leading family magazine which has been produced in Wexford town since 1902.

Thirty seven stories and memoirs were selected from an entry of over 500 in the annual Ireland's Own writing competitions, including the major prize winners and those that were highly commended.

Kevin McDermott from Kyle, Crossabeg, was a prizewinner with his piece The Lad Who Played With Meccano, about a classmate from what was considered a posh family; their paths diverged after school until Kevin saw him again in London years later.

Born in Cavan, Kevin knew London well as he served as a fire fighter there for 25 years before retiring to Wexford. He is an accomplished musician and storyteller, specialising in comic recitations, and is a regular MC and performer with the Wexford Folk Orchestra.

He published his autobiography some years ago, The Time of the Corncrake, and recorded a CD of recitations, Many Miles of Potholed Road that included three of his own compositions.

Tina Sweeney from Eden House, Oylegate, was the overall short story winner two years ago and she appears in the anthology for the third year in a row with her story Freedom, a fictional piece based around the true events of the 1916 Rising in Enniscorthy.

She began writing in the 1980s and took to the keyboards again in recent years after a long hiatus.

Siobhan Flynn, from Clonroche, makes her first appearance in the anthologies although she has had some stories published in Ireland's Own.

Her entry is The Solution. She works with Wexford County Council.

It is about the struggles of an old couple living on an isolated farm, beset by advancing age poor ill-health after sharing a lifetime of hard work. He is ill but is desperate to stay at home despite the concerns of the district nurse; she finds herself considering even more desperate solutions to their plight.

Hilary Daly Castine is living in Parker, Colorado, in the USA but has very strong links with the Tomsollagh and Monageer areas where her father still lives and she frequently visits.

She was born in London but the family moved back to County Wexford when she was in her teens and she worked in retail in Enniscorthy before marrying in Monageer and emigrating to the States.

The Last Summer is a fiction but very much based on childhood memories of holidays spent on a county Wexford farm. She says she learned the art of storytelling through her parents, Peter and Mary Daly, who filled her childhood with their stories.

The other 34 stories and memoirs in the new anthology, are from all over Ireland, London and the Channel Islands and include tales of love, loss and nostalgia, all laced with a good dash of humour.

President John F. Kennedy features twice with memories of his visit to Wexford and Ireland in 1963, and then his death just a few months later in November.

The foreword is written by popular columnist, author and publican Billy Keane, son of legendary playwright, John B. He recalls:

'My Dad had his first piece published in Ireland's Own and he told me the recognition gave him great confidence. There was also a small cheque he said, but a more likely a postal order in those days which was a big deal for a small boy and the first money Dad ever earned as a writer.

'We are a nation of story tellers and talkers.. the stories and memoirs in this anthology follow on in a noble tradition,' Billy Keane writes.

If you are among the many thousands of weekly loyal readers of Ireland's Own, you will love this book, but it should also appeal to a much wider audience and it would certainly make an ideal Christmas present for Irish people at home and abroad.

The Ireland's Own 2017 Anthology of Winning Irish Short Stories is published by Wexford company, Three Sisters Press, at 14.99, and is widely available through bookshops or on the internet through www.irelandsown.ie

It is also available directly from the offices of People Newspapers.
A bipartisan group of western senators led by Montanas Steve Daines and Jon Tester have asked federal trade officials to confront Indias imposition of 50 percent tariffs on pulse exports.

Pulses include crops like peas, lentils and beans. India is the top export market for U.S. dried peas, averaging 200,000 tons a year.

The imposition of such an increase without notice has caused cash dry pea prices to collapse in the United States, the senators wrote to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on Nov. 17. Furthermore, exporters with shipments currently en route will suffer severe financial hardship when the tariff is applied to their product upon arrival.

The letter was also signed by senators James Risch, R-Idaho; Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.; John Hoeven, R-N.D.; Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Mike Crapo, R-Idaho; and Patty Murray D-Wash.

Montana has become the largest producer of pulse crops in the United States in recent years with 1.16 million acres harvested in 2017, nearly triple the amount harvested seven years ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Sagging wheat prices are the most-often-cited reason Montana farmers are planting peas, lentils and garbanzo beans. The price of wheat has fallen from record highs in 2008 to 15-year lows this year. Wheat has lost 1.2 million Montana acres to other crops since 2014, with most of those acres going to peas and lentils. Northeastern Montana is where the switch to pulse crops started a decade ago.

Indias move also affected Canadian agricultural markets. Canada exports more than a million tons of peas worth more than $400 million a year to India. Before Indias Nov. 8 decision, Canada faced no tariffs on its pulse deliveries.

The senators asked that India reverse its tariff decision or at least delay it for 90 days so shipments under existing contracts could get their original value. If that didnt work, they asked the Department of Agriculture to buy peas intended for India during the current marketing year as surplus commodities.

Indias domestic farmers produced a record 23 million tons of pulses in 2017, 20 percent more than the previous high mark. It also imports about 6.6 million tons more. That has depressed prices internally, prompting the Indian government to seek ways of supporting its own agricultural sector.
A Swedish noir crime series in the vein of The Killing was shot, in part, in Great Island recently.

Producer and actor Joi Johannsson has been shooting the six part TV mini series 'Rig 45' directed by Per Hanefjord, in Dublin and Great Island.

The crew were based in the SSE owned Great Island power plant over a few weeks, filming.

The crime thriller is set on an oil rig. Its plot centres on nine people trapped on the rig and a there is a murderer among them.

Produced by the Swedish production company Mopar Media Group, its cast members include: Gary Lewis, David Dencik, Lisa Henni, Soren Malling, Catherine Walker and other notable actors.

Johannsson is an award winning Scandinavian actor born and raised in Iceland. He has appeared in over 40 international films and TV productions. The most recent being 'Fortitude 2' (UK), where he joined an international cast lead by Dennis Quaid.
The soaring cost of rent as seen in the latest Daft.ie report coupled with a shortage of supply in Sligo City and County is a major concern for local Focus Ireland Manager Mary Jameson.

Focus Ireland has called for more urgent Government action to tackle rocketing rents as the new Daft report shows rents have shot up to a new all-time record of 1,200 per month, with rents increasing for 21 consecutive quarters, nationally. The charity warned that, despite the Strategy for the Rental Sector published 12 months ago, Government action to address the rental crisis has had very limited impact so far.

Focus Ireland Sligo Manager Mary Jameson said: "The DAFT report clearly show that actions the Government has taken have not been implemented effectively."

The average rent in Sligo stands at 665, or 8.5% higher than the same time in 2016 or nearly 28% more than when rents were at their lowest locally. In the town and county, one and two bedroom homes are the category of properties most impacted by rising rents, with increases of 8% locally. One beds average a rental price of 494 and two bed houses are more expensive at 563.

Overall, September across Connacht and Ulster, the last quarter was the 17th time in the last 20 quarters that rents have risen locally. The DAFT report also found a continuing drop in the number of units available, down 16% from last year.

Ms Jameson said: "We are calling on the Minister to publish the full review of Rebuilding Ireland. We need a coherent and comprehensive approach, not just a series of press statements, comments and leaks.

"The strategy must include immediate and effective actions to ease the rental crisis, boost building and also get more vacant homes back into the housing stock."

Ms Jameson added: "Our frontline staff here in Sligo are still dealing with people who have become homeless from the rental sector as rents have been hiked up and they can't afford them. There needs to be a much wider range of Government actions taken to keep protecting tenants and keep them in their homes."
Martin Kivlehan had a few close friends who called in to see him on a daily basis. They looked out for each other.

They sat around, listened to music and watched television and more often than not they shared a drink.

They would borrow small amounts of money from each other, never leaving themselves stuck.

He asked one friend for a tenner on the week-end of his tragic killing. His friend didn't hesitate in giving it to him, saying he didn't mind as he had a good day at the bookies on that Bank Holiday week-end in August 2015.

Martin was a quiet, inoffensive man who was well known and loved in his community. He was one of a family of seven.

This was the picture painted of the late Mr Kivlehan (59) at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin where a 30-year-old man, Keith Brady is on trial for his murder.

When his body was discovered, lying on his sitting room floor in his apartment which had all the appearances of being ransacked, his two close friends were overcome by emotion and started crying, the court was told.

The tragic death of his mother had an effect on Martin and in recent years he began to drink more than he used to.

He ended up in hospital on numerous occasions and wasn't able to get about as much as he used to. He had problems with his legs.

His friends didn't forget him though and instead of Martin going to them they would call into him.

He had a partner of many years, Kay and his brother, Christopher was a frequent caller too to Martin's apartment on Holborn Street, next door to the MACE shop where he was a regular customer.

Christopher kept an eye on his brother he told the court. He had a key to the apartment but would always knock before entering.

When he did he would scan the room to see who was there. More often than not there would be those two or three regular close friends and the place was always kept clean and tidy.

Martin didn't have a bank account and it was Christopher who paid for his SKY television.

Martin would give Christopher the money for this later and it was another reason to pop in and see him.

It was Christopher who was contacted after one of Martin's friends, Dermot 'Mossy' Conlon found Martin lying on the floor of his sitting room.

Christopher told the trial before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury of seven women and five men that prior to his death he didn't call as often to see his brother.

Martin began to depend on him more and more, he said, often getting six to seven phonecalls a day from him.

He eased off calling to see Martin so that he would be able to help himself more.

Martin had been in and out of hospital with drink related difficulties. He once broke his ankle.

In the space of two years, Christopher reckoned he had been hospitalised about 14 times.

Martin was drinking all through his life but the talented musician and carpenter was able to manage it at times, said Christopher, who is the youngest in the family.

The eldest was Padraic who passed away in May 2016.

While he was known as Mattie to his friends he was always called Martin by his family said Christopher and he was very close to him, calling four to five times a week just to check on him.

"Martin taught me music. He would sit for hours chatting about music. He had a great love of music and so did I.

"His face would light up whenever I would speak of music," said Christopher.

Some time around July 22nd, Christopher recalled calling to the house and seeing five to six people there that day. There was a girl there drinking with them which he found strange as she was so young.

"I just scanned the faces and saw her and I thought it was unusual," he said.

He will never forget the call he got from 'Mossy' Conlon on the Bank Holiday Monday, August 3rd.

"He seemed confused. He told me that Martin was dead on the floor.

"He said: It's Matt. I think he's dead. I'm not sure. Come quickly. I don't want Kay to walk in on him," Mossy had said.

Christopher left immediately but traffic held him up for a few minutes in O'Connell Street.

He entered the apartment and saw his brother lying on the floor, the lower half of his body covered by a white duvet.

He was very cold and there was blood around his nostrils. There were some tablets loose on a nearby coffee table.

"That was out of the ordinary," said Christopher. A stereo was also on the ground and presses were open.

There was a black refuse bag of empty beer cans in the sitting room. This too was unusual remarked Christopher.

"These would never have been in full view before. They would always have been around the corner," he said.

There was something else he noticed.

"It was very silent. There was always a radio on in the background," said Christopher.

He hadn't any credit on his phone and went to the MACE shop next door to ask Trevor Cawley to dial 999.

"I forgot that I could still have rang from my own phone," he said.

He went on to described his brother as an inoffensive, jolly man whom everyone loved.

"He was witty and kind. Everyone would say the same," he said.

It was at 1.22pm on August 3rd 2015 that Garda Maria Lavin at Sligo Garda Station's control room received a 999 call from a distressed Christopher Kivlehan who said he had found his brother dead.

Christopher felt "it didn't look right" and wanted the Gardai to come quickly.

Garda Lavin dispatched Garda David Hannon and Garda David McDonagh to the scene.

Earlier that Bank Holiday morning at around 11.30am, Dermot 'Mossy' Conlon walked to Martin's house.

They knew each other for over 30 years. They had grown up together. Most days he called to see Martin, spending two to three hours at a time.

"We looked after each other," said Mr Conlon who referred to another friend, Maurice Wynne lending money to Martin the evening before.

Mr Conlon knocked on the door as usual but got no answer.

"I pulled on the handle and the door opened. Normally, it would be locked," he said.

The flat, where Martin had lived alone, was in total darkness.

"Normally he'd have the curtains open when he was up," said Mr Conlon. He stepped further into the apartment.

"I called out, Matt? What's the craic with you? There was no answer. I then put on the light," he said.

He saw his friend lying on the floor in the sitting room between an arm chair and the television. His head was tilted to one side.

"I touched his face and blood came on to my hand. I didn't know where it came from. I was shocked," he said.

Mr Conlon, whom the court heard, had vision and hearing difficulties, said he thought Martin had fallen over and hurt himself.

He left the flat and rang a friends asking them to come and help him to lift Matt up.

He returned to the apartment with Maurice Wynne.

"Maurice checked for a pulse by holding Martin's wrist and said, Matt is gone.

"We were both shocked and we both began crying," said Mr Conlon.

He went outside to have a cigarette. The drop of blood which had been on his left hand he wiped clean with his other hand.

The two men walked to the home of Martin's partner, Kay (Rooney) Ennis, but she wasn't there.

Christopher Kivlehan was then contacted and told his brother had passed away. Mr Conlon soon after received a call from the Gardai.

Mr Conlon said it had been mostly him and Maurice and a couple of others of that age group who visited Martin.

Mr Wynne told the trial he had been a very good friend of Martin's. They had gone to school and later did work together.

He was a plumber and Martin, a carpenter, would sub him some work.

He last saw his friend on Friday, July 31st. He often checked on him, bringing him food as Martin didn't cook.

Mr Wynne remembers being in the house that Friday and Martin playing the banjo. Martin loved music, especially country and western.

Mr Conlon was also in the apartment that day. There was a programme on the All Ireland Fleadh on television and they sat and watched it while having some cans.

Mr Wynne left the apartment at 3.30pm. On Sunday, August 2nd he spoke with Martin by phone at around 5pm.

"I told him I had some fish for him and he asked me for the loan of 20 and I told him that I'd give to him as I had a good day at the bookies that day," he said.

At around 12.15pm on Monday he got a call from Mr Conlon who, in a distressed state, said he couldn't get Matt up and asked him for helping in lifting him.

When he arrived at the flat between 12.30pm and 1pm he saw that Mr Kivlehan was lying on his back and there was a knife in his right hand close to his neck.

He checked for a pulse and told Mr Conlon that Martin was gone.

Mr Wynne said he saw tablets on the bed and he initially thought Martin had taken an overdose.

He told Mr Conlon not to touch anything and they left the apartment.

Mr Wynne said Martin was a good friend over the years.

"He was drinking too much in recent years and said that he was going to kill himself and said he didn't care.

"I felt this was due to the tragic death of his mother," he said.

Mr Wynne also spoke how some weeks earlier he had been in he flat and saw Janice Brady there.

"I didn't like her. I had heard she was bad news and I didn't want to be in her company," he said.
The jury of seven women and five men sitting at the Central Criminal Court at the Courts of Criminal Justice in Dublin had to hastily familiarise themselves with Sligo town during the course of the trial.

Last Wednesday they viewed an hour long compilation of CCTV footage of both Janice and Keith Brady walking the streets of Sligo both before and after the death of 59-year-old Martin Kivlehan from 7pm on Sunday 2nd August 2015 to 1pm on Monday 3rd August.

The murder accused, Keith Brady, was seen first walking in and out of the foyer of St Joseph's Church, Ballytivnan at 7.20pm wearing grey tracksuit bottoms and a black and patterned grey hoodie.

Brady and his sister, Janice Brady were then seen five minutes later at Topaz Service Station on the Bundoran Road with a large amount of coin change. They were seen later on Bridge Street, Tesco Arcade, Wine Street, Adelaide Street, Quay Street, Hyde Bridge and then Holborn Hill at 9.21pm.

They are next seen walking back down Holborn Hill at 4.18am on Monday 3rd August. The pair walked back towards the train station at 4.37am.

CCTV footage from Sligo Train Station showed both Janice and Keith entering and exiting the toilets at 8.14am and again at 9.08am. They were seen entering the Pick and Choose shop at 8am, 11.30am then back to the train station toilet at 11.50am where Janice was seen wearing a different colour hoodie.

At 12.50pm both were seen quickly entering and exiting the door to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in Sligo Cathedral.
Author Christopher Power, who will give the talk, with his book on the history of Kynochs in Arklow

The Latest Wicklow Historical Society lecture will see Christopher Power talk about the Kynoch's Munitions Factory, which operated in Arklow from 1895 to 1920.

In its 25-year life span, Kynoch's was the foremost industrial innovation of the south east corner of Ireland. Its extraordinary story begins with its surprising development in Arklow after it had originally been intended to be developed in Brittas Bay.

The lecture will also cover its controversial and politically motivated decline. The factory's history coincided with a period of huge change in Ireland's social and political fortunes. The Boer War, The First World War and The War of Independence all coincided with the factory's mass output of cordite.

Industrial accidents and harsh working conditions as well as a unique economic opportunity never encountered before in the county's history, all form part of the Kynoch's story. Modern employee welfare and development are also features of its time in Arklow.

The biggest loss of life in Ireland during The First World War occurred on September 21, 1917, when 27 workers were killed in an explosion at the factory.

Christopher Power is the son of Arklow historian Pat Power and author of 'Arklow's Industrial Revolution', a book covering the history of the Kynoch's munitions factory in Arklow.

The talk is on next Monday, November 27, at 8pm in the De La Salle Pastoral Centre. Admission is free and a donation box will be available for voluntary donations to help offset costs.
The Wicklow Syria Appeal will host a gala concert this weekend to raise much-needed funds and awareness for the project.

The fundraiser on Sunday, November 26, takes place in St Patrick's Church at 7.30 p.m and features choirs from local primary schools, along with a variety of mixed voice adult choirs. Guest soloist Lorna Breen will also perform.

The concert will be directed by Tony Norton and doors will open at 7 p.m, for a 7.30 p.m start. Tickets are 10 or 20 for a family ticket.

The Wicklow Syria Appeal (WSA) was formed to assist in some small way those affected by the Syrian conflict, and in light of Wicklow town's association with the Syrian Special Olympics team who stayed with local families for the World Special Olympics Games of 2003.

The group recently held a public meeting where co-Chairman Mick Nolan explained their origins and discussed future fundraising activities.

To date, WSA has worked with Transition Year students and fundraised for the Irish NGO GOAL, which is providing humanitarian aid on the ground in Syria along with refugee camps on the borders of that Country.

Wicklow Syria Appeal hopes to bring a Syrian refugee family to live in Wicklow town under a UNHCR Family Reunification Programme. To do this, WSA has partnered with Cork charity Nasc which has experience in this area.

If anyone would like further information or to assist Wicklow Syria Appeal, they can visit www.wicklowsyriaappeal.com or follow the group on Facebook.
A Rathnew native is looking for votes from the public as she longs to be crowned Miss Bikini Ireland 2017.

Aimee Marie Hayden's adventure began back in June during the start of the competition. Over the past few months 35 young women have been brought together to attend photo-shoots, take part in social media days and experience numerous fitness training sessions with Ger Conroy Fitness in Castleknock.

Aimee lives in Rathnew and attended the Dominican College in Wicklow town during her school-years. She is sponsored by Inglot Ireland and is currently the brand ambassador for Havana Skin Clinic in Dundrum and an active Blogger and social media enthusiast.

The 27-year-old says: 'I've grown up in County Wicklow and have spent most of my formative years between school and further education, trying to utilise my interests and talents to empower others to look and feel there best, through make up artistry and personal grooming.

'I have learnt so much about my goals and aspirations with each passing year. I have often been shy about pushing myself into the spotlight but I have found that by challenging myself and trying my best, I have learned to accept opportunities when they present themselves, which has lead me to the Miss Bikini Ireland competition.'

Five girls from the 35 will be selected, with the candidate with the most votes going automatically through, while the remaining four are chosen by text votes and by the judges decision.

The chosen candidate will then represent Ireland at the Swimsuit USA International Competition and will be announced at The Buzz Venue at the Red Cow Inn on December 1.

'I would be thrilled if the name called out is mine. It would be a real privilege to represent girls everywhere in Ireland who have dreams and unfulfilled goals and to encourage them to support one another and develop whatever skills are necessary to fulfil their personal ambition. I would really appreciate all the support I can get so I can represent Ireland,' says Aimee.

To vote for Aimee, text BIKINI 109 to 57003.

Voting closes at 9.30 p.m. on December 1.
A planning application for an upgrade of the sewage system in Blessington is expected to be lodged with Wicklow County Council early in the New Year.

Cllr Gerry O'Neill, along with Baltinglass Municipal District Cathaoirleach, Cllr Vincent Blake, attended a recent meeting in the County Buildings, Wicklow town, with representatives from Irish Water, where both Councillors were provided with an update on sewerage proposals for Blessington and water upgrading works in Dunlavin.

'With regards the sewerage upgrading in Blessington, we were informed that the design works will be completed by the end of January 2018 and there will be an application for planning to Wicklow County Council by February 2018.

'They also informed us that they have already been in contact with housing developers and have agreed that part of the Developers Contribution's fund will be used upfront to go towards the cost of the sewerage upgrading,' said Cllr O'Neill.

There has also been a change of plan regarding plans to upgrade the water supply in Dunlavin.

'It is now proposed to supply the water by local self drilling instead of the bringing the supply from the Ballymore Reservoir,' confirms Cllr O'Neill.

He also welcomes plans to construct 300 houses in Blesisngton, 10 per cent of which will provide social housing.

'A local builder who is a director of Windlin Property Ltd is applying to build 300 houses this month. The company are using the new 'fast track' planning application which means they go direct to An Bord Pleanala using the 2015 'Rebuilding Ireland' for fast track decision making regarding large scale housing schemes consisting of 100 units or more.

Ten per cent of these new houses will be for people on the social housing list.'
Growing numbers of Wicklow patients on hospital waiting lists are travelling to Northern Ireland for surgery under the a new directive which allows them to pay upfront and be refunded later by the HSE.

The EU Cross Border Directive has made it possible to patients on waiting lists for procedures such as hip and knee replacements and cataract removal to have their operations completed in hospitals in Northern Ireland in a matter of weeks.

According to local councillor Pat Fitzgerald a number of people from Arklow and Wicklow have already had successful surgeries.

'I am aware that a number of people have already travelled to the North to have joint replacement surgery and it has been a great success. There is no waiting list and the HSE has made an agreement with Credit Unions so that patients can borrow the money to pay upfront and then replay the loan once the HSE refunds them. It has given people a new lease of life who would otherwise be on waiting lists for months, if not years,' he said.

Wicklow TD Pat Casey said that this avenue is worth considering for people on these long term waiting lists.

'My office deals every week with people who are waiting for over 12 months for serious treatments such as hip and knee replacements. These people experience great pain and discomfort while waiting for these procedures and many do not know that they can avail of private treatment in Northern Ireland which can be then refunded through the EU cross border directive by the HSE.

'While there is some small costs such as travel and accommodation involved the entire cost of the treatment is reimbursed by the HSE under this EU directive. For people in pain this is an avenue worth considering. My information is that Irish Credit Union movement are very agreeable to providing the necessary bridging finance that is needed for this treatment process,' he said.
'Snowy', Ireland's largest snowman, is coming back to visit Wicklow town and now he is even taller than ever.

Last seen in Wicklow town in 2012 when he made international headlines after going on a walk-about, 'Snowy' will be making a return to Wicklow this weekend.

Five years ago he went missing from the top of a flat roof in Fitzwilliam Square during the lead-up to Christmas, with pranksters held responsible for his disappearance.

'Snowy' came to national attention, with a 'Help Find Snowy' page set up on Facebook. Contributors then posted 'photos' of the snowman around the world, including on the Great Wall of China, at the Eiffel Tower and beside Sydney Opera House.

Following a tip off, Gardai discovered an airless Snowy at the Halpin Monument in the early hours of the morning.

'Snowy' will be staying for one day only in Wicklow's Historic Gaol this Saturday in the middle of a magical funfair, especially created for the children of Wicklow. His very good friend Santa will be turning on the lights with him at 4.30 p.m. this Saturday.

The Polar Express train will be taking its first passengers from 12 noon and the magical funfair will be open from 12 noon to 6 p.m.

Wicklow Chamber President, Dianna Sheridan said: 'when we heard recently that there was to be no Christmas activity or Santa in the town this year we flew into overdrive. We contacted Snowy and Santa and have tried to provide a magical experience for the people of Wicklow town.'

Santa will take up residence in a magical funfair located at Wicklow Gaol, which will operate on Saturday and Sunday, December 16 and 17.

Dianna also thanked Cllr Irene Winters, who kindly offered to Chair the Christmas turning on the lights experience and Ed Horgan, the creator of Christmas in Wicklow Town, for the amount of work they both put into festivities.
Blessington has been named as the Most Enterprising Town in Leinster in the 3,000 to 7,000 population category.

The announcement was made at the recent Bank of Ireland National Enterprising Town Awards and comes as a result of a large amount of work by the local Enterprising Town Committee.

Strong local leadership was shown from Blessington & District Forum provided by Michael Sargent, from Blessington Tidy Towns by Jason Mulhall and from the Blessington Greenway Project by John Horan. Support by the business community from Sonia Moran of Punctual Print; Kilian McGreal of McGreals; Ronan Flood of West Wicklow Business Network; Martin Blake and Oliver Fallen Bailey from Bailey and Blake Productions and Brian McDermott of Avon Ri, was essential to the success of Blessington in this competition.

Baltinglass Municipal District staff, led by Susan Nichols, District Administrator and supported by the elected members were an integral part of the process, with an element of the judging criteria focusing on the close links between local government and the community. In addition to the organising committee, many local residents and businesses supported Blessington's entry into the competition through assistance with the various activities and attending at the Avon Ri on judging day.

Cllr Vincent Blake, Cathaoirleach of Baltinglass Municipal District, said 'What a wonderful and well-deserved win for Blessington. Congratulations to everyone involved in Blessington's entry into the competition. It is a fantastic achievement for a small town in West Wicklow to be acknowledged as the best and most enterprising town in the whole of Leinster.'

He said that it is imperative that this achievement is used to further promote Blessington.
Jack Reynor and Madeline Mulqueen at the Heineken 'Live Your Music' space at Electric Picnic. Picture: Anthony Woods

Jack Reynor poses for a photograph upon arrival at the European premiere of "Detroit" in London on August 16, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images

Jack Reynor arriving at the 'Detroit' European Premiere at The Curzon Mayfair on August 16, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images)

Jack Reynor believes he's a "richer" person for living in Ireland and never moving to Los Angeles to further his film career.

The actor (25), who has starred in movies including Transformers: Age Of Extinction and Sing Street, reckons there's a chance he'd be making bigger movies if he lived in LA, but that's not enough to make him move there.

"I don't think it's cost me anything as a person.I'm probably a richer human being for living here in Ireland and having my friends that I've always had," he told the Eoghan McDermott Show on 2fm.

"For actors that are from Ireland and the UK and Australia, if they're grounded from the culture they came from, it tends to actually be a real benefit to them in the process of getting jobs in the States because Americans love a bit of cultural texture.

"Would I be making more films? Would I be making bigger films if I was in LA? Maybe.

"But I'm not going to find out because I won't be leaving, I love it here."

Meanwhile, Reynor recently quit social media, saying he didn't like the constant stream of negativity he was seeing from people on some sites.

The Wicklow actor went on to say that he thinks people are far too focused on social media sites.

"I think people are getting an unhealthy obsession and looking for something they're not going to find outside of meeting people and having conversations face to face," he said.

"It was just people moaning and trying to get people on board with their negativity. It's a big misery fest, really. I didn't feel any positivity on there."

Video of the Day

Reynor will next star in The Jungle Book, opposite Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Benedict Cumberbatch and Naomie Harris next year.

A live action film, it will make use of motion capture performances for the animals.

"I was working in London doing extra motion capture and some of the clips of it that I saw are just amazing," he said.

The actor's career has gone from strength to strength. He made a huge impact with his 2012 performance in Lenny Abrahamson's drama What Richard Did.

Abrahamson previously recalled that Reynor landing into the casting for the movie was "like a kind of miracle." He was only 19 at the time.
Jim Carrey says he has overcome depression, after years of struggling with the mental disorder, and adds that he has "really good" and "some really bad" in his life.

The 55-year-old actor previously revealed that he was battling depression at the height of his fame, when he starred in movies such as The Mask and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. But in a new interview with Britain's i newspaper, Jim has revealed that he has now largely beaten the dark cloud that once consumed him.

"At this point, I dont have depression. There is not an experience of depression," he explained. "I had that for years, but now, when the rain comes, it rains, but it doesnt stay. It doesnt stay long enough to immerse me and drown me anymore."

Describing himself as "sometimes happy", Jim added: "Whats happening is really good, but there is some really bad in there too... Some people have come at me in the last couple of years with the intent of breaking off a piece of the Holy Grail for themselves, but the Grail isnt a thing that you can break off. So theyre going to learn that the hard way. Its not pleasant."

Expand Close HAPPIER TIMES : Cathriona White and Jim Carrey pictured holding hands while walking in Manhattan after they got back together after initial split / Facebook

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Whatsapp HAPPIER TIMES : Cathriona White and Jim Carrey pictured holding hands while walking in Manhattan after they got back together after initial split

Jim has hit headlines in recent months due to the wrongful death lawsuit surrounding his ex-girlfriend Cathriona White, to whom he is accused of supplying the drugs that led to her passing.

However, he insists that despite everything he has gone through in his life, he has no regrets.

"Im perfectly fine with everything that has happened, even the horrible s**t you know, in life and in art," he explained. "There is a lot of satisfaction about looking back at those things."

Jim remains one of Hollywood's highest-paid actors, who can next be seen in TV series Kidding, due to hit screens next year (18). But while his standing in the industry was once his main priority, the double Golden Glove winner stressed that he no longer worries about what others think of him.

"Im free of the business. Im not the business," he said. "I dont care what people think of me after I die. All I want is for people to think of me as a good energy here, a nice fragrance that has been left behind."
Injured people are evacuated from the scene of the attack in the northern Sinai Peninsula (AP)

Egypts air force has conducted air strikes against suspected terrorists after the countrys president vowed to respond with the utmost force against militants who killed 305 worshippers at a mosque in the Sinai village of Bir al-Abed.

A military source told The Independent that the air strikes had destroyed vehicles linked to the attackers who used machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades to mow down worshippers in the packed mosque during Friday noon prayers.

Egypts air force is following the trail of the terrorists and has destroyed two or three of their vehicles, the military source said.

Other Egyptian military sources later reported that the air strikes had killed everyone inside the vehicles, although it has not yet been possible to independently verify this claim.

It is understood that the air strikes took place in mountainous areas around Bir al-Abed, a small village 40km west of North Sinais main city Al-Arish, hours after the attack.

At about the same time, Egypts President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gave a televised address to the nation in which he vowed: The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force.

Expand Close The Rawda mosque, the target for the gun and bombing attack which left at least 235 dead. Photo: Getty Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp The Rawda mosque, the target for the gun and bombing attack which left at least 235 dead. Photo: Getty Images

"What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism, to destroy our efforts to stop the terrible criminal plan that aims to destroy what is left of our region."

As the official death toll rose to 305 on Saturday morning, more details emerged of the attack, the deadliest by Islamist extremists in Egypt's modern history.

Witnesses said four off-road vehicles carrying armed men arrived at the al-Rawdah mosque just as the noon sermon was about to start.

The main cleric at the mosque, Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Fatah Zowraiq said at least a dozen attackers charged in, opening fire randomly.

He said there were also explosions. Officials cited by the state news agency MENA said the attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades as well as machine guns, and shot people as they tried to run from the building.

Witnesses speaking to The Associated Press (AP) in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia where some of the wounded were taken, told how the attackers spent about 20 minutes killing and maiming worshippers.

They spoke of worshippers jumping out of windows, of a stampede in a corridor leading to the washrooms and of children screaming in horror.

Some spoke of their narrow escape from a certain death, others of families that lost all or most of their male members.

Mansour, a 38-year-old worker in a nearby salt factory, told AP: "Everyone lay down on the floor and kept their heads down. If you raised your head you get shot.

The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning and then became more deliberate: Whoever they weren't sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead."

Mansour, who suffered two gunshot wounds in the legs, said that as children screamed in terror, the militants shouted Allahu Akbar, God is great.

Panicked worshippers hid behind concrete columns or whatever shelter they could find.

"I knew I was injured, said Mansour, But I was in a situation that was much scarier than being wounded. I was only seconds away from a certain death.

Mansour, who said he had settled in Bir al-Abed three years ago in the hope of escaping the violence elsewhere in northern Sinai, added that as the shooting continued, many of the worshippers recited their final prayers.

Abdullah Abdel-Nasser, 14, who was attending prayers with his father, said that at one point, a militant shouted for children to leave.

The teenager rushed out, despite being wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel and a bullet.

"I saw many people on the floor, many dead, he said. I don't think anyone survived.

Three police officers on the scene said the militants also used burning cars to block roads, effectively cutting off escape routes and impeding the progress of anyone trying to get into Bir al-Abed to stop the attack.

Despite the attackers call for children to leave, 27 children are among the dead. About 100 people have been wounded.

It is believed that many of the victims were workers at the salt factory who had come for Friday services at the mosque, which practises Sufi, a mystical form of Islam that extremist radicals regard as heretical.

Despite the military air strikes, at least one Bir al-Abed resident demanded to know why the Egyptian army had been unable to stop the terrorist attack while it was in progress.

Mohammed Ali, who said 18 members of his extended family were killed in the attack, demanded: Where was the army? It's only a few kilometers away. This is the question we cannot answer."

Responsibility for the attack has not yet been claimed by any group, but since 2011 North Sinai has been the site of an ongoing insurgency by jihadists, who since 2014 have been aligned with Isis. The group is responsible for near-weekly attacks on the army and police in Sinai, and claimed responsibility in 2015 for downing a plane leaving the Sharm El-Sheikh beach resort, killing all the mostly Russian tourists on board.

Almost every sign points toward Isis in Sinai being behind Fridays mosque attack, Mohannad Sabry, a Sinai expert and author of Sinai: Egypts Linchpin, Gazas Lifeline, Israels Nightmare, told The Independent. They have had a decades-old lethal animosity with the Sufi community in Sinai and have killed several of their most revered clerics over the past years.

The Isis branch in Sinai, which calls itself Sinai State, claimed responsibility for the beheading of two Sufi sheikhs in December 2016, accusing them of apostasy and sorcery, and threatened that it would not allow the presence of Sufi orders in Sinai or Egypt. The group has also frequently destroyed Sufi shrines in North Sinai.

A Sinai resident who did not want to be named told The Independent that in general there has been a change in how locals perceive Sufis in recent years. Its not really sectarianism but more like us versus the other, which was not common among Bedouins.

The military source who informed The Independent of the air strikes also believed Isis was behind the attack.

They attack everyone, Christians, Muslims, the military, he said.

He also suggested the attack could indicate a change of tactics, as this is the first such large-scale assault directly targeting civilians in the region.

They did kills civilians, but not at this scale, he said.

Mr Sabry said the unique and unprecedented attack sent a loud message to the North Sinai community that even a Muslim house of worship, as long as it doesnt pledge allegiance to Isis, is a target.

There was, Mr Sabry added, another reason for Isis to attack Sufis.

The Sufi community in North Sinai has definitely succeeded in what billions of dollars and hundreds of lives spent by Egypts military could not achieve, he said. It powerfully kept thousands of youths away from joining the ranks of Isis and has continued to fight them on social, intellectual and most importantly religious levels.

Despite successive army campaigns and after years of unrest, the mosque attack served as a dark reminder that the violence in Sinai is not decreasing, and that Isis has not been weakened.

Once again it casts major doubt on the claims of success and achievements spread so loudly by Sisis regime and the Egyptian military, Mr Sabry said. This attack hit a geographic area the military claims is under control, proving that Isis is still maintaining some of its capabilities to mobilise weapons, explosives and fighters despite years of war with one of the biggest and strongest military forces in the Middle East.

Asked about progress in the fight against terrorism, the military source said the army was doing its best.

The terrorists are hiding in between the civilians, thats the problem, he claimed.

Mr Al-Sisi announced a three-day mourning in response to the attack.

Other countries offered their condolences to Egypt, with British Prime Minister Theresa May calling it an evil and cowardly act and the French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, condemning the attack and saying Paris stood with its ally.

US President Donald Trump denounced what he called a horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenceless worshippers in Egypt".

The world cannot tolerate terrorism, he said on Twitter. We must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence.
Egyptians walk past bodies following a gun and bombing attack at the Rawda mosque, roughly 40 kilometres west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish. A bomb explosion ripped through the mosque before gunmen opened fire on the worshippers gathered for weekly Friday prayers, officials said. Photo: Getty Images

Egypt was last night reeling from the bloodiest terror attack in its history after suspected Isil jihadists slaughtered 235 people during prayers by detonating explosives inside a Sinai mosque and then killing fleeing worshippers in a hail of gunfire.

The attack began with a powerful explosion at the mosque in the remote village of Rawdah in north Sinai as hundreds gathered for prayers. Gunmen then leapt from four off-road vehicles to kill people as they fled.

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Security officials and witnesses said the attackers used their vehicles to cut off escape routes and opened fire on ambulances as they reached the scene. More than 100 were wounded. The gunmen appear to have escaped before Egyptian security forces arrived.

The worshippers at the al-Rawdah mosque were mainly Sufis, who adhere to a mystic form of Islam. Isil considers Sufis to be heretics and has threatened them in the past.

No group has claimed responsibility, but suspicion fell on an Isil affiliate group in the Sinai desert which has waged a bloody insurgency against the Egyptian military and the country's Christian minority.

The village of Rawdah is home to around 2,500 people, all members of the Sawarka tribe. In conservative rural areas of Egypt it is usually only men who attend Friday prayers. With an attack so large it is believed that a significant portion of all the men in the village were either killed or wounded. Abdel Qader Mubarak, who is originally from the village, said his entire family had been killed. "I can't talk, all my family are gone," he told 'The Daily Telegraph'. The massacre was the worst terrorist attack on civilians in modern Egyptian history, and its death toll outstripped the 224 deaths caused when suspected Isil militants blew up a Russian airliner shortly after it took off from Sharm el-Sheikh in 2015.

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Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt's president promised to respond with "brutal force" against the attackers, and declared three days of mourning.

"We will remain steadfast and will fight back with an iron fist. This attack will only add to our persistence on overcoming the tragedy and we will win the battle against the forces of evil.

"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period."

Despite Mr Sisi's pledge, the security forces have struggled to contain the jihadist insurgency in Sinai and suffered heavy casualties.

Donald Trump, the American president, led a chorus of international condemnation.

"The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence."

Boris Johnson, the British Foreign Secretary, called the slaughter "a barbaric act".

Jihadist groups have regularly attacked Christian churches in Egypt to deepen sectarian divides in the country. Mobile phone footage purportedly taken from inside the mosque in the moments before the attack shows dozens of men sitting on the floor as they listened to a sermon. Suddenly, an explosion is heard nearby and the men leap to their feet in panic and confusion.
Emmerson Mnangagwa and his wife Auxillia arrive at the Zimbabwe presidential inauguration ceremony in the capital Harare. Photo: AP

Emmerson Mnangagwa appealed for national unity and promised compensation for dispossessed white farmers as he sought to draw a line under the Robert Mugabe era in his inaugural speech as president of Zimbabwe.

Mr Mnangagwa was sworn in as the second president of Zimbabwe with a 21-gun salute, marching troops, and dancing children 10 days after the military coup that led to the resignation of Mr Mugabe, who had ruled for 37 years, earlier this week.

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In an address to 60,000 people in Harare's national stadium, he praised Mr Mugabe as his mentor and a "founding father" of the nation, but in a tacit rebuke called on the international community to lift sanctions in recognition of the country's "new start".

"For me personally he is a mentor, father, comrade in arms, and my leader," Mr Mnangagwa said of the outgoing president. "While we cannot change the past, there is a lot we can do in the present and the future to give our nation a different positive direction."

Watched by 60,000 spectators, Mr Mnangagwa swore to uphold the constitution and defend the country's 16 million citizens. It was the first time since the independence ceremony of April 18 1980, that a crowd of all parties, races, and creeds gathered to hear the speech of the leader of Zimbabwe.

Mr Mnangagwa promised to fix Zimbabwe's "poisoned" political environment and its shattered economy.

He promised "free and fair" elections as scheduled next year.

Turning to the economy, he said he would invite foreign direct investment in an effort to stimulate "job, job, job creation", and called for the EU and United States to drop sanctions against top military and Zanu-PF figures.
South Africa's Supreme Court more than doubled Oscar Pistorius's murder sentence yesterday, accepting prosecutors' argument that the original jail term of six years for shooting dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was "shockingly lenient".

The gold medal-winning athlete, a double amputee known as the "Blade Runner" for his carbon-fibre prosthetics, was not in court to hear the new sentence of 13 years and five months.

Ms Steenkamp's family welcomed the revised term - the minimum 15 years prescribed for murder, minus the time Pistorius has already served - and said it showed justice could prevail in South Africa.

"This is an emotional thing for them," Tania Koen, a family spokeswoman, said.

"They just feel that their trust in the justice system has been confirmed this morning,"

Barry Steenkamp, father of the slain model, told SABC television the family could now get on with their lives.

"I always, from the beginning, said justice had not been served, now it has," he said.

The athlete was jailed in July last year after being found guilty on appeal of murdering Ms Steenkamp on Valentine's Day 2013 by firing through a bathroom door.
Pakistan's government called in army troops on Saturday to restore order after police clashed with an Islamist group's supporters that have been camped out for the last twenty days at a key intersection near the capital Islamabad, state TV reported.

The protest has prompted demonstrators to take to the streets of other cities across the country in solidarity, bringing them to a virtual standstill.

State TV reported that the Interior Ministry said on Saturday that army troops had been summoned to assist the city's civil administration in clearing the Faizabad intersection.

It did not specify when the army would be deployed. No army presence was yet visible in the area.

Six people were killed and 200, mostly police, were injured as police tried to clear the intersection linking the Pakistani capital with the garrison city of Rawalpindi, doctors at local hospitals said.

The demonstrators are demanding the resignation of a law minister over an omitted reference to the Prophet Muhammad in a parliamentary bill.

Dr Masood Safdar of Benazir Bhutto Hospital said five civilians arrived dead from bullet wounds.

Dr Tariq Niazi of the Holy Family Hospital confirmed the death of a young man who was shot in the head during the violence at the intersection and the surrounding area.

Hundreds of police in riot gear had moved in against the supporters of the Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah party early Saturday after a deadline expired at midnight.

The police action and reaction from protesters, who had camped out there for the last 20 days, sent scores of injured police and protesters to hospitals with injuries caused by stoning and respiratory problems from tear gas.

Hospital officials said about 200 people were injured, most of them police.

News of the police intervention spread quickly, prompting sympathisers in cities round the country to take to the streets in a show of solidarity with the Islamabad protesters.

The situation prompted the country's regulatory body for electronic media to take TV broadcasts off the air. Key social media sites were also blocked.

Military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa telephoned Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi to call for the peaceful handling of the protest, according to a tweet by military spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor.

Senior police officer Ismatullah Junejo said police were swiftly clearing the area as some 300 protesters ignored the final warning to disperse.

He said none of the police carried firearms to avoid loss of life, instead using only tear gas and a water cannon to disperse the protesters.

But witnesses said at one point a police van came under attack and was set on fire after two police officers aimed assault rifles at protesters.

Police lobbed tear gas canisters and deployed the water cannon while surrounding and arresting dozens of protesters who resisted by throwing rocks. The riot police used batons against protesters who resisted.

The government had made several attempts to resolve the stalemate through negotiations with the protesters, who demanded the resignation of a law minister over an omitted reference to the Prophet Muhammad in a parliamentary bill.

The minister, Zahid Hamid, apologised for the omission, saying it was a clerical error that was later corrected.

But protest leaders were adamant and refused to clear the intersection unless the law minister resigned.

Saturday's action came after a court ordered an end to the protest because it was disrupting daily life.

Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal told state television that the government had shown patience in dealing with the protesters.

"The administration is taking action under court order but still we are open for talks with them," he said, referring to the protesters.

Mr Iqbal said that some among the protesters wanted to create chaos and destabilisation in the country.

AP
Gov. Steve Bullock on Friday signed six bills that he proposed as part of a solution to the state's projected $227 million budget shortfall, vetoed one he found "disingenuous" and let three bills proposed by Republicans become law without his signature, saying they unconstitutionally limit his veto power.

The bills he signed included one to temporarily suspend contributions to a judge's retirement system to save $ 2.8 million, another to temporarily suspended payments to a state employee health care plan to save $10 million and one to charge a 3 percent management fee on some Montana State Fund investments to raise nearly $30 million over the next two years.

Bullock also signed bills that would end some school block grants, transfer money to the state fire fund and allow the state to sell liquor licenses at auction.

Bullock allowed three budget bills to become law without his signature, including an amended House Bill 2 from the 2017 regular session that effectively makes permanent the $76.6 million in budget cuts he made just before the session started on Nov. 14.

The other bills he did not sign called for transfers back to the general fund in excess of those he proposed and another that seeks to force him to extend by 10 years CoreCivic's contract to manage a private prison in Shelby, in exchange for about $30 million the state had set aside in case it decided to buy the prison. The bills contain provisions that call for more state budget cuts if the governor were to veto or issue line-item vetoes within the bills.

Because the bills are important in solving Montana's budget shortfall, Bullock said he would let them become law.

"However, I have grave concerns about the legislature's political maneuvering to encroach upon my constitutional authority to exercise the veto power on distinct, single-subject bills," he wrote. "I will look upon similar efforts in 2019 with great skepticism and I will not hesitate to veto such legislation in the regular session."

Bullock did veto a bill that sought to save $15 million by imposing furloughs on state employees that make over $50,000 a year because he says it violates federal law in saying furloughed employees do not have a right to unemployment compensation. The language of the bill was inconsistent with the sponsor's statements during floor debate, he said, and it was unclear which departments' employees would be subject to furloughs.

Bullock noted the bill exempted legislative branch employees from furloughs because the sponsor, Republican Rep. Barry Usher of Billings, said he "didn't want to ask our staff to write a bill that furloughs themselves."

The flaws, Bullock wrote, "establish that this bill is not -- and was not intended to be -- a responsible part of a solution to solve the state's budget shortfall."

He also vetoed a bill that would have permitted the insurance commissioner to apply to the federal government for state innovation waivers to establish high-risk insurance pools, saying the topic was too complex for a special session called to address a budget shortfall.

The Montana State Fund has filed a complaint challenging the management fees on its assets above $1 billion.
A Heathrow security worker was arrested in an airport toilet after seven kilograms of cocaine were seized by police.

The National Crime Agency said the man, a 30-year-old from Southalll, west London, was detained alongside a 37-year-old man from Colombia in the Terminal 5 bathroom on November 23.

Officers said the 37-year-old had recently disembarked a flight from Colombian capital Bogota.

A 43-year-old man was separately arrested in the arrivals area of the airport.

A fourth man, aged 46, was arrested following a search at an address in east London and all four are in custody and are being questioned on suspicion of drug importation offences.

Senior investigating officer Darren Barr said: "Heathrow Airport provided invaluable assistance in this operation, and working with partners such as the Metropolitan Police Service, Border Force and the Heathrow authorities we are determined to target those who may be involved in criminality at the airport."
Bosnian Muslim women from Srebrenica, sitting under pictures of victims of the genocide in the town during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, react as they watch the television broadcast of Ratko Mladics court proceedings, in Tuzla in 2011. Photo: Reuters

Watching former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity this week, I thought of the women of the Ademovic family in Dublin.

They are among the women of Srebrenica who lost fathers, husbands, brothers and sons when Mladic's forces overran the besieged Muslim town in July 1995 despite the fact the United Nations had declared the enclave a "safe area".

The Ademovic women remember seeing Mladic pat the heads of children whose fathers his forces later rounded up and took away to be killed. Among the stories recounted at a later war crimes tribunal was that of an elderly man pinned to a tree and forced to eat his grandson's entrails. "Truly scenes from hell," said the judge, "written on the darkest pages of human history".

More than 60 men from the extended Ademovic family were among the 8,000 who perished in Srebrenica's massacre. The Ademovic women moved to Dublin in the late 1990s, joining a brother who survived only because he was one of the first Bosnian refugees to arrive in Ireland in 1992.

They have returned to Srebrenica several times since the dark days of 1995 to bury male relatives whose bodies had been identified through an extensive DNA testing project. Each year Srebrenica's cemetery - a vast place of white gravestones - hosts mass burials for those whose remains have been identified over the previous year. More than two decades later, that painstaking work to allow families to bury their loved ones continues. And each year the burials bring memories flooding back.

As Sanela Ademovic often says: "The war never really goes away."

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When Judge Alphons Orie at the United Nations-backed international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague began delivering the verdict against Mladic this week, the man nicknamed the 'butcher of Bosnia' stood up shouting "this is all lies" before he was forcibly removed from the courtroom. He was found guilty of 10 offences related to "ethnic cleansing" operations in Bosnia when he was chief of staff of Bosnian Serb forces between 1992 and 1996.

The court found Mladic - now in his mid-70s and a shrunken version of the burly, boorish commander whose unapologetic TV interviews were a mainstay of the Bosnian war - was the chief military overseer of a campaign to force out or eradicate Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs in a bid to carve out a 'Greater Serbia'.

The bloodiest year was 1992, during which 45,000 were killed. In Sarajevo, the storied Bosnian capital, civilians were terrorised by snipers and shelling during a siege that lasted years. Months after the horror of Srebrenica in 1995, the Dayton accord was signed to bring an end to a conflict that had by then cost some 100,000 lives.

Concluding Mladic's trial this week, Judge Orie said his crimes "rank among the most heinous known to humankind". Some 600 people, including survivors of the war, gave evidence during a trial that lasted 530 days over a period of five years. Several survivors were present in The Hague for Mladic's sentencing, including Fikret Alic, the Bosnian whose emaciated frame as he stood behind the wire of a Serb prison camp in 1992 shocked the world. "Justice has won and the war criminal has been convicted," Mr Alic said after the verdict.

Human rights organisations hailed the judgment as historic and a reminder to others who have committed or continue to commit war crimes elsewhere that justice can be served decades later.

The United Nations human rights chief, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, called it "a momentous victory for justice" and described Mladic as "the epitome of evil".

The verdict - which followed the trials of Mladic's political leader Radovan Karadzic, jailed for 40 years on similar charges last year, and others - will help bring some closure for those whose lives were devastated by Mladic's campaign.

But Bosnia remains a troubled place and the history of the war is still contested today. Srebrenica, two-thirds Muslim before the conflict erupted, now lies within Republika Srpska, an entity within Bosnia ceded to the Serbs by the Dayton agreement, and its population is mostly Serb. Many Serbs bitterly dispute the official version of events and deny the mass killings were an act of genocide. The remarks by Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska, following the Mladic sentencing this week showed how deeply the disconnect runs. "Regardless of the verdict that we all feel as part of the campaign against Serbs, Ratko Mladic remains a legend of the Serb nation," Mr Dodik said. An uneasy peace may prevail where Europe's worst conflict since World War II once raged but reconciliation remains a distant prospect.
Come late November, the European media customarily features that all-American picture of the US president and his happy family sparing the Thanksgiving turkey. Perhaps it was just the press of other news - the non-coup coup that pushed a tenacious 93-year-old from his perch in Zimbabwe, the first intimations of Angela Merkel's political mortality, the latest spasms of Brexit, (parochially) the UK budget. Perhaps it also reflected the unpopularity of the current White House incumbent on the European side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Whatever the reason, those turkey pictures seemed fewer and further between this year, and the bird, while luxuriantly feathered as always, that bit trimmer. On the size of the turkey, my impression may not be wrong. The first turkey to be spared by a US president (George H W Bush) weighed a whopping 50lb. This year's bird tipped the scales at just 36lb.

It might be tempting to regard the comparative size of the bird, along with the lesser prominence of that Thanksgiving ceremony in Europe this year, as somehow indicative of the much-forecast decline of the US over the long term, and its sharp loss of international prestige under this president.

The reality, as so often, is more complicated, though not necessarily more consoling to those Britons and Europeans of an Atlanticist disposition.

Turn the globe towards the east, and Donald Trump is by no means the one-man foreign policy catastrophe he is widely seen as in Europe. He has just completed a 13-day trip around Asia, with stops, speeches and meetings in five countries, and it went pretty much without a hitch - which may be why we have heard so little about it. Worse, for those who wish Donald Trump and his tribe ill, he left with his reputation in the region enhanced. Thanks, perhaps, to an experienced foreign service, perhaps to his own nous, he avoided some of the bear-traps that awaited.

At a time of heightened tension with North Korea, he resisted the temptation to make things worse by staging a photo op at Panmunjom, as other US presidents have done.

Indeed, he wisely avoided the flashpoint demilitarised zone altogether, and he waited until he was safely back in the US to announce new sanctions against North Korea.

He chose not to annoy his many enemies in Washington further by sitting down for a one-on-one with Vladimir Putin during the Asia-Pacific economic summit in Vietnam.

On home turf now, they took his known views on trade in their stride. In general, his plain-speaking seems to go down better outside Europe, as does his unapologetically transactional approach.

Non-Europeans also appreciate that he always qualifies his "America First" theme by saying that he expects "you to put your country first, too".

It was Putin's defence of Russia's national interest that drew Trump's first compliments (at what political cost is now all too clear), but the same non-judgmental approach is serving him well with people who resent what they see as preaching and double standards from other western leaders.

So, although it is early days yet, Trump's standing as an American abroad is already a lot higher than it looks from Europe. And his bombast, his populist language and his flamboyant manner are less off-putting in countries with newer economies where the pursuit of wealth, and the coupling of wealth and politics, is less frowned upon than it is among old European elites.

None of this means, however, the United States in the time of Donald Trump will either enhance, or even retain, its status as unchallenged global leader - or even that Trump (as opposed to the Washington establishment) regards this as his central goal. The mistake here is to persist in the idea that US foreign policy success necessarily equates to the preservation of its status as the world's single superpower, and its view of itself as the essential and exceptional power.

"America First" does not mean "Amerika uber Alles", as it is sometimes apprehensively interpreted abroad, but the duty of any American administration to defend the country's national interests. The two are not necessarily the same thing.

So what is Trump doing or not doing in the world? Aside from his decision to keep US troops in Afghanistan - like Obama, another novice US president, steamrolled by his generals - Trump is generally honouring his campaign pitch to scale back the projection of US military power.

To speak, as some have done disparagingly, of the dangers of allowing others to fill the "vacuum" the US has left, is to persist in an already outdated view of the world. In essence, Trump is doing little more than adjust to realities beyond his control: the US public's aversion to more foreign wars and the growing power of others.

Under Trump, the US has, in part, at least, delegated policy on North Korea to China, and a backchannel at the UN. The trans-Pacific trade agreement lives on as a regional pact without the US. Trump's misgivings on Nato have translated into a European awareness that the EU should take more responsibility for defence - a task only simplified by the departure of the UK, with its Atlanticist illusions.

In the Middle East, the US may still be engaged in some mischief-making on behalf of local allies, but it has mostly left the region to its own devices. The peace-making pole has moved to Russia, where Putin this week convened a three-nation summit, with the presidents of Iran and Turkey. He had earlier met Syria's President Assad, and before that hosted the Saudi King, with an enormous entourage, at the Kremlin.

Is Russia the rising regional power? To the United States, now almost self-sufficient in energy, it hardly matters. Its prime interests are in its own security - of its borders and the international sea routes it needs for its trade. This is where any forward-looking president would be focusing US power and influence, not only "America First" Trump.

It was Bill Clinton, presiding over the United States arguably at the height of its 20th century power, who set out the long-term choice facing his country: whether to try by every means possible to stay top dog on the block in perpetuity, or  "to do everything in our power to create a world in which we are comfortable living when we are no longer top dog". He strongly supported the second option. Barack Obama accepted the premise, but found himself condemned - unjustly - for weakness.

It now falls to Donald Trump, a foreign policy realist par excellence, to prepare the US for a world where the US is no longer top dog, and there may even be no top dog at all. The difficulties he faces in Washington illustrate just how hard that adjustment will be.
New York, Nov 25 (IBNS): Researchers at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute found that a previously dismissed genetic mechanism may contribute to nicotine dependence, and to the withdrawal effects that can make quitting smoking so difficult.

Scientists in the lab of Shawn Xu examined withdrawal responses in the millimeter-long roundworms Caenorhabditis elegans, which get hooked on nicotine just like humans.

In the findings, scheduled to be published Nov. 7 in Cell Reports, the researchers identified specific genes and microRNA that play an essential role in how the roundworms develop nicotine dependence and withdrawal responsesclues that may carry over to the mammalian realm.

The study took a fresh look at a previously dismissed biological mechanism. Most research in the field has focused on how proteins called nicotine acetylcholine receptors contribute to dependence.

Xu and his colleagues focused on an earlier step in the genetic coding process and discovered that a series of genes were involved in a process that ultimately increased the production of the nicotine receptor proteins, with microRNAsa class of small RNA molecules that help fine-tune gene expressionplaying a pivotal role.

"We're seeing a clear link between nicotine, microRNA, the receptor proteins, and nicotine-dependent behavior," said Jianke Gong, a researcher in Xu's lab and one of the lead authors on the study.

This mechanism had been dismissed as unimportant to nicotine dependence. However, Xu pointed out, those conclusions were made decades ago, using less sophisticated techniques.

Xu's lab previously demonstrated that the worms exhibit behavioral responses to nicotine similar to what mammals experience, and that some of the genes involved in nicotine dependence in worms are conserved in mammalsmeaning the worms are a good genetic and behavioral model for studying nicotine dependence.

Xu hopes that this latest discovery in C. elegans will now lead other scientists to re-examine the role of these microRNAs in nicotine dependence in mammals, and ultimately lead to a better understanding of what causes the dependence.

"People believed this question had been settled," said Xu, a professor at the LSI and in the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology at the U-M Medical School. "But we have better tools now. We, as a field, need to take another look at this mechanism in nicotine addiction."

The research was supported by funding from the Marie SkAodowska-Curie Actions Research Fellowship Programme and the National Institutes of Health. The study authors are: Manish Rauthan, Jianke Gong, Zhaoyu Li, Seth Wescott and X.Z. Shawn Zhu, all of U-M, and Jiangfeng Liu of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China.
Washington,Nov 25 (IBNS): NASA launched the Technology Educational Satellite, or TechEdSat-6, to the International Space Station on Orbital ATKs Cygnus spacecraft from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Nov. 12.

This bread loaf-sized satellite is part of a continuing series to demonstrate the "Exo-Brake" parachute device, advanced communications and wireless sensor networks.

TechEdSat-6 was released into low-Earth orbit from the NanoRacks platform on Nov. 20, to begin a series of wireless sensor experiments which will be the first self-powered tests, expanding the capabilities of sensor networks for future ascent or re-entry systems.

This is the fourth TechEdSat satellite carrying an updated version of the Exo-Brake that will demonstrate guided controlled re-entry of small spacecraft to safely return science experiments from space, read the NASA website.

The Exo-Brakes shape can be changed to vary the drag on the satellite. With the help of high-fidelity simulations, we will demonstrate a low-cost, propellant-less method of returning small payloads quickly, and to fairly precise locations, for retrieval, said Michelle Munk, NASAs System Capability Lead for Entry, Descent and Landing. We are excited about tracking TechEdSat-6 as it re-enters the atmosphere.

While the goal of returning samples from the space station and orbital platforms is integral to the project, NASA seeks to develop building blocks for larger-scale systems that might enable future small spacecraft missions to reach the surface of Mars and other places in the solar system.



The Exo-Brake is funded by the Entry Systems Modeling project within the Space Technology Mission Directorates Game Changing Development program. Additional funding for the Exo-Brake is provided by NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley and the agency's Engineering and Safety Center in Hampton, Virginia.

The TechEdSat series is a science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, collaborative activity that involves NASA early-career employees, interns and students from several universities including San Jose State University, California; the University of Idaho in Moscow; the University of California at Riverside; California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; the University of Georgia in Athens; and Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Image: NASA website
Image: Screengrab from YouTube

Allahabad, Nov 25 (IBNS): Tense scenes prevailed in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur city on Friday morning, where green flags were allegedly raised along with slogans like "Hafeez Saeed Zindabad" and "Pakistan Zindabad", celebrating the release of the Mumbai terror attack mastermind, reports said.

The alleged incident took place in Begum Bagh colony in Shivpuri area, where houses were decorated with green flags.

To counter any untoward incident, a large number of policemen were also deployed in the area.

District Magistrate Akashdeep told the Times of India, "I have asked police to investigate the matter and ensure peace in the city."

A police officer said that a large number of right wing members had already gathered in the area when they reached the spot.

Kotwali police station in-charge Pradeep Shukla said, "We rushed to the colony and found green flags put up in some houses. We removed all those flags and assured members of right wing outfits that the matter will be thoroughly investigated."

However, a Lakhimpur based imam said that the green flags were put up as the community was celebrating Juloos-e-Mohammdi.

"I am not aware if someone raised anti-national slogans. As far as green flags are concerned, many people started celebrating Juloos-e-Mohammdi, which is on December 2, from Friday. It had nothing to do with Hafiz Saeed or Pakistan," the imam said.

Image: Screengrab from YouTube
Kolkata, Nov 25 (IBNS): At a time several Chief Ministers of the country are opposing the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali directorial film Padmavati, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said she will allow the screening of the controversy-marred movie in the state, media reports said.

Speaking about the controversy at an event in the city, Banerjee said: "If they cannot release it in any other state, we will give special arrangement for Padmavati."

"Bengal will be proud to do that (screening)" she added.

Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan have already banned the film, yet to be certified by the censor board.

While Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath blamed the filmmakers for the controversy, Punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh said distortion of history cannot be tolerated.

This is not the first time the West Bengal Chief Minister differed in opinions with her state counterparts. Earlier, Banerjee took to Twitter to slam the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) indirectly for the row, calling the whole episode a "super emergency".

"The #Padmavati controversy is not only unfortunate but also a calculated plan of a political party to destroy the freedom to express ourselves. We condemn this super emergency. All in the film industry must come together and protest in one voice" she said.

The #Padmavati controversy is not only unfortunate but also a calculated plan of a political party to destroy the freedom to express ourselves. We condemn this super emergency. All in the film industry must come together and protest in one voice  Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 20, 2017

Padmavati evoked a huge controversy after several fringe groups alleged that Bhansali has distorted history in his upcoming film.

Taking the controversy to a new low, a Karni Sena leader has threatened to chop off actor Deepika Padukone's nose as the latter reacted sharply to the ongoing controversy centred on the film recently.

Reacting sharply to the vandalisation of a Kota mall recently, Padukone said people have regressed as a nation. "It's appalling, it's absolutely appalling. What have we gotten ourselves into? And where have we reached as a nation? We have regressed."

Recently a Haryana BJP leader offered a bounty of Rs. 10 crore on the heads of Bhansali and Padukone.

The makers of Padmavati have even deferred the release date of the movie from Dec 1.

Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh on Tuesday refused to make any comment on the controversy.

Ranveer, who will be seen in the role of second ruler of Khilji dynasty Alauddin Khilji, told media: "I have been specifically asked (producers) not to comment at this sensitive time."

The actor even said only the producers will make any official statement on the row. However, he said, "I am 200% with the film (Padmavati)."

The film also stars actor Shahid Kapoor in one of the three lead roles.

Images: twitter.com/FilmPadmavati, twitter.com/MamataOfficial.
SOFIA - The first 16+1 eCommerce Logistics Hub and Pavilion for agricultural and other products was inaugurated at Bulgaria's Trakia Economic Zone near Plovdiv on Friday.

This hub, the first of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) under the 16+1 cooperation mechanism between China and 16 CEE countries, will promote commodity exchange by providing a place to exhibit and sell products along with a full package of transport and other logistics services.

The project was implemented by the Association for the Promotion of Agricultural Cooperation between China and the CEE countries (APACCCEEC) with the support of Bulgaria's Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry.

Lozana Vassileva, Bulgarian deputy minister of agriculture, food and forestry, said at the inauguration ceremony that the logistics hub would become a modern bridge for more successful and reliable cooperation between CEE countries and China.

"We hope that it will be a good example for the other CEE countries in expanding the cooperation with the Chinese economy," Vassileva said.

Chinese Ambassador to Bulgaria Zhang Haizhou said the newly opened logistics hub provided another platform for multilateral agricultural cooperation.

Vasil Gelev, executive director of the APACCCEEC, emphasized that this logistics hub was not only for Bulgaria, but also for all CEE countries "and of course, for our most important strategic partner -- China."

"We welcome all companies interested in investing and trading to join our project," added Gelev, whose association was established at intergovernmental level in Sofia in June 2015 to coordinate the activities of the ministries on the one hand, and the businesses on the other hand.
Aggravated DUI

Officers responded to Henry Avenue and Broadway Street around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday after a resident phoned police to report that someone had backed up in a vehicle and struck her parked car. When police arrived they spoke with the driver of the vehicle, Morgen Hayden, 32, of Butte, and officers reported she was visibly intoxicated. Officers administered a field sobriety test, which Hayden allegedly failed. Harden was taken to the Butte detention center, where the 32-year-old allegedly failed another field sobriety test and blew more than twice the legal limit on a breathalyzer. Hayden has been cited for misdemeanor aggravated DUI, police said.

DUI

Police say they arrested David Rasmussen, 64, of Butte, Wednesday night for allegedly driving under the influence.

Officers were patrolling in the area of Harrison Avenue and Civic Center Road around 10 p.m., police said, when they spotted the 64-year-old making a turn in his vehicle, nearly striking another car in the process. Officers pulled Rasmussen over and administered a sobriety test, which the 64-year-old allegedly failed. He was taken to the Butte detention center, where police said he failed another sobriety test and refused to take a breathalyzer. He was taken to St. James Healthcare, where his blood was drawn for an alcohol test. As of Friday morning he remained in Butte county jail, where hes currently facing a felony DUI charge. Results from the blood test are pending.

Arrest at Big Butte

Officers were patrolling the parking lot of Big Butte at 4 a.m. Thursday, police said, when they noticed a car parked in the lot with its lights on and engine running. Police spoke with a female occupant of the vehicle and Aaron Alley, 34, of Butte, who Police say failed a field sobriety test at the scene. He was taken to Butte county jail, where he allegedly failed another sobriety test and blew more than the legal limit on a breathalyzer. Alley is being charged with a misdemeanor DUI.

Disturbance on Gaylord

Police say they arrested a male on Gaylord Street suspected of partner- family-member assault.

According to police, they responded to a residence on the 3600 block of Garlord around 5 p.m., Thursday, in response to a call about a disturbance. When officer arrived, police said, they spoke with the mother and sister of William Sloan, 51, of Butte. The two women allegedly told officers that Sloan was intoxicated and had thrown plates of food. According to police, the two complainants said they were afraid of Sloan, so officers apprehended him and took him to the Butte county jail.

Assault

Police arrested Deborah Youngblood, 54, of Everett, Wash., Thursday night for partner-family-member assault after she allegedly pushed a family member against a wall.

Police said the alleged victim of the assault had taken Youngbloods keys in an effort to prevent the 54-year-old from driving drunk. Police said the assault occurred in retaliation.

When officers arrived, around 7:15 p.m., they arrested Youngblood, who remained in county jail as of Friday morning.
Srinagar, Nov 25 (IBNS) : The body of an army officer, who went missing on Friday, was recovered in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian on Saturday, media reports said.

The bullet-ridden body of Territorial Army jawan Irfan Ahmad Dar, 23, was found by locals in the morning and police recovered it, CNN-News 18 reported.

The report quoted a senior police official as saying that the soldier's car was found close to the body.

The police has not ruled out the possibility of militants involved in the kidnap and murder.

Dar was a resident of Sensen village of Shopian district. He was in the Engineering Regiment of the Indian Army and was posted in Gurez, the report added, a local newspaper reports said.
New Delhi/Dhaka, Nov 25 (IBNS): Admiral Sunil Lanba, PVSM, AVSM, ADC, Chief of the Naval Staff, Indian Navy is visiting Bangladesh on an invitation of Bangladesh for participation in International Multilateral Maritime Search and Rescue Exercise (IMMSAREX) being held at Bangladesh from 26 to 28 November 2017 under the aegis of Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS).

IONS, an initiative which was started by Indian Navy in 2008, has grown into a formidable organisation with 23 Member nations and Nine observer countries. Continuing with the active engagement within IONS, Bangladesh, the current Chair of IONS is conducting the first ever operational exercise called IMMSAREX, under the IONS Charter.

The exercise will be inaugurated by Honble Prime Minister of Bangladesh on 27 November 2017 in Cox Bazar, Bangladesh. Indian Naval Ships Ranvir, Sahyadri, Gharial and Sukanya along with one Maritime Patrol Aircraft P-8I will be participating in the exercise.

In-addition to the conduct of the exercise, an Extraordinary Conclave of Chiefs (ECoC) meeting of IONS is also scheduled on 28 November 2017, at Cox Bazar, which would also be attended by the Chiefs of the Navy.

The ECoC would deliberate upon activities being undertaken by IONS in-addition to reviewing the progress made by three IONS Working Group (IWG) namely HADR, Maritime Security & Information Exchange and Interoperability.

The visit is also aimed at consolidating bilateral naval relations between India and Bangladesh and to explore new avenues for naval cooperation. Admiral Sunil Lanba will also hold bilateral discussions with Chief of the Naval Staff, Bangladesh Navy on 27 November 2017, and other participating Chiefs of Navy/ Head of Maritime Agencies.

Indian Navy regularly interacts with Bangladesh Navy through the medium of Staff Talks and other interactions, which include operational interactions including Port Visits, Passage Exercises, Training, Shipbuilding Cooperation besides regular participation by Indian Navy serving and retired officers in Victory Day Celebrations, held in Bangladesh to commemorate Liberation War of 1971.

The CNS during his visit to Bangladesh would also be gifting War Memorabilia for Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh.
New Delhi, Nov 25 (IBNS): The Embassy of Israel in India on Saturday expressed its deep condolences and solidarity with the people of India on the anniversary of the harrowing terror attack of 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

An official statement from the Embassy of Israel in India said: "The tragic events of that day are ingrained in our collective memories. Israel stands by India in remembrance and grief over the senseless loss of life at the hands of terrorists."

On the anniversary of the event, Ambassador of Israel in India, Daniel Carmon said, Together with India, the people of Israel mourn the victims from countries all over the globe including Israel, embrace their loved ones and the survivors. India and Israel, along with nations of the world, must do everything in their power to eradicate extremism and terrorism for a better future.

The 2008 Mumbai attacks were twelve coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai by members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Ajmal Kasab, the only attacker who was captured alive, later confessed upon interrogation that the attacks were conducted with the support of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Kasab was hanged on Nov 21, 2012 at Yerwada Jail in Pune.

The attacks, which drew widespread global condemnation, began on Wednesday, Nov 26, 2008 and lasted until Saturday, Nov 29, 2008, killing 164 people and wounding at least 308.

Eight of the attacks occurred in South Mumbai - at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Leopold Cafe, Cama Hospital (a women and children's hospital), the Nariman House Jewish community centre, the Metro Cinema, and a lane behind the Times of India building and St. Xavier's College.

There was also an explosion at Mazagaon, in Mumbai's port area, and in a taxi at Vile Parle.
New Delhi, Nov 25 (IBNS): Vice President of India M. Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said that authors and speakers will not only dwell on the past but also discuss how to bring about change in every sphere of India.

He was addressing the gathering after inaugurating Times Lit Fest Delhi - 2017, here today.

The CEO, Raj Group, Raj Jain and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

The Vice President said that literature is the lifeblood of a society, mirroring its inner workings, its triumphs and challenges, its anxieties and its possibilities.

He further said that it is a reflection of its trials and tribulations.

It provides an insight into the happenings of a society and captures its culture, traditions, ethos and all that is good and bad, he added.

The Vice President said that from Kalidasa to Premchand, from Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore to the present day, India has always been blessed with a strong literary lineage of writers, poets, intellectuals and thinkers.



They have chronicled the times, exemplified our open traditions and enriched the intellectual traditions of India with some of the finest works, he added.

The Vice President said that the country has emerged as one of the large economic powers in the world and is increasingly becoming the favourite destination for foreign investors.



He further said that India is at a historic juncture and at the cusp of a major transformationnot only in terms of economic growth, but also because it is one of the oldest civilisations with a young population.

Blessed with an educated, talented and skilled young work force, India has all the potential to become a leading player in digital technologies and global knowledge hub, he added.

The Vice President said that India always believed in pluralistic traditions and ethos and never allowed narrow and bigoted views or practices to rear their ugly heads. Dissent is agreeable but disintegration is not acceptable, he added.

Following is the text of Vice President's address:

" I am delighted to inaugurate the Times Lit Fest Delhi- 2017. Such events not only serve to bring together leading personalities from different walks of life but more importantly provide a platform for generating and exchanging new ideas on a host of issues, both past and present.

Literature is the lifeblood of a society, mirroring its inner workings, its triumphs and challenges, its anxieties and its possibilities. It is a reflection of its trials and tribulations. It provides an insight into the happenings of a society and captures its culture, traditions, ethos and all that is good and bad.

Literature and its celebration are also intrinsically woven into the essential fabric of an open society and the culture of our democracy.

From Kalidasa to Premchand, from Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore to the present day, India has always been blessed with a strong literary lineage of writers, poets, intellectuals and thinkers, who have chronicled the times, exemplified our open traditions and enriched the intellectual traditions of India with some of the finest works. Works of many Indian writers were translated into several languages because of their universal appeal. Good books like great men are immortal.

I compliment the organizers of the Times Lit Fest Delhi, now in its third edition, for bringing to the national capital a unique Literary Festival.

Quite appropriately, Times Lit Fest-Delhi 2017 is a celebration of New India. Today, the country has emerged as one of the large economic powers in the world and is increasingly becoming the favourite destination for foreign investors. The recent upgrading of Indias sovereign rating by the Moodys Investors Service, Indias jump by 30 places in the World Banks Ease of Doing Business rankings to be ranked 100 among 190 countries, the decision of the government to infuse Rs.2,11 lakh crore into public sector banks, demonetization and introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) augur well for Indian economy with the GDP growth likely to touch 7.5 per cent in the coming months.

India is at a historic juncture and at the cusp of a major transformationnot only in terms of economic growth, but also because it is one of the oldest civilisations with a young population. This young population will be the driver of the transformation that the country will witness in the coming years. Blessed with an educated, talented and skilled young work force, India has all the potential to become a leading player in digital technologies and global knowledge hub.

India always believed in pluralistic traditions and ethos and never allowed narrow and bigoted views or practices to rear their ugly heads. In this context, I would like to once again reiterate that while the freedom of speech is a fundamental pillar of our free society, it is not absolute and is circumscribed by reasonable restrictions. Dissent is agreeable but disintegration is not acceptable. That is the bottom line and any attempt to undermine the integrity and unity of India by forces inimical to the growth of India must be nipped in the bud.

I am happy to see that you are celebrating the power of the written word, a celebration that has been a constant through the ages in Bharat. I am told that some of Indias brightest minds and writers will be discussing a host of issues at the Delhi Lit Fest such as how can 21st century children relate to our ancient epics? Should the secular state also appreciate Indian dharma? Is politics lagging behind social change and does India need a new political and economic blueprint?

Since we are celebrating new India, I hope your authors and speakers will not only dwell on the past but also discuss how to bring about change in every sphere of India: how can we move beyond the shibboleths of the past and embrace change, how do we create a society where change is positive, robust and moves us along towards an open, welcoming society in the magnificent tradition of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam?

I am very glad that the festival is open to the public and will be engaging with the the entire spectrum of ideas from social media to scholarship, from high art to street expressions, from budding novelists, films and sport to the man on the street.

Whether in the attitudes of the youth, the energy of civil society, fast-paced technological breakthroughs or in the dynamic interaction of the generations, there is no doubt that we are seeing a New India. We are the world's youngest country of its size, and the new intellectual churning and questioning, new ideas about society, politics, citizens' activism and youth power are exciting new features. I hope you will showcase these at Times Lit Fest Delhi 2017.

A society must always be in conversation with itself and I hope the writers and thinkers gathered here will discuss about bringing a positive change in every sphere and make India stronger.

Thank you. Jai Hind!"
Guwahati, Nov 25 (IBNS): At least five persons were killed and 14 others injured in three road mishaps in Assam in past 24 hours.

According to the reports, four persons were killed as a result of head on collision between an Alto car and Dumper vehicle at Borkhola area in Cachar district on Saturday.

A top police official of Cachar district said that, all four persons travelling in the Alto car were killed on spot.

On the other hand, a bike rider was killed on the spot while the bike hit back side of a roadside parked vehicle at Raha in central Assams Nagaon district.

In separate incident, at least 14 people were injured as a speedy Bolero Max pickup van rolled down at National Highway 37 at Sonapur in Kamrup (Metro) district on Saturday evening.

The injured persons were rushed to nearest hospital and Guwahati Medical College Hospital (GMCH).

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
New Delhi, Nov 25 (IBNS): Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will leave for a three-day visit to Russia on Sunday.

The meet will take place from Nov 27th-29th.

During his visit, the Union Home Minister will hold discussions with Minister for Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation Vladimir Kolokoltsev and other senior Russian leadership.

The discussions would cover the entire gamut of bilateral, regional and international matters of mutual interest.

Singh is likely to sign an Agreement on Cooperation between Ministry of Home Affairs, India and Ministry of Interior of the Russian Federation.

He will also sign a Joint Action Plan between the Narcotics Control Bureau, MHA and Ministry of Interior of the Russian Federation.

The signing of a comprehensive security agreement on cooperation in combating terrorism and organized crime with the Ministry of Interior of the Russian Federation would reinforce the relationship between India and Russia through exchange and sharing of information, expertise, best practices and would help in curbing terrorism and enhancing security in the region.

Singh will also hold meetings with Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary, Security Council of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Puchkov, Minister of Civil Defence, Emergency Situations and Disaster Relief of the Russian Federation and Alexander Bortnikov, Director, Federal Security Service of Russia.

He will pay a visit to the National Crisis Management Centre (EMERCOM) under the Ministry of Situations.

As both the countries have long history of close cooperation on matters of shared security concerns, this visit will provide an opportunity to further cement and strengthen the mutually beneficial bilateral ties between both the countries.




The actor took to Twitter itself to thank his fans.

"Thank You for your generosity. Thank you for your love, warmth and appreciation. Thank you for your constructive criticism. Thank you for your smileys . You are a part of a world of my own. #11MillionFollowers @Twitter," he posted.

Thank You for your generosity. Thank you for your love, warmth and appreciation. Thank you for your constructive criticism. Thank you for your smileys aiYYYYYY. You are a part of a world of my own.YYYYY #11MillionFollowers @Twitter pic.twitter.com/Cy5QqBKojt  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) November 24, 2017

Image: Internet Wallpaper
Cairo, Nov 25 (IBNS): Reacting to the deadly terrorist attack in Egypt, which killed 235 people, President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi has said the country will respond forcefully, media reports said.

Sisi was quoted by BBC as saying: "What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism."

"The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force.," the President added.

At least 235 people were killed as militants launched gun and bomb attack on a mosque in Egypt's North Sinai province.

According to reports, 109 people were injured in the incident.

On Friday Morning, a massive explosion rocked the Al-Rawada mosque, located in the town of Beur El Abes, in North Sinais Al-Arish, Egypt Independent reported.

The attack took place during Friday prayers.

Large number of worshippers had assembled at the mosque when the attack took place.

Three days of national mourning has been announced following the attack.

Responding to the attack, the Egyptian military said they had carried out airstrikes on terrorist targets.

Condemning the attack, US President Donald Trump said he would like to talk to the Egyptian President over the attack and terrorism issue.

"Will be calling the President of Egypt in a short while to discuss the tragic terrorist attack, with so much loss of life. We have to get TOUGHER AND SMARTER than ever before, and we will. Need the WALL, need the BAN! God bless the people of Egypt." Trump tweeted.

Will be calling the President of Egypt in a short while to discuss the tragic terrorist attack, with so much loss of life. We have to get TOUGHER AND SMARTER than ever before, and we will. Need the WALL, need the BAN! God bless the people of Egypt.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017

Trump also called the attack "cowardly". "Horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshipers in Egypt. The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!"

Horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshipers in Egypt. The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017

UK President Theresa May tweeted to say: "Appalled by the sickening attack on a mosque in North Sinai. Condolences with all those in #Egypt affected by this evil and cowardly act."

Appalled by the sickening attack on a mosque in North Sinai. Condolences with all those in #Egypt affected by this evil and cowardly act.  Theresa May (@theresa_may) November 24, 2017

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter to condemn theattack. "Strongly condemn the barbaric terrorist attack on a place of worship in Egypt. Our deep condolences at the loss of innocent lives. India resolutely supports the fight against all forms of terrorism and stands with the people as well as Government of Egypt."

Strongly condemn the barbaric terrorist attack on a place of worship in Egypt. Our deep condolences at the loss of innocent lives. India resolutely supports the fight against all forms of terrorism and stands with the people as well as Government of Egypt.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 24, 2017



Image : twitter.com/AlsisiOfficial
New York, Nov 25(IBNS): Condemning in the strongest terms an attack against the United Nations peacekeeping force in Mali that left several uniformed personnel dead, the Security Council on Friday called on the countrys authorities to swiftly investigate and bring the perpetrators to justice.

In a statement issued to the press, the 15-member body underlined that attacks targeting peacekeepers may constitute war crimes under international law.

Mahamat Saleh Annadif, the Secretary-Generals Special Representative and head of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), also condemned the attack in Menaka, in which three peacekeepers were killed and 16 peacekeepers and one civilian personnel were wounded.

A Malian soldier was also killed and another one injured, according to the Mission, which reported that aerial support was immediately deployed to secure the perimeter and facilitate medical evacuations.

Also on Friday, a MINUSMA convoy was attacked north of Douentza, in the Mopti region, leaving one UN peacekeeper dead and three severely injured.

The Council, in its statement, reiterated that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed, reaffirming the need for all States to combat, by all means, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts.

It further stressed the importance of MINUSMA having the necessary capacities, including combat convoy companies, to fulfil its mandate and promote the safety and security of the UN peacekeepers.

UN Photo/Marco Dormino

Source: www.justearthnews.com
New York, Nov 25 (IBNS): Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the United Nations Security Council have condemned in the strongest terms the attack on al-Rawdah Mosque during Friday prayers in the town of Bir al-Abed in North Sinai, Egypt, that left scores of people dead and wounded.

The Secretary-General extends his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and to the Government and people of Egypt and wishes a swift recovery to those who have been injured, his spokesperson, Farhan Haq, said in a statement.

The Secretary-General calls for those responsible for on Fridays horrific attack to be swiftly brought to justice, he added.

In a statement issued to the press by Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi of Italy, which holds the presidency of the Security Council for November, the 15-member body also strongly condemned the heinous and cowardly terrorist attack which reportedly left at least 235 people dead and over 100 injured.

Council members reaffirmed that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, and underlined the need to bring perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism to justice.

UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

Source: www.justearthnews.com
The state says there could be as much as 25 acres that will be available for industry to move into and set up shop at the former Montana Pole Plant site.

The site off South Montana Street, where wood was treated with a blend of oil and PCP for decades, has stirred controversy in recent months. The 40-acre site that stretches from Silver Bow Creek to Mt. Moriah Cemetery is on its way toward a finished cleanup. But as the Department of Environmental Quality works on it, issues have come up, making county officials and neighbors irate.

While the state considers the cleanup of the worst, as well as the most hazardous, of the contamination  the PCP, a carcinogen  as successful, the cleanup of dioxin, also a carcinogen, was not.

Another issue is that the county had long expected, during the approximately 20-year cleanup of soils and groundwater, to turn Buttes smallest Superfund site into a mixed-use space, with areas available for recreation, as well as industrial and commercial usage.

But during public meetings this fall, DEQ spoke instead of cleaning up only to recreational levels, which has led to considerable confusion about whether the site will be considered safe for workers.

And if its not safe for workers, then, many are asking, how could the site be safe for kids to play?

DEQ Project Manager David Bowers didnt address those concerns at a Citizens Technical Environmental Committee meeting earlier this week. County, federal and state officials attended the public meeting at the Butte Public Library Tuesday.

But Bowers did give an overview of a new study DEQ did recently to sample areas at the site where the state had not previously gathered enough information to proceed, despite the 20-year cleanup.

According to Bowers report, the county has reason to hope that about 25 acres will be available for industrial use.

Bowers said the study also provided a pleasant surprise for DEQ. The dioxin doesnt go as deep in the soil as previously thought in certain hot spots on the site. DEQ also found the PCP contamination cleanup has already reached industrial-level cleanup standards.

Standards are based on a formula which involves calculating the amount of time a person spends at a site and is potentially exposed.

While many are decrying the possibility of the site becoming an open space area sitting on top of waste left in place  the dirty dirt will be buried under an engineered cap with many protective layers on a portion of the site - Bowers points to other sites, including Copper Mountain Recreation Complex, which essentially acts as a cap on top of a former town dump.

There are many such recreational sites similarly sitting on top of waste of one kind or another across the country and across Montana, Bowers said to The Montana Standard in previous interviews.

But Butte-Silver Bow Superfund coordinator Jon Sesso said after the meeting that its going to be difficult to explain to the public that my kids can play on it.

One problem DEQ encountered through the study was realizing that contamination is leaching into groundwater due to rain. A liner that will go under the cap is designed to stop such leaching.

Sesso said hes concerned that some of that 25 acres includes an area of the site that is closest to the residents who live along the Boulevard neighborhood.

That was always (planned) as open space area to insulate the Boulevard from any industrial uses, Sesso said.

Sesso wants to see portions of the site that are father away from the residents available for industry.

Bowers said that within about a week, he will be meeting with the county to discuss potential designs and what can go where on the site in the future.

Bowers also plans to respond to the countys request to produce a set of newer technologies that might be available to clean up the dioxin, instead of placing it underneath an engineered cap since the hazardous waste didnt break down like the PCP and other contaminants did.

That report will be in the countys hands before the end of the year, Bowers said.

Another issue at the site is the water treatment plant. It treats the groundwater through a system similar to kitchen sink water systems, where carbon attracts the contaminants.

The plant, too, has become a point for controversy. Because there is waste underneath the interstates 90-15 bridge, DEQ now predicts it could take 50 years to completely clean up the underground plume full of toxins.

The state doesnt have enough money from the 1996 settlement with the responsible parties to operate the plant that long.

Bowers told The Standard earlier this week that DEQ is actively looking for new solutions to cut the need for water treatment down by 15 to 20 years.

We would like to get this site cleaned up with the money we have, Bowers said. We want to shorten the cleanup.
Quetta, Nov 25 (IBNS): At least four people were killed in a blast that rocked Sariab Road in Pakistan's Quetta city on Saturday, media reports said.

Five FC personnel are among 19 people injured in the blast which targetted an FC commandant vehicle, police told Geo News.

Police said evidence are being collected to know the exact nature of the blast.

The deceased included a child.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.
Islamabad, Nov 25 (IBNS) : A policeman was killed and about 170 people were injured as security forces fought on streets with Islamist hardliners during a protest sit-in that virtually laid a siege on Islamabad on Saturday, media reports said.

Pakistan's Geo News quoted police as saying that the suffered a deadly blow to the head in I-8/4 sector as protesters pelted stones at security officials during the operation at Faizabad interchange.

Heavy contingents of police, FC and Rangers were deployed to the interchange.

Dawn and Geo News reported that there are prison vans, ambulances at the site.

Helicopters and drones are being used by the authorities for aerial surveillance.

Police have also used water cannons to disperse the protesters after the capital was paralysed due to the sit-in which has been ongoing for almost three weeks.

The protesters in retaliation are throwing stones at the security men.

Dawn said the sit-in was being conducted by religious parties since November 8.

According to reports, dozens of protesters have been detained.

The operation was commenced on court orders following the expiry of the midnight deadline set by the district administration.

Dawn said almost 8,000 security personnel started operation at 7 am after last deadline ended on Saturday.

The sit-in by the little-known hardline group called Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah Pakistan has blocked Faizabad interchange used by thousands of commuters.

The protesters are demanding that law minister Zahid Hamid resign over a hastily-abandoned amendment to the oath that election candidates must swear.

Demonstrators have linked it to blasphemy.

The operation was started on order of Prime Minister as Interior Minister presented him whole situation. The premier allowed operation to fulfill Islamabad High Court orders.

According to Waqt News, the security forces had dispersed half of protesters from sit-in while all protesters were dispersed from Faizabad interchange.

The protesters however spread to dozens of different points as more people from twin cities come to the protest.

The security forces could not arrest the sit-in leadership including Khadim Hussain Rizvi till now. The protesters have surrounded leadership and stopping police and Rangers.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Electronic Media Regulating Authority (PEMRA) has issued coverage notice for electronic media and all satellite TV channels, the reports said.

Image: Wikimedia Commons
Quetta, Nov 25 (IBNS): A suicide blast in Pakistan's Quetta area killed at least five people on Saturday, media reports said.

The incident left at least one child killed.



Four Frontier Corps (FC) personnel are among the 19 people injured in the blast that targetted an FC commandant vehicle, police told Geo News.

No one was reportedly present in the vehicle during the blast.

Three suspects from near the site of the incident have been taken into custody and are being probed, police sources told Geo News.

According to media reports, the body parts of the alleged suicide attacker was found.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.


Karachi, Nov 25 (IBNS): An Afghanistan national was found dead in a hotel room in Karachi city on Pakistan, media reports said.

Siddiqullahs body was recovered from the room on the fourth floor of the hotel in the jurisdiction of the Preedy police station, Pajhwok Afghan News reported.

Police said the person was stabbed to death.

He reportedly worked in a restaurant and lived in the hotel.




Stellarton, Nov 25 (IBNS): Sobeys, the second largest food retailer in Canada, is aiming to create one big national organisation out of five regional retail units, media reports said.

As the retail company is trying to create one big national organisation, several employees will lose their jobs.

The company will be cutting around 800 jobs across the country from various regional units.

The news of the job-cut, which surfaced on late Thursday, has been confirmed by Sobeys on Friday.

Chief Executive of Sobeys, Michael Medline was quoted by CBC News: "The future success of Sobeys, and our continued service to over 900 communities across the country, depends on our steadfast commitment to transform our business."

The company told CBC News that around 150 current employees will lose their jobs in Nova Scotia along with another 100 in Stellarton, the company headquarter.

Medline told media: "The first phase of our plan to transform our business, which has been focused on resetting the foundation of Sobeys and creating a new organization structure, is now substantially complete."

"This will allow us to be more efficient in many ways and to be more agile as we pursue new opportunities to compete and win the loyalty of Canadians," the company Chief Executive added.

The report even stated that Sobeys was struggling with the problems that had come up with the company's new acquisition of Safeway Canada.

Sobeys is the second largest food retailer in Canada that operates approximately 260 supermarkets across the country. It also operates stores in 10 provinces of Canada.



(Reporting by Suman Das)

Image: facebook.com/Sobeys
Ottawa, Nov 25 (IBNS): Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday apologised to hundreds of first nations' people who had undergone abuse in a boarding school system.

The indigenous people were forcefully placed into a system of boarding school but the system was full of abuses.

Trudeau apologised to the indigenous students who had to attend the residential schools in provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador.

"Today, we apologize to former students of Newfoundland and Labrador residential schools and to the families, loved ones, and communities for the painful & tragic legacy these schools left behind.." Trudeau said on Twitter.

Along with the apology, the PM acknowledged the many Innu, Inuit, and NunatuKavut children who were neglected and abused, and who suffered lasting damage to their culture and language because of the residential school system.

Trudeau said: "For every Innu, Inuit, and NunatuKavut child in Newfoundland and Labrador who suffered discrimination, mistreatment, abuse, and neglect in residential schools  we are sorry. While this long overdue apology will not undo the harm done, we offer it as a sign that we as a government and as a country accept responsibility for our failings."

"It is our shared hope that we can learn from this past and continue to advance our journey of reconciliation and healing. We have the power to be better and to do better., the PM added.

The Prime Minister even said the government needs to acknowledge the past where intergenerational trauma had affected the first nations people.

However, according to some media reports, the local leaders feel Trudeau's apology is just not enough.

Students, who were separated from their parents, had to endure emotional, physical and sexual abuses in the boarding schools.



(Reporting by Suman Das)

Image: facebook.com/pg/JustinPJTrudeau
It has been 7 years since the tragic events of the Mumbai attacks took place. The memories of the brutal attack are still fresh for those who faced one of the most heinous attacks on Indian soil. Its time to remember the heroes who laid their lives down to save ours. Heres a small tribute.

1. Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan

Wikimedia Commons

Leading his team of NSG Commandos up to the sixth floor of the Taj Hotel, Unnikrishnan was instrumental in rescuing 14 hostages from the clutches of the terrorists. While exchanging heavy fire with the terrorists, one of his team members was grievously injured. He pinned down the perpetrators and managed to extract his injured colleague. He was shot in the arm, but continued to fight despite the injuries. He followed the terrorists who escaped to another floor and was shot from behind, later succumbing to his injuries.

2. Hemant Karkare

wikimedia commons

The Chief of Mumbai Anti Terrorist Squad rushed to the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus on being informed of the attack. Finding the place empty, he along with his colleagues rushed to Cama and Albless Hospital. From here they reached Rang Bhawan, where the terrorist were hiding behind a car. He shot one of the terrorist who dropped his weapon. The terrorist was Ajmal Kasab. Another terrorist Ismail Khan, fired from his automatic rifle hitting Karkare, killing him.

3. Vijay Salaskar

Dainik Bhaskar

A police officer in the Mumbai Police, Salaskar was an encounter specialist credited with killing nearly 75 criminals. He was in the car with Karkare when they ran into the terrorist who shot them. He was shot at by the terrorist and died on the spot.

4. Ashok Kamte

wikimedia commons

The additional commissioner of police was with Salaskar and Karkare in the car when the terrorists opened fire on them. He was hit by the volley of bullets, and was the only who retaliated to the fire. He too passed away on the spot alongside Salaskar and Karkare.

5. Tukaram Ombale

wikimedia commons

The Maharashtra Police Sub-inspector received information about terrorists being on the move towards Marine Drive. He positioned barricades to block the cars passage and managed to stop the vehicle. As soon as the car came to a stop, the terrorists opened fire. Ombale, without fearing for his own life, managed to snatch the weapon from one of the terrorists, Ajmal Kasab, despite being hit by a bullet. He overpowered Kasab and was instrumental in capturing him alive. Ombale would later die of his injuries.
Each passing day, the controversies around Sanjay Leela Bhansalis Padmavati are only picking up speed. Yesterday, a body was found hanging at Jaipurs Nahargarh fort with an anti-Padmavati slogan, which read, We dont burn effigies, we kill. Indeed, a film, which hasnt been released as of yet, has become a reason for a persons death.

(Also Read: 'Padmavati' Row Takes A Chilling Turn! Dead Body Found Hanging At Jaipur Fort Along With Note)

Protests are going on in the entire nation, and also in the UK after the Rajput body there launched a boycott campaign against the film and Rajput Karni Sena threatened to burn the theatres there.

BCCL, Screengrab

On the other hand, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee has reportedly welcomed the film in the state and wants to invite the ace filmmaker for a special premiere of the movie.

If they cannot release it in any other state, we will give special arrangement for Padmavati. Bengal will be very happy and proud to screen the film, she said, as quoted as saying by Mumbai Mirror.

The #Padmavati controversy is not only unfortunate but also a calculated plan of a political party to destroy the freedom to express ourselves. We condemn this super emergency. All in the film industry must come together and protest in one voice  Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 20, 2017

On the other side, many states including Gujarat have decided to ban the film.

Earlier scheduled to hit the screens on December 1, Padmavatis release has now been pushed indefinitely.
A brilliant orator, Shashi Tharoor has often made headlines with his wit. You can count on him to offer the most eloquent answers to questions on national issues, and to shut down trolls by trolling them right back. And always, always trust him to use words that make you reach for the Oxford Dictionary.

Here are 11 instances when Tharoor completely owned the internet.

1. When a Pakistani girl asked him about India Occupied Kashmir

During his recent visits to various US universities to launch his book, Inglorious Empire, Tharoor was asked about 'India Occupied Kashmir' by a Pakistani girl who questioned, "How long will we keep talking about Kashmir and keep this as a bone of contention?" Tharoor replied, "I am not, you are!" Tharoor's amazing reply was followed by a detailed explanation of how Pakistan was created on logic that the Indian Nationalist Movement disagreed with.

BCCL

2. When he was asked about the British contribution to India

Tharoor, during the Australian channel ABC News Q&A, was asked if Indians should be grateful to the British for imparting knowledge in the field of engineering, infrastructure, and education. Intelligently, he responded, Over 200 years of exploitation, depredation, loot and destruction, reduced it to a poster child for third-world poverty, with just over three percent of global GDP, 90 per cent of the population living below the poverty line when the British left in 1947.

3. When he coined the term Webaqoof

After giving the Internet a word like farrago, Tharoor created a fun wordplay in Hinglish and coined a new term Webaqoof to describe people who depend on the Internet for all their information. As a vocal Tweeter, Tharoor wrote, New Hinglish 21st century dictionary: *Webaqoof*: "one who believes every claim or allegation on the internet & social media must be true. [sic]

New Hinglish 21st century dictionary:

*Webaqoof*: "one who believes every claim or allegation on the internet & social media must be true"  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) July 25, 2017

4. When he took a dig at the trolls after Tanmay Bhats meme controversy

After AIB created a meme that had a picture of a Modi look-alike at a railway station and another morphed photo of Modi using Snapchat's popular dog filter, people lost their cool. Bhakts were offended, which led to an FIR against the comedy collective, but it also prompted Tharoor to troll the trolls with the same filter. He tweeted to AIB and wrote, "Attn all trolls: I took the #DogFilter challenge! [sic]

The Oxford graduate sent many scrambling for an Oxford dictionary when he tweeted, Exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies being broadcast by an unprincipled showman masquerading as a journalist. After his tweet went viral, the Google search for the word farrago registered a spike. His uniquely worded tweet led netizens to unleash a spate of jokes turning it into one of the best highlights of this year on social media.

Exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations&outright lies being broadcast by an unprincipled showman masquerading as a journalst  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) May 8, 2017

6. When Tharoor sought an apology from the British

The Congress MP shared an online petition started by Avinash Tharoor, his nephew, which required 1,00,000 signatures for it to be debated in the UK Parliament. Tharoor has, on several occasions, called out the British on their inhumane colonial rule. The petition demanded an apology for plundering India, and Tharoor literally heralded the petition and won a thundering applause from the citizens.

Petition seeking British apology to the people of India needs 100,000 signatures to be debated in the UK parliament! https://t.co/IJfhnOt7iT  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) March 25, 2017

7. When Tharoor schooled a TV host on Indias contribution to the British Empire

In an interview, after Tharoor was asked to talk about the trickle down of repatriation funds to the UK, his reply left Sky News's British presenter Colin Brazier totally stumped. Tharoor gladly answered the question and reminded the interviewer of everything that India had done for British. What really matters is for Britain to look within and to recognise that there is something to be apologetic about, the former United Nations diplomat said.

bccl

8. When he turned down a viral petition seeking him to be the next Prime Minister

The said petition read, Tharoor is a man well qualified with deep knowledge of international and national issues, who can connect with the people of India and with world leaders." The MP graciously declined to be a part of such movement and said, "I am a member of Parliament for the Congress Party, nothing more and nothing less. The party has a settled leadership, which is not up for debate. When changes occur they do so through an established procedure." His post received 10,000 reactions on Facebook.

9. When Tharoor asked Britain to teach colonial history in schools

While speaking to British television channel, Channel 4, Tharoor questioned why the British didn't teach their colonial history in schools. He said there is a "historical amnesia about what the empire entailed." He said, Britain came to one of the richest countries in the world (India) in the early 18th century and reduced it, after 200 years of plunder, to one of the poorest. The video received 9.1 million views after the channel posted it on their Facebook page.

bccl

10. When Tharoor launched his own petition to make Modi legalise homosexuality

After his private members bill to decriminalise homosexuality was voted out of the Indian Parliament, Tharoor launched his own petition and addressed it to Modi to make homosexuality legal. Tharoors decision to take the movement to the people of India was highly appreciated. People instantly got behind the petition and the signatures poured in.

What does an MP do if Parliament won't discuss his bill? Circulate a Petition! Please sign: https://t.co/b5P1aGCXFS via @ChangeOrg_India  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 23, 2015

11. When Tharoor took on the British empire in their own Parliament

The 2014 debate that put the British Empire at a mock trial in their own Supreme Court, organised by the Indo-British Heritage Trust, saw Tharoor deliver his best international address. Not only did it receive thousands of views on YouTube but was widely circulated on social networking sites. Tharoors step-by-step takedown of the British empire was one of the best history had ever seen - "No wonder the sun never set on the British Empire, even God couldn't trust the English in the dark.

Tharoor is one of the finest political personalities India has seen and we should be proud of an MP who never minces his words. He speaks his mind, always, and does so unapologetically!
It's a moment of pride for India as Golden Temple receives the 'most visited place of the world' award by World Book of Records (WBR).

A London-based organisation, the WBR team presented the award certificate to Shriomani Gurdwara Pharbandhak Committee (SGPC), the management body of the Golden Temple.

afp

Also read: These Pictures Of An Illuminated Golden Temple On Guru Nanak Jayanti Is A Sight To Behold!

The SGPC Chief Secretary, Roop Singh said that the certificate was given to Golden Temple as over a lakh devotees visit the holy shrine every day. According to Singh, the footfall has increased since the live telecast of Gurbani kirtan.

Singh added that the certificate was presented by General Secretary of the WBR, Surbhi Kaul, who was visiting from London on Friday.

pti

Kaul said that the temple has been awarded the certificate because of its increasing footfall of devotees. She added that so far, eight places including Shirdi Sai Baba, Vaishno Devi and Mount Abu, have received this award, reports The Pioneer.

Also read: Sikhs In America Ask That Women Be Allowed To Perform Kirtans At The Golden Temple

The award will also be given to Durgiana Temple at Amritsar and Attari-Wagah border, which also witnessed a huge footfall.
It's not only us Indians who love chai. Our favourite beverage is famous around the world. Don't agree? Wait till you read this story.

Meet Eamon and Becca - a Canadian couple who instantly fell in love with masala chai.

chaiwalachai.com

Also read: Turns Out, The Blue-Eyed Chaiwala The Internet Went Crazy Over Isn't From Pakistan After All!

While working in Australia, they met a guy named George Manousakis - a cafe owner who blended masala chai over 11 years of experimenting with the drink.

A post shared by CHAIWALA (@chaiwalachai) on May 26, 2015 at 7:59pm PDT

With a goal to perfect his blend of the tea, Eamon and Becca travelled to different Asian countries which consumed the beverage.

The Chief Chaiwala showcasing his "metre-pour" as learned from the streets of Kolkata. Big love to @blogto for the snap and for popping by to chai our blend @torontocoffeeandtea expo this weekend. Don't forget about our extended show special and free shipping when you shop online today with code: TCTE2017 . Check our stories for more details. A post shared by CHAIWALA (@chaiwalachai) on Apr 11, 2017 at 5:55am PDT

And their adventures bore fruit when they decided to settle as Canadian Chaiwalas in Toronto, Canada.

Their shop is aptly named Chaiwala Chai and is a hit amongst tea drinkers.

You don't need to be a certified yogi or even yoga-curious to enjoy the @yogaconference ! We've had the most joyful two days here and are so excited for one more day of positive vibes. Tap the photo for a few of our favourite vendor friends you can find at the show! A post shared by CHAIWALA (@chaiwalachai) on Apr 2, 2017 at 7:25am PDT

Also read: 7 Amazing Chaiwalas Who Will Make You Regret Your Life Choices

For the love of chai.
On Friday night, most of the international media was busy covering the suspected terror-related incident in Oxford Circus Tube station in England which has been since revealed was the result of an altercation between two men on the platform.

The panic caused by rumors of gunshots resulted in a few passengers suffering minor injuries. But it was soon cleared that there was no terror links or potential attacks.

AFP

But another major incident which got buried in the news was an actual terror attack, the deadliest in Egypt's history.

It was another bloody Friday for Egypt after some 40 gunmen attacked a Sufi Mosque in the restive North Sinai region.

The attack which happened during the evening prayer has killed over 230 worshippers and left over a hundred others injured.

Reuters

Witnesses said assailants had surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles and detonated a bomb. They then mowed down panicked worshippers as they tried to flee and used congregants' vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque.

The scene was horrific, said Ibrahim Sheteewi, a resident of Bir al-Abed, the small north Sinai town where the attack took place. The bodies were scattered on the ground outside the mosque. I hope God punishes them for this.

AFP

A Sinai police officer said the dead included at least 15 children. A witness put the toll even higher, saying he had helped gather the bodies of 25 children.

The startling bloodshed in the town of Bir al-Abd also wounded at least 109, according to the state news agency. It offered the latest sign that the Egyptian government has failed to deter an IS-led insurgency.

The scale and ruthlessness of the assault, in an area racked by an Islamist insurgency, sent shock waves across the nation which has seen a spike in terror attacks in the past couple of years.

Even though there is no claim of responsibility of the attack so far by any groups, many security analysts have pointed out the imprints of ISIS all over the place, including the choice of targets to the way the attack was carried out.

AFP

The target were mostly civilians, Sufi Muslims, a mystic sect of Islam considered heretics by hard-line groups like the ISIS. In the past too, Sufis and other minority sects like the Coptic Christians have come under attack by ISIS in Egypt.

AFP

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has vowed to respond forcefully to the attack and declared three days of mourning would begin Saturday, the day after the gun and bomb assault on the Rawda mosque.

Paris' Eiffel Tower switched off its lights in a show of solidarity with the victims.
FCC plan to repeal net neutrality gives telecom giants control of Internet access by Kevin Reed (WSWS repost)

Under the guise of fighting fake news and unsubstantiated claims of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, proposed changes to the FCCs regulatory policies are being advanced by the state to intensify censorship of left-wing and anti-war websites in preparation of further attacks on the democratic rights of the entire working class.

FCC plan to repeal net neutrality gives telecom giants control of public access to Internet

By Kevin Reed at the World Socialist Website



23 November 2017



Donald Trumps appointed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai released a final draft on Wednesday of an order that will enable privately-owned US broadband Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to control public access to online content.



The blatantly anti-democratic plan to deregulate the US Internet infrastructure will be voted on at a December 14 open FCC hearing. It is expected to be adopted by a 3-to-2 majority.



Following Pais appointment in January, the overturning of Obama-era net neutrality rules has been a top priority of the White House and Republican Party in cooperation with the giant telecom monopolies such as AT&T, Verizon, TimeWarner and Comcast.



The concept of net neutrality means that all content on the Internet is treated equally, that the ISPs cannot adjust or prioritize the kind of data or the website content that individuals or organizations access online based on business considerations.



Net neutrality Open Internet Rules that became effective on June 15, 2015 prohibited high-speed ISPs from stopping or slowing down the delivery of websites to customers or charging different rates for the quality of high-volume data content such as streaming video over the Internet to homes and businesses.



Although denied by representatives of the broadband companies, the terms of the FCC plan make it possible for access to certain information or data to be blocked entirely or subject to additional fees or service charges depending on what is in the profit interests of the Internet carrier being used.



With characteristic hypocrisy, Pai released the final draft of his Restoring Internet Freedom plan, which has been in the works since April, declaring, Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the Internet. As is widely acknowledged by tech industry experts and online access advocates, the FCC proposal has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with controlling content and throttling broadband data delivery based on service tiers paid for by customers.



A primary false premise of the repeal of net neutrality rules is that government regulation of the big ISPs is burdensome and unnecessary and stifling investment and innovation in Internet infrastructure. However, the reality is that telephone and cable corporations are leveraging their Washington influence to regenerate Wall Street interest in their legacy Internet corporations. In comparison to the investment in content giants like Google, Amazon, Netflix and Facebook, the broadband industry has stagnated and been devalued on Wall Street.



One of the objectives of the ISP monopolies is to enter the content business themselves either by developing their own programming or through acquisition of TV networks or other media organizations. By lifting net neutrality regulations, the broadband providers can enhance access to their own content and throttle, i.e. restrict, the performance or block the content of their competitors.



Under Obama, the net neutrality rules for regulating Internet infrastructure companies as utilities or common carriers is based on Title II of the Telecommunications Act signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 19, 1934. Since the election of Donald Trump, the Republican-led offensive has been exploiting the limitations of the antiquated utility framework of the landline telephone era to abolish entirely any government regulation of the privately-owned aspects of US Internet infrastructure.



The timing of the announcement by FCC Chairman Pai that he is moving forward aggressively with the new plan is significant. Despite mass public opposition to the repeal of net neutralitythe overwhelming majority of 22 million responses on the FCC website were opposed to the orderthe FCC is moving ahead now for transparently political reasons.



Opening up the ability of ISPs to control the flow of Internet content to the public is being implemented as part of the expanding campaign by the statewith the full cooperation of the major telecom, Internet and social media corporationsto censor access to socialist political opposition within the US. Providing the ISPs with carte blanche control over the flow of content takes this censorship to the most fundamental level of Internet technology.



These same ISPsAT&T and Verizon in particularhave a long history of collaboration with the military-intelligence establishment in spying on the public and gathering data on the online activity of the global population.



No one should accept the nominal opposition of Google, Amazon and Facebook to the attack on net neutrality by the Trump administration and their competitors in the Internet infrastructure industries. These same corporations have been working hand-in-glove with the state over the past year to block and censor access by the public to socialist and left-wing Internet content under the guise of the fight against fake news and unsubstantiated claims of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. The campaign has been spearheaded by the Democratic Party.



Left-wing sites, and the World Socialist Web Site in particular, have been the primary targets of this censorship campaign. The latest changes to the FCCs regulatory policies are being lined up to intensify this censorship and prepare further attacks on the democratic rights of the entire working class.
Wednesday, Jun 14th, 2017 (10:37 am) - Score 1,195

The Scottish Government has today claimed that their 428m Digital Scotland project with BT (Openreach) has successfully ensured that 750,000 extra Scottish homes and businesses can access a fibre broadband (FTTC/P) service, with superfast speeds covering more than 90% of the country.

The programme currently aims to ensure that 95% of premises in Scotland are put within reach of the new high speed fibre broadband network by the end of March 2018, although sadly this figure drops to 86% for the rural Highland and Islands region by the end of 2017 (here). Most of the funding has come from public sources, with BT also contributing 126 million to the effort.

We posted an update on superfast broadband coverage across the United Kingdom last week (here), which estimated that over 89% of Scotland could access a fixed line fibre network capable of delivering speeds of above 30Mbps. Meanwhile the raw fibre footprint (includes both superfast and sub-24Mbps capable network coverage) stood at just shy of 94%, although official figures always tend to be a little more optimistic.

Fergus Ewing, Scottish Connectivity Secretary, said: I am delighted that more people are now able to benefit from fibre broadband, with over 750,000 premises across Scotland now able to connect. Businesses like this one here in Lochgelly  one of the 77,000 connected in the last six months  can now connect to their fastest-ever broadband speeds for the first time showing our investment in digital infrastructure is paying off. The programme, is reaching more communities than originally planned and will continue to do so in the coming months. However, local people need to sign up for the new, faster services with an internet service provider, as upgrades are not automatic. I am of course aware that many homes and businesses do not yet have access. Under the further R100 contract, we will be proceeding with the next phase of our pledge to enable access to broadband for every home and business to Scotland within the lifetime of this Scottish Parliament.

As hinted above, the work doesnt stop once the current contract with BT comes to an end. The SNP ruled Scottish Government, which is headed by Nicola Sturgeon (First Minister), recently published their 2017 Digital Strategy for Scotland. This document reiterated last years R100 proposal by committing them to extend superfast broadband access to all by 2021, while encouraging the growth of ultrafast services, although were still waiting to get some more details on this (a public consultation was planned for Q2 2017).

Interestingly the SNPs recent 2017 manifesto (here) stated that the current contract aims to deliver superfast broadband to 95 per cent of properties across Scotland by the end of 2017, which seems to ignore the March 2018 completion date on the projects own website. The use of superfast also indicates speeds of 30Mbps+, although previously the 95% target was only ever spoken of as a reference to the raw fibre footprint.

Suffice to say that politicians are notoriously terrible at clearly communicating their broadband targets and we suspect that Scotland, which has an awful lot of rugged rural terrain and sparse communities, may struggle to hit 95% coverage of superfast speeds by the end of 2017, although theyll definitely achieve that figure in terms of the raw fibre footprint (including sub-24Mbps speed areas).

UPDATE 11:38am

In keeping with the above, the Highlands & Islands Enterprise (HIE) have also announced that their half of the contract has so far extended high speed fibre broadband to an additional 160,000+ premises in the region, which they claim brings the total number (plus commercial roll-outs) of homes with access to fibre in the region to 205,000 or around 84% of all premises.

We note that last weeks independent estimates produced a fibre based coverage figure of 85.70% for the HIE region, albeit dropping to around 70% for those areas able to receive superfast broadband speeds of 30Mbps+. Officially todays update re-confirms that coverage is expected to reach 86% of premises by the end of the 2017/18 financial year .

Fergus Ewing added: The Highlands and Islands project is one of the most challenging broadband infrastructure roll-outs in Europe. When it started only 4% of the regions premises could access next generation broadband. Every day roll-out reaches increasingly remote communities and smaller and smaller groups of homes, including locations like the island of Scalpay in the Outer Hebrides, and villages like Lonmore and Roskhill in Skye.

The majority of the latest connections to be upgraded were previously on the dreaded Exchange Only (EO) lines, which require a complex and expensive network rearrangement to resolve.
Little Rock, AR - Little Rock police arrested a woman after finding her attempting to steal bandages while half-naked in a Kroger store.

Police were originally called out to a burglary alarm at Ciao Baci, located near the Kroger on Beechwood Street, and found a window to the business had been busted.

While they were investigating this, officers were told there was a white female in Kroger who was partially naked and trying to steal merchandise.

Police made contact with the woman, identified as 26-year-old Philadelphia Shields. She was found near the first-aid items in Kroger and was wearing men's underwear, one flip-flop and a long sweater that was left open in the front. Authorities say she had a bandage in one hand, a flashlight in her possession and potting soil on her right cheek and left foot.

When she was confronted, Shields handed over the bandage, saying she was waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up and pay for it. When asked why she had dirt on her face, she reportedly replied she and her boyfriend were into fetishes where they throw dirt on each other and film it.

Police say Shields appeared to be under the influence of narcotics, so they placed her in handcuffs and put her in the patrol car.

While investigating further, officers learned a worker was unloading products in the back of the store when Shields popped out from behind a dumpster. He reported seeing her walk to the front of the store, grab receipts and rub them on her body, and try to steal bandages for a swollen foot. He was trying to keep her from leaving the store with the products when police came.

Officers say they also found video showing Shields shining her flashlight inside the window of Ciao Baci and using a flower pot to break the window.

She was taken into custody for commercial burglary, theft of property, public intoxication and disorderly conduct.

The Kroger told police it wants her banned from the store.
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Human Rights Watch |  

(New York)  Saudi Arabias new counterterrorism law includes vague and overly broad definitions of acts of terrorism, in some cases punishable by death, Human Rights Watch said today.

The law replaces a widely criticized counterterrorism law promulgated in 2014, adding definitions of specific acts of terrorism and their corresponding sentencing guidelines. It includes criminal penalties of 5 to 10 years in prison for portraying the king or crown prince, directly or indirectly, in a manner that brings religion or justice into disrepute, and criminalizes a wide range of peaceful acts that bear no relation to terrorism.

Saudi authorities are already methodically silencing and locking away peaceful critics on spurious charges, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. Instead of improving abusive legislation, Saudi authorities are doubling down with the ludicrous proposition that criticism of the crown prince is an act of terrorism.

The Penal Law for Crimes of Terrorism and its Financing, published on November 1, 2017, strips away extensive powers from the Interior Ministry, which Saudi authorities reorganized in 2017, and transfers them to the newly established Public Prosecution and Presidency of the State Security, both bodies that report directly to the king.

The new law carries an overly broad definition of terrorism similar to the previous law. Unlike the previous definition, the new one includes a specific reference to violence with the clause harm an individual or result in their death, when the purpose  by its nature or its context  is to terrorize people or force a government or international organization to carry out or prevent it from carrying out an action.

The new law, however, does not restrict the definition of terrorism to violent acts. Other conduct it defines as terrorism includes disturbing public order, shaking the security of the community and the stability of the State, exposing its national unity to danger, and suspending the basic laws of governance, all of which are vague and have been used by Saudi authorities to punish peaceful dissidents and activists. Prominent human rights activists Abdullah al-Hamid and Mohammed al-Qahtani are serving 11-year and 10-year sentences respectively, based on charges that contain similar language. Human rights activist Essam Koshak is currently on trial on similar charges.

The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism had concluded in May, following a visit to Saudi Arabia, that he was concerned about the unacceptably broad definition of terrorism and the use of Saudi Arabias 2014 counter-terrorism law and other national security provisions against human rights defenders, writers, bloggers, journalists and other peaceful critics.

One positive change to the definition of terrorism stipulated in article 1 of the previous law is the removal of the controversial phrase insulting the reputation of the State, which prosecutors have vigorously employed to charge and prosecute dissidents. Article 30 of the new law, however, allows prosecutors to limit the right to free expression by designating criticism of the king and the crown prince that brings religion or justice into disrepute as a terrorist act.

Given the new laws vague definition of terrorism, which could allow authorities to continue to target peaceful criticism, other provisions of the law raise alarms, Human Rights Watch said. Article 34, for example, provides a prison term of three to eight years for anyone who supports, promotes, sympathizes with, or incites terrorism. Article 35 stipulates a sentence of no less than 15 years for anyone who misuse[s] their status in any way either academic or social status or media influence to promote terrorism.

The new law undermines due process and fair trial rights, Human Rights Watch said. Instead of amending the law to strengthen the role of the judiciary, it grants the public prosecution and the Presidency of the State Security the legal authority to arrest and detain people, monitor their communications and financial data, and search their properties and seize assets without judicial oversight. The Presidency of State Security can ban a suspect from travel without notifying them, and the law gives police officers and military personnel authorization to use force according to regulations laid down in the law. No additional regulations on use of force are mentioned in the text.

As in the previous law, article 19 of the new law allows the public prosecution to hold a suspect in pretrial detention for up to 12 months, with unlimited extension upon court order, and article 20 allows suspects to be held for up to 90 days in incommunicado detention, where torture and mistreatment are most frequent, according to the UN special rapporteur on torture. In a memorandum submitted to the United Nations Committee Against Torture in April 2016, Human Rights Watch highlighted seven cases in which detainees tried at the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) alleged that confessions were extracted through torture.

Article 21 restricts the suspects right to a lawyer during interrogation, and article 27 gives the SCC the authority to hear witnesses and experts without the defendant or their lawyer present. It requires the court only to inform them of the content of the testimony, greatly hampering their right to challenge this evidence.

The law, which includes 27 articles on penalties, introduces the death penalty for three acts. Articles 40 and 41 state that the court may sentence to death anyone who kidnaps or detains a person or threatens to do so in execution of a terrorist crime and anyone who seizes a means of public transport or threatens to do so in execution of a terrorist crime whenever any such action is accompanied by the use or declaration of either weapons or explosives. International law mandates that in countries that retain capital punishment, the death penalty should be applied only to the most serious crimes such as those resulting in death or serious bodily harm, and urges countries to abolish the death penalty. Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as cruel and inhuman punishment.

Mohammad bin Salman claims to be a reformist but locking away peaceful critics as terrorists is the same old despotism weve often seen from Saudi rulers, Whitson said.

Via Human Rights Watch



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Al Jazeera English: What is Mohammed Bin Salmans next move? -Inside Story
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By Paul Rogers | ( OpenDemocracy.net) |  

Trumps worldview promises low-cost military success. The blasting apart of civilian lives in Iraq says otherwise.

Many previous columns in this series focus on the transition in the western way of war since 9/11 from tens of thousands of boots on the ground to remote warfare. This has mainly involved a much more intensive use of air-power, including armed-drones; the utilisation of long-range artillery and ground-launched ballistic-missiles; and the much wider use of special forces and privatised military corporations.

The change has been consistently analysed by a few non-government organisations, most notably the Remote Control project and Drone Wars UK, whose specific concern is armed drones.

The states pursuing this kind of offensive war see three advantages, two military and one political:

* Their own forces take minimal casualties, meaning fewer bodybags and funeral corteges

* They believe that the tactic works in practice

* There is very little media coverage of this type of war, and in the case of some countries, most notably Britain, there has been a long-term political convention that the role of special Forces should not be subject to public debate or even scrutiny.

The U.S. Air Force is on track to triple the number of bombs dropped in Afghanistan this year compared with last year.

Warfare by remote control also seems to be working, not least in the three-year war against Islamic State. It is now clear that Donald Trumps policy of devolving more authority to the United States military in the wars it is fighting is having a much wider effect. For example, the Pentagon has quietly increasing its forces in Somalia by adding several hundred special-forces troops (as Politico reports) and ratcheting up airstrikes (as Military Times reports), while airstrikes against an al-Qaida offshoot in Yemen are continuing.

In Afghanistan, the build-up of forces is even more substantial. More US troops have arrived amid concern over the Talibans ability to extend its territorial control. But less noted is the substantial increase in the US use of air-power and armed-drones since Trump took office. A US media outlet states:

The U.S. Air Force is on track to triple the number of bombs dropped in Afghanistan this year compared with last year, new figures reveal as the White House opens a new front in Americas longest war. The military dropped 3,554 weapons against the Taliban as of Oct. 31  already nearly three times the 1,337 dropped in 2016 and nearly four times as the 947 fired in 2015.

Operation Jagged Knife, a recent offensive by the US airforce, included B-52 strategic bombers and  for the first time in Afghanistan  the advanced F-22 stealth strike-aircraft. Promise and reality

All this is in the context of the presumed defeat of ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria, which is seen within the Trump team as proof of victory. Since 2014, the Pentagon believes it has killed over 60,000 ISIS fighters, but acknowledges fewer than 500 civilian casualties. This is the way to fight future wars, it believes. The expanded operations in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia are further examples of the path to be taken.In this Trumpian worldview, clean wars will be the order of the day. But a closer look shows that things are not so simple, in two distinct aspects: the outcomes of the war on terror, and its more recent reality. A brief digest of principal events since 2001 illustrates the first point:

* On 29 January 2002, George W Bushs state-of-the-union address was akin to a victory speech in the wake of the termination of the Taliban regime and the suppression and dispersal of al-Qaida after 9/11  yet the war in Afghanistan has just entered its seventeenth year

* On 1 May 2003, the US president gave his mission accomplished speech after the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq  yet that very month a nascent insurgency began to spread across the country, which would also last years

* In 2008, when Barack Obama was elected, the war in Iraq looked sufficiently under control for him to order wholesale troop withdrawals, but in 2014-17 the US has again been at war in the country

* In 2011, Nato chiefs thought that the downfall of Libyaa Muammar Gaddafi they had engineered would be followed by peace and stability, but it provoked more conflict, while the USs SEAL-team killing of Osama bin Laden that year didnt mark the end of al-Qaida, a scion of which the US is now bombing in Yemen. On the ground

The dangerous myth of the clean war should be seen in a second aspect. The results of military action in the last three years illustrate the second point, and expose the dangerous myth of the clean war. Airwars, the monitoring group, finds the US-led wars in Iraq and Syria have involved over 28,000 airstrikes, split more or less evenly between the two countries, using over 103,000 bombs and missiles. Airwars has done its best to assess the likelihood of civilian casualties, and currently puts these at a minimum of around 6,000  far larger than any Pentagon figures. Where Iraq is concerned, Iraq Body Count says that over 179,000 civilians have died in the last fifteen years.

ISISs loss of most of its territory has been followed by reports of a concentrated air-war ranged against its forces, whose effects include the widespread destruction of both western Mosul and Raqqa. The extent of damage is hardly surprising. In the last part of the Raqqa campaign, Airwars says:

Between October 1st and 17th  when the last strike was reported  the US-led alliance says it fired 2,384 munitions at Raqqa, much of it the result of US artillery strikes. Between 266 and 355 more civilians were credibly reported killed in the city as a result according to local monitors  including more than 90 women and children.

Yet it has been hard for analysts to assess the more general claim of the clean war with any accuracy, in that they were dependent largely on data provided by US Central Command (USCC). The best efforts of NGOs like Airwars and Iraq Body Count notwithstanding, their findings could be discounted or ignored.

One in five of the coalition strikes we identified resulted in civilian death, a rate more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition.

That is at last beginning to change, as these groups work is supported by on-the-ground assessments from experienced journalists who have gone at great pains to travel to areas now controlled by government forces after ISISs retreat. Their reports confirm sceptics of the clean war myth. The most substantive account available so far is a long report in the New York Times (see Azmat Khan & Anand Gopal, The Uncounted, NYT, 16 November 2017).

Over a fourteen-month period to July 2017, they visited 150 sites of attacks across northern Iraq, and interviewed hundreds of witnesses, survivors and family members. They later compared their findings with data from USCC itself. In all, they were able to coordinate data from 103 airstrikes. Their conclusions warrant a longish extract:

We found that one in five of the coalition strikes we identified resulted in civilian death, a rate more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition. It is at such a distance from official claims that, in terms of civilian deaths, this may be the least transparent war in recent American history. Our reporting, moreover, revealed a consistent failure by the coalition to investigate claims properly or to keep records that make it possible to investigate the claims at all. While some of the civilian deaths we documented were a result of proximity to a legitimate ISIS target, many others appear to be the result simply of flawed or outdated intelligence that conflated civilians with combatants. In this system, Iraqis are considered guilty until proved innocent.

The fighting against ISIS, especially in the densely packed streets of Raqqa and western Mosul, was intense. In Mosul in particular, the Iraqi armys special forces took very heavy losses. It was not just the utter determination of the ISIS paramilitaries to fight, but their willingness to die for their cause that proved so difficult to counter. It was in those circumstances that air-power was used relentlessly. In an objective sense it may be what you would expect, even if you may question the war as a whole.

That, though, is not the point, which is that the entire air-war has been presented as a clean operation  which it evidently was not. If we think that remote warfare is the way to go because it kills neither our people nor innocent civilians, then we are deluding ourselves. And that delusion in turn makes it even less likely that we will get the kind of scrutiny and political debate we need on the direction and long-term consequences of this new way of war. About the author

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracys international security adviser, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His latest book is Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threat from the Margins (IB Tauris, 2016), which follows Why Were Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on Twitter at: @ProfPRogers

Via OpenDemocracy.net (See original for hyperlinks.)



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Democracy Now! The Uncounted: New York Times Finds US Airstrikes Kill Far More Iraqi Civilians Than Pentagon Admits
By Aniqa Raihan | ( Foreign Policy in Focus) |  

Thousands of Arab Bedouins in Israels Negev desert are denied power, water, sewage, and roads by the state. And their villages are under constant threat of demolition.

Its no secret that there is an occupation happening in and around Israel.

Most people agree that the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been occupied since 1967. Much less thought and literature is dedicated to the treatment of Palestinians living inside modern-day Israel proper. I decided to head over there and see for myself.

It is commonly believed that Palestinian citizens of Israel  officially known as Arab Israelis  enjoy full equality in the Jewish State. There are Arab members of parliament, the Arab population in Israel has been growing steadily for decades, and the Arab cultural scene is thriving in places like Haifa. While all of these statements are true, Palestinians insist that occupation still exists inside the state of Israel, and nowhere is that fact more apparent than in the unrecognized Bedouin villages of the Negev desert.

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Before the creation of modern Israel, the Negev desert, which constitutes the southern half of the country, was almost entirely populated by Arab Bedouins. Nearly 90 percent fled during the Nakba of 1948. 11,000 Bedouins remained, a population which has now grown to over 200,000.

Of the Bedouins still living in the Negev, half live in government-designated towns and cities, much like Native reservations in the United States, and the other half live in unrecognized villages. The Bedouin are Israeli citizens, but because their villages arent formally recognized by the state, they have no access to state services including water, electricity, telephones, sewage systems, and roads.

Today, the unrecognized villages of the Negev desert have the highest unemployment and poverty rates in Israel. I visited three villages to understand the effect of occupation.

Beer Sheva is the largest city in the Negev desert. It is home to 205,000 people, about 10 percent of whom are Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Originally founded in 4,000 BCE, Beer Sheva has been at times a Bedouin encampment, part of the Ottoman Empire, and now, the fourth most populous metropolitan center in Israel. It is a thriving college town, a growing tech hub, and interestingly, the chess capital of the world.

Less than 5 miles away are unrecognized villages where people live in tents and tin shacks.

The largest of the unrecognized villages is Wadi an-Naam. It was established in the 1950s by internally displaced Bedouins from surrounding villages whod been forcibly removed from their homes and lands, but its never been officially recognized.

In the 1970s, Israel built Neot Hovav, the countrys primary toxic waste disposal facility, in Wadi an-Naam. Since its establishment, the facility has experienced frequent accidents, fires, explosions, and leaks, resulting in birth defects and long-term health problems in the Bedouin community.

The village is also surrounded by military firing zones, where the Israeli Defense Forces carry out military drills and trainings using live ammunition. Unexploded shells are often left behind from these exercises. The last accident killed two children aged 8 and 10.

An electric power plant is clearly visible from the village.

This plant generates electricity for Beer Sheva and surrounding localities, but not for Wadi an-Naam or the 45 other unrecognized villages like it. People in the villages depend instead on an inconsistent combination of solar panels and generators. Adalah, a human rights and legal organization, currently has three open cases regarding elementary schools in Wadi an-Naam that lack electricity.

Israel recently announced its intention to relocate the residents of Wadi an-Naam to the nearby town of Segev Shalom. The villagers oppose this plan because it would destroy their agrarian lifestyle. In 2015 the Association for Civil Rights in Israel presented two alternative options, both of which would allow the villagers to maintain their way of life, but the relocation will move forward as originally proposed.

I also visited Umm al-Hiran, an unrecognized village on the verge of demolition. Like Wadi an-Naam, Umm al-Hiran was established in the 1950s by order of the Israeli military governor as part of a state-sanctioned effort to relocate and concentrate the Bedouin. Half of the village was briefly granted recognition in 2008, but the decision was reversed two years later.

The state has marked Umm al-Hiran as the site of a future Jewish development to be called Hiran, a project that necessitates the demolition of the entire village. Residents filed appeals and fought back in court, but in 2015, the Supreme Court of Israel rejected a petition to prevent demolition of the village. Construction was briefly halted following protests led by Adalah, but is expected to continue soon.

At 3 a.m. on January 18 of this year, Israeli police arrived at Umm al-Hiran to conduct home demolitions. A local teacher named Yacoub Abu Al-Qiaan got in his car and began to drive away, but was shot at by the police.

One of the bullets hit his right knee, causing him to lose control of his vehicle and accelerate into a group of officers. One officer was killed, as was Yacoub. Israeli authorities initially declared him a terrorist connected to ISIS, but retracted when video evidence surfaced proving that he was shot before his car accelerated.

This memorial stands at the scene of the shooting.

And finally, I visited the most notorious of the unrecognized villages, al-Araqib. This village, which was once home to 600 people, has been demolished 119 times. Now, only 5 tents and a tribal cemetery remain. There are more graves than villagers.

Amazingly, the demolitions arent even the worst past: Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of this yearslong tragedy is the governments demand that the residents of al-Araqib pay for the cost of demolishing their homes.

I have been part of the movement for Palestinian justice for a year and a half now. I have spent hundreds of hours reading about the blockade of Gaza, the murders of Mahmoud Shaalan and Rachel Corrie, the intifadas, the checkpoints, the BDS movement, and more, but I was still shocked by what I saw in the Negev desert. The Bedouin are continually displaced and disenfranchised by the state  and too often, they are also erased from the mainstream Palestinian narrative.

This is occupation, pure and simple, and it is 70 years past time the world recognizes it.
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I was in the midst of my family medicine clinical rotation when my world came crashing down. I had failed my Step 1 boards. I would never be a doctor. It was a nightmare that unfolded over three failed attempts, from which I awoke in a new reality where I was no longer a medical student  and there was absolutely nothing I could do to change that.

I poured everything into my three years of medical school, and I loved every minute of it. So much so that I began documenting my journey and sharing my experiences with a rapidly growing number of followers of my blog. Which made the end of my dream all the more public, visible and crushing.

I learned a lot about myself as I made the painful journey from a broken ex-med student to a confident, self-possessed med-ed marketer. These experiences gave me the tools I need to help other medical students as they continue the pursuit of their own dreams and aspirations.

Because as cliche as it sounds, everything happens for a reason.

How I got here

There was nothing to suggest my path in medicine would ever be altered. I carried a solid B average through my first two years of medical school, after which I took the Step 1 and confidently started my family medicine clinical rotation. It was a shock to discover a short time later that I had failed this high-stakes exam. But I was undeterred, even as I pulled out of the clinical experience to focus solely on passing. Second attempt under my belt and confident in my re-take, I went back to clinicals. Only to fail again.

Confidence now shaken and fears mounting, I was sent to an 8-week prep course specifically designed to help struggling medical students. It didnt help. I failed a third and final time.

Shortly before that third attempt, the med school dean told me I wouldnt pass based on my numbers. My subconscious seized on those words and made them come true. My classmates moved on, while I stayed behind to try to process my dismissal. I cried, slept and questioned everything about myself: my intelligence, self-worth, and value as a human. I was defeated, lost and helpless, and could not see any way to begin putting the pieces of me back together.

Hope rises

After weeks of suffering from major depressive disorder, I awoke one day with the irresistible urge to pack my bags and move my entire life away from this place where I had been so miserable. I somehow realized that while growth is painful, it cannot compare to the agony of staying where you dont belong.

I wound up in Austin with less than $1,000 to my name and no job or direction. But I forced myself to keep moving forward in my search for answers about the new me. What are my talents? What do others say Im good at? Who am I supposed to be?

I had always been a student, so job hunting was foreign territory for me. I applied everywhere: the FBI, public health departments, pharmaceutical and medical device sales, office and research assistants, etc. Surely, I had some knowledge and skills for being basically three-fourths of a doctor, right?

But alas, my search bore no fruit. As the frustrations built, I shut down my social channels, too ashamed and depressed to let others in as I dealt with the chaos. Then everything changed. As I was pulling the plug on the final vestige of my former life, one of the many connections Id made through my blog showed me that I did not have to bury my medical student persona; that the blood, sweat, and tears I poured into medical school had created a valuable piece of my puzzle.

I was introduced to Dustyn and Jamie, the founders of an online clinical learning platform. They flipped the script, viewing as assets those aspects of my past that others considered shortcomings. They allowed me to differentiate myself and contribute to the field of medicine in a way few others could. After all, most people who go to med school end up with the same title: doctor.

I, on the other hand, had the opportunity to leverage my med school experience and my love of social media, and channel my motivation to learn and find purpose by helping other medical students avoid having their own dreams shattered.

Becoming whole

Im sure by now youre asking, But what does all this have to do with those of us who didnt fail out of medical school? The answer to that question, and the takeaway from my experiences, is that you must always believe in yourself and never, ever lose sight of your potential.

Medical students have generally framed their entire lives around preparing for medical school. Most, like me, never experienced a job hunt or a career path beyond medicine. It is very easy to forget that you are more than medicine, and that doing so puts unnecessary limits on you and your potential as doctors and as more-than-doctors.

By recognizing your value and potential in medicine and beyond, you will be better doctors and happier people. Truly great doctors, Dustyn likes to say, are amazing people who happen to practice medicine.

Failing medical school isnt something Id wish upon my worst enemy. But it forced me to see that I am (and always was) so much more than a doctor-in-training. That everything I have done up until now has been for a purpose  just not the one I had convinced myself was the right purpose.

By refusing to define yourself so narrowly, youll be better at recovering from lifes curveballs. Whether youre struggling in school, failing the board (for the first or third time), or dealing with a recalcitrant patient, knowing who you really are means youll be better able to pick yourself up and dust yourself off  because your comeback will be far greater than any setback.

Marteney Jacobs, a former medical student, is a marketing and social media associate, OnlineMedEd.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
A reader asked if a copy of Dr Cullens maiden speech could be located as it was not online. I put out a cry for help,and someone has found a copy, so enjoy:

New Zealand Parliamentary Debates 23 April 1982, vol. 443, p 441-446

23 April 1982 Address in Reply 441

Dr CULLEN (St. Kilda): I rise feeling like the elusive scarlet pimpernel of the Labour Party. Members opposite, or at least some of them, have worked themselves into a righteous lather of trembling indignation about the left-wing academics in the Labour Party. At last, the one and only has stood up to be counted. The previous Opposition maiden speakers are not academics by their immediate former profession. I am the first Opposition speaker to be so. Three Opposition members might be classed as academics, but I am not sure about their qualifications: the member for Christchurch Central is a lawyer, and therefore qualified to make an income outsideand that may be an automatic disqualification; and the member for Te Atatu and the member for Mt Albert taught at Auckland University, but as an Otago man I am not clear about their status as academics. When the compliments about left-wing academics are thrown across the House I shall be grateful if they are addressed to me personally and not spread around in an unwarranted fashion.

I affirm my loyalty to the Queen, and her heirs and successors, whoever they may be.

Mr East: And to your old school, Christs College.

Dr CULLEN: And to my old school, Christs College. I am proud of the fact that my secondary education was not paid for by the taxpayers of New Zealand but by the farmers of Canterbury and Hawkes Bay. I ripped them off for 5 years then, and I shall get stuck into them again in the next few years, so the honourable member should not bring that subject up too often.

The rest is over the break.





442 Address in Reply 23 April

I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your re-election. I hope that you will have little cause to exercise certain of your powers toward me. Being a member of the Labour Party, I tend to live in hope rather than in expectation. As a historian I am reminded of that part of William Cobbetts English Grammar in which he described nouns of number or multitude to include Mob, Parliament, Rabble, House of Commons, Regiment, Court of Kings Bench, Den of Thieves, and the like. I congratulate the new members who have made their maiden speeches; the mover and the seconder of the Address in Reply; the worthy successors to John Elliott and Colin McLachlan, the member for Whangarei and the member for Selwyn; and one or two other members whose speeches, thankfully, have escaped my memory. I particularly congratulate the new Opposition members. They have set an appallingly high standard for those who follow them, and I am not sure whether I shall measure up to that standard.

My maiden speech as the member for St. Kilda is notable in one respect, if no other maiden speeches from Labour members for St. Kilda are infrequent events. That reflects the good sense of the people in the electorate. With the exception of a brief period between 1951 and 1957 when battling Jim Barnes was the member, the electorate, or its predecessor Dunedin South, has returned Labour members since 1931. Yet I am only the third Labour member. That fact has always proved to be a disappointment to the two minor political parties in Dunedin. The leader of one of the parties was so bold, at his partys Otago-Southland divisional conference last year, as to guarantee that his party would win the St. Kilda seat in 1981. It was not so much a gravy train as a ghost train on the fast track that was supposed to win the party the seat. He did not, however, have sufficient confidence in his guarantee to accept my challenge to stand himself as the candidate for St. Kilda, and I deeply regret that fact.

I am very well aware of the fact that one major reason that the prediction proved false was the excellent service given by my predecessor the Hon. Bill Fraser. He was not one of the noisier or more outspoken members of the House. In that respect, we may well prove to be rather different representatives for the people of St. Kilda, but I shall be more than satisfied if I can manage a fraction of his dedication to the people, and his effectiveness in assisting them with their problems. Over the years, his dedication and effectiveness were rewarded with a gradual increase in his majority, to its peak in the Labour victory in 1972. With that victory, he at last had the opportunity to carry out some of his ideas about housing the peopleideas he had talked about so often inside and outside the Chamber. I am sure that all members of the House will join me in wishing him a long and happy retirement, and the good health to wield a hammer for many years to come.

I pay tribute to all the people who worked hard for me over the long and arduous campaign. It was the most intensive campaign fought in the St. Kilda electorate for many years, being complicated by certain extraneous issues. Yet all those involved kept working to the end for the victory that properly belongs to them and not to me. I know that those people are ready to fight again at any time for the cause in which they believe, and in which I believe. I thank the National Party candidate, Mr Stewart Clark, for the clean and open campaign he fought and for his generous spirit in defeat.

I shall spend some time talking about my electorateas Labour members have so few chances in their maiden speeches to talk about the electorate of St. Kilda, which is a very diverse and varied one. The small and fiercely independent borough from which it takes its name comprises about one-sixth of the population and no more than about one-twentieth of the area of the electorate. It fiercely fights off the irredentist ambitions of the Dunedin City Council. The electorate falls into three geographical parts, although it is not in fact Gaul: the western hills suburbs; the densely settled flats that include the only major centres of employment; and then, stretching away to the north-east, the Otago Peninsula, with its gentle bays and strong communities on the harbour side and its rugged beaches on the seaward side.

The peninsula is not merely a recreation area for Dunedin as a whole. With its many attractions it represents a large part of the underdeveloped tourist potential of the Dunedin area. This potential must not be ruined by foolish so-called developmentdevelopment of the type represented by the possibility of extensive opencast mining for low-grade gold depositsand I make my position on that perfectly clear. It is to be hoped that the mining company that holds rights over the peninsula will soon withdraw, and leave the area to more

23 April Address in Reply 443

appropriate development in keeping with its character and charm.

It is surprising that, until the last year or two, not a great deal of attention was paid to our local tourist potential in Dunedin. Part of the explanation may be a not entirely misplaced sense of modesty about our climate, yet climate is only one factor in tourism. In Dunedins case, the human and architectural history of the city are major countervailing factors. What is required to develop Dunedins potential tourism is, as in other areas, a sense of self-reliance on the part of our business and community leaders. It is time for much of the rhetoric of free enterprise that spouts forth to be applied in practice.

Too much reliance has been placed on the hope that some saviour will appear from outside, suitably subsidised by the rest of the country. Well, the legs fell off the horses of the light-blue cavalry last seen charging to the rescue; and, to reverse the old nursery rhyme, I have a feeling that even Humpty Dumpty will not put those horses back together again. We now know better about where our strengths lie, and where our future lies. It is time for Dunedin to shake off its self-imposed image as a social and economic invalid.

Mr East: It needs a carpet factory!

Dr CULLEN: Indeed, it does need a carpet factory, which is a much more serious proposal than many others that floated around before the general election. As a city, Dunedin has been through a long time of troubles that have had many causes: old industries that could not survive for ever; old business families that were content to sit on their assets, and did not do too much good with their brainets, either; the snowball effect of the drift north robbing us of much of our talent; a failure to understand the true basis of urban prosperity in New Zealand, which rests upon a strong and wealthy hinterland; rapidly rising transport costs, the biggest complaint that local manufacturers come to me aboutall these and other factors have led to a long relative decline that dates back a little more than 100 years.

In the past few years, that relative decline has become an absolute one. Between 1976 and 1981, Dunedin lost some 5000 people, which is a fearful haemorrhage made all the worse because it consisted largely of the young and the talented. When I was canvassing, I found the real clue to the reasons for those people leaving. Those missing young people were no longer to be found in Auckland but in Australia. The addresses were Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane. In other words, they were not fleeing Dunedin because of Dunedin, but they were fleeing the National Government.

There are some signs of hope and of a new realism in my city, despite 6 years of fundamentally anti-Dunedin government. What has been achieved, and is being achieved, has been achieved by the people themselves. The Otago Regional Development Council continues its basic work, although I wish it were more representative of the community at large. The Dunedin Promotion Association has begun the long-overdue task of coordinating the sale of our tourist attractions. In and around Dunedin we are seeing signs of development in processing industries, and expansion in timber, wool, and hides. Industries of that type, growing out of an expanding resource base in Otago, will provide one of our economic mainstays in coming decades. All we need, and all we ask, is the right kind of encouragement, and a recognition of our true strengths and comparative advantages. We do not come begging to Wellington on our knees.

The power development on the Upper Clutha is the necessary pre-condition for large-scale irrigation projects. Multiple-use development of the Upper Clutha must not be surrendered in a headlong rush to create a power surplus that must then be sold off at well below cost, nor must it be surrendered to a fit of pique by the Minister of Works and Development. It is not a question of whether or not to think big; it is a question of actually thinking in the first place. When the Prime Minister referred to the sweat on the brow of members opposite I assumed that it came from the strain of the effort of trying to think, and I congratulate them on effort, if not achievement. Strutting in front of the mirror in foreign-made uniforms as economic supermen is no substitute at all for serious analysis of our economic problems or of possible projects, especially when those uniforms have all the substance of the emperors new clothes.

Our future in forestry, fishing, and certain types of horticulture is only just beginning to be explored. Central Otago has big lignite deposits largely free of the environmental problems associated with the Southland fields. My colleague the member for Dunedin North has referred to this already. Research into the use of those deposits must continue apace.

444 Address in Reply 23 April

Finally in this context I mention the future exploitation of the Chatham Rise phosphorite deposits. In the initial stages, exploitation will need to be accompanied by substantial marine research. As a base, it will require both a port and a centre of marine research. Only the Otago Harbour fulfils both those needs.

There is still much that central government must bear in mind. Over the next few years it can either support or destroy the slowly emerging confidence of the Dunedin area. Within my own electorate, it is crucial that the redevelopment of the Hillside railway workshops continues. Parts of the workshops are a disgrace, and I can only wonder at the skill and dedication of the men who still manage to produce excellent results out of them. They are an exercise in economic archaeology rather than in economic progress. The railways must remain the backbone of long-distance freight haulage, and that means a substantial programme of upgrading, as well as a programme of electrificiation, welcomed and supported by members on this side. New Zealand workers must take the lions share of the benefits of the programme, and that will be possible only if we proceed rapidly with the upgrading of our own workshops, Hillside among them. The real communist threat to jobs and livelihood comes more from Hungarian train-sets than it does from the Socialist Unity Party.

Equally, the Government must come to understand, as it seems not to understand at present, the importance of the health and education industries to Dunedin, and the value of those industries to the nation at large. I am sure that if the Minister of Trade and Industry stopped reading for a while he would care to support me in that matter. I shall be referring to the health and education industries at greater length later in the session.

I find inexplicable the present Governments reluctance to accept and support the concept of centres of excellence with regard to those industries. In education, the issue is one of urgency. The University of Otago is staffed by many intelligent, responsible, and dedicated people, and some of those who teach there are not too bad, either. The university is crucial to the future of Dunedin. Although I began with somewhat jocular remarks about academics, I am saddened by the bitterness, resentment, sourness, mean-mindedness, and pettiness of the attacks upon academics and universities coming from the other side. I am sad for two reasons. I can speak only for myselfand I hope my parents are listening, if they can receive 2YA in Christchurchbut many people working in universities had parents who made great sacrifices to put them through a lengthy education. Members opposite demean the people who made those sacrifices, and they do something else as well. The universities represent a large portion of the accumulated knowledge, wisdom, traditions, and experience of our civilisationand, indeed, of other civilisations. In making those petty, mean-minded attacks. Government members are demeaning the heritage of our civilisation. That is because they are scared of that heritage, but I shall return to that point later.

The role of the University of Otago is highly dependent on students from outside the region, who find travel costs increasingly prohibitive. That is the nub of the issuethe level of bursary payments, and particularly the problem of travel costs to get to the University of Otago. Perhaps it is not too late for the Minister of Education to recognise that fact, but, as I said, I live in hope rather than expectation.

The rebuilding of the polytechnic must go ahead along the lines of the plans already prepared. No cheap-jack solution threatening the essential integrity of the teachers college will be acceptable to the people of Otago and Southlandand that includes the people in six National-held electorates. All three institutions must survive as viable entities. On adjacent sites, they will provide the potential for new experiments in co-operation and joint development. Equally, the Government must recognise the fallacies embedded in the hospital boards funding reallocation system. If the Government, at least outside Auckland, wishes to embark upon a programme spreading mediocrity equally across the nation, it should proceed with its present plans. If it does not wish to do that it must look again, and provide the appropriate mechanisms to protect the Otago medical school. In 1981 Otago gave the National Party what it had often said it soughttwo highly marginal seats. We will now watch with interest to see if the long-promised rewards are forthcoming. Otherwise, I suspect that there will be two marginal Labour seats in their place after the next election.

I am particularly pleased to be giving my maiden speech on this day, which, for the information of the member for Whangarei, is St. Georges Day. As we seek to establish our identity as a Pacific nation, this day serves to remind us of a number of things of significance.

23 April Address in Reply 445

It reminds us, above all, that we are a nation of immigrants. No one in this land is descended from people who were here much more than 1000 years agoa brief span in the long history of humankind. The large majority are descended from people who arrived in New Zealand not more than 150 years ago, and many of usmyself included, as well as some members oppositeare first-generation New Zealanders. Somebody with an acutely trained ear, for example, can just detect in the tones of the member for Clutha a faint hint of Caledonian accents. The member for Napier and I are founder-members of Parliaments newest club, the Honourable Kipper Eaters Society. The member for Onehunga runs on a famous campaign slogan, Wine producers of the world unite. Many people in the House have links back to different civilisations and different ethnic traditions. That is what makes us a rich and varied nation, and we should not be ashamed of that fact. It is very sad indeed to hear people attacking that part of our heritage in the House.

As a people, we therefore express in a very real sense the striving for betterment and the search for a better way of living that is such a common theme in human history. For us to retreat into either a peaceful or self-satisfied conservatism is to deny our very origins and the reasons for our being in this particular place. In so doing, we would destroy our identity as a people; we would cease to be citizens of a new nation and become pale imitations of the old, doomed to repeat the mistakes rather than develop the innate potential of our heritage.

There are signs that this is indeed one possible future for us. The failure to solve social and economic problems has led to a growing disillusionment with parliamentary democracy and any established forms of democracy. We are seeing around us the growth of extremist political movements that provide simple solutions to complex problems. Let us be clear that the most rapidly growing, well funded, and best organised of those movements are to be found at the extreme right-wing end of the political spectrum. Last year, for example, we saw the sudden emergence of the Tax Reform Integrity Movement, which was able to spend huge sums of money on a clever but dishonest political campaignand in that particular instance I did riot hear members opposite cry, Where is the money coming from?. There is also the neo-fascist League of Rights and the New Force group, with their adherence to the ideas of Major Douglas. Those groups represent a far more serious threat to liberal democracy in New Zealand than those at the other extreme.

One of the major reasons they do so is because politicians, within the traditional framework, have foolishly prepared the ground for them. Their objects of hatred are all too familiaran orchestrated litany of hate objects: trade unions, political activists on the left, foreigners, immigrants, academics, and the news media. We have heard those objects of hatred mentioned by members opposite one after the other during this debate. Already we have heard too many echoes of that strange modern New Zealand phenomenon, the self-pitying whine of the rich, and the insecure arrogance of those who know their abilities do not justify their wealth or power. It would be as well if some of the sorcerers apprentices in politics thought a little more before adding their treble voices to the chorus of hatred and intolerance.

I have come to the House representing a very different political traditiona tradition of which St. Georges Day also serves to remind us. It is a tradition of radicalism, a tradition of individual liberty operating within an ethos of co-operation. That tradition is no fly-by-night affair, for it dates back some centuries to a time when Russia was a poverty-stricken, oriental despotismnot that much has changedand the United States of America was not even thought of. Its first mass supporters were the artisans and craftsmen of England, and so it is a tradition of whose origins I am proud, and for which I shall never apologise to any member of the House. The message conveyed by that tradition is as relevant today and in this nation as it was more than 300 years ago in England, for it is a message concerned with human dignity and the liberation of the human spirit. It rejects the inherent right of one person to lord it over another. It is not a complicated message. It does not require the sophistry necessary for ideologies that seek to justify rampant greed in the name of the general good, or tyranny in the name of some higher purpose. In its simplest form it is summarised by a single remark in the constitutional debates that took place between the rank and file of the new model army of Oliver Cromwell and the generals, after King Charles I had been defeated. As a spokesman for the rank and file put it, For really, I think that the poorest he that is in England has the right to live as the greatest he. That simple remark represented then, and still represents, a turning upside down of the world view of conservatives

446 Address in Reply 23 April

everywhere. It is an affirmation of the essential dignity of all people, and it is of growing and not declining relevance to New Zealand. We are becoming a more unequal society in which the arrogant tones of privilege and condescension are to be heard more and more clearly. Those tones must be drowned out by the genuine New Zealand heritage, including the radical tradition to which I adhere.

We have still to house all our people decently, we have still to ensure adequate health care where and when needed, we have still to create genuine equality of educational opportunity, and we have still to provide jobs for all those ready and willing to work. We are also faced with a phase of rapid technological change that may either enslave or liberate. If we go down one path, the benefits will go to the few and the cost to the many. If we go down a different path, we will find a sharing of the benefits and the creation of greater leisure and freedom.

We are faced with a choice. One the one hand we have what is, in the short term, the easy option: let things happen as they will and acquiesce in the creation of social injustice and divisiona choice never better summed up than by the kind of existential Pollyannaism of the maiden speech by the member for Waikato. On the other hand, there is the struggle to find justice and to realise a moral purpose in politics. The irony is that it is the path of struggle that will lead surely to peace, civility, and good order. The other path may well lead to chaos and confusion, and to the breakdown of all order. In a very real sense we on this side are the true conservatives.

The seventeenth century radical, raised in a stern religious tradition and guided by right reason, would not have found that choice a difficult one. As one of them put it: Right reason shall and will endure for ever. It is that by which in all our actions we must stand or fall, be justified or condemned. After 300 years it is not a bad guide for members of the House. It is certainly a good place to begin.

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2016 was a stellar year for smartphones, and 2017 is shaping up to be even better. The launches of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL late last year mean that the humble smartphone is destined to become faster, more powerful and even more versatile than ever before.

As technology moves forward and smartphones have become more powerful, their ability to do more has increased. In recent times, latest smartphones feature almost 8GB of DDR4 RAM which more than the RAM available on a normal laptop. While you may be using a 1080p Television at home, the screen resolution on the top tier smartphones has moved onto 4K quality. Not just that, the camera quality is nearing DSLRs with each new smartphone.

Here's our list of the top 10 smartphones you can buy right now.



1. Apple iPhone X:

(c) MensXP

The iPhone X offers the best of the iPhone and Apple ecosystem along with the best design in a smartphone we've ever seen.

With its outrageously beautiful OLED display that takes up most of the front of the phone, wireless charging, and fast charging, the iPhone X has brought Apple's iPhones up to speed with top-of-the-line Android hardware. The phone comes in either space grey or silver in either 64GB or 256GB models, but the real eye-catcher is the screen. From corner to corner, it measures in at 5.8 inches, while the phone itself is actually smaller than the 8 Plus.

This time around, Apple has skipped Touch ID and instead you get Face ID as a security system. The front of the iPhone X features an insane amount of front-facing sensors, including a flood illuminator, infrared camera, and dot projector, which all take advantage of a TrueDepth camera system to power Face ID. When you look at the phone, it will unlock based on your 'face' metrics.

The display is Apple's first OLED display, which allows for true blacks and brilliant whites and it offers a resolution of 2436 x 1125 pixels, giving you 458 pixels per inch. With a stunning design and near to perfect stable software (iOS 11), iPhone X is definitely the best you can get. We have reviewed the iPhone X in-depth, be sure to check it out!



2. Google Pixel 2 / 2 XL

(c) MensXP

The smaller Pixel isn't all that small but is definitely the one to get for single-handed use. The design isn't as striking as last year, obviously because we've gotten used it. But, it's something doesn't need to change right now. The Samsung-made display on the Pixel 2 exhibits none of the issues of the XL's panel and is actually even better colour calibrated for accuracy.

It has a Snapdragon 835 processor, up to seven hours of use on just a 15-minute charge, a 12.2 MP camera on the back that employs really cool 'dual-pixel' multi-exposure technology from Google and a front camera that's 8MP. The five-inch AMOLED screen has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 three years of built-in Android security updates. It runs on the latest Android 8 Oreo OS, has 64 or 128 GB of space and Active Edge sensors which summon the Google Assistant when you squeeze the phone.

The Pixel 2 XL has nearly the same components and features that make the Pixel 2 great, but it comes with a larger display and a different design. The screen on the XL is a bigger six-inch P-OLED with a resolution of 2880 x 1440, making it way more intensely vibrant with a more cinematic aspect ratio.

You should note though, that users and reviewers have reported encountering several different problems with the Pixel 2 XL. From what we've seen, these issues have been on a very small scale and we didn't encounter any problem with our unit. Here's our Google Pixel 2 Review!



3. Samsung Galaxy Note 8:

(c) MensXP

Samsung Galaxy Note8 is undoubtedly one of the most stunning devices out there. The Galaxy Note8 is once again clearly the top Samsung device of the year. After the Note 7 Debacle, Samsung has made an amazing comeback. The screen is comprised of a quad HD+ Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 2960 x 1440 and 521 pixels per inch. The actual screen is virtually bezel-less and runs right up to the edge of the device, which Samsung calls Infinity Display.

The cameras are equally impressive, with an 8MP sensor on the front-facing camera and a 12MP sensor on the back with dual lenses (wide angle and telephoto for the now-standard dual lens effect capabilities). It even shoots video in full 4K at up to 30fps. Not to forget it's flagship feature, the S-Pen. It hasn't changed much since last year but is near perfect. Taking notes, editing documents or sketching on the go is a breeze. With an octa-core (2.35GHz Quad + 1.9GHz Quad) bundled with 6GB of RAM, it is truly a beast.



4. OnePlus 5T:

(c) MensXP

If you want a perfect combination of stellar design, camera, display and performance - OnePlus 5T is for you, and you get all that for almost half the price of a Note8 or iPhone X! The OnePlus 5T has an 18:9 1080 x 2160 resolution AMOLED display with 401 pixels per inch. The design is simple yet elegant with a metal unibody and curved sides. Powered by Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor, the device comes in two storage options i.e. 128 GB internal storage with 8 GB RAM and 64 GB internal storage with 6 GB RAM.

Coming to the optics, it has Dual: 16 MP + 20 MP lens on the rear with Electronic Image Stabilization and a 16MP sensor on the front. The camera does a very good job in low light as well as advance level portrait photography. The fingerprint sensor is now on the back so that the chins and bezels can be minimized, increasing the screen-to-body ratio to 80%.



5. Apple iPhone 8 / 8 Plus:

(c) MensXP

There isn't any considerable difference between the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 as far as the physical design and display are concerned. The device comes with a 4.7 inch LCD Display with wider colour gamut and a resolution of 1334 x 750 pixels. While the 8 Plus comes with a 5.5 inch LCD display with 1080 x 1920 resolution.

The iPhone 8 has the same camera sensor that the iPhone 7. The iPhone 8 Plus has one of the best cameras on the market and it's the fastest smartphone you can find today. On the rear, it's a dual: 12 MP, (f/1.8, OIS) + 12 MP (f/2.8) with phase detection autofocus, 2x optical zoom and quad-LED (dual tone) flash. Both the devices are splash, dust and water-resistant, and operate on an A11 Bionic chip at 64 bits.

In short, this phone takes everything about the iPhone 7 and updates it just enough to be worth the trade-in.



6. Samsung Galaxy S8 / S8+:

(c) MensXP

The Galaxy S8 has a beautiful 5.8-inch AMOLED screen that covers the whole front of the phone with no bezel (Infinity Display). It runs on an 'octa-core processor' and has 4GB of RAM. When it comes to cameras, the back has a great dual-pixel 12-megapixel shooter and the front has an eight-megapixel camera for high-quality selfies. The camera can also record 4K HD video at 30 frames per second or 1080p HD video at 30 or 60 frames per second.

The S8+, on the other hand, has a bigger 6.2-inch display with 1440 x 2960 pixels and 529 pixels per inch. The processor remains the same on both of em, the S8+ though has two variants - 128 GB, 6 GB RAM or 64 GB, 4 GB RAM. Oh and along with a fingerprint scanner that is honestly located in a very awkward place, they also come with an Iris Scanner. It's the most ergonomic big screen smartphone you can buy today.

7. HTC U11:

(c) CNET

HTC is back with another effort aimed at becoming the phone you want to have in your pocket - and this one has squeezable sides. The smartphone is powered by Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 835 processor paired with 6GB of RAM. The device is quite powerful in terms of its hardware specifications and will not disappoint you on the performance front. It has a 5.5-inch LCD display with a resolution of 1440 x 2560 pixels.

It comes with a 12MP 'UltraPixel 3' sensor, with a f/1.7 aperture and optical image stabilization. The rear camera is capable of recording 4K videos and delivers sharp and vibrant images with ample amount of detail. The HTC U 11 is backed by a 3,000 mAh battery boasting Qualcomm Quick Charge technology. The smartphone takes one hour to charge completely from 0 to 100%.



8. Razer Phone:

(c) Razer

This is Razer's first ever smartphone and it incorporates a lot of design elements from the Robin by Next bit. Razer acquired the company last year and has been looking forward to entering the smartphone market for quite some time now. Given Razer's reputation in the computer gaming industry, it is safe to assume the Razer Phone is built for hardcore mobile gaming.

Razer partnered with Sharp to make this the World's first 120Hz UltraMotion IGZO display! It's a 5.7-inch display with a wide colour gamut, coming in at a QuadHD resolution. It houses the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 with 8GB Ram.

The Razer Phone has the largest battery on any flagship phone in this generation, packing a 4,000mAh pack, supposed to give you 12.5 hours of Movie playback, 63.5 hours of music playback and 7 hours of Gaming. It is also the World's first phone to ship with Qualcomm's QuickCharge 4+.



9. LG G6:

(c) MensXP

LG's 2017 flagship - G6 - is arguably the best smartphone that the South Korean technology behemoth has ever outed. Equipped with a stunning DolbyVision-compliant display that has a unique 18:9 aspect ratio, LG G6 makes watching HDR video content a feast for the eyes.

The LG G6 camera is upgraded in a way but also remains very similar to last years in others. The same normal and wide-angle camera lenses are back, but they're now both 13MP. It also takes a back seat when it comes to the processor, powering it is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 SoC, augmented by 4GB of RAM.



10. BlackBerry KEYone:

(c) Blackberry

BlackBerry KEYone may have surprised many as to how it made the list, but it isn't a device we can easily ignore. BlackBerry has been shifting its focus to Android for the last year now and it has even started licensing out it's brand to regional players just like Nokia did with HMD Global. TCL's partnership with BlackBerry aims to regain some of the market shares that BlackBerry has lost over the past several years to an evolving landscape of touch-screen smartphones.

Blackberry 'KEYone' features 4.5-inch LCD 1080p display with 3:2 aspect ratio, Snapdragon 625 processor, 3GB of RAM, 12MP rear camera with same Sony sensor used in Google Pixel, so expect to see some eye-catching results from Blackberry shooter. The device is backed up by 3505mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0 and boost mode. On the software side, the interface is very close to Stock Android but has a lot of customization available and the keyboard is well utilized. The spacebar incorporates the fingerprint scanner and can also be used for scrolling through apps or pages.

BlackBerry and TCL have a solid device on their hands: TCL-made hardware which follows BlackBerry's legacy of physical keyboards with a security-oriented software experience.

Have a nice day!
Stonebwoy has confirmed to play Summerjam 2018 with Gentleman, Ziggy Marley, Inner Circle, Tarrus Riley, Chris Martin, Jahmiel, Charly Black & more.

Next years confirmed a date for the festival is from July 6th - July 8th.

The Ashaiman International reggae/dancehall Superstar, Stonebwoy, gets listed along with huge Jamaican and European Music Celebrates for the 2018 edition of Summerjam.

Summerjam, a European reggae festival which normally takes places annually in July at the FAhlinger in Cologne, Germany.

The event usually pulls about 100,000 and over crowd.

Two stages and two tents are located on an island, with the camping area surrounding the lake.

Stonebwoy earlier this year (2017) had a major listing for the maiden edition of the Bomboclaat Festival in Belgium which hosted Konshens, Anthony B, Agent Sasco, Charly Black, Fally Ipupa and many others.

With 3 albums to his credit already, Stonebwoy is set to drop a 4th album titled Epistles Of Mama (EOM), slated for December 12, 2017.

The 20-track album would come across as a twin CD Side A with 10 solid Reggae cuts and Side B with an all inclusive genres from Afrobeats to Dancehall and others, also holding 10 songs to compliment it (EOM).

Stonebwoy has been reigning on the international front since 2015 when he won Artiste Of The Year at Vodafone Ghana Music Awards.

Went on to win BET 2015 (Best African Act: International), IRAWMA 2016, and later in 2017, gunned nominations again for the BETs and IRAWMA.

He holds and enviable corporate record endorsements as Maso Cocoa Ambassador, UNHCR Ambassador for Refugees and also a brand affiliate to American top fashion designer, Tommy Hilfiger.

3 years consistently at the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, he won the Best Reggae/Dancehall Artiste of the Year.

He is signed to Zylofon Media record label in Ghana.
The Dean of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) Business School, has bemoaned how the country's colonial educational system is failing in its responsibility to train students to become entrepreneurs.

Prof. Samuel Kwaku Bonsu says the schools only succeed in imbibing in students the skills to become employees of already existing firms but industry is unable to absorb the high number of graduates every year, leading to massive graduate unemployment.

We still run a colonial form of education. You know when education started in this country, it was intended for a very specific purpose, to get people to be civil servants of a particular kind. So it was designed for you to follow structures. You couldnt be different, he noted.

Now we have matured and I would have hoped that as part of that the maturity, we would have adjusted the way we train young people to allow them to be more creative and inquisitive to ask the appropriate questions but we are not doing that, he added.

Prof. Bonsu was speaking at the Dream Oval Summit on the campus of GIMPA organized by the Todays Entrepreneurship Network (TEN Ghana). The summit was under the theme: Do Business schools frame students minds adequately for entrepreneurship?

The GIMPA Dean said the system of education in the country is only training people to pass exams which is not good enough.

Our educational system is very much like that we hear things and want to reproduce exactly what we hear. We learn to pass exams, he noted.

He was particularly critical of the university education system, saying; We dont learn to think. We are not critical in our assessment and you see this starting from the early stage of our formal system.

"The universities havent helped at all because I have seen this at various universities in Ghana. In other parts of the world, there is a conscious effort to expose you to the reality of business to create opportunities for you to think.

Sandy Osei Agyeman, Board chairman of the Ghana Export Authority (GEPA) told the summit pursuing formal education is good but is not the most important requirement to be a successful businessman.

A section of students who participated in the Summit

"For you young ones coming out of college or university, you dont need a college degree to be successful as a businessman. I graduated with a degree in finance but it wasnt good for me. So I went to one of the best universities in America to do a masters degree because my thinking was that Ive always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

"However, if it fails, at least I have a college degree, I can go and work for somebody else. So what you get with a college degree is an insurance policy, he said.

John Kumah, Chief Executive Officer of the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Plan observed with concern that the educational system was overly focused on encouraging young people to pursue white collar jobs.

He said it has become routine for people to get educated and get employed.

"By the time you finish your graduation, those who couldnt make it pass JHS have opened FM stations and have become big businessmen, then you send your application for them to employ you as their managing director. That concept must be changed, he said.

Whiles you are schooling, you should be able to think about how you can translate your academic knowledge into business to help those who didnt get the opportunity. Let reverse the equation.

"Dont let it be the school dropouts creating business opportunities for graduates. That is what is currently happening in this country and we can only reverse it when young educated people get involved in entrepreneurship, Mr. Kumah added.

A section of students who participated in the Summit

Georgette Barnes Sakyi-Addo, who is CEO of Women in Mining encouraged young females to be bold in the pursuit of their entrepreneurial goals.

More than 1000 young entrepreneurs, tertiary and senior high school students participated in the Dream Oval Summit on the campus of GIMPA in Accra. The summit seeks to mentor young people to take up entrepreneurship as a means to sustainable employment.

Founder of TEN Ghana Kelvin Atuguba who opened the summit called on the youth to engage in entrepreneurship at an early age.

He called for more support for young entrepreneurs from various stakeholders including government and the private sector. The session was moderated by Special Advisor at the Ministry of Business Development, Afua Asabea Asare.

This years edition was a doubleheader as the second session hit the campus of St. Louis Senior High School in Kumasi, where final year students were taken through entrepreneurship training.

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com
President and Chief Executive Chairman of Eurostar Global Limousine Group, Mr Oscar Yao Doe was last Sunday honoured in Nigeria for his contribution to the Nigerian and Ghanaian fashion industry.

He was honoured at the Fashion Designers Association of Nigeria Awards (FADAN) dubbed: A Stitch In Time held at the Civic Centre, Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue, Victoria Island, Lagos.

The FADAN is held annually to celebrate individuals who have helped shape the fashion industry in Nigeria.

The well attended event saw different designers from Nigeria exhibiting their works.

In his acceptance speech, Mr Doe thanked the organisers for their great work in the fashion industry.

Speaking in an interview with Mr. Oscar Yao Doe who dedicated his award to Ghanaians said he was happy (FADAN) honoured him for his contribution to the fashion industry.

I have been supporting the fashion industry behind the scenes for two decades, he said.

He said, the honour will push him to contribute more to the fashion industry.

Mr. Doe is the head of the Ghana Fashion Review Committee which rewards celebrities for their looks on red carpets at major events in the country.
Ghana will from today November 25 to December 10 join the rest of the world to embark on a campaign against Gender-based violence.

The celebration is to reinforce the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Speaking at the launch of the sixteen days of activism against gender-based violence, Minister for Gender, children and social protection said: it is a campaign which emphasizes that gender-based violence in any form is a human rights violation and very unacceptable.

Touching on the theme of the campaign which is "LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND: END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS, the minister said;

There could not have been a more appropriate theme than the one selected for this year because statistics by the National Domestic Violence Unit (DOVVSU) of the Police Service indicate that from January to March 2016, 79 perpetrators were arrested for defilement whilst no woman was arrested for the same purpose meanwhile, 187 females were defiled as against 11 males within the same period, Mad Djaba stated.

The 16-day program is expected to include the following activities:

Health Walks to be organized in all regions

A National Durbar to be held at Assin Fosu in the Central Region

A Debate between St Thomas Aquinas and Labone Senior High Schools

Outreach to some selected schools

Radio and Television Talk Shows across the regions.

Health Education and Screening

Stakeholder Consultations on the Draft Ghana Report on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability

Stakeholders Meeting on Inclusive Policy on Education Forum on Disability

The Minister stressed that, violence against women and girls is a crime against humanity and is punishable by law.

Womens Rights are Human Rights because women are human. This, therefore, is to sound a warning to perpetrators out there that no one has the right to abuse another, no matter the situation so violence against women and girls has no justification, she added.

The campaign is set to end on December 10, which coincides with the International Human Rights Day.

Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com
The Deputy National Organizer of the Opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Joshua Hamidu Akamba has asked the people of the Western Region to demand from President Akuffo Addo, the GNPC Head Office he promised them, in the run up to the 2016 General elections.

He made this statement in an interview with a Takoradi based Radio Silver, ahead of the NDC Unity Walk to be held in Tarkwa tomorrow November 25, 2017.

The NDC Organizer stressed that the NPP government led by President Akufo-Addo, have mastered in deception hence the people of the Western Region should keep reminding the government of its promises to them.

"At least, we heard of a promise to build a dam each in all villages in the 3 Northern Regions, provide each District with a Factory, provide each constituency with $1 million, provide free SHS for All and the most recent of all the deceptions, the announcement of the abolishment of import duties, a pronouncement that has become an albatross on the neck of the government"

Joshua Akamba who together with Mr Kojo Bonsu, Former KMA Boss is leading a team to organize the Unity Walk in the Western Region, also encouraged NDC members in the region to show up in their numbers for the walk and stay steadfast as the party works harder to wrestle power from the NPP. A task, he said will require the support and commitment of all party members

Source: Daniel Kaku
The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Ms Otiko Afisah Djaba has called on Cocoa farmers in Ghana to prioritise their children's education and desist from using them as 'labourers' on their farms.

She said the core responsibility of every parent was to send their children to school, protect them from harm, abuses, child marriage, child trafficking, kayaye and child prostitution and not to engage them in hard labour.

Ms Djaba was speaking at the 2017 Mondelez International Cocoa Life Learning Conference in Accra on Thursday.

The 2017 Mondelez International Cocoa Life Learning Conference is on the theme: 'Women Empowerment: the Mondelez International Cocoa Life Strategy for Sustainable Cocoa Production in Ghana'.

The objective is to provide evidence of best practices to enable participants to develop innovative strategies, measures and ideas that would strengthen and empower women in the cocoa supply chain in Ghana.

She condemned the frequent manner in which the rights of Ghanaian children were abused including; denial of education and encouraged the farmers to take advantage of the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education and the Free Senior High School education policy by the Government of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to educate their children.

She described as 'criminal' for any parent to deny a child formal education and that it was punishable by law and attracted a penalty of one year imprisonment or a fine of GhE500.00 or both.

'Children are the future leaders of our country and it is the duty of those of us in leadership; traditional rulers, religious leaders, parents and the society at large to develop them for the future.'

The Gender Minister charged men in the Cocoa Industry to create a strong partnership with their wives and ensure equitable distribution of every wealth they jointly generated from their cocoa farms.

She also denounced situations where the male cocoa farmers sidelined their hardworking wives who had laboured with them and decided to marry new wives, showering them with expensive gifts and built houses or bought cars at the neglect of their legitimate wives.

Ms Djaba called for total respect for women, their protection and participation in social, economic and political development of Ghana.

She said women formed greater percentage of Ghana's population (51 per cent), and that their voices must be heard and be allowed to fully participate in every decision making that affect them.

Ms Djaba urged women of Ghana to take advantage of the various pro-poor policies of the New Patriotic Party Government and appealed to the various traditional rulers to make lands available for women for agricultural and other economic activities especially those interested in the Planting for Food and Jobs initiative of the Government.

She affirmed government's commitment to empower more Ghanaian women to become business women or entrepreneurs and economic leaders to enable them contribute meaningfully to the economic development of Ghana.

The Minister called on the leaders of the Cocoa Industry, especially, Cocoa Life to develop a women friendly cocoa value chain that would encourage more women to venture into farming.

The Mondelez International Cocoa Life is the cocoa sustainability programme of the Mondelez International, established in Ghana in 2008 with a vision of empowering, thriving, cocoa communities as the essential foundation for sustainable cocoa'.

GNA

By Amadu Kamil Sanah, GNA
25.11.2017 LISTEN

The Network for Women's Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT) with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), through Feed the Future's Agriculture Policy Support Project have held a forum to discuss women's participation in Ghana's agricultural sector.

The objectives of the forum was to increase public awareness on women's participation in the agriculture sector and shed light on the policies that encourage women empowerment and productivity.

The main policies that were discussed centered on the relaunched of the Gender Agriculture Development Strategy (GADS) II, the Land Bill and their incorporation into the Government of Ghana's agriculture policy initiatives and programs:

'Planting For Foods and Jobs, One District One Factory, One Village One Dam and the Ghana Integrated Plan for Agriculture Development (GIPAD), also known as the Agriculture Marshall Plan.'

Mrs Victoria Aniaku, a Director at the Directorate of the Women in Agriculture Development took the participants through to understand the Gender and Agriculture Development Strategy (GADS II) Policy.

She said the GADS II have nine strategic objectives namely Strengthen institutional capacity for Gender-Responsive policies, Programmes, Projects, Budgets and Monitoring & Evaluation within the sector, Enhance equitable delivery of agricultural services and Access to Inputs, Enhance access to and control over land, Information on Land Rights and Tenure Security and Develop and disseminate Gender-sensitive Appropriate Technologies along the Agriculture Value Chain including climate smart practices.

'Other strategies are to promote Gender-responsive Agri-business, Value-Addition and market access for livelihood and income, Promote Gender Sensitive Research and Extension Linkages, Promote Equal representation and participation in decision-making by Women and Men at all Levels, Harness the potentials of vulnerable farmers for Social Protection along the Agricultural Value Chain and Strengthen Gender Co-ordination among key ministries, Civil Society Organisations, the Private Sector and Development Partners.'

Dr Benjamin Armah Quaye, National Project Coordinator of the Land Administration Project (LAP II) made a presentation on the Gender provision on the approved Land Bill.

He said Gender Strategy within the context of land administration seeks to promote and secure access to land and other natural resources for women, independent of men relatives and independent of their civil status.

Dr Quaye said such a policy stance is the basis for identifying and establishing instruments that eliminate, or at least decrease gender bias with regard to natural resource tenure in Land Administration programs, including title registration, and natural resource use and management.

Ms Patricia Blankson Akakpo, NETRIGHT Programmes Manager said the forum served as a platform for 60 stakeholders from women's rights organizations, women farmer groups and other representatives from the public sector who are all crucial actors in Ghana's agriculture development.

She encouraged participants to advocate for evidence-based and gender-responsive policies in the agriculture sector to strengthen their access, control and ownership of critical agriculture resources.

In Ghana, Feed the Future works to create the enabling environment for private sector participation, increase investment in Ghana's agriculture, boost the nutritional status of vulnerable populations, and link farmers to markets opportunities.

Its aim is to increase the capacity of the Government of Ghana, the private sector and civil society organizations to implement evidence-based policies, conduct research and advocacy and perform rigorous monitoring and evaluation of agriculture programs implemented under the Medium-Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan (METASIP).

NETRIGHT is a network of civil society organizations and individuals who have a clear interest in working together to promote women's right in Ghana through critical analysis of the gender dimensions of national processes and policies and advocate for policy change.

GNA

By Amadu Kamil Sanah/Samira Larbie, GNA
25.11.2017 LISTEN

Pope John Senior High and Junior Seminary School (POJOSS) scored 77.6 points to emerge winners of this year's Project Citizen Showcase competition in the Eastern Region.

For this, they were presented with a plaque, five copies of the 1992 Constitution and would be representing the region at the national competition.

Aburi Girls' SHS came second with 75.5 points and Ghana Senior High School (GHANASS) placed third with a score of 75.0 points.

The fourth and fifth places were taken by Koforidua Secondary and Technical Senior High School (SECTECH) and Islamic Girls Senior High School having scored 74.5 and 69.5 points, respectively.

The annual competition organized by the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) with support from the European Union (EU) is meant not only to empower students to learn how to develop public policies to solve community problems, but also learn how citizens could have power to monitor and influence public policy making in the community.

The theme chosen for this year's event was 'Restoring our Ghanaian values: the role of the youth in nation building''.

The participating schools undertook research on the theme and identified a peculiar problem or challenge in their locality and made policy proposals to address these.

They had to defend their proposals - explain why they thought these could work better, provide action plans and budget for implementation.

Some of the challenges identified by the schools included the lack of patriotism, indiscipline, poor sanitation and illegal mining.

Deputy Chairman of the NCCE, Mr. Samuel Asare Akuamoah, urged the youth to uphold the values integrity, hard work and punctuality.

He said these were vital for life success, telling them that cutting corners would simply not do. GNA

By Benjamin Akoto, GNA
A 37-year-old driver who is accused of defiling a 14 year old girl at Dansoman- Pambros has been remanded into Police custody by an Accra Circuit Court.

John Quaye charged with defilement pleaded not guilty before the court presided over by Mr Abogye Tandoh.

Prosecuting Inspector Judith Asante said the complainant is the mother of the victim and resides at Dansoman-Pambros while Quaye resides at Glefe.

Inspector Asante said the victim's father and accused have been good friends for the past 20 years now.

According to the prosecutor, on November 18, this year, at about 7:00pm, the victim informed her mother that she was attending to nature's call at a nearby public toilet.

On her way home, Inspector Asante said Quaye who was in the company of a friend, now at large blindfolded her and pulled her into an uncompleted building.

Prosecution said Quaye and his friend inserted their fingers into the victim's vagina and they had two rounds of sex with her.

Prosecution said when she opened her eyes she saw the accused and his accomplice took to their heels.

The complainant reported the matter to the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit at Dansoman and a medical form was issued to the victim seek medical attention. Later one of the accused was arrested.

GNA

By Joyce Danso, GNA
25.11.2017 LISTEN

The Achimota Student who was jailed three years by a Juvenile Court for shooting his friend Lily Asibete to death at Tema has appealed against his sentence.

The student, according to court processes, held that the sentence of the Juvenile Court was harsh hence the appeal.

When the matter was called at an Accra High Court, presided over by Mr Justice J. K. Dorgu, an Attorney from the Attorney's General Department told the court that they have not been served with the court processes.

The matter was therefore adjourned to December 12.

The 17-year-old boy was jailed on the charge of manslaughter.

He shot his friend, Lilly Asibetse to death when she visited him at his residence at Tema.

The juvenile court this year, found the accused guilty and handed down the jail term which he was to spend in a Correctional Home following a seven month trial.

The convict is said to have gone for his father's gun under his bed with the intention of firing into the air, but ended up killing his friend, a third-year student of Achimota School.

The facts as narrated by the Prosecution then was that at about 2pm on 4 January 2017, the deceased, who lived at Cantonments, visited the accused at Community 8 in Tema. While there, the convict went to his father's room and picked up his single-barrelled gun and shot the victim in the abdomen.

During interrogation the accused told the police that he had intended shooting into the air, but the bullet changed course and hit the deceased.

Gifty Billy, a neighbour who heard the gunshot and went to the scene saw the victim lying in a pool of blood.

Ms Billy said she rushed the deceased to the Port Clinic at Tema. However, due to the condition of the victim, she was transferred to the 37 Military Hospital in Accra, where she died on admission.

GNA

By Joyce Danso, GNA
25.11.2017 LISTEN

Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the Minister of Communications has called on the private sector to deploy innovative technology means to improve the National Identification (ID) system for national development.

This, she said, would stimulate the growth of Ghana's digital development and ensure the achievement and promotion of the country's digital economy.

Mrs Owusu-Ekuful was speaking at the opening of the 'Tech in conference' organised by the Ministry of Communications in Accra.

The conference will provide a platform for stakeholders to highlight and discuss how technology is shaping traditional industries such as Banking, Agriculture, Health and Education.

And how players in the start-up ecosystems are disrupting norms and building local solutions, and how policy makers and regulators are responding to the emerging Fintech landscape.

She highlighted the importance of technology in improving public service deliveries as well and economic growth in the country.

Mr Vincent Sowah Odotei, a Deputy Minister of Communications, charged the private sector to find innovative technological ways that would improve the national identification system as well as develop other sectors.

According to him, once the national ID is improved, the system would ensure that fake identification cards were not used in any national registration.

"It would boost the telecom sector which will enable them to benefit from less fraud related cases,' he said.

Mr Odotei urged the private sector to work assiduously in order to meet the demands of the National ID system.

He expressed the Ministry's readiness to collaborate with the private sector to provide connectivity to 200 communities in the country as part of government's plan to transform the country digitally.

GNA

By Amadu Kamil Sanah, GNA
Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi []
Stakeholders have joined efforts to investigate the impact of flooding and extreme heat on urban infrastructure and its resultant effects on the livelihoods of poor urban residents in the country.

The project titled 'Vulnerability to Extreme Weather Events in Cities (VEWEC)', seeks to investigate and suggest adaptive ways of mitigating the challenges that comes with extreme weather events such as flooding and extreme heat.

The cities of Accra and Tamale, with their differing climates, urban form and size, infrastructure and governance systems, would provide contrasting cases within one national context for the project.

At a stakeholder workshop held in Accra, Professor Sam Agyei-Mensah, the Provost of College of Humanities at the University of Ghana (UG), said the project is a laudable idea especially because of the interlinkages between the key sectors.

Professor Agyei-Mensah, who is also the Project Advisor sharing his experiences from London, South East Asia and Uganda, reiterated that the VEWEC project provided a good context to salvage negatives of extreme weather events.

He said much was known about what was happening elsewhere but in Accra, not much was known about the extreme weather events and this is the time to hold such discussions.

He said it is significant that stakeholders are looking at water, electricity and health in an inter-connected investigation.

Dr Ebenezer Amankwa of the Department of Geography and Resource Development at UG said the 16-month project which would commence investigations in January 2018 started on September.

He said at the end of the project lives would be saved because 'we are going to predict rainfall patterns, people will be more aware of when rains maybe coming in, they can be more prepared and at least they can be more proactive in their mitigation and adaptive strategies.'

Dr Amankwa said 'we are going to improve infrastructure performance once we know the type of infrastructure that are affected by these extreme weather events'.

At least we can also inform service providers as to how to manage some of the services and how much rainfall can affect some of these infrastructures.

At the end of everything, we are looking at how all these things are affecting people's livelihood and so once we are able to be more prepared, we can assist with the way people can go on with their businesses and have their daily means of survival,' Dr Amankwa said.

He said the overriding goal is to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals, with the idea that we make the world a safer place for humanity.

Professor Katherine Gough of the Loughborough University in the United Kingdom (UK) said the main aims of the project are: to refine methods for mapping 'hotspots' of vulnerability and predicting flooding and extreme heat in cities by drawing on existing climate data.

She said it is also to among others examine the impact of flooding and extreme heat on water, electricity and health services and analyse the impact of reduced service levels during extreme weather events on the income-generating activities of the urban poor;

The Project Investigators are Professors Paul Yankson and Sam Cudjoe of UG and Dr Amankwa and Dr Raymond Kasei of the University of Development Studies in Tamale.

The rest are Professor Gough, Professors Paula Griffiths, Rob Wilby, Sam Kayaga all of the Loughborough University in UK.

The Project Advisors are Professor David Simon of the Royal Holloway University in the UK and Professor Agyei-Mensah.

GNA

By Julius K. Satsi, GNA
25.11.2017 LISTEN

The 16th edition of the most prestigious corporate excellence award will be celebrated by Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) on Thursday, November 30, in Accra.

A statement issued by the GIPC and copied to the Ghana News Agency said this year's annual Ghana Club 100 (GC 100) awards would be celebrated under the distinguished patronage of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on the theme: 'Industrialization - A tool for Job Creation and Accelerated Economic Development'.

It said the event would identify and celebrate the best 100 businesses in Ghana and also award the leading companies in each of the strategic sectors.

These include the Best Company in Agriculture and Agribusiness, Financial Services, Information and Communication Technology, Services, Infrastructure, Petroleum and Mining Services, Manufacturing, Tourism, Health, and Education.

'There will also be Special Awards for outstanding business performers in selected categories including Corporate Social Responsibility and the highest tax-paying company,' it said.

'To climax the event, GIPC will outdoor this year's prestigious Ghana Club 100 Magazine - a commemorative publication containing messages from the President of the Republic to local and international businesses with an interest in the Ghanaian economy,' it added.

The statement said the magazine would also publish a full listing of the top-ranking companies, the ranking criteria and a directory of the top hundred companies in corporate Ghana.

It said the magazine which commands a wide readership of top business decision makers around the globe would also carry articles related to the Ghanaian business landscape as well as goodwill messages from the diplomatic community.

It said the special magazine was the 16th Edition since it was launched in 1997.

The statement said this year's event is being proudly sponsored by B5plus, Newmont Ghana, GCNet, GOIL, GHACEM, M&G Pharmaceuticals, First Allied Savings and Loans, Japan Motors, Sunon Asogli Power Plant Limited, Sunda International and Kasapreko.

It said media partners were Multimedia Group Limited (Joy Business), Graphic Communications Group Limited, New Times Corporation, Ghanaweb, Media General (TV3), and Business and Financial Times.

The GIPC is a Government agency, responsible under the GIPC Act, 2013 (Act 865): to encourage and promote investment in Ghana, to provide for the creation of an attractive incentive framework and a transparent, predictable and facilitating environment for investment in Ghana.

GNA
25.11.2017 LISTEN

Perplexed by the perennial non-payment of salaries and pensioners of Imo workers and retirees by the State government, a socio-political group, G42 Imo Liberation Forum has called on the Imo State Governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha to account for the over N26b Paris Club refunds he received from the Federal Government.

In a statement signed by the groups Director of Publicity, Dr. Walter Duru and made available to newsmen Saturday, the group lamented the absence of accountability in the state, even as it frowned at the neglect for the welfare of workers and Pensioners in the State.

G42 sympathized with the family of the late Chairman of the National Union of Pensioners in the state, Mr. Gideon Ezeji, describing his death as unfortunate.

It further urged the state government to disclose the monthly revenue generated by the state internally and how it is being used.

G42 Imo Liberation Forum is saddened by the news of the recent death of the Chairman of the National Union of Pensioners in Imo State, Mr. Gideon Ezeji. His death is most unfortunate, as he died in penury, caused by the irresponsible nature of governance in the State. Our investigations revealed that Mr. Ezeji died, holding his three (3) months bounced Cheque, issued by Imo State Government.

We are aware that there is an increase in mortality rate, hunger and sicknesses among pensioners in Imo State, owing to non-payment of their pensions and gratuities for over twelve months now. The development is made worse by the recent issuance of three months cheques in August that cannot be cashed till date. The initial criminal attempt by this same government to compel them to forfeit a huge chunk of the owed monies remains green in our minds.

Apart from the arrears owed Pensioners, Civil Servants in the state are owed several months of salary arrears by the state government. The infrastructural deficit in the state is so pronounced that Imo people are now ashamed of their state. The obvious hunger in the land notwithstanding; with the economy of the state almost collapsed, the present administration is more interested in the erection of meaningless statues and Christmas trees that have no relevance to the socio-economic wellbeing of the people. The debt profile of the state is also very high.

G42 Imo Liberation Forum, a socio-political mass movement in the state sees this as worrisome, considering the huge sums that have been received by the present administration, particularly, the Paris Refunds and Bailout funds.

We therefore demand an account of how the Imo State government under Chief Rochas Okorocha has expended the over twenty-six (N26b) Billion Naira bail out funds it received from the Central Bank of Nigeria. We also demand an account of the Internally Generated Revenue of the State, since the inception of the present administration. Imo State belongs to all of us and must not be run as an extension of Governor Rochas Okorochas private business empire.

Destiny Ugorji
Deputy Attorney General Godfred Yeboah Dame has indicated that owner of Exton Cubic Group Limited  a mining company exploring bauxite at Nyinahin in the Ashanti Region  obtained a fake mining licence from public officers who were under undue influence.

According to him, the officers contrived to grant the mining lease to Ibrahim Mahama  owner of the company and younger brother of former President John Dramani Mahama  during the dying days of the former president's National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration in 2016, without following due process.

Mr Yeboah Dame stated that it is the sole prerogative of the Minister for Land and Natural Resources to grant mining leases, subject to parliamentary ratification  a process the Exton Cubic licence did not go through.

The deputy attorney general was responding to an application for a judicial review filed by the company at an Accra High Court over the revocation of its mining leases by the Lands and Natural Resources Minister, John Peter Amewu.

The court was presided over by Justice Ackah Boafo.

Lawyers for the company are before the court arguing that the revocation of the mining licence is a breach of the right of Ibrahim Mahama and that the minister does not have the power to cancel a mining lease by just a stroke of the pen.

Counsels for Ibrahim Mahama, led by Osafo Buabeng, argued that Article 23 of the 1992 Constitution and to a greater extent, Article 296, states that a mining lease executed by the state acting through the sector minister to an applicant cannot be revoked without following due process.

He said it is not in dispute that there were three mining leases between the applicant and the government, but the licence, if need be, can only be revoked, cancelled or determined by the minister after he has satisfied statutory preconditions.

Making reference to Section 5(1) of Act 703 which gives the sector minister the right to revoke a mining lease, Mr Boabeng said that could also only be done based on the recommendation of the Minerals Commission.

He contended that the revocation letter served on Exton Cubic did not indicate that the minister acted on the recommendation of the Minerals Commission.

He also argued that even in the case where the company did not meet all the requirements of the Minerals Commission, the commission should have given the company the opportunity to react to the issues raised before the revocation of the licence.

He is therefore praying the court to grant the application to review the revocation of the licence which they claim was illegally done.

AG Disagrees

But according to Mr Yeboah Dame, the application is incompetent since there is no proper respondent to it.

He said Articles 88 and 293 regulate that claims against the government or procedures against the government ties the AG as the respondent and not the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources as is the case of the application before the court.

With regards to the mining lease granted Exton Cubic, Mr. Dame argued that it is the prerogative of the Lands and Natural Resources Minister to grant mining leases but in the case of Exton Cubic, the purported lease was granted on November 10, 2016  more than a month before the minister was informed about the lease.

The purported offer of the mining lease by the Minerals Commission and payment for same were all done even before the Commission forwarded its recommendations to the Minister on 28th December, 2016, he indicated.

Mr Dame maintained that Exton Cubic did not meet all the requirements for the granting of a lease as there had been no publication of notice of the pendency of the application for the Mining Leases in the Gazette as required by Section 13 of Act 703 and Regulation 177 of LI. 2176.

He added that the company had also not obtained any environmental permit as required by law, for the granting of a mining lease.

He maintained, Failure by applicant to obtain the relevant environmental permits before the purported grant of mining leases in respect of the areas constituting about 79% of the nation's known bauxite resources, among other statutory violations, is very serious, having regard to the activity applicant sought to engage in  mining.

Pursuant to an application made in April 2015, the applicant was on 24th December, 2015 initially issued with prospecting licences under Section 34 of Act 703 for a term of two (2) years in respect of the following areas: Kyekyewere  56.64 sq.km ; Mpasaso  22.46 sq.km and Kyirayaso  32.68 sq.km .

There was no publication of notice of the pendency of the application for the prospecting licence in the Gazette as required by Section 13(2) and (3) of Act 703 and Regulation 177 of Minerals and Mining Regulations, 2012 (L. I. 2176).

He therefore prayed the court to dismiss the application before it.

Justice Ackah Boafo adjourned the matter to February 8, 2018 to rule on the application.

Controversial Lease

Exton Cubic Group Limited was controversially granted a long lease concession by the Mahama-led NDC administration on December 29, 2016 when the party had lost the December 7 general elections miserably and was on its way out of office.

The company moved heavy-duty machines into the forest near Nyinahin a few months ago with intent to start exploratory activities, but was stopped by both the district and the regional authorities.

In the ensuing tussle between the youth of Nyinahin on one hand and the private firm on the other over whether Ibrahim had the right to enter the Nyinahin Forest Reserve, Peter Sarkodie, Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), issued a statement saying that the company had not obtained the required permit to enable it to mine bauxite in the area.

By Gibril Abdul Razak
A 6-year-old girl was on Thursday night burnt beyond recognition by fire that gutted the parents' abode at Sowutuom Agenda, near Bola Junction in Accra.

The deceased, identified as Lordina Hope Agbalu, according to information, was fast asleep in the porch of their apartment without the knowledge of the mother when the fire started.

The apartment was part of a chain of wooden structures that were gutted by the fierce fire that broke out about 8pm.

Mother of the deceased, Matilda Asare, said she was not aware that her daughter was sleeping in the porch when the fire started after she had left with one of her siblings some minutes before the fire started.

The inferno, which lasted for close to two hours, also destroyed properties worth thousands of Ghana cedis.

Items destroyed included refrigerator, mattresses, sofa, electronics, documents, among others.

Madam Asare, a nursing mother, told this paper that that evening she saw Lordina following one of her elder sisters out of the house.

She was asleep with her five-month-old child when she heard shouts for help coming from the adjourning kiosks followed by a thick smoke.

She said she immediately picked up her baby and left the room.

Later, I asked of the whereabouts of my child only to be told that she returned later to sleep.

With tears flowing uncontrollably, Madam Asare said the charred body was discovered lying in the porch after the fire had been doused.

Personnel of the Sowutuom District Police Command, led by Inspector Stephen Wuni and the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) were at the scene to assess the situation and to pick up the body.

Police reports have indicated that about 15 wooden structures occupied by squatters and five container shops got burnt.

The body of Lordina was later sent to the Police Hospital for preservation while investigations continue.

The cause of the fire is yet to be established by the fire fighters who visited the scene.

( [email protected] )

By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey
The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has officially opted for former President John Dramani Mahama over all other persons aspiring to become the party's flagbearer for the 2020 presidential election.

National Organizer of the party, Kofi Adams, on Thursday made it clear that the NDC does not recognize all those aspiring stalwarts and insisted that the party only recognizes the former president, who is planning a comeback once again to contest the next presidential election after being humiliated as an incumbent in 2016.

Currently, about five top notches  former Trade and Industry Minister Ekwow Spio-Garbrah; former University of Professional Studies Accra Rector, Joshua Alabi; Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin; former National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) Chief Executive, Sylvester Mensah and failed parliamentary aspirant, Stephen Atibuga  are aspiring to lead the NDC for Election 2020.

The comment by Mr Kofi Adams, who was the Campaign Coordinator of the 2016 John Mahama's campaign, has led to some of the stalwarts, who have declared their intentions to lead the party into the 2020 presidential election, to boycott this weekend's 'unity walk' that the party says it is using to bring the rank and file together.

They are boycotting the event scheduled for Tarkwa in the Western Region today because they claim the whole exercise has been skewed in favour of John Dramani Mahama  who wants to lead the NDC again in 2020, after being humiliated at the polls in 2016, thereby scattering his second term presidential bid.

Mr Adams, who supervised the abortive Mahama's re-election bid as the campaign coordinator, made the party's intention clear in an interview posted on Ghanaweb.

They haven't reached the status of former President Mahama for them to be treated that way, he said forcefully and went to the extent of saying that They (aspirants) are engaging in an illegality.

If there is any other person that reached the status of the former president and wants recognition, he should come out and say it. At this moment we only recognize the ex-president.

He said the NDC had not opened nominations for the aspirants to be accorded flagbearer status and therefore the party does not recognize any of them.

Mahama is being recognized by the party because he is a former president and immediate leader of the NDC. We therefore give due recognition to him.

Any true party person should spend much more time on the timetable set by the party. We have structured all these things and when we have to open nominations we shall recognize all of them, Adams claimed.

He said the party was going to engage the aspirants and let them know that they should pipe down because at this moment we don't recognize what it is that they are doing.

Kofi Adams continued, They shouldn't think that we are going to recognize and give them platforms as aspirants.

For everything that we do there is what we call an advantage and disadvantage. For President Mahama, those who may be contesting against him, if he decides to contest, will be using some of the things they feel were not done right against him, so if he has any advantage because he has occupied that position, before we should just let him be.

Mr Kofi Adams' statement is likely to further deepen the cracks in the party since some of the aspirants have not been happy about the preferential treatment being given to the Mr Mahama, as the NDC embarks on its re-organization exercise.

10 Chairmen

Already, there is an open endorsement and support has been given to Mr Mahama by all the 10 NDC regional chairmen in clear breach of the party's rules of engagement; and Kofi Adams' statement reinforced perceptions that the other candidates might be wasting their time in contesting the former president.

The 10 chairmen converged on Accra to meet the ex-president and assured him of their support in what has come to be known as the 'Cantonment Declaration.'

The action of the chairmen, who are part of the National Executive Committee (NEC)  the highest decision-making body of the party  sparked heated debate in the party, with some calling for sanctions against them (chairmen) for their 'divisive' action.

By William Yaw Owusu
THE DIRECTOR of the Tema East sub-metro of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA), Rita Damani, has debunked claim that she had been taking money from developers without issuing out official General Counterfoil Receipts (GCRs).

She has described the assertion as ridiculous, categorically false and intended to destroy her reputation.

Drawing from a memorandum entitled, 'Request for the Release of an officer' dated November 16, 2017, and issued by the Finance and Administration (F&A) Sub-Committee of the assembly, DAILY GUIDE reported that the director had been summoned to appear before a fact-finding committee to respond to allegations made by a City Guard of the assembly.

The summons, signed by Frederick Doe, Finance Officer of the assembly, and intercepted by this paper, stated in part, I have been directed by the Chairman of Finance and Administration Sub-Committee to inform you of a fact-finding committee commissioned by the Finance and Administration Sub-Committee whose sole terms of reference is enquire into the allegations leveled against the Tema East Sub-Metro Director in the person of Rita Damani, by a Metro Guard in the person of Chief Inspector John Mireku, with regards to taking money from the developers without issuing out official General Counterfoil Receipt (GCR).

It further named the seven members of the committee before stating, The committee will therefore be grateful if the said officer (Mrs. Rita Damani) could be released for the enquiry on Tuesday, November 21, 2017, at the office of the Presiding Member at 10:00 am prompt and she should be informed to give the committee all the necessary assistance for execution of the conferred mandate.

However, shortly after the publication, the assembly issued a press release signed by the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of TMA, Frank Asante, and copied to DAILY GUIDE, refuting the story that a staff of the assembly had been cited for engaging in the alleged receipt scam as reported by the paper.

Touching on the allegation by some staff of the assembly that the officer had been boasting of being connected to top officials, including the head of Local Government Service, the PRO stated, The officer mentioned, has not conducted herself in a manner to suggest that she is connected to the top official and that she is untouchable as alleged. The head of the Local Government Service cannot be linked to the matter at all.

From Vincent Kubi, Tema
25.11.2017 LISTEN

In the last four years, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD- Ghana) has released the District League Table (DLT) as part of efforts to increase social accountability for development across the country.

Over the period, the table has supported government in better understanding and monitoring development across the country and support citizen's access to information and knowledge in sectors, including education, sanitation, rural water, health, security and governance.

In an interview with Sarah Hague, Head of Policy Team for UNICEF Ghana, DAILY GUIDE explores various issues regarding the release of the 2017 DTL, which saw Tema Metropolitan Assembly ranking the highest.

Jamila: Why DLT?

Sarah: UNICEF came up with an idea for the district league table four years ago. At that time, we realised that if you want to know if Ghana is developing, there was no tool in the country or tracking mechanism that you can quickly go to and look at it and say yes Ghana is improving and the indicators are getting better, especially if you are at the local level you can't see. So we discussed with a number of partners and the Centre for Democratic Development that has a lot of experience in the area of governance and designed the DTL and put it out in 2014.

Jamila: What is the DLT?

Sarah: Basically, it is a simple tool. It is an index like the human development index, so we take a small number of indicators that are important to people so things like education, health, water, sanitation and security and then we put all of them together and strike an average for each district. So with that average for each district, you can then rank all of the districts from first place all the way down.

Jamila: What are the DLT results for this year?

Sarah: As we saw, there have been a few changes in the rankings. At the top is Tema Metropolitan with a score of 80 out of a 100 percent which is the target.

Eighty is not bad and it is the highest score that we have ever had in the league table but there is still somewhere to go from 80 to 100, so there is still room to improve.

And also they were the top district two years ago so they have been there and they are coming back. Last year was La Nkwantanang-Madina; they went down to second place so these two districts are sharing the top spots for the past three years.

As you saw in the 216th position is the Krachi East in the Volta Region, which scored 50 out of a 100 percent. They are really far from Tema and far from the top and there is a big gap between the top and the bottom.

Jamila: Are there any trends in the rankings?

Sarah: That is a good question because over the four years you should definitely be able to see that we are making progress. So the average score for the whole country has improved a very small amount. For the past four years the improvement seemed marginal, I was a bit surprised I thought it will be a bit more than what we are seeing so I think that has to be a notice, something that needs to be flagged up to government and all partners that in four years, which is not a very long period of time, but we are not really seeing that much progress.

Jamila: Why the choice of the six indicators?

Sarah: We try to choose things that we thought was important, so we have a lot of consultations and discussions going backwards and forth in the beginning in 2014 and then we more or less repeat these every year to ensure we have the right indicators. People always agree health is important, education is important but people have other ideas about the different sectors which could be included.

But in Ghana, we do not have the data so things like agriculture, reproductive health, child marriage, teenage pregnancy, we don't have a database which is produced nationally to show these indicators every year at the district level, we don't have it if something important comes up and the data gets produced in the future, we could include it.

Jamila: So the choice of the indicators was based on the data available to you?

Sarah: Well, it is data that was available nationally, so we looked at all the databases we have nationally to see what the best indicators are. But we have a huge challenge getting hold of the data but it should be public data, it should be on the website and everyone should be able to get it and see how your district is doing in education and in health, it should not be hard to get it, in that respect Ghana has to improve accessibility in data.

Jamila: What has improved in the indicators?

Sarah: So some of the indicators have improved so we use to have a lot of gaps in the water data given to us by the Community Water & Sanitation Agency and we went back to show them that they had a lot of gaps so they went and did a verification exercise at their district level the year after so now we do not have gaps.

Jamila: What kind of gaps were they having?

Sarah: Well, they were not able to tell us what the coverage of water was in certain districts so that district will not have a score for that indicator but they have improved.

Jamila: Has there been improvement in data collection?

Sarah: It is certainly better now, we have every one's phone number and we know the right people to call, so for us, maybe, it is a bit better but for anybody else maybe it is a bit difficult and it should not be like that so even district officials in their own district find it difficult to know what their own indicators are and they are the ones planning how to spend their allocation in the coming year.

The DLT is, at least, something to start with so we want to make sure this is freely available and all the data behind it is freely available on our website www.unicef.org/ghana and you can download that information.

We will talk to the government and the Ghana Statistical Service and see if they could put it up on their website as well.

Jamila: What was the most surprising result this year?

Sarah: Maybe two things, one we looked at whether resources were being allocated well at the district level so whether those districts which were least developed were actually getting more resources to support them. So those districts at the bottom that have the biggest challenges and are deprived they are not getting more resources for development. So we are now discussing with government how they can use the DLT to better allocate their resources.

The other thing was some districts in the north of the country, which often we think is poor and deprived part of the country are actually doing pretty well. So districts in the Upper West Region and Upper East have some of the highest indicators now.

So when we look at the average score for all the different regions, Upper West was at the top and people were surprised about that because we think the north is poor and under-developed but those district like Lawra and Nandom and Wa East and West of some of the indicators are actually not bad and they had a big boost by getting communities to certify as free from open defecation.

Jamila: How do the DLT translate to the country's attainment of the SDGs?

Sarah: In the SDGs, there are lots of different indicators and Ghana does not collect all of the indicator so we need to see how we can support GSS and all the ministries to start collecting all of the different indicators that we currently don't have so I think the DLT with a small number of indicators is somewhere we can start but we still need better coordination in Ghana on data and no one is leading. I know that we have to come together and coordinate and I know that NDPC and GSS they are currently leading on the assessment of the data system and how to strengthen it so that is very important so we are supporting them in that.

If we see progress in the DLT, then it means we will see some progress in the SDGs. The DLT is more relevant to Ghana as it is broken down by the district level.

Jamila: Were there differences in the scores this year?

Sarah: So quite a few districts managed to improve their score but it was partly because we introduced a new indicator on health and that was what pushed up some of the districts but in 26 districts things actually got worse so we have to look for why that was for those districts and it is worrying that overall Ghana is not progressing evenly so on average we are a little bit better but there are districts that things are going backwards.

Jamila: Is there any collaboration with the DCEs to improve their indicators?

Sarah: We found out that people are increasingly aware of the DLT but getting information out is really difficult that is why we rely mostly on the media to do that for us. We found that most people are aware of it and seven out of 10 people we interviewed said they are using the league table to better target resources but districts are really not in full control of their own development because most of their resources are allocated from Accra.

It is very much about central government, it is about parliamentarians and the national ministries supporting the districts and others, it is less about district assemblies themselves.

Jamila: Are there any success stories from the DLT?

Sarah: When we ask people about it, there is a sense of anticipation, we do this every single year and we are going to keep doing it and people tell us we know it is coming there is a pressure to do something and at the district when we talk to them they give us stories that they have organise activities to improve their indicators. But we really don't have a very good sense of whether the DLT is driving this improvement or development because we really need to see this better allocation of resources from the centre out to the districts and that is the most important thing.

Until that changes and parliament says we cannot give everyone the same that will be a big success story.

Jamila: What is government's response to the DLT?

Sarah: We discuss it in parliament each year so we should be having discussion with some of the select committees in the coming weeks. They seem very happy that the information is there and they have this tool that they can now use but I think they are more at the district level so I think we need to get them to think about this issue of allocation of resources from the centre.

The NDPC is looking at how they can use it to guide their planning and the vice president's office is also very interested so we will also go there to discuss it.
Samuel Atta Akyea

25.11.2017 LISTEN

The debate on the budget continued on Wednesday, with the Minister of Works and Housing, Samuel Atta Akyea, giving assurance that the government would partner the private sector to provide affordable houses for workers.

The Minister said for the 1.7 million housing deficit to be solved, the government may have to build 200,000 houses a year which will take eight and half years to clear the deficit.

He said since the New Patriotic Party (NPP) took over power in January this year, many private investors have shown interest in the housing sector and were ready to partner government to provide affordable houses for Ghanaians.

He said there is no credible mortgage system in the country and that the government will put into operation an effective mortgage system to help Ghanaians buy houses through mortgage arrangement.

According to the Minister, pension funds could be a good source of financial outlay that could be used to provide such affordable houses and mortgaged to workers.

The Minister, who is the NPP MP for Abuakwa South, indicated that the issue of flooding in the major cities and towns would also be tackled by the government.

He said the government is determined to fix the flooding problem which has been causing a lot of destruction to lives and property permanently.

No amount of propaganda by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) can stop us from working to achieve results for Ghanaians, he said, adding that it would be better for the NDC to stop the criticisms and applaud the government for the workable policies it is implementing.

The NDC MP for Ho West, Emmanuel Bedzrah, who is the ranking member on Works and Housing Committee of Parliament, said the government has lost focus as far as the 2017 and 2018 budgets are concerned.

According to him, the 2017 budget should have been an ideal document to work with in 2018 since it is better in terms of policy initiatives.

I don't see anything good in this 2018 budget because most of the budget allocations to the various ministries have been slashed in the 2018 budget, he said, adding that the 2017 budget is a better document than the 2018 one.

According to the Ho West MP, the budget for the Presidency, which is GH1.9 billion, is bigger than the budget of eight key ministries, including Roads and Highways and Works and Housing, which according to him is GH1.8 billion.

By Thomas Fosu Jnr
The world we find ourselves in is complex and full of contradictions. It is easy to fall for rudimentary textbook propaganda based on simplistic dichotomies, such as the good guys versus the bad guys. If we are not aware of the complexities and nuances facing us, we can fall for this type of propaganda, whose sole aim is to keep us apart and destroy any type of unity that could strengthen our ability to defeat the enemy.

When examining and assessing the latest information fed us by one of imperialisms mouthpieces, CNN, there are important things for us, as revolutionary Pan-Africanists, to keep in mind. The first thing to note is the clear hypocrisy and insincerity which is nowhere more stark than CNNs recent expose of Libyan crimes against humanity and French President, Emmanuel Macrons call for a special meeting of the UN Security Council to demand immediate action against this heinous Libyan crime.

I know this much for sure, as an African revolutionary I do not look to the devil for the truth. I know that the devil does not lie some of the time; he lies and deceives all of the time. In whatever form the devil manifests himself, I do not deal with him. He can come in the guise of the imperialists and White Supremacists themselves, or their mouthpieces such as CNN, BBC, Fox News or any of the mainstream corporate media outlets. We should never forget their role as cheerleaders and purveyors of the fake news that laid the groundwork for the invasion and destruction of the Libyan Jamahiriya. Therefore, let us ask ourselves the burning question, why are they providing us with this information, and why now? Why are the imperialists suddenly feigning concern for the plight of Africans?

In my first article on the invasion of Libya, published March 2nd, 2011, titled, Libya, Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective, I said that the conflict in Libya is not a revolution, but a counter-revolution. The struggle is fundamentally a battle between Pan-African forces on the one hand, who are dedicated to the realization of Qaddafi's vision of a united Africa, and reactionary, racist Libyan Arab forces who reject Qaddafi's vision of Libya as part of a united Africa.

Events have proved this analysis correct. Muammar Qaddafi and the Revolutionary Committees Movement of the Al Fateh Revolution had a monumental task on their hands: to conscientize and reposition the Libyan people for a significant role in the revolutionary Pan-African project for a United States of Africa. This is a battle for all African revolutionaries. In Sub-Saharan African countries, where almost the entire population comprises Black Africans, we face the same battle. Here in the Caribbean, it is no different. So, when Qaddafi urged his people to look towards a United States of Africa and a revolutionary Pan-African perspective, he had to face Libyans who rejected this program in favor of Libya and the entire North African region joining the Barcelona Project, a Mediterranean-European alliance, whose aim is to take North Africa out of Africa.

Prejudice against dark-skinned Africans exists all over planet earth. Even in countries where the population is almost 100% Black African, we have to contend with shadism, a hangover from colonialism and plantation culture, where Africans with lighter skin shades are held in higher esteem than Africans with darker skin shades. However, to say that Arab Libyans are selling Africans is overly simplistic and deliberately misleading. There is a hidden agenda here  beware. The objective is to ignite hostilities between so-called Arab-Africans and so-called Sub-Saharan-Africans. There is a debate amongst Africans about who is an African. On the one hand, there are those who limit the definition of African to Black Africans in the Sub-Saharan region of the continent. On the other hand, there are those of us who believe that Africa is one, and we will resist any attempt by the imperialists to redefine and further balkanize Africa. Rather than becoming part of the European Community, North Africans promoting the Barcelona Project would be better off seeking out their African roots. This is what Muammar Qaddafi told all Libyans.

Those who today call themselves Arabs have a historical, ancestral and moral duty to recognize their Africanity. Those Arabs who live in countries on the African continent and those who live in the region outside of the continent, need to explore and reexamine their history. The region they inhabit, erroneously named Middle-East and Levant by the European colonizers cannot be divorced from Africa. I agree with Islamic theologian and historian, Dr. Wesley Muhammad, that the area known as Middle-East or Levant is more aptly named Afrabia.

Anyone interested in more information on this and the Aryanization of Christianity and Islam, should refer to the brilliant works of Dr. Wesley Muhammad, especially his book Black Arabia and the African Origins of Islam.

The North Atlantic Tribes Organization (NATO) deeply fear this type of awakening and the unity of purpose and action it could lead to in this oil rich and wealthiest region of the world.

Minister Farrakhan said many years ago, reflecting on periods of unity in our history, we did it before and we can do it again. Muammar Qaddafi persistent struggle to forge a United States of Africa was starting to pay off. He was on the verge of creating an African currency that would have shifted the global economic imbalance, preparing the way for Africa to take its rightful place in the world. Laurent Gbagbo, former president of Ivory Coast, was openly supporting Qaddafi with this radical move. Gbagbo believed that those who were serious should declare a United States of Africa and the others could follow. Fear of this emerging African unity, especially between countries in the north and south of the continent, prompted France to orchestrate Gbagbos removal from power at the same time as the NATO led invasion of Libya. Genuine African unity, resulting in anything more than talk, will always be opposed, no matter what the cost, by the forces of White Supremacy.

As we now know, even those Libyans who opposed Qaddafis drive for a United States of Africa, did not support the overthrow of the Jamahiriya. It is a well-substantiated fact that the rag-tag and opportunistic conglomerate of reactionaries, including monarchists, Arab supremacists and al-Qaeda linked Islamists, such as those from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, constituted an insignificant minority. The Libyan Revolutionary Armed Forces could have easily contained these retrograde forces, if NATO had not bombed them into power. Without the backing of France, the US, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and their satellites, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, the so-called Libyan rebels amounted to nothing when confronted with the overwhelming support of the majority of Libyans for Muammar Qaddafi and the Al Fateh Revolution. This revolution brought dignity, stability, prosperity and liberation from foreign domination to all Libyans, from the fairest to the darkest in complexion. One thing you knew as soon as you stepped off the plane at Tripoli Airport was that the Libyans - all Libyans - were in control of their country! It was people power, seemingly chaotic and misunderstood by outsiders, but a truly participatory democracy to those who lived it and experienced it. The majority of Libyans were aware of this and supported Al Fateh.

Knowing who the so-called rebels truly are, it came as no surprise to me, that in addition to the long list of crimes against humanity attributed to these scoundrels, they would auction Black Africans as slave labor.

Following the heroic battle of Sirte, back in December 2011, in an article titled, Demons Unleashed in Libya: NATOs Islamists Continue Program of Ethnic and Ideological Cleansing, I wrote about the horror that was taking place. A horror that was instigated by the Anglo-Franco-American Imperialists, under the watchful eye of the UN  all of whom are now shedding crocodile tears over the sale of African migrants in Libya. In that article, I wrote about the complete whiteout by the corporate media regarding all news from Libya. I stated that, Even the United Nations, an architect of the nations destruction, says 7,000 prisoners are held without trial or charge, most of them Black, many of them tortured. Any known Qaddafi loyalists who have not been able to get out of Libya have to stay underground. Death squads scour the land. Truckloads of bodies are being carted away, as the now feuding armed gangs, each with their own command structure, and none adhering to anything the Western installed NTC says, introduces the only policy they ever had  exterminate Qaddafi and all those loyal to him.

These are NATOs thugs.

I went on to note that, In addition to loyalty to the Leader, and defense of their country against foreign invaders, having black skin and asserting ones Africanity has become a crime in the new Libya. Ethnic cleansing is continuing unabated. Every day Black Africans from Libya and other parts of Africa are hunted down. Thousands have been brutally tortured and executed. Rape of Black women is a favored weapon of NATOs Islamists. Many of the female bodies found show signs of rape, beatings and torture. Large numbers of Black Africans make up the ranks of the Green Resistance.

I quoted one Tripoli resident as saying:

Everyone is terrified of the NTC and their armed gangs. We have seen with our own eyes what they are capable of  they are animals. All around us people are being rounded up and imprisoned. We have no way of knowing how many have been murdered. Anyone who is associated with Qaddafi or suspected of loyalty to him is at risk. Even people who have worked for people who are known supporters of the leader have been rounded up and tortured. I personally know of many persons who were just working for people associated with the leader who have been taken away and never seen again. If you are black you are an immediate suspect  these rebels call black Libyans abd means slave and they are rounding them up just because they are black  it is making me sick and ashamed.

What these rebels have done to their own people is disgusting  some of the acts of torture I cant even speak about. There has been a lot of rape. I wept when I learned of what these animals did to the leaders female bodyguards  they are not human and that is why there is so much fear. Any known Qaddafi loyalists who have not been able to get out of Libya have to stay underground. Libyans are afraid to talk to other Libyans  anyone could be an informer. It feels like the last days are upon us  Libya has been turned into a living hell.

The imperialist media, including CNN was completely silent regarding all of these crimes against humanity, despite the fact that genocide in the form of an ethnic and ideological cleansing pogrom was unfolding right before our eyes. There was no outcry from the UN or the North Atlantic Tribes. No time or motive for outcry  having shared the spoils, these callous warlords had already moved on to their next victim  Syria.

So why now?

Could it be that the Green Resistance is gaining ground? Could it be that although they killed Qaddafi and buried him in an unmarked grave (they know why), his dangerous (for them) ideas are better known now than before? Could it be that Muammar Qaddafis vision for a United States of Africa could once again re-surface?

Prior to the overthrow of the Jamahiriya, thousands of Africans travelled to Libya to work, and they prospered. Employment opportunities existed across a range of occupations, including teachers, librarians, nurses, hotel workers, chefs, mechanics, electricians, construction workers and unskilled laborers. They were able to send money home to their families. African businesses and companies also traded extensively in Libya. There was zero tolerance in the Jamahiriya for the mistreatment of Libyan or migrant workers or anyone for that matter. I know of many foreigners who received favorable judgements in employment disputes.

The destruction of this most prosperous and just African country was led by France, who now dares to call for a special meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the crimes committed against African migrants by Libyans. This is devil-speak. The same devil who, in the words of the Honorable Minister Farrakhan, unleashed the demons that are now committing these and other heinous crimes, is trying to sow more discord by talking about Libyan crimes. Where was CNN and the French government when these same gangs of demons were committing the atrocities described above?

We have known since the first day of NATOs invasion that this was perhaps one of the most racist and atrocious crimes of the 21st century. The question that we must ask ourselves is why CNN, the French government and others who led the charge in 2011, are all of a sudden concerned about the plight of Africans in Libya. Minister Farrakhan calls it deceptive intelligence, and warns us that, every time the serpent raises its head it should be de-capitated.

Let us resist this crude attempt to divide and ruin us yet again. Let us not be distracted and misled by imperialist propaganda. Let us make sure that our enemies do not set our agenda, causing us to react to their devious attempts to pit us against each other. Let us set our own agenda for our second liberation. Crimes against Black Africans and Qaddafi loyalists, of every complexion, began in Libya in 2011, and continue to this day, unabated. Thousands languish in detention centers, Libyans of every complexion and migrants from all over Africa. Those carrying out these crimes on the ground are the foot soldiers and thugs of the criminal masterminds of the hell that is now Libya. Arrest warrants should be issued immediately for Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Emir Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani to name but a few.

I end with a message to All our Brothers and Sisters in Africa and the Diaspora from long time Revolutionary Committee Movement member, Dr. Salem Zubeidy:

This letter is addressed to our brothers, officials, and residents of the sub-Saharan African countries, who are characterized by dark features.

There have been many reactions and statements by African leaders, politicians, organizations and institutions following an investigation published by CNN that there are markets for the selling of Africans of dark skin in Libya 

No one stopped to question the validity of this report, and where is the market? When did this happen? Where do the (alleged) slaves go?

Then, no one asked how the channel got to the supposed market, and how was it able to video the auction? What is the purpose of the American channel to broadcast such a program that distorts an entire people, and accuses them of committing a heinous crime that is not accepted by a reasonable mind and not approved by any logic?

We can find explanations and justifications for a US channel harboring suspicious purposes in fueling separation and instigating seditions.

As an answer to the voices and forces that see in this an opportunity to falsify the facts, and play down the Libyan peoples accomplishments, side by side with their African brothers and sisters in the golden times of the al-Fateh Revolution, it behooves us to clarify some points:

1. Libya, which you know has been hijacked since the Fall of 2011, and its capabilities are being controlled by criminal gangs that had been enabled by means of the Western war machine of NATO, after destroying the foundations of the state.

2. Libya was the Bureau of the liberation movements, which trained, armed and equipped thousands of young people in the southern regions of Africa, Rhodesia, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Zambia and Angola, and enabled them to return with their full military gear, with Libyan advisers, to fight the battles of liberation.

3. Libya offered total support to the struggle of Cabral in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde and dispatched Libyan officers as volunteers to fight alongside him, some of whom are still living witnesses amongst us.

4. Libya presented absolute support for revolutionary and progressive regimes in African countries seeking liberation from imperialism and neo-colonialism in the Congo, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Chad, and others.

5. Libya alone has resisted the Barcelona process, which had as an objective the separation of the light-skinned in the north of the continent linking them with the Mediterranean in the so-called Mediterranean Organization and established the CEN-SAD in response to the Barcelona process, to prove the unity of the continent.

6. Libya fought the battle for the unification of the continent and the affirmation of its freedom, identity, and dignity through pressing for the establishment of the African Union.

7. Libya embraced African political opposition movements, supporting their programs and bringing many of their leaders to power.

8. Libya represented the ongoing battle for peace, development, and construction. It convened dozens of meetings, organized dozens of mediation affairs and reconciliations. It also invested huge sums in important projects in most countries of the continent 

We can go on in more detail, but we just want to tell you and the world that your Libyan brothers and sisters cannot accept to disassociate themselves from their continent, no matter how the enemies of Africa try.

A full statement from Libyan Peoples National Movement (LPNM) can be found at:

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2017/11/21/libyan-peoples-national-movement-statement-on-the-slave-trade/

Gerald A. Perreira is chairperson of the Guyanese organizations Black Consciousness Movement Guyana (BCMG) and Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP), International Secretary for ARM (African Revolutionary Movement) and executive member of the Caribbean Chapter of the Network for Defense of Humanity. He lived in Libya for many years, served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Al Fatah Revolution, and was an executive member of the World Mathaba based in Libya. He can be reached at [email protected]
25.11.2017 LISTEN

The First Lady, Mrs Rebecca Akufo-Addo, has urged Ghanaians living and working in China to project the good name of Ghana as they seek more knowledge to help develop the country.

'There is a lot to learn from China, therefore, those of you here should learn and bring the knowledge back home to improve the country,' she said.

The First Lady made the appeal to officials of the Ghana Embassy in China when she addressed them as part of her eight-day official trip to that country.

She noted that back home in Ghana, things were looking good for the country with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, now in charge.

She said: 'The President came to office with a lot of promises and he is working hard to achieve all of them. He has achieved quite a lot since taking office.'

The first Lady noted that with a determined and focused person like the President steering affairs, there 'is a lot of hope for Ghana and things are already looking good for Ghana.'

Meanwhile, Mrs Akufo-Addo has announced that the newly constructed Mother and Baby Unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, which was facilitated by the Rebecca Foundation, would be inaugurated by the close of the year.

She said after the inauguration of the KATH facility, her next stop would be the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.

Ghana's Ambassador to China, Mr Edward Boateng, assured the First Lady that he and his staff would not disappoint the President but would work hard to bring more investment into the country and cater for the well-being of Ghanaians in China.

The First Lady is in China with a group of women entrepreneurs, some members of the Association of Ghana Industries and academia to explore investment opportunities for women businesses and Ghana in totality.

GNA

By Lydia Kukua Asamoah, GNA
The traditional media is gradually fading out in the ever changing world of technology which is heavily reliant on new inventories.

The Chief Executive Officer of MTN, Mr. Ebenezer Twum Asante, has in this direction urged members of the Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG) to embrace the power of the internet to digitalise their news and content for wider access.

We expect that industry consolidation and convergence will increase with high penetration. The future of everything we do revolves around digitization which has huge impact on businesses, he stated.

Mr. Asante told members of PRINPAG that MTN as an enabler of digitization and integration is poised to provide the platform and support for them to bridge the gap to compete globally.

You need to integrate print, television, radio, mobile to online. You need to digitize some of your work. The digital agenda is here and we at MTN are ready to dispatch our team to meet your members for the digitalization process, he intimated.

Speaking under the theme, From Print to Digital: The Changing Face of the Media, the CEO of MTN Mr. Twum Asante noted that inspite of global trends, advertising revenue for print media has seen some significant reduction because of heavy reliance on internet marketing and advertising.

Mr. Asante said the Ghanaian media is not an exception and must therefore join the new order if they still want to remain in business for the next decades because digital subscription is most convenient and the surest way of meeting advertising target.

The MTN CEO noted that digital evolution has changed the global media and publishing landscape with availability of services and content variety which is often received, processed and delivered in real-time.

According to him, there is a sudden shift in the media landscape with a lot of readers accessing news on their mobile phones, indicating that technology makes new presentation innovative and less costly.

He urged members of PRINPAG to take advantage of the opportunities online presents to create more connections and increase sales.

Mr. Ebenezer Twum Asante emphasized that social media is making reporting more fun and interactive than the traditional media noting that many people are not able to access some of the content and news on real-time basis which digital has done.
Predictably, in the wake of the ruling by the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in favor of Ghana vis-a-vis the latter countrys longstanding dispute with the leaders of La Cote dIvoire (or The Ivory Coast), its western neighbor, the gut reaction of former President John Dramani Mahama and his National Democratic Congress Abongo Boys and Girls was to burst into the sort of morally and culturally benighted jubilation that unwisely pitted a triumphant Ghanaian side against a losing Ivorian antagonists. At least that appeared to be the mindset of the leaders of Ghanas main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), as was widely reported by nearly every one of the print and electronic media outlets in the country.

Naturally, I heaved a deep sigh of relief and thanked Divine Providence for having generously supervised the massive electoral victory of the erstwhile main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). In all likelihood, had the Mahama-led rag-tag regime of the National Democratic Congress retained power in last Decembers poll, the ITLOS verdict would have been roundly disputed or even flatly rejected by Cote dIvoires President AlassaneDramaneOuattara.

Refreshingly, President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo took the diplomatically savvy approach of assuring the Ivorian leadership that the ITLOS verdict was not one of an Us-Against-Them proposition, as it were, but rather one that was firmly predicated on the fundamental reaffirmation of the longstanding bonds of kinship and sororal friendship that link the common destiny of our two nations together.

For, at the end of the day, even as Nana Akufo-Addo poignantly and aptly observed, it takes two to tango. It also took the laudably mature, albeit quite painful, gesture of acceptance by the Ivorian leadership that, indeed, Ghana had not slyly or mischievously veered into their internationally and globally recognized territorial waters to exploit their natural gas and crude oil resources. Out in the open seas, it goes without saying, territorial demarcations or boundaries are not easy to determine. We also know for a fact that the erstwhile colonial administrator of La Cote dIvoire, France, had staunchly backed its former subjects, obviously for self-serving reasons, even when it became indisputably clear that the Ghanaians had not strayed into their territorial waters.

In deciding to accept the invitation of Ghanas former Foreign Minister and, before the latter portfolio, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, President Ouattara admirably demonstrated that he fully appreciated statesmanship and Afrocentric good neighborliness. This is what clearly differentiates morally and psychologically mature Messrs. Ouattara and Akufo-Addo from an embarrassingly morally jejune and callow Mr. John Dramani Mahama. The preceding embarrassing state of affairs is hardly surprising, in view of the fact of what we uncomfortably know about the morbid narcissism of the former Rawlings Communications Minister, as eerily and sinisterly demonstrated in the wake of the passing of then-President John Evans Atta-Mills.

For Nana Akufo-Addo, even while duly congratulating the key legal lights on state side who had been involved in the ITLOS litigation with The Ivory Coast, what mattered most was that the losing side had been morally strong enough and honest, as well, to pragmatically accept the fact that the people and citizens of the two countries could not exist qualitatively at each others throats. In the final analysis, as bona fide members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the residents and citizens of both countries stood to gain and/or share in the good fortunes of one another. Of course, Nana Akufo-Addo was also addressing the epic sweep of the history of the immediate postcolonial era between the two closely related countries, when the Ghanaian leader solemnly observed that there are a lot of things that we need to do to bring our two nations into greater intimacy than we have done in the past.

Even more significantly, Nana Akufo-Addo shrewdly demonstrated his leadership flair by exhorting Mr. Ouattara to join hands with him in ensuring that the technical decisions arrived at by the ITLOS judges are promptly put into concrete practice for the mutual benefit of the brotherly and sisterly citizens of the two countries.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
Last week, the Minister of Education, Hon. Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh revealed the educational financial rot left behind by his predecessor, Prof. Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang as follows:

 Feeding Grants for Colleges of Education  GHC36m

 Feeding Grants for Special Schools  GHC4.7m

 SHS Subsidy  GHC24m

 Progressively Free Senior High School debt  GHC33m

 Capitation Grant - GHC8m

 GETFund debt  GHC3.7 billion

In a radio interview on Asempa FM's "Ekosii Sen" programme, Napo, as affectionately called, tagged Naana as disgraceful and an 'embarrassment' for her abysmal performance. He concluded that, the former minister didnt actually understand education. But, instead of Ghanaians questioning the professional competence of Naana Opoku Agyemang with regard to the mess she caused at the Education Ministry, the likes of Bawa Mogtari, Betty Mould-Iddrisu, and Okudzeto Ablakwa have become incensed and as a result demanded an apology from the hardworking minister.

It is against this backdrop that I write this piece not only to commend the Hon. Minister for calling a spade by its rightful name, but also, to explain further to Ghanaians why Prof. Naana Opoku Agyemang was simply a political waste of the taxpayer's money.

The late Prof. Mills once posited; "What is the benefit of one's academic qualification if the knowledge so acquired cannot be used to transform the lives of the ordinary people?". Thus, if Naana Opoku Agyemang as a Professor, a mother, and an educationist who climbed every step of the educational ladder, could not make even chalk and attendance registers available in the classroom, what other befitting description did people expect Napo to use on her?

Honestly and seriously, Prof Opoku Agyemang was not up to the task as an education minister, for, apart from screwing up the education sector with debts, she did little to promote teaching and learning in our schools. For instance, under her leadership, a ban on teacher recruitment was placed in all public schools; and teachers who left the profession for further studies without pay were not re-engaged. Similarly, graduates from the University of Education, Winneba, University of Cape Coast, and private Colleges of Education in the country were all denied access to teaching due to the embargo. Again, public universities and other tertiary institutions were not given the chance to replace retired lecturers. And all these happened at a time that Ghana's basic and secondary education levels were faced with 60,000 teacher deficit.

Furthermore, Prof. Naana Opoku Agyemang supervised the cancellation of teacher trainee allowance in the Colleges of Education and put several restrictions on teachers' study leave with pay. Besides, for close to two years, newly-trained teachers who were at post were given only three (3) months' salary and the remaining 21 months accumulated salary could not be traced. The series of demonstrations and strikes by teacher unions during Jane's time, the delay in school re-opening and weeks of closure of Northern Schools, the several schools under trees and frequent leakages of WASSCE and BECE questions all go to underscore the bad legacy she left behind at the Education Ministry.

Surprisingly, Prof Naana Opoku Agyemang was quoted on many radio stations complaining and criticising the NPP governments flagship Free SHS policy. To her, the programme should have covered all SHS students, but not only first years. The question is; where did Prof Opoku Agyemang expect the new government to get the money from after overburdening the sector with debts?

For me, Napo was generous in his choice of words because we cannot be hoodwinked into believing that, professorship is tantamount to competence. The late John Mills was a Professor, but his bad leadership as a president is still fresh in our minds. And if within just 11 months Napo is on the verge of clearing these educational arrears, implemented free SHS, restored teacher trainee allowances, paid feeding grants to special schools, subsidies to continuing SHS students, capitation grant to basic schools, establishment grant to circuit, district and regional offices, then, what prevents him from stating the obvious facts? Sometimes the truth is hard to tell, but I think he did well in exposing this heartless woman, who once revealed questions to John Mahama during the IEA encounter.

Let's therefore with one accord commend him and wish him well because not many politicians are bold enough to challenge the status quo.

Katakyie Kwame Opoku Agyemang

Asante Bekwai-Asakyiri

"Vision, coupled with persistency, results in true success"
25.11.2017 LISTEN

In fact, by introducing the free SHS, Akufo-Addo has graciously upheld the international human rights provision on free universal secondary education, which is encapsulated in Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economics, Social and Cultural Rights.

Education,as a matter of fact, drives the development of a nation, thus, the logical approach to improving accessibility and quality is not through political rhetoric and insobrieties, but through well-thought through policies such as the Akufo-Addos free SHS.

Considering the enormous benefits therein education, it is, indeed, prudent and somewhat forward-thinking for Akufo-Addos government to seek to bridge the ever widening social inequalities chasm through rational distribution of national resources in the form of free SHS.

And, given the fact that the erstwhile ambivalent NDC government needlessly left behind a huge debt, it is, indeed, estimable for Akufo-Addos government to afford to implement the seemingly admirable, albeit costly social intervention such as free SHS.

But despite its associated benefits, the opposition NDC operatives have been fighting tooth and nail to scrap the comprehensively free SHS, and replace it with a progressively free policy, where each student will be entitled to just about GH40.00 per term.

Take, for example, after campaigning and voting against the poverty alleviation free SHS during the 2016 election, albeit unsuccessful, the NDC operatives now have the brashness to protest vehemently against the schematic arrangements of the free SHS.

Apparently, the NDC operatives are moving heaven and earth to bring down the infant free SHS, and bizarrely claiming that the scheme is destitute of efficiency.

Let us however be honest, in spite of the initial challenges, the free SHS will suffice. So the endless attacks and unfair criticisms will not and cannot bring the scheme down. But the free SHS policy will rather bring enormous benefits to the students, parents and the nation as a whole.

Of course, the universal free education has been introduced in a number of jurisdictions across our own continent, Africa. Suffice it to state that, in spite of the initial challenges, the policy has sufficed in those jurisdictions. So, why not in Ghana?

In 2007, Uganda became the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to introduce free universal secondary education. Under the secondary scheme, students whoget specific grades in each of the four primary school-leaving exams study free in public schools and participating private schools.

The government of Kenya, in 2002, declared a universal free primary school, and followed it up with a free secondary schooling education programme in 2008.

In Namibia, a former South African colony under apartheid, primary education was declared free in 2012, while secondary education became free from 2016.

The poverty alleviation free SHS policy, as a matter of fact, reinforces the United Nations vision on human development and the right to development.

It is, however, worth mentioning that per the right to development, development is shifting from the conventional approach to human rights approach, whereby the focus is on equity and social justice (Mansell and Scot 1994).

It was against that background that the international community agreed to work synergistically to assist the underdeveloped nations in line with the provisions of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development.

Thus far there have been concerted efforts by the international community to concretise the Right to Development by first implementing the eight Millennium Development Goals with a view to developing a global partnership for development (Alston 2005).

Apparently, the MDGS came to an end at the end of 2015 and replaced with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Under the Sustainable Development Goals, every country would be obliged to meet the targets set therein (UN 2015).

Let us face it, though, as the international community heads toward implementing and monitoring the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals agenda, the human development approach remains useful to articulating the objectives of development and improving peoples well-being by ensuring an equitable, sustainable and stable world.

In hindsight, human development  or the human development approach- is about expanding the richness of human life. It is an approach that is focused on people and their opportunities and choices.

In reality, human development focuses on improving the lives of people rather than assuming that economic growth will lead, automatically, to greater wellbeing for all.

In other words, human development is about giving people more freedom to live lives they value. In effect, this implies developing peoples abilities and giving them a chance to improve upon their lives.

Take, for example, educating a large number of children would build their skills, but it is of little, or no use if they are denied access to jobs, or do not have the right skills for the local labour market.

In essence, human development is, basically, about more choices. It is about providing people with opportunities, not insisting that they make use of them. For no one can guarantee human happiness, and the choices individuals make are for their own good.

The human development approach, developed by the economist Mahbub Ul Haq, is encapsulated in the Nobel laureate Amartya Sens work on human capabilities, often framed in terms of whether people are able to be and do desirable things in life. Examples include-Beings: well fed, sheltered, healthy; Doings: work, education, voting, participating in community life (HDR 2015).

Apparently, since 1990, 2 billion people have been lifted out of low human development, extreme income poverty has been reduced by more than a billion. Every region of the world has seen Human Development Index (HDI) gains (HDR 2015).

In a grand scheme of things, the process of development  human development in the form of Akufo-Addos free SHS, should at least create an environment for people, individually and collectively, to develop to their full potential and to have a reasonable chance of leading productive and creative lives that they value.

K. Badu, UK.

please visit me at: alljoycom.wordpress.com
In memory of KABA (Mr. Kwadwo Asare Baffour Acheampong).

Reminding Mr. Mahama, Mr. Alban Bagbin, and all their NDC compatriots who merely praised in words and talk the name of Kwame Nkrumah when they had all the power. When they had all the power to negotiate the fairest oil contracts for Ghana and put every contract and agreement in the public domain, but chose to sit on the Freedom of Information/Right to Information (FOI/RTI) Act, for nearly a decade, and are now asking the good People of Ghana to grant deposed President Mugabe a red carpet ride to Ghana, and freedom to right and freedom to reside in Ghana.

Mr. Robert Mugabe had a Right to Information law for Zimbabwe!

So, cautioning President Akufo Addo. President Akufo Addo who continues to allow the Freedom of Information Bill/Right to Information Act to stall by lack of strong, purposeful leadership, as he now sits in that chair at the Flagstaff House, now Freedom House, so-called, without transparency in Ghana oil contracts and agreements. Even as they still stall on open, free, and transparent competitive bidding for Ghana's minerals and oil resources:

Song Lyrics..................FOIB - A You Pickable, Mr. Politician?

Too much, too much, too much, too much.

Mr. Politician

Are your Pickable?

Too much, too much too much, too much talk,

Mr. Politician

Are you Serious?

Too much, too much, too much, too much

Mr. Politician

Are your Pickable?

Too much, too much, too much, too much talk

Mr. Politician

Are you Serious?

CHORUS:

Give us FOIB

Pass it FOIB

Bring it FOIB

March it FOIB

Scat.

Too much, too much, too much, too much

Mr. Politician

Are your Pickable?

Too much, too much too much, too much

Mr. Politician

Are you Serious?

Too much, too much too much, too much

Mr. Politician

Are your Pickable?

Too much, too much too much, too much talk

Mr. Politician

Are you Serious?

We dont want no Kibaki problem

We dont want Kenya massacre

We dont want Mugabe nonsense

We dont want Zimbabwe wahala

So give it to us Fili Fili

Give it to us Right now

Give it to us Fili Fili

Give it to us Right now.

Break.

Too much, too much, too much, too much

Mr. Politician

Are your Pickable?

Too much, too much too much, too much

Mr. Politician

Are your serious

Too much, too much too much, too much

Mr. Politician

Are your Pickable?

Too much, too much too much,too much

Mr. Politician

Are you Serious?

CHORUS:

Freedom of Information

Freedom of Information

Freedom of Information

Freedom of Information

Freedom of Information

Freedom of Information

Get a free copy, listen to the music, at: http://ghanahero.com/FOIB.html

So it goes, Ghana!

SOURCES/NOTES

1. James Kofi Annan. A Right to Information Act could have saved KABA, (https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/A-Right-to-Information-Act-could-have-saved-KABA-603336).

2. Ghana must offer asylum to Mugabe - Ablakwa, (https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Ghana-must-offer-asylum-to-Mugabe-Ablakwa-602717).

3. Original Lyrics, Music, and Song to Memorialize the Fight for Freedom on Information (FOI) bill for Ghana, (by Prof Lungu)

Prof Lungu - as found and heard on www.GhanaHero.Com & Ghanaweb.com / GHANAHERO.COM (Copyright. 2008 www.Ghanahero.com).

3. Freedom of Information for Ghana, FOIB, http://ghanahero.com/FOIB.html

+ For Each Decade of Independence from British Colonial Rule, after Dr. Kwame Nkrumah who never stole or take a farthing, a pesewa, a cent, from the Good People of Ghana.

Visit www.GhanaHero.Com/Visions, for more information.

SUBJ: RE - Right to Information Act could have saved KABA (& Robert Mugabe)!

Support Fair-Trade Oil Share Ghana (FTOS-Gh) Campaign/Petition:

https://www.change.org/p/ghana-fair-trade-oil-share-psa-campaign-ftos-gh-psa/

Brought to you courtesy www.GhanaHero.com25 Nov 17-On Day of Thanksgiving.

(Powered by: www.GhanaHero.Com).
25.11.2017 LISTEN

If you want to tame, culture and shape humans to submit to your culture blindly, you come as explorers, then as missionaries to show them the path to heaven and finally colonize them for political and economic gain. It works all the time, in Africa Nkrumah called it colonialism to Neo-. Once people are gripped by religion, they are ready to kill for converts. Otherwise there would be no Crusade or Jihad. Hausa are still religious zealots of Usman Dan Fodio after all the years.

If faith preachers cannot wait to get to heaven before they live in luxury on your tithes, why should you? Religious houses in every street, cramming the Koran, Bible and incarnation from our pastors, imams and babalawo are drugs on faith that cannot produce a pin, feed our hungry bellies or change water into wine. It creates jobs and wealth for those exploiting our delusions, misery, faith and hope that one day salvation would come or when we get to heaven.

Throughout the history of Nigeria, Hausa/Fulani wannabes have ruled more than other ethnic groups but their folks are the least beneficiary of basic needs. Hausa, the descendants of kings of African Empires are a good example of how radical religions stunted advancement.

The good intention of Federal Character was to make sure that every area is ameliorated by national income and Federal presence. However, Federal Character has been hijacked by the privileged and the elite politicians to secure pieces of the pie for one another instead of infrastructure.

The Southerners, if the current trend of glorified pastors, imams and Voodoo men continue, are just becoming as hooked on faith as Northern Muslims. There are pastors and imams raising the dead, predicting calamity and threatening the end of the world until they establish churches and mosques on every street where tithes can easily flow into their pockets. Their believers are so overcome by persona, they are in the early stages of charlatanry as the Hausa or Kanuri boko haram in search of converts from houses on every street to establish their business centers.

Despite leadership from the North, the Hausa remained the most marginalized based on past history with the Fulani that captured their City States and replaced their Emirs with only those that can demonstrate their Fulani blood. Unfortunately, the obvious exclusion of real Hausa has gone beyond religious power and made it into political power. The hierarchy established by Usman Dan Fodio radical Islam replaced prior established Muslim and their indigenous beliefs.

Islam was not new to the Hausa, Dan Fodio brought his radicalized version displacing the one he met and more important, suppressing Hausa indigenous religion. Therefore, no head of State from the Northern part of Nigeria would be accepted without following the established hierarchy of the Fulani blood. Indeed, when he took over, General Gowon, a tactically chosen Christian, assured the Fulani indirectly by reminding them this was a Northerner in charge.

Ironically, Gowon from the Middle Belt is not even an a Fulani or an Hausa but like General Banbangida and those without Fulani blood like Gen. Abacha and Abubakar that led after him, they had to preserve the legacy of Fulani blood in their appointments. While Southerners decried the lack of Federal Character in appointments, Northerners did not care since they have to answer to established norm prevailing after the Hausa lost their City States to Dan Fodio.

One would expect the Hausa to be better off than the rest of the ethnic groups in the North or South but not even the Federal Character could save them from Fulani religious hierarchy. The amount of funds supporting Federal Character individually deprived most communities of basic infrastructure. They end up as talikawa and some as beggars all over the Country.

The Southerners now have their own Dan Fodio competition in the miracles of pastors, imams and Voodoo men. Before pastors, imams and medicine men established themselves as the only way to salvation and the means of acquiring wisdom in the South, Hausa and most Northerners were just as fanatically glued to the teaching of their spiritual leaders that influence and in most cases dictated their political lives. It is not that most cannot read or write, but only in crammed Koranic verses so that they can be submissive and obedient to their Allah representatives.

Since most of these lessons come from the Middle East, they even face that direction when praying. The distraction have closed their minds to other forms of learning in order to function in the real world. While Middle East countries send their children to western universities, most Hausa value Arab religious teaching or pilgrimage to Mecca. Southerners relapsing into trance by the heavenly promises of pastors, imams and Voodoo priests are not far behind.

Religious relapse has closed the minds of most Hausa to western education which their western trained leaders hypocritically called boko-haram. In spite of all the enticement to go to secular schools up to level they want, free of charge, most Northerners would rather cling to religious teaching encouraged by their religious and political leaders that reward their trust and loyalty. Even worse, is the charlatan obligation to convert or kill those they see as unbelievers: kaferi.

Once Hausa can overcome their religious bias and attend western schools or universities, they are guaranteed position of power as long as they retained or claimed relationship to the Fulani hierarchy. While this is adequate for political power or field of study, it is detrimental when given position they are least qualified for, as Federal Character deprive community of amenity.

Northerners have potential to feed not only Nigeria, if they increase high yield production for storage. More could be done if their leaders can think beyond dominating political fields. Those political positions only allow you to loot selfishly. Primary skills needed for infrastructure which Nigeria lacks are imported. If Hausa leaders are serious about catching up with their Southern brothers and sisters; welders, plumbers, carpenters and ironworkers must be trained there.

Though younger generation are better educated in the South, skilled trade is still looked down on by many, only to import them from the foreign countries they contract with to build bridges, other infrastructure the Country needs badly. We are the only educated folks that contracted Ajaokuta Steel without stipulation for trained Nigerians after 5, 10, 20 or 25 years. Even Eastern and Southern African countries now demand that in their foreign contracts.
25.11.2017 LISTEN

"... Oil in the ground in Ghana that currently does not have a contract for those lots will not spoil or depreciate in 1 year, if ever... . We know that a recent report by KOSMOS showed that KOSMOS did not strike even a pint of oil...in Mauritania... . Clause (3) of...Act 919 stipulates that "A petroleum agreement shall only be entered into after an open, transparent and competitive public tender process...". So, what exactly is Ghana going to lose by suspending negotiations with...ExxonMobil?... . Why, after nearly a year in power, why has the Akufo Addo Government not "operationalized" Act 919?... . Why is Dr. Amin Adam not using the other side of his mouth to demand every Oil Contract be reviewed so Ghanaians know exactly who owns what piece, what block, what contract?...", (Prof Lungu, 16 November, 2017-rev).

The recent announcement by Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam, formerly of the UK -DFID-funded ACEP, and now the Deputy Energy Minister, is a mighty big hoax.

It is nothing less than a grab for power and resources that belong to all Ghanaians.

It is a mighty big hoax being perpetrated by Dr. Amin Adam and the oil interests in Ghana to siphon oil contract cash into their own pockets in secrecy.

All of Ghana's oil in the ground that currently do not have a contract for those lots will not spoil or depreciate in 1 year, if ever.

Even with all its flaws, Section 10, Clause (3), of the 2016 Petroleum and Exploration Act, Act 919, stipulates that:

"....A petroleum agreement shall only be entered into after an open, transparent and competitive public tender process...".

All that, before the Act provides under that same Section, Clause (5):

"....Where all or part of the area offered for tender in a public tender process has not become the subject of a petroleum agreement,...the Minister...may initiate direct negotiations with a qualified body corporate for a petroleum agreement....".

So, why, the Fair Trade Oil Share-Ghana (FTOS/Gh) Campaign wants to know, after nearly a year in power, why has the Akufo Addo Government not swiftly operationalized Act 919 by setting up standard and protocols for "open, transparent and competitive public tender process"?

Why is Deputy Minister Dr. Amin Adam now saying nothing like that will occur until "the middle of next year"?

Is this not the same Amin Adam who over the years, sitting at ACEP, had been asking for the same fairness for Ghana, before he became "Deputy"?

Why is Dr. Amin Adam now telling Ghanaians the Akufo Addo government has ".... placed a short-term ban on the award of fresh petroleum contracts until requisite regulations that will allow for an open and competitive bidding processes are enacted....by the middle of next year."

What month and day, sirs?

Are we serious?

Why?

Why not suspend all contract issuance until that same "middle of next year", when protocols and standards of performance for transparent tendering and open bidding have been vetted, established, and the public sensitized to those standards?

What is behind the Minister and his Deputy now opting to directly negotiate with oil interests in the backroom, without sunshine in the public interest?

Isn't Ghana reviewing the AMERI contract, and have some energy contracts not been cancelled by this same government?

So, tell us what the precise Ghanaian interest is, Dr. Amin Adam, in rushing to award contracts before Act 919 has been "operationalized"?

Why?

We know that a recent report by KOSMOS showed that KOSMOS did not strike even a pint of oil in their exploration efforts in Mauritania, that this had the effect of making Ghana's oil resources under the ground even more valuable to KOSMOS and a whole lot of other companies, COMPETITORS, if we must re-direct Dr. Adam's attention.

Tell them what exactly Ghana is going to lose by suspending negotiations with "American oil giant, ExxonMobil", for 7 months, President Akufo Addo!

What, Dr. Amin Adam, is the review of the AMERI deal by Ghana but just another "retroactive" review of a potentially one-sided energy deal that is not entirely defensible as supportive of Ghanaian interests, contrasted with corporations taking from Ghanaians oil they do not own, oil they have not fully earned as contractors?

And while we are at it, tell us, Dr. Amin Adam, why are you not using the other side of your mouth to demand every Oil Contract be reviewed immediately so Ghanaians know exactly who owns what piece, what block, what paper, what contract?

To the point, what happened to Dr. Amin Adam's fight for all that information about "Beneficial Ownership" while he was sitting on the outside, and the government was under the purview of the Mahama NDC?

What gives, Dr. Amin Adam?

What gives, President Akufo Addo?

So it goes, Ghana!

SOURCES & NOTES

1. Government places temporary ban on petroleum contract negotiations, Ghanaweb, at: (https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Government-places-temporary-ban-on-petroleum-contract-negotiations-600805).

2. Govt urged to operationalise, by Petroleum Act, by Ms. JESSICA ACHEAMPONG, 19 APRIL 2017, at https://www.graphic.com.gh/business/business-news/govt-urged-to-operationalise-petroleum-act.html

Visit www.GhanaHero.Com/Visions, for more information.

SUBJ: Akufo Addo's "Temporary Ban" on Petroleum Contracts is a Big Hoax (Part 2)!

Support Fair-Trade Oil Share Ghana (FTOS-Gh) Campaign/Petition:

https://www.change.org/p/ghana-fair-trade-oil-share-psa-campaign-ftos-gh-psa/

Brought to you courtesy www.GhanaHero.com17 Nov 17.

(Powered by: www.GhanaHero.Com).
Ghana would, from Monday November 27 to Tuesday November 28, host the Third Biennial Scientific Conference on Medical Products Regulation in Africa that would allow participants to deliberate on the proper regulations of medical products on the Continent.

The conference would be organised by international stakeholders with support from the Government, West African Health Organisation (WAHO)and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) among others.

It would bring together key stakeholders including regulators, policymakers, academia, the scientific community, private sector and civil society from across Africa to deliberate on the theme: 'Sustaining the Momentum for Regulatory Harmonisation in Africa'.

Participants are expected to discuss and contribute towards the future of regulation and harmonisation in Africa, which affects both industrial and regulatory aspects, as well as the aspirations of civil society and its wish to benefit from best practice and best medicine.

A document made available to the Ghana News Agency by NEPAD and Penplusbytes on Friday, said significant strides had been made over the years to enhance and modernise the regulation of pharmaceutical manufacturing and product quality across the world.

However, the drug registration system in Africa remained complex and varied, and with each country invoking separate audit and assessment processes, it almost guarantees that Africans would be the last to benefit from new drugs launched onto the international market.

The document, however, said the harmonisation of the processes for medicine registration was long overdue.

It indicated that under the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization (AMRH) Initiative there were some ongoing pilot projects aimed at improving national registration processes and these would go a long way towards meeting the goal of regulatory harmonisation and convergence.

It said many countries dealt with regulatory issues independently, which meant that the manufacturers had to make a formal registration in every country, and each country's regulatory agency would assess whether the drug was right for its market.

'These assessments may include visits to the manufacturing country to determine whether medicines are produced using good manufacturing systems and processes. What is needed is a single agency, which can do all these works once (rather than 50+ times) and then allow applicants and individual countries to benefit from it'.

It said with the many neglected tropical diseases, mechanisms needed to be found to encourage greater research and ethical clinical testing to find solutions for those diseases.

The conference would, therefore, provide a platform for stakeholders to brainstorm on the role of ethical and regulatory approval of clinical trials of new medicines.

Delegates are expected from across the Continent as well as from industry and international regulatory agencies.

The organising committee comprised the NEPAD Agency, the African Union Commission, the World Health Organisation, and the National Medicines Regulatory Authorities.

The rest are the Regional Economic Communities and Regional Health Organisations, the International Federation for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Federation of African Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (FAPMA).

GNA

By Lydia Kukua Asamoah, GNA
25.11.2017 LISTEN

The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has called on the Government to speedily resolve challenges facing the implementation of the Free Senior High School (SHS) Policy.

In a resolution passed at its 51st Annual Delegates Congress, which ended Wednesday, November 22, the student body commended the Government for the initiative whilst warning of a possible failure of the Policy if the challenges emerging were not tackled.

With admissions soaring in SHSs resulting in infrastructure and funding challenges, NUGS said it was time government paid more attention to those issues as they had the potential to undermine an otherwise beneficial initiative.

Mr Akwasi Agyemang, the Outgoing General Secretary, in statement issued to the Ghana News Agency, said: 'As a student body we are always excited at any initiative that will lessen the financial burden on students and parents in extension. And so we were one of the first to commend the Government for the political will to roll out this initiative.

"But increasingly, we are getting worried as we hear of widespread infrastructural and funding challenges, which are impacting negatively on teaching and learning in our high schools.

"We are aware that government has released only 20 per cent of the budgetary allocation so far. That is woefully inadequate and we are calling on government to, as a matter of urgency, release full funding to school heads and also put in place long term measures to address issues of infrastructure deficit in our high schools'.

During the Congress, Mr Frank Amoakohene, a student of the University of Ghana Medical School, was elected the NUGS President, while Emmanuel Kabu Nartey, a Student Journalist, was elected the General Secretary.

Other elected officers include Derrick Abotsi- Treasurer, Sylvester Kobby Marfo - Coordinating Secretary, Pearl Ossai - Women's Commissioner, Emmanuel Dogbatsey - Financial Controller, Eric Nana Agyemang - Press and Information Secretary and Solomon Ananpansah - Projects and Programs Secretary.

Speaking to the media after the election, Mr Amoakohene expressed delight at the confidence reposed in him and promised to work hard to deliver on the mandate as the President.

He cautioned political party activists whose actions brought division to the Union to stop the practice.

'I am very excited to have received such an overwhelming endorsement from delegates across the country. In partnership with stakeholders and of course my colleague National Executive, we are going to roll out a number of initiatives intended to give NUGS a new identity and make it relevant to the promotion of quality and affordable education in Ghana in the coming year.

"We have the strongest resolve to carry through every single promise we have made in this journey and we promise to serve you diligently. Let me also use this opportunity to send a strong signal to our political parties who think that dividing the students of Ghana along partisan lines is the only contribution they want to make to the student struggle.

We do not have NPP students or NDC students. We only have Ghanaian students and we shall resist every attempt to destroy our ranks with party politics,' he said.

The National Union of Ghana Students, the umbrella body for all student unions in Ghana, was established in the 1960s to champion the cause of students and serve as a vehicle to mobilise the youth for national development.
Greg Doyons trial by fire as Great Falls city manager came with the complicated, years-long bankruptcy of a public utility, Electric City Power, and its aftermath.

"I knew I needed to keep everything together," he said, "during that very dark time."

The citys former chamber president, Brad Livingston, a retired National Guard brigadier general, recalls being a frequent attendee of city commission meetings as Doyon dealt with the crisis hed inherited.

He lowered our expectations for a while. Some city services were adjusted and modified, and he put some infrastructure projects on hold, Livingston said. He was very even-tempered, very professional, although probably at times he thought nobody cared for the answers he gave."

Livingston said Doyon did what was right for the community. County commissioners were also under the gun, so they gave him the space to navigate.

Doyon said he can now look back and say, "I learned a lot, and it made me a better manager. But I never want to go through that again, and I never want my community to have to go through that again."

Doyon, 48, is one of four finalists for Billings vacant city administrator position. The four will be in town for interviews, tours, a time with the media and public Nov 30. On Dec. 1, the city council is scheduled to make its decision on who will succeed Tina Volek, who retired Sept. 30.

Ken Merrifield, the New Hampshire labor commissioner who was mayor of Franklin, New Hampshire while Doyon was city manager there, said Doyon envisioned a number of economic development projects about 15 years ago, many of which have come to fruition.

I have never met anyone with better character, Merrifield said. The ethical standard he sets for himself and for his staff is just terrific.

Doyon calls that "a servant leadership model. I'm here to help the council do a good job and make good decisions ... and I'm here to help department heads do a great job."

Earlier this week, Doyon said that hes about halfway through reading the online minutes from the Billings City Councils 2017 meetings. He called the proposed One Big Sky Center an opportunity worth exploring, because a community needs to go into a project that size with eyes wide open. Theres always risk exploring economic development initiatives that are complex.  I support the (tax increment financing) process, if its done in a transparent way.

He called it critical that the city administrator and city council have a good-natured working relationship. Good city administrators are accessible and responsive, and I also believe they need to have a good sense of humor in the mix. Youre dealing with serious issues all the time, so you have to develop a rapport.

They may make a decision I disagree with, he said of the city's elected body. Its my job to give them great information  and once they make their decision, you carry it out.

After completing his graduate degree from the University of Idaho, Doyon went to Sandpoint for a planning internship. His boss, the planning director, was soon terminated, and Doyon was unexpectedly named his successor.

I was flying by the seat of my pants, but I learned on the job, and there was a great team willing to take me on and be my support, he said.

Commissioners and staff in Great Falls have been very gracious about his application for Billings top position. Theyve told me, We understand why you are doing it, but we hate to see you go. I feel bad about putting them in a limbo state.

Still, he said he looks forward to meeting the council, staff and members of the public in Billings.

I look forward to engaging them and having this interaction with the council to see if this is a good fit for both of us. I feel like Ill be a good fit, and Im excited to be part of that.
Queen Akeelah Aminu, the reigning Miss Ambassador for Peace Africa (MAPA),on Friday Launched pupils support campaign and donates educational materials to internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) school in the Federal Capital Territory.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports Aminu visited the School Without Wall located at the IDP in New Kuchingoro in Abuja and donated Notebooks, Texbooks and other relief materials to the pupils.

According to her, the initiative was a flagship of her pet project Peace Education Campaign, geared towards promoting education for the less privileged and building peaceful and united Nigeria.

Education is the strongest tool for empowerment you can give to anyone, because ignorance is an enemy of peace and progress.

Our dear nation has witnessed unprecedented religious crisis which over the years divided us and set us back economically, and some of this crisis strive among the uninformed ,especially the young people.

We must promote unity in diversity and advocate common values, fight the same cause and seek permanent solutions to our common problems for us to win together,she said.

The Peace Ambassador said there was need to educate young Nigerians, especially the vulnerable and less privileged, in order to ensure a serene and evenly developed society for all.

She therefore called on good spirited individuals, cooperate bodies and all civil society groups to join hand with her in promoting the Peace Education Initiative.

In his remark, the Head Teacher of the school, Mr Sake Audu, who received the items on behalf of the pupils, commended the young beauty queen for the kind gesture.

He therefore urged Nigerians to emulate the kind gesture, saying government alone cannot take care of the displaced persons.

Well-meaning Nigerians should remember the IDPs especially this children that need to be educated, and extend their hands of care to them because they deserve good life as well.

Some of the pupils expressed gratitude to the visiting queen and her team and urged government to do everything possible to get them back to their homes.

NAN reports that the Miss Ambassador for Peace Peagent is organized by the Peace Ambassador Agency, a non-governmental organisation, advocating peaceful and united Nigeria.

Earlier, Mr Kingsley Amafibe, Project Director of the Peace Ambassador Agency, who led the team to the camp, called on Nigerians to identify with the Foundation.

He said that achieving and sustaining peace and development needed collective efforts of all citizens.

This Miss Ambassador for Peace initiative has been a vehicle through which we carry the message of peace across Nigeria.

We, as an agency, have sought peace and we have preached peace through this unique platform that we have taken to different states and communities.

The peace education campaign, which is targeted mainly at the youth, has reached institutions of higher learning and other youth communities through the Peace Ambassador project, he said.
An advocacy movie against domestic violence, Why Not, is set for premiere in Abuja, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

The producer of the movie, Florence Dele, told NAN on Friday in Abuja that the premiere would hold on Nov. 26 at the Merit House, Maitama.

According to her, it is to commemorate the 2017 International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

NAN reports that the United Nations General Assembly designated Nov. 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Dele said the movie would seek to raise a voice against violence in the homes, in all forms, especially against women who had been victims of violent behaviours or abuse.

The story plot is about a man named Frank who feels he was in charge and does what he wants, not knowing he was actually making his wife, Joy, pass through emotional violence.

When a man decides to be quiet about something, most often it is said to be for the peace of the home, but what happens to the vow of for better or worse.

Frank decides to keep something crucial to the peace of his home to himself, and makes his wife Joy, an alien.

He never knew he was creating a storm he would not be able to control, and Joy presumed the worse, the home then suffered severe negligence and crises, she said.

Dele explained that there were many Nigerian couples who were passing through emotional violence in the hands of their spouses, like Joy, but were keeping quiet.

She said that many of the victims of domestic violence, especially women, usually chose to suffer in silence because of societal and cultural expectations.

Dele said, Emotional abuse or psychological abuse is a pattern of behaviour that threatens, intimidates, dehumanises or systematically undermines self-worth.

Domestic violence occurs when the abuser believes that abuse is acceptable, justified, or unlikely to be reported.

Globally, the victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women, who tend to experience more severe forms of violence.

Many have gone through the agonising and traumatising situation in silence due to the African stereotype of men being the head of the home while women are meant to be submissive.

The producer said that the movie featured top Nollywood stars such as: Francis Duru, Bruno Iwuoha, Thelma Okoduwa and Daniel K. Daniel, among others.

She said that the movie was directed by Nollywood ace director, Paul Apel-Papel.

NAN reports that domestic violence has been widely criticised in recent times with many victims championing the campaign against it.

Some celebrities who had joined the campaign against domestic abuse include: Monalisa Chinda, Mercy Aigbe, Toke Makinwa and Tonto Dikeh.
Clara Care Foundation has offered N1 million to the first 100 aspiring aspirants of the second edition of Queen South East beauty pageant contest slated for February Next Year.

The Organizer of the event Mr Emmanuel told newsmen in Owerri that amount was to offset their registration.

The Brand has donated N1million as registration fees for the first 100 young ladies aspiring to participate in the 2018 Queen Of South East contest coming up in Owerri Imo State by February Next Year

The Brand Director said the amount is to encourage more young ladies who may not have the financial means to participate in the contest to do so

I am therefore, encouraging more young girls to embrace this exceptional opportunity of free registration, He said.

Emmanuel said that the idea behind organising the Queen Queen Of South East Nigeria contest by the Newsland Integrated Media Service, is to enable young ladies of today get prepared for the future, reawaken their cultural identity and imbibe decent morals in them.

As a cultural promoter and ambassador, I encourage young girls to embrace decent and culturally edifying outfits and brands.

A lot of morals have been lost, the new generation of women dont have much values for themselves and the Contest project is trying to instill back those values.

 Values as selflessness, caurage and discipline, are what a Queen is to exhibited in her lifetime, she said.

She noted that the vision of the Contest, was to bring back those unique values associated with the Pageant, through the cultural pageant.

She said that the curent queen, Nnenna Offodile , a final year student of the tansia University was crowned.

Queen Clara Offodile, who is the Founder of Clara Care Foundation said the cultural contest, first of its kind, was to boost our culture and tradition, especially among youths.

The contest is open to young ladies from ages 16 years to 26years, of which at least one of their parents must be of Igbo lineage from Anambra, IMO, Enugu, Ebonyi and Abia states, she told pressmen.

She also said that the winner of the contest would become the cultural ambassador, in addition to the gifts, wardrobe allowance among other gifts.
Bail Music Company, the record label that houses music sensation, Olawale Ashimi a.k.a Brymo has sealed a recording and management deal with another international act Osaze Moses a.k.a Weirdz.

The top talent management company recently unveiled the Ireland-Based recording artiste and song writer with affiliation to global brands and has dropped a couple of songs currently receiving massive airplay at home and abroad.

According to Weirdz on his return to home soil, he identified that his willingness to work with the company is as a result of ingenuity. "Im certain this label understands me and music industry in total, my kind of music is more conscious than the random Nigerian sound, and seeing what the label has done with Brymos brand in a couple of years, Im confident they can manage my brand and music

The CEO of Bail Music Company, Mr Lanre Lawal, also disclosed that his reason for working with the newly signed international is because his style and sound are impeccable, and will be a great asset to the company.

People have asked us over time why we had just one artiste (Brymo) under our management. Here we know good music and will not just sign any artiste. But the minute I heard Weirdz sound, I was taken aback and I knew immediately I wanted to work with him Lanre Lawal added.

The official release of Weirdz body of work has however been slated for 29th of November; an EP titled LET US PRAY'.
Review of CI.133 will aid in ...
(Natural News) The idea that artificial intelligence (AI) is soon to invade every facet of human life  including the theater of war  has become all too real at the United Nations. A U.N. panel, recognizing that the development of AI technologies is now moving at breakneck speed, recently advised that international regulations be established to limit the types of weaponry and techniques that killer robots can use to target human beings.

Thats right: The U.N. is now treating seriously the possibility that AI robots uncontrolled by humans might soon be used during battle to fight against their pre-programmed enemies, or potentially turn against their allies. And because of this, the agency is warning that certain guidelines need to be put in place to restrict how much damage they can do. According to U.N. officials, governments simply arent doing enough to preemptively thwart a potential disaster scenario caused by the eventual rollout of advanced AI weaponry.

More than 80 countries took part in the panel, which centered around what the agency dubbed Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems. The U.N. presented a video illustration similar to a scenario one might expect to see in the Terminator movies, suggesting an uncertain fate for humanity should the nations of the world fail to act in reigning in such technology before it has the chance to do this, or much worse, to humanity.

Falling under the U.N.s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, also known as the Inhumane Weapons Convention, the meeting falls in line with a 37-year-old agreement that binds U.N. member nations to set limits on the types of arms and explosives that are permitted for use during wartime. Landmines, blinding laser weapons, and booby traps are the types of things that were addressed in the past. But now AI systems have taken the spotlight.

Campaign to Stop Killer Robots pushes for blanket ban on AI technologies

Leading the charge at the U.N. is Ambassador Amandeep Gill of India, who brought up some ideas as to how to craft a legally binding code of conduct, or at the very least, a specific technology review process, to address this emerging issue. Hes joined by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, an umbrella advocacy group representing 22 different countries that are attempting to ban such weaponry entirely.

The Human Rights Watch group, a member of this campaign, is advocating for an agreement to be made by the year 2019 that will at least regulate AI killer robot weaponry. But reports suggest that such an idea is a long shot, as getting enough member nations onboard could be a challenge.

The group operates by consensus, so the least ambitious goals are likely to prevail, and countries including Russia and Israel have firmly staked out opposition to any formal ban, claims the Associated Press (as reported by the DailyMail Online). The United States has taken a go-slow approach, rights groups say.

While truly autonomous killer robots do not yet exist  at least not officially  things seem to be moving in that direction. Defining what they are and what would be necessary to keep them under control is the U.N.s goal with addressing the issue now, though U.S. representatives argue that this is premature.

Thats because the U.S. is among the nations leading the charge to unveil killer robots, which it claims will help in reducing the likelihood of inadvertently striking civilians  a likely story when considering the fact that the U.S. has been using automated drone technologies for many years now that have led to the deaths of countless innocent civilians.

The bottom line is that governments are not moving fast enough, warns Steven Goose, executive director of arms at Human Rights Watch, about where this all will lead if its not nipped in the bud now. Establishing a treaty by the end of 2019 is the kind of timeline we think this issue demands, he added.

Discover more stories about killer robots at Robots.news.

Sources for this article include:

DailyMail.co.uk

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Texas officials have officially announced the location of the Texas Bullion Depository, bringing the Lone Star State one step closer to making the facility fully operational. Once the Texas Bullion Depository is finished, it will represent a significant departure from the federal government, leading many to believe that this could be not only the end of the Federal Reserves monopoly on money, but also the first step towards secession.

In June of 2015, Texas Governor Greg Abbot signed legislation for the state gold bullion and precious metal depository. In addition to proving a secure place for people and businesses to store their gold and other precious metals, the depository will also allow people to use gold and silver in business transactions, meaning that they will be able to deport their precious metals in the depository and pay others either electronically or via a written check.

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced earlier this summer that the Austin-based company Lone Star Tangible Assets would be tasked with building and operating the Texas Bullion Depository. The facility will be located roughly 30 miles northwest of Austin and will cover 60,000 square feet on a 10-acre campus.

The state-of-the-art facility will provide tremendous benefits to the citizens of Leander and will give Texans a secure facility right here in the Lone Star State where their gold and precious metals will be kept safe and close at hand, Hegar explained in a press release. But while some are taking pride in the simple fact that Texans will now have a place to store their precious metals without having to travel out of state, others believe that the development of a state gold depository is a step towards independence. (Related. Texas wants to nullify all federal gun laws. Is this the beginning of secession?)

This is another in a long line of ways to make Texas more self-reliant and less tethered to the federal government, explained University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus. The financial impact is small but the political impact is telling. Many conservatives are interested in returning to the gold standard and circumvent the Federal Reserve in whatever small way they can.

Indeed, the Texas Secession movement has gained quite a bit of traction in recent months, with more and more Texans starting to think that a full departure from the United States government is whats best for the Lone Star state.

Back in June, for instance, a secession bill won overwhelming support from the mock legislature in Texas Boys State, which is a summer program designed to allow young people to create and run their own simulated governmental body. What made the vote particularly significant was that it marked the first time in almost 80 years that both chambers of this mock government voted in favor of Texas seceding from the Union.

The Texas Secession movement really started to gain traction immediately following Great Britains vote to leave the European Union last summer. The Texas Nationalist movement, for example, wasted no time jumping on the bandwagon, calling on Governor Greg Abbott to support a similar vote for Texans. Additionally, Daniel Miller, president of Texas Nationalist Movement, said in a statement, It is past time that the people of Texas had their say on the Lone Star States relationship with the Union and its sprawling Federal bureaucracy.

But while many people are extremely passionate about and dedicated to the Texas secession movement, others feel as though the departure of any state from the Union should be discouraged. Even if this new gold depository is a step towards the Lone Star states independence, Texas still has a long way to go if it wishes to one day secede from the United States altogether.

Sources include:

Blog.TenthAmendmentCenter.com

WashingtonPost.com

WashingtonTimes.com
Yosemite National Park officials are searching for a missing teen whose car was found parked at Glacier Point on Wednesday.

According to officials, 18-year-old Gerardo Cruz Hernandez was last seen in Santa Barbara Wednesday morning. Hernandez is described to have last been seen wearing white "Nike Air Force 1" sneakers. Officials say he is about 5 ft. 7 in. tall and has a tattoo on his right wrist.

If you were in the area of Glacier Point on Wednesday, Nov. 22 or have any information on his whereabouts, park officials ask that you contact at (209) 279-1992.
Puerto Rico is still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, so a 26-person medical team from Massachusetts General Hospital is heading down to assist with medical care.

Some of them caught a flight early Saturday morning.

Others were set to join them later Saturday.

NBC Boston caught up with nurses Kristen Wilson and Catherine Liberles at Boston Logan Airport Saturday morning.

Wilson also volunteered in Houston earlier this year.

"I have a passion for it," Wilson said when discussing how it is to deal with two natural disasters in one year. "I'm on a federal team, and it's just the nature of how it is. You just get up and go when you're called."

Liberles, who has done a lot of work in Haiti, said she didn't know what to expect in Puerto Rico.

"Whatever conditions we arrive in, I have worked in areas where we have no running water and no electricity, and that was our beginnings so whatever we need to do," she said. "I don't know what it will be like. I imagine there will be generators but we'll roll up our sleeves and do what we can with what resources we have."

The MGH team includes 15 nurses, four nurse practitioners, five doctors, one physician assistant, and one security staff.

They are expected to be in Puerto Rico for a little over two weeks.
America's top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, told NBC News Thursday that the war here remains in a "stalemate," but that President Donald Trump's new strategy has reversed a decline in the U.S. position.

"We are still in a stalemate," Nicholson, a four-star Army general said in an exclusive interview with NBC News. "We are only 90 days into this new policy, but with the U.S. forces that will be arriving, with the new authority that we have been given, put the pressure on external enablers, with the fact that we are condition based and not time based, we've set all the conditions to win."

His comments largely tracked with a more upbeat-sounding assessment Trump gave in a video conference Thursday morning with members of the Army's 82nd Airborne First Brigade Combat Team here.

"I have to say just directly to the folks in Afghanistan: Everybodys talking about the progress youve made in the last few months since I opened it up," Trump said. "We opened it up, we said go ahead, were going to fight to win. Were not fighting anymore to just walk around; were fighting to win, and you people are really  youve turned it around over the last three to four months like nobodys seen."
A Wethersfield man was killed in a crash on I-91 in Cromwell early Saturday morning.

The crash happened on the Exit 21 on-ramp to I-91 North around 1:30 a.m., according to state police.

Police said that 50-year-old Michael Rogers was traveling north when he veered off the road, through the shoulder and crashed into trees. He suffered fatal injuries.

While state troopers were investigating the fatal crash, another car slammed into a trooper's cruiser that was parked at the accident scene.

No one was in the cruiser and no one was seriously injured in that crash, police said.

The incident remains under investigation. Anyone with information should contact Troop H at 860-534-1000.
Three people were arrested after a police chase on I-95 that began in Westport Saturday.

Westport police said the chase started with a shoplifting incident at the CVS Pharmacy on Post Road in Westport around 1:15 a.m.

Westport officers gave chase to a silver minivan that fled the scene with three suspects inside. The minivan hopped on I-95 south and police broke off the chase at exit 17.

The minivan got off and back on the highway at exit 15, this time pursued by Connecticut State Police. Troopers eventually ended the chase by using spike strikes on the highway between exits 24 and 25. Two of the suspects were arrested then. A third fled on foot but was caught a short time later.

The suspects  two males and one female -have not been identified. They all face charges of sixth-degree larceny and sixth-degree conspiracy to commit larceny. The driver also faces various motor vehicle violations.

All suspects were held on bond and are currently scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 5.
A driver was charged with DUI after hitting a Connecticut State Police vehicle on I-91 in Cromwell early Saturday morning, according to Connecticut State Police.

Police said multiple state police and Department of Transportation vehicles were parked along the highway to investigate a fatal crash that occurred around 1:30 a.m.

Just before 5 a.m., an Acura drove around some of the vehicles blocking off the lane, then smashed into an empty state police SUV. No state police or DOT personnel were hurt.

The driver, identified as 29-year-old Martin Jackson of Hartford, suffered minor injuries and was taken to the hospital for evaluation. He was arrested and charged with DUI, operating with a suspended license and failure to drive in proper lane. He was held on a $2,500 bond.
A Rhode Island woman was killed in a crash in Killingly on Thanksgiving Day.

Connecticut State Police said 26-year-old Hope Butler of Warwick, Rhode Island, was driving on Route 6 in Killingly near Dark lantern Road when she went off the road and hit a tree. She was rushed to Day Kimball Hospital where she was pronounced dead.

The crash remains under investigation. Anyone with information should contact State Police.
A North Texas company is racing to launch rockets into space, and its happening in a place youd never expect.

Caddo Mills, a Hunt County town of just 1,300 people, is located about 40 miles east of Dallas.

Inside a hangar at the small Caddo Mills Airport is a company called Exos Aerospace.

"It is rocket science, right? said founder John Quinn.

Quinn, an electrical engineer who used to work on submarines in the U.S. Navy, has a new career doing what has fascinated him since he was a young boy.

He and his co-workers build the rockets from scratch.

Yep, from the ground up, he enthusiastically tells a visitor. All the components, everything that goes into it is manufactured here."

Piece by tiny piece, they are making 36-foot rockets to shoot into space.

Loaded with fuel, they weigh 2,500 pounds.

They will heat up to 300 degrees as they shoot into space. There, the temperature will suddenly plummet to minus 115.

From the circuit boards to the nose cone, it's all done in the hangar with only 15 employees.

They use software originally developed by NASA.

They've been doing test launches at the Caddo Mills Airport. The rockets would take off, if they weren't tethered to heavy blocks of concrete.

What makes what they're doing different from other space companies is their rockets are re-usable.

A round-trip launch takes 20 minutes.

They'll go up 70 miles in just under four minutes. It takes 16 minutes more to come back to Earth.

Most space companies care more about sending things even higher -- into orbit.

But that's more expensive and the payload doesn't come back.

Quinn hopes his company has found a niche -- that could one day save lives.

"One of the things that's so exciting about this is we can do research that you could never do before, he said.

He expects some of his biggest clients will be universities and bio-medical companies doing work with human stem cells.

So when you start talking about stem cells, can you activate stem cells in space on a suborbital flight? We don't know the answers. We hope to answer that on this pathfinder flight, he said.

Potentially, he said, it could mean a cure for cancer or other diseases.

"You know it's a step along the way because if we can activate stem cells, you can actually treat the cancer," he said.

Exos plans to launch its new rocket into space in December from New Mexico.

They can't do the actual launch in Caddo Mills because it's too close to DFW's busy airspace.

Exos started in 2014 with some of the same people who worked for another aerospace operation called Armadillo.

For all the power and precision it takes to do this, theres at least one surprise.

It turns out the computer that runs the rocket needs surprisingly little firepower.

You'd be amazed, Quinn said. It's like what you'd have in your iPhone. With less memory."
Haitians living under a special protected immigration status have been put on notice that they will have to return to Haiti. The U.S. announced that around 60,000 Haitians living under Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, will no longer have that protection and have to return to Haiti by July 2019.

Ted Registre, 24, and his younger brother are among those in North Texas who are weighing their options.

Ive been in Texas since 2011, you know, and finished college, been working, said Registre. Im basically a Texan, thats what I consider myself now.

Registre and his brother immigrated to the U.S. in 2010 after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake ravaged their home in Haiti. Their father was killed in the quake, so the boys came to the United States when a Temporary Protected Status was extended to the victims.

The Department of Homeland Security said on Monday that conditions in Haiti have improved significantly since 2010. The announcement came 60 days before temporary status is set to expire. In May, the agency had only given six months instead of the usual 18.

The program protects people from deportation if they are from designated countries that have been ravaged by natural disaster or war.

Registre owns a small production company and helps organize social events for fellow Haitians in North Texas. He says he always knew his immigration status was temporary, but also expected he wouldnt be asked to return to Haiti until conditions improve. He says his mother, who remained in Haiti, doesnt believe the humanitarian crisis is over.

If I go back, if my brother goes back, we are going to go there with no jobs. We have nothing to offer. Our life savings could help for a few months, but after that, what do we do?

Haiti, already a poor country, has faced large-scale natural disasters: an earthquake in 2010 and a hurricane in 2016. The recovery was also complicated by a cholera epidemic. The U.S. State Department warns American Citizens traveling to Haiti should use caution because of an increase in crime and kidnappings.

Haitians living in the U.S. under TPS arent the only people put on notice. The U.S. is also ending TPS benefits for people from Sudan and Nicaragua. A decision on the status of Hondurans with TPS is expected next summer.

Dallas-based immigration attorney Susana Reyes says some families will face tough decisions, especially if their children were born in the United States.

As a parent youre going to have to consider, do I leave my child here, do I separate from them? Do I risk staying here without status? said Reyes. These are very hard decisions for a family to make.

Those with TPS who meet the qualifications can work in the U.S. They arent given permanent residency, but they are not in the country illegally as TPS protects them from deportation.

Reyes says those on notice that their TPS protection is ending may have few options. Some may qualify to have an employer or qualifying family member sponsor them in an application for permanent residency, but the process can take years.

Reyes says Congress should tackle broader immigration reforms, instead of allowing temporary solutions to turn into extended stays that may feel permanent, but arent.

Registre said he and his little brother have few ties left in their native Haiti. His brother was in elementary school when they first came to the United States.

He doesnt even speak French anymore, said Registre. Its basically a new country for him and even for myself. Being away from a country for seven years, a lot has changed. You basically throw us back."
The Texas State Trooper who posed for a photograph with rapper Snoop Dog in March 2015 is once again suing officials with the Texas State Department of Public Safety.

An attorney for Trooper Billy Spears alleges DPS officials retaliated after Spears filed his first lawsuit and tampered with his personnel file.

The Dallas Morning News reports the lawsuit alleges that DPS changed Spears' employee paperwork by back-dating, typing in new information and forging signatures.



DPS spokesman Tom Vinger told the paper, "The department looks forward to refuting these spurious claims through the proper legal proceedings."

Spears' original lawsuit was over his reprimand -- which came after DPS leadership said he was associating with a known felon.

In his original lawsuit, Spears said he was working off-duty security at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin when an assistant for Snoop Dogg took the photo and posted it on Instagram.

DPS Director Steve McCraw reprimanded the officer for taking the photograph with the rapper, whom he described in an email as a "dope-smoking, cop hater."

Snoop Dogg also took a photograph with an Austin policewoman. A police department spokeswoman said in 2015 officers may not associate with known criminals, but the photo didn't constitute "inappropriate association."
What to Know A hunter shot at a pickup truck after mistaking it for a deer Upstate, police say

The hunter fired a high-powered rifle at the truck, disabling it

The shooting Friday came two days after a New York woman was shot to death by a hunter who police say had mistaken her for a deer

An Ohio man shot a pickup truck after mistaking it for a deer Upstate, authorities say.

The shooting Friday was the second hunting accident in Chautauqua County in three days.

Police say 43-year-old Rosemary Billquist was shot and killed Wednesday by a man who thought she was a deer.

A man accidentally shot a woman out walking her dogs after he mistook her for a deer, police say.

Friday's incident happened around 11:30 a.m. in North Harmony, according to The Post-Journal of Jamestown.

Sheriff's deputies say Marvin Miller of Middlefield, Ohio, fired a high-powered rifle at the pickup truck around 11:30 a.m. Miller told authorities he had mistaken the truck for a deer.

The sheriff's office says the bullet entered the engine compartment and disabled the truck.

Miller was arrested on charges including reckless endangerment.

It's not clear if he has a lawyer who could speak for him.
The number of empty storefronts in New York City has skyrocketed, a new city council report has found.

The recent study by city council member Helen Rosenthal has found that the number of shuttered storefronts has been on the rise for a decade in the Big Apple.

She found vacancies had shot up from 8 to 14 percent on Broadway, from 7 to almost 15 percent on Amsterdam Avenue and from 10 to 12 percent on Columbus Avenue.

Businesses say the problem is rising rents, with some complaining that rents have tripled, if not quadrupled, over the last decade, spelling closure for many mom and pop stores.

"It destroys the whole neighborhood," Upper West Side local Archie said.

To lure back those businesses at the core of New York City culture, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer pointed to two possible solutions. One is to raise fees on landlords who refuse to negotiate what they're asking for on store rent. She agrees that shuttered stores affect the whole neighborhood.

"Stores nearby feel the affects detrimentally because of garbage building up and the homeless and other things that don't help your storefront."

However building owners are likely to argue they're allowed to wait for the right price.

Brewer also suggested cutting taxes on grocery stores, known as the commercial rent tax. Hearings on the vacancy problem in the city are expected over the next month.
The Rev. Al Sharpton visited imprisoned rapper Meek Mill on Monday, joining the growing chorus of activists and celebrities who have demanded the Philadelphia rapper's release.

Sharpton, a well-known civil rights activist from New York City, visited Mill at Chester State Prison in the small city south of Philadelphia. He talked about the upcoming trip during a rally by his group, the National Action Network (NAN) Saturday in Harlem, New York.

"Just because someone does something that is wrong, does not give you the right to do wrong to them," Sharpton told a gathering. "The sentence must fit the violation."



His group, NAN, said in a statement that lending support to Mill is consistent with its long history of "criminal justice reform efforts."

"In the 1990s, Rev. Sharpton and others helped Tupac Shakur get out of solitary confinement at the request of his mother and NAN has been monitoring cases across the country," NAN said in a statement Saturday, which also noted the group's "criminal justice reform efforts."

Mill, born Robert Rihmeek Williams, has become a nationally-recognized figure in recent weeks after a Philadelphia Common Pleas judge sentenced him to jail for probation violations.

The judge sentenced Mill to two to four years in state prison. Twice in recent years, Judge Genece Brinkley ruled that Mill violated his probation by being associated with an alleged fight at a St. Louis airport and being charged with popping wheelies on a dirt bike in New York City.

Activists and renowned musicians from Colin Kaepernick to Jay-Z have pointed to his jailing as symbolic of what they describe as harsh treatment of blacks by the criminal justice system.

Julius "Dr. J" Erving and Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins took part in a Center City #FreeMeek" rally.

Kaepernick said in social media posts that he spoke with Mill in prison and said the rapper was "in good spirits."



Spoke to Meek Mill & he wanted ppl to know regardless of his unjust situation, hes in good spirits & humbled by the support the people have shown him. We'll continue to fight against the harsh sentencing practices that have affected Meek & millions of other POC for generations.  Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) November 20, 2017

Jay-Z wrote in a New York Times op-ed that the Mill has "been stalked by a system that considers the slightest infraction a justification for locking him back inside."

"Consider this: Meek was around 19 when he was convicted on charges relating to drug and gun possession, and he served an eight-month sentence," Jay-Z wrote. "Now hes 30, so he has been on probation for basically his entire adult life."

Mill's attorneys have filed appeals to Brinkley's sentence. Brinkley, who has overseen Mill's decade-long probation, has not made a ruling on the appeal.

His attorneys have also asked that Brinkley recuse herself from Mill's case and any appeals. They claimed in court filings that the judge has expressed herself over the years "in personal, injudicious terms when ruling or explaining her rulings" in the ongoing probation hearings.

The recusal request included some tawdry accusations, like a claim that she asked the Philadelphia-born rapper to record a version of a Boyz II Men song and include a shout out to Brinkley. Another claim accuses the judge of recommending Mill leave his management agency, Roc Nation, which is headed by Jay-Z, and rejoin his original manager, a Philadelphia man named Charlie Mack.

In sending Mill to jail Nov. 6, Brinkley said Mill "does what he wants" despite repeated warnings.

Al Sharpton runs the National Action Network and is a talk-show host on MSNBC, which is owned by NBC Universal, the parent company of this site.


Pakistani authorities acting on a court order released a U.S.-wanted militant Friday who allegedly founded a banned group linked to the 2008 Mumbai, India attack that killed 168 people, his spokesman and officials said.

Hafiz Saeed, who has been designated a terrorist by the U.S. Justice Department and has a $10 million bounty on his head, was released before dawn after the court this week ended his detention in the eastern city of Lahore.

The move outraged Indian authorities, but Saeed's spokesman Yahya Mujahid confirmed his release, calling it a "victory of truth."

"Hafiz Saeed was under house arrest on baseless allegations and jail officials came to his home last night and told him that he is now free," he said.

Saeed ran the Jamaat-ud-Dawa organization, widely believed to be a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which India believes was behind the deadly attack in Mumbai.

Pakistan has been detaining and freeing Saeed off and on since the attack and he and four of his aides were put under house arrest in Lahore in January under a vague law known as Maintenance of Public Order. His release came after a three-judge panel dismissed the government's plea to continue his house arrest, which ended Thursday. His aides had been released earlier.

Saeed is known for publicly supporting militant groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, which is split between Pakistan and India and is claimed by both. Many in the Indian-controlled portion favor independence or a merger with Pakistan and violence has increased in Indian-controlled Kashmir in recent years.

In recent years Saeed often addressed protest rallies, asking the world community to pressure India to give the right of self-determination to the people in Kashmir.

Hours after his release, he addressed a congregation of thousands of followers at a sprawling mosque in Lahore and asked Islamabad not to hold talks with India unless New Delhi agrees to a troop withdrawal from Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Saeed said he was detained for highlighting the Indian atrocities in Kashmir, but Pakistan's independent judiciary freed him because allegations against him were baseless.

"I am not struggling for any personal gains. My struggle is aimed at safeguarding the interests of Pakistan. I want Kashmir's freedom from India and this is my crime. I was arrested for it," he told worshippers, who chanted "God is Great."

In an emotional speech, Saeed said Pakistan's former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was ousted from power for his "betrayal" of the Kashmiri people. He did not explain, but Sharif was removed from office in July for alleged corruption.

Earlier, supporters welcome Saeed on his arrival at the mosque by showering him with rose petals.

Saeed's release angered neighboring India, which for years has asked Pakistan to take action against all those linked to the Mumbai attack. It is widely believed that Pakistan has long tolerated banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Islamic militant groups.

India's External Affairs Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar in a statement expressed outrage that a "self-confessed and UN proscribed terrorist was being allowed to walk free and continue with his evil agenda."

"He was not only the Mastermind, he was the prime organizer of the Mumbai Terror Attacks in which many innocent Indians and many people from other nationalities were killed," the statement said.

Kumar said Saeed's "release confirms once again the lack of seriousness on the part of Pakistani government in bringing to justice perpetrators of heinous acts of terrorism."

India has said it has evidence that Saeed was involved in the Mumbai attack, but Islamabad has long said sufficient evidence is not available to charge him. India claims the attackers were in contact with people in Pakistan when the assault was underway.

Relations between Pakistan and India were strained after the attack on India's financial hub. Indian authorities detained one of the assailants, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, who was sentenced to death and later hanged in the city of Pune in India. While in custody, Kasab confessed that Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind the attack, which shocked the international community.

Kasab was the only surviving gunman from the coordinated three-day attack, which targeted two luxury hotels, a Jewish center, a tourist restaurant and a crowded train station. Nine other gunmen were killed during the siege.

India has said the attackers entered Mumbai by boat carrying cellphones, grenades and automatic weapons. The attack was broadcast live on television.

Pakistan often says India is violating human rights in Kashmir, where security forces have killed or wounded dozens of protesters at anti-India rallies in recent months.

Associated Press writer Ashok Sharma contributed to this report.
Black Friday marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season but also an increase in crime at shopping malls.

In northern Virginia, the Fairfax County Police Department deploys its Christmas Anti-Theft Team to combat seasonal crimes, including larceny, fraud and retail theft.

Police said credit card fraud is going down, but shoplifting is on the rise.



Officers patrol major malls in uniform and plain clothes.

Items seized from real cases are used to train officers so they know what to look for this season. Needle-nose plyers, for example, can be used to cut sensors off items for sale.
A car crashed into the side of a house overnight in Beverly, Massachusetts.

The family that lives in the house was home at the time of the crash.

There were only minor injuries.

The family did not want to give a comment about the incident or on whether or not they know the driver.

A restoration crew was on scene early Saturday morning boarding up the house.

The home has a fence in the front and the side of the house is hidden from the street, so there is no explanation yet on why or how the car slammed into the side of the home.

Beverly Police say the incident is under investigation.
Police are searching for the driver involved in a hit-and-run accident Friday night.

It was around 7 p.m. Friday when the driver hit a man on a motorcycle and then drove away from the scene.

The incident happened near the corner of Western Avenue and Park Street.

Police say they have recovered the car involved in the hit-and-run accident, but the driver is nowhere to be found.

The motorcyclist, believed to be a man in his 40s, was rushed to Mass General Hospital for emergency surgery overnight.

There's no update at this time on his condition.

If you know anything about this incident, you're asked to call Lynn Police.
Lessingham Methodist chapel celebrates refurbishment

2017: North Norfolk MP Norman Lamb has switched on the Christmas tree lights at the newly refurbished Lessingham Methodist chapel.



The Lessingham Methodist chapel celebrated the completion of a 55,000 makeover earlier this year, after a five-year project was realised. The idea was an initial vision of the church council and supported by the then minister Revd Pat Olivent-Hayes, who felt their chapel should be used more by the local community.



However, it was not fit for purpose, due to a leaking roof and rotten floor boards. In addition, the dull and dark pews needed to be removed in order to replace the floor and brighten up the interior to encourage a bigger congregation of all ages, to use and enjoy the space.



In June, the Forget Me Not Club was founded at the chapel and Mr Lamb officially opened the facilities for people living with dementia and their carers.



Lay pastor Ros Peedle and her team of supporters helped raise the funds for the renovations, including a new kitchen, and now look forward to a successful future for the chapel.



For more information call 01692 405591 or email ros.peedle@live.co.uk .



The photo of Lessingham chapel is courtesy of https://eangliamethodist.org.uk/lessingham



This story first appeared in the North Norfolk News .





Do you have a news story or forthcoming event relating to Christians or a church in East Norfolk?
Military sexual trauma (MST) is defined as sexual harassment and/or sexual trauma experienced during the course of military service. It includes uninvited or unwanted verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature, such as attention, verbal remarks, touching, sexual coercion, sexual assault, and rape. MST happens to both men and women, and can have mental and physical health consequences. However, little attention has been paid to the behavioral health consequences of MST, such as substance misuse. This study examined the prevalence of MST during deployment among male Reserve and National Guard soldiers, and the extent to which MST exposure during deployment was associated with frequent heavy drinking and alcohol problems post-deployment.

Researchers analyzed data for 248 previously deployed male soldiers who were recruited during a 15-month period (2014 - 2015) from units in New York State. The data were drawn from a larger longitudinal study called Operation: SAFETY, which examined health among U.S. Army Reserve/National Guard soldiers and their partners (n=411). Analyses controlled for posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and age.

MST rates were high (17.3%) among male Reserve and National Guard soldiers. Greater MST exposure was associated with a greater likelihood to engage in frequent heavy drinking and experience alcohol problems in a population that is already at risk for problematic alcohol use. These findings demonstrated that MST is a serious issue for men and underscore the need for more systematic screening of MST and problematic alcohol use among members of the Reserve and National Guard.
India will have more population than China in 2022 and ASEAN (Ten Southeast Asian countries) has more population than Europe.

India and ASEAN will both have nominal GDP between France and Germany from 2019 to 2023.

ASEAN and India should overtake Germany in 2024. They should both be passing Japan in 2026.

Myanmar and Vietnam could be both be growing at about 7% GDP growth per year over the next ten years. The Philippines could also maintain growth at or near those levels.

Vietnam is expected to ride on an upward momentum thanks to a strong manufacturing sector from multinational companies moving away from China and relocating in major Vietnamese cities.

Chinas Belt and Road will also boost investment and infrastructure.
Tristan Roberts is injecting himself with a previously an untested, experimental gene therapy.

Several individuals have publicly attempted to augment themselves with genes that will inhibit cell death or boost muscle growth, and self-experimentation is also happening in private.

Brian Hanley (picture above) , a microbiologist who gave himself a gene therapy designed to increase his stamina and life span. Hanley designed a plasmid containing a gene coding for growth hormonereleasing hormone. A physician assisted in administration of the plasmid to Hanleys thigh using electroporation. The plasmids were administered twice: once in summer 2015 and a second larger dose in July 2016.

Hanley said that the treatment has helped him. Results  Testosterone up 20% with a peak increase of 77%. White blood counts up 16% with a peak of 40%. Lipid profile improved: HDLs up to 76, a rise of 20%. LDL down 20%. Triglycerides down 50%, with a low being down 60%. Healing time is much faster. Pulse rate appears to have dropped by 10 beats per minute or more.

Josiah Zayner is using gene therapy to inhibit myostatin which would enable a muscle building effect several times stronger than steroids if it is successful.

In 2015, Liz Parrish, an entrepreneur without a background in biology claimed to have received a dose of gene therapy in Latin America.

A US National Institutes of Health (NIH) study showed N6 neutralized 98% of the HIV virus in lab conditions. There are people who naturally generate N6 antivirus.

Ascendance Biomedical is using plasmids to take CRISPR gene therapy to enable the people without the N6 production mutation to produce N6.

So far the injections have not produced an HIV curing effect. Tristan will try again with 10 to 100 times larger dose of plasmid gene therapy.
The United States Navy has 11 active supercarriers. Supercarrier is an unofficial descriptive term for the largest type of aircraft carrier, typically those displacing over 70,000 long tons (71,000 metric tons).

China and the UK will each have two active supercarriers by 2021.

The United Kingdoms first Queen Elizabeth-class carrier is undergoing sea trials and is expected to enter service in late 2017.

HMS Queen Elizabeth (shown above) is the lead ship of the Queen Elizabeth-class of supercarrier, the largest warship ever built for the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom and capable of carrying up to 40 aircraft. The ship was named by Queen Elizabeth II in July 2014, began sea trials in June 2017 and will formally be commissioned in December 2017.

Existing US Supercarriers

New supercarriers under construction or fitting

China aircraft carriers and jets are catching up to current US level around 2025-2030

China will need to convert Shenyang J-31 fighters for carrier use. They are lighter at 28 tons vs the 33 tons of the J-15.

After the 80,000-85000 type 002 carrier is built by China and launched around 2021, there is a rumored Type 003 which would be 110,000 tons.
This Sat., Nov. 25, is Small Business Saturday  a day to celebrate and support small businesses and all they do for our local communities. Founded by American Express in 2010, its a day to celebrate the local businesses that help make your neighborhood great.

Sandwiched between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, American Express designed Small Business Saturday to encourage shoppers to patronize bricks and mortar businesses that are both small and local.

For you, the consumer, advantages to shopping local goes beyond helping our independent businesses. You are helping your community!

Small business owners of Cake Plate Boutique in downtown Napa, Paige Smith and sister Lindsay Smith, are celebrating 10 years in business. They plan to celebrate Small Business Saturday.

On Saturday were offering free gift wrapping and delivery to our local customers. Also, we hold an annual Guys Night on Dec. 14 and the Saturday after Thanksgiving is a great time for the ladies to come into Cake Plate to make their wish list, said Paige Smith, co-owner of Cake Plate.

Well also start promoting our 10th anniversary celebration which begins on Dec. 8 and runs through the 17th.

By shopping at small businesses throughout the year, you are showing your support for all the small businesses in your neighborhood and reinvesting in the community you call home.

Anything you can do helps to give Napa small businesses the support they need to keep creating jobs, changing the local economy and invigorating the community.

As a customer or small business owner, being a part of a powerful movement to support small businesses isnt just a trend to take part in, but a movement worth embracing.

The American Canyon Chamber of Commerce has been running a Buy Local campaign all year long. Its one of the many ways the Chamber supports their small business community.

The best gift you can give is a local gift, one that tells your citys story. This Small Business Saturday, shop local. Not only will the receiver be happy with the gift, the business owner will also be doing a happy dance, said Mandy Le, CEO of American Canyon Chamber of Commerce.

When you buy local first, you are supporting your neighbors and their dream. Whether it's finding that one of a kind treasure at Grant's Resale & Consignment or enjoying fresh macaroons from Le Paris Artisan Bakery with your friend, this Small Business Saturday think local!

Its not just about shopping at your local retail store. Non-retail businesses like barbershops and restaurants want your business too!

Places like these keep your community strong and vibrant, potentially employing your friends, family and neighbors.

The Napa-Sonoma Small Business Development Center at Napa Valley College supports the growth of small business by working with small business owners one-on-one in an effort to grow their customer base and increase revenues.

If you are a small business owner and would like to increase your bottom-line, give the SBDC a call at 707-256-7250 or visit the SBDC web site at napasonomasbdc.org today!
NEENAH, Wis.  In Winnebago County, theyve seen the paper mills close, one by one.

While Kimberly-Clark, founded here in 1872, still employs several thousand people locally, abandoned mills dot smaller towns in the region. Paper production has moved to cheaper locales overseas with less stringent pollution rules. That has left a pall  and a sense of fear and insecurity  hanging over places like Neenah, even as factories in other industries are still humming.

For many, the villain is trade.

Take Neenah Foundry, a 145-year-old operation that employs nearly 1,000 workers here. Its employees have watched in frustration as cheap manhole covers and sewer grates flood into the country from India and elsewhere, where competitors are eligible for government subsidies and face fewer environmental regulations.

For a long time, trade hasnt been fair, said Jeff Lamia, who started work at the foundry earning $5.35 an hour, fresh out of high school nearly 40 years ago, and now makes $27 an hour.

They can build stuff for pennies in China with no environmental rules, he added. Our foundry has an ungodly amount of emissions controls and that costs big money. Overseas, they throw it out into the air and we have to compete. Thats not a level playing field.

More than a year after Donald J. Trumps victory, its easy to forget that the seemingly tectonic electoral shift came largely from 80,000 voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania who moved those reliably Democratic industrial states into the Republican column.

Few places embody the underlying economic and political dynamics of that switch more than Winnebago County. Almost a third of Wisconsins 72 counties flipped from blue to red, and like most of them, Winnebago is heavily dependent on manufacturing, whether in gritty blue-collar towns like Oshkosh and Menasha or in Neenah, which is home to both factories and corporate offices downtown.

Indeed, with one-fifth of its jobs in the factory sector, Winnebago is more dependent on manufacturing than over 90 percent of the nations counties. As a result, residents worry about foreign competition for locally made products like Oshkosh trucks or the fire engines built by Pierce in Appleton and exported around the world.

And with the North American Free Trade Agreement hanging in the balance, and the possibility of a trade war rising, White House decisions on trade in the months ahead will reverberate here and in other Midwestern states  and may determine whether last years political shift becomes more enduring.

Mr. Trumps attacks on free trade and promises to bring back good-paying jobs from overseas resonated deeply here  even with lifelong Democrats like Mr. Lamia. Those issues, along with a growing disdain for politicians in general and Hillary Clinton in particular, prompted Mr. Lamia to choose Mr. Trump after voting for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Other foundry workers like Jeff Olejnik, a Democrat who couldnt bring himself to vote for Mr. Trump in November and reluctantly supported Mrs. Clinton, admits that his message on trade was compelling.

Winnebago County, Wis. Winnebago County, Wis. WINNEBAGO U.S. Population 169,900 323 mil. Percentage white 89% 61% Median household income in 2015 $52,000 $52,900 2.8% 4.1% Unemployment rate Manufacturing share of employment 20% 7% ELECTION RESULTS 2012 2016 47% Romney Trump 50% Obama 51% Clinton 43% By The New York Times | Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Bureau of Economic Analysis

We need to take care of our people here, he said. There are at least a dozen paper mills in this area that have closed. You are losing good-paying jobs.

People in the Midwest dont ask for much, he added. They want to take a vacation once a year, have decent health care and enough money to pay their bills and save for retirement. Thats our life, but pretty soon there wont be no middle class.

For many who have made a life in Neenah, it has been a place where a worker without a college degree can secure the middle-class security and comfort that have slipped out of reach elsewhere.

Mr. Lamia and his wife own a home 10 minutes from the foundry, have three cars between them, and a decade ago they purchased a summer place in Michigans Upper Peninsula.

In many respects, economic data for the area still paints a sanguine picture. At 2.8 percent, the countys unemployment rate is more than a full percentage point below the national average. Help-wanted signs hang from local factories, and Neenah Foundry recently raised hourly wages for chippers and grinders, an entry-level job, to about $12.25 an hour from $11.25.

But there is a creeping sense of having to work harder just to stay in place, as salaries and lifestyles erode amid pressure from globalization and the unceasing demand for ever-rising profits in corporate America.

People are working similar jobs to what their parents did but are not able to maintain the same lifestyle, said Mark Harris, a former mayor of Oshkosh who is now the Winnebago County executive. Thats causing anxiety.

And while unemployment may be low now, older residents have seen factories and mills close in town after town, with Wisconsin losing 120,000 factory jobs over all since 2000, including 20,000 in the paper industry alone. Not only has that kept wages in check, but it has also prompted doubts among blue-collar workers about whether they  or their children  have much of an economic future here.

We had eight kids in our family, and my mother didnt have to work, Mr. Olejnik said. Grocery stores werent open on Sunday and you spent time with your family. Now, the mall is open on Christmas Eve. Weve lost a lot.

Change Is Hard for People

Families are always rising and falling in America, Nathaniel Hawthorne observed around the time John Bergstroms ancestors arrived in Neenah from Norway 150 years ago, and Mr. Bergstrom can vouch for that.

The first Bergstroms made cast-iron stoves and carriages. When new technologies made those businesses obsolete, they turned to what would become the regions dominant industry by the mid-20th century: paper.

They prospered, and the Bergstroms joined the other paper barons who built mansions along Lake Winnebago. That house is now a museum, and the Bergstroms paper business faded as mills closed.

John Bergstrom, now 71, had the foresight to diversify, moving into automobile sales and then real estate. From a single General Motors dealership that opened in 1982, the Bergstrom family now dominates auto sales throughout the region, selling everything from Chevys and Cadillacs to Hondas, Toyotas and BMWs.

Change is hard for people, Mr. Bergstrom said. So many of the communities in the middle part of America were based on a particular business or industry, and when that changed, the community didnt. They lost the ability to continue to be what they once were.

Indeed, as a developer, he helped Neenah avoid the fate of other Midwestern towns that depended on a single smokestack industry.

In 1993, Mr. Bergstrom and 11 other local businessmen each put in $100,000 to develop a decrepit site downtown with a new office building. It quickly filled up  and since then Mr. Bergstrom has helped build seven new office buildings, lifting the work force in downtown Neenah from 500 to more than 3,700.

One of those sites was the former Bergstrom paper mill, which the town tore down about a decade ago. It is now home to the headquarters of Plexus, a rapidly growing maker of complex electronic equipment that also has two manufacturing facilities nearby, employing nearly 2,000 people in all.

When you fly on a 747, there are likely Plexus parts in that plane that were made here, said Dean Kaufert, the mayor of Neenah.

There is still a paper mill downtown as well  Neenah Paper, which traces its roots to the 1870s and was spun off from Kimberly-Clark in 2004. The company has thrived by making high-end stationery, labels and other products requiring production and service know-how not easily replicated overseas.

But the closing of so many other mills has a way of obscuring success stories.

Nearly a decade after the mill closed in Kimberly, Wis., putting 570 employees out of work, the town is still struggling with how to redevelop the 91-acre brownfield site.

Last month, the paper maker Appvion filed for bankruptcy, putting at least 1,000 jobs in the Appleton area in jeopardy. Nearby, at Appleton Coated, 500 workers have been laid off since the summer, with a skeleton crew staying on as the companys new owner seeks a buyer for the plant.

Passing the ruins of the abandoned plant in downtown Kimberly as he drove to work at Appleton Coated every day, Chris Bogan would have the same thought: His mill could be next.

So when that came to pass this fall, after five years of winding massive paper rolls, Mr. Bogan was scared, but not shocked. Three days after I was hired at Appleton Coated, we were warned about layoffs, so I worried about it all the time, he said.

Two other local manufacturers did step up and make offers to Mr. Bogan and other laid-off workers, but the $14 to $17 an hour they offered didnt come close to the $28.66 he was earning at the paper plant.

And with his wife at home taking care of two toddlers, including a 2-year-old son with cerebral palsy, there was no way to bridge that gap. If my wife was working, that would be acceptable, but in my situation that wont work, he said.

A Marine veteran, Mr. Bogan has enrolled at Fox Valley Technical College, and hopes to receive his commercial trucking certification in a few months.

That could lift his salary back above $20 an hour, but in the meantime he and his family are without health insurance. His sons therapy is covered by Medicaid.

Its been a little over a month, and people are coming to terms with the fact that we wont be making the same wages that we were, he said. Mr. Bogan said his main concern now was making sure his wife would still be able to bring their son to his occupational, speech and physical-therapy sessions each week.

Downtown Neenah is only a 15-minute drive from his home, but the craft beers on tap there and the farm-to-table restaurants that have opened up might as well be in Madison or Brooklyn.

The area is changing, he said. I grew up on the outskirts of town, and as a local guy, its not for me. Id rather cook a steak at home than go out and pay $120 for a meal.

Go to Where the Fish Are At

Watching those changes heightens the anxiety at an old-school manufacturer like Neenah Foundry, but these companies and their workers are adapting. Mr. Lamia, the 57-year-old veteran employee who backed Mr. Trump after decades of always voting a straight Democratic ticket, is a case in point.

Although he complains that its so hard to compete against Mexico, he has reinvented himself more than once during his career at Neenah Foundry.

After his first job as a laborer was eliminated, he got a commercial driving license and drove trucks there. Looking to rise and avoid another layoff from the foundry, Mr. Lamia then spent one day a week for five years at Fox Valley Technical College and eventually became certified as an electrician. With overtime, he earns roughly $70,000 a year, a solidly middle-class wage here.

Indeed, for workers with two-year degrees in fields like automation, metal fabrication and advanced manufacturing, employers are offering $50,000 to $60,000 to start. We call them gold-collar workers in the state, said Susan May, the president of Fox Valley Technical College.

But even as salaries for skilled workers like Mr. Lamia have risen, the number of low-paid entry-level laborers at Neenah Foundry is shrinking.

His boss, Tom Riordan, is about to invest $15 million in robots, automating part of the process in which cast metal parts are removed from sand molds by unskilled chippers and grinders.

American manufacturers need to take a tough-love approach, he said, sitting in Neenah Foundrys nondescript board room, not far from the noisy factory floor. Sometimes you just have to suck it up, adapt, and serve your customers.

Mr. Lamia favors another sort of tough love: tariffs aimed at the countries he feels are feeding off the U.S. and dont play by the same rules.

To comply with new government regulations, for example, Neenah Foundry will spend more than $1 million over the next six months to reduce silica particles by half, to 25 parts per billion. In China and India, workers simply make do with masks, and Mr. Lamia doesnt believe he and his colleagues should be at a disadvantage when environmental standards overseas lag behind those in the United States.

If Neenah Foundry has to pay millions for emissions controls and China doesnt have to, then they should have to pay more to export to the U.S., he said. Its got to be a level playing field, and this should have been done a long time ago.

Mexico is a more complicated case, Mr. Lamia added, especially given the countrys role as a major importer of American grain and other products. Trumps got a lot on his plate, but he should impose tariffs on China for sure, he said.

Appealing as the tough talk on trade might be at times, it wasnt enough to persuade Mr. Riordan, a self-described moderate Republican, to vote for Mr. Trump. Instead, he cast a write-in ballot for a fellow Wisconsinite, Representative Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker.

Mr. Riordan doesnt discount the appeal of Mexico to manufacturing executives like himself. But hes not considering a wholesale move south of the border for Neenah Foundry  instead, he wants to find ways to supply American manufacturers who have relocated there. A lot of our customers are heading south, and you go where the fish are at, he said.

As for the Nafta trade deal now being renegotiated, Mr. Riordan favors keeping changes to a minimum, rather than ripping up the 24-year old agreement, as President Trump has threatened to do.

There isnt an easy answer, but my personal bias would be against that, he said. Lets put some lipstick on this pig, and not make a whole lot of substantial changes.

He knows that axles made here will go into vehicles exported to Mexico and other countries that are trade targets of the White House. Whats more, Mexico is a major importer of corn and soybeans from American farmers, who in turn buy tractors and combines from John Deere, a major customer.

Do we really understand what were doing? Mr. Riordan asked. We have a big trade surplus with Mexico in terms of grain. If U.S. farmers are suddenly at a disadvantage, who is going to pay the price for that? American agricultural equipment manufacturers, which impacts us.

As the steward of a manufacturer that has survived world wars, the Great Depression, the Great Recession and a couple of trips to bankruptcy court, Mr. Riordan is much more optimistic about his companys ability to compete globally than many of his workers.

The same goes for the countrys ability to win in trade with the likes of Mexico or China.

If rational minds prevail in Washington, over time the country will get it right, Mr. Riordan said. But Congress and the president need to get it right in the meantime.
2019 will be PM Modi versus people, Kejriwals clarion call to form alliance against BJP

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Nov 25: This is Gujarat Assembly elections season, but leaders, cutting across party lines (especially the Opposition), are talking about the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal are in forefront trying to stitch a coalition of all the opposition parties ahead of the 2019 General elections to give a tough fight to the 'invincible' Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

At a book release function in the national capital on Friday, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener said that "2019 will be PM Modi versus the people", indicating that the upcoming parliamentary elections are going to be a fight between the PM and the voters of India and thus the Opposition should remain united to defeat the BJP.

The Delhi CM said that the twin reforms of demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST) have crushed the livelihood and hopes of small traders everywhere.

"The narrative of cows and Padmavati can be peddled, but will not hold when people's ability to earn a living is threatened," Kejriwal said.

The comment by Kejriwal was in regard to the ruling BJP's silence over attacks on Muslims over cow by cow vigilantes and the ongoing protests and threats over the Bollywood film Padmavati by several right-wing groups.

The book release event was also attended by BJP's 'rebel' and veteran leader Arun Shourie who too attacked the Modi government. The function saw the release of the book--India Social-- written by AAP's social media strategist Ankit Lal.

Shourie advocated unity among the Opposition parties to defeat the BJP, saying there must be one candidate in every seat against its nominee in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

"If you really think the country is in peril... then you must get together. There must be one candidate against people who we all believe are taking the country to a dangerous zone," stated the journalist-turned-politician.

Both Kejriwal and Shourie also attacked the government over the "suspicious death" of a judge.

Shourie, who had supported Modi in the 2014 polls before turning a critic of his government's policies, said even at the height of Modi's popularity in the last Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had got 31 percent of votes but it won due to fragmentation of the remaining 69 percent votes.

The opposition needs a minimum working programme to field a joint candidate, he said. "KC (a reference to a member of the audience) and I can write it in 15 minutes," he said.

On Friday, West Bengal CM Banerjee also gave a similar call, saying democracy is under threat under the BJP rule as she asked the Opposition parties to work together for the greater interest of the people before the next Lok Sabha polls.

Earlier, the Congress-led coalition of opposition parties kept the AAP away from it. However, now it looks like that Kejriwal and Banerjee are on the same page regarding the formation of a united opposition against the BJP.

OneIndia
'Poor' no more: 'Moderate' Delhi air to improve further with strong winds

Animals arrive at the Bengal Safari Park from Jamshedpur and Delhi

India

oi-Amitava

By Amitava

Vivian will be amidst new company from Saturday evening. The male Royal Bengal Tiger from Tata Steel Zoological Park, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, is being brought to the Bengal Safari Park, Siliguri.

Vivian will join the two Royal Bengal tigers already present in the park. Accompanied by a 10 member team of the West Bengal Zoo Authority, Vivian is scheduled to arrive at the Bengal Safari Park on Saturday evening.

On Friday herbivores including 20 Chitals, 5 Hog Deer, spotted deer and 9 Sambar deer arrived from the Jamshedpur and Delhi zoos.

"All the animals will be kept in quarantine first to allow them to acclimatize and adapt to the changes. Following this they will be put out on display" stated Arun Mukherjee, Director of the Park.

The park draws a lot of visitors both locals as well as tourists during holidays. Footfalls are expected to increase heavily during the Christmas- New Year week.

"By this time we expect to put out the new animals on display including three and a half-year-old Vivian" added the Director.

The park boasts of one-horned rhino, Himalayan black bears, gharial and birds of different species. The elephant safari is a special attraction at the park.

A leopard safari is also on the anvil. "Along with leopards, we expect to introduce white peacocks by next year" added Mukherjee.

Bengal Safari Park is located in Salugarah, 11 km from the heart of Siliguri town in North Bengal. Spread over an area of 200 hectares it was inaugurated in January 2016 and the first of its kind in West Bengal.

OneIndia News
Arrest of Ansarul Bangla Team terrorists raises stink of illegal immigration again

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The investigation being conducted following the arrest of the Ansarul Bangla Team terrorists has thrown up several details. Samsad Mia and Riazul Islam who were first arrested had travelled to Hyderabad and Karnataka and lived among Bangladeshis.

They entered India in July 2016 and were taken by their agent to the Manegura area of Hyderabad. Out there they worked in the slaughterhouses where several Bangladeshis are employed.

After working there for four months, they moved to Belagavi in Karnataka. They worked in a similar unit along with other Bangladeshis. It was out here that they prepared the fake Aadhaar card, investigations have revealed.

Samsad was then ordered to move to Pune. He worked as a construction labour over there despite the fact that he is a civil engineer. Later on, he moved to Hyderabad and found himself a job.

Around two months back, they were instructed from Bangladesh that the time had come to set up modules. The duo moved to Patna and then Ranchi before landing in Kolkata.

Sources say that their job was to set up a module. They had on them a new hit-list of bloggers the ABT was planning on targeting. The duo was however not part of the core strike team, the source added.

Intelligence Bureau officials say that the case on hand once again raises the issue of illegal immigrants in India. They moved around with such ease and the fact that they were able to stay with Bangladeshis only shows how well covered they were.

OneIndia News
Bakery owner gets two year jail term for polluting Yamuna

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

A bakery owner has been sentenced to two years in jail for polluting the Yamuna. The special court found him guilty of discharging untreated effluents into the sewer that flows into the river.

The court also slapped a fine of Rs 1 lakh and ordered compensation of Rs 2.5 lakh for the victims or society at large to be paid to the Prime Minister's relief fund.

The court said the "insensitive approach" has led to the river being polluted and added that people are unable to ensure the physical protection of rivers owing to industrialisation and urbanisation.

The court observed that is is because of such insensitive people that the current generation is unable to have a clean and pure Yamuna.

In the year 2000, the Vigilance Squad of Delhi and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee had found that a shop discharged the entire trade effluent generated during dishwashing and cooking without treatment into the sewer.

OneIndia News
When Simon Fischer left Napa for a day trip to visit friends in Placerville, he had no way of knowing that within hours his home and everything he owned would be destroyed by a devastating wildfire.

It was Sunday night, Oct. 8, and Fischer, a Napa Valley College student, was headed back from Placerville to the home where he rented a room in the Deer Park area.

At around 9:45 p.m., I got a call from the people I live with, recalled Fischer, 20. They said dont come back here, everything is on fire.

I was like, what are you talking about?

Fischers confusion was short lived. As he got closer to Deer Park, We saw everything on fire.

Fischer is one of a number of Napa Valley College students who lost their homes and everything they owned as a result of the October wildfires.

At the same time Fischer was facing the news of the fires, Napa Valley College student Eric Rodriguez was fleeing down Atlas Peak Road trying to escape the flames near his familys rented home.

Following his brother, who was driving in a separate car, the two men found their cars completely surrounded by the flames on both sides of the road.

It was the hottest thing I ever felt, said Rodriguez. It felt like instantly you were in an oven. I just kept thinking, We gotta drive through it. We gotta keep going.

But the flames were too much, they decided, and the two men turned around.

They headed to Rodriguezs brothers home, also on Atlas Peak Road, where they found shelter in a bathroom in a second home at that same location.

Because the bathroom was covered in ceramic tiles, We thought that was the safest place in the house, he said.

We filled the tub with water and we used that to cool down and wash our faces, he said. They used wet towels to breathe through.

As the smoke and heat continued, both men called family members to let them know what was happening. We didnt know if we were going to make it.

About three hours later, the brothers decided to venture out to Atlas Peak Road to see if a passing fire truck would rescue them.

We dunked ourselves in the bathtub to get as wet as possible, including their clothes and shoes, and started walking.

Outside, Everything was on fire.

At around 1:45 a.m. the two men were rescued by first responders.

Ryan Wagner, another NVC student, lost all of his belongings when his familys home on La Grande Avenue, near Vichy Avenue, burned on the same night.

We didnt think the fire would come anywhere near us, he said. So when the call came to evacuate, We didnt grab a whole lot.

Unfortunately, all was lost when the flames took over.

Seeing the home after the fires were extinguished was definitely a shock, Wagner, 25, said.

This kind of thing doesnt happen to you until it does.

Today, with the help of the Napa Valley College Foundation and other resources, each student is moving forward in the recovery process.

It took some time, said Rodriguez, 19. For those first few weeks, It just felt like I was a zombie.

His insurance company should help the family find a new home to rent, he said. The college helped him sign up for fire relief aid and gave him a grant. Others gave him clothes and money for meals. A GoFundMe donation page was created for Rodriguezs family.

Ive gotten a lot of help, he said.

The college has been fantastic, said Wagner. They set up a fire relief fund and that was a nice thing to do for the students that were affected. Im going to be able to replace a textbook I lost in the fire.

Now that Wagner and his family have moved into a rental home, The whole family is getting back to normal, he said.

According to Anne Branch, the executive director of the Napa Valley College Foundation, an estimated 15 NVC students lost everything in the wildfires.

The foundation is awarding grants to those and other students affected by the disaster. So far 126 people have applied for relief, and the foundation has pledged an estimated $40,000 to help them. A separate fund will provide an estimated 10 replacement computers to students.

Were committed to keeping these kids in school and helping them succeed, said Branch.

Fischer went home to Texas for a week before returning to Napa.

Every day is a new day, but its still weird, Fischer said.

The Napa Valley College Foundation gave him a grant to replace textbooks and a computer.

Part of his coping process includes helping others who were also impacted by the fires. Hes currently working at the Napa Valley College Foundation office.

This is the perfect opportunity to reach out to people who have experienced the same thing he did, said Fischer.

He can certainly relate, Fischer said. And thats what people need; someone to understand what happened.

He also wants to help those that may not have the same support network he has, said Fischer.

The people that arent that lucky and blessed  I want to make sure they get the help they deserve and need.
Dyal Singh College's renaming 'shocking and unacceptable': Harsimrat Badal

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Recommended Video

Harsimrat Badal OBJECTS renaming Dyal Singh College decision, calls it UNACCEPTABLE | Oneindia News

Union Minister and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Saturday strongly objected to the decision to rename Dyal Singh College (Evening) to Vande Mataram Mahavidyalaya, calling it as 'shocking and unacceptable'.

The governing body of Dyal Singh College, affiliated to the Delhi University, last week passed a resolution to change the name of the erstwhile evening college to 'Vande Mataram'.

"Unacceptable and shocking. The person who is so keen to change name must change his own name, he can put all his wealth to create something and give it whatever name he wants. How can you take away the legacy of someone else?" Harsimrat Badal, who is the Food Processing Minister in the NDA government, told news agency ANI.

Earlier this year, the college had decided to turn Dyal Singh Evening into a regular day college. Some of the teachers and students had been dissatisfied with the proposal that the new regular shift college would continue to function on the same campus, thereby cutting into resources and creating infrastructural constraints.

Union Minister Harsimrat Badal Harsimrat said that even Pakistan has recognised the contibution of Sardar Deen Dayal Singh Majithia, adding, "colleges are being run on his name (in Pakistan)". Captain Amarinder Singh Punjab Chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh opposed the move and took to Twitter to express his disagreement with the name change decision "Strongly oppose renaming of Dyal Singh College as #vandemataramcollege. Founder Dyal Singh Majithia was a progressive visionary. We should preserve his great legacy instead of indulging in petty name changing games," he tweeted. Sukhbir Badal has called for PM's intervention Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal asked for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention in the matter. Delhi BJP legislator Manjinder Singh Sirsa had on Monday filed a police complaint against the college's principal and chairman over the name change. Even the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) passed a resolution against the move, stating that it has hurt the sentiment of Sikhs. NSUI has also criticised the re-naming The Congress' student wing NSUI criticised the move, saying the governing board should have focused on improving the college infrastructure rather than changing its name. Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the BJP was still stuck in the past, instead of making efforts to create a better future for the students.

The chairperson of Dyal Singh College's governing body on November 18 asserted that the new name 'Vande Mataram Mahavidyalaya' is an inspiring name for the college.

"Notification was issued that Executive Council approved Dyal Singh evening college becoming a full-fledged day college. Then we had to give it a new and inspiring name, we decided it should be 'Vande Mataram Mahavidyalaya'," Sinha further said.

"It was passed unanimously. But some started protesting saying that it is not acceptable? Why so? Everybody in this universe is because of his/her mother," he added.

OneIndia News
Govt offices, schools and colleges in Bhubaneswar to remain shut after 1pm tomorrow for Prez visit

Education or abuse? In Odisha school, students earn Rs 100 per day for working in teachers field

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Bhubaneswar, Nov 25: Why do children go to schools? To study, right? No, not necessarily the same rule applies to every school.

In Odisha, there is a school, where students instead of sitting in their classrooms to get their lessons from teachers are forced to work in fields.

A lady teacher in the state's Mayurbhanj's Thakurmunda forced three of her girl students to work in her field for three days. After taking their service, the teacher paid each of them Rs 100 per day.

An inquiry has been initiated against the teacher after the students reported the incident to the higher authorities.

"Odisha: Teacher at a school in Mayurbhanj's Thakurmunda, allegedly made 3 students work in her fields for 3 days and paid each of them Rs.100 per day. Inquiry initiated," tweeted ANI.

Odisha: Teacher at a school in Mayurbhanj's Thakurmunda, allegedly made 3 students work in her fields for 3 days and paid each of them Rs.100 per day. Inquiry initiated. pic.twitter.com/uVfuLinw6x  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

Shocking, isn't it? But this is the state of Indian education system where along with poor infrastructure and unqualified teachers, students hardly have any motivation to study well.

But then there are exceptions as several bright and successful students have come out from "poor, bad and neglected" schools of the country.

During his recent visit to India, American business tycoon and co-founder of Microsoft Corporation Bill Gates expressed his disappointment over India's education system. The philanthropist stated that the country's education system needs to be far better than it is today.

Talking to Times of India, Bill said, "My biggest disappointment is the education system. I do want to create higher expectations about it."

Bill and his wife Melinda Gates share a strong bond with India as they have been frequently visiting the country and donating generously to various causes.

The observation made by Bill is spot on as the Indian education system, especially at the primary level in rural areas, suffers from various lacunae.

Now, are the authorities ready to listen to Bill's advice so that incident like the one in Odisha school does not get repeated in other schools as well?

OneIndia
Gujarat polls: After being denied their voter ID cards, transgenders demand their right to vote

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Gandhinagar, Nov 25: The beauty of a democracy lies in giving its citizens their right to vote and elect their representatives for a fixed term.

Unfortunately, thousands are still denied their basic right to vote because of administrative blockages. Consider the case of transgender community in Surat, Gujarat.

Gujarat is going to polls in a few days from now, yet transgenders in Surat's Godadara area are still waiting to get their voter ID cards, the most important tool for anyone to go and vote.

The Gujarat Assembly elections are scheduled on December 9 and 14. The counting of votes will take place on December 18, as stated by the Election Commission (EC).

Surat will vote on December 9, during the first phase of polling. When transgenders from Godadara rue the fact that they didn't get their voter ID cards, it looks like this time they won't be able to vote for very few days is left for elections.

The members of the marginalised community allege that the authorities didn't help them to get their voter ID cards.

Expressing their anguish about being denied the right to vote, Payal Kunwar told ANI that she is the only one in the community in the entire Godadara area who has a voter ID card. However, Kunwar claimed that her gender was wrongly mentioned due to which she had to face a lot of problems to open a bank account.

"No one here has a voter ID card, except me. When I received it, my name was mentioned under the female gender, I am a transgender. So, whenever I produce the voter card, I am told that they have mentioned female in it. I had to face a lot of problems to open my bank account," said Kunwar.

Another transgender said that she has an Aadhaar card, but no voter ID card. "I just have an Aadhaar card but no voter card. I do not even have a bank account. They turn me away whenever I go to them," said Khushboo.

A distressed Khushboo added that she too wants to cast her vote like everyone else.

#Gujarat: Transgenders in Surat's Godadara say that they are unable to cast their vote in the election as they do not have a Voter ID Card, add that they are receiving no help in getting their cards made. pic.twitter.com/7DCtMftHqs  ANI (@ANI) November 24, 2017

No one here except me has a Voter ID card. When I received it, my name was mentioned under female gender. I am a transgender. Whenever I produce it, I am told that they have mentioned female on it. I had to face a lot of problem to open my bank account.: Payal Kunwar pic.twitter.com/F7fOMROKEx  ANI (@ANI) November 24, 2017

I just have an Aadhaar Card but no Voter Card. I do not even have a bank account. They turn me away whenever I go to them. I want to cast my vote too just like anyone else.: Khushboo pic.twitter.com/OXpNQUwuJ5  ANI (@ANI) November 24, 2017

"The transgender community is one of the most marginalised sections in India. If they can't vote because of administrative negligence by denying them their voter ID cards then it is a cause of concern," said an activist who works for the LGBT community in Karnataka.

The transgenders like all of us can vote once they attain the age of 18. However, most often because of widespread discrimination they fail to vote.

According to an official estimate, there are 450,000 transgender people in India, while the actual number may be around 20,00,000.

OneIndia
Probe finds UP town celebrations post Saeed's release to be false

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Some persons in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur city had complained that 26/11 Mumbai terror attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed's release from house arrest in Pakistan was celebrated. The situation was immediately diffused after the intervention of the district administration.

The District Magistrate (DM) Akashdeep told OneIndia that matter was brought to his notice by some persons. The situation is under control and matter is being probed, he added.

The latest update is that the allegations were found to be false.

A Lahore Court on Wednesday refused to extend house detention of the Hafiz Saeed. Immediately after a Pakistani review board ordered his release from house arrest, Saeed said that he and his followers will ensure that Kashmir is independent.

India has always maintained that the house arrest was a hogwash. It was more like protective than preventive custody. India has maintained that Saeed enjoys the support of the Inter-Services Intelligence and is a free spirit in Pakistan.

[Hafiz Saeed free again: What makes him the Pak establishment's darling]

Following his release, The US asked the Pakistan government to make sure that Hafiz Saeed is arrested and charged with his crimes

The JuD is believed to be the front organisation for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) which is responsible for carrying out the Mumbai attack.

[Hafiz Saeed, the man who facilitates Indian Muslims who want to make Jihad a career]

In May 2008, the US Department of the Treasury had designated Saeed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224. Saeed was also individually designated by the UN under the UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in December 2008 following the November 2008 Mumbai attack in which 166 people, including six American citizens, were killed

OneIndia News
Man rapes 8-year-old to use her blood for removing obstacles to his marriage

Heinous: Yet another differently-abled girl raped in Madhya Pradesh

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

One person was arrested for allegedly raping a differently-abled girl in Madhya Pradesh's Damoh area, said reports. The police have launched a probe into the matter.

Earlier this month, the director of a centre for differently-abled children was arrested for allegedly raping two minors of the centre in Madhya Pradesh's Khandwa city. The medical examination of the girls confirmed that the director had raped them after which he was arrested and sent to jail.

[Two differently-abled minors raped, director of their centre arrested]

On November 18, a 38-year-old woman was repeatedly gang-raped for around seven hours by five men near Bhopal's Obaidullaganj railway station. The woman worked as a labourer in Sehore's district Budhni. The woman had alleged that she approached the police station to register a complaint but a policeman there asked her to go to Habibganj GRP station.

In 2014, a tribal woman was allegedly gang-raped by ten persons, including her husband, near Khandwa. The incident took place at Bhiali Kheda village under Piplod police station and the victim reported the matter on June 13, 2014, to police after her family members brought her to Khandwa district hospital.

OneIndia News
How teachings of Bhagavad Gita can help eradicate graft, Haryana CM explains

India

pti-PTI

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Saturday stressed on the need for raising the standard of living of people to eradicate corruption from the society and said this can only be possible with teaching of the 'Bhagavad Gita'.

At an international seminar organised on the occasion of International Gita Mahotsav in Kurukshetra, he emphasised on the need of the 'Bhagavad Gita' in politics, which can give the right direction to the politicians. President Ram Nath Kovind was the chief guest at the event.

Khattar said, "Though we could keep a tab on corruption with the help of law and justice, but to eradicate it from all levels, the living standard of people would have to be raised. This could only be possible when people imbibe in them the teaching of the sacred Gita."

He said the topic of the seminar has rightly been selected, as digitisation has become the need of the hour for the whole world today. The chief minister said, "With digitisation, we could get any information with a click of button."

The state government has taken various e-initiatives to ensure good governance and keep a check on corruption in the administration, Khattar said, adding as many 183 e-services were being provided in about 1,150 villages of the state.

Asserting that the 'Bhagavad Gita' is the gist of life and it was Lord Krishna who delivered the message on the sacred land of Kurukhsetra, the chief minister said, "The teachings of Lord Krishna is relevant not only for the country but for the whole world." He said representatives of 11 countries are participating in this event.

Addressing the event, Haryana Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki said with a view to fully implement the concept of 'live and let live' and to ensure peace and prosperity in the world, there was a need to spread the message of the 'Bhagavad Gita'.

Gita Manishi Swami Gyanand ji Maharaj described the 'Bhagavad Gita' as the pride and honour of the Haryana and said the teachings of this sacred book are source of inspiration for the whole mankind. David Frawley from American Institute of Vedic Studies said the 'Bhagavad Gita' characterises the civilisation and culture of India

PTI
ISIS in Kashmir: Let us face it, the ideology is right out there

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Mugees Ahmad Mir- the name made headlines recently after the Islamic State claimed that he was their man in Kashmir. Mugees was killed in an encounter with the security agencies at Zakura in the outskirts of Srinagar earlier this month. A police sub-inspector, Imran Ahmad Tak was also killed in the incident.

The presence of the Islamic State in the Kashmir Valley has been denied by the government. However, the sequence of events leading up to the death of Mugees and the subsequent funeral only goes on to show that the ideology of the dreaded ISIS is a reality.

Mugees was dressed in a black t-shirt with the Islamic verses that are used by the ISIS on their flags. His wish was to be buried with the ISIS flag and the family members obliged.

There is everything that suggests that Mugees was driven towards the ISIS. The literature at his home, his t-shirt, and ideology all showed his inclination towards the terror group.

Following his death, two terror groups claimed that Mugees was their man. The ISIS was the first to stake the claim and this was followed by the Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen which was formed in Kashmir in the early 90s. The TuM said that Mugees was their district commander in Pulwama.

Intelligence Bureau officials who have been analysing the information say that they suspect that the ISIS has been using the TuM in the Valley. The TuM which was a strong group in the 90s faded out over a period of time. They are seeking revival and this they may be doing by using the ideology of the Islamic State.

The ISIS bogey has been raised several times in the Valley. Flags have been waved, literature has been found in several places. Moreover, the ISIS when launched had spoken about its India plans while including both Kashmir and Gujarat on its map.

OneIndia News
Kerala Love Jihad: Hadiya married of her own will, NIA tells SC

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The National Investigation Agency has said that Hadiya had married a Muslim man of her own will. The NIA in its status report said that it also did not find any financial trail linking Hadiya or others in the case.

The Supreme Court is hearing the Kerala Love Jihad case and has asked Hadiya or Akhila to be present before the court on November 27. The NIA which attached Hadiya's statement said that she married Shafin Jahan of her own will and her conversion was voluntary.

It may be recalled that the father of the girl had approached the Kerala High Court which had annulled the marriage. He alleged that it was a case of Love Jihad. The SC which was further moved had ordered an NIA probe into the incident and also asked the agency to find out if there was a pattern involved.

In its earlier report, the NIA had said there is a pattern to the conversions. The NIA says that it has recorded the statement of seven other women after it was found that there were some cases of forcible conversion.

Meanwhile, another petition has been filed in the Supreme Court by a parent seeking an NIA probe into the alleged forced conversion of their daughter. The petition states that the girl was forcibly converted through Love Jihad and was being lured into joining the Islamic State in Afghanistan. The court has agreed to hear the petition in two weeks.

The petitioner Bindu Sampath said that her daughter had fallen trap to Love Jihad and this had wrecked havoc in their lives. The petitioner said that when the girl was studying in a dental college, she fell trap to a sinister radical Islamic design.

OneIndia News
Weather update: IMD issues yellow alert for U'khand, Himachal, UP for next 2-3 days

4th Vande Bharat train to be unveiled by PM Modi in Himachal

Himachal was valued less on strength, more on Parliament seats before: PM Modi

Kotkhai rape case and custodial death: CBI files chargesheet

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday filed a charge-sheet in connection with the Kotkhai rape case in which nine cops are behind the bars over custodial death of an accused.

The latest arrest, in this case, was that of Inspector General of Police Zahur H. Zaidi, who was arrested earlier this week.

The CBI had on November 18 sought permission from the Shimla High Court to conduct a voice sampling test of eight policemen arrested.

The Central Bureau of Investigation had in August arrested eight policemen for the custodial death of a person who was accused of raping and murdering a minor in Shimla district.

[Kotkhai rape case and custodial death: CBI seeks permission for voice sampling test of arrested cops]

Suraj Singh, who was a suspect in the rape-and-murder of a minor school girl in Kotkhai area of Shimla in early July, was among six people arrested by the local police. He was allegedly killed by a co-accused at the Kotkhai police station in July, triggering a massive public outrage.

On July 4, six men had raped and murdered a 16-year-old schoolgirl in Kothkai in Shimla district. On July 18, Rajendra Singh, the main accused in the case, allegedly killed his accomplice Suraj Singh in prison.

The Central Bureau of Investigation had set up a Special Investigation Team to probe the girl's rape and murder, as well as the custodial death cases on July 23.

OneIndia News
Padmavati: BJPs Amu compares Mamata to Shurpanakha, threatens to chop off CMs nose

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Kolkata, Nov 25: God only knows what else is in store in the future in regard to the ongoing controversy over the Bollywood film, Padmavati.

A day after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee invited makers of Padmavati to screen their film in Kolkata at a conclave in the national capital on Friday, Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) 'rogue' leader Suraj Pal Amu on Saturday ended up comparing the Bengal CM to the fictional character from Ramayana, Shurpanakha, the sister of Lanka's demon king Ravana.

Amu also threatened to chop off Mamata's nose like the brother of Lord Rama, Lakshmana, did to Shurpanakha.

"There are some women who are of monstrous nature like Shurpanakha was. Lakshmana dealt with Shurpanakha by chopping off her nose. Mamataji should not forget this (Rakshasi pravriti ki jo mahilaayein hoti hain, jaise Shurpnakha thi. Shurpnakaha ka ilaaj Lakshman ne naak kaat kar kiya tha, Mamata Ji is baat ko na bhulein)," the 49-year-old chief media coordinator of BJP's Haryana unit was quoted as saying by ANI.

Amu threatened Mamata for supporting Padmavati, the movie which has been constantly facing the ire of political parties and right-wing groups for allegedly distorting history.

Rakshasi pravriti ki jo mahilaayein hoti hain, jaise Shurpnakha thi. Shurpnakaha ka ilaaj Lakshman ne naak kaat kar kiya tha, Mamata Ji is baat ko na bhulein: Suraj Pal Amu, BJP on Mamata Banerjee supporting #Padmavati pic.twitter.com/m6TuSzMHPa  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2017

Amu, who has been garnering a lot of media attention for his controversial remarks on the film, had earlier announced a bounty of Rs 10 crore on the heads of Deepika Padukone, the lead actress of Padmavati, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali, the director of the film.

The Gurgaon Police booked Amu for announcing the bounty on the heads of Deepika and Bhansali. A first information report (FIR) was filed against Amu at the Sector 29 police station in Gurgaon after a complaint was filed by an "art lover and fan" of Deepika and Bhansali.

Earlier, a member of Shri Rajput Karni Sena, the fringe group at the forefront demanding a ban on Padmavati, had threatened to chop off Deepika's nose too.

On Friday, the first alleged death occurred over Padmavati controversy. A man was found hanging at Jaipur's famous Nahargarh fort and on the stone wall nearby was scribbled "Padmavati ka virodh (in opposition to Padmavati)".

Deepika and Bhansali have been continuously getting threats from Rajput and Hindu groups not to release the film, which allegedly shows queen Padmavati in a bad light and thus malign the image of Hindu women in general.

Banerjee announced that she would welcome Bhansali and the team of Padmavati with open arms and would make special arrangements for the same.

Speaking at India Today Conclave East 2017, Mamata said, "If they cannot release it in any other state, we will give special arrangement for Padmavati. Bengal will be very happy and Bengal will be proud to do that."

The film has been "officially" banned in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Rajasthan--all BJP-ruled states--even before the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) certifying Padmavati.

OneIndia
The terror in Egypt on Friday is only the latest grim reminder that Muslims are often the first victims of Muslim fanatics.

The massacre of at least 235 people attending a Sufi mosque in Bir al-Abd on the Sinai coast is being attributed to a local affiliate of the Islamic State, known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis. This slaughter was particularly venal. Gunmen waited for ambulances and first responders to come to the mosque after an initial detonation and sprayed bullets into the survivors and those dispatched to save them.

An anonymous Muslim cleric told the New York Times that he was shocked the killers would attack a mosque. Prior targets for the terrorists in the Sinai included Coptic Christian churches and a Russian airliner in 2013.

But the killing of Muslims should surprise no one. Just look at the trail of blood in Iraq. Sunni terrorists attacked the al-Aksari mosque in both 2006 and 2007 in Samarra. The site is one of the holiest in Shiite Islam and was known for its golden dome. While it was rebuilt in 2009, the attack sparked pledges of sectarian reprisals. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State perfected car bomb attacks that detonated inside crowded markets in Baghdad, killing Muslims. Shiite militias responded to these attacks by meting out random terror on the Sunni minorities in Iraq with death squads, at times abetted by the state's interior ministry. The killing is not limited to Iraq. Civil wars in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen have increasingly pitted Islamist extremists against one another.

This is important for a few reasons. To start it puts the lie to the mantra of the Islamic State, al-Qaida and other Islamic terrorists that they are protecting the faith from the West. These groups are responsible for turning their battlefields into abattoirs. They slaughter the group they claim to protect.

But it's also a reminder of the short-sightedness of President Donald Trump, who has at times tried to frame the war on terror as a contest between Islam and the West. It's true that fiends like the Islamic State have targeted religious minorities in the Middle East like Christians and Yazidis, but this has not stopped them from killing so many of their own religion too. The West's quarrel is with the extremists of political Islam, or the sect of the faith that seeks to impose Islamic law on others -- not the entire religion. Indeed, our military relies on local Muslims fighting alongside it in the war on terror. It's a strategy Trump himself has pursued in Syria and Iraq.

Many of the regimes in the Islamic world have internalized this lesson. Today Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are no longer trying to buy off jihadis or remain neutral. They seek to confront both the Sunni and the Shiite extremists.

And while this is a good sign, it's also not a cure-all. This gets us back to Egypt. The current leader, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has tried to crush the radicals in his own country with an iron fist since assuming power in a coup that unseated Egypt's elected and Islamist leader, Mohammed Mursi. His crackdown on Islamists, human rights groups and moderate opposition, however, has not stopped the terror. And as long as the terror continues, Muslim civilians will suffer.
If Cong is elected in HP, decision on 1 lakh govt jobs, pension scheme in 1st cabinet meet: Rahul

Himachal will vote for...: Congress MP Rahul Gandhi's appeal to people on election day

Cong leader Abhay Thipsay who defended Nirav Modi in UK court now at Bharat Jodo Yatra

Yatra's impact not in Himachal, Guj polls but in 2024: Congress

Rahul mocks PM Modi's 'Hugplomacy', BJP hits back

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the wake of JuD chief Hafiz Saeed's release by Pakistan court.

Rahul Gandhi's tweet came a day after the mastermind of 26/11 attack, Hafiz Saeed, was released from house arrest after Pakistan government decided against detaining him further.

Rahul Gandhi tweeted, "Narendrabhai,   . Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed."

Subsequently, BJP spokesperson, GVL Narasimha Rao, slammed Rahul Gandhi for mocking PM Modi's diplomacy. "For once, stand with the country & not with Terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks & Ishtar Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. BTW, have you congratulated your "Hafeez Saheb's" on his release yet? @officeofrg."

Rahul baba,    

For once,stand with the country & not with Terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks & Ishtar Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. BTW, have you congratulated your "Hafeez Saheb's" on his release yet? @officeofrg https://t.co/ynOianLLYa  GVL Narasimha Rao (@GVLNRAO) November 25, 2017

The US was quick to express its displeasure over the release of Saeed from house arrest. In May 2008, the United States Department of the Treasury designated Saeed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224.

Hafiz Saeed's release comes ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

OneIndia News
S&P report, a huge endorsement of Modi govt policies: Piyush Goyal

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Railways Minister Piyush Goyal today said that Standard & Poor's (S&P) is a conservative agency and its decision to retain India's rating with a stable outlook is a "huge endorsement" of the policies of the Modi government.

"We are extremely happy that S&P has continued to affirm 'BBB-minus' with a long-term sovereign rating with stable outlook," Goyal told reporters.

The rating agency is known worldwide to be a far more conservative when compared with Moody's or Fitch, he added.

"The fact that they have continued to give a stable rating but in the text have given so much praise for the policies of the government and for PM Modi's bold reform initiatives is a huge endorsement for the work which this government has done," Goyal said. S&P today kept its sovereign rating for India unchanged at 'BBB-minus' with 'stable' outlook saying vulnerabilities stemming from low per capita income and high government debt balance strong GDP growth. "S&P usually has a time lag and in that circumstance to get the kind of favourable comments that S&P has given in its report is an affirmation of the policies of the PM Modi's government being recognised worldwide," Goyal noted.

The report has spoken at length that growth will continue to remain strong, they have recognised that the quarterly slowdown in the GDP growth is a temporary phenomenon largely due to the implementation of GST which has been praised at length in the report, he added. "They (S&P) have also reflected confidence that India's external position will continue to remain strong and fiscal deficit will remain in line with the expectations," Goyal said.

The report has also suggested that despite hurdles coming in the upper house, the Narendra Modi-led government has been very deft and successful in making transformational reform possible in India, he added.

He said that policy initiatives like GST, the bankruptcy code, NPA resolution framework and bank recapitalisation among others were praised by the rating agency. "They have also praised India for having strong democratic institutions including the press and have said free press promotes policy stability and compromise," Goyal said. "So, all in all, it is a very satisfying report from S&P. I am quite delighted that they have reflected on the successes of the Modi government in state elections and have actually predicted following the series of successes in the state election in 2017; they expect much more success in state elections in the months ahead," he added.

OneIndia News
There was no 'Quattrocchi' In Rafale deal, Arun Jaitley's jibe at Rahul Gandhi

India

pti-PTI

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday hit back at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for questioning the Rafale fighter aircraft deal, saying unlike during Congress regimes when middlemen ruled the roost, there was no "Quattrocchi" in the contract for the fighter jet.

Jaitley, who is the BJP's election in-charge for Gujarat, was referring to Ottavio Quattrocchi, the Italian businessman believed to be involved in the Bofors scam which came to light when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister.

"It (Rafale deal) was a government-to-government transaction, between two governments. It wasn't like what used to happen during Congress governments, when middlemen used to be there in every transaction. There wasn't any Quattrocchi in this transaction," Jaitley told reporters here.

The Rafale deal was made to boost the combat ability of the Indian Air Force, he said.

"I wonder why the Congress leader is raising this issue now, as the transaction was done almost two-and-a-half years back. The very fact that it is being raised after two- and-a-half years indicates it is a motivated campaign linked to the election," Jaitley said.

Responding to Rahul Gandhi's allegation that a certain industrialist was favoured and due procedures were not followed, Jaitley implied that Rahul Gandhi may not understand such issues because he has no experience.

"Since it was a government-to-government transaction, the procedure was different. Another procedure is of tendering. He (Rahul Gandhi) is not having any experience of running a government. And, it is up to the company (Rafale) to choose its partner (in India). Government of India does not decide that," Jaitley said.

Rahul Gandhi today alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not want the "truth" behind the multi-crore Rafale deal to come out before the Assembly election, therefore delayed the winter session of Parliament.

"I would ask PM Modi three questions. First, is there a difference in the cost of planes in the first and the second contracts (signed with the French firm) and did India pay more or less money as per the second contract?

"And, has the industrialist (whose company has formed a joint venture with the French firm), who was given the contract, ever manufactured planes?" Mr Gandhi asked while addressing a rally in Gandhinagar district in the morning.

"And a more important question, did you follow the due government procedure? Why the (then) defence minister was seen catching fish in Goa? And, was an approval from the Cabinet Committee on Security taken (for the mega deal)?," he asked.

Meanwhile, responding to the Congress vice-president's Twitter jibe at Mr Modi over the release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan, PM Jaitley advised Gandhi to refrain from such "immature behaviour".

"He is a big leader and such immature behaviour and use of such immature words do not suit him," Jaitley said.

PTI
Can't tolerate 'barbaric terrorist' groups: Trump on Egypt blast

International

pti-PTI

Washington, Nov 25: US President Donald Trump called his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to offer condolences after militants killed over 200 people in Egypt's North Sinai region.

Trump said the international community cannot tolerate "barbaric terrorist" groups.

"The international community cannot tolerate barbaric terrorist groups and must strengthen its efforts to defeat terrorism and extremism in all its forms," the White House said after the phone call between the two leaders.

During the phone call, Trump offered condolences to the people of Egypt.

"Trump condemned the attack and reiterated that the United States will continue to stand with Egypt in the face of terrorism," the White House said.

At least 235 worshippers were killed and 109 others injured when heavily-armed militants bombed the al-Rowda mosque in Al-Arish city and opened fire on people attending Friday prayers. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in a statement said, said he was "shocked and horrified" by the terrorist attack.

"On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the friends and families of the victims of today's attack.

"We hope for a complete and rapid recovery for all those injured," he said.

Trudeau said, "This senseless attack targeting people praying at their place of worship  a place where they should have felt safe and secure. He said Canada condemns this attack and stands shoulder- to-shoulder with the people of Egypt in this difficult time. Trudeau said Canada will continue to work closely with allies and the international community to counter violent extremism that leads to such appalling acts".

"We must stand against these acts of terrorism and counter hate by promoting the values of diversity, inclusion, and peace," he said.

The UN Security Council, while condemning the "heinous and cowardly terrorist attack", in a statement underlined the need to bring perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of these "reprehensible acts of terrorism" to justice.

It urged all states to cooperate actively with the government of Egypt and all other relevant authorities in this regard. Any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed, the Security Council said.

The UN Secretary General also condemned the terrorist attack. "The Secretary General extends his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and to the government and people of Egypt and wishes a swift recovery to those who have been injured," said a statement attributable to the spokesperson of the Secretary General.

"The murder of innocent people in the midst of prayer is an especially cruel and devastating form of terror, compounded by the purported attackers waiting around to spray fleeing victims and arriving medical and security personnel with gunfire," said Senator Ben Cardin, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

This criminal act was perpetrated within a sacred place of worship where people of faith seek peace and comfort and share the values of compassion and tolerance, said High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC). Noting that the news of the terror attack on the Sufi mosque in Egypt is "deeply saddening, the Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi, said "murdering hundreds of worshippers at prayer is a vile act of brutality".

"We are horrified by these terrorists' assault on people simply gathering in community to practice their faith in peace," she said.

"Our hearts and prayers go out to all the families who have lost loved ones and all those wounded. We must be strong and smart to defeat terror, and Americans stand in solidarity with the Egyptian people in this terrible time," Pelosi said.

PTI
Israeli-Hezbollah conflict may escalate: UN chief

International

pti-PTI

United Nations, November 25: In a new report Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that unauthorised weapons in the hands of Hezbollah and threatening rhetoric from the Lebanese militant group and Israeli officials "heightens risk of miscalculation and escalation into conflict."

The UN chief called on Hezbollah and Israel, who fought a war in 2006, "to exercise restraint at all times" and "refrain from potentially inflammatory comments."

Guterres said in the report to the UN Security Council circulated on Saturday that allegations of arms transfers to Hezbollah continue "on a regular basis," which the UN takes seriously.

But it "is not in a position to substantiate them independently, he said. Guterres noted, however, that Hezbollah has displayed the weapons and acknowledged using them.

The UN resolution that ended the 2006 war calls for Hezbollah and all other militias operating in Lebanon to be disarmed and demobilized. It also calls for the 10,700-strong UN peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL to monitor a zone south of the Litani River near Israel's border where Hezbollah is banned from keeping weapons.

Guterres said Israel informed UNIFIL of the alleged presence of Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure in three specific locations in that zone, which the U.N. force closely monitored, including by aerial reconnaissance, satellite imagery and patrols.

But he said "no evidence to confirm the allegations was established." Guterres cited examples of heightened rhetoric between Hezbollah's leaders and senior Israeli officials and said that despite "relative calm" along the UN-drawn Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon the level of tensions between the two countries remains high.

Rhetoric on both sides, he said, has "resulted in increased anxiety, including among the local population." Guterres said he was equally concerned about continued Israeli overflights of Lebanese territory.

PTI
US strongly condemns Hafiz Saeed's release, warns Pak of repercussions

International

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

The White House said on Saturday lashed out at Pakistan by saying that there will be "repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistan's global reputation" unless Islamabad took action to detain and charge a freed Islamist militant accused of masterminding a 2008 assault in Mumbai.

"(Hafiz) Saeed's release, after Pakistan's failure to prosecute or charge him, sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistan's commitment to (combating) international terrorism and belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil," the White House said in a statement.

"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistan's global reputation," it added.

Hafiz Saeed, who has been designated a terrorist by the US Justice Department and has a $10 million bounty on his head, was released before dawn after the court this week ended his detention in the eastern city of Lahore.

Saeed ran the Jamaat-ud-Dawa organization, widely believed to be a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which India believes was behind the deadly attack in Mumbai.

India expressed "outrage", saying Pakistan has exposed its true face by attempting to "mainstream" UN-proscribed terrorists.

Top US counter-terrorism and South Asian experts also expressed anger at the banned Jama'at-ud-Da'wah (JuD) chief's imminent release that has come as a setback to India's efforts to bring to justice the perpetrators of the 2008 attacks in which 166 people had been killed.

OneIndia News
Asia Gaming Summit Deemed a Great Success

Published November 25, 2017 by Elana K

The first annual Asia Gaming Summit took place between November 8-10 in W Taipei, and organizers are calling it a great success and already making plans for a 2018 summit next year.

The first annual Asia Gaming Summit took place between November 8-10 in W Taipei, Taiwan, and organizers are calling it a great success and already making plans for a 2018 summit next year.

The summit attracted over 200 gaming professionals, experts, and affiliates, who all came together for the sole purpose of exploring Taiwans opportunities in the industry for both land-based and online gaming expansion.

Taiwan was a natural choice for the summits location, as the purpose of the event centered on the Taiwanese industry, and also because of the recent Kinmen Islands Referendum, which ruled that there can be no gambling on Taiwan's Kinmen Islands.

Summit Topics

Attendees were given an extensive overview of the industrys latest market trends, as well as updates on the latest developments in the region and the current states of various sectors, including sportsbetting, eSports, blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, cybersecurity, big data, lottery, affiliates marketing and more.

Additional Summit Topics

Gambling in the countries of Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan was also discussed at the Asia Gaming Summit, with various sessions highlighting the possibilities and potential of gaming expansion in those regions. These topics were especially apropos since the Kinmen Islands Referendum effectively shut down gambling options on those islands.

Attendees

Leading gaming experts in Taiwan attended the summit, including Mooze Lee, Secretary General of WISBET, a leading online gaming Taiwanese service provider, Steve Hsieh, Chairman of Taiwan Lottery, Calvin Shueh, an expert in Asian gaming, and Calvin Yang, Join Law Managing Partner.

Gaming Operators

Gaming operators in attendance included world-famous brands like BetConstruct, XPG, Taiwan Lottery Corp., and Betradar and Limelight Networks.

Summit Organizers

The Asia Gaming Summit was organized by Beacon Events, the same company that organizes the iGaming Asia Congress (iGA), one of the longest-running iGaming events in the region. The 10th edition of iGA is scheduled for March 13-15, 2018.
Swedens Revamp Reflects a Shifting Landscape

Published November 25, 2017 by Lee R

Dropping interest calls for loosening of restrictions and increases in competition in Scandiniavias largest economy.

With activity dropping, the face of online gaming in Sweden, and Scandinavia, is changing.

New Growth

New reports reveal that the Swedish gambling market did grow by 3 per cent in the first nine months of 2017 compared to the same period a year ago, with that growth clearly driven by online gaming.

GGR Sweden

GGR in Sweden for the first nine months of 2017 amounted to SEK16.56bn (1.66bn), with the market still led by state-controlled operating entity and former monopoly Svenska Spel, whom maintained a 39 per cent market share with GGR of SEK6.5bn for a drop of 1 per cent year-on-year.

International Operators Move In

The new landscape in post-monopoly Sweden has internationally licensed online gambling operators now in posession of a full quarter (25%) of Swedens overall gambling market.

Foreign Operating Revenues Up

Swedens governing gaming body Lotteriinspektionen released figures this week indicating the worth of Swedens overall gambling market at SEK 16.5b (US $1.95b) for 2017s first nine months, for a 3% year-on-year jump than the market generated in the same period last year.

Stable Swedish Revenues

The Swedish-licensed operators share of SEK 12.5b remained stable year-on-year, while the market share of Swedish-facing online gambling operators not in possession of a Swedish gaming license rose 11% year-on-year to crack SEK 4b.

Svenskas New Position

The state-owned former monopoly Svenska Spel meanwhile experienced a slight decline in year-to-date sales of 1% (SEK 6.5b). a drop which was directly attributed to flagging land-based operations, whose performance dropped 5% to SEK 4.9b, as online operations improved 15% to just under SEK 1.6b.

Nine Month Figures

In a country where various lotteries remain in effect after the monopoly was voluntarily broken, licensed online sales for the year-to-date reached were just over SEK 3.4b, representing an approximate share of 46% of the overall online marketplace and the remainder held by international operators.

Synchronizing the Reform

The full dissolution of the monopoly and the privatization of Svenska Spel is set to take effect after the completion of Swedens national elections in September, explaining the timing of Lotteriinspektionens invite to prospective licensees apply for operation in July 2018.

Safe Players

Luckily for Sweden, the latest study indicates that problem gambling rates remain low and consistent, so that adaptation of the market to privatisation appears ready to come off in a seamless and non-threatening manner overall. Insulating vulnerable players has to remain the ultimate priority of any new online regime anywhere in the world.

Rekindling Interest

The greater concern for operators, regulators and the Swedish government appears to be the continuing overall decline in play among Swedish patrons. The privatized market encouraging free competition and enhanced service offerings stands be the strongest possible response to that issue, and if that doesnt help, nothing will.
GILLETTE, Wyo.  A liberal amount of gray is flecked in the beard and hair of Norman Randall, 54.

It's not from the paint the Cheyenne man is applying to signs at the AVA Community Art Center in Gillette, though.

It may be more about his age and his business: Hand-painting signs.

He bills himself as the Old School Sign Painter.

In the 1980s, the advent of vinyl signs spelled the doom of the art of sign painting throughout the United States.

Now, though, the practice is coming back, and that brought Randall back to Gillette in September.

He wants to teach a workshop on sign painting in Gillette in the future, if others want to learn the art.

The art of signs

And it is an art, one Randall started at age 8 or 9 in the late 1960s when he helped his brother paint a sign for a Dairy Queen in Dry Prong, Louisiana.

That was his first job, one that included misspelling the word "dining" and instead painting "dinning."

His mother noticed the error and the family offered to repaint the sign.

The business owner didn't want that, however. He told Randall that he wouldn't believe the number of people who came to the Dairy Queen to tell him about the misspelled word and also bought something to eat or drink while they were there.

Since then, Randall went on to paint signs in Louisiana and Texas before closing his shop in 1983 when vinyl signs took over the industry.

"Everybody was competing for a $10 job. Lately, though, there's been a resurgence," Randall said.

Back in business

So he moved to Cheyenne a few years ago and decided to open a new shop. Now his mantra is have paint, will travel.

That's not such a bad thing. It brought him and his love of sign painting to Gillette, where he applied blue letters and black dots to a white background on a former garage door on the side of the former Wyoming Department of Transportation building that now is a center for art in the community.

He was brought to the community by artist Dara Corkery, who was looking for a new sign at AVA and wanted it done old style instead of on vinyl.

To demonstrate what he does and promote the sign-painting workshops, Corkery and Randall combined for a movie and popcorn day at AVA on Sunday afternoon. Folks also watched Randall paint, something that drew sign painters in a passing pickup to give him a few whistles and thumbs-up.

An AVA supporter donated the money for the signs and to bring Randall to Gillette. The signs face West Second Street in front of the building.

"I believe a computer will never replace a human," he said. "I'm not an artist. I couldn't paint a picture of that tree."

But he knows how to use negative space to make the words pop out at those driving by in a rush.

And he knows a sign painter is, by nature, a counselor and educator who leaves his mark on the world with each sign he paints.

That's why people collect them.

"Old painted signs are collectors' items now," Randall said. "Like me, they get better looking with age."

Meant to be

Corkery had seen some hand-painted signs in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and wanted to bring that art to Gillette. She also felt the AVA Community Art Center needed a new sign.

Executive Director Sarah Warne agreed. She even had a location for the sign, although a horse stood in the way  one of those painted for a fundraiser in years past through AVA.

Then a woman who originally had wanted to buy that painted horse  who couldn't afford it at the time  made another offer. Now the horse is gone and the location for a new sign became available.

It was a sign that Randall's work was meant to be.

Valuable real estate

He began by designing the signs in his shop in Cheyenne, then using a seamstress tool to outline the lettering, creating small dots. He chalked the letters onto the space of the sign  using math to make sure the lines were straight  and then began painting.

The paint is specially made to withstand the elements, weather and aging.

He'll teach all of that to anyone who'd like to learn the trade.

"I hope to teach an old-school workshop," Randall said. "I'll teach them what I know."

That's something he's never done, although he said there are lettering workshops offered throughout England and Scotland, where hand-painted signs are back in vogue.

"A sign is valuable real estate," he added, relating the tale of how a sign painter advised a businessman to cut the words he didn't need in a "Fresh Fish Sold Here" sign to just "Fish." Obviously, he said, the fish had to be fresh or no one would sell it, and just as obvious was where it was sold. The word "sold" also wasn't needed because the businessman wasn't a philanthropist.

No matter how you describe it, this is a profession for the ages.

"I've always enjoyed it," Randall said. "I get to play with paint."

Thousands of signs later, Randall is still doing what he loves.

His hand-lettered signs are still on display in Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Cheyenne, Gordon County, Colorado, California and now Gillette.
On Nov. 30, 1917, 100 years ago in World War I, a large U.S. non-combat unit was the first such to engage the enemy. The 11th Engineer Regiment, 1,400 strong, composed of volunteer railway workers from Queens, New York, fought German attackers with shovels and picks. (It prior helped assemble British-made tanks used in historys first mass armor offensive at the Battle of Cambrai.)

Repairing a rail supply line, the 11th abruptly came under a surprise German counterattack. Under the calm leadership of 1st Lt. Paul McLoud  who procured ammunition for rifles, apparently later handed out  the engineers fell back to a vacant British trench and repelled the attack. Twelve Americans were wounded, one lost in action, 17-year-old Private Dalton Ranlet, who lied about his age to join up. Said Gen. John Pershing, Wars are not won by fighting with shovels. (Shovels were used in trench warfare by attacking Germans as thrusting spears.)

Twenty-seven days earlier on Nov. 3, three U.S. soldiers were killed in fierce trench fighting on the Western Front. They were the first American combat fatalities of some 52,000 more to follow in the next 372 days. Cpl. James Gresham, age 24, Pvt. Merle Hay, age 21, and Pvt. Thomas Enright, age 30, died in a night trench raid by the Germans at the fronts quiet sector near Artois.

Before the war, Gresham was a furniture maker in Evansville, Indiana. In 1914, when the European war began, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was stationed in El Paso, under Black-Jack John J. Pershing, the future commander of the American Expeditionary Forces. Hay, of Glidden, Iowa, was a store clerk repairing farm equipment. With his fathers blessing, he enlisted in the American army on May 3, 1917, a month and a day after President Woodrow Wilson asked the Congress to declare war upon Imperial Germany. Enright, from near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had already served in the U.S. Army from 1909 to 1916. A veteran soldier, he had survived the post-Boxer Rebellion occupation in China, the Moro wars in the southern Philippines, the garrisoning of Vera Cruz, and the punitive expedition under Pershing to quash Pancho Villa in northern Mexico. The three were among Pershings darlings, the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division in France in the fall of 1917.

Its 16th Infantry Regiment, the first overseas U.S. combat unit, had sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey, June 14, 1917. It paraded July 4th in Paris. By late September 1917, it was in a non-glamorous training program about the anatomy of a division.

On Oct. 6, the American neophytes were assigned in driblets to a French infantry division for a baptismal training tour of the forward trenches. On Oct. 23, Co. F, 16th Regiment, rotated in as the Great Wars first U.S. unit to relieve French poilus, in the Artois subsector, Sommerville sector-thirty kilometers east of Nancy.

Perhaps via the trench vine, the Germans had suspected a new American troop presence in the middle trench section, referred to as the center of resistance. On the night of Nov. 2-3, a one-hour box barrage zeroed in and a German trench-raiding party fatally at first mistaken as Americans by Hay and Gresham  ventured past outposts into their trench, rolling in grenades and fighting in a close, brutal melee. Well-armed with Lugers, grenades, and knives, it captured 12 Americans (Enright was killed when resisting capture) before it went back to its own trench.

One or two German soldiers were killed or wounded and seven were captured, but the stealthy enemy trench raid was successful in conducting night harassment and taking captives. (It absconded with the Doughboys accouterments.)

Of the three Americans killed, one was shot, anothers throat was slit, and ones skull crushed. Folklore had it that Hays gold watch, given him by his mother, had stopped at 2:40 a.m. Pershing cried when he got the after-action report. Buried on the spot (Hays was later reinterred in America in July 1921) a grateful inscription by a sorrowful France eulogized, Here [lay] the first soldiers of the illustrious Republic of the United States who fell on French soil for justice and liberty.

To the Doughboys French mentors, the nascent Americans were not very suave in the art of trench raiding. In one French-led nighttime trench raid, a German had been captured and was being forced back to Allied lines for interrogation. An attached American Doughboy noticed in the gloom only yards away that a German trench-raiding party was dragging a captured French poilu in the opposite direction. Looking askance as to why his own party would not attack the Germans in order to rescue their fellow soldier, he was tartly informed there existed a tacit agreement by both sides that while in No Nans Land, successful opposing trench raiders did not thus interfere with each other. French trainers scoffed that American soldiers had no comprehension about the etiquette involved in the art of mutual trench raiding.

Ironically, Pershing objected to British and French trainers of the inexperienced American troops teaching the use of grenades and mortars in trench warfare. To him, the rifle and bayonet was the supreme war weapon. True to his idol, Civil War general of the Union armies, Ulysses S. Grant, he would wage an offensive campaign of open total war into Germany by 1919, hanging Kaiser Bills soldaten on lamp posts on the Unter den Linden, Berlin, to make Germany unconditionally surrender.

Pershings highfalutin concept of American warfare in Europe had its own major intrinsic obstacles to attempt to overcome. In 1917, the year of Americas war entry, no active U.S. Army officer had commanded much more than a regiment. Pershing, who led up to thousands of soldiers in Cuba, in Mindanao and Jolo, and in Mexico, would now be expected to lead millions of American troops in stalemated Western Europe. Although he felt newly minted U.S. Army officers would quickly adapt, upon acknowledging the dearth of U.S.-manufactured arms, Pershing lamented, We were beggars as to every weapon except the rifle. (On Oct. 23, at Luneville, the first American shot of the war was fired by Cpl. Robert Bralet, using a French 75.)

Pershings avuncular observations were that although U.S. troops [might be] raw and unskilled, [they] were [nonetheless] the hardiest men on the Western Front. Bearing the burden [of] Europes war, they were to inherit, they would tilt the balance of victory for America and the Allies. (France and Britain seemed spent  entrenched British Tommies hailed American arrivals as Eleventh Hour soldiers.)

Retorted the British and French high commands, such superb raw material ought not suffer under tyro [U.S.] leaders. Pershing told British Gen. Sir Douglas Haig, News of amalgamation would confirm the U.S. publics suspicion of a government giveaway, as U.S. soldiers were absorbed into Allied ranks. He would tell Allied C-in-C, Ferdinand Foch, Our army will fight wherever you may decide, [but] it will fight as an independent American army. The AEF was Pershings regime, yet it was realistic French and British trench training that bestowed its full independence.
From Other Words

Rolling back Obama's opening to Cuba hurts ordinary Cubans the most.



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On November 8, just as President Trump was clinching new business deals with the repressive Communist government of China, the Trump administration announced new rules rolling back President Obama's opening with Cuba.

The new regulations 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 on a visit to the island on a 40-person delegation organized by the peace group CODEPINK, I found that Cuba's small private businesses, the very sector the Trump administration says it wants to encourage, are already feeling the blow.

In 2014, President Obama used his executive power to renew diplomatic relations and relax restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba. The island, which already has a large tourist sector with guests from Europe and Canada, geared up for a tsunami of American visitors.

This 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 of them 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.

Unfortunately, the U.S. is now rolling all that back. And Cuba's burgeoning private sector has already felt what they call "the Trump effect."

Jose Colome, owner of the Starbien private restaurant in Havana that employs 35 people, shook his head in disgust. "We had 48 reservations from U.S. 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 canceled," said Proximity Cuba's director Rodrigo Gonzalez.

On November 1, for the 26th year in a row, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to condemn the decades-old U.S. embargo against Cuba. The vote this year was 191 nations against the embargo vs. two in favor: the United States and Israel.

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."

They're right. The embargo is a failed foreign policy that's only served to punish the Cuban people and isolate the United States internationally. And rolling back Obama's opening there is a major blow for diplomacy, people-to-people ties, and -- most of all -- Cuba's new private businesses.






Secretary Clinton Walks With Rwandan President Kagame

(Image by U.S. Department of State) Details DMCA





"Rwanda remains the poorest country in East Africa, except for Burundi."

On November 18 Rwandan President Paul Kagame inducted eight thieves without borders and one medical doctor into his "National Order of Outstanding Friendship, " presenting them with medals for "exemplary service" to the nation, meaning himself and his ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Kagame is a modern day exemplar of French King Louis XIV's theory of government: "L'e'tat, c'est moi." His list of honorees showcases the skill sets that keep any neocolonial kleptocracy in business. Agility with shell companies and offshore accounts is highly valued, and a boundlessly self-righteous sense of entitlement is absolutely required. As with all things Kagame, connection to the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation are an added plus.

Here's some of what's known about the Kagame Nine:

1, Hezi Bezalel, Israeli businessman and Rwanda's Honorary Consul in Israel. Kagame's newspaper, The New Times of Rwanda, praises Bezalel for building ties between Israel and Rwanda over the years, and says that "he arrived [in Rwanda] in the middle of 1994, a time when most international figures turned away." Hard to know just what that could mean because on July 27, 1994, after Kagame had won the war that led to the massacres, the New York Timesran the headline U.S. IS CONSIDERING A BASE IN RWANDA FOR RELIEF TEAMS , and reported that:

"The United States is preparing to send troops to help establish a large base in Rwanda to bolster the relief effort in the devastated African nation, Administration officials said today.

"Setting up a staging area in the capital, Kigali, would mark an important new phase, committing American troops in Rwanda for the first time. Military officials said 2,000 to 3,000 troops could be sent into Rwanda, in addition to the 4,000 that Washington has said would join relief efforts outside the country."

Relief efforts are sort of like "evacuating embassy personnel"--always a good excuse for sending troops. But whatever, maybe Hezi Bezalel arrived a few weeks before the US troops, more precisely at the midpoint of 1994.

In "Sex, Guns and Big Bucks ," the Israeli outlet Haaretz describes Bezalel in the context of his bid for the license to become Israel's sixth mobile phone operator:

"Bezalel made his fortune in Africa, including through arms dealing. Bezalel represented Israeli defense companies in various African countries and reaped profits from the fees he charged. His associates say he worked only with governments, not with rebel groups. Now he wants to make himself into a legitimate businessman in Israel."

"Bezalel made his fortune in Africa, including through arms dealing."

Last April Israel's Communication Minister granted Bezalel the license to go legit with his Xfone 018 telecomm company.

In 2014, Arutz-Sheva-Israel National News reported that Bezalel helped defeat the Palestinian Authority's UN Security Council resolution that called for Israel to withdraw from Judea-Samaria:

"The Palestinian Authority (PA)'s draft resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Judea-Samariafailed in a UN Security Council voteTuesday night - and an Israeli businessman may have contributed to the resolution being shelved.

"Businessman Hezi Bezalel has been working in the past few weeks behind the scenes to ensure that the draft resolution would fail to gain crucial support, Arutz Sheva has learned Wednesday.

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The US policies in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria can hurt the US interest in the Middle East. Kurdish people under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan is not similar to Kurds led by mafia families of Barzani and Talabani. Betraying YPG and YPJ of Kurd's alliances in Syria can lead to the repeated scenario of Vietnam under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh.

'Ho Chi Minh born in 1890 in Vietnam under French colonialism to a committed nationalist father, Ho Chi Minh would grow up to lead not one, but two successful wars of independence to liberate his country. In his formative years, Ho traveled widely as a sailor and lived in Paris, Harlem, and Boston, where he worked as a cook, baker, and did menial jobs. In his travels, he made contact with other colonized people, communists and nationalists, and saw the Vietnamese under France as part of an international system of empire.

Returning to Vietnam to expel the French colonizers and emancipate his homeland, Ho Chi Minh looked to the United States, once a colony of the British, as a model--the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence is clearly modeled on the United States Declaration--but also as a potential ally. Ho wrote numerous times to American audiences, presidents, and the American people, reaching out for support. But American elites, seeing France expelled and wary of independence movements "infecting" their own colonies, decided to punish Vietnam and engaged in a decade's long war of almost unthinkable violence.'

Kurds in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria are seeking the support of the US to establish peace in Turkey between Kurds and Turks with help of the US. But President Trump said we should use Kurds in Syria against the ISIS Islamic terrorist forces loyal to Turkey. Indeed, President Trump used Kurds in Iraq and Syria against ISIS Islamic terrorist. Kurd defeated ISIS Islamic terrorist forces in Syria and Iraq. The US betrayed Kurds for Arabs in Iraq. Iraqi Shi'a Arabs took 52% of Kurdish land with help of Iran and Turkey, while the US looked another way.

Turkish FM Chavusoglu announced that President Trump promised Turkish President Erdogan that the US is not supplying YPG and YPJ Kurdish people forces in Syria from today. Indeed, YPG and YPJ defeated ISIS Islamic terrorist forces in Syria with the help of the US alley. AND the US is joining Turkey back after they do not need Kurds anymore to fight ISIS Islamic terrorist forces in Syria and Iraq.

Kurd under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan will continue with the war against Turkish aggression with or without the US support. President Trump is going to create another Vietnam out of Kurdistan for the US people.

References

Trump told Erdogan no more weapons will be provided to YPG: FM Cavusoglu

click here

Messages to America: The Letters of Ho Chi Minh

Who was Ho Chi Minh?

.historyisaweapon.com/defcon2/hochiminh/
In 2014, then-Tea Party Congressman Mick Mulvaney called the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) a "sick, sad joke."

When asked what changes he'd like to make to the CFPB, Mulvaney replied: "Well some of us would like to get rid of it." And in 2015, he cosponsored a bill that would do just that.



Hey, wanna hear a real sick, sad joke? Yesterday, Donald Trump announced that he is going to name Mick Mulvaney to be the CFPB's acting director.





We knew that Donald Trump was likely going to use Rich Cordray's departure as his chance to dismantle the CFPB. Earlier this year, he promised corporate CEOs that he would deliver "a major elimination of the horrendous Dodd-Frank regulations." And now, he could do it.



I fought my heart out to build this little agency -- and I'll be damned if we let Donald Trump, Steve Mnuchin, and Mick Mulvaney destroy it without a fight.

But this has never been my fight alone. When the financial industry spent a million dollars a day trying to stop Wall Street reform and the CFPB, people in Massachusetts and across this country stood up to their army of lawyers and lobbyists and won.

We did it before, and we can do it again.



We fought Donald Trump when he named an Education Secretary who doesn't believe in public education. We fought him when he named an EPA director who doesn't believe in climate change. We fought him (and won) when he named a Labor Secretary who doesn't believe in unions. And we will fight him now to stop an Acting CFPB director who doesn't believe in protecting working families from the big Wall Street banks.



Sign our petition and tell Trump: You do not have the power to name Mick Mulvaney or another member of the Washington anarchy gang as Acting Director of the CFPB.



Thanks for being a part of this.
November 25, 2017, Kurdish PKK organization past 39 years of struggle and started the 40's years successfully. Kurdistan Communities Union (Kurdish: Koma Civaken Kurdistan (KCK)) is a Kurdish political organization committed to implementing Abdullah Ocalan's ideology of Democratic Confederalism. The KCK also serves as an umbrella group for all the Apoist political parties of Greater Kurdistan, including the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party-Turkey), PYD (Democratic Union Party-Syria), PJAK (Kurdistan Free Life Party-Iran), and PCDK (Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party-Iraq). The term Apoist refers to followers of the ideology of Abdullah Ocalan ("Apo").

Since the kidnapping of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan in the year 1999 to the present KCK is leading Kurdish people day by day. The policies of KCK is very successful because they are attracted millions of Kurds to join political parties adopted Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan philosophies in the Middle East and the world at large.

KCK are managing political parties and Kurdish military forces too. They are purchasing the weapon on the black market and providing logistic to Kurdish fighters in Kurdistan.

KCK's policies toward women and non-Kurds were very successful. KCK policies toward international communities are gaining support from the US, Rusia, Chinese, Japanese, Europian Union, South Africa, and Latian American countries too.

Islamist extremist of Turkey and Iran are leading Syria and Iraq too. Turkey and Iran are against the interest of humanity now. Iran is in control of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebonan. Iran is waging war against Arab of Persian Gulf countries and Israel. Turkish Government is waging war against EU countries because they are not fighting Kurds for them.

In conclusion, KCK must be thanked by every Kurds who want freedom and peace in Kurdistan. The future of Kurdish people is shining like stars thanks to the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan and implantation of KCK policies toward others.

References

Trump tells Turkish president U.S. will stop arming Kurds in Syria

click here

Trump briefs Erdogan on 'pending adjustments' to military support for US-backed forces in Syria

.rt.com/news/410899-erdogan-trump-fighting-terrorists/
Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"In this book, Rob Kall is fueling a discussion that is long overdue, one that can perhaps shake us out of our current herd mentality, back to true community and intertwined purpose. His bottom-up discourse may serve to turn us all upside down just long enough to view our current politic from a different perspective."



Dr. Mari K. Swingle, author of i-Minds: How Cell Phones, Computers, Gaming, and Social Media are Changing Our Brains, Our Behavior, and the Evolution of Our Species
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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.



War Crime Trials

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A Peace Train is rolling through Syria, but Canada and its terrorist-supporting allies are not on it.

If Canada wanted peace, it would be applauding the Axis of Resistance's victories over terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

But Canada's silence is loud and clear.

The growing "Peace Bloc", as described by renowned investigative reporter Vanessa Beeley, [1] includes Syria, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and Iraq. These are the forces that are defeating the Western-backed terrorists who are destroying Syria and murdering its peoples.

Although terrorists are still infesting some areas in Syria -- and civilians are still being murdered on a regular basis -- a complete victory over terrorism is in sight. The SAA victory at Abu Kamal in east Syria-- dubbed the "Mother of All Battles" -- was especially significant.

A corollary for lasting peace is respect for international law, and those countries actually fighting terrorism are better positioned to advance the power and scope of international law.

Canada and its allies have shown themselves to be rogue aggressor nations and so not suited to lead the way towards respect for international law and peace. Nor have they chosen to follow such a path.

For the sake of humanity, Canada and its criminal cohorts need to apologize for supporting the terrorists, leave Syria (including its air space), end the illegal sanctions, and stop stealing tax dollars that support illegal wars. Of course there should be trials at The Hague as well.

Corporate media, which has enabled the criminality, should also be prosecuted.

International criminal lawyer Christopher C. Black, who was a lead defense counsel in the Rwanda war crimes tribunal, and an advisor to Slobodan Milosevic at the ICTY, argues that,

The journalists who write these propaganda pieces and the presenters who read them on television are among the worst of criminals as they sit there looking attractive, with their fake smiles and fake concern, while taking lots of money to lie to our faces every day. It takes a very low person to sit there and lie to their fellow citizens so easily. It takes someone who has no sense of morality whatsoever. One could say they are sociopaths. But criminals they are and they deserve to be in the dock with the leaders that hand them the scripts they read so willingly. [2]

Notes

[1] 21 Wire, "SYRIA: The Emerging 'Peace' Bloc Challenges the Weakened 'War' Bloc." 22 November, 2017. (http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/11/22/syria-emerging-peace-bloc-challenges-weakened-war-bloc/) Accessed 23 November, 2017.

[2] Christopher Black, "NATO's War Crimes: The Crime of Propaganda." New Eastern Outlook. August 14, 2017.

(https://journal-neo.org/2017/08/14/nato-s-war-crimes-the-crime-of-propaganda/) Accessed 23 November, 2017.

The original source of this article is Global Research

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From Gush Shalom

SUDDENLY, A terrible thought struck me. What if Avi Gabbay really believes what he is saying?

Impossible. He cannot really believe all those things. No, no.

But if he does? Where does that leave us?

AVI GABBAY is the new leader of the Israeli Labor Party. Until recently, he was a founding member of a moderate right-wing party, Kulanu ("We all"). Without ever being elected to the Knesset, he served as a junior minister. He resigned when Avigdor Lieberman, considered by many as a semi-fascist (and the "semi" is far from certain), was allowed to join the government as Minister of Defense, the second most important post.

In a bold move, Gabbay left Kulanu and joined the Labor Party (also known as "the Zionist Camp") and was soon elected its chairman. However, he did not become the official "Leader of the Opposition," because he was not a member of the Knesset. (The formal title remained with his predecessor, the very nice but rather insignificant Yitzhak Herzog.)

One of Gabbay's outstanding qualities is the fact that he is "Oriental," an Eastern Jew. He is the seventh of eight children in a family that immigrated from Morocco in 1964, just three years before his birth.

This is very important. The Labor Party is decried as "Western" (or Ashkenazi), the party of the social elites, estranged from the mass of the Orientals. It must overcome this characterization if it ever wants to attain power again.

In the Likud Party, the situation is the exact opposite. The mass of Likud voters are Orientals, but Binyamin Netanyahu is as Ashkenazi as you can get. The Orientals adore him, as they have never adored any Oriental leader.

BUT GABBAY'S origin is not his only attribute. From his humble beginnings he climbed the heights of economic success. He became the CEO of one of Israel's most important corporations, amassing a personal fortune on the way.

He is not a charismatic leader, not a person to arouse the masses. Indeed, his face is easily forgotten. But he took with him from the business world a sound, logical way of thinking. In politics, logic is a rare commodity. It can be obstructive.

The question now is: where does logic take him?

DURING HIS few months as leader of the Labor Party, Gabbay has deeply shocked many party members. Shocked them to the core.

About once a week, usually on Shabbat, Gabbay lets loose a statement that seemingly contradicts everything the party has stood for during its more than 100 years of existence.

He once declared that peace does not mean that any of the many dozens of settlements in the occupied territories must be removed. Until then, the party line was that only the "settlement blocs" -- located hard on the Green line - could remain, within the framework of an agreed exchange of territories, and that all the others must be removed. Gabbay's announcement caused quite a stir, since it probably makes the "Two-State solution" impossible.

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From Consortium News



ran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei visiting the holy city of Qom in January 2013.

(Image by (Iranian government photo)) Details DMCA



For many years, major U.S. institutions ranging from the Pentagon to the 9/11 Commission have been pushing the line that Iran secretly cooperated with Al Qaeda both before and after the 9/11 terror attacks. But the evidence for those claims remained either secret or sketchy, and always highly questionable.

In early November, however, the mainstream media claimed to have its "smoking gun" -- a CIA document written by an unidentified Al Qaeda official and released in conjunction with 47,000 never-before-seen documents seized from Osama bin Laden's house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The Associated Press reported that the Al Qaeda document "appears to bolster U.S. claims that Iran supported the extremist network leading up to the September 11 terror attacks." The Wall Street Journal said the document "provides new insights into Al Qaeda's relationship with Iran, suggesting a pragmatic alliance that emerged out of shared hatred of the United States and Saudi Arabia."

NBC News wrote that the document reveals that, "at various points in the relationship ... Iran offered Al Qaeda help in the form of 'money, arms' and 'training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon in exchange for striking American interests in the Gulf,'" implying that Al Qaeda had declined the offer.

Former Obama National Security Council spokesman Ned Price, writing for The Atlantic, went even further, asserting that the document includes an account of "a deal with Iranian authorities to host and train Saudi-Al Qaeda members as long as they have agreed to plot against their common enemy, American interests in the Gulf region."

But none of those media reports were based on any careful reading of the document's contents. The 19-page Arabic-language document, which was translated in full for The American Conservative, doesn't support the media narrative of new evidence of Iran-Al Qaeda cooperation, either before or after 9/11, at all.

It provides no evidence whatsoever of tangible Iranian assistance to Al Qaeda. On the contrary, it confirms previous evidence that Iranian authorities quickly rounded up those Al Qaeda operatives living in the country when they were able to track them down, and held them in isolation to prevent any further contact with Al Qaeda units outside Iran.

Taken by Surprise

What it shows is that the Al Qaeda operatives were led to believe Iran was friendly to their cause and were quite taken by surprise when their people were arrested in two waves in late 2002. It suggests that Iran had played them, gaining the fighters' trust while maximizing intelligence regarding Al Qaeda's presence in Iran.

Nevertheless, this account, which appears to have been written by a mid-level Al Qaeda cadre in 2007, appears to bolster an internal Al Qaeda narrative that the terror group rejected Iranian blandishments and were wary of what they saw as untrustworthiness on the part of the Iranians. The author asserts the Iranians offered Saudi Al Qaeda members who had entered the country "money and arms, anything they need, and training with Hezbollah in exchange for hitting American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf."

But there is no word about whether any Iranian arms or money were ever actually given to Al Qaeda fighters. And the author acknowledges that the Saudis in question were among those who had been deported during sweeping arrests, casting doubt over whether there was ever any deal in the offing.

The author suggests Al Qaeda rejected Iranian assistance on principle. "We don't need them," he insisted. "Thanks to God, we can do without them, and nothing can come from them but evil."

That theme is obviously important to maintaining organizational identity and morale. But later in the document, the author expresses deep bitterness about what they obviously felt was Iranian double-dealing in 2002 to 2003.

"They are ready to play-act," he writes of the Iranians. "Their religion is lies and keeping quiet. And usually they show what is contrary to what is in their mind ... It is hereditary with them, deep in their character."

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(This is a reprint from NewsBred).



RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat is opening salvo

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Before the Supreme Court begins the final hearings on the Ram Janmabhoomi case from December 5, India's mainstream English media has begun pressing its foot on the propaganda gas pedal to portray the Hindu Right Wing in poor light.

Indian Express, as its front page lead story on Saturday, carried the comment of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat in Bengaluru that "Ram Mandir alone will be built, nothing else will be built." The newspaper also published the outrage of Muslim law board's hardliner Asaduddin Owaisi on the remark.

The Leftist media and academicians would look to spread lies and propaganda from now on against the idea of "Ram Mandir" as a violation of India's secularist spirit and as a disregard to apex judiciary, Supreme Court.

So it's time we firmly nail the lie of these presstitutes--both Lutyens Media and academicians of JNU kind--before they succeed in vitiating communal harmony and poisoning unsuspecting minds.

The litigation in Supreme Court was filed by parties in contention to the Allahabad High Court's Ayodhya judgment on September 30, 2010 which ran into 8500 pages. (The entire judgment is available on the website of India's National Integration Council: rjbm.nic.in).

The three-member High Court bench had then ruled that the "Babri Masjid had indeed been built on a religious Hindu site." The bench had further imposed respect for the verified Hindu convention of treating the site as Rama's birthplace. (As an aside, even the 1989 Encyclopedia Britannica had mentioned Ayodhya Ramjanambhoomi as a Hindu temple destroyed in the name of first Mughal Emperor, Babur).

As can be imagined, the High Court bench had arrived at the judgment after years of diligence and painstaking research and cross-examination which validated the claims of Hindu Right Wing groups.

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From Counterpunch



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Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck Puerto Rico in September-October 2017. The impact of these storms was great, but greater still are the convulsions on the island long after the storms had passed over. Puerto Rico's infrastructure remains in tatters, with the power grid still largely dysfunctional and basic institutions such as schools and hospitals on life support. Not surprisingly, large numbers of Puerto Ricans -- who are citizens of the United States -- have moved to the mainland. The Centre for Puerto Rican Studies (Hunter College, New York) estimates that of a population of 3.5 million, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans will make this journey. Already, 130,000 Puerto Ricans have arrived in Florida since October.

Towns and States in the mainland U.S. that are already home to Puerto Ricans have welcomed thousands more since the storms of this year. In Holyoke, Massachusetts, for instance, hundreds of Puerto Ricans have already arrived to join their families. There is little indication that these people will return to the island. Betty Medina Lichtenstein of Enlace de Familias says that it is the elderly who are likely to return, while the younger families seem to want to stay on.

The arrival of thousands of families into a State such as Massachusetts has meant that a thousand additional students have already been enrolled in Massachusetts' public schools. School officials say that they are sympathetic to the plight of these refugees who have fled a devastated island with its educational infrastructure in a shambles.

Schools yet to reopen

Of Puerto Rico's 1,113 schools, only 119 have reopened. The teachers' union, Federacion de Maestros de Puerto Rico, has suggested that the government has slowed down rebuilding of schools in order to push for their privatization. They say that the plans for the rebuilding of Puerto Rico are similar to what was done in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when schools fired teachers and created a network of private charter schools. The Federacion worries that much the same will happen in Puerto Rico. The failure to reopen schools is one sign of such a plan.

In early November, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos met Puerto Rico's Education Secretary Julia Keleher in San Juan. Members of the Federacion marched outside the Department of Education to demand a seat at the table. It was not offered to them. Betsy DeVos and Julia Keleher did not talk to the teachers. Julia Keleher had already been pushing a plan to privatize the island's schools, and the storms gave her and Betsy DeVos the opportunity to do so with minimal resistance. The storm, said Julia Keleher, gave the island a "real opportunity to press the reset button." Privatisation, she suggested to a local paper, "makes sense." About the teachers' unions, she said that "they can go out and protest in the streets, but that doesn't change the fact that we can't go back to life being the same as it was before the hurricane."

Puerto Rico and Cuba

Two U.S. Congressmen, Kevin McCarthy and Steny Hoyer, visited Puerto Rico in November to assess the situation. They found Puerto Rico "in a state of frenzied recovery," but with people cut off by destroyed roads and fallen electric lines, with little food and little medicine and "hope for a swift recovery even scarcer." They pledged to fight for more resources for the island to ensure not only that it can be rebuilt but also that it can withstand the next storm.

Meanwhile, a United Nations team went to Cuba at around the same time to assess the damage and recovery there. It found that the devastation was comparable to that experienced by Puerto Rico, but that the recovery had been swift. Voluntary teams rushed in to rebuild the collapsed infrastructure and the state provided insurance to agriculturalists and homeowners who had suffered damage. A decade ago, Cuba had rebuilt its power system into a series of 1,800 decentralized diesel and fuel-oil fired electric plants. The microgrid was quickly restored to full power a week after the hurricane. It is a system that has been opposed by private monopoly power companies.

Power grid collapse

In the second week of November, when the power grid should have been functional, it went down completely. The blackout was indication enough that matters could get worse for the residents. Reports from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) suggested that 40 percent of the grid had been repaired. But after this blackout, the grid collapsed to 18 percent, later recovering to 47 percent in a few days.

For nearly seven weeks, the residents of Puerto Rico have been living on generators and solar panels. This includes the few schools that are open. The Puerto Rican government had chosen a small firm from Montana that had close connections to U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. This sweetheart contract earned Whitefish, the Montana firm, $300 million to repair the collapsed grid. It turned out that Whitefish had no experience in such matters. It charged Puerto Rico $319 per hour for the work of a lineman but paid the workers only $63 per hour, the rest going to the coffers of Whitefish. When news broke of such malfeasance, the government had to break its contract with Whitefish.

Death toll

Meanwhile, controversy continues over the death toll from the storm. The government says that the total death toll is 55. However, Puerto Rican officials now say that the number is likely to be 472. But even this is a deflated figure, since there is now evidence that the government encouraged the cremation of bodies of people who died during the storm. The reason given was that without power, the bodies could not be refrigerated. But they were not all tallied towards the storm and post-storm death. High temperatures, lack of clean water and spreading bacteria have taken hundreds of lives that have not been registered as part of the death toll for the storm and its aftermath. Funeral home managers point out that the numbers given by the government are not correct. Given their own challenges, hospitals have few resources to provide accurate counts.

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Hardware In The Loop Market to Make Great Impact in Near Future by 2022

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The report offers a detailed insight into the upstream raw material analysis and downstream demand analysis along with crucial elements of Hardware In The Loop Market report for furthermore highlights key proposals for new project development along with offering an assessment of investment feasibility analysis. This study is a useful guide to all investors to identify the lucrative market avenues across different segments and geographical regions. The market entry conditions along with emerging avenues will help the new entrants to gauge the pulse of the market. Furthermore, the study tracks industry news in terms of new mergers and acquisition made by prominent companies to expand their product offerings across various countries. The report is a useful guide to market players, all stakeholders, interested market participants and investors to formulate their strategies.Click here for sample report @Scope of This Report:This report studies Hardware in the Loop in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2011 to 2015, and forecast to 2021.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, covering Vector Informatik GmbH, National Instruments Corporation, DSpace GmbH, Typhoon HIL, Inc., AEgis Technologies Group, Inc., Opal-RT Technologies, Inc., Siemens PLM Software, Inc., Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Private Limited, IPG Automotive GmbH, Speedgoat GmbH.By type, the market can be split into Hardware Platform, Test Management Software, Software Module..By Application, the market can be split into Automotive systems, Radar systems, Robotics systems, Power systems, Marine Engineering..By Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want) North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan, India.Buy a Copy of this report for a single user price of USD 3599 @Key Chapters of This Report :1 Industry Overview of Hardware in the Loop1.1 Definition and Specifications of Hardware in the Loop1.1.1 Definition of Hardware in the Loop1.2 Classification of Hardware in the Loop1.2.1 Hardware Platform2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Hardware in the Loop2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Hardware in the Loop2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Hardware in the Loop2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Hardware in the Loop3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plant Analysis of Hardware in the Loop3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Hardware in the Loop Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plant Distribution of Global Hardware in the Loop Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Hardware in the Loop Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Hardware in the Loop Major Manufacturers in 2016ContinueWho we areResearch Trades has team of experts who works on providing exhaustive analysis pertaining to market research on a global basis.This comprehensive analysis is obtained by a thorough research and study of the on-going trends and provides predictive data regarding the future estimations, which can be utilized by various organizations for growth purposes.
Global Ceramic Grill Market Research Report 2017

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In this report, the global Ceramic Grill market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Ceramic Grill in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesEUChinaJapanSouth KoreaTaiwanGlobal Ceramic Grill market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingKomodo KamadoBig Green EggPrimo Ceramic GrillsVision GrillsOnward Manufacturing Company Ltd/Broil KingKamado JoeGrill DomeSaffire Grill CoChar-Broil LLCBlack Olive GrillDownload Sample Copy From Here:On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoCeramic Charcoal GrillsCeramic Indoor GrillsCeramic Kamado GrillsOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Ceramic Grill for each application, includingIndoorOutdoorIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of ContentsGlobal Ceramic Grill Market Research Report 20171 Ceramic Grill Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Ceramic Grill1.2 Ceramic Grill Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Ceramic Grill Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Ceramic Grill Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Ceramic Charcoal Grills1.2.4 Ceramic Indoor Grills1.2.5 Ceramic Kamado Grills1.3 Global Ceramic Grill Segment by Application1.3.1 Ceramic Grill Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Indoor1.3.3 Outdoor1.4 Global Ceramic Grill Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Ceramic Grill Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 EU Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 South Korea Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 Taiwan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Ceramic Grill (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Ceramic Grill Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Ceramic Grill Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Ceramic Grill Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Ceramic Grill Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Ceramic Grill Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Ceramic Grill Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Ceramic Grill Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Ceramic Grill Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Ceramic Grill Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Ceramic Grill Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Ceramic Grill Capacity and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Ceramic Grill Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Ceramic Grill Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.4 Global Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.5 United States Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.6 EU Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.7 China Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.8 Japan Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.9 South Korea Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.10 Taiwan Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)4 Global Ceramic Grill Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)4.1 Global Ceramic Grill Consumption by Region (2012-2017)4.2 United States Ceramic Grill Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.3 EU Ceramic Grill Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.4 China Ceramic Grill Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.5 Japan Ceramic Grill Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.6 South Korea Ceramic Grill Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.7 Taiwan Ceramic Grill Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)5 Global Ceramic Grill Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Ceramic Grill Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.2 Global Ceramic Grill Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.3 Global Ceramic Grill Price by Type (2012-2017)5.4 Global Ceramic Grill Production Growth by Type (2012-2017)6 Global Ceramic Grill Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Ceramic Grill Consumption and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)6.2 Global Ceramic Grill Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2012-2017)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/Countries7 Global Ceramic Grill Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Komodo Kamado7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Ceramic Grill Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Komodo Kamado Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Big Green Egg7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Ceramic Grill Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Big Green Egg Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Primo Ceramic Grills7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Ceramic Grill Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Primo Ceramic Grills Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Vision Grills7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Ceramic Grill Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Vision Grills Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Onward Manufacturing Company Ltd/Broil King7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Ceramic Grill Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Onward Manufacturing Company Ltd/Broil King Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 Kamado Joe7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Ceramic Grill Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 Kamado Joe Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 Grill Dome7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Ceramic Grill Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 Grill Dome Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Saffire Grill Co7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Ceramic Grill Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Saffire Grill Co Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 Char-Broil LLC7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Ceramic Grill Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 Char-Broil LLC Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 Black Olive Grill7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Ceramic Grill Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 Black Olive Grill Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview8 Ceramic Grill Manufacturing Cost Analysis8.1 Ceramic Grill Key Raw Materials Analysis8.1.1 Key Raw Materials8.1.2 Price Trend of Key Raw Materials8.1.3 Key Suppliers of Raw Materials8.1.4 Market Concentration Rate of Raw Materials8.2 Proportion of Manufacturing Cost Structure8.2.1 Raw Materials8.2.2 Labor Cost8.2.3 Manufacturing Expenses8.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Ceramic Grill9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers9.1 Ceramic Grill Industrial Chain Analysis9.2 Upstream Raw Materials Sourcing9.3 Raw Materials Sources of Ceramic Grill Major Manufacturers in 20159.4 Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders10.1 Marketing Channel10.1.1 Direct Marketing10.1.2 Indirect Marketing10.1.3 Marketing Channel Development Trend10.2 Market Positioning10.2.1 Pricing Strategy10.2.2 Brand Strategy10.2.3 Target Client10.3 Distributors/Traders List11 Market Effect Factors Analysis11.1 Technology Progress/Risk11.1.1 Substitutes Threat11.1.2 Technology Progress in Related Industry11.2 Consumer Needs/Customer Preference Change11.3 Economic/Political Environmental Change12 Global Ceramic Grill Market Forecast (2017-2022)12.1 Global Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production, Revenue Forecast (2017-2022)12.1.1 Global Ceramic Grill Capacity, Production and Growth Rate Forecast (2017-2022)12.1.2 Global Ceramic Grill Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2017-2022)12.1.3 Global Ceramic Grill Price and Trend Forecast (2017-2022)12.2 Global Ceramic Grill Production, Consumption , Import and Export Forecast by Region (2017-2022)12.2.1 United States Ceramic Grill Production, Revenue, Consumption, Export and Import Forecast (2017-2022)12.2.2 EU Ceramic Grill Production, Revenue, Consumption, Export and Import Forecast (2017-2022)12.2.3 China Ceramic Grill Production, Revenue, Consumption, Export and Import Forecast (2017-2022)12.2.4 Japan Ceramic Grill Production, Revenue, Consumption, Export and Import Forecast (2017-2022)12.2.5 South Korea Ceramic Grill Production, Revenue, Consumption, Export and Import Forecast (2017-2022)12.2.6 Taiwan Ceramic Grill Production, Revenue, Consumption, Export and Import Forecast (2017-2022)12.3 Global Ceramic Grill Production, Revenue and Price Forecast by Type (2017-2022)12.4 Global Ceramic Grill Consumption Forecast by Application (2017-2022)13 Research Findings and Conclusion14 Appendix14.1 Methodology/Research Approach14.1.1 Research Programs/Design14.1.2 Market Size Estimation14.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation14.2 Data Source14.2.1 Secondary Sources14.2.2 Primary Sources14.3 DisclaimerBuy Now This Report From Here:Global QYResearch() is the one spot destination for all your research needs. 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Who is Negan?

In "The Big Scary U" viewers are shown Negan in a newly intimate way, and what we glean from this episode changes how we understand him. Who is the man behind the bat, and what motivates his way of life? Quite unlike in the past, Negan expresses a wide range of emotions which humanizes him, and he expresses his principles as well as details from his past, which until now have remained vague or simply absent. What does it take to finally draw out some of the secrets of this mysterious character, and does what we learn inform us about the nature and role of someone like Negan in a post-apocalyptic world?



Negan's Ego



Photo by Gene Page/AMC

While other characters (Rick. It's mostly Rick.) have been known to get carried away with their confidence and image, Negan's unwavering and brazen cockiness may not be just a self-indulgent shock tactic. Until now, who Negan is and why he is who he is has been a largely unasked and unanswered question. He seems to distract others from such questions through an odd combination of charisma and intimidation. Though Robert Kirkman has written much about him within the canon of the comic, he has maintained a somewhat two-dimensional persona in the television series. Finally, fans of the show are given a chance to understand what fuels Negan's ego.

Throughout his appearance in the series, Negan exudes an alpha masculinity which he uses to disempower other dominant male figures, and he does this by criticizing their manhood, quite literally and graphically. This episode in particular is scattered with phallic references, suggesting that power dynamics are a central theme this week. In fact, it isn't just Negan struggling with his cohorts over who is at the top of the pecking order, so to speak. Even Rick and Daryl get physical when they each try to take charge over the next course of action in their mission. Negan intimidates his lieutenants as well as Gabriel by making these awkward comments as well as swinging around his obviously phallic Lucille. Negan also attempts to dismantle Rick's efforts by belittling it as a simple game of "my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours." When Simon uses similar language while attempting to decide on their next course of action, Negan passionately and angrily shuts him down. Where does Negan's fixation with alpha masculinity come from? His manner of speech, his sexually symbolic weapon, and his harem of wives all attest to the importance of his masculine image. Why does Negan's ego rely so heavily on it? Is this method of asserting dominance and power ultimately effective?

Negan, the Saviors, and Hierarchy

Photo by Gene Page/AMC

Examining the tense conference among Negan, Gregory, and the Saviors reveals multiple weak spots in Negan's strictly maintained power structure. While Negan usually has no trouble ordering his subordinates around, this is the first time we see other Saviors challenging him with their own opinions and decisions. There are three Saviors in particular who pose a threat to Negan during this war. Viewers are well aware of Dwight's double dealings, and they perhaps still have hope that Eugene will come around to Rick's cause and aid it from within, but what about Simon?

As Negan's proclaimed "right-hand-man" and with his admittedly annoying Negan-esque mannerisms, it would appear that Simon is a devoted and trusted number-two for Negan, but could he be the true snake in the nest at the Sanctuary? Last season, Simon somewhat oddly invites Gregory to the sanctuary to talk about his concerns of an insurrection by Maggie at The Hill Top. The end of this conversation, though, is unheard by the audience as the camera pans back and drops the audio. Could Simon have sewn some kind of plan against the interests of Negan? To make this claim at the time would have been far fetched, but Negan's response to Simon's forwardness in including Gregory and hatching his own plan to simply wipe out The Hill Top is frightening and revealing. When Negan angrily shuts down Simon, he menacingly asks him if he's forgotten who's in charge and whether the two of them are "back-sliding." This power struggle between the leader and his right hand is mirrored by Rick and Daryl's disagreement. Is he referring to a point in the past when Negan and Simon were in a power struggle?

Was Simon the original leader of the Sanctuary, long ago usurped by Negan? Negan states to Gabriel that when he first got to the sanctuary, the man in charge wasn't really in charge, and so he had to take over. Did Negan put him in his place, as he so often does with other domineering figures, and then use Simon to his advantage? It is what Negan tends to do with people he considers strong or useful but doesn't want getting in his way (think back to his attempts to recruit Daryl and Sasha for example). To further this theory, the camera lingers on Simon when Gavin suggests that one of their own is a traitor, providing information to the other side that allows them to "see all and know all." These accusations obviously could be in relation to Dwight, but could both scenarios be true? Could Dwight, (possibly Eugene), and Simon all be working to take down Negan from within (and apparently unbeknownst to each other)? How could such a breach in Negan's power structure occur, and how could it affect the outcome of the war?

The Confession

Photo by Gene Page/AMC

So many questions about who Negan is and what motivates him are answered during his confession with Gabriel. While Negan rarely appears shaken or vulnerable (especially emotionally), viewers experience a profoundly humanized Negan as Gabriel gently pulls away at his ego-driven facade. There are two aspects of Negan we become familiar with for the first time: the emotional baggage of his past that he has brought with him into the apocalypse and the personal beliefs and principles since developed which now drive his actions.

Negan is typically portrayed in two moods: virulently angry or flippantly playful. This character has been the least emotionally dynamic of the show until now. When Gabriel coaxes an emotional confession out of him about the mistreatment and death of his wife, a tearful Negan exposes the deep guilt and sorrow he conceals within him. So, Negan is not all show, and he is not merely some marauding psychopath. He is capable of love and grief and regret. Perhaps his brutal survival tactics stem from a place of pain. Considering the emotions behind Negan's actions changes our perception of this character as well as our understanding of his motivations. Not only do we gain some emotional insight into Negan, we also learn about some of his fundamental principles.



Until now, it could have been easy to write Negan off as a shallow megalomaniac, brutally bent on dominating as many people as he can for selfish gains. We now know he has an emotional side, but what about his thoughts and beliefs? Unexpectedly, he admits that he is weak, but goes on to explain the nature of weakness as he understands it. He claims that all people are both weak and strong, but that we can use our weaknesses to build up our strengths. This bit of wisdom is oddly inspiring, and it suggests how much Negan has struggled (and perhaps continues to struggle). He also tells Gabriel that the saviors stuck inside the sanctuary without him will all die because he is not there to save them. He admits this with the heaviness of a man burdened with leadership, not one out conquering for it. This take on Negan's mythos accentuates his similarities with Rick. He also makes clear to the Saviors that people are the foundation of everything, and that they will not indiscriminately wipe out The Hill Top simply to eliminate a problem. So, is Negan some kind of twisted humanitarian? Is this what "saviors" look like in the apocalypse?

Finding purpose in one's life and one's death is thematically central to this episode and this show. Through his interactions with the Saviors and Father Gabriel, it is clear there is much more to Negan than an overblown ego, an anger problem, and vulgar antics. There is deliberate purpose behind his actions, and that purpose has been formed by a trying past, deep emotions, and the wisdom gained from them. The Walking Dead has continued to blur the lines between the hero and the villain, and this episode is proof of that. Negan may not be the leader that people want, but could he actually be the leader that people need? Negan certainly thinks so.

Photo by Gene Page/AMC

Ciara Cerrato was a projectionist and curator at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, and she currently is a poet and freelance writer in New York.

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Kannywood star actress, Fati SU, has described her colleagues decision to start producing Kannywood films in English language as a welcome development.

Fati, a Niger State University Public Administration graduate, disclosed this in a chat with PREMIUM TIMES HAUSA on Saturday.

While she said it was long overdue, the soft-spoken actress noted that it portends well for the Kannywood film industry.

PT: Do you think it is a wise move to start producing Kannywood films in English language, seeing that some of your colleagues are not fluent in English language?

Fati: I totally agree with you that many of us have some issues with speaking English. But people learn in life and if we keep doing it consistently, we will get there. It is not easy like you know but practice makes perfect.

PT: Critics are still complaining about the quality of Kannywood films when compared to Nollywood. Dont you think improving on the quality of Kannywood films first is a wiser decision?

Fati: Yes, you have a point here, but I think Kannywood has gotten to that standard or if you like point where we need to begin to appeal to our English speaking fans. This is why major awards now have a category for Kannywood films. We are also recognised in the annual African Movie Awards, which holds in London. Recall that ace Kannywood stars Ali Nuhu, Adam Zango, Ramadan Booth and Nafeesat Abdullahi are all recipients of that awards this year. They travelled to London to receive their awards. That being said, we do have room for improvement.

PT: Watching the first Kannywood-English film, There is a way, I could tell that your colleagues were not used to reading from the teleprompter and rendering their lines in English

Fati: I told you that we are freshers in this aspect but they will perfect their act with constant practice and time. We had to begin to produce Kannywood films in English language because we are aware of the fact that we have non-Hausa fans. This move will take our industry to the next level.

PT: Dont you think perfecting your English subtitling will do instead?

Fati: Yes that is a good idea but I think it is not a bad idea to also shoot Kannywood films in English and subtitle them in Hausa language.

PT: Why the insistence to shoot Kannywood films in English Language?

Fati: We want to prove a point; yes we are Kannywood but we can also produce our films in English.

PT: Kannywood films are said to be an imitation of Bollywood. Interestingly, Indians retain their language and even go on to succeed in America. Dont you think Kannywood can borrow a leaf from Bollywood?

Fati: I agree with you on this. That is all I will say.

PT: You have done quite well for yourself as a Kannywood actress. What is the secret?

Fati: Thank you for the compliment. I just try to do my best. I was a member of the Drama Club in my primary school and acted in English. I think my passion for acting has been my drive.

PT: When are you releasing your next English movie?

Fati: My next film which is titled, This is a way will be shown in cinemas in December. The trailer has been receiving rave reviews.

PT: Any last words?

Fati: I want to use this opportunity to thank PREMIUM TIMES English and PREMIUM TIMES Hausa for giving Kannywood a special attention. People can really read about what we do in Kannywood from your platform. And you are consistent. We thank you.
The first photos of the wedding between Banky W and Adesua Etomi in Cape Town, South Africa, have been released.

Regarded as the most talked about celebrity wedding in Nigeria in 2017, the couple on Thursday flew out of the country with close friends and family members to prepare for the grand finale of their nuptial tie.

Their traditional wedding on Sunday which was the talk of social media, had in attendance friends, associates and celebrities including Bovi, Basket Mouth, Kemi Adetiba, Tunde Demuren, Chigul, Lynxx, Juliet Ibrahim, M.I Abaga,Dotun Kayode, Toolz, Tolu Oniru, Linda Ejiofor, Sola Sobowale, among others.

Their engagement which was initially perceived as a publicity stunt was officially announced by Banky W in February.

Here are first photos of the event:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb7FgP-HcfJ/

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb7FhN0ho-_/
As the Chinese-owned Addax Petroleum winds up its operations on December 10, a confidential document has emerged showing how the company paid millions of dollars in bribes to Nigerian officials to secure juicy contracts in the oil industry, PREMIUM TIMES can report.

According to the report, there were payments for questionable transactions to Nigerian lawyers and a company owned by politician Emeka Offor, with a huge chunk of the money believed to be used to bribe government officials, PREMIUM TIMES can report.

The document, a report by leading audit firm Deloitte obtained this week by Swiss newspaper, Le Temps, said payments in excess of $20 million were made to four Nigerian legal advisors (one of them based in the U.S.), while more than $80 million was paid to Mr. Offors Kaztec Engineering Limited for questionable projects.

We have concerns over payments in excess of $80 million, which were made by Addax to Kaztec regarding construction projects for the Antan and Udele/Ofrima developments, the audit firm stated in the document dated November 18, 2016.

$70.8m was paid in 2015, including $48.7m for the Antan development, which was suspended in early 2015, and $15.8m for value engineering work on the Udele Ofrima development. This value engineering work has not taken place.

The audit revelations on the misuse of Addax corporate funds came amidst moves by the company, a subsidiary of Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Petroleum Corporation, to wind up some of its operations across the world.

Last August, it announced a proposed closure of its corporate offices in Geneva, Aberdeen, and Houston as oil prices continued to shrink.

In 2001, the Olusegun Obasanjo government granted a fiscal incentive of graduated rate of royalty based on the volume of crude oil produced from OPL 98/118, now OML 123, 124, 136, and 137, as against the flat rate of 20 per cent obtainable in the industry. The fiscal regime was deemed to become effective on January 1, 2000.

Addax claimed it committed a significant investment in excess of $3 billion in the development of the contract areas.

However, in July 2011, the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Department of Petroleum Resources raised an objection to the fiscal regime.

In 2014, Addax Petroleum dragged the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation before a federal court in Abuja over allegations of miscalculation of oil royalties and taxes and a breach of their 1998 Production Sharing Contract regarding the OMLs.

Joined as respondents in the suit FHC/ABJ/CS/1099/2014 were the Ministry of Petroleum Resources/Department of Petroleum Resources and the Federal Inland Revenue Service.

But just four days before leaving office, the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan negotiated a controversial out of court settlement with Addax Petroleum, agreeing to pay the company $3.4 billion (about N1 trillion).

Questionable legal fees

In 2015, PREMIUM TIMES reported how then Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke, negotiated the shocking deal in what industry experts said was reminiscent of the infamous Malabu Oil deal in which the same Mr. Adoke was involved in.

The parties expressly acknowledge and agree that this Agreement is being executed and delivered as part of a legally binding commercial transaction in full and final settlement of all disputes concerning or related to the applicable fiscal regime in respect of OML 123, 124, 136 & 137, the agreement stated.

The parties agree and acknowledge that time is of the essence with regard to the Settlement Agreement.

The audit report stated that high-level bribing of Nigerian government officials was instrumental in clinching the settlement.

However, in a letter to Addax dated September 7, 2015, the NNPC reversed that agreement in a decision endorsed by then newly elected President Muhammadu Buhari, in one of his first moves to clean Nigerias monumentally corrupt oil industry.

The Deloitte report alleged that a significant proportion of Nigerian contracts involved bribing of government and other related officials and kickbacks by Addax management.

The allegations included the use of company funds to buy a 75,000 Swiss Francs (about N30 million) Chopard watch intended as a gift for the then Nigerian Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke.

The watch never reached Mrs. Alison-Madueke.

Another allegation was the use of a Bermuda based company called Winfield to purchase about $150,000 worth of gifts to an unnamed Nigerian official.

The Nigerian official is alleged to have chosen the goods whilst in China and Addax paid for the goods through Winfield, the audit report stated.

There were also allegations that the Addax Chief Executive Officer acknowledged that the Nigerian legal payments were used for purposes other than legal work, with him quoted as saying what the lawyers do with the money after we pay it is none of our business, its only the result which counts.

In March this year, Zhang Yi, Addaxs CEO in its Geneva Office, and the Legal Director were arrested and charged with the payment of millions of dollars to some lawyers and an unnamed company in Nigeria.

In June, Addax Petroleum reached an agreement to pay 31 Swiss Francs (about N12 billion) fine in Geneva to settle the bribery allegations.

In the new document seen by PREMIUM TIMES, the law firms who received the over $20 million controversial payments from the company in relation to side letter negotiation in 2015 included Ahmed Raji and Co, Pollie Okoronkwo Immigration Attorneys, Solola & Akpana Chambers, and Consolex Legal Practitioners. PREMIUM TIMES contacted the named law firms.

Some of the concerns raised by the audit in the legal payments were unprofessional conduct, low standard documentation not of the standard of reputable law firms; unverifiable information (addresses for example), provided on invoices; extremely vaguescope of work which, in some circumstances, it was virtually impossible to determine what the law firms did; and inconsistent and contradictory explanations for the payments by management.

We have not received sufficient audit evidence that their payments were legitimate business expenses compliant with all relevant laws and regulations, the audit firm continued.

We suspect that some of these funds may have ultimately been utilised to bribe government officials to receive a favourable settlement in relation to the side letter as has been detailed in the whistleblowing allegations in this letter.

On the payments made to Kaztec Engineering Limited, the audit stated there was lack of adequate supporting documentation for the payments made in 2015 and, also, a lack of evident commercial rationale for a significant portion of the payments.

It noted that number of internal reports that were suppressed by management had expressed concerns about significant overpayments to the company.

We have not received sufficient audit evidence that these payments were legitimate business expenses compliant with all relevant laws and regulations, the report stated.

We suspect that some of these funds may have ultimately been utilised to bribe government officials to receive a favourable settlement in relation to the side letter as has been detailed in the whistleblowing allegations.

Audit report a joke

Deloitte said rather than Addax Petroleum management acting upon its audit recommendations, it chose to terminate its appointments with the firm in Nigeria, the Isle of Man, and the UK.

Mr. Offor is a controversial Nigerian politician who became broke in 2017, barely two years after donating $10 million to the Carter Centre to fight river blindness.

He did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

Pollie Okoronkwo, a U.S.-based immigration attorney, did not also respond to e-mail requests for comments.

The Nigerian law firms, however, pushed back vehemently on Deloittes claims of questionable payments made to them and the likelihood that it was used for bribing officials.

If they said they didnt know what the payment (to us) was for, then its a joke, Okey Egbuchu, a partner at Consolex Legal Practitioners said when contacted by PREMIUM TIMES.

It was a court case, so its a matter of records that we had representation so its not an issue at all. We represented (the company) in the matter, its a public record that you can look at, its at the federal high court in Abuja.

They paid for our services, its been a while now so I dont have it (the case) offhand but it involved plenty of money, hundreds of millions of dollars.

Henry Chibor, a partner at Solola & Akpana Chambers, said his firm never worked for Addax, adding that he was not aware of any audit report.

We didnt do matters for Addax, I dont know what you are talking about, any person can go and write whatever he likes, Mr. Chibor told PREMIUM TIMES.

If you have such document, I think that the only way forward is for us to see it then we will be able to answer anything. I cant sit here and begin to talk about a company that has no legal relationship with us, we didnt work for.

Because any person can write anything he likes, until we see it then wed know what the person is talking about. Addax that has gone down a long time ago, what did Addax do with Solola & Akpana?

Ahmed Raji of Ahmed Raji and Co said his firm was approached by Addax in 2014 and they started work for them in early 2015.

We did work for Addax, we were given letter of instruction and we did our job and then we agreed on fees, said Mr. Raji, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.

Addax is worth about $4 billion, they had an issue that was threatening the entire state and then they contacted us as lawyers, we have letters of appointment and we did our work and we were paid our fees, I dont know where they got that one from, the lawyer said about allegations that part of the legal fees was used in bribing Nigerian officials.

If they know any public officer that we bribed, let them name him.

If a lawyer opens an office and people walk in and they say look, this is our problem. You look at the magnitude of the problem and you say this is my bill. And you do your best. If they now want to be basking in the euphoria of speculation, they can go ahead and try it and then well meet up.

And if you are speculating that somebody had tried to bribe a public officer, as good auditors wont you go and ask them? Wont you know an audit trail and look at inflows and outflows from the account?

Because its very sickening, you are talking of bribing public officers, who are the public officers? Name them. Our accounts are there, they didnt say we were paid in cash, where is the outflow to any public officer if they are not a useless and irresponsible set of auditors? This is our story, this is my argument and there is nothing like that.
PREMIUM TIMES republishes an interview with former Vice President Alex Ekwueme, who died Sunday in a London hospital.

The interview, granted to leading Hausa newspaper, Rariya, was first published by PREMIUM TIMES in 2013. Mr. Ekwueme spoke about his life, his politics, his struggles and his visions for Nigeria.

Excerpts:

How was growing up like in Oko in the 30s?

Well, Oko was a very rural village but I didnt actually grow up there because my father was a church teacher for the Church Missionary Society (CMS) which is now the Anglican Church and at the time they were called CMS Agents that is Church Missionary Society Agents. Today, they call them Evangelists. They were responsible for going to rural villages where Christianity had not penetrated and primarily to set up Christian churches so although officially I am from Oko, I was not actually born in Oko. I was born in a village about 11 miles east of Oko call Uga because sometimes my father was in charge of Emmanuel church at Uga so I was born within the church premises and from there, after I was four, my father was transferred to another town Nkpologwu, to Emmanuel Church Nkpologwu.

There, he stayed for just one year before he was transferred again to another church, St Jude Adazi Ani where we stayed two years and where my younger brother, Professor Laz Ekwueme, the present traditional ruler of Oko was born. After that, we moved to a place called Oba which is the remotest part of the state that my dad had to serve. He was the pioneer missionary there. He set up the first church and assimilated the first Christians and after two years there, we came back to Oko. That was when we started living at Oko from 1940 generally and that was at the age of seven.

It was then a very rural setting. And from Oko, I went to a primary school in a neighbouring town which was about four miles away and as we moved on foot every day until 2 years after that- February, 1942, my father died and my aunt then asked me to come and live with her. When my father died my mother had me and the traditional ruler Professor Laz and another Prof, the surgeon, Obumneme, and after my father died my mother delivered twin girls so the burden of looking after three of us and the twins was too much for her and her husband. So, my aunt asked me to come and live with her which served two purposes.

First, it relieved my mother the burden of having to look after me and secondly, I was able to keep my aunt company because she was living alone. But from there, to continue going to school there meant a journey of five and half miles every morning on foot which was very strenuous. But it toughened me because we used to leave in the morning as early as five oclock and get to a stream on our way and we stop there to have our morning bath and from there we start walking from that stream to the school went uphill and it was very very strenuous. And you have to get to school on time because when you come late you know you are in trouble. When we close, we start trekking back five and half miles and when I get back to my aunts place, I had to go to the stream to fetch water for us to use and come to help cook the evening meal. It was very strenuous but it was useful as I said it toughened me and I was able to cope with tough situations later in life.

From there to Kings College. How did you get to Kings College from a village?

Thats a good question. Fortunately, my elder brother had gone into DMGS, Denis Memorial Grammar school at Onitsha. In fact, my dad just settled him in at the Grammar school in January and he died in February. So, he was the one who suggested that I should take entrance examinations to what he considered good secondary schools in Nigeria and Kings College was one of them. He mentioned Government College Umuahia which was also a good school and then, of course, there was DMGS, the one he was attending, there was Methodist College Uzuakoli, Hope Waddel College Calabar and so on.

And the first examination that came up was that of Kings College. And that was June 1944, and then a month and half after we did the examination I was asked to come for the interview. They sent a warrant to enable the child (me) travel by train to Enugu at the age of eleven.

And then you settled in Kings College?

Yes, we did the interview and I was given a scholarshipfour of us were granted scholarships and only 25 were taken to class one the following year. Officially, we would have started in September but it was during the war so we started in January 1945.

Who were your contemporaries at Kings College?

Out of a class of 25, we were only (those of us still alive today) about seven. We were four from the east and that four out of coincidence were distributed among the 4 provinces. I was the only one from Onitsha province, and there was Gogo Nzeribe the trade unionist, who was from Owerri Province, there was Okon from Calabar province and there was another person from Ogoja Province. There were four of us from the East, twenty from the West and only one from the North, Bashir from Ilorin.

In the class above us, we had Odimegwu Ojukwu and his first cousin, Emmanuel Ojukwu, and another boy who later became the President of the Nigerian Bar Association. We had quite a few bright people like Professor Olaitan who was at University of Benin and who later became an Arch Deacon. There was Adesugba who later became the Deji of Akure and others.

Was it after High school that you went to study architecture in the US?

Yes, it was after Secondary school. I did my school certificate in December 1949 and we finished from Kings College in June 1950. Then in December 1950, I did a Higher School Certificate examination which is called A Levels now in Arts subjects- English Latin and history. Then, when the results came out the following month and I passed, the Principal who was my mentor, had gotten me back to the school to work as Technical Assistant and Science Instructor to the junior classes.

While I was teaching there, in December 1951, I took another Higher School Certificate in the Sciences- Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. It was the Principal who suggested that I should study Architecture because it was a field in which there were no Nigerians at the time and that with my wide background and my ability in arts, I should make a good architect. Fortunately, then we set up that year and they asked for arts students in North America in the secretariat in Broad Street and for the first time, Nigerians were eligible to apply for a scholarship under the Fulbright Act sponsored by the Department of State to exchange students.

That year, four Nigerians were awarded this scholarship but because we were a colony, we were not eligible to be awarded the scholarship as Nigerians so we were awarded the scholarship as part of the United Kingdom contingent. So, they took two of us undergraduates and two postgraduates but they took us first to England where they took us round all the scenic places: English speaking places like Cambridge, Oxford, the Theaters, Birmingham and opera and so on. After they thought we were sufficiently drilled, we went across to the United States.

While you were there, you were eclectic in your choice of study-philosophy, sociology, law. Why did you take all these diverse courses and you had degrees in all of them?

First, I had some crucial courses I had passed before coming into the full programme. I had exemptions from Intermediate Bachelor of Arts degree from London University so Id registered for the London University BA degree before I got the scholarship to come and study Architecture. While I was studying Architecture well, the American system then, coursework, we had to have a certain number of credits to get a degree and because I had done those Higher school in arts, English and History and sciences Physics, chemistry and mathematics, I was exempted from English language courses. I was exempted from mathematics courses for architects even from the sight and sound which you had to do in preparation for mechanical equivalent of buildings in architecture.

But having been excepted from all these, I think they didnt give me credits for that so I still had to make up to get the required number of credits required for graduation. So, I used all those open spaces to concentrate on my electives- philosophy, sociology and so on. Within three years of my coming in, I took my London University External BA examination in History, Philosophy and Constitutional law. That was in June 1955 and in August that year, thats 3 months after, because I had accumulated enough courses in sociology, I was eligible to get a degree in sociology.

Is it true that you were the first to establish an architectural firm in Nigeria?

January 2 1958, Ekwueme Associates Estate and Town Planning was registered and that was the first architectural firm in Nigeria.

You said that when you came back after your PhD, you joined politics. How did that happen?

At a dinner we had in Glasgow after my PhD, there were many Nigerians there. Around September or so, the military government had lifted the ban on politics. Those who came from Nigeria were intrigued by the change from military to the civilian administration and at the dinner, they all said that I should come back and contest for the governorship of Anambra state.

I gave two conditions. First and foremost, I had spent 24 months doing this work and that I was really exhaustedreally exhausted because during the research work and preparing for my LLB examinations, it took a lot away from me. And I shuttled back and forth to Nigeria 13 times during those 2 years. Although I had partners who were running the firm but still those people who gave us their commissions asked of me because they knew me. So, I had a personal responsibility to ensure that those projects were properly handled so I travelled 13 times. So, I said first I need to rest. After that, the next condition was that I didnt have the resources for campaign and wont be able to rush into the campaign with that kind of energy. What they told me was dont worry. We will take care of all that. That I should just accept the nomination.

I came back to Nigeria in November and by the time I came back, they had formed the parties and it was four days before the primaries but however, they postponed it for another one week. So, I came in 11 days to the primary nomination. And true to the promise they made, they had mobilised people. And many of those who had indicated interest to run all stepped down and said they would support me.

Anambra state as it was then composed, had polarisation between its north which is now Enugu State and south which is presently Anambra and people from Enugu state already felt they were dominated by people in what is Anambra now. And CC Onoh wanted to be governor and from my own part the state, there were three of us. We sat down and everyone stepped down except Chuba Okadigbo. So, we came to the primaries and there were three of us coming from what was then Anambra and only one coming from Enugu so the result was a foregone conclusion. Then we went to Casino Cinema in Lagos, on December 10, for the presidential primaries. It was there that Alhaji Shehu Shagari was nominated after Maitama Sule stepped down so we didnt go for a second ballot.

There were general arrangements the party had agreed to before I came back from the United Kingdom. The north was to produce the president and they were six of them contesting for it. Four western states would produce the chairman of the party and what is now the South-east would produce the vice president and what was called southern minorities or the south-south today should produce the senate president. So, after the presidential primaries at Casino Cinema, matters came up for the selection of Vice President. The committee that was set up by the party to go to Anambra and Imo to find out whom they thought would be able to partner with Alhaji Shehu Shagari in the contest of the country went around but didnt quite conclude.

In fact they were to do their work between that time and to finish by December 26th or 27th so what happened was that because I was not mentally prepared for the post of vice president, what I came back to contest was that of governor. So, on the 21stDecember, while the committee was going round, I left the country with my family. We went to Douala in the Cameroons. Then on the 24th we moved from Douala to Nairobi and spent Christmas in Nairobi and then came back to Nigeria on the 29th December by which time we thought they must have finished the selections but they hadnt.

At the Hotel Presidential Enugu, where the state chairman of the party, Dr. Ralph Orizu, former president of the Senate was staying, he called leaders of the party from Anambra and Imo to come to his suite and when they came, he told them that the slot for vice president had been allocated to Anambra and Imo and that Anambra and Imo States should bring one person each who they would like to occupy the slot. He said those two people should bring their CVs the next morning.

So, as it turned out, the state executive submitted my name. The next morning, we submitted our CVs to Alhaji Shehu Shagari and he spent the next day in Enugu. Then the day after that, they moved us from Anambra to Benue. When we got to the Anambra/Benue border, the Benue contingent had come to meet us. While we were exchanging greetings, Alhaji Shehu Shagari called me aside and said that he had reached an agreement and that he would like to work with me.

I thanked him for the honour for considering me a suitable associate for the office of the vice president. So, we went back to Lagos after the tours and they fixed a National Executive Council meeting.

I was in London for my convocation when the treasurer of the party in Anambra state called me on the phone and said what are you doing there? I tried to explain to him and he said jump into a plane and come back immediately. I said, what is happening? But he said just jump on a plane and come immediately. I came back and so on the 23rd January at the NUC, I was invited to Jibowu street and after the NUC met, they had consultations with Alhaji Shehu Shagari and he announced to them that the party had adopted me as running mate to Shehu Shagari.

How did you emerge as an Igbo vice president to a northern President when Zik (Nnamdi Azikwe) from your locality was the presidential candidate in another party, NPP? Did it add any political pressure on you since both of you are from Anambra state?

One of the things I mentioned at the dinner in Glasgow was that I would like to get involved in the governorship thing and I would like to do it on the platform of a party that has a nationwide appeal. And as of the time we were doing primaries at Enugu, Zik had not declared for NPP. Infact, a delegation had gone to see him at Nsukka and I think it was on their way back that one of them, Chief Agbaje from Ibadan, died in an accident on their way back. What he told the delegation was that he would consider their invitation for him to join and that he would announce a decision in due course. But as soon as we finished the nomination in Enugu, the following week, NPP came to do their own. Zik then declared for NPP. He was persuaded by a team that went from Lagos, some of his old colleagues NCNC, to come and join the NPP and to lead. Waziri Ibrahim pulled out and took his own group as Great Nigeria Peoples Party (GNPP).

Did you have any form of relationship with Alhaji Shehu Shagari before your nomination as his running mate?

Well, it was when he was commissioner for finance and a mutual friend of ours who has passed on now, took me to him because the military were acquiring my properties in Port Harcourt and had defaulted. They had not paid their rent up to date so he told me that Alhaji Shagari would be able to help me. So, I saw him and he called Alhaji Shehu Musa, the late Makama Nupe who was a deputy Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Defence, and told him that he was sending me to him and that he should solve the problem. So, when I got to Alhaji Shehu Musa office, he invited one Shittu, one of his assistants, who took the matter and they sorted it out and paid all the arrears they were owing. That was my closest contact with him prior to NPN convention.

What was the nature of your working relationship with the President?

We had a very close working relationship. He is a person who is forthright and principled. I tell you one thing. The first cabinet council meeting we had, papers had been circulated earlier on but throughout the meeting, I didnt say anything because usually memoranda were signed by the president and of course he didnt draft them. It was drafted by civil servants but declared under his name. So as soon as the meeting ended, he invited me to his office. It wasnt a very expansive office. From the council chambers to his office was just a flight of stairs. He asked me why I didnt make any contribution to the discussion that went on at the council. I told him that the memoranda came under his signature and I found a lot of things I was not happy with and I didnt think it would be tidy for me to come and start pointing out those issues because it would seem as if we were working at cross purposes.

So, I said that there are two ways of handling these issues. Either I see these memos and add my input before they come which would preserve the integrity of the presidency or not. He said that I should go ahead and add my views. He said he didnt know that this problem was sometimes created by civil servants and sometimes they come so late, a day or two before council meeting and there wont be time to go through it. He said that I should be free to express my views on any of the items so I thought it was very unusual because most people would be sensitive about seeing a paper they signed being criticised by their deputy. So, we worked together amicably.

One of the traits of your government is that the President and his deputy were men of proven integrity but the government was accused of massive corruption. Give us an insight on how two of you dealt with the issue of corruption

The problem of corruption was magnified beyond proportion because the media was in total control of UPN which was in opposition to us. Well, as you can tell, when the military came in and they set up military tribunals, the first people to be jailed for corruption were those taking kickbacks from the Great Nigeria Insurance which went up in flames a few days ago.

It wasnt NPN government, it was UPN people government. And the people who had longer sentence for abuse of office was not NPN governors, it was NPP governors. So, the thing was magnified out of proportion. When contracts were awarded, it was out of the competitive tendering process. Directors had power up to N250, 000, permanent secretaries had up to so much and ministerial tenders board had so much and beyond that, it has to come to Federal Tenders Board. Now admittedly, we had a few ministers whose conduct fell below the norm and its a difficult thing to police because it was not something that was easily proven so that you say this is the proof.

Once you heard that sort of thing and you confront the minister or the person concerned, he denies totally that there was no such misconduct. But what happened then was that during the second term, of course, we knew that this problem was there So, we required all those who were appointed ministers to sign undated letters of resignation so as not to cause us any embarrassment so that when we have this sort of story about a minister collecting money, we would just say that he has tendered his letter of resignation on personal grounds.

Shortly after the 1983 coup, there was a coup. The principal officers, particularly at state and federal levels, were arrested and detained by the military including the president. What can you tell us about what happened?

As you know I was first the person to be arrested. They came to my house at about 1 am and then it was my friends (Emir of Gwandu) son, Major Jokolo, who came to arrest me.

After I was arrested, we went to the House of the Speaker where they arrested Benjamin Chaha from Benue. In the first term, we had NPN/NPP accord so the Speaker came from NPP and that was how Ume Ezeoke became Speaker, otherwise, Benjamin Chaha would have been Speaker. Because of that, he was made a minister. That position was zoned to North-central. So, Benjamin Chaha was coming to the House for the first time. He was a school teacher and my house was very close to his place and apparently, the driver forgot the way to his house and he went round and round looking for it. So, when we got there anyway, he was very frightened. When he came to the car and saw me, he calmed down. He said if I was there and was not panicking, why should he be panicking.

They said you had information that these soldiers were planning (a coup). Why didnt you arrest them? It was alleged that both President Shagari and you got a hint that they were planning the coup?

Maybe President Shagari got a hint, I didnt have a hint

During the regimes of Buhari and Babangida, you were relatively quiet. You didnt engage government during this period but when Abacha came you were so active even leading some opposition to the military. What were you doing during Babangida and Buhari period?

First, in the Buhari period which lasted for 20 months, I was in detention. I went from Bonny Camp first to a House in Temple Road and from there to Kirikiri then from Kirikiri to Ikoyi Prison. It was there in Ikoyi prison in August that Buhari was shunted aside by Babangida. It was Babangida that got us out of Ikoyi prison and back to house arrest where we started. House arrest first at Hawksworth then from Hawksworth to Roxton then from Roxton to Milverton. That went on like that for a space of about 10 months.

From there, I was taken to my home at Oko and placed under restriction. I could not go out of my Local Government. I was not allowed to make any statements so naturally, I had to comply because I signed that I would comply with and I did comply. After the restriction within my local government, they expanded it and said I should not move out of my state. From my state, I was kept within Nigeria until 1989. Six years after that, I was allowed to travel out of the country. That was why you didnt hear much from me. Then Babangida came and promised to hand over after a period of time. He set up institutions, Centre for Democratic Studies, so many institutions, and created parties. Well, what I decided was that I would not participate in any political activity. I wouldnt be a member of any of the parties and institutions.

Then when Abacha came, what really triggered me was his modus operandi. He came and it was clear that he didnt have any regards for the civilian population. He thought everything was to be accomplished by force of arms. We organized first as civil society, nine of us to tried and really appreciated that if we dont extricate ourselves from the military, we will remain slaves to them forever. Then from the Institute for Civil Society, we decided to hold a summit which was held at Eko Hotel. While that was holding, he (Abacha) sent thugs to disperse us. After that, we heard that he was planning to transit from a military to civilian Head of state and we found that that was unconscionable.

So, after the summit, all of us in civil society met again and recognised the summit and felt it was widely assumed that they were all supporting Abacha because he was a Northerner so we agreed that they would make the first move, telling Abacha that what he was doing was not acceptable. So, we met at Kaduna and drafted a memorandum which Solomon Lar delivered to him (Abacha) by a group of 18. Then after that, I called a full meeting at Glover Hotel in Yaba where 34 of us met and I prepared a memorandum which we gave to him which was G34 Memorandum.

So, it was the G34 that metamorphosed into PDP?

Well, the G34 midwifed the PDP. After Abachas death and General Abdulsalam came, we were allowed to start partisan politics. It was G34 that called the associations we had in Lagos and eventually decided to get political associations because we had come to the conclusion that we must forget every difference and come together so the associations that were in existence came together  ANC, ADP, PDN, PCS, PNS. And so that was how PDP emerged formally on August 21 at the National Conference Centre in Abuja. It formally became a party.

During the 1994/95 constitutional conference you championed the restructuring of Nigeria into 6 geo-political zones. What was the motivation?

What was exactly wrong with the structure of the Nigerian Federation at independence and thereafter? We had three regions-the North, the East and the West. The drawbacks of that structure were that the north was bigger than the other two regions put together which meant that in a parliamentary system if all the other MPs vote together, they will always produce the Prime Minister. This meant that some parts of the country will consider themselves second-class citizens if they cannot aspire to the highest office in the land. That was the first pitfall.

The second one was that we met the structure for each region such that in each region, we had a majority ethnic group and then a group of minority ethnic groups. In the north, Hausa/Fulani, then the others like Kanuri, Gwari, Nupe and so on coming down to others like Angas and Tarok.

In the West, we had Yoruba and then Edo, Urhobo, Itsoko Itsekiri, Western Ijaw. In the East, Igbo majority, then Ibibio, Efik the Eastern Ijaw, Ogoja area, Ogoni. So, all these minority groups felt that by the structure of the region they were again second-class citizens. So, it was in their interest that they should be in opposition. The Midwest was able to be established as the first region. The minorities in the east and north were not so lucky so my thinking was how do we cure these two defects.

First, the overbearing size of land in the federating units and secondly the conflict between the majority and minority groups and of course if you cure these two then we have a stable country. So, we said that we should have in the north, 3 zones: North-west, mostly Hausa/Fulani, North-east and North-central mostly minorities, South-west mostly Yoruba, the South-east, mostly Igbo and South-south mostly minorities again. Although we have some Igbo in Delta, you have some Yoruba in Edo and you have some Hausa in Auchi so, with this arrangement, we now have 3 majority zones and 3 minority zones.

The presidential campaign you ran during the formation of the PDP was exciting because of the issues and the difference. Most of the northern elders like Adamu Chiroma or those in NPN rallied around you but somehow Obasanjo was also supported by the military. So, the military was for Obasanjo and politicians were for you and he got it. In 2003, a similar thing happened. What actually played out then?

It was not quite right to say that politicians were for me while the military was for Obasanjo. Two politicians, for example, were for Obasanjo. Rimi was a politician. Even in the stadium there where they were choosing the candidate, he was campaigning for Obasanjo in Jos. And then Bamanga Tukur who was in ANC who I campaigned for in 1983 when he was running for the governorship of Gongola. He gave his reasons for supporting Obasanjo in the book This House Has Fallen. You see where he was interviewed and he said that Obasanjo was like a truck driver and I was like a limousine driver.

You know Obasanjo is a rough person and I was a gentleman type of politician and that what Nigeria needed at that time was a truck driver and not a limousine driver. So, he was supporting Obasanjo. Even Solomon Lar, may his soul rest in peace, who was the chairman of the party and who was my deputy in all those organisations, supported Obasanjo in Jos. Jerry Gana who was my Secretary in Civil Society, Secretary in G34, Secretary in PDP, Secretary of Board of Trustees when I was Chairman, he was also an Obasanjo man.

So, it was not just not a military affair. We had more to it but what most people didnt understand is that I could have scuttled the whole thing in Jos because in November 1998, at a meeting of the National Executive Committee of the party, which we had before local government elections of December, the government had said that it was the performance of the local government elections that would decide which parties would get final registration.

So, it was crucial for every party to succeed in local government elections and at this meeting it was stated in black and white that anybody who did not win his local government will not be eligible to contest for the presidency. Anybody who did not win his ward will not be eligible to contest for the governorship. After the election of December 5, the next NEC meeting, which was chaired by late Afolabi because Solomon Lar was not present that day, approved and confirmed this decision of the NEC.

Now in my pocket in Jos, I had a copy of the decision and also the constitution of the party. The chairman of the party was like the chairman of the Board and Secretary of the party was like the Managing Director so it was the Secretary who had executive powers, not the Chairman. When the result was announced in Jos and they said Obasanjo won, I had the option of saying I didnt accept it or say I accept it, embrace it and work together to make sure the party wins. I could have said that of all the candidates that contested, it was only 6 that were eligible.

I had the highest number of votes so I expected the party to send my name to INEC and having said that and read the minutes of the NEC meeting it was incontrovertible that a person who did not win his local government area, he didnt win his ward, he didnt even win the polling station in front of his house so with the NEC decision he couldnt be the partys candidate. And this decision was mentioned at the screening committee when we applied to contest.

When the screening committee read the letter and its implications, Solomon Lar (may his soul rest in peace) wrote to them to plead that they should give Obasanjo provisional clearance to contest.

Secondly, it could have given the military the chance to prolong their stay which would defeat all the efforts we made and the risk we took to place our lives on the line during Abacha. My own personal ambition was not worth putting Nigeria at risk and that was why I embraced Obasanjo and went on to campaign for him. Few days after, fundraising was done at the congress hall and I chaired that fund-raising ceremony.

Times have changed since you left government. One is corruption. The magnitude of corruption now is very high. The military accused Shagari government of corruption but what is happening now makes it look like childs play. How do you feel?

I feel very sad that I think we must leave the blame squarely at the feet of the military because the military that was accusing us of corruption had absolutely no checks. I said earlier on that no contract was awarded without tender. Except those of defence that didnt have to come into the open, military procurement. Otherwise, everything was transparent. But in their own case, there was no processing. Just call somebody and give him a contract without due process and unfortunately the civilians that came after them thought that that was a way to operate and the public servants helped to encourage corrupt practices in all areas of governance.

But as I said, when we had a workshop on anti-corruption in 1991, I told them that corruption exists in every country and most human beings have the tendency of being corrupt if they think they will get away with it. Corruption is low in America because it is difficult to get away with it. They will track you down. We can reduce corruption if we take just two steps.

The first one is to allow an exception to our jurisprudence especially the part we inherited from Britain that says you are assumed innocent until you are proven guilty. And that puts the burden of proving you guilty on the person who accuses you so that can be very difficult burden to discharge. So, we need to give exception in some cases and say you are presumed guilty unless you prove yourself innocent. For instance, if you are a civil servant on level 10 and you are driving a Mercedes Jeep and you are living in a palace in Maitama and your lifestyle is such that cannot be justified or defended by your legitimate earnings then you are deemed guilty until you prove otherwise.

If the structure of that jurisprudence makes that exception, then the incidence of corruption will reduce. The second one is to have whistle-blowers protection act. Anybody who demands gratification from you, you are free to meet his demands provided you will blow the whistle on him immediately and whatever is been recovered from him, some of it would be returned to you and you will be protected by law from being accused of inquisitorial harassment. A slight change in our jurisprudential norms and promulgation of a Whistle-blowers Act will bring down corruption.

Your last attempt at the presidency was the nearest for any person of Igbo ethnicity. How do you foresee an Igbo presidency in the nearest future?

Well, its something that has to be based on structural refinement. I dont think any Nigerian will be happy if his regional block or ethnic block or geopolitical block is seen to be excluded from vying for the highest office in the land for whatever reason. In 1987, I understand Umaru Dikko gave a press conference in London after he escaped from here where he said that the coup which took place in December 1983 was put in place by the Army to prevent me from taking over from Shagari in 1987 and they didnt want it to linger until that time so they decided to do it at a time we were complaining of the elections, hoping that they would receive the sympathy of non NPN supporters.

I dont know how Umaru got his information but that is what he said. Then in 1999, the same scenario played itself out in a different way. Also, in 2003. You know the format was that presidency was just a single term. Now if I had won in 1999, by 2003 I would have served one term and it goes to the North-east with a vice president from South-south to serve one term. By 2007 a south-south man would have served as a president and he would have someone from North-west as his vice so by 2011, a person from North-west will be president with a VP from South-west. By now we would have the opportunity for every geopolitical zone to produce a president and I am persuaded that every geo-political zone in this country has competent man power and can serve in the highest office in the land.

How would you like the Nigerian society to judge you?

Well, I cannot and should not blow my own trumpet. My music teacher in secondary school said you have to blow your own trumpet because if you dont, no one will blow it for you until it gets rusty. But I will like to be remembered as someone who came into public office to render service and rendered that service selflessly.

What is your vision for Nigeria and the future?

My vision for Nigeria is that Nigeria should become a nation rather than a country. Ghana is a nation. The type of massacre of people from certain groups that takes place from time to time in Nigeria wont happen in Ghana. You will not see people from Ashanti descending on the Fantis and the Ga and others and killing them as if they are not citizens of the same country. And when you talk a Ghanaian without being told you will see that he is talking as a Ghanaian but when you talk to a Nigerian, by and large it will not show that they are Nigerians first and foremost.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday said his administration saves the nation about N25 billion monthly through the stoppage of unnecessary allowances for government officials and blockage of other financial leakages in all its agencies.

President Buhari stated this in Jos, at the graduation ceremony of Senior Executice Course 39 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPSS, Kuru, Plateau state.

Represented by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Mr. Buhari scored his government high saying the government has effectively tackled corruption.

He said the government will not relent in its fight against graft.

Mr. Osinbajo said the onging elementary school feeding programme has targeted 5.5 million children to be captured in 19 states before the end the administrations tenure.

He said challenges being faced in power supply in Nigeria will soon be history.

He urged authories of NIPSS to improve on recommendations made by its participants while discussing national economic development.

He assured that the federal government would make good use of recommendations of the course participants on agriculture.

Earlier, the acting Director General, NIPSS, Jonathan Juma, said participants who had attended the institute since it was established 39 years ago, have impacted positively on nation building.

The official said the mission of NIPSS is to serve as a centre for policy, advocacy, advice and training for Nigeria and Africa in the context of a dynamic and changing world.

The chief executive said the institute is affected by recession and requested for financial intervention from the federal government to help replace its operational vehicles.

He explained that members of Course 39 during their study year toured 12 countries and 12 states within Nigeria.

The graduation of 66 Senior Executive in Course 39, brings to 1990 members who have passed through the Institute since its creation.

The security agencies dominated membership of the course which had 8 females; 28 out of the 66 participants for the 10-month course are members of the security agencies including a female commissioner of police.
A House of Representatives member, Adamu Chika, has given up the opportunity of seeking re-election, citing lack of public trust in Nigerian lawmakers.

The member, who represents Shiroro/Rafi/Munya federal constituency of Niger State, communicated the unprecedented decision in a letter to the Niger State chapter of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.

Mr. Chika confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES he wrote the letter, and said he stood by it.

In his memo, the first timer said given the low level of public trust in federal lawmakers, he would only be seeking National Assembly office again for personal interest.

In line with the teachings of our Prophet Muhammad (SAW), that any person seeking to be appointed or elected into public office should be rejected, now that there is eroding public trust in legislators of the National Assembly, it is not worth the trouble to seek such office unless it is for my selfish and personal interest, Mr. Chika wrote.

National Assembly members faces constant criticisms by Nigerians for their poor work ethics, unending corruption scandals and for the huge perks they receive.

Nigerians criticise the lawmakers for paying themselves millions of naira in quarterly allowances, and failing for years to disclose details of the National Assembly budgets.

Members are also accused of contributing very little to governance, with constant investigations and reports that are hardly implemented.

Mr. Chika serves out his four-year term in June 2019, and is constitutionally entitled to seek re-election. But the lawmaker says he will give up that opportunity.

He also drew the attention of the APC to the lack of cordiality between the government of Niger and federal legislators from the state.

Though I have quite a number of reasons not to contest the upcoming election, I want to draw the attention of our great party APC in Niger state to the disconnect between the governance (sic) in the state and the membership of the National Assembly, the state assembly and other key stakeholders because there is an absence of synergy, he wrote.

He said key APC leaders in Niger state were in pursuit of individual agenda and were at loggerheads with the ideals of the party.

He thanked the party for giving him the platform to serve.
A first class Nigerian graduate, who had been unemployed for two years since she left the university, has been offered employment after PREMIUM TIMES published a report on her.

Twenty-two-year-old Odufuwa Sola had almost given up and started learning tailoring at Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, before the job offer came.

The Physics Electronics graduate from the Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo State, took to Twitter in October to beg people to help her out, after her search for a job yielded no result.

Ms. Sola did not just make a first class but was the best graduating student in the university for that year with a 4.83 G.P.A. She had the honour of delivering a valedictory speech in the school.

Ms. Solas story underscored the unemployment crisis in the oil-rich Nigeria which is one of the largest economies in Africa.

Immediately the story was published, Adamu Garba, the CEO of IPI Solution Ltd, an IT firm with offices in Lagos and Abuja, reached out to Ms. Sola via Twitter and within days she was offered an employment in project development and IT solutions after a job interview. She has also been enrolled in a mentorship scheme by the company.

Ms. Sola is trying to settle down on her new job and a new life in Lagos.

Its actually a different field from what I learnt in school, she said. Its all about programming.

The company has done well by providing me with a new laptop, eBooks, and videos to aid my transition into the IT world.

And I have colleagues around me who are always willing and ready to help. Its challenging but I know with time I will adjust, she said.

Ms. Sola said she loves her new job and that the pay was good for a start.

She thanked PREMIUM TIMES for doing a story on her and also thanked her new boss, Mr. Garba, for giving her the opportunity to work in the IT company.

Christopher Olowokere, the Head of Physics with Electronics department, Ajayi Crowther University, said he was aware that Ms. Sola had been offered a job. He expressed delight over it and also thanked the newspaper for the story.

The CEO of IPI Solution Ltd, Mr. Garba, who said he was moved by Ms. Solas story, said he picked her Twitter handle from the PREMIUM TIMES report.

I just sent a Twitter message to her requesting to know if she was available for a job interview. She came in for the interview, she displayed a lot of potentials. She is an intelligent person, we said lets give her the opportunity to start work immediately, said Mr. Garba.

Mr. Garba said Ms. Sola now has a great opportunity for a promising career since the future of the worlds economy is dependent on IT.

He blamed Nigerias worsening unemployment situation on the government and the university system.

The Nigerian universities do not teach the students how to apply knowledge, he said, adding that Nigeria could create millions of jobs if only the government was willing to explore the potentials available in IT.

These five companies, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple combined have about $3.6 trillion in their pool.

As Im talking to you, Apples earnings now is twice bigger than Nigerias GDP. And this is a company of 66,000 staff, while Nigeria has more than 186 million people.

What is the government doing to empower the local IT guys? Mr. Garba said, while also advising the government regulatory agencies to stop implementing policies that block multinational IT companies from coming in to play big roles in the Nigerian market.

PREMIUM TIMES asked Ms. Sola about the lessons she has learnt from what has happened.

I have learnt that I need to come out of my comfort zone, try something new, and take risks.

There is also this Yoruba adage that says, When you have a problem and you keep it to yourself and dont share it with others, at times it wont get solved, she said.
On Tuesday, the Nigerian Senate resumed its legislative activities.

In the course of the week, the senators deliberated on matters ranging from the plight of retired judges of the state high courts, the need to harmonise the process of paying the retirement benefits of judges, to the rejection of President Buharis Residential Electoral Commissioner, REC nominee.

Below are nine major activities that took place at the senate this week:

Tuesday

1. The Senate on Tuesday called on the federal government to immortalise the late former Vice President, Alex Ekwueme, by naming the Federal Polytechnic, Oko, or other key federal institution or asset after him.

This was sequel to a motion on The Passing on of Former Vice President, Dr Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme (1932-2017), sponsored by Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, at plenary.

2. The Senate announced a new date for its planned deliberations on the proposed 2018 budget submitted by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The Senate president, Bukola Saraki, on Tuesday announced that the discussions will now start on November 28.

3. Following a motion moved by Senator Chukwuka Utazi (PDP, Enugu), the Senate on Tuesday resolved to probe the failure by state governments to pay as and when due the severance gratuity, pensions and arrears of other entitlements to retired judicial officers.

It also wants the National Judicial Council, NJC, to take over the payment so as to ensure that they are done promptly.

4. The Senate urged the Nigerian Army to reinstate Chidi Ukoha, a colonel, who was wrongfully dismissed alongside 38 other officers in June 2016 as well as cautioned the Army authorities against arbitrary disengagement of officers.

The lawmakers unanimously took these decisions after adopting a report by the Ethics and Privileges Committee.

5. The Senate Committee on Diaspora and Non-Governmental Organizations as well as that on Foreign Affairs and Special Duties on Tuesday explained why they were yet to call for a public hearing over the 26 Nigerians who died on a Spanish warship on their way to Italy.

At a joint committee meeting held at the National Assembly, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Diaspora and Non-Governmental Organizations, Rose Okoh (PDP, Cross River) said both committees will need to partner with the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking In Persons, NAPTIP, as well as the Ministry of Information to get more details about the victims.

Wednesday

6. The Senate resolved to review the security infrastructure of Nigeria, with a view to coming up with new ways to address insecurity in the country.

The resolution followed a lengthy debate on the strength and drawbacks of establishing state police in Nigeria.

7. The senate on Wednesday resolved to set up an ad-hoc committee to investigate the clash involving the State Security Services (SSS), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) over the arrest of two former security bosses, Messrs. Ayodele Oke and Ita Ekpeyong and to report its findings in two weeks.

The resolution was made after the senate was thrown into a rowdy session when a lawmaker, Biodun Olujimi, accused President Muhammadu Buhari of losing authority on his administration, while responding to a motion on the face-off raised by Dino Melaye, Kogi-APC.

Thursday

8. The Senate on Thursday rejected the nomination of Ahmad Mahmud as the Resident Electoral Commissioner for Zamfara State but confirmed the nomination of Rufus Akeju and Mahmuda Isah of Lagos and Kebbi states respectively.

These decisions followed a report by the Senate committee on INEC on the screening of the nominees.

9. The Senate committee investigating the controversial reinstatement of fugitive ex-pension reform task force boss, Abdulrasheed Maina, into the federal civil service on Thursday reported that the task force headed by Mr. Maina recovered about 222 houses and investments from pension suspects in Abuja and other major cities across the country, and asked for more time to complete its probe.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) spent about N6 billion to establish a business school in the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, Kaduna.

The universitys Vice-Chancellor, Ibrahim Garba, made this known on Saturday at ABUs 40th convocation ceremony held at its main campus, Samaru, Zaria.

Mr. Garba said the business school began as a faculty, covering Accounting, Business Administration and Economics Departments.

The vice said that the development gave room for expansion of the departments and introduction of related academic programmes.

He said that the ABUs Faculty of Medicine had been transformed into ABU College of Health Sciences and headed by a provost.

The college has taken off with four faculties of Basic Clinical Sciences, Clinical Sciences, Basic Medical Sciences and Allied Health Sciences.

Along with this development is the commencement of three new academic programmes beginning from 2017/2018 session.

These are Bachelor of Dental Surgery, Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Sciences and B.Sc. Medical Radiography, he said.

The vice-chancellor said that the university had introduced e-learning methodology in academic delivery to tackle growth in the number of students.

Mr. Garba said the e-learning was in line with developments in pedagogy and technology.

He said that ABU last year introduced four additional courses in its Department of Mechanical Engineering.

He said that the university had continued to improve and expand the existing facilities for teaching and research within the limit of available resources.

Mr. Garba said the university was using Tertiary Education Trust Fund and Presidential Need Assessment Intervention Fund to execute the projects.

The Group Managing Director of NNPC, Maikanti Kachalla-Baru, said at the occasion that he was impressed by the performance of 50 of the graduating students who had first class degree in different fields.

He announced NNPCs scholarship up to PhD level for the overall best student with Grade Point Average (GPA) of 4.93, Al-Amin Bashir-Bugaje, from Electrical Engineering Department.

NNPC will sponsor him fully to wherever he wants to study in this world up to PhD. Level, he said.

Mr. Baru said that NNPC had been at the forefront of fostering education in Nigeria.

Earlier in an address of welcome, the ABU Chancellor, Nnaemeka Achebe, said: Since my installation as the Chancellor of this university on Nov. 1, 2015, I have found this university to be vibrant and promising.

It has enormous human and material resources and a number of specialised research institutes, particularly agro-based ones.

These institutes include the Institute for Agricultural Research, National Animal Production Research Institute and National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services.

He said that the institutes had over the years made significant contributions to the agricultural sector of the Nigerian economy.

(NAN)
Governor Jibrilla Bindow has said he has no immediate plans follow Atiku Abubakar out of the ruling All Progressives Congress.

The Adamawa governor said his relationship with the former vice president would remain cordial and mutually beneficial for the foreseeable future.

The governor was elected under the banner of APC and will continue to remain as APC governor, Adamawa State Commissioner for Information, Ahmed Sajoh, told PREMIUM TIMES Saturday.

Mr. Sajoh said the APC national leadership, which has reportedly been unsettled by Mr. Atikus exit Friday morning, should exercise no fear or apprehension.

Mr. Atiku, who was the vice president from 1999-2007, cited poor governance and the partys shortcomings for his resignation from the ruling party.

He said APC had failed to deliver on its promises to Nigerians who have long been desperate for improved economic interventions.

Mr. Atiku, a founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party, joined the APC in early 2014, barely a few months after the party was established to challenge the then-ruling APC.

The APC has welcomed the development in a backhanded reaction to PREMIUM TIMES Friday afternoon, admitting on the one hand that Mr. Atikus exit was a big loss while recognising the politicians rights to pursue his personal ambition on the other.

Mr. Atiku did not immediately say which party hell move to next, but suggestions are rife that hed concluded plans to join the PDP, which has been openly courting him in recent months.

The spinning rumour mill also has it that Mr. Atikus departure would trigger a wave of defections from the APC to PDP across the country.

Mr. Bindow, widely seen as Mr. Atikus protege, has been amongst the names of top APC defectors being bandied around in political grapevine. His name has popped up alongside that of the Minister of Women Affairs, Aisha Alhassan, who had since pledged loyalty to Mr. Atiku and his political choices.

But Mr. Sajoh said neither his principal nor his cabinet members were set to follow Mr. Atiku, even as he assured that their relationship with the former vice president would remain unblemished.

The relationship would not be affected in any way, Mr. Sajoh told PREMIUM TIMES by telephone. The former vice-president respects the governor as the number one citizen of the state; the governor respects the former vice president as a prominent son of the state.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, management is scheduled to meet with the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee, FAAC, on Monday to attempt to reconcile financial records.

Discrepancies in revenue figures presented to the committee by the NNPC on remittances to the Federation Account had triggered a dispute, leading to the unexpected cancellation of the regular FAAC meeting for November, last Thursday.

The monthly meeting usually held to consider and approve revenue allocation to the three tiers of government was abruptly adjourned indefinitely when members found that the details of revenues actually remitted to the Federation Account for sharing did not add up to what was earlier presented to the FAAC Secretariat.

The FAAC, which has the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, as Chairman, also has the Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, as member.

Other members of the committee include the Accountants-General and Commissioners for Finance in the 36 states of the federation, along with representatives of government revenue-generating agencies, namely the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS; Nigeria Customs Service, NCS and the NNPC.

Following the discovery of the discrepancies in the records, the Chairman, Forum of Finance Commissioners of FFC, Mahmoud Yunusa, said the meeting had to postponed till further notice following directives from their respective state governors.

The FFC Chairman, who is also the Adamawa State Finance commissioner, said the FAAC would only reconvene after all the discrepancies have been reconciled and the revenue figures in the accounts sorted.

Although Mr. Yunusa had hinted of an emergency technical meeting next week between the finance commissioners and the state accountants-general, to review the situation, PREMIUM TIMES learnt on Saturday that the enlarged FAAC meeting is scheduled to reconvene on Monday to attempt to thrash out the alleged discrepancies.

We are meeting with FAAC on Monday to iron out the issues, spokesperson of the NNPC, Ndu Ughamadu, said in a text message in response to PREMIUM TIMES inquiries on the issue.

We remitted. There was an issue raised on data. It was more of interpretation of the data. Hopefully, it will be resolved next week, Mr. Ughamadu added.

The issue about discrepancies in records of revenue remittances to the Federation Account has been a recurring decimal in NNPCs operations over the years.

Between 2011 and 2012, the NNPC was indicted for withholding from the Federation Account about N450 billion it realised from the sale of the countrys crude oil.

A FAAC audit had found out that the revenue, which should have been remitted to the Federation Accounts in compliance with the requirement of the Constitution for all government revenues, was diverted for other purposes without approval from the National Assembly.

Consequently, the FAAC panel had recommended the Corporation to refund the entire money by paying about N6.33billion every month in over 67 installments.

The repayment, which commenced in September 2011 was completed in June 2017, according to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Mahmoud Isa-Dutse.

Again, in March 2016, a new report by the Natural Resource Governance Institute, NRGI, titled: NNPC draw blank check, also indicted the Corporation for allegedly withholding billions in oil revenues from the government account.

According to the NGRI, within the first half of the first year of the Buhari administration, the NNPC withheld over $4.2 billion (about N824.7 billion) out of a total of $6.3 billion (N1.24 trillion) revenues realised from crude oil sales in the second half of 2015.

The report said the withheld revenues represented about 66 per cent of the total  $1.4billion earnings from Nigerias regular crude oil exports for the period, while $3.4 billion from domestic crude oil sales, and $1.5 billion from oil sold from the corporations upstream subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC oil fields.

The report said only $2.1 billion (about N413.7 billion) was transferred to the Federation Account.

Besides, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI also has its fair share of reports implicating the NNPC for unremitted revenues.

The transparency and accountability agency reported in the April 2017 edition of its Policy Brief that at a time, the country was desperately looking for foreign loans to bailout its comatose economy, the Corporation failed to remit over $21.8 billion (about N7.2 trillion) and N316.1 billion oil revenue from its operations to the Federation Account.

NEITI Executive Secretary, Waziri Adio, said the unremitted funds came from federation assets divested to NPDC and its legacy liabilities; payments for domestic crude oil allocation to the NNPC, and dividends paid from investment in the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG, but withheld by the NNPC.

Details included outstanding $1.7 billion from a total of $1.8 billion as a result of the transfer of eight oil mining leases, OMLs from Shell Petroleum Development Corporation, SPDC, and $2.2 million from four other OMLs from the Nigerian Agip Oil Company, NAOC, to the NPDC respectively.

About $148.3 million paid as cash calls on the transferred OMLs, in addition to about $1.5 billion legacy liabilities, as well as about $15.8 billion that accrued as NLNG dividends between 2000 and 2014 were yet to be remitted to the Federation Account.

The NNPC is also one of the government agencies and organisations a forensic audit identified as notorious for not remitting government revenues in their operations, a development that re-strengthens calls for reforms.

The NNPC was specifically indicted among several other agencies found to have failed to remit over N450 billion revenue into government coffers between 2010 and 2015, contrary to the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who on Friday dumped the All Progressives Congress, APC, has arrived Yola to a tumultous welcome by a mammoth crowd of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, supporters.

Mr. Abubakar, who has not disclosed the party he would pursue his thinly-veiled presidential ambition is believed to be considering the PDP, his former party.

Mr. Abubakar, who arrived the Yola International Airport and was welcomed by PDP supporters led by the state and local government executives, later went to pay condolence to the family of one of his close friends, late Adamu Yaro before retiring to his residence.

Speaking on the development, the Adamawa chairman of PDP, Tahir Shehu, said the party was happy with the development and hoped Mr. Abubakar would formally declare for PDP.

He is one of the founders of the party and we have been looking for him to return to the party; we have been discussing with him for month before this development, he said.

PDP is now a better party at all levels and we are looking forward to his joining us formally to further strengthen the party to take over at all levels.

He (Atiku) just arrived and we accompanied him on a condolence visit to one of his associates house, we will allow him to rest before we meet him again for further discussion and persuasion to join us, Mr. Shehu said.

Reacting to the development, the State Organising Secretary of APC in Adamawa, Ahmed Lawan, said the party was not disturbed by Mr. Abubakars action, saying that it would not affect the partys popularity in Adamawa.

We have never taken Atiku seriously as a party member, particularly in Adamawa and his movement out of our party will certainly not affect the partys popularity and general acceptance in this state.

APC is for the masses and the masses are with us; the masses are happy about what APC governments are doing from the state to national level, Mr. Lawan told PREMIUM TIMES.
Former Abia governor, Orji Kalu, said on Saturday that President Muhammadu Buhari might not be interested in getting an automatic ticket to re-contest.

Mr. Kalu told journalists at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, that the president would prefer a situation where other candidates would explore the democratic process to test their popularity.

Buhari himself is not even looking for automatic ticket, Mr. Kalu said.

He is a man that is very fair and free in what he does.

And his feeling is that if any candidate is willing to contest against him, he should come out.

So President Buhari is also feeling that an automatic ticket for him is not right.

He believes that the political space should be opened up for other people who also want to contest and he wants an open primary (elections) to take place, he said.

He said he would support Mr. Buhari should he indicate interest to run for a second term.

I have said it times without number, that the president needs to consolidate on his achievements because he is very popular.

He is still the only person carrying 15 million votes in his back despite his tenure being besieged by illness.

So the president genuinely deserves a second tenure, Mr. Kalu said.

He also ruled out the chances of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) coming back in 2019.

Mr. Kalu said Mr. Buhari was under restraint not to expose the huge corruption that took place at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

He said if Nigerians knew what happened at the NNPC, they would not allow any of the looters to run away from the country.

Mr. Kalu wished former Vice President Atiku Abubakar well on his future endeavours following his decision to leave APC. (NAN)

Editors Note: The headline for this report has been amended to accurately reflect Mr. Kalus remarks.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-23 04:55:24|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Israeli President Reuven Rivlin (R) and Governor of the Bank of Israel Karnit Flug (L) attend a ceremony uncovering the new 20 and 100 NIS banknotes in Jerusalem, on Nov. 22, 2017. Israel will distribute new banknotes of Israeli New Shekel (NIS) in 20 and 100, said the governor of the Bank of Israel (BOI) Karnit Flug on Wednesday. (Xinhua/JINI)

JERUSALEM, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Israel will distribute new banknotes of Israeli New Shekel (NIS) in 20 and 100, said the governor of the Bank of Israel (BOI) Karnit Flug on Wednesday.

The new banknotes, which will start circulating from Thursday, present advanced standards of security, innovation and accessibility, and contain a variety of security features against counterfeiting, according to the BOI.

The new NIS 20 banknote is red and bears the portrait of the Poetess Rachel Bluwstein, with a length of 129 mm. The new NIS 100 banknote bears the portrait of the poetess Leah Goldberg. It is orange, and is 143 mm long.

The BOI clarifies that banknotes from Series B of the new shekel, which are still in use by the public, will continue to serve as legal tender for a number of years, and will continue to circulate in parallel with the new banknotes.

Since the process of replacing the banknotes is gradual, the public is not required to take any action at this stage to replace the banknotes, said the bank, adding that the BOI will publish guidelines concerning the replacement of banknotes from Series B.

With the objective of increasing the public's awareness of the new banknotes' entry into circulation, and the public's acquaintance with the security features included in the banknotes, the BOI will begin a public awareness campaign among the general public, entitled "Easy to check, easy to authenticate" through media outlets that are accessible to various population groups.

Among other things, information flyers and pamphlets will be distributed in five languages through bank branches, the post office, and various commercial and public entities.

In recent months, the BOI has worked to notify and provide guidance to the companies and major entities in the economy that use cash, regarding the upcoming entry into circulation of the new banknotes and how to use them.

In addition, the BOI provided advance samples of the new banknotes to banks, and to the importers and operators of automatic vending machines, so that their machines could be calibrated and adjusted for the new banknotes.
WINNERS

Contact

Annette Densham

***@publicitygenie.com Annette Densham

End

-- Seven Australian and one New Zealand small business women returned home from the prestigious Stevie Awards this week with a massive haul of awards for their achievements in business growth, innovation and making a difference.Competing on a world stage in 90 categories, the women won in 20 of those including the Grand Stevie, 5 gold, 7 silver and 13 bronze.Over the past few months, the women have been part of the Award Winning Adventure  a training program developed by Annette Densham and Lauren Clemett designed to guide small businesses to access awards."What is incredible is how many of these businesses are only a few years old. In such a short time, the dedication and focus of these women have grown their businesses to the point they stand out," she said."Every woman who participated in the program won an award. They took out categories across Woman of The Year, Most Innovative Woman of The Year, Women Helping Women, Best New Product/Service, Entrepreneur of The Year, Executive of The Year and Woman Run Workplace of The Year."On the night, the enthusiasm and excitement from the Australia table was a stand out," Annette said. "With people coming up after the event complimenting us on our achievements and our energy."There was a resounding message from the evening, as each of these winners took to the stage  that their business is more than just making money. That there is a purpose to what they are doing, and they are driven by the desire to make a difference in other people's lives."The judges saw this. It shined through their entries."Annette said most of the award winners are corporate refugees and women over 40. "The small business space is flourishing in Australia especially women in business. We are recognising our skills and abilities, and taking charge of our financial futures," she said.The Stevie Awards for Women in Business are the world's top honours for female entrepreneurs, executives, employees and the organisations they run. Entries came from public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small businesses. The 2017 awards received entries from 25 nations and territories.More than 1,500 nominations from organisations of all sizes and every industry were submitted this year. Stevie Award winners were selected by more than 170 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process."The judges were so impressed with the accomplishments of all of the Stevie Award-winning women and organisations. The 2017 Stevie Awards for Women in Business received a record number of nominations and had a record number of ceremony attendees," said Michael Gallagher, founder and president of the Stevie Awards. "We congratulate all of this year's Grand, Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award winners for their achievements."Details about the Stevie Awards for Women in Business and the list of Stevie Award winners are available at www.StevieAwards.com/Women.Winners:NSWRanda Halberih  MATESQLDKelly Kingston  One Purse One PlanetBelinda-Jane Dolan and Ana Rajaeian Tonkin - The Clariti GroupLauren Clemett  Ultimate Business PropellorAnnette Densham  Publicity GenieVICKathy Ashton  Flourish Nutritional MedicineNZKimberley Sumner  She Prosperity
Annette Densham at Stevie Awards

Contact

Annette Densham

***@publicitygenie.com Annette Densham

End

-- Sitting in a library, the new kid at another school, Annette Densham would lose herself in stories. They were her best friends. Tales of adventures, heroic people and epic stories of trials and tribulations kept her company.This love for stories was the foundation for a career spanning 30s years of print journalism, corporate communications and small business public relations.It was after she lost her high paying corporate role in 2013, she fell into small business. She started Publicity Genie  a PR agency for start ups and micro businesses  to help them tell their story without having to pay thousands to a big agency."Starting a business from nothing, with no capital, meant there was not a lot of money for advertising and marketing," Annette said. "I used the strategies I tap into for my clients  storytelling and clever PR."One of those tools is awards. "People love a hero story, especially of people who start from nothing and create something to help others," she said."Business awards are a great way to share stories of triumphs and tap into third party credibility. There is nothing more powerful than a judge saying your business is awesome and the media stories that follow."However, as the person behind the stories, Annette had to get used to being in the limelight."It was awkward being out in front. All my career has been about making other people shine. I had to get over myself. This is something I tell my clients. If you have a story to share, a story that can inspire, it is selfish not to tell it," she said."There is no room for modesty in business. You have to get good at telling your story. I just listened to myself."Annette has since gone on to be recognised as an internationally acclaimed PR agency for her work with small business and for her innovative automated PR program Genie Lamp."Now with my business partner, Lauren Clemett, we have created an Award Winning Accelerator to help guide, encourage and train other people in business to enter awards," she said."To walk my walk, I also enter awards for Publicity Genie. This year, at the 14annual Stevie Awards  Women in Business, we were recognised with silver for Innovative Women of The Year, bronze for Best New Business Service of The Year and bronze for Employee of The Year."But not only that, through the Award Wining Accelerator program, we helped nine Australian and New Zealand small business women win a massive haul of awards for their achievements in business growth, innovation and making a difference and not to mention the many others who have attended our award winning lunches, who have been inspired to enter awards."Competing on a world stage in 90 categories, the women who came to New York for the Stevies won in 20 of those including the Grand Stevie, 5 gold, 7 silver and 13 bronze."Annette said people in small business have to be creative when it comes to marketing their business. "Awards is one of those ways. Yes, being in the limelight is uncomfortable for most people but that discomfort is overshadowed by the feelings of pride and a sense of accomplishment when you win," she said.
New this year is the CP Holiday Train tracker, an online tool that allows our massive following in North America and beyond to track the train as it makes its way across the continent. To follow along, please visit http://www.cpr.ca/holiday-train/

For more information and regular updates about the CP Holiday Train and its journey, visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/HolidayTrain/ and check out the new promotional video about what to expect this year https://www.facebook.com/HolidayTrain/videos/10155389435098495/

About Canadian Pacific

Canadian Pacific is a transcontinental railway in Canada and the United States with direct links to eight major ports, including Vancouver and Montreal, providing North American customers a competitive rail service with access to key markets in every corner of the globe. CP is growing with its customers, offering a suite of freight transportation services, logistics solutions and supply chain expertise. Visit cpr.ca to see the rail advantages of CP.

SOURCE Canadian Pacific Holiday Train
VANCOUVER, Nov. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Samumed is a leader in biotech research for regenerative medicine - that also happens to be the most valued biotech startup in the world.

As Samumed added more people to its team, and embarked on more ambitious and expensive projects, the CFO of Samumed, Cevdet Samikoglu, felt the need to root out any operational inefficiencies and problems that could impede its growth.

Samumed turned to Procurify, a purchasing software solution, to streamline its lab operations and procurement process.

"Given our rapid growth, it would have been impressive for us just to maintain our previous procurement timeline. Instead, Procurify has cut that time in half, which is truly outstanding." - Cevdet Samikoglu, CFO, Samumed

Biotech insiders will attest to the importance of streamlining lab operations. When high growth companies such as Samumed scale quickly, they need to keep up with the increase of personnel and purchases. What the most successful biotech companies in the world do is adopt systems to manage company growth and control spend.

"Procurify hasn't just freed up time and created efficiency  it has allowed our accountants to file their reports with the confidence that all their data is up-to-date and accurate."

About Procurify

Procurify is reinventing the way companies spend, track and report.

For companies looking to make their purchasing process manageable, Procurify is a software solution that offers convenience and accessibility. Company purchases do not have to be overwhelming or complex, Procurify offers a smarter way to manage spend for hundreds of companies around the world.

SOURCE Procurify Technologies Inc.
The Sociologist, the Philanthropist, [and] the Race-leader are not unaware of the New Negro, but they are at a loss to account for him... for the younger generation is vibrant with a new psychology; the new spirit is awake in the masses, and under the very eyes of the professional observers is transforming what has been a perennial problem into the progressive phases of contemporary Negro life.

Those stirring words from the opening paragraph of The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925) were written by author, educator, philosopher and cultural critic Alain Leroy Locke (1885-1954), who, although he was a shade under five feet tall and weighed about 100 pounds, became a cultural and literary giant after editing that groundbreaking book. As a result of Lockes work on The New Negro, he has been called the godfather of the Harlem Renaissance, that legendary explosion of black American artistic and social achievement during the 1920s.

The New Negro featured the visual artistry of painter-educator Aaron Douglas and Winold Reiss, a German-American artist, as well as influential essays, journalism, social science, and fiction from such well-known Harlem Renaissance literary figures as W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Toomer. However, there have been few biographical works about Locke. The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford Univ., Feb. 2018), a nearly-1,000-page opus by UC Santa Barbara black studies professor Jeffrey C. Stewart, is the most definitive biography of Locke to date.

I have been carrying this book around with me for a while, says the Chicago-born, California-raised Stewart. Reflecting on his first encounter with Lockes work at Yale, where Stewart earned his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in American studies, he adds: I worked on Lockes life in my 1979 dissertation. What drew me to Locke was his philosophy of cultural pluralism. I had studied William James, and the idea of pluralismthat said that the American character is multiple thingsthat was very attractive to me.

Stewart has edited two earlier books on Locke: The Critical Temper of Alain Locke (1984), a collection of Lockes essays on art and culture, and Race Contacts and Interracial Relations (1992), a compendium of Lockes Howard University lectures from 1916. But writing a biography on Locke, who had a commanding grasp of history, aesthetics, philosophy, music and anthropology, would prove to be a daunting challenge.

One of the things I confronted after Id done my initial work on him was that Lockes education and his perspective were so much richer and broader than mine that, in order to really understand how he thought about things, I had to expand my own education, Stewart says. One of my struggles was to find the right literary form. When you do life writing, its different from doing other forms of historical or scholarly writing: its more literary, more imaginative. It is almost a fictive type of language.

Noted historian David Levering Lewis, Stewart says, suggested reading George Painters biography of Marcel Proust. In Lewiss book, When Harlem Was in Vogue (1981), he called Locke the Marcel Proust of the Harlem Renaissance. Proust was a literary person who was gay and in love with the literary aesthetic, Stewart explained. So I picked up Painters book, and I saw how he developed his prosewhere he moved in and out of the personal and the public. And that gave me a model, from a stylistic standpoint.

Stewarts book covers the major signposts in Lockes life from his black bourgeois upbringing in Philadelphia to his success at Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy. Locke became the first African-American Rhodes scholar in 1907, studied at Oxford and the University of Berlin, and had long career as a philosophy teacher at Howard University. Stewart also chronicles how The New Negro evolved from a Harlem gathering in 1924, where many of the neighborhoods finest writers were introduced to influential white literary patrons.

In 1925, at the behest of Survey Graphic magazine, Locke compiled a special edition of the magazine entitled Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro, which was later expanded into book form.Locke had a new concept of the black city, which is what Harlem was, Stewart says. Locke says that Harlem is not a ghetto; its a crucible, where different elements of the black community have been brought in and mixed up, and something creative comes out of it. He believed that our creativity, our art, our music, and our culture can be a way to revive the inner city. He believed that the art is in the people. And what we have to do is find a way to create the conditions for the art to come out of the people.

Nevertheless, while Locke championed the artistic souls of black folk, he may have had a difficult time actually identifying with them. As Stewart writes in the book, Locke took black Victorianism and turned it into an art of performance on the streets of Cambridge.... His dress defined him as cosmopolitan, even worldly, and not niggerish.  In one memorable letter to his mother, chafing at the racial expectations of being the first black Rhodes scholar, Locke wrote: I am not a race problem. I am Alain Leroy Locke.

Locke was gay and his sexual orientation added multiple layers of complexity. Stewart thinks he probably had a secret emotional empathy with blackness that was kind of a rebellion against the black bourgeoisie. He adds: Being gay meant that he would never be accepted in the bourgeois formation of the black community, because that foundation is profoundly heteronormative and patriarchal.

Locke also had tense relationships with some of his peers. His colleagues at Howard, notably art historian James Porter, resented the fact that Locke produced critically acclaimed art exhibitions. Locke changed the title of Claude McKays incendiary poem White House to White Houses so as to not offend white readers. And he publicly belittled Jessie Fausets novels and Zora Neale Hurstons folklore.

Stewart guesses this may have had something to do with Lockes emotional life. Though Locke had a number of love interests, including sculptor Richmond Barthe and poet Langston Hughes, he felt largely unloved, Stewart says. He was mean to people, especially women. Locke felt that he was in competition with them in a way that I think was self-defeating.

Locke helped to pave the way for those who would come after him. Stewart writes, His praise for [such black writers such as] Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Bruce Nugent, and Nella Larsen... gave the New Negro a freedom to explore sexuality in all of its variety, such that later artists, such as Luther Vandross, Michael Jackson, and Prince could make sexual ambiguity as much an attraction as race.

For Stewart, another aspect of Lockes genius was his ability to produce books for general readerships, as evidenced by one of his major accomplishments, the Bronze Bookletsa series of pamphlets he edited on black music, race, literature, the Caribbean, and economics. He got Ralph Bunche, Sterling Brown, and Eric Williams to write those books, Stewart says. The black tradition always meant that intellectuals write in a language that people can understand..

Stewart stresses that Lockes work is just as relevant today as it was in the 1920s. The New Negro can update and change, depending on the context, Stewart says. We have the possibility of reinventing ourselves in the 21st century, through arts and culture, just as weve done all along. The New Negro always comes from the younger generation, who make a move that the older generation hasnt thought of. Black Lives Matter has reinvented the civil rights movement, and thats the New Negro impulse to reinvention.

Eugene Holley Jr. is a freelance writer who contributes often to Publishers Weekly.
When Barnes and Noble closed its last store in Washington, D.C., in late 2015, the city became the largest in America without a bookstore chain outlet. For readers who, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, spend the most per capita on reading materials in the country, it was the latest blow in a decadelong string of closures that also laid waste to the citys independent bookstores, including all nine locations of Olssons Books and Music, the LGBTQ standard Lambda Rising, and the popular downtown haunt Chapters.

In the Capitol Hill neighborhood, the 2009 closure of Trover Shop Bookstore hit resident Laurie Gillman hard. It was the low point for independent bookstores in the city and there was no bookstore for people in Capitol Hill, she says. A longtime participant in community groups, she couldnt believe that one of the citys most ethnically and economically diverse neighborhoods couldnt sustain a bookstore. I got really obsessed, she says. Then she set about opening East City Bookshop.

Gillman is not alone. Across the city, a resurgence of independent bookselling is underway, with veteran booksellers following in Gillmans footsteps and returning to neighborhoods that have been without bookstores for a generation. Scott Abel and Jake Cumsky-Whitlock left senior positions at D.C.s Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe in 2017, but they werent ready to leave bookselling or Washington. We have as much indie bookselling experience as anyone, Abel says. Its what we know and what we love. We felt that we shouldnt just throw it away.

They started looking across the city at potential locations where they could open a store without hurting fellow independent booksellers bottom line. The northeast NoMa neighborhood is where they settled, where a location was available with a cafe, a vegetarian restaurant, bicycle shop, and Whole Foods all next door. With easy access to public transit, ample parking, and plenty of space to host events in-store, the two quickly turned to raising capital to secure the location.

Using an increasingly popular method of fund-raising, they offered long-term, low-interest loan shares to potential investors. With 72 investors from 22 states, along with their own savings, they are set to open Solid State Books at the end of 2017.

Abel and Cumsky-Whitlock arent the only booksellers looking to open in the northeast district. Politics and Prose, one of the citys oldest independent bookstores, announced its own plans earlier this year to open a second store in the growing Union Market complex, a mixed-use redevelopment. Nor is that the only news from Politics and Prose, which has also announced an expansion of the flagship store and recently opened a third location in a multibillion-dollar redevelopment of the citys wharf in the southeast district.

We see parts of D.C. that are undergoing phenomenal growth and redevelopmentparts of the city that people had talked for years about someday making a turn, says Bradley Graham, co-owner of Politics and Prose. Theyve made a turn and theyre taking off. These are areas where the housing stock has been improved and people with higher education levels and higher incomes have moved in.

The return of bookstores is linked to high-end development across Washington that is not without its consequences. Solid State and Politics and Prose are both moving into historically African-American, lower-income neighborhoods. Gillman says that the community feel of these neighborhoods is what drew her to Capitol Hill a quarter century ago: It was set out on a more human scale than other neighborhoods. It kind of felt like the little Texas town I grew up with.

Gentrification has moved so swiftly, Gillman says, it was almost impossible to find a lease before a wave of chain stores and restaurants boxed her out: Landlords wouldnt talk to me. Everybody wanted a restaurant, and rents were going up. When she finally located a 3,200-sq.-ft. space, Gillman says, she had a frank conversation with the landlord, about my community and books and what they could do together. He was convinced, and she opened her doors in April 2016.

With a staff of 15, Gillman has 9,000 members in a loyalty program and is working to push back and preserve a cultural part of the neighborhood she loves. Local authors Jason Reynolds and Kwame Alexander have lent their support, dropping in to sign books and making it clear that the bookstore is an essential community resource. The result, says Gillman, is that people in the community seek out the bookstore, and revenue is up 22% on average, month-over-month compared with the first year.

As newcomers to NoMa, Solid State is opening where it is because of the longstanding diversity of the neighborhood, which the owners see as essential to the success of the store. We were interested in having a more diverse clientele, both socioeconomically and racially, Abel says. If all turns out as planned, he hopes that the store will be a hub for people who lived there a long time, families, newcomers, and kids, the same way a grocery store would be. The greatest opportunity, he adds, lies in the potential to become home to D.C.-focused neighborhood events and conversations with authors, artists, and intellectuals leading conversations on history, music, and the arts in Washington.

For Politics and Prose, a longstanding ethic is helping guide the bookstores move into Union Market, says childrens buyer Mary Alice Garber, who notes that it all comes from her predecessor, longtime childrens buyer Jewell Stoddard, who retired in 2013. Jewell always made sure she was reflecting so many diverse voices, Garber says.

Stoddards inclusive approach left a lasting mark on Garber and childrens manager Donna Wells. As they help ready the Union Market store, the two have sought connections with local schools, held meetings to understand the students they serve, and forged partnerships to bring authors into the neighborhood. Along with 13 other booksellers, they are also taking a 15-week sign language course so that they can better serve the deaf and hard of hearing students from Gallaudet University.

At the Wharf location, Graham says hes excited by the opportunity to expand in three areas of the city at once. At the same time, he acknowledges the need to be cautious. The Wharf and Union Market spaces both have short-term leases, and both are much smaller than the main store, so he can ensure they are as good a fit as he hopes they will be.

Were very mindful of what happened to Olssons, Graham says. They got overextended and couldnt withstand the stress of the recession when it hit in 2008. We certainly dont want that to happen to P and P, so we have no plans to grow much beyond these additional branches.

Abel and Cumsky-Whitlock say that the potential risks should not deter indies from heralding a new era of bookselling in the city. There are fewer bookstores in D.C. than 15 years ago, even though there are more people living here, Abel says. Were not opening fitness studios or yoga shops. We feel like the city could use 10 more bookstores.
Ask Washington, D.C., publishers to describe the defining attribute of publishing in the nations capital, and theyll quickly tell you theres no such thing. Seconds later, however, each of the dozens of D.C. Metro Area industry professionals interviewed for this piece described a bevy of projects, initiatives, and innovations that add up to one characteristic. Perhaps more than anywhere else in America today, Washington, D.C., is a hub for mission-driven publishing.

People from all walks of life come to D.C. with a very specific purpose, says Arnie Grossblatt, director of the publishing program at George Washington University. Its not for the climate. Its for some kind of mission, whether to work for a government agency or a professional association, or one of the scholarly institutions.

D.C.s publishers harness the drive, focus, and diversity of those people by articulating a clearly defined sense of purpose that stands out in a publishing business already known for its close adherence to the contours of any given publishing houses mission.

Beyond their ability to tap a wellspring of global talent, D.C.-area publishers keep to their mission because they are in many ways essential components of the associations, museums, think tanks, nonprofits, and media groups that form the working landscape of the part of the city that doesnt turn over after each election.

From the International Monetary Fund to National Geographic, the American Enterprise Institute to the Association for Talent Development, D.C.s publishers are the public face of institutions wrestling with some of the worlds most crucial issues. They work alongside a handful of influential trade publishers and distributors who have the same clarity of purpose, and together they form a community set on creating a lasting impact in their hometown, the nation, and the world.

Institutions

There are institutions by name and institutions by authority. The National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institution are among the few that can claim the mantle of both. Founded respectively in 1888 and 1846, each has an affiliated publishing house that produces arresting works on science, nature, history, and politics, in a combination of visual and text-driven works for all ages.

With combined experience thats as great as the society is old, the senior leadership of National Geographic Books transforms a horde of followers82 million on Instagram aloneinto loyal readers in support of subjects ranging from wolves in North America to childrens books about spiders and historic battles in faraway lands. Since entering into a $725 million partnership with Fox in 2015 the company has a new public message, We are all explorers, around which its universe of titles are arrayed.

Internally, that message requires intensive collaboration on projects that sometimes take years to roll out. With childrens books, that means frequent all-staff meetings to determine typefaces, photo spreads, and color schemes for covers, all before bringing ideas directly to children before publication. Often, we test books out with kids, says editorial director Erica Green, who recently shared covers of forthcoming books with an audience of 500 children at National Geographics amphitheater. We listen to what they have to say.

In turn, the press has a message for its young readers. Were messaging hope, Green says. We want conservation messages to be present. That means taking some issues that roil the halls of nearby Congress head-on and without hesitation. Describing one childrens title on the environment, she says: Its a bellwether to talk about climate change. We present whats happening in the world.

Green calls its science publishing program citizen science stuff while adding that National Geographic is still keenly aware that readers need a compelling hook or the mission cant succeed. In its adult division, the hook is clear in forthcoming titles like In Praise of Difficult Women: Life Lessons from 29 Heroines Who Dared to Break the Rules by Karen Karbo (Feb. 2018) and The Promise and the Dream: The Interrupted Lives of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. by David Margolick (Apr. 2018).

Alongside current affairs and historical titles with contemporary relevance, there are the long-term projects with ambitious scope and scale, even for a company with 150 employees. The Splendor of Birds (Oct. 2018), a large, multiauthor photo and illustrated book, is just one component of a Year of the Bird project celebrating the centennial of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act with a slew of publications, advocacy, and programming in partnership with the National Audubon Society, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and BirdLife International.

The press is spurred by a robust backlist of language, reference, travel, field guide, and photographic books; perhaps most famously The National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America. First released over 30 years ago, and now in its seventh edition, deputy editor Hilary Black says the book has sold three million copies to date.

At Smithsonian Books, massive projects are director Carolyn Gleasons specialty. In 2013, she completed the publication of The Smithsonian Civil War, a project that involved nearly 50 scholars and writers, drew from more than a dozen Smithsonian museums, and took three years to produce. She is currently at work on a new project of similar scope and scale that will honor the centennial of the passage of the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote.

Gleason draws on in-house and affiliate Smithsonian authors for about half of the presss 2025 titles each year. Her staff of 10 works at developing a good strategy to interpret the Smithsonians values for a general readership. That means adapting to shifts in the trade while simultaneously responding to the many exhibits and projects underway at the museums.

Weve changed a lot, says Gleason, whose tenure at the press has been marked by a move away from scholarly and academic publications and toward childrens and general trade titles, beginning with Mark Steins How the States Got Their Shapes in 2008.

The press has been careful and deliberate about its efforts to reach more readers. With so much material at the staffs fingertips, it could be easy to go astray. We could come up with a reason to publish almost any kind of book, Gleason says. There is so much in D.C. There are all the political people and think tanks. There are all of these completely unique generators of content. When you have this huge of an umbrella, you have to focus as an imprint.

Part of her strategy is to look for books that reach multiple, clearly defined audiences. The forthcoming Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin: A Founding Fathers Culinary Adventures by Rae Katherine Eighmey (Jan. 2018) is one example. It hits on more than one point, Gleason says, reaching readers interested in both history and cooking.

Balancing the goal of expanding the Smithsonians audience while maintaining clear focus has created new opportunities as well. When the press decided to publish a photographic retrospective on rock and roll, it turned to its readers for submissions. An open call in 2015 yielded thousands of previously unpublished photographs from half a century of concerts and recording sessions. Former music executive Bill Bentley culled the reader contributions into Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen (out now).

Trade Publishing

A handful of trade publishers dot the D.C. landscape, but the definition of what a trade book can be for publishers inside the beltway can differ from the big houses in New York. After all, for librarians, statisticians, journalists, and a few interested parents, a title like Bernan Presss Millennials in America is probably more than just a passing interest.

Founded in 1952, Bernan is a private outgrowth of the Government Printing Office, pulling essential statistical data that the government produces and providing a lens for people to understand it, whether it relates to business, crime, or general demographics. Today, Bernans following is solidly professional and academic, but the presss role is hardly limited to the dusty corners of mathematical modeling.

Bernan senior marketing manager Veronica Dove says readers have turned to the press as an increasingly essential resource and advocate in the capital. At the American Law Association annual meeting this year, she says, Lawyers, law clerks, and judges were coming up to us and saying, Especially in this era of fake news, its essential to keep this statistical information out there.  She adds, Its a huge responsibility we dont take lightly.

Bernans readers have spurred the press to consider entering the general trade market, and it has already begun with the recent publication of This Day in Presidential History a general history trade title by Paul Brandus, an independent member of the White House press corps. With distribution as an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield and a ramped-up production scheduleBernan will put out 41 titles this year compared with 10 in 2010Dove says its a way to respond to readers and go beyond just statistics to general public information.

Listening to what readers want is the driving purpose for Regnery, the hard-charging politically conservative press that made headlines earlier this year when publisher Marji Ross announced that the press would no longer use the New York Times bestseller list as part of its marketing and promotion of titles.

There were criticisms of the movethe Washington Post called it a stuntbut Ross has a shrewd sense of her readership and an indefatigable dedication to giving them what they want to read. For years, those readers were politically minded conservatives, and the press thrived on publications like Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, which was published in the leadup to the 2004 presidential elections and sold two million copies.

Ross, who became president and publisher in 2003, expanded the number of publications and the reach of the press, ensuring that its books were sold at major retailers like Walmart. Today, however, she says the readership has changed. With her eye on potential bestsellers that can also support the press over the long haul, Ross is looking to a religious Christian readership to buoy Regnery alongside political authors like Dinesh DSouza. Faith is our future backlist, Ross says.

Ross was already looking at a growing religion readership when Regnerys parent company, Eagle Publishing, was purchased by Salem Media Group in 2014. Salems established radio and multimedia connections to religious conservatives were a perfect fit at an opportune moment for the strategic vision Ross has for Regnery. We were able to bring more political content from us to them, Ross says, and more faith content from them to us.

Regnery Faith is the publishers growing religion imprint. It has doubled from five titles two years ago to 10 this year, after seeing particular success with a string of titles by David Limbaugh. At the same time, Regnery has added to its childrens publications under Regnery Kids and opened a history imprint, Regnery History, which will publish 14 titles this year.

While based in the capital, and with no shortage of authors who reside there, Ross says the diversification of the press is a sign of its continued focus on readership elsewhere in the country. I believe there is a ceiling on how many political red-meat conservative books a reader is going to buy in a year, Ross says. Understanding how to appeal to those readers with a broader array of books, she adds, will help serve the bottom line for the 70 year-old press over the long term.

Associations

The Library of Congress was founded in 1800, and the Government Printing Office was created a month before the start of the Civil War, but in the past half century, the historic backbone of publishing in Washington has been associations. Filling the buildings in between embassies and government offices, professional associations and interest groups like AARP, the American Chemical Society, and the Association of American Medical Colleges have messages to spread through the halls of the government. Many do it through papers, journals, and books.

Publishing has been an essential part of how the Association for Talent Development does business since 1945, when thousands of soldiers began returning home and starting new careers. Today, the organizationwhich provides workforce trainingis largely devoted to disseminating content to its 40,000 members who are professionals in the field. Along with research reports and magazines, that includes 20 books a year published by ATD Press.

Production and editorial director Kristine Luecker says that having a large association helps the press fulfill its mission and vice versa. As part of a rebranding in 2014, Luecker says the press began looking to produce more books for a general trade readership beyond the associations members. That meant going back to basics. Any working professional has some responsibility for developing talent in others, Luecker says. Its not just about training someone to use a computer, its about training someone to expand their overall skill set.

Given their membership, Luecker says the press has been able to easily seek out experts and professionals in training and management who can write books that fit the expanded mission of the press. For example, in December ATD will release tech manager Katy Tynans How Did I Not See This Coming? A New Managers Guide to Avoiding Total Disaster, a guide in fable form that tells the story of a new manager whose employee quits.

Over time, the membership also helps the press see what works and what doesnt, according to marketing manager Deborah Orgel Hudson. When you have a built-in audience, you can take a historical and couple year look and realize what channels they sell in, and more importantly you get feedback, Hudson says.

The most feedback comes at the organizations conference, where 10,000 members gather each year. The event provides an opportunity for the presss staff to talk with readers who have experience in the field. Each year, they set up a conference bookstore, see which books are in demand, and find out which ones need to be updated. One example is Ten Steps to Successful Business Writing, which has been a press bestseller since it was released in 2008. Luecker says that after hearing from readers, the book needed some updates to reflect the digital marketplace in order to remain a strong backlist seller. It went into a second edition in mid-November.

Where ATD thinks of membership in terms of individuals, the International Monetary Fund thinks of it in terms of nations. The IMF serves 189 member countries, and while it is a global institution, it is also an association with monumental initiatives dedicated to promoting global economic health and high employment.

At IMF Press, publisher Jeffrey Hayden and associate publisher Linda Kean are responsible for communicating IMFs research and findings to members, research institutions, corporations, journalists, and academic institutions, all of whom rely on IMF to forecast trends and understand the major issues facing the global economy today.

In-house teams of researchers work to produce semiannual and annual publications, the most important of which is the World Economic Outlook. It has been a mainstay for us for many years, Hayden says. It provides information on where the global economy is headed. In addition to the report, the press produces eight to 10 paperbacks each year, along with a handful of larger volumes, most of which are anthologies.

The publications are inextricable from the IMFs larger operations, which include research, talks, and conferences with member states. Hayden says the typical path to publication begins with an author delivering a paper at an IMF talk. Editors provide comments and authors revise accordingly. Content is then gathered thematically and published in time to align with new initiatives and conferences. At the same time, Kean spearheads efforts to enhance the publishers digital presence, including e-books and more sophisticated tools to allow readers to digitally mine the content of the books.

Under IMFs managing director, Christine Lagarde, two areas of content have been of specific interest for the press. Fiscal Policies and Gender Equality, just released, reflects new research on gender and the economy. Digital Revolutions in Public Finance, also just released, is the result of a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, dedicated to looking at the impact of digital technology on the economy.

For IMF and the many other associations and interest groups in Washington, Hayden says, books are the essential component of building credibility for certain policies. He adds: There is a strong institutional and association publishing presence here, and that segment is focused on influencing and informing policy decisions. Its very much public policy advocacy.

Think Tanks

For more than a century, think tanksperhaps even more than associations and institutionshave acted as Washingtons nonprofit research hubs that provide interpretations of government policies and recommendations for how they would like to see them change.

Founded in 1938, the conservative American Enterprise Institute has had publishing at the forefront of disseminating its work since its earliest days, according to senior fellow and amateur press historian Karlyn Bowman, who has been at AEI for 38 years. Think tanks were pretty sleepy places at the time, Bowman says, but even at the beginning, AEI had what she calls a very active publishing program.

Engaging in projects that took years and sometimes decades to produce, the press would contract with law firms to write pamphlets that were disseminated on Capitol Hill. In recent years, Bowman says that AEI has moved in-house scholars to trade publishers more, scaling back its own publications to focus on large projects that often have grant support. For instance, in 2016 AEI teamed up with the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution, fellow think tanks, to publish The States of Change: Demographics and Democracy, which was supported with funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

While AEI has scaled back, other think tanks have launched and expanded their own operations. The Urban Institute recently relaunched Urban Institute Press, dedicated to sharing research and recommendations on urban policy issues that range from public housing and segregation to criminal justice reform. Brookings has also expanded its reach, adding more trade titles and growing its list.

At AEI, Bowman has recently been going through half a century of press publications, now housed in a new library at the institute. If there was any doubt about the relevance of the work that think tanks do in publishing, she says that her journey through the backlist has dispelled it. One of the things thats really interesting looking back at those publications is the durability of public policy publications, Bowman says. There are books from decades ago that ask, Should we have a national health insurance system? Should the federal government provide aid in private education? 

Community

Like the streets of the capital, the avenues of publishing in Washington, D.C., intersect at hubs that link a community of publishing professionals to one another. Publishers in D.C. take advantage of webinars, lunches, and print resources offered up by Association Media & Publishing. Along with a design award competition, 41-year-old Washington Publishers presents specialized programming for members six times a year, as well as hosting regular meetups across the city.

For learning the publishing trade, however, all roads lead back to Arnie Grossblatt and George Washington Universitys publishing program. Grossblatts mission is to ensure that students have fulfilling careers, and that means convincing them that a life in publishing can mean many different things.

People come to the program thinking that they want to do editorial work, and if the program is successful, they realize there are other things, Grossblatt says. We try to train people for management positions and give them skills that will transfer across areas.

While the program has a growing distance-learning community, in Washington, D.C., Grossblatts curriculum is part and parcel of the capitals mission-driven focus. Current and former faculty lead presses across the region, while alumni can be found at nearly every publisher in the city.

Grossblatt says that the dedication and commitment of publishing professionals in Washington comes down to communication: Were a mix, and unlike other places, weve got it all together in close quarters, so theres more cross-talk across publishing segments than you might find in New York.

With people moving from scholarly publishing to association publishing to trade, Grossblatt says, the cross-talk, the communication, and the mission-focus all come back to a simple fact. Theres a community here.

Further D.C. Metro Spotlight Coverage

Indie Booksellers Take Back D.C.

BookTV Keeps Its Focus on Authors

First Book Keeps Looking After Young Readers

Jed Lyons, D.C. Institution

Washington, D.C., Has Books for Everyone
Irish Naval personnel rescuing migrants as part of Operation Triton on June 15 of 2015 (Irish Defense Forces).

GENEVA, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Europe's Mediterranean border is "by far the world's deadliest", the UN migration agency, IOM, said Friday, citing a new study reviewing four decades of evidence.

The study titled Four Decades of Cross-Mediterranean Undocumented Migration to Europe: A Review of the Evidence, was carried out by the Global Migration Data Analysis Center, said IOM spokesperson Jorge Galindo.

"The report states that at least 33,761 migrants were reported to have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean between 2000 and 2017, as of June 30," Galindo said.

IOM also reported Friday that 161,010 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in 2017 through Nov. 24, with about 75 percent arriving in Italy and the remainder divided between Greece, Cyprus and Spain.

This compares with 345,831 arrivals across the region through the same period last year.

Professor Philippe Fargues of the European University Institute, the study's author, is quoted as saying that that number of deaths cited over the past 18 years likely under-reports the actual scale of the human tragedy.

That is despite the data that the record number of migrant deaths may have begun to subside in 2017 due in part to cooperation between the EU and Turkey, and now Libya, to stem migrant flows.

"Stopping migration and eradicating deaths at sea may [be] conflicting objectives. Shutting the shorter and less dangerous routes can open longer and more dangerous routes, thus increasing the likelihood of dying at sea," Fargues states in the report.

The report analyzes irregular migration across the Mediterranean since the 1970s. It highlights that irregular arrivals to Europe have increased in response to more restrictive migration policies by some European countries.

Prime examples from the report are the irregular migration from North Africa and Turkey to Europe in the 1970s, after visa requirements were introduced for temporary labor migrants from these regions.

Absence of legal pathways for asylum-seekers and refugees to travel to Europe and seek asylum also increased arrivals by sea along the Eastern, Central and Western Mediterranean routes from 2009, said the report.
French company Benoit Escande Editions SARL has obtained worldwide exclusive rights to Juliet, a Purdue-affiliated apple gaining popularity for organic production. The apple is a product of a cooperative involving Purdue University, Rutgers University and the University of Illinois. The Juliet is popular because of its disease resistance and long storage life. (Photo provided)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.  A French company has obtained worldwide exclusive rights to Juliet, a Purdue-affiliated apple gaining popularity for organic production.

Benoit Escande Editions SARL has obtained exclusive rights to the Juliet apple, a product of a cooperative breeding program involving Purdue University, Rutgers University and the University of Illinois. The cooperative had received royalties on the tree sales as well as any merchandise sold under the name Juliet, and will now also receive royalties on the fruit.

The Juliet apple is popular among organic growers because of its many good qualities, such as disease-resistance, lack of premature fruit drop, long storage life and smooth, shiny skin with crisp texture, said Jules Janick, the James Troop Distinguished Professor of Horticulture at Purdue University. It is a remarkable apple.

The Juliet is a club apple, which means it is trademarked and grown by a select group. The apples are grown in France by members of Les Amis de Juliet, or Friends of Juliet, and distributed throughout Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Canada. There are more than 120 Juliet growers in France.

Making it a club apple is a way to limit production and maintain a fair price for growers. People growing the Juliet are having great success, Janick said. That popularity is a strong indication this cultivar could be promoted for organic production in the United States as well as other apple-producing countries.

The long storage life also makes Juliet popular among growers. The lack of fruit browning is another virtue. Janick said one Canadian customer was even concerned the Juliet apples had been irradiated because of the lack of browning.

The cooperative apple breeding program involving Purdue, Rutgers and Illinois was started in 1945 to develop apples that were resistant to a serious disease called apple scab. Because the apples are scab resistant, the need for pesticide use is greatly reduced.

Eighteen apple selections have been named and licensed through Purdues Office of Technology Commercialization and 20 other selections are under evaluation. Among the better-known varieties are GoldRush, a long-storage yellow apple; Pixie Crunch, a medium-sized red apple; CrimsonCrisp, a midseason red apple; Enterprise, a late red apple; and WineCrisp, a crunchy, dark red apple. The cooperative continues to bring in royalties to the universities.

Jean-Louis Escande, the grandfather of Benoit Escande, spotted an apple tree, later named Juliet, being tested at Rutgers University in New Jersey and he subsequently brought it home to Saint-Vite, France, where he found it performed well . His grandson Benoit took over the nursery and conceived that it would fit organic production. It was patented in France in 2004. The scab resistance of Juliet derives from an ornamental crab apple called Malus floribunda. In addition to having a high resistance to scab disease, it also shows resistance to powdery mildew and fire blight.

About Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization

The Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization operates one of the most comprehensive technology transfer programs among leading research universities in the U.S. Services provided by this office support the economic development initiatives of Purdue University and benefit the university's academic activities. The office is managed by the Purdue Research Foundation, which received the 2016 Innovation and Economic Prosperity Universities Award for Innovation from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. For more information about funding and investment opportunities in startups based on a Purdue innovation, contact the Purdue Foundry at foundry@prf.org. For more information on licensing a Purdue innovation, contact the Office of Technology Commercialization at innovation@prf.org.

Purdue Research Foundation contact: Tom Coyne, 765-588-1044, tjcoyne@prf.org

Source: Jules Janick, 765-494-1329, janick@purdue.edu
Uruguay has welcomed another over-the-top (OTT) player, ClickVeo!, which is to be available for subscription through the public telco, Antel.

The streaming platform focuses on local content and has been launched with over 3,000 titles including films, series, documentaries and music concerts, available on-demand (VOD) and including Ultra HD and HDR content. ClickVeo! will be also available across several countries targeting Uruguayans living abroad, though a list of supported territories has not yet been unveiled.Launched along with Android and iOS apps, the service will soon release a platform supported by some smart TV brands.Despite being a subscription-based service, it also delivers free access to selected content and the possibility of publishing user-made content.
Hotel Indigo is aiming to expand to a nearby parking lot on Strong Street, currently owned by Athens-Clarke County. Above is a rendering of the "mixed-used development" which may consist of hotel rooms and office space.
There has been a surge in popularity of TV series that are based off of comic books, including Riverdale which is based off of the Archie Comics and of course The Walking Dead series. Devlin Thompson, the manager at local comic book shop Bizarro-Wuxtry, said best sellers are not necessarily the comics with TV shows.
Writing postcards will be all the more rare and valuable as we progress in advancements in communication and technology, so practice over break when youre away from your UGA friends.
On Nov. 17, nearly 15,000 students found out if they were among the 8,000 to be offered early action admission to the University of Georgia.
Martinsville is building a new police station. What you need to know.
BATUMI, Georgia -- Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili has vowed to punish those responsible for a fire that killed 11 people at a five-star hotel in the country's Black Sea resort city of Batumi.

Kvirikashvili was returning to Tbilisi from a summit with European Union leaders in Brussels late on November 24 when he heard about the fire at the 22-story Leogrand Hotel and diverted his plane to Batumi.

"All those responsible for this tragedy will be punished," Kvirikashvili said.

Interior Minister Giorgi Gakharia told journalists on November 25 that an investigation had been launched into the "breach of fire-safety norms" at the hotel, which reportedly lacked a fire-escape staircase.

Georgia's Interior Ministry downgraded an initially reported death toll of 12 to 11 people on November 25, saying the dead included 10 Georgian citizens and one citizen of Iran.

Georgia's Interpress news agency quoted relatives of victims who said eight victims were found in a hotel elevator while one was in a swimming pool and two more were found in a gym.

The ministry said the victims all died from smoke inhalation.

The ministry also said 21 people were hospitalized, mostly from smoke inhalation, and were in stable condition.

Among those being treated were five Turks and an Israeli, regional Health Minister Zaal Mikeladze said.

The authorities said more than 100 people, including guests and employees, were evacuated.

Kakha Mikiashvili, one of the hotel guests, told journalists that it "took just minutes for the smoke to fill the entire hotel."

"The electricity went off and all the doors were automatically blocked," Mikiashvili said. "We were trying in vain to break windows to get some fresh air. Firefighters arrived in a few minutes and we were saved."

The cause of the fire was still under investigation on November 25.

Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili on November 25 offered his condolences to the relatives of victims.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, BBC, Interpress, dpa, and TASS
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Pakistani security forces are holding a journalist in custody and have and detained a security guard at a press club in the Khyber tribal region, a day after a bomb was discovered beneath a car used by four journalists in northwestern Pakistan.

The detained journalist, Khalil Afridi, works for the Khyber News TV Channel. He was one of the four journalists traveling in the car on November 24 when the magnetic bomb was discovered.

The group, which also included RFE/RL correspondent Farhad Shinwari, was covering a vintage-car rally in the Khyber tribal region.

Afridi rented the car in the town of Jamroud, where the car rally began, and was traveling ahead of the race with the three other journalists when two men in a vehicle behind them spotted the explosives.

At a checkpoint near Landi Kotal at the western edge of the Khyber Pass, the two men warned the journalists and the Khasadar paramilitary police.

A bomb-disposal unit from Pakistan's Frontier Corps defused about 2 kilograms of explosives.

An unnamed security official said that, if detonated, the powerful device would have killed the occupants of the car and would have caused multiple casualties among anyone nearby watching the car rally.

Security officials said the bomb appeared to be "locally manufactured" in Pakistan.

Initially, police detained all four journalists along with the two men who spotted the explosives.

Shinwari said he and two other journalists were released shortly after midnight on November 25. He said Afridi was still being held on November 25 because the car had been rented in his name. Afridi was not immediately charged.

"When we were stopped and told there were explosives attached under our vehicle, we were terrified," Shinwari said. "We were so close to being killed. And then we suffered through the pressure of the interrogation as if we were responsible for planting the bomb. It was very disturbing."

The authorities also detained a security guard at the Jamroud Press Club responsible for the parking lot where Afridi left the car earlier in the week.

Authorities were questioning the press club security guard on November 25.

After the discovery of the explosives, authorities stopped local media from covering the car rally -- which began at the Bab-e Khyber border crossing with Afghanistan and was continuing to Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi.

Earlier on November 24, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed a senior regional police official in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where Pakistani Taliban often target security forces.

A person who claimed to be a spokesman for the militant Lashkar-e Islam (Army of Islam) group called RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal on November 24 and claimed responsibility for the attack.

That claim could not immediately be independently confirmed.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal correspondent Khalid Khan in Peshawar and Tribune.com.pk
At least four people have been killed and 22 wounded by a Taliban suicide bomber who attacked an army vehicle on the outskirts of Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta on November 25. Local authorities said all of the victims who died were civilians and that four members of Pakistan's security forces were among those wounded. (RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal)
File Photo: The Facebook application is seen on a phone screen August 3, 2017. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Facebook will launch a new online tool that it said will let users see whether they followed Russia-linked accounts or contents disguised as U.S. users, media reports said Thursday.

The feature, which Facebook said will be released by the year-end, will allow users to see if they interacted with certain pages created by the Internet Research Agency -- a Russian Internet company, which was revealed as allegedly running fake campaign ads during the 2016 U.S. General Elections.

"A few weeks ago, we shared our plans to increase the transparency of advertising on Facebook. This is part of our ongoing effort to protect our platforms and the people who use them from bad actors who try to undermine our democracy," Facebook said in a statement.

The allegation that Russia had interfered in the U.S. presidential elections has been a huge controversy among the political circles in Washington.

Russia has repeatedly denied the allegations.

"We will soon be creating a portal to enable people on Facebook to learn which of the Internet Research Agency Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts they may have liked or followed between January 2015 and August 2017," Facebook said in the statement.

"This tool will be available for use by the end of the year in the Facebook Help Center," it added.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said his company will introduce a host of measures to "provide better security and transparency for the social network."
At least four people have been killed and 22 wounded by a suicide bomber who attacked an army vehicle on the outskirts of Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta.

Quetta police officer Abdur Razzaq Cheema said the army vehicle, transport for a colonel in Pakistan's armed forces, was parked near a bus terminal when the attack took place on November 25.

Cheema said the army colonel was not in the vehicle at the time of the attack.

Muhammad Khurasani, a spokesman for Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed in an e-mail sent to the media that the Pakistani Taliban was responsible for the suicide bombing.

The authorities said all of those who died were civilians. They said four members of Pakistan's security forces were among those wounded.

Waseem Baig, a spokesman for Quetta's Civil Hospital, confirmed the death toll after the bodies of victims were brought there.

Explosives experts said the attacker used a suicide vest containing about 10 kilograms of explosives with steel balls as shrapnel.

With reporting by AP
The United States has warned Pakistan that there will be repercussions for bilateral ties unless Islamabad takes action to detain and charge a U.S.-wanted militant accused of masterminding a deadly attack in India.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on November 25 that Washington "strongly condemns" the release of Hafiz Saeed from house arrest this week.

Saeed's release sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistan's commitment to combating international terrorism and belies Pakistani claims that it will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil," Sanders said in a statement.

"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistan's global reputation," she added.

Saeed is allegedly the founder of a group linked to the 2008 attack that killed 166 people in the Indian city of Mumbai.

He has been designated a terrorist by the U.S. Justice Department and the United States offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

In January, Saeed was placed under house arrest in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore under antiterrorism laws.

However, authorities released him early on November 24 after a court rejected a provincial government request to renew his detention for a further 90 days.

U.S. and Indian officials have accused Saeed of helping plan the Mumbai attacks in which 10 gunmen rampaged through India's largest city, shooting up two luxury hotels, a Jewish center, and a train station during a siege that lasted several days.

New Delhi also accused Islamabad of helping organize the attacks in cooperation with Saeed -- the head of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) charity which U.S. officials say is a front for the banned Pakistan-based Lashkar-e Taiba militant group.

Both Pakistan and the JuD have denied involvement in the Mumbai assault.

Saeeds release came amid fraying bilateral relations between the United States and Pakistan, with Washington accusing Islamabad of providing "safe havens" for Taliban militants who stage attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistan denies doing so.

U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Islamabad of harboring "agents of chaos," and vowed to get tough with Pakistan unless it changed its behavior.

With reporting by AP and Reuters
Robert Khusnutdinov, the police chief of the city of Nizhnekamsk in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan, was removed from office earlier this month in the wake of the headline-grabbing case of a young man who recorded a video alleging brutal police torture moments before committing suicide by leaping from the roof of a high-rise building.

Khusnutdinov's deputy has been demoted and 10 unidentified police officers have also been disciplined as the growing scandal has captivated the city. Twenty-two-year-old Ilnaz Pirkin said in the video that he had been suffocated and beaten for nearly a full day by officers pressuring him to admit committing 47 robberies from parked cars.

Three officers were charged with abuse of office shortly after the video was made public, and are now being held awaiting trial. On November 16, the head of the city's police unit for combatting organized crime, Rinat Akhmetshin, was ordered held for trial after prosecutors told a local court he participated in the beatings of two men who allegedly were being pressured to confess to responsibility for Pirkin's suicide.

Prosecutors are reportedly conducting a far-reaching investigation into brutality among Nizhnekamsk police officers and into the reasons why earlier complaints were not prosecuted. Human rights activists say Akhmetshin's name has come up before in recent years as people have leveled allegations similar to Pirkin's. Until now, though, prosecutors have been unwilling to file charges related to most of the claims.

Tales Of Brutal Torture

Local resident Ildar Kamaleyev is one person who says his story has been swept under the rug.

"On October 9, 2016, a police officer came up to me and told me to go to the station with him," Kamaleyev recalled to RFE/RL's Russian Service. "I was a little concerned when I asked him if I needed to bring my documents with me. 'No, you don't need anything,' he told me. And I was even more concerned when we entered the police station and no one registered my presence in the visitors' log."

After perfunctory questioning about a fight that had happened near his home in March, police allegedly took Kamaleyev to a special room and began beating him.

"First they used handcuffs to attach my hands to the legs of a table," he said. "Then one officer sat on the table and put a plastic bag over my head."

Later, Kamaleyev said, one officer sat on his legs on the floor, while another beat him on the chest before quickly again placing the plastic bag over his head as he gasped for breath.

After a while, a third, more senior officer came in.

"When he found out that I hadn't confessed, he continued the beating," Kamaleyev recalled. "They beat me in the head, in the kidneys. They kicked me. After I said again that I had nothing to say, [the senior officer] became outraged. 'Stuff the largest rag you've got in his mouth and kill him,' he said. Then he left. The other two found a dirty rag and began stuffing it in my mouth. I said: 'Guys, you don't have to do that. I will sign whatever you want.'"

Kamaleyev filed a complaint, but the criminal investigations into his allegations have been shut down repeatedly, most recently in August 2017. Although the three officers involved were not wearing uniforms, Kamaleyev later identified them. One of them, he says, was Akhmetshin.

Also in October 2016, Nizhnekamsk police picked up Ilnaz Yunusov. Yunusov has said officers beat him in an effort to get him to confess to stealing some paint from a construction site.

"They put me on the floor face down," he told the Vechernyaya Kazan newspaper. "They put a plastic bag on my head and started to suffocate me. I bit a hole in the bag, but they noticed it and started trying to block my mouth with an old rag. Then they just taped my mouth shut. Then they brought in a gas mask."

"'Do you know what the Little Elephant is?' they asked," Yunusov said, referring to a widespread police torture method of putting a prisoner in a gas mask and cutting off the flow of air. "And then they showed me what the Little Elephant is. They tortured me and tortured me, but I didn't give in."

Although a medical examiner filed a report while Yunusov was in custody claiming he was "healthy" and "feels fine," he got an independent doctor to document his contusions and lacerations. Prosecutors say they are looking into Yunusov's complaints, but no criminal case was ever opened and no conclusions have been reached. The most recent investigation was concluded on October 26.

A History Of Violence

The Nizhnekamsk police force has compiled a notorious record in recent years. In 2015, two police officers were sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison each for torturing a prisoner in September 2014. The court ruled the two officers had struck the man at least 20 times and tortured him with electric shock.

In January 2015, a local man named Gamlet Mazmanyan was picked up by police, and he died in custody. The autopsy found that he died of hemorrhaging in the brain and lungs. He had six broken ribs and several broken fingers, as well as other injuries.

"No one was ever held responsible," says lawyer Bulat Mukhamedzhanov of the Zona Prava (Rights Zone) nongovernmental advocacy organization.

Mukhamedzhanov and other activists attribute the uptick in alleged police abuse to a new approach following the November 2015 resignation of Airat Sadykov, the head of the regional Interior Ministry branch, after official statistics revealed that crime had jumped 30 percent in nine months.

When the new head -- the recently removed Khusnutdinov -- was presented, Tartarstan Interior Minister Artyom Khokhorin emphasized he wanted to see the city's crime rating "back where it was before."

According to official statistics, the percentage of "solved crimes" in Nizhnekamsk rose by 13 percent in 2016, the highest rate over the previous five years. Those closed cases, activists fear, were largely the result of brutal and illegal methods.

But some of the suspicions about the Nizhnekamsk police go back even further. In December 2013, police across Tatarstan arrested 10 men on suspicion of targeting local Christian churches in arson attacks. Two weeks later, one of the suspects, Rafael Zaripov, was hospitalized in Nizhnekamsk with fractured limbs and other injuries. Three days after that a representative of the Investigative Committee in Nizhnekamsk announced that another suspect, Almaz Galeyev, had "cut off his sex organ with a razor blade that he found in his cell."

After these facts became public, representatives of the Tartarstan public oversight commission conducted an investigation and sent a report to Investigate Committee head Aleksandr Bastrykin and the head of the presidential human rights commission, Mikhail Fedotov.

"Nonetheless, no criminal cases were filed against the police of Nizhnekamsk," lawyer Mukhamedzhanov says. "And we think that this gave rise to a culture of impunity and illegality among local law enforcement."

Written by Robert Coalson on the basis of reporting by RFE/RL's Russian Service correspondent Mark Krutov
BRUSSELS -- The European Union has criticized legislation signed by President Vladimir Putin that empowers Russias government to designate media outlets receiving funding from abroad as "foreign agents" and impose sanctions against them.

The new law was published on Russia's official legal information Internet portal on November 25.

Maja Kocijancic, the spokesperson of the European Commission for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, said in a November 26 statement that the "legislation goes against Russia's human rights obligations and commitments."

Kocijancic called the law "a further threat to free and independent media and access to information" and "yet another attempt to shrink the space for independent voices in Russia."

The measure was passed by Russia's Federation Council, the upper chamber of parliament, on November 22 in a unanimous 154-0 vote, with one abstention.

It was unanimously approved in the third and final reading in the lower house, the State Duma, on November 15. Within hours, the Justice Ministry sent warnings to several Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) news services.

The letters did not specify what potential restrictions they could face, but lawmakers have said designated media could be subjected to detailed financial-reporting requirements and required to label published material as coming from a foreign agent.

RFE/RL was among several media outlets that Russian officials warned could be labeled a foreign agent, a list that also included the Voice of America (VOA), CNN, and Germany's international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle.

In response to news that Putin signed the law, RFE/RL President Thomas Kent said, "We cannot speculate at this time on the effect of the new law, since no news organization has yet been specifically named as a 'foreign agent' and the restrictions to be imposed on such 'agents' have not been announced."

"We remain committed to continuing our journalistic work, in the interests of providing accurate and objective news to our Russian-speaking audiences," he added.

The international rights organization Amnesty International has said the legislation would deal a "serious blow" to media freedom in Russia, although Russian officials have said it would not apply to domestic media.

Russian officials have called the new legislation a "symmetrical response" to what they describe as U.S. pressure on Russian media. On November 13, the U.S. operating unit of Russian state-funded television channel RT -- a company called T&R Productions LLC -- registered in the United States under a decades-old law called the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The U.S. Justice Department required the RT affiliate to register in the wake of a January finding by U.S. intelligence agencies that RT and Russia's Sputnik news agency spread disinformation as part of a Russian-government effort to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

John Lansing, the chief executive officer of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, said in a statement on November 25 that "any characterization of such steps as reciprocity for U.S. actions severely distorts reality."

"Russian media, including RT and Sputnik, are free to operate in the United States and can be, and are, carried by U.S. cable television outlets and FM radio stations," Lansing added. "However, U.S international media, including VOA and RFE/RL, are banned from television and radio in Russia."

He also said that "our journalists on assignment are harassed by Russian authorities and face extensive restrictions on their work."

Visiting the Moscow bureau of RFE/RL and VOA on November 17, U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman said that the Russian legislation was a "big concern" for the United States and that "the principles of free media in any free society and democracy are absolutely critical for strength and well-being."
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has called on Russia to recognize the famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin as genocide, "or at least repent for it."

Poroshenko made the call at an event in central Kyiv on November 25, the official Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holodomor.

He also said that "the time has come" for Ukraine to adopt legislation against denying the genocide.

"Not recognizing the Holodomor is as immoral as denying the Holocaust," the president said.

Ukraine and about a dozen other countries have recognized the famine as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.

The Day of Remembrance for the victims of the famine is marked in Ukraine every year on the fourth Saturday of November.

The Holodomor took place in 1932 and 1933 as Soviet authorities forced peasants in Ukraine to join collective farms by requisitioning their grain and other foodstuffs.

Historians say the seizure of the 1932 crop in Ukraine by Soviet authorities was the main cause of the famine. Moscow has long denied any systematic effort to target Ukrainians, arguing a poor harvest at the time wiped out many in other parts of the then Soviet Union.

It is estimated that as many as 9 million people may have died as a result of executions, deportation, and starvation during the Stalin-era campaign.

Poroshenko on November 25 urged all political forces in Ukraine to unite for the sake of the country, saying the Holodomor was "a terrible echo of an unforgiving loss" of Ukrainian statehood and independence.

"Would the Holodomor and the great terror of the 1930s, the deportation of the 1940s, and the Russification of the 1970s be made possible if we, Ukrainians, had preserved the independence proclaimed a hundred years ago?" he asked.

Poroshenko also said that Russia's ongoing "aggression against us is a continuation of the same policy to destroy Ukraine with other methods."

Meanwhile, Oleksandr Turchynov, chief of the National Security and Defense Council, said in a statement that "there is a war and we again see manic attempts to destroy Ukraine."

Moscow seized control of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and fomented separatism across eastern and southern Ukraine -- one of the causes of a war that has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.

Russia denies it has sent troops, weapons, and other support to help the separatists fight government forces in eastern Ukraine, despite what Kyiv and NATO say is incontrovertible evidence.

With reporting by AFP
What happened in Notre Dame hoops home game vs. Southern Indiana?

Home games against upset-minded non-conference opponents are coming fast and furious this time of year for Notre Dame men's basketball team
Bissau (Guinea Bissau), Nov 24, 2017 (SPS) - A delegation representing the Sahrawi Youth Union (UJSARIO) is taking part in the African Youth Conference in Guinea-Bissau in the capital Bissau, scheduled to be from 23 to 25 November 2017.

The Sahrawi issue on the is on the top agenda of the Conference, as decolonization cause of the last colony on the African continent.

On the other hand, Hamdi Youssef, the Foreign Relations Officer, has broached the attendees on the latest developments in the African arena, especially after the return of Morocco to the AU and its attempt to undermine Unions unity and his support to the decolonization of the last colony on the continent.

He urged the conferees to continue their solidarity and support to Sahrawi people throughout their struggle for liberation.

The conference will conclude with a recommendation on Western Sahara, the last colony in Africa. SPS

125/090/TRA
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 03:00:36|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi (C) chairs a meeting of the security committee on the attack on a mosque in North Sinai province, in Cairo, Egypt, Nov. 24, 2017. (Xinhua)

CAIRO, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi vowed on Friday a "fierce action" will be carried out in response to a mosque's attack in North Sinai province that left at least 235 killed amid local and international condemnation, state-run TV reported.

"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period," he said in a televised speech.

"Such attack is aimed at destroying our unity, but it will steel our resolve to defeat terrorism," he added.

An explosive device planted outside the mosque near Arish city went off, before militants opened fire at the prayers, an official security source told Xinhua.

The attack occurred in the village of Rawda in Beir el-Abad, 40 km from Arish, the source added.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

It is the first time a mosque is targeted by militants in Egypt. However, dozens of Christians have been killed in similar attacks on churches across Egypt.

The terror attack has drawn widespread local and international condemnation as cowardly act of terrorism.

The United States condemned the attack. "We must collectively discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said following the attack.

President Donald Trump, in a tweet, called the attack "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshipers in Egypt."

He added in his tweet "The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence."

Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman strongly denounced the killing of the worshippers as "a coward terrorist action that killed honest secured people in one of God's houses."

Italian President Sergio Mattarella sent a cable of condolences over the victims. He also expressed his country's solidarity with Egypt in its fight against terrorism.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also strongly denounced the terror attack, voicing his solidarity with Egypt.

"Terrorism doesn't target Egypt only, but it also targets the whole Arab nation," Abbas added.

Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah stressed the Gulf state's support for Egypt, the security and stability of its people and all measures taken by the Egyptian government to face terrorism.

Head of the European Union Delegation to Egypt, Ambassador Ivan Surkos, condemned the attack, describing it as a barbaric terrorist act against innocent civilians.

French Ambassador to Egypt Stephane Romatet also condemned the terrorist attack, describing it as brutal and shameful. He asserted that France stands by Egypt.

British Ambassador to Egypt John Casson deplored the terrorist attack that targeted innocent worshipers.

"These attacks on people praying in mosques and churches only strengthen our determination to stand together, & defeat terrorism & hate," Casson wrote on his Twitter.

"I am disgusted by the evil attack that killed & injured so many Egyptians in Sinai today. On behalf of the UK my deep condolences to all involved," he twitted.

Commenting on the attack, Arab League Secretary Ahmed Aboul-Gheit reiterated his support for Egypt in the fight against terrorism.

He stressed that Islam has nothing to do with such terrorist attacks, adding that the perpetrators have no human values and principles.

Meanwhile, Egypt's Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam said such terrorist attacks aim at fomenting sedition everywhere, even at mosques, stressing that perpetrators of this terrorist act have no mercy or humanity.

Grand Imam of Al Azhar Ahmed al-Tayeb denounced the attack and stressed the importance of working to eliminate terrorists.

For his part, Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria, the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, condemned the terrorist attack , expressing solidarity with the victims of terror in Egypt.

President of Evangelical Church in Egypt Andrea Zaki condemned the terrorist attack, saying it aims at destabilizing the security and stability in Egypt.

He underlined that such an attack is a violation of the principles of religion.

Egypt is suffering a wave of terrorist attacks, mostly centered in Sinai where militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers since the army-led ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Most of the attacks, which recently expanded the city and some other cities, have been claimed by the Islamic State branch in Sinai.
H yper Japan, the UKs biggest celebration of Japanese culture, cuisine and cool, returns to Londons Tobacco Dock from November 24 - 26.

Now in its seventh year, this event continues to bring a taste of Japanese tradition, modernity and the latest trends to the heart of the capital.

This years event boasts a variety of performers, special guests, exhibitors, food stalls, creative workshops - and most importantly - plenty of kawaii and kooky gift ideas. The ultimate destination to discover truly unique presents for the festive season.

For the first time, Hyper Japan is bringing Illuminight to the UK, a festival of lights which sees traditional Japanese akari lantern crafts get a modern makeover, created by up-and-coming artists. Visitors will also be lucky enough to see the Ukiyo-e Gallery, also known as pictures of the floating world. As a well-known part of Japanese culture, digital technology will bring the prints to life, showcasing them as they looked 200 years ago before their colours faded.

Snow sculptures of popular anime characters pop up in Japan 1 /10 Snow sculptures of popular anime characters pop up in Japan Grinning: Totoro, from Studio Ghibli film My Neighbour Totoro, carved from snow. (xiakea Instagram) Xiakea - Instagram Towering: Giant superhero Anpanman made in snow. (yuri_3wave Instagram). Yuri_3wave - Instagram Huge: Photos showing titans carved from snow as temperatures in Japan hit freezing. (Cobrakasano Instagram) Eerie: The titans, from Manga series Attack on Titan, at nighttime. (Cobrakasano Instagram) Film character: The frightening character No-Face from 2001 film Spirited Away. (Tsubasa Shintani) Disney: A snowy take on character Olaf from Disney's Frozen and Popular characters: Olaf from Disney's film Frozen and Baymax from Big Hero 6. (xiakea Instagram) xiakea - Instagram Titan: A carved titan looms from the side of someone's house. (beta58a330 Instagram) Snow cyclist: A figure on a bike carved out of snow. (Tsubasa Shintani)

Watch the video above for a taste of whats in store at the festival this weekend.

Tickets for post 2.30pm on Saturday and all day Sunday are 17.

For more information on ticketing, please visit: http://hyperjapan.co.uk/tickets/
A culinary experimental hub will soon be opening its doors in Shoreditch.

Wahaca, the Mexican restaurant group, aims for the new East London restaurant to act as an innovation platform to develop new ideas and recipes with the ambition of taking many of the dishes created to its restaurants nationwide.

It also means that guests to the restaurant have the chance to try new dishes before they get rolled out to the rest of the group's restaurants.

Founded by Tommi Miers and Mark Selby in 2007, dishes at the new test kitchen will draw inspiration from Tommis recent trips to Mexico City, Oaxaca and the Yucatan.

Tommi and her team want to bring to life their interpretations of contemporary Mexican cooking.

Traditional Mexican cooking techniques will continue to be at the forefront of the menu, featuring moles and charred salsas, which are set to change seasonally and as and when new experimentations allow.

As well as continuing to feature Wahaca classics such as the iconic Pork pibil tacos, Tommi and the team have developed a whole host of new dishes, including Blackened cauliflower tacos with cashew nut mole and Market Boards for sharing, including Whole roast sea bream with al ajillo butter & kohlrabi slaw.

Wahaca is collaborating with El Blanco Nino to produce a bespoke, traditionally-made nixtamalized corn tortilla that uses non-GMO corn and is naturally gluten free.

It will also continue to work with small producers like Trealy Farm for their sobresada, a Mexican-style chorizo, and Judes ice-cream.

Miers said: Wahaca has always been at the forefront of innovation, bringing new Mexican dishes to the UK, and after ten years were hugely excited to have this new Test Kitchen to help us continue to push the boundaries and find new ways to explore the incredible variety of vibrant flavours and ingredients from Mexicos extraordinary range of cuisines.

There is also a vibrant drinks list to complement the food.

The new restaurant will seat 120 and, as with all Wahaca restaurants, the design has been inspired by the neighbourhood that it is in as well as the heritage of the building itself.

The space is laid out over two levels, with a central communal table and an open kitchen letting guests see the chefs at work.

Street art murals from Lelo, a renowned street artist from Zaachila in Oaxaca, Mexico, will adorn the walls.

Beyond the architecture and interiors, the brand itself has been refreshed for Shoreditchs Wahaca Test Kitchen, going back to the inspiration of contemporary Mexican creativity and culture, and paying homage to the nations imagery, including bright colours and traditional symbols.

The Shoreditch restaurant will also see the introduction of a digital bill tablet, which will allow guests to give immediate feedback on the dishes they have just enjoyed.

Wahaca Test Kitchen opens on Monday, 27 November at 140 Tabernacle Street, London, EC2A 4SD.
F ormer Blue Peter presenter John Leslie has been charged with sexual assault after allegedly putting his hand up a womans skirt in a nightclub.

The 52-year-old star, who also presented on Wheel of Fortune, has been accused of assaulting the woman at an Edinburgh club.

The 26-year-old woman was on a hen party at a night celebrating the Atik clubs reopening in June when the alleged incident happened.

According to The Sun, he was arrested after police questioned the alleged victim at the venue.

A Police Scotland spokesman said: "Police in Edinburgh have charged a 52-year-old man following a report that a 26-year-old woman was the victim of a sexual assault at a nightclub in the Tollcross area on Sunday 25 June".
O scar-winning actress Emma Thompson called on Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to "get on a plane" and do more to help a British woman imprisoned in Iran.

Thompson spoke out at a protest in north London where local mothers, politicians and the family of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe joined together to call for her release.

The actress hit out at a "bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster" for not doing more to help Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been imprisoned in Tehran since April 2016.

The duel British-Iranian citizen was arrested at the city's airport after a holiday with her then 22-month-old daughter Gabriella.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her husband Richard Ratcliffe and their daughter Gabriella

Despite suffering from pneumonia, the 58-year-old Love Actually star appeared in Hampstead alongside Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, and her MP Tulip Siddiq.

Thompson called on Mr Johnson to take action after his suggestion that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran exposed her to the threat of her five-year jail sentence being doubled.

Emma Thompson marches in support of mother held in Iran 1 /10 Emma Thompson marches in support of mother held in Iran Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe march Richard Ratcliffe is joined by actress Emma Thompson in Hampstead PA Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe march Ms Thompson called on the Government to do more PA Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe march Richard Ratcliffe talks to demonstrators before a march REUTERS Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe march Ms Thompson joined supporters in north London REUTERS Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe march Demonstrators hold placards reading 'Free Nazanin' Reuters Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe march The actress told Boris Johnson to 'get on a plane' Reuters Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe march Demonstrators hold placards before a march in support of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe REUTERS Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe march The grop gathered in Hampstead PA

She said: "We are a net of compassion and love for Nazanin and her family.

"This is what we human beings do best in stark contrast to the bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster.

The group were staging a march calling for the government to do more to help Nazanin / REUTERS

"If I can get out of bed with pneumonia to support a horribly abused member of our community then our foreign secretary can get on a plane and go to Iran and deal with the problem he's so seriously exacerbated."

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe addressed those attending a rally, saying over the phone: "I'm so grateful for everybody's support and love... I am so overwhelmed and moved.

"All that is on my mind is to be back home and to be back with my family."

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's mental state has suffered since a gaffe by Boris Johnson about her activities in Iran led to the threat of further charges.

INazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her husband Richard Ratcliffe and their daughter Gabriella / PA

The Foreign Secretary later apologised for the "distress" and "suffering" he caused by his remarks, which has exposed her to the threat of her five-year jail sentence being doubled.

Mr Ratcliffe said earlier this month he hoped his wife would be home by Christmas after a "positive and constructive" meeting with Mr Johnson.

Ms Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn, said she had spoken to the British mother on the phone from prison.

The politician added: "We discussed how we would take both our daughters to Peppa Pig world when she's released."

Mrs Zaghari-Racliffe's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said: "It is profoundly moving to see so many people here.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe explainer

"I can really feel the love, and Nazanin can feel the love, and in the end that's the most important thing, that's what keeps us going."

The rally took place before a march to the Shia Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, north-west London, to hand in a "Mothers' Open Letter" asking for Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release from the Tehran prison.

An online petition calling for her to be returned to Britain has had

more than 1.3 million signatures.

Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK's director, said: "Once again, it's inspiring to see so many people supporting Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family this way.

"She's been put through a deeply unfair trial and could be facing a fresh charge, so it's extremely important that the recent political focus on Zaghari-Ratcliffe's case now translates into the Iranian authorities finally releasing her."
T he defence minister who ran into gunfire in an attempt to save a policeman in the Westminster terror attack is prepared to resign if cuts are imposed on the Army which would see it lose 12,000 soldiers.

Tobias Ellwood, the minister responsible for defence personnel and veterans, is understood to have concerns about proposals which could see the Army's full-time strength reduced to 70,000.

The Conservative MP ran towards danger during the terror attack in March, in a desperate bid to save Pc Keith Palmer who was stabbed to death by Khalid Masood outside Parliament.

The MP for Bournemouth East, who was pictured with his face bloodied giving first aid to the officer moments after the attack, was presented with a coat of arms and Police Federation shield for his bravery.

Bloodied: Tobias Ellwood shortly after the attack / PA

Now, according to the Times, he has shared his "deep discomfort" with colleagues about a list of cost-saving options faced by the Ministry of Defence.

A Whitehall source quoted by the newspaper said the Ministry of Defence was "beginning to try and push back" against the cuts.

The MoD said no decisions had been made and dismissed reports about the options being considered as "speculation".

But Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson was said to be shocked by the "completely awful" headline proposals drawn up by military chiefs, according to a Times source.

'Hero': The MP looking at flowers and tributes left in the wake of the attack / Jeremy Selwyn

Other measures thought to be under consideration include reducing the order for Ajax armoured vehicles and delaying upgrades to other tanks.

Mr Ellwood, who served in the Royal Green Jackets from 1991 to 1996 with tours in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Kuwait, Germany, Gibraltar and Bosnia and is now in the Army Reserve, has indicated he would have to step down if the military was not shielded from the proposed reductions, the Times said.

Asked if Mr Ellwood was known to have concerns about the prospect of cuts, a senior defence source told the Press Association: "Absolutely."

Speculation about defence cuts has mounted in recent months since the launch of a review led by Theresa May's national security adviser Mark Sedwill.

'Shocked': Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson (David Mirzoeff/PA ) / David Mirzoeff/PA

Other options reportedly under consideration include the axing of amphibious assault ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, alongside the loss of 1,000 Royal Marines.

An MoD spokesman said: "We have the biggest defence budget in Europe and are one of very few countries to not only meet but exceed NATO's 2% spending target.

"In the face of intensifying threats, we are contributing to the cross-government review of national security capabilities and looking at how we best spend the rising defence budget to protect our country.

"No decisions have been made and any discussion of the options is pure speculation." Tory MP Johnny Mercer - a former Army officer and a member of the Defence Select Committee - said the cost of the Trident nuclear deterrent should not be be part of the MoD's budget

Mr Mercer said he was "advocating hard" for the cost of sustaining the continuous at-sea deterrent - which accounts for around 6 per cent of the annual defence budget - to be borne centrally by the Government.

"The whole thing needs more money," he said. "This is just a start - like the amphibious 'rebellion'. It's a campaign, not a silver bullet, to get defence back where it needs to be."

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Lord Campbell of Pittenweem said: "When will the Government listen and learn? Former members of all three armed services, informed commentators, members of both Houses of Parliament and now a defence minister have all voiced their deepening anxieties about possible heavy cuts in the defence budget.

"Reducing the Army even further, cutting the Royal Marines and selling surface ships will fracture our defence capability."
B rits have been warned they face a long period of cold weather after temperatures plunged across the country overnight.

People have been advised to take precautions over the winter months as the mercury fell well below zero in parts of the UK.

The Met Office said the cold weather would remain on Saturday and Sunday, with a short-lived milder day on Monday, before a prolonged period of low temperatures throughout next week and the following week.

Public Health England issued the warning after figures earlier this week showed there were more than 34,000 "excess deaths" across England and Wales over the last winter period, the second highest level in eight years.

UK Snow: March 2017 - In pictures 1 /16 UK Snow: March 2017 - In pictures Children are pulled to school through snow on a sledge in Allendale, Northumberland Owen Humphreys/PA A car drives past daffodils in heavy snow in Allendale, Northumberland Owen Humphreys/PA A lone person climbs up towards Pen-y-Fan mountain on the Brecon Beacons where snow has been falling Ben Birchall/PA People walk through heavy snow in Allendale, Northumberland Owen Humphreys/PA A lorry drives through the snow on the A69 near Hexham in Northumberland Owen Humphreys/PA Dog walkers in heavy snow in Allendale, Northumberland Owen Humphreys/PA People climb the path to Pen-y-Fan mountain on the Brecon Beacons where snow has been falling Ben Birchall/PA Sheep graze on lower hills behind the Brecon mountains in Wales where snow has been falling Ben Birchall/PA Children head to school through snow in Allendale, Northumberland Owen Humphreys/PA Cars make their way through heavy snow in Allendale, Northumberland Owen Humphreys/PA Lambs in the snow near Hexham in Northumberland Owen Humphreys/PA A man clears the snow at Langley Castle in Northumberland Owen Humphreys/PA

Dr Thomas Waite, of their Extreme Events team, said: "We're well used to winter in this country so most people know what to do to protect their health before and during cold spells.

"But there are people who may not take precautions and who are at a very real risk.

"We know that every winter thousands of people fall ill and many die because of exposure to cold both in the home and while outdoors.

"Those most at risk include older people, very young children and those with conditions like heart and lung disease."

People wake up to snow near Sheffield

There were frosty scenes across the country on Saturday, with Topcliffe in Yorkshire experiencing minus 5.2C, and Benson, Oxfordshire, hitting a low of minus 4.9C.

There were smatterings of snow in parts of Scotland and the West Midlands.

North West Motorway Police reported icy, treacherous conditions on stretches of the M62, while police in Kent urged drivers to be careful on icy roads.

Commuters saw disruptions on Southern Rail and South Western Railway, Thameslink and Gatwick Express trains due to ice causing problems with the tracks.

Travellers faced cancellations, suspended services and delays on some rail services in the south-east throughout Saturday morning, but trains were running normally again by 1.30pm.

Met Office meteorologist Mark Wilson said: "The forecast is a day of sunshine and wintry showers, mostly across the north and west.

"It will generally be dry across the central and eastern parts of England.

"In the north and west of Scotland, the showers will be wintry at times and over higher ground we are likely to see snow, although it could fall on lower ground as well.

"It will be a cold and breezy day, feeling incredibly cold for November.

"Highs across the UK will be seven degrees at best, feeling colder in the wind. There will be a risk of ice throughout Saturday night into Sunday as well."
I rish pro-choice campaigners have said Brexit is a real worry for women forced to travel abroad for abortions.

The comments came on the 25th anniversary of a referendum that permitted women in the Republic of Ireland to travel abroad for terminations.

Cara Sanquest, of the London Irish Abortion Rights campaign, says the ongoing questions surrounding the Irish border could make the situation very difficult.

She said: Anything that promotes uncertainty - muddying the waters and confusing individuals with regard to their rights - is a real worry.

Protesters hold up placards during the London March for Choice / AFP/Getty Images

Figures show roughly 77 Irish women travel to the UK for terminations every week  more than 4,000 per year.

Abortion has been illegal ever since a referendum on the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution was held in 1983, with 66 per cent in favour of banning the practice.

Questions surrounding the Irish border have dogged Brexit negotiations, with Prime Minister Leo Varadkar saying he doesnt think the British Government had thought all this through.

Ms Sanquest said: Its important to remember that this doesnt just affect Irish women. Theres a good chance it will disproportionately affect migrant women in Ireland seeking abortions.

She described the 1992 referendum win as by no means a victory, as Irish women remained unsupported, morally and financially, by their Government when seeking an abortion.

She said: As it stands, there is one rule for the rich and another for the poor.

The risk of a confused Brexit process and a lack of clarity on Britains relationship with Ireland only serves to make a bad situation worse.

At present, the Irish Government has agreed to hold a referendum on abortion laws next year, although the exact wording of its question will not be released until February.

Mara Clarke is the founder of the apolitical Abortion Support Network, a charity providing advice and financial assistance to women seeking terminations outside of Ireland.

She says it isnt yet clear what impact Brexit will have on the Networks clients.

Ms Clarke also fears the Irish Government could overturn the Irish Constitutions Eight Amendment  which prohibits abortions  but maintain the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act (2013), which says mothers must be deemed sufficiently physically or mentally ill for a termination to be permitted.

Ms Clarke said: We have seen some truly horrific cases.

The burden of proof is put on the mother to prove how mentally ill they are and provides women with no control over their bodies.

We cant yet know exactly what impact Brexit will have on our clients.

Were continuing to answer calls, provide information and fund abortions for people in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man who need them.

Were going to wait and see what happens but - whatever the outcome - we are going to continue to fund abortions for those who need them.

For more information on the Abortion Support Network, click here.
A Zimbabwe former minister said masked men in uniform armed with AK-47s stormed his home and abducted him during the military operation that lead to the ousting of Robert Mugabe.

Former finance minister Ignatius Chombo appeared in court on Saturday on corruption charges that date back more than a decade.

He described how a raid in the early morning of November 15 began with two explosions, one of which shook his home.

Chombo said men entered his bedroom and pointed AK-47 assault rifles at him, his wife and his maid, then handcuffed him and blindfolded him with his own T-shirt.

Zimbabwe's former finance minister, Ignatius Chombo is led to a prison truck / AP

He was hustled out of his home through a smashed living room window, he said.

He told a magistrates' court in Harare: "I was in the custody of armed persons who were dressed in soldiers' uniforms. I don't know where I was taken to."

A one-hour drive to an unidentified location led to days in custody during which interrogators told him that he had performed badly as a government official and ruling party leader, he said.

Celebrations in Zimbabwe following Robert Mugabe's resignation 1 /25 Celebrations in Zimbabwe following Robert Mugabe's resignation Supporters of Emmerson Mnangagwa, the man expected to become Zimbabwe's new president and known as "The Crocodile", hold a stuffed crocodile and pictures of him as they cheer at Manyame Air Force base in Harare AP Zimbabweans celebrate in the morning sun after President Robert Mugabe resigned in Harare, Zimbabwe Reuters Zimbabweans drink, dance, sing and ride on cars as they celebrate at night at an intersection in downtown Harare AP Zimbabweans celebrate after President Robert Mugabe resigns in Harare Reuters Zimbabweans celebrate after President Robert Mugabe resigns in Harare Reuters Zimbabweans celebrate in neighbouring Hillbrow, Johannesburg, South Africa AP Zimbabweans celebrate after Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe resigned in Harare AP Zimbabweans drink, sing, and dance on top of passing vehicles as they celebrate at night at an intersection in downtown Harare AP Zimbabweans celebrate in the streets of Harare AP Zimbabweans celebrate after hearing about the resignation of President Robert Mugabe in Harare, AP Zimbabweans celebrate after hearing about the resignation of President Robert Mugabe in Harare, AP People and soldiers celebrate after the resignation of Zimbabwe's president AFP/Getty Images People holding Zimbabwean flags celebrate in the street after the resignation of Zimbabwe's president AFP/Getty Images Zimbabwe's members of parliament celebrate after Mugabe's resignation AFP/Getty Images Zimbabweans celebrate after hearing about the resignation of President Robert Mugabe in Harare Sky News Zimbabweans celebrate after hearing about the resignation of President Robert Mugabe in Harare Sky News Zimbabweans celebrate in Harare AP People celebrate in the streets after the resignation of Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe AFP/Getty Images Zimbabwe's members of parliament celebrate after Mugabe's resignation AFP/Getty Images

Chombo said he was blindfolded most of the time and never saw his captors' faces.

He added that he suffered lacerations during the forced exit from his home, falling several times while barefoot, and was not assaulted but saw a doctor after asking for pills.

His account has fuelled debate about the legality of the mostly peaceful takeover by the armed forces.

Finance minister Ignatius Chombo speaks at a rally of the ruling Zanu-PF / REUTERS

The evidence of Chombo came a day after a High Court judge, a retired general, ruled that the military's actions last week, which commanders described as a move against "criminals" around Mugabe, were legal.

While some critics said it set a dangerous precedent, the decision by Judge George Chiweshe reinforced the military's assertion that it acted within the law even though it set off events, including impeachment proceedings and street demonstrations against 93-year-old Mugabe, that ended his 37-year rule.

The joyful inauguration on Friday of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a former top aide to Mugabe, showed that most Zimbabweans were happy to have a new leader who might take steps to revive the shattered economy.
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Screenshot of the GoFundMe page that Kate McClure starts for Johnny Bobbitt Jr.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- A homeless man in U.S. city of Philadelphia had used his last 20 U.S. dollars to buy gas for a woman. The woman, in return, raised over 300,000 dollars in 13 days to pay him for a comfortable Thanksgiving resting in a hotel and a new vision for the rest of his life.

Kate McClure first met Johnny Bobbitt Jr, a homeless veteran in Philadelphia in the state of Pennsylvania at a night in October, when she was driving down Interstate 95 and ran out of gas.

Scared and nervous, she got out of the car to head to the nearest gas station and met Bobbitt. He told her to get back in the vehicle and lock the door.

Minutes later, he emerged with a red gas can, which he paid with his last 20 dollars.

Bobbitt didn't ask for money and McClure didn't have any money then, according to a CNN report on Friday.

About two weeks ago, McClure and her boyfriend, Mark D'Amico, who both live in New Jersey, started a GoFundMe page, wishing to raise 10,000 dollars to pay the good Samaritan for rent, a reliable vehicle and a few months of expenses.

The story ran in a local paper and later went viral on social media. By noon Friday, the fund for the kind man has exceeded 316,730 dollars, most amount of the donations came on Thanksgiving Day which fell on Nov. 23.

More than 11,100 people have made donations, and the donations have been continuing, the GoFundMe page showed Friday.

"We wanted to make sure he was safe, and go from there," McClure told CNN Thursday.

Bobbitt, a North Carolina native, has served in Marine Corps and studied nursing. He was also a former paramedic and firefighter, according to his Facebook page.

"The whole game changed in the last 24 to 48 hours. His expectations changed, and what he wanted to do changed," D'Amico said on CNN. "He has a couple of places in Philadelphia that got him through and got him by. He wants to pay it forward."
In late 2017 Russia revealed that it had out another armed UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) into service. This one, the Nerekhta, is literally a small tank, weighing 300 kg (660 pounds) and able to move silently on rubber tracks at up to 11 kilometers an hour. The armor protects the one meter (40 inch) long UGV from small arms fire and most shell and grenade fragments. Battery powered it can be armed with a RWS (remotely controlled weapons system) equipped with 12.7mm or 7.62mm machine-gun or an AGS-30 automatic 30mm grenade launcher. The RWS can be quickly replaced with 50 kg of explosives and the Nerekhta can be used on a one way mission to deliver the explosives. Sensors enable the remote operator to see around the UGV day or night. Armed UGVs are nothing new and one armed with explosives were used by the Germans (as the gasoline powered Goliath) during World War II. Currently armed UGVs are most often produced by Israel and South Korea for patrolling long borders that are often threatened by armed intruders. American manufacturers can and have armed their UGVs but find it more profitable to let the Israelis, South Koreans and Chinese have that market.

UGVs have become more common since the late 1990s and are usually unarmed and useful mainly for recon and surveillance in very dangerous situations. Even though armed UGVs have been developed and remain under remote control by a human operator, many nations resist adopting them, just as they resist armed UAVs. Yet there has never been similar opposition to sea-based unmanned armed weapons or even those that are not even under remote control (the naval torpedo since it first appeared in the late 19th century until a century later when it became possible to add remote control to high-end models).

But for nations under constant threat of attack the attitudes are different. Since 2001 Israel has developed several generations of armed UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles). The latest of these is Dogo, a smaller (12 kg/26 pounds), more aware (constant 360 degree camera coverage) and more lethal remotely controlled robot. Dogo showed up in 2016 and was designed with lots of input from soldiers and police who have been using UGVs for over a decade. Dogo is armed with a 9mm pistol loaded with 14 rounds and aimed by cameras dedicated to aiming the pistol accurately at ranges of up to 50 meters. Commandos and SWAT teams can carry one or more battery operated Dogos with them on missions that can benefit from a very mobile (it can climb steps) UGV that has night vision, is quiet and can hear as well as broadcast whatever the operator has to say (like hostage negotiation or demanding surrender). Many of these features have been found in earlier UGVs but never one as small or as capable.

Since 2006 the Israeli military has been moving its UGVs from guard duty to the battlefield. During that time Israeli infantry and several new generations of UGVs have been working together to see exactly what works and what doesnt. The basic idea here is to have UGVs with good enough sensors to successfully move across a battlefield in front of troops and look out for mines, roadside bombs, ambushes or any signs of the enemy at all. This gives the troops following close behind a better idea of what nasty surprises the enemy has for them and an opportunity to avoid lots of casualties and hit harder than the enemy expected. Dogo can do this as well as have its 9mm weapon replaced with pepper spray, a blinding flash or other non-lethal devices to deal with human threats.

Both Israel and the United States have already discovered that armed UGVs are not very successful on their own. But Israel believes that new designs, operating in close cooperation (as an advanced guard while moving into hostile territory) with infantry and manned armored vehicles might work well enough to justify regular use. The new UGVs are similar to the armed four wheeled vehicles Israel has been successfully using for guard duty along the Gaza and Lebanon borders. The eventual success of these UGVs encouraged trying to use them in combat.

Previous use of armed UGVs in active combat zones showed that these systems were vulnerable to attack and interference, which are the main reasons for not using them. Unless the cameras, and other sensors (sound, heat and seismic) can pick up hostiles far enough away, the remotely controlled weapon can be destroyed, along with many of the sensors, thus blinding the operators. By 2009 both the U.S. and Israel had developed smaller armed robots. The American systems is called Swords (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detecting System). This was a 57 kg (125 pound) remotely controlled vehicles that looked like a miniature tank. These were armed with a 5.56mm machine-guns and 350 rounds of ammo. Also known as Talon IIIB, the army spent over a year testing them in the United States before sending some to Iraq in 2008. There they found there were many ways to mess with Swords. Many tricks didn't even damage the equipment (like having a child or woman come out and throw a towel or sheet over it).

Israel has a similar system called Viper that carries a 9mm machine pistol (an Uzi) and can carry explosives, along with the usual video camera and microphones. Both Swords and Viper do have their uses, like entering very dangerous situations (like a cave or building believed occupied by fanatical gunmen). The droids can also be used for guard duty in dangerous locations (where the enemy might get a shot off, or toss a grenade.) But no matter what you have the battle robots do, the mechanical grunts lack the same degree of situational awareness of a human soldier. The sensors used on droids (mainly visual and acoustic) are getting better, as is the software that can quickly evaluate what the sensors see and hear. But humans can also smell, and feel (on their skin), as well as use superior vision and hearing. Until the sensors get better, the combat robots will always be at a disadvantage. But if used with those disadvantages kept in mind, the robots do have their uses. Dogo is the latest effort to expand that usefulness.
Amazon Web Services and Microsoft on Thursday announced the availability of Gluon, an open source deep learning library for building artificial intelligence neural networks.

Gluon will make it easier for researchers to define machine learning models using a collection of prebuilt, optimized neural network components. The interface will enable software developers and enterprise users to manipulate machine learning models like any other data structures.

Gluon also will enable data scientists and researchers to build prototypes quickly and utilize dynamic neural network graphs for entirely new model architectures without sacrificing training speed.

The Gluon interface allows developers of all skill levels to prototype, build, train and deploy sophisticated machine learning models for the cloud, devices at the edge, and mobile apps, according to both companies. The Gluon interface currently works with Apache MXNet and will support Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit in an upcoming release.

In providing the tool as open source, AWS and Microsoft published Gluons reference specification to better integrate other deep learning engines with the interface.

The Gluon interface is available now on GitHub.

As AI tools become easier to use, more developers will create more apps infused with AI, which means AI will have a bigger impact on society. So tools like Gluon and Keras are helping to expand the impact of AI, observed Chris Nicholson, CEO of Skymind .

Needed Solution

Microsoft hopes the open source community will help to solve the enormous challenges confronting society. Developing with AI and deep learning models is a difficult endeavor for most data professionals, noted Eric Boyd, corporate vice president of AI data and infrastructure at Microsoft.

We believe bringing AI advances to all developers, on any platform, using any language, with an open AI ecosystem, will help ensure AI is more accessible and valuable to all, Boyd wrote in an online post.

A deep learning network is a large and complex operation that entails manually constructing millions of connections. Deep learning networks usually are unwieldy and difficult to debug, and their code often can not be reused between projects, according to Matt Wood, general manager of artificial intelligence at AWS.

Gluon is an easy-to-use Python application programming interface intended for non-AI specialists to prototype and train neural nets. A trained neural net is one that can produce accurate predictions about the data you feed it, Skyminds Nicholson told LinuxInsider.

So Gluon will help people experiment with neural net configurations. What they do not do is offer a production-grade AI server. They are stuck in the training phase and do not do deployment like Skyminds tools, he said.

What Gluon Does

Gluon brings together two key components: training algorithms and neural network models. It eases the effort of integrating AI with applications, said Mark Lambiase, chief technology officer of Fox Technologies.

I believe the play here is the vast quantities of data necessary to have AI train to a level of relevancy. Big data has opened the way to store more types of data intelligently, he told LinuxInsider.

Big data relies on massive amounts of computers sorting, indexing and storing the data. The storage necessary for a good AI will eclipse the infrastructure necessary for the algorithms that will scan the data to make sense of it, Lambiase explained.

Gluon has lowered the bar for adding AI to an application, he added. Developers are going to be able to use this to start adding smarts to their applications.

This can potentially open up a whole new industry for data brokers who could  sell subscriptions to their data to application developers that employ AI but do not have the resources to collect the data on their own, Lambiase said.

Open Source Critical

Both Amazon and Microsoft have been battling Google to build the dominant AI framework. Right now, Google is winning, noted Nicholson.

Gluon competes with Keras, an AI framework tool that integrates with Googles TensorFlow. Both Keras and TensorFlow were built by Google engineers.

Until recently, Keras looked like it would be a standard API over multiple frameworks like Microsofts CNTK and Amazons MxNet. But with Gluon, it is clear that Microsoft and Amazon want to limit the reach of Googles tech, said Nicholson.

AWS and Microsoft are aware that todays developer communities are forming around open source software. Releasing Gluon as open source is another data point reflecting that reality, said Lucas Geiger, CEO of Wireline.

The open source donation proves Microsoft has awakened to the reality that it is the open source developers that have the strongest communities, and those communities are also influencing business decisions, he told LinuxInsider.

Battle of Influence

One of the benefits of open sourcing AI is to get it into the hands of developers who can seed it into every application and service available, according to Lambiase.

With AI, the genie is out of the bottle, and trying to monopolize it will more likely alienate people than win any friends  . AI itself is not going to drive revenue directly for these companies, he said.

Another benefit to both AWS and Microsoft in open-sourcing the shared Gluon project is that they can cast a wider net to bring a diverse set of talents to the community, Wirelines Geiger suggested. Additionally, many of the top tier talent would distrust any efforts in AI that were not open sourced. That is the new reality of software development. Open source is the only viable path.
According to the President of the National Institute of Civil Aeronautics (INAC), twelve airlines have requested to operate with Venezuela. | Read More
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) shows the way his Japan's counterpart Taro Kono during a meeting in Moscow on November 24, 2017. (AFP PHOTO)

MOSCOW, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Russia and Japan support a settlement of the Korean Peninsula crisis on the basis of the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and hope a way would be found to resume negotiations, the foreign ministers of the two countries said here Friday.

"We hope that in the end it will still be possible to find a way out of this spiral of confrontation and try to find ways to resume the negotiation process," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a joint press conference with his Japanese counterpart Taro Kono following bilateral talks.

"To denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, which is a common task of Japan and Russia, a full implementation of the resolutions of the UNSC is necessary. We have reached an agreement to cooperate closely in this sphere," Kono said.

Lavrov said Moscow does not accept the "missile and nuclear stunts" of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in flagrant violation of UNSC resolutions.

However, Russia, together with China and a number of other countries, insist on implementing the UNSC resolutions with their provisions for resuming negotiations, he said.

Russia is also concerned at the United States deploying elements of its missile defense system in South Korea and Japan under the pretext of threats from the DPRK, Lavrov said.

Though the DPRK did not carry out any tests or missile launches in the last two months, Washington, however, was attempting to provoke Pyongyang by holding military exercises in the region and imposing new sanctions on the DPRK, so as to "finally switch to military options", he said.

The use of force in the region, he pointed out, would result in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of victims, which leading experts and even representatives of the U.S. administration recognized.

The Japanese foreign minister said that Japan saw "an unprecedented threat", not only to Japan and Russia, but also to the international community in general from the DPRK's nuclear tests and launch of missiles.

Kono said Japan considers it necessary to use all available methods and means to increase pressure and persuade the DPRK to halt its nuclear and missile program.
The Argentine military submarine ARA San Juan and crew are seen leaving the port of Buenos Aires, Argentina June 2, 2014. (Armada Argentina/Handout via Reuters)

2 Sailors Miraculously Avoid Joining Argentinian Submarine Lost at Sea

Last minute decisions resulted in two Argentinean submariners not joining their fellow crew members on their submarine that has been missing in the South Atlantic since Nov. 15.

For different reasons, Humberto Vilte and Adrian Rothlisberger were not required to board ARA San Juan which left a naval base in southern Argentina on Nov. 13, reported Fox, citing Brazilian newspaper O Globo.

Vilte was permitted to miss the mission on compassionate grounds due to his mother being seriously ill, O Globo reported. As part of that the Argentinean navy also paid for his trip back home to see his hospitalized mother, according to local newspaper Clarin.

Since the disappearance of the German-built submarine, Vilte has replaced his Facebook profile picture with that of an ARA San Juan shield with a black ribbon on it.

Rothlisberger  the other submariner who did not join the 44 members on board the missing submarine  avoided the trip by a matter of seconds, his mother said, according to O Globo.

Sandra Alvares said her son was allowed to miss the mission as he had completed a series of tasks for his supervisor.

Alvares told Radio Dos it was a miracle that her son did not board the submarine.

Keep praying, she said in reference to the hope of finding those still missing.

Both sailors have now traveled to the coastal city of Mar del Plata where many of the missings family and friends have gathered to await further news of the submarines fate.

My last picture of the ARA (S-42) San Juan, taken at Darsena Norte (Buenos Aires) on May 14th, 2017. Rest in Peace, braves! #NeverForget #ARASanJuan @AncientSubHunt pic.twitter.com/dwyXMYjm2Q  Javier Mosquera +1m (@JaviMosquer) November 24, 2017

However, news that a suspected explosion  described as a hydro-acoustic anomaly  was detected in the area where the submarine last communicated from has meant many have given up hope in seeing their loved ones again.

Among the missing is Eliana Maria Krawczyk  Argentinas first female submarine officer.

Efforts to find the 34-year-old submarine continue. More than a dozen countries and some 4,000 people have joined the hunt to find the missing submarine, reported The Financial Times.

Argentinian navy spokesman Captain Enrique Baldi said search teams had access to the best technology available via the U.S. navy, reported the BBC.

We have the best naval, air and sensor resources available in the area, all focused on searching for the submarine, said Baldi. We are still looking and no country is saying at the moment when they will stop. Logically its time-limited but no-one is speaking about that at the moment.

RIP brave crew of the Argentinian submarine ARA San Juan. pic.twitter.com/hsUKIyTMkY  Falange Exterior (@Falange_Philly) November 24, 2017

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Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos presents the company's first smartphone, the Fire Phone, on June 18, 2014 in Seattle, Washington.(David Ryder/Getty Images)

Black Friday Moves Amazon Founder Into $100 Billion Club

Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos has become the newest billionaire to reach a net worth of $100 billion.

According to Bloomberg, Bezoss fortune jumped $2.4 billion to $100.3 billion early on Nov. 24, following more than a two percent rise in shares on Black Friday.

This surge in net worth makes Bezos, 53, the first billionaire to reach a net worth of $100 billion since 1999. The last billionaire to achieve that milestone was Microsoft Corp. co-founder, Bill Gates.

Reaching the new landmark was shortlived, however. After the close of trading in New York on Friday, the billionaires total net worth fell back down to $97.9 billion.

Nonetheless, Bezos has had a good year. His net wealth went up $36.2 billion this year through to Nov. 24a 49.8 percent increase since the same period last year.

The online retail mogul surpassed Gates as the worlds richest man last month, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, a daily ranking of the worlds 500 richest people.

Gate, 62, still holds second place with a net worth of $88.9 billion, while Warren Buffet, 86, of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. remained in third with a net worth of $78.9 billion, according to the index on Nov. 24.

Bezos is the largest shareholder of Amazon, the worlds biggest retailer, owning about 16 percent of Amazons stock. The bulk of his wealth is generated from these shares.

The Amazon CEO is also the owner of space exploration company, Blue Origin, which has an implied value between $1 billion and $12 billion. He also owns the Washington Post, which he purchased for $250 million in 2013, and he owns shares in a number of other companies.

Amazon reported a 34 percent rise in revenue of $43.7 billion in the third quarter this year compared to the same period last year, according to Forbes. The company also recently had a soft launch of its Australian online store on Nov. 23 in time for Black Friday sales.

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils the first iPhone at the Macworld developers conference in San Francisco on Jan. 9, 2007. Since then, Apple and other innovative companies have developed hundreds of different models, constantly improving the user experience. (TONY AVELAR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

How a Smaller Government Made the iPhone Possible

Ten years and 11 generations later, Apples invention demonstrates the power of free markets

From 1913 to 1984, the United States had a government-sanctioned telephone monopoly, in some form or another, with very heavy government involvement in the industry. From the 1950s, many homes in America even had the same telephone: the Western Electric Model 500 rotary, with some minor variations over the years. The U.S. government limited what telephone companies could be used, and the Bell System (AT&T) limited what telephones could be used.

That anti-competitive system created by government massively slowed development in residential telecommunications. In 1984, those Model 500 rotary phones, very similar to the model that had first been developed in the late 1940s and brought to the market in the 1950s, were still in use. They said telephone service was a natural monopoly, so many people considered all of this an appropriate relationship between government and business.

The Same Phones

That old Model 500 phone was in our house when I was a child. I remember that on the bottom of my familys telephone was a sticker that said our phone was property of Illinois Bell. I had imagined that our telephone had somehow been accidentally stolen the first time I saw that sticker. Why would something in our house belong to someone else? I wondered.

It was because government made the Bell System the official monopoly, and the Bell System was able to make policies that consumers couldnt really question, including the fact that millions of American households would rent their telephones from the phone company.

As I traveled through former communist Czechoslovakia over the years, I often saw a similar out-of-date phone that was used in communist times. How similar the two countries (Czechoslovakia and the United States) were, in some respects! Even today, some Slovak houses have the same sleek, communist model of telephone. I assume thats because that was the one phone that was available. I cant help but look back on how very similar our monopoly telephone laws in America (along with a host of other laws) were to those in communist countries.

While the government didnt own the telephone company in America, its foolish to pretend that theres much difference between outright government ownership, heavy-handed control, and the government doing exactly what the board of directors of big companies want. All three relationships end up blurring the lines beyond recognition between whats government and whats corporate.

But at least in the realm of telecommunication, things look very different today, and its almost impossible to imagine the United States once had a telephone monopoly.

Government-Enforced Monopolies: Stalwarts to Innovation

In 1998, an economics professor at the University of Illinois taught me that natural monopolies exist and are a fact of life. He cited telephone services and cable television as two examples. He professed this theory even as everyone on campus was slowly beginning to dial numbers like 10-10-220 or 10-10-321 for cheaper long-distance calls home.

That professor probably kept saying it the following year when cellphones finally became the rage on our campus, just five years after the U.S. government, in 1994, finally allowed phone manufacturers enough room in the radio spectrum for widespread mobile phone use.

Within two years, mobile phones went from being hardly used to being practically everywhere on that campus, and within the next decade, the iPhone would appear.

Who could possibly have imagined that in 23 years time, America would go from having the same old AT&T, 1940s-style phones in so many homes to having iPhones in so many pockets? The Model 500s were put there by a company both heavily regulated and heavily favored by the government, a company that was largely disinterested in innovatinga government and a company both disinterested in innovating.

The iPhone, in contrast, was made popular by companies, engineers, and consumers, who moved too quickly for the government to even be able to understand what was happening, let alone to have enough time to try regulating it.

As brilliant as everyone says Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was, my guess is that not even Jobs had any idea in 1984 that 23 years later, something like an iPhone would exist. My guess is that almost no one anywhere in the world was able to predict that with much accuracy. When the government took the power to make decisions out of the hands of entrepreneurs and consumers, they delegated that authority to a different groupthe federal regulators and the board of directors at AT&T.

In all likelihood, no one who sat in on AT&T board meetings 23 years ago would have predicted that an iPhone might one day appear. That probably didnt matter to them though. The U.S. government ensured that what was good for AT&T and what was good for the regulators would be what the rest of the United States would abide byeven if that meant everyone would use the same rotary telephone for 35 years.

Had residential telecommunications been left in the hands of government and AT&T, its unlikely that anything like an iPhone would exist today.

We Dont Need Central Planning

If one person makes a mistake in a free market, its not a big deal in the same way it is in a controlled economy. The brilliance of allowing competition and a free market is that no one person needs to know everything. No one person needs to know the future, and no one person needs to understand the desires of every other person.

Had you asked someone in 1984, What innovations will a more competitive marketplace in telecommunications bring over the next 23 years?, that person probably couldnt have told you with any certainty. Twenty-three years is a long time when technology is allowed to develop freely. But at least they would have been able to tell you that something better could come out of a freer system of competition.

Thats how the mechanism of competition works. You dont need to be all-knowing to be able to believe that competition works. You dont need to prove that competition is better by explaining specifically how competition will make health care better, automotive consumers happier, and users of money better off. Its enough to know that such happiness is part of the nature of competition.

While I dont know what benefits competition will bring to industries that are heavily controlled by government, I do know that experience shows free competition will advance technology and respond to the needs and wants of the consumer in a way that protectionism in its many forms cant. You may call it mercantilism, communism, cronyism, or whatever other names youd like; its all about the law being used to protect a producer, to limit the choice of consumers, and to limit the ability of competitors to enter a market freely.

By opposing government protectionism, you support a belief that better solutions can be had for any problem out there when a spirit of competition is allowed to drive innovation. By opening up the discussion and letting the profit-motive work its magic, better solutions can be found by a variety of enterprising people and not just whoever happens to be in the AT&T boardroom or in the office of a federal regulator at the time.

Jobs was a brilliant, charismatic man in the right place at the right time, and my life is enriched because someone was there to do what Jobs did. At first, I didnt even use an iPhone, but I know that everything from my old Nokia and Motorola phones had the imprint of Jobs and dozens of other people like him. My time on the internet is influenced by him. My time on any computer today is influenced by him. The word-processing program Im using to write this was influenced by him. I wonder how much less pleasant my work as a writer would be if in the year 2013, the United States had celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Ma Bell monopoly.

Free Markets Make It Easier to Help

I think competition is good for us, and freedom allows competition to take place. I dont know the details of how our lives will be better because of free markets in the future. I just know from past experience that they can and will be better. The existence of the iPhone and the demise of the Western Electric Model 500 are examples of the victory of freer markets. I do know when government allows people to get together and to freely help one another out, people are left better off than when government intervenes and slows that process.

By opening up the discussion and letting the profitmotive work its magic, better solutions can be found by a variety of enterprising people and not just whoever happens to be in the AT&T boardroom or in the office of a federal regulator at the time.

By helping each other out, I mean being kind and charitable, but also things like selling a product, selling a service, selling time, selling labor, or selling advice. All of these activities help other people.

When I buy a book on Amazon, I go through the realization that my money is worth less to me than that book, and I have the entire team of people who have cooperated in getting me that product to thank for their help. They in turn consider my money to be more valuable to them than that book. We have helped each other out in that situation.

If we push government aside, people like Jobsbrilliant, charismatic peoplewill step forward and lead the way. There will be dozens, maybe even hundreds, of options that present themselves as solutions to every minute problem. There will be open dialogue and competition. There will be lots of failure for daring entrepreneurs and investors. There will also be much success for all of us. We will be left with more than just the broken, one-size-fits-all systems that are heavy and clunky like the property of Illinois Bell phone that I grew up calling my aunts and uncles on.

Some of us are carrying around the newest and best iPhones and even some of the poorest people in society and around the globe can afford a second- and third-generation model of fantastic smartphones. No one is forced to use that old Western Electric clunker today.

Where there is only one manufacturer and where there is a market closed to competition, the improvements come slowly. A government-sanctioned monopoly simply doesnt have an incentive to innovate. Its part of the natural corruption that comes from the state protecting manufacturers. The easier it is for a potential competitor to enter a market, the better it can be for us all.

However, the U.S. government mounts towering barriers to entry for brilliant entrepreneurs with a host of prohibitions (often called regulations) that ultimately make life more difficult and more expensive for consumers. Instead of letting consumers regulate their own buying, instead of letting markets regulate themselves through the decisions of consumers, we are left with government interference sapping vital energy and resources from our industries.

Not for a moment will I pretend that the competition created by a free market is flawless. But it does a pretty good job, allows for a great deal of personal freedom, and allows society to have more iPhone-quality developments and fewer Model 500-quality stagnations. The latter stagnated for about 35 years; the former had 11 new generations in its first 10 years of existence. The latter, we were beholden to; the former, we buy because we choose to have it.

Imagine if the government stepped aside today from health care, from research, from education, from retirement funding, from charity, from banking, from agriculture, from the automotive industry, and from a host of other industries. If the government steps away from virtually any area of life it regulates, it is entirely reasonable to assume that within 20 years we will have seen our service and products in that industry go from the equivalent of the AT&T standard-issue-and-clunky to the iPhone.

Thank you, iPhone, for showing us how much can happen when government just steps aside.

Allan Stevo is a libertarian thinker and the author of The Bitcoin Manifesto.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Kim Kardashian Offers Legal Help to a Woman Facing a Life Sentence

A movement to free a woman serving a life sentence has grown, with high profile celebrities like LeBron James, Rihanna, and Kim Kardashian West offering moral, and now even legal, support.

Cyntoia Brown, now 29 years old, went to prison in 2004 when she was just 16. She was convicted of killing a Nashville real estate agent, Johnny Allen, 43, who hired her as a prostitute, Fox News reported.

She shot him with a gun she had in her purse and then stole two of his guns and his wallet before driving his pickup truck to a Walmart parking lot, Newsweek reported. She was later arrested.

The system has failed. Its heart breaking to see a young girl sex trafficked then when she has the courage to fight back is jailed for life! We have to do better & do whats right. Ive called my attorneys yesterday to see what can be done to fix this. #FreeCyntoiaBrown pic.twitter.com/73y26mLp7u  Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) November 21, 2017

Its not clear why celebrities have started calling for her freedom, but now Kardashian West is offering to help Brown by lending her her personal attorney.

The Blast reported that her lawyer, Shawn Holley, who was part of O.J. Simpsons Dream Team of lawyers, is reaching out to Brown.

Kardashian West is also throwing her attorney into the case of a 62-year-old former FedEx worker who was convicted of a drug offense after passing messages for a cocaine ring in the 1990s. She has served 21 years of a life sentence.

The documentary Me Facing Life: Cyntoias Story says Brown was forced into prostitution as a teenager.

Her mother drank alcohol while she was pregnant, and then started taking drugs after she was born, it says. The mother then got into prostitution.

Brown was given to an adoptive mother, but ran away, and ended up living with a pimp called Cutthroat who abused her.

Opponents of Browns incarceration argue that she was held captive by him, and should be treated as a victim of human trafficking.

The prosecutor in the case argued that she was trying to steal from Allen, and killed him so she could take his money.

From NTD.tv

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We are proud and wowed by the hundreds of Montanans who braved the weather to attend four public hearings and voice concerns about the mine being proposed in the headwaters of the iconic Smith River.

Our Montana Department of Environmental Quality heard your clear message: Montanans want to protect the Smith Rivers wealth of sustainable virtues  recreation, angling, scenic beauty, cultural treasures and outdoor economy rather than allow a foreign mining company to risk those values and our grandchildrens legacy for short-term profit. The DEQ is now reading through the more than 10,000 written comments people have submitted raising the same concerns we heard at the live hearings.

In the Great Falls hearing, Mayor Bob Kelly insisted on a bigger reclamation bond for the project in case pollution from an environmental event at the mine reaches the Missouri River. The city of Great Falls needs to be formally declared as having standing as an injured party and be able to seek and receive payment for reclamation and reparation of the damage that may occur to our water source, said the mayor. He was one of many people who recognized the threat this mine poses to downstream interests including clean water, fish, irrigation, property values, human health and the recreation economy.

In White Sulphur Springs, Smith River landowner and engineer Warren Hopper expressed concern about the tailings liner leaking over time. In my line of work, I have seen double- and even triple-lined impoundments eventually leak. Other opponents reminded DEQ of the track record of modern mines shuttering when the global market dictates, leaving locals with environmental contamination and taxpayers with the cleanup costs.

For most Montanans, mines like Black Butte are a threat to good jobs rather than a boon. In Helena, more than 200 people showed up to the hearing, many coming straight from having paraded drift boats and rafts sporting No Smith River Mine signs around the Capitol and rallying against the mine on the lawn.

At the hearing, representatives from leading businesses such as Simms, Orvis and Costa spoke of the role the outdoor economy plays in Montana and their businesses. Lifelong outfitters and guides told DEQ that this mine makes them worry about their livelihoods. I have built a business of the Smith River. I have watched my business put kids through college. We provide good paying jobs. Why risk it? asked Brandon Boedecker, owner of Pro Outfitters.

Finally, in Livingston, we heard concerns of forever impacts mines like the Black Butte project leave behind after shipping Montanas natural resources and profits overseas. Tim Stevens, of Livingston, said of the mine, The impacts are going to be forever, and thus, bonding, and analysis of impacts on things like roads and water quality, wildlife and the local way of life also needs to be forever.

Though the scoping period ended Nov. 16, this is not the last time for concerned citizens to make a difference. Next spring, be prepared for DEQ to release a draft document detailing the possible environmental impacts of the mine. The public will have the opportunity to review and comment on those impacts and the course DEQ should take with this mine proposal. This will be another crucial time for Montanans to speak up and make sure this mine presents zero risk to the Smith River watershed.

Montana Trout Unlimited thanks the DEQ for hosting these hearings and listening to the concerns of the public. Now its time for the DEQ to take those public concerns seriously.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 05:16:15|Editor: Zhou Xin

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ANKARA, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday held a phone conversation with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, pledging that Washington will not provide weapons to the People's Protection Units (YPG), Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara that the two leaders discussed over the phone the Sochi summit, Syria crisis and bilateral ties.

Trump gave his assurance after Erdogan reaffirmed Ankara's concerns over the U.S. continued delivery of heavy weapons and armoured vehicles to the YPG, the minister said.

"Lately, we have seen that some armoured vehicles were given to them," he said.

Turkey considers the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing the YPG the Syrian affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a terrorist organization listed by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU, while the U.S. supports the PYD as its ally on the ground in combating the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

The Turkish minister welcomed Trump's assurance, saying Turkey wants to see the decision being implemented.

The two presidents also exchanged views on the recent Sochi summit with the participation of the presidents of Russia, Iran and Turkey, said Cavusoglu, voicing Ankara's opposition to the YPG's participation in any peace conference.

Erdogan also called for the U.S. to completely resolve the visa issue against Turkey, Cavusoglu added.

President Erdogan tweeted and posted a meeting photograph in his office following the phone call.

"I had a fruitful phone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump today," he said.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish National Intelligence Organization Chief Hakan Fidan and Presidential aide Ibrahim Kalin were also seen during the phone call in the photo.
L: A frame from camera footage showing a man trying to enter a car on Hawbuck Street in Trinity Oaks, Fla., on Nov. 14, 2017; R: Stephen Titland, who was arrested for attempted burglary. (Pasco Sheriff's Office)

Man Tries to Break Into Car Full of Sheriffs Deputies

A Florida man was hunting for an unlocked car to ransack, but when he found one, it turned out to be full of sheriffs deputies.

Stephen Titland, 49, tried to get inside seven cars along Hawbuck Street in Trinity Oaks, a suburb some 15 miles northwest of Tampa, on Nov. 14, according to the Pasco Sheriffs Office. All of the cars were locked, however.

The next day, he tried again two miles northwest on Murrow Street in New Port Richey.

He tried the door of a car and found that it was unlocked. But when he opened the door, he found the car full of deputies from the sheriffs Strategic Targeted Area Response (STAR) team. The car belonged to the sheriffs office, though it was unmarked.

Titland was arrested.

Property Crimes Detectives positively identified and then arrested Titland for all 7 attempted burglaries, the Pasco Sheriffs Office stated in a Facebook post.

Several Trinity Oaks homeowners had caught the suspect on camera.

Titland, originally from Arlington, Virginia, was living in New Port Richey, and was already on probation for burglary and loitering, according to his charge sheet. He was taken to the Pasco County Jail.

The Pasco Sheriffs three Strategic Targeted Area Response (STAR) teams are tasked with suppressing crime in Pasco County.

Each team has four members who dont respond to 911 calls, unless needed. Instead, they work in high-crime areas to catch notorious criminals committing burglary, vehicle theft, and robbery.

This keeps the public safer by locking up the 6 percent of people who are committing 60 percent of the crime, the website of the sheriffs office states.

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View of the Rawda mosque, roughly 40 kilometres west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish, after a gun and bombing attack, on November 24, 2017. A bomb explosion ripped through the mosque before gunmen opened fire on the worshippers gathered for weekly Friday prayers, officials said. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)

Gunmen in Egypt Mosque Attack Carried ISIS Flag: Prosecutor

CAIROTerrorists who killed more than 300 people in an attack on a mosque in Egypts North Sinai on Friday were carrying an ISIS flag and were between 25 to 30 in number, the public prosecutors office said in a statement on Saturday.

The gunmen, some wearing masks and military-style uniforms, surrounded the mosque blocking windows and a doorway and opened fire inside with automatic rifles, the statement citing their investigation and interviews with wounded survivors.

They numbered between 25 and 30, carrying the Daesh flag and took up positions in front of the mosque door and its 12 windows with automatic rifles, the statement said using an Arabic term for ISIS.

Egypts military said on Saturday it had carried out air strikes and raids overnight against those it held responsible for killing more than 230 worshippers at a mosque in North Sinai.

The bloodiest attack in Egypts modern history, in which militants gunned down worshippers, brought condemnation from leaders from Washington to Moscow, while President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning in the shocked nation.

No group has claimed responsibility, but Egyptian forces are battling a stubborn ISIS affiliate in the region, one of the surviving branches of the militant group after it suffered defeats by U.S.-backed forces in Iraq and Syria.

The air force has over the past few hours eliminated a number of outposts used by terrorist elements, the army said.

Witnesses say gunmen set off a bomb at the end of Friday prayers at the Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of El-Arish city, and then opened fire as worshippers tried to flee, shooting at ambulances and setting fire to cars to block roads.

Images on state media showed bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the mosque.

Striking a mosque would be a shift in tactics for the Sinai militants, who have previously attacked troops and police and more recently tried to spread their insurgency to the mainland by hitting Christian churches and pilgrims.

The massive casualties in the Sinai attack and the targeting of a mosque stunned Egyptians who have struggled through instability after the 2011 uprising ousted long-standing leader Hosni Mubarak, and the years of protests that followed.

May the souls of all those who die rest in peace, Muslims and Christians alike these people have no religion, said Abdullah an unemployed man in downtown Cairo referring to the attackers. Every other day someone dies, every other day a church is bombed  where is the security?

Utmost Force

Local sources said some of the worshippers were Sufis, whom groups such as ISIS consider targets because they revere saints and shrines. ISIS has targeted Sufi Muslims and Shiite in other countries like Iraq.

The jihadists in Egypts Sinai have also attacked local tribes and their militias for working with the army and police.

Sisi, a former armed forces commander who supporters see as a bulwark against Islamist terrorists, promised the utmost force against those responsible for Fridays attack. Security has been a key reason for his supporters to back him, and he is expected to run for re-election next year.

What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism, he said on Friday.

North Sinai, a mostly desert area which stretches from the Suez Canal eastwards to the Gaza Strip and Israel, has long been a security headache for Egypt and is a strategic region for Cairo because of its sensitive borders.

Local group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, once allied to al Qaeda, split from it and declared allegiance to ISIS in 2014. But attacks in the Sinai worsened after 2013 when Sisi led the overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood after mass protests against his rule.

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Missing Teen Wanted in Connection With Grandmas Death, Caught Trying to Enter Canada

A teen in Florida who went missing this week and was wanted by police in connection with the death of his grandmother was detained on Friday, Nov. 24after he was caught trying to enter Canada near Buffalo, New York.

According to the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office, authorities named Logan Mott, a 15-year-old boy, as a person of interest in the case.

A body believed to be of Logans 53-year-old grandmother, Kristina French, was found by police on Friday in a shallow grave.

The grave was located at Eric Motts home in Neptune Beach,where Logan also lives, according to ABC News. Eric Mott is Frenchs son and Logans father.

Logan Mott has been detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as he tried to enter Canada from the Buffalo, NY area. A big thank you to everyone for sharing and helping us get #LoganMott detained quickly. The investigation is ongoing. pic.twitter.com/kAFP3fBFVM  Jax Sheriff's Office (@JSOPIO) November 25, 2017

Logan Mott has been detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as he tried to enter Canada from the Buffalo, NY area. A big thank you to everyone for sharing and helping us get # LoganMott detained quickly. The investigation is ongoing the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office posted in a Nov. 24 tweet.

Logan was reported missing along with his grandmother. The remains of the body have not been officially identified as of writing on Saturday, Nov. 25, according to CBS News.

The Logans mother, Carrie Campbell-Mott, gave CBS this statement after learning the news that her son was in custody.

We are relieved he is safe and in custody and we just ask for everyone to give us time to sort out what happened. That no matter what, Logan is our child and we love him and are standing by him to help in any way. We want to find out what happened to Kristina and we need time for that to happen, the mother said.

Earlier this week on Wednesday, Eric Mott was returning home from a vacation when he saw the ransacked home with both his son and mother missing.

Jacksonville Sheriffs Office Director Ron Lendvay told CBS that investigators found evidence of foul play and of possible criminal violence inside the home.

Logans father also said that several guns were missing from the ransacked home, according to ABC affiliate WJXX.

Police want to interview Logan to determine what exactly occurred inside their home.

At a Friday press conference, police did not describe Logan Mott as a suspect, instead saying: We need to talk to him about what happened in the house, a police representative said.

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Rescue personnel transport a man injured during clashes between police and protesters, at a hospital for treatment in Rawalpindi, Pakistan Nov. 25, 2017. (Reuters/Faisal Mahmood)

Pakistani Police Fire Tear Gas at Islamists Blockading Capital

ISLAMABADPakistani police used tear gas and watercannon, and fought running battles with stone-throwing Islamic activists, as they moved to clear a protest by the religious hard-liners who have blocked main routes into Islamabad for more than two weeks.

The clashes began on Saturday, Nov. 25, when police launched an operation, involving some 4,000 officers, to disperse around 1,000 activists from Tehreek-e-Labaik, a new hard-line Islamic political party, and break up their camp, police official Saood Tirmizi told Reuters.

Dozens of protesters were arrested, Tirmizi said, and a hospital reported at least 27 people were being treated for injuries.

The mass protest, plus the recent gains of two new Islamic parties in Pakistan, demonstrated the religious groups gathering strength ahead of what are expected to be tumultuous elections next year.

Islamabad- Protest

Lahore- Protest

Karachi- Protest

Peshawar- Protest

Quetta- Blast

Country is totally in chaos. And, PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is in Raiwind  Ali Raza (@AliRazaTweets) November 25, 2017

Islamabad clash is meant to be a detonator for a bigger explosion of extremist violence everywhere,particularly in Punjab & Karachi with largest Barelvi population. Pol parties believing in democracy should take a clear stand against extremism & violence.  Afrasiab Khattak (@a_siab) November 25, 2017

Television footage showed smoke billowing and fires burning in the streets as officers in heavy riot gear advanced. Protesters, some wearing gas masks, fought back in scattered battles across empty highways and surrounding neighborhoods.

We are in our thousands. We will not leave. We will fight until end, Tehreek-e-Labaik party spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters by telephone from the scene.

The protesters have paralyzed daily life in the capital, and have defied court orders to disband, demanding that the minister of law be fired.

Tehreek-e-Labaik blames the minister, Zahid Hamid, for changes to an electoral oath that it says amounts to blasphemy. The government puts the issue down to a clerical error.

Death to blasphemers is a central rallying cry for Tehreek-e-Laibak, which was born out of a protest movement lionizing Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab province who gunned down his boss in 2011 over his call to reform strict blasphemy laws.

The religious party, which advocates strict rule by Islamic Sharia law, won a surprisingly strong 7.6 percent of the vote in a by-election in Peshawar last month.

Since Tehreek-e-Labaik began its sit-in, the government has blocked several roads with shipping containers to corral the protesters, but that has caused hours-long traffic jams in and around the capital.

The government had tried to negotiate an end to the sit-in, fearing violence during a crackdown similar to 2007, when clashes between authorities and supporters of radical Islamabad mosque led to the deaths of more than 100 people.

By late morning, Tehreek-e-Labaik supporters were coming out on the streets in other Pakistani cities in support of the Islamabad protesters.

All roads to Islamabad have been blocked. Khanapul has also been blocked by protestors #FaizabadDharna pic.twitter.com/Mod3YnNYNc  Dr. Aliya Kareem (@DrAliya7) November 25, 2017

About 500 demonstrators blocked one of main roads in Karachi, the southern port that is Pakistans largest city, a Reuters witness said, though the gathering was peaceful.

The Islamabad administration has asked the leader of the Tehreek-e-Laibak party, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, to surrender, but he has refused so far.

He stays in communication with his followers through on Facebook. On a recent post, one reader commented, Blind emotionalism is against God. Massengers honor can only be saved by following his manners. Disrupting normal lifes activities and making it hell for ordinary citizens will only lead to more people moving away from Islam due to your bad language and poor character. May Allah give you, Mr. Khadim Rizvi, hidayat [guidance] and balance, or take you away to the Hell.

Another reader commented, The truth has been spoken. May Allah be with us. no human life is more imp than Muhammad PBUH.

In the eastern city of Lahore, party supporters blocked three roads into the city, provincial government spokesman Malik Ahmad Khan said.

We want them to disperse peacefully. Otherwise we have other options open, he said. We dont want to use force, but we will if there is no other option left.

By Asif Shahzad and Kay Johnson

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Officer Michael Colotti is holding the baby he helped deliver on Thanksgiving. (Stoneham Police Department)

Police Officers Help Deliver Baby on Thanksgiving

Working a late shift on Thanksgiving night might seem like the short strawespecially for those with family.

But for Police Officer Michael Colotti, his Thanksgiving shift became the most incredible experience of his career after he got an unusual call for assistance in Stoneham, Massachusetts.

He didnt miss out on the family vibes either, becoming involved in the most powerful moment of any familythe birth of a childfrom the second he stepped into the house.

According to Boston25 News, Stoneham police received a report of a woman in labor around 11 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 23.

Colotti and his partner, officer Christopher Murphy were dispatched to the house.

With no children themselves, and little experience to fall back on, they had to quickly assess the situation and help as best they could and rely on their training.

They had time to help the woman onto her back and prop her up with pillowsand then helped her deliver a healthy baby boy.

An ambulance arrived soon after, taking mother and child to a nearby hospital.

We see and deal with so much stuff, that was an uplifting thing to be a part of, Colitti, told Boston 25. I would say nothing is going to prepare for that situation but training did kick in for both of us and we did what we had to do.

Stoneham police officer delivers baby for family that couldnt make it to the hospital on Thanksgiving Day. #wcvb pic.twitter.com/UYAEvFmHuF  John Atwater (@AtwaterWCVB) November 24, 2017

The babys father told WMBC that there was a sigh of relief when the officers arrived to help, and was grateful for their help.

Colotti took the chance to visit mother and baby at Winchester Hospital the next day. Mother and baby are both doing fine.

At 7: grateful Stoneham dad thanks the police officers who helped deliver his baby boy in his home on Thanksgiving #WCVB pic.twitter.com/XE0NAPS9Ix  John Atwater (@AtwaterWCVB) November 24, 2017

The unusual situation came about after the woman had been rushed to hospital earlier that day, only to be sent back home because the midwives thought the baby wasnt ready yet. She was told to come back when the contractions were closer together.

[She] came back home and was getting ready for bed and we all know what happened next, said Colotti, according to Boston 25.

Neither parent has been named.

Stoneham Police Chief James McIntyre said he was proud of the officers for their calm and professional response.

This isnt something that happens every day, and I want to congratulate the new mother and father on the birth of their son, he said in a statement according to the Boston Globe.

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An alleged Taliban fighter moments before being hit by a missile launched by an AH-64 Apache helicopter. (U.S. Army)

US Military Helicopter Shoots Single Taliban Terrorist With Missile

Footage has emerged online of a military helicopter using a missile to attack a single man.

The 30-second video shows an infrared view of a man walking through rough terrain. Seconds later he disintegrates in a missile explosion.

The man was a Taliban terrorist and the footage was captured by a camera mounted on an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, according to Funker530, a website and a YouTube channel run by U.S. military veterans who regularly post clips of combat footage.

Funker530 hypothesized the helicopter was returning from a mission supporting on-the-ground troops in combat and was out of cannon rounds.

When clearance finally came in to take out the target, the pilot used the munition that was available, the website stated.

That munition was a Hellfire laser-guided air-to-surface missile. Hellfires were originally designed to bust armored vehicles, but were later adopted for a variety of situations, including strikes against individuals. The roughly 100-pound missile can take out its target from 26,000 feet away.

The U.S. military has requested 5,846 Hellfire missiles for fiscal year 2017 at a cost of $685.5 million. One missile costs on average about $117,000.

It is not clear where or when the incident captured in the video happened, but it was most likely in Afghanistan, where the Taliban still controls about 10 percent of the territory.

The war in Afghanistan, in its 17th year, has been the longest in the American history.

Nearly 16 years after September 11 attacks, after the extraordinary sacrifice of blood and treasure, the American people are weary of war without victory, President Donald Trump said in his Aug. 21 speech at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, where he announced his Afghan strategy.

Trump described three changes in the approach to the war.

First, military decisions, like troop increases or withdrawals, will be based on the situation on the ground and wont be announced publicly.

Americas enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out, Trump said.

Second, America wont try to impose a particular form of government in Afghanistan.

We are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists, Trump said.

Third, increase pressure on neighboring Pakistan to stop providing a safe haven for terrorist groups, including the Taliban.

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(LR) Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, President Donald Trump, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull link hands during the opening ceremony of the 31st ASEAN Summit in Manila, Philippines, on Nov. 13. (NOEL CELIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Why Trumps Asia Trip Was a Success

Contrary to mainstream media reporting, the president delivered on his three core goals

Was President Donald Trumps Asia trip a success? According to American mainstream media, no.

Bloomberg said his trip lacked breakthroughs. The Washington Post alleged his trip was hardly the success he says it was. In an incoherent diatribe, The New York Timess Thomas Friedman claimed that Trump was played and duped by China so much that China could sell Trump the Brooklyn Bridge. Susan Rice, the national security adviser under former President Barack Obama, scolded Trump for making China great again. Harry J. Kazianis in The Week did not aim for subtlety; he asserted that Trumps Asia trip was disastrous.

For the mainstream media, Trump can do nothing right. Even his taking a sip of water during his remarks upon his return from Asia was a subject of controversy and mockery. Why does Trump always have to forcefully defend himself and equally forcefully slam the media? Because the mainstream media is not interested in covering him neutrally. They dont want to accept the fact that he is the president; they want him to fail. More importantly, they are eager to contribute to his downfall.

Trump said this Asia trip was defined by three core goals: to insist on free and reciprocal trade; to strengthen Americas alliances and economic partnerships; and to unite the world against the North Korean nuclear menace. Lets take a look at what Trump accomplished in Asia and compare his deeds to his words. I will let you be the judge.

Trade

One of the goals was to promote Trumps trade philosophy. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO summit, Trump laid out his vision for a new international order for trade under Americas leadership.

The trade relationship must be fair and reciprocal. For too long, the United States has been a dumping ground for cheap foreign imports. We opened our markets to our trading partners, but when American businesses tried to enter our partners markets, they were bludgeoned by tariffs, non-trade barriers, and predatory regulations. Trump is the first U.S. president in three decades to decide to do something about it.

Additionally, the United States will preferentially seek bilateral trade deals, which are less likely to violate our sovereignty, while offering more latitude in enforcement. The World Trade Organization is a giant mess. Its dispute settlement mechanisms are a joke: One can win a judgment, but in the end still lose.

Finally, Trump declared that the United States will not tolerate theft of intellectual property and economic aggression. While it is widely accepted that economic espionage is a grave threat to the United States, it is extremely difficult to quantify the damage. Various sources estimate the cost is in the range of $445 billion to trillions of dollars.

If the Trump administration follows through on the proposal, our trading partners that export to the United States will have to buy an equivalent dollar amount of our goods, leading to more balanced trade, if not eliminating the trade deficits outright. Bypassing the WTO, the United States will not be constrained by its Byzantine rules. China can wreak whatever havoc it wants there, as far as we are concerned. Moreover, if we can stop China from stealing our technology and trade secrets, Americas leadership position in industrial R&D will be strengthened.

Trumps new trade paradigm is definitely not music to the ears of Chinas leadership, but more like a giant sucking sound, as former presidential candidate Ross Perot described the sound of jobs exiting the United States due to the trade deal NAFTA. Trumps trade policy will not make China great again. Au contraire, it ought to make the communist regime very nervous. Expect Beijing to fight back vigorously to thwart Trumps trade agenda.

Assuring Our Allies

Since the end of World War II, the United States has opposed communist expansion in the Asia-Pacific; since the end of the Vietnam War, it has maintained peace in the region. The United States has enormous economic interests and a towering military presence there, but does not seek territorial expansion or dominance, making it the least distrusted power among Asian governments, according to Nick Bisley, a professor at La Trobe University in Australia.

Chinas quick rise and massive military buildup have alarmed many of its Asian neighbors. Meanwhile, Americas influence in Asia has been perceived to be waning. Moreover, our Asia-Pacific allies have felt they were neglected while facing a plethora of economic and security problems at home and abroad.

Trump went to Asia to strengthen Americas alliances and economic partnerships. His first move was promoting the term IndoPacific, in lieu of the more conventional AsiaPacific. India, an emerging power, is thus given a more prominent role in the region. A senior Trump administration official told Politico there was a concerted effort to affirm the U.S.India relationship. Countering Chinas influence appears to be one of the goals.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is an enthusiastic supporter and early adopter of the IndoPacific concept. As early as 2012, Abe called for an alliance between Japan, India, the United States, and Australia, known as Asias democratic security diamond. Trumps embrace of the new language, and Australias openness to the alliance, indicate it is closer to becoming a reality.

Trump agreed to enhance naval cooperation with Vietnam and renewed ties with the Philippines during his trip. In Manila, Trump also assured the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that no one owns the ocean, a tacit jab at Chinas territorial claims in the South China Sea.

All of the above is bad news for China. As more Asian countries choose to be part of the IndoPacific alliance, fewer will fall into Chinas orbit. How does this make China great again?

North Korean Nuclear Threat

The final goal of Trumps Asia trip was to unite the world against the North Korean nuclear threat.

Japan and South Korea announced additional sanctions against North Korea entities after Trumps visit. Both countries agreed to share defense costs with the United States and to ramp up their own military spending.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping promised to fully implement U.N. Security Council resolutions on North Korea. (Whether China keeps its promise is a different matter. Color me doubtful.) Trump rejected Chinas call for the United States to freeze joint military exercises with South Korea in exchange for the Kim Jong Un regime to freeze its nuclear program.

Even Vietnam, historically a communist ally of North Korea, agreed to enforce sanctions against the hermit kingdom.

One day after Trump wrapped up his Asia trip, China announced on Nov. 15 that it would dispatch a special envoy to North Korea on Nov. 17. The announcement was laconic and cryptic, as usual. No agenda or meeting details were disclosed. But analysts believe this is a sign that Trumps pressure on China is working.

The timing strongly suggests that this is in response to the Trump trip, Robert Kelly, associate professor of political science at Pusan National University in South Korea, told the Los Angeles Times.

The envoy may eventually turn out to have been a dud. We dont know if the denuclearization issue was brought up. Even if it was discussed, there is no guarantee that Kim would abandon his nuclear brinkmanship. It is premature to call Trumps North Korea maneuver a success. But to call it a failure or disaster is off the wall.

In the media frenzy to portray Trump as a worse-than-Neville-Chamberlain villain before and after his Asia trip, nothing tops this: Someone sincerely believed Trumps Asia trip could have gotten us all killed. This individual, writing for Esquire, said he hoped were all alive when he gets back.

The world didnt end. We are all alive. The anxious Esquire columnist reveals one thing: There are people who suffer from an irrational fear of anything and everything that Trump does. What is that condition called? Trump-phobia.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A file image of Australian police during a terrorist situation in 2014 (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images) and the social media call for help that came through to Seven News (Screenshot via 7 News).

Woman Begs for Help to Foil Terror attack via Social media

A teenager has been arrested in the Australian city of Melbourne after pleas for help went out on social media saying that he was planning to conduct a terror attack.

The 17-year-old was arrested by heavily armed police outside a home on the suburb of Cranbourne North in the citys south east, reported The Age.

The police action was responding to threatening social media posts put out by a person who identified as the adolescents mother.

Hi, call the police, my son is going crazy, read the social media message.

He have locked me in the house and have all the phones. He have drugs and weapons, he is plans a terror attack please.

Two messages were sent to the Instagram accounts of the Channel 7 television network around midday Nov. 24. A similar one was sent to Ambulance Victoria. All three included the address details of the teenager.

FIRST ON 7: A man suspected of plotting a terrorist attack has been arrested outside a Cranbourne North house. @PaulDowsley7 #7News pic.twitter.com/7SHdv2nMRA  7 News Melbourne (@7NewsMelbourne) November 24, 2017

The television station alerted the police who sent out 40 heavily-armed officers, including the Critical Incident Response Team, to the address.

The police blocked off the road and monitored the house before arresting two males, one of whom was the teenager. He remains in detention.

He is currently in custody assisting police with their enquiries, Victoria Police told 7 News.

If you enjoyed reading this article, please support our independent journalism by sharing it on social media.
Woman Dies while Taking a Selfie

A woman known for traveling and taking selfies and posting them on social media died while she was snapping a picture of herself.

Toni Kelly, 20, a New Zealander living in London, died after falling out of a window and suffering a head injury, the London Evening Standard reported.

A coroner told the Daily Mail that she fell from the upstairs window while taking a picture of herself.

Toni was a young, happy and beautiful girl who has had a tragic accident while living overseas in London. Unfortunately, Toni has sadly passed away due to her injuries.

Upon her death, Tonis organs have been donated to help save other lives in the UK. This money will help the family bring Toni home and pay for any extra expenses. Any donation, big or small will be appreciated by all of her family and friends, according to an online fundraiser that has raised about $40,000.

She was keen to post pictures of herself and her travels on Instagram.

On Instagram, she wrote: Might as well be Peter Pan cause Im never gonna grow up.

Her parents and sister flew to London following her death, according to the Evening Standard.

A spokeswoman for the Inner West London Coroner told the paper: We can confirm she fell from the window. A hearing will take place on her death on January 24.

While youre here Share!

We work hard to deliver the most important and interesting news every day, but would like to ask a little favor in return: Please share this story with your friends. You can just click the share button below. Thank you!
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 06:16:27|Editor: Zhou Xin

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by Mahmoud Fouly

CAIRO, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- The deadly terrorist attack against a mosque in Egypt's North Sinai Province on Friday indicates the randomness, confusion and weakness of terrorists in Egypt who started to target fellow Muslims for the first time in the country's modern history, said Egyptian political and security experts.

On Friday noon, when Muslims gathered at mosques for massive prayers, at least 235 worshippers were killed and over 100 others wounded in a bombing and gunfire attack against a mosque in a small village in North Sinai Province bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Diaa Rashwan, head of Egypt's State Information Service and chief of Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said in a statement that the attack, despite its bloodiness and unprecedented extremism, reflects "the beginning of weakening" of the affiliates of the Islamic State (IS) regional terrorist group which started to use "soft targets" due to their failure in the face of security confrontations.

Terror attacks started to rise in Egypt following the military ouster of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.

Since then, most of the attacks focused on restive North Sinai and killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, before they later started to extend to other provinces and target the Coptic minority in their churches.

Now they started to target the Muslim worshipers at mosques for the first time, which is an unprecedented development in terrorist tactics in the country.

Fingers are pointed at a Sinai-based group loyal to the IS, which has claimed most of the large terrorist operations in Egypt over the past few years and whose affiliates are currently facing massive security crackdown in Syria and Iraq.

"I believe that Sinai mosque attack shows randomness, confusion and the beginning of the end of terrorists in Egypt. They never targeted Muslims in the mosques before during the massive Friday prayers, which is a serious change that does not even comply with their announced goals," Mohamed Kashkoush, professor of national security at Nasser Supreme Military Academy, told Xinhua.

He said the security crackdown on the IS in Syria, Iraq and Libya affected their affiliate group in North Sinai, which has been suffering besiege and shrinking sources of finance due to the current good relations between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

"The operation shows their tactical bankruptcy that led them to resort to random terrorism with the purpose of horrifying the people," Kashkoush added, stressing that targeting a Muslim place of worship shows that these terrorists have nothing to do with Islam nor do they have an Islamic cause to fight for even if they claim otherwise.

Over the past few years, the Egyptian military in cooperation with the police killed hundreds of terrorists and arrested a similar number of suspects as part of the country's anti-terror war declared by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief then, following Morsi's ouster.

President Sisi said in a televised speech Friday evening that "this mean, sinful terrorist attack will only increase our strength, resolution and unity in our fight against terrorism," vowing "we will respond fiercely against this minor group of extremists and terrorists."

The Egyptian president received phone calls on Friday from U.S. President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and others who offered their condolences over the tragic attack and voiced their support for the North African country in its war against terrorism. The attack was also condemned by many leaders and foreign ministries across the world as well as regional and international organizations.

For his part, Khaled Okasha, director of the National Center for Security Studies, described the attack as an "unprecedented operation with a very high degree of wildness that surpassed all the limits of terrorist groups."

"It's one of the largest operations that took place in Egypt, with some terrorist elements using bombs, some opening fire and others besieging the area, with the purpose of causing the largest number of casualties and not merely committing a symbolic operation," said the security expert, noting that the attack is meant to spread terror among Egyptians.

Okashsa, however, is not for the opinion that the anti-mosque attack signals randomness and confusion of terrorist groups in the Sinai Peninsula since it could achieve its goals.

According to many experts, Friday's tragedy is an evident proof that the terrorist groups, mostly the Sinai-based IS affiliates, change their strategy from confrontations with the Egyptian armed forces and police to direct confrontations with the Egyptian people regardless of their religions.

Experts also expect strong security campaigns in response to the attack to maintain the country's anti-terror war, to show the state's ability to preserve its security and stability and to absorb the anger of the Sinai people that could lead to armed clashes between them and terrorist groups.

"The bloody terrorist attack on a mosque at a small village in North Sinai shows an obviously deviant ideology of such terrorists," said security expert and retired general Salah Samak.

He ruled out the possibility of a rising ideological disagreement among IS group members in Sinai that led to the rare mosque attack.

"Due to Egypt's political and economic success, the terrorists try hard to give an impression of the country's instability by such a hopeless attack against armless civilian targets," Samak told Xinhua, noting that it also indicates the terrorists' failure in challenging security confrontations.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 07:01:36|Editor: Zhou Xin

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CAIRO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Egyptian airstrikes hit a number of vehicles of terrorists involved in the deadly attack on a mosque in North Sinai province, killing all therein, said the Egyptian military spokesman in a statement on Friday midnight.

"In addition, the air forces targeted a number of hideouts containing weapons and ammunition that belong to the extremists," said military spokesman Tamer al-Refaay in the statement.

The military raids came several hours after a terrorist attack on Friday noon against a mosque at a small village in North Sinai that killed at least 235 worshippers and wounded over 100 others. It is the first terrorist operation to target a Muslim mosque in Egypt's modern history.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 08:22:23|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Shoppers line up outside a store during Black Friday in Vancouver, Canada, Nov. 24, 2017. Shoppers across Canada started to hunt for their best bargain deals at the annual Black Friday event which kicked off the busiest shopping season of the year. (Xinhua/Liang Sen)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 07:31:42|Editor: ZD

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Argentinean President Mauricio Macri attends a press conference about the submarine ARA San Juan, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Nov. 24, 2017. Argentinean President Mauricio Macri ordered on Friday a "serious investigation" into the circumstances of the missing submarine ARA San Juan, which vanished on Nov. 15 in the South Atlantic with 44 crew on board. (Xinhua/Candelaria Lagos/TELAM)

BUENOS AIRES, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Argentinean President Mauricio Macri ordered on Friday a "serious investigation" into the circumstances of the missing submarine ARA San Juan, which vanished on Nov. 15 in the South Atlantic with 44 crew on board.

The president spoke to the press from the Argentinean navy headquarters in Buenos Aires, saying that "This is a difficult moment for all, especially for the families of the 44 crewmembers."

Macri said the situation would "require a serious, deep investigation, which brings certainty...to how a submarine which had had its half-life reparation and was in condition to sail, apparently suffered this explosion."

The president was referring to the overhaul of the submarine that took place between December 2008 and June 2014.

During his speech, Macri said "for the next days...to see the highest respect given for the pain this has caused, especially to the families."

However, he promised that the search would continue, with the vast amount of international support Argentina has received. "We will make every effort to find the submarine in the coming days."

"While we do not have the complete information, we will not risk seeking to find the guilty, to find those responsible," added Macri. "First, we must have certainty about what happened and why it happened. My commitment is to the truth. We will learn the truth in time through this investigation."

He also extended his gratitude to the 44 crew for "their patriotism, their heroism, their bravery...as they have a central responsibility in the life of this country: to take care of our territory...and of us all."

On Thursday, the Navy reported that on the day the submarine disappeared, an event "consistent with an explosion" was registered in the area the submarine was travelling in.

The ARA San Juan's last-known position was in the San Jorge Gulf, 240 nautical miles southeast of the Valdes Peninsula.
Noem tells NYT former President Trump doesn't offer 'best chance' for GOP

In an interview with The New York Times, Gov. Kristi Noem spoke about her reservations about former President Donald Trump announcing his bid for re-election.
Protesters gather at North Michigan Avenue to call for boycotting Black Friday and demand justice for minorities of police misconduct in Chicago, the United States, November 24, 2017.(Xinhua/Wang Ping)

CHICAGO, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Several dozens of activists staged a Black Friday protest and boycott stores in Chicago's busiest street for a third year in a row, to demand justice for minorities of police misconduct.

Protesters gathered at Water Tower Place in downtown for a rally Friday morning before beginning to march down North Michigan Avenue, which is also called Magnificent Mile. They are asking shoppers to boycott stores, and they plan to block the doors of stores on the Mag Mile to get their message heard.

Protesters gather at North Michigan Avenue to call for boycotting Black Friday and demand justice for minorities of police misconduct in Chicago, the United States, November 24, 2017.(Xinhua/Wang Ping)

Holding slogans like 'Boycott Black Friday', 'Stop Police Crimes' and 'Black Lives Matter', protesters lined up in front of the Macys' and Nike store to intervene store's operation while police officers formed another line separating protesters from the store's main gate and let customers move freely.

The protest was peaceful and many of the customers said they can understand their proposal but it has little impact on their shopping and happy holiday atmosphere.

Protesters gather at North Michigan Avenue to call for boycotting Black Friday and demand justice for minorities of police misconduct in Chicago, the United States, November 24, 2017.(Xinhua/Wang Ping)

The protests started in 2015, with the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video that sparked days of protests on Chicago streets. Laquan was shot and killed by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014 as he was walking away from the officer, holding a knife. Activists say they're still waiting for justice. Van Dyke is facing murder charges in the case.
DUBLINA grey afternoon in Dublin may have marked the point where Ireland and Apple truly started to fall out of love, at least publicly.

Up until about 4:15 p.m. on Tuesday, it was impossible to place a cigarette paper between Irelands hip young Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and Apple Inc.s Tim Cook, as they united to fight Europes contention that the government had granted the iPhone maker a sweetheart tax deal.

That alliance began to fray this week, as Varadkar appeared to blame Apple for delays in the collection of about 13 billion euros ($19.6 billion Canadian) in back taxes Ireland has been ordered to gather from the company. The European Commission sued Ireland in October for failing to collect the money quickly enough.

We dont want to be in a situation where the Irish government has to take Apple to court because the commission is taking the Irish government to court, Varadkar, 38, told lawmakers in parliament in Dublin Tuesday. I think that message is understood.

Apple declined to comment on this story.

Read more:

Apple ordered to pay up to 13B euros in back taxes

Varadkars intervention is the latest sign that all may not be well in a partnership that stretches back more three decades. While the two have joined forces to battle Europe on the tax question, elsewhere strains have emerged  mainly around the delays dogging Apples plan to build a $1.3-billion data centre close to the Atlantic Coast, in the West of Ireland.

Two years ago, Apple simultaneously laid out plans to construct such vast facilities in Ireland and Denmark, as part of one of its largest investments in Western Europe. While the Danish facility is completed, the chosen site in the middle of an Irish forest lies idle, stymied by a combination of objectors and court delays.

After Bloomberg News first reported in September that the project was in jeopardy, Varadkar said he had been reassured that Apple remained committed to the project. Just over a month later, at a meeting with the Irish leader at Apples California headquarters, Cook refused to give Varadkar guarantees that it would go ahead.

Apple agreed to continue considering the site close to the tiny, historic medieval village of Athenry only in the context of their future business plans, according to Varadkar, leaving him open to political embarrassment back home.

Meanwhile, European authorities were growing restive over the tax case. The Irish government had been due to collect the cash by Jan. 3, and hold it in escrow until an appeal process is complete. Both Apple and Ireland are fighting the EU decision, which could take up to five years.

Last month, amid a string of delays, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager finally lost patience, and Ireland was referred to the European Court of Justice for failing to recoup the money. That could leave the government on the hook for a fine.

Up to now, the government has diplomatically avoided publicly blaming anyone for the delay, and Varadkar has to tread carefully. Apple employs about 6,000 people in Ireland, according to its website. Most of those are based in Cork, where its among the biggest private employers in the city. The company is also among the biggest taxpayers in the country.

Yet, yesterday, Varadkar too seemed to lose patience as well.

We have indicated to it that we want the escrow account established and funds to be paid into that account without further delay, he told the Irish parliament Tuesday. That message is understood and I would anticipate progress on that in the coming weeks.

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SEOUL, SOUTH KOREALee Su-jin used to work at a love hotel in South Korea, changing sheets and cleaning up after couples who had paid for a few hours of privacy. Sixteen years on, hes using the knowledge he gained to transform the industry.

Lee is founder of Yanolja (Korean for hey, lets play), the countrys most popular app for booking rooms at the short-stay lodgings, which South Koreans call motels. Hes trying to persuade owners to jettison their long-held image of sleaze, sex and suicide, and upgrade facilities to appeal more to business travellers, families and tourists.

If all the motels relied on love, theyd starve to death, Lee, 39, said in his office in Seouls ritzy Gangnam neighbourhood.

Yanolja has 17,000 hotels as partners and now employs 350 staff, half of them focused on research and development, including software and design. Its valued at as much as $547 million U.S. (600 billion won) and this year drew 60 billion won in investment from Chin Dae-je, a former CEO of Samsung Electronics and technology minister. The app posted revenue of 68 billion won last year and is seeking an initial public share sale as early as 2020.

The company makes money by taking a cut of booking fees and through advertising and payments from motels that in turn are given prominent spots in the app. The commission can range from zero for those in remote provincial areas to 10 per cent in an upmarket area. The company also receives royalties from operators who adopt the Yanolja brand, as well as revenue for consulting or trading hotel supplies.

Yanolja has unlocked an industry with a sleazy image to the broader public and now threatens to cannibalize existing hotels, said Byun Jung-woo, who teaches hotel and tourism businesses at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. Hotels know they wont survive by competing with apps that provide more attractive booking platforms, so more and more of them rely on Yanolja.

Lees story is one of a determination to escape poverty. The early loss of both his parents meant he spent much of his childhood being shifted from one relative to another. At 23, to end his nomadic lifestyle, he took a job at a love hotel because it provided a steady wage and accommodation close to the city centre.

Day in and day out, I felt wretched but hung on, Lee said. It feels like a dream now.

With the money earned as a janitor, he invested in stocks and started a salad business. It failed and he returned to the hotels, deciding to use his knowledge of that industry to bounce back. He had built a 10,000-strong internet community, from suppliers of towels and toilet paper to the hotel owners. In 2005, he turned the connections into a website that eventually allowed people to preview and book rooms.

Lee persuaded operators to allow him to show pictures of the actual rooms, something rare at the time in an industry founded on secrecy. The images were an instant hit. In 2011, his company launched a smartphone application that now has eight million subscribers.

Lee also allowed customers to share online their opinions of the rooms, an innovation that has sometimes been double-edged. South Koreas Fair Trade Commission fined Yanolja and its two other competitors in April for hiding some negative posts.

Lees main local rival app for love hotel bookings is Withinnovation. As he moves into the mainstream hotel market, hes also coming up against big global platforms such as Agoda. Competition is intense; with apps developing features such as virtual previews and artificial intelligence software that gauges consumer preferences.

But most of Yanoljas business still comes from young couples. Many are either unemployed or just starting work and tend to take a room about one to three times a month, according to the company. They often rent the room for only a few hours to save money.

Hotel owners are often reluctant to abandon a model that has worked for decades. Only in 2015 did the country decriminalize adultery.

Lee has run ads designed to appeal to young Koreans who are tired of being told they have to work hard all the time. One features local rapper Loco, whose smiling face asks viewers: Is life long? Hey, lets play. As a sign of the industrys reputation, he also runs a training program on how owners can prevent unscrupulous clients from installing hidden cameras in the rooms.

Yanolja has started operating some of its own hotels, remodelling them to be cleaner and more modern. Below Lees office, the company runs what it calls a laboratory, to show rooms equipped with trendy furniture and the latest internet technologies.

The rise of apps and other disrupting innovations such as Airbnb have pushed traditional hotel chains to adapt. In South Korea, larger hospitality companies have moved aggressively into related businesses such as restaurants and conventions to boost profits. A decrease in visitors from China due to political tensions also played into the hands of local booking apps as hotels turned to them to try to reduce vacancy rates, said Byun at Kyung Hee University.

Lee said next Februarys Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang is an opportunity for the company to convince love hotels to become more tourist-friendly. His success may be watched closely in Japan, where the government is encouraging more than 10,000 love hotels to convert into lodgings for visitors to the 2020 summer games in Tokyo.

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Frank Morales joined Tesla about four years ago, eager to work for a growing company.

Morales handled the aggressive deadlines of the Tesla warehouse  until last month. He said he received years of strong performance reviews, but was fired one day with no warning.

A friend and a cousin recently asked him if they should go to work for the carmaker. I told them no, Morales said. Stay where youre at.

Teslas dismissal of 700 workers in October has former employees angry and outspoken. Some, like Morales, have refused to sign a separation agreement they feel is unfair and restrictive. The agreement bars former employees from disparaging the company or the executives who fired them, according to a copy obtained by the Mercury News.

Tesla also faces ongoing protests, lawsuits and federal complaints from former workers and workers seeking to unionize, and is again aggressively defending its image.

The disruptions come as the company battles the enormous task of hiring, training and expanding a skilled workforce to produce a new vehicle  the delayed, lower-cost Model 3  that is important to its success and survival.

Read more:

Tesla fires hundreds of workers after company-wide performance reviews

Teslas weak Model 3 production falls short of lofty goals

Experts in human resources and employment law say the abrupt dismissals and upheaval could have lasting consequences for the Tesla brand and the companys ability to attract talented engineers and factory workers.

You really need to plan (terminations) very, very carefully, because its about people, said Sanjay Sathe, CEO of placement support agency RiseSmart. The former workers could be future customers or even rehired as production demands increase, Sathe said. And bad word-of-mouth reviews can spread quickly on social media.

CEO Elon Musk acknowledged for the first time this month that the company had fired 700 employees, saying it was for poor performance. Tesla sets high work standards, he said, because it must be better than its bigger competition. Theyre high because, if theyre not high, we will die, Musk said.

He complained that the October terminations became public and added that journalists should be ashamed for writing about a turnover of 2 per cent of the public companys employees.

The company also shot back at critics questioning its treatment of workers, who have raised concerns about lax worker safety rules and low pay. Gaby Toledano, Teslas chief people officer, wrote an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee this month touting the companys employee stock program and innovative environment. The company lists more than 2,500 open positions on its job board.

Our employees have many paths towards promotion and long-term careers, Toledano wrote in response to a critic. We also believe it is important for everyone to be an owner of the company so, unlike other automakers, everyone is awarded company stock upon hiring.

Tesla says workers remain attracted to the automotive and clean-tech company. A company spokesperson said Tesla received more than 73,000 applications worldwide in October, a 16-per-cent increase from January.

Any suggestion that the firings would hurt Tesla hiring in the long term, the company said, is purely speculation. The companys stock price hit record highs this year, but has fallen in recent weeks.

Analysts have kept a close watch on employee turnover in key positions. High-profile executives in autonomous driving, batteries, finance and business development have left the company this year.

More than a dozen current and former employees interviewed said their dismissals came with little or no warning and were unrelated to performance. Some said they were fired weeks before stock options vested. Many added that morale suffered at the Tesla plant as workers were unsure of their job status.

The company has also angered outgoing employees by requiring them to sign a broad non-disparagement clause as part of their separation package.

The separation agreements prohibit former employees from badmouthing the company, its executives, investors, affiliated companies, contractors and products. Fired employees are prohibited from specifically criticizing Musk, in return for two weeks severance pay.

Irving Arguello, a former Tesla mechanic from San Francisco, refused to sign the agreement. I got spit out, said Arguello, an expert in automotive electronics. Its a lot to ask.

Arguello spent months in Norway, Canada and in U.S. cities fixing Tesla cars and training mechanics. He enjoyed learning the cutting-edge technology, but said he became disillusioned with company managers ignoring workers needs, and Teslas demand for secrecy.

Tesla relies a lot on perception, he said. They want to keep the positive perception.

Scores of workers and supporters have protested at the Fremont factory since the terminations. Some former employees have joined a class-action suit, saying the dismissals were actually layoffs  a distinction that could bring the former employees up to 60 days of back pay.

Employment lawyers say its unusual to fire hundreds of employees within weeks for performance issues.

If an employee is doing poorly, you would just fire him, said Nick Rosenthal, a Los Angeles attorney for several former Tesla employees. You wouldnt fire hundreds at the same time.

Randy Strauss, an employment attorney based in Oakland, questioned Teslas explanation for the dismissal.

On its face, it seems highly unlikely, Strauss said. Have you ever heard of a company that fires up to 1,000 people at one time, for cause?

Josie Camacho, an executive at the Alameda Labor Council, said the terminations shocked many in the community. Labour organizers had high hopes for Musk leading a new era of auto manufacturing in the Bay Area and restoring the former Toyota plant to regional, economic powerhouse.

Camacho said remaining factory workers shes spoken with are upset. As far as Im concerned, she said, this employer needs to be held accountable.

Morales insists hes not bitter about his time at Tesla. Hes found a new, better-paying job closer to his home in San Jose. Things happen for a reason.

But still, he said, I dont think it was right.

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The dramatic, waist-cinching, full-skirted fashions of Christian Diors New Look debuted in the spring of 1947, signalling a postwar return to elegance and the revival of the Paris couture industry. It was seen as a celebration of luxury after a long period of hardship.

But it also marked an about-face for women, who were ceding their wartime jobs back to men. That meant trading in their factory coveralls for throwback 19th century corsetry and some very cumbersome clothing to return to keeping house. The New Look outfits demanded much of the wearer. They were heavy, restrictive of movement and breath and required an assistant or two to get strapped into. Hardly liberating.

Marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the House, an exhibit, titled Christian Dior, opens at the ROM on Nov. 25 and runs through March 18. It spans the golden age of the iconic designer, the decade running from 1947 through 1957. The exhibit is sponsored by Holt Renfrew  the luxury department store was the first to bring the French couturiers work to Canada.

Tracing how those handcrafted wonders of the French couture ateliers affected transatlantic trade and womens lives right here in Toronto has been the focus of much of ROM curator Dr. Alexandra Palmers body of scholarship.

Palmer, who is senior curator, Nora E. Vaughan fashion costume curatorship, has selected more than 100 objects, including 38 outfits from the ROMs permanent fashion and textile collection showcasing day looks, evening wear and ball gowns for grand occasions. There are also borrowed accessories and examples of the intricate embroideries used by the House of Dior in that period.

In the exhibit preparation process, the museum team reverse-engineered the incredibly complex patterns, weighed and measured and did detective work on the details of the actual pieces, which is how they illuminated their links to historical fashion. Many of these dresses were donated by Toronto and Montreal socialites, who wore these pieces here in Canada.

They also discovered how cumbersome these pieces actually were to wear. These dresses used, a breathtaking amount of material, Palmer says. To make the skirt for the 1948 Isabelle formal ballgown that is a highlight of the exhibit, Dior used two complete circles of material, some 13 metres of fabric, or to put it in perspective, enough to cover a couple of sofas.

This gleeful extravagance was at the heart of the New Look, she says. The shows notes, presented on ipads in user-friendly contrast to the old-school formality of the items they describe, cite a quote from Dior himself dating to 1956: The war was over... What did the weight of my sumptuous materials, my heavy velvets and brocades matter? When hearts were light, mere fabrics could not weigh the body down.

The hem measured nearly 14 metres in circumference: that is a lot of hands (or petites mains, in the parlance of the couture atelier) and a lot of sewing. The atelier worked with master embroiderers. (Work from three embroidery houses Dior employed over that first decade  two of which are long defunct  are represented in the show.) Plus custom shoes (some borrowed from the Bata Shoe Museum), accessories, jewelry and hats. The exhibit will highlight the extraordinary and nearly-lost craftsmanship of the artisans who produced extraordinary ribbons, beads, sequins and embroideries that Dior incorporated into his dresses with the assistance of his imaginative pattern makers, tailors and seamstresses, Palmer says.

The Dior atelier had its own cabine, or permanent crew of mannequins (a.k.a models), and each dress was fit onto and worn by a specific mannequin. Incidentally, most of the mannequins went by one name only, so they were actually the prototype for modern supermodels. Each dress in the exhibit has been traced back to the mannequin who wore it in the original show.

Dior showed a complete look, the whole package, Palmer says. But the story of what the dresses became belongs to the owners. Before designer vintage became such an overheated market, socialites used to donate their finery to museums for proper preservation and study. The window on that is closing, she says.

Postwar Christian Dior is a strong suit of the ROM archives, and examples in the show include a spectacular fall season 1957 cocktail dress named Venezuela, which was a gift from Toronto philanthropist Carol Rapp. And the Estate of Molly Roebuck donated the Dior dress of then-12-year-old Elaine Roebuck, a silk organdy confection with cotton embroidery, worn to her Bat Mitzvah in Toronto in the spring of 1957. The young girls dress shows the Dior style translated in more age-appropriate detail.

The question for Palmer is: Why was Dior successful? Yes, he had deep pocket investors in a time of economic boom. But people still had to buy in, she says, and the return to more constricting styles after the freedoms of wartime dressing seem at first counterintuitive. But then, fashion is about reaction. The 50s had to happen for the 60 to happen, she says.

Dior had a very strong idea, she says, that resonated with how women wanted to look. It is more than long skirt, cinched waist and rounded shoulders. Palmer has included a 19th-century gown in the exhibit to illuminate the kind of techniques Dior was reviving, including double bodices and corsetry. But at the same time, the couture atelier was his research and development lab, she says, and you see ideas from earlier collections expanding through subsequent years.

A standout jewelry piece borrowed for the exhibit comes from renowned Toronto collector and costume jewelry dealer Carol Tannenbaum. This was a period of optimism, wealth and growth, and the costume jewelry of Dior in that era had real grandeur. It was made in very small quantity with great awareness to detail and construction. The piece she has loaned is a lily of the valley necklace made of pearls with poured glass leaves.

This is fantasy jewelry, and it is very rare. It was made by Diors jewelry designer at the time, Roger Scemama. Tannenbaum found it at the Armoury art show in New York many years ago, It just wowed me. I paid a fortune for it. It had to be mine. It has a beautiful long neckline, and it lays like a garment. There is nothing timid about it.

Calling it one of the great pieces Ive seen in my career, in 35 years, she says she had not worn it since last spring to a Bar Mitzvah in New York. The auction houses are having a field day with this period, and prices now are forbidding, she says.

Fashion is an animate art, meant to be infused with social context, movement and the wearers personality, so static museum shows are always a challenge for curators to bring to life. This one is compelling because of its local context: The fantasy dresses seem somehow closer because they are part of our past, too. And despite its natural sex-appeal, fashion scholarship itself lagged behind other subjects for a long time because of traditional biases, says colleague Sarah Fee, a curator focusing on Eastern Hemisphere Textiles and Fashion.

Fashion and textiles have only recently become hot areas of study, Fee says. In the 60s, 70s and 80s, textiles were disregarded because of male bias. But in the 90s, feminist anthropologists started to make the connection that cloth is central to identity, social life and religious life. Fashion got back on the radar, and has brought it back to such an extent that we can barely keep up.

The ROM has some 55,000 items in its permanent textile collection, ranging from BCE to present, across the globe and across cultures. The historical archives have more relevance, today, says Fee, because fashion is not just east to west, west to east, it is not a top-down only phenomenon. Street culture is happening across time and space.

As popular interest in fashion grows, fashion exhibits have also become reliable turnstile churners for museums around the world. Anna Wintours Met Ball has become the most exclusive invite in celebrity-land; the giant photo op anchors the fashion calendar and raises money for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and launches an annual fashion exhibit. Paris is also currently hosting a 70th anniversary celebration of Dior at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs. Palmer herself is the author of a book for the Victoria & Albert museum in London called Dior: A New Look, A New Enterprise 1947 -57; the V & A has held many sellout fashion events, including Alexander McQueen, Jean Paul Gaultier and Missoni.

And rather than a catalogue of this new exhibition, Palmer will be producing another book, focusing on the ROMs Dior pieces set to launch early next year. Illustrated with photos shot by official Dior photographer Laziz Hamani, it will be called Christian Dior: History & Modernity, 19471957, (ROM Press 2018)

For info on lecture series and other programming related to the show, go to: rom.on.ca/en/dior

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A recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court warns homeowners that a distributors delivery of fuel oil does not mean that their tanks are safe. It also cautions fuel distributors that they may be liable for spills brought about by a homeowners negligence.

These warnings were highlighted in a recent online blog about the case by Toronto environmental lawyer Donna Shier of Willms & Shier.

After a trial that took 25 days, Justice Robert Charney found homeowner Wayne Gendron partly responsible for an oil spill that required the demolition of his house on Hazel St., across the road from Sturgeon Lake in the city of Kawartha Lakes. The judge also found the fuel distributor liable for a portion of the damages.

Gendrons house was heated by oil from tanks located in the basement. They were filled through a fill pipe located outside the home.

The judge found that in December 2008, Thompson Fuels delivered 700 litres of fuel oil to the house. One of the tanks leaked a total of about 600 litres, and some of it made its way through a drainage system under the house into the municipal culvert and from there into Sturgeon Lake.

Court was told that Gendron and an unlicensed friend installed two 910-litre tanks in 2000. Some years later, when he ran into financial difficulty, Gendron filled the tanks with cans of cheaper stove oil. Unfortunately, the stove oil was contaminated with water and microbes, which resulted in corrosion and perforation of the tank.

A complex series of court and tribunal cases ensued.

The Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change ordered Gendron to remediate the contamination of the lake and the land under his house. Nearly $2 million was spent to remediate that oil spill, and Gendrons personal insurance coverage was rapidly exhausted. The house had to be demolished to remove the contaminated soil under the foundation.

The city of Kawartha Lakes was ordered by the ministry to clean up any oil left in the citys culverts and sewers. The city unsuccessfully appealed that order three times  right up to the Court of Appeal  losing all three times.

The city then ordered Gendron, Thompson Fuels and the Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA) to compensate it for the remediation. That order was appealed to the Environmental Review Tribunal. Thompson and the TSSA settled and withdrew their appeals. Gendrons appeal was unsuccessful and he was ordered by the tribunal to pay the city more than $300,000.

The city also sued many other defendants to recover its remediation costs.

Gendron sued Thompson Fuels, the TSSA and the tank manufacturer for the spill damages. That claim was dismissed by the Superior Court.

The remaining claim against Thompson Fuels resulted in the decision by the Ontario Superior Court this past July. The court set the damages for replacing the house at more than $472,000, and the excavation costs at $48,222.

In a 40,000-word decision, Justice Charney ruled that Thompson Fuels was responsible for 40 per cent of the damages, and Gendron for 60 per cent, due to his negligent installation of the tanks and allowing them to be used with contaminated fuel.

For owners of homes or cottages heated with fuel oil, there are a number of lessons from this case:

Make sure the oil tanks were installed by a licensed technician

Use only the proper type of fuel oil

Oil tanks must be inspected annually. If they fail inspection, they need to be replaced.

Fuel distributors are not required to deliver fuel if they are not satisfied with the tanks condition.

Always check with your insurance company to make sure there is enough coverage for a Gendron-type environmental disaster.

Bob Aaron is a Toronto real estate lawyer. He can be reached at bob@aaron.ca, on his website aaron.ca and Twitter @bobaaron2.

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OTTAWAVancouver Sun crime reporter Kim Bolan writes a crime blog called Real Scoop, a go-to stop for cops and gang members alike. Often they dont like what they read.

The good guys sometimes come after Bolan for her sources. The bad guys, too.

Until now, Bolan has had few tools to shield the identity of people who talk to her other than the legal resources of a big-city newspaper and editors willing to stand behind her refusal to divulge her sources.

In a resource-challenged media world right now, thats not a given.

In fact, Bolan is in the middle of a court battle to deflect an effort to force her to disclose a source. Shell say very little about it because it is an ongoing case subject to a sweeping publication ban.

So for Bolan, the Journalistic Sources Protection Act, that was unanimously passed by the House of Commons and Senate, and took effect Oct. 18, is not an abstract feel-good piece of legislation.

Its an important first step, she says.

The law does not offer retroactive protection, nor does it put journalists sources completely beyond the reach of a court disclosure order. Indeed, the act is so new  there has not yet been a test case to see it in action  that its hard to know how strong the protections truly are.

But Bolan believes it puts law enforcement on notice they must exhaust other avenues before they start looking for court orders to seize journalistic source material.

And in addition to protecting sources, the law may help protect journalists who face real risks  like her  if sources believe the media is simply doing the bidding of the police.

That helps me do my job, says Bolan, and allows her to back up a promise of anonymity by pointing to a law on the books.

Big stories about the transgressions of powerful institutions and influential people often begin with a tentative phone call, an email, an envelope from an insider providing information that puts a journalist on the trail of a story.

While such sources are known to the reporters writing the story, the sensitivity of the information they provide often means their careers, even their lives, could be at risk if their identities were to become public.

Think of the federal sponsorship scandal in the early 2000s.

Globe and Mail reporter Daniel LeBlanc wrote groundbreaking stories based on information from a confidential source he nicknamed Ma Chouette, whose identity he fought to protect, all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2010, the high court said journalists sources may be protected but it was to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

The hunt to identify sources can also intrude on the personal privacy of journalists.

In 2007, La Presse journalists Joel-Denis Bellavance and Gilles Toupin wrote a story containing leaked information about Adil Charkaoui, who was suspected of having terrorist ties.

Remarkably, the story put the police on their tail. A team of Mounties placed the two journalists under surveillance for nine days, hoping it would lead them to the person who had leaked sensitive documents cited in the story.

It would only be several years later that the operation came to light, exposing a gap in the law that left journalistic sources vulnerable to police tracking in a way that imperilled reporting in this country.

Conservative Sen. Claude Carignan, a lawyer, proposed Bill S-231following the revelations that police had spied on the two Quebec journalists.

For me, the problem was urgent . . . the role of the media is fundamental, Carignan said in an interview in his Parliament Hill office.

The disturbing reports of police surveillance of Bellavance and Toupin revealed that lawmakers and citizens had a false sense of safety about press freedoms in this country, he said.

It was not an isolated occurrence.

It soon emerged that Montreal police had been monitoring Patrick Lagace, a columnist with La Presse, checking his iPhone calls in a bid to discover the source of a suspected leak within the force.

Then news broke that the Quebec provincial police had tracked the cellphones of six journalists in 2013 to try to identify the source of a leak.

The revelations prompted the Quebec government to call an inquiry, brought political condemnation from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and helped spur passage of Carignans bill by appalled legislators.

The new law ensures that police may gain access to journalistic source material only as a last resort. It amends the Criminal Code and Canada Evidence Act to provide that only a superior court judge may approve a search warrant or production order, after a closed hearing with the police or state agency in which the judge may request the advice of a special advocate as he or she weighs whether the public interest in the investigation outweighs the journalists right to privacy. Thats the legal test that must be met.

To a journalist, the suggestion that the police might be eavesdropping or following you is a stomach-churning one. Not just one source but potentially many could be identified.

The Stars Ottawa bureau was recently tipped off that one of its journalists was under RCMP surveillance in connection with an exclusive news story last February reporting the federal government had reached a settlement in a lawsuit by three Muslim Canadian men jailed and tortured in the Middle East.

Its almost impossible to nail down such a tip. Warrants for wiretaps or tracking a persons communications or movements are sealed. And for months, it served as a warning that chilled communications with sources.

In the past several weeks, a senior RCMP source who cannot be identified told the Star the tip is wrong, that the countrys national police force has no Canadian journalist under surveillance, and that the Mounties seek other routes to look for the source of suspected leaks of classified information.

It wasnt always that way. The RCMP was lambasted for its 2004 raid on the home of Ottawa Citizen journalist Juliet ONeill looking for the source of a leak. A judge two years later struck down the section of the Security of Information Act used to issue that raid authorization.

Today, there is clearer authority in Carignans bill for the rare occasions when such court orders would be issued, and it provides for the first time statutory protection for the identity of journalists sources.

Duncan Pike, co-director of the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, said that Canada had been one of the few western democracies without a shield law.

The police surveillance of journalists was one reason that Canada has fallen 14 places to 22nd spot in the past two years in the World Press Freedom Index. The incidents underscored how the rules that governed this were completely broken, Pike said.

We needed more stringent and much greater protection for journalist sources, and how and when police could use these kinds of investigative tools, he said.

The initial surveillance of La Presses Bellavance and Toupin was done by RCMP officers without the required authorization from their superiors.

But the subsequent surveillance of other Quebec journalists was done within the bounds of judicial process, including the sign-off by justices of the peace  highlighting how the legal system offered little safeguards for journalists and their sources, Pike said.

They were fully within the law doing all this, which was the problem, Pike said. Thats why it so desperately needed to change.

Advocacy groups and media outlets, including the Toronto Star, got behind the push to make the Carignans proposed legislation a reality, warning that without better protections for sources, the information they provide journalists would dry up  and with it, vital stories.

Many journalists' investigations begin with a reporter being given confidential information from a whistle-blower, Toronto Star editor Michael Cooke told a Senate hearing earlier this year during its study of the bill. Like the proverbial pebble starting an avalanche, sometimes all it takes is a concerned citizen or a civil servant or a serving police officer to confide in a reporter.

Such revelations of public interest . . . would not have been possible without the contribution of those anonymous sources who trust journalists to protect them, Cooke said.

Lawyers and media experts say it will take a test case to define the legal balances between police investigations and journalistic freedoms.

But Paul Schabas, an experienced media lawyer who has represented the Star, called the new law a good, strong step.

If the media cant rely on confidential sources, the sources will dry up and that goes to the heart of how investigative journalism works, Schabas said in an interview.

Law enforcement, Crown attorneys and frankly even judges need this legislative reminder that media are only supposed to be a last resort for information and only after a really carefully balancing of freedom of the press.

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Eric Mott returned home to Florida from vacation on Wednesday, expecting his mother and son to pick him up at the airport. When they did not appear, the father tried calling 15-year-old Logan Mott, First Coast News reported.

No answer. The boys grandmother, Kristina French, wasnt picking up either.

So Mott and his girlfriend paid for a ride from the airport, arriving at his house in Neptune Beach to find the front door open, the place ransacked and the gun safe emptied.

This initiated a frantic, days-long cross-country search for the ninth-grader and his grandmother. It began with concern for both of their lives, but then took some of the darkest turns imaginable.

Kristina loves Logan dearly and Logan loves her just as much, the boys mother, Carrie Campbell-Mott, wrote in a desperate Facebook post after the pair disappeared, according to Action News Jax.

She described French  who had become a grandmother to Logan in her late 30s and was now 53  as one of the kindest, most caring people she had ever known. (Frenchs employer, a school for autistic and disabled children, would later say much the same thing.)

Her son, Campbell-Mott wrote, was good and kind to his family. He had not made a sound when he was born and remained introspective through life  always looking at the world, analyzing it.

Logan was also brave beyond his years about his diabetes, the mother wrote, which now concerned her gravely.

If you have taken them we are begging you to return Logan and Kristina, she begged in her post. Please. Without insulin he WILL die.

Wednesday passed with no sign of either. By the following night, a police cruiser stood guard in a light rain outside Frenchs house, to which she had not returned, and from which guns had also been taken, First Coast News reported.

A few miles away in Neptune Beach, police were still combing through the ransacked house where Logan had lived with his father.

A reporter saw investigators with buckets and sifters in the yard Thursday evening; the public would find out the next day what they were for.

Rumours began to circulate that something terrible had happened inside the Mott house some time between last Friday, when Logan was last seen at school, and Wednesday when his father returned.

At 5 p.m. Friday, high-ranking police and members of the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office gathered at Neptune City Hall to reveal what they knew.

Logan Mott was not in need of insulin, sheriffs office Director Ron Lendvay told reporters. The boy was believed to have taken a weeks supply of medicine and also stolen his grandmothers car and driven hundreds of miles north to Pennsylvania, where a surveillance camera had spotted him the previous day.

Meanwhile, investigators had found a makeshift grave in the backyard, and by daylight uncovered what they believed to be Frenchs body.

So Logan as still being sought. We need to talk to him about what may have taken place in the house, Lendvay said.

And considering the missing guns, he was considered armed and dangerous.

Just as Campbell-Mott could not have imagined French hurting her son, she also could not believe that Logan would harm or intentionally kill his grandmother.

It could have been an accident and he got scared and ran. We have no idea, she wrote on Facebook after the news conference, as reported by Action News Jax. He is likely scared, alone and deeply confused.

Logan Mott if you are reading this I love you, she wrote. Im here. I love you. Please call me. I will help you. Mom.

That night, less than an hour before midnight, the sheriffs office announced that Logan had been found.

He had not called his mother and come home, but had instead travelled all the way from Neptune Beach to near Buffalo, where federal agents detained him at the Canadian border.

A judge had already issued an arrest warrant for auto theft by then, though Logan was still described as only a person of interest in his grandmothers death.

The sheriffs office did return a request for further details on Saturday morning.

In a statement released to ABC News and other outlets after Logans capture, his mother remained as optimistic as might be thought possible.

We are relieved he is safe and in custody and we just ask for everyone to give us time to sort out what happened, she wrote. That no matter what, Logan is our child and we love him and are standing by him to help in any way.

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BRESLAU, ONT.Doing his rounds on the floor of the meat processing plant, Tony Morreale points to the empty holes on the production line, where positions are unfilled because of the meat cutter shortage.

Outside Conestoga Meats, a huge hiring sign has become a fixture in front of the 115,000-square-foot facility located in this community near Kitchener. The plant processes more than 30,000 hogs a week, slaughtering the swine, derinding, deboning and slicing them into primo cuts for Canadian grocery chains and for export to China and Japan.

The hiring sign has become part of the grass for me, said Morreale, Conestogas vice-president of operations, zigzagging around the conveyor belts carrying carcasses to be cut by butchers wearing helmets, earmuffs, goggles and white robes.

We just cant find enough Canadians to do the job, said Morreale, whose company has 950 employees, including 70 temporary foreign workers.

The industry is such that we have difficulties attracting and retaining individuals, said Morreale. We have temporary foreign workers, but these are year-round jobs and we want them to stay permanently.

Morreale and Canadas $6 billion meat processing industry are just the latest to call on Ottawa to ease the access to permanent residency for their migrant workers. Earlier this fall, Canadian mushroom growers, who employ 4,330 people and generate $1 billion in sales a year, issued a similar plea.

Both industries have experienced perennial labour shortages because they are located primarily in rural Canada, which has been plagued by an aging population and outmigration of youth. Migrant workers have become a lifeline  a complement to the work force that keeps those operations running.

Those calls follow a recent Toronto Star series, The Hands that Pick Your Food, which found Canada has been increasing its reliance on migrant workers in the agri-food sector and that the lack of access to permanent residency can expose workers to abusive and exploitative working conditions.

The meat industry currently employs 66,330 people, and Ron Davidson, a spokesperson for the Canadian Meat Council, estimates some 2,000 of them are migrant workers. A recent survey of 15 of the countrys largest meat plants identified a shortage of 1,500 workers. The industry, mostly unionized, has the same pay scale for both foreign and Canadian workers, who earn between $14 and $18 an hour.

Davidson said meat-cutters, the majority of them unionized full-time positions, also have medical, dental and eye care coverage as well as retirement pensions.

But, he says, the labour gap persists

Canadians dont want to move to a rural environment and we cant put a slaughterhouse in a city. It is arduous work and many Canadians dont find it pleasant, he said.

Even offering skills development programs havent worked. We tried to put together a college diploma program to train Canadians, but we had to cancel for the lack of interest, said Davidson. Not everybody can do it. You need the skills to do the right cuts. You need food safety knowledge. It takes months of training.

Raising wages is also not an option.

There is no tariff and quota for the import of meat, said Davidson. We have to stay globally competitive or we are not going to have a domestic meat industry at all.

Jennefer Griffith, executive director of the Food Processing Human Resources Council, said the temporary foreign worker program is just a band-aid fix to the meat industrys labour gap and Ottawa must change its policy to bring in the so-called low-skilled blue-collar workers as permanent residents as a long-term solution.

The meat industry is not a sexy industry, said Griffith. Because of the perception of the job and its physicality, Canadians just arent interested.

Blanket changes made by the former Conservative government to restrict the migrant worker program have not made things easier for the sector, Griffith said.

In response to reports of employers in the IT and mining sectors using migrant workers to replace Canadians, the Harper government raised the application fee employers have to pay for migrant workers from $200 to $1,000  and capped the proportion of foreign workers at up to 10 per cent of a companys work force.

To make the situation worse, the Liberal government changed the immigration selection system and made it more difficult for butchers to become permanent residents.

Under the old system, butchers could qualify as long as they had a job offer in Canada and possessed minimum proficiency in English or French. Now, the job offer doesnt give them an edge.

Mauritian retail butcher Michael Marjolin came to work at Conestoga in 2015 under the low-skilled foreign worker program and applied for permanent residency in early November.

He scored 420 points under Canadas Express Entry program for skilled workers because he got 100 bonus points from having French as his first language and have a brother in Canada. (His score is close enough to the 439 passing mark in the latest selection draw.)

I love this job and I want to stay here and continue to work for Conestoga, said the 36-year-old, who has nine years of experience in meat cutting.

His colleague Serhiy Levytskyy, came here from Ukraine in October 2016 after working as a retail butcher in Italy for nine years, just before the federal government removed the 600-point advantage he had had prior to the changes.

I came because I would be able to become a permanent resident with the job offer, said the 34-year-old, who can do all the cuts, but now specializes in the highly-skilled loin carving. Now Im screwed, because I will have to leave Canada if my work permit cannot be renewed. Its a stressful situation.

It is also a stressful situation for Canadian employers such as Alberta-based Sunterra Farms, which has 1,000 employees and processes 3,500 pigs a week.

Mark Chambers, Sunterras production manager, said the company has to submit a new labour market impact assessment application to renew the work permit of a migrant worker, which expires every year. The process is tedious and involves advertising the jobs to Canadians and filling out page after page of forms, he said.

We would love to add another new plant if we could find the workers.

The (permit) extension can be turned down and the decisions are arbitrary, noted Chambers, who also co-chairs Canadas Agriculture and Agri-food Labour Task Force. Thats whats preventing us from growing.

Federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen would not comment for the story.

Pauline Zwiers, vice-president of human resources at Conestoga Meats, said the company has tried repeatedly to attract and retain Canadian workers: relocation assistance, busing in workers from urban centres, reaching out to newcomer communities for recruitment, expanding the human resources department to improve service and introducing leadership development training.

At one point, she said, Conestoga hired Canadian workers indiscriminately and the turnover rate hit 39 per cent. Now, their turnover rate stands at 25 per cent, compared to just 4 per cent among the foreign workers.

The foreign workers are supplementing our workforce, said Zwiers. We need the stability to facilitate our growth. Its not a temporary need. They are already here in Canada and deserve the opportunity to stay.

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Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 07:46:44|Editor: Zhou Xin

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CAIRO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Egyptian airstrikes hit a number of vehicles of terrorists involved in the deadly attack on a mosque in North Sinai province, killing all therein, said the Egyptian military spokesman in a statement on Friday midnight.

"In addition, the air forces targeted a number of hideouts containing weapons and ammunition that belong to the extremists," said military spokesman Tamer al-Refaay in the statement.

The military raids came several hours after a terrorist attack on Friday noon against a mosque at a small village in North Sinai that killed at least 235 worshippers and wounded over 100 others. It is the first terrorist operation to target a Muslim mosque in Egypt's modern history.

Terror attacks started to rise in Egypt following the military ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.

Since then, most of the attacks focused on restive North Sinai and killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, before they later started to extend to other provinces and target the Coptic minority in their churches.

Now they started to target the Muslim worshipers at mosques for the first time, which is an unprecedented development in terrorist tactics in the country according to security experts.

Fingers are pointed at a Sinai-based group loyal to the Islamic State (IS) regional terrorist group, which has claimed most of the large terrorist operations in Egypt over the past few years and whose affiliates are currently facing massive security crackdown in Syria and Iraq.

President Sisi said in a televised speech Friday evening that "this mean, sinful terrorist attack will only increase our strength, resolution and unity in our fight against terrorism," vowing that "we will respond fiercely against this minor group of extremists and terrorists."

The Egyptian president received phone calls on Friday from many world leaders who offered their condolences over the tragic attack and voiced their support for the North African country in its war against terrorism.
A Progressive Conservative government would take over and expand TTC subway lines, invest $1.9 billion in mental health services and slash middle-class income taxes by 22.5 per cent, the Star has learned.

PC Leader Patrick Brown will unveil his partys ambitious spring election plan  dubbed Peoples Guarantee  in a speech to 1,500 PC delegates Saturday at the Toronto Congress Centre.

A new childcare tax benefit that will allow parents to write off more of their daycare expenses is being heralded to help families pay for soaring costs.

Sources say the 80-page platform would have the provincial government assume financial responsibility for the Toronto Transit Commissions subway network, leaving the buses and streetcar lines to the city, if the Conservatives topple Premier Kathleen Wynnes Liberals on June 7.

Tories believe the uploading promise  similar to one made by former PC leader Tim Hudak in the 2014 election  will be more popular with voters now that the subway extends into Vaughan and has become more of a regional transportation utility.

With direct provincial control, a PC administration could expedite the TTCs planned downtown relief line along Carlaw Ave., ensure completion of the controversial Scarborough subway and extend the Yonge line to Richmond Hill.

Brown will announce an additional $1.9 billion for mental health initiatives over the next decade to match the federal funding announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in March.

There would be more money for autism services, an expansion of subsidized dental care for senior citizens and a promise of 15,000 new long-term care home beds.

In a salvo at Premier Kathleen Wynnes Liberals, in power since 2003, there will be a new Stephen Harper-influenced provincial accountability act to improve conflict-of-interest rules and boost transparency and oversight at Queens Park.

Because the Tories believe the Liberals are concealing a budget deficit, they will not balance the books of a Brown government until the second year of their mandate.

Once back in the black, they plan to earmark $1 billion toward paying down Ontarios $311.9-billion provincial debt.

The Tories asked Kevin Page, the former federal parliamentary budget officer who is now with the University of Ottawa, to check their numbers in the Peoples Guarantee.

We did check the numbers for reasonableness  methodology and assumptions. We will provide this service to all parties if requested. We ask for no remuneration for this service, said Page.

While declining to discuss specifics until Saturday, Brown promised tax relief for Ontarians.

Right now, middle-class families feel beleaguered, under attack. Theres an affordability crisis, and thats whether you live in Kenora or Ajax, he told the Star.

Youre struggling to be able to afford a home, pay your hydro bill, dealing with the ever-increasing tax burden in Ontario.

To that end, there will be significant cuts in income taxes for the two lowest tax brackets.

There will be a 10 per cent cut in the provincial tax rate paid on the first $42,201 of taxable income. In 2017, that rate was 5.05 per cent, which would drop to around 4.5 per cent under the Tory plan.

The tax rate on the next $42,203 of taxable income  meaning it would include those making up to $84,405 a year  would drop to about 7.1 per cent from the current 9.15 per cent.

Thats a 22.5 per cent reduction.

As well, theres a further cut in the small-business income tax rate, which the Liberals are reducing to 3.5 per cent from 4.5 per cent in January. The Tory rate would be closer to 3.2 per cent.

Conservative insiders  declining to speak for attribution in order to discuss internal deliberations  said the cuts would be bankrolled by cancelling the Liberals cap-and-trade program that increased gasoline and natural gas prices.

The measure, which ties Ontarios greenhouse gas emission reduction program to Quebec and California, brings in about $2 billion annually.

To curb climate change, the Tories would implement Trudeaus federal carbon tax of $10 a tonne starting next year, increasing to $50 by 2022.

Brown said the policies were developed by grassroots Tories who voted on 139 resolutions submitted online from across the province instead of top-down-inside-the-bubble from Queens Park.

The resolutions that were adopted formed the basis of our platform and what I like about these policies is that I start from the position that theres no monopoly on a good idea. We had roundtables in every part of the province, listening to how can you get Ontario back on track.

There will be about 1,500 delegates, who each paid $199 to participate, at Saturdays convention.

It has been the biggest, widest, deepest policy consultation process in any provincial partys history, said PC convention co-chair Kevin Gaudet.

Gaudet noted there were 17 policy committees across the province, and some 400 people volunteered their time in person.

With voters headed to the polls in six months  and public-opinion surveys showing the Conservatives enjoying a narrow lead over the Liberals  Tories are eager to take their ideas to Ontarians.

Thats why they are releasing their plans to govern so far in advance.

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NEW YORKU.S. President Donald Trumps name has for the first time been discovered in the Panama Papers, the massive trove of leaked documents detailing the ways in which the worlds richest people hide their business dealings from scrutiny and taxation.

The discovery, first flagged by investigative reporter Jake Bernstein on Friday afternoon, involves the purchase and subsequent sale of a condo at the newly constructed Trump Palace on the Upper East Side in the early 1990s.

The deal involved a mysterious Panamanian company called Process Consultants, Inc., which bought a 16th floor condo at the Trump skyscraper in 1991.

Process Consultants was owned through so-called bearer shares, which can be used to transfer assets with complete anonymity. Such shares are popular among money launderers.

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Three years after the purchase, Process Consultants put the Trump Palace unit up for sale, with the Trump Corporation as its exclusive broker. A woman from Hong Kong, whose name has appeared in other leaked documents, appears to have bought the apartment for $355,000, according to a contract.

As has been the case with most Panama Papers revelations, theres no indication of who is actually behind Process Consultants or where that persons money came from.

While using bearer shares doesnt prove that Process Consultants was involved in something dubious, the quick condo flip is characteristic of money laundering.

Trump himself could be in serious trouble if his company knowingly facilitated the condo sale for the purpose of laundering money.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

As part of his investigation into Russian election meddling, special prosecutor Robert Mueller has been looking into Trumps sprawling real estate empire, according to reports. Its not known if the Process Consultants deal has been of interest in that probe.

The Trump condo contract is one of hundreds of thousands of documents that were leaked in 2015 from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sold anonymous shell companies around the globe. Some of the worlds richest people were able to conduct shady business deals by hiding behind the law firms offshore companies.

After the massive leak, the founders behind Mossack Fonseca were arrested and the firm remains under investigation around the world.

Last month, another leaked trove of documents dubbed the Paradise Papers revealed that Trumps commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, has been doing million-dollar business deals with Russian President Vladimir Putins son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov.

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RIO GRANDE CITY, TEXAS  Caught quite literally in the middle of the international debate over the way the United States trades with its southern neighbour are two Texans named Sam.

Sam Vale and Sam Sparks Jr. own two bridges that stretch across the Rio Grande, connecting farmers on either side with markets on the other, and linking communities in South Texas and northern Mexico that sometimes meet in the middle.

The majority of border bridges belong to the government. But the Sams are exceptions, private owners of crossings collecting tolls that can exceed $30 per truck.

As cross-border truck volume doubled in the last two decades, those tolls have given rise to a pair of multimillion-dollar businesses, a dividend of the traffic ferrying construction materials in both directions, avocados from Mexican fields to U.S. supermarkets, and Midwestern wheat to Mexican breweries.

We used to joke that if you want to own a bridge, you have to be named Sam: Sam or Uncle Sam, said Vale, who owns a two-lane crossing in Rio Grande City, a bit more than an hours drive from Sparks four-lane roadway. Both men are second-generation bridge owners.

But now their unique revenue stream could be in jeopardy.

The Trump administration wrapped up a fifth round of wrangling over the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, this week in Mexico City.

President Donald Trump has pursued an aggressive rewrite, pushing to protect U.S. workers and stem the flow of goods from Mexico.

The focus on trade is exposing cracks of tension between the president and a constituency otherwise aligned with his economic instincts.

Major retailers and manufacturers are mobilizing to keep the deal alive and to protest rules that could make it more expensive to bring parts and products in from Mexico. For the bridge moguls, anything that stanches the flow of traffic could be costly.

Trucks carried $373 billion in cargo across bridges on the southern border last year, accounting for 71 per cent of all trade in goods with Mexico, according to the American Trucking Association.

NAFTA benefits this bridge big time, said Sparks, who voted for Trump. We kind of want them to leave it alone.

Sparks and his three siblings own the Progreso International Bridge, serving Progreso, Texas, a town blanketed by ranches and farmland. A border wall built on U.S. soil runs through his property, and he can open it by punching a code into a keypad on its facade.

The bridge is a study in a trade deal that has been a boon to some U.S. farmers and hurt others. For U.S. corn, Progreso is one of the busiest exit points in the country. NAFTA was a windfall for U.S. grain producers, who have more efficient operations than their Mexican counterparts.

Its a different story for watermelons and onions, which are trucked in from the depths of Mexico by the hundreds, filling the northbound lanes of Sparks bridge on their way to U.S. stores. Fresh fruit and vegetable harvesters in the United States complain about competition from a neighbour that can grow some crops year-round and pay farmhands much less.

Sparks would like to see more trucks going south on his bridge, but he sees the give-and-take as unavoidable.

We export a lot of products through our bridge, and we get paid a toll, and we want that to continue, Sparks said. But to do that we need fair trade. Mexico has to benefit from that. Canada has to benefit. If everyone is getting a good deal, it just works.

Beyond the truck traffic, the town of Nuevo Progreso, at the southern end of Sparks bridge, has found creative ways of cashing in on its proximity to Americans. There are abundant taco shops, tequila that can be bought and consumed in the streets, and many, many dental clinics. More than 100 dentists offices cater to a U.S. clientele seeking fillings and root canals at a fraction of the cost at home, along with 80 pharmacies offering pills and medical treatments at a cut rate. The attractions draw more than 800,000 pedestrians across Sparks roadway every year, at a cost of 50 cents apiece.

Trumps hard line on immigration could eventually slow foot traffic, experts say, by discouraging tourists from Mexico. But proposals on the NAFTA negotiating table would more directly affect trucks and what they carry.

The administration has floated the idea of increasing the U.S.-made content in goods traded through the pact and requiring renegotiation every five years. Trump said last month the United States might end the deal altogether.

Business loves certainty, and they arent getting any, said Raymond Robertson, an economist at Texas A&M University. Border bridges, he said, are ground zero for NAFTA trade, so if you start reducing the U.S.-Mexico trade, it will hit them first.

If it becomes expensive to send products north, Mexico could turn to one of the 45 countries with which it has free-trade agreements. Long the leading destination for U.S. corn, Mexico has increasingly turned to suppliers in Brazil to hedge against Trumps tough talk on trade.

If Mexico diversifies, what are these bridge operators going to do? Robertson asked.

Its a good bet that Vale will survive. The 74-year-old took the reins of the Starr-Camargo Bridge around 1980, when it was an unremarkable passageway, handling cars and pickups travelling between two impoverished towns.

Then NAFTA was signed in 1993, and the number of commercial trucks went from one a week to as many as 300 a day. Vale takes in around $4 million a year in tolls. (Sparks, 63, would not specify his revenue, but it is also in the millions.)

Vale has also pursued an array of ventures beyond the bridge. A column of 18-wheelers that were waiting to cross belongs to him, and so does the sand in them. He brought the dolomite limestone from a mine in Mexico, and it will travel to concrete producers and asphalt plants across South Texas, earning Vale millions each year.

Vale does not love leaving Texas, but he has made six trips to Washington since the election to make his case to lawmakers. His pitch is simple: Dont hurt the country, dont hurt the businesses that support you, Mr. President. Dont hurt the people who are critical to the economic survival of the United States.

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BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINAThe round-the-clock international search for a submarine that has been lost in the South Atlantic Ocean for nine days is accelerating amid growing fears for its 44 crew members.

The Argentine navy says an explosion occurred near the time and place where the sub went missing on Nov. 15. Thats led some family members of the crew to give up hope of a rescue. Navy officials and outside experts worry that even if the ARA San Juan is intact but submerged, its crew may be running out of oxygen.

But spokesperson Enrique Balbi said Friday that Russia is sending an Antonov transport aircraft and a ship is being adapted in the southern Patagonian port of Comodoro Rivadavia to carry a U.S. navy submarine rescue chamber to the area.

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Despite all the effort that has been carried out, we havent been able to find the San Juan submarine, Balbi told reporters. The search ends when we find the vessel.

More than a dozen airplanes and ships have been participating in the multinational search despite stormy weather that has caused powerful waves. Search teams are ranging across an area of about 480,000 square kilometres, which is roughly the size of Spain.

The German-built diesel-electric TR-1700 class submarine was commissioned in 1985 and was most recently refitted in 2014.

Some relatives of the crew have lashed out at the navy for its response and for putting their loved ones at risk in a vessel that is more than 30 years old.

But Balbi has defended the Argentine navy, saying that with respect to the maintenance and state of our naval and air units, no unit ever leaves port or takes off if it isnt in operating conditions to navigate or fly with total security.

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WASHINGTONThe Trump administration backtracked Friday on its decision to order the Palestinians office in Washington to close, instead saying it would merely impose limitations on the office that it expected would be lifted after 90 days.

Last week, U.S. officials said the Palestine Liberation Organization mission couldnt stay open because the Palestinians had violated a provision in U.S. law requiring the office to close if the Palestinians try to get the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis. The move triggered a major rift in U.S.-Palestinian relations that threatened to scuttle President Donald Trumps ambitious effort to broker Mideast peace before it ever got off the ground.

Yet the United States delayed shuttering the office for a week while saying it was working out the details with the Palestinians, before abruptly reversing course late Friday, as many Americans were enjoying a long Thanksgiving Day weekend. U.S. State Department spokesperson Edgar Vasquez said the U.S. had advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump

Vasquez said even those restrictions will be lifted after 90 days if the U.S. determines the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in serious peace talks. The White House, in an effort led by Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, has been preparing a comprehensive peace plan to present to both sides in the coming months.

We therefore are optimistic that at the end of this 90-day period, the political process may be sufficiently advanced that the president will be in a position to allow the PLO office to resume full operations, Vasquez said.

The reversal marked a serious departure from the administrations interpretation of the law only a week earlier. Officials had said then that, one way or another, the office had to close because Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a UN speech in September, had called on the ICC to investigate and prosecute Israelis. That same law, though, says that the president can let the office re-open after 90 days despite an ICC push if serious Israeli-Palestinian talks are underway.

Asked how the Trump administration explains its new interpretation of about what must happen if the Palestinians call for an ICC investigation, Vasquez said: These actions are consistent with the presidents authorities to conduct the foreign relations of the United States.

There were no indications that the Trump administration had initially moved to close the office as part of a premeditated strategy to strengthen its hand in eventual peace talks. Instead, officials explained the move by saying U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in a strict interpretation of the law, determined that Abbas speech had crossed the legal line.

The chaos that ensued after the announcement, with the U.S. unable for several days to explain if the office was truly closing and when, indicated it had caught much of the government off-guard.

Still, the move led the Palestinians to issue an angry response last weekend threatening to suspend all communication with the U.S. Additionally, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accused the U.S. of bowing to pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus government at a time when we are trying to co-operate to achieve the ultimate deal.

Vasquez said the original position had never been intended to create leverage or impose pressure. The State Department said that the administration is actively working to pursue lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

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The requirement about the mission closing stems from a little-noticed provision in U.S. law that says the U.S. cannot allow the Palestinians to have a Washington office if they back the international courts move to investigate or prosecute Israeli nationals for alleged crimes against Palestinians.

Abbas said at the United Nations in September that the Palestinians had called on the International Criminal Court to open an investigation and to prosecute Israeli officials for their involvement in settlement activities and aggressions against our people.

The PLO is the group that formally represents all Palestinians. Although the U.S. does not recognize Palestinian statehood, the PLO maintains a general delegation office in Washington that facilitates Palestinian officials interactions with the U.S. government.

The United States allowed the PLO to open a mission in Washington in 1994. That required then-president Bill Clinton to waive a law that said the Palestinians couldnt have an office. In 2011, under the Obama administration, the U.S. started letting the Palestinians fly their flag over the office, an upgrade to the status of their mission that the Palestinians hailed as historic.

Israel opposes any Palestinian membership in UN-related organizations until a peace deal has been reached.

The Israelis and Palestinians are not engaged in active, direct negotiations. But Trumps team, led by Kushner, is working to broker a deal aimed at settling the intractable conflict.

The Trump administration has not disclosed details about its effort to achieve an agreement that ostensibly would grant the Palestinians an independent state in exchange for an end to its conflict with the Israelis. Kushner and other top Trump aides have been shuttling to the region to meet with Palestinians, Israelis and officials from Arab nations.

The Palestinians, publicly supportive of the U.S. effort, are nonetheless skeptical because Trumps close ties to Israel suggest whatever deal he proposes might be unfavourable to them.

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The brazen attack on worshipers at an Egyptian mosque early Friday showed the ability of Daeshs regional affiliates to inflict death and exact revenge for the loss of the groups main enclaves in Iraq and Syria.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack on the Rawda mosque in Egypts sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula, but there were many reasons to suspect Daesh was responsible.

The Egyptian affiliate, which consists of up to 1,000 members, has stepped up attacks in recent months on Egyptian soldiers and police in the region and laid siege to Coptic Christian churches. Before Fridays attack, the group was best known for its suspected role in the downing of Russias Metrojet Flight 9268 in 2015, which killed 224 Russian tourists.

Read more:

Dozens of casualties as Egyptian militants attack mosque in Sinai Peninsula

The attack on Friday represented a shocking escalation in the carnage, with Egyptian officials reporting 235 dead. It also represented a new and risky kind of target for Daeshs Egyptian affiliate. For the first time, the Egyptian branch of Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, appeared to target fellow Sunni Muslim civilians at prayer.

In the wake of the bloodshed, government officials and outside analysts were puzzling over the strategy behind the groups latest horror.

The Sinai chapter is only a part of a larger constellation of regional affiliates, and its high-profile attack could be a sign of a broader power struggle to take up Daeshs leadership mantle now that the groups self-declared caliphate has been destroyed, intelligence officials and terrorism experts said. Several local cells already have begun preparations to continue or even intensify their fight, analysts said.

The Sinai attack underscores that the elimination of the ISIS caliphate will have little effect on the groups regional affiliates, whose success or failure depends on local conditions, said Daniel Benjamin, a former co-ordinator for counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department and a professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. The Sinai branch, like most of the regional chapters, existed long before Daesh declared the establishment of its caliphate in 2014.

To other analysts, the timing of the attack, which occurred during Friday prayers, and the choice of target, a Sufi mosque, reflected a new level of desperation and frustration among Daeshs remaining adherents.

The group views Sufi Muslims as apostates and has attacked Sufi shrines in northern Africa and Iraq. But Daesh has generally not targeted Sufis in Egypt, where the strain of Sunni Islam has deep roots that date back centuries and broad popular appeal.

As you get more desperate, you also get internal feuding over who is more puritanical, said Bernard Haykel, a professor at Princeton University who has studied Daeshs religious roots. Everyone is trying to compete to show they are truer to the cause. They want to cast themselves as the hardest of the hard-liners.

Until recently, Daesh militants in Egypt had made an effort to appeal to disaffected Islamists who had supported the Muslim Brotherhood or opposed Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissis tight grip on power. The Rawda mosque attack suggested that the group was almost entirely focused on amassing body counts rather than holding territory or winning new followers.

On its face, its a really dumb thing to do, Haykel said. What do you stand to gain other than the hatred and contempt of Muslims all over the world?

One purpose of the attack may be to demonstrate that Daesh, despite the collapse of its armies in Iraq and Syria, remains deadly and relevant. One way to do that is to is by turning to increasingly brutal and savage terrorist attacks, said Shadi Hamid, the author of Islamic Exceptionalism and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

U.S. officials have been carefully monitoring some of the more significant affiliates in recent weeks to see how they might be affected by the fall of the core groups capital in Raqqa, Syria. One concern is the possibility that substantial numbers of Daesh fighters, including perhaps the senior leadership, could resurface in a new location. Officials also are worried that one of the regional affiliates may seek to launch a major attack against western targets as an act of revenge for the deaths of comrades in Iraq and Syria.

We say that the Islamic State has been defeated, but only as military force, said a senior U.S. counterterrorism official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security assessments. Homegrown insurgencies are going to go on for a while and will be harder to defeat. The hope is that we can get to the point where local forces can contain the threat on their own, without support from the international coalition or U.S. advisers.

The U.S. military has been largely successful in preventing a second Daesh caliphate from taking hold in Libya. But last month, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that other affiliates remain worrisome, including an ISIS concentration in Sinai that Egypt has been working on for some time.

There has been little evidence in recent months that the core organization is providing money or logistical support to its regional affiliates, but the groups ideology and brutal tactics remain a common bond, the officials said.

What ISIS is absolutely trying to do is leverage local insurgencies now to rebrand themselves, Dunford said. They are trying to maintain relevance.

The Sinai chapter presents an exceptionally difficult challenge because of the groups growing capabilities and Egypts seeming inability to contain them  or to even acknowledge the seriousness of the threat, said U.S. counterterrorism officials.

Fridays mosque attack occurred in northern Sinai, in Bir al-Abd, a town in a coastal area noted for its heavy security presence. The assailants ability to inflict a savage blow in such a place suggested to some current and former U.S. officials that the momentum lies with the terrorists, despite a two-year campaign by the Egyptian government to destroy the group.

For whatever reason, the Egyptians have not worked closely with us in the northern Sinai, said Stuart Jones, a former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and vice-president at the Cohen Group. This just shows that the Egyptians need our help with training and the special kinds of equipment it takes to defeat insurgencies.

He envisions a program similar to the one U.S. troops have been executing in Iraq.

In the wake of the attack, President Donald Trump suggested that more American help might be on the way. The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence! he tweeted. We have to get TOUGHER AND SMARTER than ever before.

But it was unclear exactly what kind of program the president envisioned. His tweet went on to call for the construction of a border wall and an immigration ban.

In Egypt, el-Sissis approach has been to launch a broad campaign against all Islamist groups, including Egypts Muslim Brotherhood, which has renounced violence in recent years. The net effect has been to drive even moderate Islamists to support the extremists. Fridays attack is likely to lead el-Sissi, with Trumps support, to get even tougher.

James Jeffrey, a former ambassador to Iraq and senior fellow at the Washington Institute, said the attack will serve as an argument for Sissi to continue his draconian crackdown and authoritarian rule.

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CAIROThe scale of the bloodshed was vastly higher than past militant attacks, but the Egyptian government response the same: Three days of mourning, reassuring messages in the media that things are under control, and the president promising vengeance.

The identical pattern in the aftermath of Fridays attack on a mosque in Sinai, which killed more than 300 people, raises the question: Does Egypt have options left?

The military has thrown tanks, fighting vehicles, fighter-jets, warships and helicopter gunships along with tens of thousands of security forces in three years of conflict with extremists, including an affiliate of the Islamic State group in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula.

The area has been under emergency law for several years and the entire country since April. Security forces have forcibly evacuated areas adjacent to the border with Gaza, razing residents houses and farmlands. They have blown up underground tunnels that authorities believe jihadis used to smuggle weapons and fighters in from neighbouring Gaza, ruled by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

These measures have shown few tangible results.

The firepower and troop deployments in Sinai have kept militants from holding territory but have not prevented them from carrying out assassinations that terrorize the population and launching deadly attacks on military and police posts and convoys and recently a daylight robbery in Sinais largest town.

In a televised address, a livid Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Egypts general-turned-president, pledged the use of brute force in response to Fridays attack. The armed forces and police will forcefully take revenge for our martyred sons and restore security and stability in the short period ahead, he vowed.

There is little public discussion of how to conduct the war and the northern Sinai area is closed off to journalists, making it difficult to assess whats going on. In the overwhelmingly pro-government media, talk about the conflict is largely focused on cheering the military and police, commemorating their martyrs and urging the public to rally around el-Sissi.

The closest authorities came to admitting shortcomings was last month when el-Sissi removed the armed forces chief of staff and top police generals after a planned attack on militants in the Western Desert went disastrously wrong. The operation left over a dozen counterterrorism police officers dead and exposed poor co-ordination among security and intelligence agencies.

It also illustrated the problem posed by Egypts long desert border with Libya  a country mired in chaos and rife with armed Islamic militant groups  through which weapons and fighters can be smuggled. That has fuelled a second front of militant violence in the west, with signs of arms movements to the Sinai extremists.

Egypts response has been in line with a long-standing model of fighting a conventional war against an opposing army. Indeed, recent years have seen up to $15 billion (U.S) in arms deals, largely for big-ticket items such as two helicopter carriers, submarines, assault helicopters and fighter jets.

But critics have called for a counterterrorism strategy in Sinai rather than the reliance on a conventional deployment of overwhelming force. There are some trained counterterrorism soldiers and police deployed, but most are poorly trained regular troops and police conscripts whose main skill is manning a checkpoint. Warplanes and attack helicopters have limits in a rugged mountain terrain that the militants know far better than the military does. And forces moving with tanks and heavy vehicles are often ambushed by the more agile militants using light arms, machine-guns, roadside bombs and suicide bombers.

El-Sissi recently said security forces are hampered by the presence of civilians in Sinai, requiring extreme caution which benefits the insurgents. But critics say the military has been heavy-handed as is, deepening the distrust of local tribes who have long claimed discrimination.

Male family members are sometimes arrested if another member is suspected of militancy, according to Sinai rights activists. Soldiers and police at checkpoints are notorious for mistreating people, they say. Roads are often blocked and mobile phone services disrupted. Houses have been razed to clear zones for military control and people forcibly evacuated. Even those who oppose the militants become less likely to help security forces.

At the same time, the militants brutally intimidate residents from co-operating with security forces, kidnapping suspected collaborators and dumping their decapitated bodies on the streets of el-Arish, Rafah and other north Sinai towns for all to see.

So the locals provide the military with little actionable intelligence.

One suggestion has been for the military to arm local Sinai tribesmen hostile to the militants  like the Sunni Arab Awakening militias in Iraq that were created by the U.S. military and were a key part of defeating al-Qaida in the 2000s. Given the anger many tribesmen now feel after Fridays massacre, its a scenario that is becoming less unthinkable.

The military, however, fears armed tribesmen could eventually turn against it.

Critics also contend the governments country-wide campaign against Islamists has pushed some young people toward the Islamic State group affiliate. The crackdown was launched against the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after the military ousted President Mohammed Morsi, a Brotherhood member. Since then, thousands of Brotherhood members and other Islamists have been jailed. There have been accounts of younger Islamists being radicalized, some in prison, and turning to IS support.

The government contends that the Brotherhood is a terrorist group, intertwined with militants from the start.

Some believe the militants are gambling as they turn ever more brutal, risking a revolt by the populace. Hassan Khalaf, a local tribal elder, said many of those killed were already co-operating with the army and that they were likely targeted as an intimidation tactic. People are more determined now to stand against that inhuman and heartless bunch, he said.

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LONDON  Merry olde England has had a glum run of news. The divorce from the European Union is going badly  a lot of fuss about alimony. Theres been a sex pest scandal in Parliament. And the British pound is getting pounded.

So, as if on cue, the flash story this week was the feverish speculation about exactly when  never if  Prince Harry and the American actress Meghan Markle would finally announce their engagement to wed.

The only thing better than royal babies are royal weddings  but one must precede the other. Of course, the most momentous royal news of all is also on the horizon, another life event, this one sad yet inevitable. Queen Elizabeth II turned 91 years old in April, God save her.

Read more:

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On Friday, the tabloids went a little nuts. The Sun ran a salivating headline claiming that a Harry and Markle engagement announcement was imminent.

The Daily Mail was more specific. They had a date and time. On Friday, it tweeted, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle rumoured to be announcing their engagement at 5pm TODAY.

Friday evening came and went. No matter.

If youve missed your latest copy of Hello magazine, Markle is a 36-year-old actress, born and raised in California, best known for playing Rachel Zane in the well-liked New York legal drama Suits, which is filmed in Toronto.

Its rumoured that she will quit her acting career and will continue her charitable work. She is a global ambassador for World Vision Canada.

The 33-year-old ginger-bearded Harry is fifth in line to the British throne. (He will be bumped to sixth place after his brother Prince William and Kate Middleton welcome their third child in the spring.) With modern medical science being what is  and the Tower of London now a tourist attraction versus a gallows  Harrys chances of sitting on the big chair are virtually nil.

Still, Harry is one of the most popular royals, said to have inherited his mother Princess Dianas mischievous side, as well as her common touch. He also has had his share of past missteps, including stirring major royal flaps in 2005 by wearing an outfit with a swastika to a costume party and in 2012 with photos showing him playing strip billiards in a Las Vegas hotel suite.

The last time an American married into the royal family, Britain was plunged into a constitutional crisis. In 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry the American socialite and divorcee Wallis Simpson.

There are no hard and fast rules for royal engagements, but perhaps William and Kate can offer us clues as to how it might be done this time.

William and Kate were engaged after a lengthy courtship. The tabloids called her Waity Katie.

Palace officials announced their engagement at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday  on Nov. 16, 2010, to be exact. Kate pronounced William a true romantic and said he popped the question on an African safari to view wildlife. The couple held a photocall event with the worlds media and then gave a sit-down interview to a broadcaster, which was aired later in the day. They were married five months later.

Rumours of an engagement between Harry and Markle have been swirling for some time.

In November 2016, Prince Harry revealed he was dating the actress when  in a remarkable statement from Kensington Palace  he blasted the press for subjecting Markle to a wave of abuse and harassment.

The palace condemned the smear on the front page of a national newspaper, the racial undertones of comment pieces, and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments.

Markles mother is African American, and her father is white.

Her relationship with Harry has been a source of intense media speculation ever since the statement. And along the way, royal watchers wondered if the couple wasnt dropping clues that there was a wedding in the offing.

In April, Markle ended her lifestyle blog, The Tig, after three years.

Something to tell us? queried the Daily Mail.

The same newspaper reported that the couple had tea with the queen last month, sparking rumours that they were seeking her majestys blessing.

Apparently the meeting went well  a good thing, too. Under ancient rules, the monarch has the right to refuse a royal marriage.

The duo made their first public appearance together in September at the Invictus Games, a sporting event for disabled veterans founded by Harry. They held hands, they kissed, they canoodled  they were snapped alongside Markles mother, Doria Ragland.

Markle has been living in Toronto, where Suits is filmed. However, there are rumours she has left the show and is planning on relocating to London, where she could move into Harrys two-bedroom cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace.

Has Harry pupped the question? ran the front-page headline in the Sun, Britains bestselling newspaper, making a very tabloidesque pun after stories appeared that Markle was moving her dogs to London. The paper said that BBC staff had been primed to expect an announcement.

What DO they know? asked the Daily Mail on its front page, noting that a British bookmaker stopped accepting bets on Harry popping the question this year.

Markle has spoken about their relationship in prescient and hopeful terms.

Were in love, she told Vanity Fair magazine. Im sure there will be a time when we will have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but I hope what people will understand is that this is our time. This is for us. Its part of what makes it so special, that its just ours. But were happy. Personally, I love a great love story.

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WASHINGTONThe crush of unfinished business facing lawmakers when they return to the Capitol would be daunting even if Washington were functioning at peak efficiency.

Its an agenda whose core items  tax cuts, a potential government shutdown, lots of leftover spending bills  could unravel just as easily as advance in factionalism, gamesmanship and a toxic political environment.

Theres only a four-week window until a Christmas deadline, barely enough time for complicated negotiations even if December stays on the rails. And thats hardly a sure bet in U.S. President Donald Trumps capital.

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U.S. conservatives do care about identity politics  but one identity trumps the rest

House Republicans pass Trumps tax reform bill, a major step toward overhaul

Republicans to add repeal of Obamacare mandate into tax bill

Trump and congressional leaders plan a meeting Tuesday to discuss how to sidestep a shutdown and work though the legislative to-do list.

For the optimistic, its plain that Democrats and Republicans have reasons to co-operate, particularly on spending increases for the Pentagon and domestic agencies whose budgets otherwise would be frozen. An additional round of hurricane aid should be bipartisan, and efforts to reauthorize a popular health care program for children seem to be on track.

Republicans are advancing their cherished tax cut measure under special rules that mean Senate Democrats cannot use delaying tactics. The measure passed the House just before the Thanksgiving break and moves to the Senate floor this coming week.

After the Senate GOPs failure on health care this summer, the majority party is under enormous pressure to produce a victory on taxes. Still, GOP deficit hawks such as Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona remain uneasy about the overhaul.

While Democrats are largely sidelined on taxes, they hold leverage over a mix of budget-related issues.

First, theres the need to avert a government shutdown after a temporary spending bill expires on Dec. 8. The most likely scenario, congressional aides say, is for an additional extension until Christmas. On a parallel track are talks to raise spending limits that are keeping agency budgets essentially frozen unless those caps are raised. If that happens, then negotiations could begin in earnest on a massive catch-all spending measure in hopes of having it signed into law by years end.

Taxes have gotten all the attention so far, but the showdown over a potential shutdown right before Christmas could soon take centre stage. Democrats are counting on GOP fears of a holiday season closure to ensure Republican concessions during December talks.

Both sides would have to make concessions that may upset partisans in either party. Just as House Speaker Paul Ryan fears a revolt on the right, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California risks an uprising on her left. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer round out the quartet of top negotiators.

Everybodys got complicated politics. The chance of short-term failure is pretty high  short-term failure being a shutdown, said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist. But the four of them, assuming they dont want to shut the government down for a long time, are going to have to come to an accommodation.

Talks on the spending caps are stuck, however, aides say. A GOP offer to lift the Pentagon budget by more than $54 billion next year and nondefence limits by $37 billion was rejected by Democrats demanding balance between the two sides of the ledger.

Long-delayed battles over immigration and Trumps promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border are huge obstacles. Many Democrats whose votes are needed on the spending bills insist they wont vote for any legislation that includes the wall. Trump remains dead set on his $1.6 billion request for a down payment on the project.

Those same Democrats also insist that Congress must act by years end to protect immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and whose protected status is set to lapse next year. Trump backs the idea despite issuing an executive order reversing the Obama administration protections, starting next spring. Conservatives oppose drawing in the immigration issue to legislation to keep the government running.

Hurricane relief is adding one more wrinkle.

Congress has approved more than $50 billion in aid in response to a series of devastating hurricanes. The most recent request by the White House is the largest yet at $44 billion, but its not nearly enough to satisfy the powerful Texas delegation, which is pressing behind the scenes for more.

Completely inadequate, said Texas Republican Rep. John Culberson. We must do far more to rebuild, repair and allow Texans to return to normal as quickly as possible.

Trump is a wild card. He warmed to the idea of cutting deals with Democrats after a September pact with Schumer and Pelosi to lift the governments debt ceiling.

He promised Democratic leaders that he would sign legislation to give the young immigrants legal status  provided border security is addressed as well.

But that demand on border security came with a long list of conditions subsequently added by the White House. Among them: building his Mexico border wall, overhauling the green card system and strengthening measures against people who stay after their visas expire.

Trump has not really engaged on the year-end agenda, however, and his impulsiveness could be a liability. He almost disowned an omnibus spending bill in May after media accounts portrayed the measure as a win for Democrats.

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On Friday, at least 305 Egyptians were killed by terrorists who detonated a bomb in a crowded mosque, then sprayed frantic worshippers with gunfire as they fled. It was deadliest attack in the countrys modern history.

It was horrific, local Ibrahim Sheteewi told The New York Times. The bodies were scattered on the ground outside the mosque.

The assault shocked Egyptians for another reason: Attacks on mosques are unusual in Egypt. I cant believe they attacked a mosque, a Muslim cleric in Bir al-Abed told The New York Times.

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Egypt mosque attack that left at least 305 dead was the deadliest single attack in the countrys history

With loss of caliphate, Daesh could turn even more reckless and radical

At least 235 dead, 109 wounded after Egypt militants attack mosque in Sinai Peninsula

But to understand why this mosque was targeted, its important to understand how Sunni extremists see Sufism.

Sufism is a strand of Islam that eschews materialism and emphasizes the inward search for God. Sufi adherents are responsible for some of Islams most famous and beloved literature, including the poems of Rumi. Followers promote values such as tolerance and pluralism.

Sufi believers can be Sunni or Shiite, though the majority are Sunni. They see Sufism less as a sect than as a way of being, a set of beliefs and practices that lead followers closer to God. It is nothing more than the spiritual dimension, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf told The New York Times. It is Islam, but we focus on meditation, on chanting sessions, which enable the Muslim to have his or her heart open. The myths people have about Sufis are analogous to the myths people have about Muslims.

A University of Michigan scholar on Islam, Alexander Knysh, summed up the tenets of Sufism as: love, peace, tolerance.

Its an interpretation of Islam thats radically different from what Sunni extremists believe. Many extremists see Sufism as heretical, followed only by apostates.

Though no group has claimed Fridays assault, the attackers reportedly carried the banner Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

More and more, extremists are willing to target Sufi mosques. Opponents of Sufism see the shrines and these living saints as idols, Knysh told The New York Times. Their existence and their worship violates the main principle of Islam, which is the uniqueness of God and the uniqueness of the object of worship.

When Al Qaeda captured northern Mali in 2012, militants destroyed the ancient mausoleums of Sufi saints in Timbuktu. In the fall of 2016, Daeshs local affiliate claimed to have executed a 100-year-old Sufi cleric in Egypt. Last February, militants allied with Daesh attacked worshippers whod come to pray at the tomb of a Sufi philosopher in southern Pakistan. More than 80 people were killed.

Not all Muslim extremists believe that Sufis should be targeted. In Mali, the assailants had acted without the permission of their leaders, and they were reprimanded. In general, Al Qaeda has shied away from conducting attacks on Sufis, though the group has been willing to destroy Sufi sites.

Daesh, though, sees things differently. Its followers have targeted Sufi people, lumping them in with other non-believers. In an interview with an Islamic State magazine in January, one of the organizations top commanders in Sinai outlined his hatred for Sufism. He labelled Rawda, the district where Fridays attack occurred, as one of three areas dominated by Sufis that his group hoped to eradicate.

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Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 07:51:46|Editor: Zhou Xin

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HOUSTON, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Several shooting incidents happened in Houston, the U.S. state of Texas, during Thanksgiving and Black Friday with two people killed, including a public safety officer.

A Texas Department of Public Safety officer was shot and killed in the line of duty on Thanksgiving afternoon in Houston, the department confirmed, adding that "preliminary information" indicated trooper Damon Allen was shot as he returned to his patrol vehicle.

Allen, 41, died after being shot around 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon by a man later identified by police as Dabrett Black, 32, who then fled the scene.

Black was captured nearly five hours into a massive manhunt was announced by Texas authorities. He was charged with capital murder Friday morning, court records show.

A male body was found Friday morning outside a middle school in southern Houston, local police said. The Houston Police Department's homicide division received information about the shooting at around 10 a.m. locol time.

Police said the dead is not believed to be a student or employee of the middle school. The deadly shooting is still under investigation.

On Friday afternoon, two people have been injured in a shooting and stabbing incident at a shopping mall in Houston.

Both persons have been airlifted for hospital care, according to the Houston Police Department. The names of the injured have not been released.

The popular north Houston shopping center was filled with thousands of Black Friday deal shoppers when the incident occurred.
Laurier apologizes to TA who aired debate clip and Protect debate on campus, Editorial, Nov. 22

Your connection of Wilfrid Laurier Universitys apology to Lindsay Shepherd with the word Bravo is dumbfounding.

In the 30-minute harangue by two professors and a university official, Shepherd was accused of being a bigot, a white supremacist and a Trojan horse for the alt-right. At the very least, her treatment by those in a position of power is a clear example of workplace harassment and bullying.

In most institutions, her treatment would have led to disciplinary action, not half-hearted apologies.

Simon Trevarthen, Toronto

The so-called apology from Wilfrid Laurier officials to Lindsay Shepherd, most particularly the equivocal tone from Prof. Nathan Rambukkana, borders on satire. You can almost imagine the brass at the school winking while they created it. These folks arent sorry at all about the shameful way they treated Ms. Shepherd; theyre sorry about getting caught.

The timing of this episode makes it even worse, in my mind, as this is the month where we offer our thanks to the brave men and women who have served and died over the years to protect our freedoms.

Yet here we have the latest example of progressive bullies trying to shut down a fellow academic for daring to posit a view that differs from the zeitgeist. For those struggling to understand why U.S. President Donald Trump appeals to many people sick of the scourge of identity politics, this is a clear example.

Jeff Barker, Mississauga

Despite the extensive coverage given to the case of Wilfrid Laurier teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd, I have yet to see anyone say the obvious: that the university treated her in exactly the same manner as they wrongly accused her of treating her students.

She was told she had made people uncomfortable and had created a toxic environment, an environment in which she had the advantage of power and position.

Imagine that Shepherd really did make people in her class feel uncomfortable, and when they objected she took advantage of her position in a power relationship by berating them, invoking Hitler, and making them cry. The university rightfully would have sanctioned her, or perhaps removed her from her position.

This leaves one to wonder, apologies aside, just what sanctions are being administered to the two professors, as well as the school official whose sole function appears to be to make sure people are treated equitably, sensitively and fairly.

Len Bulmer, Aurora

Lets not be naive and think that Wilfrid Laurier University and those administrators who interrogated Lindsay Shepherd have actually changed their opinion. The only reason they have suddenly become the champions of free speech and expression is the audio recording.

Her academic supervisor, Prof. Nathan Rambukkana, has been turning somersaults since its airing and miraculously has come to the realization that his speech was a little too free, and that making a space for controversial or oppositional views is important and even essential in a university.

Lets hope that I am wrong.

Greg Sheehan, Mississauga

I would hope that respect for transgender people  or for any individual  and respect for freedom of debate and confrontation of ideas are compatible.

But the actions of Wilfrid Laurier University show there is no respect for ideas, for debate or for discussion; that students are encouraged to spy on each other, on instructors and on professors; and that they are encouraged to report any thought that is deviant from the inculcated dogma. The spying remains anonymous, inviting all sorts of abuses.

The inquisitors who interrogated the young woman demonstrated they were incredibly obtuse ideologues without even a basic understanding of the nature of intellectual debate or intellectual freedom.

This little secret process was shameful in almost every respect and does not serve the interests of transgender people or anyone else.

The inquisitors and the university showed no awareness of the basic tenets of freedom. If we create a society consisting of an amalgam of snitches and victims, and a cult of eternal victimhood, then we create a society of puppets and slaves, easy victims for any demagogue who comes along, from the right or left.

Gilbert Reid, Toronto

Stifling free speech makes Wilfrid Laurier unsafe, Opinion, Nov. 16

I congratulate Wilfrid Laurier Prof. David Millard Haskell for his thoughtful and courageous defence of truth and free speech.

His voice of reason stands out as a refreshing beam of hope and light among the many professors in universities across this country who, blinded by a cult of political correctness, have betrayed their true purpose and mission: to promote freedom of speech and diversity of opinion in the quest for truth.

Any institution of higher learning that does not encourage free speech is a breeding ground for some other political or personal agenda. Haskell does a superb job revealing the blatant hypocrisy of his politically correct colleagues who are great advocates for diversity in their schools of higher learning, except when it extends to diversity of thought and opinion on topics of social relevance.

I commend the Toronto Star for publishing Haskells essay and presenting readers with a reasoned view on a very important matter.

Sal Ritacca, Toronto

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The use of anonymity  in other words, cowardice  was one of the worst aspects of Wilfrid Laurier Universitys ritual humiliation of a bright and thoughtful teaching assistant for the crime of WrongTeach.

Theres a lot of it about now. In a gig economy, anonymity is the nastiest weapon consumers have against the semi-employed who serve them. You can snitch on your Uber driver, film your flight attendant, catch another driver on your dashcam and shame him on Twitter. Stores will send you a form to rate a salesperson, even offering you her name, so you can get them fired and then stalk them, I guess.

I never complain to head office or supervisors  its the ultimate misuse of power  because I could wreck that persons fragile hold on a contract job. A thought hovers: that could be me one day.

I had always thought that university classes operated in a special atmosphere of mutual respect between professors and students. At least mine did. All could speak freely. If you had a problem, you consulted your prof. You did not snitch or write mean anonymous class evaluations. And you didnt record the profs words for evidence, a particular form of unkindness.

Distrust kills the academic atmosphere; it damages the classroom, the only truly safe space youll ever know in your life. Your prof isnt selling, shes teaching. You arent consuming, youre learning.

So an unknown first-year student complained to Laurier about communications studies teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd, though to whom and in what manner we dont know. Then her supervisor joined an informal panel, including the alarmingly titled Manager of Gendered Violence and Support, to tell her that that theyd been secretly informed of her creating a toxic environment.

She had shown her class a TV clip of a TVOntario debate that included a rather trollish Prof. Jordan Peterson who doesnt like efforts to alter pronouns. She was put on trial, Handmaids Tale style.

Shepherd was devastated to be told about the secret complaint. How many? Who? How many? One? she asked. I have no concept of how many people complained, what their complaint was, you havent shown me the complaint.

She was in tears. For all the alleged informality of the meeting, no one sympathized, softened their alarmist tone, apologized or even made her a cup of tea. I understand youre upset but also confidentiality matters, her supervisor said.

The number of people is confidential? Shepherd asked.

Yes, he answered.

It went on. Shepherd welled up again. And Im sorry Im crying. Im stressed out because this to me is wrong, so wrong.

She apologized. For crying.

Wisely, Shepherd had secretly taped whatever the meeting might turn out to be, a session, an intervention or a swarming, or all three. It sounded very Cultural Revolution to me, but perhaps this is how things are handled by ham-fisted Laurier.

The University of Toronto employs the man in the clip, Peterson, who pokes people with sticks on Patreon for the most absurd reasons. But U of T is serious about academic freedom, and theyre thoughtful too.

U of T President Meric Gertler radiates calm. Possibly he has taken one of those courses on how to talk down excitable men brandishing table legs or staplers or other things the police find so unaccountably terrifying that they shoot to kill.

Anyway, someone had a chat with Peterson. He eventually agreed that it wouldnt be good for his followers to go to his website to anonymously dox his colleagues teaching gender studies and the humanities. Good. Because someones going to lose an eye.

Laurier apologized to Shepherd but as she herself pointed out, only because the tape went public. Her supervisor apologized (in an alarmingly cloudily written letter) for not defending her, but the other two did not.

So Laurier is less a university than a corner on The Wire. A first-year with a scarf over his face shivs a young TA, another masked gang gathers to do the same at U of T and a posse beats down Shepherd who then produces a secret recording.

There was widespread anger, another of those civil brawls bred of an airy word, as Shakespeare so aptly put it, hes good that way. But thanks to the posse, people grow leery of speaking too freely, of leaving the house for fear of being filmed and possibly publicly humiliated, of trusting others.

Were not paranoid. We are indeed being taped, tracked, timed, watched and recorded. I hesitate to apply to teach a university semester course on column-writing, lest it be recorded and used against me. I would have to record the class to protect myself from non-contextual quoting.

What with all the taping, quoting and snitching, no student will dare to speak freely which is the only way you can learn to write freely. And I would sit at the front of the class muttering apologetic instructions and looking furtive, fiddling with my phone. Sad!

The evidence of our wrongdoing already exists. The only question is when it will be collated and used against us in informal courts not yet devised. Keep it out of the classrooms. What silent places they will become.

hmallick@thestar.ca

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Rumours of the imminent demise of German Chancellor Angela Merkel have been greatly exaggerated, as Mark Twain would have put it. But this weeks political drama in Germany will still have crucial implications for Germany and beyond.

If this past week began with Merkel after 12 years in office presiding over a political disaster that put her future in doubt, it appears to be ending with a growing consensus that she will not only survive but will likely lead her fourth term as German chancellor, if with a minority government.

But, rather than being mooted anymore as the unofficial Leader of the Free World in the chaotic era of Donald Trump, Merkel will emerge from this weeks wreckage as a diminished political leader. And Germany, with Europes biggest economy, rather than being the saviour of the battered international liberal order, will increasingly turn inward.

The political aftershocks to these German developments may also extend far beyond its borders.

At a time when Russias Vladimir Putin seems to be in the ascendance, this will likely mean a weaker Europe, a more divided Western alliance and, with Trump wilfully stoking the fire, a more fragmented political culture increasingly vulnerable to the extremist appeals of the far right.

There is an irony here that needs to be noted. However divided it may be politically, Germany is booming in every other way, particularly in contrast to other European countries. Its economy is strong, unemployment is low and one of the most remarkable domestic issues separating the various parties is how to spend Germanys enormous budget surplus. That is not a problem confronting many other countries.

Given that, Merkel was widely regarded within Germany and elsewhere as a bastion of stability in a world being rocked by the divisive Trump presidency.

But that changed in Septembers German election. Partly as a backlash to Merkels decision in 2015 to admit 1.2 million refugees and migrants, many voters apparently felt otherwise.

The results left Merkel politically wounded. Her conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), was the clear leader but it won only 33 per cent of the vote, its worst election result since 1949.

Ominously to many Germans, given the countrys Nazi past, the far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) exploited the anti-immigrant backlash to gain 13 per cent of the vote. For the first time, it now sits in Germanys parliament, the Bundestag, with 94 seats.

The divided election results meant Merkel needed the support of other smaller parties to govern. In normal times, that should not have been impossible since all German governments have been coalitions since the federal republic was founded in 1949.

But these are not normal times. Germanys traditional opposition party, the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD), had been in a coalition with Merkels Christian Democrats for the last four years. But they got trounced in the election and vowed they would not join in again.

This meant Merkel needed to seek partners elsewhere to form a government. But after weeks of negotiations, and much to the shock of Germanys political elite, talks aimed at forming a three-party coalition collapsed last Sunday, leaving Merkel with few options.

One is to call for new elections, and Merkel herself said that she was open to that. But that is seen by other German leaders, including the President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, as a last resort. There is a fear that Germanys far-right party might benefit even more from a political impasse.

A more likely option appears to be pressuring the Social Democrats to support Merkels party. If the Social Democrats keep resisting a repetition of the grand coalition that marked the last government, an alternative is for the SPD to support a minority government led by Merkel that would provide another term of relative government predictability.

So, if the week began in Germany with a high degree of political alarm, it seemed to end in a much calmer state.

The fact is that Germany now has one of the most stable political systems in the world. It has one of the most successful economic records in all of Europe. It also has in Merkel a political leader who, however damaged in this process, is still supported as chancellor by most Germans in recent polling.

For now, that will be enough to delay her demise to another day.

Tony Burman is former head of Al Jazeera English and CBC News. Reach him @TonyBurman or at tony.burman@gmail.com.

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MDU Resources Group, Inc. engages in the regulated energy delivery, and construction materials and services businesses in the United States. The company's Electric segment generates, transmits, and distributes electricity for residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, as well as operates 3,500 miles of transmission lines and 4,800 miles of distribution lines. Its Natural Gas Distribution segment distributes natural gas for residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming; and offers supply-related value-added services. The company's Pipeline segment provides natural gas transportation and underground storage services through a regulated pipeline system primarily in the Rocky Mountain and northern Great Plains regions; and cathodic protection and other energy-related services. Its Construction Materials and Contracting segment mines, processes, and sells construction aggregates; produces and sells asphalt mix; and supplies ready-mixed concrete. This segment is also involved in the sale of cement, finished concrete products, and other building materials and related contracting services. The company's Construction Services segment designs, constructs, and maintains electrical and communication wiring and infrastructure, fire suppression systems, mechanical piping and services; overhead and underground electrical, gas, and communication infrastructure; and manufactures and distributes transmission lines construction equipment. It serves manufacturing, commercial, industrial, transportation, institutional, and renewable and government customers, as well as utilities. The company was founded in 1924 and is headquartered in Bismarck, North Dakota.
Phillips 66 operates as an energy manufacturing and logistics company. It operates through four segments: Midstream, Chemicals, Refining, and Marketing and Specialties (M&S). The Midstream segment transports crude oil and other feedstocks; delivers refined petroleum products to market; provides terminaling and storage services for crude oil and refined petroleum products; transports, stores, fractionates, exports, and markets natural gas liquids; provides other fee-based processing services; and gathers, processes, transports, and markets natural gas. The Chemicals segment produces and markets ethylene and other olefin products; aromatics and styrenics products, such as benzene, cyclohexane, styrene, and polystyrene; and various specialty chemical products, including organosulfur chemicals, solvents, catalysts, and chemicals used in drilling and mining. The Refining segment refines crude oil and other feedstocks into petroleum products, such as gasolines, distillates, aviation, and renewable fuels at 12 refineries in the United States and Europe. The M&S segment purchases for resale and markets refined petroleum products, including gasolines, distillates, and aviation fuels primarily in the United States and Europe. This segment also manufactures and markets specialty products, such as base oils and lubricants. The company was founded in 1875 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 08:41:59|Editor: Zhou Xin

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ISLAMABAD, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan late Friday condemned in strongest terms the terrorism attack in Egypt, which killed and injured over 300 worshipers in a mosque.

Reports suggested that death toll from the deadliest terrorist attack reached 235 while many others were injured in Egypt's restive North Sinai province during Friday's prayers.

"The people and Government of Pakistan condemn in the strongest terms the heinous terrorist attack against innocent worshipers at Al Rawdah mosque in the North Sinai region of Egypt leading to 235 reported deaths and 109 injured," the Pakistan foreign ministry said.

"The people of Pakistan are deeply grieved at this senseless and barbaric act and stand in full solidarity with their Egyptian brethren in this moment of anguish and tragedy," a foreign ministry statement said.
Evoqua Water Technologies Corp. provides water and wastewater treatment systems and technologies, and mobile and emergency water supply solutions and contract services for industrial, commercial, and municipal water treatment markets in the United States and internationally. It operates in two segments, Integrated Solutions and Services, and Applied Product Technologies. The Integrated Solutions and Services segment offers capital systems and related recurring aftermarket services, parts, and consumables, as well as long-term and short-term service contracts, and emergency services for treating process water, utility water, and wastewater. This segment also provides odor and corrosion control services and drinking water treatment systems for municipalities. It serves manufacturing, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, biotech, power, microelectronics, chemical processing, food and beverage, and refining industries. The Applied Product Technologies segment offers advanced filtration and separation products, such as VAF self-cleaning filters, Ionpure electrodeionization systems, and Vortisand filtration systems, as well as filter presses and related consumables, and aftermarket products for customers in the microelectronics, pharmaceutical, and power end markets. It also offers disinfection solutions, including chemical and non-chemical disinfection technologies comprising low and medium pressure ultraviolet, ozone, onsite hypochlorite generation, and chlorine and chlorine dioxide systems for municipal drinking water, industrial, light manufacturing, commercial, and aquatics markets. In addition, this segment offers wastewater technologies, including biological treatment, clarification, filtration, nutrient removal, biosolid, and field-erected biological wastewater treatment plant solutions. Further, it offers aquatics and electrochlorination solutions. The company was incorporated in 2013 and is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Ashland Inc. provides additives and specialty ingredients worldwide. It operates through Life Sciences; Personal Care & Household; Specialty Additives; and Intermediates and Solvents segments. The Life Sciences segment offers pharmaceutical solutions, including controlled release polymers, disintegrants, tablet coatings, thickeners, solubilizers, and tablet binders; nutrition solutions, such as thickeners, stabilizers, emulsifiers, and additives; and nutraceutical solutions comprising products for weight management, joint comfort, stomach and intestinal health, sports nutrition, and general wellness, as well as custom formulation, toll processing, and particle engineering solutions. The Personal Care & Household segment provides a range of nature-based, biodegradable, and performance ingredients; solutions for toothpastes, mouth washes and rinses, denture cleaning, and care for teeth; and household supplies nature-derived rheology ingredients, biodegradable surface wetting agents, performance encapsulates, and specialty polymers. The Specialty Additives segment offers rheology modifiers, foam control agents, surfactants and wetting agents, pH neutralizers, advanced ceramics used in catalytic converters, environmental filters, ingredients for the manufacturing of ceramic capacitors, plasma display panels and solar cells, ingredients for textile printing, thermoplastic metals, and alloys for welding. The Intermediates and Solvents segment produces 1,4 butanediol and related derivatives, including n-methylpyrrolidone. It offers its products to customers in a range of consumer and industrial markets, such as architectural coatings, construction, energy, food and beverage, nutraceuticals, personal care, and pharmaceutical. The company was formerly known as Ashland Global Holdings Inc. Ashland Inc. was founded in 1924 and is based in Wilmington, Delaware.
Credit Suisse Group AG, together with its subsidiaries, provides various financial services in Switzerland, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, and Asia Pacific. The company offers wealth management solutions, including investment advice and discretionary asset management services; risk management solutions, such as managed investment products; and wealth planning, succession planning, and trust services. It also provides financing and lending solutions, including consumer credit and real estate mortgage lending, real asset lending relating to ship, and aviation financing for UHNWI; standard and structured hedging, and lombard lending solutions, as well as collateral trading services; and investment banking solutions, such as global securities sales, trading and execution, capital raising, and advisory services. In addition, the company offers banking solutions, such as payments, accounts, debit and credit cards, and product bundles; asset management products; equity and debt underwriting, and advisory services; cash equities, equity derivatives, and convertibles, as well as prime services; and fixed income products, such as credit, securitized, macro, emerging markets, financing, structured credit, and other products. Further, it provides HOLT, a framework for assessing the performance of approximately 20,000 companies; and equity and fixed income research services. The company serves private and institutional clients; ultra-high-net-worth individuals, high-net-worth individuals, and affluent and retail clients; corporate clients, small and medium-sized enterprises, external asset managers, financial institutions, and commodity traders; and pension funds, hedge funds, governments, foundations and endowments, corporations, entrepreneurs, private individuals, financial sponsors, and sovereign clients. As of December 31, 2021, it operated through a network of 311 offices and branches. The company was founded in 1856 and is based in Zurich, Switzerland.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 10:52:24|Editor: Zhou Xin

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian prosecutors charged 213 prisoners Friday with involvement in the murder of 56 other inmates on Jan. 1 at a prison in Manaus, the second worst massacre in Brazilian history.

The 213 prisoners at the Anisio Jobim penitentiary in Amazonas were charged with the murder of six people, the torture and destruction of bodies of 26 more, and others.

Prosecutors sent to the court a 110-page document, describing the facts of "extreme barbarity, with scenes of horror and perversity that cannot remain unpunished."

The killing happened on the first day of 2017, after a rebellion at the prison lasted over 17 hours. Several of the prisoners were dismembered and burned.

The riot was sparked by the internal fight of two rival criminal gangs fighting for control of drug trafficking in the region.

It then spread to other Brazilian prisons, plunging it into a crisis that lasted for months, and leaving over 100 dead, hundreds injured and causing dozens of riots.
Full coverage of the Delphi murders: Look back at 5 years of stories
Qatar Rail has won the ITA Awards 2017 for its Doha Metro project, which was nominated under the category of Major Project of the Year - More 500 Million.



It won the award after being shortlisted alongside the Confederation LRT line in Canada, Delhi Metro Line 3 and Tehran Metro line 6. The ITA awards are considered the highest award in the world in the field of tunneling and underground projects.



The United Nations NGO ITA comprising membership of 74 nations awarded its most coveted award for projects over 500 Million Euros to Qatar after its panel of 17 international judges cast their votes. International experts from China, South Korea, France, Canada, Singapore Finland, Brazil Norway, Germany, Australia, Denmark, and Switzerland deliberated over four finalists - ultimately deciding on Qatar in a secret ballot. The Doha Metros Scale, tight delivery time frame, technical complexity amongst other factors were taken in consideration.



Abdulla Abdulaziz T Al Subaie, managing director & CEO said: Qatar Rail will be a world-class railway company providing safe, reliable and attractive railway transportation services to the cities of Doha and Lusail. Our network will enable the sustainable development and economic growth objectives of Qatars National Vision 2030.



We are now in the most critical phase of our construction program; ongoing works include the installation of trackwork and railway systems, mechanical and electrical plant and equipment and architectural fit-out of stations. We are also preparing for operational readiness and commencement of revenue service.



I am very pleased that our project has been recognized by the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA). This is symbolic of the significant progress that we have accomplished despite major challenges.



Instituted in 2015, the ITA Tunneling Awards recognize the most ground-breaking international innovation and outstanding projects in tunneling and underground space utilization. The two first editions of the ITA Tunneling Awards received more than 200 entries and 64 nominations, rewarded 21 projects and personalities and gathered more than 450 attendees.



Through nine categories and one Lifetime Achievement Award, the ITA Tunneling Awards is becoming an international standard for tunnelling projects. The awards ceremony was held in Paris end of last week at the completion of the French Underground Spaces (AFTES) conference which was attended by more than 5000 participants. The Awards ceremony was a grand finale of the two days conference and offered a vibrant Parisian evening at famous Salle Wagram, drawing a crowd of 400 attendees.



Doha Metro joins the ranks of the UNs most awarded mega projects of the word including the tunnels of the 32,690 km Tibet railway in China and the Eurasia Tunnel Project in Turkey (linking Asia and Europe under the Bosphorus in Turkey).



Qatar Rail had completed on September 2 2016, all tunnelling on the Doha Metro project with the final breakthrough taking place at Terminal One of Hamad International Airport (HIA). The first tunnel boring machines started tunnelling in July 2014 and the final 111th kilometre was crossed by TBM Msheireb on the southern part of the Red Line. In order to achieve 100 per cent of the tunnelling for the Doha Metro project 470,497 concrete segments were required to produce 70,071 tunnel rings to make the 111km of tunnels. The overall completion of Doha Metro now currently stands at 70 per cent.  TradeArabia News Service
Hello all.. long time lurker first time poster. My wife and I are heading to Jamaica in just under 36 hours for the first time ever, we will be staying at Jewel Paradise Cove and we are very excited. In our previous travels to Mexico and Dominican Republic we found great pleasure in walking up and down along the beach, however from what I've read of JPC there is a very small beach and due to it being a cove it doesn't connect to other beaches.

My question is, is it safe to leave the resort on foot and walk down Jewel Paradise Cove Drive, turn right on the A1 and walk toward the other beach (Runaway Bay Beach), and can we walk up and down there? Is there anything else nearby that we can walk to that we should check out as well? If we need to take a taxi instead that's ok, just as I mentioned we have never been to Jamaica so I'm not sure on the area yet, looking for your expertise.

Thank you! :D
Hello!

My family and I are planning a trip to Hokkaido this December and we're hoping to visit Lake Akan, Lake Mashu and Lake Kussharo within 3 days. We are departing from Sapporo and will be using the Seishun 18 pass (and other modes of public transport). Is there an optimal order to visiting these places? Also, how should we get around via public transport? I'm a bit confused because most sites only talk about buses in January to March and not December.

Thank you!
My 1st trip to Japan.. we will be staying in Osaka for 9 days including day trips to Kobe and Nara. After that we will be going to Kyoto for 7 days and then back to Osaka for another day before we depart for home.

I'm planning to get the Osaka Amazing 2 days pass... for sightseeing in Osaka.

What other Pass that we can get to convenient us for riding Buses and Trains unlimitedly to travel in Osaka, Kobe, Nara and Kyoto

Thanks you
You have a situation in that without knowing what is going on, where to go, what to do, and not a lot of time to plan, you need some direct help in planning. I actually think a guidebook isn't that helpful in your situation. I would spend time quickly thinking about what you like, getting some guidance here, on experiences that suit YOU, rather than poring over lists of sites that random people say that random people need to see.

The good thing is that your daughters sound flexible and easy-going. One saying "wing-it" and the other saying "whatever" is great news in my books. They sound up for anything. Yay!

So think about them and what they like to do. (And of course what you like to do as well!) Where do these interests coincide?

I know from your other post that you are planning on shopping and are interested in meals too. Here's some questions to help ferret out a bit more of what you all are about. If you could (quickly!) answer them, they will help us help you.

Questions:

What kind of shopping do you want to do? Do you all share the similar interests that way?

What type of restaurants do you like? Do you have varying tastes (need lots of variety/choices? or are you all happy going the same way?) Pricing and atmosphere? Cheap and cheerful? Moderate? Expensive?

Drinks? Bars? Nightlife? Important? Less so? or not at all?

You say a Broadway show. Any concept of what you might like to see? Even in broad terms? A fun musical? A serious play? Something popular? Or it doesn't matter, really.

What kind of activities/interests do your daughters have at home? Do they knit? Or love hockey? Or play the accordion?

I'm just one person, but have been on many enjoyable mother/daughter trips to New York. I would love to help, I don't think all is lost, and don't think you need to plan everything out on your own before you seek help here. If you could answer as much as you can of those questions (and others might have some more), it would help us all help you.

I'll check back in the morning to see if you've had a chance to answer anything. If not, I can still provide some constructive advice for you.
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With the partisan divide appearing wider than ever, Sen. Jon Tester is working to rise above it all by joining his colleagues to release a common-sense regulatory reform package focused on making a better environment for small Main Street financial institutions like credit unions.

Tester should be commended for ignoring party labels and putting together a piece of legislation that would give consumers better access to mortgages and other products, while freeing up credit union small business capital that can immediately be reinvested in their community.

As one of the authors of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, Tester has put politics aside for the good of his constituents and declared that one-size-fits-all regulations arent helping community-based financial institutions and they certainly arent helping consumers.

By standing up for Main Street, he has rejected the rigged economy that sees Wall Street flourishing under a system that is crushing credit unions under regulatory burdens that tie up resources that would otherwise be put toward consumers benefit.

Tester has taken a stand against a climate that allows the biggest banks the best chance of success, while credit unions, the original consumer protectors, struggle to keep up.

Under this system, Wall Streets punishment for creating the financial crisis is a regulatory regime that allows them to continue what theyve been doing.

What is the reward for credit unions for protecting their members and continuing to lend while banks pulled back? Regulations that are keeping safe and affordable products off the market and out of the hands of those who need them the most.

Your local credit union is owned by its members, and its profits go to them, not to shareholders. The more successful your local credit union, the more successful your community.

Weve already seen knee-jerk reactions claiming this bill is yet another love letter to the big banks, and that it threatens to undo the economys recovery. In reality, all it threatens is the system where Wall Street thrives at the expense of Main Street.

Look at the bill itself, and youll see it will instead help your local credit union do better.

Through modest changes to the Dodd-Frank Act, credit unions and consumers will see barriers removed, barriers that keep more affordable mortgages off the market and small business capital diverted to pay compliance costs.

This bill means the process for getting a mortgage loan from a credit union becomes easier, making homeownership a more achievable goal for 110 million Americans.

It makes common-sense adjustments to thresholds, freeing up credit union resources while holding Wall Street accountable to federal regulators.

This bill would change the designation to certain types of apartment loans, allowing your local credit union to lend additional capital to small businesses, bringing much needed support to Main Street.

Just as important is what the bill wont do. It wont make changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and it wont affect important provisions and laws aimed at abusers of consumers. Those will remain in place.

Most importantly, it wont do anything to increase the risk to an economy still recovering from the financial crisis caused by Wall Street 10 years ago. Rather, this bill makes thoughtful, constructive, common-sense improvements to a well-intentioned law that is having the opposite of its intended effect.

In an age of hyperbole, blanket statements and overwhelmingly partisan rhetoric, this bill is a welcome, cooperative and nuanced approach to regulatory reform that will bring real, tangible benefits.

The senators who support it, including Tester, deserve our thanks for their hard work to put Main Street first.

Montanas more than 50 credit unions and more than 380,000 credit union members deserve an economy that works hard for them.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 11:37:33|Editor: Jiaxin

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TEGUCIGALPA, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Hondurans will go to the polls on Sunday to vote for their new leader, and the sitting president Juan Orlando Hernandez is seeking a second term in power for his National Party.

Honduras' electoral authority will install over 18,000 counting tables, watched over by around 35,000 members of the military and police, while 16,000 national and 500 international observers will oversee the election to ensure it goes smoothly and fairly.

The general election is considered to have three possible scenarios: the reelection of Hernandez, the return to the power of the historic Liberal Party, or the rise of an unprecedented center-left coalition.

Hernandez is the first presidential candidate in the Central American country's recent history to run for re-election as an incumbent. While the constitution bars a second term, the Supreme Court lifted the ban to allow Hernandez to run for a second time in 2015, which critics view as being favorable to the president.

The opposition, led by former President Manuel Zelaya Rosales, has named TV host Salvador Nasralla as its candidate.

The third man with a chance to win is the candidate of the Liberal Party, Luis Zelaya, the former dean of the Central American Technological University, who has stepped down from his job to run.

Raul Pineda Alvarado, a political analyst, said that Hernandez's pursuit of re-election is based on certain improvements in the economy and security. However, the analyst also pointed out some problems hidden under the improvements.

He warned that while Hernandez and the International Monetary Fund have declared positive economic results due to the reduction of fiscal deficit, it came at the cost of the general public, who have seen rising prices of essential foods.

Alvarado also said that while police have arrested more gangsters and broken up organized crime rings to enhance social security, prisons are seriously overcrowded.

The other two candidates Nasralla and Zelaya have suggested solutions to Honduras' socioeconomic problems, said Alvarado.

Along with a president, some 6.2 million eligible voters will also elect three vice-presidents, 128 members of parliament, 20 members for the Central American parliament and 298 mayors.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 12:07:39|Editor: Jiaxin

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SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Japan's Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura has threatened to sever the sistership relations with the U.S. western coast city of San Francisco over a "comfort women" statue, a local media report said Friday.

Yoshimura said he will cut ties with San Francisco by the end of this year.

Yoshimura's comments came after San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee signed a resolution earlier this week to accept the transfer of the statue onto a Chinatown memorial hall.

The bronze sculpture, called "Women's Column of Strength", features three teenage girls holding hands next to an older woman. It was erected to honor female war victims forced into sexual slavery known as "comfort women" by Japanese troops during World War II.

The statue was sponsored by two retired San Francisco Superior Court judges, Lillian Sing and Julie Tang, to commemorate an estimated 200,000 women from Asian-Pacific countries, who were turned into sex slaves by the Japanese Armed Forces from 1931 to 1945.

It was the first sculpture to honor comfort women in a major American city, and similar statues can also be found in South Korea and some cities around the United States.

"I think its a shame," Tang told local media on Friday in response to Yoshimura's comments. "They're turning history on its head."

"He's continuing a policy of denial at the expense of the truth and history of the comfort women survivors," Tang added.

As Japan's third-largest city, Osaka was the first of San Francisco's 18 sister cities. The two cities forged their sistership ties in 1957.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 12:07:40|Editor: Lu Hui

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An ambulance arrives at a hospital where the injured people receive medical treatment in Ismailia, Egypt on Nov. 24, 2017. The death toll in an attack on Friday on a mosque in Egypt's North Sinai province rose to 235, Egypt's state TV reported. (Xinhua/Zhao Dingzhe)

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Security Council and the UN secretary-general on Friday condemned the terrorist attack in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula that killed 235 people.

"The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the heinous and cowardly terrorist attack," said Sebastiano Cardi, president of the council, in a statement.

The members expressed their deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims and to the Egyptian government and they wished a speedy and full recovery to those who were injured, said the statement.

They underlined the need to bring perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism to justice and urged all states to cooperate actively with the Egyptian government and all other relevant authorities.

They reiterated that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed.

The members of the council reaffirmed that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security. They reaffirmed the need for all states to combat by all means threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also condemned the attack on al-Rawdah Mosque during prayers in the town of Bir al-Abed in North Sinai on Friday.

Guterres extended his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and to the government and people of Egypt and wished a swift recovery to those who have been injured, said Farhan Haq, his deputy spokesman, in a statement.

The secretary-general called for those responsible for the horrific attack to be swiftly brought to justice, said Haq.

Related:

Death toll of attack on mosque in Egypt's Sinai climbs to 235

CAIRO, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- The death toll in an attack on Friday on a mosque in Egypt's North Sinai province rose to 235, Egypt's state TV reported.
- Opposition coalition NASA has unveiled a new paybill number to raise funds for victims of police killings

- The paybill number unlike before, is an Airtel number underlining the NASA boycott of Safaricom services

- NASA leader Raila Odinga claimed that police killed 15 of his supporters upon his return from the US

NASA unveiled a new paybill number dedicated to supporting victims of police executions on Saturday, November 25.

In a statement seen by TUKO.co.ke, ODM director of communications, Philip Etale mentioned that the fundraiser would allow loved ones mourning those killed by police meet the funeral expenses.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens.

READ ALSO: NASA to hold mega rally parallel to Uhuru's swearing in ceremony

The Paybill Number is Airtel money No.303101 contributions to this will assist in meeting funeral expenses for victims of police killings across the country.Photo:twitter/PhilipEtale

The Paybill Number is Airtel money No.303101 contributions to this will assist in meeting funeral expenses for victims of police killings across the country. We have victims from Nyanza, Western, Ukambani, Kisii, Meru and Nyandarua, said Etale, in a statement on November 25.

Raila accused police of killing 15 NASA supporters when he arrived in the country on November 17, after a 10 day trip to America and London.

Etale's statement comes in the wake of political violence that shook the country following the Supreme court's decision to uphold Uhuru's win.

The shift to using Airtel paybill is in response to the boycott launched by the National Resistance Movement wing (NRM).

READ ALSO: President Uhuru chairs fourth successive meeting on the economy amid fears of an economic crisis

NASA revealed a new paybill number dedicated to supporting victims of election related violence.Photo:twitter/PhilipEtale

The opposition leader asserted that the procession to welcome him was peaceful, up until police intervened using excessive force which included live ammunition.

In a recent report published by TUKO.co.ke, Raila Odinga, speaking at the Laico Regency, delivered a heartfelt speech telling the Jubilee government to shoot him dead instead of his supporters.

NASA is sheduled to hold a requiem mass for the victims on Tuesday, November 28, at the Jacaranda Grounds in EMbakasi East.

This event coincides with Uhuru's inauguration slated for the same day.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Two servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who were thought to have been killed during a clash with the enemy near Krymske in Luhansk region on November 24, are alive, the press center of the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) headquarters has reported.

"Good news from the area of the ATO. Two servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who were believed to have been killed during a clash with the enemy near Krymske yesterday, thanks to their own combat experience and training skills, went out from shelling and returned to their units," the statement reads.

In total, 17 ceasefire violations by occupiers have been recorded along the entire contact line over the past 24 hours. The Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen fired back in more than half of cases.

"As a result of enemy attacks, there have been no losses among Ukrainian soldiers over the past 24 hours," reads the report.

In the Luhansk sector, from the evening, the Russian occupation troops grossly violated the Minsk agreements at the Svitlodarsk Bulge. Ukrainian soldiers came under fire from 120mm mortars near Novoluhanske. Illegal armed groups also repeatedly fired from mortars, grenade launchers, infantry fighting vehicles and small arms at the defenders of Luhanske. The enemy opened fire Several times on Ukrainian soldiers near Lozove.

In the Donetsk sector, Russian mercenaries used 82mm mortars near Pisky, large-caliber machine guns and small arms near Avdiyivka and Butivka mine, as well as grenade launchers and infantry fighting vehicles on the outskirts of Berezove.

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Ukraine has managed to achieve the unity of the EU countries regarding the idea of deploying an international peacekeeping force to Donbas and include this provision in the joint declaration of the Eastern Partnership summit.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stated this after the summit in Brussels on Friday, November 24, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The summit resolution mentions the European aspirations of Ukraine. We have managed to resolve another political thing - the unity of the European Union around a peacekeeping mission in Donbas," Poroshenko said.

He noted that Ukraine was actively promoting the idea of deploying an international peacekeeping force to Donbas at the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council.

"Today we managed to include this clause in the final declaration of the summit," the president said.

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The participants in the Eastern Partnership summit, which took place in Brussels on Friday, November 24, have adopted a joint declaration, which, in particular, expressed concern over violations of the principles of international law in many parts of the region, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The Summit participants remain deeply concerned about the continued violations of principles of international law in many parts of the region. The Summit participants call for renewed efforts to promote the peaceful settlement of unresolved conflicts in the region on the basis of the principles and norms of international law," reads the declaration.

The heads of state and government welcomed efforts and the EU's strengthened role in conflict resolution and confidence building in the framework or in support of existing agreed negotiating formats and processes, including through field presence, when appropriate.

As for the EU membership prospects of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, the summit participants "acknowledge the European aspirations and European choice of the partners concerned, as stated in the Association Agreements."

As reported, the Ukrainian side insisted on more ambitious formulations of the summit declaration, in particular regarding the pressure on aggressive Russia and the acknowledgement of Ukraine's EU membership prospects, as stated in Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union.

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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels, the press service of the head of state has reported.

"The president expressed his gratitude to NATO for the continued support of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and assistance in counteracting Russian aggression. The head of state noted that Ukraine continues to implement the course for Euro-Atlantic integration at the legislative level and consistently reform the security and defense sector in accordance with NATO standards," reads the statement.

It notes that Poroshenko confirmed the Ukrainian side's interest in further deepening cooperation with NATO through the effective implementation of the respective Annual National Programs and the use of the alliance's Comprehensive Assistance Package for Ukraine.

Poroshenko thanked Stoltenberg for a clear position on keeping NATO's doors open for countries that meet the necessary criteria.

Stoltenberg stressed that the North Atlantic Alliance stands by Ukraine and that the partnership is reliable and strong.

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The leadership of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) consciously makes negative remarks in its speeches in order to discredit Ukraine and justify Russia.

Director of the Department of Religious Affairs and Nationalities of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine Andriy Yurash said this to Ukrinform, while commenting on untrue media reports that at a UN meeting in Geneva on November 15, Ukraine was criticized for violating the rights of the UOC-MP.

"No foreign delegation had any claims to Ukraine regarding alleged violation of religious rights, and nobody asked for anything from our state," he said.

Yurash himself participated in the meetings of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review of the 28th session of the UN Human Rights Council and delivered a speech there.

The report submitted by Ukraine was discussed by 77 UN member states. In their speeches, participants most often voiced problems of ensuring the rights of national minorities, children, and displaced persons. Religious issues were raised by Russia and Greece in their speeches.

"Greece appealed to Ukraine to pay attention to ensuring the rights of religious and national minorities and stressed the need to respect the internal rules of every religious organization," Yurash said. "This is an absolutely universal statement, with which we fully agree. The Russian delegation repeated the same general desire to ensure the rights of religious organizations. These are two points that sounded during the discussion that lasted three and a half house. Nothing concrete was said," he added.

Yurash also added that the UOC-MP's hierarchy constantly puts forward the thesis that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is persecuted.

"I travel a lot, and this thesis is not confirmed anywhere. Moreover, in the regions the bishops openly wonder why the center should deliberately simulate the situation and make accusations that cannot be confirmed. Their question is who benefits from this," he said.

Instead, according to Yurash, this religious organization (UOC-MP) itself uses negative expressions concerning other denominations at various international forums.

The official gave such an example, a fragment of the speech of Metropolitan Luka (Kovalenko), Archbishop of Zaporizhia, at a conference in Greece entitled "Modern methods of discrimination of the UOC in Ukraine": "The schismatic led by Mykhailo Denysenko and Uniates headed by Sviatoslav Shevchuk." That is, we have a set of offensive definitions for other denominations. The proper names are not used, but disregard for the leaders of the churches is used. In this context, what may be the response of the society and those religious organizations to which such a disreputable form of communication is used?"

"The state cannot but react to this provocative conduct. The state should give a proper definition of when the manipulation takes place. If we continue this position, then the crucified boys are not so far," the director of the department said.

The information websites of the UOC-MP and related media outlets earlier spread untrue reports that Ukraine was criticized by the United Nations in Geneva on November 15 for violating the rights of the UOC-MP.
The Ukrainian Embassy in London has expressed regret over the UK Government's refusal to recognize the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine as genocide, according to Voice of America.

"We are glad that the UK Government recognizes the severity and awfulness of Holodomor as well as the responsibility of the Soviet leadership for the policies and political decisions taken which resulted in the famine causing the deaths of millions of Ukrainians," the embassy said in a statement.

The reason for the statement by the Ukrainian side was an official explanation from the British government to new calls for recognition of the genocide of Ukrainians, which were made during a special parliamentary hearing in the Westminster Hall on November 7.

"The Government states that the Holodomor pre-dates the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide which established genocide as a concept in international law and international law cannot be applied retrospectively," the embassy said.

British officials emphasize that the Holocaust, although it took place before 1948, has an exclusive status, since it was the basis for the legal determination of the genocide by the convention.

During parliamentary hearings in London on November 7, a representative of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Alistair Burt, said that the government would use the term "genocide" with regard to Holodomor if any British court applied such a definition.

However, government officials also say that they currently do not see any possibilities or grounds for initiating a similar lawsuit on events in Ukraine in the 1930s.

Ukraine's Ambassador to the UK Natalia Halibarenko, who attended the parliamentary hearings in London on November 7, spoke about an agreement with British deputies to "continue cooperation on attracting public attention to this tragedy, and to appeal to the government to include the Holodomor issue in the school program."

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Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 12:17:42|Editor: Jiaxin

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump Friday spoke with Egyptian and Turkish presidents over phone about Friday's deadly mosque attack in Egypt and the Syrian issue.

In his conversation with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Trump offered condolences to the people of Egypt after the "heinous" attack on worshippers in Egypt's North Sinai province, according to a readout released by the White House.

Reiterating that the United States will continue to stand with Egypt in the face of terrorism, Trump noted that the international community must strengthen its efforts to defeat terrorism and extremism in all forms.

The attack, which took place at the mosque in a small village in North Sinai, at least killed 235 worshippers and wounded 109 others.

Earlier, Trump talked with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan about Syria. They discussed the importance of implementing UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and supporting the UN-led Geneva process to peacefully resolve the conflict in Syria.

Underscoring the need to end Syria's humanitarian crisis and to allow displaced Syrians to return home, Trump and Erdogan said efforts shall be made to "ensure the stability of a unified Syria free of malign intervention and terrorist safe havens."

Trump also informed Erdogan of pending adjustments to the military support on the ground in Syria, saying the battle of Raqqa is considered complete and the situation "is progressing into a stabilization phase" to ensure that the Islamic States cannot return to Syria.

The two leaders also discussed the Turkish purchase of military equipment from the United States.
Cambodia's crackdown on critical news media has taken a sordid turn with the publication of pictures purportedly showing a former Radio Free Asia (RFA) reporter filming and participating in pornographic videos.

The photos were posted last weekend on the websites of two pro-government news outlets, whose editors say the images were provided to them by police.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, whose government has already dissolved the countrys main opposition, warned Thursday that journalism that threatens the government will be targeted. He did not address the release of the compromising images.

"The royal government of Cambodia will not allow the use of freedom in anarchic and illegal means to stage a color revolution to topple the legitimate royal government," he said, invoking an accusation that is now routinely deployed against any government critic.

Fresh News, which posted the lewd images first, said an anonymous police official had unearthed the material during a raid last week on an allegedly unlicensed karaoke video filming studio set up by former RFA reporter Uon Chhin.

He and former colleague Yeang Sothearin, who also goes by the pen name Yeang Socheameta, have been in custody, accused of continuing to work for RFA after the U.S. government-funded broadcaster shut down its offices in early September citing the government's "relentless crackdown on independent voices."

The two were charged with espionage under a vaguely defined law that criminalizes passing on information that could be deemed harmful to national security to a foreign state. If found guilty they could be sentenced to up to 15 years.

RFA responds to allegations



RFA spokesperson Rohit Mahajan said in an emailed statement that the broadcaster had not had a relationship, contractual or otherwise, with the two reporters since the Phnom Penh office was shut on Sept. 12. VOA has been unable to contact Uon Chhin for a comment on the photos while he is in custody.

The photos emerged soon after the arrests. Pro-government website Swift News published uncensored versions of the photographs, though later removed them from the website. But they remain in its Facebook instant news feed.

Fresh News still has pixilated versions of the photos on its site. CEO and founder Lim Cheavutha defended his decision to publish the photos saying his decision to blur the characters genitalia showed he followed an ethical code.

"As the news outlet, I get information from the government and police and I published it by confirming from the police. It is not related to the false report but it is just what the police gave [me]," he said.

Journalists sign petition



At least 80 local journalists have thumb-printed a petition calling for the release of Sothearin, who had worked as a news editor and office coordinator, and Chhin  a widely respected and popular veteran video journalist.

The Cambodian Club of Journalists (CCJ) and the Union of Journalist Federations of Cambodia (UJFC) both have refrained from making public statements in defense of the two reporters.

As head of the UJFC, an undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Interior and the head of news at television network CTN, Huy Vannak is in a unique position to view these events.

Vannak, who said he also informally advises Swift News and Fresh News on content strategy, stressed he was trying to stay neutral by providing legal support rather than opinions, but recalled some impressions of his former student Uon Chhin when pressed repeatedly.

"He spoke less. He was very soft but like I said, before and now is different. Like you are confused about Pol Pot," he said, pointing out that the former Khmer Rouge leader often came across as a smiling and caring person, even as his regime implemented policies blamed for the deaths of almost 2 million people during the late 1970s. "It is very hard for me to say and to judge personality," Vannak said.

Handling leaked news



Concerning the ethics of posting the naked photos, Vannak said he did not judge personally but behind closed doors had told those involved what was right and what was wrong.

"I explained to them leaked news is a tactic but as a journalist you would consider with a high morals what story you should run and then they decided to drop their decision."

He could not provide clear guidelines as head of the UJFC to journalists about how they could avoid committing "espionage" under the vaguely worded law, but said citizens needed to know "the value and frame of your rights" and exercise awareness.

"I tried to be very clear that if you consider, they are journalists and then what grounds to defend them because RFA denied that they [are] no longer working for RFA  then who they going to work for?" said Vannak, who himself used to work for RFA.

Sothearins uncle-in-law, Lim Sim, said his nephew had stopped working for RFA before the arrest and had merely gone to the guesthouse where Chhin was apprehended to act as a witness - resulting in his own arrest.

"I dont understand the case," he said.
Cambodias economic growth is forecast to remain stable at just short of 7 percent in 2018, the World Bank has said.

Inguna Dobraja, its country representative, said Cambodia had begun to climb up the manufacturing value chain from garments to electronics and auto parts.

But the Bank added that the country must undertake deeper structural reforms to address high production costs.

At the economic outlook report launch on Wednesday, Dobraja said: To sustain these positive trends Cambodia must embark on deeper structural reforms in improving the business environment, further diversifying exports, lowering the cost of logistics by bridging the skills gap.

The Bank recorded growth at 7 percent in 2016 and projects Cambodias 2017 growth will dip slightly to 6.8 percent.

It says textile exports have moderated which has been partly offset by the gradual emergence of exports of electrical machinery, vehicle parts and equipment, and the ongoing construction boom. Tourism figures had also improved, it said.

However, the Bank warned of risks from political instability that may arise during the election period next year. Downside risks to this outlook are a slowdown in the Chinese economy and potential election-related uncertainty, it said.

The World Bank report comes as western nations consider sanctions against Cambodia for the dissolution of the main opposition party and a wider crackdown on dissent and opposition to the rule of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Sweden and the United States have already announced measures against Cambodia following a court decision last week that banned the Cambodia National Rescue Party.

Miguel Sanchez, a senior World Bank economist, said the political uncertainties would have a negative impact on growth and investment. This affects the economy, and this is something were monitoring closely, he said.
This week on Issues in the News, prominent Washington correspondents discuss topics making headlines around the world, including the resignation of longtime Zimbabwe leader, Robert Mugabe. Join moderator David Rennie of The Economist, along with our panelists, Philippe Gelie of Le Figaro and Thomas DeFrank, Contributing editor for the National Journal on Issues in the News. Listen this Saturday and Sunday on the Voice of America!
Officials in Argentina say an indigenous rights activist whose disappearance and death captured the countrys attention did not die from foul play.

A judge investigating the case said Friday that an autopsy showed activist Santiago Maldonado had died by drowning, along with hypothermia.

Maldonado's body was found in a river 78 days after he went missing.

The activist disappeared August 1, the day of a protest that he participated in demanding the release of a jailed indigenous leader.

Witnesses said police beat and detained Maldonado after he and others blocked a road. Police have denied any wrongdoing.

The autopsy said there was no evidence of injury to Maldonados body.

Family members of Maldonado said they would keep up the pressure for an investigation into his death.

With the information that was given to us today, we arent able to conclude anything.  We will continue to sustain our principal hypothesis that this was a forced disappearance followed by death, Maldonado family attorney Veronica Heredia said.
Some international airlines resumed flights to Bali, Indonesia, Sunday. Several airlines canceled flights Saturday after Bali's Mount Agung volcano erupted, spewing smoke and ash hundreds of meters into the air, officials said.

Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin resumed flights Sunday. Flights operated by KLM and AirAsia were also affected. Jetstar warned passengers that flights could be subject to change on short notice.

It was the second time in less than a week that Mount Agung had become active, sending grey-black ash at least 1,500 meters (4,900 feet) into the sky.

Though the airport remained open, thousands of people fled the island.

"Tourism in Bali is still safe, except in the danger [zone] around Mount Agung," Indonesia's Disaster Mitigation Agency said in a statement.

Senior volcanologist Gede Suantika asked residents in the local community to stay calm. But about 25,000 people have already evacuated from the slopes of Agung to shelters.

"We will continue to see eruptions like this on similar scales, but we cannot predict when Mount Agung will really erupt," Suantika told AFP.

The latest activity created a bigger ash cloud than the initial episode on Tuesday, officials said.

After the second time, Singapore updated its travel advisory for the island, noting that ash clouds could "severely disrupt air travel."

J. A. Barata, a spokesman for Indonesia's Transportation Ministry, said flights in and out of Bali remained normal.

"Tactical guidance for departure and arrival aircraft has been applied. This hasn't endangered any flights," he said.

However, several international flights were to have been canceled and rerouted on Saturday night as a result of the eruption, according to Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport website.

KLM, Qantas, AirAsia, and Virgin were among the airlines that canceled flights, which included travel to Australia, the Netherlands and Malaysia.

Bali is a major tourist hub. Indonesia lies on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," where tectonic plates crash, which causes frequent volcanic and seismic activity.

There has not been an increase in seismic and volcanic activity after the [Tuesday] eruption and until this afternoon, according to the agencys statement, adding that it had not changed its emergency status for Agung from Level 3, one stage under the highest level. Level 3 is characterized by a sharp increase in seismicity in a given area, supported by results of other monitoring.

Mount Sinabung on Sumatra island, active since 2013, is at its highest alert level.
Cuba marks the first anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on Saturday followed by municipal elections on Sunday that will usher in a new leader who for the first time in 60 years will not be a Castro brother.

The island will hold a series of remembrances from Saturday through Dec. 4, the day Castro was laid to rest in a cemetery in Santiago de Cuba, where he launched the Cuban revolution.

Fidel Castro's death last Nov. 25 ushered in a nine days of national mourning. The Cold War icon, who defied U.S. efforts to topple him, died at the age of 90.

By the time he died, Castro had been largely out of public view for nearly a decade because of ill health. He ceded the presidency to his younger brother, Raul Castro, in 2008 after intestinal troubles nearly killed him in 2006.

State-run media reports that galas and vigils will be held around the country this week in honor of Fidel Castro. State television is running archived footage of Fidel Castro, and cultural institutions are dedicating their performances to his memory.

Elections and gradual transition

During the weeklong events, citizens will also take part in municipal elections. The vote will end with the selection of a new president in late February, after Raul Castro said he would step down at the end of his two consecutive five-year terms.

The transition to new leadership, however, is expected to be gradual as Raul Castro will remain head of the Communist Party, the only legal party in Cuba.

State-run media is championing the belief that the elections are a way for citizens to show support for Fidel Castro's ideas. In the provincial and national votes, candidates were chosen by commissions made up of Communist Party representatives.

The elections come at difficult time for Cuba, as relations with the United States have worsened under U.S. President Donald Trump and its economy continues to suffer as the fortunes of its key ally Venezuela decline.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 12:22:43|Editor: Jiaxin

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CHANGCHUN, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A subsidiary of Chinese trainmaker, China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC), said Saturday it had established an Asia-Pacific headquarters and a research & development center in Australia.

The Melbourne-based headquarters will help provide technology support for train design, manufacturing and maintenance in the region, according to CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles Company in northeast China's Jilin Province.

"The office will create more job and export opportunities for local train manufacturers," said Wang Run, chairman of CRRC Changchun.

The office employs 41 local workers.

In November 2016, CRRC Changchun signed a deal with Victoria to build high-capacity metro trains worth 1.5 billion U.S. dollars, the biggest metro train purchasing project in the Australian state's history.

CRRC Changchun has more than 18,000 employers and annually manufactures more than 8,000 trains.
A former North Korean agent who bombed a South Korean airliner in 1987, killing all 115 on board, welcomed U.S. President Donald Trumps decision to return North Korea to the list of state sponsor of terrorism, calling the U.S. move a good thing.

The bombing of Korean Airlines (KAL) Flight 858 near Myanmar prompted the U.S. to list North Korea as a terror sponsor for the first time in 1988.

In 2008, the administration of President George W. Bush removed the North from the list as part of a nuclear deal, in which Pyongyang agreed to disable its plutonium plant and allow some inspections.

Kim Hyon-hui, who now lives in South Korea, said before taking North Korea off the list, the U.S. should have sought the communist regimes official apology for the tragic event.

Question: What is your take on the Trump administrations designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism?

Kim Hyon-hui: North Korea has always been a terrorist nation. Following the Norths bombing of Korean Airlines (KAL) Flight 858 in 1987, the country was designated a state sponsor of terrorism the next year by the (U.S. President George H.W.) Bush administration, but 20 years later, in 2008, it was taken off from the U.S. watch list. It was, from my view, a major mistake (on the part of the U.S.) to do so without receiving a formal apology from the North Korean regime for the bombing. And for that reason, North Korea still would not admit it and remains unapologetic, blatantly claiming to date that the bombing was the Souths self-fabricated plot and continuing its provocative actions  acts of terrorism and threats of nuclear devastation.

It is thus a good thing to return North Korea to the terrorism state sponsor list, which I believe would be effective, especially at this time when the international community has become more inclined to pressure the regime.

Q: This year marks the 30th anniversary of the KAL bombing incident. How have your past 30 years been?

Kim Hyon-hui: Over the past 30 years, I think I had many twists and turns. It breaks my heart when I think about the KAL bombing victims and their families, and I know nothing could staunch the deep wound that grew within them. So I live to pray for them. Of the 30 years, I spent the first 10 years devoting myself to telling others the truth of the incident. And (for the following 15 years) when left-leaning governments were in power, I was falsely accused of being fake and thereby lived under suppression. It was also during that time my whereabouts was revealed, and thereafter I lived moving from one place to another.

Q: Please tell us about the bombing, which played a huge role in U.S. designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1988.

Kim Hyon-hui: A year after I confessed to the bombing, North Korea was named a state sponsor of terrorism. This was clearly an act of terror on a passenger jet, unprecedented since the 1950-53 Korean War, that killed all 115 people aboard. That is why I think the U.S. designated the North as a terrorist state.

Q: Earlier this year, in February, Kim Jong Nam, the North Korean leaders half brother, was allegedly assassinated at a Kuala Lumpur airport. Could you tell us similarities and differences between the 1987 bombing and the recent killing?

Kim Hyon-hui: In the case of the KAL bombing and other previous operations, well-trained North Korean agents carried out terrorist attacks themselves, and if caught, they committed suicides so as not to reveal North Korea had orchestrated them. But a different, more cunning, underhanded tactic was used in the alleged murder of Kim Jong Nam, the North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns half brother. Instead of getting North Korean agents hands dirty, they pulled the wires behind two women with different nationalities, who smeared Kim Jong Nams face with VX, a banned chemical weapon. This manifests North Koreas intention not to leave any decisive evidence of its involvement as well as to readily pull back its foot when its missions fail.

Q: What triggered you to confess to the bombing incident after being apprehended in Bahrain and extradited to South Korea?

Kim Hyon-hui: After I came to South Korea, I realized everything taught in the North was a pure lie and everything I believed as truth was, in fact, false. And I was amazed by the level of freedom and prosperity enjoyed by South Korean people, who can think and talk without any restraint. In the days after my arrival in South Korea (as a captive), I tried to run away from the situation using only Japanese and Chinese, but I reached my limit as scientific truths began to come out. I came to repent my past action, which I realized would only fuel a fratricidal war, rather than contributing to the unification of the two Koreas. So even though I was afraid that my confession would put my family in the North at risk, I thought it was my duty as a human being to die after telling the truth.

Q: How is living in South Korea?

Kim Hyon-hui: I lived in North Korea for 26 years and in South Korea for 30 years. The life here can never be matched with that in North Korea. My personal view is that South Korea is a prosperous country, where people can lead a good life, but their sense of national security is weak even in the face of North Koreas continued nuclear threats. I think they are very carefree. The young generations in South Korea dont know about the KAL bombing incident because its been 30 years since it took place and it is not being taught at school. I think as much as I like democracy, there are also inefficient sides to it.

Q: What are your future plans?

Kim Hyon-hui: Because North Korea still hasnt made an admission of the crime and issued an apology, South Korea, despite my criminal act, has pardoned me, the sole, living witness, to speak the truth about the KAL bombing incident and prevent North Koreas future acts of terror. That, I think, is my mission going forward until theres reunification.
The fugitive leader of Catalonia's separatist movement has launched his campaign for the upcoming Catalan elections from Belgium, where he awaits extradition.

Carles Puigdemont, who wants to be re-elected as regional president, launched "Together for Catalonia" from Bruges on Saturday. Spanish media reports that 90 of the candidates he chose traveled from Catalonia in northeastern Spain to the Belgian city for the launch.

Puigdemont and four former members of his government fled to Belgium following a declaration of independence by Catalonia's parliament on Oct. 27 and a swift crackdown by Spanish authorities, which included firing his government and calling regional elections for Dec. 21.

Puigdemont's extradition could take several weeks or longer, meaning he can run his campaign from abroad. He faces arrest if he returns to Spain.
A gun control group founded by former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords asked two web hosting companies on Friday to shut down websites selling parts and machines that help make untraceable homemade firearms known as "ghost guns."

The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence asked the providers that host GhostGunner.net and GhostGuns.com to disable the websites for violating the hosting companies' terms of service.

The sites sell kits, components and machines that help create homemade semiautomatic weapons. It's legal to build a gun in a home or a workshop, and advances in 3-D printing and milling have made it easier to do so. The kits can be purchased legally for a few hundred dollars without the kind of background check required for traditional gun purchases.

Attorneys for the gun control advocacy group said the homemade weapons are increasingly being used in crimes and asked each of the companies to "invoke its policies to help stem the tide of this illegal, deadly behavior.''

They argue that the hosting companies, Shopify and DreamHost, should invoke their ability to disable and terminate the websites. The group argues that the two sites sell "the sort of products that have already caused scores of senseless deaths  and are likely to cause many more, unless taken off the market.''

The gunman who killed his wife and four others in a rampage in Northern California earlier this month had been barred from having guns but built two semiautomatic rifles at home that he used in the shooting, authorities said. Federal officials are sounding the alarm about an increasing black market for homemade military-style semiautomatic rifles and handguns.



Cody Wilson, who runs GhostGunner.net, said the products he sells on his website are legal and in compliance with federal regulations. He has said although there is no legal requirement that he conduct background checks, he tries to take precautions to make sure the weapons aren't used nefariously.

"This is an attempt to apply pressure to deplatform a legal American business selling legal products to law-abiding customers,'' he said.



Representatives for GhostGuns.com, Shopify and DreamHost did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
The three American sailors who missing since their plane crashed into the Philippine Sea were identified by the U.S. Navy on Saturday as Lt. Steven Combs, Aviation Boatswain's Mate Airman Matthew Chialastri, and Aviation Ordnanceman Airman Apprentice Bryan Grosso.

The Navy said Thursday that eight U.S. Navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ships, three helicopter squadrons and maritime patrol aircraft had covered nearly 1,000 square nautical miles in the two-day search for the missing sailors.

On Thursday, search and rescue efforts were halted for the three sailors, who were lost at sea Wednesday when a U.S. Navy transport plane crashed into the western Pacific Ocean.

Our thoughts and prayers are with our lost shipmates and their families, said Rear Admiral Marc Dalton, commander, Task Force 70.

As difficult as this is, we are thankful for the rapid and effective response that led to the rescue of eight of our shipmates, and I appreciate the professionalism and dedication shown by all who participated in the search efforts.

Routine mission

The Navy said the twin-propeller C2-A Greyhound aircraft plummeted into the sea about 925 kilometers southeast of Okinawa while it was on a routine mission taking passengers and cargo from a U.S. base in Japan to the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier.

It said the eight people were rescued about 40 minutes later and taken to the Reagan where they are reported in good condition. There was no immediate explanation for the crash, and the Navy said the incident is being investigated.

U.S. President Donald Trump, at his oceanfront Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, said via Twitter that he is monitoring the situation.

Prayers for all involved, he said.

Joint exercises with Japan

The Reagan was operating in the Philippine Sea as part of joint exercises with Japans Maritime Self-Defense Force, part of 10 days of training designed to increase defensive readiness and interoperability in air and sea maneuvers between the two countries.

More than 14,000 U.S. personnel are participating in the drills, which also include the guided-missile destroyers USS Stethem, USS Chafee and USS Mustin, and a maritime patrol and reconnaissance squadron.

Fifth accident this year

Wednesdays crash was the fifth major Navy incident in Asian waters this year. Two fatal accidents left 17 sailors dead and prompted the Defense Department to remove of eight top Navy officers from their posts, including the 7th Fleet commander.

The destroyer USS John S. McCain collided with an oil tanker in August off Singapore, leaving 10 U.S. sailors dead and five injured. The USS Fitzgerald, another destroyer, collided with a container ship in waters off Japan in June, killing seven sailors.

After investigations, the Navy concluded the collisions were avoidable, resulting from widespread failures by commanders and crewmembers, who did not recognize and respond quickly to the emergencies as they unfolded. The Navy has called for improved training, and increasing sleep and stress management for sailors.

Separately, in January, the USS Antietam ran aground near Yosuka, Japan, and the USS Lake Champlain collided with a South Korean fishing vessel in May.
After days of waiting to hear news about their missing loved ones, families of the crew members of an Argentine submarine have decided to go home.

They were waiting at the Mar del Plata naval base for news about the ARA San Juan. The submarine disappeared on November 15 during a routine mission. Ten days later, it has not been found and grieving relatives scheduled a religious ceremony for Saturday afternoon.

The Argentine navy, however, has not declared the 44 crew members dead. The navy also hasn't said if there is any chance of finding survivors.

On Friday, a navy spokesperson said the submarine was not on a secret or special mission when it disappeared. Speaking at a daily briefing in Buenos Aires, Captain Enrique Balbi said there was no indication of any attack.

The Argentine navy said Thursday that a possible explosion had been heard in the ocean not long after one of its submarines went missing with 44 people aboard.

The Argentine navy described the explosion that followed near the sub's location as an "anomalous, short, violent."

The U.S. Navy and an international nuclear test ban monitoring organization said the "hydroacoustic anomaly'' was produced just hours after the navy lost contact with the submarine.

Balbi said officials did not know what caused the explosion. He said the search would continue until there was certainty about the fate of the San Juan.

The 34-year-old German-built, diesel-electric submarine, had reported a battery problem on November 15 and said it was diverting to its home base at Mar del Plata, but did not send a distress signal, according to the navy.

Assuming that the submarine remained intact after the blast and settled to the ocean floor, the ship had only a seven-day supply of oxygen, which might have run out Wednesday.

The week-long search has focused on the sub's last known position, about 320 kilometers off the Argentine coast, but has been hampered by bad weather.

Russia on Thursday sent navy specialists and analysts to areas off the coast of Argentina to assist in the search.

The U.S. Navy has sent underwater search vehicles and two undersea rescue systems to help with the effort.

The 2,000-ton submersible uses diesel engines on the surface and battery-powered electric motors underwater. At the surface, the vessel's four diesels can charge the batteries.
Covert attempts by Russia to support Catalonia's independence bid using disinformation and cyberattacks to support separatists may be part of a long-term strategy to penetrate and gain control not only of Spain's wealthy northeastern region but also other parts of Europe, Spanish officials tell VOA.

Spain and NATO are investigating allegations that thousands of social media trolls or robot accounts were set up in Russia to amplify distorted or "fake news" items aimed at influencing a referendum for independence held October 1 in Catalonia.

No direct link has yet been established between the Russian government and the cyberattack, but much of the activity has been traced to a property near the city of St. Petersburg that is owned by a close business partner of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to testimony presented at a Spanish congressional hearing Thursday.

The cyberattack also has involved attempts to hack email accounts of opponents of the independence movement, according to the victim of such an attempt, Erik Encinas, who told VOA that Google traced an attempt to intercept his emails to a Russian source.

Russian crime organizations have been trying to gain leverage in the region for years and recently came close to taking control of the Catalan security ministry, a high-level intelligence officer operating in Catalonia who requested anonymity told VOA.

Russian money laundering

The intelligence officer, working for one of Spain's main security services, participated in an investigation known as Operation Clotilde, in coordination with the U.S. Treasury Department. The investigation targeted money laundering by Russian crime syndicates through Catalonian banks, shell companies and real estate investments.

The intelligence officer told VOA some of the Russian money went to the Catalan nationalist Convergence and Union (CiU) party.

The Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT), a radical CiU faction, joined the leftist ERC and CUP parties to form a regional governing coalition that held the October referendum for independence, which was ratified by Catalonia's parliament.

Money laundering investigations were centered in the Catalan seaside resort of Lloret de Mar, whose former CiU mayor, Xavier Crespo, was indicted in 2014 for taking bribes from alleged Russian crime boss Andrei Petrov.

In 2013, Catalonia's regional government appointed Crespo to the key post of security secretary, equivalent to a ministerial position, and one in which he would have controlled the Catalan police.

"His appointment was overturned when we reported our investigation to the regional government," the intelligence officer told VOA. The officer pointed out, however, that Crespo's association with Russian crime figures was well-known: In 2008, Crespo had made a much-publicized trip to Moscow and was hosted by Petrov, who took him on a helicopter ride.

Crespo was celebrating his security appointment in Lloret de Mar's city hall when a unit of Spain's Civil Guard gendarmerie "met with the Catalan regional government to inform them of our findings," the Spanish intelligence officer said.

Taking control of police

Spain, which imposed direct rule in the region after last month's independence vote, now faces the delicate task of taking control of Catalonia's police force.

Most members of the regional government have been arrested, including security chief Joaquim Fom, who has been accused of supporting the independence bid.

Catalan police also failed to prevent the escape of regional President Carles Puigdemont to Belgium, where he is trying to establish a government in exile.

"The Russians would be looking to fill the void left by Catalan and Spanish companies that are leaving due to the instability," the Spanish intelligence source said. More than 2,000 companies have transferred their headquarters out of Catalonia since October, including major multinational firms.

Spanish Intelligence analysts say that Russians see an independent Catalonia as a possible base from which to penetrate other parts of Europe, where their business activities are restricted by sanctions enforced by the United States and the European Union.

Russian officials have denied Spanish and NATO accusations.

But Putin has made no secret of his desire for revenge against the West for recognizing the 2008 unilateral independence of Kosovo, which caused the dismemberment of Serbia, a close Russia ally.

A Kremlin operative who acts as the virtual foreign minister of South Ossetia, which separated from the former Soviet republic of Georgia and came under Russian military protection in 2008, visited Barcelona last month to establish an "interests office" and meet with local businessmen, according to Spanish press reports.

The Kremlin operative also traveled to the Italian region of Lombardy, which is holding a referendum for greater autonomy from Rome.
Pakistani police using tear gas and water canon fought running battles with stone-throwing Islamist activists, as they moved to clear a sit-in by the religious hard-liners who have blocked the main routes into the capital of Islamabad for more than two weeks.

The protests have spread to other main cities, including Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar.

The clashes began Saturday when police launched an operation involving about 4,000 officers to disperse around 1,000 activists from Tehreek-e-Labaik, a new hard-line Islamist political party, and break up their camp, police official Saood Tirmizi told Reuters.

Dozens of protesters were arrested, Tirmizi said, and hospitals reported dozens of people were being treated for injuries.

Religious rights strength

The mass protest, plus the recent gains of two new Islamist parties in Pakistan, demonstrated the religious rights gathering strength ahead of what are expected to be tumultuous elections next year.

Television footage showed a police vehicle on fire, heavy curtains of smoke and fires burning in the streets as officers in heavy riot gear advanced. Protesters, some wearing gas masks, fought back in scattered battles across empty highways and surrounding neighborhoods.

We are in our thousands. We will not leave. We will fight until end, Tehreek-e-Labaik party spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters by telephone from the scene.

By midday, TV coverage had been cut off and private channels were off the air by orders of the official media regulator.

Daily life shut down

The protesters have paralyzed daily life in the capital, and have defied court orders to disband, demanding the firing of the minister of law.

Tehreek-e-Labaik blames the minister, Zahid Hamid, for changes to an electoral oath that it says amounts to blasphemy.

The government puts the issue down to a clerical error.

Death to blasphemers is a central rallying cry for Tehreek-e-Laibak, which was born out of a protest movement lionizing Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab province who gunned down his boss in 2011 over his call to reform strict blasphemy laws.

The party, which advocates strict rule by Islamic Sharia law, won a surprisingly strong 7.6 percent of the vote in a by-election in Peshawar last month.

Negotiations failed

Since Tehreek-e-Labaik began its sit-in, the government has blocked several roads with shipping containers to corral the protesters, but that caused hours-long traffic jams in and around the capital.

The government had tried to negotiate an end to the sit-in, fearing violence during a crackdown similar to 2007, when clashes between authorities and supporters of a radical Islamabad mosque led to the deaths of more than 100 people.

Support for protest

By late morning, Tehreek-e-Labaik supporters were coming out on the streets in other Pakistani cities in support of the Islamabad protesters.

About 500 demonstrators blocked several main roads in Karachi, the southern port that is Pakistans largest city, a Reuters witness said. Police fired tear gas to try to disperse them from a main road near Karachis airport.

In the eastern city of Lahore, party supporters blocked three roads into the city, provincial government spokesman Malik Ahmad Khan said.

We want them to disperse peacefully. Otherwise we have other options open, he said. We dont want to use force, but we will if there is no other option left.

In Islamabad, police official Aftab Ahmad said officers were using restraint and denied media reports that rubber bullets were being fired.

However, Labaik spokesman Ashrafi said several of our workers have got rubber bullet injuries and also asserted police had fired live rounds, which police denied.
Pakistans government has called in the army to deal with thousands of protesters in the capital, Islamabad after a security crackdown led to violent clashes. More than 100 security personnel and several dozen protesters have been injured, according to local hospital sources.

The operation started about 7 a.m. local time Saturday after the protesters were given a deadline to peacefully disperse and they ignored it.

Several Islamist groups had been carrying out a sit-in for the past 20 days demanding that the federal law minister resign after a minor amendment in an electoral oath, which the protesters insisted undermined their religious beliefs. The government said the amendment was a clerical error and had been reversed.

The sit-in has paralyzed life in the capital city, and at least two people, including a child, have died over the last three weeks when their ambulances could not reach hospitals in time. The protesters also defied court orders to disband.

Once the operation started, the protests quickly spread to other cities, and by Saturday afternoon, Pakistans largest cities Lahore and Karachi, also experienced clashes between police and supporters of the Islamist parties.

Several main entrances to Lahore were blocked by protesters, while several major highways in different parts of the country also were cut off by groups of protesters who set fire to tires.

By early afternoon, the government shut down all the news channels and blocked access to social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to try to contain the fallout.

Pakistan Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal said his government was ready to negotiate with the protesters and would try to minimize losses during the operation. The government had resisted carrying out the operation, indicating some among the protesters carried weapons, and the fallout could spread across the country. It was forced, however, after a court ordered that the area be cleared.



More than 8,000 security personnel took part in the initial operation Saturday morning. Police used tear gas, water canons, and riot gear. The protesters set fire to several vehicles. The operation was suspended before the decision to call in the army.
Poles held demonstrations in cities across the country Friday to protest plans by the ruling party to push through laws that would give it greater control over the courts and the national election commission.

The protesters rallied under the slogan "Free courts, free elections, free Poland'' after lawmakers voted earlier in the day to give preliminary approval to the changes. Protests were also held abroad, including in Chicago, London and Dublin.

The ruling Law and Justice party has already pushed through two laws that have given it greater power over the Constitutional Tribunal and ordinary courts.

Two other bills on the judicial system that sparked large protests in the summer were blocked by the president but have returned to the legislature in modified form. The lawmakers sent them for fine-tuning to a specialized commission, and a vote on a final version could be held in early December. It would then need approval from the Senate and from President Andrzej Duda.

The European Union says that if passed, the bills would undermine the separation of powers, while Polish critics see these and other changes as a power grab that has nothing to do with improving the justice system.

The ruling party, however, says it is making needed reforms that have not been tackled yet since communism fell in 1989. It says the protests are the work of post-communist elites seeking to hold on to their privileges.
Pope Francis visits Myanmar and neighboring Bangladesh next week amid international outrage over what the U.S. describes as the ethnic cleansing, of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority. During the Nov. 26 through Dec. 2 trip, the pope will meet with Myanmar's civilian and military leaders as well as Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. As Jesusemen Oni reports, all eyes are on the pontiff to see how he handles the diplomatic minefield in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 12:32:46|Editor: Jiaxin

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CANBERRA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A German company has been awarded the 2.6-billion-U.S.-dollar contract to design and build Australia's 12 new Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs).

Luerssen will begin construction on the first two ships at the government-owned ASC Shipbuilding facility in Adelaide at the end of 2018.

The remaining 10 ships will be built at the Austal shipyard south of Perth in Western Australia (WA).

Under the contract, announced by Australian Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne, Austal will be forced to sever ties with Fassmer, a European shipbuilder considered one of Luerssen's biggest rivals.

Jay Weatherill, premier of South Australia, praised the federal government for making the right decision.

"There are 400 families (in South Australia) that were going into Christmas wondering whether they had security," Weatherill told reporters in Adelaide on Friday night.

"Now we will see a pipeline of work that can bridge the gap between the end of the Air Warfare Destroyer project and the beginning of the Future Frigates project," he said.

"This is exactly what we've been asking for and it's a great decision," he added.

The new fleet of ships will be used by the Australian Navy to conduct intelligence and surveillance missions as well as providing disaster relief and humanitarian assistance.

Austal said that while it was happy to be involved in the construction it was disappointed that bid partner Fassmer would miss out.

"Obviously they're disappointed that they're not involved but they like us bid (on) a lot of programs around the world, and you win some and you lose some," said David Singleton, chief executive officer (CEO) of Austal.
A group of U.S. senators have signed a letter in support of an officer who says he was wrongly disciplined after refusing to sign a certificate of appreciation to the same-sex spouse of a retiring master sergeant.

Senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas and Roy Blunt of Missouri are among the Republican senators who sent the letter to the Air Force secretary earlier this month in support of Air Force Colonel Leland Bohannon, the Albuquerque Journal reported .



Last May, Bohannon was asked to sign off on a series of documents for the retiring sergeant as part of a customary but optional certificate of appreciation. Bohannon cited his religious beliefs about marriage for not signing it. He asked for a religious exemption. When that did not come through, he arranged for another officer to sign the certificate.

Complaint filed

The retiring officer filed an equal opportunity complaint against Bohannon, accusing him of discrimination based on sexual orientation. As a result, Bohannon was relieved of his command of the inspection agency at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The senators' letter, dated November 13, calls for Bohannon's discipline to be reversed.

"During your own confirmation process, you made it a point to acknowledge that 'Air Force commanders have a responsibility to ensure that the spiritual needs of all airmen are met,' '' the letter states. "We were highly encouraged by your answers and trusted that, when the time came, you would follow through. That time is now.''

The letter also called for more formal guidance and training for Air Force leadership on religious rights. Other senators who put their name on the letter were John Kennedy of Louisiana, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Mike Lee of Utah and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

The Family Research Council has also thrown its support behind Bohannon. The conservative Christina nonprofit began circulating an online petition two weeks ago calling for a reversal of the disciplinary action taken. As of Wednesday, it had garnered 24,000 signatures.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed legislation that empowers the government to designate media outlets receiving funding from abroad as "foreign agents" and impose sanctions against them.

The new law was published on Russia's official legal information Internet portal on Saturday.

The measure passed the Federation Council, the upper chamber of parliament, Wednesday in a unanimous 154-0 vote, with one abstention.

And it was unanimously approved in the third and final reading in the lower house, the State Duma, on November 15. Within hours, the Justice Ministry sent warnings to several Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) news services.

The letters did not specify what potential restrictions they could face, but lawmakers have said designated media could be subjected to detailed financial-reporting requirements and required to label published material as coming from a foreign agent.

RFE/RL was among several media outlets that Russian officials warned could be labeled a foreign agent, a list that also included the Voice of America (VOA), CNN, and Germany's international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle.

In response to news that Putin signed the law, RFE/RL President Thomas Kent said, "We cannot speculate at this time on the effect of the new law, since no news organization has yet been specifically named as a 'foreign agent' and the restrictions to be imposed on such 'agents' have not been announced."

"We remain committed to continuing our journalistic work, in the interests of providing accurate and objective news to our Russian-speaking audiences," he added.

John Lansing, director of the Broadcasting Board of Governors which oversees VOA and RFE/RL, said in a statement Saturday, "RFE/RL, VOA, and the other networks of U.S. international media will remain committed to our mission, stipulated by U.S. law, to provide accurate, objective, and comprehensive journalism and other content to our global audiences, including in the Russian Federation.

"We will study carefully all communications we may receive from Russian authorities concerning our operations. While we will not speculate as to the effect that any new steps by the Russian government will have on our journalistic work, any characterization of such steps as reciprocity for U.S. actions severely distorts reality," Lansing said.

The international rights organization Amnesty International has said the legislation would deal a "serious blow" to media freedom in Russia, although Russian officials have said it would not apply to domestic media.

Russian officials have called the new legislation a "symmetrical response" to what they describe as U.S. pressure on Russian media. On November 13, the Russian state-funded television channel RT registered in the United States under a decades-old law called the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Lansing, however, denied Moscow's actions were "symmetrical." "Russian media, including RT and Sputnik, are free to operate in the United States and can be, and are, carried by U.S. cable television outlets and FM radio stations. However, U.S international media, including VOA and RFE/RL, are banned from television and radio in Russia," he said in a statement released Saturday.

The U.S. Justice Department required RT to register in the wake of a January finding by U.S. intelligence agencies that RT and Russia's Sputnik news agency spread disinformation as part of a Russian-government effort to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In a November 15 statement, RFE/RL said the "situation regarding Russian media in the U.S. and U.S. media in Russia remains vastly unequal."

"RT and Sputnik distribute freely in the U.S., whereas RFE/RL has lost its broadcast affiliates in Russia due to administrative pressures, and has no access to cable," it said. "RFE/RL reporters are subject to harassment and even physical attack in Russia."

Visiting the Moscow bureau of RFE/RL and VOA on November 17, U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman said that the Russian legislation was a "big concern" for the United States and that "the principles of free media in any free society and democracy are absolutely critical for strength and well-being."
A Saudi-led Muslim military coalition, commanded by a celebrated former Pakistan army chief, will be officially launched on Sunday when Riyadh hosts defense ministers of the participating nations at its inaugural meeting.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Defense Minister of Saudi Arabia, will open the meeting of the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition or IMCTC, said an official statement issued on the eve of the event.

The statement explains that the pan-Islamic coalition of 41 predominantly Sunni Muslim countries will coordinate and multiply their individual efforts in the global fight against terrorism and violent extremism.

The meeting [in the Saudi capital] marks the official launch of the IMCTC and strengthens the cooperation and integration of member countries in the coalition, it reads.

While supporters dubbed the Saudi-led coalition the Muslim NATO, skeptics, including those in Pakistan, continue to question its objectives and see it as a sectarian-based grouping against rival Shiite Iran, Syria and Iraq.

Saudi officials announced formation of the coalition in 2015, headquartered in Riyadh, with a mission to fight terrorism, particularly to counter the threat of Islamic State.

Tehran has opposed the move from the outset, however, and has been lobbying against it, believing it is aimed at increasing Saudi influence in the region.

The coalitions formation specifically has been the focus of debate in Pakistan after former Pakistani military chief Raheel Sharif was appointed as IMCTCs first commander.

Critics have warned that Islamabads participation could upset the countrys minority Shiite community and undermine bilateral relations with Iran, which shares a nearly 1,000-kilometer border with Pakistan.

The Pakistani Senate  upper house of parliament  witnessed another heated debate on the issue this week where opposition members urged the government not to give any undertakings in Sundays meeting in Riyadh without taking the parliament into confidence.

Senator Farhatullah Babar, in his speech, noted that the coalition encompasses four key areas, including ideology, communications, counter-terrorism financing and military. Those areas, particularly ideology, present potential pitfalls and challenges with possible consequences for Pakistan, local media quoted Babar as saying.

A day after IMCTC's inaugural meeting, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and head of the countrys main spy agency, ISI, among others also plan to visit Riyadh on Monday at the invitation of the Saudi leadership for important consultations, although it is not known exactly what the issues are.

If the IMCTC turns out to be a Saudi platform to bash geopolitical enemies and advance sectarian narratives, then this country [Pakistan] would best stay away from such a misadventure, warned the leading English language newspaper, DAWN, in an editorial Saturday.

The newspaper noted with concern the Saudi crown princes statement issued Friday in which he dubbed Irans supreme leader the Hitler of the Middle East.

In its announcement ahead of Sundays meeting, the IMCTC quoted its commander, General Sharif, as saying that terrorism is the biggest challenge confronting the Muslim world.

The IMCTC encompasses an integrated approach to coordinate and unite on the four key domains of ideology, communications, counterterrorism financing, and military, in order to fight all forms of terrorism and extremism and to effectively join other international security and peacekeeping efforts, Sharif said.

The general retired in November 2016 and is credited with effectively countering terrorist groups operating in Pakistan during his three-year tenure as the chief of the powerful military.

But Shiite community leaders and independent critics in Pakistan have criticized the government, as well as Sharif, for accepting the assignment, fearing it would fuel domestic sectarian rivalries.

Pakistan has always walked a tightrope while trying to maintain a balance between its immediate neighbor, Iran, and also Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Kingdom hosts hundreds of thousands of Pakistani expatriates, and is a key source of oil supplies to Islamabad on deferred payments and cash grants to help Pakistans traditionally struggling economy.

The Pakistan government, under extreme domestic pressure, had refused to join Saudi-led military operations against Iran-backed Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen in 2015.

The parliament barred then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif from joining the operation, saying Pakistan's involvement in a foreign conflict would exacerbate sectarian tensions at home and upset its friends in the Muslim world.
A suicide bomber struck a paramilitary convoy in southwestern Pakistan Saturday, killing at least five people and wounding around 20 others.

The bomb went off on a busy road in Quetta, capital of violence-hit Baluchistan province, causing mostly civilian casualties, said Abdul Razaq Cheema, deputy inspector general of the provincial police.

The evidence collected from the site of the blast suggests it was a suicide blast and the bomber was waiting in a small roadside hotel before attacking the (Frontier Corps) convoy, Cheema told reporters near the site of the violence.

He said investigators retrieved body parts of the bomber and were trying to determine his identity.

The Pakistani Taliban instantly took credit for plotting the attack, claiming it killed several security personnel. The anti-state militant group often issues inflated casualty tolls.

There has been an increase in militant violence recently in and around Quetta, killing and wounding dozens of people. Baluchistan is at the center of an economic corridor being built in Pakistan with billions of Chinese dollars.

Officials blame rival India for being behind the growth in militant attacks in the province, alleging the neighboring country wants to disrupt economic cooperation with China, charges New Delhi rejects.

Saturday's bombing came a day after a suicide bomber killed one of the most senior provincial police officers in the northwestern city of Peshawar. That attack also wounded six police personnel.

Pakistani security forces have been conducting major counter-militancy operations, particular in traditionally volatile tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.

The militants in response plot suicide and other terrorist attacks that have killed tens of thousands of people over the past decade.

However, officials say security operations have significantly reduced the violence over the past two years.
Egyptian officials said 305 people were killed Friday by suspected militants in an attack on a packed mosque in the volatile northern Sinai Peninsula. Twenty-seven of the dead were children.

The public prosecutors office said Saturday that 25 to 30 extremists targeted the al-Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of the provincial capital, el-Arish.

Militants arrived at the mosque in four-wheel-drive vehicles, set off an explosion and then ran inside, where they opened fire on worshippers as they tried to escape. The gunmen also used burning cars to block exits from the building.

Eyewitnesses also said the militants fired on ambulances as emergency personnel tried to evacuate the wounded to hospitals. The state news agency said 128 people were wounded in the attack.

The attack targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but an Islamic State affiliate has been carrying out attacks in the region since 2013.

Egyptian government warplanes reportedly attacked terrorist targets in the Sinai following the carnage at the mosque.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi vowed that the attack will not go unpunished but did not specify what steps might be taken.

U.S. President Donald Trump reacted to the violence, calling it a horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshippers.

Trump added, The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence! in a tweet sent from Florida, where he is staying over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Neighboring Israel sent condolences to Egypt following the attack. Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979 and maintain close security cooperation.

Egypts security forces are battling an Islamic State insurgency, mostly in the northern region of Sinai, where militants have killed hundreds of police officers and soldiers since fighting there intensified in the past three years.

Militants have targeted security forces, but have also struck beyond the Sinai by hitting Christian churches and civilians in other parts of Egypt.

Egyptian media reported that Sissi met with top security officials, including the defense and interior ministers, immediately after the attack as security was stepped up around government buildings.

List of Recent Militant Attacks in Egypt:
Syria's main opposition group selected a new chief negotiator on Friday ahead of a new round of U.N.-backed peace negotiations with the Damascus

government set to kick off next week.

Nasr Hariri said the opposition was going to Geneva on Nov. 28 to hold direct talks and was ready to discuss everything on the negotiating table.

The announcement came at a summit in Riyadh where, a day before, the opposition stuck by its demand that President Bashar al-Assad play no role in an interim period, despite speculation that it could soften its stance because of Assads battlefield strength.

The opposition groups met to seek a unified position ahead of Geneva after two years of Russian military intervention that has helped Assad's government reverse major territorial losses incurred since the beginning of the war.

Under pressure

Hariri replaces hardliner Riyad Hijab, who led the Higher Negotiations Committee at previous negotiations but abruptly quit this week, hinting that the HNC under him had faced pressures to make concessions that favored Assad.

U.N. peace talks mediator Staffan de Mistura, preparing for the next round of Geneva talks, met on Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who said Moscow was working with Riyadh to unify the Syrian opposition.

For many years, Western and Arab countries backed the opposition demand that Assad leave office. But since Russia joined the war on behalf of Assads government it has become increasingly clear that Assad's opponents have no path to victory on the battlefield.

Putin requests framework

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for a congress of the Syrian government and opposition to draw up a framework for the future structure of the Syrian state, adopt a new constitution and hold elections under U.N. supervision.

But he has also said that any political settlement in Syria would be finalised within the Geneva peace talks process overseen by the United Nations.

The opposition has long been suspicious of the parallel diplomatic track pushed by Russia, which before the proposed Sochi congress included talks in Kazakhstan, and has insisted that political dialogue should only take place in Geneva.

Hariri said Sochi did not serve the political process and called on the international community, including Russia, to concentrate all our efforts to serve the political process according to international resolutions in Geneva under UN auspices.

'Moscow Platform'

Alaa Arafat, who represents the Moscow Platform political grouping, though, said he would attend Sochi and urged others to go too, reflecting lingering tensions within the diverse opposition.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir, who opened the summit on Wednesday pledging his countrys support for unifying the opposition, praised the creation of one negotiating team that represents everyone.

Asked if there was any change in position towards Assads future, he told reporters that Riyadh continued to support a settlement based on the U.N.-backed process at Geneva.

We support the positions of the Syrian opposition. We have from the beginning and we will continue to do so, he said.

Syria's six-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions to flee in the worst refugee crisis since World War Two.
A Texas woman has been indicted for allegedly sending homemade bombs last year to then-President Barack Obama, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Social Security Administration.

According to newly released court documents, Julia Poff was indicted by a grand jury this month on six counts, including transporting explosives with the intent to kill and injure.

Of the three packages Poff purportedly sent, only Abbott opened his, but it did not detonate. The court documents filed in Houston say that Abbot may have escaped "severe burns and death" only because "he did not open [the package] as intended."

The package intended for Obama was intercepted by the Secret Service.

According to the documents, investigators traced the packages to Poff through their components, which included a box of cigarettes that bore a stamp showing it had been purchased at a store near Poff's house in Brookshire, Texas.

Other evidence included a damaged shipping label that Poff had originally received through a purchase on eBay and cat hairs found under the address label, which were later matched to the hairs of one of Poff's cats.

Federal investigators say the improvised explosive device sent in the packages contained a cellphone, a cigarette package and a salad dressing cap.

The court documents say Poff allegedly stated she did not like Obama and was angry with Abbott because she had not received support from her ex-husband when Abbott was serving as Texas attorney general.

Government prosecutors are asking that Poff be denied bail ahead of her trial, which is expected to take place next year.
The politically fraught trial of a Turkish-Iranian businessman accused of running a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran gets underway next week but is widely expected to start without the main suspect: Reza Zarrab.

Zarrab is a 33-year-old multimillionaire of dual Iranian-Turkish citizenship with business interests in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, and ties to the governments of Turkey and Iran.

He was arrested in Florida in March 2016 while on a family trip to Disney World and later moved to New York to face criminal charges of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions between 2010 and 2015 by laundering money through the U.S. financial system and bribing Turkish officials.

US-Turkey relations

The impending trial has become a flashpoint in deteriorating U.S.-Turkish relations.

Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan has personally lobbied the U.S. to release Zarrab, raising questions that Erdogan and other Turkish official are worried Zarrab could implicate them with bribery and corruption.

Meanwhile, the recent transfer of Zarrab from a federal detention center in New York to an undisclosed location has prompted speculation that he is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors, possibly on unrelated matters of interest to Turkey.

Zarrab is accused of using a network of front companies in Turkey and the UAE to disguise hundreds of millions of dollars of business transactions on behalf of the Iranian government and other Iranian entities.

One entity, Mahan Air, is charged with ferrying fighters to Syria. Among other things, Zarrab is accused of shipping gold to Iran in exchange for Iranian oil and natural gas in a scheme known as gold for gas.

To facilitate his scheme, Zarrab allegedly paid tens of millions of dollars to Turkish government officials and bank executives.

The sanctions, aimed at Irans access to U.S. financial institutions, were lifted after Iran struck a deal with the U.S. and other major world powers in 2015 to keep a peaceful nuclear program.

Eight other people, including Zarrabs 39-year-old brother, Mohammad Zarrab, and a former minister of economy, Mehmet Zafer Caglayan, have been indicted on charges related to the scheme.

But only one other, Mehmet Atilla, a former deputy general manager of Halkbank, one of Turkeys largest banks, has been arrested.

Their trial has been repeatedly postponed and is now scheduled to start Monday in New York with jury selection.

Allegations

In court filings, prosecutors have alleged that Zarrab has had a personal relationship with Erdogan and that Erdogan may have known of of Zarrabs sanctions-busting scheme.

Erdogan is not accused of any wrongdoing, but he and other Turkish officials have slammed the case as a conspiracy against Turkey.

Erdogan has repeatedly pressed President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama to drop the case. In September, he said Trump told him that the prosecution is out of his jurisdiction.

Yet as Zarrabs trial draws near, there are indications that Zarrab may be negotiating a deal with U.S. prosecutors.

For starters, his whereabouts remains a mystery.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons website, Zarrab was released from the Metropolitan Correction Center, a federal detention center in New York, Nov. 8.

But the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, where Zarrab will be tried, says he remains in federal custody.

Nick Biase, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, confirmed Zarrabs detention to VOA but declined to elaborate.

Indication hes talking

Legal experts say Zarrabs release from federal detention is an indication that hes talking to prosecutors as part of a guilty plea deal.

One cannot be sure, but the most likely explanation for the release of a detained defendant, in the absence of any formal release from detention, is that he is in the custody of the FBI, said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor now a professor at Columbia University in New York. This move rarely happens, but has occurred in extraordinary circumstances.

Benjamin Brafman, Zarrabs lead attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.

In recent weeks, Brafman and Zarrabs other lawyers have not participated in key pretrial proceedings, such as providing questions for prospective jurors. That has fueled speculation that Zarrab may skip his own trial.

In an Oct. 30 court filing, Victor Rocco, an attorney for Atilla, Zarrabs co-defendant, wrote that it appeared likely that Mr. Atilla will be the only defendant appearing at trial.

Eric Jaso, a former federal prosecutor now a partner at the Spiro Harrison law firm in Short Hills, New Jersey, said the absence of Zarrabs lawyers from court proceedings could mean Zarrab is cooperating with the government.

Adding to the mystery, the federal judge overseeing the case dropped Zarrabs name from the title of the case in an order issued Monday and replaced it with Atillas name.

The title change suggests Atilla will be the only defendant on trial Monday, Richman said.

It is also consistent with Zarrabs having already entered a guilty plea, although that is not necessarily the case, Richman said.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim, whose office is prosecuting the case, gave no indication last week that his office has dropped the case against Zarrab.

This case, our case, the prosecution thats going on and well start next week in the courthouse, was brought and will continue to be brought by career prosecutors, by career FBI agents and investigators, Kim said at a press conference.
Overhauling welfare was one of the defining goals of Bill Clintons presidency, starting with a campaign promise to end welfare as we know it, continuing with a bitter policy fight and producing change that remains hotly debated 20 years later.

Now, President Donald Trump wants to put his stamp on the welfare system, apparently in favor of a more restrictive policy. He says people are taking advantage of the system.

Trump, who has been signaling interest in the issue for some time, said this past week that he wants to tackle the issue after the tax overhaul he is seeking by the end of the year. He said changes were desperately needed in our country and that his administration would soon offer plans.

Work on new policy begins

For now, the president has not offered details. Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said more specifics were likely early next year. But the groundwork has begun at the White House and Trump has made his interest known to Republican lawmakers.

Paul Winfree, director of budget policy and deputy director of Trumps Domestic Policy Council, told a recent gathering at the conservative Heritage Foundation that he and another staffer had been charged with working on a major welfare reform proposal. He said they have drafted an executive order on the topic that would outline administration principles and direct agencies to come up with recommendations.

The president really wants to lead on this, Winfree said. He has delivered that message loud and clear to us. Weve opened conversations with leadership in Congress to let them know that that is the direction we are heading.

Trump said in October that welfare was becoming a very, very big subject, and people are taking advantage of the system.

Clintons campaign promise

Clinton ran in 1992 on a promise to change the system but struggled to get consensus on a bill, with Democrats divided and Republicans pushing aggressive changes. Four years later, he signed a law that replaced a federal entitlement with grants to the states, placed a time limit on how long families could get aid and required recipients to go to work eventually.

It has drawn criticism from some liberal quarters ever since. During her presidential campaign last year, Democrat Hillary Clinton faced activists who argued that the law fought for by her husband punished poor people.

No evidence of fraud

Kathryn Edin, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who has been studying welfare since the 1990s, said the laws legacy has been to limit the cash assistance available to the very poor and has never become a springboard to work. She questioned what kinds of changes could be made, arguing that welfare benefits are minimal in many states and there is little evidence of fraud in other anti-poverty programs.

Still, Edin said that welfare has never been popular even from its inception. It doesnt sit well with Americans in general.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at Heritage, said he would like to see more work requirements for a range of anti-poverty programs and stronger marriage incentives, as well as strategies to improve results for social programs and to limit waste. He said while the administration could make some adjustments through executive order, legislation would be required for any major change.

This is a good system, he said. We just need to make this system better.

Administration officials have suggested they are eyeing anti-poverty programs. Trumps initial 2018 budget proposal, outlined in March, sought to sharply reduce spending for Medicaid, food stamps and student loan subsidies, among other programs.

Budget director Mick Mulvaney said this year, If you are on food stamps and you are able-bodied, we need you to go to work.
U.S. President Donald Trump has told his Turkish counterpart that the U.S. will no longer supply weapons to Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria, according to a Turkish officials summation of the call on Friday between the two world leaders.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Trump made the comment Friday after speaking by phone with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

According to Cavusoglu, Trump said he had given clear instructions that the YPG not be given arms. Cavusoglu also quoted the U.S. president as saying, This nonsense should have ended a long time ago.

A White House statement issued Friday evening said Trump informed Erdogan of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria. The statement described the change as consistent with our previous policy, and said it reflects the new phase of the battle after the fall of Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State's self-described caliphate.

The battle of Raqqa is complete and we are progressing into a stabilization phase to ensure that ISIS cannot return," the White House statement said, using an acronym for the militant group.

The statement did not specifically name YPG.

Erdogan and Trump also discussed the purchase of military equipment from the United States by Turkey, according to the White House.

Turkey has been pushing to persuade the U.S. to abandon support for the YPG as the militia fights the Islamic State group.

The U.S. considers the Syrian Kurds its best fighting force on the ground against Islamic State, but has to balance that interest with maintaining good relations with Turkey, a NATO ally.

Ankara considers the YPG a terrorist organization linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in Turkey. The PKK has been fighting Turkey since 1984 in a conflict that has left about 40,000 people dead. Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union consider the PKK to be a terrorist group.

Relations between Ankara and Washington also have been strained over issues that include the U.S. refusal to extradite a cleric wanted by Turkey in connection with a failed coup last year. The cleric, Fethullah Gulen, denies involvement.

Additionally, Ankara has been critical of U.S. plans to try Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab and Mehmet Hakan Atilla, an executive with Turkish state bank Halkbank, on charges of defying sanctions against Iran. Ankara describes the case as political. The defendants are scheduled to go on trial next month in New York.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 13:12:52|Editor: Yang Yi

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ROME, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Vatican and a Beijing-based fund have been working to organize joint art exhibitions which will take place simultaneously in the Vatican Museums and in China's Forbidden City in the spring of 2018, the Vatican Radio has reported.

The two exhibitions are part of a joint project called "Beauty unites us," which is promoted by the Vatican and China Culture Industrial Investment Fund.

The two sides will lend each other 40 works of art from their collections.

The idea is to promote "cultural collaboration through the universal language of art," according to the Vatican Radio.

This will be the Vatican's first-ever show in China, Vatican Museums Director Barbara Jatta told Vatican Radio in an interview posted online. "It is much more than an exhibition," Jatta said.

"It is a project of friendship and cultural and artistic exchange," Jatta said, adding that Pope Francis wants "to build bridges and create dialogue between different cultures, through the diplomacy of art."

Most people don't realize that over half of the Vatican Museums collections are made up of non-European works of art, said Father Nicola Mapelli, curator of the Vatican's Anima Mundi Museum, which houses tens of thousands of works of art from Asia, Australia, and the Americas.

Over the centuries, China had sent precious gifts to Catholic popes, including paintings, statues, and other priceless works, said Mapelli.

These beautiful items will be loaned for exhibition in Beijing, while China will loan 12 paintings by Chinese artist Zhang Yan as well as other works of art illustrating the thousands of years of Chinese art history, according to Mapelli. "We are trying to build bridges through art," Mapelli said.

China Culture Industrial Investment Fund Secretary General Jiancheng Zhu said the event is very important for promoting mutual trust and understanding.

Zhang said that he is inspired by the works of Italian Renaissance masters such as Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and Raphael, many of whose masterpieces are housed in the Vatican Museums complex.

"I believe art has no nationality and no boundaries, so I am convinced that cultural exchanges can be more and more beneficial, including between China and the Vatican," the artist told Vatican Radio.
The United States warned Pakistan on Saturday that there would be repercussions in bilateral relations unless Islamabad immediately re-arrested and prosecuted an Islamist leader accused of masterminding the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India.

The warning came after Pakistani authorities on Friday acted on a court order and freed Hafiz Saeed, a U.S.-designated global terrorist, from months of house arrest for a lack of evidence. Detention of the firebrand cleric had stemmed from allegations of terrorism.

Washington has been offering a $10 million reward since 2012 for information that would lead to bringing Saeed to justice for plotting the Mumbai bloodshed through his outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) global terrorist organization.

The White House on Saturday condemned Saeeds release, saying it sends a deeply troubling message about Pakistans international counterterrorism commitment and belies claims the country will not provide sanctuary for terrorists on its soil.

If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistans global reputation, the statement said.

Trump policy

It also reminded Islamabad of U.S. President Donald Trumps South Asia policy, which seeks a constructive U.S.-Pakistan relationship but expects decisive action against militant and terrorist groups operating out of Pakistani soil that are a threat to the region.

The release of Saeed is a step in the wrong direction. The Pakistani government now has an opportunity to demonstrate its seriousness in confronting all forms of terrorism, without distinction, by arresting and charging Hafiz Saeed for his crimes, the statement said.

Saeed heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) Islamic charity. But the U.S. and the United Nations both have listed JuD as a global terrorist group, calling it a front for LeT, also founded by Saeed and later outlawed by Pakistan. Saeed denies any link to the massacre in Mumbai.

The Pakistan foreign ministry, while responding to the criticism over Saeeds release from house arrest, said Friday that the countrys courts were determined to uphold the rule of law and due process for all Pakistani citizens.

Legal processes are anchored in rule of law, not dictates of politics and posturing, the ministry spokesman said. He reiterated that Pakistan condemns all forms of terrorism by any individual or group and says its successes in the fight against terrorism are "unmatched."

U.S., Indian pressure

Saeed claimed his detention was the outcome of U.S. and Indian pressure on the Pakistani government. Meanwhile, New Delhi asserts that supporters of the Pakistani cleric are assisting armed Muslim separatists in the divided Kashmir region.

Hours after his release from house arrest, the cleric addressed a massive Friday congregation of supporters at a Lahore mosque, urging the government not to engage in talks with India until the rival country had withdrawn its troops from Kashmir.

Saeed credited Pakistans independent judiciary for his freedom, saying he had been put under house arrest for highlighting the Indian atrocities against Kashmiris.

I want Kashmir's freedom from India, and this is my crime. I was arrested for it," he told worshippers, who chanted, "God is great.

Saeeds release angered India, prompting foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar to call him a self-confessed and U.N.-proscribed terrorist ... being allowed to walk free and continue with his evil agenda.

A statement quoted Kumar alleging the cleric was not only the mastermind, he was the prime organizer of the Mumbai terror attacks, in which many innocent Indians and many people from other nationalities were killed.

Islamabad maintains that neither Washington nor New Delhi has offered any evidence linking Saeed to attacks in Mumbai.
The U.S. has reversed its decision that would have closed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington.

The U.S. said last week the PLO had to close its office because the organization had violated a little-known provision in U.S. law prohibiting a PLO Washington office if the organization asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Israelis or prosecute Israelis for crimes against Palestinians.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked the international court earlier this year to "open an investigation and to prosecute Israeli officials for their involvement in settlement activities and aggressions against our people."

Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian legislator, told the Associated Press that the U.S. made a "correct" decision in reversing its original choice. He said the first decision should not have been made because "the United States cannot play the role of a mediator and at the same time take the side of the Israelis against the Palestinians ...We cannot have peace in this region if the United States government continues to be biased to the Israeli positions."

A State Department spokesman says the U.S. has "advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians."


The Trump administration backtracked Friday on its decision to order the Palestinians office in Washington to close, instead saying it would merely impose limitations on the office that it expected would be lifted after 90 days.

Last week, U.S. officials said the Palestine Liberation Organization mission couldnt stay open because the Palestinians had violated a provision in U.S. law requiring the office to close if the Palestinians try to get the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis. The move triggered a major rift in U.S.-Palestinian relations that threatened to scuttle President Donald Trumps ambitious effort to broker Mideast peace before it ever got off the ground.

Yet the United States delayed shuttering the office for a week while saying it was working out the details with the Palestinians, before abruptly reversing course late Friday, as many Americans were enjoying a long Thanksgiving Day weekend.

Restrictions for 90 days

State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said the U.S. had advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Vasquez said even those restrictions will be lifted after 90 days if the U.S. determines the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in serious peace talks. The White House, in an effort led by Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, has been preparing a comprehensive peace plan to present to both sides in the coming months.

We therefore are optimistic that at the end of this 90-day period, the political process may be sufficiently advanced that the president will be in a position to allow the PLO office to resume full operations, Vasquez said.

New interpretation of law

The reversal marked a serious departure from the administrations interpretation of the law only a week earlier. Officials had said then that, one way or another, the office had to close because Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a U.N. speech in September, had called on the ICC to investigate and prosecute Israelis. That same law, though, says that the president can let the office re-open after 90 days despite an ICC push if serious Israeli-Palestinian talks are underway.

Asked how the Trump administration explains its new interpretation of what must happen if the Palestinians call for an ICC investigation, Vasquez said: These actions are consistent with the presidents authorities to conduct the foreign relations of the United States.

There were no indications that the Trump administration had initially moved to close the office as part of a premeditated strategy to strengthen its hand in eventual peace talks. Instead, officials explained the move by saying Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in a strict interpretation of the law, determined that Abbas speech had crossed the legal line.

The chaos that ensued after the announcement, with the U.S. unable for several days to explain if the office was truly closing and when, indicated it had caught much of the government off-guard.

Angry Palestinian response

Still, the move led the Palestinians to issue an angry response last weekend threatening to suspend all communication with the U.S. Additionally, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accused the U.S. of bowing to pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus government at a time when we are trying to cooperate to achieve the ultimate deal.

Vasquez said the original position had never been intended to create leverage or impose pressure. The State Department said that the administration is actively working to pursue lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Requirement little-noticed

The requirement about the mission closing stems from a little-noticed provision in U.S. law that says the U.S. cannot allow the Palestinians to have a Washington office if they back the international courts move to investigate or prosecute Israeli nationals for alleged crimes against Palestinians.

Abbas said at the United Nations in September that the Palestinians had called on the International Criminal Court to open an investigation and to prosecute Israeli officials for their involvement in settlement activities and aggressions against our people.

The PLO is the group that formally represents all Palestinians. Although the U.S. does not recognize Palestinian statehood, the PLO maintains a general delegation office in Washington that facilitates Palestinian officials interactions with the U.S. government.

The United States allowed the PLO to open a mission in Washington in 1994. That required President Bill Clinton to waive a law that said the Palestinians couldnt have an office. In 2011, under the Obama administration, the U.S. started letting the Palestinians fly their flag over the office, an upgrade to the status of their mission that the Palestinians hailed as historic.

Israel opposes any Palestinian membership in U.N.-related organizations until a peace deal has been reached.

Shuttle diplomacy

The Israelis and Palestinians are not engaged in active, direct negotiations. But Trumps team, led by Kushner, is working to broker a deal aimed at settling the intractable conflict.

The Trump administration has not disclosed details about its effort to achieve an agreement that ostensibly would grant the Palestinians an independent state in exchange for an end to its conflict with the Israelis. Kushner and other top Trump aides have been shuttling to the region to meet with Palestinians, Israelis and officials from Arab nations.

The Palestinians, publicly supportive of the U.S. effort, are nonetheless skeptical because Trumps close ties to Israel suggest whatever deal he proposes might be unfavorable to them.
When people come to the U.S. seeking protection because they have suffered persecution or are afraid they will suffer persecution, they are permitted to file for asylum regardless of their immigration status.

U.S. law offers asylum to those people facing persecution in their home countries on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular group.

WATCH: What is Asylum and How Does it Work in the US?

There are two kinds of asylum: affirmative and defensive. An immigrant may claim affirmative asylum within one year of their last arrival in the United States. An immigrant may request defensive asylum while fighting an order of deportation.

During the years 2013-2015, an average of about 25,000 people received asylum each year. Almost twice as many affirmative applicants were approved as defensive applicants.

Detention

Applicants must be physically present in the U.S. to apply for asylum.

Current policy is to detain asylum-seekers, often when they arrive at a port of entry. Waiting while their cases go through the courts can mean spending months in a detention center.

We are closing the doors on so many people, and the first thing that they get when they come here to the U.S. is like OK, were going to lock you up, said Rosa Santana, a detainee visitation coordinator at First Friends immigrant advocacy group. We dont know what these people have been through, their traumas. Putting them in detention is another trauma for them.

First Friends is a local nonprofit in Jersey City, New Jersey, and its visitation groups visit immigrant detainees at the Elizabeth Detention Center, Hudson County Correctional Center, Bergen County Jail and Essex County Correctional Center-Delaney Hall.

Credible fear

Asylum-seekers must apply within one year from the date of last arrival or show proof of an exceptional change based on extraordinary circumstances. Above all, they must prove to the asylum officer or to an immigration court judge that they have a credible fear of returning to their home country.

To Judy Pepenella, community organizer at the Conservative Society for Action in New York, asylum is a touchy subject.

I have a problem, personally, and it has to be honesty. You know, just because you have to get out and you dont have the ability to become a citizen and you dont want go back, it has to truly be an issue, Pepenella told VOA.

Pepenella, a Republican and conservative, said though she doesnt believe in jailing asylum-seekers, each case must be looked at on its merit.

When they come here, are they gonna become citizens, or are they going to stay on an immigrant or not American basis? If you come, become a citizen, become part of the process, become part of what makes America great, Pepenella added.

WATCH: Asylum in the US: The Pros and Cons

Future of asylum

The White House wants to tighten standards in the U.S. asylum system.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has claimed the current asylum system is subject to rampant abuse and fraud and he called for tighter rules for people seeking asylum in the United States.

Sessions said current policies allow applicants to take advantage of a broken court system that is backlogged by about 600,000 cases nationwide, although not all are asylum cases.

Figures from the months of July, August and September of 2016 and 2017, while hardly conclusive, indicate that asylum cases were being adjudicated at a faster rate since Trump took office in 2017 than the previous year  and that the percentages of approval, at least for affirmative cases, have fallen off slightly.

July 2016: 1,957 cases adjudicated; 996 affirmative approvals

August 2016: 2,262 cases adjudicated; 884 affirmative approvals

September 2016: 2,232 cases adjudicated, 967 affirmative approvals

July 2017: 3,934 cases adjudicated; 1,252 affirmative approvals

August 2017: 5,336 cases adjudicated; 1,543 affirmative approvals

September 2017: 4,255 cases adjudicated; 1,513 affirmative approvals

Pepenella struggles with asylum.

Im not saying everyone is lying, please make sure you understand that, there are nations that people need help to get out of, she said.

But Santana sees it in stark, human terms.

We know that they are not lying. We can hear the desperation, you know, when we talk to them, she said. Every day we have tears in our eyes from the stories that we hear. Because we know that people are really risking their lives to come here.
Despite the hostile nature of their breakup, President Emmerson Mnangagwa paid "special tribute one of, and the only surviving founding father of our nation Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe," for liberating the nation. Mnangagwa said Mugabe will be "lauded and celebrated for all times."
Oscar Pistorius prison sentence was increased to 13 years and five months by South Africas Supreme Court of Appeal on Friday, a decision that more than doubled the Olympic runners jail term for the murder of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

In an announcement that took a matter of minutes, Supreme Court Justice Willie Seriti said the Supreme Court upheld an appeal by prosecutors against Pistorius original six-year sentence for shooting Steenkamp multiple times in his home in 2013.

Prosecutors had called that six-year sentence shockingly lenient.

Pistorius should have been sentenced to the prescribed minimum of 15 years for murder in South Africa, Seriti said, as he delivered the verdict that was reached by a panel of five judges at the Supreme Court in the central city of Bloemfontein.

The new sentence of 13 years and five months took into account time Pistorius has served in prison and at home under house arrest, Seriti said.

Pistorius, who turned 31 Wednesday, has served over a year of his initial six-year sentence.

Pistorius killed Steenkamp in the pre-dawn hours of Valentines Day 2013 after shooting four times through a closed toilet cubicle door in his home. Claiming he mistook his girlfriend for an intruder, he was initially convicted of manslaughter. That conviction was overturned and replaced with a murder conviction by the Supreme Court in 2015.

Fridays decision likely brings an end to a near five-year legal saga surrounding the double-amputee athlete, a multiple Paralympic champion and record-breaker who was once one of the most celebrated sportsmen in the world.

Pistorius lawyers have just one avenue open to them if they want to challenge the new sentence handed down by the Supreme Court, and that is to appeal to the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa.

Pistorius failed with an appeal to the Constitutional Court last year to challenge his murder conviction.
Egyptian officials say 305 people were killed Friday by suspected militants in an attack on a packed mosque in the volatile northern Sinai Peninsula. Twenty-seven of the dead are children.

The public prosecutors office said Saturday that 25 to 30 extremists targeted the al-Rawdah mosque in the town of Bir al-Abed, west of the provincial capital, el-Arish.

Militants arrived at the mosque in four-wheel-drive vehicles, set off an explosion and then ran inside, where they opened fire on worshipers as they tried to escape. The gunmen also used burning cars to block exits from the building.

Eyewitnesses also said the militants fired on ambulances as emergency personnel tried to evacuate the wounded to hospitals. The state news agency says 128 people were wounded in the attack.

The attack targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but an Islamic State affiliate has been carrying out attacks in the region since 2013.

Egyptian government warplanes reportedly attacked terrorist targets in the Sinai following the carnage at the mosque.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi vowed that the attack will not go unpunished but did not specify what steps might be taken.

U.S. President Donald Trump reacted to the violence, calling it a horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshippers.

Trump added, The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence! in a tweet sent from Florida, where he is staying over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Neighboring Israel sent condolences to Egypt following the attack. Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979 and maintain close security cooperation.

Egypts security forces are battling an Islamic State insurgency, mostly in the northern region of Sinai, where militants have killed hundreds of police officers and soldiers since fighting there intensified in the past three years.

Militants have targeted security forces, but have also struck beyond the Sinai by hitting Christian churches and civilians in other parts of Egypt.

Egyptian media reported that Sissi met with top security officials, including the defense and interior ministers, immediately after the attack as security was stepped up around government buildings.

List of Recent Militant Attacks in Egypt:
Former Finance Minister Ignatius Chombo, who appeared in court today facing several fraud and corruption charges, told the courts he was abducted by men wearing army uniforms and was detained at an unknown location.

Chombo said he was dumped at his residence on Wednesday but was immediately picked up by police.

He said suspected members of the Zimbabwe Defence Force abducted him on November 14th after they broke into his residence where they smashed the main gate, doors and windows before force-marching him into a vehicle while blindfolded.

He said his so-called abductors accused him of failing to properly run the ruling Zanu PF party and the Ministry of Local Government before he was recently appointed finance minister and corruption.

Chombo claimed that he was taken to an unknown location and then dumped at his house on Wednesday where he was arrested by police who took him to Harare Central Police.

Prosecutor Edmore Nyazama said Chombo is facing charges of fraud involving billions of dollars and corruption and as a result should be remanded in custody.

However, his attorney Lovemore Madhuku said Chombo has been in police custody for a long time and therefore he needs to be released.

Madhuku argued that as per some provisions of the Zimbabwe Constitution, an accused person is supposed to be brought before the courts within 48 hours of his arrest. He said police are violating the constitution by holding him in custody for more than the prescribed period.

But Nyazama argued that Chombos arrest is within the required time frame.

At the same time, two of his subordinates of the so-called Generation 40 faction of the ruling party, which wanted then First Lady Grace Mugabe to succeed her husband, have also appeared in court facing charges of insulting General Constantino Guveya Chiwenga.

ZANU PF Youth League members, Kudzayi Chipanga and Innocent Hamandishe, claim that they were beaten up by members of the national army who abducted them from their homes a week ago.

Chipanga made a public apology on television saying he was misled to read a statement in which he said the Zanu PF Youth League will defend President Mugabe until the last man from any person who wanted to manipulate him to embrace Team Lacoste, which was another group led by then ousted Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The latter seized power from Mugabe following an interference by military, which intervened in Zanu PF squabbles and sidelined Mugabe in favour of Mnangagwa.
"It looks like business as usual this Saturday in Zimbabwe's capital. Today is the first day of Emmerson Mnanagagwa's presidency. But there is a lot going on beneath the surface. Managagwa is meeting with top Zimbabwean politicians today to settle his cabinet, and a top minister is in court."
The Zimbabwe High Court ruled Saturday that the military takeover that led to Robert Mugabe's resignation was legal, a key decision since the military had insisted that its moves did not result in a coup.

The court said that the military acted to stop the takeover of Mugabe's powers by those around him, thus ensuring that non-elected individuals do not exercise executive functions

The court's decision comes a day after Zimbabwes first new leader in nearly four decades was sworn in, promising major reforms to ease the countrys long-running economic crisis.



President Emmerson Mnangagwa took office Friday in a nation left deeply scarred by 37 years of authoritarian rule by Robert Mugabe, who resigned Tuesday under intense pressure from the military and the ruling party.

In his inaugural address, Mnangagwa said Zimbabwe would attempt to pay its international debts, would loosen import restrictions, and would work to ensure Zimbabweans get easier access to hard currency  a promise that drew massive cheers in a nation where nine currencies are legal tender, but where cash is woefully scarce.

He also said he is committed to compensating farmers whose land was taken under Mugabe's rule. Mugabe critics say the country's controversial land-reform program, which forced experienced white commercial farmers off their property, has caused hunger in the nation once considered the breadbasket of southern Africa.



Mnangagwa will serve out the remainder of Mugabe's term, which is slated to end in mid-2018 after elections the new president promised will be democratic.

I encourage all of us to remain peaceful even as preparations for political contestations for next years harmonized free and fair elections gather momentum. The voice of the people is the voice of God, the new president said Friday.

Mnangagwa also took time in his inaugural address to praise his predecessor. He called Mugabe the "father of our nation," while also acknowledging the former president had made "errors of commission and omission.

Mugabe remains a hero to millions for his role in freeing Zimbabwe from British colonial and white minority rule. But human rights groups have accused him of rigging elections, allowing his cronies to steal millions from the treasury and being responsible for the torture and killing of thousands of political opponents.

Mnangagwa's inauguration culminates a dramatic turn of events for Zimbabwe. On November 5, Mnangagwa was fired from his position as Zimbabwe's vice president amid a succession struggle with Mugabe's wife, Grace.



He fled into exile for two weeks while the military, which has close ties to Mnangagwa, seized control of state institutions and put pressure on Mugabe to resign.

Mugabe and his wife, Grace, who were granted immunity from prosecution on Thursday, were nowhere to be found among the front row of Southern African presidents at Fridays ceremony.

Zimbabweans packed a 60,000 seat stadium in the capital to see Mnangagwa take the oath of office. Across Harare, attendees draped themselves in Zimbabwean flags and enthusiastically applauded military and police bands.

Some attendees traveled a long ways for the ceremony, like 34-year-old Solomon Gatsa, who took a five-hour bus ride from the nations second city of Bulawayo. He offered the new president some simple advice.

The first thing, he starts to change the economy, he told VOA outside the stadium. After that, the people need to have a job.

Emillia Majandari, who is 35, said she was less focused on the details of his speech. She said she has only ever known one president, Mugabe, and had to see this event in person.

Im very excited, I wanted to see for myself, is it real? she said. Im overexcited. Im overjoyed. The joy I have  ah!
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 13:27:54|Editor: Yang Yi

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KIEV, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Kiev International Exhibition Center, which hosts the China-Ukraine Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Exhibition, has been crowded these days with visitors, including kids and professors.

Child-sized interactive robots, remote-control vehicles and working models of innovative factories and transport, among others, are showcasing China's technological achievements in the past years at the exhibition held on Nov. 21-24.

AMAZING INVENTIONS

About 150 projects brought by a total of 64 Chinese research institutions and enterprises to the event have really impressed locals.

Volodymyr Yaskiv, a dean of the Electrical Engineering Department at Ternopil National Technical University, said he rushed to the exhibition right from the airport after a visit to China.

Yaskiv, who visited China 11 times and has a joint scientific project with Chinese partners, said the part of the exhibition that showcases the achievements of Chinese-Ukrainian cooperation is vivid evidence that the partnership between the two countries is flourishing.

"The program of scientific and technical cooperation between Ukraine and China is working. It is effective, it is needed, and it helps not only to exchange scientific and technical experience, but also to better understand the culture, the language and the level of development," Yaskiv told Xinhua.

Nazar, 11, who is a member of IT-technologies and Chinese language hobby groups, said that he missed the school to visit the exhibition, where he tested several remote-control vehicles and virtual reality glasses.

"I really liked the amazing Chinese inventions, especially the computers, which could control the tank ... and all the devices that allow me to indirectly learn Chinese," Nazar told Xinhua.

NEW TRANSPORT TECHNOLOGIES

While most exhibition visitors are somehow linked to science, Andrey Osadchy is a businessman, who came to the event in search for new business partners.

Osadchy took pictures of himself near the two high-speed trains developed by the Beijing-based China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC), China's largest train manufacturer.

The electric multiple units (EMU) are suitable for intercity and regional trips. They have not only superior ride comfort but also high safety, energy-efficiency, and eco-friendliness.

Osadchy, who travels a lot on business, said he would like to see such trains running in Ukraine one day.

"It would be interesting to talk about the introduction of this train project in the financial bill of Ukraine for 2018-2020. I would particularly like to see this train running between the airport Boryspil and the central part of Kiev," Osadchy told Xinhua.

His dream may come true as Ukraine plans to replace 40 percent of the passenger rolling stock by 2022, while the CRRC is interested in entering the Ukrainian market.

"China has already achieved a great success in developing high-speed trains and high-speed railways. We want to show the Chinese technologies to the world and bring them to Ukraine to make the trips of people here more comfortable," Yu Hang, sales manager of the CRRC, told Xinhua.

Chinese innovative road construction technologies are also an area of interest to the Ukrainian public. The tunnel boring machines, presented by the China Railway Construction Heavy Industry (CRCHI), are one of the most unusual and most visited exhibits at the exposition.

People here are well aware that the machines, which could be used for boring highway, railway and subway tunnels, may contribute to the infrastructure development in Ukraine.

INNOVATIONS FOR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

The development of energy-saving technologies is a particularly pressing issue for Ukraine. Currently, the East European country heavily relies on imported energy resources and the Chinese inventions may help it to boost energy independence.

The first steps in this direction have already been taken. During the exhibition, the Beijing-based Shenwu Group presented two innovative projects developed specially for Ukraine, which has vast coal and iron ore reserves, but lacks gas and oil.

"The first one is our technology for coal, especially for low-quality coal. With this technology, we can produce a large amount of gas and oil from bad coal," Song Xin, deputy director of the Shenwu Group, told Xinhua.

"Another platform is the technology for metallurgy. It is for the unusable iron ore, for the low-grade iron ore and also for the slag and dust. We can easily produce semi-steel from it and also such products as Zinc oxide," Song added.

Song said that during the exhibition, the Shenwu Group has established contacts with Ukrainian partners and plans to enter the Ukrainian market soon.

Anatoly Smyhula, deputy director for Scientific Work at Kiev Institute of Gas, said energy cooperation with China would be useful for Ukraine, as it has much to learn from China with regard to energy technology development.

"Chinese technologies are developing quite intensively as China absorbs all the advanced developments of the world. We must learn from China how to value science and must borrow understanding that the humanity needs to move forward," Smyhula told Xinhua.


(Simone Massoni for The Washington Post)

An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice

By Khizr Khan (Random House)

It took about two minutes for Khan to become a celebrity and a national symbol: At the Democratic National Convention, the grieving Gold Star father whipped out a pocket-size U.S. Constitution and defiantly invited Donald Trump to read it. In American Family, Khan tells his story. A Harvard-educated lawyer, Khan was born in 1950 and came to the United States from Pakistan in 1979. He writes with grace and clarity about his new American life, especially about his son Humayun, an Army captain killed in Iraq.



"The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying," by Nina Riggs (Simon & Schuster)

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying

By Nina Riggs (Simon & Schuster)

Riggs completed The Bright Hour just months before she died of breast cancer at 39. A chronicle of the final years of her life, this book is more joyful than its subject suggests. Riggs  a poet, former teacher and mother of two  records the happy moments of everyday experience, celebrating nature, family and the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Michel de Montaigne. A heart-rending meditation on life and its end, The Bright Hour is this years When Breath Becomes Air.

Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz

By Fred Hersch (Crown Archetype)

Hersch, a jazz musician and composer, writes affectingly of how jazz captivated him as a teenager growing up in Cincinnati and of how he struggled to be honest with himself and others about his homosexuality. When he was diagnosed as HIV positive, he sought to compose, perform and record as much music as he could and, in the process, he became recognized as one of the finest pianists of his generation. There were setbacks along the way, including harrowing health problems that led to psychotic episodes and left him in a coma for two months in 2008. Now 62, Hersch is thriving, with multiple Grammy nominations and, with this book, one of the most honest and moving memoirs written by a jazz musician.



"Hunger: A Memoir of My) Body," by Roxane Gay (Harper)

Hunger

By Roxane Gay (Harper)

This searing account of Gays lifelong struggle with her weight offers no tidy resolution. Theres no willowy woman on the book jacket holding the waistband of her old pants an arms reach from her new body. Rather, the best-selling author of Bad Feminist delivers a portrait of resilience after she was gang-raped at age 12. The book also offers a pointed retort to the smug strangers who shoot Gay sidelong glances at the gym or gawk as she settles into an airplane seat. Here is everything you could possibly want to know about why and how someone comes to live in their body.

Priestdaddy

By Patricia Lockwood (Riverhead)

Yes, Lockwoods father is indeed a Catholic priest. But dont be creeped out by her provocative book title. Lockwoods father was a married Lutheran pastor when he converted to Catholicism (he was granted special dispensation to keep his wife and children). Lockwoods darkly witty memoir centers on an extended visit with her eccentric family in Kansas. The experience gives Lockwood, a poet, the chance to consider the complexity of feelings about her father and the church. The result is a book that showcases Lockwoods verbal inventiveness while exploring the question so many wonder: Can you ever really go home again?


Simone Massoni for The Washington Post (Simone Massoni for The Washington Post)

Batman, Vol. 2: I Am Suicide

By Tom King et al. (DC Comics)

King, a CIA agent turned star comics writer, has an uncanny knack for blending visceral action with focused intellect  a dance of brains and brute force that pops off the page like genius choreography.

The Best We Could Do

By Thi Bui (Harry N. Abrams)

Bui, a Vietnam-born Californian, delivers in her debut graphic novel a cinematic epic that poignantly tracks several generations through immigration and emotional dislocation. At its best, this memoir feels not just created but also deeply lived.

Boundless

By Jillian Tamaki (Drawn and Quarterly)

Set along the fault lines of humanity and technology, this short-story collection disorients the senses even as it grounds us in the quirks of 21st-century life  all bundled with virtuosic visuals and slyly brilliant wit.

Everything Is Flammable

By Gabrielle Bell (Uncivilized)

Published shortly before the fall wine-country wildfires began, this Northern California story illuminates how fragile our relationships are and how quickly everything can go up in smoke. A graphic memoir practically rendered on flash paper.



Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York, by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury )

Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York

By Roz Chast (Bloomsbury)

What began as a mothers illustrated mash note to Manhattan becomes a meandering map of Chasts hilarious mental approach to her beloved town, with all of its oddball shops, subterranean secrets and an abundance of visual stimulation.

Hostage

By Guy Delisle (Drawn and Quarterly)

Delisle tells the true story of a Doctors Without Borders worker who was kidnapped in 1997. He deftly mines stillness and long stretches of inaction for uncomfortably taut drama. Delisles monochromatic palette only heightens the sense of captivity as a brutal mind game of uncertainty.

Mighty Thor, Vol. 3: The Asgard/Shiar War

By Jason Aaron et al. (Marvel)

Aarons run on Thor is only getting more rewarding, and the adventures of Jane as Thor  cancer-patient mortal turned race-uniting god  are riveting as we witness the extremes of her leadership, loyalty and sacrifice.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

By Emil Ferris (Fantagraphics)

This debut graphic novel from a 55-year-old Chicago artist is a revelation: a deeply textured tale of dark histories framed as a girls diary and told through riveting art that is an homage to midcentury horror comics and film. A dark-horse winner that came out of nowhere.

Portugal

By Cyril Pedrosa. Translated by Montana Kane (NBM)

The dreamy liquid lines of this translation of Pedrosas French story  as much a triumph of atmosphere as action  propel a cartoonists search for rejuvenation. The books artist as a young man may be disenchanted, but the dazzling, meditative panels are entirely enchanting.

The Stone Heart: The Nameless City

By Faith Erin Hicks and Jordie Bellaire (First Second)

This YA book is a visual stunner, with Bellaires brilliant tints enriching everything from the anatomy under combat to the sweeping peaks of beckoning horizons. Hickss flair for tangible fantasy makes this a standout.

Michael Cavna is creator of the "Comic Riffs" column and graphic-novel reviewer for The Washington Post.


Simone Massoni for The Washington Post (Simone Massoni for The Washington Post)

Bluebird, Bluebird

By Attica Locke (Mulholland)

Locke, a former writer and producer of the Fox series Empire, sets this novel in an East Texas town where two people have been murdered. Is it a hate crime? Its up to Texas Ranger Darren Mathews, nephew of the states first black Texas ranger, to sort things out. Locke is a brisk writer with a sharp eye for the racial tensions that continue to simmer in small Southern communities.

Glass Houses

By Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Were back in Three Pines in the company of detective Armand Gamache. On the first page, Gamache is already in the hot seat, being questioned about a murder. He describes a Halloween party disrupted by the appearance of a masked figure. Later, a body is discovered, along with some disturbing secrets that send a chill through this close-knit community.

A Legacy of Spies

By John le Carre (Viking)

More than 50 years after The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, le Carre has written what is essentially a sequel. Agent Peter Guillam is retired and living in France when hes summoned back to London: The children of operatives who died in Spy are seeking answers  and justice. As Guillam searches his memory and pores over old intelligence reports, readers are led once again into the murky world of espionage by the 86-year-old master of the genre.

Little Deaths

By Emma Flint (Hachette)

Little Deaths revisits the case that grabbed headlines in the mid-1960s: the story of Alice Crimmins, who was found guilty of murdering her two children and, after a dizzying legal back-and-forth, released. Flint is scrupulous about centering this moody thriller in the facts yet giving them a deeper psychological spin. In a way that feels measured rather than salacious, Flint keeps aloft the crucial question of Who murdered the children? until the very last pages.



"The Long Drop," by Denise Mina (Little, Brown)

The Long Drop

By Denise Mina (Little, Brown)

Based on the true story of Scotlands most infamous serial killer, this chilling novel is set in 1950s Glasgow. Peter Manuel committed seven grisly murders before he was hanged on the gallows of Barlinnie prison in 1958. (Thats the long drop of the title.) Here, Mina focuses on the triple murder of a family. She takes readers into the mind of a psychopath, as well as into the shadow lands where the grieving families of the victims find themselves exiled.

Not a Sound

By Heather Gudenkauf (Park Row)

Theres minimal blood and zero sexual depravity in Gudenkaufs psychological suspense story. In terms of style, think Mary Higgins Clark or Lisa Scottoline, accented with a dash of inspiration from the vintage Audrey Hepburn movie Wait Until Dark. Like Hepburns character, Gudenkaufs heroine, Amelia Winn, is physically challenged: A near-fatal accident left her deaf. When Amelia discovers the body of a friend in a nearby river, she becomes both a novice sleuth and a potential victim.

Prussian Blue

By Philip Kerr (Marian Wood/Putnam)

The 12th Bernie Gunther mystery is as brisk and agile as its German police detective protagonist. It moves back and forth between Nazi Germany in 1939 and the French Riviera in 1956, with two suspenseful tales that for a while seem unconnected but arent. Gunther is one of crime fictions most gratifyingly melancholy creations, and in Prussian Blue, we watch him match wits with the officialdom of pre- and postwar Germany.

Six Four

By Hideo Yokoyama (FSG)

This ingenious novel has no serial killers, no femmes fatales, no locked-room murders, no torture, no sexually repressed villains, not even much in the way of forensic evidence. Instead, we have one-sided telephone calls (one party does nothing but listen), bureaucratic infighting, snarled relations between the police department of a Japanese prefecture and the local media, and a strikingly original plot.

Sleep No More

By P.D. James (Knopf)

James, one of the greatest English mystery writers, died in 2014 at 94, but her work lives on. Sleep No More offers six previously uncollected, quite wonderful murderous tales that will delight her longtime fans and provide for others a fine introduction to her work. The stories collected here are surprising, sardonic and darkly humorous and are always intelligent and beautifully written.

The Switch

By Joseph Finder (Dutton)

It could happen to any of us: accidentally grabbing the wrong laptop off the security conveyor belt at the airport. For Michael Tanner, the hero of Finders propulsive novel, this innocent mishap puts him in the middle of a dangerous scenario involving lies, leaks and threats to our liberties. This innocent-man-on-the-run tale may sometimes feel over-the-top crazy, but it hits the mark regarding life under surveillance in the 21st century.


Simone Massoni for TWP (Simone Massoni for The Washington Post)

Dating You/Hating You

By Christina Lauren (Gallery)

The romance genres best-loved trope is the enemies-to-lovers tale. Lauren adds her own twist to this story line with Evie and Carter, rival Hollywood agents. They discover theyre perfect for each other just days before they find themselves competing for the same position in their newly merged company. At turns hilarious and gut-wrenching, this is a tremendously fun slow-burn of a romance.

Take the Lead

By Alexis Daria (Swerve)

When professional dancer Gina Morales sets out for the Alaskan wilderness to meet her celebrity partner for The Dance Off (a fictional Dancing With the Stars), she discovers a bearded woodcutter named Stone Nielson. He has no interest in dancing, but Gina has a plan. This is a case of extreme opposites attracting: Gina is a hilarious city girl, and Stone is a stoic mountain man with a secret.

Till Death

By Jennifer L. Armentrout (Morrow)

Armentrouts new romantic suspense series begins with the story of Sasha, a woman who narrowly escaped a serial killer a decade ago. Upon her return home, a copycat killer  chillingly called the Groom  resurfaces, and Sasha is immediately in danger. This time, however, shes no child, and neither is Cole, the boy shed loved when she left town. Hes now an FBI agent willing to do anything to protect her.

Wanted, A Gentleman

By KJ Charles (Riptide)

In this Georgian-era romance, Theo Swann is the proprietor of a paper that publishes personal ads. When Martin St. Vincent, a free black Englishman, arrives at the papers offices in search of a young woman and the rake with whom shes eloped, Theo seizes the opportunity to sell information about the couple and accompany Martin on his quest. Of course, carriages and close quarters bring the two men closer together.

Wicked Abyss

By Kresley Cole (Gallery)

The hero of Wicked Abyss is the thousands-of-years-old Abyssian Sian Infernas  a demon with the power to create and destroy worlds. His infinite power should make him a matchless hero, but Cole presents him with Lila Barbot, a lost princess who wields even greater power. Whats more, Sians passion for her stems from her ability to hold that power.

Sarah MacLean reviews romance novels for The Washington Post.


Simone Massoni for The Washington Post (Simone Massoni for The Washington Post)

The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage

By Philip Pullman

Narrated by Michael Sheen (Listening Library)

Actor Michael Sheen brings the rich timbre of his Welsh voice to Pullmans The Book of Dust, an antecedent to the His Dark Materials trilogy. The story finds Lyra, star of the trilogy, as a baby pursued by a madman and his hideous hyena daemon. Lyras protectors are 11-year-old Malcolm and 15-year-old Alice. They flee with baby Lyra in La Belle Sauvage, a canoe, paddling through a flooded Thames Valley, a nightmarish waterscape bobbing with bodies and infested with villains. Sheens voice truly contains multitudes, capturing the nature of each character with brio and passing from speaker to speaker with preternatural limberness. This is an audiobook for everyone over the age of 8.

[To listen to a sample, click here.]

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

By Trevor Noah (Audible Studios)

The host of The Daily Show reads his own account of growing up in Johannesburg under apartheid and the years following. Noah is the son of a Xhosa mother and a Swiss father  both of whom could have been imprisoned for the crime of interracial sexual relations. A social misfit, Noah made his way out of poverty and danger through entrepreneurial ingenuity, comic genius and an ability to speak a number of tribal languages, which he gives marvelous voice to here. Above all, Noah owes his success to the unfailing support of his mother, the real hero of this memoir.

[To listen to a sample, click here.]

A Kind of Freedom

By Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Narrated by Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin, Adenrele Ojo (Blackstone Audio)

Sextons first novel is set in New Orleans from the mid-1940s to the citys ruthless real estate makeover years after Hurricane Katrina. Delivered by three accomplished narrators, the story moves through three generations of a black family, starting with the daughter of a pioneering doctor and his Creole wife, who have set themselves against her marrying the hard-working son of a janitor. This moving debut is ingeniously told in its passage back and forth through lives and changing times.

[To listen to a sample, click here.]

Kristin Lavransdatter

By Sigrid Undset. Translated by Tiina Nunnally

Narrated by Erin Bennett (Audible Studios)

This all-absorbing masterpiece by Nobel laureate Undset has finally entered the audiobook universe in a truly superb, sensitive performance by Erin Bennett. Published in Norwegian as a trilogy in the early 1920s, the book is set in 14th-century Norway and covers the life of Kristin Lavransdatter. She is seduced at 16 by a knight while betrothed to another man and conceives a child out of wedlock in a society that insists on the honor of women. Bennetts voice captures Kristins rapidly changing moods and her wonder at natures immensity. It is rich in its portrayal of 14th-century life and of the strain between Christianity and ancient, deep-seated pagan beliefs.

[To listen to a sample, click here.]

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

By Arundhati Roy (Random House Audio)

Roy brings her melodious voice and clipped Indian accent to the narration of her second novel, a passionate work 20 years in the making. First, we meet Anjum, a transgender woman who, like practically every character here, finds a version of identity warfare waged within herself. After her best friend is slaughtered in the Gujarat riots of 2002, Anjum establishes a guesthouse in a graveyard, gathering around her other victims of the New India. The second story line concerns the repression of the independence movement in Kashmir. The overall tragedy of these stories is leavened by intermittent comedy and the joy of friendship.

[To listen to a sample, click here.]

Katherine A. Powers reviews audiobooks every month for The Washington Post.


This new book by Jon Bonne is full of practical advice, says our wine columnist. (Ten Speed Press)

Wine writers attempt to reveal wines mysteries, strip away its pretensions, simplify its immense variety. Of course, if we were to ever succeed, no one would need us anymore.

The latest to try is Jon Bonne, with " The New Wine Rules: A Genuinely Helpful Guide to Everything You Need to Know " (Ten Speed Press, $15). This slim volume of practical advice  each of the 89 new "rules" is just a few paragraphs  headlines this holiday season's books for the wine lovers on your gift list.

Bonne is an authoritative voice. He is a senior contributing editor for Punch, an online drinks publication, a former wine editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, author of "The New California Wine" and the forthcoming "The New French Wine," and an occasional contributor to The Washington Post Food section.

As you might suspect, the premise of The New Wine Rules is that the old rules no longer apply. Bonne told me in an interview that he didnt want to write the traditional basic wine book. You can Google grape varieties, he said. I wanted to write for people who are already buying wine and want to know enough about it to enjoy it, and maybe to hold their own when they run up against someone who claims to know everything about wine in an obnoxious way.

Bonne flouts convention when he says ignore estate bottled  on a wine label. What really matters is where the grapes are grown, not where they ferment, he writes. Yet he upholds tradition with wineglass stems are there for a reason  use them! Some of his rules try to set us at ease about our individual preferences. You can drink rose any time of year, he advises. Some are obvious: Make sure to buy wines you want to drink yourself (for a party). Mostly, theres a lot of good, practical advice.

The stuffier wine lovers on your gift list will love " Champagne: The Essential Guide to the Wines, Producers and Terroirs of the Iconic Region, " by Peter Liem, one of the foremost experts on the world's top bubbly (Ten Speed Press, $80). Liem has written a beautiful book, focusing on champagne not as a luxury tipple but as serious wine, expressive of the place where it is grown rather than the lifestyle of the person drinking it.



Think of Peter Hellmans new book as a wine whodunit. (The Experiment Publishing)

The author has spent years exploring the terroirs of the Champagne region, and he engagingly describes the differences of the Montagne de Reims and the Cote des Blancs as he extols the importance of grower champagnes, those made by individual farmers. But he celebrates the large maisons as well, as in this description of the various wines of Krug:

[The] Grande Cuvee, which is made from a blend of up to two hundred wines from a dozen vintages, [was] a symphony orchestra, where many different components come together to create a harmonious and complete whole. Krugs vintage brut, which comes exclusively from wines harvested in the same year, was equivalent to a quartet, or chamber music. Even narrower in scope, the Clos du Mesnil, a vintage-dated, single-vineyard champagne, was akin to a soloist.

Liem gives us what we expect from a comprehensive guide to a famous wine region, including producer profiles, artsy photographs and descriptions of the regions geography and geology. The handsome boxed set includes not just his book but also reproductions of seven maps of Champagnes subregions published in the 1940s by Louis Larmat. Any map geek, or any champagne fiend who has visited the area, will enjoy exploring Champagnes famous vineyards through these maps.

And why not a wine whodunit? With " In Vino Duplicitas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire " (The Experiment, $26), Peter Hellman tells the story of Rudy Kurniawan, the charming modern-day swindler who fooled wealthy wine collectors, famous writers and auctioneers with elaborate fakes of rare and expensive wines. Kurniawan was featured in 2008's "The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine." That book, by Benjamin Wallace, detailed billionaire collector Bill Koch's quest to prove bottles he bought that supposedly had been owned by Thomas Jefferson were, in fact, fakes.

Hellman takes Kurniawans story further, through the arrest and the conviction in 2013. Along the way, he explores not only the swindlers craftiness, but the vulnerability and gullibility of his victims  people successful in many fields who fell prey to Kurniawans charm and apparent generosity in offering them a rarefied taste of history.

The wealthy collectors who spent millions on those fake wines were canny fellows in their businesses, Hellman writes. Yet, in the hands of this unlikely con man, they . . . responded to his perceived generosity by opening their wallets.

In Vino Duplicitas is a cautionary tale of how we can let the romance of wine get the better of us. Kurniawan preyed on rich collectors, but most vinophiliacs have experienced the seductive lure of a rare or expensive bottle of wine. None of us are immune.
Its no secret that the Districts public schools are highly segregated, with a recent analysis showing that nearly three-quarters of black students attend schools where they have virtually no white peers.

But a recent report examines the role that enrollment in private schools, which are disproportionately white, plays in the citys segregation woes. The report was released last month by the Albert Shanker Institute, a nonprofit endowed by the American Federation of Teachers, a major teachers union.

The study found that up to one-third of citywide segregation in the 2011-2012 school year could be attributed to the demographic imbalance at the citys private schools.

There is growing evidence that the nations public schools are resegregating, with some studies suggesting that U.S. public schools are as segregated by race as they were in the 1960s.

A Government Accountability Office report released last year found that the share of schools that are majority black and majority Latino is growing.

[On the anniversary of Brown v. Board, new evidence that U.S. schools are resegregating]

Much of the research on segregation focuses on segregation among public schools, said Matthew Di Carlo, who co-authored the research brief with Kinga Wysienska-Di Carlo. The pair sought to determine how big a role private school enrollment plays in contributing to citywide segregation.

We were wondering what segregation would look like if we looked at all students in a big city like D.C., Di Carlo said.

The study has implications for a city that has become a testing ground for school choice  with about 40 percent of students attending charter schools  and for a federally funded private school voucher program that allows a small number of students from low-income families to attend private schools. The researchers said the voucher program is too small to significantly affect school segregation but added that our results might certainly inform the ongoing debates about vouchers and segregation.

Di Carlo and his colleague examined the demographics of all students who attended school in D.C. in 2011-2012, the last year for which private school enrollment data were available, and found that private schools look radically different from the city overall. They are significantly whiter: While white students made up about 15 percent of all students in the city, they represented nearly 60 percent of private school enrollment. Black students accounted for nearly 70 percent of all students that year but made up just 28 percent of private school enrollment. Hispanic students made up 12 percent of all students but just 8 percent in private schools.

The portrait becomes more dramatic still when looking at public schools in isolation: During that school year, the citys public schools were more than three-quarters black, 13 percent Hispanic and 8 percent white.

Thats a rather large imbalance, Di Carlo said. That matters for segregation.

[Report: Public schools in the District remain highly segregated]

The researchers concluded that even if public schools in D.C. were perfectly integrated  if every school reflected the exact demographic makeup of the public school student body  they would still be far less diverse than the citys student body as a whole.

The study counted all students going to schools in D.C., even if their families lived outside the city and would not have been eligible to attend the citys public schools.

Di Carlo said he does not believe that many students fell into that category.

The study recommends that the citys public schools continue to work to attract more private school families and that private schools work to increase diversity, using scholarships and financial aid to recruit more students of color. Without changing the imbalance of demographics between public and private schools, there may be what amounts to an impermeable ceiling on the citywide impact of big city public school integration efforts, the report concludes.

The citys public schools have been working hard to attract more families, including those who may have opted to send their children to private school, and their efforts appear to be paying off: Enrollment in city schools reached a peak of nearly 90,500 last year, up from about 75,000 when the study was done.

Tomeika Bowden, a spokeswoman for the citys Public Charter School Board, said charter schools are working hard to attract students from across the city by replicating successful charter school models and with marketing.

Charter school enrollment was up to 41,677 last year, up from fewer than 30,000 in the 2011-2012 school year.
The Maryland State House in Annapolis. Progressive legislators hope to uncouple the states taxation on inheritances from the federal estate tax. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

As Republicans in Congress weigh a dramatic reduction in taxing inheritances left by wealthy Americans, progressive lawmakers in Maryland want to make sure the state does not follow suit.

Maryland Del. Jimmy Tarlau (D-Prince Georges) said he will sponsor a bill in 2018 to exempt only the first $4 million of an estate from state taxes, even as federal lawmakers want to raise the threshold from $5.49 million to $11 million.

It is the latest example of liberal state lawmakers attempting to blunt the impact of a Republican-controlled White House and Congress, and it could create an argument over tax breaks in Annapolis during an election year.

Under current law, Maryland  which has more millionaires per capita than any other state  is supposed to follow federal estate-tax rules beginning in 2019. The state now taxes inheritances greater than $4 million.

Tarlau estimates that raising the exemption level to $11 million could cost Maryland $50 million to $100 million a year. We need to protect our money for programs like schools, roads, mass transit and tax relief for seniors, he said.

Previous attempts to uncouple the state exemption from federal policy  by Tarlau and other progressive lawmakers, including state Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery), who is running for governor  have stalled in committee.

But with a significant increase in the federal exemption increasingly likely as part of a broad overhaul moving through Congress, Tarlau said he hopes to stir more interest in his bill from the Democratic majority in Annapolis.

State legislators have acted on multiple fronts to repel actions and proposals by Congress and President Trump since his inauguration in January.

Prompted in part by concerns that a repeal of the Obama-era Affordable Care Act would diminish women's access to birth control, Nevada passed a bill requiring insurers to cover a 12-month supply of contraceptives without co-pays, and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) is expected to sign a nearly identical bill that landed on his desk this month. Maryland approved a law this spring to reimburse Planned Parenthood clinics for their services if Congress defunds the organization.

And in response to Trump's vow to crack down on illegal immigration, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed "sanctuary state" legislation last month limiting the extent to which state and local police can cooperate with immigration authorities.

If Tarlaus estate-tax bill moves forward, it could become an issue for Maryland legislative and gubernatorial candidates in the 2018 elections.

Gov. Larry Hogan (R), a moderate who has distanced himself from Trump and some of the most controversial GOP proposals on Capitol Hill, won the governorship three years ago with an anti-tax message. He has not stated a position on federal plans to expand estate-tax exemptions or, eventually, abolish the tax. His campaign and office spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment on Tarlaus proposal.

Madaleno, vice chair of the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee and one of eight Democrats seeking to challenge Hogan, said state lawmakers absolutely should revisit the estate-tax exemption if Republicans expand the federal cap or abolish the tax.

When we agreed to this coupling with the federal government, no one saw that high of a threshold, said Madaleno, who voted against the 2014 legislation that tied the state exemption to federal policy. I dont see how it doesnt become an issue.

Three other Democrats running for governor, attorney Jim Shea, policy consultant Maya Rockeymoore Cummings and Krishanti Vignarajah, a onetime policy aide to former first lady Michelle Obama, also said they support Tarlaus proposal.

Rockeymoore Cummings said an expanded exemption would give huge tax breaks to millionaires on the backs of Maryland families.

Shea said a higher threshold would give tax breaks to the supremely wealthy and that he would look for additional ways to insulate Maryland families from Republican tax-cut plans if he wins the governorship.

Other Democratic gubernatorial candidates did not respond to requests for comment.

House Ways and Means Chair Anne R. Kaiser (D-Montgomery) said her panel cant make some of these decisions until we see what the federal government will do.

But she suggested that the state should not allow its exemption threshold to increase past the $5.49 million cap that lawmakers expected when they voted in 2014 to follow federal guidelines.

We cant keep changing the goal posts, she said. One of our goals of tax policies . . . is to ensure that businesses and individuals can plan from year to year.

Tarlau said state lawmakers should approve his proposal next year regardless of whether Congress passes a tax overhaul.

Maryland should have its own decisions in these actions instead of being tied to whats going on in Washington, he said.
On Black Friday, a day of retail frenzy, stores provide goods in return for money. But the streets of the Washington region saw a kind of reverse Black Friday, as several people tried to get money in return for nothing but threats.

In Alexandria, police said a robber with a gun took cash from a business around 8 p.m. in the 200 block of W. Glebe Road.

In Annapolis, according to police there, someone walked into a bank on Bay Ridge Road and offered a note, demanding money. None was given, and the individual left, police said.

In Washington, according to D.C. police, someone showed interest in cash at a store in the 900 block of Bladensburg Road NE at 2:25 a.m. They said he displayed a pistol, got money and left.

What might be described as illicit Black Friday observances took place in other places, too. D.C. police said property was snatched about 6:40 p.m. near the Navy Memorial. In addition, robberies were carried out by creating fear in the 1200 block of Eaton Road SE and by showing a knife in the 2300 block of Wagner Street SE, police said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 13:37:57|Editor: Zhou Xin

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NEW DELHI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has strongly condemned the "barbaric" terror attack on a mosque in Egypt that killed 235 people and injured over 100 others.

"Strongly condemn the barbaric terrorist attack on a place of worship in Egypt. Our deep condolences at the loss of innocent lives," Modi tweeted Friday night.

The prime minister has also expressed India's support to Egypt.

"India resolutely supports the fight against all forms of terrorism and stands with the people as well as Government of Egypt," he added.

The al-Rawda mosque in the town of Bir al-Abed in Egypt's restive North Sinai region was first bombed and fleeing worshippers were then gunned down by terrorists during Friday prayers.
As David Abrams, 63, was walking his dog, Gabe, on Thanksgiving morning, he came across graffiti at Rose Park. Dear Jews stop pushing war with Russia, the message read.

It was written in two places on a black storage box near first base at the softball field at Rose Park in Northwest Washington.

Abrams, who is Jewish, said he was disgusted, just totally, totally disgusted.

Not only is the park a part of Abramss community, but he also lives across the street and is a member of the Friends of Rose Park board of directors.

Anti-Semitism is happening here in D.C., and its happening in our front yard, Abrams said.



An anti-Semitic message was found on a structure in Rose Park on Nov. 23, 2017, in Washingtons Georgetown neighborhood. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

He said he walked along 26th Street to the park a few minutes after 9 a.m. to talk with a neighbor who was also walking her dog.

When he glanced at the box, he spotted the graffiti.

Abrams sent an email to local community members, Advisory Neighborhood Commission members, the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation and the D.C. Department of General Services reporting the incident and asking that the graffiti be cleaned up.

Abramss neighbor Oz Malkesman wrote back after seeing the email about the graffiti. He said he had stretched against a post facing the black storage box about 8:30 a.m. before going on a run and did not see anything on the box. Malkesman told Abrams it is unlikely that he would have missed the graffiti had it been there when he was stretching.

Abrams said: The speculation is that it happened in broad daylight between 8:30 and 9:05.

Later in the day, Abrams reported the graffiti to the D.C. police, who created an incident report. Abrams said the police told him that the person who wrote the graffiti could be charged, if found, with a hate bias offense and defacing D.C. government property.

Jim Wilcox, a member of ANC 2E, said: Obviously, everybody is opposed to graffiti, and were even more opposed to anti-Semitic graffiti.

We hope to eliminate the problem as soon as possible, Wilcox said.

The citys Department of General Services has created a work order to have the graffiti removed.

I never thought I would live to see something like that, Abrams said.
Three people were found slain at a house in Virginia on Thanksgiving night, authorities said, and a suspect was arrested who was described in a newspaper account as a youth pastor at a church. Police described the incident as domestic-related.

The police in Chesterfield County, Va., a suburb of Richmond, said Jeanett L. Gattis, 58, Candice L. Kunze, 30, and Andrew E. Buthorn, 36, were all found dead at a house on Dogwood Court in Chester, Va. All had been shot, police said. They said Christopher R. Gattis, 58, was arrested at the scene and charged with three counts of murder.

In a statement, the Chesterfield County police said the victims and suspect all lived at the same house. They said Jeanett Gattis was the wife of Christopher Gattis, the man who was arrested. They said Candice Kunze was the daughter of Jeanett Gattis. Buthorn was described by police as the boyfriend of Kunze.

A Facebook profile page for a Christopher Gattis listed his occupation as director of youth ministry since 2014 at the Grace Lutheran Church in Chester, Va.

Two photographs on the profile page showed a man who resembled the man shown in the booking photograph police released of the suspect. The man in both of the Facebook pictures and in the booking photograph wears a mustache and goatee. The man in the booking photo is older, however.

On the website of the Grace Lutheran Church, the following statement could be read late Friday night.

Members of Grace Lutheran Church are deeply saddened by the loss of life Thursday night as a result of three individuals being shot in Chester and this tragedy included members of Grace Lutheran Church.

Grace Lutheran Church has experienced many hardships over the years, but this heartbreak has unique challenges. Grace Lutheran Church asks for the prayers from the community as our congregation begins the process of addressing the grief being experienced by everyone involved.

As read Friday night, nothing on the church website made any specific reference to Gattis by name, or to any role of his at the church. Available online public records for Christopher R. Gattis say nothing about any employment at the church.

However, the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper described Gattis on its website as a youth pastor.

According to the Times-Dispatch, the website of Grace Lutheran had said he was the youth pastor there.
THE DISTRICT

Fatal shooting in Southeast parking lot

A 43-year-old man was shot and killed Thursday night at an apartment complex in Southeast Washington, according to D.C. police.

The victim was identified as Joseph Phill Smith, of Northwest. He was pronounced dead at the scene. A second man was shot and suffered injuries that police deemed non-life threatening.

The shooting occurred shortly after 7 p.m. in a parking lot at the Forest Ridge Vista apartments in the 2400 block of Elvans Road SE, between the Barry Farm and Fort Stanton neighborhoods near Suitland Parkway.

Police said Smith was shot multiple times. Two vehicles and an apartment were struck by bullets, according to a police report.

 Peter Hermann

MARYLAND

Man found fatally shot in car is identified

Police have identified a man found fatally shot in a car on Thanksgiving.

Officers found Aaron Taylor, 20, of Forest Heights, about 6 a.m. in the 100 block of Cree Drive after someone reported a suspicious car, according to Prince Georges County police.

Taylor was pronounced dead at the scene.

 Lynh Bui

Seat Pleasant woman pulled from house fire dies

A Seat Pleasant woman, pulled from a house fire early Friday morning, has died.

The fire broke out around 3:15 a.m. in a two-level, single-family home in the 6800 block of Wilburn Drive, Prince Georges County Fire Department spokesman Mark Brady said.

Firefighters tried to extinguish the fire as they searched for a woman reportedly trapped inside, Brady said. Firefighters found the victim, who was in her 70s, in the second level of the house.

She died at a hospital. Authorities have not released her name.

A firefighter on the scene was also hospitalized with second-degree burns.

Brady said the cause of the fire remains under investigation, though it appears to have been accidental.

 Lynh Bui
Metros Office of Inspector General has reopened an investigation into whether a MetroAccess contractor manipulated tens of thousands of trip records to make late arrivals appear on-time, masking performance lapses for the paratransit service for elderly riders and customers with disabilities.

The issue came to light in a previous OIG investigation, which found more than 100,000 MetroAccess arrival times had been modified in a computer system  and suggested the changes had been made with the knowledge of management. Contractors must pay Metro a penalty if they fail to meet certain bench marks, such as on-time performance.

Some details of the investigation were posted online in a semiannual OIG report to the Metro board in October.

According to the synopsis of the report, 115,681 late arrival times were retroactively changed to be on time over a period dating to June 2009.

OIG received allegations that a contractor was manipulating data to avoid liquidated damages, the report says. It was alleged [MetroAccess] management was aware of this activity and did nothing to hold the contractor accountable.

Investigators found sufficient evidence to present the case for prosecution, but authorities turned it down because of the amount of time that had elapsed, the summary says. The office also said some circumstances exist in which changing arrival time data may be valid.

The full report has not been publicly released and is subject to a lengthy review process by Metros general counsel.

But after a June report in The Washington Post detailed a steep decline in MetroAccess service and other problems, the inspector general obtained new information pertaining to alleged data manipulation. The office reopened the case, according to an individual with knowledge of the matter but who asked not to be identified because of the confidential nature of the investigation.

[How problems with MetroAccess have left D.C.s most vulnerable commuters stranded]

Metro Inspector General Geoff Cherrington confirmed the probe is ongoing, but he declined to comment on the case or provide details from the previously completed report. The office declined to say when or where the prior case was presented for prosecution, which contractor was suspected of changing the records or what portion of the modified records were believed to have been improperly altered.

We dont discuss open investigations, Cherrington said.

Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said the agency has taken steps to tighten controls after the concerns were raised by the OIG, including formally documenting policies and procedures, and establishing quality assurance protocols.

He said the number of records in question represents less than 0.7 percent of MetroAccess trips during the time period. More than 60 percent of the modifications occurred before summer 2011, he said.

He also explained instances in which the changing of arrival times is allowed. Circumstances include a driver failing to log their arrival via the onboard computer, data-transmission issues that prevent the driver from logging the arrival using the computer, among others, he said.

Stessel noted the OIG report doesnt specify what proportion of the more than 115,000 altered entries in question were deemed to have been improperly modified.

But the new allegations are potentially significant because the MetroAccess contract is up for bid. A memo from the agency said the bidding process for the $100 million service is expected to begin this fall and be completed no later than next summer, when the current contract expires.

The service is split among three contractors  Transdev, First Transit and Diamond Transportation  with dispatch handled by MV Transportation. MV Transportation was the service provider until 2013 and also operated dispatch through the services call center.

An MV spokeswoman said the company was unable to comment because it had not seen the full report. Transdev, which handles 50 percent of service delivery under the contract, denied any connection to the alleged manipulation.

As an operator of [Metro] paratransit services, Transdev strictly provides door-to-door transportation and care for [Metro] passengers, company spokesman Scott Hagen said. All dispatch and trip information is managed and monitored through the operations control center, which is run by another vendor reporting directly to [Metro]. Transdev does not manage, retain or submit any performance data  including on-time performance information  for [Metro] and has not done so since we began providing paratransit services for [Metro] in 2013.

First Transit and Diamond Transportation, the other service providers, declined to comment on the probe.

MetroAccess is the transit agencys fastest-growing and most expensive service per passenger. It offers shared, door-to-door trips to passengers within a three-quarter-mile radius of the rail and bus system. MetroAccess delivered roughly 2 million trips last year.

The service has been a focus for Cherrington, who previously conducted an investigation homing in on former MetroAccess service director Omari June. June was fired from the agency in August amid an OIG probe into his alleged racial and sexual harassment of a female subordinate.

[MetroAccess director fired amid probe into sexual and racial harassment]

MetroAccess service came under scrutiny in 2016 after on-time performance dropped to 83 percent from 91 percent between August and October of that year. The number of missed trips more than doubled over that period, and the number of excessively late trips  defined as more than 20 minutes after the scheduled arrival  nearly tripled, from 2,956 in August to 8,138 in October.

Users of the service, Metros most vulnerable customers, said they were subjected to circuitous routes and excessively long trips. One passenger recounted how her roundabout ride took so long that a fellow passenger soiled herself.

Contractors are subject to monetary penalties if they miss service targets. Transdev, First Transit and Diamond Transportation were fined almost $1 million each in the months following last years service slide, according to Metro. Contractors were assessed roughly $560,000 in contract damages for failure to meet performance targets over the prior decade, Stessel said, citing the OIG report on data manipulation.

Metro blamed the 2016 service slide on a worker shortage that left contractors with 10 percent fewer drivers than needed. No single contractor was determined to have been responsible for the decline. On-time performance had rebounded to 90 percent by September, according to figures on Metro's website.
T he expansion of Virginia's extensive system of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes is shifting to Interstate 395.

Construction is set to take off before the end of the year along an eight-mile stretch of Interstate 395, where todays high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes are being converted into toll lanes. The $480 million project will deliver the next major milestone in the states vision to create a network of more than 90 miles of HOT lanes in Northern Virginia by 2022.

About 45 miles of express lanes have opened on Interstates 495 and 95 within the past five years, and the state is set to open another 10 miles of HOT lanes on Interstate 66 next month.

"The goal is to move more people," Virginia Deputy Transportation Secretary Nick Donohue said at a recent meeting about the Dec. 4 launch of the I-66 toll lanes.

By growing its network of toll lanes, officials say, the state will increase the capacity of its transportation network and give drivers more options. Solo drivers, for example, who cannot currently use the HOV lanes will be able to  if they are willing to pay. Having more people in the HOT lanes will help relieve congestion in the general lanes, officials say.

The benefit, officials say, is a quicker, more reliable trip than they could get using the interstates regular lanes. Drivers who carpool will be able to continue to travel free in the HOT lanes.

All HOT lane users will need a toll transponder. A portion of the revenue will help fund highway improvements and additional transit options.

[Virginias latest experiment with toll lanes to test thousands of commuters on I-66]

The I-395 corridor spans 14 miles from the I-95/I-495 interchange and ends at New York Avenue NW in the District. The project covers only the Northern Virginia portion, which includes four northbound and four southbound general-purpose lanes, as well as two reversible HOV lanes in the middle.

Under the I-395 plan, those two reversible HOV lanes will be converted to three reversible HOT lanes without significantly affecting the overall width of the interstate. The HOV lanes operate in the northbound direction in the morning and southbound in the afternoon and night. HOV restrictions are in effect during the peak commute hours.

The lanes will change to a 24-hour toll system when the project is completed, officials say, creating an incentive for drivers who want to travel free to carpool.

Drivers in the area should expect to see construction activity pick up in the next few weeks as crews begin installing new sound walls. On-the-shoulder work will begin next year. The project also includes enhancements at the Eads Street interchange near the Pentagon to improve traffic flow.

Slated to open in fall 2019, the I-395 Express Lanes will essentially amount to an extension of the 95 Express Lanes. Those lanes stretch for 31 miles from Edsall Road in Alexandria to Garrisonville Road in Stafford County. The project will push the HOT lanes to the District line, from Turkey Cock Run near Edsall Road to the vicinity of Eads Street in Arlington.

Transurban, the company that operates the 95 and 495 HOT lanes, is overseeing construction and operation of the 395 lanes, under a contract with the state.

[Virginia is betting more people will turn to transit when I-66 tolling begins]

Replacing the HOV system on I-395 has been the states vision for more than a decade, but the plans were derailed for years, in part because of opposition from Arlington County.

Arlington came on board with the project in December 2015, but the countys concerns have lingered. Some have questioned the states decision to use a third-party concessionaire to build and operate the toll lanes, and have urged the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to partner with the District to extend the express lanes across the Potomac River and improve transit, pedestrian and bicycle accessibility on the 14th Street Bridge.

Arlington officials say that the county will closely monitor any traffic impacts and construction noise. They also disagree over how much toll revenue will actually go to fund transit projects as promised.

State transportation officials anticipate $15 million in annual dedicated funding for transit. In a county document, Arlington officials said they found the proposed annual transit allocation of $15 million to be insufficient to expand transit and other travel options in the corridor that will result in a meaningful impact on cost-effective non-auto travel in the corridor. The county has asked Virginia to guarantee that a portion of any excess revenue received from the tolls will be used to fund additional transit projects.

[Another 2 miles of Interstate 95 HOT lanes open]

The lanes will connect with the 31-mile network of reversible lanes on I-95 and with the 14 miles of HOT lanes on the Capital Beltway to the west. Nearby will be 10 miles of rush-hour, peak-direction toll lanes on I-66.

On I-66 outside the Beltway, construction is set to begin next year on a $2.3 billion expansion that will add toll lanes by 2022. That project spans 22.5 miles from the Beltway to University Boulevard in Gainesville, in Prince William County. On the southern end of the 95 Express Lanes, plans are to extend another 10 miles to Fredericksburg, also by 2022.

If you are a commuter in Northern Virginia, every day is a challenge to find the best route to get to and from work, VDOT Commissioner Charles Kilpatrick said. We have done a number of capacity projects, but the realities are we have to continue to try to find ways of moving more people.

Expanding the HOT lane system can be a game-changer for regional mobility, he said. The state estimates that the projects will help reduce congestion, provide additional travel choices for solo drivers and improve travel reliability. As with the other HOT systems, the toll will vary to control congestion and maintain an average speed of at least 45 mph. There is no cap on the toll pricing; the toll will increase as congestion rises and decrease as it lessens.

Officials say that toll revenue will provide a reliable source of funding for transportation projects.

Transportation improvements are incredibly expensive, Kilpatrick said. The revenue generated will be used to operate the facility and to make improvements in the corridor.
A 22-year-old who police say attempted to rob an Annapolis bank on Friday was arrested Saturday in North Carolina.

Gregory Klemkowski, of Annapolis, entered a Bank of America branch at 920 Bay Ridge Road shortly before 5 p.m. Friday, Annapolis police said. He reportedly handed a note demanding money to one bank employee, but the banks employees instead barricaded themselves and called police.

At about 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Klemkowski was arrested near Durham, N.C., by North Carolina Highway Patrol officers. Police said he would be extradited to Maryland to face charges of attempted bank robbery.
Kim Drew Wright is the founder of Liberal Women of Chesterfield County and Beyond, a grass-roots organization that helped deliver the Richmond suburbs to the Democratic candidate for governor for the first time since 1961. (Julia Rendleman/For The Washington Post)

In this bastion of Virginia-brand conservatism, dozens of Democratic women roared on a recent night as their organization's leader crowed over their party's historic electoral triumph.

For the first time since 1961, Chesterfield County backed a Democrat for governor  and the driving forces in this Richmond suburb included women who defiantly trumpeted a political label their party has ducked for decades.

Are we done? Kim Drew Wright asked members of the organization that she and her allies christened the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County after President Trumps election last year.

"Noooooo!" the women shouted back.

Until Gov.-elect Ralph Northam (D) won Chesterfield County three weeks ago, the stretch of suburban and rural communities southwest of Richmond had been considered reliably Republican.

Yet voters infuriated by Trump, many of them women and Hispanics who have migrated to the county in recent years, are redefining Chesterfield and alarming Virginia Republicans who have depended on the area to make up for the support the party lacks in urban areas.

The results in Chesterfield are also a potential harbinger of what looms beyond Virginia, in suburbs where anger toward Trump is motivating voters bent on defeating Republican candidates in next years midterm elections.

Thats a huge red flag for Republicans and an opportunity for Democrats, said Jesse Ferguson, a national Democratic strategist. Theres opportunity in these traditionally conservative suburbs with college-educated white voters who are unwilling to back a Republican candidate. Its a function of and proof that Trump has tainted the rest of the Republicans running for office.

Chris LaCivita, a Richmond-based GOP strategist who works on national campaigns, said Chesterfields results are a pointed reminder of the challenges Republicans face not only to remain competitive in Virginias suburbs but elsewhere.

Midterm and off-year elections are defined by whose base is more animated and engaged and right now its the Democrats, he said. Youre going to have to work harder than ever if youre a Republican in this environment.

As they sift through the remains of their Chesterfield defeat, Republicans hold onto what they describe as encouraging signs, including that Ed Gillespie, their party's losing gubernatorial candidate, got 7,000 more votes in the county than Ken Cuccinelli II, the GOP's 2013 nominee.

Yet the growth in Republican turnout was overwhelmed by the ballooning number of Democratic voters. Northam received 16,000 more votes than Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) got in the county in 2013.

View Graphic The latest stories and details on the 2017 Virginia general election and race for governor.

The Liberal Women of Chesterfield County is an example of a new breed of Democratic activism in the Richmond suburbs. The group, which says it has admitted nearly 3,000 followers to its private Facebook page, has established 13 neighborhood chapters and canvassed more than 50,000 homes in a get-out-the-vote effort. On Election Day, the group worked with the local Democratic committee to staff all 75 of the countys polling places, something that the local party on its own had previously been unable to accomplish.

Besides championing Northam and the statewide ticket, they pushed local residents running for the first time, including the first openly gay woman elected to the House of Delegates ; a mental health administrator who came within 128 votes of defeating a Republican House of Delegates incumbent; and a British-born accountant who ran her first race and is Chesterfield's newly elected commissioner of revenue.

I wouldnt have done this every day for the past year if I hadnt gotten so angry about Trump, said Wright, 46, a mother of three who observed politics from the sidelines before last years presidential election. Once you wake up and see how important local elections are, its hard to go back to the shadows and stick your head in the sand. Now we have our eye on everybody, from dogcatcher on up.

Wright and her allies insisted on including liberal in the groups name, reviving a political brand that Republicans and even some Democrats have lampooned or avoided. It was defiance, she said. My mission is to change that connotation of liberal. 

The groups next target is Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), whose district includes Chesterfield and who earlier this year complained that the women are in my grill no matter where I go  a reference to the activists who protested against efforts by Brat and other House Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Three women and a man who are LWCC members are among the six candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Brat in 2018, a group that includes a former CIA operative, an Army veteran, and a former Marine. Everybody loves to hate Brat, Wright said. Theres something about his smug little face.

Asked about the group targeting him, Brat in a statement said Northam won because Democrats nationalized the election and motivated their voters to go to the polls while Republicans did not.

Overall, when you compare the policies the liberals want and the policies I support, he said, it will be clear to voters in Chesterfield and throughout the 7th District what the better way forward is.

A half-century of GOP control

The last Democratic candidate to carry Chesterfield was former governor Albertis Harrison  56 years ago. Harrison had been the choice of Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr., the former Democratic governor who ran the states dominant political machine and led the resistance against school desegregation.

In 1965, as Byrds health was suffering his political influence was waning, A. Linwood Holton won Chesterfield  the first of 13 successive gubernatorial races in which the county voted Republican.

Nearly 30 years later, Republican dominance in the county peaked when gubernatorial candidate George Allen defeated Democrat Mary Sue Terry by more than 31,000 votes. In 1997, Republican James Gilmores margin of victory in the county was 25,000 votes.

In presidential years and in governors races, the county where Republicans had their largest margins was Chesterfield, said Bob Holsworth, a retired Virginia Commonwealth University political science professor. It was where Republicans did their best.

But the county evolved as its population mushroomed by nearly 25 percent between 2000 and 2016. While the number of whites in Chesterfield declined by 10 percent from 2000 to 2010, the percentage of blacks grew by 4 percent and Latinos more than doubled from 3 percent to more than 7 percent.

At the same time, Republicans victory margins steadily declined. In 2001, Mark R. Warner was the first Democratic gubernatorial candidate in four decades to get more than 40 percent of Chesterfields vote. By 2013, the Republicans winning margin had shrunk to eight percentage points. In 2016, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by only two percentage points in Chesterfield, setting the stage for Northam to surpass Gillespie.

I dont think this election was generally about demographics, but in Chesterfield it was, said Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. In the next 10 years, its not going to be the Chesterfield where you slap an R next to someones name and they win.

The broader question is whether Chesterfields political shift is a template for suburbs nationwide, Kidd said. The challenge for Democrats is, Can you transcend Trump?  Kidd said. A lot of this is driven by women voters, but can Democrats translate that to a more permanent voter? Or is that woman going back to voting Republican once Trump is gone?

Republicans in Chesterfield insist that the countys shift is more about Trump than any deeper bend toward the left.

Even as Gillespie lost the county, they point out that Jill Vogel, the GOPs candidate for lieutenant governor, and John Adams, the Republican running for attorney general, both carried Chesterfield, albeit by slim margins.

They both lost the statewide contests to Democrats Justin Fairfax and Mark Herring, respectively.

Adams, who was raised in Chesterfield County and still lives there, said the fact that he and Vogel carried the county but Gillespie lost should not be interpreted to contain any profound lesson.

I think its indicative of a lot of energy on the left to vote against Republican candidates but not Republican ideals, Adams said. I dont think its as monumental a shift as Democrats are claiming.

Yet Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginias Center for Politics, said the results suggest that voters rejection of Trumps brand of Republicanism is potent in suburban areas that are increasingly diverse and/or highly educated.

These results should scare them, Skelley said of Republicans inside Chesterfield and beyond.

From despair to resolve

On the night Trump won the presidency, Kim Drew Wright became so infuriated that she took a Sharpie and, on poster board, compared the Republican mogul to a slang word for the male sex organ, and added: "And so are you if you voted for him."

She then duct-taped it over the Hillary for President sign in her front yard, and was pleased when a few neighbors emailed to thank her for sharing their sentiments (she took it down the next day, afraid that kids on school buses would see her invective). A week later, Wright posted on the Clinton-inspired website Pantsuit Nation an open invitation to women to meet at a local tavern to share their angst over Trump.

Ninety people showed up.

Her hands shaking as she made her first public speech, Wright declared that she hated Trump with the white-hot passion of a billion suns. She urged everyone to connect with others and know that you are not alone.

A year later, she has a slew of new friends.

They include women such as Lynette Clements, 62, a retired computer programmer, and Sara Gaborik, 40, a criminal defense lawyer, and Becky Conner, 43, an electrical designer, all of whom help organize LWCC events, including a recent speed dating soiree at which advocates for a variety of progressive causes went table-to-table briefing the women on issues.

Jenefer Hughes, 54, a British-born accountant who was among those who attended the meeting, said Trumps election is what prodded her to join LWCC, where she heard members talk of the need to find Democrats to run for office.

Soon she found herself considering a new career path, one in which she could draw on her experience as an accountant for Fortune 500 companies.

Last week, after winning her first political race, Hughes was sworn in as Chesterfields commissioner of revenue, a $126,000-a-year post.

Id like to run for governor at some point, Hughes said in her British accent, when asked about her future political ambitions.

She insisted that she was serious.

"I didn't even know a person like me could run for office," she said. "I'm just a regular person who stood up."
CALIFORNIA

Dismembering suspect charged in killing

A homeless man found sleeping in a Kansas storage unit with his children and his dismembered wifes remains is suspected of killing a California man who vanished last year.

Justin Tod Rey, 35, was charged Wednesday in the death of Sean Ty Ferel, a Palm Springs resident who disappeared after going on vacation with Rey in 2016. Ferels body hasnt been found, but his blood was detected in the trunk of his vehicle after Rey was involved in an accident while driving it.

Rey is jailed on $1 million bond in Kansas s Johnson County on child endangerment charges. Hes also charged with abandonment of corpse in Missouri, where his wife died at a hotel. Investigators allege Rey took photographs with his wifes body and children, then dismembered the body two days later in a hotel bathtub.

A judge in Californias Riverside County also set Reys bail at $1 million. Palm Springs police said they and county prosecutors were working with Kansas authorities on extraditing Rey to face charges in the California case.

Investigators said that after Ferel went on vacation in May 2016, his friends noticed changes in responses to texts and suspected the messages were coming from someone else. That August, Rey had an accident with Ferels vehicle in Los Angeles, but it wasnt until months later that blood found in the trunk was determined to be Ferels.

Palm Springs police said Rey had Ferels cellphone, and that Ferels wallet, credit cards, letters, medication and other possessions were found in a storage unit Rey rented in Kingman, Ariz. Surveillance footage also showed Rey using Ferels credit card, according to a statement from police.

Rey hasnt been charged with killing his wife, Jessica Monteiro Rey. Missouri and Kansas court records dont say how she died, and Rey provided conflicting information: He said his wife killed herself after giving birth on Oct. 20 at a hotel, but also said she died during childbirth, according to a probable cause statement.

 Associated Press

Man postpones mission

to prove Earth is flat

A California man who planned to launch himself 1,800 feet high on Saturday in a homemade scrap-metal rocket  in an effort to prove that Earth is flat  said he is postponing the experiment since he couldnt get permission from a federal agency to do so on public land.

Instead, Mike Hughes, 61, said the launch will take place next week on private property, albeit still in Amboy, an unincorporated community in the Mojave Desert along historic Route 66.

Its still happening. Were just moving it three miles down the road, Hughes told The Washington Post on Friday. This is what happens any time you have to deal with any kind of government agency.

Hughes claimed the Bureau of Land Management said he couldnt launch his rocket as planned on Saturday in Amboy. He also claimed the federal agency had given him verbal permission more than a year ago, pending approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. Representatives from the BLM and the FAA did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

Assuming the 500-mph, mile-long flight through the Mojave Desert does not kill him, Hughes told the Associated Press, his journey into the atmosflat will mark the first phase of his ambitious flat-Earth space program.

Hughess ultimate goal is a launch that puts him miles above Earth, where the limousine driver hopes to photograph proof of the disc we all live on.

 Amy B Wang and Avi Selk
In Unrest, Jennifer Brea turns the camera on herself to document the treatment of people with chronic fatigue syndrome. ( / Jason Frank Rothenberg)

Jennifer Brea wasnt supposed to break down. But in 2011, her body did just that. The 28-year-old was on the verge of a Harvard PhD and a wedding, but a series of viral infections transformed her from an energetic young woman to a bedridden patient with a mystery illness.

Desperate to escape the pain, exhaustion and loss of muscle control that bound her to her bed, Brea visited a long list of medical specialists  many of whom questioned whether she was sick at all.

In reality, Brea has myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME. Also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, the condition can mystify health-care providers and disable patients. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up to 2.5 million Americans suffer from the illness, 90 percent of them undiagnosed.

"Unrest," Brea's intensely personal documentary about her journey through ME, asks why physicians still know so little about the disease. The film delves into Brea's ordeal, her marriage and the lives of others whose health was stolen by a condition that can strip a person of dignity, mobility and hope for the future.

More women have ME than men, and Breas experience fighting for recognition from her doctors is central to the films narrative. Her documentary is a testimony not just to the terrors of ME but also to the struggles that women often face when relaying information about their own bodies to medical providers.

ME can keep patients painfully separate from their everyday lives and loved ones. Unrest breaks through a bit of that isolation and offers a sometimes heartbreaking look at what it takes to survive a poorly understood disease.

Brea, who directed the film largely from her bed, received a Special Jury Award from the Sundance Film Festival for her documentary. Its available for rental and purchase on streaming services including Vudu, Google Play and iTunes, and in select screenings at theaters worldwide.

Read more

How chronic fatigue has taught me to ask for help

With his son terribly ill, a top scientist takes on chronic fatigue syndrome

How the definition of chronic fatigue syndrome keeps changing
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 13:47:58|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

A sit-in protestor is arrested by police during an operation against the activists of a religious group in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, on Nov. 25, 2017. Pakistani police on Saturday morning began to carry out operation against the activists of a religious group, who launched a sit-in protest that blocked the main highway to the capital Islamabad for 20 days. (Xinhua/Liu Tian)

ISLAMABAD, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani police on Saturday morning began to carry out operation against the activists of a religious group, who launched a sit-in protest that blocked the main highway to the capital Islamabad for 20 days.

The Islamabad police and Frontier Constabulary (FC), a force which is deployed for the security of Islamabad, launched the operation Saturday morning after the last warning to the protesters issued late Friday to disperse.

Nearly 20 people, both the law enforcement agencies and the protesters, were injured during the clashes and were brought to a main hospital in Islamabad.

Witnesses said that the protesters initially resisted the police action and pelted stones at the raiding parties. The police used tear gas shells to disperse the protesters. The law enforcement agencies arrested dozens of protesters.

Supreme Court of Pakistan and the Islamabad High Court had issued orders to the government to disperse the protesters as the sit-in had disturbed the lives of the hundreds of thousands of the people in Islamabad and the nearby Rawalpindi.

According to local reports, roughly 2,000 protestors were in the sit-in site of Faizabad since Nov. 8, and about 8,500 police and FC forces were deployed at the place for the operation.

Security forces have surrounded the protesters from all sides and fired tear gas shells and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters. In response, the protesters throw stones at the security forces.

The operation against the protesters is still underway.
Antidepressants are taken by millions of Americans each year. (R. David Duncan III/Lynchburg News & Advance via Associated Press)

Depression afflicts an estimated 16 million Americans every year, many of whom go to their doctors in despair, embarking on an often stressful process about what to do next. These visits may entail filling out forms with screening questions about symptoms such as mood changes and difficulty sleeping. Doctors may ask patients to share intimate details about such issues as marital conflicts and suicidal urges. Some patients may be referred to mental-health specialists for further examination.

Once diagnosed with depression, patients frequently face the question: Are you interested in therapy, medications or both?

As a resident physician in psychiatry, Ive seen many patients grapple with this question; the most frequent answer Ive heard from patients is Im not sure. Deciding between different types of medical treatment can be challenging, especially amid the fog of depression. Moreover, patients rely on doctors to help guide them, and were often not sure ourselves which is the best approach for a specific patient.

People commonly associate psychotherapy with Freud and couches, but newer, evidence-based treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy have become prominent in the field. CBT helps patients develop strategies to address harmful thoughts, emotions and behaviors that may contribute to depression.

There are many proposed explanations for how specific psychotherapies treat depression. These possibilities include giving patients social support and teaching coping skills, and researchers are using neuroimaging to study how these treatments affect depressed patients' brains.

Antidepressant medications are thought to work by changing chemical signaling in our brains. For example, one class of commonly used drugs  selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors  is designed to alter levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. These antidepressants may be effective for treating depression in some patients, but the neurochemistry of depression remains poorly understood, and we're still not entirely sure how these drugs alleviate depressive symptoms.

A number of recent studies highlight the uncertainty involved with these treatment decisions. Researchers have dedicated considerable effort to studying the relative effectiveness between psychotherapies and antidepressants, frequently without finding much difference. For instance, a study published in 2012 reviewed data from more than 100 prior trials and included more than 10,000 patients; although psychotherapies and antidepressants each worked better than placebo in blinded trials at reducing depressive symptoms, neither of these treatments was more effective than the other. Furthermore, psychotherapies and antidepressants did no better overall than alternative therapies such as exercise.

In 2014, research presented at the European Congress of Psychiatry suggested that CBT was just as good as, if not better than, antidepressants for the acute treatment of depression. A 2015 systematic review of randomized trials similarly found that antidepressants were no better than CBT across multiple measures for managing depression. And this year, a meta-analysis looking at dozens of studies found psychotherapies and medications were fairly alike at improving quality of life and functioning in people with depression.

If psychotherapy and medication are both used to treat depression, could using them together work even better?

This is a valid question, and one often brought up by patients. But the efficacy of combining these treatments is controversial in medical circles: Studies have come to different conclusions about it. As a result, many patients still receive one or the other first.

In 2016, the American College of Physicians released guidelines about using antidepressants as opposed to non-pharmacologic therapies for depression. After reviewing decades of evidence, a committee concluded that CBT and newer-generation antidepressants are "similarly effective treatments" for adults with major depression. The guidelines recommend that "clinicians select between either cognitive behavioral therapy or second-generation antidepressants" for treating patients with depression.

The authors of these guidelines also raise an important point: Doctors commonly turn first to antidepressants when treating patients with depression, even though evidence suggests alternate therapies are just as effective. The medications can also have side effects including nausea and vomiting as well as dangerous interactions with other drugs.

Antidepressants rank among the top-prescribed types of medications in the United States, and surveys suggest that more than 250 million antidepressant prescriptions are filled annually nationwide. A 2015 JAMA study found that 13 percent of American adults took antidepressants in 2012, a figure that nearly doubled since 1999.

Does this mean antidepressants are overprescribed?

It depends on how you interpret the question. Antidepressant use has risen considerably in recent years, while psychotherapy use appears to be stable or declining, because these treatments are often equally effective in managing depression, this might suggest we're relying more on these drugs.

Some patients may prefer to take medications for depression. Many people do not have the time to participate in psychotherapies like CBT or psychodynamic therapy  a type of talk therapy that explores the interplay between unconscious feelings and distressing symptoms  which can span multiple hour-long sessions over months. Others may not have access to mental-health specialists who can provide appropriate therapy. Then there are patients who would rather take a pill in the comfort of their own home, instead of opening up about intimate experiences in a doctors office.

The structure of our health-care system may also be a factor. Higher insurance reimbursements for medications rather than psychotherapies may make physicians quicker to pull out the prescription pad. The crunched time and administrative burdens of today's medical practice can lead to pressured patient visits that are more conducive to quick check-ins and pills than to in-depth conversations.

Patients should be aware that there are treatment options in addition to therapy and medication. Several studies have shown that exercise may be helpful in managing mild to moderate depression. For patients with more severe depression, transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroconvulsive therapy  approaches that use brief electric currents to influence brain activity  can be lifesaving treatments.

As the ACP guidelines recommend, providers should discuss treatment effects, adverse effect profiles, cost, accessibility, and preferences with the patient when treating depression. But in todays hurried medical environment, completing that task in a thorough and comprehensive manner can often be difficult, if not impossible.

Researchers are developing tools including brain imaging and genetic testing to help guide this decision-making. Such individualized treatment has long been sought in mental-health care.

These technologies have shown promise, but they remain far from standard clinical practice. And adding more tests to doctors visits may ignore the central issue when treating depression: Do we have enough time to truly talk with our patients about their options?

Morris is a resident physician in psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

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IRELAND

Government set to fall before Brexit summit

Irelands minority government looked set to collapse within days Friday after the party propping it up submitted a motion of no confidence in the deputy prime minister, weeks before a summit on Britains plans to leave the European Union.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that if the motion was not withdrawn by Tuesday, he would be forced to hold an election before Christmas, a prospect E.U. officials say would complicate a key summit Dec. 14-15 on Brexit.

What that would mean is me throwing a good woman under the bus to save myself and my own government, and that would be the wrong thing to do, Varadkar told national broadcaster RTE, dismissing demands for his deputy, Frances Fitzgerald, to quit.

Varadkar is due to play a major role in the Brexit talks, telling E.U. leaders whether Ireland believes sufficient progress has been made on the future border between E.U.-member Ireland and Britains province of Northern Ireland.

 Reuters

POLAND

Lawmakers back bills on replacing judges

Polands ruling party lawmakers gave initial approval Friday to two bills allowing Parliament and the president to replace top judges, plans the opposition and the European Commission denounced as a threat to the rule of law.

Once approved and signed by the president, the bills would probably deepen the right-wing governments standoff with the E.U., potentially reducing E.U. development funds for Poland.

Law and Justice (PiS) party deputies sent the bills authored by President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, to parliamentary committees after Duda vetoed PiS-sponsored bills in July that would have given the justice minister extensive powers over judges.

Several thousand people in more than 100 cities protested the bills in July and again Friday night, although the demonstrations Friday fell short of the mass summer rallies.

 Reuters

MEXICO

Rights official seized; 2nd attack in a week

Assailants kidnapped an official of the human rights office of the western Mexico state of Jalisco, in the second attack on a rights worker in one week.

The National Human Rights Commission called on authorities to find the Jalisco official, who was not named.

Local media said gunmen stopped the official Friday when he was driving to the offices of the state rights commission and apparently abducted him

On Monday, gunmen in Baja California Sur state killed the head of that states human rights commission, Silvestre de la Toba Camacho, and his son.

 Associated Press

Istanbul district bans LGBT event: A Turkish district governorship in Istanbul banned a film screening event Friday related to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, the day before it was due to start, citing risks to public safety. After the announcement, a statement from the venue where the film and interviews were to take place said they had been postponed. Last week, the Turkish capital, Ankara, banned the public showing of films and exhibitions related to LGBT issues until further notice.

Algeria's ruling parties retain majority : The ruling parties in Algeria took more than 50 percent of the vote in local elections, retaining their majority, the interior minister said Friday. Turnout in Thursday's vote reached 46.83 percent, slightly up from 42.92 percent in 2012, Minister Noureddine Bedoui told reporters. The elections come amid continuing questions over the health of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in power since 1999 and has made only rare appearances since suffering a stroke in 2013.

Autopsy of protester shows he drowned: Authorities in Argentina say that an activist who was found dead in a river drowned and that they are ruling out foul play. The forensic medical board said Friday that Santiago Maldonado died from "asphyxia after being submerged" along with hypothermia. Maldonado's family has said that border police killed him.

 From news services
PAKISTAN

Protests break out across the country

Protests erupted across Pakistan on Saturday, compelling the government to call out army troops and paramilitary rangers to restore order in cities and towns filled with angry crowds.

The nationwide protests developed after security forces in the capital launched a crackdown on thousands of religious demonstrators. Conflict began when police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators who were camped on a highway interchange outside Islamabad and fought back with clubs and stones. Hundreds of injuries were reported, and at least two people were killed, according to accounts.

The demonstrators had initially called for a federal minister to be fired over a religious controversy, but by midday, many protesters were demanding that the entire government step down. By evening, police had retreated and the protesters had regrouped, with more supporters joining them.

The confrontation came four months after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was ousted by the Supreme Court, leaving the country in the hands of a caretaker prime minister and cabinet from Sharifs party.

 Pamela Constable

LEBANON

Hariri takes hard line against Hezbollah

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri says he wont accept Iran-backed Hezbollahs positions that affect our Arab brothers or target the security and stability of their countries. The statement from his press office did not specify which countries he meant.

Hezbollah is fighting alongside forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Persian Gulf monarchies have accused the Shiite group of also supporting the Houthi group in Yemen and of backing militants in Bahrain. Hezbollah denies any activity in Yemen or Bahrain.

Hariri announced his resignation from his post on Nov. 4 in a televised statement from Saudi Arabia. After returning to Lebanon, Hariri shelved the resignation.

 Reuters

U.S. demands that Mumbai attack suspect be arrested: The White House said there will be repercussions for U.S.-Pakistani relations unless Islamabad takes action to detain and charge a newly freed Islamist accused of masterminding a 2008 assault in Mumbai. A Pakistani court ordered the release of Hafiz Saeed, who was put under house arrest in January. The White House on Saturday urged Pakistan to arrest Saeed, calling for him to be prosecuted over the Mumbai attack, which killed 166 people, including Americans.

Bangladesh, Burma agree to accept U.N. Rohingya relief: Bangladesh and Burma have agreed to take help from the United Nations' refugee agency to safely repatriate hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who had fled violence in Burma. More than 600,000 Rohingya sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after the military in mostly Buddhist Burma launched a brutal counterinsurgency operation following attacks by Rohingya militants on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25.

Merkel opposes new elections in Germany: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she is opposed to new elections as her party struggles to cobble together a ruling coalition. "I am absolutely not convinced that, if we can do nothing with the result, we should ask people to vote again," the center-right Christian Democratic Union leader said at a party conference. Electoral losses in September forced Merkel's conservative bloc to attempt to build a national coalition, but those talks collapsed last week.

Zimbabwe's finance minister appears in court: In the wake of Robert Mugabe's resignation, Zimbabwe's finance minister appeared in court to face corruption charges that some observers believe are politically motivated. Ignatius Chombo says he was illegally detained for more than 48 hours during the military takeover that led to Mugabe's resignation from the presidency. Chombo disputes the corruption allegations, saying some date back decades.

Macron touts French initiative against violence: French President Emmanuel Macron has launched an initiative to combat violence and harassment against women in France, aiming to erase a sense of shame that breeds silence among victims and changing the country's "sexist culture." In a speech marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Macron noted that 123 women died in attacks against them in France last year. "It is time for shame to change camps," Macron said.

 From news services
Psychoanalyst Joseph Burgo has proposed that the proper punishment for sexual harassers is public humiliation ["Why we should humiliate harassers," Outlook, Nov. 19]. Nowhere in Mr. Burgo's argument was a mention of first establishing the facts of an accusation of sexual harassment. The limitations of the strategy of public humiliation were on display three years ago at the University of Virginia. After an article appeared in Rolling Stone magazine alleging a gang rape at a fraternity house, the accusation was spray-painted onto the outside of the house for the world to see. Unfortunately for the spray-painting vandals, the accusation proved to be false, as often occurs with mob justice. Puritan-era America was rife with public humiliation in the form of pillories and ducking stools, but even in those cases, the accused went through a formal judicial process. Even if a man is duly convicted of harassment, should he then be forced to wear a large, red letter H (harasser), like Hester Prynne's A, for the rest of his life? We are in the midst of a hysteria about sexual transgressions, but if we lose our heads, we also lose our enlightened system of laws, in which a person is considered innocent until proven guilty and in which the punishment is commensurate with the crime.

Paul Rood, Silver Spring

I was a bit disappointed in the Nov. 19 Business article "Why training doesn't stop sexual harassment." Its principal explanation seemed to be that employers do such training to protect themselves legally, not actually to protect employees. True enough, I'm sure.

However, as a long-term trainer myself, I believe that training serves to teach people how to do something they want or need to do  it teaches skills  but it does not change basic motives and desires. Anti-corruption training doesnt really change peoples greed or need, and anti-harassment training probably doesnt change mens desire for sexual power over women either. Why do we think training can change basic character? Training is not a panacea. Raising boys to be decent might be.

Abby Thomas, Silver Spring
CHINESE PRESIDENT Xi Jinping offered 14 "fundamental principles" behind the new doctrine of "Xi Jinping Thought" unveiled at the recent 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Among them, according to the official Xinhua news service, was "ensuring every dimension of governance is law-based." In a democratic society, rule of law is essential and means no one is above the law. In the Chinese approach, rule of law means the Communist Party holds the upper hand and crushes individuals who dare to question its monopoly on power.

On Nov. 21, Jiang Tianyong, a prominent human rights lawyer and activist became the latest individual to be crushed under the Chinese steamroller of surveillance, coercion and repression. Mr. Jiang was convicted in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, of subversion of state power, a charge often used to silence critics of the party. He was sentenced to two years in prison. The court's indictment said he had "speculated" on politically sensitive cases, "incited others to illegally gather in public places" and "stirred up" public opinion, as well as "seriously harmed state security and social stability" by "attacking and slandering the current political system, and attempting to overthrow the socialist system." Mr. Jiang's crimes were no more than words, but in today's China, words can be trouble. His friends and family say he published articles, gave interviews to foreign journalists and criticized the government. He also generously defended human rights activists, including Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer-advocate who was punished for helping his fellow citizens fight for their rights.

Mr. Jiang was known for being careful, cognizant of the limits and navigating within them. However, over the past two years, the authorities have waged a relentless and dirty campaign  known as the 709 crackdown, for the date it began in 2015  against more than 200 human rights lawyers. They have been detained, tortured, coerced into confessions, subjected to show trials, convicted and incarcerated.

To not just round up dissidents but stalk their lawyers, too, is a harsh tactic, to be sure. But it has failed to squelch dissent; even as they grow more single-minded, China's leaders can't or won't grasp the simple fact that dissent is not a passing whim to be eradicated by more police and arrests. It is a profound and enduring response to tyranny. Mr. Jiang was described as the "soul of the 709 rescue effort" by Chinese rights lawyer Xie Yanyi, and there will be more souls to follow in his footsteps.

Mr. Xi declared in his report at the party congress that China would "take center stage in the world." He may shoulder his way onto that stage. But as long as he practices rule by fear and force, he will earn little respect in the spotlight.
Deputy editorial page editor

"I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed," Jonathan Swift observed. That was three centuries ago, so our current, degraded condition has deep historical roots. Yet it feels, more and more, that we are experiencing the end of shame.

Our sad national trajectory has been on display recently with two oddly connected stories: Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore and the tax bill. They share a common thread in President Trump, but their significance goes beyond the president. Trump surely helped fuel the end of shame, but just as surely we were already on that degraded path.

No one who has watched Moore expected that reports of how he allegedly preyed on young girls would provoke shame from the egocentric, already discredited judge. Moore has long proved  with his flagrant disregard for constitutional values, his homophobia and racism  that he is impervious to such feelings.

The open question involved Moore's true-believing supporters and political allies of convenience: At long last, had they any decency? For some, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and most of his colleagues, the answer has been a welcome yes. Others, most prominently Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) and, inevitably, Trump, have failed what should have been an easy test. To conclude that electing an accused child molester to the Senate is preferable to seating a Democrat is the epitome of shamelessness.

We know this from the president's own team. "There's no Senate seat more important than the issue of child pedophilia," said White House legislative affairs director Marc Short, in the that-was-then world of mid-November. "There is a special place in hell for people who prey on children," said Ivanka Trump, adding, "I have no reason to doubt the victims' accounts."

Neither did Ivey, who made her priorities clear, with no evident distress. "I have no reason to disbelieve them," she said of the women accusing Moore. And yet: "Most important, we need to have a Republican in the United States Senate to vote on things like Supreme Court justices." Pardon the gender bias, but there is a special place in hell for female politicians who make this ugly calculation.

With plenty of room for Trump & Co. The White House line on Moore has descended from "if/then" to "let the voters of Alabama decide" to "we need the seat." Adviser Kellyanne Conway, who had once touted the no-Senate-seat-more-important line, found something even more important than defeating an accused child molester: "I'm telling you that we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through."

And the president, for whom shamelessness has proven a potent tactic, pronounced himself persuaded by Moore's similarly blatant approach: "He totally denies it." But the more instructive moment came with Trump's very first public words on the Moore reports: "I can tell you one thing for sure. We don't need a liberal person in there, a Democrat." Morality is a luxury with a 52-vote Senate majority. Shame is a millstone, or would be if Trump were capable of it.

Which brings us to the tax bill, and Trump's budget director, Mick Mulvaney. The shameful part of the tax bill  shameful in the sense that it heralds the end of shame, not that it is morally deficient, although that too  is not that the former South Carolina congressman once styled himself a deficit hawk and now is pushing a measure projected to add at least $1.5 trillion to the debt over 10 years.

The shameful part is not that the bill is so studded with gimmicks that the real cost is more like $2.2 trillion. It's not that the Mulvaneys of the world have managed to convince themselves of supply-side gobbledygook in which tax cuts pay for themselves.

What is truly stunning is Mulvaney's brazen willingness to admit that the price tag is phony  specifically the notion that individual tax cuts will expire. Mulvaney, making the rounds of the Sunday shows, felt no need to dissemble. "One of the ways to game the system is to make things expire . . . a lot of this is a gimmick," he told NBC. And, on CNN, "It's simply trying to essentially manipulate the numbers and game the system." In other words, we're lying to you to ram this through, and we're not even going to bother to hide it.

If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, what does it say, exactly, when our most senior public officials feel no such compunction? What does it mean if we lose Swifts capacity to wonder at the absence of shame?

Read more from Ruth Marcus's archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.
Donald Trump, at 70, was the oldest person at the start of his presidency; Theodore Roosevelt, 42 when he was sworn in, was the youngest. (Jabin Botsford/Brown Brothers/The Washington Post; Associated Press)

Columnist

George Washington was 43 when the Continental Congress placed him in command of the fledgling army that would eventually drive the British out of their American colonies. At 55, the general presided over the fractious convention that produced the most durable constitution the world has ever seen. He then served two terms as the nations first president, leaving office for the last time at 65.

Abraham Lincoln moved into the White House shortly after his 52nd birthday and guided the nation through a terrible civil war. Along the way, he ended slavery, started the Transcontinental Railroad, expanded higher education and delivered two of the most eloquent speeches in human history. When he was assassinated on April 14, 1865, he was 56.

Theodore Roosevelt, governor of New York at 40, was persuaded to run for vice president after just a year in office. When an assassin cut down William McKinley, Roosevelt became president at 42. His vigorous and effective leadership was the sun at the dawn of the American Century. He left office at 50.

A distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was 51 when he became president after crippling polio delayed his career. FDR led the United States through two of its darkest crises, the Great Depression and World War II. He died in office at 63.

Presidential historians typically rank those four as the greatest to occupy the White House. Runners-up often include Harry S. Truman, who took office at 60; Dwight D. Eisenhower, 62; Thomas Jefferson, 57; and John F. Kennedy, 43.

If our four best presidents entered office at an average age of 50, why am I reading about potential candidates for 2020 who will be in their 70s? Former vice president Joe Biden says he is thinking about making a run. If he won, he would take office at 78. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been touted as a front-runner for the Democratic nomination. He would be 79. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) beams as throngs of Democrats chant her name. If she runs and wins, she would take the oath at 71.

Until Donald Trump came along, the United States had never sent a septuagenarian to occupy the Oval Office. (We did keep one there in 1984, when Ronald Reagan was reelected at 73.) We've sworn in more than twice as many presidents under the age of 50 as over the age of 65. That serious people are discussing candidates who would be pushing 80 is unprecedented  and sclerotic for our political system.

My point is not to disparage the elderly, for I am rapidly becoming one myself. But no thriving society finds its fresh thinking among its oldest leaders. The wisdom of years is a check, not an engine. Though age takes its toll in different ways on different people, in the aggregate the science is clear: Mental agility, executive function and creativity all tend to decline as we pass through middle age. A nice summary of the research, published by the distinguished Dana Foundation, noted: "Older adults tend to be slower in conceptualizing and less ready to change strategies when circumstances shift."

Studies have found that the brain reaches its peak processing power by age 20. (Other mental peaks come as late as 40 or beyond.) This youthful period of high performance is associated with creative lightning bolts: the physics of Einstein, the poetry of Keats, the music of Lennon and McCartney.

Admittedly, leadership is not a simple matter of speedy thinking. It also requires enough knowledge and experience to make wise decisions, as well as the savvy to read people and situations. For the gifted leader, though, a little experience goes a long way. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was only 39 when he was murdered, younger than any U.S. president. Yet few could match his ability to inspire, to frame the debate, to match strategy with tactics, to seize the moment and to hold coalitions together.

Indeed, a point arrives for most of us when additional experience no longer produces better decisions. Our brains seem to filter out information that doesn't fit neatly into our existing worldviews. In problem solving, University of Arizona brain researcher Elizabeth Glisky has written, older humans "tend to rely more on prior knowledge about the problem domain and less on new information."

Which might explain how a president in the 21st century could think that coal mining is a key to America's future.

Rapidly changing modes of living and working call for leaders at the peak of their creative and conceptual powers. And decisions that will shape lives long after the baby boomers are gone should not be made by boomers and their older siblings. Were passing a lot of red ink and unsolved problems to the next generation. We should pass the torch, too.

Read more from David Von Drehle's archive.
IMPULSIVE, BOMBASTIC and prone to grudges, President Trump has stirred serious questions in the minds of many Americans about the command and control of nuclear weapons. Mr. Trump has already threatened North Korea with "fire and fury like the world has never seen." Could he really do it? Are there restraints? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) deserves credit for airing this timely concern in a hearing this month, the first of its kind since 1976.

Naturally, the questions are being driven by Mr. Trumps personality and might not have been raised had someone else been elected president. But the fact is that Mr. Trump sits in the Oval Office and holds the power to launch nuclear weapons, and an understanding of how that works is important.

Start with a key distinction between today and the Cold War. During the long confrontation with the Soviet Union, both sides threatened each other with nuclear-armed missiles that could hit the other in 30 minutes. Both nations built elaborate command-and-control systems to enable a rapid response to attack. The threat of certain and rapid retaliation  the cocked-pistols standoff  was intended to deter war. To effectively deter, it had to be credible. In the United States, the president was, and is, the sole decider. He carries a card to authenticate his authority, and in the event of an emergency attack on the United States, with the help of military aides, he would have to make excruciating decisions in just minutes: whether the nation is under attack, how to retaliate, what targets to aim at, what weapons to launch. Ground-based missiles can be launched within about four minutes of the president's order, sea-based within 12 minutes or so. Obviously, in such an emergency, there is no time for a Cabinet meeting or consultation with Congress. This system still exists.

But the anxiety felt by most Americans is largely not about the Cold War scenario. Rather, it is about a nuclear conflict in today's world of second-tier nuclear powers, particularly North Korea, run by another bombastic leader, which has conducted six nuclear tests over 11 years and is working on long-range missiles to deliver nuclear warheads. The worry is that any kind of conflict  perhaps a war started with nonnuclear forces, or a sudden missile launch, or a misunderstanding  might prompt the impulsive Mr. Trump to demand a nuclear strike. In this scenario, as with the Cold War attack, Mr. Trump's authority at the apex of the command-and-control pyramid is not in doubt. But there are restraints.

Most likely, there would be somewhat more time for deliberation, a window for others to scrutinize and possibly dispute or delay a nuclear launch order. Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists obtained 2012 U.S. strategic war plans under the Freedom of Information Act that clearly state that strike options and execution must pass muster under domestic and international law and that any weapon use "must comply" with requirements of the Law of Armed Conflict: "military necessity, avoidance of unnecessary suffering, proportionality and discrimination or distinction." The former head of U.S. Strategic Command, retired Air Force Gen. C. Robert Kehler, testified that the U.S. military does not blindly follow orders and would question  and check  whether an order to launch nuclear weapons was legal. The Senate panel was also reminded that the system is made of people, processes, checks and controls and is not automatic. Furthermore, when it comes to fighting wars in general, Congress shares authority with the chief executive, and that authority might be exercised more clearly in a nuclear use decision not taken under emergency conditions.

Still, there are disturbing gray zones. What if conventional war breaks out, say, on the Korean Peninsula, Congress gives approval to defend U.S. allies South Korea and Japan, casualties soar and Mr. Trump wants to use a nuclear weapon in the hope that it would quickly end the conflict? He might argue that a low-yield nuclear weapon aimed at a remote North Korean weapons target is proportionate, militarily necessary and able to halt further suffering. What is to stop a president then? The boundary between conventional and nuclear war could be very blurry, as it was in Europe during the Cold War. These questions bear further scrutiny.

Mr. Trump's personality does not seem likely to change. But there is one area where he could make the world safer: the Cold War procedure, in effect in the United States and Russia, of keeping land- and sea-based nuclear missiles on launch-ready alert. This is a holdover from the era of mutual assured destruction that could be modified in tandem by the United States and Russia, a smart, pragmatic move to ease off the hair-trigger alerts, which pose a threat of miscalculation and catastrophe. The nuclear weapons would still retain their awesome destructive power; they would remain a potent deterrent. But giving a leader more than mere minutes to decide whether to launch them in a crisis seems to be a wise step that Mr. Trump, who carries that nuclear weapons authentication card around with him, can surely appreciate.
Columnist

Last Tuesday was the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the demonstration that turned into a revolution in Ukraine. To mark the occasion, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko visited the Maidan, the central square where much of the drama played out back in late 2013 and early 2014. Together with the prime minister and the speaker of parliament, he and his wife laid flowers beside the monument to dozens of people who were murdered by police sharpshooters at the climax of the revolution, just before Poroshenko's predecessor fled the country. Since then, many thousands more have died in fighting in the east.

I was in Kiev that morning, and couldn't help but note the occasion, not least because the president's appearance caused a spectacular traffic jam in the center of the city. Meetings had to be rearranged, new locations found. I heard several loud complaints  and in a certain sense, this was good news. In 2014, many feared that the Russian invasion that followed the Maidan revolution would end with the occupation of Kiev. Instead, the Ukrainian capital in 2017 has really, really bad traffic. That's a far better outcome. Incomparably better. Unless you're a bus driver, in which case the situation is catastrophic.

Perhaps that's a trivial example, but right now, any conversation about Ukraine is like that. In the course of 10 minutes, you hear a wide range of perspectives, from optimism, pessimism and pride in the revolution to anger at the things that don't work. The assessment depends on who is talking, and, more importantly, what that person's expectations were four years ago. In her new book, "The Ukrainian Night," Marci Shore has described how the Maidan revolution genuinely transformed the lives of many of those who participated in it. Forced, suddenly, to make existential decisions, ordinary Ukrainians risked their lives to protest an unjust government, against corruption, against autocracy and in favor of a different, "European" future.

Facebook likes dont count! was the original call to protest. In subsequent months, some volunteered to fight against the Russian invasion  to raise money for soldiers and equipment. It was a moment one described as the end of ambivalence. And it explains why, four years later, so many who entered the government, joined the parliament or campaigned to change their country are disappointed.

To be absolutely clear: Ukraine's current leadership has achieved more in the past four years than all of the country's previous post-Soviet leaders achieved over two decades. Under Poroshenko's leadership, the country has passed laws on banking reform, health-care reform and, most controversially, gas-sector reform (the gas sector having been, hitherto, the most important source of large-scale corruption). The country has instituted a widely praised electronic procurement system designed to eliminate corruption, too.

After a long, disastrous recession, growth is finally picking up, with a lot of activity in the tech industry. There are efforts, stronger in some places than in others, to radically alter the operations of higher education. At Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, an ancient university re-founded in 1991, students study everything from computer science to history to finance. I asked the rector what percentage of the student body speaks some English. All of them, he told me.

These changes have taken place against the backdrop of an ongoing conflict that seems to grow stranger and more pointless with time. Just this week, a coup d'etat replaced the "government" of one of the tiny, Russian-backed mini-states created by "rebels" in eastern Ukraine. A series of mysterious assassinations and thousands of cyberattacks on everything from private companies to the public electricity grid are also features of the hybrid war. Ousted Ukrainian oligarchs wage information campaigns against the government from both inside and outside the country.

But anti-corruption activists and opposition politicians aren't satisfied, either with that list of achievements or with the argument that extraordinary obstacles have prevented faster change. They want their leaders to break more loudly and clearly with the past. They want anti-corruption institutions that result in actual convictions. They want an end to infighting between different law enforcement agencies. They complain that the interior police, falling into bad habits, still harass opponents.

A lot of things have been started, one member of parliament told me. But we dont have the feeling that they are irreversible. Maybe this generation of Ukrainian reformers are impatient, but maybe they have a right to be. If you have absolutely changed your entire life for your country, then its no wonder you want your country to change absolutely, too.

Read more from Anne Applebaum's archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.


White House senior adviser Jared Kushner listens as President Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Nov. 1. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

A month ago, Jared Kushner  President Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser  made a surprise trip to Riyadh to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the son of a world leader who is making waves with crackdowns and modernization efforts.

Kushner, 36, flew commercial, and the White House only announced the visit once he was already on the ground. There were no news releases touting the specifics of his meetings, which included two days of one-on-one and small private audiences with Salman, 32. White House officials said the trip was part of Kushners effort as Trumps adviser to build regional support for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Just days after Kushner landed back in Washington, Salman launched a purge of allegedly corrupt Saudi officials also seen as rivals to the prince and his father, King Salman. Kushner had no knowledge or advance warning of the move, and the topic was not natural for the two to discuss, a White House official close to him said. "Jared's portfolio is Israeli-Palestinian peace, and he respects what his lane is," the official said.

The journey revealed Kushner as a figure who seems both near the center of power and increasingly marginalized at the same time. His once-sprawling White House portfolio, which came with walk-in privileges to the Oval Office, has been diminished to its original scope under Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, and he has notably receded from public view.

His still-evolving role in the investigations of Russian election interference and possible obstruction of justice also make him a potential risk to President Trump, even as he enjoys the special status of being married to the bosss daughter, Ivanka, and serving as one of the presidents senior confidants. Kushners family faces additional pressures over a troubled New York skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave., which he purchased in his role as head of his familys real estate business but from which he has divested since entering the administration.

[Kushner redevelopment plan for 666 Fifth Ave. deemed not feasible by partner]

In a rare interview in his West Wing office earlier this month  a silver bowl of Halloween candy still on the table  Kushner offered his own version of the fable of the fox, who knows many things, and the hedgehog, who knows one important thing.

During the campaign, I was more like a fox than a hedgehog. I was more of a generalist having to learn about and master a lot of skills quickly, he said. When I got to D.C., I came with an understanding that the problems here are so complex  and if they were easy problems, they would have been fixed before  and so I became more like the hedgehog, where it was more taking issues you care deeply about, going deep and devoting the time, energy and resources to trying to drive change.

This portrait of Kushner comes from interviews with Kushner himself, as well as 12 senior administration officials, aides, outside advisers and confidants, some of them speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a more candid assessment.



Kushner arrives before Trump and Singapores Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong speak at a news conference in the Rose Garden at the White House on Oct. 23. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Allies say Kushners subtle shift into the background of the West Wing reflects his natural inclination to work hard and eschew the limelight. His enemies gloat that it stems from avoidable missteps that resulted from his political naivete.

Following recent reports, which the White House denied, that the president privately blames Kushner for special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs widening probe, Breitbart, the conservative website, snarkily dubbed him Mr. Perfect. The nickname originated from promotional material Kushners own family used, when trying to lure Chinese investors to their New Jersey real estate projects.

Some aides scoff at the notion that Kushner isnt still whispering to the president about official business. But one of Kellys conditions for taking the job was that everyone, including Kushner and his wife, had to go through him to reach the president, and Kelly has made clear that Kushner reports to him, aides said.

The new hierarchy is part of Kellys effort to sideline Kushner, said one Republican in frequent contact with the White House. Others say the order Kelly imposed has simply liberated Kushner to focus on his own portfolio  and eased some of the animosity his colleagues felt toward him.

[Enforcer or choke point? Kelly seeks to bring order to chaotic White House]

Kushner said he welcomes the change. The order allows this place to function, Kushner said. My number one priority is a high-functioning White House because I believe in the presidents agenda, and I think it should get executed.

He still maintains the broad portfolio he took on at the beginning of the administration that made him a punchline among aides on Capitol Hill: peace in the Middle East; matters regarding Canada, Mexico and China; and the Office of American Innovation, an in-house group that focuses on tackling longer-term government challenges.

He attends meetings of his innovation group once a week, often on a Tuesday or Wednesday for an hour-long check-in and progress update. The innovation office launched with great fanfare in March, but some aides recently said they could not pinpoint exactly what it has accomplished.



Ivanka Trump and husband Kushner listen as Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Oct. 16. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Kushner and his allies reject that assessment, saying the office is focused on long-term projects. They say, for example, that the group helped the Department of Veterans Affairs launch their electronic medical records initiative in June, with Kushner expediting the process by calling Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and asking him to send people from his department to help.

If I ever get into a roadblock, we just elevate it to Jared, said Chris Liddell, a senior White House official who works in the innovation office. Hes great at saying, Cant we get so-and-so to come over? And we get it done on the spot.

Kushner is one of the advisers helping on negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement, and he accompanied Trump on the first half of his Asia trip earlier this month.

[Analysis: Jared Kushners quest for peace looks increasingly doomed]

But the main focus for Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, is working to bring peace to the Middle East  a task that has bedeviled negotiators far more experienced in the region for generations. What Kushner brings to the effort, say several senior White House officials, is personal relationships with players on all sides and a willingness to bet on long-shot outcomes.

Before Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met with Trump at the White House in September, Kushner and Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt met him at the Mandarin Oriental for a two-hour breakfast. More recently, on Halloween, Kushner suggested that he and Greenblatt visit Saeb Erekat, the lead Palestinian peace negotiator, at the apartment in Virginia where he is recuperating from a lung transplant. After briefly considering, and then nixing, wine  Erekat is Muslim  Kushner ultimately brought chocolate.



Kushner flies over Baghdad with military personnel in April. (Reuters)

This is very much a human conflict and a human-to-human relationship, Greenblatt said. When youre able to touch somebody and talk about it, its a meaningful engagement. It takes a certain personality, and Jared has that touch.

Yet snags persist. A week ago, the Palestinians threatened to freeze all contact with the Trump administration after the State Department said the Palestine Liberation Organization's office in Washington could not remain open  a decision it backtracked on Friday.

And Kushners friendship with Mohammed bin Salman raised questions after the crown princes anti-corruption campaign  which critics paint as an attempt to consolidate power but devotees say is part of his efforts as a reformer  as well as concerns from some that Saudi Arabia now feels further emboldened within the region.

[Jared Kushner turns out to be shadow diplomat on U.S.-Mexico talks]

The Mueller probe, meanwhile, is entering a new phase, with the special counsel announcing three indictments at the end of last month  including for Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort  while investigators begin to interview people close to the president's inner circle. Kushner has turned over documents to the House and Senate committees investigating possible collusion between Russia and Trump's campaign, although in a letter, the Senate Judiciary Committee recently complained that Kushner had not been fully forthcoming  a charge his lawyer denies.

So far, Mueller has filed no court documents to suggest Kushner is in legal jeopardy, but people close to the case say investigators have been looking at his meetings with Russians before and after the election, as well as his role in discussions that led to the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey.

The news on Thanksgiving that former national security adviser Michael Flynn's lawyers notified Trump's legal team that they could no longer share information about the Russia probe prompted speculation that Flynn may now be cooperating with Mueller  a potentially perilous sign for the president and his associates.

But friends say Kushner is even-keeled about the investigations. For him, they said, the most stressful moments came in May, amid news reports that he had tried to establish a secret back channel with Russia during the transition and that the FBI was probing his actions. He was frustrated, a White House official said, that he couldnt respond to the allegations until he went to be interviewed by Congress.

[When the Trump campaign and Russian actors overlapped]

Jared is an extraordinarily calm person, said H.R. McMaster, the White House national security adviser. I have never seen him distracted.

He huddled with his lawyers for hours in the run-up to his testimony before Congress but is in less frequent daily contact now unless something from Muellers probe specifically requires his attention, one White House official said.



Kushner and national security adviser H.R. McMaster wait for Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to arrive for a Chinese opera performance at the Forbidden City on Nov. 8 in Beijing. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

Kushners detractors point to his role in the Russia probe as another sign of his poor political skills and continued risk to the president. A Republican close to the White House said Kushner has no judgment  never has and never will.

But in some ways, Kushner appears more protected from the daily sniping that plagued the early months of Trumps presidency. Over the summer, a trio of advisers who were rivals to Kushner were pushed out of the West Wing: Stephen K. Bannon, then the presidents chief strategist, who now runs Breitbart; Reince Priebus, the chief of staff; and Sean Spicer, the press secretary.

He no longer is in an environment where he has an actual predator, said one White House official, likening Kushner to Bannons regular prey. That has probably helped his working environment some.

Kushner, with his whispery voice, has also proved one of the few people adept at absorbing Trumps anger. He can speak to Trump in a shared language of transaction from their days in the New York real estate world.

I dont try to manage him, Kushner said. I try to give him my honest feedback. If he asks my advice on something, sometimes Ill give it, sometimes Ill say, Let me go call a few people, and then Ill give it.

[A long winter: White House aides divided over scope, risks of Russia probe]

McMaster said Kushner sometimes acts as a translator between the president and his senior advisers. He helped a lot of us learn faster whats important to the president, McMaster said. His relationship with the president makes Jared valuable as an adviser to the president, and also as an adviser to the presidents advisers.

When Kushners family first arrived in Washington, they agreed they would assess after six months whether they intended to stay. Trump himself has mused privately about the hit his daughter and son-in-laws reputation is taking because of their White House roles and about what a great and easy life they had back in New York. Others have questioned why someone like Kushner would put himself in Muellers crosshairs by remaining in government.

But when the couple reassessed in July, they reached a decision. Were here to stay, Kushner said. At the current moment, were charging forward.

He added, My wife asked me the other day if we should be looking at new houses, so thats a good sign.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 14:03:02|Editor: Zhou Xin

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HOUSTON, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Black Friday, a traditionally busy shopping day in the United States, began with shorter lines for door busters here as more shoppers opted for online deals.

Only a small group of people stood outside a Houston's Target store, a major U.S. discount store retailer, before it opened in early morning.

U.S. consumers seem to prefer shopping from smartphones and tablets. On Thursday alone, U.S. consumers spent 2.87 billion U.S. dollars online, about 18 percent more than last year, according to data from Adobe Digital Insights, which publishes research on digital marketing.

Holiday shoppers have already spent a record 33.2 billion U.S. dollars online this month, nearly 18 percent more than they had at this time last year.

Thursday's Thanksgiving Day had been busier with in-store shopping. About 300 people had lined up when the Target store opened for a six-hour shopping rush, store manager Cameron Dennington told local media. But this year, most of the store's Black Friday activity took place behind the scenes.

Six Target employees scrambled on Thursday to fulfill hundreds of online orders for in-store pickup, an option that has proven especially popular this year.

E-commerce growth is expected to coincide with an overall increase in holiday spending. The National Retail Federation expects sales in November and December to rise between 3.6 percent and 4 percent, up from 655.8 billion U.S. dollars last year.
Republicans are pushing full steam ahead on their tax cut plan, despite polling that shows more Americans oppose rather than support the sweeping proposal to reduce corporate rates and some individual tax bills.

In pushing so hard, Republicans are betting they can sell this plan to the skeptical public once the legislation is signed into law by President Trump and workers see a boost in take-home pay. They are not dismissive of the polling, but they believe they can make the legislation popular enough next year to save their congressional majorities in the midterm elections.

I fundamentally believe when we do this  make good on our word, make good on our promise, make peoples lives better  were going to be just fine politically, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters the week before the House passed its tax-cut plan Nov. 16.

One can almost hear the echo of a previous House speaker pushing legislation in the early days of a new administration, as the proposal and the president started to grow unpopular.

We have to pass the bill so that you can find out whats in it, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), then the House speaker and now minority leader, said before final passage of the Affordable Care Act.

All your major questions about the House GOP tax plan, answered

Pelosis opponents accused Democrats of approving a major law without ever reading it, taking her words out of context. What Pelosi was trying to say was quite similar to what Ryan is now saying: Once the law is passed and the public sees its impact, voters will like its benefits.

Instead, opponents branded the ACA as Obamacare, and it remained unpopular for most of Barack Obamas presidency. In December 2009, after the House approved its version and the Senate was gearing up for a Christmas Eve vote, just 44 percent of voters supported the health proposal, and 51 percent opposed it, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The GOP tax proposal is slightly less popular at almost the same stage of the process: Just 33 percent of adults support Trump's tax plan while 50 percent oppose it, according to this month's Post-ABC News poll.

Support for the ACA barely moved ahead of the 2010 elections, and Democrats lost the House majority in a 63-seat blowout.

In 2016, Obama's last year in office, the public began to appreciate the health law. By August of this year, after Republicans failed in their bid to repeal the law, 52 percent of voters supported the ACA and 39 percent opposed it, according to a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll.

Republicans can take some solace in that groundswell of ACA support, showing how the public can warm up to previously unpopular laws. The question for Republicans is whether, if they pass their tax plan, they can convince the public that it was a good thing to do in time for next years elections.

Democrats are driving home that the relief for corporate tax rates, from 35 percent down to 20 percent, is permanent, while the lower rates for individuals expire after 10 years. Republicans are openly looting the hard-earned income of the American middle class to hand tax breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent and corporations, Pelosi said.

To counter that charge, Republicans have been circulating data, polling and focus group feedback to win back the public on a traditional GOP issue. The key moves are talking about workers seeing more money in their paychecks and not focusing on large macroeconomic theory.

As a stand-alone, tax reform is a moderate priority, but in its ability to impact the economy, jobs and wages, it is a huge priority, David Winston and Myra Miller, co-founders of the Winston Group, a Republican polling firm, wrote in a July memo.

Several of these Winston Group memos, sent to congressional leaders and K Street allies, were provided to The Washington Post by recipients who have been sharing the firms work to lawmakers unsteady in their support to shore up their vote and help them explain their decision to constituents.

Leader of key GOP super PAC warns lawmakers: Oppose tax bill at your peril

Republicans also believe taxes and the economy are a better issue set. In the Winston memo, voters chose Republicans by eight percentage points over Democrats to handle the economy and by four points on taxes, while Democrats held a margin of 12 percent on health care.

Also, there is a political imperative to deliver results, given how frustrated conservatives are with the lack of output so far. Most House Republicans represent less affluent, somewhat rural districts where the vast majority of workers do not itemize their taxes. That means lower rates would benefit constituents in deep-red districts because the elimination of other deductions will not hit them.

For Republicans fearing a primary challenge, this tax plan is something to sell to conservative voters. They need to put a product on the table, said former congressman Thomas M. Davis III, who served as the House Republican campaign chief from 1999 to 2003.

But the proposed elimination or reduction of some deductions, particularly state and local taxes, hurts in the suburbs. Several dozen of the most targeted Republicans represent wealthy suburban districts where quite a few of those constituents will see a net tax hike.

The people that itemize are the swing voters, Davis said.

Some Republicans are urging lawmakers to focus on other proposals inside the massive legislation. In the immediate term, it will deliver tangible relief  in doubling the standard deduction, lowering rates and increasing the child tax credit  to middle-class families, said Michael Steel, a former House GOP leadership aide working with an outside coalition supporting the proposal.

Yet during the 2009-2010 push for the ACA, when Steel worked for John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), then the minority leader, Republicans successfully defined the proposal for many voters as a government takeover of the health industry. Other popular provisions  allowing children to stay on a parents plan until age 26, ensuring coverage for preexisting conditions  could not overcome the general disdain toward the ACA.

Eight years later, Pelosi and Democrats are working overtime to do to the tax plan what Republicans did to the ACA.

Ryan is adamant that, once the bill is signed into law, voters will like what they see.

This is not unpopular. Were actually letting people keep more of their own money, Ryan told reporters, citing the benefits to come. That's not an unpopular thing to do.

Read more from Paul Kane's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Doug Jones makes a campaign stop in Troy, Ala., on Nov. 17. The Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate believes he can win if he pieces together an unusually delicate coalition. (Aly Grice/Troy Messenger/AP)

The Ensley Park Recreation Center was beginning to come to life. The song "Happy" and other upbeat tunes boomed through the loudspeakers. And a crowd was gathering for a chance to glimpse something rarely seen in conservative Alabama: a surging Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

But Donald Williams was skeptical.

The 75-year-old retired UPS worker had come to cheer on Democrat Doug Jones in a campaign that has captured national attention. Has it also generated energy in Alabamas African American communities?

As of this day, I would say no, said Williams, who is black. And this is Doug Joness problem. Hes got to get out and get the voters energized.

With two-and-a-half weeks left until Election Day, a once unthinkable victory in the heart of the Deep South is within Jones's reach, thanks largely to a string of sexual misconduct allegations against Republican candidate Roy Moore.

Joness campaign believes he can win only if he pieces together an unusually delicate coalition built on intense support from core Democrats and some crossover votes from Republicans disgusted with Moore. Crucial to that formula is a massive mobilization of African Americans, who make up about a quarter of Alabamas electorate and tend to vote heavily Democratic.

Yet, in interviews in recent days, African American elected officials, community leaders and voters expressed concern that the Jones campaigns turnout plan was at risk of falling short.

Right now, many African Americans do not know there is an election on December 12, said state Sen. Hank Sanders (D), who is black and supports Jones.

The challenge for Jones is clear. According to Democrats working on the race, Jones, who is white, must secure more than 90 percent of the black vote while boosting black turnout to account for between 25 and 30 percent of the electorate  similar to the levels that turned out for Barack Obama, the countrys first black president.

As a result, Jones and his allies are waging an aggressive outreach campaign. It includes targeted radio and online advertisements, billboards and phone calls. Campaign aides are debating whether to ask former first lady Michelle Obama to record a phone message for black voters.

The message emphasizes that Jones prosecuted two Ku Klux Klan members who bombed a black church in Birmingham in 1963.

The Jones campaign expects to intensify its black outreach in the final stretch. Among the messages under consideration for radio ads and already included in mailers that have been produced, according to campaign officials, are reminders that Moore once opposed removing segregationist language from the state constitution and expressed doubt that Obama was born in the United States.

The Moore campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

A key question for Jones's campaign is how to balance a more partisan campaign message aimed at energizing core Democrats, particularly blacks, with the need to appeal to GOP voters with a more middle-of-the-road approach. Not only must Jones come close to matching Obama's performance among blacks, but also he must far surpass the former president's tallies among whites. Exit polls show that Obama won 15 percent of the white vote in Alabama in 2012  and Jones, according to Democratic strategists working on the race, may have to win more than a third of white voters to beat Moore.

The accusations Moore is facing from women who said he made unwanted sexual contact with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, including one who said she was 14, have opened the door for Jones to peel away some of these Republican votes. Moore, 70, has denied the allegations, and his allies have argued that even skeptical GOP voters should back him because he will be a reliable conservative vote.

Maximizing black turnout makes the rest of what he needs to do more achievable, said Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster whose firm is working on the race for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

The Democratic nominee does not appear to be lacking in resources to make a closing pitch to black voters. According to a Democrat and Republican tracking the ad war, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe their findings, Jones is on pace to spend more than $4.7 million on ads between early October and Election Day, compared with about $636,000 by Moore and an allied group.

The Jones campaign said it has placed about 40 billboards across the state, some of which show photographs of the four young black girls who were killed in the 1963 church bombing.

One recent ad on R&B radio recounts Jones's closing arguments as the lead prosecutor in the case.

[An Alabama Senate race conjures the awful 1963 church bombing that killed 4 black girls]

Meanwhile, the campaign is targeting online ads at younger African Americans by focusing more on jobs and education.

"Turnout for a special election is a problem across the board, and we are putting as many resources as we can behind making people aware not only that there's an election, but with the opportunity that Doug Jones presents for Alabama," said Giles Perkins, the chairman of the Jones campaign.

At a stop here in Birmingham last week, a fish fry held inside a rec center gym, Jones presented himself to the crowd as a break from Alabamas painful past.

Jones said the differences between him and Moore could not be greater, and he encouraged backers to spread the word about the election.

We are at a tipping point, he told the crowd. Jones later added: We are on the right side of history in this campaign.

Jones, 63, is getting an assist on the campaign from elected officials and organizations that are prominent in the African American community.

He was joined at the fish fry by Randall Woodfin, the 36-year-old mayor-elect of Birmingham and a rising political star in the state.

Rep. Terri A. Sewell, who is African American and the only Democratic member of the states congressional delegation, said she recently took Jones through six churches in her home town of Selma  and sought to introduce Jones as an effective advocate for their community.

Doug is not a default candidate, Sewell said.

The Alabama chapter of the NAACP is also helping inform voters about Jones, even as it is not officially endorsing a candidate in the race. Benard Simelton, the president of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, said in an interview his group is making phone calls to what he termed sometimes voters, meaning those who tend to vote only in presidential elections.

NAACP volunteers read from a script that tells voters that Jones prosecuted members of the KKK and that Moore has twice been removed from the state Supreme Court and has said that Muslims should not serve in Congress, Simelton said.

But Simelton voiced some reasons for concern that black turnout may not be as high as it needs to be for Jones.

I hate to say it: A lot of people are apathetic about voting, because they dont think their vote counts, he said.

Simelton also said the NAACP was trying to encourage college students to vote, but that the effort might have missed the boat a bit on that front when schools closed for Thanksgiving ahead of the Nov. 27 registration deadline.

Kyle Campbell, 21, a University of Alabama law student who has been actively involved in Democratic politics in recent years, said in an interview that energy in his circles for the election is on par with a presidential race.

Every young, black voter that I talked to who voted in 2016 is going to vote in this election, Campbell said.

For Campbell, the election could be a personal turning point in deciding whether to stay in Alabama long-term or move to another state.

If Roy Moore actually did win  I couldnt make any promises about it  but it would be very difficult for me to see the potential for Alabama, even as someone who has lived here most of my life, he said.

Michael Scherer contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost
Across the U.S., several institutions have been converted into apartments and condos.

When Laura Kiker rented a new apartment in September, a few blocks from the Capitol, she knew she was moving into a historical neighborhood. She had no idea, though, that her new home, at 700 Constitution Ave. in Northeast Washington, was a former hospital dating back nearly a century. Katherine Frey/The Washington Post
Reporters and editors plan the daily coverage of the Zimbabwe Herald. The state-owned newspaper was forced this month to cover the downfall of Robert Mugabe, whose rule it had long applauded. (Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post)

For 37 years, it was the official newspaper of Robert Mugabe. Then, this month, the staff of the Zimbabwe Herald got an impossible assignment: They would have to cover the downfall of their benefactor.

In the days after Mugabe was detained by the military, editors and reporters gathered in a wood-paneled newsroom in an old office building downtown, trying to figure out what to do.

Should they back Mugabe or the military takeover? Did they still have to echo the party line? What was the party line, anyway?

Suddenly, a newsroom that had been the mouthpiece of the regime was without a censor.

In the past we could never criticize the president, said Felex Share, a political reporter, in the hours before Mugabes resignation. Right now, we can touch anything.



Phyllis Kochere holds the newspaper announcing the resignation of Robert Mugabe in the newsroom of the Zimbabwe Herald. (Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post)

The rapid descent of the worlds oldest head of state came as a shock to many Zimbabweans who assumed Mugabe would rule the country until his death.

The Herald, which is owned by the government, had advanced the idea that his rule was untouchable. Until two weeks ago, the paper was printing laudatory stories and editorials about the countrys despotic leader.

"President Mugabe deserves Nobel Peace Prize," said one headline last month.

"He is undisputedly the most exceptional figure in the history of our country," another article said in September.

The papers editors and reporters didnt usually agree with those messages, but working for the Herald meant shelving your own politics. It was the best-paying newspaper in Zimbabwe, and in a country with a soaring unemployment rate, that meant something.

It makes you feel stupid writing this stuff, said Joram Nyathi, the papers deputy editor. But youre working for government media. You know what to expect.

Even after Mugabes house arrest, the paper decided to play it safe. Business as usual across the country, its front-page headline said, ignoring the shock wave rippling across Zimbabwe.

Inside the newsroom, a frenzied revolution was taking place. Reporters who had for years bit their tongues while writing flattering stories saw an opening.

It was a seismic shift for us, Share said.

Days later, when thousands poured onto the streets of Harare to demand Mugabe's resignation, the tenor of the paper's coverage began to change. It started publishing straightforward news reports about the country's swelling opposition. It sent reporters and photographers into crowds carrying anti-Mugabe signs. For the first time in decades, it gave Mugabe's rivals a voice.

It wasnt just the Herald that seemed to be liberalizing. Arbitrary police checkpoints vanished overnight. Foreign journalists, once heavily obstructed, could move freely (including into the Heralds newsroom). The demonstrations themselves were unimaginable only weeks ago.

In the following days, the paper wrote front-page stories about Mugabes dismissal as head of the ruling party, ZANU-PF.

It covered plans by the parliament to impeach the president. It ran op-eds in support of efforts to bring Mugabe down.

"We have no doubt that the biggest winner in this fiasco are the people of Zimbabwe," said one.

Zimbabweans started posting pictures of the Herald on Twitter and Facebook, in disbelief that the newspaper of Mugabe had suddenly abandoned him. The paper had to increase its print run to keep up with demand.

"This in the Herald. Pinch yourself  it is not April Fools Day," tweeted David Coltart, a former senator and member of the opposition, after the paper covered Mugabe's dismissal from the party.

It wasnt just that the Herald was eager to seize a rare moment of press freedom. Its senior editors were also trying to sort out who was likely to emerge from the countrys political chaos  so they knew which horse to back.

You dont want to step on the wrong toes, said Phyllis Kochere, the deputy news editor.

On Tuesday, the paper sent its parliamentary reporter, Farirai Machivenyika, to cover a session in which lawmakers were expected to begin protracted impeachment proceedings. About an hour into the session, Machivenyika watched as the speaker of the house stood up with a piece of paper in his hand, a smile spreading across his face.

The speaker began to read a resignation letter written by Mugabe. Machivenyika took frantic notes. Like many of the Heralds reporters, he was born after Mugabe assumed power in 1980. He could hardly believe he was about to file a story about the presidents resignation.

He thought to himself: This is what relief feels like.

The next day, the Herald ran the words "Ta Ta, Cde President" on the front page, with the full text of Mugabe's resignation letter. In an editorial, the paper wrote: "Last night was a new beginning for Zimbabwe."

In the morning, the newspapers staff gathered for the news meeting, its first of the post-Mugabe era.

Nyathi looked around at the other editors and reporters and muttered under his breath, Well, what do I do now?

For about an hour the staff debated what had just happened to their country and what was going to come next.

Theres a need for a coalition government, said Ruth Butaumocho, the gender editor.

If ZANU-PF thinks it will lead the country alone, they will continue just like Mugabe, said one editor.

We need to come up with an objective analysis of the trajectory the countrys politics is going to take, another said.

Things are changing every hour, Kochere said.

We need more stories! yelled Nyathi.

That day, the major story line was the return of the soon-to-be president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been in exile for several weeks since being fired as vice president. No one  not even the papers reporters  was sure how the Herald would cover it.

Would Mnangagwa get the same kind of flattering coverage Mugabe had received for so many years? Would the Herald continue its streak of more objective reporting?

That night, Mnangagwa's speech veered into the anti-opposition rhetoric Mugabe had often used. "Those who oppose us will bark and bark," he said. "They will continue to bark, but the ZANU-PF train will roll on, ruling and ruling while they bark."

It was exactly the kind of language many of the Heralds top reporters and editors had expressed concern about, a sign Mnangagwa had no interest in forming a broad coalition.

The paper didn't cover that angle. Instead, it published positive news stories and editorials, including one on the front page under the headline "President needs our maximum support."

Had the papers brief window of freedom closed? Back in the newsroom, opinions were divided.

Like any other media business, we are expected to toe the owners line, Kochere said.

Share was more optimistic.

There are no sacred cows now, he said.

In the front entrance of the Herald, the portrait of Mugabe had already been taken down, leaving a slightly discolored rectangle on the wall where it once hung. The newsroom looked like any other  with piles of yellowing paper atop desks, clusters of reporters discussing their stories, editors trying to plan the days coverage.

Kochere looked through a list of story pitches in the center of the room. Outside, a crowd was waiting for Mnangagwa to arrive at the presidents office, waiting to hear what he would say on the eve of his inauguration.

Kochere sighed. She had been at the paper for 17 years. She knew the Herald as well as she knew Zimbabwean politics.

I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed, she said. Its a divided nation.

Read more

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
Injured people are evacuated from the scene of a militant attack on a mosque in Bir al-Abd in the northern Sinai Peninsula on Friday. (AP)

Egypt's security forces were on high alert Saturday after striking back at militants whose massacre of more than 300 people at a Sinai mosque raised fears of a new and bloodier phase in the country's struggle against Islamist insurgents.

Egypts state-run Information Service tried to portray Fridays carnage  at least 305 dead, or about quarter of the male population of the village of Rawda  as a sign of weakness, despair and collapse among militants opting for easy civilian targets rather than hitting heavily armed security forces as in the past.

But the level of coordination and precision by the attackers gave no obvious suggestions of a struggling force in an area where Islamic State-inspired groups have gained a key foothold.

The assault on a mosque  a rarity in Egypt  also raised concerns over increasing threats to the countrys Sufi Muslims, whose mystic interpretation of Islam is at odds with the Islamic States hard-line creed.

Survivors and officials described five pickup trucks carrying up to 30 gunmen  some of them masked  converging on al-Rawda mosque as the imam began his sermon. Some worshipers died in a suicide blast; others were gunned down as they ran. The attackers would later walk among the fallen, 27 of them children, shooting those who appeared to be breathing.





[Why extremists stuck this mosque in Egypt]

Eyewitnesses said that some had carried a black flag that local residents recognized as belonging to the State of Sinai, a local Islamic State affiliate that has remained largely intact even as the Islamic State has lost its strongholds in Iraq and Syria.

By the time the attackers left, there were so many bodies on the ground that a fleet of ambulances couldnt hold them, said a local resident, Muhamed Khalil, 25. Instead, the bodies were piled high in pickup trucks and in the trunks of private cars.

Although no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, suspicion immediately fell on Islamic State-linked militants who have dueled with the army across the desert region.

President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi vowed to avenge the bloodshed with brute force  pushed by widespread horror to act with more resolve. But the contours of a tougher approach remain hazy.

Egyptian security forces have been locked in battle with the countrys Islamic State affiliate for several years. The insurgency has killed hundreds in the heavily patrolled Sinai region, and militants have struck farther afield, including Coptic Christian churches in Cairo and Alexandria.

The Egyptian government has been describing its reaction to every attack as a harsh response since the summer of 2013, if not before. So its difficult to assess what is meant by a promise to do more than that, said Zack Gold, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Councils Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Late Friday, the army said that it launched airstrikes on vehicles apparently used by the assailants, but it was unclear whether any suspected militants were killed in the counterattack.

In Rawda, a hamlet off the road that cuts across the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, almost no one was untouched by the violence.

[Trump tries to use Egypt attack to boost calls for border wall]

According to Egypts 2016 population figures, Rawda was home to some 2,100 people. Assuming those numbers had stayed relatively constant, it appeared that Fridays massacre would have killed about a quarter of the male population.

We had to bury them in mass graves. In every hole, we would bury 40 or 50, said Khalil, who helped lay entire families together. People were silent, motionless, unable to grasp the reality of what had happened.

The massacre inspired acts of kindness. Community members arrived in droves at a hospital to donate blood, first-aid kits and all the painkillers they could afford.

Egyptian security forces have been battling the militants since 2011, when the group  then known then as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis  initially trained its firepower on Israel. But when the army overthrew Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, the militant group shifted its sights toward Egypts security forces, its attacks growing more deadly as state repression of the Sinais Bedouin inhabitants worsened.

Since the militants 2014 pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State, the government has worked to keep its war with extremists in the shadows. Journalists are banned from entering the area, amid frequent reports of militant atrocities and heavy-handed tactics by the army.

But local residents said that an attack had been threatened for weeks. An ISIS member would stand at the entrance of the village, hand a piece of paper to a resident and ask him to deliver it to one of the Sufi scholars in the area, said a local journalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears for his safety.

The attack was never a surprise to the community here. It is the savagery that was, he said.

Experts on militancy in the Sinai have attributed the groups growing brutality to a rising number of members who do not have family ties to North Sinai, as well as the pressures that accompany affiliation with the Islamic State.

When you call yourself ISIS, you have to start copying the more brutal attacks and showing youre in control, Gold said.

The dead were believed to be mostly Sufi Muslims, a branch of Islam considered heretical by many extremists. Some also may have had links to a tribe that had opposed the Islamic States presence in the area. An edition of the Islamic States al-Nabaa newsletter, published last year, featured an interview with one of the groups Egyptian cadres, who promised to combat the manifestations of polytheism including Sufism.

Fridays attack brought that threat to a national stage.

His eyes glued to a state television broadcast Saturday, Mohamed Saleh, a pharmacist in Cairo, described the attack as a lightning shock. They targeted Muslims. They killed Muslims, he said. Egypt has suffered a lot, but these are our cruelest years.

Read more:

Christians flee restive Sinai

With loss of caliphate, ISIS could turn even more reckless and radical

Militants open other fronts as Islamic State caliphate crumbles

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
Merry olde England has had a glum run of news. The divorce from the European Union is going badly  a lot of fuss about alimony. There's been a "sex pest" scandal in Parliament. And the British pound is getting pounded.

So, as if on cue, the flash story this week was the feverish speculation about exactly when  never if  Prince Harry and the American actress Meghan Markle would finally announce their engagement to wed.

The only thing better than royal babies are royal weddings  but one must precede the other. Of course, the most momentous royal news of all is also on the horizon, another life event, this one sad yet inevitable. Queen Elizabeth II turned 91 years old in April, God save her.

On Friday, the tabloids went a little nuts. The Sun ran a salivating headline claiming that a Harry and Markle engagement announcement was "imminent."

The Daily Mail was more specific. They had a date and time. On Friday, it tweeted, "Prince Harry and Meghan Markle rumoured to be announcing their engagement at 5pm TODAY."

1 of 62 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Prince Harry through the years View Photos The British royal has been in camera viewfinders since his birth. Caption The British royal has been in camera viewfinders since his birth. The Obama Foundation Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

Today came and went. No matter.

If you've missed your latest copy of Hello magazine, Markle is a 36-year-old actress, born and raised in California, best known for playing Rachel Zane in the well-liked New York legal drama "Suits," which is filmed in Toronto.

Its rumored that she will quit her acting career and will continue her charitable work. She is a global ambassador for World Vision Canada.

The 33-year-old ginger-bearded Harry is fifth in line to the British throne. (He will be bumped to sixth place after his brother Prince William and Kate Middleton welcome their third child in the spring.) With modern medical science being what is  and the Tower of London now a tourist attraction versus a gallows  Harrys chances of sitting on the big chair are virtually nil.

Still, Harry is one of the most popular royals, said to have inherited his mother Princess Diana's mischievous side, as well as her common touch. He also has had his share of past missteps, including stirring major royal flaps in 2005 by wearing an outfit with a swastika to a costume party and in 2012 with photos showing him playing "strip billiards" in a Las Vegas hotel suite.

The last time an American married into the royal family, Britain was plunged into a constitutional crisis. In 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry the American socialite and divorcee Wallis Simpson.

There are no hard and fast rules for royal engagements, but perhaps William and Kate can offer us clues as to how it might be done this time.

William and Kate were engaged after a lengthy courtship. The tabloids called her Waity Katie.

Palace officials announced their engagement at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday  on Nov. 16, 2010, to be exact. Kate pronounced William "a true romantic" and said he popped the question on an African safari to view wildlife. The couple held a "photocall" event with the world's media and then gave a sit-down interview to a broadcaster, which was aired later in the day. They were married five months later.

Rumors of an engagement between Harry and Markle have been swirling for some time.

In November 2016, Prince Harry revealed he was dating the actress when  in a remarkable statement from Kensington Palace  he blasted the press for subjecting Markle to a "wave of abuse and harassment."

The palace condemned the smear on the front page of a national newspaper, the racial undertones of comment pieces, and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments.

Markles mother is African American, and her father is white.

Her relationship with Harry has been a source of intense media speculation ever since the statement. And along the way, royal watchers wondered if the couple wasnt dropping clues that there was a wedding in the offing.

In April, Markle ended her lifestyle blog, The Tig, after three years.

Something to tell us? queried the Daily Mail.

The same newspaper reported that the couple had tea with the queen last month, sparking rumors that they were seeking her majestys blessing.

Apparently the meeting went well  a good thing, too. Under ancient rules, the monarch has the right to refuse a royal marriage.

The duo made their first public appearance together in September at the Invictus Games, a sporting event for disabled veterans founded by Harry. They held hands, they kissed, they canoodled  they were snapped alongside Markles mother, Doria Ragland.

Markle has been living in Toronto, where Suits is filmed. However, there are rumors she has left the show and is planning on relocating to London, where she could move into Harrys two-bedroom cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace.

Has Harry pupped the question? ran the front-page headline in the Sun, Britains best-selling newspaper, making a very tabloid-esque pun after stories appeared that Markle was moving her dogs to London. The paper said that BBC staff had been primed to expect an announcement.

What DO they know? asked the Daily Mail on its front page, noting that a British bookmaker stopped accepting bets on Harry popping the question this year.

Markle has spoken about their relationship in prescient and hopeful terms.

Were in love, she told Vanity Fair magazine. Im sure there will be a time when we will have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but I hope what people will understand is that this is our time. This is for us. Its part of what makes it so special, that its just ours. But were happy. Personally, I love a great love story.

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Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 14:38:10|Editor: Zhou Xin

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Brazil condemned the deadly terrorist attack in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and conveyed condolences to Egypt, said the Brazilian government in an official statement Friday.

"As it expresses its condolences to the families of the victims, its wishes for the prompt recuperation of the injured and its solidarity with the people and government of Egypt, Brazil reiterates vehemently its repudiation to all and any acts of terrorism, regardless of their motivation," said the Brazilian government.

The country's Foreign Ministry said there has been no news of Brazilian citizens being among the 235 victims registered so far. The Brazilian embassy in Cairo is ready to offer all sorts of assistance for Brazilians currently in Egypt.

Earlier on Friday, gunmen broke into a mosque west of the city of Arish in the north of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, set off an explosive device and shot those running out. So far, the attack has killed 235 people and injured at least 109 others.
The Trump administration backtracked Friday on its decision to order the Palestinians office in Washington to close, instead saying it would merely impose limitations on the office that it expected would be lifted after 90 days.

Last week, U.S. officials said the Palestine Liberation Organization mission couldnt stay open because the Palestinians had violated a provision in U.S. law requiring the office to close if the Palestinians try to get the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis. The move triggered a major rift in U.S.-Palestinian relations that threatened to scuttle President Trumps ambitious Mideast peace effort before it ever got off the ground.

Yet the United States delayed shuttering the office for a week while saying it was working out the details with the Palestinians, before abruptly reversing course late Friday, as many Americans were enjoying a long Thanksgiving Day weekend. State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said the United States had advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Vasquez said that even those restrictions will be lifted after 90 days if Washington determines that the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in serious peace talks. The White House, in an effort led by Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, has been preparing a comprehensive peace plan to present to both sides in the coming months.

We therefore are optimistic that at the end of this 90-day period, the political process may be sufficiently advanced that the president will be in a position to allow the PLO office to resume full operations, Vasquez said.

The reversal marked a serious departure from the administrations interpretation of the law only a week earlier. Officials had said then that, one way or another, the office had to close because Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a U.N. speech in September, had called on the ICC to investigate and prosecute Israelis. That same law, though, says that the president can let the office reopen after 90 days despite an ICC push if serious Israeli-Palestinian talks are underway.

There were no indications that the Trump administration had initially moved to close the office as part of a premeditated strategy to strengthen its hand in eventual peace talks. Instead, officials explained the move by saying that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in a strict interpretation of the law, determined that Abbass speech had crossed the legal line.

The chaos that ensued after the announcement, with U.S. officials unable for several days to explain whether the office was truly closing and when, indicated it had caught much of the government off-guard.

Still, the move led the Palestinians to issue an angry response last weekend. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accused the administration of bowing to pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus government at a time when we are trying to cooperate to achieve the ultimate deal.

Vasquez said the original position had never been intended to create leverage or impose pressure. The State Department said that the administration is actively working to pursue lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The brazen attack on worshipers at an Egyptian mosque early Friday showed the ability of the Islamic States regional affiliates to inflict death and exact revenge for the loss of the groups main enclaves in Iraq and Syria.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack on the al-Rawda mosque in Egypts sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula, but there were many reasons to suspect that the Islamic State was responsible.

The Egyptian affiliate, which consists of up to 1,000 members, in recent months has stepped up attacks on Egyptian soldiers and police in the region and laid siege to Coptic Christian churches. Before Friday's attack, the group was best known for its suspected role in the downing of Russia's Metrojet Flight 9268 in 2015, which killed 224 Russian tourists.

The attack on Friday represented a shocking escalation in the carnage, with Egyptian officials reporting 235 dead. It also represented a new and risky kind of target for the Islamic States Egyptian affiliate. The Egyptian branch of the Islamic State appeared to be targeting fellow Sunni Muslim civilians at prayer.

[Militants kill 235 at Sinai mosque in deadliest assault on civilians in Egypt]

In the wake of the bloodshed, government officials and outside analysts were puzzling over the strategy behind the groups latest horror.

The Sinai chapter is only a part of a larger constellation of regional affiliates, and its high-profile attack could be a sign of a broader power struggle to take up the Islamic States leadership mantle now that the groups self-declared caliphate has been destroyed, intelligence officials and terrorism experts said. Several local cells already have begun preparations to continue or even intensify their fight, analysts said.

The Sinai attack underscores that the elimination of the ISIS caliphate will have little effect on the groups regional affiliates, whose success or failure depends on local conditions, said Daniel Benjamin, a former coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department and a professor at Dartmouth College. The Sinai branch, like most of the regional chapters, existed long before the Islamic State declared the establishment of its caliphate in 2014.

To other analysts, the timing of the attack, which occurred during Friday prayers, and the choice of target, a Sufi mosque, reflected a new level of desperation and frustration among the Islamic States remaining adherents.

The group views Sufi Muslims as apostates and has attacked Sufi shrines in northern Africa and Iraq. But the Islamic State has generally not targeted Sufis in Egypt, where the strain of Sunni Islam has deep roots that date back centuries and broad popular appeal.

As you get more desperate, you also get internal feuding over who is more puritanical, said Bernard Haykel, a professor at Princeton University who has studied the Islamic States religious roots. Everyone is trying to compete to show they are truer to the cause. They want to cast themselves as the hardest of the hard-liners.

Until recently, Islamic State militants in Egypt had made an effort to appeal to disaffected Islamists who had supported the Muslim Brotherhood or opposed Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissis tight grip on power. The al-Rawda mosque attack suggested that the group was almost entirely focused on amassing body counts rather than holding territory or winning new followers.

On its face, its a really dumb thing to do, Haykel said. What do you stand to gain other than the hatred and contempt of Muslims all over the world?

One purpose of the attack may have been to demonstrate that the Islamic State, despite the collapse of its armies in Iraq and Syria, remains deadly and relevant. "One way to do that is by turning to increasingly brutal and savage terrorist attacks," said Shadi Hamid, the author of "Islamic Exceptionalism" and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

U.S. officials have been carefully monitoring some of the more significant affiliates in recent weeks to see how they might be affected by the fall of the core groups capital in Raqqa, Syria. One concern is the possibility that substantial numbers of Islamic State fighters  including perhaps the senior leadership  could resurface in a new location. Officials also are worried that one of the regional affiliates may seek to launch a major attack against Western targets as an act of revenge for the deaths of comrades in Iraq and Syria.

We say that the Islamic State has been defeated, but only as a military force, said a senior U.S. counterterrorism official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security assessments. Homegrown insurgencies are going to go on for a while and will be harder to defeat. The hope is that we can get to the point where local forces can contain the threat on their own, without support from the international coalition or U.S. advisers.

[For ISIS followers, terror by truck is now the default choice and the hardest to stop]

The U.S. military has been largely successful in preventing a second Islamic State caliphate from taking hold in Libya. But last month, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that other affiliates remain worrisome, including an ISIS concentration in Sinai that Egypt has been working on for some time.

There has been little evidence in recent months that the core organization is providing money or logistical support to its regional affiliates, but the groups ideology and brutal tactics remain a common bond, the officials said.

What ISIS is absolutely trying to do is leverage local insurgencies now to rebrand themselves, Dunford said. They are trying to maintain relevance.

The Sinai chapter presents an exceptionally difficult challenge, because of the groups growing capabilities and Egypts seeming inability to contain them  or to even acknowledge the seriousness of the threat, U.S. counterterrorism officials said.

[How parts of Egypts rugged Sinai peninsula have become a terrorist hot spot]

Fridays mosque attack occurred in northern Sinai, in Bir al-Abd, a town in a coastal area noted for its heavy security presence. The assailants ability to inflict a savage blow in such a place suggested to some current and former U.S. officials that the momentum lies with the terrorists, despite a two-year campaign by the Sissi government to destroy the group.

For whatever reason, the Egyptians have not worked closely with us in the northern Sinai, said Stuart Jones, a former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and vice president at the Cohen Group. This just shows that the Egyptians need our help with training and the special kinds of equipment it takes to defeat insurgencies.

He envisions a program similar to the one U.S. troops have been executing in Iraq.

In the wake of the attack, President Trump suggested that more American help might be on the way. The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence! he tweeted. We have to get TOUGHER AND SMARTER than ever before.

But it was unclear exactly what kind of program the president wants to see. His tweet went on to call for the construction of a border wall and an immigration ban.

In Egypt, Sissis approach has been to launch a broad campaign against all Islamist groups, including Egypts Muslim Brotherhood, which has renounced violence in recent years. The net effect has been to drive even moderate Islamists to support the extremists. Fridays attack is likely to lead Sissi, with Trumps support, to get even tougher.

James Jeffrey, a former ambassador to Iraq and senior fellow at the Washington Institute, said the attack will serve as an argument for Sissi to continue his draconian crackdown and authoritarian rule.
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This article was published 24/11/2017 (1818 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Its not hard to understand why Elyse Allan is such an effective advocate for innovation.

The president of GE Canada is not a technology expert by training. She has a casual, friendly speaking style but delivered a pretty powerful message about the imperative for business to embrace technology or risk becoming obsolete.

She didnt share a lot of specific tricks of the trade in a speech to more than 400 people at a Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce event on Friday but she also did not pull any punches.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Elyse Allan President and CEO of GE Canada and Vice President of GE speaking to the chamber of commerce at the Delta Hotel on the future of workplace automation.

You have to decide if you are going to be a disrupter or be disrupted, she said without candy-coating the fate of the disrupted.

In speaking about additive manufacturing she mentioned how a sub-assembly for a GE product was put together that at one time required more than 800 different parts but with new design capabilities, 3-D printing and other innovations can now be put together with just 12 different parts.

There is a lot of disruption among the former suppliers, she said. The change is profound.

It wasnt fear mongering but it was unequivocal  companies must adapt.

She made the point that the disruption and change that the digital era is causing is not something that is going to stop in a couple of years. Its the way things are going to be from now on.

As an example she compared a printed circuit board company GE had acquired a few years ago in Alberta where the work was done by hand to GE Transportations acquisition last December of Oakbanks Iders Inc., an electronic product design and manufacturing company founded by Winnipeggers Dave Fletcher and Brad Brown that is fully automated.

The Alberta operation is gone. Allan gushed about automation and efficiencies at Iders.

It is just so cool, she said emphatically.

The well-attended event in Winnipeg  everyone still wants to get with GE  came at an auspicious time for General Electric.

The company just announced it was cutting its dividend by 50 per cent, its stock price has lost about 40 per cent of its value since the beginning of the year and the company is now likely going to sell off its iconic light bulb business and probably the transportation business as well.

To climb to the top of the mountain you have to go through a few valleys, she said. GE has been on the top of a lot of mountains and over our 126-year history we have been though some valleys. We will get through it.

She spoke a lot about sharing the risk and investing in the supply chain and being part of the creation of new businesses and encouraging innovation among its supply chain. She said lots of innovation takes place on the fringe.

We recognize you cant have sacred cows, she said. The markets are dynamic. Competition is real and its changing and its always tougher and faster. You can never get comfortable.

Needless to say, if that is the attitude of a $126 billion US per year company like GE, it ought to strike fear into the hearts of any company.

Allan was also uncompromising in her assessment of Canadian industrys track record in investing in information and communications technology.

We are horrible at it, she said. We are the worst.

But its a testimony to Allans power of persuasion because as tough as her message was, it was delivered in a gentle, encouraging manner and when it was over she received a rare standing ovation from the Chamber of Commerce crowd.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 25/11/2017 (1817 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At the heart of innovation, discovery and advancement is research. The catalyst for moving in the right direction, science and research provide the foundation for our province and our countrys economic growth and job creation.

A multi-year plan has been developed that could transform the capacity for research in Canada. The Fundamental Science Review was developed by an esteemed advisory panel of experts across post-secondary institutions and the science field nation-wide.

It is the public sector that is often responsible for the largest gains in Research and Development (R&D), explains Dr. Robert Chernomas, professor of economics at the University of Manitoba and president of the Manitoba Organization of Faculty Associations.

Photo by Marianne Helm

Much of this funding has been channelled through research departments in universities. Limited private sector R&D in Canada makes the government role especially important. It is Canadian public sector funding that led to the discoveries of world changing innovations such as stem cells, insulin, the cell battery, the Canadarm and canola.

The investments in fundamental research that this vital report calls for could significantly improve research capacity and competitiveness both nationally and in Manitoba.

University of Manitoba president and vice-chancellor Dr. David Barnard and Dr. Chernomas have jointly invited Dr. David Naylor, chair of the Fundamental Science Review Panel to come to Winnipeg to present the findings of the review.

The Fundamental Science Review describes an invigorated Canadian research environment and a direction for moving forward, says Dr. Barnard.

Whether we are thinking about Canadas future economic growth, our ability to positively impact health outcomes, to cultivate future generations of thought leaders, or to generate improvements in quality of life both at home and around the world, we need to encourage a national commitment to investment like that envisaged by the advisory panel. I look forward to our conversation.

Canadas Fundamental Science Review: Findings, Responses and Prospects will take place on December 6, 2017 at 7:30 p.m. in the La Verendrye Room of the Fort Garry Hotel.

Dr. David Naylor

The evening will consist of a presentation, followed by a Q&A session with Dr. Naylor. At the conclusion of the Q&A component, there will be a reception in the Mezzanine. Everyone is welcome.

This event is sponsored by the Manitoba Organization of Faculty Associations, which represents the 1,600 faculty members and librarians from Brandon University, Universite de Saint-Boniface, University of Manitoba and University of Winnipeg.
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The multimillion-dollar reno of The Forks Market is paying big dividends for the downtown destination and its growing roster of tenants.

We havent necessarily seen a large increase in traffic. What weve seen is a large increase in sales, Chelsea Thomson, manager of marketing and communications for The Forks North Portage Partnership, said in an interview.

Thomson said sales are up 20 to 30 per cent in the past year, as The Forks completed the first phase of a multi-year revamping/remodelling project which has cost about $4 million so far.

Photos by WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Marc Priestley, co-owner of Nuburger, says they decided to open a kiosk on the main floor of The Forks Market after witnessing the popularity of the revamped attraction.

She said last summer was the best in The Fork Markets 28-year history.

We owe that, in part, to the number of events that took place, with the Canada 150 (celebrations) and the Canada Summer Games, she admitted. But we also believe its due in large part to the investment weve made in the site and the building. That was sort of the point in reinvesting into the building itself. But this has exceeded our expectations, for sure.

The first phase of the reno, which was completed last year, involved extensively revamping the two-storey buildings main-floor food market and centre court area to create a new food hall and a craft beer-and-wine kiosk called The Common.

The second phase, which is nearing completion, involved the addition of two new food and beverage vendors  Red Ember Common and Passero and Corto. Phase 3, which will unfold early in the new year, involves converting the south-isle area of the building, where Generation Green used to be, into a new seating area, with new lighting, paint and furniture.

Thomson said that may not be the end of the renovations. She likened it to a home renovation project where you think youre almost done and then you find something else that needs to be addressed.

Officials believe its money well spent, and the owner of one of their oldest retail tenants agrees.

Brad Hewlett, who owns two gift shops in The Forks Market  The Forks Trading Company and Two Rivers  said adding a kiosk for craft beer and wine in the food hall and obtaining an expanded liquor licence to cover the entire main floor of the building has helped attract a younger crowd to The Forks,

This is what millennials want. They want to go and have a glass of wine, carry it around while they shop, and just hang out, Hewlett said.

It used to be that January, February and March we couldnt wait to close the doors at 6:30 p.m. because it was so dead. Now, its well worth it for us to be open till 9 p.m. It has completely changed. The Forks is now very much the hip place to go.

Hewlett said the other smart thing Forks North Portage officials did was to convince a number of successful local food vendors/restaurant operators to open kiosks in the food hall.

They said, whats cool, whats hip, whats local, and they went out and recruited those vendors, he said, adding they give Winnipeggers even more reasons to come to The Forks.

Its (all about) lets make this unique, and lets have local independents only, he said, and it gives the city of Winnipeg something that is very different.

Hewlett said he and Forks Trading Company general manager Megan Basaraba have taken a similar approach with The Forks Trading Company gift shop.

There is a heavy emphasis on products made by local artisans, and its paying dividends for them, as well.

We just continue bringing in more and more locally made products. Were cramming in as much as we can because theres an enormous demand for it, Hewlett explained. Particularly from millennials who dont mind paying more for products if theyre of a high quality, organic and locally made, he said.

Brad Hewlett, who owns two gift ships at The Forks, says younger people are visiting the site now.

One of the new food vendors recruited by Forks North Portage was Nuburger, the local gourmet hamburger restaurant chain that has two other outlets in the city  one in Osborne Village and the other in the Kenaston-McGillivray retail area.

It opened a 300-square-foot kiosk in the food hall last November. Company co-owner Marc Priestley said although the kiosk can only offer about half as many items on its menu as its two full-sized sister outlets, it still does extremely well.

Its been really busy. And all of the other vendors and everybody who works there have been wonderful to work with, so were really happy to be part of it.

Priestley admitted he had reservations when The Forks first approached him because it had been a number of years since hed last been there, and he remembered it as being not very busy during the evening.

So before giving them an answer, he and his partners went to see what its like now. They quickly realized things had changed a lot since their last visit.

The Common is very popular and is growing in popularity, he said. That allows businesses to be open later because it is open in the evening and its bringing a lot of people there. Its not just a daytime sort of place to visit anymore.

Priestley said Nuburgers customers at The Forks are a little bit of everything, including families and millennials. Thomson said thats the case for The Forks Market in general.

She said its encouraging that while The Forks is weather-dependant, it is evolving into a year-round destination.

Over the last three to five years, weve seen that on a mild weekend during the River Trail season, well see just as many people on a Saturday or Sunday as we would during a busy July weekend.

She said spring and fall seem to be getting shorter and shorter, which is really great.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 25/11/2017 (1817 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Shaken friends and colleagues are struggling with the news that Dauphin Mayor Eric Irwin had died suddenly on a family vacation in Florida on Friday.

The cause of the death is unknown, but at least one close friend believed it was due to natural causes. Irwin was believed to have been snorkeling at the time of his death.

As Mayor, his leadership provided financial stability along with projects and initiatives that offered growth to the community, all while maintaining strong fiscal constraints. His visionary ability and leadership will be greatly missed, the citys statement read.

His passing creates a void in our community but offers inspiration to carry out his vision.

The council for the city of 8,400 people located 327 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg planned to meet with senior city administrators and in consultation with the province, develop a plan for the mayors replacement. Irwin had one year left in his term.

Deputy Mayor Allen Dowhan said Irwin first moved to Dauphin as a young lawyer, probably over 30 years ago and fast became a local booster and was among the citys hardest working volunteers.

His mind was going 24/7 and well miss him dearly. Dowhan said.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Dauphin mayor and president of Dauphin's Countryfest has died.

When he took a project on, he made sure he attacked it with a passion. He wanted the best for our region and our community, because were in a rural community and with the declining rural population, we wanted to grow our community.

Irwins long-time friend and colleague, Yorkton-based music promoter Rob Waloschuk, said he was the driving force behind the success of Dauphins Countryfest.

Not only we were colleagues together in Countryfest. We were friends. We did a lot of things together. You know, trips to Nashville, seeing music together, stuff like that, Waloschuk said.

The annual festival is one of the countrys biggest country music events and among the largest outdoor music venues in Manitoba. Irwin led it for over two decades, after taking over as president in 1988, the same year he was first elected to Dauphin city council. The music festival put the town on the music map.

Its really a heartbreaking day for everyone involved. I still cant even wrap my head around it. Its like a bad dream right now.

He was the mayor. He was the president of the Co-op. He was on Rotary. He had a successful law firm, which, by the way, was the only thing that actually paid him, his Waloschuk said. Everything else that Eric ever did, it was all volunteer. He was going constantly, 24/7, and I often asked him How do you do it. Why do you do it?

He just truly had a love of everything that he did. Every organization he was a part of, it was because he wanted to make things better.

Word of the death spread like wildfire through the country music industry with Twitter posts from as far away as Nashville by early afternoon.

This is shocking. Eric was such an great spirit and ambassador. The show will go on but it will never be the same. My (emoji for heart) is w/ his fam and Dauphin, Nashville broadcaster and SiriusXM host Storme Warren tweeted.

Condolences poured in from the political and labour worlds as well.

Saddened to hear of the sudden passing of Eric Irwin, Mayor of Dauphin, read one post on Manitoba Premier Brian Pallisters Twitter.

The shock was deepest for people who regarded him as almost an unstoppable force of nature.

In addition to his wife and daughter Irwin was also the father of two sons, the Free Press was told.

According to provincial law, the city is not required to hold a byelection to fill the mayors seat since Manitobas municipal elections are less than a year away. If council decides not to hold a byelection, council can appoint one of their own to the mayors desk.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 14:38:11|Editor: Zhou Xin

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JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Up to 13 militants loyal to the Islamic State (IS) group were killed, following an air operation in Haska Mina district of eastern Afghan Nangarhar province on Friday, an official said Saturday.

The operation was launched late on Friday evening, leaving 13 IS fighters dead in Gagari area of the turbulent Hasak Mina district of the province, Ataullah Khogyani, the governor spokesman told reporters here.

No civilian had been injured in the operation, according to the official.

IS group has yet to make comment.
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This article was published 24/11/2017 (1818 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  Winnipeg shipping companies warn multiple Manitoba industries could see a chunk of their business go to Quebec, as the ruptured Churchill rail line speeds up an ongoing trend of Nunavut communities relying on Eastern Canada.

Its been a really difficult year, said Jay Michno, co-owner of Arctic Expediting.

Business, as far as we can tell, is starting to leave the province.

Katie de Muelles / winnipeg free press files Shipping companies are seeing their clients begin to head east to transport their items to northern ports.

Michnos company ships construction materials, vehicles, heavy equipment and chemicals, mostly to the 10,000 residents of Nunavuts western Kivalliq region.

He buys products near Winnipeg, and puts most of them on the rail line to the northern Manitoba town of Churchill to then ship them further north by sea.

When the rail line washed out May 23 near Gillam, it was the start of the shipping season and only some of Michnos freight had reached Churchill.

Shipments were stranded in Thompson, costing customers huge sums to get their products back down to Winnipeg and onwards by truck to Montreal. Michno has since relied on trucking supplies to Montreal ports from Winnipeg.

Typically, we would do 90, 95 per cent of operations through the Port of Churchill, and this year everything had to go through Montreal, said Michno. He adds Manitobans dont realize how frequently an array of industries based in the province ship up to the territories.

Though his long-term contracts have helped him almost match the cost of trucking to Montreal to that of shipping through Churchill, he knows Quebec companies are eating up his client base with cheaper offers.

Ultimately, if theres not an option to ship right from Winnipeg straight north thats what were going to see more an more of, he said.

Michno says its only sped up a trend of abandoning the Churchill line. Since about 2010, his company faced steadily rising costs from both sealift companies and Hudson Bay Railway owner Omnitraxs fees.

We saw customers moving to vendors in Montreal and taking their business there and shipping through that port, he said. We definitely lost noticeable business to companies in Quebec.

Other companies echo his dismay.

Its been terrible since the track went down, said Jim Ramsay, owner of Arctic Connection.

His company ships 1.36 million kilograms of supplies each year, from food and vehicles to classroom supplies and houses.

Nobodys paying attention to it, but its huge and its going to get bigger and bigger, said Ramsay, who has been shipping to Nunavut for 25 years. Youre going to see Manitoba business losing.

For example, he said his company buys 50 vehicles a year from Winnipeg dealerships, but Montreal will likely have cheaper options.

He suspects hundreds of cars could be left unsold in Manitoba each year.

The Manitoba government is not paying much attention  they say Churchill, but youre talking millions of dollars of supplies that come out of Manitoba into the Kivalliq region.

OmniTrax A portion of the Hudson Bay Railway to Churchill has been under water since May.

Ramsay has moved almost all his business onto flights out of Thompson, adding 40 to 50 cents onto each pound. The summertime barge shipments hes using out of Quebec means orders need to be placed a month in advance.

A decade ago, Baker Lake Contracting & Supplies acquired Umingmak Supply, which ships supplies from Inkster Industrial Park, accounting for 10,000 tonnes of cargo in 2011  no one from the company was available for an interview this week.

Similarly, Arctic Buying Company focuses on food shipments, and has reportedly seen shipping costs rise dramatically.

Not all suppliers are hard hit. Ryan St. John, president of Eskimo Point Lumber Supply, said his firm opted for sealifts due to costs and unreliability along the Hudson Bay Railway. For us, its really business as usual, he said. We just lose another option for shipping.

The provincial government wouldnt say whether theyve studied the hit to Manitoba suppliers this year, or if any of the $500,000 Premier Brian Pallister pledged in September for Churchill has been allotted for this fiscal year.

Our government has been primarily focused on the safety and security of the community by ensuring the supply of propane and fuel for the coming winter, and minimizing pricing hardships on food and other essentials, reads a statement from a government spokesperson, with no name attached.

Manitoba NDP labour critic Tom Lindsey said the province needs to put money behind its talk of boosting trade.

Weve got a port right in our backyard that we can be using throughout the province to transport stuff, not just to Nunavut, but to Russia and other points, he said. Instead, the provincial government is ignoring that opportunity.

Meanwhile, the province has not decided whether to follow Ottawa in suing Omnitrax for the $20 million it spent under a 2008 funding agreement.

The province has not provided the contract, which Omnitrax consented to be released to the Free Press a month ago.

As always, the province highlighted that rail and ports are federally regulated.

We have reserved all of our legal rights and claims against Omnitrax and will continue to actively monitor legal steps taken by the federal government, wrote a spokesman.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 25/11/2017 (1817 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The provinces Health Professions Advisory Council says chiropractors need to make sure their patients are aware of the risks involved with the high neck manipulation procedure.

Practitioners also need to make sure their patients know which symptoms show theyre having a severe adverse reaction to the procedure, said the council, which decided there wasnt enough evidence to altogether ban chiropractors from performing the procedure.

The council made the recommendations in a March report that Manitoba Health made public this week.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS files Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen previously had tasked them with the review.

The Manitoba Chiropractors Association said in a statement it welcomes the recommendations.

(It) will allow regulated health professionals to continue to help Manitobans with their acute and chronic pain, association executive director Lisa Goss said.

We are pleased to work with the government to review and further strengthen the informed consent process for Manitobans.

Under the Regulated Health Professions Act (RHPA), the council is tasked with advising Goertzen on regulation issues.

High neck manipulation is considered to be a reserved act under the RHPA, meaning only certain professionals can perform it. Other reserved acts include prescribing or administering drugs and ordering diagnostic tests.

In a letter to the council, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba made clear it has serious reservations about allowing chiropractors to perform such manipulation.

According to the councils report, the college thought the association should be required to demonstrate scientifically the safety and efficacy of spinal manipulation therapy to ensure patient safety.

Among their concerns are the risk of a vertebral fracture or artery dissection and brain stem stroke, risk of spinal cord injury or nerve root injury that could lead to motor and sensory deficits as well as quadriplegia and death.

The MCA has always put patient safety first, Goss said.

As a profession, we have long had an informed consent process which makes both risks and benefits clear to patients.

A spokeswoman for Goertzen said the government will work with the relevant health profession regulatory colleges to address the findings of the council as outlined in the report.

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca
With all-party support, Canadas Parliament adopted in late October a new sanctions law patterned after the US Magnitsky Act. Under the pretext of targeting so-called human rights violators, the legislation provides a ready mechanism for Ottawa to sanction leaders of, and ratchet up tensions with, Russia and other countries in the cross-hairs of Canadian and US imperialism.

The Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Bill S-226) enables the government to freeze Canadian assets of corrupt foreign officials and prevent them from entering Canada. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, a self-avowed Ukrainian nationalist and notorious anti-Russian hawk, announced the first round of sanctions under the new law at the beginning of this month. They target 52 individuals in Russia, South Sudan and Venezuela, including Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

These sanctions were imposed only weeks after Canada targeted 40 other Venezuelan government officials and individuals under a different sanctions regime. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza has labelled the sanctions as illegal and accused Canada of absolute and shameful subordination" to Washington in its campaign for regime-change in Caracas.

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the passage of Bill S-226 by accusing Canada of playing unconstructive political games. While not revealing any names, Kirill Kalinin, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Ottawa told the Globe and Mail that a large number of Canadians pursuing a toxic Russophobic agenda were now prohibited from entering Russia. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed that the list of Canadians contains dozens of names.

Canadas Magnitsky Act is only the latest step in its longstanding and growing strategic rivalry with Russia. Ottawa staunchly supported NATOs expansion to Russia borders, which was undertaken in violation of pledges given to Moscow at the end of the Cold War. It has played a major role in Washingtons quarter-century long drive to bring Ukraine under western domination; and today is an integral part of the US-led military-strategic offensive to isolate, encircle and prepare for war with Russia.

Since coming to power in 2015, Trudeaus Liberal government has continued and even intensified Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harpers anti-Russia agenda.

In Ukraine, Canada was deeply involved in the February 2014 fascist-spearheaded, US-orchestrated putsch that toppled the countrys pro-Russian elected president, Victor Yanukovych.

Trudeau has continued Canadas close relationship with the far-right regime in Kiev. Last year Ottawa signed a free trade pact with Ukraine that facilitates arm deals between the two countries. When he travelled to Ukraine in the summer of 2016 visit, Trudeau boasted that Canadian troops are training Ukrainian forces to liberate eastern Ukraine from pro-Russian separatists. This was a reference to the 200 Canadian Armed Forces personnel who are training Ukrainian Army and National Guard troops under a mission set to last until 2019.

The Canadian Armed Forces is commanding and anchoring a NATO forward deployed battlegroup in Latvia, one of four such battalions that have been established since 2016 in the three Baltic States and Poland. Canada also now routinely deploys battleships to the Black Sea and warplanes to patrol Russias western border.

Another element in Canadas conflict with Russia is Ottawas determination to expand its military presence in the Arctic, where the two countries have competing claims for the resource-rich Arctic seabed.

The original Magnitsky Act was adopted in 2012, with bi-partisan support, as part of the Obama administrations increasingly hardline anti-Russia stance. The Obama administration seized on a persistent campaign waged by multi-millionaire financier and Hermitage Capital-founder William F. Browder for anti-Russia measures, following the 2009 death of his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in a Russian prison. Browder, who made a fortune out of the restoration of capitalism in Russia, alleges Magnitsky was jailed on trumped up charges and refused proper medical care, because he had uncovered a US$230 million tax fraud involving Russian government officials.

In addition to the US and Canada, Britain and Estonia have implemented Magnitsky-style sanctions legislation. The US law enables the government to deny visas and block access to American banks to Russians and others accused of human rights abuses.

Browder has praised Canadas adoption of like legislation, saying that the fact that the government came out so quickly with this shows how serious they are. This is a demonstration of moral leadership in a world that's sorely needing world leadership right now.

In reality, the Canadian parliaments unanimous adoption of a Magnitsky-style law is a further sign that the Canadian ruling class is determined to deepen the countrys already extremely close military-security partnership with Washington, while pressuring the Trump administration not to seek any accommodation with Moscow.

Since the election of Donald Trump, Trudeaus Liberals and Canadas corporate media have aligned themselves with the furious anti-Russia campaign mounted by the Democrats and a section of the Republicans, in league with the military-intelligence apparatus. Without providing any evidence, this campaign has baldly asserted that Russia, under the direct orders of Putin, covertly intervened in the 2016 US elections to undermine Hillary Clintons presidential bid and favour Trumps victory.

This neo-McCarthyite campaign is increasingly being exploited to label all voices critical of the US ruling class as Russian stooges and demand that they be censored. It takes place in a context of fierce and ongoing conflicts within the US political establishment over matters of foreign policy. Specifically, the issue at stake is whether to prioritize Russia or, as Trump advocates, China for economic and military confrontation.

Although Russia is the prime target of Bill S-226, the Liberal government is seeking to invoke human rights to advance Canadian imperialist interests around the globe.

Trudeaus humanitarian rhetoric is shot through with hypocrisy. Canada, as a long-standing ally of US imperialism, has for decades resorted to the most ruthless methods to enforce its predatory imperialist ambitions around the globe. This includes assisting in installing, arming and otherwise supporting right-wing dictatorships, backing US wars of aggression, and spying on the worlds population through Canadas membership of the American National Security Agency-led Five Eyes surveillance network.

In tandem with Washington, Ottawa maintains a studious silence when western-aligned governments such as Saudi Arabia, Israel or Egypt commit gross human rights violations. Indeed, Canada recently concluded a $15 billion arms deal with Riyadh, facilitating the absolutist sheikdoms suppression of its own population and its brutal war against the Yemeni people, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the Arab worlds most impoverished country. During his recent Asian tour, Trudeau declared his willingness to work with the fascistic president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte as well as the Burmese government of Aung San Suu Kyi, which is carrying out an ethnic pogrom against Rohingya Muslims.

While claiming to uphold international law and human rights, Canada has engaged in virtually uninterrupted war over the last two decades, including NATOs 1999 bombardment of Yugoslavia, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan for a decade beginning in 2001, the 2011 war on Libya, and the ongoing conflict in Syria and Iraq. In its foreign interventions, Canada has shown no qualms in cooperating with far-right, fascistic forces, such as in its 2004 toppling of the Haitian government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Trudeau is also indifferent to glaring human rights abuses at home, when not overseeing further encroachments on Canadians democratic rights. Trudeau preaches native reconciliation. But his government has refused to provide native people living on reserves with per capita health and education funding commensurate with that given other Canadians and has privately reassured Big Oil that it is ready to deploy the army to suppress protests against the building of environmentally and socially-destructive pipelines.

And while the Liberals do everything to prevent desperate asylum seekers from fleeing to Canada to escape the Trump administrations brutal anti-immigrant crackdown, hundreds of refugees, including children, are left to rot in Canadian jails without trial, merely because they lack adequate identification papers. Since 2000, at least 15 people have died while detained by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), including at least three since the Liberals came to power two years ago.
After 39 years of wrongful imprisonment, a California man was released on Wednesday. Craig Richard Coley, 70, was convicted in 1978 for the murder of his ex-girlfriend and her four-year-old son. California Governor Jerry Brown ordered Coleys immediate release from a state prison in Lancaster based on the results of a new investigation that demonstrated he was wrongly convicted.

Coley was arrested on November 11, 1978 after 24-year old Rhonda Wicht and her four-year old, Donald Wicht, were found dead in her apartment in Simi Valley. Rhonda Wicht was strangled with a macrame rope and Donald Wicht was smothered to death. Investigators quickly identified Coley as a suspect because he had broken up with Wicht shortly before she was killed.

According to a news release issued by the police chief and district attorney, Coleys first trial in 1979 resulted in a hung jury after jurors failed to resolve an impasse that left them deadlocked 10-2 in favor of a guilty verdict. Coley was tried again in 1980, found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Coley, a Vietnam War navy veteran, has always maintained his innocence. He appealed to Governor Brown for clemency and Brown ordered a review of the case in 2015. Brown said that former law enforcement officials felt that Coley was wrongfully convicted or framed.

Coleys request for clemency was supported by Simi Valley Police Chief David Livingstone and Ventura County District Attorney Gregory Totten, who said they could not stand by the evidence used to convict Coley. The trial court had ordered evidence destroyed after Coley exhausted his appeals, but investigators received records from Coleys relatives and found biological samples at a private lab.

According to Simi Valley Police, biological evidence that was previously thought to be lost or destroyed was discovered at a private laboratory. The evidence, which police have not described, was tested using advanced technology, not available at the time of the original trial, and did not have any trace of Coleys DNA.

This case is tragic, Livingstone and Totten wrote in a news release. An innocent woman and small child were murdered. Craig Coley has spent 39 years in custody for a crime he likely did not commit.

Reviewing the case in light of the new evidence, we no longer have confidence in the weight of the evidence used to convict Mr. Coley, Simi Valley police and Ventura County prosecutors said in a joint statement earlier this week. The pair called the case tragic and said they will seek to determine if they can figure out who killed the mother and child nearly 4 decades ago.

Coley had no criminal history, and Governor Brown suggested that he might have been framed. The grace with which Mr. Coley has endured his lengthy and unjust incarceration is extraordinary, Brown wrote. I grant this pardon because Mr. Coley did not commit these crimes.

Speaking to NBC News following his release Coley said, How can you feel when someone just reaches in and takes four decades out of your life? He has been assigned a public defender and will seek compensation for the time he was unjustly incarcerated.

According to The Innocence Project, more than 350 people have been exonerated by new technology for DNA testing in the United States since 1989. The organization is dedicated to helping those wrongfully convicted - the organization itself has been involved in 183 DNA exonerations - and offers demographics on the cases.

On average, the wrongfully accused have spent 14 years in prison before they were proven innocent. The total number of years served by those exonerated by DNA evidence amounts to 4,788. Those wrongfully convicted have an average age of 26.5 at the time they were arrested, age 42.5 when they were set free. Some 71 percent of cases involved eyewitness misidentification of suspects.

The National Registry of Exonerations has recorded 2,120 exonerations since 1989, involving mistaken identification, false confessions, bad forensic evidence, perjury, and official misconduct. The total amount of time served comes to 18,454 years, with an average of 8.7 years per case. The states with the most exonerations include Texas (332), New York (250), California (190), and Illinois (203).
Four days after the failure of the exploratory talks on the formation of a Jamaica coalition between the conservative, liberal and Green parties, Germanys Social Democratic Party (SPD) is preparing the way for a continuation of the grand coalition.

On Monday the party executive had voted unanimously against participating in government and in favour of new elections. But after negotiations between SPD leader Martin Schulz and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and an eight-hour meeting involving the SPD leadership, General Secretary Hubertus Heil announced the change of course early Friday morning. The SPD is firmly convinced that it is necessary to talk, he said. The SPD will not exclude itself from government talks, he added.

However, the SPD did not want to explicitly commit to a grand coalition at this stage. Within the SPD, the grand coalition is not automatic, stated executive member Manuela Schwesig. But this is merely aimed at buying time so as to implement the new course.

It is now up to party leader Schulz to prepare the party for a change in course and explain it to the membership. That was the message from Willy Brandt House, the SPDs headquarters. Schulz declared over Twitter that he would have the membership vote on the SPDs participation in government. The SPD has planned a party congress for early December.

Along with a continuation of the grand coalition, another possibility currently being discussed is the SPDs support for a minority government of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU). But this is less likely. The offer is merely the first step back into the grand coalition, wrote Spiegel Online.

The Suddeutsche Zeitung stated that the minority government option would be wrong because it would weaken Germany in foreign policy: In the situation in which Germany finds itself, and also the role that Germany possesses in Europe, it is inconceivable that the government would have to fear the securing of an agreement in its own parliament for every difficult decision.

President Steinmeier, whose SPD membership has officially lapsed, has applied major pressure on his party over recent days to enter the government. He now no longer wants to let any time slip, and has invited the leaders of the SPD, CDU and CSU to Bellevue Palace next week to discuss how things are to proceed. He also intends to hold separate talks with the parliamentary leaders of the Free Democrats (FDP), Greens and the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The SPD decided to go into opposition after it received its worst result in 70 years in the September 24 election, in which the CDU and CSU also suffered substantial losses. The governing parties lost a total of 14 percentage points. The SPD fears that it will decline into insignificance, and that the working class will turn to the left if it remains in government in spite of the devastating verdict of the electorate.

After the talks on a potential CDU-FDP-Green coalition dragged out for weeks and ultimately collapsed, their priorities changed. President Steinmeier, President of the Bundestag (parliament) Wolfgang Schauble (CDU), and other leading state representatives insisted that new elections had to be avoided at all costs. The reason for this was their concern that the widespread social dissatisfaction would find political expression in a new election campaign and that a protracted government crisis would undermine Germanys international standing.

They rapidly gained supporters within the SPD. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who continues to serve temporarily in that position, Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz and other representatives of the partys right-wing criticised Schulz, who continued to insist that the SPD should remain in opposition. On Thursday, Schulz relented.

A third installment of the grand coalition would differ significantly from its predecessors from 2005 to 2009 and 2013 to 2017. Emerging out of a major electoral defeat, the government will lack any democratic legitimacy. As a result, it will respond in a much more authoritarian and ruthless manner than its predecessor to pressure from below. Reading the newspaper commentaries on the SPDs change of course leaves no room for doubt about this.

On Monday, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) was still paying respect to the FDP, because they torpedoed the Jamaica talks and spared Germany a government full of contradictions. The FAZ is now praising the SPD in the warmest tones because the party has bowed to the states interests.

When the midwife bearing the name President intervenes in the labour ward of parliamentary democracy, all party desires must retreat in the face of the states interests, wrote the conservative mouthpiece of the Frankfurt stock exchange.

The Weimar Republic, with which it compares the current situation, did not fail because the state elitesReich President, the general staff, judiciary, and bourgeois partiesaligned themselves with the most reactionary forces and even appointed Hitler as chancellor, but rather because the party landscape in an increasingly fractured spectrum gained the upper hand over the well-being of the state, the FAZ wrote.

This is the classic justification for every dictatorship: as the social and political conflicts intensify, the partiesthe political expression of social interestsand thus democracy, bow before the well-being of the state. On August 4, 1914, when the SPD voted for war credits for the First World War and opponents of the war were thrown in prison, Kaiser Wilhelm uttered the infamous statement, I no longer recognise any parties, I recognise only Germans.

Die Zeit is also enthusiastic about the SPDs return to government. The most important thing now is that Germany gets a new government soon that is not only capable of administering day-to-day business, but also of tackling the countrys problems, providing an answer to French President Emmanuel Macrons proposals for renewing the EU, and responding to crises, wrote the SPD-aligned weekly newspaper.

The SPD has long been the most aggressive party when it comes to tackling the countrys problems in the interests of the ruling elite and responding to international crises. The abolition of social and democratic rights has largely been implemented by the SPDfrom the Hartz laws to the raising of the age of retirement to 67, the contract unity law, which suppresses smaller trade unions, and the Facebook law, which censors the Internet.

President Steinmeier, the driving force behind the grand coalition, was in 2003, as head of Gerhard Schroders chancellors office, the actual author of the right-wing Agenda 2010. As foreign minister, he played a leading role in 2014 in the revival of German militarism, and his successor Sigmar Gabriel is pressing ahead with strengthening the German army and the construction of an independent European army. It was Gabriel who made the statement that the rise of Trump should not only be seen as a threat, but as an opportunity for German big business to intervene more decisively in new regions of the world.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) warned in its statement on the federal election, All of the established partiesfrom the CDU/CSU, to the FDP, Greens, the SPD and the Left Partysupport the policies of militarism, the strengthening of the domestic repressive state apparatus, and social cutbacks. They organise the social attacks at the federal and state level. They are all conspiring against the population.

This is now being confirmed. The grand coalition is deeply unpopular, as shown by its losses in the federal election. If it is continued, it will be the result of a conspiracy behind the scenes. The SGP rejects this and demands new elections.

The policies of social cutbacks, strengthening of the state apparatus and militarism are being met with widespread opposition among workers and youth. But this opposition requires a political perspective; otherwise the right-wing will profit from the mounting frustration. The SGP is fighting for the building of a socialist alternative, which connects the struggle against war with the fight against social inequality and capitalism.
Israels Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman has asked for an immediate US$1.4 billion increase in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) budget, citing the new threats developing along its northern border with Syria.

This is a reference to the Syrian government forces, the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah as well as Iran that destroyed the power of the various Israeli-backed rebel groups and now control the border region.

Crucially, the defeat and driving out of ISIS forces around the Euphrates River in the south east of Syria, along the border with Iraq, has effectively secured the land bridge linking Tehran to the Mediterranean via its allies, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Contrary to Tel Avivs best calculations, and after years of buying expensive equipment for the IDF to deal with Iran, Israel now faces a better armed and trained Hezbollah as well as a battle hardened and re-equipped Syrian army, directly supported if not led by Iran on its northern doorstep. It is therefore seeking to counter Iranian influence and the Syrian governments consolidation of control over the areas previously held by the various Islamist militias.

Lieberman declared that Israel would not allow Iran to dig in or allow Syria to become a forward position against Israel. Israel has launched several air strikes on Syrian targets in recent weeks, even acknowledging them, something never previously admitted. Housing Minister and former general, Yoav Galant, asserted that Hezbollah has 100,000 launch-ready missiles.

The Israeli military carried out its largest military manoeuvres in 20 years in September, with tens of thousands of soldiers simulating the defence of Israel against a Hezbollah invasion and attempted seizure of Israeli towns. Israel announced that it would not hesitate to intervene to protect the Druze residents of the Jebel al-Druze region in Syria near the Israeli border and has on several occasions fired warning shots against Syrian operations in the area.

The IDF also deployed Iron Dome anti-missile batteries throughout the country, ostensibly in preparation for an escalation of tensions along the border with the Gaza Strip.

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, having for more than 20 years called Iran an existential threat to Israel, now faces Iranian forces just five kilometres from the Golan Heights border. He has indicated that Israel would do everything it could to contain Iran, even if it had to act alone, and accused Tehran of plotting to destroy Israel from Syria.

Netanyahu alleged that Iran, one of the monitors of a ceasefire deal in Syria along with Russia and Turkey, wants to station its troops on Syrian territorya zone stretching from the Syrian-Jordanian-Israeli border junction at the Golan Heights up to Mount Hermonon a permanent basis, with the declared intent of using Syria as a base from which to destroy Israel.

According to the DebkaFile website, Netanyahu told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that as long as Iranian and Hezbollah forces were present there, Israel could not guarantee not to open fire if its border security was threatened and demanded their removal.

Israels actions are a key factor threatening to ignite a wider regional conflagration, with Saudi Arabia seeking to draw Israel directly into a war against Iran, its archrival in the region.

The failure of the Sunni Persian Gulf oil monarchies, in cooperation with the US, Britain, Turkey, Jordan and Israel, to topple the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as part of Washingtons broader strategy of isolating Iran and reordering the resource-rich region in its own interests, has intensified Israels crisis.

The near-seven year war to unseat Assad follows the failure of Israels war against Lebanon in 2006 that was intended to spread to Syria and lead to Assads overthrow, with Washington entering the war alongside Israel. Israel was forced to end the war after 33 days, having destroyed much of Lebanons infrastructure but without achieving either US intervention or any of its political objectives.

While the US is withdrawing its Islamist proxies from Syria, including ISIS and al-Qaeda-linked affiliates and splinter groups it claims to be fighting in Iraq and Syria, this is only to prepare new military plans. Following his visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel to build up an anti-Iran coalition, President Donald Trump signalled a sharp intensification of US hostility toward Iran, demanding the renegotiation of the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran and the re-imposition of sweeping sanctionsin defiance of Washingtons European allies who support the deal.

Viewing Trumps words as a green light, Riyadh and its Gulf allies, working closely with Israel, have stoked up tensions with Tehranwith Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stating that Irans supreme leader is the new Hitler of the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia has escalated the blockade of Yemen, where it accuses Iran of arming the Houthi rebels and launching a missile against Riyadh airport, both charges that Tehran denies. The Saudis have cited Qatars close links with Iran, with which it shares the giant South Pars gas field, and its support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates in Egypt, Hamas in Gaza and elsewhere in the region, to justify its blockade of Qatar.

Crucially, Saudi Arabia has threatened Hezbollah and Lebanon. Forcing Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who heads a coalition with Hezbollah, to resign, Riyadh branded Hezbollah a terrorist organisation and called for its destruction. Beirut had to end its acquiescence to Hezbollahs war against the Persian Gulf monarchy in Syria and confront Hezbollah by force, Riyadh warned, or face economic and financial sanctions. Saudi nationals were told to leave Lebanon.

Hariris resignation had the hallmarks of a Saudi attempt to deliberately foment a crisis aimed at provoking an Israeli-Iranian confrontation in Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah alleged that the organization had received credibly-sourced information that Riyadh had offered Israel billions toward the cost of the next war on Hezbollah.

According to leaked cables aired by Israels Channel 10 news, Israel instructed its overseas embassies to lobby in support of Saudi Arabia and its efforts to destabilise Lebanon and stress Iran and Hezbollahs involvement in regional subversion.

The Saudis ramping up of tensions prompted Lebanons army chief General Joseph Aoun to urge his forces to be ready to face the threats of the Israeli enemy on Lebanons southern border. Israel has been holding a military exercise near its border with Syria since the weekend.

The Saudi monarchy summoned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to Riyadh, where he was told to support Trumps soon to be announced peace initiative brokered by Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner, or make way for someone elsemeaning Mohammed Dahlan. The aim is to provide political cover for an alliance between Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, the US and Israel against Iran. At the same time, the Trump administration announced it will close the Palestinian Liberation Organisations (PLO) diplomatic mission in Washington because it has taken cases against Israel to the International Criminal Court.

Israel's energy minister Yuval Steinitz has spoken publicly about close Saudi-Israeli and regional cooperation, while IDF chief of staff Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot, in an unprecedented interview to a Saudi news website in Arabic, said that Israel was ready to share intelligence information with Saudi Arabia as they both had a common interest in standing up to Iran.

There are reports of Israeli military forces operating in Egypts Sinai against the Islamic State, and in the north where Jordan, Israel and Syria converge.

Eisenkot claimed that Hezbollah posed a threat to the Arab world, while Israel supposedly wasnt interested in war with Lebanon or Syria.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) has negotiated a new cost-cutting deal at the Unilever-owned Streets ice-cream plant in Minto, south-western Sydney, after a 16-month dispute over an enterprise agreement.

AMWU state secretary Steve Murphy hailed the agreement as an enormous victory for fairness and called off the unions token consumer boycott of the brands popular ice-creams. Christmas has come early for Streets workers and their supporters, he declared.

Murphys claims were repeated by Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus who said the deal was a huge victory against one of the worlds biggest multinationals.

These claims are bogus. The enterprise agreement, which was negotiated in the Fair Work Commission (FWC) in recent weeks, satisfies Unilevers demands for lower costs and increased labour flexibility.

Streets management, which had threatened to close the plant if its demands were not accepted, immediately praised the new arrangements. A company spokesperson told the media that it would deliver significant improvements in the flexibility of the factory.

Although the more than 140 AMWU members at the Streets plant are reported to have given in-principle support at a meeting Wednesday night, the union and the company are observing a code of silence about the specifics of the deal which will be subject to a formal ballot by workers next week.

The sketchy details about the agreement are no accident. Like previous enterprise deals at the Streets plant, which operates round the clock with rotating shifts, the new agreement will open the way for further speedups and cuts to working conditions. It is not even clear whether workers will be given a copy of the new enterprise deal before the final ballot.

The agreement reportedly includes a minimal 5 percent wage increase over three years and no changes to current working conditions and rosters. This rise does not keep pace with current cost-of-living increases.

The deal includes the creation of 39 flexible part-time jobs or almost a quarter of the plants current workforce. No information has been made available about these jobs but Streets management insisted during all negotiations that casualisation and increased flexibility of the workforce was necessary.

Since last year, when the previous 2013 enterprise agreement expired, Streets workers have resisted managements demands for flexibility. In July workers rejected, by a margin of 130 to 9, a previous in-principle deal cooked up between the union and management.

Streets management responded to this rejection by applying to the Fair Work Commission in August for the termination of the expired enterprise agreement. This would have led to the imposition of the current food industry award resulting in pay being slashed by up to 46 percent.

Anxious to block any industrial action, the AMWU in late October, with financial support from the ACTU, launched a so-called consumer boycott, claiming this would force the company to withdraw its threats. Within days of initiating its boycott, the AMWU resumed negotiations with Streets in the FWC. The union offered to save the company millions of dollars.

As AMWU state secretary Steve Murphy told Fairfax Media early this month, the union identified and was prepared to impose $2.5 million in annual cost-savings. This would be achieved, he said, through roster changes, modifications in staffing levels to reflect demand and seasonal fluctuations, and a training program to multi-skill employees.

The union, Murphy declared, would work constructively with Unilever to ensure the long-term future of the Streets factory in Minto.

This offer, in fact, was in line with a union commitment in the previous enterprise agreement to build a partnership for the future success of the plant and to ensure a viable ice cream business in the future. None of this will guarantee that the plant will remain open in the future.

Last year Unilever, a British-Dutch corporation, recorded an $11 billion operating profit, up from the previous year, and is currently axing thousands of jobs internationally. This includes the elimination of more than 3,000 positions in the US, UK and Netherlands with plans to axe 1,000 jobs in Germany and between 10 to 15 percent of its 18,000-strong workforce in India.

AMWU and ACTU officials are claiming that their consumer boycott has been an overwhelming success with 1.5 million people endorsing it on Facebook and other social media.

Consumer boycotts, of course, are nothing new but have been used for decades by union bureaucrats around the world to divert workers anger into impotent publicity stunts and protests.

The Streets boycott, like last years union protests against Carlton Union Breweries (CUB) after it sacked 55 tradesmen at its Abbottsford plant, was not about defending jobs and conditions. The sole purpose of these campaigns is to demonstrate to big business that the unions are the best mechanism for suppressing industrial action and imposing alternative cost-cutting measures.

The CUB campaign was no victory for the tradesmen. Six months after being sacked for refusing to accept a 65 percent wage cut, about 40 of the sacked 55 tradesmen returned to work in December on a new union-negotiated agreement. The deal reportedly involved moderated wage outcomes and productivity and efficiency improvements. These include greater worker flexibility on rosters, overtime requests and rostered days off.

AMWU and ACTU officials denounce the corporate bullying of workers and call for changes to industrial relations laws. This bluster is simply a political smokescreen to cover up the responsibility of the unions for Australias repressive industrial relations regime.

The unions fully backed the former Rudd and Gillard Labor governments Fair Work laws and have systematically imposed mass job destruction, wage cuts and productivity concessions across all sectors of the economy.

To the extent that the unions oppose the assaults of employers on workers it is from the standpoint that they have not been consulted sufficiently. Their principal aim is to maintain their role in collaborating with management in imposing destruction of jobs, wages and conditions.

Streets ice cream workers should reject the latest agreement, review the real record of the unions and recognise that a struggle against Streets or any other corporation involves a political rebellion against the unions.

To defend jobs, wages and working conditions, it is necessary to organise democratically controlled rank-and-file committees, independent of the unions, and mobilise Unilever workers in Australia and other countries. Such a struggle must be animated by a new political perspectivethe fight for workers governments to implement socialist policies in Australia and internationally.

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The UK Electoral Commission is investigating whether the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum on British membership of the European Union (EU) breached its 7 million spending limit.

Vote Leave was the officially designated representative of those advocating exit from the EU. It was fronted by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Environment Secretary Michael Govestill figureheads of the strident pro-Brexit wing of the Conservative government.

The commissionwhich regulates electoral spendingis also investigating fashion design student Darren Grimes and his social media campaign BeLeave, which received 625,000 from Vote Leave.

While it was permissible for Grimes, a registered independent leave campaigner, to spend up to 700,000 in the referendum campaign, it is alleged that the funds he received were paid directly to Canadian-based data analysts AggregateIQthe social media analyst firm employed by Vote Leave.

Veterans for Britain is also under investigation for the 100,000 it received from Vote Leave, which it also spent on AggregateIQ's services.

Under election funding guidelines, campaigns must declare if they are working with others. All the campaigns deny any wrongdoing.

The Commissions announcement came as the Good Law Project threatened a legal challenge over an earlier decision to drop an investigation into the spending of Vote Leave and others. Good Law's website, which states its objective as using the law to deliver a progressive society, describes Brexit as a terrible idea. And if the people agree we think they should be able to stop it.

The Commission denied its reopening of the investigation was in response to the legal threat. A review of information submitted previously had given reasonable grounds to suspect an offence may have been committed, it said. It will investigate if Veterans for Britain, Grimes and Vote Leave delivered incorrect spending returns and whether Vote Leave exceeded its spending limit in the referendum.

If proven, relatively paltry fines of up to 20,000 can be levied for each offence. The Commission has warned, however, that if further potential contraventions and/or offences were identified they would be referred to the police.

The traducing of democratic norms by a handful of billionaires is a matter of serious concern. But this is not the real target of the Commission, or the political agenda from which it is working.

The EU referendum was the most expensive in British political history. Some 32 million was officially spent on the campaign, with Leave receiving 16.4 million in donations to Remain's 15.1 million.

The ties between Vote Leave and numerous other Brexit groups with the right-wing of the Tory Party and the UK Independence Party are well known.

Although a minority position in ruling circles, Brexit was favoured by a number of oligarchs and hedge-fund operators. Their opposition to the EU has nothing to do with its anti-democratic and pro-austerity policies, but aims to dismantle all remaining impediments to their untrammeled enrichment by eradicating even minimal regulations on workers' rights and health and environmental standards.

The Remain campaign has even more friends in high places, however, whose interests are just as reactionary as their opponents. Supported by the majority of the political establishment along with NATO, the EU and significant sections of the City of London, Remain reflected the strategic concerns of British imperialismnot just for preserving European trade but also its role as a central linchpin of the US-led global military-intelligence apparatus, which depends on its role as Washington's key ally in Europe.

Official government policy was in favour of Remain, which distributed propaganda to this end from Downing Street. Then US President Barack Obama appeared in Britain to call directly for a Remain vote.

If one were to try to quantify the monetary value of such publicity it would vastly surpass any official spending limits. None of those leading the complaints over potential spending breaches in the referendum are concerned with this, however, because it cuts across their self-serving agenda. Their objection is not to the influence of a super-rich cabal over political life per se, but that their faction of the ruling elite lost.

The referendum delivered a shock vote narrowly in favour of Leave, by 51 percent to 49 percent, opening an existential crisis for the British bourgeoisie. This reflects a global shift in the tectonic plates of geopolitical relations, at the centre of which is the historic decline of the United States, and which is the motive force behind an ever more hysterical campaign targeting Russia and China for military action.

Two further investigations are underway by the commission over the allegedly undeclared services provided by Cambridge Analyticaa US-owned firm based in London, to the unofficial campaign, Leave.EU. This was bankrolled by the multi-billionaire insurance tycoon, Arron Banks, who also funded the UK Independence Party, formerly led by Nigel Farage.

The commission is investigating whether Banks is the true source of non-commercial loans totaling 6 million made to Leave.EU and whether Better For The Country Limitedof which he is a directoracted as an agent for other parties in donating 2.3 million to five registered campaigners.

Outside the commission, the other parties is defined more explicitly as dark Russian money.

The Observer alleged that AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytica are connected through an intellectual property license, which created a binding 'exclusive' 'worldwide' agreement 'in perpetuity' [for] all of AggregateIQ's intellectual property to be used by SCL Elections (a British firm that created Cambridge Analytica with [Robert] Mercer).

Mercer is a hedge fund billionaire with close ties to former Trump adviser and fascist Steven Bannon and Farage and Banks in Britain.

An article by Carole Cadwalladr in the Observer earlier this year placed Cambridge Analytica at the centre of an Alt-right network that played a role in both Trump and Brexit campaigns.

Cadwalladr expressed concerns at the ability of billionaires to lay the basis for an authoritarian state, utilising the type of psychological operations employed by the military to effect mass sentiment change.

Her material on the common political and economic agenda of such firms with billionaire fascists and sections of the military establishment is important. But it was employed to give the existing political set-up a clean bill of health. Claiming that the strategic objective of such operations is to smash the mainstream media and replace it with fake history and alternative facts, Cadwalladr asserts that, in contrast, government in the US, like Britain, is bound by strict laws about what data it can collect on individuals. But, for private companies anything goes.

This whitewashes the massive illegal Prism surveillance network and other covert programmes, operated through the US National Security Agency and GCHQ in Britain. The exposure of this and other criminal activities led to the hounding of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning.

For the Observer and its sister newspaper, the Guardian, social discontent is the result of psychological manipulation by the Alt-right or foreign actors. This is used to justify state censorship of social media and anti-Russian warmongering.

Cadwalladr's article began with warnings by MI6 and security analysts of the role of hostile states in subverting the democratic process, before asserting that the transatlantic links that bind Britain and America, Brexit and Trump, so tightly also wrapped Russia in its tight embrace.

No evidence is presented to back up this assertion, other than a map shown to the Observer  indicating that SCL and Cambridge Analytica have worked in Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Iran and Moldova and some employees had travelled to Russia.

Such allegations are viewed by a section of the ruling elite as a means of overturning the Brexit result.

Once again, the so-called liberals lead the way. Guardian journalist George Monbiot previously cited questions over the funding of the referendum as a means of annulling the result. Brexit should be halted until the means by which the result was obtained have been thoroughly investigated, he wrote. A public inquiry into potential serious breaches of electoral law should be convened, he argued, which could result in the referendum being annulled and repeated.

The Electoral Commission investigation could yet lead in this direction.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 14:53:17|Editor: Zhou Xin

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COLOMBO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan government on Saturday strongly condemned the terrorist attack at a mosque in the Sinai region of Egypt which killed at least 235 people.

The foreign ministry in a statement said that attacking those at prayer was an act of inexplicable brutality and the Sri Lankan government along with its people offered the deepest condolences to the families of the victims, and wished those who were injured, a speedy recovery.

"While expressing solidarity with the Government of Egypt at this time of national mourning, the Government of Sri Lanka urges the international community to join hands to find effective ways and means to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations," the foreign ministry said.

At least 235 people were killed when gunmen opened fire and bombed a mosque in Egypt's volatile Sinai Peninsula on Friday.

Egyptian officials said 109 more had been injured in the attack, which was among the deadliest in Egypt's history.
A Virginia youth pastor was arrested and charged in three murders that occurred at his home on Thanksgiving.

Christopher Gattis, 58, was arrested late Thursday night after Chesterfield County police officers arrived at the home for a reported alarm, according to the Associated Press.

Authorities found the bodies of 58-year-old Jeanett Gattis; her daughter, Candice Kunze, 30; and Kunzes boyfriend, Andrew Buthorn, 36  all dead from apparent gunshot wounds, the police said in a statement obtained by the AP.

The outlet reported Gattis had no lawyer listed in online court records.

Jeanett Gattis and daughter Candace Kunze

Gattis has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and is being held in the Chesterfield County Jail with no bail, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. He does not have a lawyer at this time.

Buthorns body was discovered by police in the front yard of Gattis home, while the bodies of the two women were found inside, according to the newspaper.

Gattis married Jeanett in 2009, as shown on his Facebook page.

As well as murder charges, Gattis is facing three counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, the Times-Dispatch reported.

He worked as as high school youth ministries coordinator for Grace Lutheran Church. The church released a statement obtained by WTVR on Friday afternoon, saying, Members of the Grace Lutheran Church are deeply saddened by the loss of life last night as a result of three individuals being shot in Chester and this tragedy included members of Grace Lutheran Church.

Grace Lutheran Church has experienced many hardships over the years, but this heartbreak has unique challenges, the statement continued. Grace Lutheran Church asks for the prayers from our community as our congregation begins the process of addressing the grief being experienced by everyone involved.

Neighbors told the Times-Dispatch that Kunze had moved back home about six weeks ago and brought along her boyfriend.

They were good people, Larry Patton told the outlet. [Christopher] would do anything for you. He was always quick to laugh. He had a hearty laugh.

They welcomed us to the neighborhood, Patton continued. Its just sad that their Thanksgiving ended that way.
Will Prince Harry and Meghan Markle spend this holiday season as an engaged couple? All bets are off!

Gambling companies have decided close bets on when an engagement between the 33-year-old royal and the 36-year-old actress will take place, amid gossip that an announcement is coming soon.

The rumour mill is going into overdrive and it looks like the worst kept secret is to be confirmed imminently, Jessica Bridge of Ladbrokes, which suspended betting this week, tells PEOPLE. Its long been a case of when and not if Harry and Meghan announce they are engaged, and all bets are off for a 2018 wedding.

The odds were 4/6 for the couple saying I do in 2018 before betting was closed.

On Tuesday, Company William Hill also closed betting on when the engagement will take place.

Even at a very short price we were taking some serious money and chose to close the betting, said spokesman Rupert Adams. We believe the happy couple are already engaged and possibly have been for some time.

They are still taking bets on other factors of the relationship, like if Harry will shave his beard for the wedding (odds are now 4/6) and where the couple will walk down the aisle (St. Pauls is the front-runner, followed by Westminster Abbey).

Odds are currently 3/1 that the couple will have a child  a cousin for Kate Middleton and Prince Williams children, 4-year-old Prince George, 2-year-old Princess Charlotte and a third baby on the way  by the end of 2018.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry hold hands at the Invictus Games

Markle, who reportedly just wrapped her last season on Suits, has already semi-immersed herself into London life during many under-the-radar trips to the capital. And she is now preparing for a more permanent move across the pond.

Harry has made no secret of the fact that he wants to marry her, a source recently told PEOPLE. She is the one.

During the last year, Markle has been spotted walking around Harrys neighborhood in Kensington, carrying Whole Foods shopping bags (the health food store is a short stroll from Harrys cottage), picking up flowers and visiting a spa in Soho on the eve of Pippa Middletons wedding. But it was an invite to Buckingham Palace for tea with the Queen last month that is most indicative of how serious things are between the two.

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The actress will live with Harry at his two-bedroom Nottingham Cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace, where staff already know Markle. In a similar fashion, Prince William and Middleton lived together at St. Andrews university and then at a secluded farmhouse in North Wales briefly before they wed in April 2011. There has been speculation that one day Harry will move into Apartment 1 at the palace which has 21 rooms and is currently the home of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are seen at the Invictus Games Closing Ceremony

Many royal fans are wondering if Markle will spend Christmas with the royals this year.

Harry usually joins his family to celebrate Christmas with Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip and the rest of the wider Windsor clan at the Queens Sandringham estate. The private event which includes exchanging presents on Christmas Eve and a big lunch as well as a trip to church for Christmas services on the big day.

However, it isnt a guarantee that Markle will get an invite  even if they announce their engagement in the coming weeks. Kate wasnt invited to the festivities in Christmas 2010, despite the couple revealing they were engaged in November. They wed in April 2011.

Royalty expert Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty, tells PEOPLE, that his instincts are that she would not be invited. I really dont think it will happen. Kate didnt go under the same circumstances, he says.

And even if Harry puts a ring on her finger before December, things might not be different. There are some patterns that they seem to follow and Im inclined to think that this is one of those, Little adds.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 14:53:18|Editor: Zhou Xin

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TORONTO, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Canadian steelworkers Friday joined Mexican mineworkers to demand justice for two Mexican protesters killed at a gold mine owned by a Canadian company in Mexico.

The United Steelworkers (USW) in Canada sent an open letter to Canadian Foreign Minister and chief negotiator of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Cynthia Freeland, urging the Canadian government to contact Mexican authorities, Canadian company Torex Gold Resources which operated the mine, and related Mexican workers unions to solve the conflict and avoid further violence.

On Nov. 18, two workers protesting at Torex's Media Luna gold mine, which is located near the town of Azcala in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero, were killed by gunmen near a blockade, according to the Mexican National Union of Mine, Metal, Steel and Related Workers (Los Mineros).

Workers at the mine have been on strike since Nov. 3, protesting working conditions and demanding the right to join Los Mineros. Members of the company-supported protection union CTM reportedly have been accused of responsibility for shooting dead the two protesters.

According to the USW, the conflict at Media Luna underscored the need for enforceable labor rights protections that must be implemented before the launch of a new NAFTA.

In addition, the USW said the conflict also underscored the need for an extractive industries ombudsperson to ensure transparency and accountability in overseas operations of Canadian mining companies.

The USW said that it will send a delegation to Guerrero to investigate the attacks on the striking miners and their communities, and that it has cemented a strategic alliance since 2005 with the Los Mineros to work closely on cross-national organizing and human rights issues.
Bamako (AFP) - Four UN peacekeepers and a Malian soldier were killed in attacks in Mali on Friday, the UN's MINUSMA mission to the country said.

Twenty people, including another Malian soldier and several UN peacekeepers were injured in the attacks.

The first attack happened in the morning in the northeastern Menaka region and claimed the lives of three peacekeepers and a Malian soldier, MINUSMA said, adding that 16 other UN troops and a civilian were injured.

It did not give the nationalities of the UN forces involved but contingents from Togo and Nigeria are deployed in the area.

Several of the attackers were killed and others wounded, the UN force added.

The Malian army confirmed that one of their soldiers was killed and another wounded, and that three troops were killed on the MINUSMA side and 15 wounded.

"This operation to protect civilians in the region also aimed to bring medical assistance to people in need," the head of MINUSMA, Mahamat Saleh Annadif, said in the statement, condemning the attack.

He praised the "bravery" of the peacekeepers and soldiers who "neutralised several terrorists" and called for vigilance and unity in the face of "the cowardice of our adversaries," referring to jihadists groups in Mali's restive north.

The second attack targeted a MINUSMA convoy in the central Douentza area. One UN blue helmet was killed and three others seriously injured, according to the UN mission.

The MINUSCA troops gave chase against their attackers who used explosives and rocket-launchers.

On October 26, three Chadian peacekeepers in the UN force were killed when their vehicle hit a landmine and a fourth one later died of his injuries.

Mali's situation has been particularly volatile since 2012 when jihadist groups captured the entire north of the country, but were pushed back by a military intervention by France in 2013.

However, large swathes of the country remain outside the control of Malian and foreign forces.
As exciting as it may be go on an online shopping spree for Black Friday, there is a human price to be paid: thousands of warehouse workers often have to commit many exhausting hours to making sure your orders arrive on time. And some Amazon warehouse workers have had enough. Staffers at Amazon distribution centers across Germany and Italy have gone on strike over pay issues and conditions they believe "endanger the health" of employees. Complaints about a lack of bonus pay are central to the walkout, but there are also extensive concerns about what Amazon expects from its floor staff.

The German union Verdi claims that Amazon "permanently endangers" workers by pressuring them to do more and more in a shorter time span, with constant performance monitoring, a "poor leadership culture" and short recovery times between working stints. In short: even if pay wasn't an issue, the risk of burnout would be.

In a statement to TechCrunch, Amazon didn't say if it was negotiating with unions but did downplay the significance of the strikes. The "vast majority" of German and Italian employees came to work, Amazon said. It also pointed to its "record of job creation" and was "confident" it would fulfill customer demand during the holidays. When speaking to Reuters, Amazon added that its salaries were some of the highest in the logistics field and included perks like private medical insurance and money for training programs.

The strikes underscore the tensions that increasingly dominate online shopping. When companies like Amazon revolve around offering the lowest prices and shipping your goods as quickly as possible, cutting costs is important. It can be tempting to wring as much as possible out of warehouse employees, especially when robots could streamline (and theoretically replace) their jobs.
Caption from LIFE. Seated close to the evening fire, old man Gray Mountain, 91, tells his small grandchildren legends about the early days of the Navajo people.

A Navajo family living on a reservation.

Caption from LIFE. Toward sunddown the Yellowsalts finish up their outdoor chores and start the fire for evening meal. In background is Navajo Mountain. One of the people's sacred peaks.

Caption from LIFE. Yellowsalt's son has his hair brushed by wife. Nowadays many young Navajos wear their hair short.

A Navajo woman smoking a hand rolled cigarette.

A Navajo boy running his fingers through his hair.

Navajo woman sporting Navajo-crafted silver shirt collar caps, long beaded earrings, beaded necklace complete with silver quarters and 50 cent pieces strung together like a tie.

Caption from LIFE. Baking bread, a woman kneels by the fire while loaf cooks on crude metal grill. This native bread is a major item of Navajo diet.

A Navajo girl hugging her dog while she watches the sheep on the high plateau.

Caption from LIFE. Game of marbles, one popular part of white man's culture, is explained by small boy at center to brother and sister. This boy goes to school and learned the game there. His brother has to stay home to help with the sheepherding.

Navajos trading at the store on the reservation.

Navajo children receiving religious instructions.

Navajo children taking naps on the tables and the floor.

Navajo girls sweeping the sidewalk.

A young Navajo girl reading a Raggedy Ann book.

Caption from LIFE. Navajo schoolchildren get a lesson in nose blowing from white teacher.

As LIFE described the situation to readers in 1948, the Navajo Nation was a country within a country  a reminder that Native American history courses inextricably alongside everything else that falls under the umbrella of American history, a fact that is underscored for Native American Heritage Day on Friday.

When photographer Leonard McCombe visited Navajo country in Arizona to create the images seen above, however, he caught a people at a very specific and important point in that long and ongoing history. The Navajo Nation, which comprised about 61,000 members at the time and was the fastest-growing Native American group in the nation, was at a moment of crisis.

By that point in 1948, the U.S. government was well aware that the land on which the Navajos lived could no longer support the residents, but that fact was news to most Americans, who first heard the story through news reports of starvation on the reservation. However, as LIFE noted, simply sending food wouldnt solve the problem.

The story focused on the extended Yellowsalt family, most of whom made their living by herding sheep. The family couldnt get permission from reservation administrators  who pointed to the disappearing grass in the area  to expand the flock. By the governments calculations, according to LIFE, the land could only support enough sheep for about 20% of the families to own enough of the animals to make a sustainable living, or for more families to barely scrape by. Meanwhile, even though exposure to white populations had introduced new and devastating diseases into the Navajo community, the government-run hospitals didnt have enough beds to support the population.

The two central questions posed by the story were inescapable: How can technical knowledge be made available to a primitive people without destroying the whole fabric of their lives? How can nations which differ from each other in appearance and language and culture live peaceably together?

Story continues

Now, nearly seven decades later, replace the word primitive with native and those questions are still profound ones, says David E. Wilkins, a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and an author of The Navajo Political Experience.

Overall, I was surprised at the general accuracy of the piece, Wilkins tells LIFE, considering the date and the audience for which it was written. It was full of the assimilation language that was dominant at the time, but that wasnt surprising.

Wilkins has some other quibbles with the story  for example, LIFE published images of bare-breasted Navajo women that strike him as strange, as he says hes not aware of a ceremony in which Navajo women would usually go unadorned  but the big thing thats missing, he says, is a sense of the larger context in which the Yellowsalt family was living. LIFE hints at the reasons why there arent enough sheep for the family to prosper, noting that when the people returned to land theyd been forced from in the late 1800s, it was now a reservation hemmed in by land-hungry whites, and that grazing flocks on that fenced-in space destroyed the range. As the Navajo nation grew, LIFE noted, the land, the basis of its existence, began to fail. But as Wilkins points out, it was a federal livestock-reduction program in the 1930s  not the natural course of things  that had mandated they cut back on grazing animals on that land.

In 1948, the Navajo Nation was still reeling from the livestock-reduction program, he says. It devastated the Navajos economically, psychically and culturally.

The coming of World War II staved off economic disaster for a little while; Wilkins says that over 15,000 Navajos were employed in some fashion as a result of the war. But in 1948 the consequences could no longer be denied. The wars over and they go back to the reservation and theres nothing there because of wrong-headed policy makers who thought they were doing the right thing, he explains. Though those policy-makers thought they saving the land from overgrazing, Wilkins says that in fact later research shows that the Navajo livestock were not a primary cause of the problems. In addition, though federal policy affected every aspect of Navajo life, it was only later in 1948 that the Arizona Supreme Court declared that the states Navajo citizens had the right to vote.

But the best thing about this article, Wilkins says, is what happened after it was published.

Media attention paid to the crisis among the Navajo People, with popular journalistic reports such as this one, contributed to what Congress did in 1950. That attention, Wilkins says, encouraged them to pass the Navajo-Hopi Long Range Rehabilitation Act, which helped to save those two peoples from the economically crippled situation they were in.

Assistance like that  coming from the very source that had contributed to the problem in the first place  made a huge difference for those tribes in the 1950s, and is perhaps an example of one part of an answer to that central question: How can two very different nations live peaceably together?
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 15:48:31|Editor: ZD

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KABUL, Nov. 25 (Xinhua)-- United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) called for concerted national efforts to end violence against women in Afghanistan, according to a statement of the entity released here to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, on Saturday.

"Violence against women in Afghanistan must immediately stop," Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN Secretary-General's special representative for Afghanistan and head of the UNAMA said in the statement.

"For Afghan women to achieve their full potential and their immense capacity in development, in peace and in security, the violations of the rights of women and girls, particularly through violence, must cease," the statement quoted the UN top official in Afghanistan as saying.

In the conflict-hit Afghanistan, violence against women and girls, according to Afghan Independent Human Right Commission (AIHRC), is a matter of concerns as women and girls are facing variety of violence ranging from underage marriages to physical beating.

Afghan Independent Human Right Commission (AIHRC) in a statement released Saturday said that the watchdog had registered 3,778 cases of violence against women in Afghanistan in the past 10 months.

Among the registered cases of violence against women over the past 10 months, according to the watchdog, 1,351 are physical harassments, 186 are sexual violence, 1,093 are using abusive languages and the remaining includes variety of violence ranging from underage marriages, forced marriage to economic violence.

"The UN family in Afghanistan stressed that alongside the effective legal and institutional mechanisms for access to justice, stopping violence against women requires an effort from all of us, from every individual, to speak out against violence in homes, workplaces and social settings," UNAMA statement added.
(Via CBS)

Arkansas linebacker Derrick Munson got ejected from his teams game vs. Missouri on the opening kickoff of the second half.

As Missouri went to kick off, Munson was lined up as one of the up blockers on Arkansas return team. Instead of retreating at the time the ball was kicked, he took off straight ahead and laid out Missouris Cam Hilton.

(via CBS)

It was pretty clear Munson had every intention of trying to hit Hilton as hard as possible. And he did not do it very subtly. There are targeting calls that are clear accidents. This was not one of those times.

The penalty was applied quite oddly. Or not at all.

The kickoff resulted in a touchback. Officials on the field said Arkansas was able to decline the penalty yardage  remember, the penalty was on an Arkansas player  and the Razorbacks took over on their own 25 just like after a normal touchback with no penalties. Had the 15-yard penalty been applied appropriately, Arkansas should have been penalized half the distance to the goal and gotten the ball between the 12 and 13.

      

Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
Yangon (AFP) - A fiery brand of Buddhist nationalism is burning brighter than ever as Myanmar braces for its first ever papal visit, posing a challenge to the message of religious tolerance Pope Francis is expected to preach next week.

A wing of extremist monks have been stirring Islamaphobia in Myanmar for years, earning a reputation as incubators of "Buddhist terror".

But their cause has received new support since August, when the army launched a brutal crackdown on the Muslim Rohingya, expelling more than half a million from the country.

Global outrage over the violence -- which the UN and the US have called ethnic cleansing -- has triggered an ultra-nationalistic reflex inside Myanmar, pushing the public towards firebrand monks who have long cast the Rohingya as ill-intentioned outsiders.

"Our ideas have now won the vast majority of the population," said Ottama, a prominent monk in Buddhist nationalist circles.

Speaking to AFP in a temple in Yangon, the saffron-robed monk repeated a well-worn falsehood that Muslims are poised to "swallow the nation" in a demographic assault on Myanmar's Buddhist majority.

"Fifty years ago, only 12 percent people in Myanmar were Muslim. Now their population is about 38 percent," he said.

Census figures show Muslims make up less than five percent of the overwhelmingly Buddhist nation.

That fraction has been chiselled down further by the latest violence in Rakhine state, which has pushed over half of the 1.1-million Rohingya into Bangladesh.

The pope, who will head to Bangladesh after Myanmar, has thrown himself into the centre of the crisis rippling across the two nations' border.

In Yangon he will press for peace in masses expected to draw hundreds of thousands from the country's Catholic community.

But he will also meet with Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and army chief Min Aung Hlaing -- a highly symbolic sit-down between a peace icon and a general whose troops are accused murder, rape and arson.

Story continues

- All in the name -

Francis is already in the crosshairs of Buddhist hardliners for expressing sympathy for the Rohingya, whom he has referred to as "brothers".

His public comments in Myanmar will be closely scoured for any mention of the group by name -- the term is rejected by the army, government and many in the Buddhist public, who insist the Muslims are "Bengalis".

"I do not understand why the Pope is coming in the middle of a conflict, many people say he's coming for the Bengalis," Nyo Nyo Aung, a follower of an ultra-nationalist monk, told AFP.

Myanmar's Catholic leaders have advised the Pope not to use the 'R-word', a path Suu Kyi has also taken to avoid triggering backlash from Buddhist nationalists, a powerful political bloc.

Myanmar's Buddhist clergy has taken some steps to rein in radical members, including banning notoriously Islamaphobic monk Wirathu from giving sermons for one year, though with little enforcement.

A few days before the pope's visit, another prominent ultra-nationalist abbot, Parmaukkha, was detained over an anti-Rohingya protest he organised in 2016.

But those moves have done little to draw the toxicity from anti-Rohingya hatred pinballing across social media in the form of rants, memes and grotesque cartoons.

This hyper-nationalism stretches back to Myanmar's British colonial past, when the mass migration of people from South Asia caused economic and social tensions, according to Burmese historian Thant Myint-U.

"It created a sour, defensive nationalism, and remains at the heart of Myanmar's political DNA," he said.

Analysts warn the animus threatens to unpick fragile democratic gains in the former junta-run country and have chastised Suu Kyi for failing to use her moral authority to defend the Rohingya.

The Nobel laureate has avoided dangerous political territory by not condemning the army crackdown that sparked the refugee crisis.

The Pope's visit will test that intransigence.
Canadian dog walker, Annette Poitras, could not have survived over two days in the wilderness without the help of her dogs - Coquitlam Search and Rescue

A Canadian dog walker has said she was able to survive for more than two days in the wilderness thanks to her pet border collie, boxer and beagle.

Annette Poitras, 56, was out walking her dogs on Monday when she fell, injuring herself and losing her phone in remote British Columbia.

She was not rescued until Wednesday afternoon, after an extensive search from a rescue team.

Her husband Marcel said the three dogs, which did not leave her side during the ordeal, helped to keep her alive.

Annette Poitras, could not have survived over two days in the wilderness without the help of her dogs Credit: Coquitlam Search and Rescue

Mr Poitras said that his wife and the dogs - a border collie called Chloe, a boxer named Roxy, and Bubba, a pug-beagle mix - looked after each other over two days and two nights, with no supplies and periods of "torrential" rain.

He said his wife used her coat to keep Roxy, the short-haired boxer, warm and took her lead from the dogs who dug a hole in the undergrowth to sleep in, following suit.

"One of them was cuddling [her] and one of them was on guard and the other one was looking for food," he told Global News.

Annette Poitras Credit: Coquitlam Search and Rescue

None of the dogs left her side, he added.

Over 100 rescuers combed the wilderness near Eagle Mountain to try and find Mrs Poitras after her husband reported her missing on Monday. Two helicopters were also used in the search.

Eventually, one group of rescuers heard faint cries for help and the dogs' barks and were able to locate them in a remote area.

The rescue team said she was "alive and in good condition" quite far into the Coquitlam Watershed and off trail, in dense bush and swamp.

Mr Poitras said his wife was recovering and will be released from hospital this week.

The couple are looking forward to "quiet, peace, walking dogs, visiting family" now the ordeal is over, he added.
By Sarah Marsh HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Raul Castro met with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on Friday amid hopes the Communist-run island might be able to convince its Asian ally to avert a showdown with the United States. North Korea is facing unprecedented pressure from the United States and the international community to cease its nuclear weapons and missile programs. Cuba has maintained close diplomatic ties with North Korea since 1960 but is opposed to nuclear weapons. "In the brotherly encounter, both sides commented on the historic friendship between the two nations and talked about international topics of mutual interest," Cuban state television said on its midday broadcast. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday he had discussed with Castro last year the possibility of working together to defuse global tensions with North Korea. "Can we pass along messages through surprising conduits?" Trudeau asked in a Q&A session after a speech. "It was a topic of conversation when I met President Raul Castro last year. These are the kinds of things where Canada can, I think, play a role that the United States has chosen not to play, this past year." Canada had an interest in seeking solutions, not just because of regional security but also because the flight path of possible North Korean missiles would pass over its territory, Trudeau said. North Korea is working on developing nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, aiming to achieve what Ri has called "a real balance of power with the United States". Ri met his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez this week and the ministers denounced U.S. "unilateral and arbitrary lists and designations" that led to "coercive measures contrary to international law", according to Cuba's foreign ministry. The ministers called for "respect for peoples' sovereignty" and the "peaceful settlement of disputes", according to a ministry statement. President Donald Trump has increased pressure on Cuba since taking office, rolling back a detente begun by his predecessor Barack Obama and returning to the hostile rhetoric of the Cold War. North Korea and Cuba are the last countries in the world to maintain Soviet-style command economies, though under Raul Castro, the Caribbean nation has taken small steps toward the more market-oriented communism of China and Vietnam. Raul took over the presidency in 2008 from his older brother and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, who died on Nov. 25 last year. Cuba is marking the anniversary on Saturday with vigils and concerts. [L8N1NS6SF] Cuba maintains an embassy in North Korea but trades mostly with South Korea. Last year, trade with the latter was $67 million and just $9 million with the North, the government said. (Reporting by Sarah Marsh in Havana; Additional Reporting by Nelson Acosta in Havana, Julie Gordon in Vancouver and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Daniel Flynn and James Dalgleish)
Photo credit: Getty

From ELLE UK

In September, President Donald Trump's administration announced they were rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program, affecting hundreds of thousands of young immigrants for whom the United States is home. However, the program hasn't been rescinded yet, but the rights of those already admitted under the act are currently unclear.

But thanks to the power of social media, celebrities have chosen Thanksgiving to send a crucial message to Ivanka Trump. In the post entitled "Dear Ivanka," Trump is urged to support DREAM, America's Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, which would protect undocumented minors in the United States, who have already been granted legal status through DACA.

Supporters urging Trump to act include Olivia Wilde:

A post shared by Olivia Wilde (@oliviawilde) on Nov 23, 2017 at 9:11am PST

Cara Delevingne:

A thanksgiving message to @ivankatrump #happyholidayseveryone A post shared by Cara Delevingne (@caradelevingne) on Nov 23, 2017 at 9:27am PST

Alexa Chung:
A bridge providing the main road link between China and North Korea is to be closed "temporarily" while workers on the North side carry out maintenance, Beijing announced Friday.

Some 70 percent of trade between the Asian neighbours is conducted in the northeastern Chinese city of Dandong, connected to North Korea by the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge.

"The bridge will be closed temporarily because the DPRK (North Korean) side needs to carry out some repair and maintenance work," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters at a regular news briefing on Friday.

The closure would take place within "days," Geng said, without specifying any timeframe for the work to be completed and the bridge re-opened.

China is North Korea's largest trading partner, but it has backed a series of United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile activities, straining ties between the Cold War-era allies.

US President Donald Trump has urged his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to use his economic leverage to exert more pressure on the pariah state in the hopes it might abandon its nuclear weapons programme.

However, Beijing this week condemned as "wrong" fresh US sanctions that targeted North Korean shipping interests as well as Chinese companies that do business with the North.
High angle view of a church, Riddarholm Church, Riddarholmen, Stockholm, Sweden - Nordic Photos

The Church of Sweden is encouraging its clergy to use the gender-neutral term "God" instead of referring to the deity as "he" or "the Lord".

The decision was made on Thursday, wrapping up an eight-day meeting of the church's 251-member decision-making body. The decision will take effect on May 20 during Pentecost.

It is the latest move by the national Evangelical Lutheran church to modernise its 31-year-old handbook setting out how services should be conducted.

The decision to update the book of worship gives priests new options on how to refer to God during their services.

Priests can now open their services by referring to the traditional "Father, son and Holy Ghost" or the gender-neutral phrase "in the name of God and the Holy Trinity". Other gender-neutral options are available for other parts of the Church of Sweden liturgy.

Gender-neutral terms checklist

"We talk about Jesus Christ, but in a few places we have changed it to say 'God' instead of 'he'," Church of Sweden spokesperson Sofija Pedersen Videke told The Telegraph. "We have some prayer options that are more gender-neutral than others."

"A wide majority of people decided on the book," she said, adding that she had heard of no priests who objected to the new linguistic framework.

The Church of Sweden is headed by Archbishop Antje Jackelen, who was elected Sweden's first female archbishop in 2013.

Archbishop Jackelen defended the decision, telling Sweden's TT news agency: "Theologically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human."

The decision was met with some criticism. Christer Pahlmblad, an associate theology professor at Lund University in Sweden, told Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad that the decision was "undermining the doctrine of the Trinity and the community with the other Christian churches."

Story continues

"It really isn't smart if the Church of Sweden becomes known as a church that does not respect the common theology heritage," he said. The Church of Sweden has 6.1 million baptised members in a country with a population of 10 million.

The Church of England told The Telegraph that it also chooses to avoid divisive language in its services, but not with regards to God. When liturgy is revised we also seek to use inclusive language where appropriate when referring to people, a spokesperson said.

The Church of England has always used masculine language when speaking about God, for example in the words of the Lords Prayer  our Father, who art in Heaven  and in referring to God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and continues to do so."

The decision by the Church of Sweden mirrors an international trend for inclusivity in major churches. Earlier this month, the Church of England published guidelines for helping children explore the possibilities of who they might be", including their gender identity.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 16:03:37|Editor: liuxin

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SYDNEY, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) said it was looking into allegations of tomb raids in the Middle East by an Australian national, now 95 years old, local media reported.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Joan Howard, who had been staying in the Middle East with her diplomat husband in the 1960s, lifted a collection of antiquities as she volenteered to work on dig-sites in Mideast countries including Egypt, Jordan and Palestine.

Joan Howard is accused of removing ancient weapons, jewelry, a funeral mask and other objects now said to be worth around 1 million Australian dollars (over 760,000 U.S. dollars),

Joan's husband, Keith Howard, was an Australian veteran of World War II who had served on the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization for over a decade in the region since 1967.

The matter came to light after she gave an interview to the West Australian newspaper on Nov. 4, displaying her collection.

"She used her diplomatic freedom to search for antiquities," the newspaper said.

The matter falls in a grey area as the law that prohibits the removal of cultural heritage articles from a country may not have been in place at that time.

Still, the "cultural theft" details revealed by the interview outraged many archaeologists. In an open letter to Australia's Ambassador to Egypt Neil Hawkins, Egyptian expert Monica Hanna said Howard has "broken all possible laws taking advantage of her diplomatic status."

"As an Egyptian citizen and an academic in the field of archaeology and cultural heritage, I demand that an investigation should be carried out on the sources of Mrs. Howard's collection now in Perth. These objects should be repatriated if found to have left Egypt illegally," Hanna wrote.

She also denounced the tone of the interview, calling it celebratory and boastful, and saying it could have negative and destructive influences considering the current situation of looting of archaeological sites post-2011.

"We need to counter the exact image Mrs. Howard has presented in her article for the safeguard of not only Egyptian heritage, but also world heritage in general," Hanna said.

In response, Egypt's foreign ministry contacted the Australian authorities to open an investigation, an official at the Egyptian Culture Ministry's Supreme Council of Antiquities said.

"We want to investigate how these pieces made it out of Egypt illegally," Shaaban Abdel Gawad told the Sydney Morning Herald.

The DFAT said Australia implements its obligations under the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

"This includes the return of foreign cultural property which has been illegally exported from its country of origin and imported into Australia," a DFAT spokesperson told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Timothy Constantin, a 20-year-old John Brown University student from Gainesville, Florida, was arrested Tuesday and was being held pending a bond hearing Thursday morning, said the local prosecutors office, which didnt know if he had an attorney.

In an affidavit, detective Ron Coble said Constantin had built small bombs with PVC pipe and black powder collected from fireworks and ammunition. The student had written that one side of his brain genuinely hates and actively wants to murder ever (sic) single human I come across as well as those Ive never seen in my life.

Police began investigating after other students said Constantin was suicidal. One student told Coble that Constantin wanted to kill himself to prevent himself from committing a terrorist attack over the upcoming winter break.

Officers said they found guns and ammunition in Constantins dorm room, including an AK-47 rifle and a Keltech 9mm carbine gun. Constantin told police in interviews that the firearms were for protection and that if he were to do a mass killing, he would use explosives. Police found no explosives in his room. Cobles affidavit said Constantin told another officer he had previously made explosives.

The university released a statement saying it was increasing the number of armed guards on campus and reviewing training procedures after the arrest.

While the student indicated thoughts of harm to himself and potentially to others, to the best of our knowledge there was not a specific plan to carry out any type of campus attack nor was there a specific person targeted, the statement said. If Campus Safety or the Siloam Springs Police determined there was immediate risk to the campus, we would have alerted campus through our crisis alert system.

An arrest warrant directed officers to hold Constantin on a complaint of engaging in criminal acts involving explosives, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Bogota (AFP) - Colombia on Friday marked a year since the signing of a landmark peace deal with Marxist FARC rebels, which President Juan Manuel Santos said had saved thousands of lives.

Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londono returned to the same Bogota theater where they signed the deal a year ago to end Latin America's longest war.

The mood was considerably less festive, however.

Londono, who for years as guerrilla leader went by the name of Timochenko, said the deal had failed to live up to the "immense expectations" it had raised.

"What we are implementing is not the agreement that was signed here a year ago," he said.

He blamed congress, where Santos' government has a weak majority, for failing to implement rural and political reforms that were part of the deal.

He accused it of betraying "the expectations of peoples who were hoping the accord would transform their lives for the better."

Santos and Londono were to meet again later Friday to discuss delays and breaches of the pact.

Santos nonetheless defended the peace process as leading to the "exemplary disarmament" of 7,000 FARC rebels.

"Silencing the guns have saved us lives, thousands of lives, and building peace....does not happen overnight."

"There have been delays, there have been difficulties, we have made mistakes, I have made mistakes, but we are working tirelessly to move forward," said Santos, who will leave office in August after two terms as president.

However, many former fighters are finding it difficult or impossible to return to civilian life, raising the risk they might turn to crime rings, illegal mining or drugs, according to the UN.

The peace accord signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in November 2016 ended a conflict which lasted 53 years.

After agreeing to the peace deal and disarming, the rebels transformed their movement into a political party, keeping the same initials but changing the official name to the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force.

Story continues

- Work in progress -

"We said we would give land to the peasant farmers in areas where the FARC are. But they want to control who we do and don't give to. Development programs are for rural areas, not for the FARC" to decide, Santos told foreign correspondents in comments marking the anniversary.

The peace deal stipulates that rebels who confess to their crimes, pay reparations to their victims and promise not to return to violence can receive alternatives to jail time for their wrongdoings.

"The far right and the far left are attacking the process, and I said from the beginning that this process would be very difficult," he said of congress, where some factions believe FARC has been treated too leniently.

"What worries me is that people lose hope in peace. But people have very short memories. They forgot how it was before," said Santos, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his push for peace in Colombia.

"Some want to see the glass half-full, others half-empty. In government we see it half full," said Santos.

"The process is irreversible and it will be impossible for the next president, regardless of party, to go back."
Kate Middleton is renowned for her sartorial taste and her maternity wardrobe unsurprisingly draws even more adoration from the nation.

So when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium last night, all eyes were on the 35-year-olds outfit.

It is the second time the royal couple have attended the annual event and at the 2015 show, Kate was pregnant with Princess Charlotte.

Kate donned a bejewelled gown by Jenny Packham last night [Photo: Getty]

And at last nights performance, the Duchess of Cambridge couldnt have looked more regal if she tried.

Kate looked for inspiration from one of her favourite designers as she chose to dress her blossoming baby bump in a sky blue gown from Jenny Packhams autumn line.

Kate accessorised the jewel-emblazoned dress with equally eye-catching heels by Oscar de la Renta and a glittery Jenny Packham box clutch.

The Duchess of Cambridge accessorised the sheer gown with glittery heels by Oscar de la Renta [Photo: Getty]

The performance, which has been running since 1912, is designed to raise money for the Royal Variety Charity of which Queen Elizabeth II is the patron.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge take their place on the balcony [Photo: Getty]

This year, comedian Miranda Hart hosted the show and reportedly had the Duchess of Cambridge in a fit of giggles as Prince William was encouraged to take part by shouting her catch-phrase such fun throughout the performance.

While the likes of The Killers, Louis Tomlinson and Paloma Faith performed.

The Royal Variety Performance will be aired on ITV in December.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook for non-stop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyleUK.

Read more from Yahoo Style UK:

Every outfit the Duchess of Cambridge has worn to work in 2017

Kate Middletons top fashion moments of 2017

Is this what the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William are planning to call the royal baby?
Cairo (AFP) - Egypt mourned on Saturday as the death toll from a gun and bomb assault on a mosque in the Sinai Peninsula soared above 300, including children, in the deadliest attack the country has witnessed.

The army said warplanes had struck militant hideouts in the insurgency-wracked North Sinai in retaliation.

According to the state prosecution, up to 30 militants in camouflage flying the Islamic State group's black banner had surrounded the mosque and massacred the worshippers during weekly Friday prayers.

Twenty-seven children were among the dead, it said.

IS has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but it is the main suspect as the mosque is associated with followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Sunni Islam whom it has branded heretics.

Funerals for the victims were held overnight and many were buried unwashed in their bloodied clothes, according to the Islamic burial practices for martyrs, security and medical officials said.

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning and vowed to "respond with brutal force" to the attack, among the deadliest in the world since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period," he said in a televised speech.

Hours later Egyptian air force jets pursued the "terrorists and discovered several vehicles used in the terrorist attack, killing those inside near the vicinity of the attack", an army spokesman said.

- 'Darkness pervades the village' -

The state prosecutor's office said in a statement that 305 people were killed and 128 wounded in the assault on the Rawda mosque in a village roughly 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish.

It said the attackers, with long beards and hair often seen on jihadists, arrived in five all-terrain vehicles and surrounded the mosque.

Story continues

Witnesses said they heard gunshots and explosions before the assailants entered the mosque, according to the prosecution.

"Nobody in that mosque escaped unharmed," said the brother of the mosque's imam, or prayer leader, Mohamed Abdel Fattah.

"He was shot in the foot," the brother, Ahmed, told AFP in a phone call, adding that the religious leader was still in "too much shock" to speak.

One of the wounded, Magdy Rizk, told AFP assailants wore masks and military uniforms, and that extremists had previously threatened people in the area.

Relatives visited victims in hospital in the city of Ismailia near the Suez Canal where the wounded were taken for treatment, an AFP photographer reported.

Locals and relatives of people living in the village where the attack happened said the Rawda mosque was prominent.

"This is the largest mosque in the area. It is the parent mosque, where events take place, funerals and weddings. When full it has 600 or 700 people," said Ahmed Sweilam, whose cousins live in the village.

"Darkness pervades the village now."

World leaders voiced outrage. US President Donald Trump denounced on Twitter the "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenceless worshippers".

Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar, Egypt's highest institution of Sunni Islam, condemned "in the strongest terms this barbaric terrorist attack".

Israel's Prime Minister called for unity against "terrorism", saying: "Terrorism will be defeated even more quickly if all countries work against it together."

- IS targeting of Sufis -

The Egypt branch of IS has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and also civilians accused of working with the authorities, in attacks in the north of the Sinai peninsula.

They have also targeted Sufis as well as Christians.

A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights IS told AFP that the Rawda mosque is known as a place where Sufis gather.

IS views Sufis as heretics for seeking the intercession of saints.

The group has also killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, forcing many to flee the peninsula.

The military has struggled to quell the jihadists who pledged allegiance to IS in November 2014.

The jihadists have since increasingly turned to civilian targets, attacking not only Christians and Sufis but also Bedouin Sinai inhabitants accused of working with the army.

The group also claimed the bombing of a Russian plane that killed all 224 people on board after takeoff from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on October 31, 2015.

Aside from IS, Egypt also faces a threat from Al-Qaeda-aligned jihadists who operate out of neighbouring Libya.

A group calling itself Ansar al-Islam -- Supporters of Islam in Arabic -- claimed an October ambush in Egypt's Western Desert that killed at least 16 policemen.

The military later conducted air strikes on the attackers, killing their leader.
London (AFP) - Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson led a small protest Saturday demanding the British government do more to help a woman jailed in Iran, accusing Boris Johnson of making her situation worse.

Thompson said the foreign secretary should "get on a plane" to Tehran as she joined supporters of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, including her husband Richard Ratcliffe, in the couple's neighbourhood of Hampstead in north-west London.

"We are a net of compassion and love for Nazanin and her family. This is what we human beings do best -- in stark contrast to the bunch of angry molecules bumping around in Westminster," the actress said.

"If I can get out of bed with pneumonia to support a horribly abused member of our community then our foreign secretary can get on a plane and go to Iran and deal with the problem he's so seriously exacerbated."

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian citizen, was arrested at Tehran airport on April 3, 2016, after visiting relatives with her young daughter.

She was sentenced to five years in jail for sedition. Then last month authorities presented extra charges, and she will appear in court on December 10 accused of spreading propaganda.

Johnson was accused of jeopardising her defence by saying she was training journalists before she was arrested -- something her employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), and her family have strongly denied.

The foreign secretary later clarified his remarks, saying it was clear that she was only on holiday. He is expected to raise her case when he makes an official visit to Iran in the coming weeks.

Thompson, a mother of two who won a best actress Oscar for "Howard's End", is supporting a "mother's open letter" calling on Tehran to free Zaghari-Ratcliffe so she can be reunited with her daughter.

Gabriella, now three, had her British passport confiscated and has since been living with her grandparents in Iran.
Paris (AFP) - Billions of euros will change hands over Black Friday weekend sales across Europe, but despite increasingly accepting the US import, the promotions will be marked by strikes, protests and concerns about over-consumption.

Here is how the sales, which stretch four days from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, are expected to fare in some of the continent's big spenders:

- France -

After starting in 2015, the concept of Black Friday sales has now been taken up by all major retailers after wavering in the wake of the Paris attacks in November 2015.

The French are expected to spend 845 million euros ($1 billion) online this weekend, a 15 percent increase since 2016, and 4.5 billion euros in stores, a four percent rise, according to a report by the Centre For Retail Research for the Poulpeo website.

But buyers beware -- the government website cybermalveillance.gouv.fr has urged all shoppers to be wary during the sales, when scams by cybercriminals multiply.

Some have also warned of the dangers of over consumption. Envie, a network of 50 French companies, launched a "Green Friday" initiative, while the Camif website closed on Friday, saying it was "fed up".

- Germany -

Shoppers in Germany have been seduced by the sales for several years.

Last year, 16 percent of consumers participated in the sales on Black Friday and 13 percent on Cyber Monday, spending a 1.7 billion euros, according to the German retail federation.

However US online retail giant Amazon faces strikes by 2,000 at six of its warehouses in Germany by employees demanding better working conditions, according to trade union Verdi.

- Spain -

Black Friday took off in Spain in 2012, when labour reforms liberalised sales.

Nine out 10 companies will participate in the sales this year, according to the Spanish Digital Economy Association. Even banks are joining in, offering discounted credit cards and home loans.

The average Spanish shopper is expected to spend 222 euros during the sales, up from 200 last year. Sales country-wide could reach 1.4 billion euros.

Story continues

Faced with this rising consumption, some associations have encouraged people to boycott the sales, with little success.

- Italy -

Fourteen million Italians will take advantage of the sales on Friday, according to leading local business association Confesercenti. A total of 1.5 billion euros is expected to change hands -- an average of 108 euros per person.

Most of the sales take place online, but Black Friday is gradually gaining acceptance in brick-and-mortar stores, with seven out of 10 making special offers this year.

Along with Germany, some Italian Amazon workers will also go on strike at a distribution centre in Castel San Giovanni in the country's north.

Greenpeace activists also protested in a Rome shopping centre, using the symbol of a globe suffocating under the weight of consumer goods.

- Britain -

After a drop in the value of the pound, British shoppers may well welcome this year's sales.

Britons are expected to spend 2.6 billion pounds (2.9 billion euros, $3.4 billion) this Friday, up eight percent from last year, according to forecasts by VoucherCodes and the Centre for Retail Research.

Over the four days, as much as 7.8 billion pounds will be spent -- an increase of seven percent.
Facebook's vice president for Latin America, Diego Dzodan, poses for a photograph at Estacao Hack on Paulista Avenue in Sao Paulo's financial centre, Brazil August 25, 2017: REUTERS/Nacho Doce

Facebook is building a web page that will let them see what Russian propaganda they've liked or followed, it has said.

The tool is an attempt to fend of accusations that it is being secretive about the reach of fake Russian accounts, and that people are still unaware of what they have seen.

Those accusations have come particularly from US lawmakers, who argue that such accounts were able to influence the US election and benefited Donald Trump.

They have praised the feature. But it falls far below what they'd told Facebook to do, which would be to individually notify users about all of the Russian propaganda or ads they had seen.

As it is, users will have to see a story about the tool and opt to head to it and check what they had seen. Given billions of people use the site, it's likely that many people will never know about the page, let alone use it.

Facebook, Google and Twitter are facing a backlash after saying Russians used their services to anonymously spread divisive messages among Americans in the run-up to the 2016 US elections.

US lawmakers have criticised the tech firms for not doing more to detect the alleged election meddling, which the Russian government denies involvement in.

Facebook says the propaganda came from the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organisation that according to lawmakers and researchers employs hundreds of people to push pro-Kremlin content under phony social media accounts.

As many as 126 million people could have been served posts on Facebook and 20 million on Instagram, the company says. Facebook has since deactivated the accounts.

Facebook, in a statement, said it would let people see which pages or accounts they liked or followed between January 2015 and August 2017 that were affiliated with the Internet Research Agency.

The tool will be available by the end of the year as "part of our ongoing effort to protect our platforms and the people who use them from bad actors who try to undermine our democracy," Facebook said.

Story continues

The web page will show only a list of accounts, not the posts or ads affiliated with them, according to a mock-up. US lawmakers have separately published some posts.

It was not clear if Facebook would eventually do more, such as sending individualised notifications to users.

Lawmakers at congressional hearings this month suggested that Facebook might have an obligation to notify people who accessed deceptive foreign government material.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who had asked for notifications, said Facebook's plan "seems to be a serious response" to his request.

"My hope is that it will be a responsible first step towards protecting against future assaults on its platform," he said in a statement.

Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat, called it a "very positive step" and said lawmakers look forward to additional steps by tech companies to improve transparency.

Additional reporting by agencies
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 16:18:43|Editor: Lifang

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BEIJING, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Saturday sent a message of condolences to his Egyptian counterpart Sherif Ismail over Friday's deadly terrorist attack in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

In his message, Li extended sincere condolences to the bereaved families and those injured in the attack.

He stressed that China will join hands with Egypt to firmly oppose any forms of terrorism.

The attack on a mosque in northern Sinai Peninsula killed at least 235 people and injured over 100 others.
Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez made six appearances with the Phillies. (AP Photo)

Former Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez has died in a car accident in Cuba, the team confirmed Friday. He was 34.

The Cuban native was thought to be a prized pickup in 2013 after defecting. Scouts fell in love with the 29-year-old, and he was believed to be the next great talent to come to the majors from Cuba.

Bidding on Gonzalez skyrocketed, and the Phillies were able to secure him on a six-year, $48 million deal. His contract also included an $11 million option for the seventh season. At the time, it was among one of the bigger deals to be handed out to an international free-agent. Gonzalez was expected to be at least a back-end starter, with the possibility of having mid-rotation upside.

Shortly after agreeing to the deal, however, it was discovered that Gonzalez was dealing with arm trouble. He would eventually come to an agreement with the Phillies, but at a much lower cost. He wound up signing a three-year, $12 million deal with the club a month after his initial contract was rumored to reach around $60 million.

Those arm concerns wound up being significant. Gonzalez performed admirably in 2014, posting a 3.13 ERA along multiple levels as a reliever. He made his major-league debut that September, posting a 6.75 ERA over six appearances.

After an injury-riddled season in the minors in 2015, the Phillies released Gonzalez prior to the start of the 2016 regular season. He went unclaimed on waivers and did not hook on with another club.

Gonzalezs major-league career didnt turn out as expected, but he was considered a significant addition when he was first available. He was also the first Cuban player signed by the Phillies.

The Phillies organization has already been in mourning this November after former pitcher Roy Halladay died in a plane crash earlier in the month.

More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:

      

Chris Cwik is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at christophercwik@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik
The man escaped from an Alabama jail twice and robbed people while on the run

(DECATUR, Ga.)  A fugitive has been captured near Atlanta after escaping from the same Alabama jail twice within a three-week span and then tying up and robbing people while on the run, authorities said early Wednesday.

Shane Anthony Vernon, 27, was taken into custody late Tuesday in DeKalb County, Georgia, just east of Atlanta, the Coosa County Sheriffs office in Alabama said. Vernon had been the focus of a nationwide manhunt.

The inmates most recent escape happened Sunday afternoon, Coosa County Sheriff Terry Wilson said.

He had been allowed out of his cell to use the inmate telephone system and noticed that a guard had failed to properly secure a door in the area, Wilson said. He went through that door and gained access to the ceiling, and then breached four security doors and fled the facility, the sheriff said.

Vernon then broke into a home in Rockford, Alabama, where he tied up and robbed the residents and stole their 2016 Ford Fusion, Wilson has said.

After abandoning that vehicle, he broke into another home Monday in Wetumpka, Alabama, where he sat in a chair and waited for the homeowner to arrive, Elmore County Sheriff Bill Franklin told the news site Al.com. He then kidnapped the homeowner and drove with him to Douglasville, Georgia, just west of Atlanta, Franklin said.

Early Tuesday, the homeowner was let go and went to a gas station for help, authorities said. All indications are that he is OK, Franklin told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Vernon had previously escaped Oct. 29 by forcibly removing his restraints and running while being booked into the county jail, authorities said. He was recaptured the next day after that escape.

Vernon was being held in the Alabama jail on multiple felony charges, including burglary and auto theft, before his latest escape.

Early Wednesday morning, he was being held in the DeKalb County Jail in Decatur, Georgia. He was booked into that facility at 12:40 a.m. Wednesday, jail records show.
Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia) (AFP) - Gas exporting countries, grappling with collapsed global markets, on Friday called for a "fair price" for the commodity after a summit in Bolivia.

The Gas Exporting Countries Forum seeks a "fair price for natural gas," taking into account its environmental benefits and energy efficiency, a declaration said.

The price of natural gas is linked to that of petroleum and its derivatives, and is down roughly 50 percent from peaks of three years ago -- partly from rising shale gas production in the United States, which does not belong to the Forum.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, one of the last Latin American leftist leaders, said producers should combat "those who want to appropriate our resources through abusive price manipulation."

In coming decades, the role of petroleum in the global energy mix will fall from 32 percent to 29 percent while gas will rise to 26 percent from 22 percent, Seyed Mohammad Hossein Adeli of Iran, the Forum's secretary general, told the group's opening session.

The 12-country group, which aims to strengthen collaboration among members, includes Venezuela, Russia and Qatar, the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.

Forum members hold about 70 percent of global natural gas reserves.
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - The Gaza Strip's border crossing with Egypt that was due to reopen Saturday will remain closed until further notice following the bloody attack in neighbouring Sinai, an official told AFP.

Friday's bomb and gun assault on the Rawda mosque near North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish killed at least 235 people.

Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt had been due to reopen on Saturday for three days.

But the official in Gaza, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it will remain closed.

"The Egyptian side informed us that Rafah will not reopen on Saturday because of the tragic events in Northern Sinai," the official added.

The border reopened last Saturday for three days for the first time since the transfer of control of Gaza crossing points from the Islamist Hamas movement to the Palestinian Authority on November 1.

It had been closed since August, and the reopening allowed patients, students and stranded people to leave the Palestinian enclave.

Gaza has been subject to Israeli blockade for a decade, and for years to the almost permanent closure of its border with Egypt.

Hamas took power by force in June 2007 after a week of bloody clashes with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah.

The transfer of control of border crossings is a major test for a reconciliation deal reached in Cairo on October 12, after multiple previous attempts at Hamas-Fatah reconciliation over the past decade failed.
By Thomas Escritt BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's Social Democrats agreed on Friday, under intense pressure, to hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel on renewing their outgoing coalition government, but pledged that party members would have the final say on any deal. The about-turn by the center-left SPD, which had said it would go into opposition after suffering its worst result in 70 years in September's election, could help avert a disruptive repeat vote in Europe's economic and political powerhouse. SPD leader Martin Schulz told a news conference the party leadership had reached the decision out of a sense of responsibility to Germany and Europe after Merkel's attempt to form a government with the pro-business Free Democrats and environmental Greens smaller parties collapsed on Sunday. "There is nothing automatic about the direction we are moving in," Schulz said. "If a discussion results in us deciding to participate, in any form whatsoever, in the formation of a government, we will put it to a vote of party members." Schulz told 300 members of the party's youth wing - who rejected another "grand coalition" at a conference in Saarbruecken - that nothing had been decided. But he suggested that governing could offer better chances to achieve his primary goal of improving the lives of people in Germany and around the world. "From which position is that best possible? What is more important? The radiance of our decisions, or the improvement of the everyday lives of people?" Schulz told the group. He said he noted the group's position and thanked them for their support in the September election. But he said he expected their loyalty and "constructive cooperation" with whatever path was ultimately decided by the party's leadership. Backing for a new government could mean forming a coalition, agreeing not to obstruct a Merkel-led minority government, or other options yet to be explored, SPD deputy leader Ralf Stegner told broadcaster ZDF. Rainer Haseloff, the premier of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and a member of Merkel's center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), told Reuters: "I think opinion is moving in the direction of there being a grand coalition." He said conservatives would look at the SPD's proposals, but the bloc would not agree to any move to replace Merkel. QUESTION OF WHEN, NOT IF Juergin Trittin, a senior Greens member, told Germany's RND newspaper group it was "a question of when, not if" the SPD would agree to discuss another coalition with conservatives. Stegner, who is skeptical about another grand coalition, told broadcaster ZDF the SPD would extract a price for any deal. "The SPD won't go cheaply," he said, without elaborating. Merkel spoke with reporters after an event in Brussels, but declined to answer any questions. A poll conducted on Monday, before the latest SPD comments, showed half of Germans supported the SPD's initial rejection of a new grand coalition, while 44 percent would support renewing the coalition government that has ruled for the past four years. Six out of 10 Germans would support a new election, the poll by infratest dimap for broadcaster ARD showed. Over her 12 years in power, Merkel has embraced a succession of coalition partners who then went on to suffer painful electoral defeats. A cartoon published by Cicero magazine on Friday depicted the SPD as a mouse being enticed out of its hole by a waiting feline Merkel. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will host a meeting with Schulz, Merkel and Horst Seehofer, leader of the CDU's arch-conservative Bavarian sister party, next Thursday. Steinmeier, a former SPD foreign minister, has urged his former party to reverse its pledge to go into opposition, having made clear that he saw fresh elections as a last resort. The crisis has arisen because Merkel's conservatives also lost votes in September as the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany surged into parliament. With the SPD licking its wounds, an unlikely-looking three-way coalition with smaller parties had appeared the only option for the weakened chancellor. (Additional reporting by Joseph Nasr and Andrea Shalal in Berlin, Alastair MacDonald in Brussels and Reuters TV in Saarbruecken; Editing by Gareth Jones and Hugh Lawson)
The holiday season is officially underway, which means the surge of shoppers looking to purchase gifts for loved ones has kicked off too. For some, the time of year can be a financially stressful one, especially for parents looking to get their kids favorite toy. Sometimes though, Santa comes early.

This Black Friday, a New Jersey resident who identified himself as Charlie K. headed to the Cherry Hill Toys R Us with his son. Instead of just getting his son items, Charlie paid for 60 layaway orders  adding up to 8,000 toys worth $10,000.

Through layaway programs, stores hold on to items people choose until they come back to pay for it at a later time. Because of Charlies deed, a group of Toys R Us shoppers will no longer have to wait.

The dad told CBS3 that he wanted to give back to the community that has given him so much.

Im trying to bring some happiness to people, to the community that brought happiness to me and my family, Charlie K. told CBS3. I love this community, and I am trying to provide back to it.

This is Charlie K.

While doing a segment @ToysRUs in Cherry Hill, Charlie walked in & decided to pay off all items on layaway. Over 8,000 toys!

Charlie also had everyone in the store pick 3 items for @ToysForTots_USA & paid for those too. Amazing generosity. Thank you Charlie. pic.twitter.com/GWr1pbGnVV  Pat Gallen (@PatGallenCBS3) November 24, 2017

He didnt stop at the layaway orders, either. He also had everyone in the store pick out three toys to donate to Toys for Tots, a nonprofit run by the United States Marines that donates toys to kids in need.

This time of year is often teeming with stories about good Samaritans, or as some may call them, Santas helpers. Last season, an anonymous shopper under the pseudonym Santa B paid for $46,265.59 in layaway items at a Pennsylvania Walmart.

Story continues

A woman whose layaway had been paid had $75 on her balance for an Xbox for her grandson. She recently quit her job due to surgery complications and was worried about how to pay the balance, Yahoo reported at the time.

Charlie K. said he had never before donated like he did today, so it appears theres more good people out there than one would assume. The good news? Anyone can help out. Programs like Pay Away the Layaway accepts any amount from anyone who feels compelled to donate.

Tis the season.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.
A woman in western New York state has died in a tragic accident in which a hunter fired at her, thinking she was a deer.

Rosemary Billquist, 43, was taking her two dogs for a walk near her home Wednesday in the town of Sherman when she was shot once from about 200 yards away, The New York Post reports.

The hunter, neighbor Thomas Jadlowski, rushed over to Billquist when he heard her scream, according to police. He called 911 and applied pressure to her wound while waiting for emergency responders to arrive. Billquist was transported to a local hospital, where she died of her injuries.

They tried saving her, her husband, Jamie Billquist, told The Buffalo News. It was just too bad. ... Its horrific. It will be with me the rest of my life.

Billquist said his wife, who was shot in the hip, was only 100 yards away from their house when the incident occurred.

He posted a tribute to her Thursday on Facebook.

I know shes touched so many lives with her kindness, he wrote, urging others to savor Thanksgiving with their families and enjoy those moments because they are precious.

The Chautauqua County Sheriffs Office said that Jadlowski reported the shooting 40 minutes after sunset and noted that its against state law to hunt deer after the sun has gone down, according to the Buffalo News. So far, no charges have been filed, although law enforcement was still investigating the incident.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
New Delhi (AFP) - India said Thursday it was outraged at Pakistan's release of an Islamist leader accused of organising the 2008 deadly Mumbai attacks that nearly brought the nuclear-armed nations to the brink of war.

A Pakistani court on Wednesday ordered the release of firebrand cleric Hafiz Saeed, who carries a $10 million US bounty, after Islamabad failed to back the charges of terrorism with evidence.

Saeed, who heads the banned charity group Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), was put under house arrest in January following increased US pressure on Islamabad to rein-in militant groups.

"India, as indeed the entire international community, is outraged that a self-confessed and a UN proscribed terrorist is allowed to walk free and continue with his evil agenda," Raveesh Kumar, India's foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters at a weekly briefing in New Delhi.

"It also appears to be an attempt by the Pakistani system to mainstream proscribed terrorists," the spokesman added.

Kumar said the radical leader's release shows that Pakistan continues with its policy to support and shield non-state actors who are involved in militant activities in the region.

Saeed was declared a global terrorist by the US and the United Nations over his alleged role in the attacks that left nearly 166 people dead, including Western nationals.

JuD, which has operated freely across Pakistan and is popular for its charity work, is considered by the US and India to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the militant group blamed for the attacks.

US President Donald Trump in August angrily accused Islamabad of harbouring "agents of chaos" while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said too many extremists are finding sanctuary inside Pakistan.

New Delhi has long seethed at Pakistan's failure either to hand over or prosecute those accused of planning the attacks, while Islamabad has alleged that India failed to give it crucial evidence.

Story continues

It is the third time that the cleric has been released by courts after Islamabad briefly detained him twice in the aftermath of the attacks in November 2008.

Saeed for decades has publicly espoused ending India's rule of the disputed Himalayan Kashmir region, with India accusing him of sending armed militants to the valley.

India and Pakistan, who rule parts of the disputed region, have fought two of their three wars over the territory, with scores of militant groups, including LeT, engaged in a decades-old armed insurgency against the Indian rule.
Women are still often expected to give up work after having children in Japan - AFP

A local Japanese politician has stirred debate after she was forbidden from bringing her baby into a council session.

In a case that contrasts starkly with the Australian lawmaker who breastfed her baby in parliament, Yuka Ogata was told she could not take part in the assembly on Wednesday if she had her seven-month-old son with her.

Officials of the Kumamoto municipal assembly said visitors and observers were forbidden from the floor, and that included the young children of politicians.

The session eventually started 40 minutes late after Ms Ogata agreed to leave the infant with a friend.

It was the first time Ms Ogata had attended a plenary session since she gave birth to her son, the BBC reported. She said she wanted to show how difficult it was for women to continue careers and bring up children.

Ms. Yuka Ogata (Ogata is her family), one of a few female members of Kumamoto's City Council, has received... https://t.co/Q4KirSrif1  Kumamoto-i (@Kumamotoi) November 23, 2017

"I wanted the assembly to be a place where women who are raising children can also do a great job," she told the Mainichi newspaper.

The council said it would discuss ways to support lawmakers who had young children.

"We would like to work on a system where assembly members can participate in meetings with their children," Speaker Yoshitomo Sawada, according to the Mainichi.

Her move has sparked debate online with supporters saying she was brave and opponents questioning if it was a good idea to bring a baby to a workplace.

"I think her act was wonderful. People wouldn't take problems seriously" if she hadn't shown up with the child, one Twitter user said.

"Balancing work and child rearing isn't about being with a child all the time at a workplace," said another user, who identified herself as a fellow working mother.

Story continues

"I really cannot understand her action," wrote this user.

Japan has consistently fared poorly in gender equality rankings in the developed world.

Women are still often expected to give up work after having children, face chronic shortages of public childcare spots and regularly describe the existence of a concrete rather than glass ceiling preventing female workers from advancing to senior positions.

So proud that my daughter Alia is the first baby to be breastfed in the federal Parliament! We need more #women & parents in Parli #auspolpic.twitter.com/w34nxWxG0y  Larissa Waters (@larissawaters) May 9, 2017

In contrast, Senator Larissa Waters returned to parliament in Australia in May after giving birth to her second daughter and brought her baby Alia Joy with her while she voted.

Furthermore, she made political history in the country by breastfeeding her daughter in the chamber.

In Britain, an independent review in July last year concluded that allowing women to breastfeed would be "symbolic" and showcase the Commons as a "role-model parent friendly institution".
The moment the patient was given one last chance to see the sea (Facebook)

This is the poignant moment a crew of paramedics in Australia made a dying patients wish come true by letting her see a beach one last time.

The Queensland Ambulance Service took a detour to a stretch of coastal land known as Hervey Bay after the female patient had told them she wanted one last look.

The terminally-ill woman was propped up in her stretcher looking out over the water.

Alongside her is a paramedic.

The moving moment was shared on social media by the ambulance service.

They posted the picture on Facebook and it has subsequently become a viral hit, with the paramedics being roundly praised for their actions.

A crew were transporting a patient to the palliative care unit of the local Hospital and the patient expressed that she just wished she could be at the beach again, wrote the Queensland Ambulance Service on the Facebook post.

Above and beyond, the crew took a small diversion to the awesome beach at Hervey Bay to give the patient this opportunity  tears were shed and the patient felt very happy.

They added: Sometimes it is not the drugs/training/skills  sometimes all you need is empathy to make a difference!

Hervey Bay in Queensland (Rex)

Plenty online agreed.

The image has been shared more than 15,000 times.

The crew were praised for their kindness to the patient, with the image since shared more than 15,500 times.

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The story even prompted other paramedics to share similar tales.

One wrote under the Queensland post: Years ago a fellow crew member and I had a situation where the patient was taking her last ride home.

Story continues

She asked to see the beach one last time. After going the beach and opening the rear door, we asked her if would like an ice cream, to which she replied yes with a giggle of delight. A short time later the hardly licked ice cream fell to the floor.

The patient had passed away. As she lay there still smiling at the last view that she ever saw, we had a minutes silence for her.

Hervey Bay is some three hours drive north of Brisbane and is considered the whale-watching capital of Australia
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 16:28:45|Editor: Lifang

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WUHAN, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A total of 165 Yangtze finless porpoises have been visually identified during a survey expedition along the Yangtze River, a significant increase from previous research in 2012.

Acoustic equipment identified 102 finless porpoises during the expedition.

"There is a notable increase in the population size of the finless porpoise based on our observation," said Hao Yujiang, head of the research expedition.

Two scientific research vessels docked at a wharf in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, Wednesday, concluding a 1,300 kilometers round-trip between Wuhan and Yichang in Hubei.

On November 10, a scientific expedition to the Yangtze River to study wild finless porpoise and their habits was launched.

The 40-day expedition, organized by the Ministry of Agriculture, will be conducted in the main stream of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze spanning from Yichang to Shanghai, as well as the river's largest tributaries and the lakes of Dongting and Boyang.

"Results of the expeditions, including the population of the finless porpoise, are to be made available after sufficient analysis," Hao said.

A separate expedition in 2012 found the population of finless porpoises had shrank to about 1,040, about 14 percent less than six years previously.

Scientists say insufficient food, illegal fishing tools, water pollution and habitat destruction are the major reasons for the decline.
Pristina (AFP) - Kosovo police on Friday arrested three leading members of the main opposition party, including its founder, over the firing of tear gas in parliament last year.

Albin Kurti, a member of parliament who founded the nationalist leftist Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) party, was detained by police as he approached the parliamentary building in Pristina, along with two female colleagues.

Police used pepper spray against other deputies who tried to prevent the arrests, which came after they refused to attend a summons to appear in court over the accusations.

Later on Friday court ordered a month's detention for the three.

Members of the party have repeatedly set off tear gas in parliament as a tool of protest, including against a border demarcation deal with Montenegro, which has yet to be ratified.

The party fiercely opposes the agreement, claiming it will cede hectares of Kosovo's land to its neighbour, but the deal is a condition for Kosovo's citizens obtaining visa-free travel in the European Union.

Four Vetevendosje activists, including a member of parliament, were jailed earlier this month for "terrorism" over a grenade attack on the parliament building last year, ahead of a vote on the border deal.

Visar Ymeri, currently the leader of the party, told reporters Friday that "a massive persecution" has been launched against them.

Having announced court's detention order on his Facebook profile, Ymeri accused the government of being behind the move.

"Persecution is directed against the Vetevendosje, because only Vetevendosje is an obstacle to their criminal enterprise," Ymeri wrote.

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and has since been recognised by more than 110 countries, although not by Belgrade or Moscow.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 16:28:47|Editor: Lifang

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HONG KONG, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor Saturday praised the Hong Kong Police for maintaining Hong Kong's rule of law, integrity as well as law and order.

Attending the passing-out parade of the Hong Kong Police College Saturday, Lam said that the police force has contributed greatly to the economic development of Hong Kong which every member of the law enforcement agency should take pride.

A total of 40 probationary inspectors and 176 recruit constables passed out.

Lam said the number of crimes per 100,000 population in 2016 stood at 825 cases in Hong Kong, representing a new low in the past 44 years. It was attributed to the concerted efforts of every member of the police force.

The chief executive also commended the police force for being innovative and striving for excellence in the past years.

On technology-related crimes, it has set up a dedicated team to handle online crimes after noting with foresight that technology-related crime would burgeon and become popular.

In view of the heightened global terrorism situation, it set up a team within a short period of time to ensure that Hong Kong remains one of the safest cities in the world, she added.

Lam encouraged graduates to work with full commitment and passion, and to serve the society and members of the public with empathy. Meanwhile, she hoped that every member of the police force could work together and continue to maintain its professionalism.
UU service to offer a cultural exchange event

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and Church, 818 E. Divide Ave., in Bismarck is offering service on "Reflections from Columbia to North Dakota" at 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Sunday.

Originally from Columbia, speakers Sofia Agudelo and David Toledo are scholars, parents and lovers of life. Their reflections on the joys and challenges of North Dakota living will reflect on some of the big questions: the relationship between culture and place, the role of community and what it means to be human. Elicia Faul is music leader.

Swedish association to host Santa Lucia Celebration

Three Crowns American Swedish Association is hosting a Santa Lucia Celebration at 2:30 p.m. Dec. 10 at the Lord of Life Lutheran Church, 1143 N. 26th St. in Bismarck. The event is open to the public.

Santa Lucia coincides with the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, so her feast day becomes a Festival of Lights. In celebration of Lucia, a young girl dressed in a white dress and a red sash wears a crown or wreath of candles on her head and carries a tray with hot coffee and Lucia buns Lussekattor for her parents and family.

MacKenzie Swenson, daughter of Mark and Stephanie, has been named Santa Lucia 2017. Santa Lucia leads a procession that includes white-clad attendants, Star Boys, Apple Girl and several mischievous tomtes. Lucia attendants are Sophie Caldwell, Emma Walz and Allyson Geiger.

Swedish folk dancing, music and special childrens activities are being planned, including the plundering of the Christmas tree decked with julgranskaramel, which are candy treats.

This event is open to the public, and attendees are invited to bring their special Christmas treats that will be served along with a variety of Scandinavian delicacies and coffee. A freewill offering will be donated to the Bismarck-Mandan area Salvation Army.

Christian musicians to hold Christmas performance

Heart River Child will be performing a Christmas concert at Lutheran Church of the Cross, 1004 E. Highland Acres Road in Bismarck, at 7 p.m. Dec. 20.

In addition to the live performance, the concert will be live streamed via the church's website at www.churchofthecross.org.

Heart River Child is a group of Christian musicians who grew up in Heart River Lutheran Church in Mandan. They first began playing music together in their Sunday school class in 2008. It didnt take long before they were sharing their music with the congregation during worship. As time passed, they picked up more instruments and began playing and singing more complex arrangements of music. They enjoy playing many different styles of Christian music, including bluegrass, folk, African American spirituals, global and contemporary music, as well as traditional hymns.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 17:39:01|Editor: liuxin

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Security officials examine the blast site in southwest Pakistan's Quetta on Nov. 25, 2017. At least four people were killed and 19 others injured when a blast went off in Pakistan's southwest Quetta city on Saturday afternoon, hospital sources said. (Xinhua/Irfan)

ISLAMABAD, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- At least four people were killed and 19 others injured when a blast went off in Pakistans southwest Quetta city on Saturday afternoon, hospital sources said.

Wasim Baig, spokesperson for Civil Hospital Quetta, confirmed with Xinhua that they have received four bodies and 19 injured people.

Local media reports said that the explosion happened near a bus stand located in Sariab road of Quetta, the provincial capital of the countrys southwestern Balochistan province.

The attack happened when a security forces vehicle was passing by the blast site, the reports added.

Nature of the explosion has not been officially confirmed yet, but some reports said that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.

Chief Minister Balochistan Nawab Sanaullah Khan Zehri condemned the incident and directed hospital administration to provide best treatment to the injured people.
A church in upmarket Malibu has decided to stop providing free meals for those in need after claiming they were told by officials they were attracting too many homeless people.

The United Methodist Church, one of many churches that provides food and help, has been offering free meals twice a week. But it said it was going to stop after being told the meal service was luring too many homeless people.

Dawn Randall, a member of the church, said it recently received an email from city officials. Very succinctly, they claimed we are increasing homelessness, she told CBS.

Volunteer at the Thursday night dinners for the homeless at Malibu Methodist Church, shares her experience. #newswaves32 pic.twitter.com/R9Ymv7XLGy  Alexa Garza V (@Alexagava) November 14, 2017

Reports suggest that the California city of Malibu, famed for its gorgeous beaches and multi-million dollar homes, has a growing problem with homelessness, an issue that was met with both charity and taxpayer money.

The Los Angeles Times said the city, which has a population of 13,000, has roughly 180 homeless residents, but no shelter or housing for poor people.

The United Methodist Church and Standing on Stone, a Christian group, had been hosting twice-weekly homeless dinners on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

But the newspaper said once the metro line to Santa Monica opened last year, a number of residents complained that mentally-ill and other homeless people were camping at the beach and entering schools.

A homeless person was taking a shower in the girls locker room in middle school - that wasnt real good, Gary Peterson, a retired developer, told the newspaper. Providing dinner is a nice thing to do and a good thing, but its the location.

Story continues

At a public hearing this week, Malibu Mayor Skylar Peak denied making the order and apologised for any miscommunication.

No they were never formally asked to stop feeding the homeless, said Mr Peak. Not at all.

Neither the church or Mr Peak immediately responded to inquiries.
(Photo: ullstein bild via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON  Mexico has joined a growing global effort to safeguard the worlds oceans with the creation of a marine reserve surrounding Revillagigedo Archipelago, a chain of four volcanic islands off the countrys Pacific coast.

At more than 57,000 square miles  roughly the size of Georgia  Revillagigedo Archipelago National Park becomes the largest fully protected marine reserve in North America, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. All fishing and other extractive activities will now be banned in the area.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto established the sanctuary via a decree on Friday. The archipelago and the rich waters surrounding it are critical habitat for numerous species and have already been recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2016.

Mario Gomez, executive director of Beta Diversidad  which along with Pew and other groups had supported the reserves creation  called Revillagigedo the crown jewel of Mexican waters.

We are proud of the protection we will provide to marine life in this area, and for the preservation of this important center of connectivity of species migrating throughout the Pacific, Gomez said in a statement.

Mexico's Revillagigedo Archipelago National Park becomes North America's largest fully protected marine reserve. (Photo: The Pew Charitable Trusts)

The island chain, part of a submerged volcanic mountain range, lies some 250 miles south of the Baja California peninsula. There two ocean currents collide and draw up nutrients that help feed some 400 species of fish, sharks and rays, according to Pew. The area is also an important site for whales, dolphins and seabirds.

Matt Rand, director of the Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project, told HuffPost that the reserve is biologically spectacular. And he applauded Mexicos leadership.

It wasnt an easy decision because they had significant opposition from the commercial fishing industry, which I think is unfortunate, Rand said. I would love to see a commercial industry embrace this notion that certain areas should be protected.

The scientific community has called on world governments to set aside large swaths of ocean for preservation purposes. The United Nations has established a goal of protecting 10 percent of the worlds oceans by 2020. Joining the movement in recent years have been countries like Chile, New Zealand and Tahiti.

Story continues

During the 2015 Our Ocean conference in Valparaiso, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet announced the creation of both the Nazca-Desventuradas Marine Park, located some 550 miles off the coast of Chile  giving that country claim to the largest marine reserve in the Americas  and the Easter Island Marine Park, which will be the third-largest fully protected marine area in the world. The Easter Island reserve bumped New Zealands Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary to the No. 4 spot.

Meanwhile in the United States, President Donald Trump is considering shrinking two marine national monuments in the Pacific  Rose Atoll and the Pacific Remote Islands  as well as opening those and a third  Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, off the coast of New England  to commercial fishing, according to a leaked report published by The Washington Post.

A scuba diver swims with Pacific creolefish near the Revillagigedo Islands. (Photo: ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Also on HuffPost

Toola

This undated image provided by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation shows Toola, a sea otter who died at the aquarium, Saturday March 3, 2012, in Monterey, Calif. Believed to be 15 or 16, Toola succumbed to natural causes and to the infirmities of age, an aquarium spokesman said. (AP Photo/Monterey Bay Aquarium)

A California sea lion and a walrus kiss each other during a show at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium-amusement park complex in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

A red lionfish (Pterois volitans) swims in the aquarium of the Schonbrunn zoo in the gardens of the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna on October 16, 2012. The red lionfish is a venomous coral reef fish. ALEXANDER KLEIN/AFP/Getty Images

A two-day-old female white whale swims with her mother at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium-amusement park complex in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, Saturday, June 30, 2012.(AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

A seahorse swims in an aquarium in the zoo of Frankfurt, Germany, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012.(AP Photo/Michael Probst)

A Cownose Ray swims in a tank during a preview of the newly renovated Suzanne and Walter Scott Aquarium at Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Neb., Wednesday, April 4, 2012.The aquarium opens to the general public on Thursday, April 5. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

King penguins stand in an enclosure at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium-amusement park complex in Yokohama, near Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012.(AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

In this photo taken Thursday Aug. 2, 2012 and released by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a male weedy sea dragon at the Monterey Bay Aquarium swims with some of his newly hatched babies on in a sea dragon display thats part of the aquariums special exhibition, The Secret Lives of Seahorses. in Monterey, Calif. The inch-long fish, Australian relatives of the seahorse, were carried as eggs on a brood pouch under the father sea dragons tail. (AP Photo/Monterey Bay Aquarium, Randy Wilder)

Activists from environment campaign group Greenpeace wearing cardboard tuna cutouts hold a protest in front of South Korea's embassy in Manila on November 29, 2012. The activists sought conservation commitments from the fishing powers in the upcoming global summit on Pacific tuna fisheries to be hosted by the Philippines next week. NOEL CELIS/AFP/Getty Images

This Sept. 5, 2012 photo shows Serena, a dugong at the Toba Aquarium in Toba, Japan. Dugongs, a sea mammal related to the manatee, are rare in captivity. The aquarium gift shop sells stuffed dugongs and dugong cookies. (AP Photo/Linda Lombardi)

This May 9, 2012 photo provided by the New England Aquarium in Boston shows a rare calico lobster that could be a 1-in-30 million, according to experts. The lobster, discovered by Jasper Whites Summer Shack and caught off Winter Harbor, Maine, is being held at the New England Aquarium for the Biomes Marine Biology Center in Rhode Island. The lobster is dark with bright orange and yellow spots. (AP Photo/New England Aquarium, Tony LaCasse)

Pterophyllum scalare fish are displayed at the 2012 Taiwan International Aquarium Expo in Taipei on November 9, 2012. More than one hundred fish tanks from many countries will be on display in the four day exhibition at Nangang Exhibition Hall from November 9 to 12. Mandy Cheng/AFP/Getty Images

In this Oct. 15, 2012 photo provided by the Wildlife Conservation Society, Mitik, an orphaned Pacific walrus calf rescued off the coast of Alaska, emerges from his tank at the New York Aquarium in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Mitik suffered from a number of ailments when he was rescued in July but is making progress as he receives round-the-clock care at the aquarium. (AP Photo/Wildlife Conservation Society, Julie Larsen Maher)

Phenacogrammus interruptus fish are displayed at the 2012 Taiwan International Aquarium Expo in Taipei on November 9, 2012. More than one hundred fish tanks from many countries will be on display in the four day exhibition at Nangang Exhibition Hall from November 9 to 12. Mandy Cheng/AFP/Getty Images

This photo taken July 4, 2012, at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward, Alaska, shows a baby beluga calf being rehabilitated at the center. The whale was approximately two days old when it was found in Bristol Bay, Alaska, and separated from its mother. Staff from the Alaska SeaLife Center is receiving help with the whale's care from the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, Shedd Aquarium in ChiCago and SeaWord in San Diego.. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

A Pacific white-sided dolphin calf swims along with its mother Piquet, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium. The baby male dolphin, which does not have a name, was born on Memorial Day. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

A seahorse (Hippocampus Reidi) is displayed during a news conference before the 2012 Taiwan International Aquarium Expo in Taipei November 5, 2012. More then one hundred tanks of fish from many countries will be on display in the four day exhibition at Nangang Exhibition Hall from November 9 to 12. Mandy Cheng/AFP/Getty Images

A still unnamed King penguin chick that hatched on April 9 is unveiled at The Aquarium at Moody Gardens, Monday, April 23, 2012, in Galveston, Texas. A blood test will be conducted to determine the gender of the bird who came into life weighing about 20 ounces. This chick is the 14th King penguin chick to have been successfully bred at the aquarium. Due to space limitations, this chick will be go to another facility once weaned from its parents. The chick currently is in the main penguin exhibit at the aquarium which also home to Gentoo, Macaroni, Rockhopper and Chinstrap penguins. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Johnny Hanson)

A Rock Beauty angelfish looks out from its tank at the Greater Cleveland Aquarium in Cleveland Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. Developed by Marinescape NZ Limited, Ohio's only free-standing aquarium opens Thursday with two preview days for annual pass holders and opens to the public Saturday, Jan. 21. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

This image provided by the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium shows a female Argonaut, or paper nautilus, a species of cephalopod that was recently scooped out of the ocean off the California coast. The baseball-sized animal is making herself at home at the aquarium, bobbing up and down in her tank furling and unfurling her sucker-covered arms. This strange octopus is rare in California, because it only lives in tropical and subtropical waters. (AP Photo/Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, Gary Florin)

In this photo released on Friday April 27,2012 by the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach showing Shelby, one of the Aquariums female harbor seals, who is 16 years old and gave birth to her first pup today Friday April 27,2012. The newborn female seal weighs approximately 20 pounds. Aquarium of the Pacific mammal and bird curator Dudley Wigdahl says Shelby 16 years old and gave birth to her first pup when most seals start having pups at 4 or 5.(AP Photo/Terri Haines, Aquarium of the Pacific)

Turkey fish swim in an aquarium in the zoo of Frankfurt, Germany, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

A Magellanic penguin swims in the June Keyes Penguin Habitat exhibit at The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif., Wednesday, May 16, 2012. (AP Photo/The Orange County Register, Mark Rightmire)

A common spider tortoise is seen in its enclosure at the South Carolina Aquarium in Charleston, S.C., on Tuesday, May 1, 2012. The creature is part of a new exhibit, Madagascar Journey, opening at the aquarium on Saturday, May 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Bruce Smith)

A blue caribbean tang swims over an artificial coral reef inside the Greater Cleveland Aquarium in Cleveland Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. Constructed in an old powerhouse, Ohio's only free-standing aquarium opens Thursday with two preview days for annual pass holders and opens to the public Saturday, Jan. 21. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

A new baby Fairy Penguin swims at the Sydney Aquarium in Sydney, Australia, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. Three juveniles were born at the aquarium and have been separated from the main group since birth to ensure a healthy growth rate and to keep them safer while they were still young. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith)

This image provided by the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium shows a female Argonaut, or paper nautilus, a species of cephalopod that was recently scooped out of the ocean off the California coast. The baseball-sized animal is making herself at home at the aquarium, bobbing up and down in her tank furling and unfurling her sucker-covered arms. This strange octopus is rare in California, because it only lives in tropical and subtropical waters. (AP Photo/Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, Gary Florin)

In this Monday, Aug. 27, 2012 photo, Mauyak, a beluga whale at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, swims with her newly born calf at the aquarium's Abbott Oceanarium. Shedds animal care team estimates that the calf is 4 feet long and weighs about 150 pounds. The newborn is the sixth successful birth as part of Shedds collaboration in the beluga whale breeding cooperative. (AP Photo/Shedd Aquarium, Brenna Hernandez)

Freshwater exotics Greater Cleveland Aquarium in Cleveland Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. Ohio's only free-standing aquarium opens Thursday with two preview days for annual pass holders and opens to the public Saturday, Jan. 21. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

Walrus, (Odobenus rosmarus), Neseyka swims in the new aquarium in the Hamburg Hagenbeck zoo, Thursday, July 5, 2012. (AP Photo/dapd/ Philipp Guelland)

In this May 24, 2012 photo provided by the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Cayucos, bottom left, an orphaned sea otter pup, swims with other otters as she makes her first public appearance at the aquarium's Abbott Oceanarium. The sea otter was found stranded on a beach in California and named after the beach where she was rescued. The staff at Shedd has nursed the 7-month-old otter back to health. She has put on 11 pounds since arriving at the aquarium in January and now weighs 26 pounds. (AP Photo/Shedd Aquarium, Brenna Hernandez)

A male walrus pokes his tongue out at his trainer during a practice at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium-amusement park complex in Yokohama, near Tokyo, Japan, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

In this photo taken on May 7, 2012 and distributed by Japan Coast Guard's 3rd Regional Coast Guard Headquarters Thursday, May 17, a fugitive Humboldt penguin swims in the water in Tokyo Bay. The one-year-old penguin Number 337 which escaped from a Tokyo aquarium in March has been spotted alive in the water busy with many ships throughout the day. (AP Photo/Japan Coast Guard's 3rd Regional Coast Guard Headquarters)

In this March 2012 photo provided by the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Piquet, a Pacific white-sided dolphin, swims at the aquarium. Care experts are preparing for Piquet to give birth this spring. Veterinarians and other staff members are planning a sleepover at the aquarium when it is shutdown because of the upcoming NATO summit May 20-21, 2012. Shedd officials say they're worried about being able to get to the aquarium, which is in close proximity to the summit and protest route, quickly if needed. (AP Photo/Shedd Aquarium, Brenna Hernandez)

This undated photo provided by the Monterey Bay Aquarium shows a dwarf seahorse at the aquarium in Monterey, Calif. The government will study whether the inch-long seahorse  the smallest of four species found in U.S. waters should have federal protection. The dwarf seahorse lives only in seagrass beds in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP Photo/Monterey Bay Aquarium, Randy Wilder)

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Searching for something to listen to this weekend? Yahoo Music has you covered with a rundown of some of this weeks biggest and buzzing releases, from artists including Bjork, Noel Gallagher, Yes, and more. Check back every Friday for a fresh list of albums to help fuel your weekend playlists.

Bjork: Utopia (One Little Indian). Bjorks latest lives up to the hype. The set is lush, beautiful, artistic, haunting, and abstract  everything that any fan of the artist could expect or desire. That said, it is a little challenging for the casual listener, but thats part of her appeal.

Noel Gallaghers High Flying Birds: Who Built the Moon? (Sour Mash/Caroline International). Guests Paul Weller and Johnny Marr join the Oasis brother on this big, bold, fun up-tempo record  which was released not too long after brother Liams effort. Given the well-documented feud between these siblings, its a fun exercise to compare.

Yes: Topographic Drama  Live Across America (Rhino). This extensive set showcases highlights from the 2017 leg of the legendary bands 28-show tour.

Englebert Humperdinck: The Man I Want to Be (OK! Good/MRI). A particular standout on this set is the track Im Glad I Danced With You, which was written by the 81-year-old pop crooners daughter Louise as a tribute to his wife of 53 years, Olivia, who has Alzheimers.

Luis Miguel: Mexico Por Siempre! (Warner Latina). Miguels first album in seven years is his second mariachi album, and it offers up 14 classic selections in the genre filled with power and passion.

Pugwash: Silverlake (Lojinx). Produced by indie favorite Jason Falkner, the Irish bands latest is another classic power-pop entry that will please fans of the Beach Boys, Beatles, Jellyfish, and other like-minded melodic outfits.

Bob Saget: Zero to Sixty (Comedy Dynamics). Comedian Saget brings the dark side of comedy to the Big Apple, taking the audience on a stroll through his brain that is rude, crude, and not recommended for those who are offended easily.

Story continues

New Fumes: Teeming 2 (Rad Cult). Daniel Huffman, the creative force of New Fumes, has lent his talents to a multitude of diverse bands, including the Flaming Lips. Here, Wayne Coyne joins him on his sophomore effort, an offbeat blend of electronic and rock tones.

Matt Terry: Trouble (RCA). Terry may be familiar to some as the winner of the 2016 U.K. series of The X Factor. Here, he shows off an assured, impressive vocal range on a selection of R&B/pop tunes.
Our nights are getting brighter and they have been every year since 2012, according to a new study published today in Science Advances. Researchers led by Christopher Kyba at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences used satellite imagery to track changes in nighttime outdoor artificial lighting around the world and they found that between 2012 and 2016, the amount of lit area grew by 2.2 percent per year. The amount of brightness from continuously lit areas also increased by 2.2 percent per year. So not only is more area being illuminated at night, already lit areas are getting even brighter. "We're losing more and more of the night on a planetary scale," said the journal's editor, Kip Hodges.

Some areas stayed largely the same year over year, but many of those regions, including those in Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the US, were already among the brightest to begin with. Lighting increased throughout South America, Africa and Asia. And the numbers are likely to underestimate the problem because the satellite used doesn't pick up blue light emitted by LEDs, which have been used more and more in the last few years.

"The numbers are truly shocking, given that we know illuminating the nocturnal environment can have widespread ramifications for the environment and human health," University of Exeter researcher Thomas Davies, who wasn't involved with the study, told Gizmodo. And exactly how much it will impact human and environmental health is unclear since nighttime illumination is a fairly new phenomenon. "Artificial light at night is a very new stressor," said Franz Holker, one of the researchers on the project. "The problem is that light has been introduced in places, times and intensities at which it does not naturally occur and [for] many organisms, there is no chance to adapt to this new stressor."

And unless we change how we're lighting our outdoor spaces, this trend will likely continue. "In the near term, it appears that artificial light emission into the environment will continue to increase, further eroding Earth's remaining land area that experiences natural day-night light cycles," said the study.

Image: Carla Schaffer / AAAS
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 17:44:03|Editor: ZD

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ISLAMABAD, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- At least one policeman was killed and over 100 people injured in clashes between security forces and protestors here on Saturday during the police's clear operation against religious sit-in protest, local media reported.

The police officer suffered a deadly blow to the head as protestors pelted stones at security forces during the operation, said local Dunya News, adding that at least 56 security personnel were among the injured.

Heavy contingent of police and paramilitary Rangers launched a crackdown against the protestors who have been camped at the key route linking Islamabad and Rawalpindi city, paralyzing the country's capital for almost three weeks.

Security forces resorted to rubber-bullet after the protesters put up the resistance. The law enforcement agencies lobbed tear gas shells and used water cannons to disperse the protesters. In return, the demonstrators pelted stones on the security personnel.

As many as 370 protestors have been taken into custody by the law enforcement agencies, said police officials, adding that the helicopters and drones are being used by the authorities for aerial surveillance.

At least 10 motorcycles and two vehicles were torched by the protestors, said the reports.

The injured have been shifted to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad and Benazir Hospital Rawalpindi. Emergency has been imposed in all the hospitals in the twin cities and staff has been advised to remain on duty.

The protestors from various religious parties were protesting against a religion-related amendment in the oath taken by parliamentarians. The amendment was retracted after the strong protests from religious community, but the protestors still demand the stepdown of federal law minister.

The Islamabad High Court on Nov. 18 directed the local administration to clear the Faizabad Interchange, the main gateway between the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, within 24 hours. However, the government did not carry out the orders and initiated several rounds of talks with the protestors to disperse them peacefully, but failed each time.

The operation on Saturday came a day after the Islamabad High Court issued a show-cause notice for contempt of court to Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal over his failure to take steps ordered by the court to end the sit-in.

Crackdown against the protestors also sparked protests in other parts of the country. In southern port city of Karachi, people supporting the sit-in took to the streets and blocked several roads, causing disruption in traffic flow.

Clashes also erupted between supporters of sit-in and police after they burned tires and blocked roads and railway tracks in the country's eastern cities of Lahore and Daska.

According to the local administration, the Faizabad Interchange is now under control of authorities as the operation is still underway.
North Korea has reportedly replaced all its border guards at the frontier it shares with South Korea after one of their colleagues defected earlier month.

The guards may have been punished for their failure to stop the guard rushing over the border, a report from the South Korean Yonhap News Agency claims.

The soldier sprinted across the Joint Security Area in the demilitarized zone (DMZ), despite it being one of the most heavily-guarded strips of land in the world.

Signs were detected that North Korea has replaced all border security officials following the defection, Yonhap said, quoting a source.

The dramatic moment the guard makes a break for freedom (AP)

Given this situation, commanders of the responsible military unit and senior officers might have undergone punishment.

Footage of the incident released earlier this month shows the defecting North Korean speeding to the border in a military jeep.

Four of his colleagues open fire on him and he was shot five times by his former comrades. It is thought at least 40 shots were fired at the North Korean.

He crashed the jeep, and was then dragged across the border by South Korean soldiers, with the help of three Americans.

Former colleagues fired at least 40 bullets at the fleeing guard (AP)

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The border between the two countries is one of the most militarized strips of land in the world (Rex)

The defector survived and was later taken to hospital.

The US, which is currently engaged in a war of words with the secretive state in Pyongyang, claimed that in their desperate attempts to stop the soldier defecting, North Korean troops had violated the armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korean soldiers fired across and physically crossed the border in pursuit of the soldier, said US Colonel Chad G Carroll.
Charles Manson clowns around as he is led to his cell in 1989: Reuters

A fundraising webpage which claimed to be raising money for the funeral of notorious mass murderer Charles Manson has been shut down by the GoFundMe charity.

Set up by a man called John Michael Jones, he claimed to be raising money on behalf of Mansons grandson Jason Freeman.

The Independent has not been able to independently verify whether Mr Jones knows any member of Mansons family.

But some US media outlets reported that they had spoken to Mr Freeman, who confirmed he has asked Mr Jones to set up the page.

He reportedly raised $972 (728) before the page was taken down by the website.

Manson and his followers were convicted of nine counts of murder at four different locations in California between July and August 1969.

He had hoped to ignite an apocalyptic race war and was sentenced to life in prison.

He died at California State Prison in Corcoran of natural causes, aged 83, over the weekend.

Prison officers in California are reportedly trying to figure out how to dispose of his body, either through burial or cremation, to avoid his grave becoming a sight of pilgrimage.

Undeterred Mr Jones posted on a Facebook group called Murderabilia, which facilitates the sale and exchange of serial killer memorabilia, where he vowed to continue fundraising and announced he was switching to PayPal.

He had previously posted signed postcards and business cards allegedly signed by Manson on the page.

He said: It breaks my heart to see Jason now suffering from the same prejudices, hate, discrimination and deliberate lies that his grandfather endured for 48 years.

Mr Freeman added that he was the son of the killers only known child, Charles Manson Jr. He was the product of Mansons first marriage to Rosalie Willis in the 1950s.

But it may not be so simple for him to claim ownership of his fathers body as Manson reportedly wrote a will in March in which he names Matthew Roberts  a musician who has claimed he is the killers illegitimate son  his sole beneficiary, according to The Sun.

Story continues

Mr Roberts said he was adopted but he tracked down his birth mother in 2001 who told him she had been raped by Manson in 1968  nine months before his birth.

It is not know whether the will is legally valid, Manson reportedly believed he was immortal, but if it is Mr Roberts will have possession of his body and will arrange the funeral.

The Independent has contacted GoFundMe for comment.
A terminally ill patients final wish to see the ocean one last time has been granted by Australian paramedics who took her to the beach on a stretcher.

The Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) shared the tear-jerking story on their Facebook page Wednesday in a post that has since gone viral.

The post says the patient was being transferred to the palliative care unit of the local hospital by team members in Hervey Bay.

While en route, the patient revealed she wanted to see the beach  and the medics made it happen.

Above and beyond, the crew took a small diversion to the awesome beach at Hervey Bay to give the patient this opportunity  tears were shed and the patient felt very happy, QAS said in a Facebook post.

The post was shared more than 20,000 times, and paramedics Danielle Kellum and Graeme Cooper were praised for their actions. Cooper is seen in a picture accompanying the story, looking out into the water alongside the patient in her stretcher.

"It's just very humbling to have these experiences," Cooper told ABC News

Cooper added that he filled a vomit bag with the ocean water so the patient could put her arm in it. He admitted that she tasted the salt water, too.

Kellum said that despite the circumstances, the patient was calm at the sight.

"I said to the patient, 'What are you thinking?' She was looking out towards Fraser Island and she said, 'I'm at peace, everything's right,'" Kellum told ABC News.

Since being uploaded, the post has received thousands of positive comments, calling the act of kindness beautiful and heartfelt. Some folks even shared their own personal experiences in the comments.

In a follow-up post by QAS, Commissioner Russell Bowes showed his appreciation and said he was proud of the team.

Being highly skilled to save lives with medical intervention and drugs is important but equally to the Service is empathy & compassion, Bowes said in the post. We are so lucky that our staff around the State value and practice the importance of both.

Story continues

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The Argentine navy and the government face growing pressure over the missing submarine and how the search operation was conducted - AP

Argentinas Navy faces multiple investigations over the disappearance of the submarine ARA San Juan and the possible dismissal of its entire top brass, amid a swelling controversy over the accident and search efforts.

A day after the Navy confirmed an apparent explosion close to the submarines last known position, the internal war that has been raging between the force and the government in Buenos Aires spilled out across Argentine media.

Oscar Aguad, the defence minister, incensed by a succession of alleged failings by the force - which left him to learn of the ARA San Juan's disappearance from the media and then delayed revealing it had suffered a battery fault - is reported to have opened more than 40 probes to determine responsibility.

Any dismissals would be unlikely to happen until the sub is found. The newspaper Clarin cited high level officials as saying that President Mauricio Macri wanted all efforts to remain focused on the search, though changes were surely ahead.

On Friday, amid the growing furore, Mr Macri publicly cautioned against "taking risks in assigning blame". "This is going to take a serious, deep investigation that yields certainties about why what we are seeing happened," he told a news conference.

Timeline | Submarine accidents

Despite a fleet of US underwater vehicles scouring the area of the explosion, Captain Enrique Balbi, the Navy spokesperson, yesterday said they still had no trace of the ARA San Juan.

There was some confusion over the scale of the explosion, as the head of the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation - one of the sources of Thursday's report - suggested it could have been "very small and may not have destroyed the San Juan. But Captain Balbi said the report Argentina had received did not say a small explosion.

Amid angry complaints from families that Navy officials had lied to them and withheld information, Captain Balbi acknowledged that mistakes may have been made. We are not infallible, he said. If there were errors, the Navy will not hesitate to say sorry.

Story continues

But he defended the force against claims of delays in the operation, insisting protocol had been followed in waiting two days to begin a physical search. He also insisted the submarine had been in good condition.

Relatives have raised doubts about the seaworthiness of the ARA San Juan, built in 1985. On Thursday, Itati Leguizmon, wife of radarist German Oscar Suarez, said that the submarine had suffered a serious fault in 2014 - the year that its mid-life renovation was completed. Ms Leguizmon, a lawyer, claimed an incident had occurred in which the submarine found itself unable to surface: the situation was so grave that the crew said goodbye to each other.

Family members finally abandoned a vigil by the Mar del Plata naval base on Friday Credit: Esteban Felix/ AP

Questions are now being asked about that 2014 renovation, in particular, the decision to replace all internal elements of the batteries but retain the old casings. But, naval sources told La Nacion, the process was supervised by the submarines German builder, Thyssen Nordseewerke, and checked by Argentinas National Institute of Industrial Technology, and was deemed satisfactory.

Previous claims by the then-president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, that the repaired vessel could go to sea for another 30 years is also coming under scrutiny.

As the government itself faces increasing pressure, party politics is likely to enter the blame game. The head of the congressional defence committee - a former defence minister under both Kirchner presidencies - will reportedly request an appearance by Mr Aguad.

Submarine rescue mission

Federico Pinedo, the Senates provisional president, admitted publicly that Mr Macri was angry at the situation, but cautioned against premature conclusions over the tragedy. It could have been an accident or it could have been have been because of lack of maintenance," he told the channel Todo Noticias. "There has to be a serious investigation.

But he could not resist a shot at the Kirchner governments, which he categorized as anti-military. The neglect of defence hardware was a terrifying thing, Mr Pinedo said.

Families of the 44 crew members of the submarine on Friday gave up hope and went home after a days-long wait at the Mar del Plata naval base, saddened and angered.

Jesica Gopar, wife of Mendoza Fernando Santilli, who was aboard the sub, told local reporters: "My husband missed my son's first birthday."
Disgraced former paralympian Oscar Pistorius will spend more than two times his original sentence stemming from the 2013 murder of his girlfriend.

Pistorius, a double amputee, was originally sentenced to six years, which the court determined was too lenient in the Valentine's Day shooting death of 29-year-old model Reeva Steenkamp.

Supreme Court Justice Willie Seriti said Friday that the decision in South Africas Supreme Court of Appeal to uphold an appeal against his original six-year sentence was unanimous, according to The Associated Press.

When imposing the original sentence in 2015, Judge Thokozile Masipa said he believed a longer prison term would have been inappropriate because it would lack elements of mercy.

But Seriti said the athlete should have been given the minimum 15-year sentence for murder.

Since Pistorius, 31, has already served a year and seven months behind bars, his sentence was raised to 13 years and five months with the possibility of parole in 2023.

Pistorius was convicted of shooting his girlfriend multiple times with a 9mm pistol through a closed bathroom door. He had claimed during the trial that he believed she was an intruder in his home when he fired the fatal shots.

Steenkamps parents June and Barry were emotional at the decision, but said they believe justice for their daughter has been served, The AP reported.

Pistorius has been held at Atteridgeville, a prison for sentences of six years or less.

The question now is whether the decorated champion will be transferred to another facility, like the notorious Kgosi Mampuru II Prison in central Pretoria, which was the scene of capital punishment during the era of apartheid in South Africa.

Pistorius' lawyers may appeal the ruling at the highest court in South Africa, the Constitutional Court.

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson isnt sending a top delegation to accompany Ivanka Trump to a business summit in India because he doesnt want to promote her on the world stage, CNN reported.

In her highest-profile international event yet, the first daughter is attending the three-day Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad, sponsored by the State Department and India, next week. A theme of the summit is female economic empowerment.

A senior State Department source told CNN that no one higher than the deputy assistant secretary is allowed to participate in the India trip. Tillersons staff wont send someone senior because they dont want to bolster Ivanka, the source said.

.@IvankaTrump will lead the U.S. delegation to India this fall, supporting womens entrepreneurship globally.#GES2017 @narendramodi  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 10, 2017

Tillerson has a history of tension with the White House, and this could be the newest chapter. President Donald Trump has appeared to contradict his secretary of state a number of times. The president threatened to destroy North Korea in a speech before the United Nations, for example, while Tillerson was counseling diplomacy. Trump said Tillerson was wasting his time on North Korea.

Tillerson also reportedly called Trump a moron after a summer meeting at the Pentagon with members of Trumps national security team and Cabinet officials, according to NBC. Tillerson never specifically denied he used the word. Instead, he said at a press conference: Im not going to deal with petty stuff like that.

Ivanka Trumps participation in the summit is already controversial. Hyderabad has forcibly removed thousands of beggars from the streets, and even jailed many of them, ahead of her visit. In the U.S., critics also question her credentials as a promoter of women in business.

Story continues

While the president touts made in America products, his daughters own fashions are manufactured exclusively in overseas factories paying low wages, The Washington Post has reported. A Post investigation also found that her company lags behind many in the apparel industry in monitoring the treatment of the largely female workforce.

President Barack Obama attended the two previous Global Entrepreneurship Summits in Silicon Valley (2016) and Nairobi, Kenya (2015) with a top delegation.

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Details have emerged of the highly-classified Israeli intelligence revealed by Donald Trump to Russian officials earlier this year.

The US Presidents decision to spill the information during a meeting with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was described as having brought Israeli spies worst fears to life.

Israel and the US have a close intelligence-sharing relationship but spies from the Middle Eastern nation had previously been warned not to share sensitive details with the Trump White House, according to reports in Israeli media.

During his meeting with Mr Lavrov and the Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, Mr Trump is now said to have revealed the details of a the covert Israeli operation that exposed Isis plans to create new laptop bombs and smuggle them aboard commercial airliners.

US reporters were barred from the meeting and the only images that documented it were taken by Russias TASS news agency.

Two experts on Israeli intelligence told Vanity Fair the anti-Isis mission took place last winter, the magazine claimed.

Two helicopters flew a team of commandos and Mossad operatives deep into Syria to gain information on a reported new Isis weapon.

They landed some miles from their target and proceeded in vehicles with Syrian Army markings before bugging the Isis cell and getting back out, Vanity Fair reported.

Unit 8200, Israels signals intelligence corps, monitored the broadcasts from the bugs for several days before striking gold  an Isis soldier explaining how to create a bomb from a laptop that would fool airport security.

Israel quickly shared the details with the US, Vanity Fair said. A widespread ban on carrying laptops on plans was announced to travellers in March this year.

Mr Trump also told his Russian guests the specific city in northern Syria that had been targeted, though not the nation that carried out the mission, the magazine reported.

Israel was later named as the source of the intelligence in US media reports.

Story continues

At the time, US National Security Adviser H R McMaster said the President wasnt even aware where this information came from and wasnt briefed on the sources and methods.

At no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed, he said. The President did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known... I was in the room. It didnt happen.

Mr Trump later said he had the absolute right to share the intelligence.

One Israeli official, however, told Buzzfeed News: We have an arrangement with America which is unique to the world of intelligence sharing. We do not have this relationship with any other country.

To know that this intelligence is shared with others, without our prior knowledge? That is, for us, our worst fears confirmed.
Moscow (AFP) - The Russian military says it has begun scaling back its deployment to Syria more than two years after Moscow's intervention in the conflict on the side of the Damascus regime.

Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia's general staff, said there would be a "extensive" reduction of troops by the end of this year. He spoke after President Vladimir Putin said that a military campaign in Syria was coming to an end.

Here is what you need to know about the Russian army's presence in Syria.

- How many troops? -

The precise number of Russian troops fighting in Syria is not known.

Many in the country still harbour painful memories of the Soviet Union's disastrous venture into Afghanistan in 1979, with the decade-long conflict claiming the lives of more than 14,000 Soviet troops.

Putin ruled out dispatching ground troops in Syria, making the air force the mainstay of Moscow's Syria campaign. Officials have also acknowledged the presence of Russian advisors and military police in Syria.

The reality however is more complicated.

Independent Russian military expert Pavel Felgenhauer said up to 10,000 Russian troops and private contractors could have been deployed to Syria.

He suggested that Russia had between 4,000 and 5,000 Russian military servicemen in Syria including personnel at Russia's airbase in Khmeimim, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad in northwest Syria, and the Tartus naval facility.

On top of that, Felgenhauer said, some 2,000 to 3,000 military "advisors" helped the Syrian army gain an upper hand over rebels and jihadists on the ground.

Aside from these forces, Moscow has sent military police, mainly made up of Chechen battalions deployed to regions retaken from rebels forces like Aleppo.

Felgenhauer estimated there are also "up to a thousand" military police and special forces fighting alongside regime troops.

Officials and observers also point out the presence of Russian mercenaries in Syria, including those working for the private military company dubbed Wagner.

Story continues

Felgenhauer estimated the number of mercenaries at 2,000 to 3,000.

- How many casualties? -

Around 40 Russian servicemen have reportedly been killed in Syria since Moscow's intervention. The Kremlin has acknowledged some of those deaths.

But the losses may be much higher given the number of Russian troops and mercenaries believed to be in the country.

- Fighter planes, bombers -

The role of the Russian air force has been celebrated at home. It is unclear how many aircraft have been deployed but Felgenhauer said "several dozens" of war planes and "several dozens" of helicopters were currently in the country.

Bomber planes such as the Tu-22 and Tu-160 have also flown from Russia to hit targets in Syria.

- Navy, aircraft carriers -

Russian warships and submarines have also played a prominent role backing up the bombing campaign in Syria, firing missiles at Islamic State group targets from the Mediterranean.

Moscow's Khmeimim airbase in Latakia province and naval facility in Tartus have been protected by S-300 and S-400 air missile defense systems.

Russian ships, such as Moscow's only aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov, also completed missions in Syria.

- What next? -

The significant retreat Gerasimov spoke of was not the first time Russia promised to wind down operations in Syria.

Putin first said in March 2016 that the country's military campaign in Syria was coming to an end.

Today few believe Russia is leaving the war-torn country any time soon, with analysts saying its military presence could be used as a bargaining chip during sputtering peace negotiations.

"Russia will not quit Syria, it did not fight for that. It fought so that it could stay," Felgenhauer said.

"These last two years, we heard announcements about retreat several times but, in fact, Russian presence has only increased," he said.

The military base in Khmeimim, hastily set up at a civilian airport in 2015 to welcome Russian planes, has became a permanent Russian base following an agreement between Damascus and Moscow.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 18:24:16|Editor: Lifang

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RABAT, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Morocco's King Mohammed VI condemned Saturday the "cowardly" terrorist attack that targeted worshippers of a mosque in the Egyptian city of Al-Arish.

In a message to the Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the King expressed in his name and on behalf of the Moroccan people "strong condemnation of this cowardly criminal act, which targeted the faithful in flagrant violation of the sacredness of places of worship."

The King reiterated his full solidarity with the Egyptian people in this difficult time, as well as Morocco's commitment to international efforts to combat all forms of terrorism contrary to the Islamic religion and universal human values.

The King also voiced his deep condolences and sincere compassion, wishing the wounded a swift recovery.
By James Macharia JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's Supreme Court more than doubled Oscar Pistorius' murder sentence on Friday, accepting prosecutors' argument that the original jail term of six years for shooting dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was "shockingly lenient". The gold medal-winning athlete, a double amputee known as the "Blade Runner" for his carbon-fibre prosthetics, was not in court to hear the new sentence of 13 years and five months handed down. Steenkamp's family were also absent but welcomed the revised term -- the minimum 15 years prescribed for murder, minus the time Pistorius has already served -- and said it showed justice could prevail in South Africa. "This is an emotional thing for them. They just feel that their trust in the justice system has been confirmed this morning," Tania Koen, a family spokeswoman, told Reuters. Rights groups in a country beset by high levels of violent crime against women say Pistorius, 31, received preferential treatment compared to non-whites and those without his wealth or celebrity status. Barry Steenkamp, the father of the slain model, told SABC television the family could now get on with their lives. "I always, from the beginning, said justice had not been served, now it has," he said. In the same interview, her mother June Steenkamp said: We felt that we didn't have justice for Reeva by that too-lenient sentence but now we have justice for her." Pistorius' elder brother Carl wrote on Twitter: "Shattered. Heartbroken. Gutted." The athlete's lawyers could not be reached for comment. The athlete was jailed in July last year after being found guilty on appeal of murdering model and law graduate Steenkamp on Valentine's Day 2013 by firing four shots through a locked bathroom door. The case attracted worldwide interest. He had originally been found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in jail. That conviction was increased to murder by the Supreme Court in December 2015 and his sentence extended to six years by trial judge Thokozile Masipa in July last year. Masipa said in court that while the Steenkamps had suffered a great loss, "fallen hero" Pistorius' life and career were also in ruins, and that a long prison term "would not serve justice". Pistorius' appearance during the trial without his prostheses had drawn gasps from the courtroom. In a scathing criticism, the appeals court said Masipa's ruling had "erred in deviating from the prescribed minimum sentence" of 15 years' imprisonment for murder. "The sentence of six years' imprisonment is shockingly lenient, to a point where it has the effect of trivializing this serious offence," said Judge Willie Seriti, who read out the unanimous court decision. "I am of the view that there are no substantial and compelling circumstances which can justify the departure from the prescribed minimum sentence." Seriti also censured Pistorius, saying his apology to the deceased's family during the hearing did "not demonstrate any genuine remorse on his part" and that he "does not appreciate the gravity of his actions". 'BIRTHDAY OF LOVE AND TEARS' State prosecutors led by advocate Andrea Johnson had told the appeals hearing this month that there were no mitigating circumstances to justify Pistorius' six-year sentence. Defense lawyer Barry Roux argued that Pistorius did not deliberately kill Steenkamp and the appeal should be thrown out. Roux had said during the July 2016 trial that Pistorius' disability and mental distress following the killing should be considered as reasons to reduce his sentence. Pistorius reached the semi-finals of the 400 meters at the London Olympics in 2012 and took two golds in the Paralympics. Even in prison, he has been in the news. In August, he was allowed out to attend his maternal grandmother's funeral and spent a night in hospital for what local media reports said was a suspected heart attack. In August 2016, the athlete denied trying to kill himself after he was treated in hospital for wrist injuries. On Pistorius' birthday on Wednesday, his father Henke told local YOU magazine that although he was behind bars, it was still a special day for his family, "full of love and tears". CONSTITUTIONAL COURT? Legal analysts said Pistorius could still appeal to the Constitutional Court, South Africa's topmost legal authority but saw his chances of success as slim. "I don't think it's over. He has one more option," said lawyer Ulrich Roux, who is not linked to the Pistorius defense. "All the same there are few grounds of success in this venture, to be honest." Lawyer Zola Majavu said the Constitutional Court was unlikely to agree to hear the case. "In my view, that will be a very tall order. It is pretty much the end of the road for Pistorius." (Reporting by James Macharia; Editing by Catherine Evans)
An 18-year-old woman was allegedly harassed at a hospital by several members of the New York Police Department just hours after she was allegedly raped by two of their colleagues, according to her lawyer.

The victim, who uses the name Anna Chambers online, was at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn this September for a sexual assault forensic exam  commonly referred to as a rape kit  when the NYPD officers approached, her attorney Michael David told HuffPost.

Nine cops came initially from the 60th Precinct and then another four or five from another precinct, David said. They were basically trying to intimidate [Chambers] and her mother ... to get them to say it wasnt cops.

David said he only learned of the alleged intimidation attempt earlier this month during a meeting with Chambers mother. She mentioned that cops had bullied them at the hospital on the night of the assault, he said.

According to David, the group of officers interrogated Chambers and her mother after the hospital had filed a report about the rape allegation with the police. One cop spoke to Chambers mother in Russian, her native language, and allegedly told her that Chambers often filed complaints against police. But David said his client had never filed a complaint  until that day.

The lawyer said a nurse who witnessed the interrogation allegedly told Chambers mother to be strong and stand up for her daughter.

Chambers was repeatedly told that her attackers hadnt been police officers, according to David. You dont know what youre talking about, the Russian-speaking cop allegedly told her.

But Chambers pushed back against the alleged intimidation attempt and followed through with the forensic exam, according to The New York Post.

I know what cops look like, Chambers told the officer, based on her lawyers account in the Post. They had guns, there were handcuffs, and the police radio was on.

According to prosecutors, the alleged sexual assault began around 8 p.m. on Sept. 15 after two Brooklyn South narcotics detectives  Eddie Martins, 37, and Richard Hall, 33  stopped her and two male friends in a local park.

Story continues

Prosecutors described in court what happened next: Chambers said the cops told her to lift up her shirt so they could search her for drugs and then ordered her friends to leave, the prosecutors said. Next she said she was handcuffed, taken into an unmarked van, and told she would be driven to the 60th Precinct. Instead, the cops allegedly parked the van at a nearby Chipotle restaurant and forced her to perform oral sex on them before raping her. Then they released her.

Chambers said she went to the hospital with her mother almost immediately afterward.

DNA from Martins and Hall matched genetic material recovered from Chambers during the medical exam, according to The New York Post. The pair have admitted to having sex with Chambers while on the job, but claim it was consensual.

Sexual violence experts have pointed out that it would be nearly impossible for Chambers to freely consent to having sex with the officers, given the power dynamics involved.

Someone in police custody cannot give consent, in any meaningful sense of the word, to the officer holding them, The Intercepts Natasha Lennard wrote about the case last month. Claiming to have received consent, whether it is based in any truth or not, betrays a policing culture that refuses to recognize its own outsized power over those it alleges to protect and serve.

The defense teams for the accused officers attempted to undermine Chambers credibility by attacking her social media presence in a letter to the Brooklyn district attorneys office, the Post reported last month. The lawyers claimed that Chambers posts since the alleged attack, which include a provocative selfie and videos of her rapping, suggest behavior that is unprecedented for a depressed victim of a vicious rape.

Martins and Hall pleaded not guilty to a 50-count indictment last month. They also resigned from the police force earlier this month.

A representative for the Patrolmens Benevolent Association of the City of New York did not immediately return HuffPosts request for comment.

Any complaints received will be fully investigated, an NYPD representative told HuffPost in an email.

Chambers has filed a $50 million claim against the city. A civil hearing is scheduled for Dec. 8.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
A federal judge has struck down Texas restrictions on a common second-trimester abortion procedure, ruling that the law blocks a womans constitutionally guaranteed right to an abortion.

The Texas law, Senate Bill 8, which was supposed to go into effect in September, would have required doctors to stop the heart of a fetus before it could be removed in an abortion. U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that the law imposed an unnecessary medical procedure on women with no known benefit to them.

The Act does not further the health of the woman before the fetus is viable, Yeakel wrote in the Nov. 22 decision.

That a woman may make the decision to have an abortion before a fetus may survive outside her womb is solely and exclusively the womans decision, Yeakel ruled. The power to make this decision is her right.

Whole Womans Health, Planned Parenthood and several other reproductive rights groups sued over the law, which would have blocked common dilation and evacuation abortions.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has already filed a notice of appeal, reports The Dallas Morning News.

Yeakel wrote that the states legitimate interest in fetal life does not allow it to require an additional medical procedure not driven by medical necessity to complete a standard D&E abortion.

The court is unaware of any other medical context  in contravention of the doctors medical judgement and the best interest of the patient  to conduct a medical procedure that delivers no benefit to the woman, he wrote.

District courts exist to preserve constitutional rights, including a womans right to a second-trimester abortion, Yeakel added. Once the Supreme Court has defined the boundaries of a constitutional right, a district court may not redefine those boundaries, he said in his opinion.

The law was passed to block dismemberment of a fetus in an abortion before its heart stopped. But abortion providers argued that methods to stop a fetal heartbeat  which include cutting the umbilical cord or injecting potassium chloride or digoxin into a fetus  could cause health risks to the woman.

Story continues

At least seven other states have similar laws, which are being challenged in six of those, reports Politico. Last month an Alabama court also threw out the law, saying it imposed significant health risks to women, as Yeakel noted in his order.

Senate Bill 8, which included the ban, also requires in another section that fetal remains from miscarriages and abortions be buried or cremated. A U.S. District Court judge ruled in January that those rules likely are unconstitutionally vague and impose an undue burden on the right to an abortion. Paxton appealed that decision, and the legal challenge is still pending.

Also on HuffPost

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
A teenager was shot outside the Columbia Mall in Columbia, Mo. late on Thanksgiving night. The Missouri mall shooting took place Thursday when a 19-year old man was reportedly hit with a bullet as another man was putting his gun inside its holster, reports Kansas City news station KSHB.

Theres no danger to any shoppers or anything at any point during this situation, Sgt. Clint Sinclair of the Columbia Police Department said, according to KSHB.

No arrests were made. We have everybody we need to talk to, said Sinclair. Nobody was in any sort of danger.

The victim was taken to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. According to the local ABC affiliate, the mall shooting took place in a car in the parking lot, and the two men involved knew each other.

The Columbia Mall shooting may be the first violent outburst of the 2017 holiday shopping season. Later that night, police responded to a disturbance at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Ala. where shoppers were fighting over bargains, reports AL.com. The brawl shut down Alabamas largest mall 40 minutes early, the outlet reports.

On Black Friday, another incident at Houstons Willowbrook Mall resulted in the shooting of one man and the stabbing of another. Both were airlifted to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
If Danica Roem was anxious about barriers to entry when running for office, the results of the 2016 presidential election threw any uncertainties out the door.

All Donald Trumps election showed me was that theres literally nothing in my background that disqualifies me from running, Roem, who this month became Virginias first openly transgender elected official, told the U.K.s Channel 4 in an interview published Thursday. When you brag about sexually assaulting women and then you get elected anyway, theres no barrier to entry anymore.

So I said, theres nothing in my background even close to that, so yeah. Go run, Roem continued. What are they going to hit me on  my gender? OK, they did.

Roem, a Democrat, won Virginias 13th District House of Delegates seat on Nov. 7. She toppled the incumbent, Robert Marshall, who has held the seat since 1992 and has described himself as Virginias chief homophobe.

At least 16 women have accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault. In a 2005 leaked Access Hollywood tape, Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women by the pussy.

You know, Im automatically attracted to beautiful  I just start kissing them. Its like a magnet. Just kiss. I dont even wait, hes heard saying in the audio clip. And when youre a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

"When you brag about sexually assaulting women and then you get elected anyway, there's no barrier for entry anymore."



Danica Roem speaks out against Trump after becoming the first openly transgender woman elected to office. pic.twitter.com/bX2CRRLOti  NBC News (@NBCNews) November 24, 2017

Speaking to Channel 4, Roem described the challenges she faced on the campaign trail, from the exhaustion of campaigning to receiving bad press to people saying mean things about you.

Story continues

Ultimately, she said, it was her constituents and supporters  like a 10-year-old trans girl who said she had contemplated suicide but was inspired by Roems story  who acted as the jet fuel I needed to get through it.

They bring you back to why youre doing it, Roem said.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article described Marshall as a 13-year incumbent. In fact, Marshall is a 13-term incumbent, meaning he has served since 1992.

Also on HuffPost

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Ankara (AFP) - President Donald Trump has informed Ankara that the US will no longer supply weapons to the Syrian Kurdish militia fighting Islamic State, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Friday.

Trump delivered the message during what the Turkish presidency called a "productive" phone call with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday.

"Mr Trump said he gave a clear order and that after this, weapons would not be supplied to the YPG, essentially he said this nonsense should have been ended earlier," Mevlut Cavusoglu said during a press conference in Ankara.

The YPG is the Peoples' Protection Units Kurdish militia in Syria, which the US has seen as the most effective fighting force on the ground against the Islamic State extremist group.

"Naturally, we welcomed these statements," said Cavusoglu, adding: "Of course we want to see this put into practice."

There was no immediate comment from the US side regarding the content of the telephone call between the two leaders.

In recent months, the YPG has recaptured territory from the Islamic State jihadists, including the former de facto IS capital Raqa in northern Syria.

But Turkey views the YPG and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as "terror" groups linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Cavusoglu again repeated that Turkey saw the YPG as a "threat" trying to divide Syria.

The PKK -- blacklisted as a "terror" group by Turkey and its Western allies including the US -- has waged an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.

Relations between the US and Turkey have been strained since the administration of former President Barack Obama over its support for the YPG and the failure to extradite Pennsylvania-based Fethullah Gulen blamed for ordering last year's coup bid.

Gulen strongly denies the charges.

Bilateral ties are at further risk of fraying over a scheduled trial in New York of Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab and Mehmet Hakan Atilla, the deputy chief executive of Turkish lender Halkbank, both accused of defying US sanctions on Iran.

The trial is expected to start early next month but there are fears over possible fines against one or more Turkish banks in the event of a guilty verdict.
Ankara (AFP) - President Donald Trump told Ankara on Friday that the US will no longer supply arms to the Syrian Kurdish militia Washington has used against the Islamic State, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Friday.

Trump delivered the message during what the Turkish presidency called a "productive" phone call with his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the White House hailed as reaffirming a "strategic partnership."

"Mr Trump said he gave a clear order and that after this, weapons would not be supplied to the YPG, essentially he said this nonsense should have been ended earlier," Mevlut Cavusoglu said during a press conference in Ankara.

The White House was less explicit about the US military's intentions towards the YPG.

But it confirmed that Trump had told Erdogan "of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria, now that the battle of Raqa is complete and we are progressing into a stabilization phase to ensure that ISIS cannot return."

The YPG is the Peoples' Protection Units Kurdish militia in Syria, which the US has seen as the most effective fighting force on the ground against the Islamic State extremist group.

- Threat to divide Syria -

"Naturally, we welcomed these statements," said Cavusoglu, adding: "Of course we want to see this put into practice."

In recent months, the YPG has recaptured territory from the Islamic State jihadists, including the former de facto IS capital Raqa in northern Syria.

But Turkey views the YPG and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as "terror" groups linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Cavusoglu again repeated that Turkey saw the YPG as a "threat" trying to divide Syria.

The PKK -- blacklisted as a "terror" group by Turkey and its Western allies including the US -- has waged an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.

Story continues

Relations between the US and Turkey have been strained since the administration of former president Barack Obama over Washington's support for the YPG and the failure to extradite Pennsylvania-based Fethullah Gulen blamed for ordering last year's coup bid.

Gulen strongly denies the charges.

Bilateral ties are at further risk of fraying over a scheduled trial in New York of Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab and Mehmet Hakan Atilla, the deputy chief executive of Turkish lender Halkbank, both accused of defying US sanctions on Iran.

The trial is expected to start early next month but there are fears over possible fines against one or more Turkish banks in the event of a guilty verdict.
By Magali Cervantes OVER THE SOUTH ATLANTIC (Reuters) - From the window of a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon airplane taking part in an international search for a missing Argentine submarine, the glistening vastness of the South Atlantic stretches in every direction. Yet onboard the modified Boeing 737, the nine-man crew spends much of the flight bent in silence over tracking devices. They listen to signals sent by buoys deployed on the ocean surface and watch video from the plane's heat-seeking camera on five sets of double screens at the center of the plane. More than 30 aircraft and ships from Argentina, Britain, Brazil, the United States, Chile and other countries are participating in the effort to find the ARA San Juan submarine, which disappeared on Nov. 15 with 44 crew members on board. In all, more than 4,000 personnel from 13 countries are assisting the search, scouring some 500,000 square km (193,051 square miles) of ocean - an area the size of Spain. "It's great to be able to utilize everything we have - all the training we have, the equipment we have - in order to come down here to Argentina to help find this submarine," said mission commander Lieutenant Zachary Collver, a 32-year-old pilot from Washington state. However, hopes dimmed of finding the submarine's crew alive on Thursday when Argentina's navy raised the possibility the submarine suffered an explosion, after an international agency with listening posts to check for secret atomic blasts detected an unusual signal near where the vessel went missing. Midway through its seven-hour flight, the U.S. plane changed course, picked up speed and descended toward the ocean surface. Collver alerted the crew that a satellite image had picked up "something" near the area where the submarine last reported its position, according to a Reuters witness aboard the flight on Wednesday. The plane turned south toward the Patagonian city of Puerto Madryn, after taking off from an Argentine base in Bahia Blanca, some 650 km (400 miles) south of Buenos Aires. Data analysis would later show the object was just a big rock. The episode was one of several false leads in the international search operation, which has involved more than a dozen boats but has not yet produced any solid clues about the fate of the missing vessel. But the P-8A Poseidon crew insisted they would not diminish their search efforts. "It's rewarding to know we can help out the best that we can," Collver said. It was the first time the Florida-based crew participated in an actual aerial search mission, rather than just a drill. Argentina has thanked the countries that have participated in the search. (Writing by Luc Cohen and Hugh BronsteinEditing by Jonathan Oatis)
By Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Saturday there would be repercussions for U.S.-Pakistan relations unless Islamabad took action to detain and charge a newly freed Islamist accused of masterminding a 2008 assault in Mumbai, India.

A Pakistani court ordered the release on Wednesday of Hafiz Saeed, who was put under house arrest in January after years of living freely in Pakistan, one of the sore points in its fraying relationship with the United States. His freedom had also infuriated its arch-foe India.

The White House on Saturday urged Pakistan to arrest Saeed, calling for him to be prosecuted over the Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, including Americans.

"If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistans global reputation," the White House said in a statement.

This is the first time the United States has acknowledged that the recent decision could have an impact on relations between the two countries, who are allies but view each other with suspicion.

Saeed has repeatedly denied involvement in the Mumbai attacks in which 10 gunmen attacked targets in India's largest city, including two luxury hotels, a Jewish centre and a train station in a rampage that lasted several days.

The violence brought nuclear-armed neighbours Pakistan and India to the brink of war.

The United States had offered a $10 million bounty for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Saeed, who heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). Members say the JuD is a charity but the United States says it is a front for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group.

The White House said Pakistan's failure to charge Saeed sent a "a deeply troubling message about Pakistans commitment to (combating) international terrorism." It added that it also was counter to Pakistan's claim that it did not provide sanctuary to militants.

Story continues

President Donald Trump has accused Pakistan of harbouring agents of chaos and providing safe havens to militant groups waging an insurgency against a U.S.-backed government in Kabul.

Pakistan argues that it has done a great deal to help the United States in tracking down terrorists.

U.S. official expressed hope that relations between the two countries could improve after a kidnapped U.S.-Canadian couple and their three children were freed in Pakistan in October, after the couple was abducted in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Michael Kugelman, of the Woodrow Wilson Center think tank in Washington, said he did not expect an imminent change in relations between the two countries, but Saeed's release would be a critical point for Washington as it considers it options.

"This could move the U.S. closer to adapting a largely symbolic but nonetheless major punitive step - the revocation of Pakistan's non-NATO ally status, which would be a big reputational blow for Pakistan," Kugelman said.

Pakistan won major non-NATO ally status in 2004 from the George Bush administration, in what was at the time seen in part as recognition of its importance in the U.S. battle against al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents.

Non-NATO ally status is a designation given by the U.S. government to close allies who have a strategic working relationship with U.S. Armed Forces but are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Susan Thomas)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 18:29:18|Editor: Lifang

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BEIJING, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The management committee of Zhongguancun Science Park in Beijing has released an industrial incubation plan to promote the development of the AI industry.

"Zhongguancun will strive to make breakthroughs in the core technology of the AI industry, and build innovation platforms for AI technology research and development in the following years," according to the plan released Friday.

The plan will introduce measures to enhance AI cooperation among enterprises, universities and research institutions.

Zhongguancun Science Park has been making efforts to develop its AI industry in recent years.

The high-tech zone has about 250 AI enterprises with 7,800 AI patents. Nearly 43 percent of China's AI startups companies are from Zhongguancun.

By 2020, Zhongguancun is expected to have five internationally competitive AI enterprises, and more than 500 AI enterprises, with the AI industry valued at 500 billion yuan (about 76 billion U.S. dollars).
The Pentagon had previously acknowledged the presence of 500 US troops in the country: ABC News

The Pentagon is likely to announce in the coming days that there are about 2,000 U troops in Syria, two US officials said on Friday, as the military acknowledges that an accounting system for troops has under-reported the size of forces on the ground.

The US military had earlier publicly said it had around 500 troops in Syria, mostly supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces group of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting Islamic State in the north of the country.

Two US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon could, as early as Monday, publicly announce that there are slightly more than 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria. They said there was always a possibility that last minute changes in schedules could delay an announcement.

To summarize:

--For months DOD officials claimed 503 US troops in Syria

--Last Friday DOD report details 1,720 troops in Syria.

--Today, DOD officials acknowledge "slightly more than 2,000" US troops in Syria.  Micah Zenko (@MicahZenko) November 24, 2017

That is not an increase in troop numbers, just a more accurate count, as the numbers often fluctuate.

An accounting system, known as the Force Management Level (FML), was introduced in Iraq and Syria during former President Barack Obama's administration as a way to exert control over the military.

But the numbers do not reflect the extent of the US commitment on the ground since commanders often found ways to work around the limits - sometimes bringing in forces temporarily or hiring more contractors.

The force management levels are officially at 5,262 in Iraq and 503 in Syria, but officials have privately acknowledged in the past that the real number for each country is more than the reported figure.

The Pentagon said last December that it would increase the number of authorized troops in Syria to 500, but it is not clear how long the actual number has been at around 2,000.

Story continues

Obama periodically raised FML limits to allow more troops in Iraq and Syria as the fight against Islamic State advanced.

As that campaign winds down, it is unclear how many, if any, US troops will remain in Syria.

Most of them are special operations forces, working to train and advise local partner forces, including providing artillery support against Isis militants.

One of the officials said that the actual number in Iraq is not expected to be announced because of host nation sensitivities, referring to political sensitivities about US forces in Iraq.

In August, the Pentagon announced that there were 11,000 troops serving in Afghanistan, thousands more than it has previously stated.

US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has in the past expressed frustration with the FML method of counting US troops in conflict zones.

Reuters
The United States will send stealth fighters to a large-scale air force drill with South Korea next month, the US military said Friday, in a new show of force aimed at North Korea.

The massive five-day annual exercise comes as Washington pushes what President Donald Trump has called a "maximum pressure campaign" against Pyongyang over its nuclear programme.

The exercise, named Vigilant Ace, starts on December 4 with 12,000 US personnel and an unspecified number of South Korean airmen flying more than 230 aircraft at eight US and South Korean military bases.

Six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters will be deployed to South Korea for the exercise, a US Air Force spokesman told AFP.

The supersonic Raptor is one of the most advanced warplanes in the world, capable of providing what its maker Lockheed Martin calls "unprecedented air dominance".

"This realistic air combat exercise is designed to enhance interoperability between US and Republic of Korea forces and increase the combat effectiveness of both nations", the US Seventh Air Force said in a statement.

Pyongyang routinely condemns such exercises, labelling them preparation for war.

Local media reported that the American warplanes will conduct precision strike drills with South Korean fighter jets.

North Korea has carried out a flurry of missile tests this year -- including intercontinental ballistic variants apparently capable of hitting the US mainland -- and tested what it claimed was a thermonuclear weapon in September.

The tests have prompted shows of force and sanctions from Washington.

Trump on Monday declared North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism, adding the country back to a US blacklist Pyongyang was removed from nearly a decade ago.

Earlier this month, the US flew two B-1B supersonic bombers over the Korean peninsula as part of a joint exercise with Japan and South Korea.

That was followed by a joint naval drill involving three US aircraft carriers and seven South Korean warships, the first such triple-carrier exercise in the region for a decade.

Story continues

The US also unveiled fresh sanctions that target North Korean shipping, raising the pressure on the Pyongyang in a bid to make it abandon its nuclear programme.

Pyongyang condemned the listing as a "serious provocation" on Wednesday, warning that sanctions would never force it to abandon its nuclear weapons programme.

China, the North's sole ally, has also said the new US sanctions -- which also target Chinese companies doing business with the pariah state -- are "wrong".

Russia said Thursday that the US decision to add North Korea to its terror blacklist was a "PR move" that could allow the situation on the peninsula to escalate into a global "catastrophe".
Britain purchased advanced technology used in the Iron Dome missile defense system from Israel for 78 million pounds (365 million shekels) to defend the Falkland Islands, a British Overseas Territory.

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The technology will be used for command and control of a British air defense system called Land Ceptor and was developed by mPrest, a subsidiary of Iron Dome developers Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

The British acquisition is part of a move by the Israeli company to sell the advanced system to the armies of Israel's allies and NATO.

Iron Dome system in action (Photo: Rafael Advanced Defense Systems)

The acquisition is set to be implemented in Britain's newly developed Sky Saber system, which is set to replace by 2020 the Rapier air defense system currently stationed on the islands to protect them from Argentina, who is in dispute with the UK over their claim to the archipelago.

Two years ago, the British Defense Ministry decided to equip the islands with a  280 million defense package following an exchange of threats with the government in Buenos Aires.

UK's Prince William in the Falkland Islands (Photo: Getty Images)

The Falkland Islands are a group of 776 islands in the Southwest Atlantic. The total area of the islands is 12,000 square kilometers and its population is 3,000.

In 1833 the British Army took control of the group of islands and turned them into a British protectorate. However, Argentina has claimed over the years that the islands belong to it, due to their proximity to its shores.

In 1982 a war broke out between Britain and Argentina over control of the islands. The war ended two months later with Britain's victory. In 2010, the struggle for control over the islands intensified after British companies began drilling in the area.

Royal Air Force F3 Tornado fighter jets, Falklands Islands (Photo: Getty Images)

A referendum in 2013 ruled that islanders wanted to remain under British sovereignty, but Argentina refused to recognize British control of the islands and raises a claim to its sovereignty over the islands at any meeting with British officials.

"We held an open tender at the end of which we decided to purchase the Rafael system," a source in the British Defense Ministry said. "Their technology will provide us with the main computerized system that will connect our modern radar with the launchers of the air defense system to strengthen the protection of the Falkland Islands."
BAMAKO, Mali  Four UN peacekeepers and a Malian soldier were killed and 21 others injured in two attacks on peacekeepers in Mali on Friday, UN officials said.

Suspected jihadists attacked peacekeepers carrying out on an operation with Malian defense forces in Indelimane, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of Menaka near the border with Niger, on Friday morning, the officials said.

Later Friday, unknown assailants carried out an attack against a UN convoy north of Douentza in the Mopti region, the officials said.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned "the outrageous attacks" and warned that targeting UN peacekeepers may constitute war crimes and lead to sanctions, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump informed Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan in a call on Friday that Washington is adjusting military support to partners on the ground in Syria, the White House said on Friday.

Turkey's presidency had previously reported that the United States would not supply weapons to Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria.

The Turkish presidency also said that Washington had agreed to fight "terrorist organizations" with Ankara, including the Islamic State militant group, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the US-based Muslim cleric Fetullah Gulen network.

A description of the call provided by the White House did not specifically mention PKK, the YPG or the Gulen network, but it did say the two leaders also discussed the purchase of military equipment from the United States.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in a new report to the UN Security Council members circulated Friday that unauthorized weapons in the hands of Hezbollah and threatening rhetoric from the Lebanese militant group and Israeli officials "heightens risk of miscalculation and escalation into conflict."

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The UN chief called on Hezbollah and Israel, who fought a war in 2006, "to exercise restraint at all times" and "refrain from potentially inflammatory comments."

Guterres said in the report to the UN Security Council circulated Friday that allegations of arms transfers to Hezbollah continue "on a regular basis," which the UN takes seriously. But it "is not in a position to substantiate them independently", he said.

UN Secretary-General Guterres warned that illegal weapons in the hands of Hezbollah and threatening rhetoric 'heightens risk of miscalculation and escalation into conflict' (Photo: Reuters)

Guterres noted, however, that Hezbollah has displayed the weapons and acknowledged using them.

The UN resolution that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War calls for Hezbollah and all other militias operating in Lebanon to be disarmed and demobilized. It also calls for the 10,700-strong UN peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL to monitor a zone south of the Litani River near Israel's border where Hezbollah is banned from keeping weapons.

Guterres said Israel informed UNIFIL of the alleged presence of Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure in three specific locations in that zone, which the UN force closely monitored, including by aerial reconnaissance, satellite imagery and patrols. But he said "no evidence to confirm the allegations was established."

A UNIFIL convoy in Lebanon (Photo: United Nations)

Guterres cited examples of heightened rhetoric between Hezbollah's leaders and senior Israeli officials and said that despite "relative calm" along the UN-drawn Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon the level of tensions between the two countries remains high. Rhetoric on both sides, he said, has "resulted in increased anxiety, including among the local population."

Guterres said he was equally concerned about continued Israeli overflights of Lebanese territory. From July 1 to Oct. 30, he said UNIFIL recorded 758 air violations totaling 3,188 overflight hours, "an increase of 80 percent compared with the same period in 2016." He said drones were involved in over 93 percent or 707 of the violations.
Death toll in the terrorist attack on a mosque in the town of Bir al-Abd in the Sinai Peninsula climbed to 305, with 27 children being among those dead, said Egypt's chief prosecutor Nabil Sadeq. Sadeq also added 128 people were hospitalized due to wounds suffered in the attack.

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The chief prosecutor then went on to shed some light on the attack and its details, saying 25-30 terrorist carrying Islamic State (IS) banners participated in the assault, despite the fact IS had yet to claim official responsibility. The terrorists then got into positions in front of the door to the mosque and its 12 windows.

Still from video documenting Egyptian air force's strikes in Sinai

Carrying automatic weapons, they began firing at worshipers coming in for Friday's prayer. Sadeq also noted terrorists arrived on five off-road vehicles and torched seven vehicles belonging to worshipers.

Egyptian media outlets reported Friday President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ordered the army to undertake a widespread military operation in Sinai following a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 305 people, the deadliest such attack in the country's history.

El-Sisi reportedly ordered Chief of staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces Sedki Sobhy and Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar to have the army conduct far-reaching military and security operations in the north and center of the Sinai Peninsula. Threat levels were also raised all across Egypt, with the Interior Ministry saying exiting security will be increased in places of worship and vital facilities.

Egyptian President el-Sisi announced a military operation in Sinai (Photo: Reuters)

The military operations' goal was to capture the terrorists who participated in the attack on the Al Rawdah mosque in northern Sinai's Bir al-Abd, situated west of El Arish. Egyptian air force, infantry and civilian police forces will all participate, according to reports, under the direction of the army's chief of staff.

Footage of the aftermath of the attack on the mosque

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The Egyptian army said its attack on terrorist strongholds in northern Sinai was underway and published a video documenting alleged air force attacks. An Egyptian army spokesman said Friday dozens of terrorists were killed in such airstrikes.

Arabic-language Sky News reported 30 terrorists killed by Egyptian forces in the village of a-Risan in central Sinai as part of security raids, whereas the Al Arabiya network reported Egyptian infantrymen massively descended on several targets in Egyptian Rafah.

Footage of Egyptian aerial attack on the terrorists

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The Sky network also reported earlier the air force had destroyed two vehicles carrying 15 terrorists who were also involved in the attack. The attack was reportedly carried out by two drones, with surveillance operations in progress on additional vehicles.

Victims of the attack lying dead in the mosque (Photo: MCT)

Friday prayers turned into a bloodbath Friday afternoon, with terrorists setting off explosive charges and then opening fire on local worshipers. Egypt reported 235 people were killed and 109 wounded, most of them civilians. Egyptian television also reported children were among those killed.

President el-Sisi, a former armed forces commander who presents himself as a bulwark against Islamist militants in the region, convened an emergency security meeting soon after the attack, and order military and police forces to increase security detail on Sinai places of worship.

Hospitalized victims tried to recuperate from deadly attack (: )

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In a televised statement following the meeting, el-Sisi stressed that the attack "will not go unpunished."

"This treacherous, despicable act reflects its perpetrators' inhumanity. The hand of justice will reach all those who participated, assisted, financed or incited this attack. The pain felt by the Egyptian people in these dark times will not be for naught," the president's statement further said.

El-Sisi meeting security officials

In an additional speech, el-Sisi remarked, "We will have a response against these extremists very soon. This attack will only strengthen our determination and force in the fight against terror."

Horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshipers in Egypt. The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017

President Donald Trump denounced the attack Friday. In a tweet, Trump wrote, "Horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshipers in Egypt. The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence." Trump later announced he will be telephoning el-Sisi.

Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent el-Sisi a condolence message following the attack, despite the acrimonious dispute between the two countries and the fact Egypt has joined three other countries in boycotting Qatar.

The attack took place only a day before the Rafah Border Crossing connecting Egypt and the Gaza Strip was slated to be reopened again for three days. Following the attack, Egypt announced the reopening will be postponed.

The Bir al-Abd mosque was attacked Friday

Many of those killed and wounded in the attack were reported to belong to the local a-Sawarka tribe, which refused to align itself with Islamic State forces in the peninsula and therefore suffered the alleged revenge attack.

Eyewitnesses and a police source said the terrorists were apparently trying to hurt the security personnel present during prayer at the mosque, 40 kilometers west of the Sinai capital of El Arish.

Men in four off-road vehicles opened fire on worshipers, according to Egyptian police. The country's Ministry of Health also alleged the terrorists later fired at ambulances that attempted to remove those wounded in the attack to local hospitals.

While the Islamic State had been defeated in Syria and Iraq, its Sinai Peninsula chapter continues waging war on the Egyptian government. In 2014, following a terrorist attack that killed 31 soldiers, el-Sisi declared a state of emergency in the region and dubbed it "fertile ground for terror and terrorists."

Maj.-Gen. (res.) and former GOC Southern Command Yom-Tov Samia commented about the attack. "Rumors of the Islamic State's death are greatly exaggerated. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) Sinai Province strikes again, which signifies the chief target is, in fact, Israel, with Egypt merely standing in its way," he opined.

Former senior IDF official Samia said Israel must remain vigilant against IS presence in Sinai (Photo: Herzel Yosef)

"A scenario in which IS in Sinai links up with Hamas in Gaza is very real. The massive IS presence in Sinai and their attack are the product of the Muslim Brotherhoods' reign in Egypt. While it may have only lasted a single year, it was enough to make it plain to the world why Israel cannot afford the existence of such regimes near its borders. A determined retaliatory action is necessary, fully coordinated with Egypt, to make it clear Israel is standing on guard," Samia concluded.

Victims recount the attack: 'Where was the army?'

The hospital in Ismailia admitted many of the 109 victims who survived the deadly attack.

One of the wounded, a man called Majdi, recounted the horror from his hospital bed. "Between ten and twenty armed men entered the mosque and obliterated everything in sight. Some of the terrorists were wounded, but there were many more victims. When the shooting started everybody started fleeing in a blind panic and kept running into each other, but I caught a glimpse of men with masked faces wearing army fatigues," he said.

Another victim named Mohammed Ali said 18 members of his extended family were killed in the attack. The mosque belonged to a local clan, the Jreer, so many of its members worshipped there. "Where was the army? It's only a few kilometers away. This is the question we cannot find an answer to," he said.

The attack's victims in hospital (Photo: AP)

Abdullah Abdel-Nasser, 14, who was attending prayers with his father, said the shooting began just as the cleric was about to start his sermon, sending panicked worshippers rushing to hide behind concrete columns or whatever shelter they could find. At one point, a militant shouted for children to leave, so Abdel-Nasser said he rushed out, though he was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel and a bullet.

"I saw many people on the floor, many dead. I don't think anyone survived," he said at a hospital in Ismailia.
The demand from the Ministry of Defense and Minister Avigdor Lieberman for additional budgeting is only the tip of the iceberg, the top of which pokes out on occasion in the media and in the political arena. The iceberg itself is changefor the worsein the threat the Israeli home front faces in case war breaks out on the northern border.

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While the defense establishment estimates the Iranians and their proxies, Hezbollah and Syria , can cause a far greater loss of life and material damages to the Israeli civilian and military home front than they could mere years ago, with the worst still yet to come.

In two or three years' time, threats to the home front will become graver. The main reason for this eventuality is not the increase in the number of rockets, missiles and mortars Iran and its satellites may rain on Israel, but rather the deadly effectiveness of such an attack, far more precise than ever before, and hitting Israel on two fronts: the Lebanese and Syrian ones. As a result, casualtiesboth civilian and militarymay increase by hundreds of percents.

Chief of Staff Eisenkot (L) and Minister of Defense Lieberman offer differing views on the defense budget (Photo: Ariel Hermoni/Ministry of Defense)

This would appear to be the main catalyst for Lieberman's request to supplement his ministry's budget with billions of shekels more.

Lieberman's request to break out of the confines of the defense budget is the minister's first major independent initiative since he was appointed in May 2016.

While IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot and top army brass are not opposed to the move, they have thus far offered only halfhearted support for it publically. Senior army officials concur with Lieberman and the ministry's officials on the gravity of the new potential threat the Iranian axis poses to the home front. Indeed, the estimate was originally put together by the IDF's Military Intelligence Directorate and Planning Directorate.

However, the top army brass believes the IDF already possesses the means and the methods to tackle the worsening northern threat head-on, and it would therefore be imprudent and unjustified to undercut the budgetary equilibrium struck by the IDF thanks to the Gideon multiyear plan, which was achieved after exhausting negotiations between the finance minister and Lieberman's predecessor Moshe Ya'alon.

Minister of Defense Lieberman and Chief of Staff Eisenkot recently toured the northern front (:  )

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Motivating the requested NIS 3.8 billion (net) increase to the defense budget are three strategic developments that came into force in the past two years, which adversely affect the country's security standing.

The first development is the so-called "precision revolution," which the Iranians and their proxies attempt to inject into their munitions component. Instead of "static fire" based on a large number of missiles, rockets, artillery shells and mortarsa large portion of which will either hit low-value targets or miss their mark completelythe Iranian axis is moving on a smaller arsenal of munitions of different types, all of which are calibrated to hit high-value targets.

Either direct hits or hit landing within several meters of a relatively small number of "quality targets" will inflict casualties and damages of a strategic military or functional civilian nature far, far graver than the thousands of imprecise missiles and rockets (representing "static fire") lobbed by Hezbollah at Israel during the Second Lebanon War, for instance.

Simultaneously with improving the projectiles' precision using GPS and other means, Iranian military industries are also hard at work to increase their warheads and range.

Adding hundreds of kilograms more of conventional explosives to a rocket or missile's warhead increases its destructive potential and number of losses it can cause with a direct hit. Increasing the range then enables to move rocket launch pads further back in Syria and Lebanonand even Iranto areas the Israeli Air Force will be hard pressed to attack.

Iranian militias proliferate in war-torn Syria

Difficulties faced by the IDF

The second strategic development we've witnessed is the Syrian theater, recently (re)appearing in Israel's northern front. Should Iran make good on even some of its intentions to increase its foothold in the war-torn country, the next war will probably display a coordinated, cohesive action by Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese firing forces operating against Israel from the northwest in Syria and north in Lebanon.

These firing forces will not be many, but they will be more precise. This effectively means the IDF will have to split its main offensive effort in twain. Instead of a focused, simultaneous effort hitting all of Lebanon from the air, ground and sea to paralyze or suppress projectiles lobbed by Hezbollah at Israel, the army's command will have to send the air force and maneuvering land divisions to attack not just in Lebanon but also in Syria.

Such an attack will also be waged not merely at Hezbollahnow attacking on two frontsbut also at the Syrian army and whichever forces Iran stations in Syria. All of the aforementioned forces will come togetheraccording to Iran's strategic visionto rain precise fire on central Tel Aviv and the Kirya army headquarters base, the Haifa oil refineries and ammonia tank, as well as many more "quality targets" on the Israeli home front.

The third strategic development to hamper our ability to defend ourselves is the Russian military presence in Syria. Without going into too much detail, it may be said Russian boots on the ground limit the air force's abilities as far as neutralizing projectile launch pads in Syria and Lebanon is concerned.

The air force will now have to consider Russian radars and antiaircraft batteries already stationed in Syria, as well as cutting edge antiaircraft missilessuch as the SA-22Russia has already sold to the Syrian and Iranian armies and will assist them in operating, it may be reasonably assumed.

The Russian military presence in Syria complicates matters for the IDF (Photo: AP)

It's entirely possible access to some far-off targets of long-range missile launch pads in Syria will be blocked off due to Russian measures capable of forewarning the Syrians and Iranians, which means Israeli aircrafts will need to fly longer and more dangerous routes to reach their targets. Israel will find it hard, for example, to attack military air bases or sites where Russian army personnel are presentPutin does not appreciate his men being in harm's way.

The bottom line is that in the not-too-distant future, the IDF will find it difficult to powerfully and efficiently mount the offensive operational plans on land, sea and air with the intention of paralyzing or substantially reducing casualties and damage inflicted by Hezbollah, Iran and Syria on the Israeli home front.

What should be done?

The conclusion is self-evident, then: the Israeli home front is in dire need of added protection and shielding. Active rocket and missiles defenses developed in Israel have proven to be immensely successful. It's unparalleled in the world when it comes to successful interception. This is, therefore, the first item that needs boosting in light of the escalating threat.

If Israel's enemies already possess several hundreds precise missiles and heavy rockets, it would be fair to assume there will eventually be hundreds such projectils aimed at Israel.

Based on the above assumption, the number of intercepting missiles carried by the IDF's missile-defense systems must be increased, especially as it pertains to missiles carried by the David's Sling system and the Arrow 2 and 3 missiles intended to handle heavy rockets and precise ballistic missiles.

An Israeli Arrow missile (Photo: Ministry of Defense)

Why? Because more precise Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah rockets and missiles will almost certainly find their mark, and David's Sling and Arrow batteries will therefore be required to launch more than one interceptor at each missiles fired to ensure a hit. That will cost money, true, but the damage each precise Iranian projectile can inflict on a quality Israeli civilian or military target will be far more costly, without even going into casualties.

Another implement that needs to be purchased and whose price only soars is precise and sophisticated armaments, remotely-operated aircrafts and other intelligence systems for the air force, all of which will allow it to handle the number of targets it will be required to hit in far-flung environs, hampered as it is by the Russian military presence and the building up of the Syrian-Iranian antiaircraft arsenal.

In addition, Israel must consider the possibility that when such fire is aimed at our home front, the air force will not be able to operate at full force for different reasons, whether due to inclement weather conditions or because the Russians and Iranians pull some kind of rabbit out of their hats.

The IDF's ground-based fire deployment must be endowed with the same precise destructive capabilities possessed by the air force. That is, precise medium- and long-range missiles and rockets with relatively heavy payloads.

Lastly, the army must double its capabilities to plan and carry out cyber-based attacks.

The IDF's cyber warfare capabilities must be boosted (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

Defense Minister Lieberman, IDF chief Eisenkot, and other senior army officials all concur on the necessity of the above measures. But since this threat to the home front is still in the futuregrave though it may be, it is still considered potentialthe IDF believes the necessary procurement may be spread out over a year or two with the bulk of expenses absorbed by the current defense budget.

The army further maintains that budgetary stabilityso difficultly wonis an important asset in effective, orderly building (one planned for years in advance) of the IDF's powers. The budgetary system's basic elements of stability, then, should not be thrown out of order.

Lieberman, on the other end, says he favors an improved home front defense in the present over the uncertainty of the IDF's offensive plans and other capabilities developed as part of the Gideon multiyear plan.

The minister of defense is thus seeking additional budgets, and it's certainly easy to see why. As a high ranking political official, he must first and foremost ensure civilians and home front functioning are done minimal harm, even at the expense of the otherwise worthy principle of endowing the army with years' long budgetary stability.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 18:44:22|Editor: liuxin

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ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian government on Saturday called for transparent dialogue with the Egyptian government and public on a 6,450-megawatt hydro dam Ethiopia is constructing.

Egypt, a Nile river downstream country, has feared that the dam will cut into its water supply, potentially crippling its agricultural sector that is already struggling with water shortage.

Speaking to Xinhua, Sileshi Bekele, Ethiopian Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity (MoWIE), said there is little understanding in Egypt on the benefits of the dam Ethiopia is building on Blue Nile river.

"The hydro dam will reduce the amount of siltation and floods that severely affects hydro dams in downstream countries like Egypt and Sudan by regulating the water flow" he said.

MOWIE explains Sudan alone spends an average of 50 million U.S. dollars annually on removing silt from its dams.

Ethiopia insists that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is part of its desire to equitably use Nile water to help power its economic growth.

The minister further said Ethiopia is building the dam with a view to harnessing energy for regional economic integration especially of Northeast Africa.

Tensions over GERD saw senior Ethiopian and Egyptian officials exchange war of words this week, prompting fears it could lead to political crisis between the two African countries.
An Egyptian court sentenced seven defendants to death and 10 additional people to life imprisonment for their involvement in creating an Islamic State terror cell in the Mersa Matruh district near Egypt's border with Libya.

Some of the defendants were charged with participated in the execution of 21 Coptic Christians, murdered by ISIS in Libya in 2015.
Colombian authorities deported an Israeli national claiming he had harmed the security of the state and its citizens, Colombian media reported Saturday. Reports identified the Israeli as Assi Ben-Mosh, who owns the Benjamin Hotel near Santa Marta in northern Colombia.

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"Police in Santa Marta, the capital of the Magdalena department, hereby announces the removal of an Israeli citizen who owns a spa hotel frequented by many foreign tourists. Deportation procedures have been commenced as per law and will be carried out due to the Israeli's conduct, which has harmed Colombia's national security," Colombian police said.

Israeli businessman Ben Mosh (center) was deported from Colombia

One of the country's news sites reported Mosh and his associates were suspected of tax fraud, drug offenses and inciting children to prostitution. "Ben-Mosh came to Colombia after his army service. He is a businessman whoalong with several partnerspurchased controlling shares in several Taganga (a fishing village in Santa Martaed) institutions," the news site reported.

The hotel owned by Ben Mosh

It was further alleged that on 14 January of this year police officers arrived to Mosh's hotel complex after a party held there went out of hand. After the incident, police commenced a covert investigation as part of which the alleged offenses were discovered.

The Colombian news site said that since his arrival in the South American country Mosh returned to Israel, and went back to Colombia just recently.
BEIRUT  Top Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt on Saturday called on Saudi Arabia to enter dialogue with Iran and said that the Kingdom's modernization plans could not work while Riyadh was engaged in a war in Yemen.

Lebanon was thrust back onto the frontline of a regional power tussle this month between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The two regional powers back competing factions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, the last of which has become a central arena of the proxy battle.

"A settlement at minimum with the Islamic Republic (of Iran) gives us in Lebanon more strength and determination to cooperate to enforce the policy of disassociation," Jumblatt wrote in a Tweet on Saturday.

"Disassociation" is widely understood in Lebanon to mean its policy of staying out of regional conflicts, which Hariri has been stressing since his resignation, a reference to Hezbollah whose regional military role is a source of deep concern in Saudi Arabia.
The Shin Bet provided the Police Investigation Unit (Internal Affairs) with a classified document containing relevant, sensitive information pertaining to police shooting resident Yaqoub Abu al-Qiyan to death after he directed his vehicle at themkilling cop Erez Leviduring the Umm al-Hiran riots this past January.

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News of the document was first reported by Channel 2 News Thursday evening.

Senior police sources, however, claimed Internal Affairs (IA) have thus far disregarded the Shin Bet document. IA, for its part, said "claims Internal Affairs withheld the document or fabricated evidence are patently false."

Umm al-Hiran resident al-Qiyan rammed cop Erez Levi with his car, killing him

As IA were certain they had finished their inquiry into the Umm al-Hiran affair, State Attorney Shay Nitzan decided further completions are in order and ordered the case reopened and returned to Internal Affairs, with news of the aforementioned document, forwarded to IA at the behest of Attorney General Avichai Mandeblit and including relevant data collected at the scene of the crime, being reported Thursday.

Footage of the Umm al-Hiran incident

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Internal Affairs had determined, based on its own inquiry into the matter, that al-Qiyan ramming cops with his car was not a terrorist attack but an accident. Said determination elevated tensions between IA and senior police and Ministry of Public Security officials.

With the existence of the Shin Bet document coming to light, police sources scathingly criticized IA and claimed the department chose not to pursue the leads offered therein. Some sources even went so far as allege tampering by the Police Investigation Unit.

Police further claimed that since Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh decided to reinstate Lahav 433 Commander Roni Rittman, bad blood between police and IA has persisted, and has now surfaced. Alsheikh had also been criticized by the High Court of Justice for the decision.

Police Commissioner Alsheikh (R)'s decision to reinstate Rittman amid allegations of sexual harassment is said to have created bad blood between police and IA (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg, Zvika Tishler)

The State Attorney's Office said in response, "At the state attorney's request, specific details in the investigation are being examined. Immediately after learning of the document's existence, Internal Affairs demanded Shin Bet hand it over.

After the investigation concludes fully, an up-to-date opinion will be put together and forwarded to the state attorney. It should be made clear the document's existence was not known until recently. Any other claims regarding withholding it or fabricating evidence by Internal Affairs are false and absurd. The state attorney rejects out of hand baseless accusations against Internal Affairs made in this context."

The violent clashes took place at nighttime between police forces and residents on the backdrop of families being evicted from their homes, and included live fire exchanges.

The police force, which arrived at Umm al-Hiran to provide security for the demolition of illegal buildings in the town, opened fire on residents and wounded Yaqoub Abu al-Qiyan.

Sgt.-Maj. Levi was killed in the clashes

Al-Qiyan then carried on driving and ran over and killed Sgt.-Maj. Erez Levi, who was part of the security detail. Al-Qiyan later succumbed to his wounds and passed away.

An Internal Affairs inquiry into the incident found serious failings with police's conduct during the clashes, which aroused a claim the incident leading to Levi's death was not an intentional car attack.
Lebanese actor and director Ziad Itani has been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel, Lebanon's security services said Friday night.

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Itani, who was arrested on Wednesday, reportedly admitted in his interrogation to the accusations leveled against him.

He is suspected of following a series of senior political figures in Lebanon and trying to get close to their aides in an effort to obtain information about their movements.

Ziad Itani

He also stands accused of providing information to his Israeli handlers about two senior, well-known political figures in LebanonInterior Minister Nouhad Machnouk and former defense minister Abdul Rahim Mrad.

His Israeli handlers allegedly asked him to provide them with information on the reactions on the Lebanese street to the unexpected resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, reported on Saturday that Itani's involvement with Israel began when he was contacted on Facebook in 2014 by an "attractive woman," 30 years old with black hair, white skin and green eyes, who introduced herself as "Colette Vianoi."

The two reportedly exchanged messages, with Itani believing the woman to be Swedish. Their Facebook relationship continued until 2015, when Itani gave the woman his phone number and email address.

At first, according to Al Akhbar, the two talked mostly about the economic situation in Lebanon and in the world, but their topics of conversation soon changed.

In early 2016, the "Swedish woman," who according to Al Akhbar was an Israeli intelligence officer, managed to recruit Itani to work for her. Security officials quoted by the paper claimed he knew at that point she was Israeli, as she revealed her true identity to him.

The two continued talking via messenger apps, WhatsApp and Gmail, with their communications encrypted and split into three parts, each sent through a different app, or otherwise an encrypted message was sent via one app and decrypted with the help of another.

The personal account used by the Israeli officerwho may have been either a man or a womanwould reportedly be closed every three weeks and reopened under a different name.

According to interrogation transcripts quoted by Al Akhbar, Itani knew the new account belonged to his Israeli acquaintance because the two agreed to begin communications every time with the phrase: "HI IT'S ME" in English and in all capital letters.

The Israeli officer, according to the paper, would ask after Itani's well being on a daily basis. Itani told his interrogators the two agreed he would log onto his Facebook and WhatsApp accounts every day at 2pm so his handler knows he hasn't been caught.

Ziad Itani

It was also reported Itani received many phone calls with calling codes of several different countries, including Belgium, Sweden, Israel, Turkey and Qatar. The handler allegedly used a new phone time every time.

Itani reportedly met with his Israeli handler face-to-face for the first time in Turkey in August 2016.

"Colette" reportedly asked the actor to work to make himself an influential public figure and make special connections. Among other things, he was told to look after his appearance so he could blend into certain crowds, where he could cultivate his connections. To that end, he was sent a monthly sum of $500-$1,000.

The paper elaborated on the suspicions Itani tried to get close to influential political figures via their aides and journalists in their close circles, reportedly providing his Israeli handler with information on his conversations with them.

Itani, according to the paper, was asked to choose political figures considered liberal who support peace in the Middle East, in order to establish a small group to promote peace that also includes the establishment of a Palestinian state and later normalization with Israel.

Itani told his Israeli handler he had close ties with the advisor to the minister of interior and municipalities, Nouhad Machnouk, and she reportedly asked him for the minister's home address and encouraged him to get closer to the aide.

Itani also told his handler he knew the former defense minister, Abdul Rahim Mrad, and his son and provided her with information about them. The handler reportedly asked Itani for information about their home addresses and movements as well.

The Israeli handler also reportedly asked Itani about the security situation in southern Lebanon and in the Palestinian refugee camps in the country, and sought to know whether Hariri's resignation was genuine or merely a political ploy.

Their last contact was recently, when the Israeli handler told Itani she intends to visit Lebanon on December 2 of this year and even booked a hotel room to that end. Itani tried to postpone the meeting, but "Colette" insisted and said she will be joined by someone who could help train him.

Security officials denied to the paper the reports on Friday that Itani was gathering information on Machnouk and Mrad in order to assassinate them, saying he only wanted to get close to the minister and former minister in accordance with the instructions he received from the Israeli handler.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned on Saturday the terror attack on a Sinai mosque the day before that claimed the lives of at least 305 people.

"Israel strongly condemns the horrific and criminal terrorist attack on the El-Rawda mosque near El-Arish, and sends condolences on behalf of the people of Israel to President al-Sisi, the Egyptian people and the families of the victims. Israel sends its best wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured," a statement from Netanyahu's office said.

"Terrorism will be defeated even more quickly if all countries work against it together," Netanyahu's statement went on to say.
BEIRUT - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri said on Saturday he would not accept Iran-backed Hezbollah's positions that "affect our Arab brothers or target the security and stability of their countries," a statement from his press office said.

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The statement did not specify which countries he meant.

Hariri announced his resignation from his post on November 4 in a televised statement from Saudi Arabia, a Sunni monarchy and regional powerhouse locked in a confrontation with Shi'ite Iran.

Hezbollah is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad in Syria. Gulf monarchies have accused the Shi'ite group of also supporting the Houthi group in Yemen and of backing militants in Bahrain. Hezbollah denies any activity in Yemen or Bahrain.

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri (Photo: AP)

Hariri's resignation pitched Lebanon to the forefront of a regional power tussle this month between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which backs Hezbollah. The two regional powers back competing factions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

After returning to Lebanon this week, he shelved the decision on Wednesday at the request of President Michel Aoun, easing a crisis that had deepened tensions in the Middle East.

Following his announcement, made on Lebanon's independence day, hundreds of Hariri supporters packed the streets near his house in central Beirut, waving the blue flag of his Future Movement political party.

On Saturday, he said his decision to wait instead of officially resigning is to give a chance to discuss and look into demands that will make Lebanon neutral and allow it to enforce its "disassociation" policy.

"Disassociation" is widely understood in Lebanon to mean its policy of staying out of regional conflicts. The regional role played by the Hezbollah political and military movement has greatly alarmed Saudi Arabia, Hariri's long-time ally.

On Saturday, Hezbollah's International Relations Officer Ammar Moussawi said that the Shi'ite group is ready to reach understandings with "our partners in the country," and that the group is open to real dialogue and cooperation with all, Lebanon's state news agency NNA reported.

Moussawi added that Hariri's resignation, which he said was done under coercion from Riyadh, was a spark that aimed to ignite Lebanon.

Top Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt on Saturday called on Saudi Arabia to enter dialogue with Iran and said that the kingdom's modernisation plans could not work while Riyadh was engaged in a war in Yemen.
Health Minister Yaakov Litzman (United Torah Judaism) is expected to hand in his resignation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday morning amid the crisis over train works done on Shabbat.

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"It's a matter of values and principles," a UTJ official told ynet. "The Likud Party did not heed Litzman's warnings over the past two months over the issue of train works on Shabbatand this is the price."

Train works done Saturday at the Tel Aviv-Savidor Center Station (:  )

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Infrastructural and maintenance work on the train done on Shabbat has long been a thorn in Litzman's side.

In an effort to appease him and his party, Labor Minister Haim Katz (Likud) announced he had greatly reduced train works and authorized only essential work to be done on the train on Shabbat, to ensure rail safety.

Health Minister Yaakov Litzman (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky and Ofer Meir)

"This decision reflects complete consideration for the feelings of the religious public on the one hand, and maintaining the routine of the train users on Sunday on the other," said Katz.

While Litzman said his party would remain in the coalition following his resignation, political officials expressed concerns on Saturday night that the crisis would lead UTJ to quit the coalition as well.

The current crisis surrounding weekend train works began two weeks ago. The Haredi parties felt the Israel Railways was not sensitive to their needs, leading Litzman to call Netanyahu and set an ultimatum: he would resign from the government if Shabbat train works continue.

As a last minute solution, it was decided last Friday to only have non-Jewish workers carry out the Shabbat works, but the Haredim did not consider this to be an acceptable permanent solution.

On Wednesday of this week, Haredi MKs threatened the coalition would be dismantled if non-vital train works are done on Shabbat.

Following negotiations that lasted well into the night Wednesday and continued on Thursday morning between the Haredim, Labor Minister Katz and the Israel Railways, it was decided to greatly reduce works on the train this weekend in an effort to prevent further escalation of the political crisis.

The Haredi parties have escalated their protests of train works on Shabbat over the past year. Three months ago, UTJ's Litzman and Moshe Gafni and Shas leader Aryeh Deri sent a strongly-worded letter to Netanyahu over infrastructural work done at the Tel Aviv HaShalom train station.

"These works constitute a very serious precedent and flagrant violation of the status quo," they wrote. "In light of the urgency, and since we cannot be held accountable for the government desecrating the Sabbath, we request that you immediately postpone the works."

Last July, Minister Haim Katz halted planned infrastructural work for a new signaling system for the trains because they were scheduled to be carried out during The Three Weeks, a period of mourning commemorating the destruction of the Jewish temples.
ISMAILIA - They arrived in five SUVs, took positions across from the mosque's door and windows, and just as the imam was about to deliver his Friday sermon from atop the pulpit, they opened fire and tossed grenades at the estimated 500 worshipers inside. When the violence finally stopped, more than 300 people, including 27 children, had been killed and 128 injured.

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As the gunfire rang out and the blasts shook the mosque, worshipers screamed and cried out in pain. A stampede broke out in the rush toward a door leading to the washrooms. Others tried desperately to force their way out of the windows.

Those who survived spoke of children screaming as they saw parents and older brothers mowed down by gunfire or shredded by the blasts. Some marveled at their narrow escape from a certain death. Some families lost all or most male members in the massacre.

So composed were the militants that they methodically checked their victims for any sign of life after the initial round of blazing gunfire. Those still moving or breathing received a bullet to the head or the chest, the witnesses said. When the ambulances arrived they shot at them, repelling them as they got back into their vehicles and fled.

Friday's assault was Egypt's deadliest attack by Islamic extremists in the country's modern history, a grim milestone in a long-running fight against an insurgency led by a local affiliate of the Islamic State group (ISIS). Al-Rawdah Mosque was in a sleepy village by the same name in Egypt's troubled northern Sinai, near the small town of Bir al-Abd.

A statement by the country's chief prosecutor, Nabil Sadeq, said the attackers, some masked, numbered between 25 and 30. Those with bare faces sported heavy beards and long hair, it added. Clad in military-style camouflage pants and black T-shirts, one of them carried a black banner with the declaration of the Muslim faiththere is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. The banner matched those carried by ISIS, which has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

They also torched seven cars parked outside the mosque that belonged to worshipers, the statement added.

The chief prosecutor's statement was the most detailed account given by authorities and it generally agreed with what witnesses told The Associated Press on Saturday in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, where some of the wounded are hospitalized.

"We knew that the mosque was under attack by (militants)," said witness Ebid Salem Mansour recalling the intense gunfire. Mansour, a 38-year-old worker in a nearby salt factory, said he had settled in Bir al-Abd three years ago to escape the bloodshed and fighting elsewhere in northern Sinai. He suffered two gunshot wounds to his legs on Friday.

"Everyone lay down on the floor and kept their heads down. If you raised your head you get shot," he said. "The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning and then became more deliberate. Whoever they weren't sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead."

The militants were shouting Allahu Akbar, or God is great, as they fired at the worshipers and the children were screaming, Mansour added. "I knew I was injured, but I was in a situation that was much scarier than being wounded. I was only seconds away from a certain death," he said. Amid the shooting many worshipers recited their final prayers, he added.

Friday's attack targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam. Islamic militants, including the local ISIS affiliate, consider Sufis heretics because of their less literal interpretations of the faith.

President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi vowed that the attack "will not go unpunished" and that Egypt would persevere with its war on terrorism. He did not specify what new steps might be taken. On Saturday, he ordered that a mausoleum be built in memory of the victims of Friday's attack and cancelled a visit to the Gulf Sultanate of Oman that was scheduled for next week.

The military and security forces have already been waging a tough and costly campaign against militants in the towns, villages and desert mountains of northern Sinai, and Egypt has been in a state of emergency since April. Across the country, thousands have been arrested in a crackdown on suspected Islamists as well as against other dissenters and critics, raising concerns about human rights violations.

Seeking to spread the violence, militants over the past year have carried out deadly bombings on churches in the capital of Cairo and other cities, killing dozens of Christians. The ISIS affiliate is also believed to be behind the 2015 downing of a Russian passenger jet that killed 224 people over Sinai, an incident that decimated the country's already ailing tourism industry.

Friday's assault was the first major militant attack on a Muslim congregation, and it eclipsed past attacks, even dating back to a previous Islamic militant insurgency in the 1990s. The death of so many civilians in one day recalls the killing of at least 600 in August 2013, when Egyptian security forces broke up two sit-in protests in Cairo by supporters of Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist president ousted by the military the previous month.

Another witness to Friday's attack said worshipers tried to jump out of windows as soon as the militants opened fire. "The small door that leads to the corridor for the wash rooms was about the only one where worshipers rushed to escape," said a 38-year-old government employee who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation.

"There was a stampede. I fell down and then bodies piled up on top of me," he said.

The local ISIS group affiliate has targeted Sufis in the past.

Last year, the militants beheaded a leading local Sufi religious figure, the blind sheikh Suleiman Abu Heraz, and posted photos of the killing online. Islamic State group propaganda often denounces Sufis. In the January edition of an ISIS online magazine, a figure purporting to be a high level official in the Sinai affiliate of the group vowed to target Sufis, accusing them of idolatry and heretical "innovation" in religion and warning that the group will "not permit (their) presence" in Sinai or Egypt.

Millions of Egyptians belong to Sufi orders, which hold sessions of ritual chanting and dancing to draw the faithful closer to God. Sufis also hold shrines containing the tombs of holy men in particular reverence.

Islamic militants stepped up their campaign of violence in northern Sinai after the military ousted the elected but divisive Morsi. Authorities followed up with a fierce crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood group, jailing thousands.

The result has been a long, grinding conflict centered on el-Arish and nearby villages and towns in north Sinai. The militants have been unable to control territory, but the military and security forces have also been unable to bring security, as the extremists continuously carry out surprise attacks, mostly targeting outposts and convoys.

The attacks have largely focused on military and police and, more recently, Christians. Hundreds have been killed, although exact numbers are unclear. The militants have also assassinated individuals the group considers to be spies for the government or religious heretics. Egypt has also faced attacks by militants in its Western Desert.
Five Jewish Israeli citizens who entered the Palestinian Authority have been returned to Israel with the help of the Civil Administration.

One of them was arrested by the Palestinian security forces in Bethlehem after he allegedly shoved a local security guard at a tourist spot. He taken for questioning by the Israel Police.

An Israeli woman was returned from Nablus, claiming she went to the city to shop, while a couple of Israelis with their four-year-old son were returned after entering Nablus for a wedding of a Palestinian worker they are acquainted with.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 18:44:23|Editor: pengying

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Workers unload aid from a plane at Sanaa International Airport in Sanaa, Yemen, on Nov. 25, 2017. A total of four planes carrying aid workers and materials landed at Yemen's Sanaa Internatinal airport on Saturday, one day after the Saudi-led coalition granted permission to the UN bodies to resume flights. (Xinhua/Mohammed Mohammed)

SANAA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A total of four United Nations planes carrying aid workers landed in Yemen's Sanaa airport on Saturday, one day after the Saudi-led coalition granted permission to the UN bodies to resume flights.

It was the first time that UN flights was granted access to the rebel-held capital, following more than two weeks of air, land and sea blockade imposed by the coalition after Saudi intercepted a ballistic missile fired towards its capital Riyadh from Yemen on Nov. 6.

Around a dozen of UN aid workers got off the planes and went to the reception hall of the destroyed airport terminal, before boarding vehicles heading to the UN offices in Sanaa.

The piecemeal reopening of one airport in the most humanitarian crisis-hit country is unlikely to ease the aggravating economic and health catastrophes.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemeni dominant Shiite Houthi rebels said on Wednesday it would allow access of humanitarian supply planes to Sanaa and ships carrying aid to the Red Sea port of Hodeidah.

However, the coalition's blockade has remained on Yemen's seaport of Hodeidah, which has cut off food, medicine and fuel imports to the Yemeni northern population where more than 7 million people are on the brink of famine.

Jens Laerke, spokesman of the UN humanitarian aid coordination agency OCHA, said on Friday that what really matters is that "we can get the ports in Hodeidah and Saleef open both for humanitarian aid and for commercial imports."

The coalition has been facing escalating criticisms from senior UN officials and humanitarian agencies who expressed mounting concerns over already worsening humanitarian catastrophes in the war-torn Arab country which largely depends on humanitarian aid supplies and food imports.

The coalition, which intervened in the Yemeni conflict on March 2015 to back the Sunni government of the Yemeni exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has said it is planning to give clearance to aid ships only, but has yet to say whether it will allow commercial imports to access the rebel-held sea ports.

OCHA said in its latest report on Thursday that Yemeni fuel importing companies "will not be able to supply local markets at the end of this week."

On Nov. 16, OCHA said the blocking of fuel imports would lead to the running out of petrol in local markets in 10 days. It added that few gas stations are currently open with very long queues of cars.

OCHA also warned of increased prices of trucked water by 133 percent in Sanaa.

"This will further increase the vulnerability of millions of Yemenis with limited access to clean water and threatens to reverse gains made in combating cholera," the UN aid agency OCHA added.
Police arrested a prominent activist in the southern Tel Aviv residents' struggle against African asylum seekers during a protest outside Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut's home on Saturday night.

The police said the 65-year-old activist was arrested for disturbing the peace.
Ghana is one of the very few African countries that score high marks when it comes to patronage of tertiary education.

Click here for all the latest news in Ghana

For a nation that so much relies on the formal sector, it is easy to see why so many people hinge all their hopes of success on getting a first degree.

However, despite the prestige and glamour that comes with attending and completing a university, cost is one thing that normally proves to be a hindrance.

Ashesi University

READ ALSO: Lady accuses Prophet One of sleeping with her and forcing her into countless abortions

Ghana is blessed with so many universities, but there are some that one can virtually say are made for the bourgeois and A-listers only.

Here are five of the most expensive private universities in Ghana currently:

1. The Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA)

The Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) is one of the oldest universities in the country. The institute, charges students very high fees per semester.

Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA)

Students of GIMPA pay up to Ghc 6,000 per semester, making the university one of the most expensive in the country.

2. Ashesi University

The Ashesi University is just over a decade old. But the institute has had an impressive growth in the last few years and has gradually become one of the best universities in the country.

It is also one of the most beautiful universities in Ghana, but if you are thinking of enrolling yourself there, then be prepared to dig out some cash. Students of Ashesi university pay semester tuition fees of $3,852 (GHc 16,936).

The beauty of Ashesi's campus

3. Lancaster University Ghana

Lancaster University is actually the most expensive university in Ghana. The school is an affiliate to its parent body, Lancaster University  UK.

As a widely recognized international university, fees charged are also exorbitant with students paying tuition fees of up to $9,000 (39,482 cedis) per semester.

4. Central University College

The Central University College was instituted by the International Central Gospel Church, led by head pastor Dr. Mensah Otabil. The university now has six faculties, despite initially starting as a pastoral college.

The university, though, does not have relaxed fees. Students of the Central University are charged roughly GHc 3,500 per semester.

5. Webster University

The Webster University is actually a school based in the United States of America, but has a campus here in Ghana.

However, students of the university are equally charged very high fees, with the semester tuition fees estimated at around $4,900 (GHc 21,482).

READ ALSO: Bawumia mourns his special aide Kwabena one year after his passing

Send us a message on our official YEN Facebook group or at info@yen.com.gh.

YEN is building a platform where Ghanaians can share local news and own experiences with each other.

Witnessing an incident? Want to tell about a local problem? Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition?

Your stories and photos are always welcome.

Source: YEN.com.gh
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 18:49:28|Editor: Lifang

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CAIRO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian court on Saturday has sentenced seven people to death for joining the Islamic State (IS) in Libya and contributing in beheading 21 Copts, official news agency MENA reported.

The defendants formed a cell in the north coast city of Marsa Matrouh province bordering Libya for training and recruiting new elements, and planning for terrorist operations, the prosecutor said.

Cairo Criminal Court referred the files of seven members of the militant group to the country's highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti, for his non-binding Islamic legal opinion on their execution.

The accused militants have taken part in terrorist attacks in Cairo, Alexandria, Maras Matrouh and also outside Egypt from 2012 till April 2016, the court judge said.

Some of the terrorists have contributed in slaughtering 21 Egyptians Copts who were working in Libya in February 2015, he added.

Egypt has been fighting against a wave of terror activities that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military toppled Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently blacklisted Brotherhood group.

Terror attacks in Egypt used to focus on police and military men in North Sinai before spreading nationwide and targeting the Coptic minority as well, with most of them claimed by a Sinai-based group loyal to the regional Islamic State militant group.

However, the militants adopted new tactics after they killed more than 235 Muslims in an attack Friday on a mosque in a small village in North Sinai.
A sailing boat is seen amid sunset glow on the Nile River near Cairo, Egypt, Jan. 26, 2017.(Xinhua/Meng Tao)

ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian government on Saturday called for transparent dialogue with the Egyptian government and public on a 6,450-megawatt hydro dam Ethiopia is constructing.

Egypt, a Nile river downstream country, has feared that the dam will cut into its water supply, potentially crippling its agricultural sector that is already struggling with water shortage.

Speaking to Xinhua, Sileshi Bekele, Ethiopian Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity (MoWIE), said there is little understanding in Egypt on the benefits of the dam Ethiopia is building on Blue Nile river.

"The hydro dam will reduce the amount of siltation and floods that severely affects hydro dams in downstream countries like Egypt and Sudan by regulating the water flow" he said.

MOWIE explains Sudan alone spends an average of 50 million U.S. dollars annually on removing silt from its dams.

Ethiopia insists that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is part of its desire to equitably use Nile water to help power its economic growth.

The minister further said Ethiopia is building the dam with a view to harnessing energy for regional economic integration especially of Northeast Africa.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 19:09:33|Editor: Lifang

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BEIJING, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- China's steel prices will continue to firm up in 2018 as production and supply are becoming more balanced, according to a senior official at the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA).

"Prices are rising in 2017 due to government effort to close small mills that churn out low-quality steel made from scrap metal. As a result,a batch of money-losing producers begin to make profit," Gu Jianguo, deputy head of of CISA, told an industry forum on Friday.

"Prices have seen a reasonable rebound, while it is quite normal to see tight supply and price fluctuations during certain periods," he said.

Gu said that environmental checks would curb output in 2018 as new capacity was added, with demand and supply becoming balanced.

He said steel producers should speed up deleveraging, phasing out zombie firms, and disposing of assets after capacity cut.

China has been striving to close low-quality small mills, leading to decreased supply.

The crackdown on small low-end furnaces, which account for 4 percent of total steel output, comes as the government aims to cut excess capacity, tackle pollution and improve safety measures.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 19:14:34|Editor: liuxin

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CAIRO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Militant gunmen who launched an attack on a mosque in Egypt's North Sinai were carrying Islamic state flag, official news agency MENA reported on Saturday.

No group yet declared responsibility for the attack that killed 305 persons.
Historians are paying homage to North Dakotans who fought in World War I a century after the United States joined its allies in the conflict.

Exhibits featuring weapons, gear and photographs from the Great War were recently put on display at the Heritage Center in Bismarck. The displays were erected in conjunction with a two-year series, Perspectives on the Legacy of World War I, that will feature quarterly presentations at the museum.

The efforts were sparked by the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission, which held a ceremonial groundbreaking on a national memorial this month in Washington, D.C. Nov. 11, 2018, will mark 100 years after the war ended, but Joseph Stuart, the head of the history program at the University of Mary, said its effects lasted long after that.

If I had to make a prediction, in 100 years historians will remember the First World War as the most important one, he said.

World War I led to the Second World War a few decades later, Stuart said. It also signaled a shift to more mechanical means of warfare, said Erik Holland, curator of education at the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

More than 30,000 North Dakotans fought in the war, including more than 200 American Indians who werent yet recognized as U.S. citizens, Stuart said.

North Dakotans were skeptical of entering the conflict in part because a third of the population had German heritage, Stuart said. Moreover, people here have long distrusted outside interests like big corporations, and at the time the state had a strong socialist influence.

Those effects combined to basically convince North Dakotans that the war was just going to be an opportunity for big business to get richer, he said.

One of North Dakotas senators at the time, Asle Gronna, was one of a handful to vote against the resolution declaring war against Germany in 1917.

But any resistance from North Dakotans evaporated when war was declared, Stuart said.

Stuart, a member of the North Dakota World War I Centennial Commission, is supervising a group of college students who are transcribing letters from North Dakota soldiers to publish in newspapers across the state. The students are combing through about 1,000 letters stored at the State Archives next to the Heritage Center.

In a January 1919 letter to his father, Fritz Olstad of Valley City recapped his time in the war, from weathering gas bombs and big shells at the front to hearing the good news that hostilities would cease on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

The last living U.S. World War I veteran died in 2011, but Holland hopes the historic efforts will keep their stories alive.

Part of what we do  is to help to preserve that heritage, he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 19:19:38|Editor: liuxin

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TEHRAN, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- An Iranian official said that Israel's nuclear program and its atomic arsenal threatens the security of the Middle East region, Press TV reported Saturday.

Reza Najafi, Iranian Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), denounced what he called the West's "double-standard approaches" on Israel's move to develop its nuclear program.

Israel's continuous nuclear program and its stockpile of atomic arsenal also discredits the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), said the envoy addressing a meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna.

He also urged Israel to join the NPT so that its nuclear installations would be subjected to the full monitoring of IAEA safeguards.

"The Zionist regime (of Israel) has unfortunately overlooked legitimate demands of the international community over the past years and continued to advance its military nuclear program in blatant violation of all international regulations and with the blind support of certain countries," he was quoted as saying.

Israeli military nuclear activities are the main cause of concern among regional nations and the international community, Najafi added, urging the international community's complete ban on any type of nuclear cooperation with Israel.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 19:19:39|Editor: liuxin

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by Alex Osei-Boateng

ACCRA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Ghana on Saturday began a nationwide campaign against gender-based violence.

The 16 days of activism against gender-based violence is an international campaign that starts on Nov. 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and ends on the International Human Rights Day on Dec. 10.

The campaign urges governments, development partners and civil societies to address the structural causes of inequality and marginalization that affect women, girls and the marginalized in general.

The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Otiko Afisah Djaba, said in a statement that the campaign would continue to contribute to a world free from gender-based violence especially for women and girls.

This year's global theme for the campaign is "Leave No One Behind, End Violence Against Women and Girls".

Statistics by the national domestic violence unit of the Ghana Police Service indicate that from January to March 2016, 79 men were arrested for defilement while no woman was arrested on the same offence.

Also, 187 females were defiled as against 11 males within the same period.

"Leaving no one behind means prioritizing and putting people at the center of development and placing the progress of the most marginalized groups and communities first," said the statement.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 19:24:40|Editor: Lifang

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BEIJING, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A female teacher was detained Saturday on suspicion of child abuse at a Beijing kindergarten, according to local police.

Beijing police said the teacher surnamed Liu, 22, was detained on suspicion of child abuse at the RYB Education New World kindergarten in Chaoyang District.

On Wednesday, Beijing police received reports that pre-school children at the kindergarten had been abused.

Several teachers at the kindergarten were suspended from duty Thursday, pending a police investigation in the child abuse claims.

Police said they had performed forensic tests and obtained surveillance footage for the investigation.

The kindergarten has around 20 children in a bilingual class with four teachers, including one foreigner.

The case has sparked outrage online across China, and Chaoyang has launched an investigation into kindergartens across the district.

A woman, 31, has also been arrested for disrupting social disorder by spreading false information about molestation allegations, according to the police.

Founded in 1998, RYB Education is based in Beijing and listed in New York. It has more than 1,300 day care centers and nearly 500 kindergartens in 300 cities in China.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 19:29:43|Editor: liuxin

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NAIROBI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday condemned the Friday terrorist attack on a mosque in Egypt that has left 305 people dead.

Kenyatta said his thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of the horrific attack, which hit the Egyptian town of Bir al-Abed in North Sinai.

"We pray that Egypt may be consoled; and that it may be granted the courage to bear this loss, and to bring the perpetrators of this vile act to justice," he said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

Kenyatta's statement came as Egypt launched a major manhunt for the attackers after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed to respond to the attack with "brute force."

Kenyatta said Kenya stands with Egypt in these difficult times and pledged to offer any necessary support to Cairo in the fight against terrorism.

"Bitter experience has taught us that in the fight against terror, and against the extremists who have chosen such atrocious means, all of us who love freedom are allies against a common enemy. Any help we can offer, then, will be gladly given," Kenyatta said.

The terrorists reportedly used automatic weapons as well as opened fire on worshippers and ambulances as they fled the scene.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 19:49:47|Editor: liuxin

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by Maria Spiliopoulou

ATHENS, Nov. 25 (Xinhua)-- An Afghan boy aged 10 lost his life on Saturday during a boat incident off the island of Lesvos in the Aegean Sea, while 65 other persons were rescued, Greek national news agency AMNA reported.

The boy was on board the boat with his parents and two younger sisters among other refugees and migrants illegally crossing from Turkey to Greece, and most likely was trampled when panicked passengers reacted when a FRONTEX vessel approached the boat, according to initial information by Greek Coast Guard sources.

According to the same sources, the refugees thought that the Bulgarian FRONTEX boat was Turkish and they would be returned to Turkey.

The boy was transferred unconscious to the hospital of Mytilene of Lesvos, but succumbed to his injuries.

His mother was saved by Greek Coast Guard officers when she tried to commit suicide by falling into Mytilene's port, AMNA reported.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 19:54:49|Editor: liuxin

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ATHENS, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A 10-year-old Afghan boy was killed Saturday in a boat mishap off the island of Lesvos in the Aegean Sea, while 65 people were rescued, Greek national news agency AMNA reported.

The boy, his parents and two younger sisters were in the boat crammed with other refugees and migrants illegally crossing from Turkey to Greece.

He was most likely trampled to death when the passengers panicked following a vessel of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency approaching the boat, according to initial information by Greek Coast Guard sources.

The passengers thought the approaching vessel was Turkish and they would be returned to Turkey, which triggered a mad scramble.

The unconscious boy was taken to hospital in Mytilene, capital of Lesvos, but succumbed to his injuries.

His mother tried to jump into the sea but was saved by Greek Coast Guard officers, AMNA reported.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 20:29:59|Editor: liuxin

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ANKARA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Saturday condemned a mosque terrorist attack in Egypt's North Sinai that left 305 people dead.

Speaking at an event in Istanbul, Yildirim said "I strongly condemn the heinous attack in Egypt and offer condolence to the Egyptian people."

"Attacking people during Friday prayer is against humanity and Islam," he was quoted by state-run Anadolu Agency as saying.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag also condemned the deadly terrorist attack, expressing support for Egyptian.

"Turkey, like always, stands with the people and the government of Egypt. Turkey is ready for all kinds of cooperation in the fight against terror without any 'ifs' and 'buts'," Bozdag said on Saturday.

Turkish Foreign Ministry on Friday strongly condemned the terror attack in a written statement, and conveyed its condolences to the families and people of Egypt.

At least 305 people were killed and more than 100 others were injured when attackers bombed a mosque in North Sinai and then opened fire on fleeing worshipers on Friday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 20:50:05|Editor: liuxin

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TEHRAN, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- South Korea has shifted its focus from trade to investments in Iran, the South Korean ambassador to Tehran, Kim Seung-ho, was quoted as saying by Financial Tribune daily on Saturday.

"Trade is like gluing two things but investment is rather a chemical reaction. When two materials react chemically, it is almost impossible to detach them. So the Korean government urges Korean companies to invest more in Iran," Kim said.

The Iranian and Korean companies should apply their common projects to Korea's Eximbank. Then the bank reviews if the project is really profitable or not, the ambassador explained.

Iran signed its biggest credit line deal in recent years with South Korea's Eximbank in August 2017. The deal envisages as much as 8 billion euros (9.54 billion U.S. dollars) in loans provided by South Korean companies to finance various projects in Iran.

Referring to hurdles in the way of foreign investment in Iran, the Korean ambassador said the Islamic Republic needs to improve its business environment to help foreign investors gain a foothold in the country.

Bilateral trade reached the highest level of 6.33 billion U.S. dollars over the past 10 years.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 20:50:06|Editor: ZD

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A man injured in a mosque attack inEgypt's North Sinai province receives medical treatment at a hospital in Cairo, Egypt, on Nov. 24, 2017. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

CAIRO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The death toll in a terrorist attack on a mosque on Friday in Egypt's North Sinai has risen to 305 killed, including 27 children, and 128 others were wounded, state news agency MENA reported on Saturday.

"The attackers of the mosque were carrying Islamic State (IS) flag," MENA quoted the statement of the country's general prosecutor as saying.

"Some 25-30 militants have gunned down the worshippers while performing the Friday prayer," it added.

The attack took place after the mosque's preacher started his speech, when the terrorists threw bombs from the windows and doors of the mosque, besieging the worshippers inside, the statement said.

Later, some masked men, carrying black flags reading "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet," broke into the mosque with automatic weapons, it added.

Long queues of the victims' relatives were laid on the ground, some covered with blankets, outside the Suez Canal Hospital in Ismailia.

"My 23-years old nephew, Amir, who was working as a nurse has passed away in the attack," said Samy Mahmoud, who came from Delta Monofiya province to get the license of burying Amir.

The father of Amir, Magdy, a 45-year-old teacher has also been wounded in the attack by three bullets, two in his leg and one in his right arm, Mahmoud told Xinhua while waiting outside the hospital.

"I couldn't get the body of Amir and he was buried in collective graves with the others," he said while weeping.

But Mahmoud was waiting to ensure the status of the father who underwent some surgeries.

Magdy said the terrorists for the first time attacked mosque because they failed to cause rift between the Copt and Muslims and also found difficulties in targeting more security men.

North Sinai province, a mostly desert area bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, has been experiencing waves of anti-security attacks that killed hundreds of police and army men since the army-led ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 in response to mass protests against his rule.

Now they started to target the Muslim worshipers at mosque for the first time, which is an unprecedented development in terrorist tactics in the country, according to security experts.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 20:50:07|Editor: liuxin

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KABUL, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Up to 27 armed insurgents have been killed and 13 others injured fallowing Afghan forces operations in restive provinces over the past 24 hours, the defense ministry said in a statement released here on Saturday.

"Security and defense forces conducted several military operations across the country in past 24 hours, killing 27 militants and injuring 13 others," the statement said. It added that two hideouts of militants were also destroyed during the operations.

Taliban militants who are fighting against government forces in several provinces haven't commented.
Federal prosecutors are seeking prison time for a man they say endangered drinking water sources by illegally operating an oilfield saltwater disposal well near Dickinson and then attempting to cover up his environmental crimes.

But a defense attorney for Jason Halek argues in court records that probation and home confinement is the right punishment, referring to the situation as a permit violation.

Halek, of Southlake, Texas, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Bismarck after he pleaded guilty in April to three felony counts of violating the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The case involves a saltwater disposal well that Halek Operating continued operating in early 2012 even after state regulators ordered wastewater injections to stop because the well was not in compliance with environmental rules.

Prosecutors for the U.S. Department of Justice Environmental Crimes Section say in court documents that Jason Halek directed an associate to move a safety device within the well, known as a packer, to deceive inspectors. He then covered up his illegal conduct with false statements and failed to fully comply with a grand jurys subpoenas, prosecutors say.

In short, Halek willfully violated laws designed to protect the publics drinking water and, thereafter, took active steps to hide his criminal acts, prosecutors wrote.

Before Halek came to North Dakota, he was accused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of fraudulently selling investments in Texas oil and gas projects, raising $22 million from at least 300 investors nationwide.

Prosecutors allege that a judgment from the SEC requiring Halek to pay back his ill-gotten gains provided a motive for him to try to get rich quick in North Dakota at the expense of environmental laws.

Haleks dire financial situation, along with his greed, and disregard for the law, drove his decision to illegally operate a disposal well in North Dakota and deceive government officials, prosecutors wrote.

Federal sentencing guidelines call for Halek to serve 24 to 30 months in prison, and federal prosecutors argue in court records that he should receive a high end of that range. The prosecutors also cite previous environmental violations with Haleks dealings in Texas.

Stephen Foster, trial attorney for the Environmental Crimes Section, declined to comment.

Defense attorney Alexander Reichert says in court records that prosecutors are attempting to perform a character assassination of Halek rather than sticking to the facts of the North Dakota case.

Reichert points out that, though there was potential for harm to the environment, no environmental damage occurred.

It appears the United States is attempting to use Halek as its poster child for the conduct that occurred in this case for general deterrence, Reichert wrote.

Reichert did not return two calls this week seeking comment.

Nathan R. Garber, Kalispell, Mont., who pleaded guilty in 2014 to federal charges related to the operation of the well, also will be sentenced on Monday. Federal prosecutors allege in court documents that Halek directed Garber to commit the violations.

Defense attorneys for Garber recommend in court documents a sentence of home confinement not exceeding four months, with work release privileges, in combination with probation and community service.

Garber also pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of violating the rules of the North Dakota Industrial Commission in state court and received a two-year suspended sentence and a $2,500 fine. Halek was not charged with a crime in state court.

The illegal injections of saltwater into the well posed significant risks to water sources, but state regulators are not aware of any contamination that occurred, said Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources.

Mondays sentencing hearing may pave the way for North Dakota regulators to plug and reclaim the abandoned well, Helms said. The state has requested but not yet received information from the Environmental Protection Agency investigation that might affect how the well is plugged, he said.

The state estimates it will cost $135,000 to plug and reclaim the well, court records say. Helms said he hopes restitution is ordered to cover those costs.

In 2012, the North Dakota Industrial Commission issued a civil complaint against Halek Operating and a $1.5 million fine. The commission has not been able to collect the fine, and Helms said he thinks it's unlikely the agency ever will. The state confiscated about $140,000 in bonds from Halek Operating.

The Halek case changed the way North Dakota regulators do background checks on new operators. Now, state regulators check for criminal history and investment issues for new operators, as well as a company's officers and directors, Helms said.

In 2010, when Halek Operating applied for a permit to drill in North Dakota, regulators only checked the operators compliance record with North Dakota environmental rules, Helms said.

North Dakota also has since increased bond amounts for wells from $20,000 to $50,000 per well, in part due to the Halek case, Helms said. Bond amounts can be set even higher if regulators think the operator may be a risk.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 21:10:11|Editor: liuxin

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WARSAW, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission (EC) has decided to earmark 800 million euros (955 million U.S. dollars)for ten new transport projects in Poland. The funds will come from the Connecting Europe Facility(CEF), a key EU funding instrument, Polish Press Agency reported Saturday.

According to the EC, "the projects will improve transport connections, railways in particular, and support low-emission mobility in Poland. They will also stimulate investment and spur growth and jobs creation, which is a core priority of the Juncker Commission".

At the same time, the EC recalled that Poland is the largest beneficiary of 2014-20 CEF funding, "equal to 4.2 billion euros for 41 projects".

"This is good news for Polish people who will benefit from 'faster and greener' transport connections. I am also delighted that the European Union is playing such important part in Poland's remarkable infrastructure progress, We should build on these achievements to address the future mobility challenges and investment needs", European Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc was quoted in an EC press release as saying, while opening a conference on transport investment here on Friday.

Three projects will be allotted a total of 338 million euros to modernise the railway lines in north-east and south-west Poland. Almost 293 million euro CEF funding will be channelled to a project deploying the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) on the Polish railway for an improved and safer rail service, the EC said.

Nearly 1.2 million euros has been awarded to a feasibility study for the construction of rapid urban rail transport in Krakow, and another 1.8 million euros to the acoustic modernisation of freight wagons to reduce noise nuisance for people living close to the railway lines.

The CEF programme will support the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency with almost 5.8 million euros to modernise the country's air traffic management system and harmonise it with European standards.

945,000 euros will go to studies and the pilot construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) "smart" docking station in Slawkow that will allow long-term LNG storage and distribution to ships and road vehicles.

Nearly 450,000 euros of EU funding will boost a plan to range 12 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations along the Gdynia-Warsaw motorway and prospectively set up a network of further 90 new stations throughout Poland.

The Port of Swinoujscie will be included in a common project with Sweden aimed at improving its infrastructure in order to upgrade maritime transport connection with the Port of Trelleborg in Sweden. (1 euro = 1.19 U.S. dollars)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 21:25:14|Editor: liuxin

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LJUBLJANA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Slovenian NGOs hosted various events on Buy Nothing Day joining other countries around the world on the last Saturday in November in response to Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, the the Slovenian Press Agency reported.

This year, Buy Nothing Day runs under the motto "The More You Consume, the Less You Live". Slovenian NGOs organised an exchange of used clothes, books, as well as food, toiletries and cleaning products at the Library of Things in Ljubljana.

Among other events, Red Cross Ljubljana hosted a workshop where visitors will be able to learn how to renovate furniture, repair clothes and maintenance some household commodities.

A debate on consumerism was held earlier in Ljubljana on Tuesday, with Ziva Lopatic, the head of fair trade movement in Slovenia, saying that consumerism has made it hard for people to see the distinction between sensible purchases and mindless spending, according to the report.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 21:35:16|Editor: liuxin

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CAIRO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The death toll in a terrorist attack on a mosque on Friday in Egypt's North Sinai had risen to 305 killed, including 27 children, and 128 others wounded, state news agency MENA reported on Saturday.

"The attackers of the mosque were carrying Islamic State (IS) flag," the statement of the country's general prosecutor was quoted as saying.

"Some 25-30 militants have gunned down the worshippers while performing the Friday prayer," it added.

The attack took place after the mosque's preacher started his speech, when the terrorists threw bombs from the windows and doors of the mosque, besieging the worshippers inside, the statement said.

Later, some masked men, carrying black flags reading "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet," broke into the mosque with automatic weapons, it added.

Long queues of the victims' relatives were lying on the ground, some covered with blankets, outside the Suez Canal Hospital in Ismailia.

"My 23-year-old nephew, Amir, who was working as a nurse has passed away in the attack," said Samy Mahmoud from Delta Monofiya province, who came to get the license of burying Amir.

The father of Amir, Magdy, a 45-year-old teacher was also wounded in the attack by three bullets, two in his leg and one in his right arm, Mahmoud told Xinhua while waiting outside the hospital.

He could not get the body of Amir and he was buried in collective graves with the others, he said while weeping.

The case would be tackled as "a top emergency case of state security," MENA added.

The attackers were riding five jeeps and they set seven cars of the worshippers ablaze before fleeing.

No group has declared responsibility for the attack yet.

North Sinai province, a mostly desert area bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip, has been experiencing wave of anti-security attacks that killed hundreds of police and soldiers since the army-led ouster of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 in response to mass protests against his rule.

Now they started to target the Muslim worshippers at mosques for the first time, which is an unprecedented development in terrorist tactics in the country according to security experts.

The law enforcement forces continued their operations to hunt down elements involved in the brutal terrorist attack that targeted worshippers, the Armed Forces said in a Saturday statement.

According to intelligence information and in cooperation with Sinai residents, the Air Force has destroyed over the past hours several hotbeds used by terrorists as bases to launch their attacks, it added.

The hotbeds included firearms, ammunition and explosives, read the statement.

Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi vowed on Friday a "fierce action" against the attackers.

Egypt's military said they had carried out air strikes and raids overnight against militants held responsible for the killings, the bloodiest attack in Egypt's modern history.
Members of the Green Ecologist Party protest against whaling in front of the Japanese Embassy in Mexico City, capital of Mexico, Feb. 11, 2009. (Xinhua/Pool Contreras)

GENEVA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A number of wild-life related matters will be highlighted in the upcoming 69th meeting of the standing committee of the CITES next week in Geneva, the CITES secretariat said Friday.

According to the secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora(CITES), other concerns of the meeting include the rosewood crisis in Africa and Asia, saving totoaba and vaquita from extinction, illegal trade in pangolins, poaching of African elephants and the related trade and legislations of wildlife products, it said.

The week-long 69th meeting of the CITES Standing Committee is expected to kick off next Monday in Geneva with a packed agenda of 76 items that address the most pressing wildlife trade issues affecting the survival of a myriad of wild plants and animals.

A record number of 600 participants from all over the world have registered to attend next week's meeting, the CITES secretariat said.

During the meeting, members of the Standing Committee will consider for the first time information concerning Japan's "scientific research programme" in sei whales, one of the world's fastest cetaceans.

CITES secretariat said that the Committee will discuss whether the introduction from the high seas of sei whales is conducted in accordance with CITES provisions regulating non-commercial trade in Appendix I species.

According to the CITES secretariat, thousands of tons of precious rosewood have been seized from illegal loggers in Madagascar, showing that the control and disposal of the vast stockpiles of highly valuable rosewood cut from Madagascar's rainforests has been a huge challenge.

As for the illegal trade in pangolins, the secretariat said that data shows that a total of 1,557 seizures involving an estimated 192,576 pangolins took place between 1999 and 2017.

"Data reflects that illegal trade in pangolins significantly escalated in recent years, with the majority of these seizures, approximately 94 percent, having taken place from 2007 onward."

Concerning the poaching of African elephants, the CITES secretariat pointed out that there has been "a steady decline in poaching levels since its peak in 2011", and the overall poaching trends of African elephant have now dropped for five consecutive years and in eastern Africa to pre-2008 levels.

However, the secretariat added, illegal killing continues at unsustainably high levels that exceed the natural rate of population increase, and a lot of hard work remains to be done, especially in central and west Africa, in this regard.

A great diversity of other species, such as African lions, cheetahs, great apes, helmeted hornbills, tortoises and freshwater turtles, rhinos, sharks and rays, sturgeons and paddlefish, are also on the agenda of the upcoming meeting.

"This is the first meeting of the Standing Committee following the largest World Wildlife Conference ever, the CoP17, held last year in Johannesburg," CITES Secretary-General John E. Scanlon said.

"With many of the ground-breaking decisions and resolutions adopted at CoP17 being fully embraced by the new UN General Assembly resolution on Tackling illicit trafficking in wildlife adopted two months ago, it is now for the Standing Committee to review how the 183 Parties to CITES and its Secretariat are progressing with the implementation of these decisions and resolutions, and to determine what further steps are necessary," he added.

The CITES remains one of the world's most powerful tools for wildlife conservation through the regulation of trade.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 21:40:18|Editor: liuxin

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ADEN, Yemen, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A security official of Yemen's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was assassinated by unknown assailants in the southern port city of Aden on Saturday, according to a local police source.

Unidentified assailants opened fire on Colonel Mohamed Abdu, an official of the Criminal Investigation Department in Aden's neighborhood of Shaykh Othman, and fled the scene unscathed, the police source said on condition of anonymity.

No militant group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack that resulted in killing the Yemeni security official.

Saturday's killing came several days after an IS-claimed suicide car bombing targeted the CID building in Aden and killed more than 47 people.

The southern port city of Aden is considered as Yemen's temporary capital and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government based itself there since 2015.

During the past two years, the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and other terrorist groups including the Islamic State had an active presence in Yemen's southern part.

The impoverished Arab country has been locked into a civil war since the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels overran much of the country militarily and seized all northern provinces, including capital Sanaa, in 2014.

Saudi Arabia leads an Arab military coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after Iran-backed Houthi rebels forced him into exile.

The United Nations has listed Yemen as the world's number one humanitarian crisis, with seven million Yemenis on the brink of famine and cholera causing more than 2,000 deaths.
An ambulance arrives at a hospital where the injured people receive medical treatment in Ismailia, Egypt on Nov. 24, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhao Dingzhe)

NAIROBI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday condemned the Friday terrorist attack on a mosque in Egypt that has left 305 people dead.

Kenyatta said his thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of the horrific attack, which hit the Egyptian town of Bir al-Abed in North Sinai.

"We pray that Egypt may be consoled; and that it may be granted the courage to bear this loss, and to bring the perpetrators of this vile act to justice," he said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

Kenyatta's statement came as Egypt launched a major manhunt for the attackers after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed to respond to the attack with "brute force."

Kenyatta said Kenya stands with Egypt in these difficult times and pledged to offer any necessary support to Cairo in the fight against terrorism.

"Bitter experience has taught us that in the fight against terror, and against the extremists who have chosen such atrocious means, all of us who love freedom are allies against a common enemy. Any help we can offer, then, will be gladly given," Kenyatta said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 22:00:21|Editor: liuxin

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WARSAW, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of people protested across Poland Friday evening after members of the Polish parliament from the ruling party gave initial backing to controversial bills to reform the judiciary.

Demonstrators demanded the withdrawal of draft laws on the reform of the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS) and the Supreme Court (SN), holding banners saying "I love freedom over everything."

Hundreds of demonstrators in the capital city of Warsaw gathered in front of the Presidential Palace, shouting the slogan "free courts, free elections, free Poland."

According to the organizers of the protest, people have gathered in front of the courts in more than 100 Polish cities on Friday, and 19 protests will take place in 123 places afterwards, including in foreign cities such as Chicago, Dublin, Copenhagen, London, Zagreb and others across the world.

Polish President Andrzej Duda prepared his own bills on the KRS and the SN following his vetoes in July of an earlier version of bills drafted by the ruling Law and Justice party.

With more than three months of negotiations, Duda and the ruling party tweaked the presidential bills in order to strike an agreement on the ultimate shape of the reforms.

The Polish Sejm (lower house) held the first reading of the presidential bills on Thursday, and sent the acts for further processing to its Justice and Human Rights Committee on Friday.

The committee is tasked with working on the SN and KRS drafts next week, with the second reading of the bills provisionally scheduled for Dec. 6.

The Polish government has been preparing judicial reforms for several months, igniting controversies among Polish citizens and foreign institutions.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 22:00:22|Editor: Xiang Bo

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Chinese Ambassador to Russia Li Hui receives an interview in Moscow, Russia, on Nov. 22, 2017. China and Russia will enhance cooperation on digital economy, including big data, the Internet of Things and smart cities, Li Hui told Xinhua in a recent interview. (Xinhua/Evgeny Sinitsyn)

MOSCOW, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- China and Russia will enhance cooperation on digital economy, including big data, the Internet of Things and smart cities, Chinese Ambassador to Russia Li Hui told Xinhua in a recent interview.

While making continuous efforts to strengthen bilateral cooperation in the sectors of energy, equipment manufacturing, agriculture and spaceflight, the two countries are eyeing digital economy as a new area of cooperation, Li said.

China and Russia will also continue their efforts to achieve substantial results from the alignment of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and development programs within the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) led by Russia.

The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by China in 2013, aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa on and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes. It comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

The EEU, which groups Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, is an economic bloc aiming to optimize the flow of goods and services among its members.

Li said China and Russia will work to implement the project of an international transportation corridor in the Far East and jointly explore the Arctic shipping route to make it a "silk road on ice."

According to him, strategic mutual trust between the two countries is strengthening, while political, economic and people-to-people exchanges are developing robustly, forming a solid base for the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination.

The partnership plays a special role in China's "major-country diplomacy" with Chinese characteristics and both countries will never waver in their determination to develop such a partnership no matter how the international and regional situations change, Li said.

Both China and Russia are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and important parties of the G20, BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Li said, adding that the two countries share similar positions on many international affairs.

"I believe as long as we keep up with the times and seize the opportunities, China-Russia relations will be very productive," the ambassador said.

Next week, the 16th meeting of the Council of Heads of Government (Prime Ministers) of the SCO will be held in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.

In Li's view, the SCO adheres to its founding values or the "Shanghai Spirit" featuring mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and pursuit of common development.

At the Astana summit in Kazakhstan in June, India and Pakistan completed their accession to the SCO, which also groups China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

After the expansion, the SCO covers about 44 percent of the world's population and over a fifth of the world's gross domestic product (GDP).

The SCO members have shown a strong will to cooperate in various sectors in the SCO framework, and the Belt and Road Initiative will create new economic propellers for the SCO members and contribute to regional prosperity against a backdrop of globalization, said Li.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 22:10:25|Editor: pengying

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People bury the body of a mosque attack's victim in Bir al-Abed of North Sinai, Egypt, on Nov. 25, 2017. The death toll in a terrorist attack on a mosque on Friday in Egypt's North Sinai has risen to 305, including 27 children, and 128 others were wounded, state news agency MENA reported on Saturday. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

CAIRO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The death toll in a terrorist attack on a mosque on Friday in Egypt's North Sinai has risen to 305 killed, including 27 children, and 128 others were wounded, state news agency MENA reported on Saturday.

"The attackers of the mosque were carrying Islamic State (IS) flag," MENA quoted the statement of the country's general prosecutor as saying.

"Some 25-30 militants have gunned down the worshippers while performing the Friday prayer," it added.

The attack took place after the mosque's preacher started his speech, when the terrorists threw bombs from the windows and doors of the mosque, besieging the worshippers inside, the statement said.

Later, some masked men, carrying black flags reading "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet," broke into the mosque with automatic weapons, it added.

Long queues of the victims' relatives were laid on the ground, some covered with blankets, outside the Suez Canal Hospital in Ismailia.

"My 23-years old nephew, Amir, who was working as a nurse has passed away in the attack," said Samy Mohammed, who came from Delta Menoufia province to get the license of burying Amir said.

The father of Amir, Magdy, a 45 year-old teacher has also wounded in the attack by three bullets, two in his leg and one in his right arm, Mohammed told Xinhua while waiting outside the hospital.

"I couldn't get the body of Amir and he was buried in collective graves with the others," he said while weeping.

But Mohammed was waiting to ensure the status of the father who underwent some surgeries.

The father, Magdy said the terrorists for the first time attacked mosque because they failed to cause rift between the Copt and Muslims and also found difficulties in targeting more security men.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi instructed the Armed Forces to set up a memorial for the victims who lost their lives in al Rawda mosque terrorist attack, official sources told MENA on Saturday.

The case would be tackled as "a top emergency case of state security," MENA added.

The attackers were riding five jeeps and they set seven cars of the worshippers ablaze before fleeing.

Some of the worshippers were Sufis, members of Islam's mystical movement, whom groups such as the IS consider as "infidels."

Local militant group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, once allied to al-Qaeda, split from it and declared allegiance to the IS in 2014.

Sufis have been a target of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis who burnt one of their shrines in 2013.

Also the IS affiliate in Sinai has beheaded a 98-year-old man who was considered as the Sufist's spiritual leader in North Sina in November 2016.

No group has declared responsibility for the al Rawda attack yet.

North Sinai province, a mostly desert area bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, has been experiencing waves of anti-security attacks that killed hundreds of police and army men since the army-led ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 in response to mass protests against his rule.

Now they started to target the Muslim worshipers at mosque for the first time, which is an unprecedented development in terrorist tactics in the country, according to security experts.

The law enforcement forces continued their operations to hunt down elements involved in the brutal terrorist attack that targeted worshipers, the Armed Forces said in a Saturday statement.

According to intelligence information and in cooperation with Sinai residents, the Air Force has destroyed over the past hours several hotbeds used by terrorists as bases to launch their attacks, it added.

The hotbeds included firearms, ammunition and explosives, read the statement.

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi vowed on Friday a "fierce action" against attackers.

Egypt's military said they had carried out airstrikes and raids overnight against militants held responsible for the killings, the bloodiest attack in Egypt's modern history.

The Interior Ministry declared a state of high alert nationwide.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 22:23:24|Editor: Lifang

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A staff worker (L) of "ule.com", an e-commerce platform of China Post, introduces the platform to a customer in Jiande, east China's Zhejiang Province, Nov. 25, 2017. By October of 2017, the "ule.com" has established 360 rural service stations in Jiande, selling farmland products of more than one million kilograms for local farmers. (Xinhua/Tan Jin)
The superintendent of Ellendales public school chuckled when asked about the challenges recruiting and retaining teachers there, a community of about 1,300 near the South Dakota border.

Its difficult, yes, Jeff Fastnacht said.

He and other North Dakota education leaders are hopeful a revamped student loan forgiveness program will help alleviate teacher shortages in rural areas. About $2.1 million is available for the effort in the current two-year budget cycle, and state officials expect to begin accepting applications early next year.

Kirsten Baesler, the states superintendent of public instruction, said the new program was created based on the recommendations of a task force that formed to address teacher shortages that were at a crisis level. The state Legislature gave its approval earlier this year.

Democratic state Sen. Erin Oban, a former teacher from Bismarck, said lawmakers didnt put any new money into the program but rearranged its requirements.

Weve for a long time had a program, its just never shown effectiveness because weve never tried to direct them into areas that we really need, she said.

Under the new state law, a person who accepts a position of critical need in a nonrural school district may receive up to $3,000 per year for up to four years. But somebody who accepts a critical need position in a rural school school district may receive up to $6,500 per year for up to four years.

The average student debt here for all programs is almost $28,000, according to data provided by the North Dakota University System.

Its a program thats open to any school in North Dakota, said Nick Archuleta, president of the public employee and teacher union North Dakota United. But  its not as difficult for some of the larger districts to recruit and retain teachers.

Above and beyond

Lower salaries and a lack of amenities in remote communities are two significant barriers to attracting teachers to rural schools, education officials said. But more than two-thirds of North Dakota schools are located in a rural area, dwarfing the national figure of 28.5 percent, according to a report from the Rural School and Community Trust.

Rural teacher salaries in North Dakota are more than $10,000 below the national average, the report said.

Obviously we want the best people going into teaching no matter where they are, Oban said.

In the last decade, Ellendale has had to replace 32 professional educators, representing 9 percent turnover, Fastnacht said, but theyve been uniquely lucky to go without any unfilled positions.

There are more than 200 unfilled teaching positions across the state, said Kay Mayer, director of outreach and engagement at the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction.

I think that inherently puts us behind the eight ball right away because were lacking the number of bodies to fill the positions, Fastnacht said. The big schools are not immune to this problem.

Ray Public School Superintendent Ben Schafer said theyve flown in candidates from out of state, giving them a tour of a town thats home to an estimated 800 people northeast of Williston. The district will be pressured to find more teachers as elementary class sizes grow, he said.

Schafer said its become maybe a little bit easier to recruit educators since the oil boom subsided. He said the school district owns 12 properties to help make rent more affordable for teachers.

You kind of have to go above and beyond, Schafer said. Even while youre doing those things you still end up with one candidate per position. Youre choosing between a candidate and not filling the position.

But Schafer is hopeful the new student loan forgiveness program will encourage teachers to go without some of the conveniences of a larger city.

I think a lot of times in the rural schools, all were asking for is to give us a chance. And this is something that gets young people to give the rural school a chance, he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 22:15:27|Editor: ZD

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DHAKA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Bangladeshi Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali, who Thursday signed a deal with Myanmar on repatriation of the Rohingyas, has expressed his satisfaction over the bilateral arrangement.

Upon his return from Myanmar, the foreign minister held a press briefing in Dhaka Saturday saying both sides agreed to seek the assistance of UN refugee agency UNHCR in the return process.

The Bangladeshi foreign minister said a joint Working Group will have to be formed within three weeks since the date of agreement signing to oversee the repatriation process.

Mahmood Ali and Myanmar Union Minister U Kyaw Tint Swe signed the instrument at the State Counsellor's Office in Myanmar on Thursday.

According to the minister, Myanmar will take back now only its nationals who were displaced since Oct. 9, 2016, after it completes the repatriation of the Rohingyas who recently crossed the border.

Meanwhile, he said 622,000 Rohingyas have so far took shelter in Bangladesh after violence erupted in Myanmar on Aug. 25.

According to the agreement, both the governments would arrange for the voluntary return in "safety, security and dignity with options for recommencing livelihood" after they had been verified to be Myanmar residents.

In this connection, Ali told journalists Saturday that Myanmar will keep the Rohingyas in temporary camps near their abandoned homes after they returned to their country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 22:35:31|Editor: yan

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MOGADISHU, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, widely known as Farmajo, on Saturday condemned Friday's terrorist attack in a mosque in Egypt that has left over 300 people dead.

Farmajo, whose country has faced increased terror attacks from Al-Shabaab militants, said the heinous attack targeting innocent Muslims performing Friday prayers in Egypt's North Sinai, was against Islam.

"This attack depicts the brutal acts of the terrorists and it's against Islam," the Somalia leader said in a statement issued in Mogadishu.

"We stand united with our brothers and sisters in Egypt against terror. Our prayers are with families of the victims," Farmajo said.

He said the terror attack calls for effective international cooperation against terrorism.

According to prosecution in Egypt, some 25 to 30 militants used automatic weapons to open fire on worshippers, as well as ambulances as they fled the scene.

Egyptian authorities have started a major manhunt for the attackers after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed to respond to the attack with "brute force."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 22:35:33|Editor: Yamei

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(Xinhua file photo)

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Friday the agency is optimistic that President Donald Trump may allow the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office here to resume full operations if it met the necessary conditions.

An earlier report said the Trump administration had backtracked on its decision to close the office; instead, the United States would merely impose "limitations" on the office that it expected would be lifted after 90 days.

The spokesperson told Xinhua by email that after a waiver of statutory restrictions on PLO activity in the United States lapsed last week, they had advised the PLO office to limit its activities to those related to "achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians."

The State Department said if after 90 days the authorities determine that the Palestinians are engaged in "direct and meaningful" negotiations with Israel, restrictions on the PLO and its Washington office may be lifted.

The spokesperson said that so far, both parties had been found to be cooperative, constructive and prepared to engage in negotiations. Hence the agency was optimistic that at the end of the 90-day period, the political process may be sufficiently advanced for the president to allow the PLO office to resume full operations.

The waiver lapse was not intended to create leverage or put pressure on the Palestinians, the spokesperson added.

The Trump administration said a week earlier that the United States will close the office as a response to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute Israelis at the United Nations in September. A provision of the U.S. law requires the PLO office to close if Palestinians back the ICC's move to investigate or prosecute Israelis.

The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) responded by announcing Tuesday that it was suspending contacts with the United States over the decision to close the PLO office, calling it unacceptable.

The spokesperson of Abbas' Fatah Party, Nasser Quadwa, told Xinhua on Saturday that anti-Palestine laws in the United States are used by pro-Israeli lobbies against the PLO representation in the country.

He also said shutting down the PLO office would cause the Palestinians to react strongly, and will harm Palestinian-U.S. relations.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 22:40:35|Editor: yan

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TEHRAN, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Ministry of Agriculture announced to transfer all vegetable farms to greenhouses within the next 10 years, Financial Tribune daily reported on Saturday.

The area under greenhouse cultivation in Iran presently spans 12,157 hectares, 38 percent bigger compared with the one in mid-2013 when President Hassan Rouhani took office, said Valiollah Bani-Ameri, executive of Greenhouse Expansion Project undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture.

The ministry plans to increase the country's greenhouse area to more than 48,000 hectares by the end of the 20-Year Vision Plan (2005-25), Bani-Ameri was quoted as saying.

The official noted that the ministry expects to produce 21 million tons of agro products in greenhouses per year when the project is completed.

Ali Ashraf Mansouri, head of Tehran's Agricultural Jihad Organization, said the area under greenhouse cultivation in Tehran province amounts to more than 3,150 hectares, accounting for more than a quarter of all greenhouses in the country.

Besides, "Iran produces 1.55 billion cut flowers per year with Tehran Province accounting for 850 million, or 57 percent of the total sum," Mansouri said.

He added that an export terminal for flowers and plants has recently opened in the city of Eslamshahr in southwest Tehran while another is under construction in the city of Pishva also in southern Tehran.

According to Deputy Agriculture Minister Mohammad Ali Tahmasebi, the construction of per square meter of a greenhouse in Iran costs up to 2,000 U.S. dollars.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 22:45:36|Editor: yan

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DAMASCUS, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Deputy of the UN special Envoy to Syria said here on Saturday that the upcoming Syrian talks in Geneva would focus on discussing elections and constitution for Syria.

Ramzi Ezzedine Ramzi said four baskets would be under discussion in the eighth round of Syrian talks in Geneva slated for November 28, adding that the focus will be on the second and third baskets, pertaining the elections and constitution.

"The stance of the special envoy (Staffan de Mistura) is clear and hasn't changed. There are four baskets that must be dealt with. As de Mistura has said in his latest brief to the UN, there will be a focus on the second and third baskets that are concerned with elections and constitution," Ramzi told reporters.

Meanwhile, Ramzi said the political process in Syria won't be an easy task.

"The political process is difficult and complicated because the situation in Syria is complicated and we are building our strategy on a step by step process and I hope the next round of Geneva talks be marked with an active participation from the government with the presence of a unified delegation from the opposition, which could be conducive in pushing the political process forward," he added.

The upcoming Geneva talks will take place just days after the leaders of Iran, Turkey and Russia met in the Russian resort city of Sochi, where they supported a comprehensive dialogue for Syria.

The meeting would also come after the opposition groups agreed on unifying a delegation to the fresh talks, which marks the first time for the political opposition groups to unify a delegation to the internationally-backed talks.
An ambulance arrives at a hospital where the injured people receive medical treatment in Ismailia, Egypt on Nov. 24, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhao Dingzhe)

MOGADISHU, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, widely known as Farmajo, on Saturday condemned Friday's terrorist attack in a mosque in Egypt that has left over 300 people dead.

Farmajo, whose country has faced increased terror attacks from Al-Shabaab militants, said the heinous attack targeting innocent Muslims performing Friday prayers in Egypt's North Sinai, was against Islam.

"This attack depicts the brutal acts of the terrorists and it's against Islam," the Somalia leader said in a statement issued in Mogadishu.

"We stand united with our brothers and sisters in Egypt against terror. Our prayers are with families of the victims," Farmajo said.

He said the terror attack calls for effective international cooperation against terrorism.

Also on Saturday, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta condemned the terrorist attack in Egypt, while pledging to offer support to Cairo in the fight against terrorism.

"Bitter experience has taught us that in the fight against terror, and against the extremists who have chosen such atrocious means, all of us who love freedom are allies against a common enemy. Any help we can offer, then, will be gladly given," Kenyatta said.

According to prosecution in Egypt, some 25 to 30 militants used automatic weapons to open fire on worshippers, as well as ambulances as they fled the scene.

Egyptian authorities have started a major manhunt for the attackers after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed to respond to the attack with "brute force."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 22:55:39|Editor: pengying

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A drowned immigrant's body is carried from a boat at a naval base in Tripoli, Libya, on Nov. 25, 2017. A boat carrying more than 100 illegal immigrants on Saturday drowned off the Libyan western town of Garrabulli, killing 31 migrants, according to a local official. (Xinhua/Hamza Turkia)

TRIPOLI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A boat carrying more than 100 illegal immigrants on Saturday drowned off the Libyan western town of Garrabulli, killing 31 migrants, according to a local official.

"The Coast Guard patrol spotted a rubber boat carrying more than 100 migrants, 24 miles north of Garrabulli. When the patrol arrived to the wrecked boat, dozens of bodies were scattered next to it," Libyan Coast Guard official Abu-Ajela Ammar told Xinhua.

"Initial information indicates that the boat broke due to overcrowding of migrants," added Ammar, confirming that the bodies of 31 migrants were recovered and about 80 migrants in a poor medical condition were rescued and taken to Tripoli naval base.

"As the Coast Guard patrol was returning after the rescue operation, another rubber boat was spotted with nearly 120 migrants on board," Ammar said.

The total number of migrants rescued on Saturday by the Libya Coast Guard is more than 200, Ammar revealed.

Libyan navy last week rescued 450 illegal African immigrants in two separate operations off the coast of the capital Tripoli.

Due to the insecurity and chaos that followed the 2011 uprising, Libya became a hotspot for migrants wanting to cross the Mediterranean towards European shores, many of who drown on the way.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 23:00:40|Editor: yan

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NEW DELHI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- At least six people were killed and seven others injured Saturday in a head-on collision between two cars in India's southwestern state of Karnataka, officials said.

The accident took place at Metikurke village of Chitradurga district, about 168 km northwest of Bengaluru, the capital city of Karnataka.

"Today six people were killed on the spot and seven others injured when two cars they were travelling in collided head-on at Metikurke here," a police official posted in Chitradurga said.

According to police, the collision happened when a tyre of one of the cars burst, the driver lost control over the car, which hit another car coming in opposite direction.

After the accident, locals removed the injured to hospital. The identity of the deceased is being ascertained, the official said.

Deadly road accidents are common in India often caused by overloading, bad condition of roads and reckless driving.

According to an official report released recently, India witnessed an average of over 400 deaths in road accidents every day during 2016.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 23:05:42|Editor: yan

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TRIPOLI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Armed clashes broke out on Saturday between a Libyan security force and gunmen in the western city of Khoms, killing five people.

"A security force of the Joint Security Chamber in cooperation with a number of other security services carried out a raid to a location in the city to arrest wanted persons accused of killing seven family members last week," Mohammed Abu-Soba, head of Khoms Security Directorate, told Xinhua.

"Three of the Joint Security Chamber personnel and two of the gunmen were killed, according to initial information," Abu-Soba added, stressing that the security situation in the city is stable.

"No information so far has been received about the arrest of the remaining gunmen," he added.

Last week, a dispute over an agricultural land escalated into armed confrontation between gunmen and residents of Khoms, located some 120 km east of the capital Tripoli.

Since the uprising of 2011 that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime, Libya has been suffering from political division and unrest.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 23:10:43|Editor: yan

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MOSCOW, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Sudan is seeking to buy Russia's advanced Su-30 and Su-35 fighters, RIA Novosti news agency reported Saturday, citing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

He said Sudanese and Russian officials discussed the possibility of warplane sales earlier this week in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi, where he met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

"We do not intend to carry out aggression abroad, but we want to protect our country," he told RIA Novosti, adding that Sudan is also interested in Russia's S-300 air defense system, missile boats and minesweepers.

It remains unclear whether any arms supply deal has been reached.

According to a Kremlin transcript of the Putin-Bashir meeting, Russia agreed to help Sudan re-equip its armed forces and Khartoum will send more military attaches to Moscow.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-25 23:35:50|Editor: Xiang Bo

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Cao Jianming (L), Procurator-General of the Supreme People's Procuratorate of China, shakes hands with Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah at Istana Nurul Iman, Brunei's royal palace in Bandar Seri Begawan, capital of Brunei, Nov. 25, 2017. (Xinhua/Xue Fei)

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- China and Brunei reached consensus on the strengthening of prosecution cooperation on Saturday during a visit here by Cao Jianming, Procurator-General of the Supreme People's Procuratorate of China.

Cao, who led a Chinese delegation consisting of several provincial chief procurators, met with Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah at Istana Nurul Iman, Brunei's royal palace. He thanked the Sultan for attaching great importance to strengthening procuratorial exchanges between the two countries and for his support for hosting the Eleventh China-ASEAN Procecutors-General Conference.

Cao said that the Supreme People's Procuratorate of China will work with their Brunei counterpart to actively implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, deepen mutually beneficial and pragmatic cooperation and make positive contributions to the development of the strategic cooperation between China and Brunei.

Hassanal welcomed Cao Jianming for his delegation's visit. The Sultan said Brunei attaches great importance to developing relations with China and is willing to work with China to consolidate mutual political trust, broaden exchanges and cooperation in various fields to better benefit the two peoples.

Earlier in the day, Cao held working talks with Hajah Hayati, the Attorney General of Brunei Darussalam, and issued a joint statement on further enhancing cooperation between both sides.

The two sides agreed to deepen the exchange of information, broaden the cooperation channels, strengthen communication and cooperation in the multilateral framework and promote the upgrading of the friendly relations under the framework of the Memorandum of Understanding in the field of legal cooperation signed in 2002.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 00:10:58|Editor: yan

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BRUSSELS, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A major police deployment is underway around Place Louise in Brussels, following major damage committed by some protesters on Saturday afternoon. The police said 12 suspects have been arrested. There are no injuries at the moment.

According to spokeswoman for the Brussels-Capital Ixelles area, Ilse Van de Keere, a group of about 30 young men from an ongoing protest on Poelaert Square moved towards Place Louise. "They committed damage in stores," said the commissioner.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 00:26:01|Editor: yan

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MOGADISHU, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) on Saturday launched a campaign across the Horn of Africa nation aimed at preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls in Somalia.

The campaign dubbed "16 Days Activism Against Gender-Based Violence" was launched simultaneously in Somalia's regional capitals as part of a global campaign to create awareness about some of the most widespread human rights violations.

Speaking during the launch in Mogadishu, Christine Alalo, AMISOM Deputy Police Commissioner called on victims of gender-based violence to speak out and break the silence on these violations.

"When we keep quiet and don't talk about it, then we are also perpetrators of gender-based violence," Alalo said in a statement issued in Mogadishu after the launch.

The global theme of the campaign this year is "Leave No One Behind -- End Violence Against Women And Girls."

"The overall theme correlates to AMISOM's role as a peace support operation, in which we support the Federal Government of Somalia and Federal Member States to provide a secure environment where children feel safe to go to school; where civilians can thrive and go about their daily activities unhindered; where communities appreciate the civil liberties that come with the presence of peace and security," Alalo said.

She said AMISOM is committed to ending violence against women and girls considered as the most extreme form of discrimination; and subscribes to the ideals enshrined in the charters and protocols of the African Union.

The campaign, 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, is organized around the world annually from Nov. 25 marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, to Dec. 10, the Human Rights Day.

According to a 2016 UN report based on data from 87 countries, 19 percent of women aged between 15 and 49 years, have experienced physical and/or sexual violence.

According to the report, harmful practices such as female genital mutilation, which is still widely practiced in Somalia and considered an extreme case of violence against women, has declined by 24 percent worldwide, although prevalence remains high in at least 30 countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 00:46:06|Editor: yan

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- As many as 37 U.S. troops were lost in crashes of military non-combat planes flying routine operations so far this year, including the three missing American sailors in a U.S. Navy plane crash earlier this week.

That is more than 130 percent higher than the number killed in non-combat plane crashes at this point in 2016, according to a Fox News investigation report on Saturday.

The total number of U.S. military non-combat plane crashes also skyrocketed to 22, up 38 percent from this time last year, said the report.

The crash of the U.S. Navy 7th Fleet C-2 Greyhound cargo plane occurred 575 miles out to sea while flying from Japan to the USS Ronald Reagan on Wednesday. Eight on board survived and three others went missing.

Just two days before the Navy plane crash, an Air Force T-38 training jet crashed in Texas killing one pilot and injuring another. A mechanical failure is suspected. A similar Navy training jet, a T-45, crashed last month killing both pilots.

In August, an Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed off the coast of Hawaii, killing five soldiers. Late this month, a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey crashed off the east coast of Australia killing three Marines and rescue workers saved 23 others.

In July, a Marine Corps KC-130 transport plane crashed in the Mississippi Delta killing all 16 on board after reaching cruising altitude during a routine cross-country flight to California originating from North Carolina.

In April, U.S. media reported that instructor pilots refusing to fly the Navy's T-45 training jet, citing poison in the plane's oxygen system, the Navy grounded its fleet of some 200 jets for weeks afterwards.

"We are killing more of our own people in training than our enemies are in combat," John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and former naval aviator, said on the senate floor earlier this year.

The U.S. Navy is down 41 ships and 90,000 sailors since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the Fox News report, blaming the defense budget which has prioritized the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for years.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 01:01:08|Editor: yan

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TUNIS, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Tunisia has set the deadline for the municipal election registration on March 25, 2018, while the lists of registered voters will be published on Dec. 4 and 5 this year, Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) said on Saturday.

Te ISIE will announce the final list of voters on January 2, 2018. The electoral body will have to publish the lists of approved applications until Jan. 22.

As for the election campaign, it will start on March 3, 2018 and end on March 23 at midnight to give way to the electoral silence.

Voting for security guards and army soldiers has been scheduled for March 18, 2018.

The preliminary results of the municipal elections will be announced within a deadline not exceeding March 28, 2018, while the announcement of the final results must not be later than May 2, 2018.

Eligibility requirements for municipal elections include Tunisian nationality, a minimum age of 18 and a clean criminal record.

Administrative officials such as governors, judges, delegates and etc, will not be eligible to apply in their constituency.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 01:06:09|Editor: yan

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JUBA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The South Sudanese army (SPLA) on Saturday said it killed 22 rebels in the wake of a weeklong fighting in several separate clashes within the war-torn country.

SPLA spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said they seized 10 AK-47 assault rifles and one Rocket propelled Grenade (RPG) from rebel fighters after clashes in the northern areas of Rup-Kuai, Leer, Western Lakes, Latjoor, Fangak and the central Amadi and Yei-River.

"Well known anti-peace elements (SPLA-In opposition) as well as unknown or little known armed outfits have recently intensified hostile acts against the SPLA in order to attract the attention of Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) for them to be included in the forthcoming peace revitalization meeting," Koang told a press conference in Juba.

He also disclosed that the SPLA killed notorious militia commander Anyar Anyar of the nascent Pan African National Guards in the Western Lakes State.

However, the rebels had earlier said they killed 27 government soldiers with only five killed on their side after the warring parties accused each other of causing the fighting as the High-Level Peace Revitalization Forum set for December draws near.

Koang revealed that heavy fighting is ongoing in the northern Rup-Kuai County between rebels and government forces.

South Sudan descended into violence in December 2013 after political dispute between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy turned rebel chief Machar led to split within the SPLA, leaving soldiers to fight alongside ethnic lines.

The 2015 peace agreement to end the conflict was weakened after outbreak of renewed fighting in July 2016 caused the SPLA-in opposition rebel leader Machar to flee the capital.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 01:11:11|Editor: Yamei

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Russian President Vladimir Putin (Xinhua file photo)

MOSCOW, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill vesting the government with the power to label foreign-funded media outlets in Russia as "foreign agents," said a presidential decree published Saturday.

The lower and upper houses of Russia's parliament approved the bill on Nov. 15 and Nov. 22, respectively.

The law was enacted after Russia's state-owned English news channel RT America was forced to register as a foreign agent in the United States by the Department of Justice under its Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) effective since 1938.

FARA requires "persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities."

U.S. authorities accused Russian media outlets of influencing public opinion during the 2016 presidential election by spreading fake news. But Moscow saw the forced registration as an obstacle to Russian media activities in the United States and a step violating the freedom of speech.

According to the new Russian law, the Ministry of Justice will decide which media outlets should be listed as a foreign agent, who may face restrictions in Russia.

The ministry said it has sent letters about possible recognition as foreign agents to VOA, Caucasus Reality, Crimea Reality, Siberia Reality, the Idel Reality regional project, the Current Time TV channel, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty's Tatar-Bashkir service and the Factograph project.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 01:26:15|Editor: yan

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LONDON, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- London's world-famous Harrods store is to be given a 268 million U.S. dollars makeover to attract more Chinese shoppers.

The revamp will be the biggest and most ambitious in the luxury store's history, its owners have confirmed.

A key aim of the project is to appeal to Chinese customers who are already Harrods' second-highest spenders after British shoppers, managing director Michael Ward said in media interviews on Friday.

Ward said: "This ambitious store development, the most comprehensive in Harrods history, will invest in some of our most exciting retail divisions and redesign our store around the expectations of our discerning global customer base."

The store boss added that Chinese customers are extremely important to Harrods and considered part of their redevelopment plans.

"For us the future is in the east and we have been focusing on that for a number of years," added Ward, adding research had shown that one in every five pounds that Chinese visitors spend in London is spent at Harrods.

One thing that won't change is the famous exterior of the store with its 12,000 light bulbs and green awnings.

Harrods was founded by Charles Henry Harrod as a small shop mainly selling tea. It has grown into one of the best-known shops in the world and attracts more than 15 million visitors every year.

Harrods recently reported its annual sales had broken through the 2-billion pounds mark (2.67 billion U.S. dollars) for the first time.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 01:46:19|Editor: yan

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JERUSALEM, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Israel on Saturday strongly condemned the Friday deadly attack on a mosque in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, which claimed the lives of at least 305 people.

A statement released by Israeli Prime Minister's Office denounced "the horrific and criminal terrorist attack" on the El-Rawda mosque near El-Arish, a city in northern Sinai, close to Egypt's border with Israel.

The statement said it wished to send "condolences on behalf of the people of Israel to President al-Sisi, the Egyptian people and the families of the victims."

"Terrorism will be defeated even more quickly if all countries work against it together," the statement read.

Tel Aviv, Israel's financial capital, mourned the victims by lighting up the city hall building with the Egyptian flag.

"A horrific attack in #Egypt. We send our condolences to our friends across the border and light the Municipality building in their honor," Mayor Ron Huldai said in his Tweeter account, along with a photo of the building.

The attack came as Israel and Egypt marked 40 years to the historic visit of former Egyptian President Anuar Sadat to Israel, which led to the signing of the peace agreement between the two countries two years later.

At noon on Friday, some 25 to 30 assailants bombed and opened fire at the mosque, killing 305 worshippers, including 27 children, and wounding 128 others, according to Egyptian authorities.

It was the first terrorist operation to target a Muslim mosque in Egypt's modern history.

Terror attacks started to rise in Egypt following the military ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.

Since then, most of the attacks have focused on restive North Sinai, killing hundreds of policemen and soldiers, before they later started to extend to other provinces and target the Coptic minority in their churches.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 01:56:22|Editor: Yamei

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Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri waves to his supporters in Beirut, Lebanon, on Nov. 22, 2017. Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri arrived in Beirut Tuesday evening after his sudden resignation in a televised statement he read from the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh on Nov. 4. (Xinhua/Li Liangyong)

BEIRUT, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri's decision on Wednesday to postpone his resignation has provided Lebanon with the chance to maintain political stability, analysts said.

They cited that Hezbollah has shown pragmatism and could even make certain compromise for the sake of maintaining Lebanon's political unity.

When Saudi TV news channel Al-Arabiya broadcast a recording of Hariri announcing, in Riyadh on Nov. 4, his decision to step down as prime minister, Lebanon's one-year-old government was once again plunged into uncertainty.

A year prior, on Oct. 31, Michel Aoun was elected Lebanon's president, officially ending two and a half years of presidential vacuum and political stagnation. The new government established by Hezbollah-backed Aoun and the Saudi-tied Hariri promised to maintain a "national accord," and de-escalate the political rivalries halting advancements in the country.

Hariri's resignation announcement three weeks ago was a strong departure from his repeated promises to maintain political unity. His aggressive rhetoric calling for Iran and Hezbollah to step away from regional affairs stirred up widespread rumors that Saudi Arabia had written the speech and forced the prime minister's resignation.

Despite the unpredicted move, Lebanon's government responded with overwhelming calls for peace and unity in uncertain times.

In the first of three speeches following the resignation, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah urged for nationwide "calm and patience until things are clear." Assuring listeners that "there is nothing to fear," Nasrallah's tone diverged considerably from routine rallying cries.

Analysts thus speculate that Hariri's announcement Wednesday to postpone his resignation has opened an avenue to maintaining internal stability.

"The next few months are going to be quite delicate for Prime Minister Hariri because he's going to have to maintain consensus with the other Lebanese parties," Karim Bitar, director of research at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, told Xinhua.

"Hariri is still the official head of the national unity government in Lebanon, which includes Hezbollah. Simultaneously, he will have to make sure that Saudi Arabia's strategic interests are taken care of," Bitar added.

In a televised interview filmed in Riyadh a week after his resignation announcement, Hariri indicated that he would possibly rescind his resignation if Hezbollah agreed to stay out of regional affairs, specifically in the conflict in Yemen.

"There is a Lebanese group that is carrying out certain actions," Hariri said, referring to Hezbollah, during the interview with Lebanese channel Future TV. "I will not allow for anyone to launch regional wars on Lebanon for regional gains."

Yemen remains a vital interest for Saudi Arabia in asserting the Sunni authority over the growing Shiite sphere of influence in the region, as tensions ramp up between Riyadh and Tehran.

Bitar attested to the likelihood that Hezbollah would make "minor concessions" in regards to Yemen, but dismissed allegations that the Lebanese group and Iran were strongly backing Yemen's Houthi rebels.

Calling the Houthis' insurgence a "mostly Yemini phenomenon," he noted that the link between the Yemeni armed group and Iran were by no means comparable to the historic ties between Hezbollah and Iran.

"So to be honest, I don't think Hezbollah is about to make major concessions, but they might show some pragmatism," Bitar concluded.

Sami Nader, director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs in Lebanon, expressed hope that Hezbollah would indeed make a sacrifice for Lebanon's political unity.

"The government will be up and running, but it will take some time," Nader said. "After Hassan Nasrallah's latest speech, we feel that Hezbollah has paved the way for a compromise, because he said he would not be involved in Yemen, Kuwait and Bahrain."

According to Nader, only Hezbollah's commitment to making the concessions would make Hariri withdraw his resignation, serving as proof that his "demands had been taken into consideration."

Without these concessions, Hariri will not be able to maintain his position as prime minister, he opined.

"If Hariri gets back into government without any commitment from Hezbollah, the relationship with Saudi Arabia will turn sour. But escalation at this level would be against Lebanese interest," the Lebanese expert noted.

Nader, also an economist, warned that a "Qatar-style" economic blockade was also likely if the situation were to escalate.

Despite the major role of Saudi Arabia and Iran, international actors such as France and Egypt have also involved themselves to ensure continued stability in Lebanon, and to prevent further destabilization in the region.

Halim Shebaya, a political analyst based in Beirut, underlined this international support as a key aspect in keeping the Lebanese government together.

"There is a cautious optimism in Lebanon with regards to reports of a French-Egyptian initiative that would 'save' the presidential settlement or the Aoun-Hariri rapprochement," Shebaya told Xinhua.

However, like Nader and Bitar, Shebaya noted that the ultimate key to internal peace rested in the hands of Hezbollah.

While all three analysts foresaw internal concessions and negotiations, London-based analyst Kareem Chehayeb said this political fiasco could function as a reminder of Lebanon's fragile state.

"If you look at the last president, Michel Sleiman, he was brought in as a neutral figure, whereas (Speaker Nabih) Berri was pro-Hezbollah. There was (former Prime Minister) Mikati who was pro-Saudi Arabia. This balance is what Lebanon relies on, so it can remain neutral," Chehayeb said.

"Of course, this is very fragile, so every now and then we will see this fragility exposed," he added.

Negotiations will indeed take place, but what they will look like remains to be seen.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 02:06:24|Editor: yan

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DAR ES SALAAM, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A Tanzanian minister said on Saturday the east African nation has demonstrated political will in fighting corruption and upholding good governance.

George Mkuchika, the country's Minister of State in President's Office responsible for Public Service Management and Good Governance, said the political will in fighting corruption was demonstrated by the arrest of corrupt government officials and the establishment of a special court specifically dealing with economic crime and corruption.

Mkuchika said the country's willingness to investigate and charge government officials was a positive move in uprooting graft in Tanzania.

"This is an important step and it goes to show that there is political will in stamping out corruption," he said on the sidelines of a continental consultative workshop organized by the African Union Advisory Board on Corruption (AUABC) in the country's northern tourist city of Arusha.

"The creation of the special court dealing with economic crime and corruption will see people involved in corruption be put on trial," said Mkuchika.

The Economic, Corruption and Organized Crime High Court's Division became operational last year following a decision by Tanzanian President John Magufuli to assent the bill passed by Parliament to establish such a special court.

A new report released early this week said 85 percent of Tanzanian citizens said the level of corruption in the country has declined compared to five years ago.

"Citizens say they are less likely to be asked for bribes in 2017 compared to 2014 in almost all sectors," said the report released by Twaweza, an initiative that works on enabling children to learn, citizens to exercise agency and governments to be more open and responsive in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.

The report said corruption declined from various sectors, including the police from 60 percent in 2014 to 39 percent in 2017, water from 20 percent in 2014 to 6 percent in 2017, land 32 percent in 2014 to 18 percent in 2017, Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) from 25 percent in 2014 to 5 percent in 2017 and healthcare from 19 percent in 2014 to 11 percent in 2017.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 02:51:34|Editor: yan

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DAR ES SALAAM, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian President John Magufuli on Saturday inaugurated a 94.5-million-U.S.-dollar Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) teaching hospital on the outskirts of the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.

Magufuli challenged the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF) to invest in the construction of pharmaceutical industries, saying the government was using billions of shillings to import drugs.

Magufuli said the country was currently facing shortage of drugs, forcing the government to use taxpayers' money to import them.

"I am appealing to the business people to invest in the construction of pharmaceuticals where market is huge and reliable," said the president.

Magufuli said the most important thing for the drugs manufacturers in the country to take into consideration was production of drugs that meet the required standards by relevant authorities like the World Health Organization.

The hospital has nine floors with the capacity of admitting more than 500 patients.

The MUHAS acting vice chancellor, Appolinary Kamuhabwa, said the new health facility will have modern equipment and medical specialists to help reduce the congestion of patients at the Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH).

Kamuhabwa said the health facility would also reduce number of patients to be referred to overseas hospitals.
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province, Sept. 3, 2017. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

MOSCOW, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- China and Russia will enhance cooperation on digital economy, including big data, the Internet of Things and smart cities, Chinese Ambassador to Russia Li Hui told Xinhua in a recent interview.

While making continuous efforts to strengthen bilateral cooperation in the sectors of energy, equipment manufacturing, agriculture and spaceflight, the two countries are eyeing digital economy as a new area of cooperation, Li said.

China and Russia will also continue their efforts to achieve substantial results from the alignment of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and development programs within the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) led by Russia.

The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by China in 2013, aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa on and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes. It comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

The EEU, which groups Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, is an economic bloc aiming to optimize the flow of goods and services among its members.

Li said China and Russia will work to implement the project of an international transportation corridor in the Far East and jointly explore the Arctic shipping route to make it a "silk road on ice."

According to him, strategic mutual trust between the two countries is strengthening, while political, economic and people-to-people exchanges are developing robustly, forming a solid base for the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination.

The partnership plays a special role in China's "major-country diplomacy" with Chinese characteristics and both countries will never waver in their determination to develop such a partnership no matter how the international and regional situations change, Li said.

Both China and Russia are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and important parties of the G20, BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Li said, adding that the two countries share similar positions on many international affairs.

"I believe as long as we keep up with the times and seize the opportunities, China-Russia relations will be very productive," the ambassador said.

Next week, the 16th meeting of the Council of Heads of Government (Prime Ministers) of the SCO will be held in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.

In Li's view, the SCO adheres to its founding values or the "Shanghai Spirit" featuring mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and pursuit of common development.

At the Astana summit in Kazakhstan in June, India and Pakistan completed their accession to the SCO, which also groups China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

After the expansion, the SCO covers about 44 percent of the world's population and over a fifth of the world's gross domestic product (GDP).
File photo taken on Feb. 1, 2016 shows refugees and migrants aboard the passenger ferry Blue Star Patmos arrive at the port of Piraeus, near Athens, Greece. Almost 6,000 refugees who registered at the islands of Lesbos and Chios arrived at the Port of Piraeus. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos)

ATHENS, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- An Afghan boy aged 10 lost his life on Saturday during a boat incident off the island of Lesvos in the Aegean Sea, while 65 other persons were rescued, Greek national news agency AMNA reported.

The boy was on board the boat with his parents and two younger sisters among other refugees and migrants illegally crossing from Turkey to Greece, and most likely was trampled when panicked passengers reacted when a European Border and Coast Guard Agency, or FRONTEX, vessel approached the boat, according to initial information by Greek Coast Guard sources.

According to the same sources, the refugees thought that the Bulgarian FRONTEX boat was Turkish and they would be returned to Turkey.

The boy was transferred unconscious to the hospital of Mytilene of Lesvos, but succumbed to his injuries.

His mother was saved by Greek Coast Guard officers when she tried to commit suicide by falling into Mytilene's port, AMNA reported.
Two women take a selfie at the China-Ukraine Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Exhibition in Kiev, Ukraine, Nov. 21, 2017. (Xinhua/Chen Junfeng)

KIEV, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Kiev International Exhibition Center, which hosts the China-Ukraine Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Exhibition, has been crowded these days with visitors, including kids and professors.

Child-sized interactive robots, remote-control vehicles and working models of innovative factories and transport, among others, are showcasing China's technological achievements in the past years at the exhibition held on Nov. 21-24.

AMAZING INVENTIONS

About 150 projects brought by a total of 64 Chinese research institutions and enterprises to the event have really impressed locals.

Volodymyr Yaskiv, a dean of the Electrical Engineering Department at Ternopil National Technical University, said he rushed to the exhibition right from the airport after a visit to China.

Yaskiv, who visited China 11 times and has a joint scientific project with Chinese partners, said the part of the exhibition that showcases the achievements of Chinese-Ukrainian cooperation is vivid evidence that the partnership between the two countries is flourishing.

"The program of scientific and technical cooperation between Ukraine and China is working. It is effective, it is needed, and it helps not only to exchange scientific and technical experience, but also to better understand the culture, the language and the level of development," Yaskiv told Xinhua.

Nazar, 11, who is a member of IT-technologies and Chinese language hobby groups, said that he missed the school to visit the exhibition, where he tested several remote-control vehicles and virtual reality glasses.

"I really liked the amazing Chinese inventions, especially the computers, which could control the tank ... and all the devices that allow me to indirectly learn Chinese," Nazar told Xinhua.

NEW TRANSPORT TECHNOLOGIES

While most exhibition visitors are somehow linked to science, Andrey Osadchy is a businessman, who came to the event in search for new business partners.

Osadchy took pictures of himself near the two high-speed trains developed by the Beijing-based China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC), China's largest train manufacturer.

The electric multiple units (EMU) are suitable for intercity and regional trips. They have not only superior ride comfort but also high safety, energy-efficiency, and eco-friendliness.

Osadchy, who travels a lot on business, said he would like to see such trains running in Ukraine one day.

"It would be interesting to talk about the introduction of this train project in the financial bill of Ukraine for 2018-2020. I would particularly like to see this train running between the airport Boryspil and the central part of Kiev," Osadchy told Xinhua.

His dream may come true as Ukraine plans to replace 40 percent of the passenger rolling stock by 2022, while the CRRC is interested in entering the Ukrainian market.

"China has already achieved a great success in developing high-speed trains and high-speed railways. We want to show the Chinese technologies to the world and bring them to Ukraine to make the trips of people here more comfortable," Yu Hang, sales manager of the CRRC, told Xinhua.

Chinese innovative road construction technologies are also an area of interest to the Ukrainian public. The tunnel boring machines, presented by the China Railway Construction Heavy Industry (CRCHI), are one of the most unusual and most visited exhibits at the exposition.

People here are well aware that the machines, which could be used for boring highway, railway and subway tunnels, may contribute to the infrastructure development in Ukraine.

INNOVATIONS FOR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

The development of energy-saving technologies is a particularly pressing issue for Ukraine. Currently, the East European country heavily relies on imported energy resources and the Chinese inventions may help it to boost energy independence.

The first steps in this direction have already been taken. During the exhibition, the Beijing-based Shenwu Group presented two innovative projects developed specially for Ukraine, which has vast coal and iron ore reserves, but lacks gas and oil.

"The first one is our technology for coal, especially for low-quality coal. With this technology, we can produce a large amount of gas and oil from bad coal," Song Xin, deputy director of the Shenwu Group, told Xinhua.

"Another platform is the technology for metallurgy. It is for the unusable iron ore, for the low-grade iron ore and also for the slag and dust. We can easily produce semi-steel from it and also such products as Zinc oxide," Song added.

Song said that during the exhibition, the Shenwu Group has established contacts with Ukrainian partners and plans to enter the Ukrainian market soon.

Anatoly Smyhula, deputy director for Scientific Work at Kiev Institute of Gas, said energy cooperation with China would be useful for Ukraine, as it has much to learn from China with regard to energy technology development.

"Chinese technologies are developing quite intensively as China absorbs all the advanced developments of the world. We must learn from China how to value science and must borrow understanding that the humanity needs to move forward," Smyhula told Xinhua.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 04:51:58|Editor: yan

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ISMAILIA, Egypt, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- "The whole thing started with a grenade thrown from the window, then masked militants rushed into the mosque, showering us with bullets, leaving dead bodies scattered everywhere," Mohamed Ali described the Friday attack on a mosque that killed 305 people in Egypt's North Sinai.

It was a real inferno, said the 33-year-old man, who was shot with two bullets in the legs. He is now receiving medical treatment in Ismailia province by the Suez Canal, southwest of terror-stricken North Sinai.

Ali, a father of four who works as salesman at a grocery in al-Rawda village, where the attack took place, told Xinhua that he still could not believe that he survived this "heinous massacre."

The militants attacked the mosque minutes after the preacher started his sermon, he said with a low fatigued voice as he struggled his pains.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

However, fingers are pointed at a Sinai-based group loyal to the Islamic State (IS) regional terrorist group, which has claimed most of the large terrorist operations in Egypt over the past few years and whose affiliates are currently facing massive security crackdown in Syria and Iraq.

It is the first time a mosque is targeted by militants in Egypt. But dozens of Christians have been killed in similar attacks on churches across Egypt.

North Sinai province, a mostly desert area bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, has been experiencing waves of anti-security attacks that killed hundreds of police and army men since the army-led ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 in response to mass protests against his rule.

"The terrorists threw bombs from the windows and doors of the mosque, besieging us inside and started to shoot randomly," he recalled. "Bodies of the dead and panicked injured worshippers lied motionless with blood splattered across the Mosque."

Ali said he was praying on the front-line chairs near the preacher's rostrum, which he used as a cover from the terrorists' showers of gunshots.

"The pulpit did not protect me as I was injured with two bullets, but at least it saved my life," Ali said, looking at the central venous line placed into his arm.

When some worshippers attempted to get out of the mosque, He went on saying, some masked men finished them with rounds from their machine guns.

"It was horrible and chaotic...they showed no mercy, it was an act of genocide," he said as tears rolled down his pale cheeks. "Three brothers from my neighborhood were killed in cold blood."

On Saturday, the Egyptian general prosecutor announced that the death toll in the Mosque attack climbed to 305 killed, including 27 children, and 128 others were wounded,

Meanwhile, the Egyptian military spokesman said air forces jets hit a number of vehicles loaded with terrorists involved in the deadly attack.

In addition, the air forces targeted a number of hideouts containing weapons and ammunition that belong to the extremists, the spokesman added.

The airstrikes came hours after Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi vowed to respond fiercely against terrorists who carried out the attack.

"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period," he said in a televised speech.

Outside the Suez Canal University's Hospital in Ismailia, long queues of the victims' relatives laid on the ground, some covered with blankets.

"My 23-years old nephew, Amir, who was working as a nurse was murdered in the attack," said Samy Mohammed, who came from Delta Menoufia province to Ismailia after he was told about the death of his nephew.

The father of Amir, Magdy, a 45-year-old teacher has also been wounded in the attack by three bullets, two in his legs and one in his right arm, Mohammed told Xinhua while waiting outside the hospital.

"I couldn't get the body of Amir. He was buried in collective graves in Sinai... we sadly could not bid him a farewell ceremony," he said while weeping.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 05:07:02|Editor: yan

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CAPE TOWN, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- South Africa on Saturday launched the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, amid rising incidents of violence against women and children.

Susan Shabangu, Minister in the Presidency Responsible for Women, represented President Jacob Zuma at the launch ceremony in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape Province.

Violence against women and children continues every day in South Africa, Shabangu said, adding, "We cannot allow ourselves to be defeated by this scourge."

She pointed to "the worst and most shocking incidents of violence against women and children" this year, particularly at schools, which are meant to be safe havens for children.

South Africa is among the countries that have the highest rate of violence against women and children. According to the South African Medical Research Council, a woman is killed by an intimate partner every eight hours in South Africa.

The South African government has declared violence against women and children a strategic crime-prevention and policing priority.

To curb rising violence against women and children, South Africa has reinstated specialized Sexual Offences Courts to speedily handle cases of this kind, Shabangu said.

The government has also put in place several progressive and comprehensive laws, policies, support systems and institutional arrangements to respond to violence against women and children.

Shabangu said the success of the 16 Days of Activism campaign rests on every South African citizen and collective actions to safeguard their society against this cycle of abuse.

As a worldwide campaign initiated in 1991, the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is held from November 25 to December 10 every year, with the participation of more than 3,700 organizations from about 164 countries.
People bury the body of a mosque attack's victim in Bir al-Abed of North Sinai,Egypt, on Nov. 25, 2017. The death toll in a terrorist attack on a mosque on Friday in Egypt's North Sinai has risen to 305, including 27 children. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

ISMAILIA, Egypt, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- "The whole thing started with a grenade thrown from the window, then masked militants rushed into the mosque, showering us with bullets, leaving dead bodies scattered everywhere," Mohamed Ali described the Friday attack on a mosque that killed 305 people in Egypt's North Sinai.

It was a real inferno, said the 33-year-old man, who was shot with two bullets in the legs. He is now receiving medical treatment in Ismailia province by the Suez Canal, southwest of terror-stricken North Sinai.

Ali, a father of four who works as salesman at a grocery in al-Rawda village, where the attack took place, told Xinhua that he still could not believe that he survived this "heinous massacre."

The militants attacked the mosque minutes after the preacher started his sermon, he said with a low fatigued voice as he struggled his pains.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

However, fingers are pointed at a Sinai-based group loyal to the Islamic State (IS) regional terrorist group, which has claimed most of the large terrorist operations in Egypt over the past few years and whose affiliates are currently facing massive security crackdown in Syria and Iraq.

It is the first time a mosque is targeted by militants in Egypt. But dozens of Christians have been killed in similar attacks on churches across Egypt.

North Sinai province, a mostly desert area bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, has been experiencing waves of anti-security attacks that killed hundreds of police and army men since the army-led ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 in response to mass protests against his rule.

"The terrorists threw bombs from the windows and doors of the mosque, besieging us inside and started to shoot randomly," he recalled. "Bodies of the dead and panicked injured worshippers lied motionless with blood splattered across the Mosque."

Ali said he was praying on the front-line chairs near the preacher's rostrum, which he used as a cover from the terrorists' showers of gunshots.

"The pulpit did not protect me as I was injured with two bullets, but at least it saved my life," Ali said, looking at the central venous line placed into his arm.

When some worshippers attempted to get out of the mosque, He went on saying, some masked men finished them with rounds from their machine guns.

"It was horrible and chaotic...they showed no mercy, it was an act of genocide," he said as tears rolled down his pale cheeks. "Three brothers from my neighborhood were killed in cold blood."

On Saturday, the Egyptian general prosecutor announced that the death toll in the Mosque attack climbed to 305 killed, including 27 children, and 128 others were wounded,

Meanwhile, the Egyptian military spokesman said air forces jets hit a number of vehicles loaded with terrorists involved in the deadly attack.

In addition, the air forces targeted a number of hideouts containing weapons and ammunition that belong to the extremists, the spokesman added.

The airstrikes came hours after Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi vowed to respond fiercely against terrorists who carried out the attack.

"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period," he said in a televised speech.

Outside the Suez Canal University's Hospital in Ismailia, long queues of the victims' relatives laid on the ground, some covered with blankets.

"My 23-years old nephew, Amir, who was working as a nurse was murdered in the attack," said Samy Mohammed, who came from Delta Menoufia province to Ismailia after he was told about the death of his nephew.

The father of Amir, Magdy, a 45-year-old teacher has also been wounded in the attack by three bullets, two in his legs and one in his right arm, Mohammed told Xinhua while waiting outside the hospital.

"I couldn't get the body of Amir. He was buried in collective graves in Sinai... we sadly could not bid him a farewell ceremony," he said while weeping.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 05:22:06|Editor: yan

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VALLETTA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- International credit agency Creditreform Rating AG has affirmed the unsolicited long-term sovereign rating of "A+" for Malta, Maltese government announced in a statement Saturday.

Creditreform Rating has also affirmed Malta's unsolicited ratings for foreign and local currency senior unsecured long-term debt of "A+". The outlook is stable.

It said that the A+ rating was driven by the very strong growth performance exhibited by the Maltese economy, which expects to remain among the strongest in Europe in 2017 and 2018.

Creditreform also attributes the positive rating to the advancements in budget consolidation in 2016, which it expects to continue in the medium term.

The agency said it expects Malta to make further progress on debt reduction, with the government's debt-to-GDP ratio falling close to 50 percent in 2018.

Meanwhile, Malta has room to improve when it comes to the level of perceived corruption and the effectiveness of policy formulation and implementation, according to the agency.

It also said that potential vulnerabilities associated with the large stock of external liabilities are tempered by the pivotal role of core domestic banks for private sector funding, significant external assets, and sustained current account surpluses.
Family members of the injured people in the mosque attack wait outside a hospital in Ismailia,Egypt, on Nov. 25, 2017. The death toll in a terrorist attack on a mosque on Friday in Egypt's North Sinai has risen to 305. (Xinhua/Zhao Dingzhe)

CAIRO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The terrorists in Egypt, particularly in North Sinai, seek to prove their strong existence by expanding terror attack targets to vast Muslims, said Egyptian political experts.

At noon on Friday, when Muslims gathered at mosques for massive weekly prayers, a bomb and gunfire attack against a mosque in a small village in North Sinai killed at least 305 worshippers, including children, and injured over 100 others.

The attack is the first against Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Egypt and the deadliest in the country's modern history.

Although no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, it is widely expected to have been carried out by a group self-styled as "Sinai State" or "Sinai Province," a Sinai-based group affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) regional terrorist group, which claimed responsibility for the largest terrorist operations in the country over the past few years.

"The mosque belongs to mystical Sufi branch of Sunni Islam, whose followers are considered heretics by the IS, unlike al-Qaida-aligned group that has recently appeared in Egypt and forcused on targeting security men," said Mohamed Gomaa, researcher at the Arab and Regional Unit of Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Gomaa was referring to the two-day confrontations that started on Oct. 20 near Al-Wahat highway on the outskirts of Giza in southern Cairo, and left 16 policemen dead and 13 wounded, in addition to one kidnapped but freed later by security forces.

Later security raids on the nearby mountainous areas around the Western Desert left 15 militants dead and finally caught alive a Libyan runaway, who confessed that his group carrying out the anti-police attack was inspired by Al-Qaeda's beliefs.

On Saturday, the Egyptian Prosecution said in a statement that the Sinai mosque attack was carried out by nearly 30 militants in camouflage who bore the IS black banner.

"The mosque attack may reflect an attempt of the IS branch in North Sinai to place itself on the world's map to attract financial support as well as loyalists from fleeing IS members amid the group's defeat in Syria and Iraq," Gomaa told Xinhua, noting that the Sinai-based IS branch is facing pressures from security raids and the appearance of an al-Qaida-inspired group.

Terror attacks started to rise in Egypt following the military ouster of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.

Since then, most of the attacks had focused on North Sinai's cities of Arish, Rafah and Sheikh Zuweid and killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, before starting later to extend to other provinces and target the Coptic minority in their churches and now the Muslim worshipers at a mosque for the first time.

Gomaa explained that the intensified security campaigns in northeastern Sinai and the tight security grip on the borders with Gaza might have forced the IS-affiliates to move their operations from North Sinai's traditional cities of Arish, Rafah and Sheikh Zuweid southward to a small village in Bir al-Abed town.

"Perhaps we could say that targeting mosques represents a new strategy of terrorists in Egypt through which they declare the expansion of their targets to include Muslim worshipers during Friday massive prayers," said the Egyptian researcher.

Hassan Nafaa, a political science professor at Cairo University, believes that the bloody mosque attack, although none has claimed responsibility, will fuel Egyptians' hatred and rejection of militant groups in the country, even including those who oppose the regime most.

"This crime, undoubtedly, is a further proof that everyone has become a terror target, regardless of their religions," Nafaa told Xinhua, adding that it does not matter which terrorist group may claim responsibility for it because they are all the same and they all deserve obliteration.

He stressed that the Egyptian society is certainly aware that terrorism and its groups pose the biggest danger to them and their future, and whether they support the regime or not they definitely reject such terror activities.

"Through the tragic mosque attack, the militant groups want to prove powerful enough to hit anytime anywhere in order to spread horror nationwide and undermine the government, but this is a failed strategy that will bring them opposite results of popular anger, hatred and rejection," Nafaa noted.
USS John S. McCain is seen at sea off Singapore's Changi Naval Base, on Aug. 21, 2017. Ten sailors were missing and five others injured after the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain collided with a merchant vessel in waters east of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore early on Monday, the U.S.navy said in a statement. (Xinhua/Then Chih Wey)

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- As many as 37 U.S. troops were lost in crashes of military non-combat planes flying routine operations so far this year, including the three missing American sailors in a U.S. Navy plane crash earlier this week.

That is more than 130 percent higher than the number killed in non-combat plane crashes at this point in 2016, according to a Fox News investigation report on Saturday.

The total number of U.S. military non-combat plane crashes also skyrocketed to 22, up 38 percent from this time last year, said the report.

The crash of the U.S. Navy 7th Fleet C-2 Greyhound cargo plane occurred 575 miles out to sea while flying from Japan to the USS Ronald Reagan on Wednesday. Eight on board survived and three others went missing.

Just two days before the Navy plane crash, an Air Force T-38 training jet crashed in Texas killing one pilot and injuring another. A mechanical failure is suspected. A similar Navy training jet, a T-45, crashed last month killing both pilots.

In August, an Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed off the coast of Hawaii, killing five soldiers. Late this month, a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey crashed off the east coast of Australia killing three Marines and rescue workers saved 23 others.

In July, a Marine Corps KC-130 transport plane crashed in the Mississippi Delta killing all 16 on board after reaching cruising altitude during a routine cross-country flight to California originating from North Carolina.

In April, U.S. media reported that instructor pilots refusing to fly the Navy's T-45 training jet, citing poison in the plane's oxygen system, the Navy grounded its fleet of some 200 jets for weeks afterwards.

"We are killing more of our own people in training than our enemies are in combat," John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and former naval aviator, said on the senate floor earlier this year.

The U.S. Navy is down 41 ships and 90,000 sailors since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the Fox News report, blaming the defense budget which has prioritized the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for years.
Photo taken on Dec. 22, 2015 shows crows perching on trees and street lamps in smog in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 22, 2015 (Xinhua/Li Xin)

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Light pollution at night is on an alarming rise worldwide, despite a transition to energy-saving LED lights, a new study has found.

Satellite images showed that the artificially lit surface of our planet grew by 2.2 percent per year in both size and brightness from 2012 to 2016, according to the study in the U.S. journal Science Advances.

The findings, released this week, were based on data from the first-ever calibrated satellite radiometer designed especially for nightlights, known as Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer (VIIRS), which is mounted on a U.S. satellite that has been circling our planet since October 2011.

Globally, the increase in light emission closely corresponds to the increase of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with the fastest growth occurring in developing countries.

Still, researchers noted they may underestimate the problem of light pollution, because the VIIRS instrument used in this study can not "see" light at wavelengths below 500 nanometers, something called "blue" light, which humans can see.

"Earth's night is getting brighter. And I actually didn't expect it to be so uniformly true that so many countries would be getting brighter," Christopher Kyba from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geoscience, who led the study, told reporters at a news teleconference.

The study found that lighting changes varied greatly by country, far exceeding the global rate in some cases, and with decreases in radiance in only a few, such as war-torn Yemen and Syria, said the study.

In some of the world's brightest nations, like the United States and Spain, radiance remained stable, while for most nations in South America, Africa and Asia, it grew, it said.

The study is among the first to examine the effects, as seen from space, of the ongoing worldwide transition to LED lighting, which requires significantly less electricity to yield the same quantity of light as older lighting technologies.

Proponents of LED lighting have argued that the high energy efficiency of LEDs would contribute to slowing overall global energy demand, given that outdoor lighting accounts for a significant fraction of the nighttime energy budget of the typical world city.

"While we know that LEDs save energy in specific projects, for example when a city transitions all of its street lighting from sodium lamps to LED, when we look at our data and we look at the national and the global level, it indicates that these savings are being offset by either new or brighter lights in other places," Kyba said.

Kyba expected that the upward global trend in use of outdoor lighting will continue, bringing a host of negative environmental consequences.

"There is a potential for the solid-state lighting revolution to save energy and reduce light pollution," he said. "But only if we don't spend the savings on new light."

The researchers warned that "loss of night" on a planetary scale could cause negative effects on human health, ecosystems and even astronomical research.

"This is concerning, of course," said Frank Holker of the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin, a co-author of the study.

"We are convinced that artificial light is an environmental pollutant with ecological and evolutionary implications for many organisms from bacteria to mammals, including us humans and may reshape entire social ecological systems."

The Arizona-based International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) has campaigned for the last 30 years to bring attention to the known and suspected hazards associated with the use of artificial light at night.

"Today's announcement validates the message IDA has communicated for years," IDA Executive Director Scott Feierabend said. "We hope that the results further sound the alarm about the many unintended consequences of the unchecked use of artificial light at night."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-26 05:57:14|Editor: yan

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ALGIERS, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Libya's National Liberation Front (FLN) and the National Democratic Rally (RND) have grabbed a landslide win in the sixth municipal and prefecture elections since 1989, which reshaped the country's political landscape.

The two ruling parties in Algeria won the municipal and prefecture elections amid remarkable drop of Islamist parties over the emergence of some newly established parties.

FLN snatched the top position by winning majority in 603 APCs, or 30.56 percent of the existing 1,451 municipalities nationwide, and won 711 seats at prefect assemblies, the equivalent of 35.48 percent of the exiting 48 APWs nationwide, Interior Minister Noureddine Bedoui told a press conference on Friday.

The second ruling party, namely the National Democratic Rally (RND) came second in these polls, as it collected majority in 451 municipal assemblies, with 26.21 percent of the total seats.

RND won 527 seats at prefect assemblies, with 26 per cent of the total seats.

These two ruling parties thus managed to grab majority both at local assemblies and at parliament.

However, the Islamist Movement for Society of Peace (MSP), the largest opposition power at parliament, fell to fifth place in the municipalities with only 49 APCs, (4.92 percent).

But the MSP maintained its good presence at prefect assemblies by winning third place with 152 seats, which constitutes 7.58 percent of the total seats.

Yet, the Islamist parties all together came third in these elections, regarding the number of seats obtained by the different Islamist parties at both municipal and prefect assemblies.

The newly established Mustakbal Front party (Future Front), a dissident party from FLN, won majority in 71 APCs.

The Mustakbal Front did well in these elections, as it managed to overcome the largest Islamist party, of MSP.

The leftist party of the Socialist Forces Front (FFS) won majority in 64 APCs, while the Algerian Popular Movement (MPA) grabbed majority in 62 municipalities.

The secular Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) won majority in 37 municipalities.

According to Interior Minister, the voter turnout hit 46.93 percent at municipal assemblies' poll, and 44.96 percent at prefect assemblies' poll.

He said that this ballot confirms more and more Algeria's determination to move forward to consolidate the rule of law and respect for democratic norms.

He said that "today, Algeria is on the correct construction path outlined by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika by establishing the values of peace and reconciliation which are the basis of stability and cohesion of society in light of the fluctuations experienced by the region."

He added "the Algerians have demonstrated in calm, responsible and optimistic way their will to look forward to a better future, rejecting all despair calls aiming at killing hope in this nation."

Some 22.8 million people are eligible to vote, while 10.5 millions cast their vote at APCs polls, while 10.1 participated in APWs polls, according to official figures.

These polls are the sixth of their kind since the Algeria adopted multiparty system in 1989.

As many as 165,000 candidates run for APC elections, while 16,000 candidates contested to grab seats at the 48 prefect assemblies nationwide.
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On Friday, a large crowd of Sufi Muslims was praying at a mosque in Bir al-Abed, Egypt, when a bomb ripped through their house of worship. As the panicked survivors fled the building, an estimated 25-30 attackers rained bullets down on them; when emergency workers arrived to treat the wounded, the militants reportedly opened fire on the ambulances.

It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypts modern history. At least 305 people were killed in the 20-minute assault, including 27 children, Egyptian authorities reported on Saturday. One-hundred-and-twenty-eight people were wounded.

Terrorism has been prevalent in Egypt in recent years, but the most vicious attacks have been directed at the nations Christian minority, and violence at mosques has been rare. Fridays attack was the first time militants in the country have ever targeted a Muslim congregation with a major assault.

As of this writing, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but an ISIS affiliate on the Sinai Peninsula, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, has killed Sufis in the region in recent months. Like many other Sunni extremist groups, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis regards the Sufis mystical interpretation of Islam as heretical. According to the New York Times, the group had previously singled out the district where the attack took place as a potential target. The assailants reportedly shouted Allahu Akbar during the assault on Friday.

The mass-casualty attack undermines the authority of Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has justified his regimes ruthless suppression of political dissent on the grounds of national security. Following Fridays attack, the Egyptian military claims it launched several air strikes against militants fleeing in four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Hours later, Donald Trump argued that the attack on a Sufi mosque in Egypt proved that the United States urgently needs to build a wall on its border with Mexico. The president further suggested that, in light of this attack on a religious minority group, his administration would take further steps to restrict anyone from the Middle East from seeking refuge in the United States.
Just asking questions. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The Washington Post published a story on Friday that details Attorney General Jeff Sessionss remaking of the Justice Department in his own nativist image. As the piece details, Sessions takes an anachronistic attitude to crime and punishment, following the lead of his frozen-in-the-1980s boss. He has directed federal prosecutors to seek the harshest possible punishment for low-level crimes, an approach that has fallen out of favor almost everywhere. He has backed the federal government out of oversight agreements with local police departments, to the dismay of even conservatives hungry for reform. He likes to scare Americans by hyping up a violent crime wave that doesnt exist.

But immigration is what really gets Sessions up in the morning. His hard-line views on the subject, which landed him on the fringe during his tenure as an Alabama senator, have become the animating force of the Trump coalition. It was Sessions who announced that the Trump administration was rolling back the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. As the Post points out, Sessions isnt just in favor of cracking down on illegal immigration; he wants to crack down on legal immigration. As recently as 2015, he endorsed the racist anti-Asian immigration statutes put in place by the federal government between the 1920s and 1960s.

One anecdote from the article perfectly encapsulates the attorney generals blinkered attitude:

In meetings with top Justice Department officials about terrorist suspects, Sessions often has a particular question: Where is the person from? When officials tell him a suspect was born and lives in the United States, he typically has a follow-up: To what country does his family trace its lineage?

While there are reasons to want to know that information, some officials familiar with the inquiries said the questions struck them as revealing that Sessions harbors an innate suspicion about people from certain ethnic and religious backgrounds.

Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in a statement, The Attorney General asks lots of relevant questions in these classified briefings.

Its not absurd to want to learn basic facts about a suspects background. Sessionss query, though, sticks out because of its inevitability. When presented with evidence that a suspect who was born and raised in this country has committed a terrorist act, Sessions immediately turns to the nefarious outside (read: nonwhite) world to explain away the roots of the problem.

Most of Sessionss actions at the Department of Justice have made it clear that he puts crimes committed by immigrants  like the gang MS-13  into a special category that is especially threatening to the fabric of society. (This is the American carnage that President Trump spoke of so darkly in his inauguration speech.) To Sessions, these crimes are doubly offensive: They shatter his cherished vision of law and order, and they were committed by people who, in his view, shouldnt be here in the first place.

The problem is that a man who believes that recent immigrants are more prone to violence than longtime citizens will tend to look for evidence where he expects to find it. And, as weve seen in the rest of the Trump administration, that sort of confirmation bias can have serious consequences.

To his credit, Sessions has seemed serious about at least one group of homegrown extremists: the white nationalists whose rally led to the death of Heather Heyer in August. That prosecution aside, though, his deep-seated suspicion of foreigners of any stripe will continue to manifest in irrational and unfair public policy.
Sister Carol (not real name) has been working in the paediatric clinic in one of the hospitals in central Uganda.

Carol wants her true identity to stay hidden if she is to talk to me freely, because she is afraid for her job. Before being transferred to the paediatrics department, Carol had been working as a midwife for more than five years at the hospital, starting immediately after her midwifery course.

It is also during this time that she met the love of her life and decided to start a family. Carol took her antenatal care from the same hospital since she was confident of her work colleagues, and trusted the hospital work.

My husband and I decided to get our services from here, because [we felt] if I was not confident of the system I was serving, then I was not worthy to be called a service provider. We talked about it and decided I would deliver our first child from this hospital. In any case, we had no alternative; we couldnt afford private services, she says.

When she was eight months pregnant, Carol took her mama kit suitcase into the midwives room at the hospital, just in case.

What I did not do was book a doctor who would work on me. Something I regret up to now. I arrived at the hospital in labour on a Wednesday evening and everything happened so fast. One of my colleagues, a nurse was taking her ward rounds when I arrived. My husband was still at work so I was all alone at the hospital, she remembers.

With the labour pains intensifying, Carol could not get a doctor immediately. Her colleague was trying to call for help too, but in vain.

Being a midwife, I knew what to do and yes, I started pushing. Since the doctor my colleague had contacted had promised to arrive shortly, I knew it was now upon me to [step in for myself] until the doctor arrived. But he never showed up shortly; by the time he did, it was too late. The baby was halfway out and it had suffocated because I delayed, she says, in tears.

Carol says although she had been reading stories of mothers and babies dying due to neglect, it had never occurred to her that she could be a victim.



Lightning strikes twice

Being a very religious couple, we prayed about it and decided not to blame anyone but to try again, she notes.

Six months later, Carol conceived again and the couple again chose to deliver at the same facility.

This time I talked to one of my close colleagues and asked them to be around whenever I would be due. But then, the baby came sooner than we expected, at seven months. It was 2am when I felt labour pains. I thought it was just false pains, so I just walked to the hospital like any expectant mother, to have a checkup, she says.

I dont know how I did not see this coming, yet I had examined so many mothers who would have premature babies. Whereas I would refer such mothers to bigger hospitals, it was too late for me. The baby was coming and my hospital did not have incubators. I looked on; no ambulance to rush me to the next hospital. My husband was upcountry.

Again, in the hospital where Carol had served with diligence, she lost her baby under avoidable circumstances. She had to undergo a caesarian section birth to remove the dead foetus and save her life.

The hospital I had served for so long had failed me in my desire to have children. When my husband got the news, it was devastating. We decided not to have any more kids until we were financially stable to foot medical bills in a private facility, she says.

After losing two babies from a hospital where she has served for more than seven years, ushering thousands of mothers into the family way, Carol lost trust in the services offered by her employer.

I filed my complaints to the district health monitoring unit and also to the ministry of health. But I only received promises, especially from the district health service commission, of how they were going to investigate the circumstances under which I had lost my babies, she adds.

At one point, Carol contemplated quitting her job.

I trusted the system of which I am part, so much. I thought the government was providing good services and the patients were just good at not appreciating. But after my experience, I realized I was wrong and thought of leaving the system completely; how would the patients trust my services after my experience? she ponders.



Do as I say

Carols story relates to so many female health workers who opt for private health facilities for their own maternal health needs. Dr Sarah Ogobi, the in-charge Luwero Health Center IV, says government should devise a system that allows female health workers to access decent maternity services.

When I was going to give birth to my second child, I had been posted here as an in-charge for three years. I wondered how I was going to have my child at this health center where I knew I had no access to a gynaecologist. Our ambulance is rarely functional, because of fuel and sometimes it has mechanical issues, she says.

Ogobi says she could not imagine herself going through what other mothers do when they seek maternal health services from the health center she manages.

It is terrible! Sometimes you look at a mother and you almost shed tears because you cannot help her even when you badly want too. Sometimes we have no power, no drugs, no referral means and in such situations, the health workers do what is in their power; if God wills and the baby and mother survive, we are happy, she says.

Ogobi chose to have her baby in Mulago National Referral hospitals private wing.

Even then, I had to pay Shs 600,000 for a normal delivery, with no consideration that I was a medical doctor.

She wants government to expedite health insurance for female health workers, who have to regularly seek expensive reproductive health services that their own points of service cannot give them.

I had to part with more than half of my miserable pay to have a child. I had to run away from my own health center that I manage, because I was afraid I could have complications that may not be managed.

Sister Ezeresi Nannyanja, the Deputy Principle Nursing Officer at Nakaseke hospital says apart from the general demands that need to be addressed by the government, there is need to prioritize female health workers.

I gave birth to all my children at Mengo hospital where I was working then, because I trusted the services. In fact, health workers are not even charged for maternity services at the hospital, something that not only motivates the workers, but also builds trust among other clients, because we use our own services, she says.

Mengo hospital is a private hospital run by the Church of Uganda. The same cannot be said of many public healthcare facilities, where drugs, essentials and staffing are not readily available.

Nannyanga says the female health workers at Nakaseke hospital prefer to give birth at private health facilities than the district hospital.

And the reasons are valid; our doctors are never here, especially in the night even when they have staff houses. But we understand that their pay is miserable and therefore they have to find other jobs to fill the financial gap, she says.

The female health practitioners concerns come during a national health workers strike, under their umbrella Uganda Medical Association, demanding better pay and better working conditions. The health workers want enhanced allowances for overtime, housing, transport, medical risk, and retention, among other demands.



beatricenyangoma@gmail.com
In Gulu, it is called chapati. In Karuma, it is called jigi jigi. Two terms coined to mean sex with a prostitute.

In the township of Karuma on the Gulu-Kampala highway, illicit sex is a hot cake. Easy money from thousands of construction workers is fuelling the boom, but beneath the happy-go-lucky surface, one will find heartbreaking stories of betrayal and disillusionment.

On any given day, at a little after 6:40pm, the township will be flooded with people wearing bright-coloured helmets, the sound of gumboots and orange reflector jackets as those on the day shift return and others on the night shift rush to catch the bus to the project site.

Some are late, so they run with stained white and silver climbers hanging lose on their shoulders making that clicking sound like that of a bell. It is used to be typical highway hamlet. Today, Karuma is bustling with life and a population that has more than tripled as a result of the 600MW Karuma Hydro Power dam construction.

Women at a popular hangout called Yellow bar in Karuma

According to Karuma LC-I chairperson Severino Opiyo, today there are over 11,000 residents in Karuma in Mutunda sub-county of Kiryandongo district, something that worries him because of the social cost on his area.

This town has all manner of tribes and languages because of the hydropower project. Prostitutes are everywhere. They rent these small huts; four of them in one yet we have children in this community, Opio told The Observer.

They are shameless, even during daytime, you find them bringing men in.

Many widows, school drop-outs, spinsters, separated or divorced women and school-age girls have been drawn to this place from as far as Nebbi, Gulu, Oyam, Wakiso, Kampala and Mbarara. The attraction is money through sex trade with especially workers on the dam project.

Sino Hydro Corporation, the contractor of the five-year $1.7 billion dam built with financing from Exim Bank of China, is expected to be onsite until the projected completion date of December 2018.

To meet that deadline, Karuma town is, in effect, staying awake 24 hours a day. The more than 6,000 workers from all parts of the country and beyond are either coming or going to work, and they pass through the town all the time.

The project site is never silent; the buzz of activity has had an unintended lucrative spill-off for many, especially sex workers who serve both day and night. In the night, the town throbs with humanity as prostitutes and vendors on the streets frying either chicken or chips compete for attention.

The rolex makers have seen it all; probably because they offer a more readily affordable snack. They tend to be familiar with the faces of the prostitutes.

These girls you see here are beautiful for nothing. They are all rotten inside. Look at that one. She has just joined the group. They come here to work in the local hotels but end up as prostitutes, a woman frying chicken said as she sneered at the girls.

Nearby, a tall, well-built woman with heavily bleached skin emerged from Yellow Bar, a few metres away. This bar is one of the watering holes patronised by the dam workers. The woman is known as the manager of the prostitutes and manages all their affairs, the chips lady told our reporter.

Despite her thick Luganda accent, she managed to express herself in a few English words.

I am Nakigudde from central there, she said when approached. She preferred to be known by her surname only.

A section of Karuma dam project employees in a market after work

Apart from the sex workers who join groups to stay, chapati seller Peter Ayeng told The Observer that others only arrive on days when the construction workers have been paid. Fresh with cash, many of these workers seek out loose women for a good time.

It is easy to tell when it is pay-day, Ayeng smiled  because then Karuma will be full of bleached, dark, brown and mostly skinny girls who go for the richer class of workers. There are those who he says arrive pale and weary but still get clients.

They appear and disappear when their mission is done and the cycle continues for another month when Sino Hydro workers get their money. Most of the workers here spend their money on prostitutes and alcohol. Some do not even go for work for days after receiving their pay, Ayeng said.

Easy and risky sex goes for between Shs 10,000 and Shs 30,000 a night or day. Chinese nationals are an exception; they are charged a stiffer rate, according to mobile money vendor, Simon Mukiibi who operates near the spot where teenage girls and women scramble for men.

Everyday, by 7:30pm, the flesh traders are on the prowl. Some are shy while others giggle or laugh loudly to attract men. At 11.45pm, this writer meets Adong (not real name), an 18-year-old P.6 school dropout from Kamdini in Oyam district.

She is out in the cold waiting for a man. Unlike other girls, Adong is eight months pregnant and a bit withdrawn, chewing something green and leafy. It forms a bulge on the side of her mouth as she speaks.

Mairungi, an addictive sleep depressant, is a common drug used by most prostitutes to keep awake. Adong started selling her body just six months ago. Until then, she had led a relatively calm life with her boyfriend  a worker on the dam.

Then he left. She was two months pregnant. I was working in a hotel. I used to earn only Shs 40,000 per month. This man came to me and said he wanted to love me and make me his wife. When I moved in to stay with him, I left my job because I was pregnant and always sickly, says Adong.

Her lover had moved her into a grass-thatched hut for Shs 25,000 in Karuma town but left when his contract ended, without paying the rent.

He told me to look for the father of this baby I am carrying because he is not ready to be a father to my child. He left me just like that and never came back. He has switched off his phone number that I know.

All she knows is that he was from somewhere in central Uganda. Adong is terribly worried that her child will grow up without knowing its father.

I dont know where their home is but I know he is a Muganda. I tried asking from his friends and they didnt know either. What will I tell this child when he or she grows up and begins to ask me about the father? she wonders with tears forming in her eyes.

Because she feared going back to her alcoholic, widowed mother in Oyam, Adong lingered around Karuma with hopes of getting a job as she awaits the birth of her baby. She desperately needed a job. A friend introduced her to prostitution.

I asked my friends to get for me any job to do because I did not have what to eat and the landlord was chasing me away from the house because I did not have a husband or someone to support me with rent. I came to my friend here and she asked me to join them in prostitution if I wanted money.

Prostitution is rife in Karuma town

So, Adong joined. She now hangs around and lives in Karuma Cheap Lodge for Shs 12,000 per day. It is easier for men to come to a lodge with a prostitute, she says.

Adongs story is hard luck one. She comes from a family of 12 children. When her father died, her mother turned to booze, became an alcoholic who abused her children. She blames her situation on her mother not caring for them.

When my father died, I was still young. My mother resorted to alcohol. I stopped in P.6 and started to look for ways of survival. She only cares about money and how a child gets the money they take to her is not her problem.

Because she does not have money, this lost soul fears to return to Oyam. She is also concerned about what her mother will think; especially the inevitable questions about the father of the child growing in her womb. At her young age, Adong says she has been used by several men who fail to pay her at the end. Some have been violent.

In the third trimester of her pregnancy, she thinks about the birth of her child. She has not decided where she will deliver from. Karuma Cheap Lodge would be uncomfortable for the baby.

And Adong shares a room with another working girl to cut costs. When she gets a man, which she says has become harder due to her condition, her friend steps out. Adong has modest plans for now: make Shs 60,000 to start renting her own house after birth.

Emily Akello, the manager of the lodge, says the prostitutes here come from far and wide.

For me I work in the lodge and my job is to welcome whoever comes as a customer. These girls who come to hire the lodge beg me to allow them use the rooms for prostitution with the promise that they will pay me after getting a man to sleep with to get the money to pay the lodge. These women have different backgrounds. Some are divorced, others are widows, and some have given birth to children but is at their parents home.

She adds that most of the women suffer in the hands of the men who sleep with them and fail to pay yet they cannot claim the money since prostitution is illegal in Uganda.

I feel pain when they explain their situation to me. Some are suffering because a man can sleep with her and refuse to give her the money. She has to just let go because, as a woman, she cannot begin to fight the man to demand for the money.

Akello adds that most of the women are exposed to sexually transmitted diseases and that syphillis is rampant. Many cannot pay for treatment.

Disease-ridden as the chips seller said, Karumas working girls could very easily be part of the countrys HIV/Aids statistics released by the Uganda Aids Commission (UAC). The UAC says that 570 girls and young women aged 15 to 24 get infected with HIV every week.

Knowing this, one can only wonder what the power dam project has brought upon Karuma.
The Uganda Medical Association (UMA) has temporarily called off a strike that had paralyzed services in government health facilities across the country. The doctors laid down their tools on November 6 to protest against low pay and poor working conditions.



The decision to halt the strike was declared by the National Executive Committee of the UMA at a meeting held at Silver Springs hotel today.



Dr Ekwaro Obuku, the president of the UMA asked doctors to resume work between now and December 16, when they expect to conclude negotiations with the government on the demands to improve the general welfare of medical personnel.

Dr Ekwaro Obuku addressing the media earlier "We have talked to government and they have assured us that consultations to address our demands are going on", said Obuku. "We have talked to government and they have assured us that consultations to address our demands are going on", said Obuku.

A total of 113 doctors out of 205 doctors who attended the general assembly voted to suspend the strike. 76 voted to continue with the strike while six abstained.

"The general assembly voted in favour of suspending the industrial action, meaning doctors will return to hospitals to attend to patients as soon as possible. However, we are aware government will give us feedback on December 15 and doctors are saying on 16th December is when the suspension of industrial action will be lifted automatically", Obuku said.



Dr Obuku called for respect during the ongoing negotiations between the two sides.



"Ministry of Health, youre very quick to harass doctors yet youre doctors. Please hold your pens, we have finished business with government, we want to take further to Parliament, State House etcetera until we see that the key issues are handled. We want to see this Shs 41 billion in reality that supplies are being taken to hospitals. It is useless for doctors to return to hospitals without nothing to work with. This is key. We have seen patients dying", he added.

The medical officers laid down their tools about three weeks ago demanding that a senior consultant doctor or professor be paid Shs 48 million; provided a five-bedroom house, 4.0cc vehicle and three domestic workers. The current rate is Shs 3.4 million for a senior consultant; consultant Shs 2.6 million, and a medical officer Shs 1.1 million.

The doctors demanded salaries for nurses and midwives enhanced to about Shs 6.5 million besides providing them a three-bedroom house, 2.0cc vehicle and one domestic worker. So far, the government has announced that Shs 4.2 billion has been released to the Ministry of Health to cater for allowances of senior house officers and an additional Shs 41 billion to cater for emergency supplies. It also reaffirmed that the entry level salary for doctors will be increased from Shs 1.3 million to Shs 5 million effective next financial year. Allowances for medical interns will also be reinstated to Shs 940,000, having been summarily slashed to about Shs 740,000.

State minister of Finance David Bahati, who represented government at the meeting called for patience and understanding during the negotiations adding that doctors need to trust their leaders to work in their best interest in addressing their grievances.



"There are people who are saying now-now-now...but that will not work. We need to be patient and trust each other." He assured the doctors that government is willing to work with UMA to address all their demands.



"You have brought us to our knees and now we are asking you to work with us. We have identified UMA as a body that we can work with to address all your demands."



Bahati pronounced that government and the doctors collectively realized that the challenge of availability of medical supplies is a result of shortfalls in the supply chain which is going to be reviewed in order to ensure steady supply in all facilities.



However, the minister expressed reservations on the suggested disbandment of the State House Health Monitoring Unit, saying that the matter requires a comprehensive process before a decision is taken. He asked doctors with complaints on the operations of the unit to lodge them within the 10 days in the office of the security minister.



However, Dr Derrick Obumba, a leader of interns at Hoima hospital says they will only call off the industrial action if government assures them in writing that their grievances will be addressed.




Developments in Zimbabwe draw attention to the precarious realities of the day.

First, losers in politics do not concede defeat. Democracy is such that there are losers and winners. But a trend is growing where, right from before campaign season, through nominations, campaigns, voting and declaration, those who have not garnered sufficient numbers from the electorate make false and preemptive claims.

Globally, this tendency is a threat to stability. Even in places where the culture of concession is institutionalized such as in the USA, to date, some quarters have never accepted that President Donald Trump carried the day in last years election.

A perfect election is what everyone looks out for, but errors and omissions usually do come about. As long as nobody is willing to accept the voters verdict unless it favours them, stable leadership is at stake.

Elections are contested under political parties, but most of the parties are in shreds internally. Belonging appears to be for convenience, and not conviction. The NRM, as the light of politics in Uganda, should take note. Intrigue must end unless we are suffering power fatigue.

The partys national chairman remains the unifying factor, standing above factional politics. With him in control, we can avoid being dragged low like Mugabe was. Camps within Zimbabwes Zanu-PF precipitated Mugabes downfall as he gravitated towards a weak link.

On discipline, no organized society functions or survives without discipline. Zanu-PF has always been an organized group with considerable control of state affairs but, at the last moment, the collective responsibility gave way to outside influence, hence the showdown and a palace coup.

Locally, we just had a glaring example of indiscipline. A member of parliament, Raphael Magyezi (Igara West), in fulfillment of his duties as a peoples representative and lawmaker, tabled a private members bill (for the amendment of Article 102(b) of the Constitution).

His proposed law was endorsed by cabinet and NRMs central and national executive committees. The NRM caucus, to which Magyezi belongs, had given him timely backing too.

But that did not stop some members from going off track. And in doing so, they have gone to extremes; they side with the opposition, revel in red ribbons and speak ill of other members.

These are people for whom the national chairman of the party campaigned and they hold the party card to date. But they feel that the party owes them the world while they are free to offend. Dissent is allowed and open; but these are extremists we are talking about. If not tamed, they are enemies within and very dangerous.

In Zimbabwe, youths werent party to the revolution but they have since assumed key leadership positions. They wish to have a major say on the direction of Zanu-PF even though they did not participate in its struggles.

Many of them are not well-versed with Zanu-PFs history and ideology but they were working on a revolution within a revolution, thereby clashing with the hand that nurtured them.

Youths must educate themselves on the core principles of revolutionary parties. NRMs principles are nationalism, social and economic transformation, pan-Africanism and democracy.

A youthful revolution devoid of the key values and principles of management, cohesion and discipline is a disaster. They are easy to mislead, which may imperil a country.

Another dangerous trend is abuse and misuse of the media, now made the more absurd with social media. While Zimbabwes military commanders denied that they were targeting President Mugabe, the media was giving a different narrative, thereby precipitating a different situation from what was envisaged. Anti-government circles always use the media to discredit and overwhelm it.

In Uganda, the opposition used the media to incite and mislead the public on the bill on land amendment until President Museveni intervened and neutralized the threat. Now they are quiet, hanging on age limit.

They falsely claim that the amendment qualifies as instilling life presidency, a mythical state inapplicable in todays Uganda. When Museveni hits the airwaves on this, they will be left in disarray.

The office of the national chairman will remain busy looking into these things. The broader membership is called upon to wake up to the reality and take remedial action. Our opponents should not shape our party for us.



The author is a senior presidential advisor and personal assistant to the NRM national chairman.
Sansan Inc, a Japan-based provider of cloud-based business card management services, has launched its business card organizer and professional networking app Eight in India. The app, which helps the user store the business cards and stay connected with their network, will be available in both Android and iOS versions in the country.

According to the company, Eight app combines business card scanning features with social media functionality to connect users and enable them to capitalise on a superior networking platform. The app has implemented AI driven technologies and offers a new way to connect with business connections by converting analog business card information to digital.

"We have two services, one is B2B and the other is B2C, but here this time we are launching B2C. While it is a utility app it is also a network service, which is more like LinkedIn. After you put your business cards on Eight, you may also connect with the people on the business cards and can interact with each other. So it is a utility app and also a business networking tool," said Chika Terada, CEO, Sansan Inc, announcing the launch.

The users can digitise the business cards by either scanning or clicking the picture and sending it on the app, where it is stored on cloud. The users can later use the app to connect with these contacts using its instant messaging feature and can get more insights about them from the Facebook-like real-time news feed. The app also sends recommendations of the new connections to its users.

Sansan is targeting 1 million users in next 6 months for its app, Chika informed. The app is already functional in Japan and has about 2 million users in the country.

The app was first introduced in Japan five years ago and claims to be the biggest professional network in Japan with user numbers double to that of LinkedIn.

The company is also launching a business card scan partner programme in India to escalate the speed of digitising business cards. The company would partner with co-working spaces, chain shops such as coffee or tea chains where business persons come by, and facilities where more than 100 people visit per day to set up these scanners, where a user can scan his business cards and save them on the app.

Sansan Inc was founded in 2007 and has raised a funding of $98 million so far. In its recent round in August, the company raised a total of $38 million, which will be used for its international expansion.
Deputy Chairman of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), Mr. Samuel Asare Akuamoah, has underlined the need to focus priority effort on helping everybody to have better understanding of their civic responsibilities.



He said it was the way forward to the get people to uphold national values - do the right things to protect the nations democracy and sustain it on the path of socio-economic progress.



Mr. Akuamoah was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sidelines of the Eastern Regional senior high schools (SHS) Project Citizen Showcase competition in Koforidua.



The annual competition, organized by the NCCE is meant not only to empower students to learn how to develop public policies to solve community problems, but also learn how citizens could have power to monitor and influence public policy making in the community.



The other high point is that it would aid them to develop intellectual and participatory skills that promote authentic research, critical thinking, effective communication and reflective thinking.



The expectation is that the project would enable them to have strong democratic inclination that encourages the exercise of fundamental rights and responsibilities with commitment and confidence.



The chosen theme for this years competition is Restoring our Ghanaian values: the role of the youth in nation building.



Mr. Akuamoah suggested a re-introduction of civic education in the school curriculum.



He thanked the European Union for the support it had been giving to the activities and programmes of the Commission.

Source: GNA









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La Union Europea Premio Nobel de la Paz?



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Algun dia Colombia volvera a la ideologia de Bolivar







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LOS REVOLUCIONARIOS NO TOMAN CACA-COLA No se trata solamente de un capricho, sino de una sana actitud en todos los sentidos. Desde la solidaridad con el pueblo colombiano donde la empresa Caca-Cola ha cometido los mas grandes abusos contra sus trabajadores incluyendo el presunto secuestro y asesinato de los dirigentes del sindicato, hasta la proteccion de la salud de nuestros hijos, enviciados por ese jarabe de cola y azucar, que les produce obesidad prematura. Pensemos tambien los revolucionarios, que ese dinero que gastamos en los refrescos es utilizado por esas empresas para financiar el terrorismo en nuestro pais. Es cierto, no se trata solo de la Caca-Cola, sino tambien de la cerveza, de los cigarrillos y todos esos articulos innecesarios y mas que eso, daninos para nuestra salud. Podriamos incluso pensar en un dia de parada para cada uno de ellos. Es cuestion de irnos organizando. Pero para empezar, que tal si dejamos de comprar Caca-Cola y sus similares?



























Cuando lo extraordinario se vuelve cotidiano...



Discurso del Acto de Grado en Barinas en 12 de Febrero del 2005 Queridos Graduandos:



Mas que un discurso, quiero dirigirles algunas palabras que escribi anoche, despues de visitar en las clinicas, a los estudiantes heridos, a consecuencia de los enfrentamientos con la policia de hace apenas dos dias.



Me ha tocado por razones del destino, ser la persona que les otorgue el titulo que bien merecieron con sus estudios. Y me siento sumamente orgulloso de serlo. Me consta que la Universidad de Los Llanos Occidentales Ezequiel Zamora, a pesar de lo dicho por los enemigos de esta universidad, es una universidad de primera.



No tendremos la mejor planta fisica, en los salones hace calor. En el comedor hace calor. Pero no es en lo material que las cosas deben valorarse. El mayor capital es el ser humano. Y en eso, nuestra UNELLEZ, lo digo con conocimiento de causa, esta sobrada. Los llaneros venezolanos son nobles, valientes, de coraje.



En la UNELLEZ hacen vida, en este momento, aproximadamente 67000 personas. El 97% de ellas son estudiantes. Jovenes que, como Ustedes hasta el dia de hoy, buscan ese titulo, que constata los anos de dedicacion y de estudio.



Los jovenes son el rio de la vida, ustedes graduados deben ser los capitanes de esos barcos que naveguen por el rio de la vida.



Nuestra Patria atraviesa momentos muy dificiles porque decidio dejar de ser esa matrona de edad vetusta y complaciente, para ser joven, rebelde y altanera. Nuestra imagen ya no es la de una acaudalada ricachona mayamera. En nuestro rostro brilla ahora la sonrisa del Che Guevara, con su diente delantero torcido, su pelo largo y su boina con la estrella.



Entender esto, a mi me ha tomado practicamente toda la vida. Tengo 53 anos, y ya perdi mi oportunidad de derramar sangre joven a causa de un ideal.



Ustedes son jovenes, estan en la flor de la vida. No cometan por favor el error de renunciar a su instinto de rebelion. El Che Guevara fue Ministro de a Economia en Cuba. Los billetes y las monedas se adornaban con su rostro. Nada de eso le importo. Primero fue a Angola donde paso un penoso ano de combate. Despues se fue a Bolivia, donde encontro la muerte. El Che era el ultimo que comia, el que cargaba la mochila mas pesada. Siempre se sacrificaba por los demas en un estoicismo que mas parecia fervor religioso que ideologia marxista.



Si quieren un modelo de vida. Ahi lo tienen.



Dije hace unos momentos que el 97% de la poblacion de la UNELLEZ es estudiante. Se imaginan Ustedes la Universidad que podriamos tener si todos los estudiantes tuvieran la abnegacion, la combatividad del Che?



Los momentos que se avecinan van a requerir de una gran unidad del pueblo venezolano. La alternativa de continuar siendo libres o regresar a la pobreza se nos planteara en los proximos dias de forma enmascarada, o quizas peor, desenmascarada, vestida con uniforme de soldado del Imperio.



Por nuestra parte podemos esperar lo mejor. La macroeconomia no podria ir mejor, la justicia social ha mejorado notablemente. Las misiones ocupan un papel muy importante en el pago de dicha justicia social. Aqui en Barinas ya hemos cumplido con dos de las misiones, la mision Robinson y la mision Sucre. No hay analfabetismo y no hay exclusion en la educacion superior, en estas tierras de Zamora.



Pero ay malhaya! Son precisamente estos exitos los que nos hacen mas antipaticos al Imperio. Para ellos, somos inclusive un mal ejemplo que se esta contagiando al resto del continente y cuidado sino al resto del mundo.



Nunca venceremos al Imperio. Estara siempre ahi, acechando. Por lo menos hasta que el mismo no se autodestruya. Porque, sepanlo senores, el neoliberalismo es canibal. Cuando le ataque el hambre, se devorara a si mismo.



Ustedes, queridos graduandos, a partir de hoy pasan a conformar la elite profesional que debe sostener este pais en los proximos cuarenta o cincuenta anos. Anos decisivos para el logro de nuestra libertad y del rescate de nuestra Soberania.



No se dejen comprar. No se dejen corromper. No se dejen gritar. No se dejen pisar. Que nadie les diga que comer, o que vestirse, o que leer. Sean siempre autenticos, rebeldes, contestatarios. Pero eso si, profundamente patriotas, dignos de ser hijos de Bolivar.



Muchas gracias y que Dios los bendiga.





Alguna duda?



Medio siglo de Holocausto Palestino



Oscar Zanartu Nacio en Caracas en 1960. Ha realizado exposiciones individuales en las galerias Minotauro, Clave y San Francisco, y en salas de Coro, estado Falcon, y Puerto Ordaz, estado Bolivar. En Paris su obra ha sido exhibida en el Centro Cultural Tanagra, en la Exposicion Cite Internationale des Arts, en las galerias De Mars y Arver Space, al igual que en la Galeria Municipal Levallois, en Levallois Perret (Francia). En muestras colectivas, su obra se ha expuesto en Belgica, Francia, Estados Unidos y Venezuela; en Caracas intervino en la exposicion "Del genesis a la memoria", 1995, organizada por la Fundacion La Previsora. En 1982 obtuvo el Premio Nacional Critven y en 1990 la Mencion de Honor Jose Antonio Paez, en la Embajada de Venezuela en Paris. En 1991 se le concedio el primer premio de Pintura Itinerante, en Levallois Perret, Francia.



OZ1



OZ2



OZ3



OZ4



Homenaje a Jason Galarraga



La Victoria de Samotracia



Odalisca



Mas fotos de la nevada del pasado agosto 2008



























La Sierra Nevada de Merida



Nuestro precioso Churum Meru



Homenaje a Picasso



Autoretrato



Sabes lo que bebes en una Coca-Cola?

La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar.

Mi profesion?

Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos.

Sal en la Coca Cola?

A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar.

De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla:

Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gusto

Acido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido)

azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa)

Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantas

Mucha Cafeina

Conservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o Potasio

Dioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebe

Sal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracion

El uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja.

Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos.

Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja.

En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero).

Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma.

La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate.

Bebidas Light?

Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el

Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal.



Publicado por loretahur



En realidad, la formula secreta de la Coca-Cola se puede detallar en 18 segundos en cualquier espectrometro optico, y basicamente la conocen hasta los perros. Lo que ocurre es que no se puede fabricar igual, a no ser que uno disponga de unos cuantos millones de dolares para ganarle la demanda que te metera la Coca-Cola ante la justicia (ellos no perderian).La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar.Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos.A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar.De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla:Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gustoAcido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido)azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa)Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantasMucha CafeinaConservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o PotasioDioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebeSal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracionEl uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja.Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos.Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja.En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero).Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma.La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate.Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el aspartamo , despues de tres semanas mojado, pasa a tener gusto de trapo viejo sucio.Para evitar eso, se agregan una infinidad de otros productos quimicos, uno para alargar la vida del aspartamo, otro para neutralizar el color, otro para mantener el tercer quimico en suspension porque sino el fondo de la gaseosa quedaria oscuro, otro para evitar la cristalizacion del aspartamo, otro para realzar el sabor, dar mas intensidad al acido citrico o fosforito que perderia su sabor por el efecto de los cuatro productos quimicos iniciales... y asi sucesivamente.Un consejo final !!Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal.Publicado por loretahur

MARGARINA o MANTEQUILLA La margarina fue producida originalmente para engordar a los pavos; cuandolo que hizo en realidad fue matarlos.Las personas que habian puesto el dinero para la investigacion quisieronrecobrarlo asi que empezaron a pensar en una forma de hacerlo.Tenian una sustancia blanca, que no tenia ningun atractivo como comestible,asi que le anadieron el color amarillo, para venderselo a lagente en lugar de la mantequilla.Que tal esa?... Ahora han sacado algunos nuevos sabores para vender mas alos incautos como usted y yo.CONOCE USTED la diferencia entre la margarina y la mantequilla?Siga leyendo hasta el final... porque se pone bastante interesante!Comparacion entre mantequilla y margarina:

1.- Ambas tienen la misma cantidad de calorias.

2.- La mantequilla es ligeramente mas alta en grasas saturadas: 8 gramos,comparada con los 5 gramos que tiene la margarina.

3.- Comer margarina en vez de mantequilla puede aumentar en 53% el riesgo deenfermedades coronarias en las mujeres, de acuerdo con un estudiomedico reciente de la Universidad de Harvard.

4.- Comer mantequilla aumenta la absorcion de gran cantidad de nutrientesque se encuentran en otros alimentos.

5.- La mantequilla provee beneficios nutricionales propios mientras lamargarina tiene solo los que le hayan sido anadidos al fabricarla.

6.- La mantequilla sabe mucho mejor que la margarina y mejora el sabor deotros alimentos.7.- La mantequilla ha existido durante siglos mientras que la margarinatiene menos de 100 anos.

Ahora... sobre la margarina:

1.- Es muy alta en acidos grasos trans. (Si, esos que recien ahora loscientificos descubrieron que son malisimos y los gobiernoscomenzaron a prohibirlos) .

2.- Triple riesgo de enfermedades coronarias.

3.- Aumenta el colesterol total y el LDL (el colesterol malo) y disminuye elHDL (el colesterol bueno).

4.- Aumenta en cinco veces el riesgo de cancer.

5.- Disminuye la calidad de la leche materna.

6.- Disminuye la reaccion inmunologica del organismo.

7.- Disminuye la reaccion a la insulina.

Y he aqui el factor mas inquietante (AQUI ESTA LA PARTE MAS INTERESANTE! ):A la margarina le falta UNA MOLECULA para ser PLASTICO...!!Solo este hecho es suficiente para evitar el uso de la margarina de porvida, y de cualquier otra cosa que sea hidrogenada (esto significaque se le anade hidrogeno, lo cual cambia la estructura molecular de lassubstancias).Usted puede ensayar lo siguiente:Compre un poco de margarina y dejela en el garaje o en un sitio sombreado.Dentro de unos dias notara dos cosas:

* No habra moscas; ni siquiera esos molestos bichos se le acercaran (esto yale debe decir a usted algo).

* No se pudre ni huele mal o diferente porque no tiene valor nutritivo; nadacrece en ella. Ni siquiera los diminutos microorganismos puedencrecer en ella.Por que? Porque es casi plastico!!



No a la guerra, Si a la Paz



Misterios de la ciencia...



Los costos de la guerra



medicos y capitalismo...



Capitalismo...



medicos (2)



Quien educa a nuestros hijos?



Los Medios...



Sin Palabras...



Chistes feministas

- Cual es el problema, Eva?

- Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz...

- Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas.

- Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas...

- Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti.

- Que es un hombre?

- Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente.

- Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente.

- Cual es el truco?.

- Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion.

- Cual?

- Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer.





Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas?  Porque todos son unos cerdos

Un dia, en el Paraiso, Eva llamo a Dios: Tengo un problema.- Cual es el problema, Eva?- Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz... - Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas.- Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas...- Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti.- Que es un hombre?- Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente.- Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente.- Cual es el truco?.- Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion.- Cual?- Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer.Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas?  Porque todos son unos cerdos

Ellas...



Ellas (2)...



Tres venganzas femeninas VENGANZA NUMERO 1

Hoy mi hija cumple 21 anos y estoy muy contento porque es el ultimo pago de pension alimenticia que le doy, asi que llame a mi hijita para que viniera a mi casa y cuando llego le dije:

-Hijita, quiero que lleves este cheque a casa de tu mama y que le digas que: Este es el ultimo maldito cheque que va recibir de mi en todo lo que le queda de su puta vida!!! Quiero que me digas la expresion que pone en su rostro.

Asi que mi hija fue a entregar el cheque. Yo estaba ansioso por saber lo que la bruja tenia que decir y que cara pondria.

Cuando mi hijita entro, le pregunte inmediatamente: -Que fue lo que te dijo tu madre?

-Me dijo que justamente estaba esperando este dia para decirte que no eres mi papa!



VENGANZA NUMERO 2

Un hombre que siempre molestaba a su mujer, paso un dia por la casa de unos amigos para que lo acompanaran al aeropuerto a dejar a su esposa que viajaba a Paris.

A la salida de inmigracion, frente a todo el mundo, el le desea buen viaje y en tono burlon le grita:

- Amor, no te olvides de traerme una hermosa francesita Ja ja ja!!

Ella bajo la cabeza y se embarco muy molesta.

La mujer paso quince dias en Francia.

El marido otra vez pidio a sus amigos que lo acompanasen al aeropuerto a recibirla.

Al verla llegar, lo primero que le grita a toda voz es:

- Y amor me trajiste mi francesita??

- Hice todo lo posible, - contesta ella - ahora solo tenemos que rezar para que nazca nina.



VENGANZA NUMERO 3

El marido, en su lecho de muerte, llama a su mujer. Con voz ronca y ya debil, le dice: - Muy bien, llego mi hora, pero antes quiero hacerte una confesion.

- No, no, tranquilo, tu no debes hacer ningun esfuerzo.

- Pero, mujer, es preciso - insiste el marido - Es preciso morir en paz.

Te quiero confesar algo.

- Esta bien, esta bien. Habla!

- He tenido relaciones con tu hermana, tu mama y tu mejor amiga.

- Lo se, lo se Por eso te envenene, hijo de puta!!!



machismo y cibernetica



Chiste machista La NASA ha enviado al espacio una mision experimental tripulada por dos monos y una mujer.Apenas abandona la atmosfera, se establece comunicacion con Houston.

-Atencion, simio 1, verifique sistemas hidraulicos, controle adecuada presion de los propulsores de arranque. A 60.000 pies disminuya un 25% la velocidad.

El simio hace la sena de OK.

-Atencion, simio 2, nivele al cruzar la estratosfera y active sistemas anticongelantes. No olvide monitorear sistemas de comunicacion e indicadores de presion. Comprendido?.

El simio hace la sena de OK.

-Atencion, Houston llamando a mujer: no se olvide.

-Mujer: Si, si, ya se! -interrumpe enojada- que no me olvide darles de comer a estos monos de mierda y que no se me vaya a ocurrir tocar nada!.



.Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti.

Un abogado mantiene un romance con su secretaria.Al poco tiempo, esta queda embarazada y el abogado, que no quiere que su esposa se entere, le da a la secretaria una buena suma de dinero y le pide que se vaya a parir a Italia.Esta pregunta: Y como voy a hacerte saber cuando nazca el bebe ? El abogado responde: Para que mi mujer no se entere, tan solo enviame una postal y escribe por detras: Spaghetti. Y no te preocupes mas, que yo me encargare de todos los gastos.

Pasan los meses y una manana la esposa del abogado lo llama al bufete, algo exaltada: Querido, acabo de recibir el correo y hay una postal muy extrana viene desde Italia. La verdad, no entiendo que significa.El abogado, tratando de ocultar sus nervios, contesta:Espera a que llegue a casa, a ver si yo entiendoCuando el hombre llega a casa y lee la postal, cae al suelo fulminado por un infarto.Llega una ambulancia y se lo lleva. Ya en el hospital, el jefe de cardiologia se queda consolando a la esposa y le pregunta cual ha sido el evento que precipito tan masivo ataque cardiaco.

Entonces la esposa saca la postal y se la muestra diciendole: No me explico, doctor; el solamente leyo esta postal. Vea usted mismo lo que trae escrito.Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti."Tres con salchicha y albondigas y dos con almejas



Gol !!!!



Chistes de Borrachos Entra un borracho a su casa todo manchado con lapiz labial por todos lados hecho un desastre, y la mujer le pregunta:-Hombre que te paso?Y el borracho le responde:-No me vas a creer, me pelee con un payaso!



Este es un borracho que entra en un bar y le dice al camarero:-Me da cinco copas de whisky?Al rato:-Me da cuatro?Al rato:-Me da tres copas?Despues:-Me da dos copas?Luego le dice:-Me da una copa?Y le dice al camarero:-Ves? Cuanto menos bebo, mas borracho estoy!


As he raised estate tax rates to fund work programs during the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, The transmission from generation to generation of vast fortunes by will, inheritance or gift is not consistent with the ideals and sentiments of the American people.

Its plenty consistent with the ideals and sentiments of President Trump, who began lying about the merits of an estate tax repeal on the day he began the tax overhaul effort.

To protect millions of small businesses and the American farmer, we are finally ending the crushing, the horrible, the unfair estate tax, or as it is often referred to, the death tax, Mr. Trump said in late September.

Congressional Republicans echoed Mr. Trumps whoppers.

You actually create jobs by getting rid of this death tax, said the House speaker, Paul Ryan. Because you know what kills one family business from passing their business on to the next generation? The estate tax.

For too long, this tax has threatened family-owned businesses  including women- and minority-owned businesses  from being passed down to their children and grandchildren, said Representative Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which produced the tax legislation.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. So who actually does pay estate tax?

1. The top 0.2 percent. Some 11,300 American estates  about 0.2 percent  are estimated to be subject to the estate tax this year. The top tenth of income earners pay nearly 90 percent of estate taxes collected, and about one fourth of that total is paid by the richest 0.1 percent. The tax itself has been whittled down significantly. Until 2001, it applied to inheritances starting at $650,000 for an individual. Today, an inheritance must be larger than $5.49 million for an individual or $10.98 million for a couple for their heirs to be liable for any estate tax at all. Opponents of the tax say it taxes earnings twice. But more than half of the biggest estates consist of unrealized capital gains  like stocks that have appreciated without being sold  that have never been previously taxed.

2. A few dozen farmers, and even fewer minority business owners. About 80 family farmers or small-business people would be subject to the estate tax this year, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center  a far cry from the millions Mr. Trump wrongly claims. The biggest winners in an estate tax repeal wouldnt be struggling ranchers, minority contractors or mom-and-pop grocers. Theyd be people like Mr. Trumps kids, unless theyre.

3. Morons. Only morons pay the estate tax, Gary Cohn, Mr. Trumps chief economic adviser, told Senate Democrats, meaning, it was later explained, rich people with really bad tax planning. Many of the very wealthy use loopholes, like trusts, to avoid paying inheritance tax. We dont know where Mr. Trumps kids would stand because Mr. Trump has never fulfilled his promise to publicly release his tax information.

An estate tax repeal would provide a tax windfall of more than $3 million apiece for the top 0.2 percent of earners, and more than $20 million for the wealthiest Americans. It would cost $239 billion in revenue over a decade. It offers nothing for middle-class people, except more evidence of Mr. Trumps and Republicans bad faith.

This editorial was published in the New York Times on Nov. 20.
Editor:

Your story, Post-Star, Oct. 27, "Campus officers to be armed" is worthy of some comments.

The first consideration is what is the intent of arming the college security force? If it is to prevent a deranged person from shooting up the college, then forget it. Just as a well dedicated and highly trained fire department cannot prevent fires, an armed force cannot prevent shootings. The best value of well trained armed officers is to stop the carnage of a shooting or at least slow it down. There is also a small degree of value of armed officers just as a deterrent to some.

It must be realized that the weapon being carried by security officers is never to be used to frighten or intimidate but a tool to kill with in order to save a life or lives during a calamity. These officers must not only be trained in the proficiency use of their weapon but most importantly the psychology of when to shoot. This can be the most difficult part of an officers training.

If these people can be found and trained, you will have provided the best kind of security available for the college, its personnel and students.

Joe Rota, Granville, retired New Jersey police officer
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:

Home Regional News East
A fake, or "magic" $100 bill was given to Bettendorf School Board members recently and each of the seven directors was asked what they would do with the money.

An exercise like this is part of a new learning session, added to the agenda at school board meetings. It debuted on Nov. 6 and is directed by Superintendent Michael Raso.

It is useful for the board, in terms of team-building, and learning to work with one another, Raso said. The scenarios provided come from the Iowa Association of School Boards, Des Moines.

The Nov. 6 session was about "identifying priorities," and is part of the At-the-Board-Table online tools, according to Harry Heiligenthal, leadership development director for the state association.

With the fake $100 bill, board members were to decide where to place the funds, either in infrastructure, or course offerings, and to explain their reasoning.

The lesson is a springboard to discussion, Raso said. According to the association, every dollar the board allocates, every minute the board spends to discuss priority issues, has the potential to make a significant difference in the district.

New board members Richard Lynch and Andrew Champion, with Board President Gordon Staley, put 80 percent of their "funds" into infrastructure, and 20 percent into course offerings in the district.

"Property is the biggest, but course offerings get students ready for the workforce," Staley said.

This year's board has three new members, and Raso said there needs to be time to discuss issues. Such discussion items are also beneficial to the district's leadership team, and helps to guide their work, he said.

Heiligenthal, of the state association, said while all schools in Iowa had elections in September, two-thirds of them now have new board members. Districts of all sizes use the online tools provided by the association in different ways.

School boards, such as Bettendorf, use them during a meeting or they integrate the lessons into a work session or retreat, Heiligenthal said.

It's a proactive way to stay sharp and talk about what school boards might do to provide the best leadership possible, he said.

"This, having been a board election year, the feedback we've gotten are that these are good tools to orient new board members to the work and serve as a refresher course to other board members," Heiligenthal said.
CEDAR RAPIDS  Investigators heard several reports of sexually suggestive comments by Iowa Republican caucus staff members and senators, but found no provable incidents of sexual harassment in the state Senate, a review released Friday shows.

The three-page report features staff members recollections of at least seven incidents of sexually suggestive or offensive comments, but no allegations of physical harassment. The report reveals two incidents in which what appears to be senators made offensive comments, but their names are censored.

The report shows the workplace culture needs to improve, according to Senate President Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Dix, R-Shell Rock, who originally had refused to release it.

The internal investigation followed former staff member Kirsten Andersons successful sexual harassment lawsuit this summer that resulted in a $1.75 million settlement to be paid by taxpayers.

Anderson was the Republican caucus communications director between 2008 and 2013 when she was fired hours after lodging a sexual harassment complaint. Leaders cited poor work performance as the reason for her dismissal.

During Andersons trial, GOP Senate staff members testified to ongoing sexual harassment, which led to the internal inquiry of allegations from December 2012 to now. Current members of the staffs of the Republican Senate caucus and the Secretary of the Senate were interviewed between July 25 and Aug. 7.

The leaders, who have brought in former ambassador and Senate President Mary Kramer to help them address what Anderson described at trial as a toxic environment, said workplace culture at the Senate can improve, and with a lot of hard work, it will improve.

But Senate Minority Leader Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, found the report deeply troubling because investigators heard about senators making sexually suggestive comments as recently as the 2017 legislative session  after Dix and other GOP leaders said they had zero tolerance for such behavior.

The report will increase the disgust that Iowans feel about the harassment, discrimination, and retaliation against Kirsten Anderson and other legislative staff, Petersen said in a statement. The report paints a picture of an environment in the Iowa Senate that will lead to more lawsuits against Republicans senators and staff unless dramatic changes are made.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Kim Reynolds, who earlier called for the report to be released, said Friday that the governor had no comment.

In releasing the report Friday, Whitver and Dix said they were trying to balance two competing concerns: openness and protecting staff.

The first concern is to be open with Iowans about the workplace issues in the Iowa Senate, they said in a statement.

Names were redacted from the report because to improve the workplace culture, employees need to know they can share their concerns without those issues being shared publicly.

Publicizing those individuals could have a chilling effect on the willingness of employees to make reports of future incidents, they added.

Whitver and Dix also shared a letter from the Des Moines law firm of Ahlers Cooney advising them to black out the names of employees because participation in the investigation related to job conduct and performance would be confidential information under Iowa law.

The attorneys also advised that senators names should be redacted because under Iowa law, personal information in personnel records of government bodies relating to identified or identifiable individuals who are officials, officers or employees of government bodies is protected.

In their investigation, Secretary of the Senate Charlie Smithson and Whitvers senior aide Mary Earnhardt looked at incidents and comments in and by the Senate caucus staff and office environment, the Senate floor environment and the Secretary of the Senate staff.

Among the findings:

An staff member said an person made a sexually suggestive comment during the 2013 legislative session.

Another provided copies of handwritten documentation of offensive comments within the GOP staff office that occurred after December 2012.

A person specifically noted a sexually explicit story told by a fellow staff member. The staff member asked that the story be stopped.

The report notes that documentation of the events was provided, but it was not included in the materials released.

A member of the Secretary of the Senate staff indicated a person overheard what could possibly be interpreted as harassment, but declined to give specifics.

Many caucus staff members indicated there is an environment on the Senate floor of senators making sexually suggestive comments or about sexual preferences.

One recalled one occasion of a senator making a sexually suggestive comment in 2017.

Another detailed a story about a senator making sexually suggestive comments regarding proposed legislation on dense breast tissue.

There were other reports involving former senators.

Some staff members told investigators they feared retaliation, saying that is why they did not feel comfortable reporting harassment. Other staffers, however, said they were comfortable reporting potential harassment.

The investigators said that, in conclusion, it does not appear that any provable incidents of sexual harassment as defined in Section 17 of the Personnel Guidelines have occurred.

Democratic leader Petersen said the report by a political appointee and a Republican staffer confirms her belief that an independent, outside investigation is needed.

We called on all senators to work together to fix this problem, she said. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans have ignored the calls for action by refusing to fire any of their staff or to make any changes in their leadership.
The brats, bacon and steaks produced at Scherer Farms in Scott County have been a staple at the outdoor Freight House Farmers Market for the past seven years.

Typically, during the off-season from November to May, Scherer Custom Meats hasn't been able to offer products to customers, Carol Scherer, who helps with the family business, said.

We dont have a storefront, the stay-at-home grandmother said. We rely on the farmers market to reach our customers.

This year, Scherer Custom Meats has secured two extra months of business thanks to a recent expansion of the indoor farmers market inside the Freight House.

The meat tent is one of 15 vendors part of the new holiday market, slated to be open Saturday and Sunday through the end of the year at the site of the former Quad-Cities Food Hub at the east end of the Freight House, 421 W. River Drive, Davenport.

When the food hubs retail market closed in October, Pat Connor, chair of the Freight House Farmers Market board of directors, thought it would be a fitting space to house additional vendors in November and December.

We have a lot of seasonal vendors who want to be inside in the winter, Connor said.

In the past, vendors have had limited room inside the Freight House, which is owned by the city of Davenport. For the past decade, the indoor market has been open year round and has housed about 30 vendors on the west end of the property, on the other side of Fresh Deli and Front Street Brewery.

Several of the 250-plus outdoor market vendors have expressed interest in setting up indoors, Connor said.

Once a spot opens up, it goes to whoever is next in line, Connor said.

Traditionally, Scherer said, the wait list has been long.

Its really a small percentage of vendors that are inside, she said. As an outdoor vendor, we feel fortunate to have this space.

A variety of vendors, selling everything from crafts and cookies to coffee and tea, have moved into the additional 12,000 square feet of market space. Each vendor pays about $50-$100 per month for their lot.

The list features Hopes Treats, which serves gluten-free baked goods.

This gives us the means to interact with the community, Todd Herzog, who started Hopes Treats earlier this year with his wife, Catherine, said.

It is named for their daughter, Hope, who has celiac disease.

Some of the gluten-free products she has tried dont taste that good, Herzog said. Weve been able to improve upon that.

It also features Dangerous Coffee, a brand of mild coffee roasted by Hwanghee Lee, who came to Davenport from South Korea to study at Palmer College of Chiropractic, and a collection of specialty loose-leaf teas made by Mr. and Mrs. Tea, the moniker for Quad-City couple Tim and Leah Foss.

On Saturday, several indoor market participants, such as Suzanne Tanner, who operates Suzannes Swiss Bakery, said foot traffic has been slow so far.

People just need to know that this is happening, Tanner said. Outside is best because you have so many people.

As Connor said, the indoor market is typically not as busy as the outdoor offering.

We all know its crazy down here in the summer, he said. People dont realize its inside year-round and its been there for 10 years.

Connor, a longtime vendor, said it's important to keep the market's mission going in the colder months. Known as "Palm Tree Pat," he sells tropical plants and his sister sells maple syrup and honey at the market.

"Were supporting local people, he said. Its not like a big box store. Once customers start buying from you, its like a one-on-one relationship.

Especially now that the food hub is no longer here, if you want something thats handcrafted in Davenport, Iowa, this is the place, he added.

So far, it has worked out well for Scherer Custom Meats.

Somebody just bought 150 pounds of lamb for winter, Scherer said. Because were here. I'm glad they were able to utilize this space in such a wonderful way."

Eric Scherer, who also helps with the family business, agrees.

Its so nice that we have this space available," he said. And at least were not outside right now.
A priest known for his steadfast devotion to the needy cleared a threshold on the way to possible sainthood Saturday as the Roman Catholic Church beatified Solanus Casey, who is credited with the miraculous cure of a woman with a chronic skin disease.

More than 60,000 people attended a Mass in Detroit where Father Solanus, as he was known, has an extraordinary following, decades after his death in 1957. Many insist their prayers to him have led to remarkable changes in their lives. Some of their stories were told on the scoreboard screens at Ford Field.

Pope Francis said Father Solanus met the requirements to earn the rank of "blessed," especially after Paula Medina Zarate of Panama was instantly cured while she prayed at his tomb in 2012.

Zarate had a formal role at the Mass, placing a cross in front of a portrait of Father Solanus near the altar. Italian Cardinal Angelo Amato read a decree by the pope, who described the priest as a "humble and faithful disciple of Christ, tireless in serving the poor."

Father Solanus can be made a saint in the years ahead if a second miracle is attributed to him. He's only the second U.S.-born man to be beatified by the church, joining the Rev. Stanley Rother, a priest killed in Guatemala's civil war, who was beatified in Oklahoma in September. One U.S.-born woman has been beatified and two others have been declared saints.

"It's a great event," Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron said ahead of the Mass. "It's hard to communicate how vivid and real the presence of Father is to our community."

Even 60 years after his death, "people don't say, 'I'm going to Father's tomb,'" Vigneron told The Associated Press. "They say, 'I'm going to talk to Father.'"

Father Solanus, a native of Oak Grove, Wisconsin, joined the Capuchin Franciscan religious order in Detroit in 1897 and was ordained a priest seven years later. But there were conditions: Because of academic struggles, he was prohibited from giving homilies at Mass and couldn't hear confessions.

"He accepted it," said the Rev. Martin Pable, 86, a fellow Capuchin. "He believed whatever God wants, that's what he would do."

He served for 20 years in New York City and nearby Yonkers before the Capuchins transferred him back to the St. Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit in 1924. Wearing a traditional brown hooded robe and sandals, Father Solanus worked as a porter or doorkeeper for the next two decades, but his reputation for holiness far exceeded his modest title.

The unemployed shared their anxieties with Father Solanus, the parents of wayward kids sought his advice, and the ill and addicted asked him to urge God to heal them. As he listened, he took notes that were later turned into typewritten volumes of his work.

Later in life, when Father Solanus was stationed at a seminary in Huntington, Indiana, Detroiters boarded buses for a four-hour ride just to see the man with a wispy white beard. Mail piled up from across the country.

"He had a gentle presence. He left people with a wonderful feeling of peace inside their hearts," Pable said. "He would say, 'Let's just pray about this and see what God wants to do.' Some people were not healed. He told them to bear their problems with God's help."

In 1929, Father Solanus co-founded the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, which serves up to 2,000 meals a day in Detroit.

The Capuchins built a center that bears his name and explains his life story. The public is invited to pray and leave handwritten pleas atop his tomb. Father Solanus' name is invoked by many people who attend a weekly service for the sick.

Shirley Wilson, 78, said she regularly prayed to Father Solanus to help her nephew get a kidney. He got one a few weeks ago.

"It was a perfect match," she said. "I believe in miracles."

Vigneron hopes Father Solanus will inspire people to show mercy toward others.

"We need to care for the poor and give them a high priority," the archbishop said. "Father was very loving and understanding to people who came to him with their troubles."
Nov. 11

8:26 a.m.  Theft, fuel drive-off, in the 200 block of Mears Street.

8:51 a.m.  Theft by unlawful taking reported in the 500 block of Ann Street.

2:36 p.m.  Citation issued to 54-year-old male for dog at large, first offense, at West 10th and Morehead Streets.

10:22 p.m.  Domestic disturbance reported in the 1000 block of Main Street.

10:34 p.m.  Suspicious circumstances reported in the 100 block of Lake Street.

Nov. 12

12:32 a.m.  Arrested 32-year-old male for DUI, first offense, and a stop sign violation at Eighth and Maple Streets.

3:03 a.m.  Arrested 22-year-old male for DUI, first offense, .15+ in the 1100 block of West Highway 20.

5:45 p.m.  Suspicious circumstances reported in the 500 block of West Niobrara Avenue

5:58 p.m.  Suspicious circumstances reported in the 1200 block of West Highway 20.

Nov. 13

12:17 a.m.  Arrested 48-year-old male on a Dawes County warrant in the 300 block of Main Street.

5:55 a.m.  Suspicious circumstances reported in the 1000 block of Main Street.

8:48 a.m.  Criminal mischief reported in the 100 block of Main Street.

9:52 a.m.  Suspicious circumstances reported in the 300 block of Main Street.

1:00 p.m.  Burglary reported in the 300 block of Lake Street.

3:44 p.m.  Citation issued to 17-year-old juvenile for possession of marijuana, less than one ounce, and possession of drug paraphernalia in the 800 block of King Street.

3:54 p.m.  Criminal mischief reported in the 400 block of West Seventh Street.

7:58 p.m.  Arrested 36-year-old male for second degree trespassing and disturbing the peace in the 1200 block of West Highway 20.

10:36 p.m.  Domestic disturbance reported in the 400 block of Main Street.

Nov. 14

1:08 a.m.  Disturbance reported in the 1000 block of Main Street.

1:59 a.m.  Disturbance, loud party, was reported in the 300 block of Cedar Street

3:41 p.m.  Issued citation to a 13-year-old juvenile for theft by unlawful taking in the 500 block of Pinecrest Drive.

6:00 p.m.  Non-injury accident in the 100 block of North Main Street.

Nov. 15

1:25 a.m.  Suspicious circumstances reported in the 500 block of Ridgeview Road.

2:05 a.m.  Suspicious circumstances reported in the 100 block of East 10th Street.

6:15 a.m.  Non-injury accident on Highway 385.

9:03 a.m.  Suspicious circumstances reported in the 200 block of Main Street.

4:15 p.m.  Citation issued to 62-year-old male for failure to report an accident and no insurance in the 800 block of Centennial Drive.

5:21 p.m.  Cited 19-year-old male for possession of marijuana, less than one ounce, and possession of drug paraphernalia in the 1000 block of Main Street.

Nov. 16

10:50 a.m.  Theft of a bicycle reported in the 200 block of Bordeaux Street.

12:51 p.m.  Theft by unlawful taking reported in the 600 block of Pine Street.

7:14 p.m.  Cited 29-year-old female for driving under suspension in the 400 block of North Main Street.

7:25 p.m.  Suspicious circumstances in the 700 block of Bordeaux Street.

9:57 p.m.  Suspicious circumstances reported in the 500 block of Chadron Avenue.

Nov. 17

11:17 a.m.  Suspicious circumstances reported in the 200 block of West Second Street.

11:28 p.m.  Disturbance reported in the 600 block of Cedar Street.

Nov. 18

12:58 p.m.  Suspicious circumstances reported in the 600 block of West Fourth Street.

1:04 p.m.  Arrested 31-year-old male for failure to appear in District Court.

4:53 p.m.  Criminal mischief reported in the 800 block of West Seventh Street.

Nov. 19

3:52 a.m.  Arrested 38-year-old male on a Dawes County warrant for driving under suspension and no operators license in the 800 block of Centennial Drive.
Two retired CSC faculty were approved as Emeritus Faculty at the November meeting of the Nebraska State College System Board of Trustees.

Dr. Kathy Bahr and Dr. Margaret Crouse each successfully met the Nebraska State College Systems required criteria outlined in Board Policy 5017.

The criteria includes a minimum of 15 years full-time employment, earning the rank of full professor, evidence of exemplary performance, and demonstrating leadership and collaboration through service and contribution beyond normal expectations. According to Chadron State College Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Charles Snare, many of the recent revisions to Board Policy 5017 included significant input from CSCs Faculty Senate.

Both Bahr, who worked at CSC for 21 years, and Crouse who worked at CSC for 36 years, were instrumental in Chadron States recent reaffirmation through the Higher Learning Commission (HLC).

Also at the meeting, the International Studies Abroad (ISA) contracts for travel to England, Ireland and Northern Ireland for Chadron State were approved. ISA will help provide planning, logistics, orientation and other support services for CSC Justice Studies, Business and Education students when they study abroad.

Several Board Policies were revised and approved at the meeting. They include changes to further define student organizations, the role of advisers, and travel and funding of student organizations in Board Policy 3300.

Other revisions occurred to Board Policies 3400, 3401, 5104, 6006, and 8064. Additionally, Board Policy 4050 was created to outline academic and professional organizations as they relate to students.

Informational items were shared with the board and discussed. Those items included online program reports, summer instructional load reports, Quantitative Academic Reports, personnel actions, marketing activities, grant applications and awards, and others.

The meeting concluded with reports from Chancellor Stan Carpenter and each college president. President Randy Rhines report focused on Chadron States successful HLC reaffirmation.

The NSCS Board of Trustees next meeting is scheduled for Jan. 16, 2018.
Several individuals entered not guilty pleas to various felony charges in Dawes County District Court last week, while another case appears to be headed for trial.

Brittany Carder entered not guilty pleas to five felony counts, including three counts of child abuse/neglect, delivery of a controlled substance that poses an exceptional hazard and possession of a controlled substance. Public Defender Jerrod Jaeger asked that her $50,000 bond be reduced so she can deal with cases in juvenile court and in South Dakota and also resume working. County Attorney Vance Haug objected to any reduction in bond, saying that the charges here are serious, as are the ones in South Dakota, dealing with drugs and children.

I dont think we can count on her to do what a reasonable person would do, Haug said.

Judge Travis OGorman agreed, leaving Carders bond at 10 percent of $50,000.

Warren Yankton entered not guilty pleas to fourth offense driving under the influence with a blood alcohol content higher than .15 and criminal mischief. The first is a felony, the latter a misdemeanor. He will appear in court again Jan. 9 at 1 p.m.

Trenton Rattler entered a not guilty plea to one felony count of second degree assault of a pregnant woman, while Racheal Wasserburger entered not guilty pleas to two counts of felony possession of a controlled substance and one count of possession of drug paraphernalia, which is an infraction. Both will appear in court again Jan. 9 at 1 p.m.

Kelly Hellers attorney, Jon Worthman, said it looks like her case is headed to trial. She will appear for a pre-trial conference Dec. 12 at 1 p.m. in both cases against her in Dawes and Sioux counties. However, her trials in the two counties will be separate. Heller is charged with felony theft by deception for allegedly leasing the same pasture land to multiple individuals through Craigslist.

Her co-defendant in the cases, Calinda Vantine, was sentenced in October to 12-20 years in prison on three counts in Sioux County.Vantine has appealed the case. Vantines Dawes County charges were dismissed.

David Young entered into a plea agreement with the state, pleading no contest to attempted possession of a controlled substance with the intent to deliver. The rest of the charges against him were dismissed. He will be sentenced Jan. 9 at 1 p.m. for bringing marijuana from Colorado to Chadron State College in April.

Jaeger filed a motion to suppress in the case against Shawn Hollow Horn, who is charged with possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of a controlled substance, driving under suspension, possession of less than one ounce of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. The motion will be heard Jan. 4 at 9 a.m.

Another motion to suppress will be heard Dec. 14 in the case against Brandon Dehling. He is charged with several felony and misdemeanor counts after allegedly breaking into a home and assaulting the occupant. The motion will be heard at 12:30 p.m.

Aaron Houser was sentenced to 18 months probation after being convicted of attempt of a Class IIA felony, in connection with possession of marijuana.
A fire on U.S. Forest Service land last week was smaller than initially believed, but an investigation continues into the start of the human-caused blaze.

The Slicker Fire was reported Thursday around 1 p.m. about five miles south of Chadron in the Spotted Tail area. District Ranger Tim Buskirk said Forest Service crews were on scene late into the night. Crews returned for most of the day Friday and also spent the weekend monitoring the burn area. Chadron and Crawford firefighters provided mutual aid as well, which was appreciated, Buskirk said.

Initially estimated at 30 acres, the Slicker Fire has been downsized to 16 acres after the area was mapped on GPS, Buskirk said. The exact cause of the fire, while definitely human-caused, has yet to be determined. The blaze began near what looked to be a deer camp, Buskirk said, and the Forest Service is urging caution during the remainder of the year.

Our fire danger remains very high and we need everyones help to safely get through the final weekend of deer rifle hunting season. Please ensure that your fires are dead out, and please stay on roads and trails designated on the Motor Vehicle Use Maps, (MVUMs), Buskirk said.

The free MVUMs and other maps are available at the Pine Ridge District Ranger Office at 125 North Main Street in Chadron. The office is open Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. until 4:30 pm MST. MVUMs can also be accessed online, https://www.fs.usda.gov/detailfull/nebraska/maps-pubs/?cid=stelprdb5097502&width=full. Anyone with questions may also call the office at 308-432-0300 during normal business hours.
ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE, S.D. | For the first time, the Ellsworth Air Force Base Diversity Council worked with Mniluzahan Okolakiciyapi Ambassadors, a local organization, to build bridges between the native and non-native communities of Rapid City.

We welcome [Airmen] to Rapid City and we want [them] to come in and enjoy what we have to offer here, said Karen Mortimer, director of MOA. One of the things we have to offer is a rich cultural experience. We want it to be one that is not only enjoyable for [Airmen], but one that [they] are knowledgeable about.

The Diversity Council built upon this community partnership by putting on two events to celebrate National American Indian Heritage Month and raise awareness about the multiple cultures.

The Diversity Councils biggest project for the month brought more than 100 members of the community together on Nov. 15 at the Individual Deployment Readiness Center on Ellsworth.

The event began with a presentation from Sergeant Chris Hall, training administrator with the Rapid City Police Department and member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, who showed off the Departments newest addition to the fleet  a police cruiser decked-out in local Native American artwork.

[The cruiser] represents the Lakota culture and the history of the area, Hall said It is our way of giving back to the area and letting them know were there.

As Airmen and families from all walks of life viewed Native American exhibits and dined on Native American cuisine, Nique High Hawk, a sophomore at Douglas High School in Box Elder performed a healing dance for attendees. Additionally, Native American elders told stories of their experiences in South Dakota, immersing attendees in the rich history local tribes offer.

To engage Team Ellsworths youngest members, the council invited children to make dreamcatchers, a traditional Native American symbol on Nov. 7 at the bases Youth Center. Attendees heard the story of the dreamcatcher and learned about the dreamcatchers significance to the Native American community.

It opens [children] up to different cultures and gets them thinking about others, said Airman 1st Class Wandy Griggs, a cybersecurity technician assigned to the 28th Communications Squadron. It is a great way to bring people together.

Although Native American Indian Heritage Month is a national observance, the month holds a special significance at Ellsworth.

The reason it is important for us here at Ellsworth is because of the Lakota community, said Staff Sgt. Natasha Wohlwend, NCOIC of diagnostic imaging assigned to the 28th Medical Group and Diversity Council project officer. Specifically in the state of South Dakota, we have the largest reservation in the nation, and a lot of people dont realize that.

Wohlwend hopes Airmen came away from the event with more than just full stomachs.

What I want Airmen coming away with is just them being able to grasp the knowledge of the local Black Hills community, the local Native American community [and] them actually knowing these Native Americans have a past here, they have a history, she said.

Wohlwend is not alone in hoping Airmen left with a greater appreciation for our Native American neighbors.

We think education breaks down any barriers and any differences that we may encounter, said Whitney Rencountre, Ateyapi Program Director of Rural America Initiatives in Rapid City. I think by sharing our culture, people have a better understanding and can start to view each other as fellow human beings and we are all created by the same creator. We are all here for a reason.

Mortimer wants Airmen and their families come away from both events more knowledgeable about Native American culture.

We hope that [Airmen] can learn about the culture and the history so when [they] encounter people in Rapid City who are Native American, [they will]understand who they are.

Humphrey Long, an elder in the Native American community, was thankful for the Ellsworth Diversity Council for putting on the events. I was proud to actually talk about my heritage, my lineage, what happened to my people, my family, he said. [The Diversity Council] gave me the opportunity to do that.
A 62-year-old man was sentenced Tuesday to 30 days in county jail for mistreating more than a dozen horses in Meade County between September 2016 and this January.

LeRoy James of Hermosa was convicted at trial this month on three misdemeanor counts of neglect, abandonment or mistreatment of an animal. Magistrate Judge Francy Foral of the 4th Circuit Court sentenced him on each count to 360 days in jail with 350 days suspended, as well as 360 days of probation, according to court records.

James still owns 15 horses, which the prosecution recommended that he immediately sell, said Meade County Deputy States Attorney Michele Bordewyk.

The judge instead ordered James to provide official proof by March 1 that the horses are being cared for; otherwise, he should sell the animals within two weeks. They were being kept in a rural property southeast of Sturgis, referred to in court documents as the McFarland property. James was forbidden from obtaining more livestock for three years.

He was also fined $1,500 and ordered to pay back the Meade County Sheriffs Office $270 for the hay it fed the horses early this year, Bordewyk said. Members of the public, such as a Box Elder horse-boarding facility and neighbors who saw the animals' malnourished condition, also donated hay.

James was the first person convicted at trial in Meade County of misdemeanor animal mistreatment since South Dakota passed a 2014 law that created a felony-level offense for animal cruelty, Bordewyk said.
Discover six new routes to walk, bike or stroll in Stevensville, while boosting your health and historical knowledge.

The Stevensville Walking Map was developed by a partnership of Montana State University Extension and the College of Nursing. MSU nursing students Sarah Del Rae and Rhonda Golds internship under Katelyn Andersen in the Ravalli County Extension Office, was designed to engage the community in physical activity. Previous interns designed a Hamilton Walking Map and held a successful Walk and Win competition last spring.

Del Ray and Gold said they wanted to make the Stevensville map more interesting.

We tried to make iconic things of Stevensville, mostly historical points, Del Rae said. We included Lee Metcalf because they already have little walking paths down there. Each route is designed for a historical point and is named for that point.

Bass Mansion Route is just over one mile, and St Marys and Stevensville River Trail routes are nearly two miles. The East Stevensville Route is 2.3 miles and City Limits Route is 3.1 miles.

And then there's The Whole Shebang Route.

One issue is Stevensville is small and we wanted a long route, so we decided to make it where you zigzag and hit all the historical points, Del Rae said. That route is called The Whole Shebang and is 4.6 miles.

The students walked each route to confirm that each road was safe and enjoyable. A Stevensville resident walked with them to give feedback and point out additional points of interest to include.

Both students grew up in the Bitterroot Valley and said they didnt know even half of the historical highlights to see in Stevensville.

It was very interesting to us because there are so many interesting things about Stevensville, Gold said. We didnt know it was the first settlement in Montana and all the historical points of interest. It was awesome to see these in person.

The students will give a presentation about the walking map and take feedback from the community at a launch party set for 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 30, at North Valley Public Library in Stevensville.

Andersen said they are hoping for community responses, especially on names of features.

We want to ask the community Do they want it identified as the Skate Park and Pool? so if someone came to the community they would know what it is, Andersen said. Or do they want it called Lewis and Clark Park? We also know Google maps have street names, but they may not be what they call them in Stevensville.

The nursing students will also present the walking map to their classmates before they graduate in December.

Del Ray and Gold said the interaction with the community has been positive.

Businesses are excited, Del Ray said. We did go to the city council and introduced it and they had a few changes.

Gold said there are many benefits of physical activities. Some of them are included on the Stevensville Walking Map, which is similar in design to the Hamilton Walking Map but with different information.

Physical activity is important for your health, Gold said. It lowers the risk of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, type II diabetes, and breast and colon cancer. It also produces endorphins that help with self-esteem, reduces depression, and improves concentration and bone strength. Its the heel-strike and impact that makes bones stronger.

There are also tips for exercising safety all year round.

Del Ray and Gold said they enjoyed working with the Extension Office and Andersen.

It has been great and Katelyn has been understanding with our crazy schedules, Gold said. It has been very interactive and good.

Andersen said every semester of nursing student interns has been enjoyable.

It is wonderful to work with knowledgeable students who want to work with the community, Andersen said. This is an educational outreach and a great partnership with MSU College of Nursing and MSU Extension with our office in Ravalli County.

Andersen said the Walking Map of Hamilton and the Walk and Win challenge last spring was successful enough to do it again  with an expansion.

When I learned I was going to have two more students, I decided on Stevensville, she said. There will be another Walk and Win challenge this spring. Ill have two new students in the spring to build awareness of the campaign.

Donations for prizes are welcome. Donors should contact the Extension Office.

"This can be a tool of Stevensville residents and also a tool for visitors," Andersen said. "It's a great way to explore Stevensville, explore the community and gain physical health."
The Corvallis FFA Chapter traveled to Bozeman for the 6th Annual John Deere AG Expo with 23 competition-ready students.

This is the third time that the chapter has attended the expo, and each year has brought new success to the chapter.

This year, however, was unique, as the chapter also had three eighth grade students joining the ranks of competition. This is the first time in Corvallis history that middle school students have traveled and competed at a high school level, and each of them was able to attain success in their age group. The middle school members said they were eager to travel with the chapter again.

My favorite part about going to JDAE was how supportive and kind everyone was, said Laney Heiland, one of the eighth grade students. It was a good learning experience for the upcoming FFA competitions that I'll be going to.

In addition, the chapter traveled with their largest number of freshmen students, and each of them was successful in their contests.

I thought it was a lot of fun and I would want to do it again, said Coeman Rahmsdorf, a freshman who competed in meats, vet science, and conduct of chapter meetings.

Corvallis FFA was proclaimed as a first place team, as well as placing first in extemporaneous speaking. Multiple top ten teams and individuals were announced, all from the Corvallis FFA. Along with the success through the competitions, many of the members made interpersonal relationships with members across the state.

John Deere gives you a chance to meet new people and have new experiences, said freshman Tiffany Ioder, who ranked second in Creed speaking. Many of the upperclassmen within the chapter have strong relationships with other students across the state.

Sophomore Martina Madsen said she met new friends across Montana and the country.

To us, the competitions are only half of what we do, Madsen said. The other half is us interacting and getting to know the other people within the organization, people that we very well could be going to college with and working with later in life.

Many students taking part in FFA activities plan to enter agriculture related fields later in life, and those who dont still are able to gain valuable leadership, public speaking, and team skills through the organization.

Corvallis FFA reporter Michael McKay called their advisor, Brandon Braaten, innovative and encouraging.

Our advisor has allowed this chapter to achieve our potential, McKay said. Mr. Braaten has helped each of his students step out of their comfort zones, and he continues to teach them to expand their horizons.

The Victor FFA chapter took 20 students.

Cassy Tintzman, advisor of Victor FFA, said shes proud of her chapters accomplishments.

All of these students have spent the last couple months preparing for a variety of Career Development Events (CDE), Tintzman said. These contests prepare the students to enter careers related to a variety of agriculture driven jobs. The Victor FFA chapter was very successful.

Cassidy Buchanans, reporter for Victor FFA Chapter, noted that at this years Expo, the Victor FFA placed and won several different competitions. For speaking competitions, Lilly Challinor placed first in Junior Extemporaneous Speaking and Gracie Smith placed fourth. In the Junior Creed Speaking Competition, Nora Goodwin placed second and Emma Day placed third.

In more business-like competitions such as Employment Skills, Jadyn Scheffer placed 11th. In The Market Plan competition Victor won in both the senior and junior division. On the junior team was Wyatt Day, Teasha Johnson, and Will Banks. On the senior team was Lilly Challinor, Gracie Smith, and Jadyn Scheffer.

In the Ag Communications competition, both Victor teams placed fourth and Bella Scichilone placed third as an individual. On the Junior Ag Communications team was Bella Scichilone, Jill Challinor, Delilah Beck, and Bailey Johnson. The Senior Ag Communications team consisted of Cassidy Buchanan, Gracie Smith, Lilly Challinor, and Nora Goodwin.

In the Junior Agronomy competition, the Victor FFA placed 11th with a team of Jill Challinor, Delilah Beck, Bailey Johnson, and Nora Goodwin. In the Livestock Judging competition, the junior team consisting of Emma Day, Jadyn Scheffer, Ashley Buchanan, and Nora Goodwin, placed 10th as a team.

The Victor FFA Chapter wants to thank the community for supporting us and helping us grow over the last few years that we have been a chapter, Buchanan said.

Josette Hackett, advisor for the Stevensville FFA Chapter, said their chapter also did well at the John Deere Expo.

Students learn new knowledge and skills in Agricultural Education class, then take these skills and competed in various events, Hackett said.

For Stevensville, the junior agricultural mechanic team of Sam Kearney, Mackeala Hawthorne, Dustin Steele, and Beau Hemery placed sixth out of 49 teams. The senior team, Sami Merwin, Richard Hardy, Wes Brown, and Hunter Rodrick, placed 19th out of 62 teams.

The sales team, of Britany Eryre, Abbie Motley, Hunter Rodrick, Kaitlin Garoutte, Izzy Gilleard, Gwen Thompson, Hannah Silva and Wes Brown, placed eighth out of 33 teams. The top four scores were used for team placement.

The Ravalli County livestock judging team - Gracie Orem, Sallie Orem, Sydney Kostecki and Savannah Kostecki - placed sixth out of 60 teams with Gracie Orem placing first out of 238 students. Agronomy placed third out of 48 teams with Gwen Thompson and Kylie Rhoades placing in the top 20 students out of 195 students. The agronomy students competing were Gwen Thompson, Kylie Rhoades, Izzy Gilleard, Hunter Rodrick, and Virginia Miller. The top four scores were used for team placement.

Abbie Motley competed in Employment Skills and placed third out of 89 students.
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 "Furman and Finitude" | Main | "What Rape Reform Needs: More Convictions, Less Punishment" 

As reported here via CNN under the headlined "Pistorius' sentence more than doubled; slain girlfriend's family calls it 'justice'," a notable defendant got a notable new sentence via appeal in South Africa this week. Here are the details:

"Reeva Steenkamp "can now rest in peace," her family said Friday, after a South African high court more than doubled Oscar Pistorius' sentence for her killing. The Supreme Court of Appeal increased his sentence to 13 years and five months for the murder of his girlfriend, Steenkamp. It issued the ruling after the prosecution appealed his previous sentence of six years as too lenient.

The former Olympic and Paralympic sprinter killed Steenkamp at his home in an upscale Pretoria neighborhood on Valentine's Day 2013 -- an act he says was an accident after he mistook her for an intruder. The prosecution called it a deliberate act after the two had an argument. The court's decision is "justice for Reeva," her family's spokeswoman said, adding that they hope "this is the end of the road and that everyone can move forward."

Prosecutor Gerrie Nel argued that Pistorius' sentence was "shockingly lenient," while the defense sought to dismiss the appeal.

Supreme Court Justice Willie Seriti said Pistorius failed to explain in court hearings why he fired the fatal shots and "does not appreciate the gravity of his actions."... Seriti said the facts of the case demanded a higher sentence. "The sentence of six years' imprisonment is shockingly lenient to a point where it has the effect of trivializing this serious offense," he added.

Pistorius can appeal the new sentence, according to Kelly Phelps, an adviser to his defense team, but no decision has been made.
 South African court more than doubles prison sentence of Oscar Pistorius | Main | Is California finally going to get it machinery of death operational come 2018? 

November 24, 2017

"What Rape Reform Needs: More Convictions, Less Punishment"

The title of this post is the headline of this recent interesting commentary authored by Kari Hong over at The Crime Report. Here are excerpts:

In what is being called the Post-Weinstein era, victims of sexual assault and harassment are finally being believed. This no doubt is overdue, but in the context of rape, believing the victim will not be enough. Three reforms are essential to how we convict and punish rapists. First, the way states currently define the crime of rape does not target the conduct of unwanted sex. In the United States, rape was initially defined by unwanted sex accompanied by an element of force. The proof of force was and continues to be a high bar to meet, usually requiring threats, physical violence, actual injury, or weapons.... The first needed reform to the definition of the crime of rape, then, is to abandon the definitions of rape used by 42 states. Rape should not be limited to unwanted sex when there is also force or only arising in specific contexts. Rather, all states should simply define rape as only eight currently do: sex without the consent of the other person. Full stop. Second, unlike homicide and theft offenses, rape law has not benefited from having liability arise from more sophisticated mental states that define the crime.... The second essential reform, then, is establishing a new crime of rape by malice, a crime that criminalizes both those who knew  or deliberately did not care to know  if their advances were consented to. Unwanted sex arises from multiple motivations. A mens rea for rape should be flexible and responsive enough to criminalize as much unwanted sex as possible without criminalizing lawful or wanted sex. Other crimes such as homicide have expansive definitions to capture all killings made by the predators, the fools, and the careless. A new crime of rape by malice would do the same. Third, these proposed reforms to the redefinition of rape would lead to more convictions. But convicting more rapists under our current criminal justice system should not be welcomed. On paper, 19 states have respective maximum terms of 99 years, 100 years, and life sentences. And 12 states begin at 10 years. Although only six states and the federal government even compile data on the number and lengths of sentences, where data is available, the range in actual sentences for rape was from eight to 30 years. In the rush to condemn rapists, throwing people away in prison is a poor policy option that no other developed country follows. These numbers should be alarming. Whereas 40 percent of people convicted of all felonies will be punished with prison terms, about 90 percent of all rapists will receive a prison sentence, and a very lengthy one at that. In the rush to condemn rapists, throwing people away in prison is a poor policy option that no other developed country follows. In 35 comparable countries, the vast majority impose prison terms that do not exceed five years. This short sentence does not at all communicate that the crime was not heinous, the offender not depraved, or the victim does not merit justice.... If the goal is to reintegrate into society convicted rapists who will not reoffend, the third essential reform is to impose shorter sentences for rapists. It is shorter sentences and actual treatment that succeed over calls to simply lock them up.

November 24, 2017 at 08:38 PM | Permalink

Comments



Posted by: My friend , Docile (now in OR) | Nov 24, 2017 9:08:50 PM

This recent outburst over rape is another example of tragically misguided feminist propaganda. What does it tell me? The Left never learns. The only thing that these sexual smear attacks achieve is an internal bloodletting (Charlie Rose, Al Franken) which does nothing to damage the opposition. It is the sign of truly obsessive behavior which in the face contradiction demands greater and greater purity from the believer. When will she be satisfied? When in a parody of Islam it is the American male who must avert his eyes and wear the burka? Probably not even then, it his death she hungers for. The death of the penis she will never have, the ultimate source of male effrontery.

"In what is being called the Post-Weinstein era, victims of sexual assault and harassment are finally being believed." Yea, believed and the next step in the sequence is holiness, then worship, then Godhead.



Posted by: Selfie Man | Nov 24, 2017 9:14:20 PM

Here is my Harvard Law School radicalized reply. Mirandize the sex act. Carry a card, and have the female sign it. You are about to have sex. You have a right to refuse. You may have a lawyer present during sex. If you cannot afford one, one can be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to get boned by me?

I go further. Get informed consent. There is an 18 page consent form. Each paragraph should be initialed. Get the consent form signed by both parties before a notary public. Then, there should be a 3 day lawyer review period. The lawyer should review the meaning and potential consequences of every single paragraph. Each party should sign again, that they have gone through the 3 day lawyer review.

Now, they may proceed. I strongly advise all males to record the entire procedure, to avoid false allegations, 40 years later. In my experience, 100% of feminist allegations are false.

Posted by: David Behar | Nov 24, 2017 9:30:29 PM

Another purpose of the recording is for crime fighting. If the bra turns out to be padded, all the feminists should be arrested for rape by deception.

Posted by: David Behar | Nov 24, 2017 9:33:15 PM

The lesbian author blocked the above message on the John Jay College page.

Posted by: David Behar | Nov 25, 2017 5:33:33 AM

I don't know how much rape is prosecuted too little but to the degree sexual related wrongdoing should be addressed more, do agree a heavy punishment model (except for limited cases) is not the best policy. Addressing the needs of the victims, outing the persecutors and addressing means to guard against repeats (a culture that encourages or at least allows various of the things that is coming out now will not only bring people exposing themselves; in some cases that mentality will lead to rape).

Posted by: Joe | Nov 25, 2017 11:59:31 AM

Hi, Joe. Do you agree? All accusers making false allegations to a government official, or to a quasi-governmental official, should be arrested, tried, and sentenced to 5 years in prison. They should also be made to pay for all investigation and legal costs.

Posted by: David Behar | Nov 25, 2017 1:20:12 PM

DB--

You need a mens rea for fraud (false accusations), right? Regardless of whether the man is found guilty or not, if the woman believed that it was genuinely rape, then she simply doesn't have the pre-meditated intention of falsely accusing him, right?

That doesn't mean she wasn't perhaps recklessly negligent with his reputation, or something, (like Hillary with the e-mails) but its hard to say that if she passes a lie-detector test and a psych evaluation, that she intentionally lied.

Posted by: Curly Moe Dameron | Nov 25, 2017 10:49:10 PM

Hi, Curly. I have proposed a screening test on Facebook, for all accusers, that they pass a lie detector test. This should be mandatory for all people who know each other. For accusations between strangers, all allegations should be supported by physical evidence.

As a result of these proposals, I was called a rapist, a pedophile, a serial killer, by feminists that never met me. That is the data point where I determined that 100% of all feminist accusations are false. I am none of those criminals.

Then, I was banned from Facebook, yet again. That is why I have more time to devote to this blog, and its wonderfully intelligent commentators.

Posted by: David Behar | Nov 26, 2017 12:12:13 AM

Curly. A basic review of the charge is here. I do not see a mens rea analysis. I do see the additional element of material omission. For example, Mattress Girl failed to report that her accusations began after the boy refused her text messages to have sex again. She should have been arrested, tried, sent to prison for 5 years, and should have been made to pay all investigation and legal costs.

They recommend that the accuser correct her false allegations as soon as possible, as liability grows over time.

https://criminal-law.freeadvice.com/criminal-law/white_collar_crimes/false-police-report.htm

Posted by: David Behar | Nov 26, 2017 12:46:16 AM

Mattress Girl almost certainly lied--and should've been prosecuted for false allegations--but she seems to be the exception to the rule. Most women are made of sterner stuff than mattresses.

Posted by: Red-Haired Curly | Nov 26, 2017 6:05:53 AM

I take back my comment about the lesbian author, and sincerely apologize. She published the comment. I will submit myself to an ethics committee investigation, fully cooperate, but will not resign from being a commentator.

Posted by: David Behar | Nov 27, 2017 11:31:36 AM

Since my comment was published, I added this one.

How about this sentence being said in Sex Ed? If you are in the vicinity of intoxicated males, leave.

That may cut acquaintance rape in half.

I once said that on Facebook. I was called a rapist, a pedophile, a serial killer by feminists and their male running dogs that never met me. That is when I concluded that all feminist allegations are false, based on personal experience, since I am none of those criminals.

Posted by: David Behar | Nov 27, 2017 11:38:40 AM

So this woman wants (1) to define down rape to turn anything where consent is in any slight grey area into "rape" (2) make lots of "degrees" of rape so that we can have "actual rape" and "rape light", and (3) get more convictions.

The US criminal justice system is not fair, and it is not justice. I looked up the plea bargain rate in California in my jurisdiction, and it is about 98%. You think ALL 98% of those defendants were actually guilty? They were not. Designing the system like this woman claims will lead to a massive rise in innocent men being forced into plea bargains to a "lesser charge".

Why do innocent men plea guilty? Lots of reasons: (1) they don't trust the system to give them a truly fair trial, and so fear losing even when innocent, (2) they can't afford the expense of a private trial lawyer, and don't trust the public defender, and (3) the same reason that civil cases settle: trials are risky and "taking the deal" is the responsible risk-adverse action in most cases. everyone knows that companies who are not wrongdoers routinely pay out settlements because of the cost of litigation and risks the jury will get it wrong, why not criminal defendants.

But but "beyond a reasonable doubt!" Yeah right. That is not an objective standard. There is no way to know if it is followed. It almost never is. If a jury does not like a defendant for any reason, their collective standard is much lower, but you'll never prove it.

Posted by: lawguy | Nov 29, 2017 1:20:34 PM

Lawguy. This proposal is good for lawyer employment, do you agree?

Posted by: David Behar | Nov 29, 2017 3:38:20 PM

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Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier

"When you shake a veteran's hand today, look them in the eye and give them a heartfelt thank you," said USAF Ret. Col. Jen Fullmer, parade grand marshal, who spoke at the event.
News / National

by Staff reporter

A 34-YEAR-OLD suspected illegal gold panner is battling for life after he was stabbed seven times when rivals attacked him during a gold mine wrangle in Fort Rixon.Anele Ncube of New Eclipse Mine, Shangani, was stabbed and pelted with stones by two unidentified men who lured him out of a bar on Tuesday at around 9PM. They took him to a secluded place where they accused him of meddling in their mining business and assaulted him.Ncube sustained seven stab wounds on his back and body injuries. He was rushed to Shangani Rural Hospital before being transferred to the United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) due to the severity of his condition.The suspects fled from the scene and are still on the run.Matabeleland South police spokesperson Inspector Philisani Ndebele confirmed the attempted murder case and said investigations were underway."We are investigating a case of attempted murder where two unknown males assaulted, stabbed and stoned a man in an alleged gold mine wrangle. The man sustained seven stab wounds and several body injuries and is hospitalised."The unidentified suspects are still on the run and we appeal to members of the public who may know their whereabouts to contact the police," he said.Insp Ndebele urged people to resolve their disputes amicably without resorting to fighting.A source who preferred anonymity said Ncube was drinking beer at Farai Munashe Bar when two unknown men approached him and took him outside the bar."They said they wanted to discuss something with him and should go outside. He followed them outside to a secluded place only to be attacked. They accused him of disturbing their business at New Eclipse Mine".Chief Jahana expressed concern over the increase in cases of murder and assault in Fort Rixon.He said illegal miners were giving the community bad publicity through committing murder and assaults."I am very worried about the increased cases of violence in Fort 9. They are tarnishing the image of my area of jurisdiction and the police based in the area. Police are always up in arms with the same groups of people and this calls for behaviour change."I am urging villagers to put an end to such behaviour because it only lands them in jail. People should learn to live in peace and harmony. When there are misunderstandings, they should learn to consult and engage third parties like family members, police, community leaders and churches," said Chief Jahana.




Accordingly, the Southeast Asian country will develop and operate a timber legality assurance system of Vietnam (VNTLAS) to verify the timber origin from the source of the supply chain to processing, exporting and licensing FLEGT.In return, Vietnams FLEGT export consignments will be free to import to the EU without having to take legal responsibility for explaining the timber origin in accordance with the wood legal regulations which has been effective since March, 2013 all over the EU.As per regulation, there are four new important contents to be noted and implemented, including management; control for imported wood; enterprises classification; export verification and FLEGHT licensing.The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Forest Protection Department will classify enterprises into two groups, including the enterprises have been complied with laws and ones not complied with the laws yet.VNTLAS applies to all origin of wood inputs, all enterprises involved in the wood supply chain and all domestic or international markets.VPA/FLEGHT will be expectedly effective by 2020.

BY CONG PHIEN  Translated by Huyen Huong
Logan Lucky isn't quite Coen Brothers goofy, but it's goofy enough for director Steven Soderbergh.

Chronicling a heist at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, the comedy has the same complexity as "Ocean's Eleven," but a little less swagger.

Channing Tatum and Adam Driver star as brothers who mastermind the crime during the Coca-Cola 600.

They pull in an odd mix of characters  including a Daniel Craig you wont recognize  and manage to surprise with moves you never saw coming.

Tatum plays a construction worker who has been laid off from his job at the racetrack. His ex-wife (a surprisingly good Katie Holmes) is prepping their daughter for a Little Miss West Virginia Pageant and has some upsetting news  shes planning to move. Meticulously plotting every move, the brothers visit Joe Bang (Craig), whos one of the best explosive guys in prison.

When the timetable is moved up, theres plenty of margin for error, particularly since its pageant day and everything depends on everyone being in the right place at the right time.

Soderbergh gets plenty of mileage out of his O Brother Where Art Thou? take on the story, letting Driver play an artificial arm to maximum effect and, essentially, giving Craig free rein to chew anything that isnt tied down. (Oscar action, no kidding, could follow.)

Riley Keough does a great job, too, as the brothers sister, who knows her way around a getaway car.

Before the last dollar is counted, Soderbergh manages to mention everyone from John Denver to the Unabomber. He gives Tatum a goofy robbery to do list and glimpses a carnival that everyone has been to. If you look closely, youll see Dwight Yoakam as a warden and Hilary Swank as an FBI agent but you wont recognize Seth MacFarlane as a British driver.

The Looney Tunes loopiness makes all of the disparate characters seem fitting.

Driver and Tatum dont get the good lines, but they make much out of simple gestures.

The beauty pageant serves as a coda of sorts (one weve gotten in other disenfranchised parent films) but it slides into an explanation of benefits that holds plenty of interest.

Logan Lucky doesnt succeed because its in the right place at the right time. It towers because its good and its people work hard.

While real NASCAR drivers are sprinkled in here and there, they dont push this across the finish line. Logans win comes from a great man behind the wheel and well-oiled pit crew.
SIOUX CITY | After Karl Schenk was diagnosed with stage 3 pancreatic cancer in November 2014, sympathy cards began filling his mailbox.

Seventy-four percent of patients with pancreatic cancer die within the first year of diagnosis, while only nine percent survive more than five years, according to the American Cancer Society. Schenk was well aware that the odds weren't in his favor.

Still, the 52-year-old farmer and father of four from Jefferson, South Dakota, thought, "Maybe I can beat this."

"I was scared, there are some very black, dark days shortly after diagnosis," he said. "Then you start to get your fight on and you say, 'Maybe I do have a path to a cure,' and you start working toward that goal."

More than two years later, after a cutting-edge combination of chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, Schenk said he's back to 90 percent of who he was before the cancer diagnosis. He water-skis, hunts and rides horses like he used to.

Karl Schenk and his wife, Nancy, a physician who practices at Family Health Care of Siouxland Dakota Dunes Clinic, are sharing his story of survival in order to give others battling pancreatic cancer hope of a potential cure.

Cells grow out of control

An estimated 53,670 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the United States in 2017, according to the American Cancer Society. Pancreatic cancer starts when cells in the pancreas, an organ that sits behind the stomach and converts food into fuel for the body's cells, start to grow out of control. The disease, which is the third-leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States, is expected to claim 43,000 lives this year alone.

"It's really interesting how slowly some of that medical advancement news makes it out to the general public," Karl Schenk said. "That's probably one of my biggest frustrations with this entire chapter of my life -- what does it take to get that positive information out to people so they just don't give up, that the medical community doesn't give up on these people?"

Shocking diagnosis

Karl Schenk was busy with family life and farming when he began experiencing back pain. He chalked the discomfort up to indigestion, but three years ago at harvest time, he could no longer grin and bear it.

Nancy Schenk said she suspected something was wrong with her husband. At the time, she thought he had an infection.

Doctors suspected a gallstone may have migrated to Karl Schenk's pancreatic duct. They sent him to Nebraska Medicine in Omaha to have the suspected blockage removed. Two days after the procedure, Karl Schenk was still struggling. Further testing revealed a mass, which was 2.7 centimeters in size, on his pancreas.

"For me, cancer had been ruled out," Nancy Schenk said. "But as soon as they did a different type of scan and found the tumor, I knew exactly what that diagnosis meant for most people -- that was that he wasn't going to be here in another six months. It was very scary at that time."

Nebraska Medicine arranged for Karl Schenk to see a surgeon, but the wait was three to four weeks. Panic-stricken, Nancy Schenk said she contacted her brother, who works at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to see what other options were available for her husband. Within 12 hours, Nancy Schenk said her husband had an appointment at Mayo Clinic.

"Higher level pancreatic cancer, stage 3 or stage 4 -- most of those are considered non-operable or not curable," she said. "This surgeon that we talked to on that first day that we were (at Mayo Clinic) said, 'Things are changing and we can do a surgery for you.'"

Instead of rushing in and doing the surgery quickly, Karl Schenk said his surgeon wanted to treat him with a course of high-level chemotherapy, followed by radiation. Then, the tumor would be removed.

"They're not worried about the tumor in the pancreas -- that's not going to kill you. It's the metastases that might be in your body that they can't see, so they want to kill those off first and then worry about the tumor in the pancreas," Karl Schenk explained. "Chemotherapy and radiation followed by surgery is the only potential cure for this disease today, so there is hope for a cure if you've been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer."

About a week after the diagnosis, he started a regimen of Folfirinox. He took the combination of three chemotherapy drugs and a vitamin every two weeks for about three months. By the third session, he said he felt "pretty rotten."

"It's a cumulative effect. It's going to build up in your body," he said. "You know it's going to make you sick. You know it's going to depress you, but you also know it's something that could potentially extend your life if not save it."

After each session, Karl Schenk was asked to rate how he felt on a scale of 1-10. Even when he felt like "garbage," he said he circled "10" to ensure he could get another treatment.

"You know if you complain, they might just take it away from you," he said. "It didn't matter how rotten I felt, I circled the '10' and I said, 'Thank you, sir. May I have another one?'"

Testing that measures the level of tumor-associated antigens in the blood showed that Karl Schenk's cancer was responding to the chemotherapy. Next up: six weeks of radiation therapy.

"He was able to build up his system and he got to the point where he was a candidate for surgery; he's like, 'I feel so good I don't want to do it,'" Nancy Schenk recalled.

A potential cure?

As the Schenks were driving up to Rochester for Karl Schenk's surgery, they read stories of pancreatic cancer survivors. Their spirits were also lifted thinking about the people all over the world who were thinking about them and praying for them.

On June 15, 2015, at 1 p.m., after a four-hour delay, Karl Schenk entered the operating room for a 13-hour operation that would involve the removal of the tumor, along with his stomach, spleen, pancreas and duodenum. Nancy Schenk sat in a waiting room with her mother and father, her children and a friend.

The group talked and played games as they waited to hear whether the surgeon had found any evidence of metastatic disease. Nancy Schenk said the first step of the procedure involved inserting a camera through holes poked in her husband's abdomen to find out whether the tumor was contained. If so, the surgery, which Nancy Schenk said would be the largest Mayo Clinic had ever done, could move forward.

"He would never want to put somebody who had metastatic disease through the Whipple because it's such an extreme surgery and recovery takes six months to a year," Nancy Schenk said of surgeon Mark Truty. "If they would've found (metastatic disease), then they would've come out and said, 'I'm sorry. We couldn't do anything more. We've closed him up.' That was the most intense portion waiting for them to come back."

About an hour later when she heard that the operation was moving forward, Nancy Schenk said she felt immediate relief and encouragement.

"I think that pulled us through the rest of the 12 hours of the surgery, because he made it passed that hurdle," she said.

Nancy Schenk said she recalls Truty walking across the dark room at 2 a.m. to tell her that the tumor looked completely dead and that he got all the margins.

"It was a success. They only had to give him one unit of blood for 13 hours of surgery," she said. "He was already being extubated within the first hour after this major surgery. He just did so well."

A year of recovery

As a result of the surgery, Karl Schenk's ability to absorb nutrients changed dramatically. His weight dropped from 210 pounds to a low of 140 pounds.

He said the first three months of recovery were the toughest. When he ate, he felt nauseous.

"I became instantly diabetic when they took my pancreas," said Karl Schenk, who started counting carbohydrates and taking insulin. "Within six months, I was on a pump and a continuous glucose monitor. That was fairly easy."

Getting his strength back, however, took some time. Karl Schenk had to eat small, frequent meals, because his intestines had been shortened. Off and on for a year after surgery, he received intravenous feeding to help supplement his nutrition.

"His esophagus is connected to the second part of his small intestine," explained Nancy Schenk, who joked that she lovingly calls her husband "the gutless wonder." "He doesn't have storage to hold things to go through slow and he has less surface area for absorption of nutrients."

After everything he has been through, Karl Schenk said he's grateful for the quality of life that he has. He doesn't like to say that he "beat" cancer, because he doesn't know what the future holds. So far, he said his outlook looks good.

"One of the reasons I fought so hard to get back is that I wanted to show there is a good quality of life from this surgery and give hope to people who find themselves in this unfortunate set of circumstances," he said.
SIOUX CITY | As he battled illness in the late 1930s, Mexican folk artist Pedro Linares Lopez had feverish dreams of fierce, mythical creatures.

He saw a donkey with butterfly wings, a lion with an eagle head and a rooster with bullhorns. These strange-looking animals were shouting "alebrijes," a nonsensical word.

Linares couldn't get the creatures or the word out of his head. He began crafting the animals and objects he saw in his dreams out of papier-mache. These sculptures became known across Mexico as "alebrijes."

Now through Jan. 21, more than two dozen traditional wood carvings or "alebrijes" from the southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca (pronounced "wa-ha'-ka") are on display at the Sioux City Art Center. The carvings, featured in the exhibit "Crafting Tradition: Oaxacan Wood Carvings," are part of the University of Iowa Museum of Art's permanent collection.

Sioux City Art Center curator Todd Behrens described the exhibit as wild, imaginative, colorful and even a little silly. He said it will appeal to all ages.

"Some years ago, our director, Al Harris-Fernandez, had seen this on view at the (University of Iowa) and mentioned it was something to put on the back burner," he said. "When I looked at it more deeply and recognized what a fun exhibition it is, I thought it would be a nice change of pace."

Both animals that are native to Mexico, such as the armadillo and iguana, and those that are not, such as the giraffe, are on display in whimsical fashion alongside rustic depictions of life in the Mexican countryside. Some of the carvings are barely the size of chess pieces, while others tower several feet into the air. All are carved from the wood of copalillo, or copal, trees.

Varieties of copal trees, which produce an aromatic resin that has been used in ceremonial incense for centuries, grow in Mexico. The soft, curved branches can be shaped first using a machete and then with small knives found in one's kitchen. Behrens said watching the latter stages of the carving process looks effortless, as if the artist was slicing a banana.

While Linares gave "alebrijes" their name, Behrens said Oaxacan artist Manuel Juan Jimenez Ramirez popularized the wood version of alebrijes, and inspired others to try their hand at wood carving. His work was exhibited across Mexico and the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.

For many families living in Oaxaca, Behrens said carving "alebrijes" is a means of making a living.

"In some of the towns represented in this exhibition, these carvings have become the primary driver of economics," he explained. "One of the communities happens to be located near one of the pre-Colombian sites that's a tourist attraction, so they have the advantage of being a pass-through for tourists. Tourists want to walk away with something artistic that's a good indigenous craft form."

Gazing at a colorful, cartoonish dragon-like figure resting on a pedestal and encased in glass brings a smile to Behrens' face. He said the curved tendrils shooting from the head of the creature with bulging eyes, spiky teeth and wings, were added to the carving's base.

"The teeth coming out, the tongue, the wings, his headdress -- all of those are separate components," he said while looking at the cute orange monster marked with green and yellow blotches. "Personally, I prefer the animals. I think they're the most adorable."

While the actual carving and painting of such pieces may have only taken days, the entire creative process likely stretched on for months, according to Behrens.

Once they've finished carving, Behrens said the artists treat the wood for insects. The wood is then left to dry, which can take months. When the wood is dry, the artists can start painting. Behrens said the creation of "alebrijes" is often a family affair. He said even children get involved by painting the undercoat.

"They come up with the most bold and wild patterns and colors you can imagine," he said of the artists.

One of the intricate carvings depicts mourners visiting a cemetery. Each tiny grave is decorated and accented with candles and bouquets of flowers. Next to it, two larger figures wearing feathered hats dance hand in hand.

Near the center of the exhibit, a brown and gold patterned armadillo nearly touches noses with the purple and blue lizard attached to its back. The artist's use of the wood's curves are evident in the shape of the armadillo's back and curve of its tail.

"This is the type of art that you just don't see everywhere," Behrens said. "If you travel to Mexico you might see something like this in a tourist shop, but these (carvings) are elevated to a much higher level -- much more complex and original and beautiful."
SIOUX CITY | Siouxlanders moved in large numbers to kick off the holiday shopping season on Thursday and Friday, and law enforcement authorities monitored the activities.

The police officials didn't want crime to seep into the shopping tasks.

The Storm Lake Police Department has been going by businesses to keep tabs on the shopping. The department in a Facebook post on Thursday shared, "The SLPD is increasing patrols tonight and assisting shoppers and motorists at the Wal-Mart Store as large crowds arrive to begin their holiday shopping. Be safe this Christmas Season and shop local early and often."

Elsewhere, the South Sioux City Police Department asked businesses to be on the lookout for counterfeit bills on Black Friday.

The department in a Friday post said, "Employees accepting the money should pay attention to the texture of the bills, the way they are cut and look, and the watermark used by the U.S. Treasury. It is important that businesses properly train all employees who handle money from the public how to detect counterfeit money and what to do when they suspect a phony bill has been passed."

In the last few years, retailers have changed from having no shopping on the Thanksgiving holiday to becoming open that day. Big waves of people arrived in Sioux City stores Thursday to nab low-priced special items they bought for themselves and as Christmas presents.

Siouxlanders continued with the deluge of shopping on Friday.

Menards in Sioux City opened at 6 a.m. Several hundred vehicles packed the lot, and people poured in and out of the store at 7:40 a.m.

At 7:45 a.m., Irene Rivas, of Sioux City, walked out of Bomgaars carrying her special purchase, a DeWalt drill that was marked down from $299.99 to $199.99.

Rivas said she had looked at an advertisement, and knew it was an item that was worth going out for. She didn't consider shopping at 7 a.m. too early a task.

"I started at 7 a.m. at Sam's Club for TVs and a Ninja Blender, and then we came here," she said.

The South Sioux City Department later in the day offered an atypical "Black Friday Deal."

Police shared that, "If you have an active warrant and turn yourself in, the South Sioux City Police Department will give you a FREE ride to jail. Use your money to pay the fine or post bond."
SOUTH SIOUX CITY | The Dakota County Sheriff's Office has asked federal officials for permission to deputize jailers to enforce U.S. immigration laws.

The sheriff's office is the first agency in Nebraska and one of only 60 nationwide to apply for a federal program known as 287(g). The program authorizes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies to allow officers to perform immigration law enforcement functions after the officers complete specialized training.

Dakota County Sheriff Chris Kleinberg downplays the impact of the program, saying it will help his department more efficiently process undocumented workers who have been arrested and incarcerated in the county jail.

But critics of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration worry the county's participation in the program will "provoke fear, distrust and strife" within minority groups in the community.

Kleinberg bristled at that notion, saying "this has nothing whatsoever to do with Donald Trump" or the Trump administration's agenda.

"This is basic stuff in the jail, how can you go wrong by training your staff more? I don't see anything," Kleinberg said, adding the program is more than a decade old and has been around before Trump took office in January.

The sheriff said he is waiting to hear back on the department's application for the program, which falls under section 287(g) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.

The program allows correction officers to act as ICE agents to decide what actions need to be taken for both illegal immigrants and legal refugees, those with work visas and those with a green card when they are arrested.

Opponents argue the program erodes trust between law enforcement and immigrants and can lead to racial profiling. Kleinberg said the latter likely wouldn't happen since the department's trained officers would deal with a person's immigration status only after they have been arrested and jailed on other charges.

South Sioux City immigration lawyer Heidi Oligmueller said she is concerned with the amount of training the local jailers would receive in the 287(g) program. To win approval, officers must undergo a four-week basic training program and would have to take a one-week refresher training program every two years with certified instructors.

Oligmueller said officers would face difficult decisions including immigration removal proceedings, deportation based on certain crimes, whether someone is eligible for bond or if a case should be turned over to an immigration court.

"Those kinds of analyses are really complicated," Oligmueller said. "My concern is that there's so much of a case-by-case analysis, especially when criminal activity comes into play, that 30 days of training seems to be completely inadequate as far as those officers being able to make the appropriate decisions with regard to immigration law ... and circumventing a trained immigration official. That is problematic in my opinion."

Kleinberg believes the two to three officers who would get the training could handle the job. He also stated the issue has been blown out of proportion.

"There is so much misinformation out there when it is actually really simple. Google it, for Pete's sake. It says right on there what it is," Kleinberg said. "A lot of the local groups want to turn it into a 'You are going to get a paddy wagon and start kicking doors in.'

"Just in the last couple months, we have had to send a Canadian back through ICE and a German man who was here on a work visa. So it is not geared toward any race or origin or anything like that," Kleinberg continued. "This is just to help us in our jail understand immigration law."

Currently, ICE has 287(g) agreements with 60 law enforcement agencies in 18 states. The border state of Texas accounts for about 20 of those. Iowa and South Dakota do not currently have any agreements with the federal agency.

ICE has trained and certified more than 1,822 state and local officers to enforce immigration law.

The local Latino advocacy organization Unity in Action has started an online petition for the sheriff to withdraw his application to the program. The petition had received more than 115 signatures as of Friday evening.

In a statement, Unity in Action Executive Director Ismael Valadez said "287(g) entitles the sheriffs office to certain actions that can provoke fear, distrust and strife within our small community. It is the actions that come with the certification that can take this county down a disturbing path. Our community members should live in a community that encourages them and helps them achieve their potential -- not a community that subjects them to fear and distrust."

Kleinberg said he has met with members of Unity in Action and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, who also expressed their concerns about the program with him.

"They are trying to force me to (not contract with ICE), but I am going to do it. There is really no changing my mind," Kleinberg said. "I want to protect my county, also my employees, my jail, and my office. By this training, it will help me to do that better."

Once a memorandum of agreement that lays out the scope and limitations of the contract is established, Kleinberg said he would be willing to meet with the concerned citizens and organizations again.

"I'm happy to sit and do a public meeting and talk about this MOA once we agree to it," he said.

Kleinberg said two or three officers would be selected to undergo training. He mentioned he has had people reach out to him offering to fund the training since the "sheriff's budget can't pay for any of it," he said.

Oligmueller said she will "take the sheriff at his word" when he says the program won't instill distrust and fear between minorities and law enforcement, as Unity in Action has contended.

"The decision to act on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security is only supposed to be made once people are in the four walls of the jail," Oligmueller said. "It's not supposed to spread out into patrolling or other interaction with everyday people.

"I feel like just the application for the 287(g) itself -- and the uncertainties that go along with it -- kind of sends the wrong message to the immigrant community," she said. "I think many of these people come from countries where there is already a distrust of government and law enforcement because of corruption or whatever it is. Immigration advocates work really hard to tell (immigrants) that police are their friends and you need them when you are a victim or have an emergency. So I worry this just sends the wrong message, but only time will tell, I guess."
MARCUS, Iowa | Marie and Neal Bork have many trees on the Country Pines Tree Farm in rural Marcus that Siouxlanders can cut and buy to decorate for Christmas.

But the experience the Borks offer to the extended families scouring tree options is a broader, festive one, with cider drinks, candy canes, Santa items for sale and music in a barn. Marie Bork said people greet her with hugs and some will catch up for the gap over the 12 months since they last came to Country Pines.

"We say that we sell memories, that is the key to everything.... Everybody who comes is happy. Nobody is grumpy. Well, if they are grumpy, we make them not grumpy," Bork said.

Bork said the trend of people buying Christmas trees from Country Pines Tree Farm on the first weekend after Thanksgiving has been strong for many years.

"People get through Thanksgiving, and now it is time for Christmas," Bork said of the buying mentality.

"We have families, maybe two or three generations, coming to the tree farm. Some people wander around for an hour, just enjoying being outside and being together."

Holiday decorators can cut the fragrant tree of their choice at the farm. Most trees grow from seven to 15 years before being harvested. Pine grows faster than spruce or fir, and the slower-growing trees command a higher price.

Continuing her 20-year tradition of shopping at Country Pines, Jean Walker, of Cherokee, Iowa, went with 15 family members and four friends to buy trees Friday. Walker said she has always preferred real to artificial trees, for the scent of the pine, plus it delivers a sense of nostalgia.

Walker said it is pleasing to have her grandchildren now coming to pick trees, adding onto the memories of when her own children drove to the farm while hearing Christmas music in the car.

"We come, we cut down our tree and we enjoy it...It is an old-time Christmas (feel)," Walker said.

There aren't a huge number of tree farms in Iowa. The other main one in Northwest Iowa is 40 miles west of the Borks', in rural Hawarden, Iowa, T&S Christmas Tree Farm.

The Iowa Christmas Tree Growers Association dates to 1963, and about 100 association members are selling trees on plots that typically range from three to eight acres.

The Borks have owned the tree farm since 1990. They planted the first seedlings that year, and enough had reached maturity to begin selling by 1996. This year, the selling season opened Wednesday, then the Borks enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday.

Marie Bork said her expectations for a busy three-day weekend were quickly realized, describing Friday morning being full with 15 to 25 vehicles for much of the time.

"It was absolutely wild and crazy," Bork said.

There are 4,000 trees at the Country Pines farm in various stages of growth, from seedlings to the seven-footers people want. Bork said there was concern with July drought conditions, but "we've had nice rains this fall," so the crop is fine for sales.

"There were quite a few good options. I always go for the biggest and the tallest, that just me," Walker said, punctuating her assessment with a laugh.
State and federal officials said Friday Iowa does not need approval to move some 213,000 Iowans on Medicaid to a managed-care organization without offering them a choice.

The officials said they are working together on the issue but did not offer a timeline as to when it would be resolved.

Department of Human Services officials had announced in late October that one of its three insurers in Iowas Medicaid program, AmeriHealth Caritas, would exit the program on Dec. 1.

The states two remaining Medicaid insurers  Amerigroup Iowa and UnitedHealthcare of the River Valley  both re-signed contracts with Iowa for 2018.

Those enrollees previously covered by AmeriHealth would be transferred to UnitedHealthcare, department officials announced earlier this month. Those beneficiaries then could switch Amerigroup.

However, Tuesdays notice obtained by The Gazette stated Amerigroup does not have the capacity to take additional members, including those who have actively chosen Amerigroup Iowa as their (managed-care organization) after AmeriHealth Caritas withdrawal.

That would leave 213,000 Medicaid enrollees with UnitedHealth care as their only choice for a managed-care organization.

This could create complications for some beneficiaries and health care providers, as some doctors and providers have signed with only one or two of the managed-care organizations.

An approval from CMS to suspend choice is not necessary. Iowa has not requested any additional waiver authority as part of this transition, but is in constant communication with CMS, Department of Human Services spokesman Matt Highland wrote in an email Friday. Iowa Medicaid is proceeding forward in temporarily suspending choice for Medicaid beneficiaries.

Highland added that Amerigroup is actively ramping up their capacity, which the department will be monitoring.

Once Amerigroup Iowa and the Department are confident they have capacity to take additional members, members will again have choice, Highland wrote.

Neither Highland or federal officials gave further information on a timeline for the solution.

DHS officials currently are undergoing a search for a new managed-care organization, which wont be available for beneficiaries until July 1, 2019.

Temporary suspension

Medicaid enrollees are guaranteed a choice among managed-care organizations according to a provision within federal law, and a state must obtain a waiver from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for any suspension of that provision.

Tuesdays notice from DHS stated it had approval for a temporary suspension of managed-care organization choice from CMS, which oversees nationwide Medicaid programs.

However, a later email to The Gazette by CMS regional spokeswoman Julie Brookhart, based in Kansas, said the state had not received federal approval.

On Friday, Highland clarified the inconsistency, saying that using the term approval was inaccurate.

States generally have the ability to manage their programs in situations such as this within existing statutory and regulatory authorities, Highland said in Fridays email. CMS has offered our full support to Iowa to help provide as smooth an experience as possible for all impacted beneficiaries.

State or federal officials did not offer clarification on how long the temporary wave of choice would last for beneficiaries.

Iowa has kept the federal office apprised on the state of the Medicaid program since AmeriHealths withdrawal, as well as the challenges associated with the capacity at Amerigroup, said Johnathan Monroe, a Washington, D.C.-based spokesperson for CMS, in a separate email to The Gazette Friday.

CMS has been working with the state to address their immediate needs and we have no pending decisions before us for consideration related to this transition, Monroe said in the email. CMS intends to continue working with the state to help ensure it comes back into full compliance with the choice provisions in the managed-care regulations in a meaningful and measured way so as not to create further disruption to the beneficiaries and providers.
Opinion / Columnist

Linda Tsungirirai Masarira

Human Rights Defender, Aspiring MP Harare Central, Political Activist, Founder and National Coordinator of Zimbabwe Women in Politics Alliance.

Today, I join the world to commemorate the international day of eliminating violence against women. This year's theme is "Leave no one behind: End violence against Women and Girls. One in every three women around the world has been a victim of violence. Violence against women and girls is one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in our world today.I have observed that most women feign emotional stability in public spheres whilst they are suffering and broken emotionally. This is due to negative cultural expectations which dictates how a woman ought to behave and present herself. In the face of abuse and ill-treatment a woman is expected to be resilient and embrace any form of hardship and suffering that comes her way. Growing up a young woman is told that "usafukure hapwa", "mukadzi anoshinga". In a bid to follow what they have been socialised to believe, many women have painted a sunny picture of their lives, whilst their lived realities depicts a dark, gloomy cloud hanging over their lives. It is fact that many women in Zimbabwe are subjected to gender based violence perpetrated by their husbands, fathers or partners being the chief perpetrators.Violence against women is the most extreme form of discrimination. The UN reports that "on the basis of data from 2005 to 2016 for 87 countries, 19 per cent of women between the ages of 15 and 49, said they had experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner in the 12 months prior to the survey. In the most extreme cases, such violence can lead to death. In 2012, almost half of all women who were victims of intentional homicide worldwide were killed by an intimate partner or family member, compared to 6 per cent of male victims. These figures could actually be a fraction of the reality on ground, taking into account the culture of silence and some unreported cases.Moreover, only just over half (52 per cent) of women between 15 and 49 years of age who are married or in a relationship make their own decisions about consensual sexual relations and use of contraceptives and health services. That statistic is based on available data from around 2012 for 45 countries, 43 of which are in developing regions."Another extreme case of violence against women as highlighted by the UN report is that of female genital mutilation/cutting. Great strides are being made to eradicate this harmful practice, resulting in about 24 per cent decline since around 2000. Nevertheless, prevalence remains high in some of the 30 countries with representative data. In those countries, survey data from around 2015 indicate that more than 1 in 3 girls between 15 and 19 years of age have undergone the procedure compared to nearly 1 in 2 girls around 2000.In the political spheres, women have not been spared of violence tendencies either. As a victim of state sponsored violence, police brutality, rape, discrimination, torture and domestic violence I strongly advocate for the Elimination of any form of violence against women. On the 25th of February this year, I was brutally assaulted by ZRP in riot gear at Parirenyatwa Hospital for protesting against former President Mugabe's $4m birthday bash whilst the biggest referral hospital in Zimbabwe had no medication. Earlier this year Thokozani Khupe, MDCT Vice President was assaulted by party youths at their party offices. The violence I experienced made me more resolute in advocating for the promotion and protection of human rights, helping women to think positively about the future as well as moving away from self pity. As a leader, one of my obligatory duties is to inspire change in an effort to have a violent free Zimbabwe.Most women are traumatized by the violent attacks they have experienced in their lives and many have never received any form of therapeutic interventions or any form of support. Political violence is one critical area that needs redress and today. I urge all political party leaders to make peace pledges and eliminate violence in solving intra party conflict. Women in different spaces experience different forms of political violence including rape and most of these cases are unreported.Politically-motivated sexual violence against women was prevalent under Mugabe's oppressive regime and was used as a tool to silence and intimidate dissenting voices and repress political opposition. Women are frequent victims of brutality at the hands of police and other security forces, subjected to torture, rape, disappearances, and displacement. Zimbabwe is a signatory to the Southern African Development Community Gender and Development Protocol, Mugabe's regime did not respect its commitment to enforce the protocol. I am challenging the incoming President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa to ensure that any forms of violence are condemned and perpetrators of violence, face stiff penalties and the full wrath of the law.Public violence against women is another challenge for women especially at kombi ranks and bus terminus. Stiff penalties should be in place to deal with the rogue, uncouth, foul mouthed and violent kombi conductors and touts. Dialogue should be used to resolve conflict.The onus is on us women to be agents of change, we need to socialize our children to shun violence and endeavour to bring up our children in violent free homes. A nation cannot be successful without the contribution of women. Women are naturally endowed with influence. It is imperative that men promote peaceful environments in the home for their spouses to promote peace in our communities. For the woman, peace begins in her home.I am encouraging every woman who has been a victim of any form of violence to speak out boldly about the importance of eliminating any form of gender based violence. Together we can make a difference in our society.
WASHINGTON -- Tryptophan, an amino acid in turkey, is unjustly blamed for what mere gluttony does, making Americans comatose every fourth Thursday in November. But before nodding off, give thanks for another year of American hilarity, including:

A company curried favor with advanced thinkers by commissioning for Manhattan's financial district the "Fearless Girl" bronze statue, which exalts female intrepidity in the face of a rampant bull (representing (1) a surging stock market or (2) toxic masculinity). Then the company paid a $5 million settlement, mostly for paying 305 female executives less than men in comparable positions. New York's decrepit subway system took action: Henceforth, gender-neutral announcements will address "passengers" rather than "ladies and gentlemen." Washington's subway banned a civil liberties group's ad consisting entirely of the text of the First Amendment, which ostensibly violated the rule against ads "intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions."

California now can jail certain caregivers who "willfully and repeatedly fail to use a resident's preferred name or pronouns." A Massachusetts librarian rejected a donation of Dr. Seuss books because they are "steeped in racist propaganda," and The New Yorker discovered that "Thomas the Tank Engine" is "authoritarian." Always alert about planetary crises, The New Yorker also reported: "The world is running out of sand."

A food truck offering free lunches to workers cleaning up after Hurricane Irma was banished from a Florida town because its operator had no government permit to do that. United Airlines said: Assault? Don't be misled by your eyes. That passenger dragged off the plane was just being "re-accommodated."

Even Sen. Bernie Sanders went to Mississippi, to the Nissan plant in Canton, to help the United Automobile Workers with yet another attempt to convince Southern workers of the delights of unionization. The workers, 80 percent of whom are black, voted 2-to-1 against the UAW. A New York Times tweet about the South reported a shooting at a nightclub "in downtown Arkansas." Louisiana's Democratic Party joined the virtue-signaling by changing the name of its Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner.

In toney and oh-so-progressive Malibu, the City Council voted to become a sanctuary city. The councilwoman who made the motion for protecting illegal immigrants said: "Our city depends on a Hispanic population to support our comfortable lifestyle." In more-progressive-than-thou Oregon, where you can get state-subsidized gender reassignment surgery at age 15 without parental permission, the Legislature made 21 the age at which adults can buy cigarettes.

UCLA researchers warned that because Americans' pets eat meat, they endanger the planet by generating 64 million tons of carbon dioxide. Forty-two years after the government began (with fuel economy standards) trying to push Americans into gas-sipping cars, the three best-selling vehicles were the Ford, Chevrolet and Ram pick-up trucks. A year after a NASA climatologist (from the "settled" science of climate) said California was "in a drought forever," torrential rains threatened to break dams.

Pierce College in Los Angeles was sued after it prevented a student from giving away Spanish-language copies of the U.S. Constitution because he was outside the .003 percent of the campus designated a "free speech zone." Two years after social justice warriors convulsed the University of Missouri in Columbia, freshman enrollment was down 35 percent. An Arizona State University professor allowed some students in her human rights class to stage anti-Donald Trump protests in lieu of final exams. The University of Arizona guide instructed instructors to encourage students to say "ouch" when something said in class hurts their feelings. Clemson University's diversity training washed brains with this idea: Expecting punctuality might be insensitive because in some cultures time is considered "fluid." The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that student snowflakes are not the only victims of academic suffering. It seems that after the nine-month school year, professors endure isolation, solitude and depression during their three-month vacations.

Massachusetts continues to be surprised that the smuggling of cigarettes into the state increased when state cigarette taxes increased. Although San Francisco's hourly minimum wage has not yet reached its destination of $15, the city is surprised that so many small businesses have closed. McDonald's probably was not surprised when its shares surged after it announced plans to replace cashiers with digital ordering kiosks in 2,500 restaurants.

Finally, Domino's Pizza is going to need bigger menus. Government labeling regulations require calorie counts for every variation of items sold, which Domino's says (counting different topping and crusts) includes about 34 million possible combinations. None, however, have excessive tryptophan.
Sputnik 1 CBS/Paramount

I first wrote this for StarTreks official website in 2002 the day after the Enterprise episode Carbon Creek first aired. The story was clearly inspired by my friend Homer Hickams book Rocket Boys Well, that episode was on TV last night.

Curiously, after 15 years, and several pivots, NASA seems to be moving back toward the Moon again (which happens to be my favorite destination for human exploration as well as Homers) and interstellar object 1I/Oumuamua (previously A/2017 U1) is passing through our solar system  echoes of the plot of yet another Star Trek tale i.e. Star Trek First Contact.

Within  and below  my article are references to thinking that was on everyones mind as talk of going back to the Moon and on to Mars was on everyones mind. This was a few months before the loss of Columbia and more than a year before President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration.

Science Brief: Rocket Boys, Vulcans, and Wandering Apollo Rockets Special to STARTREK.COM by Keith Cowing, SpaceRef.com, 26 September 2002.

I tuned in last night, as I do every week, to watch Enterprise. I knew the basic premise of the episode: Vulcans crash near a small town (Carbon Creek) in Pennsylvania in 1957. But knew little else. As the story unfolded, the stage was quickly set: the Vulcans were visiting Earth to observe our first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. They crashed and found themselves in a small coal mining town.

Within moments I thought immediately of my friend (and SpaceRef advisor), Rocket Boys author Homer Hickam who wrote of his experiences in a coal mining town (Coalwood) watching Sputnik 1 soar overhead. I asked Homer what he thought of the episode. He said:

I got quite a few chuckles from it. I have little doubt that the writers were inspired by my book Rocket Boys and its film adaptation October Sky. Just as with my story there was the boy in a mining town inspired by Sputnik, wanting to go to college and hoping to figure out a way.

In Rocket Boys, I wrote about Quentin, the prototypical nerd genius of the Big Creek Missile Agency, who not only read every book in the library but, because he noticed that beggars lice (a seed) stuck to his jeans, came up with the idea of Velcro (he also invented panty hose, by the way, at least conceptually and Tang, too). Unfortunately, we didnt make any money off Quentins brainstorm because we Rocket Boys reacted to his beggars lice proposal as we did to most of his other ideas  Shut up, Quentin!

Anyway, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so Im pleased by the show and, come to think of it, it may explain a lot. Maybe Quentin was a Vulcan!

While Quentin independently came up with an idea for hook-and-loop fabric fasteners, the actual product was developed by George de Mestral. Alert viewers will recall that Mestral was the name of one of the Vulcan characters in this episode!

By coincidence Homer and all of his Rocket Boy pals will be back in Coalwood on October 5th for the October Sky Festival. I suspect a few of them may be wearing Vulcan ears this year.

While often inspirational, how we did some things back in 1957 at the dawn of the space age (and still do them today) can also be a source of frustration.

By now many of you may have heard NASA Administrator Sean OKeefe mention the fact that weve not made improvements in speed commensurate with some of our other technological advancements. We routinely move humans through space today at around 17,500 mph (28,000 kph). According to OKeefe thats the same speed John Glenn traveled at during his first mission 40 years ago.

Of course, that is the speed you need to travel so as to stay in low Earth orbit  whether you are Sputnik or a Vulcan starship.

There was a time when humans have traveled through space somewhat faster: up to 25,000 mph (40,000 kph) during Apollo trips to and from the Moon. While the technology certainly still exists to travel at these speeds  and even faster  we currently do not have a compelling reason to do so.

That may be changing.

After nearly a decade of being more or less absent, serious talk of exploration beyond low Earth orbit can be heard once again at NASA. A recent email memo by newly confirmed Deputy Administrator Fred Gregory is a clear demonstration that things are starting to happen. Gregory [with NASAese translation] said:

Speaking Out: Seems as though, even after telling the crowd last Wednesday that it is OK to combine NEXT [the name of NASAs new exploration planning activity] and Eileens science and the medical stuff as the beginning of several road maps with milestones that acknowledge the possibility of leaving Low Earth Orbit, there are still some who are afraid to take the next step without getting further permission. Those folks will be left at the station. Research driven exploration is where I am heading. If an email of this type will help, share this one with your folks and lets get rolling. We need the convincing arguments that only your folks can help provide, to plan for follow on activities once we are cleared of our past sins and omissions. And we need those requirements right now! Fred

This week a meeting of NASA scientists and engineers was held on Cape Cod. The attendees considered a variety of new (albeit preliminary) human exploration concepts  including one to send humans to the L1 point in the Earth-Moon system and another to put humans on the surface of Mars by 2018.

Curiously, just as a resurgence of interest in looking beyond low Earth orbit has been sparked at NASA, object J002E3 entered orbit around Earth.

Based on orbital calculations and analysis of light reflected off of the object it is most probable that J002E3 is the S-IVB upper stage that sent the Apollo 12 Command Module and Lunar Module to the Moon in 1969.

After bouncing around the Earth-Moon system for a few years, J002E3 managed to escape and enter its own solar orbit  one it pursued for three decades until being re-captured 6 months ago. Calculations now suggest that it will depart Earth orbit sometime in 2003 and return to an independent orbit around the sun.

Star Trek loves to present  and revisit  historical ironies  be it through time travel or encountering people and technology that had managed to survive in the depths of space for centuries. A Vulcan ship visiting Earth just as we make our very first step into the cosmic ocean is just the latest example.

During the Apollo 12 mission, by some ironic coincidence, Astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean landed a short distance from the Surveyor III spacecraft  a trailblazer that had sat alone on the lunar surface for several years.

Perhaps well soon be repeating such ironies once again in space.

Orbital dynamics may well cause J002E3 to make yet another return visit to near-Earth space in several decades. Perhaps, when it does, (unlike today) it will encounter ships bearing humans heading outwards  just like they do in the opening sequence of Enterprise.

2017 Addendum from Michael Okuda, scenic art supervisor for Star Trek Enterprise:

I saw your story on SpaceRef about the Star Trek Enterprise episode, Carbon Creek. I honestly have no idea if our writers were deliberately referencing Homers book, Rocket Boys, but the echoes struck me as well. For the scene in which our Vulcan friends sold the invention of Velcro, I took it upon myself to put a sign on the front window of the office building, proclaiming it to be the Big Creek Manufacturing & Sales company, which was my deliberate nod to Rocket Boys. Ive attached a snapshot of the window. I also had the company name placed on the building directory. Its been quite a few years since Ive seen the episode, and I dont recall if either is visible in the finished episode.

Well if you know to look for them, theyre there. Rocket Boys in Carbon Creek.

Related links

 Carbon Creek, Enterprise

 NASA Administrator Sean OKeefe And Rocket Boy Homer Hickam Join National Rocket Contest

 First Confirmed Capture Into Earth Orbit is Likely Apollo Rocket

 Lets Stop Going in Circles  And Go Somewhere, SpaceRef
Canale 5, a TV network owned by This report emanates from the mainstream media, Italysa TV network owned by Mediaset , a company largely controlled by the family of former Prime Minister S. Berlusconi.

Canale 5 is the most watched TV channel in Italy.

Why is this report which reveals the unspoken truth regarding the February 2014 Kiev Euromaidan coup dEtat is not the object of mainstream news coverage? It emanates from the MSM yet it is tagged by the mainstream media as pernicious media disiformation.

While the independent media (including Global Research) is ensuring its distribution outside Italy, the Western corporate media remains silent on the underlying political causes, perpetrators and consequences of the 2014 Kiev EuroMaidan coup dEtat.

Michel Chossudovsky, November 24, 2017

***

Gian Micalessin and Milan-based Canale 5 (Matrix program) last week, still have not paved its way to the international mainstream media. That is hardly surprising taking into account the bombshell evidence against the real perpetrators and organizers of the 2014 coup detat in Kiev, generally known as the  The interviews with three snipers of Georgian nationality, conducted by the Italian journalistand aired as a breathtaking documentary onprogram) last week, still have not paved its way to the international mainstream media. That is hardly surprising taking into account the bombshell evidence against the real perpetrators and organizers of the 2014 coup detat in Kiev, generally known as the  revolution of dignity .

Alexander Revazishvili, Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia, Georgian military officers who were recruited to carry out a special mission in Kiev by Mamuka Mamulashvili, a close aid of Mikhail Saakashvilis former defense minister Bacho Akhalaia. They claim that on Jan 15, 2014 they landed in Kiev equipped with fake documents and were transferred to Maidan. Having received 1000 USD each one and being promised to be paid 5000 USD after the job is done, they were tasked to prepare sniper positions inside the buildings of Hotel Ukraine and Conservatory , dominant over the Maidan Square. The documentary featuresand, Georgian military officers who were recruited to carry out a special mission in Kiev bya close aid of Mikhail Saakashvilis former defense ministerThey claim that on Jan 15, 2014 they landed in Kiev equipped with fake documents and were transferred to Maidan. Having received 1000 USD each one and being promised to be paid 5000 USD after the job is done, they were tasked to prepare sniper positions inside the buildings ofand, dominant over the Maidan Square.

Map of the Maidan square in Kiev and surrounding buildings

Brian Christopher Boyenger (his Facebook page is Segrey Pashinsky, who was detained by protesters on Feb 18, 2017 There were three or four weapons in each bag, there were Makarov guns, AKM guns, rifles, and a lot of cartridges.   witnesses Nergadze. The facts they exposed afterwards, were shocking. Along with other snipers (some of them were Lithuanians) they were put under command of an American military operative(his Facebook page is here ). The coordinating team also included Mamulashvili and infamous, who was detained by protesters on Feb 18, 2017 with a sniper rifle in the boot of his car and later headed the first post-Maidan interim president administration of Ukraine. The weapons came on stage on February 18 and were distributed to the various Georgian and Lithuanian groups.   witnesses Nergadze.

The following day, Mamulashvili and Pashinsky explained to snipers that they should shoot at the square and sow chaos. When Mamulashvili arrived, I also asked him. Things are getting complicated, we have to start shooting  he replied that we cannot go to presidential elections. But who to shoot? I asked. He replied that who and where it did not matter, you had to shoot somewhere so much to sow chaos.

It did not matter if we fired at a tree, barricade, or those who tossed a Molotov, what counted was making panics.

 I listened to the screams,  recalls Revazishvili.  There were many dead and injured downstairs. My first and only thought was to leave in a hurry before they caught up with me. Otherwise, they would tear me apart. 

Four years later, Revazishvili and his two companions report they have not yet received the promised 5000 USD bills as a payment and have decided to tell the truth about those who  used and abandoned  them.

The full documentary with English subtitles is available below (in two parts):

Two days later a Macedonian news agency Infomax organized a 52-minutes long night talk with Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia (in Macedonian) in which they provided more details about their backgrounds and mission to Kiev.

These three men are presenting themselves as repented military officers who were simply  obeying orders  and did not know that they  had to kill people . A naive attempt for professional death squads operatives, to put it mildly. Meanwhile the fact and time of these confessions and revelations are absolutely synchronized with the ongoing agony of the incumbent regime in Kiev.

the talking Georgians explicitly claim that the operation was initiated by the former president of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili. Mamulashvilis chief Bacho Akhalaia was a very close associate and trusted person of the Georgian leader who lost parliamentary elections in October 2012 following the Georgian sniper trio was hired for dirty job in Kiev, Akhalaia was under criminal trial on charges of abusing the power while heading the penitentiary branch of the Ministry of Justice, illegal detention and tortures of inmates (in October 2014 he was pleaded guilty by the Tbilisi City Court and sentenced to 7,5 years in prison). One month earlier, in November 2013, Mikhail Saakashvili, facing multiple criminal charges in Georgia, left the country for the United States, and officially He and his stooges, having suffered a painful defeat at the homeland, would hardly initiated a risky and adventurous project in a neighboring country if only they were not forced to do so by their masters to make up for failing to comply with their mission in Georgia. Since the very beginningexplicitly claim that the operation was initiated by the former president of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili. Mamulashvilis chief Bacho Akhalaia was a very close associate and trusted person of the Georgian leader who lost parliamentary elections in October 2012 following the prison abuse scandal (the Human Rights Watch dedicated a special report to the Georgian Abu-Ghraib, Gldani Prison, same month). At the time whenwas hired for dirty job in Kiev, Akhalaia was under criminal trial on charges of abusing the power while heading the penitentiary branch of the Ministry of Justice, illegal detention and tortures of inmates (in October 2014 he was pleaded guilty by the Tbilisi City Court and sentenced to 7,5 years in prison). One month earlier, in November 2013, Mikhail Saakashvili, facing multiple criminal charges in Georgia, left the country for the United States, and officially settled at the Tufts University.

Anyway, on the early days of the Ukrainian crisis the vast Soros-financed network in Georgia (Bacho Alakhaia, a bright offspring of the notorious Mengrel criminal clan, was got on Soros money at the Georgia Liberty Institute since his studentship in early 2000s) was activated to conduct special operations in Kiev.

showcase democratic alliance of Poroshenko & Saakashvili Four years later the situation has drastically changed. Aof Poroshenko & Saakashvili was broken into shatters . Saakashvili again proved to a be a psychopath unable to build any stable political relationship (since September 2017 Ukraine is considering extradiction of Saakashvili to the Georgian authorities meeting their request). Meanwhile on Nov 1 one of the closest aides of Bacho Alakhaia and Saakashvili, former chief of the military police at the Georgian defense ministry, Megis Kardava , wanted to face the same criminal charges in Georgia, was detained with false passport on the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian security service has already announced that he would be extradited to Tbilisi within 40 days. Several other Georgians from Saakashvili personal protection team were arrested in Ukraine and expelled to their homeland earlier in late October.

All these factors could make the Georgian sniper trio to preventively appear on the Italian TV as voluntary whistle-blowers exposing the truth about Euromaidan before they are captured and punished as the scape-goats.

Prudently enough they named a number of iconic personalities of the incumbent regime in Kiev  Andriy Parybiy (currently the Chairman of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), Segrey Pashinsky (member of parliament representing pro-government Peoples Front) and Vladimir Parasyuk (another charismatic parliament member)  as organizers and coordinators of the massacre on the Maidan square on Feb 20, 2014.

Their claims are confirmed by other evidence. The most comprehensive collection of such facts so far was carried out by Professor of the University of Ottawa Ivan Katchanovsky (he also commented on the Italian documentary last week).

Whatever we feel towards the repented snipers, their public confessions does not exonerate them from responsibility for deliberately killing people. They were not soldiers at the battlefield during the declared war. They could not be ordered by their commanders. They were hired for money to do a dirty job and they were aware that what they were going to do was a dirty job. Their jabbering in attempt to prove the opposite is ridiculous. So this trio, Alexander Revazishvili, Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia, as well as those who hired and ordered them  Mamuka Mamulashvili (currently he is the commander of the Geogian Legion in Donbass), Brian Boyenger (he fought on the Ukrainian side in Donbass in 2015-2016)  and other snipers from Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine have to face trial in Ukraine or any other country whose citizens perished during the Euromaidan. Next should come the turn of the Ukrainian politicians, principal beneficiaries of that massacre  those named (Andriy Parybiy, Segrey Pashinsky and Vladimir Parasyuk) and still unknown to the public.

The Heavenly Hundred, perished on Maidan square in 2014

As a matter of fact, this still underreported story totally undermines the legitimacy of Poroshenkos regime. The crocodile tears of the incumbent rulers of that long-suffering nation over the graves of the victims of revolution of dignity since now onwards will every time only emphasise and highlight the formers role in mass killing of their own supporters. Having paid a puny 1000 USD to every foreign sniper, they came to power to abuse dreams and trust of the millions of citizens of Ukraine. That was the real price of the Ukrainian dignity for the masterminds of their national catastrophe.
Thats one of the strangest natural disaster in history and shows that lakes are natures serial killers. Theyre all nice and calm, until one day they snap and suffocate a bunch of people. Lake Nyos, located in Cameroon, is a crater lake. Created by volcanic activity, it stores insanely high amounts of carbon dioxide underneath its surface. That typically isnt a problem, as the fluidity of the water usually gets rid of the poison queefs before they can bubble up. But Lake Nyos is very still. So for hundreds of years, the gas kept building up underwater, waiting for an excuse to let rip Silent but deadly. Literally.

Nobody knows what triggered it, but on August 21st, 1986, the lake exploded. A column of water over 300 feet high erupted into the air, and with it, enough gas to cause a small genocide. Hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide shat out at 60 miles an hour, while a mini-tsunami of water cascaded down at the same time. When the air cleared, 1,746 people were dead. The nearby town of Nyos had 800 residents, and only six survived the lake explosion.

In 2001, French scientists finally figured out a way to make sure Lake Nyos would never kill again. The bottom of the lake now hosts pipes that carry a constant stream of gas far away. Plus, an alarm system has also been installed to warn the lakeside villages in case the silent killer returns, giving them some time to sprint 15 miles to avoid being lake-farted to death.

Also worrisome is Lake Kivu, a lake over 1,000 times larger than Nyos and in a much more populous area. It has been shown to have a historical record of causing creatures in the lake to go extinct approximately every thousand years. Scientists believe that a volcanic disturbance could cause the same kind of event seen at Nyos but on a much, much larger scale. The question is when.

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Opinion / Columnist

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a 75 year old Zanu leader to be a champion of change. Even by scientific evidence, a 75 year old who spent 50 years admiring and being mentored by Mugabe cannot bring change to Zimbabwe.In Karanga, which is my culture, if you hate someone, you refer to them as dogs. "Imbwa yomunhu!". It becomes a psychological terminology of "cognitive dissonance" if a President calls Zimbabweans dogs, and claim to be their loving leader. This is exactly what Mnangagwa is doing. He is trying to break out from his murderous past, into a World Quality Unique and Democratic Zimbabwean leader. But, his murderous language is failing to depart from his lips.Since 2016, Matemadanda, Mahiya and Mutswangwa were mobilising Zimbabweans while Mnangagwa was stuck with Mugabe. These gallant War Veterans, who also have a violent past, managed to convince Zimbabweans across diverse political spectrum that they have changed. They managed to remind people like me, what they promised us in 1979, that a Zimbabwean leader would fairly safe the people of Zimbabwe.We rallied behind our War Veterans, and saw Mnangagwa being humiliated out of office by Mugabe's Chibwido wife. War veterans gave us instructions of how to behave in order to remove Mugabe and bring a REFORMER.When we, and our Military, had finished the job, our perceived reformer landed from South Africa. He started talking about himself, how he was poisoned, how he was in contact with the army, how he had come back to lead Zanu. About us, he uttered his old auto-mouth "Pasi ne Mhanduuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!" "Zanu icharamba ichingotonga, IMBWA DZICHINGOVUKURA. (Down with enemies, Zanu will keep ruling and DOGS WILL KEEP BARKING"Honourable Countrymen, we Zimbabweans are DOGS in the eyes of our President. No matter how much we sympathise and support him in the hour of need, he does not pause, to stop calling us dogs.I cry for my country which has majestically traversed from Old Mugabe to a Newer Mugabe. We are back to 1980, we will experience the moment of madness in year 2019, faked unity in 2024 and a new Zimbabwean leader in 2054. You have seen what the Military can do. We will sink low, low, low until 2054 when the Military will notice that the support they give a misguided old man, destroys our country.
There are many traditions associated with Thanksgiving, and one of them is the insane crowds and chaos that descend upon stores while customers search for deals on Black Friday.

However, many shoppers in Longview and Kelso on Friday morning didnt feel like the retail experience was too out-of-control.

I think everybody planned ahead this year, so I think its going smoother than usual, said Portia Yokel, from Kelso, who said she went to Walmart on Thanksgiving night and was at Target Friday morning.

This is a much more pleasant experience than I expected it to be, said Toutle resident Kristy Poapst, who shopped at Fred Meyer Friday morning.

Char Braack, the human resources manager at the Kelso Target, said although the store opened at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving, she didnt notice any massive lines into the store. Instead, customers consistently came in throughout the night and into Friday.

I dont think we had any crazy doorbusters where we only had one or two of the items, so theres really no need for anybody to camp out like they do at some of the other stores, Braack said.

Just across the street in the Three Rivers Mall, J.C. Penney was a different story.

Manager Matt Blisard noted that when the department store opened at 2 p.m. on Thanksgiving, there were giant lines at all of the doors, with a total of around 300 people waiting to get in.

Blisard said he was pleased with the days results.

I do believe we offer a great value to our customers and great valueso I think were keeping them local, he said. Thats the biggest thing for us, to keep them from going to Vancouver or Olympia or Portland. I think were doing a great job, and as you can see by the crowds today, its very busy.

Longview Fred Meyer Manager Lisa Baker also was happy with her stores sales. They opened at 5 a.m. Friday and handed out gift cards to the first 100 people in line  and Baker estimated that threshold was reached by 3:15 a.m.

It was much bigger than it was last year, she said. We had much more volume. The communitys been really good for us.

However, not every customer was enticed by the gift cards. Longview resident Maria Kell said she considered going early to Fred Meyer, but her friends convinced her it wasnt worth it.

Still, Kell said shes happily participated in Black Friday ever since she moved to America from the Philippines less than a decade ago.

I love it, she said. Lots of shopping and more sales.

Some families have even created a ritual around Black Friday shopping. Nicole Logotaeao, from Kelso, said her family comes to Fred Meyer every year to buy lots of socks. This year, they purchased 17 pairs.

Everybody always wants socks and towels for Christmas, so its kind of a tradition, she said.

Target customer Kristina Fritz said she participates in Black Friday every year, not so much for buying tons of presents, but for browsing around stores and socializing.

I dont do a lot of my shopping today, she said. I just go, with nothing in particular in mind. Its just hanging out with people and seeing people.

Although some shoppers that were interviewed went hunting for deals on Thanksgiving night or early morning that Friday, others had no desire to wake up early or interrupt their turkey dinner.

It aint worth the stress, Id rather pay a bit more, said Fred Meyer customer Sheldon Sanders. Im still getting a good deal (later in the morning).

One shopper said she wakes up early on Friday purely to avoid shopping during the actual holiday.

I dont want to shop on Thanksgiving, because I dont want people to have to work, so we always come the morning after, said Clatskanie resident Christy Davis.

And of course, like many shopping trips, a few customers admitted to spending more than they expected.

I only came here to get diapers; I wasnt planning on shopping, Poapst said. There have been a lot of great deals, and it wasnt as busy as I expected it to be, so I dont mind looking around a little bit. And I havent even got diapers yet.

And with the holiday season in full swing, some shoppers said they simply love the festive atmosphere of stores this time of year.

Its a merry time at Christmas, I like shopping (now), said Castle Rock resident Jeannette Mason. It just seems like theres a happy spirit.
The Washington state Department of Natural Resources says it will not renew the last of a fish-farming companys leases on net pens in Puget Sound. The Seattle Times reports Cooke Aquaculture's last net pens in Puget Sound are located near Bainbridge Island and in Skagit Bay. Department officials say Cooke has until Dec. 14 to finish steelhead farming and start deconstructing equipment. Letters sent Monday from the Department of Natural Resources to the company indicate Cooke had a history of failing to comply with the provisions outlined in contracts. Cooke didn't comment on the decision, but a representative told the newspaper the company may do so later.
Poaching story update

(No Thumb)Many readers have called asking why there isnt any ongoing coverage about the poaching case. We are covering everything related to the case as it occurs, but not much has been happening.

The defendants have been charged with crimes and the case is making its way through the courts.

TDN reporter Zack Hale will have stories coming soon.

To read what has been reported visit www.tdn.com.

City of Seattle

(Thumbs down)The city of Seattle wants to implement an income tax, which has been ruled unconstitutional more than once by the State Supreme Court.

A week ago, city of Seattle officials were in the courtroom trying to explain why they should be allowed to impose an income tax on city residents.

We thought it might be good reading to pass along some observations from Jason Mercier of the Washington Policy Center, and others who were in the courtroom.

According to Mercier, Seattle brought 13 attorneys into the courtroom. Why would anyone need 13 attorneys?

The argument the city is trying to make is that income is not property, even though the State Supreme Court has ruled income is property.

The city of Seattle attorneys positioned the income tax as a transaction tax for the benefit of living in Seattle. Dont citizens already pay property taxes for the privilege of living in a given city?

Former Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna testified at the hearing as well. McKenna made the point that an income tax already has been ruled unconstitutional, and the lower court is bound by the Supreme Courts prior decision, so theres not much to argue about.

David Dewhirst, the Freedom Foundations chief litigation attorney, said in a press release, To allow this income tax to stand would require the trial court to abandon 80 years of clear precedent and ignore clear taxing limits imposed by the Constitution and the Legislature.

On the other side, the Economic Opportunity Institute (EOI) told the court to declare state law banning a local income tax unconstitutional and that it would like to see a statewide income tax implemented.

What is at stake here is the future of the state of Washington. Washingtonians voted down income tax proposals nine different times. The citizens have spoken.

Regardless of what the taxpaying citizens want, a minority group of liberal Democrats want to somehow push through an income tax. These folks basically want a copy of your debit card so they can dip into your account to pay for their latest scheme such as safe injection sites.

If you are not keeping tabs on this issue, you should.

Holiday shopping hours

(Thumbs down)The holidays are family time. Many people only see close friends or relatives during the holiday season, but it continues to be a challenge for any family who has members working in the retail industry.

Several years ago, a few retailers started opening stores on Thanksgiving Day and many other stores followed suit. Unfortunately, the trend of stores being open on Thanksgiving Day continues.

With retailers being open on Thanksgiving Day, it is hard for folks to take even a short trip to be with their families. Many retailers open in the late afternoon and keep employees working into the early morning hours. Then workers get a short time to sleep and many go right back to work for Black Friday.

We wonder if being open on Thanksgiving Day increases revenue for retailers or just spreads out the same amount of sales over more days?

Were not sure how much sense it makes to open brick and mortar store locations on Thanksgiving Day when customers can still buy products online.

While we doubt anything will change, wed like to see retailers go back to being closed on holidays so families can spend time together.

Port of Kalama

(Thumbs Up)The Port of Kalama has filed a $1.8 million dollar lawsuit against the state of Washington. The lawsuit is an effort to overturn the states decision to rescind shorelines permits that previously were issued.

The Port contends the Environmental Impact Statement completed for the project followed state law, while the Shorelines Hearings Board said the EIS fell short of what was needed and therefore permits were taken away.

Whats happening here is that Washington state officials appear to want every project to suffer through a cradle to grave Environmental Impact Statement, but there is no law requiring projects to do so.

Unfortunately, one of these companies wrongly denied permits over and over again will have to keep litigating against the state of Washington in an effort to clear a pathway forward for business.

State of Washington agencies and officials have clearly shown a willingness to choose politics over policy as it relates to business and permits.
Fun fact: Under U.S. law, sexual assault allegations are now adjudicated by political election.

Dont believe me?

Just ask White House officials, Republican lawmakers and right-wing pundits, who lately argue that an electoral win provides absolution for any past sexual misconduct.

This troubling claim is being applied to (who else?) our president. But it also sets a terrible precedent for what happens if alleged child molester and sexual predator Roy Moore wins an Alabama Senate race.

Last week, after President Trump mocked Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., for sexual misconduct, a reporter asked the White House if it was fair to investigate similar accusations against the president by more than a dozen women.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said no. Those allegations had all been nullified by the election last November.

Look, I think that this was covered pretty extensively during the campaign, Sanders said. We addressed that then. The American people I think spoke very loud and clear when they elected this president.

Thats right, my fellow Americans. When you voted last November, it turns out you were actually volunteering for national jury duty. And you didnt even get your $40 daily stipend!

Sanders is not the only one making this argument.

On CBSs Face the Nation on Sunday, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., was asked by host John Dickerson whether the countrys increasing willingness to believe victims of sexual harassment and assault should cause a re-evaluation of those who came forward against the president.

Well, it happened in the middle of the campaign last year, John, he replied. And the American people had their say on that as well.

Meanwhile, on Fox News, MediaBuzz host Howard Kurtz questioned why the media would resurrect allegations against Trump in the first place.

Hes called these women horrible liars. Theres certainly a debate about whether they should be believed, Kurtz said. Theres about a dozen of them. But we had an election after that. And he won.

To hear Trump apologists tell it, the 2016 election exonerated its victor not only of any past sexual misdeeds, but also of every possible transgression or broken norm.

Such as not releasing his tax returns.

On Sunday, on NBCs Meet the Press, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney was asked why anyone should believe Trump when he claims the Republican tax agenda will raise his tax bills, since the public still has no idea what Trumps current taxes look like.

Mulvaney ducked the question.

I cant speak to the presidents taxes. I think that was sort of litigated by the American public during the election, he said, echoing language that White House aide Kellyanne Conway has used on this subject.

These excuses are both dumb and dangerous.

Dumb because, well, if the American electorate was indeed serving as jury last year, its verdict was not exactly unanimous. Or even in the right direction, for Republicans purposes.

A majority of American voters voted against Trump, as you may recall. If you buy Republicans logic, that would mean the public found Trump guilty of sexual misconduct and wanted him to disclose his tax returns.

Moreover, casting a ballot for a politician does not necessarily mean you endorse a candidates every policy stance, character trait and action.

When choosing between candidates, voters have to select one bundle of beliefs and behaviors or another. Its a combo plate. No substitutions allowed.

Maybe Trumps supporters backed him because they dont believe the allegations made against him. Or maybe they supported him in spite of finding those claims credible. (They heard him admit to grabbing women by the p  y on tape, after all.)

In any case, by arguing that victory refutes all allegations against Trump, Republicans are laying the groundwork to welcome Moore to Washington if he wins next month.

Already, White House officials are ducking questions about whether Moore should be allowed to serve as senator. A mere week ago, Conway said there was no Senate seat worth more than a child. On Monday, when asked whether Alabama voters should cast their ballots for Moore, she denounced his Democratic opponent and said, Im telling you that we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through.

Sure, some Republican senators have said they believe Moores accusers. Some, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), have even suggested that they might try to expel him if he gets elected.

But with tax cuts hanging in the balance, dont be surprised if they lose their nerve once the voters have spoken.
Dedicated to the Restoration of Progressive Democracy
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Come practice and learn Gongfu Tea With Us! Or just Sample Amazing Teas for Free! All This Amazing Information, Knowledge, and Training is Provided Graciously by george jaw and the Las Vegas Tea Club! Thank you! ... Tea culture in China differs from that of Europe, Britain or Japan in its preparation methods, tasting methods and the occasions for which it is consumed. Chinese Tea Ceremony is also called the Chinese Art of Tea, is a cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of the process of brewing tea. The manner in which it is performed, or the art of its performance is shown in the tea ceremony. The spirit of the Chinese Tea Ceremony is described as he(, jing, yi, zhenwhich mean peace, tranquility, enjoyment and truth. Monks felt they could exhibit philosophical concepts through tea service. It is for that reason that the underlying philosophies of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism all can be appreciated in a Chinese Tea Ceremony. Tea services are still employed today by many scholars, intellectuals, learners as a way of self-cultivation. Over time, people recognized the health benefits of tea but also its overall enjoyment. Tea ceremonies could be seen in both Chinese imperial celebrations and ordinary people's lives. ... Gongfu Tea Ceremony Most of Asia-produced teas (China, India, Sri Lanka, nepal, Taiwan, Japan, Korea etc) are required to brew the Gongfu way. "Gongfu", not Kungfu, means a process of accumulated skills and experiences combined. The Gongfu Tea Ceremony, is a specific style of Chinese Tea Ceremony. Originated from South China, based on local tea characteristic and how tea is processed, southern area people developed and created Gongfu Tea Ceremony which uses smaller tea pots and matching teaware, accessories to brew and serve tea threw a particular set of brewing steps to create delightful savoring experiences. The experiences of savoring the tea, as a result of Gongfu Brewing, shall be an obvious difference from that of western style brewing. The standard held to measure a good Gongfu Brewing is to maintain consistent flavor (density, aroma, flavor) of tea soup across multiple steepings(brewings). This involves 3 key elements, i.e., 3 Ts : temperature(of the water), Tea (amount), Time (of each brewing) and the skills to keep these 3 elements perfect in harmony for a particular tea being brewed. The skills of brewing requires technical knowledge of the tea and artistic training of movement forms. So does the service area of the tea ware and accessories requires sensible and artistic arrangement of each component. To make both brewing and tasting experience both simplistic, natural, tasteful, delightful, and relaxing. Benefits of learning Gongfu Tea Ceremony: - Better, Healthier Life Style - Natural and Healthy Beverage - Wide Range of Health Benefits: Lower Blood Pressure, Cancer Prevention, Weight Control, Lower Cholesterol Level, Digestive help, just to name a few. - Better Mannered, Improved People and Family Relationships. - Self-Cultivation and Perfection - Mind Calming and much more. - George Las Vegas Tea Culture Institute - "Small Tea Gathering, Big World Within", est. 2010

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Opinion / Columnist

Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have taken to the streets in recent days in protest marches calling for Robert Mugabe to resign and then again to celebrate when the dictator was finally gone. Tens of thousands packed the National Sport Stadium in Harare on Friday for the inauguration of President Mnangagwa while Zimbabweans at home and across the world watched on TV.Zimbabweans cannot stop smiling. The elation is palpable. The national mood has not been so upbeat since Independence Day in 1980. There is unbounded optimism that a new era has dawned.However, if we stand back from the emotion and analyse the events of recent weeks, we see that, in reality, all that has happened is that ZANU PF has used the military to get rid of Mugabe and the G40 faction and to tighten their grip on power. They have regained the loyalty and support of the war veterans and we can expect that Joice Mujuru and those who were purged in 2014 will now re-join ZANU PF.A myth is already emerging that all Zimbabweans came together to remove Mugabe. The reality is that the military and the war veterans cleverly manipulated the emotions of the people and invited them onto the streets in order to give a semblance of legality to the coup that was not a coup. That was no spontaneous popular uprising. The people were manipulated and exploited by those in power. That was no "Zimbabwe Spring".Heightened emotions seem to have engendered irrational hope regarding the 2018 elections. People do not seem to have realised, or do not want to realise, the implications of what has just happened. The triumvirate of ZANU PF, the military and the war veterans that has deposed Mugabe and purged G40 will never stand by and watch Mnangagwa lose elections and power.Right now, the majority of people I meet are not willing to listen to such rational thought. Their hatred for Mugabe was so very deep that, as long they do not see him in power, what happens now is of little consequence. People are lionising Mnangagwa simply because he is not Mugabe. It is emotional and irrational.Mugabe has gone. However Mnangagwa's presidency is not really a new beginning. In his inauguration speech on Friday, Mnangagwa paid tribute to Robert Mugabe, calling him "his father, mentor, comrade-in-arms, and leader". Mnangagwa is a Mugabe clone. His close association with Mugabe began in Mozambique in 1976 and was Mugabe's chief enforcer over a period of 40 years. He is still a subject of U.S. sanctions targeting officials of Zimbabwe's repressive regime.The man is a monster with blood on his hands. As Mugabe's Minister for State Security from 1980 to 1988 he oversaw ethnic massacres carried out at Mugabe's behest as part of a vicious post-independence power struggle with Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU faction. 20,000 civilians were massacred by Zimbabwe's notorious 5th Brigade, most of them ethnic Ndebele in Matabeleland and Midlands.On Friday, Mnangagwa spoke boldly about rooting out entrenched corruption in business and the civil service, warning that grief awaits the perpetrators. But this is the man who in in 2012, was specifically named in a Global Witness investigative report, together with his comrade Constantino Chiwenga, as being complicit with ZANU PF and the military elite in using the proceeds from looted diamonds to fund human rights abuses. He also stands accused of corruption and looting diamonds in both Zimbabwe and the Congo.Human rights groups allege that Mnangagwa has been responsible for ZANU PF's promotion of violence, intimidation and repression as well as illegal administrative procedures to ensure ZANU-PF election success. During the 2008 election campaign, repression was so intense that Morgan Tsvangirai dropped out of the run-off election after more than 200 of his supporters were killed, leaving the way clear for Mugabe to retain power.The crocodile is not going to change his scales. In his inauguration speech Mnangagwa "humbly" appealed to all of us to "let bygones be bygones". This appeal, almost a throwaway line, can in no way be interpreted as a contrite apology and certainly does not confer any kind of absolution for his crimes.Mnangagwa and ZANU PF have no respect for human rights. People are so caught up in the elation of seeing the end of Mugabe that they are ignoring a track record that shows Zimbabwe can expect more of the same.Meanwhile the opposition forces keep bumbling along. They failed to seize the moment and lost whatever chance they had of wrong-footing ZANU PF while the governing party was riven by infighting.All we have heard from them since the military intervention have been expressions of unrealistic hope that either a Government of National Unity or a National Transitional Authority would be formed. They do not seem to actually understand the difference between the two and some were clearly salivating at the prospect of getting back on the gravy train.Morgan Tsvangirai must resign immediately. The lesson of the necessity for decisive action when a failing leader is reluctant to nominate a successor and stand down will not have been lost on his colleagues.When all the emotion dies down and true perspective returns, we will still be a people under the oppressive heel of ZANU PF. The people are being led like lambs to the slaughter of another ZANU PF victory in 2018. Who knows how long Mnangagwa's "honeymoon period" will last but there is no doubt that ZANU PF will use it to build public support to lend the seemingly inevitable result a veneer of respectability. We must continue to fight to remove this blight from our land if we truly want a free, democratic and prosperous Zimbabwe.If we are to have any chance at all, Nelson Chamisa must step forward to quickly rally the disparate opposition parties into one cohesive force. He must transform the MDC Alliance into the Zimbabwean Alliance and lead a truly united opposition into the election.Tapson Muchena is an academic and a keen observer of the Zimbabwe situation. He can no longer remain silent. tapson.muchena@gmail.com.
Police constable critically injured

One traffic police constable named Md Mostafa received fatal injury while discharging duty in the city recently. Police constable Mostafa while on duty at Barrister college intersection under EPZ thana in city rammed by a lorry truck and wounded critically .

He was immediately admitted in Chittagong medical college hospital. ASI of Chittagong Medical college post Shilbrata Barua told that police constable Mostafa was admitted in hospital on Tuesday night with critical condition who is now under treatment .Thana police detained the lorry but the driver & helper quickly escaped from the spot , sources said.


May hails very positive Brexit talks with Tusk

Britain\'s Prime Minister Theresa May and European Council President Donald Tusk attend a bilateral meeting during the Eastern Partnership summit at the European Council headquarters in Brussels on Friday.

AFP, Brussels :

British Prime Minister Theresa May said Brexit talks with EU President Donald Tusk on Friday had been "very positive", but admitted there was still work to do to reach a deal.

"There are still issues across the various matters that we're negotiating on to be resolved, but there's been a positive atmosphere in the talks and a genuine feeling we want to move forward together," May said after talks with Tusk on the margins of an EU summit in Brussels.

The British premier met Tusk, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders on the sidelines of the summit with ex-Soviet states as part of a bid to unlock negotiations on a future trade deal.

May said they were making progress on all of the major issues-Britain's exit bill, the rights of EU nationals living in Britain and the Irish border, which has flared up as a major sticking point in recent weeks.

"In relation to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, we and the Irish government continue to talk about the solutions for that," May said.

"We have the same desire. We want to ensure the movement of people and trade across that border can continue as now and we don't create any new barriers to trade or the movement of people across that border."

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he was more confident than before about a deal but added nothing would be decided before he had dinner with May on December 4.

Tusk said after the talks that a deal in December was possible, but still a "huge challenge".

Meanwhile, EU President Donald Tusk said Friday that a Brexit deal in December was possible but a "huge challenge" and gave Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May 10 days to act.

Tusk issued the ultimatum after crunch talks with May on the sidelines of a Brussels summit, which the embattled British premier described as taking place in a "very positive atmosphere".

The "absolute" deadline gives May until a meeting with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker on December 4 to make sufficient progress on the key Brexit divorce issues.

Failing that, the EU leaders will refuse at their next summit on December 14-15 to unlock the next phase of the Brexit negotiations, which are supposed to cover a future trade deal and a transitional arrangement after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.

"Sufficient progress in Brexit talks at December EUCO (summit) is possible. But still a huge challenge," Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, said on Twitter after his hourlong meeting with May.

"We need to see progress from UK within 10 days on all issues, including on Ireland."

An EU source told AFP the talks were "long and honest", with Tusk setting December 4 as an "absolute deadline for the UK to make additional efforts" in time for EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to formally declare enough progress.

"PM May agreed to this timeframe," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The EU insists that Britain must tie up three thorny divorce issues-a multibillion-euro exit bill, the Irish border and the rights of EU nationals living in Britain-before there can be any talks on future relations.

"Particular attention was on how to ensure the support of Ireland to move to the second stage," said the source, adding that it was "still unclear" how Britain would meet Dublin's demand to avoid any return of border restrictions with British-ruled Northern Ireland.

EU leaders had been hopeful that May would bring new proposals on Ireland and on the exit bill, after senior British ministers agreed earlier this week to double the offer to a reported 40 billion euros ($48 billion).

May struck a positive note despite acknowledging there were "still issues" after her meeting with Tusk on the sidelines of a summit with six former Soviet countries.

"There's been a positive atmosphere in the talks and a genuine feeling we want to move forward together," she said.

EU member states have become increasingly impatient for Britain to compromise, and are also worried that May's fragile Conservative government is unable to do so even if it wanted to.

Talks did not start for almost a year after the June 2016 Brexit referendum and since then have been virtually deadlocked, first on the exit bill, and then on Ireland as well.

In a bid to make progress, May also met German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of Belgium, Denmark and Lithuania to press her case that there can be no final divorce agreement without a deal on trade.

Her hastily arranged talks with Merkel, whose status as Europe's most powerful leader has been undermined by the collapse of German coalition talks, were "very constructive", May's office said.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said on Twitter after meeting with May that "clarity on our future relations is in everyone's interest," while Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said "I have decided to be optimistic about this."




Internationalism to the advantage on US job market

So you're an international student who wants to stay and work in the US after completing a degree from an American university? While the reality is that you may face some extra obstacles along the way, your foreignness may also present unique advantages. Read on to learn more about how your international status can help you land a dream job in the US, along with one particularly important tip for positioning yourself for success.

The Benefit of Bilingualism

As the business landscape grows increasingly global, so grow opportunities for workers fluent in two or more languages. Asserts The Matching Group CEO and Founder Nathalie Jansen in a LinkedIn piece, "Bilingual employees offer innumerable benefits to your business. Many scientific studies have found that people who can speak more than one language enhance the workplace for others, as these individuals are often skilled multitaskers with impressive communication skills."

Specifically, Jansen cites five benefits bilingual candidates bring to the table, including the ability to reach international consumers, improved localization services, enhanced multilingual proofreading capabilities, better multitasking and productivity, and stronger communication and listening skills.

And the benefits of bilingualism aren't limited to the business world. Patricio Grane Labat, partner of public international law firm Volterra Fietta, told The Guardian, "In our profession, language skills are critical because, as international lawyers, we apply our trade with words. It is certainly something I look for when I recruit, if a candidate is not fluent in other languages I generally would not consider them - if I do it's usually for a discrete assignment."

As a foreign candidate, the choice is yours: You can choose to play up or downplay your international status. But the sooner you start embracing your internationalism for all of its advantages, the better you can sell these advantages to potential employers.

A Key Differentiator

Your language skills can also be a key differentiator in gaining visa sponsorship. Says Hult International School of Business, "Students who land a foreign job and sponsorship tend to present unique skills that their future employers couldn't fulfill.As an example, some of the most in-demand industries in the U.S. are in fields we refer to as "STEM" (Science Technology, Engineering and Manufacturing). Additional examples of in-demand areas are: Android and mobile apps, digital marketing and social media, data analytics, including data visualization, statistics and Google Analytics."

And while some foreigners are self-conscious about their accents, other insist that foreign accents can also be a positive. In discussing his experiences as a New Zealander on the academic job market in an Inside Higher Ed article, Christopher Garland reveals, "My 'Kiwi' accent is more of a point of curiosity than a reason to question my fluency in English...Moreover, I believe it directly aided in the minutiae of the job search. New Zealand is on many travelers' bucket lists, so it provided a conversation piece during those unavoidable, potentially awkward moments on the campus visit: for example, that lengthy drive with a graduate student from the airport to the hotel, or that very long breakfast with a senior professor."

Garland even goes so far as to conclude that his foreign status played a significant role in landing a job. He says, "One of the reasons I got a job, I believe, is that I took time to think about how 'being foreign' shaped my teaching and research in this country."

The Honesty Imperative

One last thing to keep in mind? Regardless of the challenges associated with conducting a job search as a foreigner, honesty is always the best policy. Attorney and immigration expert Steve Pattison told LinkedIn, "Most U.S. firms are happy to employ qualified non-U.S. citizens or residents to work in their U.S. offices, but can find U.S. immigration requirements and procedures confusing, and no business wants to have penalties imposed on it for employing unauthorized aliens."

The takeaway? The clearer and more forthcoming you are about your status, the better off you'll be. Concludes LinkedIn, "If you present an attractive hiring opportunity to a prospective employer rather than a complex set of administrative and legal obstacles, you'll enhance your credibility as a desirable candidate worth sponsoring for work authorization."



(Joanna worked in higher education administration for many years at a leading research institution before becoming a full-time freelance writer. She lives in the beautiful White Mountains region of New Hampshire with her family).

Joanna Hughes
Future of China and the UK in academic partnerships

Academic cooperation is a cornerstone of economic and diplomatic international relations, and China and the UK are working to build a firm foundation for the future. Last October the two countries launched a new phase of collaboration, which is already leading to some exciting educational partnerships. Let's take a closer look at one of the dynamic relationships forged by the new agreements.

The Past

The United Kingdom and China have historic educational ties. In 1855, a Chinese medical student at the University of Edinburgh became the first student from China to earn a degree from a Western institution, and in 1957, the UK became one of the first countries to create a student exchange program with the People's Republic of China. Since the latter half of the twentieth century, China and the UK have worked to create a strong bond through international education and exchange programs and the efforts have been a huge boon for both nations. In the last five years, the UK has seen a 50% growth in the number of Chinese students, and Chinese students make up at least 20% of the UK's university student population. The UK government is also keen to have British students study in China and has used various initiatives to encourage university and internship exchanges.

The Present

The robust pattern of academic trade between China and the UK is due to several overlapping factors:

 rapid growth in China's university-aged population

 highly competitive entrance requirements at Chinese institutions

 family traditions of international study

 the UK's reputation as a source of high-quality higher education

While China has developed its post-secondary education sector, academic infrastructure has yet to meet the demands of the country's university-aged population and the UK is one of the top overseas choices for Chinese students. This is, in large part, a result of a series of bilateral international education agreements created by China and the UK over the last several decades that have established strong links between British and Chinese institutions. Most recently, China and the UK signed a new group of agreements at the 8th UK-China Education Summit in September 2015. The new agreements reinforced the two countries' commitment to academic collaboration, as well as cooperation in research, vocational training, and secondary education.

The 2015 agreements, seen as a new phase in the UK-China academic relationship, include educational organizations as well as initiatives aimed at improving academic quality and cohesiveness.

The Future

While transnational academic ties between China and the UK remain strong, changing demographics in China and the UK's desire to maintain its standing as a top-rated international education provider mean that bilateral agreements like those established during the 2015 Summit are vital to the academic goals of both countries. But how do they work? Let's take a closer look at one of the more exciting collaborative programs established between British and Chinese institutions.

The partnership between Wuhan Textile University (WTU) and Birmingham City University (BCU) operates under a shared vision: to be providers of nationally and internationally recognized creative arts education. Both Universities aim to provide students with quality education with access to world-class technology and teaching.

The partnership, which was one of just a few approved to award degrees in China, will operate as the Birmingham Institute of Fashion and Creative Art (BIFCA). The Institute opens its doors this autumn and will offer courses in both English and Mandarin. Students will have the option of completing their four years of study at the Chinese campus in Hubei Provence, or jointly between the Birmingham City and Wuhan campuses.

All graduates will receive prestigious and internationally recognized British undergraduate degrees.

BIFCA is a perfect fit for creative arts students who want international experience and the chance to study in two of the worlds most dynamic and emerging fashion and design locations.

BIFCA builds on the reputations of WTU and BCU as centers for creativity. WTU has been China's top-rated fashion institution for fifteen years running, and BCU wants to build its profile as an international institution. BIFCA will offer programs in arts, media, and design in its expansive and recently refurbished location in Wuhan.

The new building will house a variety of resources and technology for students of design and media production and the administrations of both universities expect that BIFCA will host nearly 4,000 students in the next seven years.



(Elizabeth Koprowski is an American writer and travel historian. She has worked in the higher education system with international students both in Europe and in the USA).

Elizabeth Koprowski
Relief for Rohingya children under 5

Engr SA Rashed

Staff Reporter :

Like different NGOs and voluntary organizations, many individuals are also distributing relief materials, including food and life saving drugs, to the displaced Rohingya nationals at Ukhiya's Balukhali and Kutupalong camps.

In the latest effort, an individual social worker Engr SA Rashed distributed a huge quantity of relief materials to the Rohingya children under five years of age.

It was not so easy for him to collect such a huge quantity of relief materials. To achieve the goal, Engr Rashed had gone through hard labour for many days. Later, Brigadier General Bakir and some other Major ranking army officers extended their helping hands for a well-coordinated distribution of the relief materials.

"I got support from different sources, specially friends and well-wishers, to collect a huge quantity of relief materials. Some materials I've received as kind gifts while some I've bought from the stores in discount or nominal prices. I also got a good quantity of cash for various expenses, including conveyance," Engr SA Rashed said while he came to The New Nation office on Friday.

Engr SA Rashed was determined to distribute the relief among Rohingya children under 5 seeing their distress in the television reports ran by different channels. "One day, while I was watching television, I saw a large number of tortured Rohingya children, women and men who were crossing a muddy canal. Of them, a 5-6 year old boy was coming holding his mother's hand. Suddenly, the boy was separated from his mother and fell on the mud.The boy was crying. It touched my heart," he said. Meanwhile, a UNICEF report released recently said that 12,000 children left Myanmar weekly soon after military crackdown in August 25. "Many Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh have witnessed atrocities in Myanmar no child should ever see and all have suffered tremendous loss. For them, basic services such as food, safe water and sanitation are in short supply," UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said recently.

The children fled from Myanmar's Rakhine State into Bangladesh have reported experiencing or witnessing brutal acts of violence - accounts which point to grave human rights violations. According to the UNICEF, almost 60 per cent of the refugees are children while many have become separated from their families or fled on their own.

Echoing the same, UNICEF Bangladesh Representative, Edouard Beigbeder, recently said: "The appalling dangers that children here face are plain to see. Living in the open, with food, safe water and sanitation in desperately short supply, the risk of waterborne and other diseases is impossible to ignore."

Out of nearly 12 lakh Rohingya people - including new arrivals, about 720,000 are children. Of them, an estimated 450,000 Rohingya children aged 4-18 years old need education services, 270,000 of them from among the new arrivals.

Nearly 17,000 children with severe acute malnutrition need inpatient and outpatient treatment and need nutritious supplementary food, according to officials.
West Ham draw 1-1 with Leicester for David Moyes' 1st point

UNB, London :

Cheikhou Kouyate equalized before the break to earn West Ham a 1-1 draw against visiting Leicester on Friday for David Moyes' first point in his second game in charge of the struggling Premier League club.

Moyes' side got off to a terrible start with Angelo Ogbonna failing to clear Jamie Vardy's cross, allowing Marc Albrighton to slide in for Leicester's opener in the eighth minute.

Leicester continued to dominate to home fans' frustration and might have had a penalty when Albrighton went down under Arthur Masuaku's challenge.

But West Ham gradually improved and Ogbonna forced a save from Kasper Schmeichel.

Kouyate equalized with a header after a Manuel Lanzini corner before the interval.

The home side went closer to grabbing a winner toward the end.

West Ham stays 18th in the 20-team league ahead of the rest of the 13th round, while Leicester moved up to 11th.






Egypt mosque attack: An act of despicable cruelty

AT least 235 people have been killed and many more injured in a bomb and gun assault on a mosque in Egypt's north Sinai. So far it has been the deadliest massacre in the country's recorded history. Killing innocent unprotected worshippers - be it inside a mosque or a church - is an act of evil's brute force. No group claimed responsibility for the attack as yet, but it marks a major escalation in a region where for the past three years Egyptian security forces have battled the Islamic State insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and soldiers. We condemn the mosque attack in the harshest terms while express our sympathy and solidarity with the families and relatives of the victims. However, the attack we believe should only strengthen our will and unity against terrorism and radicalism worldwide.





Reportedly, the attackers shot at people as they left the mosque, and also at the ambulances. They even had set alight nearby vehicles to try to block routes away from the mosque. Given the nature of such ruthlessness, whatever their cultural and religious identity may be, they are evidently killers without morality and conscience.

Last May, gunmen attacked a Coptic group of Christians travelling to a monastery in southern Egypt, killing 29. Understandably, Militants are now attempting to expand their hit-and-run operations beyond the largely barren, desert Sinai Peninsula into Egypt's heavily populated mainland. The Egyptian security forces must concentrate in this particular zone. After targeting Christians, the turn for mosques has come







The Egyptian government and people should equally respond to such acts of terror with equal brute force where we to stand beside them. Moreover, we expect the Egyptian people to remain steadfast in their long-lasting battle against derailed radicals and terrorists. Lastly, faraway at home our government shouldn't take the attack as an isolated terror attack at a distant country - our mosques too can come under attack any time.
Don`t let Razakars, killers return to power: PM

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina addressing a grand rally as the Chief Guest marking the recognition of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman\'s historic March 7 Speech by UNESCO at Suhrawardy Udyan in the city on Saturday.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Saturday urged all to remain alert so that Razakars, Al Badrs, war criminals, killers and manipulators of history can never return to power.

"...Razakars, Al Badrs, war criminals, killers and history manipulators should never come to power again. The country is moving ahead, it'll move forward and we'll build it with the Liberation War spirit," she said.

The Prime Minister said this while addressing a grand rally organised to celebrate the recognition of the historic 7th March speech of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as a world documentary heritage by Unesco.

Sheikh Hasina said, it is matter of great regret for all that the anti-liberation forces not only killed the Father of the Nation, but also demolished the ideal for which the Liberation War was waged and tens of thousands of martyrs laid down their lives.

"They had put Razakars, Al Badrs and killers in state power...they had distorted the country's history coming to power," she said. After the assassination of the Father of the Nation, the Prime Minister said, the historical 7th March speech was banned in the country. "This speech never had gone on air through radio and television. Our leaders and activists had to face inhumane torture for playing this speech, many leaders and workers laid down their lives.

Hasina said no one can erase history. "The real history is always remains on top. This has been proved today."

She wanted to know the present condition of those who had banned this historic 7th March speech. "Where will they hide their faces. They had tried to peter out this speech."

Hasina regretted generations one after another could not know the real history of the county after 1975. "With this recognition, this speech has attained its place in the international arena."

Briefly describing the various achievements of the government, the PM said the present government put Bangladesh in a respectable position in the world arena. "The Father of the Nation wanted to see a developed and prosperous nation... we're moving towards that end, this is our prime work," she said.

The programme started with the play of the national anthem. Bangabandhu's historic March 7 speech was also screened on the occasion.

Eminent reciter Bhaswar Bandapadhay recited poet Nirmelandu Goon's famous poem 'Jevabe Swadhinata Shobdo Ti Amader'.

The PM's address was followed by a cultural function and a laser show.

On October 30, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) recognised the Bangabandhu's historic March 7 speech as part of world's documentary heritage. Unesco Director General Irina Bokova announced the decision at its Paris headquarters.

In the capital, the celebration began at noon through placing wreaths at the portrait of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at Dhanmondi Road-32.

Later, a procession from there moved towards Suhrawardy Udyan where Bangabandhu had delivered the landmark speech in a mammoth gathering on March 7, 1971.

As part of the celebration, a jubilant processions, essay and quiz competitions and screening of films on the Liberation War were arranged in 64 districts.

Bangladesh missions abroad also hold the similar programmes.

Educational institutions across the country also organised essay, quiz and general knowledge competitions.
United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. CHAD RYAN HUNTSMAN, Defendant - Appellant. No. 17-4031 Decided: November 24, 2017

Before HARTZ, BALDOCK, and BACHARACH, Circuit Judges.

ORDER AND JUDGMENT *

We dismiss the appeal of Defendant Chad Ryan Huntsman because his plea agreement waived his right to challenge his below-guidelines sentence.

In November 2015 a grand jury indicted Defendant on one count of producing child pornography, see 18 U.S.C.  2251(a), and one count of possessing child pornography, see 18 U.S.C.  2252A(a)(5)(B). The following August he entered into a plea agreement with the government. Under the agreement Defendant would plead guilty to the first count, the government would dismiss the second count, and the government would recommend that his prison term be 240 months. In addition, Defendant waived his right to appeal. Paragraph 8 of the agreement states:

I know that 18 U.S.C.  3742(a) sets forth the circumstances under which I may appeal my sentence. However, fully understanding my right to appeal my sentence, and in consideration of the concessions and/or commitments made by the United States in this plea agreement, I knowingly, voluntarily and expressly waive my right to appeal as set forth in paragraph 12 below.

R., Vol. 1 at 18 (emphasis added). And Paragraph 12(e)(1) states:

Fully understanding my limited right to appeal my sentence, as explained above in paragraph 8, and in consideration of the concessions and/or commitments made by the United States in this plea agreement, I knowingly, voluntarily, and expressly waive my right to appeal any sentence imposed upon me, and the manner in which the sentence is determined, on any of the grounds set forth in 18 U.S.C.  3742 or on any ground what-ever, except I do not waive my right to appeal (1) a sentence above the maximum penalty provided in the statute of convic-tion as set forth in paragraph 2 above [i.e., 18 U.S.C.  2251]; and (2) a sentence above the high-end of the guideline range as determined by the district court at sentencing, or, in the event that no such determination is made by the district court, a sentence above the high-end of the guideline range as set forth in the final presentence report.

Id. at 19 (emphasis added).

The presentence investigation report prepared by the probation office calculated a total offense level of 43 and a criminal-history category of I, resulting in an advisory guidelines sentence of life imprisonment. But because the statutory maximum term for Defendant's offense is 30 years, the guidelines range dropped to 30 years.

In a presentencing filing Defendant referred to the need for sentencing consistency and observed that similar defendants had received 240-month (20-year) sentences. And at the sentencing hearing itself, his counsel reemphasized the importance of consistency and noted that in the last two or three cases I've had with this Court, we've gone be-tween 20 and 25 years. R., Vol. 3 at 18. Also, in accordance with the plea agreement, the government stated at the hearing that it believed a 240-month sentence was appropri-ate. The district court, however, asked the government why Defendant should receive a lower sentence than those given to two other defendants (Lyman Black and Brenton Andrews) who had both pleaded guilty to producing child pornography under plea agreements setting the sentence at 300-month (25-year) prison terms. Defendant neither ob-jected to the question nor responded to it. The government pointed to three mitigating factors: that Defendant had previously suffered a brain injury, had Asperger's syndrome, and had made some earnest attempts to help the government early in this case to find other perpetrators of the same crime. Id. at 27. The court agreed that Defendant was distinguishable from Black and Andrews and sentenced Defendant to 270 months (22.5 years).

Defendant's sole contention on appeal is that the district court erred in basing [Defendant's] sentence on materials outside of the record [the sentences of Black and Andrews] without first notifying [him] of its intent to use unrelated, non-case specific materials in committing him to federal prison. Aplt. Br. at 1. But this argument is barred by Defendant's appeal waiver. We determine whether an appeal waiver is valid and applicable by considering (1) whether the disputed appeal falls within the scope of the waiver of appellate rights; (2) whether the defendant knowingly and voluntarily waived his appellate rights; and (3) whether enforcing the waiver would result in a miscarriage of justice. United States v. Garcia-Ramirez, 778 F.3d 856, 857 (10th Cir. 2015) (internal quotation marks omitted). Defendant does not dispute that the first two ele-ments are satisfied. His only argument concerns the miscarriage-of-justice prong.

It is a defendant's burden to show that an appeal waiver causes a miscarriage of justice. See United States v. Johnson, 756 F.3d 1218, 1221 (10th Cir. 2014). An appeal waiver causes a miscarriage of justice [1] where the district court relied on an impermis-sible factor such as race, [2] where ineffective assistance of counsel in connection with the negotiation of the waiver renders the waiver invalid, [3] where the sentence exceeds the statutory maximum, or [4] where the waiver is otherwise unlawful. Id. at 1219 (brackets in original). Defendant, however, rests only on a general assertion that [e]nforcing the waiver would be a miscarriage of justice. Aplt. Reply Br. at 6. We are not persuaded. Defendant points to none of the four miscarriage options as being applicable, and clearly none apply. Nor was there anything close to unfairness when the district court challenged his assertion that similar defendants had received sentences of 240 months.

We DISMISS the appeal and GRANT defendant's motion to supplement the record.

Entered for the Court

FOOTNOTES

. After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist in the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.

. We grant Defendant's motion to supplement the appellate record to include the plea agreements for Black and Andrews.

Harris L Hartz Circuit Judge
Certain forces responsible: Sultana Kamal

Staff Reporter :

Speakers at a discussion on '20 years of Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord' on Saturday said though 20 years have already elapsed, nearly nothing of the accord implemented so far.

"After 20 years of the CHT accord, miscreants recently set fire on indigenous people's homes in Langadu of Rangamati district. Associates of certain forces are behind the attack," Sultana Kamal, a former advisor of

the caretaker government, said while presiding over a roundtable meeting in CIRDAP auditorium in the capital city.

She added: "We have seen that there is no progress of the judicial process of the incident yet."

The meeting entitled, '20 years of CHT peace accord: problems of land right issue and solutions', was organised by the Association for Land Reforms and Development (ALRD).

Sultana Kamal alleged that there is a huge lack of political will in the government to implement the peace accord.

She said a lot of scope was there to implement the accord in the last 20 years. But the government did very little in this regard.

The former advisor stressed the need for creating pressure on the government to implement the CHT peace accord.

"If we try our best together, the changes are high to implement the accord," she said.

Khuhsi Kabir, Chairperson of the ALRD, said, the Bangalee settlers in CHT should mind that they are living in the 'indigenous' people's area.

"Bangalees should follow and obey the customs and rules of the 'indigenous' people there as like as we follow the rules of foreign countries when we travel abroad," she said.

She said, the 'indigenous' people were involved in armed 'struggle' long time before 1997. After the signing of the peace accord, the 'indigenous' people hoped that they would get their rights fulfilled, but it has not been implemented yet."

Khushi Kabir alleged that the Bangalee settlements were made in those areas aiming to make the 'indigenous' people minority.

She said, "After signing the accord, one side refrained from 'armed struggle' and being deprived for two decades. The government, on the other hand, stopped construction of Army camps but setting up huge BGB camps in CHT areas what has made us anxious."

Shamsul Huda, Executive Director of ALRD, Goutam Dewan, Convener of Parbattya Chattagram Nagorik Committee, Banchhita Chakma, Member of Jatiyo Manabadhikar Commission, Sanjib Drong, General Secre
Myanmar agrees to take back only recent Rohingya refugees

Myanmar will take back only those refugees who fled to Bangladesh following the violence on Oct 9, 2016 and Aug 25 this year.

Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali briefed the media on Saturday on his recent trip to Myanmar and a Rohingya repatriation agreement signed with the Southeast Asian nation on Nov 23.

The deal covers the residents of Rakhine State who have crossed over to Bangladesh after Oct 9, 2016 and Aug 25, 2017.

The repatriation of residents who crossed over to Bangladesh earlier will be considered separately on the conclusion of the present agreement, according to the agreement.

The governments would arrange for the voluntary return in 'safety, security and dignity with options for recommencing livelihood' after they had been verified to be Myanmar residents, the agreement says.

The deal outlines the criteria for repatriation:

(i) Returnees must be residents of Myanmar

(ii) Returnees must be the ones who voluntarily wish to return to Myanmar by themselves

(iii) The members of split families and their left-behind members, and orphans need to be certified by a court of Bangladesh

(iv) Both parents of additional offspring born on the other side of the border must be residents of Myanmar

(iv) Children born out of unwarranted incidents are to be certified by a court of Bangladesh

A joint working group is to be formed to oversee all aspects of the repatriation within three weeks of the agreement's signing. The repatriation process will begin in two months.

The Rohingya minority in Myanmar fled across the border to Bangladesh amid fear of persecution following insurgent attacks on border police on Oct 9, 2016 and Aug 25, 2017.

The attack on Oct 9 led to the deaths of nine Myanmar police personnel, while the Aug 24attack resulted in the death of 12 security force personnel and 59 insurgents.

Nearly 67,000 Rohingyas had entered Bangladesh soon after the Oct 9 attacks, the foreign ministry had said on Jan 31, 2017.

Over 600,000 more have taken refuge in Cox's Bazar since the Myanmar military began a crackdown in Rakhine state following the August attack.

Nearly 400,000 Rohingyas, who had crossed the border at various points in the past few decades, had already been living in Bangladesh before then.

In 1992, Bangladesh signed a repatriation agreement with the then military regime of Myanmar, following which 236,599 Rohingyas returned to their homeland. But another 2,415 were denied entry even after meeting the criteria under the arrangement.

Last month, Foreign Minister Ali said the previous arrangement will not work now as the current situation is 'entirely different' and verifying Rohingyas based on their residence in Rakhine is not 'realistic' anymore.

The two countries also agreed to seek the assistance of UN refugee agency UNHCR in the return process.

Aid agencies and rights bodies, however, have expressed concerns over return of Rohingyas to Myanmar without a guarantee for their safety.

"The idea that Burma will now welcome them back to their smoldering villages with open arms is laughable," said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch.

"Instead of signing on to a public relations stunt, the international community should make it clear that there can be no returns without international monitors to ensure security, an end to the idea of putting returnees in camps, the return of land and the rebuilding of destroyed homes and villages."

On Nov 23, Amnesty International said they had doubts about a safe return while "a system of apartheid remains" in Myanmar.

In a statement, the London-based group said it hopes those who do not want to go back are not forced to do so.
Ensure safety, citizenship first

Rohingya refugees, who are living in makeshift settlements in Bangladesh's border town of Cox's Bazar, said on Saturday that they should not be sent back if their safety and citizenship cannot be guaranteed.

"They will never agree to voluntary repatriation if they are not taken back to their villages and their land returned to them," a Rohingya leader Mohammad Zubair told media at a camp about the prospects of returning to Myanmar.

He said Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a similar repatriation agreement in 1992, which led to the return of some 200,000 Rohingyas to Rakhine, but unresolved problems, including the issue of citizenship, continue to fester. "Unless we get citizenship in Myanmar, no way the Rohingya will this time return to Rakhine," Zubair said.

The UN refugee agency yesterday echoed the concerns of the Rohingyas, saying all returns must include the "informed consent of refugees".

The stateless Rohingyas have been systematically oppressed by Myanmar, which has stripped the minority of citizenship and severely restricts their movement, as well as their access to basic services.

A 1982 law prohibits Rohingya from becoming citizens of Myanmar.

According to the agreement, some 700,000 Rohingyas who have fled to Bangladesh since October 2016 will be considered for repatriation.

But that still leaves hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas-some of whom had fled Myanmar years or decades ago to Bangladesh.

"The repatriation of residents who crossed over to Bangladesh earlier will be considered separately on the conclusion of the present arrangement," the newly signed deal said.

The new agreement has already drawn criticism at home, with the main opposition party saying "taking steps to repatriate Rohingyas without stopping repression and genocide in their homeland will be tantamount to pushing them to the hell".

Abdul Jabbar, 65, former community chairman from Tung Bazar Village in Rakhine state, said the military started firing at us as we were fleeing our village when they started the attacks [in August]. My son was killed and two of my daughters were taken away by the military. I have five other children who made it to Bangladesh I am educated. When I was younger, it was better for us. I was educated by a government teacher.

But education is not so easy for Rohingya any more. I did not get a job, despite being educated, because I was Rohingya. Rather, other non-Rohingya got the job, even though I was better educated.

I heard the news about the repatriation agreement from the radio. We don't want the 1992 agreement. We want that no violence will happen to us, that people will get an education, that people will freely move and not have to bribe the military to get around. If we do not get more rights, I will die here in Bangladesh.

Nur Kamal, 18, a farmer from Maungdaw Township, said, "I came to the camp in the beginning of October. Our mosques and madrasas were closed by the government in 2012. The government has been pressuring us, and the situation got gradually more difficult. Our religious leaders (clerics) were jailed".

If a Rohingya is well educated, he cannot get any job like Rakhine people. We cannot live freely. I'm extremely eager to go back to my homeland, but the first and main thing we need is citizenship. If we are not given citizenship, I would die rather than go back.

"We're afraid this repatriation agreement will be the same as in 1992. We want a different agreement. In the 1992 agreement, you needed to show Myanmar identity papers to return. Most people don't have Myanmar identification cards. I have one and my grandfather has one, but my father does not. Families will be separated," said Nur Kamal.

He said, "I will also only go back if we can return to our land. We really miss our land in Myanmar; it is too crowded here in the camps. We are in hardship here. We don't have fuel to cook food. First, we want citizenship status; that is our main demand. We want all people to be treated equally".


Varsity students involved in entry test forgery!

Six including 3 DU students arrested

M M Jasim :

A good number of university students, some of them from Dhaka University (DU), are allegedly involved in university admission forgery, sources said.

Their main duties are to collect information of the admission seekers, provide leaked question papers, to render all out cooperation during the admission test and sit for the admission in favour of the candidates.

The students of different universities get a percentage from the syndicates for their efforts to admit the candidates into the universities.

Mollah Nazrul Islam, Special Superintendent of Police of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) told The New Nation on Saturday that the number of involved students in admission test forgery was not poor. "We have just started our journey to nab the culprits. The arrested students are the symbol of wave of our initiative," he said.

"The accused university students are committing such illegal activities for money only. Some of them are also addicted," he said.

Nazrul Islam said, the admission forgery is a big offense. That is why, the CID is determined to free the admission process from corruption.

In the latest incident, the Detective Branches of Police on Saturday arrested six students including three Dhaka university students on charge of their involvement in Barisal University admission test forgery from Barisal city.

The police recovered five anti-jammer electronic devices, five magnetic Bluetooth induction, 11 mobile sets using for question leakage, two extra SIM cards, one headphone and three pen drives.

The accused students are Alamgir Hossain Sahin, a 4th year student of Soil, Water and Environment Department of DU and Central leader of Bangladesh Chhatra League, Maruf Hossain Maruf, a 3rd year student of Geology Department of DU, Mahmudul Hasan Abid, a 3rd year student of Mathematics Department of DU, Muidur Rahman Baki, a 3rd year student of BBA Course of Mohammadpur Degree College and Sabbir Ahmed Pritom, a 3rd year student of Golachipa Dergee College.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Tuesday arrested two masterminds and seven students of Dhaka University for their alleged involvement in leaking admission test question papers.

The accused students have been identified as ring leaders Enamul Haque Akash and Navid Anzum Tonoy,- DU first year students Tanvir Ahmed Mollik, Md Bayezid, Nahid Iftekhar, Fardin Ahmed Sabbir, Proshenjit Das, Rifat Hossain and Azizul Hakim.

Navid Anzum Tonoy is a student of Geography Department of the Dhaka University.

On October 20, the CID detained two DU students and an applicant on charge of question leakage and forgery in 'Gha' unit admission test.

They were-Abdullah Al Mamun, a 3rd year honors student of the Department of Applied Chemistry, a master's student of the Department of Physics, also a leader of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), and Ishrak Ahmed Rafi, the applicant.

A matters student of Dhaka University wishing anonymity told this correspondent that some of his friends offered him to take part in admission test forgery when he was 2nd year student. "I refused their proposal and stopped communication with them," he said.

"There are many students of Dhaka University who are involved in question paper leakage," he said.

Another third year student from Jagannath University said, "I went to the Jagannath University just a day before my admission test. Five to seven masters students came to me and tried to convince me for receiving their proposal. They proposed me to give them Tk three lakh with cent percent assurance of my admission. I did not agree and left the campus immediately."

"I can say that there are also many students involved in such activities," he said.

Vice-Chancellor of Dhaka University Professor Akhtaruzzaman said, the university will take stern action including cancellation of studentship against accused students in admission forgery.


Zimbabwe ex-finance minister arrested

BBC Online :

Zimbabwe's former Finance Minister Ignatius Chombo, taken into custody by the military after it took power, has appeared in court in Harare.

He faces corruption and abuse-of-power charges from his time in local government, his lawyer says.

Mr Chombo is one of several leading figures detained when former President Robert Mugabe was placed under house arrest on 14 November.

Separately, the high court has ruled that the military takeover was legal.

"The actions of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces to stop the usurping of power by those close to former president Robert Mugabe are constitutional," the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation quotes the court as saying.

The court also ruled "null and void" the sacking by Mr Mugabe of then Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa earlier this month.

The military takeover was widely seen as a reaction to moves by Mr Mugabe to ensure his wife, Grace, succeeded him, and against the sacking of Mr Mnangagwa, who became president on Friday.

The high court said its ruling would prevent non-elected individuals exercising powers only open to those who have been elected.

What's next for Zimbabwe?

But the ruling has raised concerns that the military is exercising undue influence over the judiciary.

Dewa Mavhinga, Southern Africa Director of Human Rights Watch, warned of a "strange, captured judiciary".

Meanwhile, former Finance Minister Chombo appeared in court attired in a blue suit and chatting to police guards as he faced charges stemming from his time as a local government minister more than 10 years ago.
DU celebrates recognition of 7th March speech

DU Correspondent :

Dhaka University (DU) celebrated the recognition of Bangabandhu's 7th March speech as 'World Certified Heritage' in World's Memory.

On this occasion, DU authority chalked out a day-long programme, including colorful procession on campus, portrayal competition, photography exhibition and discussion meeting at Teachers and Students center (TSC).

Marking the day a discussion meeting titled 'Historical 7th March - Bazrakantha-Memory of the World' was held at the TSC.

Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed, MP, was the Chief Guest, while DU VC Professor Md. Akhtaruzzaman presided at the programme. DU Treasurer Prof Md. Kamal Uddin, President of DU Teachers' Association (DUTA) Professor ASM Maksud Kamal, General Secretary Professor Md. Rahmatullah, and President of DU Alumni Association (DUAA) AK Azad were present on the occasion.

Hailing Bangabandhu's 7th March speech as a one of the best speeches of the world has ever recorded, Chief Guest and Commerce Minister Tofayel Ahmed, MP, said that Bangabandhu united the whole nation like a rock, instilled revolutionary thoughts and inspired them to get ready for an independent country by the 7th March speech. In fact the said speech was a guideline for the freedom fighters.

Describing the brief history of Bangabandhu's life-time movement, Commerce Minister said that he had to go to jail repeatedly for the cause of the people. He was a visionary politician. He was a far-sighted leader and never compromised his principle, he said.

DU VC Prof Md. Akhtaruzzaman paid rich tributes to the memory of the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and said, we feel proud that the UNESCO recognized the historic 7th March speech as the 'World Certified Heritage' across the world. Through this, the international community would get the opportunity to learn about a historical document of our independence.

President of DU Officers Association (DUOA) Syed Ali Akbar, Bangladesh Chhatra League, DU Third Class Employees Association, Technical Employees Association and Fourth Class Employees Association leaders also addressed this progamme.


People`s faith on cops decreases

Md Joynal Abedin Khan :

People from different professional strata, mainly rights bodies, have alleged that the peoples faith has already been lost on cops as maximum personnel get minor penalties after repeatedly committing serious crimes.

Huge numbers of victims are still indifferent to file any complaints against cops to avert further problems influenced by law enforcers, they said.

They added that people still fear police considering crimes like detention, threat, missing, filing fake case, wrong investigation, extortion, grabbing, creating artificial problems and harassing in the name of police verification.

Inspector General of Police (IGP) AKM Shahidul Hoque at a Community Police Day programme in the city has said, Common people keep their distance from police as they fear the law enforcers. If there is a police fear among the people, then it has to be removed. If police and people work together, crime will be reduced.

All members of the force, mainly Communality Police and Bit Police, have already enabled to back the faith of countrymen on police force, the IGP said.

Recently, he said, we have launched complaint cell in the headquarters to ensure the easy complaint service and victims security.

We generally ensure the punishment such as suspension, demotion, salary cuts, reproof notices and transfers, he mentioned.

In this context, a statistic from the Police Headquarters showed, a total of 76,426 members of Bangladesh Police were punished for their involvement in various crimes and irregularities in five years and eight months till August 31.

Among them, 551 were dismissed or sacked and 72 faced forced retirement after the allegations against them were proved, said a senior officer at the Police Headquarters.

The accused members were given four types of punishment  major and minor punishments, and dismissal and forced retirement, said the official.

The police currently have about 200,000 members, which means on any given year, 6-8 per cent of the force are facing some kind of disciplinary action, he said.

On Wednesday, 11 members of the Criminal Investigation Department took Tk 45 lakh in bribes from the owner of a recruiting agency in the city's Fakirer pool area, a police probe report has found.

Seven Detective Branch (DB) policemen were caught red handed for possessing Tk 17 lakh ransom from a businessman at a check post on Teknaf-Coxs Bazar Marine Drive on October 25.

On July 8, police have allegedly planted evidence to falsely charge a photojournalist of the Daily Observer with possession of contraband yaba pills. The incident took place on the night of June 27 at Shantinagar.

A suspect in a robbery case accused nine police of Khalishpur Police Station, including its Officer-in-Charge, of gouging out his eyes in Khulna early September.

In February, five cops officials, including Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Jatrabari Police Station under Dhaka Metropolitan Police, were sued for rape of a woman in the police station. The offender OC Abni Sankar Kar and four others were only transferred focusing the charge, said police sources.

Monir Hossain, relative of a victim, said, People wearing jackets of DB along with pistol, handcuffs, wireless sets picked up his brother in January 15.

He claimed that police personnel committed serious crimes but they got minor punishments.

Dr Zia Rahman, Professor of Criminology Department at Dhaka University, said, If police do not undergo massive reform, people will not get necessary service from them.

We have always said that structural changes in police are needed, especially at the station level where there is a massive workload on policemen. For this reason, they need internal training on behaviour and job responsibility, he said.

He also urged the public to protest police crimes.

Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB) Executive Director Dr Iftekharuzzaman earlier claimed that 72 per cent police took bribe from people.

Nur Khan, a former executive director of Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), said that police professionalism and chain of command breaks down when police are used for political gains.

We should prevent a lot of the illicit activities and misuse of power by police, he said.

Human rights activist Alina Khan believes polices internal actions are merely eyewash.

When people forget the incident a few days later, they are back to doing the same crime. To prevent these incidents from recurring, we need exemplary punishment, she said.

Interestingly, most of the investigation reports do not see the light of day, leaving the complainants to face police harassment instead, she said.

Asaduzzaman Miah, the DMP Commissioner, said that they have issued several letters against many police officials who were engaged in crimes like narcotics trade and kidnapping for money.

If anyone is found involved in crimes, the person will not be treated as police official, he said.

Sahely Ferdous, Assistant Inspector General (media and publication) of the Police Headquarters, said, When we get any allegation against the police, first we investigate it. If we find any authenticity to the claims, we take action against them.

Police also undertake criminal prosecutions against serious offenders, she added.




United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. ROBERT J. RICE, Appellant No. 17-1102 Decided: November 16, 2017

Before: CHAGARES, JORDAN, and FUENTES, Circuit Judges

OPINION*

Robert Rice appeals his jury conviction for knowing possession of child pornography, and knowing receipt and distribution of child pornography. For the following reasons, we will affirm.

I.

Because we write exclusively for the parties, we set forth only those facts necessary to our disposition. Rice, who was an officer in the United States Army, had a laptop computer. Without his knowledge, his wife, Marilyn Rice-Goldie, installed a spyware program called Spector Pro on the laptop. Spector Prothe presence of which was not readily apparent to computer usersmonitored and reported on the activity of Rice's entire computer, including accounts on the laptop that Rice had not authorized Rice-Goldie to access. Among other things, Spector Pro logs keystrokes, takes screen shots, captures web sites visited, and saves the contents of searches, emails and chats.

After installing Spector Pro, Rice-Goldie reviewed Spector Pro's records and discovered child pornography on the laptop. Rice-Goldie eventually turned the laptop over to the police. Based on Rice-Goldie's reports, the police obtained a search warrant and found evidence of child pornography on the laptop.

Rice was charged with one count of knowing possession of child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C.  2252A(a)(5), and one count of knowing receipt and distribution of child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C.  2252A(a)(2). Before trial, Rice moved to suppress the evidence seized under the above warrants, arguing, inter alia, that it was acquired in violation of the Wiretap Act. The District Court denied Rice's motion.

In May 2016, Rice was tried by jury. On the first day of trial, Rice-Goldie appeared as a government witness. During defense counsel's cross-examination of Rice-Goldie, the prosecutor erroneously commented, in the jury's presence, that defense counsel's questioning might elicit information related to a separate investigation into a national security issue. Defense counsel immediately objected and moved for a mistrial. After speaking with counsel at sidebar, the District Court took a recess to consider the transcript and how to proceed. After the recess, the District Court spoke further with counsel about their respective arguments, but ultimately rejected defense counsel's motion for a mistrial. Rather, after recalling the jury, the District Court delivered a short curative instruction informing the jury that the prosecutor's reference to a national security investigation was in error and instructing them to disregard it. With that, Rice's trial continued and the prosecutor's remark was not mentioned again during the rest of the five-day trial.

Ultimately, the jury convicted Rice on both counts. Rice was then sentenced to 142 months' imprisonment, to run concurrently with the four-year term of imprisonment imposed by the Army following court-martial. This appeal followed.

II.

Rice appeals his conviction on two grounds. First, Rice contends that the District Court erred in denying his pretrial motion to suppress all evidence that the government seized pursuant to warrants based on Rice-Goldie's alleged violation of the Wiretap Act. Second, Rice argues that the District Court abused its discretion by denying his motion for a mistrial and instead giving a curative instruction after the prosecutor erroneously mentioned once in the jury's presence that Rice's case was related to a separate investigation into a national security issue. We address these issues in turn.

A. Suppression Motion

Rice first maintains that the District Court should have suppressed evidence obtained through Rice-Goldie's installation of Spector Pro on his laptop as a wrongful interception of his electronic communications under the Wiretap Act. This argument fails. The Wiretap Act does not provide a suppression remedy for electronic communications unlawfully acquired under the Act. Instead, 18 U.S.C.  2515the Wiretap Act's suppression provisiononly mandates the exclusion of unlawfully intercepted wire and oral communications. Indeed, while the legislative history for the USA Patriot Act demonstrates that Congress considered amending  2515 to extend to electronic communications, no such provision was added.

Recognizing that  2515's exclusion rule does not apply to electronic communications, Rice asserts that 18 U.S.C.  2517(3) creates, by negative implication, a suppression remedy for electronic communications under the Wiretap Act. We reject this argument. Section 2517(3) does not suggest that unlawfully intercepted electronic communications should be suppressed. Rather,  2517(3) merely describes the limited purposes for which information concerning electronic communications received by authorized means may be disclosed under the Wiretap Act.

B. Mistrial Motion

Lastly, Rice argues that the District Court abused its discretion in denying his motion for a mistrial based on the prosecutor's incorrect statement, before the jury, that Rice's case was related to a separate investigation into a national security issue. We disagree. The prosecutor's single reference to a national security investigation, which occurred on the first day of trial and was not mentioned again during the rest of the five-day trial, was corrected by the District Court's prompt and succinct curative instruction, and could not have prejudiced Rice in light of the overwhelming evidence presented regarding Rice's possession, receipt, and distribution of child pornography.

III.

For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm Rice's conviction.

FOOTNOTES

. The Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C.  2510, et seq., formally known as the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, was technically superseded by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. Fraser v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., 352 F.3d 107, 110, 113 n.7 (3d Cir. 2003), as amended (Jan. 20, 2004). For the sake of convenience, we refer to the Wiretap Act throughout.

. App. 301.

. On Rice's motion, the court later dismissed Rice's conviction under 18 U.S.C.  2252A(a)(5) pursuant to the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment because Rice was convicted by court-martial for the same offense. App. 903.

. The District Court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.  3231. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.  1291.

. App. 301.

. We review the denial of a suppression motion for clear error as to the underlying facts, but exercise plenary review as to its legality in light of the [D]istrict [C]ourt's properly found facts. United States v. Jackson, 849 F.3d 540, 544 (3d Cir. 2017) (quoting United States v. Coles, 437 F.3d 361, 365 (3d Cir. 2006)). The District Court's denial of a motion for a mistrial is reviewed for abuse of discretion. United States v. Liburd, 607 F.3d 339, 342 (3d Cir. 2010).

. The Wiretap Act defines electronic communication as any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, electromagnetic, photoelectronic or photooptical system that affects interstate or foreign commerce. 18 U.S.C.  2510(12).

. United States v. Steiger, 318 F.3d 1039, 1052 (11th Cir. 2003); see also United States v. Meriwether, 917 F.2d 955, 960 (6th Cir. 1990) (The [Electronic Communications Privacy Act] does not provide an independent statutory remedy of suppression for interceptions of electronic communications.).

. See 18 U.S.C.  2515 (Whenever any wire or oral communication has been intercepted, no part of the contents of such communication and no evidence derived therefrom may be received in evidence in any trial, hearing, or other proceeding in or before any court  if the disclosure of that information would be in violation of this chapter.) (emphasis added); United States v. Barajas, 710 F.3d 1102, 1110 n.5 (10th Cir. 2013) (In 1986, Congress amended [the Wiretap Act] with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and clarified that only wire and oral communications are subject to statutory suppression.).

. See Steiger, 318 F.3d at 1050.

. See United States v. Jones, 364 F. Supp. 2d 1303, 1308 (D. Utah 2005) ([I]t is clear from the general context of  2517(3) that it does not create by implication a suppression remedy for electronic communications.).

. See 18 U.S.C.  2517(3) (Any person who has received, by any means authorized by this chapter, any information concerning a wire, oral, or electronic communication  may disclose the contents of that communication  while giving testimony under oath or affirmation in any proceeding held under the authority of the United States ); see also Jones, 364 F. Supp. 2d at 1308 (Read in context,  2517 describes the limited purposes for which communications received by authorized means may be used or disclosed; its effect has no implication for communications received by unauthorized means.).

. App. 301.

. See United States v. Rivas, 493 F.3d 131, 140 (3d Cir. 2007) (A mistrial is not required where improper remarks were harmless, considering their scope, their relation to the context of the trial, the ameliorative effect of any curative instructions and the strength of the evidence supporting the conviction.).

FUENTES, Circuit Judge.
United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. JESSICA ROSEBERRY, Appellant v. CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, d/b/a Philadelphia Police Department; LIEUTENANT JAMES SMITH, Individually and in his official capacity as Lieutenant in the Philadelphia Police Department; SERGEANT COLLEEN COOK, Individually and in her official capacity as Sergeant in the Philadelphia Police Department; SERGEANT RON WASHINGTON, Individually and in his official capacity as Sergeant in the Philadelphia Police Department; SERGEANT TYRELL MCCOY, Individually and in his official capacity as Sergeant in the Philadelphia Police Department; CORPORAL HENRY JACKSON, Individually and in his official capacity as Corporal in the Philadelphia Police Department; LIEUTENANT TANYA COVINGTON, Individually and in his official capacity as Lieutenant in the Philadelphia Police Department; LIEUTENANT JOSEPH MCBRIDE, Individually and in his official capacity as Lieutenant in the Philadelphia Police Department; CORPORAL SHARON BRAMBRICK, Individually and in his official capacity as Corporal in the Philadelphia Police Department; SERGEANT KIRT MILLER, Individually and in his official capacity as Sergeant in the Philadelphia Police Department; CAPTAIN DAVID BELLAMY, Individually and in his official capacity as Captain in the Philadelphia Police Department; JOHN DOES 1-10; SERGEANT AARON GREEN, Individually and in his official capacity as Sergeant in the Philadelphia Police Department No. 16-1784 Decided: November 24, 2017

Before: SMITH, Chief Judge, NYGAARD, and FUENTES, Circuit Judges

OPINION*

We will affirm the District Court's award of summary judgment to the Appellees because the Appellant, Jessica Roseberry, has not presented any evidence that establishes the necessary causal link between the conduct she claims was constitutionally protected and the retaliatory actions she alleges were taken against her. See Thomas v. Indep. Twp., 463 F.3d 285, 296 (3d Cir. 2006) (citing Mitchell v. Horn, 318 F.3d 523, 530 (3d Cir. 2003)).

I.

The District Court's opinion thoroughly relates the summary judgment record, viewed in a light most favorable to Roseberry. See Roseberry v. City of Philadelphia et al., 2016 WL 826825 (E.D. Pa. Mar. 3, 2016). This obviates the need to restate the intricacies of that record herein. See, id. It is sufficient to note that Roseberry, an 18-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department, filed complaints against her fellow officers with the Department's Internal Affairs Division (IAD), alleging harassment and corruption.

Her claims against her fellow officers were investigated by the Department's Internal Affairs Division. But, Roseberry provided no evidence of harassment or corruption other than her gut feeling that the treatment she received from her fellow officers had not happened to anyone else. IAD took no action as a result of her complaint. Roseberry brought suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C.  1983 against the City of Philadelphia and several members of its police department alleging a First Amendment retaliation claim. That case was dismissed, with prejudice, pursuant to a local rule. See Rule 41.1(b) of Local Rules of Civil Procedure of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Roseberry filed this action in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas and the cause was removed to federal court by the Appellees. She alleged First Amendment retaliation claims as a result of her complaints to IAD. The District Court ruled that those claims failed because the actions she pointed to as retaliation were, in actuality, minor, isolated actions, and as such, could not form the foundation of her claim. Further, the District Court ruled that her claims failed because she did not introduce any evidence of causation, specifically noting that Roseberry produced no evidence of temporal proximity inasmuch as she could not remember when the actions she complained of occurred. The District Court also noted that Roseberry had conceded she lacked evidence other than her personal observation of an intention among her fellow officers to retaliate against her. The District Court's take on the summary judgment record was correct.

II.

The elements of a retaliation claim under  1983 are: (1) engaging in a constitutionally protected activity, (2) suffering, at the hands of a state actor, an adverse action sufficient to deter a person of ordinary firmness from exercising his [constitutional] rights, and (3) having the protected activity be a substantial motivating factor in the state actor's decision to take the adverse action. Rauser v. Horn, 241 F.3d 330, 333 (3d Cir. 2001). The third element, causation, means either: (1) an unusually suggestive temporal proximity between the protected activity and the allegedly retaliatory action, or (2) a pattern of antagonism coupled with timing to establish a causal link. Lauren W. ex rel. Jean W. v. DeFlaminis, 480 F.3d 259, 267 (3d Cir. 2007); see Krouse v. Am. Sterilizer Co., 126 F.3d 494, 50304 (3d Cir. 1997). In the absence of that proof, a plaintiff must show that from the evidence gleaned from the record as a whole the trier of fact should infer causation. Farrell v. Planters Lifesavers Co., 206 F.3d 271, 281 (3d Cir. 2000).

Determinatively, we agree with the District Court that Roseberry failed to establish the necessary causation for her claims to succeed. For example, she complains that Captain Bellamy denied her a commendation sometime after Thanksgiving, 2011. However, this event took place more than a year after Roseberry's complaint about the break-in to her home (September, 2010) and before her filing of the lawsuit (July, 2012). Sergeant McCoy's actions took place a year after that same lawsuit. This passage of time is too great to conclude that these actions were undertaken in retaliation for Roseberry's decision to file a lawsuit. In sum, nothing is unusually suggestive on this record to establish a causal link.

If temporal proximity is not unusually suggestive, then timing plus other evidence can suggest a pattern of antagonism sufficient to establish causation. Farrell, at 280-81. Such evidence is not limited to evidence of timing or demonstrative proof of animus or retaliatory motive, but instead includes evidence gleaned from the record as a whole that may support an inference of causation. Id. at 281. Here, the record reveals nothing more than isolated events, occurring over a three-year period. Indeed, Roseberry herself cannot recall the dates of most of these events. Simply put, there is no pattern of antagonism on this record that would allow Roseberry to establish the causation necessary for a retaliation claim.

III.

In light of the foregoing, we will affirm the order of the District Court.

FOOTNOTES

. The timing of the actions of the other Appellants cannot even be considered because the record reveals they knew nothing about Roseberry's filings, and therefore, could not be retaliating.

NYGAARD, Circuit Judge.
The Cairo Heritage Foundation is getting into the holiday spirit.

On Saturday, Dec. 2, the foundation hosts a "Soulful Christmas Dance Spectacular" featuring Cape Girardeau-based band Shades of Soul. The dance is from 6 to 10 p.m. at The Talk of the Town, at 38th and Sycamore streets. Admission is $10.

The following weekend, on Saturday, Dec. 9, the foundation hosts its annual Christmas music festival, which will feature several local performers. It starts at 6 p.m. in Festival Park, at Eighth and Ohio streets. The event is free, and there is a raffle. There will also be refreshments and food for sale.

Surrounding businesses will be decorated with Christmas lights for the foundation's Christmas Decoration Challenge.

For more information, call 618-559-1359.

 The Southern
STEELEVILLE  Part of Paula Owens family history lives in her refrigerator.

In two jars sits yeast that Owen said was given to her 42 years ago by her mother when she married, just as her mother had done in 1918. Owen said the culture, made by feeding the yeast with sugar and the water discarded from boiling potatoes, was at least a century old if not older. In fact, while Owen knows for certain her grandmother kept it, she said it is the family story that her great-grandmother actually brought the culture from Germany.

The yeast and the special family sandwich bread recipe that is made with it has always been a part of Owens life.

I watched my mom bake all the time, Owen said, remembering how her mother baked bread for the family at least once a week. She made it every week and sometimes other people in Percy, where she lived, they would call her and ask her to make them some and so she did."

When Owen married and started her own family, she kept the tradition up, baking for her family and though her household is a lot smaller now  she lives with just her husband, Gene, in Steeleville  she still feeds the starter once a week and tries to bake at least every other. She said she gets a good feeling every time she bakes with it.

You know, it makes you feel good that you are still keeping it going, she said of the tradition. Owen also said she enjoys remembering her mother every time she bakes.

Bread was not the only thing Owens mother made with her special yeast culture. There were coffee cakes, cinnamon buns and donuts, too. As for recipes though, Owen said those are hard to come by.

When she had recipes, she didnt write it down. She said, You just use a pinch of this and that, and she said, You do it by feel, she said laughing.

Owen said her mother was very secretive about the yeast culture.

She wouldnt give it out to anybody and when she gave it to me, I was really happy about it, Owen said.

Indeed, the yeast has likely only left the family one time. Owen said when her children were small, she baked her familys special bread for a school bake sale. One customer loved the bread so much she got in touch and asked Owen how to make it. Owen said she gave the woman a portion of the yeast, but isnt sure if she kept the tradition going.

Owen, a second-shift worker at Gilster Mary-Lee, said she doesnt have much time to bake. However, she took days off for Thanksgiving to mix up four loaves, which she divides into halves  she planned to make the stuffing for Thursdays meal with it.

They know its homemade bread and they said its better, it tastes better with it, she said of her children.

Owen said, as of right now, she is the only person still keeping the yeast that she knows of  she is the only girl in her family and her brothers didnt express interest in keeping up the family tradition. She said one daughter has expressed an interest but, because of her schedule, has not been able to keep the yeast Owen gave her alive.

At 67, Owen still has years of baking left, but said she is hopeful the tradition wont die with her  hopefully a child or even a grandchild will keep the family tradition alive.

Im hoping that as they see me doing it all the time that they will eventually do it, Owen said.
United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. JOHN HART, Appellant v. CHRISTOPHER H. OPPMAN, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; GILMORE, CORRECTIONAL OFFICER, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; C. J. MCKEOWN, INDIVIDUALLY AND HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; MICHAEL MAHLMEISTER, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; LISA GRAVES, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HER CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; BRIAN THOMPSON, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; ROBIN LEWIS, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; BROMLEY, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; ROBERT GRAVES, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; PAUL G. THERIAULT, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; DORINA VARNER, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; DENISE THOMAS, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; GERALD ROZUM, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; JACK LOUGHRY, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; JOSEPH JOZEFCZYK, INDIVIDUALLY AND HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; JOSEPH DUPONT, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; MELANIE PYLE, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; JOSEPH BIANCONI, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; BARRY GRUBB, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; EDWARD MULLIGAN, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; DAVID CLIPPINGER, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; MICHAEL WENEROWICZ, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; STEPHEN CAMPBELL, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; E. PETERSON, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HER OFFICIAL CAPCITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; JEAN WAMPFLER, INDIVIDUALLY AND HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS No. 16-1807 Decided: November 24, 2017

Before: GREENAWAY, JR., GREENBERG and ROTH, Circuit Judges

OPINION*

John Hart appeals pro se from the District Court's order denying his motion to vacate an earlier order of the District Court that had dismissed his case for lack of prosecution. We will vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings.

Hart brought a civil rights suit in the District Court in March 2014 against officials at multiple state correctional institutions where he had been imprisoned. Hart had difficulty serving the defendants. Eventually, in October 2015, the District Court dismissed the case for lack of prosecution. In March 2016, Hart filed a detailed motion pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) to vacate that dismissal order, in which he set out his various efforts to effectuate service. The District Court denied that motion four days later without providing any reasoning or analysis. This appeal followed.

We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C.  1291. The District Court's underlying dismissal order is not before this Court at this time. Hart did not appeal directly from the dismissal order, and instead filed a motion to vacate just over five months later. An appeal from the denial of a Rule 60(b) motion is not itself an appeal from the final judgment dismissing the case, and does not toll the time to appeal the underlying dismissal order unless it is filed within 28 days of that judgment. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(4)(A)(vi); cf. Selkridge v. United of Omaha Life Ins. Co., 360 F.3d 155, 161 n.3 (3d Cir. 2004). Therefore, whether the District Court abused its discretion when it initially dismissed Hart's case is not at issue in this appeal.

The District Court's denial of the motion to vacate, of course, presents a different situation, as Hart appealed directly from that order. Hart's motion to vacate raised excusable neglect as a basis for relief from the District Court's dismissal order. A district court may relieve a party from a final judgment because of: (1) mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect; [or]  (6) any other reason that justifies relief. Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b). The Court reviews a district court's denial of a Rule 60(b) motion for an abuse of discretion. Brown v. Phila. Hous. Auth., 350 F.3d 338, 342 (3d Cir. 2003). The assessment of whether a party's neglect is excusable is essentially an equitable one, in which courts are to take into account all relevant circumstances surrounding a party's failure to file.  George Harms Constr. Co. v. Chao, 371 F.3d 156, 163 (3d Cir. 2004) (quoting Chemetron Corp. v. Jones, 72 F.3d 341, 349 (3d Cir. 1995)). When assessing a Rule 60(b)(1) motion that invokes excusable neglect as a ground for relief, the district court must consider  the danger of prejudice to the [opposing party], the length of the delay and its potential impact on judicial proceedings, the reason for the delay, including whether it was within the reasonable control of the movant, and whether the movant acted in good faith.  In re Cendant Corp. PRIDES Litig., 235 F.3d 176, 182 (3d Cir. 2000) (quoting Pioneer Inv. Servs. Co. v. Brunswick Assocs. Ltd. P'ship, 507 U.S. 380, 395 (1993)). We have imposed a duty of explanation on district courts examining a Rule 60(b)(1) excusable neglect motion, meaning they must entertain[ ] an analysis of the [Pioneer] factors. Id. District courts must therefore review the Pioneer factors and memorialize their analysis; when they fail to do so, the Court may remand and order them to articulate their reasoning. Id.

Here, the District Court provided no reasoning to support its decision to deny Hart's motion to vacate. Under these circumstances, we cannot conclude that the District Court's decision was a proper exercise of its discretion. Consequently, we will vacate the judgment and remand for the District Court to apply the Pioneer factors in the first instance, and to otherwise conduct further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

FOOTNOTES

. The District Court did not provide any discussion in its order, but the context indicates that the District Court likely intended to issue a final, appealable order.

PER CURIAM
You won't see me coming....
Saudi Arabia's securities regulator is planning to ease requirements for foreign institutional investors - with a minimum of SR1.875 billion ($500 million) assets under management - into the stock market, said a report.

The Capital Market Authority (CMA) move comes at a time when Saudi Arabia seeks to draw more capital into the market before the listing of state oil giant Saudi Aramco, reported Reuters.

The CMA had opened the bourse to direct investment by qualified foreign institutions in 2015. It reduced minimum requirements for the institutions last year and is now proposing a fresh round of reforms, giving the public 14 days to comment on the proposals.

Among the reforms, the minimum value of assets under management needed for an institution to qualify as an investor would fall to SR1.875 billion ($500 million) from SR3.75 billion.

The number of foreign funds operating in Saudi Arabia could affect the government's plan to sell about 5 percent of Aramco next year, potentially raising some $100 billion, according to authorities' valuation of the company. It could be the world's largest-ever initial public offer of equity, it added.
Leading international industry experts will be in Dubai to highlight the latest trends, technologies and techniques in precast concrete construction, at the inaugural Big 5 Innovation in Precast Summit, being held in co-ordination with the UAE Ministry of Infrastructure Development.



The two-day event will kick off on November 26 and run alongside the 38th edition of The Big 5, the regions largest and most influential construction event, said the organiser.

A prelude to The Big 5 Heavy, running from March 26 to 28 at the Dubai World Trade Centre, The Big 5 Innovation in Precast Summit will bring together internationally renowned precast experts and leading suppliers of concrete products for a two-day event tailored for the Middle East region.

It will feature some of the global industry leaders including Elematic, Hard Precast, German Plant Experience, Columbia Machine, Weckenmann and Command Alcon.



Organised in partnership with BetonTage, Europe's largest precast congress, the two-day event will be inaugurated by Abdullah Al Nuaimi, UAE Minister of Infrastructure Development.



"Achieving a balanced and sustainable infrastructure development in line with the best international standards is one of the ministrys main missions, along with ensuring the completion of the national housing programme," remarked Dr Al Nuaimi.



"Precast concrete is a strategic component of our development plans and The Big 5 Innovation in Precast Summit will go a long way in advancing the infrastructure industry in the UAE," he stated.



The minister pointed out that precast technology played an important role in achieving the ministrys initiatives and objectives, by moving forward the UAE infrastructure toward excellence.



"Precast technology can boost the quality and speed of construction projects, and is widely employed for both infrastructure components (rail systems, highways and roads), and structural building and architecture components," he stated.



Al Nuaimi said hosting such a summit highlights the role of the UAE in leading the change process to achieve a promising future in the field of infrastructure development, as it brings together decision-makers and major international companies specialised in the sector, which offer the most advanced and innovative solutions.



"In the UAE, we are aware of the importance of developing infrastructure based on creative ideas, in line with the country's development over the past years, as well as its position on the global map for the coming years," he added.



Josine Heijmans, the portfolio event director of The Big 5, said: "We are extremely proud of the ministrys support to the event, which confirms the growing importance of precast concrete in the infrastructure development of the UAE."



"As cost-saving, durable and sustainable materials, innovative precast solutions offer unprecedented opportunities in the built environment, which should not be underestimated," noted Heijmans.



The summit will offer a high-level education agenda, spanning from structural design and innovation, to transformation technology, and sustainability and green buildings.-TradeArabia News Service
Egypt and Cyprus have agreed to begin talks next month on the construction of a pipeline to transport natural gas from Cypriot fields to Cairo, a media report said.



The agreement includes the construction of gas lines on the Mediterranean coast, the first of which will be dedicated to receive Cypriot gas from the Aphrodite and Cyprus 1 fields, in Damietta, Egypt, for liquefying gas, reported Daily News Egypt, citing government sources.



The second line extends from Egypt across the Mediterranean Sea, reaching Cyprus and from there, extending to Crete, Greece, and then continuing to northern Europe.



Egypt is liquefying the gas from the Aphrodite field for re-export to Europe, receiving revenues from liquefied gas, and consuming part of it in the local market, thus diversifying gas resources, the sources said.



Egypt and Cyprus have also signed a cooperation protocol for the electrical interconnection process across the Mediterranean seabed, according to the report.
The mission of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to support infrastructure investment is good for the world's economy, and the institution is operating "to the highest international standards," according to Sir Danny Alexander, the bank's vice president and corporate secretary.

Alexander was a cabinet minister in the British Treasury from 2010 to 2015. He was appointed as vice president and corporate secretary of the AIIB in February 2016.

In an interview with Xinhua, Alexander said he was one of the senior ministers in the British government at the time "who advocated strongly that the UK should join the AIIB."

In March 2015, Britain became the first major western country to announce its intention to join the new multilateral development bank, which started operations in January 2016 and has grown to 80 approved members from around the world.

"The AIIB seems to us to be a very good initiative to create a new framework for countries to work together and to further that common interest in infrastructure investment," he told Xinhua in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.

He noted that there had been more than 20 countries choosing to join the AIIB since the founding of the bank.

The fact shows that "they [members] can see that the bank is developing in the right way and to the highest international standards," said the former British politician.

Great responsibility

In the interview, Alexander said that it is "a great responsibility" to work for the AIIB.

"It is very rare for new multilateral development banks to be set up. Ours is the first in the 21st century, and it is the first ever to be headquartered in China, so it is a great responsibility to do that well and to get it right," he explained.

As vice president, he is responsible for the bank's relations with its members, the board of governors, the board of directors and other aspects of governance, including the admission of new members.

"I have a role as part of the senior management team in the bank, with a particular responsibility for the governors of the bank, making sure the board of directors, the board of governors and so on operate in the right way," he said.

"We have a very good team ably led by President Jin Liqun. And I think together we are helping to ensure that the AIIB is built in a way that fulfills the vision that our institution is lean, clean and green," he said.

Highest standards

In the interview, Alexander repeatedly stressed that the AIIB is committed to "operating to the highest international standards."

The bank is focused on its work "to ensure high standards in everything that we do: high standards of governance, high standards of environmental and social management and high standards of project development," the AIIB vice president said.

By focusing on investing in "good projects" that have strong safeguards on environmental and community impact, the AIIB "can help to ensure through those investments that we spread the high standards and that we share better practice," he noted. "That helps to ensure that there is a good business environment, so I think that is the main way in which the AIIB can make that contribution."

Priorities

In January, the AIIB unveiled its three priorities for the year ahead, namely sustainable infrastructure, cross-country connectivity and the mobilization of private capital, according to a statement on its website.

Alexander said sustainable infrastructure helped to support the transition for Asian countries to be "more environmentally sustainable," which requires renewable energy and sustainable cities.

On connectivity, the vice president said it meant "improving the connectivity between Asian countries, and through Asia, and other parts of the world."

"That means transport projects, like roads, railways, airports and ports, but also things like electricity transmission and energy pipelines," he said.

"The scale of the need for infrastructure in Asia is so huge that all of the national government resources and all of the international financial resources are too small," he said, highlighting the need to mobilize private capital.

"We must mobilize more private capital, so we also have a role to play in helping to make infrastructure more attractive for private sector investors as well as institutions like ours," he urged.

Shared aim

In the interview, Alexander also shared his views on the links between the AIIB and the Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by China in 2013 with the aim of building a trade, investment and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along ancient trade routes.

He said that though the AIIB and the initiative are two separate initiatives, they also overlap at certain intersections and share a similar goal.

"There is overlap and there is mutual interest and mutual benefit in terms of their shared aim to promote productivity within the Asian region," he told Xinhua.

The AIIB, together with five other major multilateral development banks, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese Ministry of Finance at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held in May this year.

"That created a framework for all of the major international financial institutions to work with the Belt and Road Initiative," Alexander said.

He stressed, however, the AIIB would invest in good projects, "according to its own strategy" and would apply the same high standards and tests to its investment projects.
The first phase of the King Abdullah Financial District project is due to be launched next year with plans to host the G-20 meeting there in 2020, reported Arab News.

A $10-billion business hub coming up in Riyadh, King Abdullah Financial District has been under construction since 2006, and will soon get a fresh lease of life under the management of the kingdoms sovereign wealth fund, it stated.

The Public Investment Fund (PIF) has finalised a deal to take over the management of the King Abdullah Financial District from the Public Pension Agency, stated the report citing Bloomberg.

The Saudi Vision 2030 economic reform plan outlines details for the rehabilitation of the capitals financial district, which is to be an economic free zone with visa exemptions and a direct connection to the airport, it added.

While details of the deal have yet to emerge, Hilmi Ghosheh, who acts as an adviser for PIFs real estate projects, is reportedly set to manage the completion of the development, said the report.

The government is now exploring new incentive options to attract financial institutions to occupy space in the district.

Decade-long tax breaks for banks are among the ideas circulating to help populate the 73-building development, which has been restructured to reduce office space and increase the number of residential units, the report added.
At least 235 people were killed and more than 100 others injured on Friday when militants detonated explosives and sprayed gunfire inside a crowded mosque in the Sinai Peninsula, the deadliest terrorist attack in the countrys recent history.

A bomb ripped through the mosque as Friday prayers were finishing, before militants in four off-road vehicles approached and opened fire on worshippers, a military source told The Guardian. Some witnesses said they had seen around 20 attackers.

More than 50 ambulances ferried casualties from al-Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, about 40km west of the city of Arish, to nearby hospitals. Pictures from the scene showed rows of bloodied victims inside the mosque, and at least 130 people were reported to be injured.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but it marks a major escalation in a region where for the past three years Egyptian security forces have battled an Islamic State insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and soldiers.

The scale and ruthlessness of the assault, in an area racked by an Islamist insurgency, sent shock waves across the nation - not just for the number of deaths but also for the choice of target, reported The New York Times.

Attacks on mosques are rare in Egypt, where the Islamic State has targeted Coptic Christian churches and pilgrims but avoided Muslim places of worship.

The attack injected a new element into Egypts struggle with militants because most of the victims were Sufi Muslims, who practice a mystical form of Islam that the Islamic State and other Sunni extremist groups deem heretical.

And it underscored the failure of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, who has justified his harsh crackdown on political freedom in the name of crushing Islamic militancy, to deliver on his promises of security.

World leaders quickly condemned the mosque attack, with President Trump denouncing it as horrible and cowardly. He said later that it explained why the US needed a border wall with Mexico and restrictions on immigration, which he referred to as the ban.

State media showed images of bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the Al Rawdah mosque in Bir Al Abed, west of El Arish, the main city in North Sinai.

Worshippers were finishing Friday prayers at the mosque when a bomb exploded, witnesses said. Around 40 gunmen set up positions outside the mosque with jeeps and opened fire from different directions as people tried to escape, reported Reuters, citing a witness.

Four groups of armed men attacked the worshippers inside the mosque after Friday noon prayers. Two groups were firing at ambulances to deter them, said Mohamed, a witness.

The scene was horrific, said Ibrahim Sheteewi, a resident of Bir al-Abed, the small north Sinai town where the attack took place. The bodies were scattered on the ground outside the mosque. I hope God punishes them for this.

A Sinai police officer said the dead included at least 15 children. A witness put the toll even higher, saying he had helped gather the bodies of 25 children.

Hours later the Egyptian military carried out several airstrikes near Bir al-Abed targeting militants fleeing in four-wheel-drive vehicles, an Egyptian military official said.

The gunmen set fire to cars parked outside the mosque to hinder escape, and opened fire on ambulances as they arrived on the scene, a government official said on state television.

Mayna Nasser, 40, who was shot twice in the shoulder, drifted in and out of consciousness as he was rushed to a hospital. My children were there; my children were there, he said, according to Samy, a volunteer emergency worker who drove him there and who declined to give his last name.

Local emergency services were so overwhelmed that some of the wounded had to be transported to the hospital in the back of a cattle truck, he said.

Many were taken to the general hospital in the main northern Sinai town of El Arish, where medics described chaotic scenes as staff struggled to deal with a flood of dead and wounded, many with extensive burns or severed limbs.

Most worshipers at the mosque were Sufi Muslims, who practice a mystical form of Islam that some extremists consider heretical.

We are swamped, said one medical official, speaking by phone on condition of anonymity. We dont know what to say. This is insane.

Other victims, like Mohammed Abdel Salam, a 22-year-old construction worker, ended up in a hospital in the nearby city of Ismailia. I wish I never stopped to pray, he said. Im not even a Sufi. I was just there by accident.

Sisi convened an emergency meeting of top security officials, including the interior minister, spy chief and defense minister. The military and the police will take revenge, he said in a televised speech.


The TransGriot is available for speaking engagements, college lectures, panel discussions, media interviews, conferences or Trans 101 education efforts for your school, business or professional organizations.



For local Houston area, Texas or national events, you can e-mail me at transgriot@yahoo.com



For events outside the Houston metro area, I ask that my travel and lodging expenses be covered.



This is separate from my speaking fee.



If you are interested in having me appear as a speaker or panelist, you can e-mail me with the date and details of your proposed event.

Please book as early as possible because my speaking and event calendar slots during the year rapidly fill up.
Meet award-winning artisans and buy their products at Kerala Arts and Crafts Village
Billy Brenton has a foot in two worlds, one in oil, gas and mining, the other in wind.

Like a lot of companies that serve energy industries, a dramatic drop in the fossil fuel economies in recent years meant an evaporation of business in Wyoming. So Brentons trucks and cranes and hauling equipment would normally be dotting Wyoming were shifted to offices in neighboring states where there was still work to be found. Wind similarly had a downturn from Brentons point of view, ever since the state passed a wind tax. And again, the firm moved its resources elsewhere.

But its coming back, a bit, he said.

Wyomings oil and gas jobs hit about 11,600 in June, coinciding with increased drilling activity in the state. And theyve stayed right there for the last six months, according to state economists.

Many firms that serve the industry are headquartered in Casper, home of machinists and roustabout crews, rig repair shops and maintenance bays. Though development is better than is was, improvements appear to have leveled off. Shops that closed have remained closed. The handful that survived the worst of the downturn are working again. The economy of the city, much like the state as a whole, has contracted, said Jim Robinson, economist with the states economic analysis division.

A recent snapshot of Caspers economic health showed improvements from the year before, but they also show whats been lost, said

The jobless rate is down, which improves the overall picture, but it also means folks have gone elsewhere, he said.

The Casper economy is recalibrating itself, he said. Part of that adjustment process is that sometimes people leave the area because they cant find a job.

And the result is a smaller labor force and a tighter mining sector.

Not all folks have been left out of business. Jerry Bloms JB Machine and Manufacturing shop was buzzing with the sound of steel being cut on the day before Thanksgiving.

The father and son shop on Yellowstone Highway is one of the few that survived the downturn when business fell flat. They cut employees and made it work from contract to contract.

Things are better, they say.

The company has had a number of jobs with a local company in recent months that have given the shop a boost. JB generally works with small to medium sized independent companies repairing equipment that is run down out in the oil fields.

Those small firms have kept the shop open during the downturn, Blom said.

The price of oil hit $58 bucks a barrel, Blom, noted. He expects it to continue.

Real slow, like its been doing, he said. Thats good for us. They start bringing out some rigs that they havent used that they need repaired.

For Brenton, whose businesses serve two different industries, the oil and gas side has seen an uptick. Drilling thats going on in the Powder River Basin, near Wright, has trickled down to the company that hauls heavy equipment, helps transport rigs from one site to the next.

The company is about five years old. It came into its own before the sharp downturn and made it through by working in other states.

Brenton, like Blom, said he expects a slow return of the oil business, no dramatic upswings or sudden booms.

But there is some frustration for how politics are influencing the wind business, Transportation Partners and Logistics, he said.

The wind tax pushed business out of the state, and it went straight to Colorado and Idaho, he said.

We have projects that we are servicing all around Wyoming, except Wyoming, he said.

The business could have a dramatic upswing if politicians would get rid of the tax, or make a promise to keep it at a certain level long term, he said.

Being able to operate outside of Wyoming means the lull in wind development hasnt hurt his bottom line. But Wyomings missing out, he said.

Would I love to build a railyard in Casper? Yes, I would, he said. I would build it tomorrow.
Caspers state lawmakers are divided on instituting a Wyoming womens boot camp in light of a federal court case brought against the state and a nonprofits report recommending the institution of a new facility.

The American Civil Liberties Union issued a report last week stating that one in every 130 Wyoming residents is incarcerated and that the rate of incarceration in the state has steadily grown for most of the past two decades. The report suggests that the high rate of incarceration is expensive and unnecessary. As a partial solution, the nonprofit recommended opening a womens boot camp, which would allow young inmates to ask judges for sentence reductions if they successfully complete the program. Wyoming only operates a mens facility.

Meanwhile, the director of the Wyoming Department of Corrections is facing a federal lawsuit from a female inmate who says prison officials violated her constitutional rights by only operating the mens camp. One of the womans attorneys in the case is an ACLU lawyer.

The plaintiffs lawyers have asked for equal treatment of men and women in light of the boot camp program. To do so, the state would have to operate boot camps for inmates of both genders, send inmates of both genders to boot camps out of state or abolish the program altogether.

State Rep. Tom Walters, R-Casper, said he would prefer for the state to eliminate the boot camp program altogether, rather than institute a womens camp if the courts called for changes that would equalize access to the program in Wyoming. He said a low rate of participation in the program limited its efficacy.

State Rep. Joe MacGuire, R-Casper, said he had not reviewed the report but he was skeptical of the organizations politics. He said he thought the mens boot camp can be very effective but that he did not think it was feasible to create a womens boot camp given the state of Wyomings finances. Instead, MacGuire said, women who qualify for a boot camp program should be sent to out-of-state camps.

State Rep. Debbie Bovee, R-Casper, said she supports creating a womans boot camp program because she expects the up-front costs would be offset by lower recidivism and less imprisonment.

I think it would save us money in the long run, Bovee said. Where were gonna get that money, Im not sure.

Linda Burt, a former ACLU lobbyist and 2016 Democratic state legislature candidate, said the boot camp program is necessitated due to heavy cuts to substance-use treatment program funding. Burt said the vast majority of prison inmates qualify for treatment options that are unavailable to them and boot camps are one of the few alternatives available to those offenders.

In addition to the organizations recommendation to institute a boot camp, the report also suggests a moratorium on creating new crimes and a reduction in pre-sentence incarceration.
The University of Wyoming is partnering with an international company to build a drilling simulation lab that officials expect will be one of the leading facilities of its kind.

When completed in 2019, the laboratory will operate as a way for students to simulate drilling wells, including what happens after drilling. The deal between UW and Drilling Systems, which is headquartered in Bournemouth, England, has been in the works for about 18 months, according to a university press release.

The new program  officially titled the Drilling and Completions Simulation Laboratory  will be housed in the new Engineering Education and Research Building, which is also expected to be completed in 2019. No other facilities will need to be constructed to accommodate the new lab, university spokesman Chad Baldwin said.

Were taking the biggest step to make a supercenter, professor Doug Cuthbertson, who oversees the drilling simulator, said in the press release. This may be rivaled by one such facility in the world. ... This will teach them how to do things and how to plan.

Its unclear what facility Cuthbertson was referring to. Baldwin said he was unsure, and the professor did not return an email. Nor is the cost of the lab or who will pay for it clear.

Drilling Systems will provide the university with exclusive access to emerging technologies and the ability to influence the development of future products and services that may benefit both parties, the press release states.

Baldwin said the partnership will benefit the company by potentially providing it with well-trained graduates, while also giving the firm an opportunity to advance technology.

Drilling Systems will support UWs efforts to be recognized as a Tier-1 university, according to the agreement. The Engineering Education and Research Building is part of the schools Tier-1 Engineering Initiative.

A Tier-1 college is a nationally recognized institution of academic excellence and world-class research, UW has said.

The university will continue to use its current drilling simulator. That equipment will eventually be moved to the new lab space, along with new technology.

Along with the new lab will come new masters and Ph.D. programs in drilling and completions.

Similar technologies can be found at universities such as Texas A&M, the Colorado School of Mines and Louisiana State.
Eleven budding science instructors at the University of Wyoming will travel across the state next semester to get hands-on, student-teaching experience.

The program is part of associate professor Andrea Burrows science methods class, according to a university press release. The students also each created a science learning center for middle school students. Each project was based on a misconception in science, like how genes work or a mountain is formed.

The whole idea of a learning center is that the students are teaching themselves this information instead of you standing up front and talking, Danielle Larson said in the release. Larson will work as a student teacher at Cheyenne East High next semester.

Other schools that will host student teachers include Laramie High School, Sage Valley Junior High in Gillette, and the UW Lab School.

All of the students in the class are obtaining some form of certification in secondary science. Each of the students all hope to be teaching science full time next year, according to the release.

Part of what we do in this class is to try to create experiences for them to showcase their knowledge, but also get experience with what works and what doesnt work, Burrows said in the release.

The university previously announced an augmented reality training program for teachers-to-be. Students at UW would face a camera or wear a virtual reality headset and teach a classroom of digital students, who are controlled by an off-site actor.
They have Ernest Hemingways shotgun, and William Codys Medal of Honor. And, theres a custom rifle built for Abraham Lincoln with the presidents head for a hammer.

All that can be seen daily at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

But some of the most interesting and bizarre items at the Center rarely make a public appearance.

The Center of the West is home to five world-class museums devoted to chronicling the history of the Western United States. The Buffalo Bill Museum opened in 1927 and over the last 90 years the Center has grown to include the Whitney Western Art Museum, Plains Indian Museum, Cody Firearms Museum and the Draper Natural History Museum. Each of the museums have collections with thousands of items, but space constraints, delicate materials and sometimes cultural sensitivities force the museums to keep a majority of their treasures hidden from visitors in climate-controlled vaults.

Buffalo Bill Codys Wild West show toured in 47 states and throughout Europe over the course of three decades. Cody, the citys namesake, hosted hundreds of exhibitions every year and hobnobbed with royalty and the days newsmakers across the globe.

The cowboy back in 1883, when Buffalo Bill started the Wild West show, was seen as a thug, basically a Hells Angel on horseback. By the time (Cody) was done, the cowboy was an American hero, said Jeremy Johnston, executive curator of the Buffalo Bill Museum.

When Cody died in 1917 he left behind an outsized legend and thousands of historically significant items related to his life as a frontiersman and performer. Thanks to the efforts of Mary Jester Allen, Bill Codys niece, the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association was formed to connect Codys descendants in the name of preserving the mans legacy.

According to Johnston, the Buffalo Bill museum now claims more than 10,000 items. But, only about 10 percent of the artifacts are on display at any given time. Key items in the collection are always on display, while many others are rotated between exhibits, several vaults beneath the museum and offsite storage facilities.

Some of the items like a carriage used in the Wild West show are kept off site because theyre too large to keep on the main campus. Others are loaned to museums across the country, and some items, like a collection of 200 promotional posters from performances as far away as Ukraine, are stored in controlled environments to facilitate preservation. The posters were meant to be temporary objects, so keeping them in tact takes calculated handling.

You can imagine these were used once and then scraped off the wall or painted over, Johnston said while pulling out a blood red poster promoting a tour through France.

He said museum curators have two main duties, to share history and artifacts with the public but also to ensure the items are around for thousands of years in the future.

The museum displays 20 of the promotional posters at any given time and circulates them every six months. If the museum displayed the posters full time, UV rays would damage the materials and rob the images of their brilliant color.

Other items reside in the museum vault because similar items are already on display in exhibits like a few examples of Codys over-the-top buckskins or the dozens of saddles kept by the museum. Some artifacts are just too bizarre to fit into an exhibition.

The Buffalo Bill Museum vault contains a wig worn by Annie Oakley in her later years with the Wild West show. Johnston said Oakley went grey prematurely. The official story blamed her loss of color on stress created by a train crash she experienced, but in reality she went grey after soaking too long in a spa containing potent chemicals. Her vanity prompted her to wear a wig during remaining performances.

The odd objects arent limited to the vaults of the Buffalo Bill Museum. The Cody Firearms Museum has about 35,000 items in its collection but only 7,000 of those are guns. Many of the objects are tools, gun parts, ammunition, or items otherwise connected to firearms. At any time, about three fourths of the collection is in storage.

Since 1998, the firearms museum vault has contained large milk chocolate plates bearing depictions of bison, geese and other western imagery. While edible at one time, the chocolate is actually an artifact telling a piece of American firearms history.

Danny Michael, Cody Firearms Museum curatorial assistant, said the chocolate moldings were created by an engraving company and depict images etched into the firearms the firm worked on. The museum maintains few records concerning the candy so little else is known about them.

Other items in the vault are as unusual though their connection to the museums mission is easier to see. The museum is home to a prototype shotgun known as the liberator. This unusual firearm was designed in 1964 at the height of tensions with the Soviet Union as a cheap gun that could be dropped to resistance fighters in enemy territory.

Michael said the four-barrel 12 gauge has a single firing pin that rotated to fire a shell in one barrel at a time. The shotgun was designed to be cheap with mostly cast parts and a folding wire stock. The idea was for a fighter to use the gun to obtain better weapons from their enemies. Not all the items in the vault are so utilitarian.

A gold-plated revolver once belonging to Cody madam Cassie Waters is often on display, but not currently. The .32-caliber Hopkins and Allen has mother of pearl grips with a personal inlaid message: To My Friend Cassie, Every Inch a Lady.

Its gold plating is kind of ironic because Hopkins and Allen are kind of known for their inexpensive handguns, Michael said with a smile. Notice theres no description who its from, only whos getting it.

Almost all the vaults and behind-the-scenes areas are inaccessible to Center of the West visitors, but there is a notable exception. The Draper Natural History Museum encourages guests to gaze through large windows into the lab where their wildlife specimens are processed by researchers and volunteers.

The Natural History Museum opened in 2002 and is the newest of the five institutions at the Center. Charles Preston, Drapers Willis Mcdonald IV Senior Curator of Natural Science, said the museum operates a little differently than the others in Cody.

Much of the museums mission lies in research. Biological specimens are constantly brought into the lab where they are processed for scientific study. Folks walking through the public sections of the museum will enjoy taxidermied wolves, bears and other animals native to the area, although Preston said this type of preservation has little value for researchers because the dimensions change during the taxidermy process.

Instead, volunteers in the lab routinely preserve specimens by carefully skinning the animal and collecting the bones. The skins are pressed flat and the bones cleaned and organized into a representative skeleton. The method has an added benefit with smaller species in the ability to be stored flat in file cabinets.

Thats not to say the only specimens chronicled in the museums vaults are small birds or mammals. The Draper has about 1,000 specimens including the complete skeleton of a bison that once lived and died in the Big Horn Basin.

The collection grows every day and sometimes in surprising ways. Preston said a volunteer once chanced upon a young male mountain lion that died in Yellowstone National Park. The level of decomposition prevented easy identification of the cause of death so the cat was taken to the lab in Cody for investigation. Researchers discovered punctures in the animals skull from the canine teeth of adult mountain lion. The deceased lions skull is now part of the Draper collection.

Its in good company. The museum is a repository for skulls belonging to wolves killed in Yellowstone National Park since their reintroduction in 1995. There are now about 150 wolf skulls in the collection.

You get a series as big as this you can tell how the wolves are getting injured, if they were kicked in the head while hunting or something, Preston said.

Researchers are also finishing a comparison between the skeletal records of the reintroduced wolves and wolf specimens that lived in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem 100 years ago. Preston said some of the people opposed to the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone have claimed the gray wolves brought in from Canada are larger than the original population. The study has not yet been completed but preliminary results indicate the reintroduced packs do not differ in size to the animals that preceded them.

The skulls and other specimens are kept away from public view like the vaults of the other four museums at the Center. But visitors with an appetite for a look behind the scenes can catch a glimpse of front-line research at the Draper.
A rural community in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in China. [Photo by Christopher Georgiou/China.org.cn]

While China's last 40 years of rapid economic growth have been a rising tide that has lifted most boats, there remain pockets of exceptionally destitute areas across the nation  especially in the countryside. The government is now turning to targeted poverty alleviation in order to complete the job.

At the 19th CPC National Congress in October, General Secretary Xi Jinping declared that the "principal contradiction" facing the country is "unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life."

The government has therefore promised to deepen reform to achieve a "moderately prosperous society" by 2020.

But solving this contradiction will be a challenge, especially for local governments, which are faced with urgent poverty reduction tasks.

Guizhou, a southwestern province in the country, has set a trailblazing example of what can be achieved despite the obstacles. Though it is one of the poorest regions of China, its GDP grew at a rate of 10.5 percent in 2016, allowing an additional 1.2 million people to escape impoverishment.

Huamao Village in northern Guizhou provides an illustrative example of how to tackle poverty in remote areas.

Measures enacted by the local government have three broad objectives: to expedite the upgrading of the agricultural structure, to promote e-commerce, and to develop rural tourism.

The results have been remarkable. Huamao's GDP increased from 160,000 yuan in 2014 to 500,000 yuan in 2015, eventually reaching 1.05 million yuan in 2016.

The government developed the local infrastructure, including a newly-built 16 km road and an "internet plus" service center. E-commerce transactions subsequently increased by 20 percent in 2016.

Many former residents are now returning from the cities to start their own e-commerce businesses in the village.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some Nov. 25 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.
Thinking of wearing a Trump mask to a political demonstration?

A chicken suit to a protest?

Or even fake nose and glasses to a public event?

A proposed new law could send you to prison for a year  and a dozen times longer if you or someone else at the event was involved in property damage.

Legislation crafted by Rep. Jay Lawrence, R-Scottsdale, would make it a felony to wear any sort of disguise to evade recognition or identification in the commission of any public offense.

But HB 2007 goes even farther. Masks and costumes also would be illegal at civil protests, political events or any public event.

The only exceptions would be for those wearing a disguise for a business-related purpose or anywhere a disguise may generally be viewed as part of acceptable attire.

Lawrence said he began writing the legislation following TV news reports this past summer.

Weve seen masked, hooded people breaking windows, hitting people, fighting with police, he said.

The first-term lawmaker acknowledged that has not occurred in Arizona, but said there have been threats.

This legislation says those threats, if carried out, have penalties, Lawrence said.

Will Gaona, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, said the proposal is not designed to protect the public but instead to chill the First Amendment rights of those who protest.

Its important to keep in mind that the disguise that a person may wear, that disguise itself may be expressive, he said.

Imagine a person wearing some kind of Donald Trump costume to a protest, Gaona said. And on the other side of the political spectrum, he said someone dressed up in a white wig and colonial garb at a tea-party event could be considered in partial disguise.

Lawrence insists thats not the kind of thing his proposal is designed to stop.

That type of disguise would not be the same as antifa and others who wear masks and hoods to hide their identity, he said, referring to the self-named anti-fascist movement. So, for example, he said it would be perfectly acceptable if someone protesting his views or his legislation shows up at a rally wearing a chicken suit.

Anyway, Lawrence said he believes his measure has an escape clause of sorts to prevent prosecution of those who have no ill intent: It allows a police officer to detain someone wearing a disguise to verify that persons identity and to determine if the person has committed a public offense.

Gaona, however, said none of that will keep the person whom the police unmask from getting arrested. Thats because the bill itself makes it a public offense just to wear a mask at a public event.

So by the nature of the way its written, youve already committed a public offense even before a police officer asks for ID.

That isnt the only problem Gaona has with HB 2007. He said its unconstitutionally vague because it is impossible for a reasonable person to know what conduct will get him or her in trouble.

For example, the bill refers to a partial or a complete disguise, he said.

Well, what does that mean? If I wear glasses and a fake mustache to a protest, am I guilty of a felony?

There are various laws across the nation dealing with the use of masks and disguises.

But Gaona said that, in general, they are nowhere near as broad and encompassing as what Lawrence is proposing.

For example, Massachusetts provides for a one-year prison term for wearing a mask. But that law is broken only in situations where there is intent to obstruct execution of the law or to intimidate, hinder or interrupt an officer or other person exercising his or her rights.

By contrast, there is an Alabama law, with a version dating to 1949, that makes it a misdemeanor to appear in public wearing a mask. That broad-based legislation originally was enacted to deal with Ku Klux Klan members.

In general, courts have upheld similar laws.

For example, a federal appeals court in 2004, looking at a New York statute, said there is a First Amendment right to anonymous speech, saying that covers things like having to disclose an organizations members or the names of people who produce political leaflets. In contrast, the Supreme Court has never held that freedom of association or the right to engage in anonymous speech entails a right to conceal ones appearance in a public demonstration, the court concluded.

But a California state court struck down an anti-mask law there in 1979, ruling it was overly broad. That states law now prohibits disguises in public  but only in commission of public offense unrelated to wearing the mask itself.

Even if a basic anti-mask law is legal, Gaona said there are other provisions in what Lawrence wants that he believes are not.

He pointed out that while the legislation provides for a year in state prison simply for wearing a mask at public events, there is an enhanced penalty if the person who is wearing the disguise has direct or indirect involvement in an offense involving property damage, injury or death.

What that includes, Gaona said, is someone in a mask spray-painting graffiti on a wall during a demonstration. The penalty, he said, is in the same category as rape or manslaughter: 12.5 years for a first offense which is incredibly punitive.

Worse yet, he said, is that part about indirect involvement.

If Im at a protest and I happen to be wearing some kind of disguise, and somewhere in the course of that protest theres property damage, am I indirectly involved in that offense? he asked.

Lawrence suggested that questions being asked about the proposal were based on an overly literal reading of the law versus the intent. Still, he conceded there are questions that may need to be addressed if and when the measure gets a hearing.
The Pima County assessor is suing 30 businesses in Arizona Tax Court, a number of cases without recent precedent. The number of suits is also raising concerns among other county officials, one of whom questioned the ethics of filing so many.

Last year, Assessor Bill Staples was the plaintiff in three State Board of Equalization decisions appealed to the court, which is a part of Maricopa Superior Court and handles tax-related disputes, according to a Star review of online court records.

As of Wednesday, the current years total exceeds the total number of cases since 2007 and appears to be the largest number of such appeals filed by any Pima County assessor since at least the early 1990s. Staples filed nine cases  the second highest figure  in 2005, the year after he was first elected. The state board hears secondary appeals of property valuations in Pima and Maricopa counties.

Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen said his office rarely files such appeals, and has not done so this year. Appeals are reserved for when he feels the board has usurped its authority or incorrectly applied the law in ways that affect more than just one parcel of property, Petersen said.

If the assessor wins the cases, that could spell higher tax bills for defendants, as well as a marginally smaller portion of the county property tax levy for other taxpayers to pick up. But losing could spell significant attorneys fees to be paid by the county, and litigating the cases itself comes with costs.

When asked for comment on this years cases, Staples pointed to his oath of office, which requires assessors in the state to truly and fairly determine the valuation, without favor or partiality, of all the taxable property in said county at its full cash value.

Other officials interviewed by the Star said a recent decision by Staples office to no longer send a representative to State Board of Equalization appeal hearings could be at play. Without a representative in the room, rulings are less likely to go his way and more likely to be appealed by Staples, they said.

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said theres also the possibility that Staples suits are intended to dissuade would-be appellants from contesting assessor decisions, something that  if true  would be marginally ethical. In fact, I dont think that is ethical.

Asked about the likelihood that intimidation is a factor, Huckelberry said, Certainly it would appear so, if the behavior is repetitive and consistent, which it sounds like it is. Staples declined to respond to Huckelberrys statements.

In the 30 cases so far this year, Staples is appealing decisions made by the state board to reduce either the full cash or limited cash value of parcels owned by the defendants.

Some of the reductions were substantial, as with a property owned by HSL Tucson National Apartments on North Shannon Road, the full cash value of which was dropped from nearly $42 million to $33 million by the state board. Others were more modest, like three parcels off East Tanque Verde Road owned by the Magna Investment & Development Limited Partnership, which were each dropped $35,000 for a cumulative $105,000. The median parcel reduction was around $300,000, according to figures included in Maricopa County court documents obtained by the Star through public records requests.

County assessors are tasked with determining full cash value, which is intended to reflect market values. While not used for property tax purposes, full cash values set a ceiling for limited cash values, which are used to calculate all county primary and secondary property taxes and whose annual increases are capped by state law. For many of the parcels in the suits, county primary property tax burdens would fall by around $750 for every $100,000 reduction in the limited cash value, according to calculations reviewed by a county finance official.

It appears that in most cases the state boards decisions would lower limited cash values, and thus property taxes for those properties, but in a number of cases they likely would not, meaning that there are no immediate property tax impacts at stake in those cases.

NOT SHOWING UP

Since last year, Staples has not been regularly sending an office representative to the state equalization board hearings, where they previously were on hand to field questions from hearing officers. Staples has said he made that decision because there is no internet access in the hearing rooms, making it difficult to verify new information sometimes brought by petitioners.

But members of the state board said that not having an assessor representative in the room complicates those hearings, and also may make rulings unfavorable to the assessor more likely.

I would assume that there is at least the possibility that without an assessor there to answer certain questions, there may be a likelihood that more decisions went in favor of the petitioner, and those would be decisions that Mr. Staples did not agree with, longstanding board member Ted Sitterley said.

When asked if not sending a representative puts Staples at a significant disadvantage, fellow member George Garcia said, without a doubt.

Local appraiser Steven Cole, who represented one of the 30 defendants as a property tax agent when they appealed their valuation earlier this year, didnt weigh in on what role  if any  Staples not sending representatives to the board hearings is playing in the numerous lawsuits. He did say he has a lot of confidence in the board members decisions.

Whatever the explanation for the suits, Cole said they could effectively threaten the right of owners to appeal their property values. Thats because defending yourself in tax court can be costly and, for owners of lower-value properties, the potential benefits of fighting their cases may not justify the risk. He said an attorney could cost $5,000 to $7,000 to defend tax court cases, plus additional fees.

Unless youre a very, very big hitter, this whole scheme of the assessor has frankly, in my opinion, gutted the appeals process, he said.

HACIENDA DEL SOL

An Oct. 10 letter sent by partners with the Foothills resort Hacienda del Sol sheds some light on how at least one of these cases has proceeded.

Staples appealed to tax court in January, several months after the state board had dropped the resorts full cash value from $6.2 million to $3.8 million, one of the larger percentage drops among the 30 cases. Most of the other cases were filed since September.

To avoid a potentially expensive and drawn-out court battle, the resort reached out to Staples to settle the case at the original $6.2 million value, according to a letter sent by the resorts partners to Huckelberry and obtained by the Star.

The assessor rejected that offer, instead seeking to increase the value over the assessors own value, thereby trying to penalize the Hacienda del Sol for exercising its tax appeal rights in the first instance, and burdening our business with litigation costs, the letter reads. When asked to respond to this claim, Staples again directed the Star to his oath of office.

Thats astounding, Petersen said, responding to a summary of the partners letter.

In a Nov. 3 court document dealing with an unrelated 2014 Staples case, Maricopa Superior Court Judge Christopher Whitten wrote that there is no bar to the assessor seeking a valuation higher than previously sought.

The Pima County Attorneys Office, which is representing Staples in this case and most of the others, also subpoenaed the resorts lender, asking for emails, appraisals and other correspondence, which risked putting a strain on our banking relationship, the partners wrote.

While the city of Tucson and Rio Nuevo District make economic concessions, which encourage competition against ours and other county properties, we are discouraged by the assessor from making further investment, the letter said.

Michael Stilb, one of four partners to sign the letter, directed the Star to the resorts attorney on the case for comment. The attorney also declined to comment.

In the spring, Staples hired the firm TS Worldwide to appraise the resort, a contract worth up to $30,000. The first two phases of work were estimated to cost $16,000, and the hourly rate for expert testimony and related work would be $500, according to an April letter from appraiser Suzanne Mellen to Staples. Up to $2,000 in travel costs could also be charged in addition to our fee.

Huckelberry said such litigation costs would only be justified if the value determined by the appraiser exceeds the settlement offer enough to offset the costs with greater tax receipts.

When asked about resolving the other cases, Staples said his office will settle all valuation cases at the appraised value (as determined by an independent state certified appraiser), which could be above or below the SBOE value. As with the resort, he said he intends to hire third-party appraisers for the other valuation cases.

Petersen said Staples is within his right to file the appeals, and that on cases involving millions in valuation, hiring outside appraisers can be sensible. But when the differences in dispute are significantly smaller, I would want to consider the resources necessary to do that and whether thats worth it, he said.

I just dont see the cost-benefit analysis, I dont see the benefit to anybody, he added later of cases in which the valuation and property tax stakes are low.

When asked if the large number of cases might require the county attorney to hire outside help, Huckelberry said he hasnt heard any concerns about additional workload. He is concerned that the defendants could ultimately be awarded attorneys fees in some of the cases.

The board of supervisors is not privy to many case details because Staples is the client, according to Supervisor Sharon Bronson, who told the Star that the assessor is pursuing the cases on the backs of taxpayers.

We need to review what he has cost the county to date and adjust his budget accordingly, she said.

Staples has previously told the Star that his office is consistently under budget and that appealing state board rulings is sometimes necessary to ensure fairness for all taxpayers.
Smuggled in car seats, beneath clothing and in hidden car compartments, the amount of fentanyl seized this year at Arizonas ports of entry on the Mexico border skyrocketed 600 percent over last year.

A few salt-grain size pieces of the synthetic opioid are fatal, and nearly 140 pounds were seized this year at Arizonas ports, enough deadly doses for almost 32 million adults, and enough to make traffickers up to $1.3 billion.

Arizona and California ports of entry have become the doorstep to the U.S. for the global black market of one of the most dangerous drugs of the opioid crisis. Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and highly addictive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ingredients are shipped from China, synthesized in labs in Mexico and Canada and smuggled into the United States.

Fentanyl seizures at Arizona ports of entry jumped from 20 pounds in fiscal 2016 to nearly 140 pounds in fiscal 2017, according to Customs and Border Protection data provided in response to a records request from the Arizona Daily Star.

Teresa Small, spokeswoman for CBP, said the majority of fentanyl seizures at Arizona ports happen at the Nogales port, but CBP cannot explain why, since drug trafficking organizations control the specific supply.

About 950 pounds of fentanyl were seized nationwide by CBP from October 2016 to the end of August 2017, more than double the 440 pounds seized in fiscal 2016. While about 60 percent of the total for the first 11 months of FY17 was seized at ports on the Mexico border, the other 40 percent, 400 pounds, were found at seaports, airports inside the U.S. and along the Canadian border.

More than half, 550 pounds, of the total fentanyl was seized at the San Diego and Tucson Field Offices on the Mexico border from October 2016 through July 2017. At the El Paso Field Office, about four pounds of fentanyl were seized in those 10 months and no fentanyl seizures were reported at the Laredo Field Office.

Before fiscal 2016, the ports of entry in Arizona had no fentanyl seizures, and the other CBP Field Offices along the border did not have data on fentanyl seizures, according to CBP.

Fentanyl is powerful enough that even accidently touching or accidently inhaling some of the powder can be dangerous, according to the DEA. Fentanyl overdose can result in cold and clammy skin, the bluing of hands and feet, a coma, failure to breathe and death.

The number of people who died from overdoses of fentanyl and fentanyl variations in the U.S. doubled from last January to this January, from 9,945 to 20,145, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Pima County, 13 people died by fentanyl overdose in the first six months of 2017. In his quarterly report, Chief Medical Examiner Greg Hess predicted about 270 overdose deaths from different drugs by the end of 2017 in Pima County, with over 20 of them involving fentanyl. This would be an increase from the 16 overdose deaths from fentanyl in the county last year.

Logistics of global industry

China is the primary source for fentanyl ingredients for the United States, Canada and Mexico, according to the DEA. A couple of pounds of these ingredients shipped from China cost a few thousand dollars, but traffickers can sell the same batch for millions in profit after manufacturing the drug.

Fentanyl pills are sold for $10 to $20 per pill depending on the purity and dosage. The DEA estimates that batches of one-milligram pills from about 2 pounds of fentanyl can make traffickers up to $20 million.

Small-scale manufacturing labs of fentanyl have been found in Canada and the United States also, and counterfeit pills containing fentanyl are smuggled into the United States from both Mexico and Canada, according to the DEA.

Fentanyl trade occurs across the southwest border both to Mexico from the U.S. and vice versa for manufacturing and consumption, according to the DEA. The supply lines for fentanyl are the same as the ones used for heroin, so traffickers traveling to the border can purchase both drugs from the same supplier.

Fentanyl can be sold alone or laced into other drugs, such as heroin, meth, cocaine, marijuana and spice at mills, which are usually hotel rooms or homes, according to the DEA. Lacing fentanyl into other drugs amplifies the effects, but buyers are not always told the original drug has been modified. Fentanyl sold alone is manufactured to resemble oxycodone.

A 2016 DEA report said that fentanyl has been mixed into counterfeit prescription pills since 2014, such as the pain medication Norco or the anti-anxiety medication Xanax.

Industrial pill press machines are openly available on the internet. One DEA search found a press priced at $995 capable of making 5,000 pills per hour and molds for oxycodone and Xanax pills for $115 to $130.

How it happens here

The Star reviewed 10 cases of fentanyl smuggling filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson. The cases were filed in fiscal 2017 and include seizures of 110 pounds of fentanyl at Nogales ports of entry, almost 80 percent of the total seized at Arizona ports in fiscal 2017.

In August, a CBP dog and X-ray scan detected almost 50 pounds of fentanyl under the backseat of 43-year-old Jose Cuevas Esparzas Hyundai Sonata at the Mariposa port in Nogales. He told agents at the border two men in Mexico placed a note on his car a week earlier with $300 attached that read: Dont be stupid, drive your car to Nogales.

Also in August, border officers discovered two bags containing 720 grams of fentanyl pills in 26-year-old Ruben Sekisakas Nissan Altima.

Sekisaka told them a man in Mexico threatened him to transport the pills, first with a rifle and by confiscating his car for over a week, and second, by parking the car in front of his moms house after hiding the drugs inside. He said he was given 400 pesos and promised $4,000 if he delivered the pills to Phoenix.

Zuilma Garcia Valencia, 25, wrapped 5 pounds of fentanyl in a blanket and hid it in a car seat behind her 10-month-old baby while attempting to cross the border in Nogales in April, according to court documents. She told officers she was promised $2,500 from an individual in Mexico for her help.

The DEA announced in a Nov. 9 news release that the trafficking of all fentanyl derivatives would be prosecuted in the same manner as the trafficking of original fentanyl and other controlled substances. One analog of fentanyl, carfentanil, is about 10,000 times more potent than morphine and mostly used in veterinary medicine to sedate elephants, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

In April, a drug-sniffing dog at the pedestrian port in Nogales detected drugs near a womans groin, which prompted authorities to escort the woman to a hospital. Once there, the woman, Cecilia Alvarez Molina, 39, removed over a pound of plastic-wrapped drugs with fentanyl or carfentanil properties from the area. She told officers she was promised $500 to carry the substances.

Illegal fentanyl trade happens in the interior of Tucson, too, and not always through the ports at the border. In August, an undercover agent coordinated a purchase of almost 1,200 fentanyl pills from a married couple selling at a hotel parking lot on West Grant Road. Other agents hiding at the scene arrested the wife, Lina Martinez Buelna, 46, once she removed the pills from her purse.
Public participation in gathering and analyzing large amounts of scientific data began as a major trend about 15 years ago in a movement called citizen science.

When asked if scientists could produce this same work without the help of citizen scientists, the general refrain was typically absolutely not.

The internet and the availability of powerful, yet simple tools such as a smartphones, created conditions in which almost anyone can participate in scientific research in ways that were impossible just a few years ago.

Like many good ideas it takes a while to germinate and, all of a sudden, it has exploded, said Joaquin Ruiz, dean of the University of Arizona College of Science, talking about ordinary citizens gathering data for scientific research.

The fruit of citizen science work is often used to publish papers in scientific journals.

Funding goes a long way when there are citizen scientists volunteering their time, said Don Swann, a biologist at Saguaro National Park and coordinator for the Saguaro Census. At the same time, we can get high quality data with the proper amount of training.

Its also an educational tool. If done properly, it adds to our understanding of the particular disciplines, Ruiz said. So all of a sudden, the people trying to get an education become scientists themselves.

As an added benefit, citizen scientists might also find a passion in the work they are participating in and become an advocate for it, Swann said.

If you are curious about a subject and want to participate in a citizen science program in the Tucson area, here are some local projects:

Science and saguaros

Every 10 years, volunteers are trained to count and record features of saguaros in 45 permanently studied, 200-meter-square plots dotting Saguaro National Park.

The survey is where we assess the health of saguaros in the park, Swann said. Its a huge project.

Data collection on saguaros began not long after the park was established in 1933.

The last census was hosted in 2010 and included more than 300 volunteers. Another 300 participated in the 2016 Centennial Saguaro Survey to celebrate 100 years of national parks.

The next census will be held in the winter of 2019-2020.

Swann frequently fields inquiries from people who want the opportunity to volunteer.

School groups, like Tucson High Magnet School in 2015, are also welcome to participate.

In one case, Swann enlisted a canyoneering club to help with plots that were more difficult to navigate.

Besides the scientific value from the data, Swann noticed that exposure to the parks and the species they encompass can generate concern for conservation.

Part of our job is to protect these plants that mean so much for Southern Arizona. This survey was created to study and protect the saguaros, so this feeds directly into our conservation strategies, Swann said.

Gila monster paparazzi

Swann partnered with Kevin Bonine, director of education and outreach at Biosphere 2 to address two main objectives: learn more about Gila monsters and promote interest in the species and natural habitat.

Bonine runs a program in which hikers in and around Saguaro National Park can submit photos of Gila monsters that they might stumble upon.

Adult Gila monsters have a pattern of pink or orange and black scales like a fingerprint, Bonine said. It doesnt change.

People can go out and when they see a Gila monster, take a photo of it and record the date and location, Swann said. There are many ways to submit: using the iNaturalist app, sending via email or bringing it to the visitor center.

Matching patterns to identify individuals and recording their locations allows researchers to track how long they live, their home range, when theyre most active and how their behavior might change over seasons or years, Swann said.

Times ticking

Phenologists study the timing of seasonal events, such as when saguaros bloom, insects hatch or birds migrate.

The timing of certain biological events could shift as a result of climate change.

There are consequences to this, said Theresa Crimmins, assistant director of the National Phenology Network. The biggest is that not all species respond in the same way and at the same time (to climate change)...we see phenological mismatches emerge.

The NPN is headquartered on the UA campus and hosts various citizen science opportunities for a range of skill levels.

Since its 2009 launch, almost 11,000 people from across the country have submitted 12 million data points that have resulted in 40 peer reviewed science publications, Crimmins said.

Curiosity takes flight

The Tucson Audubon Society also runs multiple citizen science projects and volunteer opportunities for a range of skill levels, said Jennie MacFarland, bird conservation biologist and Tucson Bird Count Coordinator.

During Christmas bird counts, each individual bird and species within a 15-mile diameter circle plot is recorded by bundled bird watchers using binoculars.

Christmas bird counts are fun and great because they utilize those high skill levels as well as beginning birders, she said.

The Tucson Audubon Society just wrapped activities celebrating the year of the hummingbird, but other programs include the Arizona Important Bird Areas Program and the Tucson bird count.

Citizen scientists have contributed huge amounts  two databases that have 100,000 data lines of bird sightings, MarFarland said.

The Tucson bird count is suitable for more experienced birders.

Tucson is home to hundreds of birders, MacFarland said. Southeastern Arizona is terrific for birding. Its one of the top three (birding hotspots) in the nation. People will retire here to live out their passion.
Mexican customs officers in Naco, Sonora, watched a man emerge from the trunk of a white sedan with his mouth taped shut and his hands and feet in shackles.

The man approached the customs officers and asked for help.

Meanwhile, the driver of the sedan, Roxanne Marie Carpenter, 54, was unaware her captive had escaped. She drove to a plaza a few hundred yards south of the international border where she planned to collect a bounty of 30 pounds of marijuana from two drug cartel members for turning the man over to them, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson.

When the cartel members discovered the captive was no longer in the trunk on the morning of March 29, they took the car and told Carpenter to run. She was arrested by FBI agents hours later as she walked across the international border into Naco, Arizona.

Federal prosecutors said Carpenter and three Sierra Vista men conspired to kidnap the victim and turn him over to the cartel after they heard about the bounty, which was issued after the captive reportedly stole a marijuana load in Cochise County.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Cindy K. Jorgenson sentenced Carpenter to 14 years in federal prison for what Jorgenson called a shocking, depraved series of activities that were fueled by a lifestyle of substance abuse.

Federal prosecutors said Carpenter, also known as Rocky, was the mastermind of the plan and recruited her friends to kidnap the victim, who went by Ghost.

Fausto Zombie Velazquez, 23, negotiated the bounty price with the cartel, prosecutors said. Brian Meyers, a 40-year-old friend of the victim, was the lure to get the victim to enter the car. Phoelix Loki Begay, 29, was the muscle.

In an interview with FBI agents included in court documents, Carpenter quoted Begay as saying: You know, if we could get our hands on Ghost, and we turned him, thats $37,000, Rocky. You could buy this property, not have a problem with it. You know, everything would be cool.

Carpenter recounted to agents that Begay told her: Rocky, we need to get some money. Living like this is ridiculous.

Before deciding to kidnap the victim, Carpenter wanted to confirm there was a bounty, saying: Were not going to do this and theres not going to be any money.

Carpenter then spoke with Velazquez, who confirmed the bounty.

So I asked Zombie. I yelled from the carport. I said, Hey Zombie. Can you get a hold of your family and find out if theres still money on  on Ghosts head? And he said, all right. Let me make a phone call.

They negotiated with the cartel for the bounty, which started at $37,000 but quickly diminished to an offer of a truck. The kidnappers rejected the truck offer because they would not be able to split it among themselves. In the end, the parties agreed to 30 pounds of marijuana.

Hours before Carpenter drove across the border, Meyers drove the victim and Begay to a remote area near Bisbee, prosecutors said. Sitting in the back seat, Begay shocked the victim in the neck with a cattle prod and used the seat belt to choke him. After the victim blacked out, they cut him out of the seat belt and he fell out of the car.

When the victim started to resist again they kicked and punched him until they could shackle his feet, handcuff his wrists, and put duct tape over his mouth and around his legs and arms. They then put him in the trunk. Begay shocked the victim repeatedly and kept him on a dog leash to quiet him.

They went to the house of Carpenters friend and smoked meth, laughed, joked, and listened to music while Velazquez negotiated the bounty with the cartel. During that time, the victim was confined to the trunk with a pillowcase over his head, federal prosecutor Serra Tsethlikai told Jorgenson on Tuesday.

They drove to a Safeway in Bisbee, where they bought more duct tape and Velazquez called the cartel to arrange the delivery of the victim, according to court documents. Carpenter then drove the victim from Bisbee to Naco, but got lost.

She met the other conspirators at the Gay 90s Bar in Naco and Velazquez drove in front of Carpenter to guide her to the port of entry in Naco, while the victim pleaded for his life from inside the trunk.

All four were indicted in federal court on conspiracy to kidnap and kidnapping charges.

A jury found Carpenter and Velazquez guilty of the charges in August. Velazquez is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 11.

Meyers pleaded guilty July 20 to one count of conspiracy to kidnap. He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 27.

Begay pleaded guilty to the charges July 25. He was sentenced Tuesday to 11 years in prison.

On Tuesday, defense lawyer Jill Thorpe told Jorgenson that Begay served seven years in the Army, including 18 months in Afghanistan where he was awarded several medals. After returning to civilian life, he struggled with drug abuse and committed domestic violence.

Begay agreed to participate in the kidnapping because he was worried the cartel would hurt Carpenter, Thorpe said. Tsethlikai questioned why Begay was involved in negotiating the bounty if he had no interest in the money.

Defense lawyer Jonathan Young said the kidnapping victim was related to a cartel member and was never in any real danger from the cartel. In a sentencing memorandum, he urged Jorgenson to disregard statements made by his client and the other kidnappers as the hyperbolic ramblings of some overwrought methamphetamine enthusiasts.

Young said Carpenter became involved in the criminal activity when the kidnapping victim stashed part of the stolen drug load at her house over her objections. She felt threatened and wanted to resolve the situation by turning over the kidnapping victim to the cartel.

Im very sorry for being involved in this. I didnt realize it would get so bad, Carpenter told Jorgenson, adding I didnt want to end up in a trunk myself.

The only reason she was the one who drove into Mexico was because the other three conspirators were under court-mandated supervision, Young said, which would raise flags when crossing back into the United States.
The widow of a landscaper who died in July after being stung by thousands of bees has filed a lawsuit against the homeowners, whose yard he was working in when he was attacked.

Attorneys for Gloria Babuca filed the lawsuit in Pima County Superior Court on Nov. 2, saying that negligence on the part of the homeowners caused the death of Babucas husband, 48-year-old Daniel Martinez.

On July 31, Martinez went with Eduardo Alvarez to a home in the 6600 block of South Camino de la Tierra to perform landscaping services for the homeowners, John C. and Sherilyn Ricketts, the lawsuit says.

When he arrived at the home, Martinez was stung by thousands of Africanized bees that had built two nests attached to the roof of the Ricketts home. The nests were exposed and visible, the lawsuit says.

Martinez died on the scene and Alvarez, who was also stung, was able to run away and refused medical treatment, according to the lawsuit.

Drexel Heights Fire District was dispatched to the scene to assist and seven firefighters were hurt or stung attempting to rescue Martinez, the lawsuit says.

Investigators learned that the two bee nests each weighed about 300 pounds and contained roughly 100,000 aggressive bees, the lawsuit says, adding that it appears that the bee nests had been growing at the home for more than a year.

Even neighbors noted the numerous amount of bees in that neighborhood, the lawsuit says. Defendants as property owners had a duty to repair known dangers, and also had a duty to reasonably inspect for, discover, and correct unknown hazards in those areas of the premises that the invitees might access.

The lawsuit claims wrongful death and gross negligence, saying that Martinez died as a direct result of the Ricketts reckless, wanton and/or willful misconduct.

The Ricketts failure to use reasonable care when inviting Martinez to their home, despite the massive bee nests, showed they acted with malice and as a result, Babucas lawsuit is also asking for punitive damages.

Substantial punitive damages are necessary and appropriate to punish defendants, and to deter defendants and other homeowners from such conduct in the future, the lawsuit says.

Babucas lawsuit is also asking for burial-related expenses, attorneys fees and damages in an amount to be proven at trial.

Priscilla Frisby, one of Babucas lawyers, knew Martinez as her landscaper and described him as a kind, hard-working man.

He was very grateful to have work and he worked every day of the week, Frisby said, adding that Martinez had been at her home only 10 days before his death.

Frisby said the bee nests at the Ricketts home were roughly 5 feet tall and neighbors had noticed an increase in bee activity in the neighborhood starting the year before.

Investigators believe the noise from the landscaping equipment Martinez and Alvarez used stirred up the bees, causing them to attack, Frisby said.

In addition to Babuca, Martinez is survived by his high school-aged son, Martin, who Frisby said has taken over his fathers landscaping duties at her home.

Babuca has a limited education and as a result, has been unable to find work, Frisby said.

Martinez was the sole breadwinner, Frisby said. The family is struggling financially immensely.

While Martinezs son has taken on some work, he is a full-time student and intends to finish his education, said attorney Adolfo Lara, who is also representing Babuca in the lawsuit.

Martin plans to ... do what his father expected him to do, which is pursue a college education, Lara said. This has devastated their lives.

While litigation could take two to three years to complete, the family is struggling financially and emotionally, Frisby said.

Danny left home that day at 5:30 a.m. and at 8 a.m., he was dead, she said. (His wife) was expecting him home for lunch.
In a sudden reversal, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has backed down from its insistence that federal regulators must consider the environmental impact of a 28,000-home development east of Tucson when consulting about whether to reinstate the projects permit.

Yet a wildlife service official emphasized the agency still has concerns about what the massive project will do to nearby critical habitats and the San Pedro River, the last major free-flowing river in the Southwest.

Our concerns remain, but the legal situation required us to retract that position, said Steve Spangle, the wildlife services Arizona field supervisor. That doesnt make the concerns go away.

Critics of the Benson-area project, a master-planned community called Villages at Vigneto, say the reversal is based on an unsupported assertion by the Phoenix developer, El Dorado Holdings Inc.

The wildlife service last year aligned itself with environmentalists when it insisted that federal agencies review of the project must consider the environmental effects of Vignetos entire 12,300 acres, including the impact of groundwater pumping for its anticipated 70,000 new residents.

But in an October letter, the wildlife service told the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers it now agrees with the Corps that the scope of analysis can be much more narrow, focused just on Vignetos effects on desert washes which are under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps. Thats an area covering about 1,800 acres, including an off-site mitigation parcel.

The letter was first reported by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, in collaboration with High Country News, on Nov. 17.

Because of that narrower scope, the wildlife service said it agrees with the Army Corps earlier findings that if Vignetos permit is approved, the project is not likely to adversely affect critical habitats and endangered or threatened species in the portion of the project its now evaluating.

The wildlife service said the reversal was prompted by a new and controversial assertion from Phoenix-based developer El Dorado Holdings: The developer now says it doesnt actually need the Clean Water Act permit that prompted the federal agencies scrutiny in the first place.

El Dorado spokesman Mike Reinbold did not respond to the Stars question about why it has been pursuing the permit, which has been holding up the project since the Army Corps suspended it last year, if it wasnt required for Vigneto to move forward.

As a practice we generally do not comment on ongoing pending governmental actions, he said in an email.

Whether or not the permit is necessary is a crucial legal point: If the developer could build the master-planned community without disturbing the washes that weave through the development site, then it doesnt need a Clean Water Act permit.

If thats the case, the developments environmental impact, including its groundwater use, technically cant be considered a direct outcome of approving the permit, Spangle said. The only impacts directly caused by the permit will be the developers filling of 51 acres of desert washes allowed by the permit, and the habitat mitigation activities the permit requires in exchange.

If they say, Were gonna build without the permit, then we have no reason to not believe them, Spangle said. The fact is, the Fish and Wildlife Service does not have expertise on what other development could happen without a permit. Therefore we have to rely on the intent of the developer, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers.

Vigneto critics have a lot of problems with this line of reasoning. An attorney for environmentalists says its concerning that a regulatory agency would defer to a bold assertion from the developer it regulates.

That deference allows the proverbial fox to guard the henhouse, said attorney Stu Gillespie of Earthjustice. The law firm represents six environmental groups engaged in a lawsuit against the Army Corps, alleging violations of the Endangered Species Act. The act requires federal agencies to consult about any federal action  in this case, approving the permit  that could affect endangered or threatened species and their habitats.

The wildlife services reversal is exceptional, Gillespie said in an email. It effectively renders the (Endangered Species Act) toothless.

Spangle said the wildlife service still has concerns about Vignetos anticipated groundwater pumping from the aquifer feeding the San Pedro River, which could result in reduced river flow, and the effects of a surge in human population near sensitive habitats.

Those are our main concerns, and those remain. Those are biological facts, Spangle said. But from a legal standpoint, we couldnt consider that in our Endangered Species Act deliberations with the Army Corps.

Army Corps spokesman Dave Palmer declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

BENSON CITY COUNCIL

The Benson City Council approved Vignetos community master plan in July 2016, and is currently considering the creation of additional special taxing districts to help fund the development.

Councilmember David Lambert said he has a lot of questions for El Dorado about a variety of issues, and the developer has not been forthcoming.

Of the latest issue, he said, If they dont need the permit, why are they wasting the time waiting for it? ... I think El Dorado Holdings is actually doing this to basically keep us confused. A confused person would be more apt to just go ahead and vote for something.

None of the other four council members responded to the Stars requests for comment. Mayor Toney King also did not respond.

Tricia Gerrodette, an environmental activist, said the wildlife services reversal appears to be linked to the Trump administrations eagerness to weaken environmental regulations that could constrain development.

Theyve done 180 degrees, she said. I dont think its as scientifically driven a change, as a politically driven change.

El Dorado Holdings CEO Mike Ingram contributed $15,500 to Donald Trumps presidential campaign last year, Federal Election Commission records show. Trumps EPA administrator Scott Pruitts online schedule shows on May 2, Pruitt met with El Dorado Holdings.

The developer would not say whether Vigneto was discussed at that meeting, but Reinbold said in an email that Ingram was among 17 attendees at the meeting which was organized through the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.

NO ACTION ALTERNATIVE

Nicole Gillett of the Tucson Audubon Society, one of the groups suing the Corps, said federal agencies should not simply trust that El Dorado can build Vigneto without the Clean Water Act permit.

We should certainly not be making permit decisions based on that assumption, she said. If theyre going to completely redo their plan to be no-impact, wed love to see them try to do that. But as it stands we dont see that as likely, or possible, given the current scope of the project, which is enormous.

By the developers own account, the projects no-action alternative  that is, how the development could proceed if the federal agencies did not take any action to approve the Clean Water Act permit  differs from what is described in the plan approved last year by the Benson City Council.

Avoiding the washes would undermine the projects core concept of interconnected villages, wrote El Dorado president Jim Kenny in a September letter to the Army Corps, obtained by the Star through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Major streets and backbone infrastructure would be oriented west-to-east between the major washes, and would not be interconnected and integrated, he wrote. Sewer collection and treatment would be less centralized, and the timing and availability of reclaimed water for non-potable uses and recharge would be affected. Kenny also said this version of Vigneto would likely add vineyards and nut orchards as an additional source of revenue.

Admittedly, developing our property in this manner would not meet our project purpose, he wrote. But if the permit isnt reinstated, El Dorado will develop the site in this fashion rather than sitting on its investment and earning no return.

In an interview, El Dorado spokesman Reinbold would not elaborate on how the vision for Vigneto would change if the developer had to avoid desert washes, nor whether the City Council of Benson would be likely to approve that version of Vigneto.

Let me ask you a question: What does it matter? Reinbold said. Youre getting the cart in front of the horse. Why dont we have this conversation if the permit is not reinstated?

Attorney Gillespie says there is a crucial difference: If the no-action alternative will be dramatically different than the project as planned, then its not true to claim that the same Vigneto development could happen without the permit, Gillespie said. The letter from El Dorado makes it clear that the no-action alternative would be markedly different than the current Vigneto plan, he said.

If this type of letter is all a developer needs to do under this administration to circumvent (environmental oversight laws), there will be serious impacts to our environment that go unanalyzed and unregulated, he said.

PUBLIC COMMENTS

The Army Corps is accepting public comments through Dec. 4 on whether to reinstate or revoke Vignetos suspended Clean Water Act permit.

The permit allows the developer to fill in 51 acres of washes  considered Waters of the U.S., under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps  to make way for the residential development, in exchange for protecting and restoring the 144-acre offsite mitigation parcel.

The permit was originally awarded to a smaller, canceled housing development and transferred to Vignetos developers in 2014. But the permit only covers 8,200 of Vignetos 12,300-acre project site, which is another point of contention for Vignetos critics.

Vignetos developers have said the remaining 4,100 acres can be permitted separately, but environmentalists call that piecemealing, a strategy that understates the cumulative effects of development.

Lambert said city councilmembers shouldnt shy away from asking questions of developer El Dorado to ensure the project is done in a way that truly benefits Benson residents.

I think the project is a great project, he said. But there are ways to do it correctly and ways to do it incorrectly.
Joellen Russell has a vision of holding countries accountable for their carbon-dioxide emissions.

She and her research team are focusing their work in Antarcticas Southern Ocean  which absorbs a significant portion of the man-made heat generated in the world  to measure the amount of carbon in the water. Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of burning fossil fuels and responsible for rising global temperatures.

Carbon is stored in the atmosphere, ocean and land, said Russell, a University of Arizona associate professor of geosciences. Scientists understand the flux of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in great detail, so if Russells team can account for levels in the ocean, then they can infer levels on land, which are too complex to measure directly.

To do this, the team has deployed nearly 100 cylindrical tanks, known as floats, into the Southern Ocean.

The 5-foot sensors drift with the currents about 1,000 meters under the oceans surface. Every 10 days, for four hours, they drop another 1,000 meters then bob up to the surface, gathering data along the way, finally returning to their original depth. Within hours, data gathered from the on-board sensors is online so anyone can access it, including Russell, from her desk at the UA.

Russell leads the modeling component of the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling Project.

The project is run by Jorge Sarmiento at Princeton University, the floats are built by Stephen Riser at University of Washington, the sensors were made by Ken Johnson from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and the floats are deployed by Lynne Talley at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Ocean observations are lacking, Russell said. Yet were trying to figure out how much carbon the ocean is taking up in the summer versus the winter, this year versus last year, and yet, oh my God, theres no data.

Her team is funded to deploy another 100 floats, but researchers hope to ultimately send out 1,000 total.

I know it sounds crazy, she said. Its not.

Recipient

of endowed chair

Russell is known for her boldness and enthusiasm among her peers, Sarmiento said.

She is a first-order scientist for sure, addressing first-order questions, said Joaquin Ruiz, dean of the UA College of Science. She is just as engaged and engaging with students as she is with mainline scientists and has the capacity to collaborate with individuals to make a huge project happen.

She was recently named the Thomas R. Brown Endowed Chair. Ruiz nominated her for the position.

With the endowment, shell fund her travel to recruit more countries to participate in the float project.

Its very meaningful to her to have the chair, Talley said. I think it helps that she enjoys working in Arizona. Its sort of her home turf, and its somewhere where she can make a difference.

Everyone asks me, Whats an oceanographer studying the Southern Ocean doing in the desert? Russell said.

She tells them: The churning Southern Ocean absorbs 25 percent of the worlds carbon dioxide, and two-thirds of the heat that humans pump into the air  holding off rising global temperatures for now.

Water moderates wild changes in temperatures. The Sonoran Desert has no buffer. It is so dry that when temperatures begin to rise, the desert will follow the global average temperature.

going to the sea

Russell loves the desert, but she is not an Arizona native. She spent 10 years of her early life in an Eskimo fishing village called Kotzebue along the Chukchi Sea.

Its the most beautiful place Ive ever seen in my life, she said, and Ive been many places.

Russell didnt know about climate change as a kid, but she knew she wanted to explore.

I wanted to be like Sally Ride, but space in a tin can was nowhere near as beautiful as where I walked and kayaked, she said. So I went to sea.

She received her bachelors degree in environmental geosciences from Harvard University, then her Ph.D. from Scripps, where she met Talley. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton when she met Sarmiento.

Her first venture into deep ocean waters wasnt until her second year of grad school.

Oh it was terrifying. She remembered of being on a ship, hanging onto the walls, the toilet and her dinner. At night, she stuffed a life jacket under half of the mattress to pin herself against the wall.

I spent almost a year of my life at sea, she said, and despite all the chaos, I get very zen because in fact, Im here and I can only do whats right in front of me and Im surrounded by amazingly skilled, hard-working human beings.

Its hard work, but its important, she said. Even now she insists that researchers need more observations if they are going to make the models and predictions more accurate.

It would be different if we were roughly within the same range of (carbon dioxide levels and global average temperature) that happened in the past, she said. Thered be no rush; wed just be exploring.

Instead, were rushing to get ahead of the change. We have to observe the change well enough to be able to predict it.

After the many intense hurricanes of recent years, she thinks that the small community of oceanographers finally has the worlds attention.

These are profound changes. (Hurricanes) are much bigger than they ought to be and everyone can see that. Its naked eye obvious.

A tribes generosity

Russell also worries about permafrost melting and turning to mud, threatening villages like the one she grew up in.

They made room for me in a culture that has been profoundly decimated and has had very hard things to live through, she said. If tribes can be like that, then I have an obligation to spend the rest of my life trying to make things better.

When she was 10, she and her family moved to northern Montana to live with the Chippewa Cree Tribe of the Rocky Boys Reservation, a 2-hour drive from Glacier National Park.

When I turned 16, they gave me a star quilt that they made just for me because they wanted me to remember them when I went out into the world, said Russell.

They were so generous with a kid who was only a pain in the butt, she said, wiping away tears.

Russell is proud to serve so many students of color at the UA. We have more than 25 percent Hispanic students, she said, and serve many Native American students as well.

She also worries about mosquito-borne diseases such as Zika. The pests thrive in warmer temperatures.

Yet she and her team are so optimistic about the future of climate change. When asked why, Talley said: We are so much in the middle of doing something about it. ... No one feels like were pushing a rock up a hill.

At this point we have everything we need, Russell said: the floats, the models, the funding. We are roaring.

Despite the Trump administration pulling out of the Paris agreement on greenhouse gases, the United States has made significant reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions, she said.
Tank destroyers from the People's Liberation Army's base in Djibouti participate in a live-fire exercise at a range in the African country's capital on Thursday. [Photo/China Daily]

The Djibouti Logistics Support Base of the People's Liberation Army conducted a live-fire exercise on Thursday with its heavy-duty weapons, according to the Chinese military.

Several wheeled tank destroyers and wheeled infantry fighting vehicles from the base in the Horn of Africa took part in the exercise at a local shooting range and fired dozens of shells, according to a news release published late Friday by the PLA Navy, which administers the logistics support base.

Infantry practiced assault maneuvers with the armored vehicles, it said. It quoted Senior Captain Liang Yang, commander of the base, as saying that the move was intended to verify the combat capability of troops and their weapons and to improve their adaptability in the local environment.

The PLA established its Djibouti Logistics Support Base, the first of its kind for the Chinese military, on July 11 and put it into formal operation on Aug 1.

Located in Djibouti City, the African nation's capital, the base will support the Chinese military's naval escort, peacekeeping and humanitarian missions in Africa and western Asia, the Navy said. It will also help China improve its capabilities in international military cooperation, joint exercises, emergency evacuations and overseas rescue.

It will enable the nation to better guard the safety of international strategic maritime passages with other countries, it said.

President Xi Jinping, also chairman of the Central Military Commission, had a teleconference with troops at the Djibouti base this month during an inspection of the CMC Joint Command Headquarters in Beijing. Xi told them to gain a good reputation for Chinese soldiers and to contribute to regional peace and stability.

On Friday, Premier Li Keqiang met with Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh in Beijing. Calling Djibouti a major partner in East Africa, Li said China is willing to work with the nation to make use of each other's advantages to foster economic cooperation and to build a regional hub of trade and logistics.
PHOENIX  A federal lawsuit set to go to trial next month marks the latest legal action brought against former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio over allegations that he pursued a fictitious criminal case to get publicity and embarrass an adversary.

The political opponent in this case: U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake.

One of Flakes sons filed a malicious-prosecution lawsuit, saying Arpaio pursued felony animal cruelty charges against him and his then-wife in a bid to do political damage to the senator and gain publicity.

Austin Flake and his wife were charged in the heat-exhaustion deaths of 21 dogs in June 2014 at a kennel operated by his in-laws. The Flakes were watching the dogs when the in-laws were out of town.

The dogs died when an air conditioning unit failed in a small room where the animals spent the night.

The case against the Flakes was dismissed at the request of prosecutors, and the owners of the kennel pleaded guilty to animal cruelty charges after an expert determined the air conditioner failed because the operators didnt properly maintain it.

The lawsuit, which is scheduled for trial on Dec. 5, alleges that Arpaio was intent on linking the Flakes to the deaths, going so far as to conduct surveillance on the senators home. The suit also says Arpaios investigators examined phone records to see if the younger Flake called his father during the time he was watching the dogs.

Lawyers for Austin Flake and his then-wife have said the senator disagreed with Arpaio over immigration and was critical of the movement questioning the authenticity of then-President Barack Obamas birth certificate.

In a deposition, Arpaio didnt accept responsibility for bringing the charges against the couple and was unable to cite any evidence to support the allegations. But he still expressed confidence in his investigators.

I am going by what my detectives accomplished during their investigation, Arpaio said during the July 2016 deposition. They had the nuts and bolts already. I defend my people. I have confidence in them. I dont have to know everything thats going on.

Arpaio and Jeffrey Leonard, an attorney representing Maricopa County and the former sheriff, declined to comment on the case.

Stephen Montoya, an attorney for Austin Flake and his former wife, Logan Brown, said the sheriffs office didnt have evidence showing his clients intended to hurt the dogs, yet still charged them with crimes that devastated them and contributed to the demise of their marriage.

It splashed their names across the internet as the murderers of 21 dogs. It really ravaged them emotionally, Montoya said, noting that Austin Flake was 21 and his wife was 20 at the time.

A ruling in August by U.S. District Judge Neil Wake dismissed a defamation allegation from the lawsuit but determined investigators didnt have probable cause to charge the couple.

A factfinder could thus reasonably find that the prosecutors initially charged the Flakes based on pressure from Arpaio, Wake wrote.

The prosecutor who brought the allegations said in a court filing that she wasnt pressured by Arpaios office to prosecute the couple and that the decision to present the case to a grand jury was made by her and her supervisors. The Maricopa County Attorneys Office isnt named as a party in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit doesnt specify how much money the younger Flake and his ex-wife are seeking. But they previously sought $4 million in a notice of claim  a precursor to a lawsuit.

It isnt the first time Arpaio has been accused of trumping up charges in an animal cruelty case.

He launched an investigation against a police officer from the Phoenix suburb of Chandler over a 2007 death of a police dog that was left in a hot vehicle for 12 hours in blistering summer heat.

The officer was charged with animal abuse but eventually acquitted. He filed a lawsuit alleging Arpaio brought the criminal case so the sheriff could exploit the publicity.
Re: the Nov. 22 article Conyers denies harassment settlement; ethics probe opens.

As a feminist, I am outraged that Rep. John Conyers allegedly sexually harassed members of his staff for years. As a taxpayer, I am appalled that he apparently used federal dollars to pay off one of his victims by listing her as a temporary employee on payroll records, resulting in payments to her of more than $27,000 as part of a settlement agreement.

At the very least, Rep. Conyers should reimburse the U.S. Treasury for that money with his own funds. I hope the House Ethics Committee also investigates whether this rises to the level of fraud, and, if so, takes appropriate action to sanction him accordingly.

Laura Penny

Foothills
It is hard to tell what Americans will dread more this Thanksgiving weekend: avoiding talking to relatives with opposing political views, or the feeling of dread that comes with knowing that we may be one day closer to seeing this frightening proposed tax bill become a reality.

There are valid reasons to be afraid of this tax plan that the Senate is set to debate after the holiday.

If it passes the Senate in its current form, I will be forced to drop out of my Ph.D. program at the University of Arizona.

This is in no way an exaggeration. I  along with most of my fellow graduate students who are not among the wealthiest Americans  will not be able to afford to finish their postgraduate degree because the tax plan proposes to tax graduate student tuition waivers as though they are income.

These are the facts: as part of my program to complete my degree, I teach classes to undergraduate students for which I receive a small stipend of around $15,000. I pay federal taxes on that income. In addition to my modest stipend, I receive a tuition waiver for the classes that I must complete in order to earn my Ph.D. degree.

These tuition waivers are considered fellowships awarded by the university to students like myself who are competitive burgeoning scholars in our fields.

This is not an issue that just affects me and my University of Arizona colleagues. According to the most recent data from the American Council on Education, 145,000 graduate students received tuition waivers in the 2011-2012 academic year.

Under the proposed tax plan, graduate students (who are already living at or under the national poverty line) would be taxed on essentially twice as much money as they actually get paid as a stipend.

This would have devastating effects on me, my colleagues at the University of Arizona, and the thousands of other graduate students currently in graduate programs across the nation.

It would severely damage (and probably destroy) graduate programs in public universities. It would make high level degrees not affordable to low- and middle-income students.

Only wealthy students would be able to complete Ph.D. programs without taking on oppressive debt.

This is unconscionable, indefensible and anti-public education.

We can all surely agree that an increased tax burden on already impoverished and over-worked graduate students in the service of a windfall for the wealthiest Americans is unjustifiable.

Since when is it the American way for the federal government to punish academic talent and innovation with the undue burden of crippling taxation?

Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain must take a responsible and honest look at this bill  not just this horrifying provision that will bankrupt graduate students  but at the entire text and its various dark and sordid corners.

The result of such an investigation could only lead them to vote no.
Help India!

By Umair Azmi for TwoCircles.net

The case of Hadiya, who converted to Islam and married a Muslim youth, has been in the headlines for months. The order of the Kerala High Court annulling her marriage has been the subject of much commentary and criticism. But the passages quoted have been limited to those regarding a 24-year lady as a child. This article attempts to point out other problematic elements and inherent contradictions in the judgement.

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What do the judgements say?

The overarching theme is one of smelling conspiracy in every nook and corner. Actions that one would take place as a matter of course are given sinister colours. It appears that Hadiya had earlier come in contact with other Muslims, named Fasal Musthafa and Sherin Shahana, and had got an affidavit executed on 10.9.2015 declaring her conversion, and choosing the name Aasiya. Later she broke contact with them. This happened before she was supported by Sainaba. This earlier affidavit, in the eyes of the high court, becomes suspicion for a sinister conspiracy (p. 28). Is it to create a confusion regarding her identity Or has she been acting at the dictates of some others (p. 31), asks the judge, conveniently ignoring the fact that all the affidavits mention the declarant as Akhila Asokan @ (New name). Hadiya repeatedly mentions her earlier her name in her petitions and affidavits, and impleads herself in cases where she is yet to be made a respondent; are these the actions of a person who wishes to create confusion regarding her identity?

Repeated references are made to the case of another girl, Athira (p. 17) who initially left home and claimed to embrace Islam and later retracted and went with her parents. This again, becomes evidence for conspiracy! Another repeated reference point is an earlier case, Shahan Sha A v. State of Kerala, where the same conspiracy theories of forcible conversion were at play. A fertile imagination betraying personal prejudices becomes the evidence for conspiracies elsewhere.

Same advocate? Conspiracy!!!

The court notes that Ms. Akhila has appeared in this case through a lawyer We place on record the fact that initially Adv. P.Sanjay and Smt. Parvathy Menon had appeared for Ms. Akhila However, as per the records of this Court, no vakalath was filed by the said advocates for Ms. Akhila. Subsequently, Sri. C.M.Mohammed Iquabal started representing Ms. Akhila. Sri.C.M. Mohammed Iquabal has started appearing for Ms. Akhila without obtaining a no-objection certificate from the former counsel, which would have been necessary, had Adv. P.Sanjay and Smt. Parvathy Menon filed their vakalaths. There is no explanation forthcoming for the above discrepancy. (p. 25). Legal experts may be able to throw more light on this, but the judge himself notes that no NOC was required, and yet treats its absence as some sinister act for which no explanation is forthcoming.

It is interesting to notice that Adv. P.K.Ibrahim, the present counsel for the 7th respondent in this writ petition, was the counsel appearing for the petitioners in the said case. (p. 31). Though not stated explicitly, the same advocate representing both Hadiya and Sainaba, becomes a point worth noting. One wonders whether courts take similar notice of advocates with a track record of representing politicians accused of corruption, murder, or other heinous crimes?

The fact of being represented by a counsel, an integral part of the judicial system, also assumes conspiratorial overtones! So does the matter of organisational support, in this case the SDPI. The court was also worried about the source of income of the 7th respondent, since it was alleged by the counsel for the petitioner that she was only part of an organization that had unlimited financial resources. (p. 11). We also notice that the detenue has entered appearance through a counsel and has been contesting this matter on her own We therefore, wanted the detenue as well as the 7th respondent to disclose their sources of income. (21.12.2016, p. 7). As we have already noticed above, the alleged detenue Ms. Akhila has appeared in this case through a lawyer. (p. 25).  it is worth noting that an expensive Senior Advocate is appearing for Ms. Akhila, who has only an income of Rs. 2000/- per month, while an Advocate of considerable standing is appearing for the 7h respondent. (p. 37). It is clear from the facts and circumstances of the present case, that neither Ms.Akhila, who is the alleged detenue, nor the other respondents in this case who are contesting the matter have any paucity of funds. (p. 38).

Again, one wonders, are their lordships always concerned about where the resources come from when leading lawyers, who charge by the lakhs per hearing, appear as counsel in the courts? Or are their lord-ships outraged by the audacity of a convert to Islam to seek justice in the courts of law, when she should have walked to the altar like a meek lamb?

Do their lordships feel the need to act as accountants and auditors in every case, or is it again the result of the audacity of the supposed meek lamb?

The court was outraged by the marriage being conducted while Court was kept totally in the dark regarding the said developments. (p. 36). Sainaba had a duty to at least inform this Court of the same, in advance. (21.12.2016 p. 8). Regarding the advertisement on a matrimonial site, seeking appropriate matches, Since this Court had reposed trust in her and had permitted Ms.Akhila to reside in her house, she had the duty at least to inform this court of the proposal that was admittedly being considered during the pendency of these proceedings. (p. 43). Since when did it become necessary to obtain the courts permission for conducting a marriage?

In the first place, it is not normal for a young girl in her early 20s, pursuing a professional course, to abandon her studies and to set out in pursuit of learning an alien faith and religion. The normal youth is indifferent towards religion and religious studies. (p. 34). Almost as a concessional favour, their lordships add Though the possibility of genuine interest in the study of religion on the part of any person cannot be ruled out, such inclination is in the first place out of the ordinary. (p. 34).

And how should one go about learning about a new religion? Once again, the commands of their lordships should be heeded. Though the alleged detenue in this case is stated to have set out to study Islam, her study has been confined to merely attending a course of two months duration conducted by the 6th respondent. She does not appear to have conducted any study thereafter. In the present case, the academic records of Ms.Akhila show that she was not a bright student. She had failed in all her subjects in the first year. Of course, she cleared all the papers later Ms. Akhila only gives a vague statement in her affidavit that she had acquired knowledge about Islam by reading Islamic books and also viewing interesting videos. What are the materials on the basis of which she had developed an interest in Islam religion is unavailable. (p. 34).

A list of additions to the duties of the courts: to decide if you are bright enough to consider a new religion? To decide whether you have studied enough about the religion you wish to adopt. To decide if the videos you have watched constitute sufficient justification to adopt a new religion, for why else would their lordships be so concerned about vague statement regarding the nature of content?

Perhaps the courts will also decide whether your looks are compatible with conversion to a new religion. Who knows? After all their lord-ships never said that this list is exhaustive.

Khaps, anglicised

Our interaction with the detenue when she was brought before us, gives us an impression that, she is only an ordinary girl of moderate intellectual capacity. She appeared to be repeating verses and quotations in Arabic that she has apparently memorized. According to the Police, and the Senior Government Pleader, she has been made to believe that she would go to hell if she did not accept Islam and is under such a belief. She also appears to be a gullible person. A hostility to her parents also has been instilled into her. It could also be that, she is under some sort of compulsion that is binding her to the 7th respondent and others who are controlling her. She has not impressed us as a person who is capable of taking a firm and independent decision on her own. (p. 39). Perhaps only people who cross the threshold of moderate intellectual capacity are entitled to any rights or freedom.

A girl aged 24 years is weak and vulnerable, capable of being exploited in many ways. This Court exercising parens patriae jurisdiction is concerned with the welfare of a girl of her age. (p. 50). Till what age is a girl weak and vulnerable? 24 years is the lower bound but as it has not been specified, it may be so till the end of life for all we know. And since you happen to be girls, perpetual children, the court may say The learned Senior Counsel  submits that, since the detenue is present in Court this Court may interact with her and verify whether it was under the influence of anyone else or under coercion that her marriage was performed  We are not satisfied that it is necessary to interact with her at present. (21.12.2016, p. 6).

Just as the colonial rulers deemed Indians to not be suitable for self-government, girls are not to be deemed suitable for even speaking their mind.

One of the orientalist stereotypes prevalent in the colonial era considered Indians as half-child and half-devil. Perhaps inspired by them, the judges see young ladies as half-child and half-idiot.

There is more. As part of the interim order on the date that Hadiya appeared with her husband for the first time, she was prohibited from using a mobile phone (21.12.2016, p. 8). There appears to be little daylight between the khaps and the High Court.

Would their lordships consider every lady in her 20s marrying against the will of her parents to be a child in need of being forced for her own good? This is not a case of a girl falling in love with a boy of a different religion and wanting to get married to him. Such situations are common and we are familiar with them. In all such cases, this Court has been consistent in accepting the choice of the girl. (p. 41). So it is not marriage itself that irks the court, it is conscientious conversion to Islam.

Much is made of Shefin Jahans failure to update his Facebook page with details of his marriage (p. 20) (Note to youngsters: henceforth, failure to update your Facebook can result in annulment of marriage.) and his facebook posts which unmistakably show his radical inclination. (p. 45). Perhaps a new prerequisite for marriage: an absence of radical inclination. As he has a criminal record relating to some college fight, No prudent parent would decide to get his daughter married to a person accused in a criminal case. This is for the reason that, the possibility of such a person getting convicted and being sent to jail cannot be ruled out. (p. 45). Are we to understand that one who is an accused is not to be permitted matrimony? That would result in condemning almost the whole political class to bachelorhood (or spinsterhood)!

Conversion = force

The conversion and marriage of a lady becomes a matter of national interest (p. 32) which must be investigated. The underlying prejudice is that of considering conversion as a crime. Or to state it more accurately, considering conversion to Islam as a crime. In referring to the case of Athira, the court states that she had been forcibly persuaded to embrace Islam. (p. 17). The arguments of the government pleader, as recorded in the judgement, consist of calling this a case of forced conversion based on Hadiya being fed graphic details of hell and the torments that sinners are subjected to in their life after death. (p. 18). In an act of devilish sophistry, force is correlated with persuasion. Merely stating the tenets of the faith regarding its beliefs on salvation, equals force in the dictionary of the government pleader (the representative of a communist government). The court seems to assent to this colourful understanding of force, which almost criminalises the mere enunciation of religious beliefs. The tragedy is that in this matter at least, this judgement is treading familiar ground, for past judgements on the question of conversion have been equally disturbing.

As precedent, the judgement is terrifying. What does one do when in a difficult situation but to accept organisational support? If one converts to a new faith, is it surprising for her to seek help from an organisation led by members of the new faith? And what does one do if not employ a legal professional when embroiled in a court case? These actions, which would be considered common sense responses, assume an air of conspiracy in the eyes of the high court. What intent could be behind such a judgement? Could it be to create such a chilling effect in the minds of minorities that they dare not even organise, nor dare approach legal institutions?

Perhaps the judges would have loved to institute an inquisition and bring in the stake to discipline Hadiya. Alas, this being the twenty first century democratic India, not medieval Europe, a veneer of civilisation has to be retained. Ordering her imprisonment  for that is the right word to describe Hadiyas position  is to condemn her to mental torture, and possibly physical torture, all under the auspices of the high court. For all the hullabaloo of forced conversions, this is its classic example  imprisonment until she renounces her faith. But in the post-truth world, non-threatening words constitute force, imprisonment does not.

Such a judgement is the result of anti-Muslim prejudice which considers the whole Muslim community to be violent and dangerous. Only then does every act associated with Islam, be it conversion to the religion or marriage to a Muslim become associated with criminality.

The aftermath in the Supreme Court

The aftermath in the Supreme Court has shown that the High Court judgement was no rare aberration. For in response to a petition seeking relief from the Supreme Court, an investigation under the National Investigating Agency was ordered. It is official, from the highest judicial body  conversion and marriage are now matters of terrorism and national security. And for those who dare wonder as to how that is so, beware! For it indicates that you do not desire the correct and independent view of the controversy to emerge before this Court. (10.08.2017, p.3). In effect, this meant sanction for continued denial of freedom to Hadiya.

On 30 October 2017, the Supreme Court finally ordered that Hadiya be produced in Court. While it is tempting to consider this a positive development, by setting the date for producing the lady to 27 November 2017, the court has in effect extended Hadiyas imprisonment for a month apart from giving her family further opportunities for physical violence. But in an environment where the National Investigating Agency, in true bigoted fashion, can argue that in a case of the present nature when there is material with regard to a pattern of indoctrination, the choice of the person should not be treated as absolute (30.10.2017), perhaps one should be thankful for small mercies.

Will the might of the Indian government and judiciary succeed in breaking the spirit of a young lady? Or will the supposed ordinary girl of moderate intellectual capacity show every state institution their place? November 27 will be a day of reckoning.

*Note on the references: References to the final order of the Kerala High Court are given as paragraph numbers. Other orders are referred by the order date and paragraph.

The author holds a masters degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Help India!

By Mirza Mosaraf Hossain, TwoCircles.net

The death of a 16-year-old teenager inside a police station in Kolkata has shocked the residents of the Metiabruz region, even as the family of the deceased maintains silence over the issue, allegedly due to political pressure.

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On November 21, the 16-year-old teenager was found hanging in one of the office rooms of Kolkatas Metiabruz Police station, and this has led to many human rights organisation questioning the role of the police present at the station. The negligence of the police officials has led to many calling it a case of custodial murder and not suicide, as the police are trying to establish. When contacted, the local police denied the allegation and clarified the death as the consequence of heroin withdrawal that the boy was addicted.

But what is even more surprising is that four days after the death, the teenagers family has not lodged any complaint against the police or anyone else and many are taking their silence, even after having lost their son, as a result of sustained pressure from political links to suppress the case. On November 21, the boy was called for some interrogation related to a case at Karbala Lane of Metiabruz. We got this boys name in a gold robbery case from another thief and so we called him to appear at the police station. We kept him in a room with a guard. But when the guard came out for some tasks, he was found hanging with his belts and shoelaces from the ceiling fan. When he was brought to Hospital, the doctors declared him as dead. As far we came to know, he was a heroin addict and it was a committed suicide for the cause of heroin withdrawal as the doctoral report said, Sitaram Bhattacharjee, the Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Metiabruz Police Station told TwoCircles.net.

He also said that the boy was a vagabond and he was chained in his home by his parents and he used to sell household assets for the addiction.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police (DC), Port Division, Kolkata, Syed Waquar Reza, also pointed to the drug addiction as a possible reason. He said, We learnt from the locals that the boy was a drug addict. Presumably, it is thought to be a suicide. But we cannot say anything else until the postmortem comes that may come within two to three days.

The boy was from Nadial locality, a 2 km distance from Metiabruz, who was the fourth son among his six siblings. He worked as a tailor in Metiabruz locality. When his uncle, Arabul Molla, was contacted by TwoCircles.net to check why they have not lodged any complaint against anyone, he refused to answer. Instead, he said, I cannot say anything regarding this, please. I will be calling you if we needed.

But Altaf Ahmed, the Vice President of Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), West Bengal, is taking it as a murder case that the Police, as well as the political links of the boys uncle, tried to conceal as a self-killing. He said,  It is strange that the police has framed the murder as a suicide. How one can hang oneself with a belt and a shoelace from a ceiling fan? Is it worthy enough to believe that the belt and shoelace of a teenage boy are enough to arrange the trap with a ceiling fan when his body was continuously trembling? He added, If it was a self-killing, why were then the four gates of the graveyard packed with police vans? Is it not an attempt to hush up the killing as a suicide? He also said that he came to know about the uncle of the boy, Arabul Molla, who has some good liaison with the local leaders of the ruling Trinamool Party and maybe thats why he has been forced not to file any case against anyone.

Akhlaqur Rahaman Qureshi, the President of Majlis-e-ittehad Council, a non-political organization based in Kolkata, who visited the family of the boy and the locality, agreed with the points made by Ahmed of APCR. If someone dies inside the police station, it is the police who are responsible for the death. If we take the case as a suicide, it is the negligence on the part of the police that caused the death. How can one dare to kill himself if the police station corridor is filled with police and other visitors? asked Qureshi. He also blamed Arabul Molla for forbidding the parents of the boy to say anything regarding the death.

Qureshi warned that if the police do not work properly to investigate the unnatural death after the issuing of the post-mortem report, they would march a protest demonstration along with APDR and Prosecuted Prisoners Consolidatory Committee.

The allegations that Ahmed made was denied by both the OC and DC. The DC said,  if it is proved as a murder, then the culprits will be getting punishments in accordance with law and order. But we cannot anything until the Post-mortem report comes out.
Help India!

By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net

The Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) has dropped several charges including that of private practice and corruption against Dr Kafeel Ahmad Khan, the senior doctor at Gorakhpurs Baba Raghav Das Medical College. Dr Khan was alleged to be involved in the infants deaths at the Medical College during July and August.

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Dr Kafeel is one of the nine accused in the death of over 50 children in Gorakhpur. After the state governments nod, the UP STF filed charge sheet against medical college principal Dr Rajiv Mishra and Dr Kafeel Ahmad Khan.

The Gorakhpur Police had also filed charge sheets against Dr Purnima Shukla, former Anaesthesia Department Head Dr Satish Kumar, ex-Chief Pharmacist Gajanan Jaiswal, Accounts departments clerks, Sudhir Pandey, Udai Sharma, Sanjay Tripathi and owner of Pushpa Sales Pvt Lt Manish Bhandari.

Mishra was charged under Sections 120-B, 308, 409 of the Indian Penal Code and 7/13 Anti-Corruption Act while Kafeel Khan was charged under Sections 120-B, and 308 of the IPC.

Making the case even more complex, Section 7/13 of Anti-Corruption Act, Section 66 of IT Act and Section 15 of the Indian Medical Council Act in the last week of August were added after the FIR of Director General Medical Education KK Gupta on the recommendation of the high-level committee headed by the Chief Secretary Rajiv Kumar.

According to Investigation officer Abhishek Singh, the investigation team was unable to find any substantial material or evidence against Dr Kafeel. He was not found to be indulging in private practice and corruption and he did not violate any clauses of any IT act.

Dr Kafeel was appointed under the National Health Mission (NHM) as a contractual staff and he was regularised in December 2016.

When the hospital at BRD Medical College ran out of oxygen on the night of August 10, Dr Kafeel tried to manage oxygen cylinders and restore oxygen supply to the hospital to avoid deaths.

Later on, a section of media alleged Dr Kafeel Ahmad Khan of using hospital oxygen for his own hospital Medispring, a charge that Dr Khan denied.

However, Kafeel Ahmad Khan is still charged under section 409 and 120B and is still under judicial custody. Both the sections are non-bailable and Kafeels stay behind bars is likely to continue. Section 409, pertaining to embezzlement of government funds, of IPC was added in the chargesheet later on and makes the charged person liable for life imprisonment.
Zimbabwe and South Africa share a similar history with the oppression of the whites in their various timelines but up until they both gained their independence only. Zimbabwe has had the unfortunate experience of being dominated by the rule of the now ex-President Robert Mugabe for almost four decades. Whilst the president of South Africa has changed over the years since the country gained independence from Afrikaner nationalism in 1994. South Africa has had the chance to breathe some fresh air unlike their neighbouring southern African country, Zimbabwe.

But that too was perhaps a fresh breath too soon.

Jacob Zumas South Africa

Jacob Zuma doesnt have the dreadful past that follows Mugabe like a shadow. The former president of Zimbabwe came in as a liberator and left as someone beyond a dictatorship title. He left the country in ruin, governed stubbornly and brutally, as though he hadnt realised there were consequences for his action against his countrys growth. Zimbabwes economy began to deteriorate drastically in the 2000s when Mugabe forced 4,000 white farmers to give up their land. This hit the once agriculturally golden farming sector enormously and its effects were soon realised immediately  almost overnight. It led to a famine, the worst of its kind the country had ever seen in 60 years and that was just the beginning.

In all Mugabes 37-year rule, inflammation rocketed, public services collapsed, the economy shrank by 18% in 2008 and the Zimbabwean currency was abandoned in 2009, leaving the country to operate in a multi-currency system including the use of the US Dollar.

South Africas story is a bit different. Its history; the Apartheid left a mark that made sure that the countrys development and keeping a democracy was more than fundamental for the country to move on.

The African National Congress (ANC) Party which set out to liberate South Africa from the oppression, had to think of changing to a leadership role by the early 1990s, suitable for governance. But that vision which once was for the party is now lost in todays version of the ANC, the one with Jacob Zuma as president.

A change of leadership in South Africa is necessary

Jacob Zuma has been the president of South Africa since 2009. Even though not as lengthily as Mugabe, Zuma has managed to endure numerous scandals that have continuously questioned his credibility as a leader of South Africa. One of which, is said to be the most damning and damaging to his political career  in March 2016, South Africas High Court ruled that he violated the constitution by failing to repay the government for money used for upgrading his private residence, including building a cattle enclosure, amphitheatre, swimming pool, visitor centre and chicken run. He apologised and repaid back the money.

In addition, Zuma received heavy scrutiny and protests from students from low-income families in South Africa and university staff on the extreme inequality in university education between black students and white students.

#FeesMustFall became a social media campaign trying to get the President and the ANC to give all students the equal university education access that was once promised to them post-Apartheid. Since then more protests have followed from the opposition, including one on his 75th birthday earlier this year which called for his resignation because of scandals and the sacking of the former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, contributing to the growing disillusionment of the extent to which Zumas corrupted government.

Even his own party stand divided. Some remain supporters of him and others have made a conscious decision to redirect their energy into criticising his every action for which they are not wrong for doing so.

By August of this year, he had already survived eight votes of no-confidence in parliament as a result of his own party members trying to find ways of 'firing' him from his duties as president. However, critics and most importantly the members of the ANC that are now against him should move the microscope and look closely at the party that elected President Zuma as their party leader. A leader is the representation of his people, therefore if President Zuma is scandalous and no longer worthy of being the head of government, isn't the ANC party also unfit to remain in power?

ANC Party elections could mean a smooth transition from Zuma to the successor?

People are not happy with President Zuma and people are not happy with the ANC either.

With the upcoming party elections in December 2017, it is expected that Jacob Zuma will hand-over the party leadership to his successor; who could be Cyril Ramaphosa, Zumas current Vice-President. Then later, it is also expected that he leaves the Presidency for a successor to follow after the general election in 2019. It could be a peaceful and smooth running exit or it could be sooner for the President to leave both the party and the presidency.
In recent days, the war of words between Donald Trump and members of the Republican Party has reached a new low. Despite the drama, the president attempted damage control during one of his morning tweets.

Trump and the GOP

The rift between Donald Trump and the Republican Party started not long after he announced his plan to run for the party's presidential nomination back in June 2015. Trump would go on to mock nearly all of his primary opponents, giving some of them labels like "low energy" Jeb Bush, "Little" Marco Rubio, and "Lyin'" Ted Cruz. Trump even tooka shot at Sen.

John McCain, questioning his time as a POW during the Vietnam War, infamously saying the senator was "not a war hero" because he was captured. Since taking office, Trump and the GOP have often found themselves at odds, especially when it came to repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Despite vowing to do so on the campaign trail, Obamacare is still the law of the land due to Trump's inability to rally enough Republicans by his side, and then insulting those who opposed his plan. Over the last week, Trump's feud with GOP members of congress has been highlighted by senators Bob Corker and Jeff flake, who both announced they would not seek re-election due to their opposition to the current commander in chief.

Despite trouble brewing on the political right, Trump used his Twitter account on October 26 to claim that everything is going well in the Republican party.

Do not underestimate the UNITY within the Republican Party!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2017

Taking to his Twitter feed on Thursday morning, Donald Trump sent out several tweets, but used one to claim unity between himself and the GOP.

"Do not underestimate the UNITY within the Republican Party!" Trump tweeted. Not long after posting his message, those who oppose the president had a good time pointing out the recent dissension in the ranks.

Twitter reacts

Following Donald Trump's latest tweet about unity with other Republicans, critics of the president hit back.

"Saying there is 'Unity' in the Republican party is like saying there is unity between North and South Korea!" one tweet read.

Edited* Do not underestimate the LACK OF INTEGRITY within the Republican Party!  Shelly  (@shellbell_xo) October 26, 2017

If by unity you mean chaos and confusion, yes the Republican Party is united more than ever  Impeach Donald Trump (@Impeach_D_Trump) October 26, 2017

My guess is that your definition of "Love Fest" is everyone else's definition of "Food Fight".  Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) October 26, 2017

"Are you kidding me? April Fools' Day isn't for another six months," another tweet added. "Edited* Do not underestimate the SPINELESSNESS within the Republican Party!" an additional tweet noted.

You mean unitylike what the GOP displayed when they tried to #RepealAndReplace #ObamaCare?  Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) October 26, 2017

I will say this: it takes an awful lot of unity to hold the majority in all branches of the judicial system and not get one piece of legislation to go through. #ThursdayThoughts  Alt Fed Employee (@Alt_FedEmployee) October 26, 2017

"I will say this: it takes an awful lot of unity to hold the majority in all branches of the judicial system and not get one piece of legislation to go through," yet another Twitter user added. "Do you mean the type of unity when your secretary of state compliments you as a 'moron?' Or when @Jeffflake & @@SenBobCorker talk about you?" one tweet wondered. Despite Donald Trump declaring "unity" between himself and the GOP, it didn't appear that many of his critics took him at his word.
A federal judge struck down a Texas Law Wednesday that imposed restrictions on second-trimester abortions.

West District Texas Judge Lee Yeakel overturned Senate Bill 8, which effectively prevented doctors from performing dilation and evacuation abortions by mandating that they must stop a fetuss heart first, according to the New York Times.

Yeakel wrote in his decision that previous rulings in the Supreme Court demonstrate that legislators cannot obligate women to experience a medically unnecessary and invasive procedure for the benefit of the fetus.

He also said the decision to abort before a fetus can survive outside the womb is solely and exclusively the womans decision.

Laws that prevent D&E abortions pose an undue burden on women, Yeakel argued, pointing out that previous court decisions ruled such restrictions as unlawful. Requiring a woman to undergo an unwanted, risky, invasive, and experimental procedure in exchange for exercising her right to choose an abortion, substantially burdens that right, he wrote.

Proposals under the bill

The proposals available under the bill to stop a fetuss heart before abortion included injecting a chemical into the pregnant womans abdomen, injection potassium chloride directly into the heart of the fetus or using instruments inserted through the v*gina and cervix to cut the umbilical cord.

Yeakel said the methods were unfeasible, untested, dangerous and add undue burden because they require multiple trips to the doctors office, according to the New York Times.

The other alternative available to woman apart from a D&E procedure is an induced abortion, which induces labor. However, this procedure is more costly and difficult and often requires hospitalization.

Bill's proponents

SB 8 was passed in May in Texas, according to Taylor Morrison. Proponents of the bill argued that D&E procedures were cruel and inhumane, claiming the fetuses could feel pain and would suffer due to the procedure.

We know that children in the womb are capable of feeling pain. Prohibiting this practice is long overdue, said state Sen.

Charles Perry in January, according to The Dallas Observer.

But scientists agree that fetuses cannot begin to feel pain any earlier than 24 weeks into development. However, Texas law bans abortion after 20 weeks, and D&E procedures are the easiest method of performing an abortion after 15 weeks.
A crowded Sufi mosque in Sinai, Egypt came under attack today. Islamists detonated a bomb inside the place of worship and sprayed a barrage of bullets at the people attempting to flee the scene. The death toll has risen to 235 victims with 109 injured. Al Rawdah mosque has gone from a peaceful place of prayer to a war-zone. Egyptian authorities are currently on the hunt to track down the terrorists responsible for this heinous act.

Ambushing the innocents

Reports from witnesses and survivors show just how barbaric this Terrorist Attack was. Ashraf Abu Salem, 27, said that the gunmen fired at people who were running away from the explosion.

Gunfire began in an adjacent building and continued when the gunmen went inside the mosque.

The attackers even opened fire on ambulances from "ambush" locations. Ambulances were unable to get to the scene until security forces were able to secure the roads. Rescuers reported between 15 and 25 of the victims were children. With the body count up to 235, this is the deadliest terrorist attack to ever occur in Egypt.

Sufism

Sufism is a mystical form of Islam that is considered to be heretical by many conservative Muslims. It is not a distinct sect of Islam and can cross into both Sunni and Shia sects. The word Sufis comes from the Arabic word for the type of clothing that Islamic mystics historically wore.

Al Rawdah mosque is the birthplace of Sheikh Eid al-Jariri, a prominent Sufi cleric. He was considered to be the founder of Sufism in Sinai, Egypt.

As of now, no religious group has taken responsibility for this attack. However, Egyptian officials believe that ISIS is responsible. In 2016, Sulayman Abu Hiraz, a 100-year-old Sufi cleric, was executed in Sinai by ISIS.

They claimed that the cleric was guilty of practicing witchcraft.

ISIS released a video earlier this year calling Sufism a disease. They claimed to have killed 130 Sufis at shrines throughout Pakistan and called their actions a form of purifying the faith.

National mourning

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has called for a national mourning period spanning over the next three days.

The Egyptian president met with multiple government officials to discuss how to respond to the largest terrorist attack in Egypt's history. He called this attack a war crime and vowed to answer with brute force.

Earlier this year, dozens of Coptic Christians were killed in Egypt by another terrorist attack orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamic extremists set out to target minority groups, women, and children. The hunt for the terrorists who committed this atrocious attack today is ongoing.
MEXICO CITY - Chinese car-maker BAIC, which assembles cars in the Mexican state of Veracruz, said on Friday that it plans to export cars from Mexico to the United States and Canada starting in 2018.

Yang Nanhua, director general of BAIC in Mexico, said the plan would go into action "unless something drastic happens with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)."

The landmark free trade agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States is currently undergoing a tough re-negotiation process, at the behest of US President Donald Trump.

"We are very confident that Mexico is a market with not only a great sales potential, but also a strategic (hub)," said Yang during a press conference for the 2017 MAPFRE Carshow in Mexico City.

Yang also said that BAIC would bring four new models into Mexico in 2018, including an electric vehicle with a range of up to 200 km. He added that the company is looking to enter the Mexican aeronautical industry.

Tian Jinghai, assistant to the director general of BAIC International Development, told Xinhua that the company intends to offer its products to the Mexican market and to satisfy a broader demand.

"We intend to offer the best products and services to Mexican consumers, as well as provide a better image of Chinese brands in Mexico," said Tian.

Tian also noted that "the Mexican market is a priority," and BAIC also wants to expand its market to the rest of Latin America and North America.

"The US market is very mature and full of competition, as it is the second-largest (automotive) market. For any Chinese automotive company, this represents a great challenge, as well as opportunities, to enter this market. BAIC is no exception," said Tian.

"We are improving our product development and technological offering to meet American rules and laws," Tian added.

BAIC sells its products in countries such as Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Peru and Venezuela. Its production in Mexico is also expected to serve these markets.
A gavel in a court. [Photo/IC]

A new item will be added to the list of tasks the State Council, China's Cabinet, should report to the Standing Committee of National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, as part of the latest efforts to place executive power under more scrutiny. On Monday, the Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform of the 19th Communist Party of China Central Committee adopted a reform project that urges the State Council to report State-owned assets' management to the Standing Committee of the NPC.

Apart from introducing more transparent management of State-owned assets, the reform measure is an example of enhanced supervision by the legislature.

In August 2015, the leading group adopted a policy asking the State Council to report to the NPC Standing Committee how it deals with problems exposed by auditing. The mechanism, which enables the NPC and its standing committee to regularly examine the central government's work, has helped realize the legislature's constitutional power to supervise the government.

The list of the issues that the State Council should report to the NPC Standing Committee has been expanding over the years as the country makes efforts to advance law-based governance. The best-known practice is the annual Government Work Report delivered by the premier to the top legislature at its annual session, which is then discussed and examined by the NPC deputies to the session before being approved.

A budget report and a national economic and social development plan, too, are delivered to the NPC for examination before being approved. The top legislature also reviews the reports on final accounts, mostly in the latter half of the year.

Since 1996, when the Audit Law came into effect, lawmakers have reviewed the National Audit Office's audit report on the implementation of the central budget annually. In addition, the national legislature receives from the central government reports on specific issues, mostly about important and urgent matters concerning the people. These issues vary from year to year, from environmental protection to poverty alleviation.

At the last bi-monthly session of the NPC Standing Committee in late October and early this month, lawmakers were briefed by Agricultural Minister Han Changfu about the progress made in and the problems associated with the protection of grasslands.

Another efficient tool of the NPC Standing Committee to check the government is reviewing the enforcement of laws. At the last bi-monthly session, the NPC Standing Committee also delivered a report on the enforcement of the Solid Waste Control Law after several months of investigation nationwide. Based on this report, the NPC Standing Committee, headed by Chairman Zhang Dejiang, conducted an inquiry with State Council officials. The report of the inquiry should be prepared in due time along with suggestions on improvement and remedial measures.

Over the past five years, such interactions between the legislature and the government have become a regular practice, touching on a number of urgent issues such as air and water pollution, vocational education and product quality.

The key report at the 19th National Congress of the CPC regards the system of people's congresses as "a political system fundamental to the Party's leadership, the people's running of the country, and law-based governance". In the report, the country's leadership pledged to improve the organizational and working systems of people's congresses in order to ensure they exercise their statutory powers to enact laws, conduct oversight, make decisions, and appoint and remove officials.

A healthy relationship between the legislature and the government is essential to China's drive toward law-based governance as well as for modernizing its system and capacity for governance.

Xinhua News Agency
MINSK - China will build as many as 22 apartment buildings for Belarus as part of the second stage of Belarus-China public welfare housing construction project.

A ceremony to launch the second stage of the project took place on Friday in Smolevichi, Minsk region. Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Fu Ziying, Belarusian Economy Minister Vladimir Zinovsky and Belarusian First Deputy Architecture and Construction Minister Alexander Kruchanov attended the ceremony.

During the second stage, 22 apartment houses with 1,854 apartments will be built in various parts of the country.

The Belarusian-Chinese public welfare housing construction project envisages building 58 apartment houses in Minsk and the regions in three stages. China intends to allocate about 102 million U.S. dollars for it.

With China's technical and economic assistance, the first stage has been completed with 1,432 apartments built in 16 houses across the country. The first stage took about two years to complete.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday sent a congratulatory message to Zimbabwe's new president Emmerson Mnangagwa, a foreign ministry spokesperson said.

Xi said in the congratulatory message that China and Zimbabwe are good friends, partners and brothers. Bilateral ties have withstood the test of time and changing international situation.

China values the traditional friendship with Zimbabwe and stands ready to work together for strengthening all-round cooperation and advancing bilateral ties, so as to bring benefits to the two countries and two peoples, according to spokesperson Geng Shuang.

Mnangagwa was sworn in as the president of Zimbabwe Friday.
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!)
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Japan's Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura has threatened to sever the sistership relations with the U.S. western coast city of San Francisco over a "comfort women" statue, a local media report said Friday.

Yoshimura said he will cut ties with San Francisco by the end of this year.

Yoshimura's comments came after San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee signed a resolution earlier this week to accept the transfer of the statue onto a Chinatown memorial hall.

The bronze sculpture, called "Women's Column of Strength", features three teenage girls holding hands next to an older woman. It was erected to honor female war victims forced into sexual slavery known as "comfort women" by Japanese troops during World War II.

The statue was sponsored by two retired San Francisco Superior Court judges, Lillian Sing and Julie Tang, to commemorate an estimated 200,000 women from Asian-Pacific countries, who were turned into sex slaves by the Japanese Armed Forces from 1931 to 1945.

It was the first sculpture to honor comfort women in a major American city, and similar statues can also be found in South Korea and some cities around the United States.

"I think its a shame," Tang told local media on Friday in response to Yoshimura's comments. "They're turning history on its head."

"He's continuing a policy of denial at the expense of the truth and history of the comfort women survivors," Tang added.

As Japan's third-largest city, Osaka was the first of San Francisco's 18 sister cities. The two cities forged their sistership ties in 1957.
HCM CITY  As most of the machines used in the agricultural sector are imported, innovations in agricultural machinery made by Vietnamese farmers are being viewed as rain after the drought.

The innovations are bringing a new face to the agricultural sector because they save time and costs, and simplify cultivation activities.

Pham Van Hat, a farmer from the northern province of Hai Duong, can remember the day he faced bankruptcy in 2013 after failing to trade organic vegetables and losing VN3 billion (US$132,000).

The bankruptcy, however, opened new doors when he decided to go to Israel as a guest worker. During his time there, Hat was responsible for putting manure on 100ha of vegetables per day.

After a time, he decided to meet the manager and proposed suggestions on how to make a machine that could do the job.

Receiving approval, he presented his first machine which could do the work of 25 people within a few days.

The company increased his salary from US$1,000 to US$2,500 monthly.

Hat later returned to Viet Nam to open a factory to make his machines.

He invented many kinds of machines to serve cultivation work like auto-sowing machines, fertilizing machines, corn-sowing machines, bean-sowing machines and vegetable seed-sowing machines.

He has invented 30 machines, with an auto-sowing machine replacing a workforce of 40. In a trial run, four people could sow only one square metre within five minutes.

Hats machine, however, could sow eight square metres in one and a half minutes.

The machine has been improved every year and has been exported to many markets, including Germany, the US, Singapore and Thailand.

Other machines he made for fertilisation can do the work of 50 people.

Tran ai Nghia, a farmer from northern Thai Binh Province, developed a machine that helps farmers improve cultivation.

Nghia, who began working in South Korea from 2001, decided to make a cultivation tool in 2009, several years after returning to Viet Nam.

His tool is small enough that it can be used by children or the elderly.

My family has many farms. It costs me about VN250,000 to hire one person to cultivate for one day. The machine I bought from Nghia helps me save a lot of money, said Phan Chau Giang, a farmer from Vu Thu District of Thai Binh Province.

Exhibitions

The inventions of Hat and Nghia are among many products designed by Vietnamese farmers that save time and simplify cultivation techniques.

Some foreign companies want to buy these products but there have been no professional events for the farmers to advertise their goods. They have mostly contracted with partners via phones or manufacturers.

This problem will be solved at the end of this month, when the biggest exhibition for agriculture, forestry and fisheries will take place in Ha Noi.

The first-ever Viet Nam International Exhibition on Machineries and Technologies of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery (Growtech 2017) will be held from November 30 to December 2.

It is organised by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Science and Technology and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

For the first time in Viet Nam, farmers and fishermen will be able to participate in an international exhibition showcasing the latest technologies and innovations in agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

Growtech is seen as a key for farmers to open the gate to step into the global market. VNS
HA NOI  After financial technology (fintech), which changed the way the financial sector worked, now, property technology (proptech) is expected to effect a change in the real estate industry.

Proptech has emerged in the world after nearly a decade and has started to grab attention in Viet Nam.

A report by real estate and investment services firm, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), showed that US$4.8 billion, out of $7.8 billion worth of funding, was poured into Asia Pacific proptech start-ups between 2013 and 2017.

Asia Pacific was leading the investment into proptech start-ups, with a great deal of potential, according to JLL. With its young population, rapid urbanisation and popularity of mobile phones, all the conditions are in place for this new sector to grow, JLLs report said.

According to Nguyen Quoc Anh, deputy director of ai Viet Group, which owns property information website batdongsan.com.vn, proptech would help minimise risks for both buyers and sellers.

Proptech is defined as technology applied to real estate information, transaction and management to digitalise services and products, so as to improve real estate processes and solve modern challenges.

Proptech would help property developers and real estate businesses to make changes and adapt to a new generation of customers via the internet, build brands and direct their products to the right targeted buyers, Quoc Anh said. He said that applying the technology would also promote sales efficiently.

With proptech, customers could search for products to meet their demands, compare prices and choose the best financial solutions to minimise risks. In addition, all transaction procedures would be conducted online, Quoc Anh said.

Besides ai Viet Group, other firms in Viet Nam also invested in proptech or hastened the application of proptech in their real estate business, such as Holomia  a startup offering virtual reality in marketing for real estate projects and Homedy  a website which helps search project information and compare projects.

Recently, a number of developers such as Vingroup, Sun Group and BIM Group made use of virtual reality and augmented reality to provide customers with real-life experiences of their projects.

According to the Viet Nam Association of Real Estate Brokers, the development of proptech was an indispensable trend, but it was important to improve the awareness of both buyers and firms in applying proptech to fuel a boom in Viet Nam.

Nguyen Thanh Hung, chairman of the Viet Nam e-Commerce Association, said at a recent online forum that proptech would also help promote the transparency of the real estate market because it made access to real estate information much easier.

According to Pham Van Hung, from property developer CenGroup, technology such as big data, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and the Internet of Things was being applied in the real estate industry of Viet Nam, catching up with the global trend.  VNS
A NANG  Financial technology (fintech) should be used to strengthen regional integration and promote inclusive and sustainable development, speakers said at the 47th ASEAN Banking Council Meeting in a Nang yesterday.

Nguyen Thi Hong, Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV), said ASEAN members should seek new opportunities and linkages in finance and banking.

She also called for strong connections between the private sector and governments, as also commercial banks with businesses in ASEAN.

Banking systems in the region should strongly boost financial integration and build effective links with businesses for solidarity and prolonged co-operation to realise the 2025 ASEAN Economic Community vision, she said.

ASEAN central bank governors had contributed a lot to financial integration in the region through the ASEAN Banking Integration Framework (ABIF) initiative, she added.

Hong said the initiative helped boost the introduction of commercial banks into the ASEAN financial market and facilitated negotiations of Qualified ASEAN Banks (QABs).

She hoped ASEAN banks would take full advantage of technology to generate maximum benefit and make the banking system secure.

ASEAN Banking now plays a very important role in boosting economic growth, while ensuring well-managed operations and sustainable development of the banking system in coping with risks, Hong said.

We need to restructure our banking system to provide better services with modern and updated technology applications in the context of the Internet boom and the Fourth Revolution.

The growth of financial technology (fintech) has helped create new services and supported trans-border payments among partners, she said.

But fintech had also created pressure and tough competition among bankers, she added.

Hong said SBV and other central banks in the region had shared experiences in fintech management.

Faid Raham, Chairman of ASEAN Bankers Association (ABA), said many follow-up events and activities had been carried out by national bank associations since the last meeting in Bangkok.

These enabled and strengthened the role of ASEAN banks in the ASEAN Economic Community, he said.

He highly appreciated efforts made by Viet Nam to successfully host the 47th ASEAN Banking Association meeting.

ASEAN Secretary-General Le Luong Minh said: Integration in the financial sector is envisaged under the first characteristic of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint 2025  a highly integrated and cohesive economy which aims to facilitate the seamless movement of goods, services, investment, capital and skilled labour within ASEAN to enhance trade and production networks as well as to establish a more unified market for firms and consumers in the region.

Under the AEC Blueprint 2025, ASEAN has developed the ASEAN Strategic Action Plan 2016  2025 for Financial Integration, highlighting three key pillars: financial integration, financial inclusion, and financial stability.

He said "the establishment of Qualified ASEAN Banks (QABs) is a critical milestone for ASEAN toward achieving greater financial and economic integration".

ASEAN now ranks as the worlds 6th largest economy, with a current combined GDP of approximately US$2.6 trillion, and the third largest market with a combined population of 640 million people.

Minh also noted: The implementation of the ASEAN Banking Integration Framework and ASEAN Financial Inclusion Framework has taken into account the diversity of economic structures and levels of development across the ASEAN Member States.

We are committed to an ASEAN payment system that is safe, innovative, competitive, efficient and more interconnected as specified in the 2016-2025 Strategic Action Plan 2016-2025 for Financial Integration. ASEAN is also aiming to achieve international standards by adopting ISO 20022 as a preparation for the domestic payment systems for bilateral/ multilateral linkages within ASEAN by 2025.

Nations contribution

Chairman of the Viet Nam Banks Association (VNBA), Phan uc Tu, said its the third time that Viet Nam was hosting the ASEAN Banking Council after 2000 and 2007.

Tu said this meeting was focused on sustainable development, inclusion, updated technology application and human resource training in finance sector.

He said ABIF also offered three stages of development including an ASEAN common market for banking between 2015-2020. Members had been negotiating bilateral QABs before they were recognised by the bloc, he said, citing the examples of Philippines-Malaysia, Indonesia-Malaysia, and Thailand-Malaysia.

Tu said Vietnamese commercial banks had improved their management mechanisms and expanded their presence abroad.

Ten Vietnamese commercial banks had been selected for applying Basel II (second of the Basel Accords, recommendations on banking laws and regulations issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision) in early 2018, he added.

VNBA general secretary Nguyen Toan Thang said ABA had agreed to two proposals made by Viet Nam in the agenda of Co-operation in Finance, Investment and Trade (COFIT): financial inclusion and bank credit for Micro- Small and Medium sized enterprises (MSMEs).

Viet Nam and ABA co-hosted a seminar on digital infrastructure development for banks and boosting co-operation with the Singapore Banks Association for sharing experiences in management and personel training.

The 47th ASEAN Banking Council Meeting, an annual event, gathered 200 participants from the member nations of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam.

Brunei will host the next meeting.  VNS
HA NOI  E-commerce platforms are trying to emulate the famous Black Friday sale in the US with a massive advertising campaign announcing attractive discounts.

In the US, Black Friday falls on the fourth Friday of November, following Thanksgiving Day.

In Viet Nam, many online shopping websites have been preparing for their Black Friday since the beginning of the month with a series of promotions.

Lazada, the online shopping giant operating in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Viet Nam, is also one of the largest e-commerce sites in the Vietnamese online market.

It is calling its year-end discount programme The Raining Sale. In just three days, Lazada announced that it had sold over 1.43 million products, three-fold last years figures.

The company also plans a special four-day promotion campaign for its Black Friday sale, lasting from November 24 to 27, reported news website enternews.vn.

The Black Friday concept has gone beyond e-commerce sites to include traditional shopping channels, but it is the former that has been more aggressive in reaching out to customers.

Other well-known local e-commerce sites like Tiki.vn, Adayroi.com, Shopee.vn and Sendo.vn have also been offering many attractive promotions for many products including household items and clothing, though the most anticipated sales are from apparels.

More convenient

The success of e-commerce has a lot to do with changes in the purchasing habits of consumers.

Hoang Chi Mai of Ha Noi told Viet Nam News that she preferred shopping online. I can easily compare prices of the same products offered by various online websites within shortest possible time, and not waste time wandering into different stores.

Besides increasing the number and improving the quality of merchants and products, many online shopping platforms have also tried to reduce delivery times, which is a key factor in enticing clients. Furthermore, some sites allow customers to reject goods on receipt, if they are not satisfied. These factors are helping e-commerce platforms outdo traditional shopping channels.

Le uc Anh of the Ministry of Industry and Trades E-commerce and Digital Economy Department told news website enternews.vn that in 2013, the number of e-commerce companies registered accounts was just 1,923. By 2016 it was 10 times higher.

As the number of enterprises involved in e-commerce increases, the e-commerce market will see increasingly fierce competition, uc said.

According to market research firm Nielsen, Viet Nams e-commerce revenues reached US$4 billion in 2016. At the current growth rate, it is set to hit US$10 billion in 2020, accounting for 50 per cent of the total retail sales in Viet Nam.

With 45 per cent of the population now accessing the Internet, the e-commerce industry is looking at a highly promising future.

Stiff competition

But, as noted earlier, the e-commerce battle is heating up, with foreign companies tipping the scales back in their favour.

In addition to lowering product prices, Lazada has announced four new centres to process orders from clients, minimising the congestion seen in previous years.

Despite being a heavyweight contestant, Lazada has said that it remains on its toes, with many new rivals coming on the scene, like Shopee Vietnam, which has been growing very fast over the last two years with a lot of supportive policies for sellers and buyers.

"We will continue to provide customers and sellers with better supporting policies in the future," Tran Tuan Anh, Operations and Chief Financial Director of Shopee Vietnam, told enternews.vn.

Lazada and Shopee have also forced local companies to fight harder to retain and expand their market share.

Tiki.vn plans to offer 3,000 incentives for orders placed during the year-end period, including 50 per cent discounts, free delivery for bills over VN111,000 and delivery within 2 hours for orders of over VN599,000.  VNS
The Ministry of Construction has asked the peoples committees of Ha Noi and HCM City to report existing disputes between buyers and developers at apartment projects before the end of this month.  Photo vietnamnet.vn

HA NOI  The Ministry of Construction has asked the peoples committees of Ha Noi and HCM City to report existing disputes between buyers and developers at apartment projects before the end of this month.

The report would then be submitted to the Prime Minister as the basis to implement solutions to tackle these problems.

From the beginning of this year, disputes between buyers and developers at apartment projects have been mounting in the two major cities, specifically related to projects progress, services fees, maintenance fees and construction quality, as well as the use of shared areas, house ownership certificates and selection of the management board.

Previously, the Prime Minister said appropriate solutions must be raised to tackle disputes.  VNS
HCM CITY  The Minister of Natural Resources and Environment has asked authorities in HCM City and 10 provinces to develop a master plan on effective management of water resources and environmental protection in the ong Nai River basin.

Speaking at the 11th meeting of ong Nai Rivers Environmental Protection Committee held yesterday in HCM City, the deputy minister of Natural Resource and Environment, Vo Tuan Nhan, said the ong Nai River basin was one of the countrys largest basins.

The master plan has to ensure harmonious socio-economic development in each province and city as well as environmental protection, he said.

The development of hydroelectric plants, industrial parks, urban areas, and other infrastructure should be noted to ensure that it matches the load capacity of the river system.

Environmental protection has to be considered an important activity which cannot be ignored. Pollution of the ong Nai river can only be solved when all localities carry out their plans well," he said.

Local authorities should allocate significant capital to speed up the construction process of water and solid-waste treatment systems in urban areas and industrial parks as well as complexes, Nhan said.

Since last year, the proportion of urban areas in HCM City with water drainage and waste water treatment works rose from 13.2 per cent to 21 per cent, helping to improve water quality and the environment in the basin. The proportion in Binh Duong Province increased from 20 per cent to 60 per cent.

More inspections of establishments should be conducted, and those causing pollution should be fined, he said.

inh Quoc Thai, chairman of ong Nai Province Peoples Committee, said the committee would continue to look for the best solutions for protection of water sources and problems in the management of the basin.

The provinces and HCM City in the basin have carried out many activities to maintain quality of the ong Nai river system. They have invested in a system to monitor the water environment.

Next year, they will set up centres to receive data from automatic waste water monitoring stations.

A project on environmental protection in the ong Nai River basin until 2020 has been approved, Nhan said, adding that the committee was set up to guide and co-ordinate the project.

Rapid urbanisation and economic growth in the basin have caused water pollution, at times at alarming levels.

The 10 provinces in the area include ong Nai, Binh Duong, Binh Phuoc, Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Long An, Tay Ninh, Lam ong, ak Nong, Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan.  VNS
The village of Phuoc Kieu in the central province of Quang Nam is a centrepiece of the regions history, with a 400 year-old traditional trade of bronze casting.

Attention to detail: An artisan puts the final touches on his workshops bronze gongs.

Established by followers of feudal lord Nguyen Hoang, the village was said to be his weapon production base in the early 17th century. It was again employed and expanded by Vietnamese 18th-century Tay Son army.

Safety first: Workers pour molten bronze into a mould during a casting.

The villages craftsmanship impressed the lords of Tay Son so much that their artisans were summoned to then capital Phu Xuan, now Hue, to make items used in royal ceremonies, government seals and even cannons.

Careful now: Its a meticulous process to fine tune the gongs so they will produce good sound and resonance.

Four hundred years have passed and the villagers are still keeping the fires burning in the forges. Long gone are the times of weapons making, with village now famous for its bronze decorative items and ceremonial artefacts.

Tool of the trade: A mould being cleaned and prepared for casting.

Some of the most prized creations are the bronze gongs, ancient musical instruments popular among the regions numerous ethnic groups. The villages artisans passed trade secrets down from generation to generation in bronze casting and fine-tuning to produce the best products.  VNS
Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha. Photo vietnamnet

Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha spoke with Thoi bao Kinh te Viet Nam (Vietnam Economics Times) about tightening regulations on doctoral training to create qualified human resources.

Why has the Ministry of Education and Training decided to draft a plan to spend VN 12 trillion (US$533 million) to train 9,000 PhD holders for Viet Nam by 2025?

Viet Nams college and university lecturers with doctoral degrees account for just 21 per cent compared to 35 per cent set by the ministrys Project 911 by 2020. Once the project training 9,000 PhD holders is finished, the rate of lecturers with PhDs will be 30 per cent.

This project is not a new one. It is a revision of Project 911 which focuses on training PhD instructors for universities and junior colleges in Viet Nam during 2010-20. The project aims at training academics abroad and creating mechanisms and policies for scientists to work at universities in the country.

The information of the plan should be clear to avoid misunderstandings. The project is based on the demand and focus on the quality of training, not for the mass training of PhDs.

What are the policies to attract PhD holders to return to work in Viet Nam after they finish their studies abroad?

Currently, the ministry focuses on links between training and demand of employees. Training institutions must take responsibility in planning and developing staff, including lecturers. Based on that, the ministry will launch supportive policies and mechanisms for those who study abroad and return to the country for work.

The renovation of doctoral training management in the new project is very different from traditional training. The amount of money for the training will be the same amount as in Project 911 approved by the National Assembly and will be spent based on the quality of training.

The most important factor is the quality of training. This project focuses on the responsibility of training institutions and learners. The role of the ministry is to introduce a policy and mechanism to encourage talented people to register for the project.

The training of doctors in Viet Nam has shortcomings. How will the ministry control the quality of training in the new project?

The ministry has promulgated regulations on doctoral training with higher requirements. For example, learners are required to have a period of intensive study and scientific papers published in international journals.

The ministry will strengthen inspection on the compliance of regulations of training institutes.

If trainees meet the standards and requirements, they will be provided scholarships.

The cost of training PhDs in Viet Nam is quite low compared to abroad. Could the ministry adjust the cost of PhD training in the country?

In my opinion, we have to adjust the cost. It is obvious that we need to calculate the level of funding properly. Of course, the level of support needs to meet training requirements and take into account developmental conditions for learners.

The Ministry of Education and Training has worked with the Ministry of Finance to calculate how to train doctors for each region. However, in my opinion, we have very good training facilities, so it is advisable to link with foreign institutes to jointly train PhDs instead of sending everyone overseas. -- VNS
HA NOI  The National Assembly yesterday approved several important, long-awaited documents before wrapping its latest month-long session.

The first of these was the Law on Planning, for which 88.19 per cent of deputies voted in favour.

The law, some aspects of which raised a lot of controversy, had been discussed in previous sessions of the 14th NA and sparked heated debates.

It establishes a new system of national master plans and fundamental principles for planning work. It also defines tasks and powers of State authorities in planning activities and specifies the process from formulating to implementing and supervising implementation of the plans.

Planning, as defined in the law, is the arrangement and allocation of space for economic, cultural, defence, security and environmental activities in an identified area aiming to effectively utilise resources to reach sustainable development goals set by the State in a given period of time.

The system comprises of national planning, regional planning, provincial planning, special administrative - economic zone planning, and urban and rural area planning. National plans serve as the basis for formulating plans at lower levels.

The law stipulates that an agency empowered to decide and approve a certain plan has the right to adjust it without waiting for the nod from higher-level planners as long as planning at the higher levels are not affected.

This stipulation addresses concerns expressed by deputies and voters that uncontrolled adjustments at lower planning levels would affect higher-level consistency and effectiveness.

Another noteworthy point is that airspace and underground planning are not included in the national planning system as was suggested by some NA deputies. Explaining this before the NA voted on the law, Chairman of the NAs Economic Committee, Vu Hong Thanh, said the planning of airspace and underground space was already incorporated in other kinds of planning in the system and did not require separate mention.

The new law will take effect on January 1, 2019.

HCM City autonomy

Another major document adopted was a resolution on piloting several mechanisms and policies for the development of HCM City.

The resolution won 93.7 per cent of the deputies vote.

The resolution grants greater autonomy to city authorities on specific policies for land management, investment, finance and State budget management, as well as incomes of public officials under the citys management.

For example, the city Peoples Council is allowed to impose certain fees not in the list of those regulated by the Government, or raise fees that have been decided upon by competent authorities.

The council can ask the Government to submit for approval from the National Assembly Standing Committee proposals on raising taxes or tax rates for some products over what is regulated by the Government.

The city can use 100 per cent of the additional budget revenues earned from these policy adjustments and 50 per cent of earnings from selling State property and land-attached property based on law to invest in socio-economic infrastructure.

HCM City is also allowed to enjoy revenues from privatising State-owned enterprises under the management of the city Peoples Committee and divestment of State equity from economic entities in which the Peoples Committee serves as the representative of State ownership.

The resolution takes effect on January 15, 2018 and will be valid for five years.

National Defence Law

Also on Friday, the NA deputies spent time to discuss a revised law on national defence with many emphasising the importance of combining national defence activities with economic and cultural activities.

Deputy Nguyen Anh Tri of Ha Noi expressed support for the military to engage in economic activities, saying it was in conformity with the Partys policies and the countrys Constitution.

National defence and the economy have intertwined relations, so doing business would help strengthen the military and be beneficial to the society as well, he said.

Major General Nguyen Van Khanh, a deputy of Binh Duong Province, said the military would not only do business in its pure sense, but focus on national defence economy business and developing science and technology for strengthening national defence capabilities.

Defence Minister General Ngo Xuan Lich said that engagement in economic activities had always been an important function of the military and should be regulated in the revised law this time.

He said that over the past 70 years since the country gained independence, military business entities had done business in many regions that civil ones dont invest in due to low profit.

Under the plan to restructure military businesses, the ministry would only maintain 100 per cent stake in 17 out of the current 88 businesses, he said. The rest would be subjected to divestment, privatisation and mergers and acquisitions, he said.

Deputies also discussed other issues including national emergencies, policies on national defence education, and curfew declarations.

NA Chair remarks

The fourth plenary session of the 14th NA concluded yesterday after 26 working days.

In her closing remarks, NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan stressed that the NA deputies spent much time discussing socio-economic development and the State budget in 2017, the socio-economic development plan and State budget estimates and allocation for 2018, and the national three-year financial plan and State budget from 2018-20.

During the session, the NA pointed out shortcomings of some sectors, assessed both achievements and failures, analysed and forecasted risks and challenges the country will face, and urged the Government, ministries, agencies, sectors and localities to have breakthrough solutions and resolute management to meet targets.

The NA also approved resolutions on socio-economic development plan for 2018 and State budget estimate and allocation for 2018.

The NA also approved six laws that will influence national development in different fields, including planning, public debt management, restructuring of credit institutions for bad debt handling, forestry and fisheries development and foreign relations, Ngan said.

The NA discussed nine other draft laws to complete the legal system and ensure national defence and security. They also featured contents to ensure social order and safety, human rights, citizens rights and obligations and to prevent law violations, corruption and wastefulness, she said. These draft laws will continue to be studied to improve their quality before submission to the next NA session.

The NA Chairwoman urged ministries, agencies and localities to implement measures to enforce newly-approved laws and resolutions, continue assessing and drawing lessons from achievements and limitations, and renewing management tasks and improving operation efficiency.

Earlier the same day, the NA passed a resolution to continue reforming State administrative apparatus to make it streamlined and operate effectively with 94.5 per cent of legislators voting yes and a resolution on question-and-answer activities at the fourth session of the 14th NA with 93.89 per cent of deputies voting yes.  VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc applauded the achievements of the Viet Nam National Institute of Ophthalmology (VNIO), known as the Central Eye Hospital, especially its work with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to eradicate trachoma in Viet Nam.  VNA/VNS Photo Thong Nhat

HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc applauded the achievements of the Viet Nam National Institute of Ophthalmology (VNIO), known as the Central Eye Hospital, especially its work with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to eradicate trachoma in Viet Nam.

The leader made the appraisal at the centenary celebration of the VNIO, which was held at the same time as the opening ceremony of the Viet Nam Ophthalmological Societys 2017 Congress in Ha Noi yesterday.

He also highlighted the hospitals Vitamin A supplementation programme, which has been implemented nationwide with the aim of preventing blindness.

The VNIO, the predecessor of the Central Eye Hospital, has trained more than 7,000 ophthalmological doctors and nurses nationwide.

The PM urged the institute to continuously improve the quality of eye check-ups and treatment while utilising international support and coordination in public eye health care.

Prior to the ceremony, Phuc visited the Central Eye Hospital.

The Viet Nam Ophthalmological Society Congress is held annually in November with the participation of many ophthalmological professors, doctors, nurses and technicians from Viet Nam and abroad.

This years event brings together more than 1,600 delegates from Viet Nam and 80 others from France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Australia, Taiwan (China), Singapore and the Republic of Korea (RoK).

Apart from short training courses, the congress will feature an exhibition displaying products and equipment in the service of the ophthalmological sector.  VNS
Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan meets with delegates of the World Peace Council (WPC) attending a meeting in Ha Noi. VNA/VNS Photo Trong uc

HA NOI  Viet Nam always supports and creates optimal conditions for peoples organisations, including the Viet Nam Peace Committee, to engage in activities promoting world peace, National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan said yesterday.

The nation considers maintaining peace a top priority, she told leaders and delegates of the World Peace Council (WPC) attending a meeting in Ha Noi.

As a nation has experienced several wars, the country is deeply aware of the value of peace, she said.

She said the people of Viet Nam always kept in their mind the support that the WPC and its member organisations and countries gave Viet Nam during its past struggles for national independence and reunification as well as the current tasks of national construction and development.

Ngan also said that Viet Nam pursued a consistent foreign policy of peace, independence, self-reliance, diversification, multilateralisation and active global integration. The country has worked hard to join the world communitys efforts to secure peace.

The NA Chairwoman also expressed her hope that the WPC would continue uniting forces for peace, solidarity, stability and development of nations, and further assist Viet Nam in nation-building.

WPC President Socorro Gomez said she highly valued Vietnamese peoples love for peace as well as solidarity with people in the rest of the world for peace and unity.

She said the WPC meeting in Ha Noi had gathered delegates from different countries with the common objective of peace  a value that late President Ho Chi Minh dedicated his whole life to.  VNS
HCM CITY  The College of Business Administration and Management signed an agreement on November 23 for offering "double vocational training" for Vietnamese students in Germany with German non-profit education and training organisation SBH Group.

Under the programme, trainees will take an intensive German language course before going on to do a three-year learning-working course in hospitality.

Their tuition fee will be waived and they be paid a basic salary of 550-700 euros per month, with their employers providing them with all the insurance that locals are eligible for.

After graduation they will be given help to find a job at a restaurant, international hotel or luxury resort in Germany with a starting monthly salary of 1,600  2,500 euros.

They will be allowed to stay for long and work legally, getting the same wages and other benefits as locals.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Vu Tien Loc, chairman of the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said: "The educational co-operation between CBAM and SBH with practical training programmes can help young people.

He hoped the programme would be expanded to supply Viet Nam well-trained workers.

German-Vietnamese lawyer Nguyen Xuan Hoang, director of Anwealte am Osktreuz Law Company, said: "We take the responsibility to support and offer legal advice to Vietnamese students and workers to safeguard their legitimate rights  in Germany."

Next year CBAM plans to expand the programme to include medicine, nursing and elderly care. VNS




HA NOI  The Ministry of Education and Training recently proposed raising teachers salaries, but its unclear whether this will be approved given the small portion of the State budget spent on education, according to experts.

In a draft proposal for the amendment of the Law on Education, the education ministry suggested that teachers salaries should be increased.

According to statistics from the ministry, currently, the average monthly income for a teacher with 15 to 25 years experience ranges from VN7.2 million (US$320) for kindergarten teachers to VN8.5 million ($370) for university lecturers.

For new teachers who have worked less than five years, the figure is only half of that at VN3.2 million ($142) to VN3.9 million ($173).

Reform for teachers salary actually was discussed several years ago when a study announced in 2012 by Nguyen Thi Binh, former vice president, and her team, revealed that 50 per cent of teachers earn less than the education fields average income which is between VN3 and 3.5 million (US$140-164) per month, including allowances.

The salaries and allowances are not enough for teachers to support themselves and their families, especially those who live in urban areas, the study concluded.

The study also found that on average, teachers worked 13 years before making more than the average wage.

The studys authors proposed that the Government adjust its policies so teachers can rely on their salaries to make ends meet and dont have to wait too long for raises.

Nguyen Khac Thanh, principal of Dan Hoa Secondary School in Thanh Oai District, Ha Noi, said he supported the reforms.

If the salary is increased, teachers will be able to focus better on their teaching quality and do not have to worry too much about how to make ends meet, Thanh said.

Tran Xuan Nhi, chairman of Viet Nams Association for Universities and Colleges, agreed.

Teachers have to be able to cover their expenses by their salary to be devoted to teaching. I think teachers deserve to have the highest place in the salary rankings, he said.

Although the need to make such reform was mentioned in 2013s Resolution 29 on education and training reform, the situation was not made much better, according to ao Trong Thi, former head of the National Assemblys Committee on Culture, Education, Youth and Children.

Challenging task

Thi, however, admitted that such reforms would be challenging.

The number of teachers in the country is large, if we raise teachers salaries it means we have to cut the State budget for other components. People are willing to say: yes, lets raise teachers salaries, but Im not sure if they would agree for their salaries to be cut to make up for the raise, Thi said.

Thi also emphasised that support for teachers was critical to improve education quality.

If everyone in the society would think this through  they would not hesitate to make the sacrifice, Thi said.

Bui Thi An, former NA deputy from Ha Noi, said the reforms could only be made when Government agencies are streamlined and work effectively.

According to a report from the education ministry, Viet Nam has more than 1.2 million teachers, 272,000 education staff, and 154,000 education managing staff.

However, o Hong Cuong, vice principal of Ha Noi Capital University, said salary would not be a fix all for the education sector.

Other measures need to be conducted along with salary reform, like improving education facilities, he said.

The proposal by the education ministry also suggested that more students be exempt from public secondary school tuition fees.

Its not sufficient and does not make sense if Viet Nam tries to universalise secondary education without providing free secondary education to every child, ao Trong Thi said.--VNS
QUANG NGAI  Viet Nams agricultural sector should focus on developing the economic value of domestic plant varieties by ensuring their output and protecting branding, instead of importing large amounts of other plant varieties. Otherwise, typical and valuable local species will disappear, experts have warned.

The warning was made after central Quang Ngai Provinces Peoples Committee agreed in principle with two Japanese businesses to do research and grow Japanese elephant garlic as a pilot on Ly Son Island, which has long been known as the kingdom of garlic with distinctive high-nutrient varieties.

Specifically, Japan-based Nikken Sekkei Civil Engineering Ltd, in co-operation with CAN Holdings  a Japanese company specialising in hi-tech agriculture, proposed to grow elephant garlic on the island and then export it back to Japan.

The plant was introduced as a high-yield and high-value crop. About 4-5 tonnes of garlic can be harvested per hectare, bringing profit of VN180,000 (US$8) per kilogramme for farmers.

Agricultural specialist Le Tien Dung, who is also former head of the Hue University of Agriculture and Forestrys Agricultural Faculty told Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper that the import of another variety of garlic to the island with its small garlic cultivation area could seriously affect the existence and development of local plants.

Dung said Ly Son garlic is a special and distinctive plant that could only be grown in the natural conditions of the island. It took a long time and much effort by local people to select and develop the current variety.

He cited "lonely garlic" which has only one clove as an example. This kind of high quality garlic requires special planting techniques and could be sold at the price of between VN1-2 million ($44-88) per kilo.

If the imported variety was more productive and easier to cultivate, Ly Son garlic would not be able to compete and would gradually disappear, he said.

Ly Son garlic is one of the best varieties with high value that needs to be protected and developed. The problem was all about the protection of typical plants, not about high productivity.

To build a trademark for a local agricultural product was much more difficult. Imported garlic should be planted in places except for Ly Son Island, Dung stressed.

According to the agricultural specialist, there were many lessons about importing plants. Japanese-imported Japonica rice was an example.

Although the rice variety has not been tested and accredited by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the plant was planted on tens of thousands of hectares in the Mekong Delta region. Many hectares of domestic fragrant varieties such as Tam Xoan, Tam Thom, Lua Huong have been replaced by the imported plant.

Domestic-grown peanuts in the central region are another example. Lac giay, a special peanut variety in Thua Thien Hue Province, has disappeared from the crops of local farmers. It is now preserved in the Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry for gene conservation.

Lac cuc in Nghe An Province faced the same fate. Many peanut crops of local farmers have been replaced by Chinese-imported varieties.

Dung said although the State had policies to restore and re-plant local varieties, not all of the varieties could be re-planted successfully or restored back to their origins.

ang Lien, a garlic farmer on Ly Son Island, said that he did not know anything about the import of garlic to the island and the quality of this variety.

Lien said the cultivated area on the island was restricted. Each person was given 110 square metres for garlic cultivation and many households had to lease land from other households to expand their crops.

If the new imported variety was planted on the island, the area for local products would surely decrease, he added.

Nguyen Van Tien, another farmer in An Vinh Commune said he did not want to try a new variety as the problem was not about productivity.

My three sao (1,080 square metres) of garlic field has stable productivity of between 1.5-1.8 tonnes, but the price is not stable as it depends on traders, so my profit is not stable, he said.

Tien said stable and long-term output was what he and other farmers expected most.

Nguyen Viet Vy, secretariat of the Ly Son Island District said that the warning of the specialist was accurate, and that the provincial authorities need to consider carefully before planting the imported garlic variety on the island.

Vy said so far there was no specific information about the pilot project, so the district could not give further comment.

The district estimates that local farmers plant more than 330 hectares of garlic annually and harvest over 2,000 tonnes, bringing in VN200 billion ($8.8 million) for farmers. In April, 2009, the brand ownership of Ly Son onions and garlic was recognised by the National Office of Intellectual Property of Viet Nam under the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Vy said the productivity of the plant had slightly reduced in recent years, so the district has reported to the province and asked for help from scientists.

The provincial Peoples Committee said it had planned to build a factory producing garlic oil with Japanese technology to ensure the output of the plant.  VNS
HCM CTY  Viet Nam has a great opportunity to use information technology in teaching English since 70 per cent of the countrys population use the internet and broadband internet connection is available in every village, Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Van Long, vice rector of the University of Foreign Language Studies, said yesterday.

Speaking at AsiaCALL 2017, which is the 15th International Conference of the Asia Association of Computer-Assisted Language Learning held on November 24-26, Long emphasised the fact that nearly 60 per cent of households have access to the internet and have computers at home.

The country has various policies to encourage the use of ICT in education.

ICT application helps teachers change methodologies, he said.

"They are trained to incorporate interaction between students, teachers and computers in each activity in class," he said.

However, there are weaknesses such as lack of qualified human resources and expertise, low ICT literacy among teachers and students, teachers resistance to changing methods, and poor professional development, according to Long.

The limited time for teaching English and large number of students in a classroom also prevent ICT application.

The use of IT faces problems like cyber security and limited financial resources.

Technology can also be a source of distraction, he said

Assoc Prof Robert Murphy of Kitakyushu University in Japan said motivational teachers should be engaged.

The conference is held by the HCM City Open University in co-operation with the association.

Scholars from Viet Nam and countries like Australia, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and others are discussing adding mobile-friendly activities to the curriculum as part of a coherent digital strategy and the effect of using Facebook on English as a foreign language learning, digital storytelling for language learning, and others.  VNS
An initiative for managing natural disasters was introduced on Friday in the context of increasing extreme weather events in Viet Nam. VNA/VNS Photo

HA NOI  An initiative for managing natural disasters was introduced on Friday in the context of increasing extreme weather events in Viet Nam.

The project entitled, Improving the resilience of vulnerable coastal communities to climate change related impacts in Viet Nam, involved cooperation from the government and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), with sponsorship of the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

This newly-approved project adopts community-based approaches to natural disaster management, including storm-resilient housing, mangrove forest restoration and data systems which engage communities and participants.

Experts from the UNDP and CGF will work together with local authorities to reach out and redesign some 4,000 houses in high-impact areas to make them storm resilient.

Mangrove restoration is the key to protecting vulnerable people and fisheries-based communities from storms.

Current data is a reliable source of information for decision making in disaster management. Communities, local decision makers, the private sector and other related agencies can easily access it online.

The database, moreover, is an evaluation tool, as both images and information will be updated in real time so that stakeholders can manage and evaluate the impact of projects on the communities in question. Other global and regional evaluation frameworks of the UN will be applied to guarantee every effort counts.

Local womens unions will ensure the full participation of citizens in the decision making process.

Caitlin Wiesen, UNDP Country Director, emphasised the projects scale and ambitious goals. The government and UN agencies are working to make sure they are synchronised with efforts that exist and complement other smart ways of engaging, she said.

To be implemented in seven coastal provinces of Nam inh, Thanh Hoa, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, Thua Thien  Hue and Ca Mau, the project is expected to both protect and empower involved groups as well as enhance their capacity for natural disaster preparedness.

Hoang Van Thang, deputy minister at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development stressed the significance of this initiative in enhancing localities capacity.

With the increasing intensity and unpredictability of natural disasters, provinces are encouraged to create their own blueprints based on the projects general know-how, he said.

The project will be implemented over five years with non-refundable aid of USD$29 million provided by CGF.

With more than 3,000km of coastline, Viet Nam is one of the worlds most vulnerable countries to climate change.  VNS
Twelve technology transfer contracts worth more than US$10 million have been signed among scientific application centres nationwide and foreign partners at the technology demonstration and connection conference (TechDemo) in Da Nang, the Department for Technology and Science Application and Promotion under the Ministry of Science and Technology said.
DES MOINES -- Investigators heard multiple reports of sexually suggestive comments by Iowa Republican caucus staff members and senators, but no provable incidents of sexual harassment in the Senate, a review released Friday shows.

The three-page report that included staff members recollections of at least seven incidents of sexually suggestive or offensives comments  but no allegations of physical harassment  shows the workplace culture needs to improve, according to Senate President Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Dix, R-Shell Rock, who originally had refused to release the report.

The investigation followed former staff member Kirsten Andersons successful sexual harassment lawsuit that resulted in a $1.75 million settlement to be paid by taxpayers.

Anderson was the GOP caucus communications director between 2008 and 2013 when she was fired hours after lodging a sexual harassment complaint. Leaders cited poor work performance as the reason for her dismissal.

During Andersons trial, GOP Senate staff members testified to ongoing sexual harassment, which led to the internal investigation of allegations from December 2012 to the present. Current members of the staffs of the GOP Senate caucus and the Secretary of the Senate were interviewed between July 25 and Aug. 7.

The leaders, who have brought in former ambassador and Senate President Mary Kramer to help them address what Anderson described as a toxic environment, said workplace culture can improve, and with a lot of hard work, it will improve.

However, Senate Minority Leader Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, found the report deeply troubling because investigators heard about senators making sexually suggestive comments as recently as the 2017 session  after Dix and other GOP leaders said they had zero tolerance for such behavior.

The report will increase the disgust that Iowans feel about the harassment, discrimination, and retaliation against Kirsten Anderson and other legislative staff, Petersen said in a statement. The report paints a picture of an environment in the Iowa Senate that will lead to more lawsuits against Republicans senators and staff unless dramatic changes are made.

In releasing the report Friday, Whitver and Dix said they were trying to balance two competing concerns: openness and protecting staff.

The first concern is to be open with Iowans about the workplace issues in the Iowa Senate, they said in a statement.

Names of those in the report were redacted because to improve the workplace culture, employees need to know they can share their concerns without those issues being shared publicly.

Publicizing those individuals could have a chilling effect on the willingness of employees to make reports of future incidents, they added.

Whitver and Dix also shared a letter from the Des Moines law firm of Ahlers Cooney advising them to redact the names of employees because participation in the investigation related to job conduct and performance would be confidential information under Iowa law.

The attorneys also advised that senators names should be redacted because under Iowa law personal information in personnel records of government bodies relating to identified or identifiable individuals who are officials, officers or employees of government bodies is protected.

In the report, names that appear to be of two senators were censored.

In their investigation, Secretary of the Senate Charlie Smithson and Whitvers senior aide Mary Earnhardt looked at incidents and comments in and by the Senate caucus staff and office environment, the Senate floor environment and the Secretary of the Senate staff.

Among the findings:

-- An unidentified staff member said an unidentified person made a sexually suggestive comment during the 2013 session.

-- Another unidentified person provided copies of handwritten documentation of offensive comment with in the GOP staff office that occurred after December 2012.

-- A person specifically noted a sexually explicit story told by a fellow staff member. The staff members asked that the story be stopped.

Documentation of the events was not included in the materials released.

-- A member of the Secretary of the Senate staff indicated an unidentified person overheard what could possibly be interpreted as harassment, but declined to give specifics.

-- Many caucus staff members indicated there is an environment on the Senate floor of senators making sexually suggestive comments or about sexual preferences.

-- One recalled one occasion of an unidentified senator making a sexually suggestive comment in 2017.

-- Another detailed a story about a senator making sexually suggestive comments regarding proposed legislation on dense breast tissue.

-- There were other reports involving former senators.

Some staff members told the investigators they feared retaliation, which is why they did not feel comfortable reporting harassment. Other staffers said they were comfortable reporting potential harassment.

In conclusion, the investigators said, it does not appear that any provable incidents of sexual harassment as defined in Section 17 of the Personnel Guidelines have occurred.

Democratic leader Petersen said the report by a political appointee and a Republican staffer confirms her belief that an independent, outside investigation is needed.

We called on all senators to work together to fix this problem, she said. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans have ignored the calls for action by refusing to fire any of their staff or to make any changes in their leadership.

The report can be found at https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/publications/WMD/SenateInternalReview.pdf
By The Associated Press Nov. 20, 2017 | 11:23 AM | HUMBOLDT, TN

Tyson Foods Inc. says it plans to build a new chicken production complex in Tennessee, a $300 million project that is expected to create more than 1,500 jobs when the facility begins operations in late 2019.

The Springdale, Arkansas-based company said Monday that the new plant in Humboldt will produce pre-packaged trays of fresh chicken for retail grocery stores nationwide. The company says it will help it meet strong consumer demand for its chicken.

The announcement marks the second major economic development project Tyson has begun this year in Tennessee. In August, the company announced an $84 million expansion of operations in Union City. That project is expected to create about 300 jobs.
Minister: No change to South African energy policy

24 November 2017

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South Africa's energy policy has not and will not change, Energy Minister David Mahlobo told the country's Portfolio Committee on Energy earlier this week. He said energy was an important catalyst and enabler for economic development, and the country must ensure it used a diversity of energy resources.

"We are blessed with uranium that could be extracted and be put into use to produce nuclear power. We have gas, but not in abundance. Nuclear energy [has] got to be at a cost that we could afford. If energy is expensive it will be an impediment to growth and stability," he said.

South Africa's current Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), drawn up in 2010, called for construction of 9600 MWe of new nuclear capacity over the period to 2030. The country's Department of Energy is in the process of updating the IRP, and in November 2016 issued a draft IRP and Integrated Energy Plan (IEP) for public consultation. The 2016 draft IRP, under its base case, calls for 1359 MWe of new nuclear capacity to be built by 2037 and a total of 20,385 MWe by 2050.

The IRP guides the government's plan for electricity provision within the energy mix, while the IEP aims to guide future energy infrastructure investments over the period up to 2050, and identify and recommend policy options to shape the future energy landscape of the country.

Portfolio committees are appointed from members of South Africa's National Assembly to provide parliamentary oversight for the work of government departments.

Chairman Fikile Majola said the Portfolio Committee wanted to deal with issues previously identified as important in the energy sector.

"The Committee wants to be sure on processes that are said to be under way so that there is certainty," Majola said. "There has to be clarity with the general attitude of government with regard to energy policy so that the public is clear [about] the intentions of government. On all the big issues in the sector, we want some level of certainty with regard to where we are," he said.

Mahlobo, who became energy minister in a cabinet reshuffle last month, said reliability and sustainability of energy supply, as well as social, political and environmental impacts, were important factors. "The implementation of the policy has to give consideration to clean energy sources going into 2025 when it is expected that the country cuts down its gas emissions, in line with the climate change commitments that have been made," he said.

South African utility Eskom in December 2016 released a request for information to support the future procurement of the new nuclear capacity under the existing IRP. However, The South African High Court earlier this year ruled ministerial determinations underpinning the country's nuclear procurement plans to be unlawful and unconstitutional. It also declared the same to be the case for intergovernmental nuclear cooperation agreements, including those with Russia, South Korea and the USA, and ruled that they and the request for information must now be set aside.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
Nov 25, 2017 | By Julia

As more and more fashion designers turn to 3D printing as an innovative, cost-effective method for producing state-of-the-art creations, an Israeli maker is keen to show that less is more. Meet Eden Saadon, the Haifa-born textile designer whos pioneering new possibilities for creating with a 3D printing pen. Once the tool of amateur at-home crafters, 3D printing pens such as the 3Doodler (Saadons instrument of choice) are now being elevated to the high-fashion realm, providing designers of all backgrounds a new way to thinkor drawoutside the box.

3DLace, Saadons lingerie collection which recently secured her a finalist position in New York Textile Months Dorothy Waxman competition, is one such example of how a simple 3D drawing tool can be re-spun to do great things. Taking aesthetic cues from ancient civilizations, 3DLace presents delicate yet volumetric lace designs that detail beautiful flora and fauna imagery. The breath-taking seven-piece collection, which ranges from luxurious nightgowns to barely-there negligees, was inspired by the tapestry drawings of William Morris, the architecture of Frank Gehry, the paper and bamboo sculptures of Ai Weiwei, and the body sketches of Oskar Schlemmer, Saadon says.

Yet while the lingerie pieces are awe-inspiring in and of themselves, the real surprise is in Saadons technique. All seven garments in the collection are made from Flexy, a 3Doodler-brand flexible plastic that, when fused into a thread, can be used to draw and construct different elements. What is fabric, after all, but cloth made of threads? Saadon asks poignantly. She certainly has a point: despite being made singularly of plastic, the garments in Saadons 3DLace collection are so light and delicate that they are eminently wearable, and immediately read as haute couture.

But that doesnt mean Saardons work wasnt met with criticism along the way. Discovered during Saardons final year at the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design, and Art in Tel-Aviv, the 3D printing pen shocked her textile instructors. The designer notes that her faculty was rather disbelieving when they saw Saardons rudimentary tool, but her creations spoke for themselves: no one could ignore the incredible potential in how Saardon re-imagined the 3Doodler.

The recent graduate admits that it took some time to master the craft, and actually create fully-fledged fabrics from a 3D printing pen. Saardon was intent on showcasing the wearers body with her fabric, which she felt was the best way to test her unique creations. She began with brassieres, drawing cups and straps to see if they could stay together and feel comfortable. Its kind of a philosophical question, she says. Can a photo of a bra be a bra?

By the time Saardon graduated and began working in the industry, she was working directly on the mannequin, constructing elaborate patterns and interconnections between each piece of the plastic fabric. Eventually, she was able to create delicate, spiderweb-like fabrics which were then heat pressed onto pieces of tulle and mesh fabrics.

The momentum is certainly building for Saardons 3D drawn lace designs. But even as word spreads, the Israeli designer remains focused on her work. For now, Saardon has returned to work in her home studio, where she spends 10 hours a day drawing out different ideas based on her textiles. Its a painstaking process: while small pieces can be created in just 15 minutes, a full dress requires several days of work.

In the future, we can expect accessories and shoe designs to accompany Saardons signature lingerie. I do not know where it will go, Saadon says of working with her 3D printing pen, but its fun that there are a thousand options.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Florence Aubenas over at the Verso blog:

His office has no door. Truth be told, it is not an office at all: it is a kind of box room, open onto the corridor. Each morning in 1958, the young woman crossed Tunis to sit there. She waits. For what? She does not know. The head doctor, her superior, does not address her. His gaze passes across her as if she did not exist. Sometimes she catches something he says, and she chews it over for whole days. An example? "In Arab culture, breasts are not an erotic object."

She is the only French woman working at the Tunis psychiatric hospital. She is Marie-Jeanne Manuellan, 31 years of age, maiden name Vacher, born in Meymac (Correze). She has a check skirt, she has three children, and is a field social worker married to a cooperant [a man doing a social service instead of military service]. The others in the team are all Tunisians and Algerians. Manuellan knows nothing about psychiatry. Too bad. Tunisia, which has just won its independence, has appointed her to this position, in order to show that the new government is doing better than how things were under the French protectorate.

The chief doctor in this department "doesnt hang round with French people." He told her as much in a glacial tone. He explained: "I have responsibilities in the FLN," the National Liberation Front in the middle of its fight for Algerias independence. The young woman warns her husband "Ive come across a sadist." The "sadist" is Frantz Fanon, 33 years of age. He is already  all at once  a fervently anti-psychiatry psychiatrist, a high-profile essayist, a Negreintoning against negritude, a revolutionary and son to a wealthy Martinique family.

Manuellan spends two months in the box room, till the day when the Sadist appears in front of her, telling her: "You are going to follow me during my rounds, listening and noting everything I say." He introduces her to the patients, "This woman is not a woman, but a tape recorder." She was his assistant for three years.

More here.
Pope Meets Dialogue Commission With Assyrian Church of the East

Pope Francis with Joint Commission members. ( CNA) ROME - Pope Francis on Friday encouraged Eastern Christians in the Middle East, who are experiencing persecution and violence, to take hope in the cross, where Christ sacrificed himself not to eliminate wounds, but to transform them. "In all of this, the constant repetition of the sign of the cross is a reminder that the Lord of mercy never abandons his brothers and sisters, but embraces their wounds within his own," the pope said Nov. 24. "By making the sign of the cross we recall Christ's wounds, which the Resurrection did not eliminate but rather filled with light. "So too the wounds of Christians, including those still open, become radiant when they are filled with the living presence of Jesus and his love," he continued, "and thus become signs of Easter light in a world enveloped by so much darkness." Francis's message was given to members of the Mixed Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East. The commission is sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, which is an Eastern Church found primarily in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon. The commission meets periodically to study and discuss points of theological difference. In his message, Francis asked the Lord to bless the future work of the commission, that one day both Churches may celebrate "full communion in Christ's Church." He also emphasized an aspect of their new Joint Declaration, which refers to the sign of the cross as "an explicit symbol of unity among all sacramental celebrations." This is a beautiful reflection, he said, because "hope and peace" come from Christ's glorious cross, "and from the cross flows the unity of the sacred mysteries we celebrate, as well as our own unity, for we were baptized into the same death and resurrection of the Lord." Francis noted that when we make the sign of the cross, or when we look at a crucifix, it is an invitation to think of those who have endured great sacrifices by uniting their suffering to Christ's. It also reminds us to remember those who "today bear a heavy cross upon their shoulders." The Assyrian Church of the East, and other Churches in the Middle East, are afflicted by grave persecution and are witness to "brutal acts of violence," he stated. This suffering was recently "exacerbated" by the tragedy of the Nov. 13 earthquake that hit the border between Iraq and Iran, killing at least 500 people and injuring thousands of others. Those who have died from tragedy and from persecution - giving their lives "in following the Crucified Christ" - are the "heralds and patrons" in heaven of our visible communion on earth, he exclaimed, encouraging them to trust in the intercession of the saints as they continue to patiently rebuild their devastated land. The full text of the Pope's address is below:

Dear Brothers and Sisters, I extend a warm welcome to all of you. I thank you for your visit and Metropolitan Meelis Zaia for his kind words on your behalf. Through you I convey my fraternal greeting in the Lord to His Holiness Mar Gewargis III, recalling with joy our cordial meeting a year ago, which marked a further step on our journey towards deeper growth in mutual solidarity and communion. Our meeting today offers us the opportunity to look with gratitude upon the progress made by the Joint Commission, established following the historic signing of the Common Christological Declaration here in Rome in 1994. After professing the same faith in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Commission planned two phases of dialogue: one on sacramental theology and one on the constitution of the Church. I join you in thanking the Lord for today's signing of the Joint Declaration which brings to a happy conclusion the phase regarding sacramental life. We can now look to the future with even greater confidence and I ask the Lord that your continuing work may help bring about that blessed and long-awaited day when we will have the joy of celebrating, at the same altar, our full communion in Christ's Church. I would like to emphasize one aspect of the new Joint Declaration, where the sign of the cross is referred to as "an explicit symbol of unity among all sacramental celebrations". Some authors of the Assyrian Church of the East have included the sign of the cross among the sacred mysteries, convinced that every sacramental celebration depends precisely on the Pasch of the Lord's death and resurrection. This is a beautiful insight, because the Crucified and Risen One is our salvation and our life. Hope and peace come from his glorious cross, and from the cross flows the unity of the sacred mysteries we celebrate, as well as our own unity, for we were baptized into the same death and resurrection of the Lord (cf. Rom 6:4). When we look at the cross, or make the sign of the cross, we are also invited to remember sacrifices endured in union with Jesus and to remain close to those who today bear a heavy cross upon their shoulders. The Assyrian Church of the East, along with other Churches and many of our brothers and sisters in the region, is afflicted by persecution, and is a witness to brutal acts of violence perpetrated in the name of fundamentalist extremism. Situations of such tragic suffering take root more easily in contexts of great poverty, injustice and social exclusion, largely caused by instability, often fuelled by external interests, and by conflicts that have also led in recent times to situations of dire need, giving rise to real cultural and spiritual deserts, within which it becomes easy to manipulate people and incite them to hatred. Such suffering has recently been exacerbated by the tragedy of the violent earthquake on the border between Iraq, the homeland of your Church, and Iran, where your communities have also long been established, as well as in Syria, Lebanon and India. As a result, particularly during periods of greater suffering and deprivation, large numbers of the faithful have had to leave their lands and emigrate to other countries, thus increasing the diaspora community, with the many trials it faces. Arriving in some societies,
5 Genocides That Are Still Going on Today

After a grueling, five-year trial, Ratko Mladic, the general of the Bosnian Serb Army during the Bosnian civil war in the '90s, was convicted of war crimes including genocide on Wednesday by a United Nations court at The Hague. He was sentenced to life in prison. He was also found responsible for the 1995 massacre of over 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is considered the worst atrocity committed in Europe since World War II. Many victims of the massacre are still being identified to this day.

Even though Mladic is one of the most high-profile perpetrators of genocide convicted in recent years, genocides are by no means a thing of the past. Here are five genocides going on right now around the world: Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and Syria As the terrorist group ISIS carved its caliphate out of war-torn Syria and Iraq in 2014 and 2015, it extended its reach over various non-Muslim communities and ethnic groups, including Yazidis and Shiites Iraq, as well as Assyrian Christians living in both Syria and Iraq. In brutal, genocidal campaigns in both countries, ISIS sought to systematically exterminate Yazidis, Shiites, and Christians and destroy their villages. They also carried out mass rapes in these communities. Although numbers remain hazy, thousands of people have been killed in these related genocides. As of this week, ISIS has officially been defeated territorially, but the effects of their genocides continue to wreak havoc on people in the region. Khider Domle, Yazidi researcher based in Dohuk, Iraq, says the secondary effects of the genocide are still very present in Yazidi communities in Iraq. "Our psychological, social and religious identity has been destroyed," Domle told Al Jazeera. "People are living all over the place, and they don't know what the future is. There have been no initiatives from the Iraqi government to help the displaced people return back to Sinjar; no national reconciliation process; no attempt to rebuild ruined infrastructure." Christians and Muslims in the Central African Republic The Central African Republic, an African country wedged mainly between the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and Chad, has been embroiled in a civil war ever since 2013 when the country's Christian President Fran
The U.S. Navy plans to ramp up cooperative exercises with southeast Asian navies next year, and an admiral says that two ships built in Alabama - Austal's Littoral Combat Ship and Expeditionary Fast Transport - both will play a role.

Rear Adm. Don Gabrielson, commander for Logistics Group Western Pacific/Task Force 73, told the U.S. Naval Institute News earlier this week that Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) and Expeditionary Fast Transports (EPF) are particularly well suited to such operations.

Austal builds one of two versions of the LCS, a program whose merits have been extensively debated over the years. LCS 4, the Austal-built USS Coronado, sailed out of Singapore Nov. 4, ending a 14-month deployment in the region.

The EPF has been less controversial and consequently is less well known to the general public. It's a 338-foot aluminum catamaran designed to carry troops and equipment for use in various operations, from warfare to disaster relief. At least one EPF was used in recent hurricane relief efforts in the Caribbean, according to Austal.

The USNS Spearhead, an Expeditionary Fast Transport (EPF) built in Mobile by Austal USA, is shown with its cargo ramp dropped onto a dock in Philipsburg, St. Maarten, during Hurricane Irma relief efforts in September. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kristen Cheyenne Yarber/courtesy of Austal USA)

Gabrielson said the Coronado's Asian deployment had taught some valuable lessons, and that learning how to do maintenance while under way had enabled the ship to remain available for action.

"We were able to perform expeditionary maintenance availabilities in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Guam where we actually loaded equipment, in some cases on an EPF and in other cases we flew it there," Gabrielson said. "This gave us a lot of operational flexibility on the deployment."

According to the USNI News, Gabrielson said that because of their size and ability to work in shallow water, the LCS and EPF were ideal for training exercises with regional navies.

"We're using the LCSs and EPFs, both individually and together, to conduct these engagements because they are the right-sized platforms and frankly they bring the right kind of skills for many navies to take on the challenges that they are dealing with," said Gabrielson. According to the USNI News, the admiral added that LCS and EPFs have access to over a thousand port locations in the littoral regions of South and Southeast Asia while larger ships like destroyers only have access to about a dozen locations.

Gabrielson said that the Navy plans to have two LCSs stationed at Singapore, likely after mid-2018. Until then it will keep three EPFs in the region.

In October, Austal received the contract to build LCS 30, its fifteenth LCS. The National Defense Authorization Act for 2018 currently contains three LCS contracts; as of Nov. 27 it had been approved by Congress, but had not yet been signed by the president. In late October, the ninth EPF, the City of Bismarck, completed acceptance trials; it's due to be delivered to the Navy later this year. (Austal builds even-numbered LCSs, but all EPFs. It has an order for 12 of the latter, a contract worth $1.9 billion.)

(Note: This story was updated Nov. 27 to reflect the current status of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act.)
A woman in Rome, Georgia early this morning was stabbed by an Alabama man after she refused to refund the money he paid her for sex, according to The Rome News-Tribune.

The newspaper, citing a report filed today by Rome City police, said the victim went with two Alabama brothers -- the report does not identify the suspects or say where in the state they live -- to find drugs and at one point had sex with one of the two for money.

The man "complained about the sex he just had, and told the woman to give him his money back. When she refused, the report continues, he stopped the car and got out, opened her door, punched her in the mouth and stabbed her in her chest."

The victim ran for help, telling a homeowner: "I got stabbed, call 911." She was taken to a hospital, treated and released. It was not clear if any arrests were made.
Clinging to the ceiling of an abandoned mine tunnel in Birmingham's Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve, a tricolored bat is in trouble.

It's February, and the small, tufted ball of fur and wings is just a few feet inside the entrance to Ruffner's Mine No. 3. It should be much farther inside the tunnel, better protected from the cold, and waiting for spring to reemerge and begin foraging on mosquitoes, moths and other insects in the urban nature preserve just south of Birmingham's East Lake neighborhood.

That probably won't happen. The bat is showing signs of infection with white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has caused more than 95 percent mortality for this species in Georgia.

Ruffner Mountain's bats are very likely to follow the same path, according to Chris Cornelison, a PhD researcher studying white-nose at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

"White-nose syndrome is going to move through that population pretty severely," Cornelison said. "It would be my prediction that we'll continue to see declines until they probably hit about five percent of that historic population."

Cornelison conducted that survey with Jamie Nobles, Ruffner Mountain's Conservation Director, and Dottie Brown of Ecological Solutions Inc. He said they counted more than 600 bats in their limited exploration of the mine tunnel, and believe there were more than 1000 tricolored bats hibernating there last winter.

That makes it one of Alabama's largest tricolored bat hibernacula, according to surveys conducted by the Alabama Bat Working Group, a collaboration of state wildlife officials, researchers and volunteers. Or at least one of the largest ones left.

"Cathedral Caverns used to have many, many tricolored bats," said Nick Sharp, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources' lead bat biologist. "There's no telling how many bats used to be in Cathedral Caverns.

"I suspect Cathedral Caverns once upon a time rivaled Ruffner Mountain No. 3, but those bats [in Cathedral] have all but disappeared."

Cathedral Caverns also tested positive for the fungus that causes white-nose, and all signs point to that disease as the driving force in the population declines.

Cornelison said the bats he encountered at Ruffner were in "at least" year two of a white-nose outbreak, possibly year three. The greatest mortality usually occurs in years three and four.

"I would not be surprised to hear that spring counts show a 50 percent or greater reduction in those bats," Cornelison said. "I hope that is not the case, but unfortunately that is the trend that has been observed in neighboring states with that species.

"It's not a very positive outlook, but you never know."

Species in peril

The tricolored bat got its name from its fur, which is dark at the base, lighter in the middle and bears a yellow-brown tip. It is known as a slow flyer, hovering over water bodies and around the edges of forests to hunt insects during the summer.

It's the smallest bat in Alabama, and until recently it was one of the most abundant. In fact, Sharp said, the bat was so common, that there wasn't much of a push for new research on the species here.

"The fact of the matter is, the species that are going extinct are the ones that get the money, that's the way things work," Sharp said. "We start studying them when they're in danger of going extinct."

The bats reproduce once a year, with females birthing one to two pups usually around late May or early June. Beyond that, Sharp said, there are still significant questions about the bat's life cycle, especially in Alabama.

"Another complicating factor in trying to conserve and manage and support these bats is we don't know how to do it," Sharp said. "We know very little about their summer habitat use and their general natural history and breeding biology.

"Folks have started looking at that now."

There is also very little survey data on tricolored bat populations in Alabama caves before white-nose arrived. Most of the surveys began in 2010. White-nose was first confirmed in Alabama in 2012.

Alabama caves that have tested positive for white-nose have all shown a 70-95 percent drop in observed tricolored bat populations within a few years of the arrival of the disease.

White-nose syndrome is caused by a fungus, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, which is not native to North America. The prevailing belief among wildlife agencies is that spores of the fungus were brought to American caves by hobbyists who did not properly wash their gear after visiting European caves.

Once the fungus crossed the Atlantic, bats and other animals have spread it from cave to cave, causing a slow-moving wave of the disease from that radiated out from New York throughout the Appalachians, across the Southeast and Midwest, with more isolated outbreaks confirmed in north Texas and Washington state.

The fungus causes white growths to appear on the bats, often around the nose and mouth, or sometimes on the wings. The fungal growth irritates the bats and prevents them from reaching deep hibernation in winter. The bats use too much energy at a time when they are meant to be dormant, and sometimes leave the safety of their caves to forage for insects.

Infected bats are sometimes spotted around cave entrances in the late winter, sometimes behaving erratically or otherwise showing signs of distress.

Just like the ones encountered in the February survey. Nobles said there are several old mining tunnels at Ruffner that recreate cave conditions for the bats, and the white-nose fungus has been found in all three portals that have been surveyed.

"With the tunnels being as close as they are, if you find it one, you're going to find it in all three," Nobles said. "And we did. We found more individuals in mine No. 3, and also more individuals with white nose."

Tricolored bats are one of the most vulnerable species to white-nose syndrome, being one of the smallest hibernating bats in North America. Since they're so small to start with, it's harder for them to build up enough energy to survive a fungus-agitated winter.

Cornelison said the tricolored bat was once Georgia's most abundant bat, before white-nose wiped out 95 percent of the population.

"[White-nose] showed up in Georgia in 2013 so that's four years and 95 percent loss," Cornelison said. "It's unprecedented in a wildlife disease.

"It's arguably the most severe wildlife disease that's ever been observed."

The tricolored bat has been proposed for protections under the Endangered Species Act, but that proposal is still under evaluation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Cornelison said the species is expected to gain some level of protection from the federal government due to the severity of the declines.

Due to the lengthy review process, it's unclear when a decision might actually be made.

"There's some concern they could go extinct before we actually list them," Nobles said.

'If you like food, thank a bat'

As to why Alabamians should care that one of the state's most common bat species seems on the brink of irreversible decline, Sharp said he steers that conversation to the dinner table.

"What I tell people is 'if you like food, thank a bat,'" Sharp said. "All our bats in Alabama are insectivores and they eat billions of insects every night."

Sharp pointed to studies finding that in North America, bats provide agricultural pest control benefits worth billions of dollars every year, not to mention feeding on a lot of insects that are undesirable for other reasons. Another study showed bats provide more than a billion dollars' worth of benefits to corn crops alone.

"Everything we eat has corn in it in some form or another," Sharp said. "All our livestock are fed corn, so if you like to eat, you should thank a bat for that."

Opportunity lost?

Cornelison and Sharp said little can be done at this point to save Ruffner's bats.

Ruffner built steel gates over the entrances to Mine No. 3 and Mine No. 2 to prevent people from spreading the fungus to new areas. There is no treatment for white-nose syndrome that's been proven to work in the field.

But Ruffner's population could have served as a living laboratory to help researchers develop treatments for white nose that might be useful elsewhere.

This summer, Cornelison applied for a federal research grant to use Ruffner's bat population to test potential treatments for white nose, but he did not receive funding.

"I feel really good about the proposal we put in," Cornelison said. "I believe it scored highly, but it's just a very competitive process and that's the way these sort of research projects go."

Cornelison said the Ruffner site was an ideal location to test white-nose treatments, because it had a large bat population with an active outbreak, and it was an already disturbed site, not a natural cave system with a functioning ecosystem to worry about.

"This was the best-case scenario for Ruffner to be involved in promoting the conservation of bats," Nobles said. "In the meantime, we're still going to do surveys, but all we can really do is observe.

"Because white-nose is time-sensitive, you only have so long. That mine that had 600 bats this year might only have 200 next year and the year after that, it might have 20, at least with that species of bat."

The project would have tested two different techniques to reduce white-nose mortality over two winters. One group of bats would have received a "probiotic" bacterial treatment that has been shown in labs to slow the growth of the fungus. Another group would get an anti-fungal aerosol that is mild enough to avoid damaging bats and other cave-dwelling wildlife. A third group would receive both treatments.

But Cornelison would also have to have a control groups of bats receiving no treatment to prove that his treatments worked. The clearest proof of the effectiveness of the treatments would be for the subject group that received the treatments to survive at higher rates than the rest of the cave. Otherwise, he said, researchers would wonder whether other factors in the cave besides his treatments were responsible for any resistance to the disease.

In other words, the project wasn't about saving Ruffner's bats, but about developing techniques that might prevent future caves - or the species as a whole - from suffering the same fate.

"There's a bigger game afoot," Cornelison said. "Within the context of the species, the bats at Ruffner don't matter. To people there locally and it's their backyard, the bats are very important, but what we want to do is not just save bats in Georgia or Alabama, we want to develop tools that can be taken across the affected range.

"It would take these kind of controlled trials to demonstrate that these techniques are effective and scalable."

Cornelison said stopping white nose in Georgia was essentially a lost cause, and Alabama was following the same path.

"The fact of the matter is we're post-collapse in Georgia with this species," he said. "It's a greater than 95 percent decline across the state, so even if our treatment was effective in Georgia, it would take over a century -- if we stopped all white nose mortality -- to get back to our historical numbers.

"In those cases, the die is cast. What we're trying to do is utilize those resources to help states where white nose hasn't yet taken hold. That's what we were trying to do at Ruffner."
Sen. Luther Strange is keeping watch over a largely deserted Senate chamber during a 10-day Thanksgiving recess, Bloomberg reported today.

Strange, the report states, stayed in Washington at the request of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell "to simply sit in a chair overlooking the empty desks of his colleagues.

"The brief sessions--which last for only about a minute--ensure that President Donald Trump can't make recess appointments of his nominees while the Senate is out of town."

"I'm hoping I'll be here as long as it takes to get the tax bill passed. That's my hope," Strange said. "It's such a fluid situation right now, I can't say."

The Washington Post today reported Trump will meet with Senate Republicans on Tuesday to discuss the tax bill.

"A majority of Senate Republicans are expected to back the measure, but at least six have stopped short of saying they will vote for the tax cut package. None of these lawmakers is seen as being intractable, but Republicans can only lose two votes or the bill will falter," The Post report stated.
Close to the border with Brazil, large illegal cannabis plantations thrive on a network of corruption.

Pedro Juan Caballero, Paraguay  Cowboy hats and flasks adorned with imitation jaguar and snakeskin prints dot the market of the Paraguayan border town of Pedro Juan Caballero.

Cross the two-lane avenue outside and one will have entered Brazil.

Not far away, one will find casinos, motels and brothels typical of a crime-ridden frontier.

The town is on a key trafficking route into Brazil, with two major gangs  the First Command of the Capital (PCC) from Sao Paulo and the Red Command (CV) from Rio de Janeiro  competing to import Bolivian cocaine, firearms and other contraband.

In June 2016, a ceasefire between the factions came to an end when lead gangster Jorge Rafaat, allied with the CV and known as the king of the frontier was executed in his armoured Hummer. His death has been attributed to the PCC.

Pedro Juan Caballero is just the start of a journey into a more tranquil, hidden  but no less illegal  world just a few kilometres from the border with Brazil.

It is here  for the most part, untroubled by police or other authorities  that gigantic plantations exist to grow the vast majority of the cannabis smoked by millions of Brazilians.

The plantations

Eighty percent of cannabis produced in Paraguay is smuggled to Brazil, according to data from Paraguays National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD).

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Three million Brazilians regularly use the drug, according to the Second National Survey on Alcohol and Drugs at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, and in the first six months of 2017, Brazils Federal Police seized 126 tonnes of the drug, most of it originating from Paraguay.

Unlike Colombia and Uruguay, planting cannabis is illegal in both Brazil and Paraguay.

The Paraguayan plantations are believed to cover 7,000 hectares. Those working on land reveal a widespread system of impunity, guaranteed by a network of corrupt police officers and other officials.

Among these plantation workers is Adriano*, a 25-year-old Brazilian who manages a plantation for its owner. Adriano spends most of the year in the fields with the workers who plant and pick cannabis, mediating any problems between them and the field boss.

Adrianos boss, Gerson*, is a 50-year-old Brazilian who was born into a family that has always exploited cannabis.

While he is the owner of two plantations, he is not the legitimate owner of the farms, which are usually appropriated public land  including forests and protected national parks  or rented from the owner of a much larger estate.

In a Toyota pick-up truck, loaded with food and cleaning products, Gerson drove to his plantation, talking to Adriano about the threats they face from police units.

The Paraguayan police do not cause many problems, Gerson said.

When stopped, the pair paid a bribe of about $70 and were allowed to continue.

The Brazilian police are similar, Gerson added, except one feared military police unit.

They do not mess around, he said. With them, it is either jail or a coffin.

Like the town they had just left behind, the Brazilian and Paraguayan roads run side by side. The only difference between the two is that if the Brazilian asphalt is bad, the Paraguayan is often nonexistent.

Along the way, the pick-up changed side, and country, several times, in an effort to avoid police stations.

While passing through the nearest town to the plantation, which has less than 1,000 inhabitants, Gerson rolled up the tinted windows to avoid being seen.

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The headquarters on the farm is a simple house with a bedroom full of bunk beds, a bathroom with hot water and a television and satellite dish.

Adriano explains that in his five years at various plantations in the region, it is the first time that he has such comfort; usually, he would spend months camped out on the plantations.

Adriano and Gerson are armed with pistols.

But unlike the frontier, in the countryside disputes between groups are almost unheard of and police operations are usually announced beforehand and the outcome negotiated.

The operations

No one wants to draw too much attention to what is going on.

According to Gerson, politicians are bribed to delay the pavement of roads that would improve access to the region, helping to complicate any police operation.

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On one occasion, Gersons informants called to tell him that SENAD were planning to carry out an operation in an area that included a plantation of his and four others.

Immediately, Gersons team went to the farm and hid many tonnes of dried cannabis.

A day later, Gerson received a visit from Cabanas*, a Paraguayan man in his 70s, with a cowboy hat and a pistol in his holster.

He is the boss of the region and acts as an intermediary between the landowners and the Paraguayan government.

Cabanas said that police were proposing cancelling the operation if each plantation boss paid 10 million guarani ($1,800). It was unclear how many bosses there were, but Gerson said there hundreds of plantations in the region.

He explained that it is always the same at harvest time: the police threaten to invade the farms as a means of upping their bribes.

Last year, Brazilian Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes arrived in the region with SENAD officials, local media reported at the time. He used a machete to cut down cannabis plants, sending a signal to traffickers that illegal plantations would not be tolerated.

Its all negotiated, Gerson said when asked about the operation.

We deliver a little crop for them, take everything thats worth something out of there and leave the plants alone, he said.

No one is ever arrested

When asked about these claims, Francisco Ayala, the SENAD communication director, said that it must be assumed that there is no institution that is 100 percent transparent or 100 percent incorruptible, especially when it comes to drug trafficking, a business that moves many millions, which often makes it possible to buy what you wish, or the temptation to fall in the drug trafficking network.

Ayala told Al Jazeera that any security force is in constant danger of its members falling into corruption, but that SENAD has implemented policies to try to prevent this.

We believe that this historic level of seizures that has taken place in the last three years, we have never before seen these levels of destruction of marijuana crops or seizures of cocaine, is precisely the result of this policy of purification and internal transparency, Ayala said.

We are not infallible, there might always be corruption, but this policy is getting results and as the drug trade has been damaged in recent years in various regions of the country.

The fields

During the four months the cannabis grows, a field is taken care of by two or three workers. At harvest time, another 10 are recruited to pick, dry, sack, shred and press the flowers.

Most workers receive 70,000 guarani ($12) a day.

The rates, as well as the price of the cannabis, are decided by the farm owners to avoid competition.

The camps where the peasants sleep are made of logs, canvas, string and wire.

The water comes from wells or streams and is often hot and brown.

The camp is very dirty and is scattered with cheap bottles of wine and Fortin, a local cachaca spirit.

The men work from sunrise to sunset, except for the cannabis press, which runs non-stop with lighting from a petrol generator.

There are also some fields that operate 24 hours a day during the harvest, with reflectors illuminating the fields.

Few have ever worked in any other type of agriculture. Most of the workers are young, around 20, silent and suspicious.

Their ambition is only evident in the looks in their eyes.

Roque* is responsible for a field, from sowing to harvesting. He puts his hand into the ground, chooses the seeds, fertilizers and techniques that will be used to grow the crops.

The now-25-year-old started planting cannabis at the age 17 after finishing high school and not being able to find a job. After four years harvesting crops for others, he now co-ordinates his own field, financed by Gerson.

Roque, who now takes half the profit from selling the cannabis, wants to get out of the plantation-life and start an agricultural supply shop.

He cares for his plants with affection and gives the patches nicknames.

He spends any profit he makes on girlfriends and prostitutes.

There are practically no women on the plantations, but workers communicate with girlfriends via WhatsApp.

There are still a few family farms, but these days, they are rare.

Its getting harder and harder to work without a boss, Roque explained. Because the police are asking for more and more money.

The older workers carry the calm acceptance of a life spent in monotony.

Cannabis money feeds families and keeps communities functioning in this corner of Paraguay, but does not provide enough to get these people out of their misery.

Even the managers live a paranoid existence with very few possessions  a motorcycle and some brand-name clothing, perhaps  and the certainty that they are easily replaceable.

If the money made from the trafficking of cannabis offsets the risk for anyone involved, it is not for these workers at the sharp end of the deal.

*All names have been changed to protect the individuals identity.

This report was produced by Agencia Publica, a non-profit investigative journalism agency based in Brazil. This is a translation of the original version, published in Portuguese here.
The stepson of an Australian Vietnam veteran gives an insight into what its like to live with war-induced PTSD.

To date, the Vietnam War remains Australias longest engagement in a foreign conflict since World War II, including its commitment to the war in Afghanistan. Around 60,000 Australians were deployed to Vietnam between 1962 and 1972, where thousands were wounded, and hundreds died. At the time, their return home was not a cause for celebration.

Stephen Collins is the stepson of one of those veterans. Part of a project aimed at addressing the gaps in the treatment of veterans, Collins describes the first-hand effects of living with a veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the common frustrations for those coming home.

This is his story told in his own words.

My stepdad Jim met my mum when I was about 17 or 18 years old. At that time in Australia, the Vietnam veterans experience was still extremely negative, similar to what happened in the US with the anti-war movement. Unlike veterans who fought in previous conflicts, the Vietnam veterans were never welcomed home, so many of them suffered from significant social isolation.

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Jims PTSD was a result of his military experience in conflict and social isolation which created a vicious circle. He left Vietnam with some degree of trauma, and that trauma and not being welcomed home compounded each other. You become socially isolated, and because youre socially isolated you have no way of dealing with your trauma, so your trauma becomes aggravated, and you become more socially isolated.

However, many of these veterans were functional in society. My stepdad worked as a taxi driver and then as a security guard at a large gallery. So he worked regular jobs, had friends, but he definitely had social isolation issues; he didnt have a connection with people that understood and contextualised his military experience.

T hey had run out of bread rolls. Thats what triggered him

People with high-functioning PTSD turn up to work, and they do their thing, and you would never know that they are suffering from PTSD. Until something triggers them in your presence and you realise that there is something thats not right.

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Jim had a notoriously short temper; his moods could change from one moment to another. The weirdest things could trigger him. He would see a helicopter on the news, and you could almost guarantee that he would have nightmares that evening.

I remember going to a restaurant one evening, late on a Sunday  which is the end of the working week for restaurants in Australia. We went to a little suburban cafe  and they had run out of bread rolls. Thats what triggered my stepdads temper.

The poor waiter, who was probably not older than 17 or 18, was caught in what was effectively a vicious, angry shouting fire hose of invective for about five minutes before we were asked to leave by the restaurant manager.

Jims PTSD would manifest as anything from restlessness to full-on, full-blown, technicolour nightmares, including doing things like trying to drag my mum out of bed and into hiding, in what he thought was obviously a foxhole. It was pretty dramatic.

If youre broken, youre not fit to serve

There is still a culture in the military here that if youre broken, youre not fit to serve any more. And if youre not fit to serve any more, then your reason for being, particularly if youre in uniform, kind of vanishes. And thats one of the re-integration issues that military people have.

Many veterans define themselves completely by the fact that they are a soldier. So they are coming back into civilian life where youre not a soldier any more, and life doesnt revolve around the things that soldiers do. Its really hard.

Soldiers dont want to appear broken. So, being associated with psychological illness is significantly harder. People are often a lot more accepting with physical problems. So if you fall off a truck, and you bust your legs, ok, you got some busted legs, but well get you back, and well fix you up, and youll be ok. And even if you cant serve, no one is blaming you because it wasnt your fault that you fell off of a truck.

Many veterans define themselves completely by the fact that they are a soldier. So they are coming back into civilian life where you're not a soldier any more, and life doesn't revolve around the things that soldiers do. It's really hard. by Stephen Collins

Whereas, much like it is in civilian life, if you suffer from a mental illness there is a perception  right or wrong  that you have a weakness of some sort. Youre weak somehow, and you gave up, and something broke because you gave up.

So, theres a strong cultural aspect of Im not broken, I want to be able to continue to serve. This is what happens, particularly for people that are discharged medically and therefore are likely to have a relationship with Veterans Affairs. Theres also an aspect of Im tough because I was trained to be a soldier, so I dont want to have to rely on Veterans Affairs because I feel like I can go it alone.

T ransitioning from military to civilian life

Veteran suicide and veterans dealing with major mental health issues is a massive problem, and its pervasive across the militaries and veteran communities the world over. Everyone understands its there, and no one is quite sure how to address it.

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In our last national election in September 2016, the current government made an election commitment to look at the challenges facing veterans transitioning from military to civilian life.

I joined a project at the Department of Veterans Affairs to investigate the entire spectrum of barriers to successful transition to civilian life: cultural challenges, logistical challenges. What happens to families? What happens particularly to women veterans?

We talked to the Brits, and we talked to the Americans and found that similar proportions had the same problems. We talked with 160 people who served formerly, are still serving, family members, organisations set up to provide a connection around being an ex-service person. We did research in half a dozen cities in Australia as well as in rural areas, with all ranks, from brand new trainees and cadets all the way through to starred generals.

Veteran suicide and veterans dealing with major mental health issues is a massive problem, and it's pervasive across military and veteran communities the world over. Everyone understands it's there, and no one is quite sure how to address it. by Stephen Collins

A bunch of issues around bureaucracy and culture issues came out. Issues surrounding those that are discharged medically, who are no longer fit to serve because they have a health challenge, were highlighted as well as the emotional loss of identity, particularly suffering mental illness problems.

While some people are better prepared through their career or their rank to transition into civilian life, there are  across all ranks and all genders, and all gender identities  a range of issues that people see frustrations with, and have some adjustment issues with.

My partner, who is former military, still loves a lot about the military such as the strong structure and strong rank sense in the organisation. In her career since leaving the military, she has sought those kinds of roles, because thats what they like.

Many of my friends who are ex-military transitioned from uniformed military to working for the civilian Department of Defence or a civilian military contractor, or organisations that have some kind of affinity with the military, so that the transition is not so challenging.

In the late 80s, maybe the early 90s, Australia finally decided to hold welcome home parades for its Vietnam veterans. This was nearly 20 years after they had arrived home. The veterans attended these parades en masse, and it was a massive cathartic experience for them. They finally felt welcomed home.
After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, religious practices on the island nation were targeted, but the Cuban government later opted for a more conciliatory approach, and the country today hosts a variety of diverse religions.

Some Cubans believe that the countrys late president, Fidel Castro, was responsible for this religious unity, while others will never forget the years of persecution they endured.

A year after Castros death, Al Jazeera visited the Cuban capital, Havana, to explore how different religious communities are living side by side.
'A woman's struggle is everyone's struggle' Ana Maria, 38 Discrimination hurts. Not being allowed to enter places because I'm wearing my traditional dress, speaking my native language, or simply because I am poor  it hurts. Our government is racist and exclusive. They do not take into account the opinions of indigenous women. They don't look after the rural areas and the extreme poverty we live in. I suffered sexual harassment from a young age. From the age of seven, my brother would sexually abuse me. I always believed this was what brothers did, until I told my mother. After that, she never left me alone with him. But when I was 15 she died, and a year later I married my husband. At the time, I did not know what it meant to have sexual relations or a child. When I'm with my husband today, I often think, I never really fell in love, I never enjoyed my youth. But, I've found new people. This women's association is my house. We laugh, we cry, many times we sleep here too. We share our stories and advise each other. Here I feel calm, because we are allowed to heal. We speak our inner thoughts. We speak from the Mayan perspective, and we feel confident. We fight for our rights, but we also fight against the macho society we live in. We understand that we have a right to be respected. A woman's struggle is my struggle, and their struggle is everyone's struggle.



'My biggest fear is that the same story will be repeated' Ingrid Liseth, 27 When she was four years old, my daughter was a victim of sexual abuse. It was a single incident, but it was extremely difficult to take. I had to think about what to do, and how to react. As it was a member of our extended family, her cousin, who committed the crime, there was a question of whether or not to report it to the police. But my daughter was at stake, so I had to do it. You know how difficult it is to have a kid? And somebody comes and hurts her. It's not fair. So I went to the police and opened a case. The psychological consequences were hard, and being part of the organisation helped me through it. Through the talks and lessons on women's rights, counselling, by listening to other experiences, I managed to handle what happened. They helped me to get through the shock. My daughter's cousin was taken to court; he was only 16. I decided not to put him in jail. My husband didn't even want us to pursue the case, but I knew I had to do it, and I knew I would do it with or without his support. But I decided not to put my daughter's cousin in jail. He was only 16; jail would have destroyed any chance of him becoming a better person. My daughter didn't get any kind of help, but I'm here for her. I have dealt with my own shock by listening to other people, by understanding more about my own rights. I learned about this organisation by talking to my friends, so I decided to approach them and try. Before, I was timid, but through the organisation, I have learned not to be scared. Talking to people, by learning from other's experiences, by attending lessons, I lost this fear of being judged, and I'm not afraid to speak up and express what I feel. We do not have to remain silent. How could other people understand, if we don't talk? I do not fear being alone. I do not fear my husband leaving me. A woman does not need a man to be able to survive in life. However, my biggest fear today is that this might happen again to my daughter and that the same story will be repeated. My dream is to be a lawyer so that I can represent other women. I'm currently studying and, hopefully, one day I'll achieve this. I have the right to everything, to be free, to choose.



'Discrimination and racism go hand in hand' Maria Rafaela Chacach, 50 I've been a victim of psychological abuse. My husband does not always trust me. Sometimes he thinks that I go out to flirt with men or do other things. He believes in gossip and rumours. He is rude and disrespectful in the way he talks to me. This is the kind of violence that you cannot see, but you feel. It drains you, it hurts you, you cry, and it damages everything you believe in. I've also faced discrimination and racism when I wear my Mayan attire. People do not accept it. It's not the same for a mestizo [a woman of mixed race], they enjoy more respect than indigenous women do. Discrimination and racism go hand in hand. In our communities, there is also a lot of illiteracy, and many spaces where we are not welcome, we are not accepted because of our attire or lack of education. Schools can discriminate against us too. But through the association, I have learned to feel proud of being a Mayan Kaqchikel [one of the indigenous Maya peoples of the midwestern highlands of Guatemala] woman. I know my worth, and I have learned to value my dignity. I understand it is possible to be different, and it is possible to be respected. It is not an option; it is my right. I attended many lectures; they explained to me the importance of education, the rights and the respect I should be receiving from people. Today, I'm studying my native language, Kaqchikel, at university. Knowing this language enables me to help many more women in my community who do not speak Spanish. The aim is to be able to voice other women's concerns to the authorities so that they will not need to go alone to court, and they won't be in situations where they can't represent themselves because they do not speak Spanish. I want to be there to help them through such situations. Machismo is another big challenge we face as women. My husband has been taught not to help at home; that touching a broom or cleaning a plate is a woman's job, and that his opinion is the only one that matters. I know I won't be able to change him, but with my sons and daughters, I'm hoping to make a difference and help them understand more about their identity. I talk to them every day about who they really are. Because they must have values, and my daughters need to be respected and valued as the women they are. Women are a fundamental pillar of society. My sons must understand that marrying does not mean hiring a maid, they should collaborate at home, and respect their partners. I only fear one thing, to be alone. I am afraid of not being loved; it is a constant concern in my mind. I know how to fight for my rights - but I fear that because of this, one day, I won't be loved anymore. I am afraid of being rejected by those I cared about.



'This knowledge allows you to defend yourself' Patricia Shajon, 64 Before I never used to leave my house - my husband didn't allow me, it was forbidden. My life was sad; my only responsibilities were to take care of my kids and husband. I did not know anything other than taking care of my house. I came to the association because they invited me twice. The second time, I decided to join. They explained to me that there was a group of women who sat and talked about human rights, violence, discrimination, racism and all of that. Through the workshops and lessons, I've opened my eyes. Before, for example, I was really afraid of speaking in public, the first time I did it, I was shaking, but today, when I have the opportunity to speak, it's not the same. I'm not afraid anymore. Through the talks they have given us we have learned that we as women have rights, and obligations too. And that women should defend those rights. When you are ignorant, you suffer a lot, and you just do what you are told to do. But once you are aware, things change, they are not the same anymore. By sharing our experiences, we learn. With my change, my husband has changed too. He now understands more. When I tell him I have a workshop or lesson, I just let him know, but I don't need his permission anymore. The knowledge allows you to defend yourself. But while you do what you can, sometimes economic difficulties can block you. Without money, there are not many options. My biggest hope is to help more women and girls develop.



'I've learned not to fear' Lonjina Saban, 70 As a group, we fight for the women that are here. We are learning, maybe little things, but we are learning. I've learned not to fear. We are willing to go out and make our voice be heard. We work for our women.


It is time for the Palestinian leadership to wean itself off of the US.

Without knowing or planning it, the Trump Administration may have given Palestinians a gift that they badly need. Last week, it announced that it would not renew the routine six-month waiver for the office of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) delegation in Washington, DC. In response, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared that all talks with the US will be suspended.

Although on November 24, the US State Department reversed the decision, the damage was done. This move was part of a series of anti-Palestinian policies the Trump administration has adopted demonstrating that it is fully supportive of Israel and like previous US administrations unlikely to support a just resolution for the Palestinian issue. It is trying with all possible means to push the Palestinians to concede to all Israeli demands.

At this point, disengagement with the US is the only possible move for the Palestinian leadership. Given that the pressure from Washington will continue, the Palestinians have to get ready for major financial and political challenges.

Having a semblance of a state with jobs, budgets and programmes have done more harm than good to Palestinians. It has created a dynamic of its own that has been so bound to the Oslo Process that it has been difficult to grow out of the dependence on it.

This complacency has hurt the Palestinian cause because it has created an entire generation of Palestinians who benefit from the status quo. A shock was needed to shake Palestinians out of this complacency. The US action against the PLO mission could be precisely the push needed to shake up the system and break the status quo.

The obvious antagonism Washington is displaying could push the Palestinian Authority (PA) to finally seek a complete overhaul of its strategy and political set-up. This means that the restraint on pursuing Israel on various international platforms will finally be lifted. The PLO should push forward with investigations of Israeli war crimes at the International Criminal Court disregarding US pressure and seek assistance from European and Arab allies.

The Palestinians should also be prepared for increased financial pressure on the PA and all the civil servants that depend on it for their income. This means that they must cut back on spending, curb corruption practices that burden the budget and seek outside financial support from Arab states.

More importantly, in order to have the support of the general population, the PA has to adopt a radically different approach of transparency and stop security coordination with Israel. At present a major part of the annual PA budget is spent on security. If coordination with Israel is no longer needed then it is possible to greatly reduce this line item in the budget.

The PA should stop internals repressions and arbitrary political arrests and guarantee the basic rights of freedom of expression and assembly. This is also an opportunity for Palestinian reconciliation to be pushed through and democratic practices to be implemented.

It is important to resolve the current disagreements with Hamas and Islamic Jihad and include them in the political process. This reconciliation process should not rely on outside sponsors and should be something that Palestinians are able to figure out themselves.

The PA should seek direct support from the general population and re-legitimise itself by giving Palestinians political choice. It cannot continue being run by unelected officials. It should proceed with the plan to hold parliamentary and presidential elections before the end of 2018.

In opening up the political scene, the PLO should also look to include the diaspora and request its backing both politically and financially. For far too long millions of Palestinians living around the world have been alienated and their voices ignored resulting in general apathy and disillusionment.

This is also an opportunity for the PLO to stand in full support of the highly successful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement by changing its current position which calls for boycott of Israeli settlements only. It should support the boycott of the state of Israel.

Internal divisions and disagreements have plagued the Palestinian cause for decades now. It has worked in favour of Israel and its allies and has allowed it to encroach on Palestinian rights with impunity. With its current diplomatic offensive, Israel is trying to push the Palestinian issue out of the international political agenda and into oblivion.

The only way this can be prevented is if Palestinians and their supporters around the world mobilise on all fronts. The PA has the chance to play a key role by pushing for a unified national strategy and rallying support from all sides for it. The recent rebuke by the US can give the needed momentum to do that.

The need to unite Palestinians behind a national liberation strategy has never been as important as it is now.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
There is suddenly too much entropy in the Russian political universe. At least some people are acting as if there are no adults in the house. Political campaigns seem to start without the Kremlins blessing, state TV channels contradict each other in their coverage of important stories, and infighting between Kremlin factions gets into the open. A major player in that infighting has been Igor Sechin, the head of the oil giant Rosneft, who helped engineer the arrest of Economy Minister Alexey Ulyukayev, but who is currently ignoring court summons for the same the case.

All of this prompts one question: Where is Vladimir Putin?

The March 2018 elections

Of course, the Russian leader is very much still around, his busy schedule reflected in daily news broadcasts on state TV. But as political expert Gleb Pavlovsky writes: the president is disappearing. Currently a critic of Putins political regime, Pavlovsky was one of its chief architects in the 2000s  definitely a man whose opinion matters on such occasions. In the article, he goes on to describe the Russian leader as a not-so-young gentleman dogged by power fatigue and accumulated weaknesses.

Putin does often look drained during public appearances. Kremlin sources, quoted by Independent, went as far as claiming that he was on the verge of quitting in 2016 and only changed his mind after the surprise election of Donald Trump in the US.

It is conventional wisdom that Putin will seek re-election for what would be his fourth presidential term. But is a lame duck presidency what he really wants? by

Russias next presidential election is due in March 2018, but with only four months to go, the Kremlin is not giving away enough clues about how it is going to run the campaign and, in fact, still hasnt confirmed that Putin will be running. It is conventional wisdom that Putin will seek re-election for what would be his fourth presidential term. But is a lame duck presidency what he really wants?

There is also the issue of perceived legitimacy, which didnt come up for years as Putin had no strong rivals. But now he is being challenged by Alexey Navalny, who has revolutionised Russian politics by running an efficient presidential campaign and mobilising opposition supporters not just in Moscow and St Petersburg, but all over the country. No other opposition politician was ever able to achieve this during Putins era.

Again, conventional wisdom goes that the authorities will bar Navalny from the election. But as time passes without the Kremlin making any coherent statements on whether Putin will run, Navalny is gaining strength. The stronger he gets, the weaker Putins claim to legitimacy will be in the event that he chooses to run in an uncompetitive election.

If the Kremlin allows Navalny to register as a candidate, Putin is still very likely to win, but for him, that means stepping into unchartered territory. Will this let a revolutionary genie out of the bottle, as it happened with Mikhail Gorbachevs limited reforms leading to the colossal release of political energy which destroyed the entire communist system? Will it be interpreted as a sign of weakness by the hardline part of the establishment? And is this allegedly tired man up for the challenge of running a real campaign against a real rival? Can he run in an election that does not use the surrogate opposition leaders who helped the Kremlin maintain a semblance of pluralism in the last three elections?

A paramount issue is the agenda of the next presidency. Russian political cycles can be compared to TV series, where each season is tied by a single coherent plot. The first season was all about political stability and economic growth, spurred by high oil prices. That theme exhausted itself by 2012 when the economy slowed down and the middle class showed open discontent with corruption and undemocratic nature of the regime.

The second season began with the chaotic revolution in Ukraine, which allowed the political leadership, or  as many Russians say  the collective Putin, to rebrand the regime by embracing irredentist nationalism and aggressive conservatism, a plagiarised version of the Christian fundamentalism of the US Bible Belt. That transformation culminated in the annexation of Crimea, which sent Putins approval ratings soaring to almost 90 percent.

But this plot is about to exhaust itself, too. Whatever new unifying agenda Russias ruling elite might come up with, it will define both the direction the country will take in the next six years and who will be the face of this new political brand. Putin is a not a brand per se  it is the agenda he embodies, which matters.

The third season with a new plot

The Kremlin already has a plot in mind for the third season that will help keep the pro-Kremlin majority intact and the Navalny-led opposition at bay. It already has something up its sleeve. It is the mind-bogglingly massive reconstruction and modernisation of urban infrastructure in Moscow  an accomplishment the government is preparing to replicate during the next presidential term in dozens of other large Russian cities.

Such a new positivist agenda would contrast sharply with the confrontational negativism that defines Putins current presidential term. The modernisation of Russian cities, which retain much of the outdated Soviet-era infrastructure is long overdue. It will not only improve the quality of living for Russians, but also serve as a contrast to the impoverished and war-torn Ukraine, which the Kremlin desperately wants to prevent from becoming an alternative Russia  a place where millions of Russian-speakers will live better and freer than in Russia proper. Besides, such a large-scale public-sector project may boost the sluggish economy.

The current face of this agenda is Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin, who used to serve as Putins chief of staff between 2005 and 2008. A shrewd apparatchik experienced in dealing with both politics and the economy, Sobyanin is also relatively old (59 years old) and uncharismatic, the latter two qualities, in fact, giving him an advantage in the anti-meritocratic system that the Russian establishment is. Crucially, he defeated Navalny in the 2012 local elections in Moscow, when the opposition leader was surprisingly released from prison and allowed to run for mayors office (Navally gained 27 percent of the vote campaigning on a shoestring with almost no access to state TV airtime).

If Putin finally confirms that he is running for the fourth term, Sobyanin could become a near-ideal replacement for Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev providing a sense (or at least an illusion) of change to the growing number of Russians who seek it.

If  perhaps not now, but sometime in the middle of his term  Putin decides to call it a day, the current Moscow mayor will be uniquely positioned to offer a popular forward-looking agenda that preserves the pro-regime majority and provides a smooth transition into a post-Putin era.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Family of five was among 65 people trying to reach Greek island of Lesbos on a flimsy boy that had departed from Turkey.

A 10-year-old Afghan boy has been crushed to death on board a packed boat carrying at least 66 people aiming to reach the Greek island of Lesbos, according to Greeces news agency ANA.

Scenes of panic broke out on Saturday, when the refugees saw a patrol boat from European border agency Frontex approaching their flimsy vessel, in fear they would be sent back to Turkey, said ANA.

The Greek coastguard confirmed to Al Jazeera the age of the boy but did not comment on his nationality.

The coastguard spokesman said a Frontex boat, which was carrying out a routine patrol operation east of the island, identified the vessel travelling towards the island.

The young boy was recovered unconscious from the dinghy and then transferred to Vostanio hospital in Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos, where he was pronounced dead, according to the coastguard.

He was reportedly on the boat with his parents and two younger sisters.

His mother tried to jump into the sea after finding out about her sons death, said ANA. She was rescued by Greek coastguard officers.

Greek authorities told Al Jazeera they had opened an investigation into the incident and the boys cause of death.

Worlds deadliest border

In March 2016, the European Union (EU) and Turkey reached a deal to stem the flow of refugees from Turkey to the continent, while countries across the Balkans sealed their borders.

Those measures have led to a build-up of more than 60,000 refugees and migrants in Greece, which is an EU member.

But despite the agreement, people desperate to reach Europe have continued arriving on Greeces islands, with numbers growing over the past few months.

The death of the 10-year-old boy comes a day after the United Nations migration agency said more than 33,000 people have died at sea trying to reach Europe since 2000, making the Mediterranean by far the worlds deadliest border.

Professor Philippe Fargues, of the European University Institute in Florence, author of the International Organization for Migrations (IOM) report, said the figures probably underestimated the actual scale of the human tragedy.

So far this year, some 161,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe by sea, according to IOM figures.

About 75 percent of them landed in Italy, with the rest in Greece, Cyprus and Spain.

Nearly 3,000 others are dead or missing, said the IOM.
Planes carrying humanitarian aid land in Sanaa, after a blockade lasting almost three weeks.

Four planes carrying life-saving aid have landed in Yemens capital, nearly three weeks after Saudi Arabia imposed a total blockade on the Arab worlds poorest country.

The aircraft  carrying urgent relief supplies, including polio and diphtheria vaccines  arrived in Sanaa on Saturday, in an attempt to ease the suffering of millions of beleaguered Yemenis and help stave off mass famine.

A Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemens Houthi rebels closed land, sea and air access to the country on November 6. It said the move was aimed at preventing weapons from reaching the rebels.





Iran has repeatedly rejected Saudi accusations that it is giving financial and military support to the Houthis, blaming Riyadh for the protracted crisis.

Khaled al-Shaif, the director of Sanaas international airport, said more than 40 aid flights had been cancelled since the start of the siege.

Sanaa international airport was banned from receiving humanitarian aid aircraft for more than 19 days, that led to more than 500 UN aid workers being stuck here and the cancellation of more than forty aid flights.

Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UNs Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), said he was encouraged by the clearance of a humanitarian flight to Yemen, but urged the kingdom to resume commercial imports.

We stress the critical importance of resuming commercial imports, in particular fuel supplies for our humanitarian response, he said.

Humanitarians are serving the needs of seven million people who are completely dependent upon us.

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.

Yemens civil war has been raging since 2015, when the Houthis, a group largely composed of the Zaidi Shia minority, stormed Sanaa and deposed the internationally recognised president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Since then, the Houthis, believed to be backed by Iran, have been dislodged from most of the south, but remain in control of Sanaa and much of the north.
Jagtar Singh Johals arrest three weeks ago in the Indian state of Punjab has sparked anger among the Sikh diaspora.

Sikh activists have accused authorities in India of torturing a British Sikh man who was arrested while on holiday in the country in early November.

Jagtar Singh Johal, from the Scottish town of Dumbarton, was detained by plain-clothes police officers in the Indian state of Punjab and is accused of involvement in the targeted killing of eight prominent Hindu figures, a claim rejected by his supporters.

Campaign groups say authorities subjected Johal to abuse, such as body separation techniques and electric shocks to extract a confession, as well as denying him access to British consular officials, his lawyer and family.

Punjabs chief minister, Amarinder Singh, has rejected the allegations of torture as baseless and police say they have sufficient evidence linking Johal to the killings, though no charges have been filed against him three weeks after his arrest on November 4.

Johals MP, Scottish National Party politician Martin Docherty-Hughes, said consular access was only granted to the 30-year-old 10 days after his arrest.

With allegations of torture, I and other MPs have reached out to the [Indian] authorities seeking their commitment to an open and transparent judicial process, he said.

We take all allegations or concerns of torture and mistreatment very seriously and will follow up with action as appropriate. by British Foreign Office

Jagtars family and his local community in Dumbarton are gravely concerned for his welfare and we all hope that with openness and transparency, that this state of affairs will conclude with a satisfactory conclusion and that Jagtar can come home.

Both British Prime Minister Theresa May and the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, have voiced concerns regarding the allegations of torture, and Rory Stewart, a minister with Foreign Office responsibilities, has promised extreme action if the claims of abuse are proven true.

A spokesperson for the Foreign Office told Al Jazeera: We take all allegations or concerns of torture and mistreatment very seriously and will follow up with action as appropriate. When considering how to act, we will avoid any action that might put the individual in question, or any other person that may be affected, at risk.

Sikh activism

A petition calling for Johals release has picked up close to its 50,000-signature target, and Sikh activists have used the hashtag #FreeJaggiNow on Twitter to demand his freedom.

The Sikh Federation UK, citing Indian media reports, said there were suggestions Johal was being targeted for his own activism, specifically his role running a magazine detailing atrocities during the 1984 Sikh Genocide and using social media to influence Sikh youths.

Since the 1980s, images of Sikh men and their tortured bodies have come to be shuttled back and forth between India and then Sikhs across the world. The Johal case reawakens this. by Ketan Alder, Lancaster University

In 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, angry at the storming of the Golden Temple, Sikhisms holiest site, by Indian troops fighting Sikh separatists.

What followed was a campaign of mob killings and massacres targeting Sikhs by Gandhis supporters, which left thousands dead and is referred to as a genocide by some activists, particularly among the vast Sikh diaspora community.

According to Lancaster University academic Ketan Alder, the Sikh diaspora has played a key role in drumming up awareness of Johals arrest.

There is a significant Punjabi-Sikh diaspora spread across the world, and this is particularly vocal in North America and Britain, said Alder, an expert on the relationship between religion and politics in South Asia.

This is one of the reasons that Johals case has been raised in the House of Commons (British Parliament) and by Sikh activists outside of India. It is this diaspora-homeland relationship which speaks to the heart of the issue.

Alder explained that Johals purported activism documenting the abuses experienced by Sikhs during the 1980s made it difficult for Sikhs in the diaspora to separate his case from the wider narrative of Sikh suffering.

Johals media-led campaigns implicated the Indian state in human rights abuses and the killing of Sikhs during the [80s]. Since the 80s, images of Sikh men and their tortured bodies have come to be shuttled back and forth between India and then Sikhs across the world. The Johal case reawakens this, Alder said.

Sikh separatist campaigns in India were before, and again could be, partly driven by Sikhs abroad and their own senses of displacement.
Dhahi Khalfan calls for the bombing of Qatar-based media network after Fridays attack on a mosque in Egypts Sinai.

A senior security official in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has sparked outrage after calling for the bombing of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based media network.

In a series of posts on Twitter on Friday, Dubai Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan launched a scathing attack against Al Jazeera, accusing it of provoking a bomb and gun assault on a mosque in Egypts Sinai Peninsula earlier in the day.

      ..          (@Dhahi_Khalfan) November 24, 2017

The alliance must bomb the machine of terrorism  the channel of ISIL, al-Qaeda and the al-Nusra front, Al Jazeera the terrorists, the former police chief and now head of security in the Emirate told his 2.42 million followers on the social media site.

For how long will they [Al Jazeera] continue to tamper with the security of Egypt and the Arab world? he tweeted.

Khalfan then posted an image of Al Jazeeras iconic logo superimposed in front of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and 91-year-old Islamic theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

What Dhahi Khalfan is doing is incitement to terrorism. Terrorism is not just limited to committing a crime, but any act or statement that paves the way for a terrorist act or incites it, and incitement to terrorism is terrorism itself. by Yaser Abuhilalah, managing director of Al Jazeera Arabic

Yaser Abuhilalah, managing director of Al Jazeera Arabic, said Khalfan bore full responsibility for any attack against Al Jazeera and its employees.

The UAE needs to respond [to Khalfans comments]. Hes not just an Emirati citizen but an official in the UAE government, Abuhilalah told al-Quds al-Arabi on Saturday.

He is using a moment of anger and grief over the terrible attack in Sinai to fuel his hatred against Al Jazeera.

What Dhahi Khalfan is doing is incitement to terrorism. Terrorism is not just limited to committing a crime, but any act or statement that paves the way for a terrorist act or incites it, and incitement to terrorism is terrorism itself, he said.

Stoking controversy

Khalfan has made several controversial comments in the past but has never been prosecuted under the UAEs anti-hate speech laws.

In March of last year, he made headlines after urging Arabs to ally with Israel against enemies of the Middle East  a veiled attack against Iran and the regions Shia Muslims.

And earlier this year, the 66-year-old tweeted his complete support for US President Donald Trumps Muslim ban.

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Khalfan railed against Iraqis, Somalis and Iranians, nationalities included in the US travel restrictions, calling them unproductive groups, mocked the war and poverty afflicting Iraq, and would also call on the UAE to annex Qatar, referring to it as an eighth emirate.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing it of supporting terrorism, an allegation Doha has vehemently denied.

As part of the blockade, the UAE made expressing sympathy towards Qatar a punishable offence, with a jail term of up to 15 years and a fine of at least AED 500,000 ($136,000).

On June 22, the Saudi-led group issued a 13-point list of demands, including the shutdown of Al Jazeera, the limiting of ties with Iran and the expulsion of Turkish troops stationed in the country, as a prerequisite to lifting the sanctions.

Qatar rejected the demands as an infringement on its sovereignty.

Since its launch 21 years ago, Al Jazeeras offices have occasionally been bombed or shut down in many places, including Kabul, Baghdad and Gaza.
Army statement says air force destroyed a number of vehicles used in Fridays massacre, killing all those aboard.

The Egyptian army says an air raid killed some of the attackers involved in Fridays massacre when at least 305 people died in a bomb-and-gun attack on a mosque.

In a statement late on Friday, army spokesman Tamer Rifai said the Egyptian air force chased down the assailants who, according to officials, arrived in four 4WD vehicles and carried out the attack during noon prayers.

The air forces chased the terrorists and discovered and destroyed a number of vehicles that were involved in carrying out the brutal terrorist attack  Those on board were also killed, Rifai said.

The massacre occurred in Bir al-Abed, a town in North Sinai province.

The mosque  about 40km west of el-Arish, the provincial capital of North Sinai  was frequented by followers of Sufism, a more mystical form of Islam.

No group has claimed responsibility, but according to a statement on Saturday from Egypts public prosecutor, the attackers were carrying a flag representing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS). The government declared a three-day period of mourning for the victims.

Egyptian state media MENA said 120 people were also wounded in the attack.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi condemned the assault, which he described as criminal and cowardly in a televised statement on Friday.

He said the attack will not go unpunished.

The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force, Sisi said.

Egypt has for years battled an armed, anti-government campaign on the rugged and thinly populated Sinai Peninsula. The campaign has gained pace since the military overthrew democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013.

In 2014, following a suicide bombing that killed 33 soldiers, Sisi declared a state of emergency on the peninsula, describing it as a nesting ground for terrorism and terrorists.

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Previous attacks in Sinai mostly aimed at security forces and members of Egypts Coptic Christian minority.

However, mosques in North Sinais Sheikh Zuweid town have also been hit.

The Bir al-Abed mosque was an easy target because it was outside the provinces main cities.

The mosque may also have been targeted because it was attended by members of the Sufi sect, who are considered infidels by armed groups such as ISIL.

In 2016, ISIL fighters released images purportedly showing the execution of a 100-year-old Sufi religious leader, whom they accused of witchcraft.

Timothy Kaldas, a professor at Nile University in Cairo, told Al Jazeera that Fridays assault fits the pattern of ISIS attacks.

Potentially, its another attack against Sufis in northern Sinai. Potentially, its retaliation for tribes co-operating with the state in the crackdown on ISIS, he said.

Kaldas said ISIL has been more willing to target civilians, as we saw with a lot of attacks on the Egyptian-Christian community in the past year.
Confrontation looming between SDF and FSA, with the pair at odds over the reasons for a major military defection.

Two Syrian groups are at odds over the sudden departure of a high-ranking Syrian commander who reportedly left for neighbouring Turkey last week.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, and the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), a loose entity of opposition rebel groups, have presented different versions of the reasons behind General Talal Silos departure.

Silo served as the SDFs spokesperson, and his parting marks the first major defection among the forces top ranks. While the SDF refuses to acknowledge the departure as an official resignation, the FSA says his defection has been in the works for a very long time. Silo, who belongs to the Turkmen ethnicity, previously served as a high-ranking general within the FSA when the group was first created.

We had several options in front of us, so the best and most feasible one was for Silo to break away from the SDF towards [Turkey], Abou al-Farouk, an FSA spokesperson and lieutenant in the north, told Al Jazeera.

The FSA aided Turkish authorities in facilitating Silos departure via northern Syria, from where he was ushered to Turkey, according to Abou al-Farouk.

There has been no official comment from Turkey, which perceives the SDF, led by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), as a security threat for its alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) separatists inside Turkey. The PKK has waged an armed campaign since 1984 that has killed more than 40,000 people.

In a nutshell, the SDF, who call themselves democratic, have been claiming that they are the representatives of the people  of all the minorities and races  from Arabs to Kurds to Turkmen, Abou al-Farouk said.

So when we work on pulling out people like our brother Silo from the SDF, we would have succeeded in making them lose the diversity tactic that they promote, he added. In this case, they used Silos Turkmen origin to promote that they are representatives of a minority and not just Kurds.

Initially founded by a group of officers who defected from the Syrian Armed Forces in 2011, the FSA is a conglomeration of armed groups fighting under a larger umbrella, without a unified, central command. Several FSA groups have since shifted alliances, but in 2016, they were mobilised with Turkeys support to limit the SDFs influence along Turkeys southern border.

Founded in 2015, the SDF says it is fighting to establish a democratic and federal Syria along the lines of the Rojava region in the north. Its makeup largely consists of Kurdish YPG fighters and smaller groups of Arab, Turkmen and Armenian fighters.

Earlier this year, the US began arming them before an offensive to recapture Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). The Kurdish YPG and its allies have carved out autonomous regions in the north, and they now control nearly a quarter of Syria.

The FSA and SDF are adversaries, and are currently controlling various parts of Syria, which is in its seventh year of war.

Were still working on pulling out Arab leaders within the SDF, said Abou al-Farouk, noting this has been in the works on a high intelligence level.

Silos defection comes after months of mounting discontent by Arabs within the SDF, who say they have been sidelined when it comes to decision-making.

They also blame the YPG for discriminating against them, but the YPG has denied these allegations.

Complex proxy war

Silos departure reflects the complexities of Syrias proxy war. While the two groups were created to fight varying enemies  the FSA against Syrian government forces and the SDF against ISIL  each claims to represent the oppressed.

Aron Lund, a Syria expert and Century Foundation fellow, said that the SDF will remain relevant as long as it controls territory and has powerful armed forces.

The fact that they have the US Air Force at their back makes it impossible for Assads government to simply ignore them or try to seize their areas with force, said Lund. How Assad and his allies decide to handle the SDF problem will probably be determined by what the United States decides to do.

He further noted that since American policy under US President Donald Trump remains unclear, the SDF would have a much weaker hand or risk military defeat if the US signals that it wants to leave Syria.

But American decisions will likely be informed by several factors, including the risk of a jihadi resurgence, Turkish pressure to abandon the SDF, and concerns in Washington over Irans influence in an Assad-run Syria, Lund explained.

US alliance

The US has come under international scrutiny for arming the Kurdish-led SDF, especially since they have undertaken operations in Arab-majority cities. The fear in shifting these regions demography has been a point of contestation, augmented by Silos departure and the fact that his position, for the time being, has been filled by a Kurd.

A spokesperson told Al Jazeera that the coalition fighting ISIL in the region does not have any role in determining the internal staffing of the SDF, but indicated that the US would remain in Syria supporting its partners for the foreseeable future as a lot of fighting remains to defeat remaining pockets of ISIL.

Mostafa Bali, the SDFs media relations head, reiterated the importance of the SDF in fighting other terrorist groups.

We [SDF] were not just created for the goal of fighting ISIL. We will not simply disappear afterwards, he told Al Jazeera. There are still many terrorist factions that remain in Syria, and these are strong. They include Hayet Tahrir al-Sham [former al-Qaeda affiliates] and al-Nusra Front.

The SDF considers itself the better, more refined model of Syrias future army. According to Bali, the forces will naturally remain centred in the Kurdish north.

But Samer Abboud, an associate professor of international studies at Arcadia University, noted that there will be a sustained campaign by the Astana powers  Russia, Turkey and Iran  to downplay the SDFs capacity, despite it being one of the strongest armed groups on the ground.

The confrontation with the SDF was put on hold until this later stage because the Kurdish issue is the major one facing the regime and its allies now, he said, referencing Silos defection as the first stage of a looming confrontation.

Abboud questioned whether the US would abandon its SDF partners to maintain its relationship with Russia.

We cant have it both ways  its a threat when its around and a threat when its not around, he said of the SDF. So I think that eventually the US-SDF link could be severed, sacrificed at the altar of US-Russian agreement on Syria.

However, the FSAs trust in Turkey has given the group hope.

In light of the international aggression that happened, we have to coordinate with our biggest ally and supporter moving forward, Turkey, to rebuild ourselves better and stronger to prepare for future battles, said Abou al-Farouk.
Although improvements have been made, the murder rate is still six times the global average in Honduras and residents in San Pedro Sula still live in fear.

Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

And as voters head to the polls this weekend, public safety is high on the agenda.

The government says progress has been made in policing and tackling violence.

But many are not convinced.

Al Jazeeras Mariana Sanchez reports from Honduras.
Prominent Lebanese actor and playwright Ziad Itani has been arrested for allegedly collaborating with the Israeli enemy in plots targeting political leaders in the country.

Lebanons State Security Forces said on Friday the charges centre on Itanis alleged help in Israeli plans to assassinate current and former Lebanese officials, as well as efforts to normalise relations with Israel throughout his career.

Itani was detained at his home in Beirut on Thursday night after several months of monitoring, follow-up and investigations within and outside Lebanon, it said.

The statement said Itani confessed during interrogation to being in contact with Israeli agents in Turkey, where he gave them extensive information on two prominent political figures while monitoring a larger group of politicians.

Itani has performed in plays that tackle Lebanons sectarian divide. His first acting role came in 2013 in Tarik al-Jaddideh, a play written and directed by Yehia Jaber, a survivor of the Lebanese civil war.

Tarik al-Jaddideh is named for a predominately Sunni neighbourhood in Beirut, and Itani reportedly grew up near there. Itani played 14 characters in the one-man play that lambasted societal norms.

News of the arrest came the same day the Lebanese National News Agency reported an Israeli gunboat entered Lebanese waters three times.

Lebanon and Israel have been at war since 1948, the year Israel declared statehood, displacing more than 700,000 Palestinians in the process.
Manang, Nepal  Polls closed in Nepals northern mountain districts as the country voted in the first parliamentary and provincial assembly elections since a new constitution became law two years ago.

More than three million voters were expected to cast their ballot, with some of the remote mountain areas recording sub-zero temperatures and snowfall. The Election Commission put the preliminary voter turnout at about 65 percent.

Commission spokesperson Nawaraj Dhakal said voting started at 7am and ended at 5pm (11:00 GMT).

The election is expected to lay the groundwork for Nepals transition into a federal state. Nepals constitution, declared in September 2015, states the country is a federal democratic republic and the geographical area has been divided into seven states.

It was the first phase of the election, held in 32 districts in the hills and mountains. Complications in logistical management and the possibility of a harsh climate in the mountains mean the election has to be held in two phases, with the second slated for December 7 in 45 districts. November and December can be extremely cold, and most of the villagers travel down to warmer regions.

Political forces on the left  mainly Nepals Communist Party, Unified Marxist-Leninist and Nepals former Maoists  joined forces in early October and are running together against the democratic alliance of the Nepali Congress and the former monarchical parties.

The effect of the alliances can be seen even at 3,500 metres in Manang village. Because of its remoteness and distance from the capital, in the past, the community used to make unanimous decisions related to village issues. Now, mainstream politics have affected community dynamics, and locals have had to take sides.

There are possibilities of scuffles between youth cadres of two political parties, democratic alliance and left alliance. So far, it has been peaceful. We have deployed security forces to abort such situations, the chief district officer of Manang said.

Election-related violence

More than 600 security forces have been deployed for Manang, out of 250,000 nationally. More than 17 people have been injured in election-related violence across the nation.

Manang district is in Province 4 and has the smallest electorate, with just 5,881 registered voters. Every vote counts and everyone here is related. Clanship rather than political ideology plays a big role, and tensions on the day before the election were high.

I came here for two reasons: one, because I could not say no to my family. More than politics, I had to support my family member, who is a candidate. If he wins, I hope he develops the village, said Shidi Gurung, 53, a distant relative of the candidate representing the left alliance.

Cheta Gurung, who is related to the democratic alliance candidate, says that she came to support him so that he would develop the village. Since most of the villagers are related to each other, people are feeling the pressure: Nobody should be forced to vote for one side or the other.

Many of the voters from this district live in Kathmandu, and candidates have provided shuttle services for their supporters. Manang was recently connected by roads and hundreds have made the perilous journey. Voters have had to be shuttled back and forth to a lower altitude, as many have suffered altitude sickness.

One candidate will represent Manang in the house of representatives and two will be elected to represent the state assembly.

Ngopang Gurung, 79, who represented Manang back in the 1970s, has also come to vote.

I could not just stay back. I want to vote for the candidate who will develop this village and the district  a candidate with wisdom and compassion, a love for the country. Such a candidate can do much when they get to power.
Islamabad, Pakistan The Pakistani army has been called in to restore order to the capital after clashes between anti-blasphemy protesters and police left at least 174 people injured.

Thousands of riot police and paramilitary personnel on Saturday fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon at the protesters in an attempt to dislodge them from a major highway into Islamabad.

The protesters, numbering as many as 2,000, stood their ground, fighting back by throwing stones and beating police with sticks and metal rods in running battles that continued throughout the day.

The protesters have been blocking the Islamabad expressway, the main road into the capital, since November 8, demanding the resignation of Federal Law Minister Zahid Hamid over a perceived softening of the states position on blasphemy.

Last week, a Pakistani court ordered the government to clear the sit-in protest, prompting a series of meetings between protest leaders and the government to attempt to reconcile differences.

By midday, the demonstrators appeared to have beaten back the police to roadblocks located several kilometres away from the site of the protest.

We will remain deployed but are holding our positions for now, Khalid Khattak, Islamabads police chief, told Al Jazeera. We do not want to cause further casualties [and] will adopt a new strategy soon.

At least 111 of those injured in the clashes were members of the police or other security forces, said Dr Farrukh Kamal, an official at the PIMS government hospital where most of the wounded were being treated.

Official figures on how many protesters had been arrested during the crackdown were not immediately available.

Caught in the crossfire

Liaquat Kazmi, 30, was standing outside his home near the Faizabad interchange, where the protest is centred, when he was manhandled and beaten by police as the crackdown got under way.

I am just a regular citizen, I have no connection to the protesters or to the police, he said from his hospital bed. Without asking any questions as to who I was, [the police] brutally beat me, and then one of them shot me at close range with a rubber bullet.

Kazmi suffered a serious wound to the chest, but doctors said he would make a full recovery.

Safoor Akram, 23, a police constable from the nearby town of Rawat, was among those tasked with being the first wave in the clearing operation against the protesters.

We were surrounded by those maulvis [religious leaders]. First, they stole our mobiles and wallets, and then they beat us mercilessly with sticks and their fists, he told Al Jazeera.

Akram and two other policemen were then taken hostage and held by the protesters for five hours, he said. They were eventually released.

As the crackdown got under way, Pakistans media regulator ordered all television news channels other than the state broadcaster taken off air, saying their live coverage was compromising the security operation.

Shortly thereafter, access to social media sites Twitter and Facebook was also cut across the country.

Protesters digging in

By nightfall, small protests had spread to other cities, with gatherings and limited clashes reported from Pakistans largest city, Karachi, as well as in Lahore, Gujranwala and Faisalabad.

In Islamabad, the protesters appeared to have dug in for the night, with more than 1,000 gathered around a makeshift stage, raising slogans of solidarity with Islams Prophet and vowing not to back down.

The smell of tear gas hung heavy in the air, hours after the last shell had been fired from the days onslaught.

The road that has become the protesters home over the last two weeks was strewn with stones and other detritus from the earlier battle. Among the crowd, many protesters stood armed with sticks and rods, policing the entry points of the demonstration.

Nearby, many others were huddled around small fires in makeshift tents, as night drew in.

Follow Asad Hashim on Twitter @AsadHashim
Four peacekeepers killed and 21 others injured near the border with Niger during joint operations with Malian soldiers.

At least four United Nations peacekeepers and a Malian soldier have been killed in two separate attacks in northern Mali, according to officials.

Fridays attacks, which also left 21 other soldiers injured, took place while troops from the UN mission in the country, known as MINUSMA, were carrying out a joint operation with Malian forces near the border with Niger.

The first attack happened early on Friday morning in Indelimane, leaving three peacekeepers from Niger and a Malian soldier dead. The second happened near Douentza and left one peacekeeper dead, UN officials said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.

In a statement, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the outrageous incidents against MINUSMA, warning that targeting peacekeepers may constitute war crimes.

The Secretary-General conveys his deepest condolences to the Governments of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger and his profound sympathies to the families of the victims. He wishes a swift recovery to the injured, his spokesperson said.

The mission, which has more than 11,000 troops and was established in 2013, is one of the most dangerous peacekeeping operations in the worl,d with troops and convoys regularly coming under attack from armed groups.

According to UN figures, more than 146 members of the mission have lost their lives since 2013.

Last month, three UN peacekeepers from Chad were killed when their vehicle hit a landmine and fourth peacekeepers died later from their wounds..

The security situation in Mali has been fragile since 2012 after armed groups captured the entire northern part of the country and were only pushed back a year later following a military intervention by France.
Persistent rain on the Pacific Coast is bringing flooding to Washington State in the US.

Washington is among the most flood-prone US states, west of the Mississippi River. Here, the costs of flood damages exceed the financial impact of all other natural hazards.

One of the reasons for this is the recurring phenomenon of the Pineapple Express. This is a persistent flow of moisture-laden cloud that flows from the tropics, near Hawaii, the source of many pineapples.

Current satellite imagery reveals just such a ribbon of cloud at the moment, while rain has been falling, sometimes heavily, for the last week.

Much has fallen on Olympic National Forest which is a natural sponge and grows on the peninsula to the south of Puget Sound.

But water flows downhill and rivers in the north of Washington State have now exceeded their normal capacity and overflowed.

In Mount Vernon, seat of Skagit County, the Skagit River crested on Friday at 10.1 metres, the highest water level since 2006.

The flood level of the river here is 8.5 metres. In 2010, authorities began building a $30m flood wall to keep downtown Mount Vernon dry  the city says the flood wall worked.

The Baker River, which is a southward-flowing tributary of the Skagit River, has overflowed.

The small town of Hamilton was flooded and evacuated for the first time in 11 years. The towns fire chief and mayor activated the emergency evacuation sirens at 8am. At noon, the evacuation became mandatory. Some had to leave Thanksgiving food uncooked.

The heavy rainfall in recent weeks has increased soil moisture to high levels across Western Washington. This has created a heightened threat of landslides.

Seattle, the states largest city, benefits from the shelter of Both Olympic National Forest and Vancouver Island. As a result, it has a relatively low average rainfall for the month of November.

In fact, at 167mm, the effects of shelter are pretty obvious and this month, despite the now swelling rivers, Seattle has recorded 166mm of rain so far.

The next two days have the potential to deliver another 130mm of rain onto Olympic Forest, so the river levels may rise again. Much of this part of the state is put down to agriculture and as such, horse and cattle rescue efforts are likely to be an increasingly common need.

Extra reporting from Kiro7
With Trumps Middle East peace plan in jeopardy, State Department says PLO office to remain open at least for 90 days.

The United States has backtracked on an announcement that Palestinian offices in Washington, DC would be closed, following Palestinian threats to sever all communication with the Americans as they work on a new Middle East peace plan.

The US order last week to close the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) office was in response to efforts by Palestinians to indict Israeli officials at the international court, over illegal settlement expansion and violent crimes.

However, the US State Department announced the reversal on Friday, saying the PLO office in the US capital would be allowed to operate for at least the next 90 days.

The US had advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez told reporters.





Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said at the United Nations in September that the Palestinians called on the International Criminal Court [ICC] to open an investigation and to prosecute Israeli officials for their involvement in settlement activities and aggressions against our people.

Illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories have expanded exponentially in recent years. And, for the first time in two decades, a new Israeli settlement is being built in the West Bank.

Since 1967, Israels government has transferred between 600,000 and 750,000 Israeli citizens into the occupied territories.

The office closure announcement ignited an angry response from the Palestinians who threatened to cut all communication with US officials, thereby thwarting US President Donald Trumps effort to broker Middle East peace.

Trumps adviser, Jared Kushner, has been working on a peace plan to present to both sides in the coming months.

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We, therefore, are optimistic that at the end of this 90-day period, the political process may be sufficiently advanced that the president will be in a position to allow the PLO office to resume full operations, Vasquez said.

A legal requirement enacted in 2015 said the US cannot allow the Palestinians to have a Washington office if they support investigations of Israeli nationals for alleged crimes in Palestine.

While Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute  the treaty of the ICC to which all members are bound to  its nationals could be tried by The Hague-based court for crimes committed on Palestinian territory.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  A Rohingya repatriation deal is being hailed as a first step by the Bangladesh government, but many argue the plan is premature.

Myanmars Rakhine state is the ancestral home for Muslim-majority Rohingya, but those living there face discrimination, violence, and segregation. Human rights group Amnesty International calls it a system of apartheid.

The repatriation deal does not take Rohingya refugees rights into consideration, said the European Rohingya Council (ERC). Its Malaysia ambassador, Tengku Emma Zuriana, has spoken out against it.

This repatriation process should not proceed until the safety of the Rohingya [can be] ensured, she said.

Malaysia is home to about 150,000 Rohingya. Several non-government organisations held a press conference here on Thursday to discuss the repatriation plan.

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The United Nations and United States have stated the violent actions taken by Myanmars armed forces and local vigilantes amount to ethnic cleansing against its Rohingya minority.

This must be a voluntary process, in safety and dignity, and for them to return to their homes  not into camps. And if theres any loss of property and life, it must be compensated fairly, Zuriana said.

Malaysian civil society groups and faith-based organisations urged the Myanmar government to end the violence, and to ensure the safety of the Rohingya living in Rakhine state before any repatriation process begins.

The Malaysia Consultative Council of Islamic Organisation (MAPIM) said any repatriation deal must include protection and compensation for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh whove lost everything amid the heavy-handed security clearance operation.

Even if the agreement has been finalised, we strongly call on the UN to ensure safe passage for the Rohingya to return back to their homes, said MAPIM President Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid.

He went on to ask the international community and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): What repatriation are they planning to implement when the Rohingyas lives are totally destroyed?

Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organization Malaysia (MERHROM) wanted to remind Bangladesh of past Rohingya repatriations to Myanmar.

[An] estimated 240,000 Rohingya were repatriated by the Bangladesh government under the 1978 agreement, which had a six month time limit. After that, Bangladesh repatriated about 236,000 Rohingya until 2005 under the 1992 agreement, noted MERHROM President Zafar Ahmad.

In 2012, Myanmars armed forces began to force Rohingya into refugee camps, both in Rakhine state and across the border into Bangladesh.

Recent attacks on a police outpost in Rakhine state by the armed group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) sparked the latest army crackdown. More than 600,000 Rohingya fled their homes into Bangladeshs refugee camps.

MERHROM wants the UN Security Council to conduct an assessment of the situation in Rakhine state, to ensure military operations against Rohingya have ceased.

Myanmar Armed Forces Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has said the Rohingya could return only if they are real citizens.

The UN said on Friday the time wasnt right for a Rohingya return.

At present, conditions in Myanmars Rakhine state are not in place to enable safe and sustainable returns. Refugees are still fleeing, and many have suffered violence, rape, and deep psychological harm, said Adrian Edwards, a spokesperson for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

It is critical that returns do not take place precipitously or prematurely, without the informed consent of refugees or the basic elements of lasting solutions in place, he added.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Malaysia agree they must be consulted.

Until the Myanmar government is serious to improve the situation, the Bangladesh government should not agree to any repatriation plan, Zuriana said.

The European Rohingya Council is calling [on] Myanmar authorities to grant full citizenship to the Rohingya and review the [1982] citizenship law.

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ERC called on the international community to send a clear message to Myanmar that it will not tolerate any further violence. It also said it wants to see the UN observe, support, and monitor all investigations into human rights violations.

Humanitarian agencies providing aid and medical services to the Rohingya in Rakhine state are not allowed to access secured areas, where those most affected need urgent help.

Until unhindered access is granted to aid agencies in Rakhine by the Myanmar government, refugee and civil society groups in Malaysia will continue to voice opposition to any agreement, they said.

The concern is Myanmar will force returning Rohingya into displacement camps and settlement zones protected by the same armed forces guilty of carrying out attacks them.

They dont have the freedom to go back home, Zuriana said.
Kutupalong Refugee Camp, Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh  Rohingya refugees tuned in on handheld, nine-band radios to the news that the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar had signed a preliminary deal for their return.

The news slowly made its way throughout the labyrinthine alleyways of tarpaulin and bamboo shelters that more than 800,000 stateless Rohingya now call home. For those living in the camps, the development was frustratingly light on details, but the first repatriations could start in two months.

More than 620,000 Rohingya, a minority Muslim group, have fled Myanmars Rakhine State since August 25 amid allegations of murder, mass rape, and coordinated arson carried out by the Myanmar military, in what the United States and United Nations have called ethnic cleansing. The violence came after attacks on Myanmar police stations by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.

A 1982 law prohibits Rohingya from becoming citizens of Myanmar. For decades, smaller groups of Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh to escape persecution from the majority Buddhist population in Myanmar. The most recent repatriation agreement was in 1992.

Rights groups have called for international monitors to oversee the latest repatriation, noting that Rohingya must be promised safety, the right to return to their land, equal rights and citizenship. Amnesty International has called the deal premature, as thousands of Rohingya continue to flee to Bangladesh every week.

Al Jazeera spoke with Rohingya refugees at the Kutupalong Refugee Camp about the prospects of returning to Myanmar.

Abdul Jabar, 65, former community chairman from Tung Bazar Village

The military started firing at us as we were fleeing our village when they started the attacks [in August]. My son was killed and two of my daughters were taken away by the military. I have five other children who made it to Bangladesh  I am educated. When I was younger, it was better for us. I was educated by a Muslim government teacher.

But education is not so easy for Rohingya any more. I did not get a job, despite being educated, because I was Rohingya. Rather, other non-Rohingya got the job, even though I was better educated.

I heard the news about the repatriation agreement from the radio. We dont want the 1992 agreement. We want that no violence will happen to us, that people will get an education, that people will freely move and not have to bribe the military to get around. If we do not get more rights, I will die here in Bangladesh.

Nur Kamal, 18, farmer from Maungdaw Township

I came to the camps in the beginning of October. Our mosques and madrasas were closed by the government in 2012. The government has been pressuring us, and the situation got gradually more difficult. Our clerics were jailed.

If a Rohingya is well educated, he cannot get any job like Rakhine people. We cannot live freely. Im extremely eager to go back to my homeland, but the first and main thing we need is citizenship. If we are not given citizenship, I would die rather than go back.

After the repatriation in 1992, Rohingya continued to be repressed. They would say, Why are you here? You are Bengali. Were afraid this repatriation agreement will be the same as in 1992. We want a different agreement. In the 1992 agreement, you needed to show Myanmar identity papers to return. Most people dont have Myanmar identification cards. I have one and my grandfather has one, but my father does not. Families will be separated.

I will also only go back if we can return to our land. We really miss our land in Myanmar; it is too crowded here in the camps. We are in hardship here. We dont have fuel to cook food. First, we want citizenship status; that is our main demand. We want all people to be treated equally.

Nur Bahar, 35, mother of five from Buthidaung Township

I will never go back to Myanmar as things are now. The Myanmar government disregarded our dignity. Women were raped and oppressed by them. The military surrounded our village and began firing on us. We ran. My aunts child and husband were killed.

We tried to hide in the woods. I was raped by the military. I was beaten, hit in the head and shoulders and legs. I never experienced peace in Myanmar. There, we could not sleep. Here, at least we can sleep and know we are safe.

Even if the Myanmar government says we are safe, I wont go. They say one thing and do another. I will only go if we are given citizenship status and the government promises us protection. They need to settle this in a just way. Otherwise, I will not go back to Myanmar, even if they have to kill me here in Bangladesh.

Sole Mohammed, 50, former shopkeeper in Maungdaw Township

I came to Bangladesh in 2007. When I left Myanmar, there wasnt any violence, but we had no rights. I had to bribe the government just to do business and move around where I wanted to.

We want to go back to our homeland, our farms, our cattle and our shelters. We miss these things. But we are trying to get more rights from Myanmar. If they dont give us citizenship, why would we want to go back there? The people are not free to work, do any kind of ritual, choose any kind of profession. It is hard for children to get an education and we cannot freely move.

I will return if the situation improves, and our kids can get an education, and our land is returned, so we can live like the other people in Rakhine. We want equality.

Feroza Khatum, 24, from Rathedaung Township

My daughter was thrown into the fire of a burning house by the Myanmar military. The military killed her. She was three and a half years old. I have no other children.

I will not return now because we have been oppressed and I remember that oppression. I do not hope to return.

We should have citizenship status and the military must assure the international community that they will not oppress us. But I dont believe we will be safe. I dont believe the military will change anytime soon. The Myanmar government must promise us stability, and the world must force them to obey.
East coast of Australia has one of the highest rates of land-clearing, adding pressure on the besieged natural wonder.

Brisbane, Australia  Coral bleaching and the effects of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef have drawn international focus, but another threat has emerged to one of the worlds most famous natural wonders  the systematic clearing of native bushland.

The east coast of Australia is considered a global front for deforestation  ranked alongside Brazil and Democratic Republic of Congo  with one of the highest rates of land-clearing in the world.

Predominately utilised for pasture, 1.4 million hectares of remnant vegetation has been cleared since 2010. Last month, a government report revealed 395,000 hectares of land were deforested between 2015-16 alone.

Environmental experts have warned if these numbers continue unabated the natural landscape of the region risks irreversible damage.

Associate Professor Martine Maron, deputy director of the Centre for Biodiversity and conservation science at the University of Queensland, explained to Al Jazeera just how damaging the effects of land-clearing can be to reef systems.

Due to a process known as gully erosion, sediment from cleared zones is released into catchment areas and flushed into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

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Maron highlighted the sedimentation reduces the health of corals and seagrass by blocking out sunlight and preventing coral growth. In high volume, such sediment can affect the resilience of the reef and its ability to recover from bleaching events.

In essence, sedimentation smothers coral by hindering its ability to photosynthesise.

Sharing Marons concerns is Queensland states Environment Minister Steven Miles, who described the current rates of deforestation as nothing short of catastrophic.

Miles underscored the need for legislation to combat rampant land-clearing, adding he favours incentive policies that would encourage landholders to avoid land-clearing and to re-vegetate riparian zones.

It is very much about reducing our carbon emissions, but also delivering habitat benefits for the Great Barrier Reef, he told Al Jazeera.

In August 2016, Miles and his Labor Party colleagues attempted to introduce such reforms, but were blocked in the state parliament by the Liberal National Party (LNP) in coalition with crossbench members. If Labor returns a majority vote during Queensland elections on Saturday, Miles confirmed the party will revisit the legislation.

However, there continues to be resistance to these reforms. The LNP has stated it will continue to oppose any land-clearing changes, arguing it would stifle production  put a tight lid on development  and undermine farm investments.

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Similarly, the conservative One Nation party has pledged to abolish all land-clearing protections, arguing such legislation hinders the work of farmers.

Farming is integral to Queenslands economy. The state is Australias biggest exporter of beef products, but also has the second-highest unemployment rate in the country and is in severe debt, with economists warning it may top $80 billion Australian dollars ($61bn) in 2018.

As a result, conservative members of the Queensland parliament want to retain jobs in farming areas. This was a point highlighted by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull this week, who endorsed the need for jobs and growth for Queensland at LNPs election campaign launch.

As the debate over deforestation clearly shows, management of the Great Barrier Reef falls within both state and federal jurisdictions.

As it is the federal government that is a signatory to World Heritage Conventions, Miles said the role of his federal counterparts is to assure the global community that Australia is meeting its obligations for the reefs well-being.

A spokesperson from federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenbergs office told Al Jazeera the Queensland government has primary responsibility for regulating land-clearing in the reefs catchment areas.

Laws are already in place in Queensland prohibiting land-clearing, which seek to improve water quality and prevent sediment runoff.

The ministers spokesperson added these measures have proven effective, referencing The Great Barrier Reef Report Card 2016 that shows there is less pollution flowing to the Reef.

But critics point out there are still significant swaths of bushland set aside for clearing.

The Wilderness Society, in conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund, published a joint analysis that concluded a further 1.02 million hectares of land has been earmarked for deforestation in Queensland.

The figures indicate the rate of proposed clearing could be an average of 850,000 hectares a year.

Jessica Panegyres from The Wilderness Society described this as a national disgrace.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Panegyres highlighted that cattle grazing is the number one driver of deforestation in Australia. Given that 93 percent of cleared land was used for pasture last year, it is reasonable to assume this trend will continue, she said.

Panegyres argued this is not sustainable and it undermines market demand for sustainable agriculture.

Some of the biggest food companies in the world have made individual commitments to have zero deforestation in their supply chains, she noted.

To reduce environmental pressures on terrestrial and marine environments, Panegyres said sustainable practices may need to be implemented by industry and both federal and state governments.

It has become clear to governments and industry that if were going to continue growing food in 50 years time, we need to look after the land now, she said.

Professor Maron said without preventive measures to curb deforestation, the Great Barrier Reef will face the further threat of sedimentation pollution.

We will continue to see pressures on the reef intensify if land clearing continues at the very time we need to be protecting it against every additional threat that we can, said Maron.
At least four killed and several wounded in a suicide attack in Quetta on a paramilitary convoy.

Islamabad  A suicide attack in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on a paramilitary forces convoy has killed at least four bystanders, police say.

The attack aimed at vehicles carrying personnel of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force, which largely controls security in the restive province, in the Balochistan provincial capital on Saturday afternoon, said Abdul Razzaq Cheema, the citys police chief.

At least 15 people were wounded in the attack, he told reporters at the scene.

Our investigation is ongoing, but from the evidence we have gathered from the scene so far, it was a suicide attack, he said. It was a crowded area; there were rickshaws and other cars there at the time.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Security forces have been battling an armed, ethnic Baloch separatist movement in the province for almost a decade, and the region has also seen a wave of attacks by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and its allies.

Increasingly, it has come under fire from local affiliates of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvis Al-Alami faction.

Earlier this month, a senior police official was killed in a similar suicide attack on his vehicle in the provincial capital.

In October, at least seven elite anti-terrorism police personnel were killed in a roadside bombing aiming at a truck in which they were travelling.

Balochistan Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti condemned the latest attack in brief remarks to the press on Saturday.

Quetta is in a state of war, he said.

Additional reporting by Saadullah Akhtar in Quetta.
Most of Syrias hospitals, along with its entire healthcare system, have been devastated by six years of war, so Syrians have built a 500sq metre hospital under the ground.

A secret underground hospital has been built by doctors to treat patients injured by government air raids.

The doctors say they have been driven underground because attacks on hospitals above ground have become horrifyingly routine.

While the underground hospital may be relatively safe from aerial bombardment, like other medical facilities in Syria it will struggle to find enough medicines and other necessary supplies.

Al Jazeeras Osama Bin Javaid reports from Gaziantep, Turkey-Syria border
Top Lebanese Druze politician says kingdoms modernisation plans could not work while Riyadh was engaged in Yemen war.

Top Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt has has called on Saudi Arabia to enter dialogue with Iran and said that the Kingdoms modernisation plans could not work while Riyadh was engaged in a war in Yemen.

Lebanon was thrust back onto the front line of a regional power tussle this month between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The two regional powers back competing factions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, the last of which has become a central arena of the proxy battle.

A settlement at minimum with the Islamic Republic (of Iran) gives us in Lebanon more strength and determination to cooperate to enforce the policy of disassociation, Jumblatt wrote in a post on Twitter on Saturday.

Disassociation is widely understood in Lebanon to mean its policy of staying out of regional conflicts, which Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has been stressing since his resignation, in reference to Hezbollah, whose regional military role is a source of deep concern in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi policy of confronting Iran more aggressively around the region has been spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is also attempting to push through difficult and extensive internal reforms.

Saudi Arabia has played a role in Lebanon in the past, helping to broker the end of its civil war in 1990 and invested in the reconstruction afterwards.

But the extent of its role in the November 4 resignation announcement by Hariri has been widely debated in Lebanon and led some Lebanese to fear that Riyadh sought to destabilise their country.

Addressing Mohammed bin Salman, Jumblatt said: The challenges are tremendous and the modernisation of the Kingdom is an Islamic and Arabic necessity, but this mission cannot be successful while the Yemen war continues.

The Druze are a minority religious sect present in Syria, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon.

The Saudi-led coalition has been attacking the Iran-aligned Houthi movement since 2015, after the Houthis seized parts of Yemen including the capital, Sanaa, forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee.

On Wednesday, the coalition said it would allow aid in through the Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif, as well as UN flights to Sanaa, more than two weeks after blockading the country.

Enough of the destruction and siege in Yemen and enough of the human and material drain on the Kingdoms people and resources, Jumblatt said.

Let the Yemeni people choose who it wants and you, Your Excellency the Prince, be the judge, the reformer, and the big brother as your ancestors were.

Jumblatt also said it is very difficult to stop the war unless issues are overcome and discussions are held with Iranians.

On Friday, Jumblatt criticised the way Hariri had been treated by some Saudi circles  the first time he has appeared to direct blame at Riyadh over Hariris resignation.

Lebanese officials say Saudi Arabia put Hariri under effective house arrest in Riyadh and forced him to declare his resignation on November 4. Saudi Arabia has denied holding Hariri against his will or forcing him to resign.
Many young Zimbabweans are hoping this week will prove a watershed moment for their countrys economic future as well as its politics.

After nearly four decades of Robert Mugabes unchallenged power, the countrys banking system, agricultural system and industrial sectors are in urgent need of reform.

So one of the key challenges for Zimbabwes new leader Emmerson Mnangagwa will be to transform the economy into one that can offer good employment opportunities.

They call Mnangagwa the crocodile, but can Zimbabwes new president attack the countrys broken economy and demonstrate a real commitment to reform?

Andrew Simmons reports on the challenges ahead and why some people are sceptical. And Samir Shasha, the CEO of Cambria Africa, joins Counting the Cost to discuss Zimbabwes economic future.

There is a tremendous level of optimism in Zimbabwe at the moment, says Shasha. I think that people would be well advised not expect too much too soon. There will be a lot of need for support and changes There is an interest in making changes and bringing about a new dawn. I truly believe thatOptimism is something that goes along with investing in Zimbabwe and people are optimistic.

He is hopeful that there will be increasing economic support for Zimbabwe  from both the region and the West  and that Zimbabwe will see a greater degree of confidence and commitment, both from the outside and investors from the inside.

I think that when we look at the South African example, empowerment as opposed to indigenisation is truly the way forward [for Zimbabwe] and if policies became more inclined towards empowerment rather than indigenisation, you would have a greater comfort level as far as foreign investment is concerned. If we look back, most of the laws here were based on creating some political favour. And I think that that will change, he tells Al Jazeera.

There is tremendous potential in empowerment. Zimbabweans have one of the greatest resources and thats the resource of education. Its one of the most educated countries in Africa, it has the highest literacy levels. The Zimbabweans that are no longer here, the expatriate Zimbabweans, are really economic refugees  I think that that makes for one of the greatest foreign investments  the return of the diaspora so to speak  to this country.

Libyas slave trade

The UN-backed government in Libya said its looking into allegations that African migrants are being sold at slave markets in Libya.

According to reports, the trade works by preying on the tens of thousands of vulnerable people who risk everything on whats been described as the deadliest route on earth.

They get off the bus when they arrive in Libya and they are quickly put into a kind of murder machine, an extortion machine. They are robbed of their possessions, their families are called. They are forced, they are tortured, they give them money. And then they are sold. by Leonard Doyle, International Organization for Migration

They use smartphones to connect with people smugglers to get them to the coast in the hope that they can cross the Mediterranean into Europe.

There is no proper registration process for the tens of thousands of refugees arriving in Libya.

According to reports, the business of detention centres is unsupervised in some parts of the country and stories of torture, rape and forced labour have emerged.

When the centres get too crowded, people are then allegedly sold off like goods in an open market.

The International Organization for Migration says trade in humans has become so normalised that people are being bought and sold in public for as little as $400.

Mahmoud Abdelwahed reports from a detention centre in the Libyan capital Tripoli. And Leonard Doyle from the International Organization for Migration joins Counting the Cost to discuss Libyas modern-day slavery.

As shocking as it seems, its indeed true. And the reason it [slave trade] can happen is because there is really no rule of law across much of Libya. Libya is a country as big as France, with a lot of space there. Migrants are coming there. they see the promise of a new life when they go to their Facebook feed and they think something wonderful is waiting for them in Europe, because a smuggler has abused the system and has sold them that lie, says Doyle.

They get off the bus when they arrive in Libya and they are quickly put into a kind of murder machine, an extortion machine. They are robbed of their possessions, their families are called. They are forced, they are tortured, they give them money. And then they are sold. Unbelievable, but they are sold in open, public auctions: $400 for a labouring man, maybe a bit more for a women who can be put in the sex trade. And this is whats happening across the country.

Also on this episode of Counting the Cost:

Tencent: Chinas biggest social media company Tencent is now the fifth most valuable publically-traded company in the world edging Facebook out of the top five.

Uber cover-up: If a company that has your credit card address and tracks your movements was hacked youd be alarmed. But what if it paid hackers to destroy the data? We look at why Uber is under pressure from regulators after a secret data breach cover-up. Alan Fisher reports.

South Korea gold: Many South Koreans still remember giving up their gold to help their country when South Koreas economy was facing ruin two decades ago. Kathy Novak reports from Seoul.
A bomb-and-gun attack on a mosque in Egypts Sinai region killed at least 305 people, including 27 children.

Criminal and cowardly. That is how the Egyptian president described an attack on a Sufi mosque on Friday.

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed to respond with what he called brutal force.

At least 305 people were killed in what is seen as the worst attack in Egypts modern history.

It happened in the northern Sinai region. Men, women and children were shot by armed men as they tried to flee al-Rawda mosque in the town of Bir al-Abed.

Since coming to power, Sisi has promised to crack down on armed groups, particularly in the Sinai.

So, why has the Sinai Peninsula become a security nightmare for Sisis government?

Presenter: Hazem Sika

Guests:

Ahmed Badawi  Senior researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern and North African Politics at the Free University of Berlin

Timothy Kaldas  Non-resident fellow at Tahrir Institute for Middle East Politics

Afzal Ashraf  Assistant professor at the Centre of Conflict, Security and Terrorism at Nottingham University
The media story behind the downfall of Robert Mugabe after 37 years in power. Plus, police vs the press in Uganda.

When the moment finally came, it caught many Zimbabweans  their media included  by surprise: After 37 years in power culminating in a week-long struggle, 93-year-old Robert Mugabe resigned as Zimbabwes president.

The transition began when tanks rolled onto the streets of the capital, Harare, and a man in a military uniform appeared on the state-owned TV channel assuring everyone that what looked like a coup and sounded like a coup was, in fact, not a coup.

During seven days of constitutional limbo, the countrys mainstream journalists  many of whom had spent decades toeing the government line  seemed unsure who they were taking their orders from, or what line they were supposed to take.

This changed when Emmerson Mnangagwa, a senior member of the ruling Zanu-PF party, was eventually sworn in as Mugabes successor. But how will the end of the Mugabe rule affect the media and freedom of press in Zimbabwe?

Talking us through the week of confusion that ended an era for Zimbabwes media are:

Lance Guma, managing editor, Nehanda Radio & TV

Wendy Willems, assistant professor, London School of Economics

Alexander Rusero, lecturer, Harare Polytechnic School of Journalism

On our radar:

The US Federal Communications Commission announces plans to repeal rules that safeguard net neutrality.

Google is making changes to its algorithm that will see Russian news agencies RT and Sputnik de-ranked on its search engine.

In India, the furore surrounding a yet-to-be-released Bollywood epic leads to a BJP leader placing a bounty on the heads of the filmmakers.

Police vs the press in Uganda

Among the many challenges Ugandan journalists face in order to do their jobs  political intimidation, harassment and bogus charges, for instance  police brutality has become a major concern of late.

The early years of current President Yoweri Musevenis 31-year tenure saw the opening up of the countrys media.

In recent years, however, things have begun to change, with the government enacting a string of laws that have made the lives of journalists in Uganda increasingly difficult, and have had a chilling effect on reporting.

The Listening Posts Nic Muirhead reports on when journalism in Uganda crosses paths with policing.

Contributors:

Andrew Lwanga, former journalist

Robert Sempala, national coordinator, HRNJ-U

Asan Kasingye, assistant inspector general of police

Sarah Birete, Centre for Constitutional Governance
The president of Ghana talks to Al Jazeera about his countrys democratic success and his hopes for the continent.

Typically associated in international media with political instability, disease, poverty, corruption, dictatorships and a lack of human rights and democracy, African countries struggle to deconstruct the stereotypes.

One of the few exceptions seems to be the Republic of Ghana.

Ghana today  at least on the surface  is enjoying political stability, with a multiethnic population coming together in peaceful democratic elections.

The march of democracy in Africa is something that's going to be very difficult to reverse. by Nana Akufo-Addo, President of Ghana

President Nana Akufo-Addo speaks with Al Jazeeras Jane Dutton on why his country is so different from its neighbours in this respect  and what work still remains to be done in Ghana and in the rest of the continent.

In 1957, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan country to gain independence from colonial rule.

We had our problems early, Akufo-Addo tells Al Jazeera. After the volatility of the first 30-odd years after independence, the people of Ghana  made up their mind that they wanted a democratic government.

Akufo-Addo took office on January 7, 2017, after winning Ghanas seventh peaceful democratic elections since multiparty democracy returned to the country in 1992.

The determination of the Ghanaian people to go through democratic principles and values has meant that election after election has been stronger in terms of its credibility and its transparency  and it has also meant that the willingness of the population to accept the results of our electorate council has heightened, he says.

Elsewhere in the continent, democracy has been far less successful at taking root. In Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta is set to be sworn in for a second term on Tuesday, November 28 after the countrys supreme court rejected two petitions to nullify last months election results.

And this week in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe was forced to resign, ending his 37 years in power after members of his own ZANU-PF party forced him out with the backing of the army.

Its a pity that the current political situation has degenerated to the extent that the army is finding itself [required] to come directly into play, Akufo-Addo says. [That] can never be a long-term solution, obviously  I think at the end of the day, the determination to engage, democratic values will triumph in Zimbabwe.

Still, the president of Ghana remains optimistic about Africas future.

Im confident that the march of democracy in Africa is something thats going to be very difficult to reverse, he says.
The failure of German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to form a coalition government in her fourth term of office has, for the first time, given rise to speculations as to her possible demise as the long-time and seemingly indispensable fixture of German and European politics. Such is the respect, bordering on veneration, for Mutti Merkel in the European mainstream press, that few bother to look critically at her policies and accept without question her assurances that she will make sure that her country continues to be well governed. Yet, there is by now overwhelming evidence that her policies have neither been very successful, nor marked with a great deal of democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and human dignity, as she has accused President Trumps agenda of lacking. What this could mean, of course, is that Emperor Angela has no clothes, with all this implies for her political future and for Germany and the European Union beyond.

There is much to criticize in most of her policies from her sudden decision to outlaw the nuclear industry only months after legally extending its operations, to mindlessly tying the destiny of the EU to that of the Greek bailouts (the end of the Euro is the end of Europe), her support for Russian pipelines, and several others. But limits of space would allow us to focus only at the two policies of which she was the main architect and proponent: energy transition (Energiewende) and the migrants disaster.

As the German minister of the environment (1994-1998), Merkel was an early and enthusiastic supporter of a wholesale transition to renewable energies in a country not known for either much sun or wind, and became a key organizer of the Kyoto Protocol. By the time she first became chancellor in 2005, the renewable energy law (EEG) was in full swing and its disastrous implications soon manifested themselves. In 2017 German households paid 30 cents per KWh compared to 9 cents in the U.S. and 16 cents in France. This led to 300,000 German families unable to pay their bills and having their electricity disconnected. A large portion of their bill (6.88 cents) was made up of renewable energy surcharges. It is estimated that in ten years the average household will pay euro 440 per annum for electricity, while the cost of the Energiewende would explode to euro 520 billion by 2025, to be borne once again by the German taxpayer. Despite these huge expenses, Germany continues to rely on lignite coal to avoid blackouts and will be unable to meet its CO2 emissions promises for years to come. No wonder a prominent former green executive calls the Energiewende a disaster in the making.

As bad as Merkels environmental policies were, the impact of her migration policies are a lot worse because they affect many other countries. What happened there very simply was Merkel making a decision without bothering to consult even her cabinet, let alone EU authorities or neighboring countries. And she did that totally disregarding established parliamentary procedures in the Bundestag. So much for the rule of law. It bears reminding that Frau Merkel is the chancellor of Germany, not of Europe, though she certainly acted as the latter in this particular case. She then compounded her error by demanding that the Eastern European EU members accept migrant quotas as determined by the European Commission, that is to say by Berlin. This has set in motion a widening fault line between East and West in the old continent that could imperil the EU long after Merkel is gone.

A monumental green gabfest has come to an end in Bonn with predictably nothing to show. But not to worry, says the left-liberal Zeit weekly, since there were not any great expectations for it anyway. Yet, there was and there is plenty to worry for the assembled eco-cabal from 190 countries, if they were to remove the green shades for even a moment, not least because it coincided with the collapse of the efforts to form a government of three German parties that have very little in common. For they were told in no uncertain terms by chancellor Angela Merkel herself that saying goodbye to the hated coal energy in her country is not in the cards for a long time to come, if ever. Coming from the world champion of renewable energy, this must have hurt. What they were not told would have hurt a lot more, and that is the reality that this experiment in German wishful thinking is collapsing in front of our eyes, very likely spelling doom for the entire renewable utopia long after Merkel is gone.

Alex Alexiev is chairman of the Center for Balkan and Black Sea Studies (cbbss.org) and editor of bulgariaanalytica.org. He tweets on national security at twitter.com/alexieff and could be reached at alexievalex4@gmail.com.but
Many Americans know a little about the life and times of Elon Musk, the visionary futurist and dynamic billionaire. Musk grew up in South Africa, moving eventually to Canada and then the United States. He received Bachelor's degrees in physics and economics at the University of Pennsylvania, and spent just two days in a Ph.D. program at Stanford before deciding to become a cutting-edge tech sector entrepreneur instead. He has never looked back since.

Few people realize that Musk played an important part in the creation of PayPal. More familiar is Musk's role as the CEO of Tesla, an innovative and increasingly successful auto manufacturer that produces stylish electric cars. He also helped found SolarCity, one of the leading companies in the United States that manufactures solar panels. Currently, Musk is planning an integrated network of satellites that could provide broadband internet access to the entire planet, and he is exploring artificial intelligence and the potential for brain-computer interfaces.

Perhaps Musk's greatest claim to fame is his role as founder and CEO of SpaceX, a company that has made enormous strides in the commercialization of space flight. Not only does SpaceX deliver payloads (cost-effectively) into space, for private companies and for NASA and the U.S. military, but it also has ambitious plans to build a human colony on Mars. In the near term, it plans to send two space tourists on a lunar fly-by in 2018. It is no wonder that Musk has been repeatedly recognized for his boldness and vision. Forbes, in fact, has named him as the 21st most powerful person on earth --and, one assumes, his Martian ranking must be even higher.

Like all celebrated inventors/entrepreneurs, however, Musk has had his share of failures and detractors, and more importantly his successes have always come at a price. Increasingly, that price is borne by taxpayers, in the form of costly subsidies, tax breaks, and government contracts. According to the Los Angeles Times, Musk's companies have received, or will receive, government subsidies and tax breaks totaling $4.9 billion! It is thus reasonable to ask: is Elon Musk worthy of such a giant investment of taxpayer dollars?

Musk is, as one would expect, a brilliant self-promoter. Indeed, his fame is part of his entrepreneurial strategy. Where his penchant for self-aggrandizement becomes politically problematic is in the field of lobbying, where Musk's companies excel. SpaceX, for example, has spent at least $4 million on lobbying since 2002, and, surely not coincidentally, it has received massive contracts from NASA to send supplies to the International Space Station (ISS).

The initial contract, valued at $1.6 billion, was cheap compared to the multi-billion-dollar commitments that NASA has since made to SpaceX  and costs per mission are escalating in a troubling way. SpaceX is also increasingly the space transport company of choice for the U.S. Air Force, which employs SpaceX to launch highly sensitive national security payloads. Moreover, thanks to the way SpaceX's contracts with the government are written, even in the case of rocket failures SpaceX gets paid virtually all of its fees.

Meanwhile, NASA has shown favoritism towards SpaceX in at least one instance of rocket failure, seemingly concealing the findings contained in accident reports. The recent explosion during testing of SpaceX's Block 5 Merlin engine, slated for use in manned missions, raises the stakes considerably. The public has the right to know whether SpaceX's lobbying efforts, and the Musk brand's sheer notoriety, lead the government to treat SpaceX with kid gloves. Given that the company will soon be shuttling not just supplies, but astronauts, to the ISS, the question is not merely academic or financial. It could become a matter of life and death.

Conservatives may also be troubled by the fact that Musk steers most of his political donations to Democrats (he gave the maximum allowable amount to President Obama's reelection campaign), and he has sharply criticized President Trump and even resigned from two advisory panels in protest against the President's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. Musk is by no means as political or as progressive as many other California billionaires, but his agenda, insofar as he has one, is more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

Musk's ventures can also stimulate corruption and wasteful government spending. For example, much controversy surrounds the Buffalo Billion project in Western New York, which is investing state funds on a massive scale to underwrite the construction of a factory to produce solar panels for Musk's SolarCity company. Much of the state money has apparently been steered to contractors that donate money to Governor Cuomo, however, and it remains to be seen whether the promised 1,500 jobs will materialize. SolarCity has also faced scrutiny for its sales and pricing policies, and it has paid a $29.5 million penalty to the federal government for allegedly misrepresenting how much it invested in new facilities.

In many ways, Mr. Musk's innovations in space travel, clean energy, transportation, and artificial intelligence are the embodiment of classic Yankee ingenuity, and they help to keep the U.S. at the forefront of technological evolution. In this sense, every American should be rooting for Musk to succeed. The truth, though, is that even high-flying visionaries need to be brought back down to earth from time to time, and more importantly the beneficiaries of government spending should always be accountable to the American taxpayer. Otherwise, we, the people, may find ourselves on a Musk-supplied rocket, or perhaps an electric car, to nowhere. That would be a disappointing conclusion to the often-inspiring story of Elon Musk.

Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy, associate professor of History at SUNY Alfred, blogs at: www.waddyisright.com
Last Saturday, President Trump stated that he thought Russian president Putin meant what he said when he denied interfering in the American presidential election. Whereupon Senator John McCain shot back that he was shocked that our chief executive would take the word of a KGB official over that of the American intelligence community. Leaving aside certain obvious questions, such as whether Trump may be justified in suspecting the trustworthiness of some past leaders of the intelligence community and whether Trump was actually agreeing with Putins disclaimer, lets focus on McCains designation of Putin as a KGB official. This is the same characterization that one hears repeatedly on Fox-news; indeed Fox-news celebrity Charles Krauthammer usually begins his remarks about Putin by referring to him as the KGB agent.

What is being criticized is not the recognition that Putin learned political tricks while working for the KGB earlier in life. It is rather the attempt to view him and his regime as an extension of the Soviet Communist one. This is a glaring misreading of the cultural and political changes in Russia since the 1990s. There isnt much evidence that Putin was ever anything but a Russian nationalist, who worked for the Soviet rulers of the Russian empire before they fell from power. Identifying Putin as a left-over Soviet Communist is misleading, and perhaps like characterizing Mussolini in 1930 as a Marxist, because he was a socialist before the Great War. This linkage between Putin and Soviet Communism seems especially popular among geriatric Cold Warriors who may already be nostalgic for the Cold War. It also plays well among a GOP base that like to imagine that theyre still confronting the evil empire that President Reagan famously denounced.

But much has changed since the early 1980s. Most of the Western fan base of the present Russian government is situated on the very conservative Right. It is certainly not found among leftists, if we make an exception for the Nations Steven Cohen, a leftist Russia expert whom those sympathetic to Putin like to quote. But Cohens efforts to show Putin in a favorable light is hardly typical of the Left or of Putins neoconservative critics in the U.S. More typically we find an international gay activist like Jamie Kirchik denouncing Putin as a reactionary homophobe. This Russian despot, complains Kirchik, has banned the presentation of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle in Russian schools and has openly associated gay marriage with Western decadence. Putin has also gone out of his way to advance the moral and social teachings of the Russian Orthodox faith and attacks current Western notions of secularism. At the same time he is refurbishing Orthodox monasteries and churches throughout Russia and boasts that in the last three years atheism has declined in his country by 50%. In June, 2015 Putin announced his intention of reinstating what is left of the Russian royal family in their ancestral residence. This is widely regarded as the first step toward restoring the Russian monarchy.

While Western societies rush into a multicultural, PC society, Putin is presenting himself as the defender of Western Christian civilization. He is also, not incidentally, a traditional Russian nationalist pursuing the Russian policy of expansion on his countrys Western border. Although former Soviet satellites are justified in fearing Russian expansionist politics, some Eastern European heads of government now view the Cultural Marxist ideology coming out of the West as even more pernicious for their way of life than Putins efforts to reclaim the Soviet empire. Despite Hungarys unhappy history with Russia, its premier Viktor Orban has expressed sympathy for elements of Putins worldview. This has also been heard from other traditionalist leaders in Eastern Europe, who, like Hungary, are interested in Russian gas deliveries as well as having a protector against a socially disruptive Western liberalism. A complaint made against former National Front head Marine Le Pen during her presidential campaign earlier this year was her praise of Putins conservatism.

Please note that I have not come to praise the Russian president. A Russian nationalist, he seems hell-bent on geopolitical expansion, and his stirring of the pot in the Middle East should be of some concern to our country. Further, because one feels traditionalist repugnance for the cultural transformation undergone by the West in recent decades does not mean that one has to lavish praise on Putin. But it is plainly stupid or dishonest to claim that we are still fighting the Commies or the Soviet evil empire when Putin and his government challenge us. Pat Buchanan has a point when he describes Putin as a paleoconservative who stands for a new international Right: He is seeking to redefine the Us vs. Them world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent West. This dialectic, according to Buchanan, changes radically the locations of the two opposing sides at the outset of the Cold War: when Soviet Russia was viewed as the champion of the international Left and the U.S. as the defender of Judeo-Christian-classical civilization locked in combat with godless Communism. Whether this change is good or not, I shall leave to others to decide. More relevant here is that the platitudes of the Cold War era no longer apply to the current American-Russian confrontation.
Behold a tax plan, or more precisely, two tax bills, one of the House signature, the other of the Senate. Im told that there are all kinds of juicy (or disastrous, depending on whom you ask) bits in it, but what stands out to the casual observer is the top line. The House version defines four income tax brackets, topping out at a rate of 39.6%, while the Senate proposes seven, with a top rate of 38.5. Apparently, this is the best we can expect from a federal government supposedly dominated by small-government Republicans.

Yet the Democrats weep, gnash their teeth, rend their garments and exhibit other well-rehearsed expressions of impending Armageddon.

The Deficit! they cry. The Holy, Sacrosanct Deficit!

Let us set aside for the moment the Laffer Curve effect, acknowledged by such right-wing conservative Republicans as John F. Kennedy, John Maynard Keynes, and Woodrow Wilson, that lower rates result in HIGHER revenue to the treasury. On second thought, scratch that -- lets NOT set that aside. Quoting Thomas Sowell citing Benjamin Rader, In 1921, when the tax rate on people making over $100,000 a year was 73%, the federal government collected a little over $700 million in income taxes, of which 30% was paid by those making over $100,000. By 1929, after a series of tax rate reductions had cut the tax rate to 24% on those making over $100,000, the federal government collected more than a billion dollars in income taxes, of which 65% was collected from those making over $100,000.

Democrats shed nary a crocodile tear for the Deficit when it was their guy blowing it up for eight years. We may take seriously their claim that Uncle Sam lacks even trousers with which to cover his nakedness when ten of the top twenty wealthiest counties in the country (out of 3,144) are no longer within spitting distance of Mother Sow D.C.

Tax cuts for the rich! they chant, and the rats and cockroaches scamper in terror for the wall cracks and under the refrigerator.

Laugh or cry? Squishy, squeamish Republican politicians need to grow a few organs, beginning with a brain, extending down the spine to at least a couple of reproductive gonads, and aggressively smack down this tired canard whenever the Dems trot it out like some kind of trump card (pun intended).

Tax cuts for the rich? George Soros is not going to pay that 40% rate. Dianne Feinstein is not going to pay that rate. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, Michael Bloomberg, and the rest of the Democrat aristocracy arent going to pay it, because they already have their billions and the high-priced tax accountants to find them the loopholes, dodger schemes, and unproductive shelters where capital goes to die. Which is why they, the true permanent wealthy class, are laughing all the way to the bank about tax cuts for the rich.

The people who are paying that 40% rate are the men and women who might otherwise be giving you your next job or raise: small business entrepreneurs who have not yet accumulated cushy fortunes and high-priced tax accountants. Except that with that tax rate, instead of hiring ten new workers, they can only hire six; or if they hire more than six, each will have to live with less -- up to 40% less. Multiply that by a million business owners, and thats another four million people who wont be getting a new job or raise next year.

Some accounting geniuses will say thats not true, because all the business owner has to do is reinvest any surplus in new workers, thereby turning taxable profit into a non-taxable expense. But this is an argument from a bureaucratic mentality, a world where everything happens on a regular, predictable schedule, year in and year out. That is indeed the way Washington and Sacramento work, but it is not at all how entrepreneurial business works. The fickle winds of annual profit and loss do not guarantee any such regularity. The entrepreneur who made $500K this year may have made $250K last year and may make -- or lose -- a million dollars next year. He or she has been working 80 hours per week for 20 years and had many failures and loss years along the way. She is not a member of the privileged permanent wealthy class, getting fat in her sleep. Entrepreneurial business -- the leading driver of job growth -- is creative, risky, difficult and volatile. It grants privileges to no credentials, no pedigrees, no races, sexes, ethnicities, birthrights, or approvals from authority. 80% of startups fail within five years. Yet we feel we just must punish them whenever they succeed.

The multi-billion-dollar quasi-monopoly corporations that the left owns now are laughing all the way to... themselves. The progressive income tax code is their protection racket, ensuring no upstarts like Apple Computer in 1984 (enabled by Reagans tax cuts) ever disturb their comfortable status quo.

Since Democrats are going to scream about the end of the world anyway if we do much as cut 1% from the budget of the Department of the Interior (hey -- I think something like that actually did happen), then why not give them something worth screaming about, like a Steve Forbes/Herman Cain/Ben Carson flat tax?

Timidity is a self-inflicted wound for which Republicans will pay at the polls next year if the economic resurgence sputters. Incremental progress toward the ultimate goal is good, but I remind my colleagues that one of the key reasons Trump got elected was that Americans got fed up hearing from the Bushes, the McConnells, the McCains, and the rest of the landed gentry of the GOP why it was their most well-considered judgement, dont you know, yes, based on decades of selfless public service, that nothing could be done.

Howard Hyde is a Fellow of the American Freedom Alliance www.AmericanFreedomAlliance.org and author of the book Escape from Berkeley: An EX liberal progressive socialist embraces America (and doesn't apologize).
Along with thousands of legitimate Venezuelan asylum-seekers, now even those aligned with the Chavista regime are seeking asylum. There's a new case in Canada.

Ralenis Tovar, the Venezuelan criminal court judge who signed the arrest warrant of Leopoldo Lopez, now wants asylum in Canada. The man she signed the arrest warrant for was a popular dissident leader who was thrown in jail without trial in 2014 after being blamed for violent protests. He spent three years in mostly solitary confinement as a result of her failure to speak out. Tovar admitted she knew he was innocent but signed the arrest warrant anyway because she said Chavista goons made her do it, threatening her with the grim fate of another judge who resisted Chavista orders.

It's an interesting case study of how the little things a regime gets away with, such as the grim fate of the first judge, leads to a chain reaction with the next judge  the one the regime wants something from. Yet she was in a position of power when she signed the warrant, so now that the country has turned into a hellhole because of it, she doesn't like the result.

To the Canadian press, she has a sympathetic case.

Out on Twitter, however, ordinary Venezuelans are not happy about it.

La juez Ralenis Tovar Guillen, otra que le vendio su alma al diablo!! #ProhibidoOlvidar pic.twitter.com/pqjXhFGNoM  Ingrid Santiago (@IngridSantiagoT) June 6, 2014

Translation: "Another one who sold her soul to the devil."

Dia del abogado: Pregunto si Juez Ralenis Tovar y Adriana Lopez tendran desfachatez d celebrar luego d atropellar a Leopoldo y estudiantes?  Vp MARCANO (@MarcanoVp) June 23, 2014

Rough translation: "Day of the Lawyer: Will Judge Ralenis Tovar and Adriana Lopez have the impertinence to celebrate the eventual victory of Leopoldo and the students?"

Juez: Ralenis Tovar Guillen RT @ElUniversal: Ordenan a Inteligencia Militar capturar a Carlos Vecchio #Venezuela http://t.co/gKToCOtZhT  EDGAR URRUTIA (@elbodega) February 28, 2014

Rough translation: "Judge Ralenis Tovar also ordered military intelligence to capture Carlos Vecchio" (another dissident and ally of Lopez).

#19NOV "TRAS EL ASESINATO DE OTRO JUEZ INVOLUCRADO" LA EXJUEZA -RALENIS TOVAR- QUIEN FIRMARA -OBLIGADA- LA DETENCION CONTRA LEOPOLDO LOPEZ: HUYO A CANADA POR SENTIRSE AMENAZADA! -JUSTICIA NARCO/CASTRISTA- pic.twitter.com/qVqVku9hjD  @linaed09 (@linaed09) November 19, 2017

Rough translation: "The ex-Judge Ralenis Tovar who signed the arrest warrant against Leopoldo Lopez, is going to Canada because she feels threatened. Justice Narco/Castrista!"

La jueza Ralenis Tovar quien firmo detencion d Leopoldo pide asilo en Canada x miedo al regimen xq el juez q ratifico la condena lo mataron y ella corria el mismo peligro.El gbno le pago muy bien a esta corrupta  oleyra monsalve (@oleyram) November 23, 2017

Rough translation: "The Judge Ralenis who signed the detention warrant against Leopoldo asks asylum in Canada out of fear of the regime, exactly as she ratified the orders to kill, and now she claims the same danger. The government paid this corrupt one very well."

Here's the thing: The time to have asked for asylum was when the Chavistas put the Lopez warrant in front of her and told her sign the warrant or else. Instead of saying no and asking for political asylum then, when she would have had a valid case, she signed instead, took the bonuses, and went her merry way while Lopez rotted in prison. Perhaps she thought the crocodile she was feeding by signing that warrant would eat her last. Now she's got problems, and like thousands of other Venezuelans, she wants out.

Now the average Venezuelan has been so economically ruined that he cannot afford a plane ticket out of that hellhole, and if he is lucky, he will make it to Trinidad or Colombia. It's rather hard to be sympathetic to the idea of this person living it up in Canada while ordinary Venezuelans continue to suffer.

It's also suspicious that she isn't asking for asylum in the U.S., where 14,000-plus Venezuelans have gotten asylum this year, topping the charts for U.S. asylum-seekers, as they are in Spain, too. Just this week, the mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, a bona fide dissident, fled to Spain for asylum, which shows how strong the exodus has become. The people and their leaders are fleeing, and now a few rats are following. Yet somehow, Tovar didn't want to ask the U.S. or the Spaniards for asylum. Might that be because Canada is where the soggy-headed lefties live?

Maybe she ought to be forced to lie in the bed she made in Venezuela. Or if she is really a person in danger, which she may well be, perhaps she ought to be shipped to some second hellhole, like Haiti, to wait it out. Asylum should be reserved for those who have displayed some kind of courage and fortitude  not people who aided and abetted the ruin of the regime in the first place.
By deciding to tolerate a corrupt president, Janet Napolitano, the Regents of the University of California have failed in their duty to the citizens of California, who own the university and subsidize that institution with $3 billion a year of their hard-earned taxes. There is no doubt that Napolitano is corrupt: the behavior that she engaged in, once it was uncovered, has been made a crime. But because ex post facto laws cannot be applied to behavior that predated them, she is escaping prosecution.

A criminal who has gone free on a technicality is not suitable for high public office. I seem to be one of the few public voices that cares about the ongoing destruction of the integrity of one of the worlds premier institutions of higher learning. For those who have not been following the story, I described Napolitanos corruption of the system designed to evaluate her performance here, her perfunctory, inadequate apology here, and the fall-guys (her two top staffers) here.

The national media largely have ignored the story, and the California media have given it scant attention. But at least one brave voice shares my outrage. Daniel Borenstein, editorial page editor, writing in the San Jose Mercury-News, has called for Napolitano to be fired. (Update: The Santa Cruz Sentinel also joins the honor roll. However, the Los Angeles Times and SF Chronicle remain silent.) He also provides a story narrative to understand the corruption that helps those less inclined than me to consider the broad abstractions of organizational control mechanisms.

George Blumenthal, chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, was driving to work a year ago when he received a call from Janet Napolitano, president of the 10-campus university system. She was furious, Blumenthal later recalled. The state auditor was surveying the campuses to see if officials were satisfied with services provided by Napolitanos office. Following survey instructions, UCSC officials had sent their answers directly back to the auditor. But Napolitano, who had previously described the survey as a witch hunt, had insisted that her office first screen each campuss answers. UCSC had failed to comply. Napolitano told Blumenthal that the submission is going to be very damaging to the university. When he asked her what she wanted him to do about it, Napolitano responded, Well, withdraw it, you can withdraw it. So thats what he did.

This is the functional equivalent of cooking the books and deceiving the board of directors. Not just a firing offense, but a criminal offense in the corporate world. Corporate presidents have gone to prison for this.

Now that the Regents have failed in their duty to protect the university, I fear that it will suffer the inevitable consequences, harming the institution gravely. How can the federal government live up to its responsibilities to protect Americans if it continues to entrust our most important nuclear weapons management functions to an institution that tolerates corruption in its leader? Ever since its inception, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has been managed by the University of California. Now that this multi-billion dollar contract is up for renewal, two Texas University systems  perhaps sensing the opportunity the California corruption has created -- are moving toward offering competing bids.

Loss of this contract would be a huge blow to UC, and almost certainly would see the universitys global prestige suffer. Such a rebuke, however, is justified.

I think there may be one final opportunity to rescue the University of California from its ethical shame. The Department of Energy must announce that the integrity of the management of bidders will be a major factor in evaluating the bids it will receive for management of LANL.

If the Regents ignore the warning and do not demand Napolitanos ouster, then they will go down in history as infamous enablers of the fall of a once-great university.
I pity those politically correct parents who have an extraordinarily difficult time finding suitable toys for their children. Just about everything out there is culturally insensitive in some way  or worse, advances the patriarchal hierarchy.

But Mattel, Inc. may have found a solution for harried parents who are so worried about bad influences on their children. In January 2016, Mattel completely redid its line of Barbies, adding 23 new dolls of every shape, size, and hue. The campaign was a smashing success and was credited with bringing Barbie back from near oblivion.

This year, Mattel has added a "Hijab Barbie" so Muslim girls don't feel left out.

A what? Yes, it's true. Mattel has brought out a "modestly dressed" Muslim doll, presumably targeting not only Muslim parents, but also those guilty white moms and dads who want to show their daughters (and these days, sons) how to be tolerant of all people's beliefs. Of course, if the neighbors see the kid playing with Hijab Barbie, all the better. Parents then can engage in a little virtue-signaling, proving how much better they are than everyone else.

A great piece on Hijab Barbie from James Robbins in USA Today:

Some conservatives have criticized Mattel for hijab Barbie. Yes, it is obviously a nod to political correctness and a transparent attempt to keep the Barbie franchise edgy. Muslim modesty is in, both as a fashion and political statement. And the political angle is why we are unlikely to see other avatars of feminine modesty such as evangelical Barbie wearing a cross or frum Orthodox Jewish Barbie in her sheitel. How about Amish Barbie? Buggy sold separately. Is there a big demand for hijab Barbie? Mattel thinks so. One obvious market for the doll is the liberal, non-Muslim parent who wants to make a statement to the world about tolerance and intersectionality. This is the kind of person who dresses a baby boy in pink to trap the unwary into an uncomfortable/sanctimonious discussion about gender roles. These parents will have a special glow of virtue about them in the checkout line. In fact, they will make a special effort to go to the mall instead of ordering online so they can chat up the patient checkout person about the social importance of their purchase. But kids love to experiment with juxtaposition, so what happens on Christmas morning when their girls (or boys, whatever!) immediately put hijab Barbie into a skimpy bikini? Odds are they will get a stern lecture on cultural sensitivity. Because really, kids, this isn't about you having fun; it's about your parents sticking it to Trump.

Whatever gives these liberal parents a merry Christmas.

Another potential market (probably not for Christmas) is conservative Muslim parents who want a toy that expresses and helps transmit their values. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. America in part originated as a haven for religious groups seeking to build communities that practiced a way of life based on their beliefs. This is one of the meanings of Thanksgiving, the parable of the pilgrims. A strong and vibrant nation is rooted in family values. It is an expression that conservatives use with affection and one that makes liberals wince. If hijab Barbie helps preserve a form of cultural identification, then great. It's a free country. But on the other hand, it would be a mistake to assume that all kids born into a certain culture want to remain in it. This is an intellectual shortcoming of identity politics, the insistence that you are defined by a group affiliation over which you have no choice. But part of living in a free country is the ability to adopt social mores other than the ones you grew up with, or inherited from a country where such choices are non-existent.

Why would we want to "transmit the values" represented by the hijab? The garment is first and foremost an invention of male Muslims who want to keep their wives and daughters slaves. It also represents a strict interpretation of sharia law, that is anti-democratic, anti-Western, and anti-human.

The first black Barbie appeared in 1968, although it wasn't until 1980 that Mattel marketed a black Barbie to black parents. Strangely, the 1968 version had black features, while the 1980 version looked just like white Barbie but with chocolate skin.

What will Mattel think of next? The obvious choice is "Tranny Barbie" for all those gender-confused five-year-old kids. Such a doll will almost certainly be "anatomically correct," or how would you be able to tell the difference from the original?
We remember the 54th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination this week.

There is something about President Kennedy's legacy, as Alan Brinkley wrote a few years ago:

President Kennedy spent less than three years in the White House. His first year was a disaster, as he himself acknowledged. The Bay of Pigs invasion of Communist Cuba was only the first in a series of failed efforts to undo Fidel Castros regime. His 1961 summit meeting in Vienna with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was a humiliating experience. Most of his legislative proposals died on Capitol Hill. Yet he was also responsible for some extraordinary accomplishments. The most important, and most famous, was his adept management of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, widely considered the most perilous moment since World War II. Most of his military advisers  and they were not alone  believed the United States should bomb the missile pads that the Soviet Union was stationing in Cuba. Kennedy, aware of the danger of escalating the crisis, instead ordered a blockade of Soviet ships. In the end, a peaceful agreement was reached. Afterward, both Kennedy and Khrushchev began to soften the relationship between Washington and Moscow.

He is extremely popular overseas, but the reasons are vague. No one can give you a specific reason or accomplishment.

They love him in Latin America, perhaps for the Peace Corps.

His impact in U.S. politics is huge, and I would recommend Dr. Sabato's book, The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy. Every modern Democrat embraces Kennedy.

For the record, Cuban-Americans are not among JFK fans, primarily because of the Bay of Pigs. Nevertheless, I recognize his amazing appeal and have often wondered when history will look at back at him with more objectivity.

For example, many Democrats want to pin Vietnam on LBJ and civil rights on JFK. The truth is more complicated, because secretary of state Dean Rusk and secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara (from the Kennedy Cabinet) were there for the escalation in Vietnam that started in 1965.

So how long will this "sainthood" of President Kennedy continue? Or are we finally going to get a more objective view?

Maybe it will start now as more allegations of sexual misconduct come out against politicians. It's obvious that President Kennedy had a problem with women, too.

My bottom line is that President Kennedy should be viewed as a politician and not as a saint, as he has been for 50-something years.

Again, I think it will start soon, and that's necessary.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
In a phone call on Friday, Donald Trump told Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the U.S. would stop arming Kurdish fighters in Syria.

Erdogan had been agitating against arming the Kurds in Syria for years, saying the arms were being funneled to the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) militia. NATO has designated the PKK as a terrorist group for its armed attacks inside Turkey.

U.S. arms were being supplied to the YPG, a Kurdish militia Turkey says has ties to the PKK. Arming the Kurds had been a major source of tension between the two countries.

Chicago Tribune:

In late afternoon, the White House confirmed the weapons cutoff would happen, though it provided no details on timing. "Consistent with our previous policy, President Trump also informed President Erdogan of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria, now that the battle of Raqqa is complete and we are progressing into a stabilization phase to ensure that ISIS cannot return," the White House statement said, referring to the recent liberation of the Syrian city that had served as the Islamic State's de facto capital. The decision to stop arming the Kurds will remove a major source of tension between the United States and Turkey, a NATO ally. But it is likely to further anger the Kurds, who already feel betrayed since the United States told them to hand over hard-won territory to the Syrian government. Turkey has pointed to the YPG's affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers' Party  a Kurdish rebel group that has fought the Turkish state for decades  as evidence of its terrorist ties. The YPG, which formed amid the chaos of the Syrian civil war, has worked with U.S. forces to oust the Islamic State from key areas there. The Obama administration began arming the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia, because they were considered the most effective fighters against Islamic State militants. The phone call between Trump and Erdogan followed a summit on Syria held this week in Sochi, Russia. It was attended by Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Russia and Iran backed the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad and helped Syrian forces to rout the Islamic State. The two powers, along with Turkey, have forged an alliance that is advancing its own peace plan, in which the United States would play little role beyond being an observer. They have said U.S. troops should leave Syria now that the Islamic State's defeat appears imminent. But a U.S. withdrawal without a peace plan well on its way would be victory for Assad, and by extension, Iran and Russia.

The Kurds are a minor player in a strategic part of the world. The U.S. fully understands their desire for an independent state but also knows the impossibility of that dream at the present time. The Kurds are spread out in an arc from Syria through Iraq into Iran, Turkey, and Armenia. The idea that all five of those states would allow a carve-out of their territory to satisfy Kurdish ambitions is absurd.

So the Kurds are trapped by history and events. As our most reliable and skillful ally in Syria, the Kurds performed very well. But the present realities regarding Turkey make continued support for the Kurds problematic.

It may seem like weakness to cave in to Erdogan's demands, but once again, reality intrudes. Turkey is a member of NATO, despite electing an Islamist president. Turkey has always played a vital role as a western bulwark against Russian expansion into southern Europe, and despite all, it continues to play that role today.

Americans have had a special place in their hearts for the Kurds. In Iraq, the Kurds are very pro-American and welcomed U.S. troops stationed there. But our support for the Kurds can go only so far before it bumps into other foreign policy realities. It's unclear how that will affect our relations with the Kurds, but it almost certainly won't help to improve them.
President Trump's use of Twitter often horrifies his critics and delights his fans. Faced with an implacably hostile media (for now, at least), he uses the unfiltered, spontaneous medium to snipe at his opponents. For those who worship government and revere the presidency as a sort of high priesthood, its occupant is required to always reflect the dignity and awe of a collectivity that is greater than the sum of its parts.

That's a religion I want nothing to do with, and apparently, neither does the president.

Yesterday, Trump did something no other president has ever done: he mocked Time Magazine for dangling its "person of the year" title before him.

Once upon a time, Time Magazine was a force to be reckoned with. Making its cover as the "man of the year"  back when sexism ruled and magazines mattered  was a big enough deal that even presidents and potentates felt honored. Today, the title retains only some vestigial power to make the progressive editors of Time seem important. Those days are long gone, with even the editors seeming to realize it:

But nobody has ever told Time, "Never mind, not worth it."

Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named "Man (Person) of the Year," like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017

How dare he?

First of all, granting an interview would have been a sucker's bet. Imagine the glee with which Time would announce that even though President Trump eagerly participated, he just wasn't worthy of P-O-Y. That sort of public humiliation is irresistible to those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Twitchy, the site that spares me from ever having to read though Twitter feeds myself, has collected some of the hilarious outrage this tweet has garnered. About a half-hour later, Judd Apatow, the talented comedy director, engaged in a bit of unconscious self-satire by tripping over Godwin's Law:

I am pretty sure Hitler didn't do the interview. https://t.co/a3Copm4bSi  Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) November 24, 2017

Will anyone ever regard Time's cover choice with the same level of interest?

Update: My friend Mark Fitzgibbons emails: "Trump is known for his ego, and people worry that he falls for having it stroked, but he is also shrewd."
It's rare that two corporations cooperate on anything, much less the politically charged topic of "propaganda." But Twitter has apparently given the website BuzzFeed the power to identify suspected "propaganda" accounts on the social media giant that Twitter can then suspend.

I frankly don't care if every one of those accounts is part of a Russian propaganda plot. That's not the issue. The issue is two liberal companies cooperating to interfere with the free flow of information.

Who's to say that BuzzFeed won't start flagging sites it disagrees with politically? Would Twitter accede to the dictates of BuzzFeed then?

The 45 suspect accounts were uncovered through basic analysis of those that interacted or retweeted accounts cited by Twitter to Congress, yet none of them appeared on the company's list. The relative ease of discovery raises serious questions as to just how many Russian-linked bots may still be active on Twitter, how the company identifies and removes such accounts, and whether its process for identifying accounts for its evidence was inadequate. Until BuzzFeed News approached Twitter on Tuesday afternoon with details of the accounts, they all remained active on the platform, though dormant. But within 24 hours, all 45 had been suspended. The network of propaganda accounts was identified using a database of 17 million Brexit-related tweets collected by the University of Sheffield. They tweeted predominantly in German, and were primarily focused on jumping on German hashtag games and other trending topics, often inserting negative messages about the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. However, 20 of the accounts also tweeted about Trump, and 21 about Brexit  with a huge spike of activity on the day of the referendum, 23 June 2016. The tweets about Trump and Brexit were often the only ones the accounts posted in English. Damian Collins, the Conservative chair of the UK parliament's culture, media, and sport committee  which is holding an inquiry into fake news and online propaganda  said the findings showed the information handed over by the social media platform so far was "only the tip of a very large iceberg". "This BuzzFeed investigation clearly calls into question the evidence that Twitter provided to the US Senate judiciary and intelligence committees and demonstrates that whatever process the company undertook to identify Russian-backed fake accounts was simply not rigorous enough," he said. "The findings of this report raise serious questions about the methodology used by Twitter to identify fake content on their platform, and how seriously they are taking investigations by governments and parliaments around the world."

BuzzFeed used keywords to flag accounts it believes are connected to Russian propaganda. That's a dangerous method to employ, considering that other, innocent accounts could also use those keywords and thus get caught up in BuzzFeed's dragnet.

Who decides what's "propaganda," anyway? How many conservative and liberal accounts on Twitter spread or create propaganda? Are liberal accounts that have been tweeting about the Trump dossier a source of anti-Trump propaganda and fake news? Should conservative accounts that spread lies about Democrats be considered "fake news"? These attempts to "clean up" the internet are being done with little thought about the consequences to free speech.

One wonders if Twitter would be so conscientious if a conservative website pointed out propaganda accounts on the left.
Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky was a Russian chemist and photographer, best known for his pioneering work in color photography during the early 20th century. His priceless color photographs documenting the waning days of the Russian Empire before the First World War and the Russian Revolution are today some of the most prized possession of the United States Library of Congress.

In the beginning of the 20th century, color photography was still in its infancy. It was the German photochemist Adolf Miethe, with whom Prokudin-Gorsky studied briefly the techniques, who greatly improved the three-color principle of color photography. Using a specialized camera developed by Adolf Miethe, Prokudin-Gorsky took three black and white images in quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, which were later recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. Because exposure time was often high and the three color-filtered photographs were not taken at the same time, subjects that did not hold steady during the entire operation exhibited colored fringes around its edges in the resulting color image. Such fringes are characteristics of many Prokudin-Gorsky's photographs.

The Emir of Bukhara, Alim Khan (1880-1944), poses for his portrait, taken in 1911 shortly after his accession. As ruler of an autonomous city-state in Islamic Central Asia, the Emir presided over the internal affairs of his emirate as absolute monarch, although since the mid-1800s Bukhara had been a vassal state of the Russian Empire. With the establishment of Soviet power in Bukhara in 1920, the Emir fled to Afghanistan where he died in 1944.

Around 1905, Prokudin-Gorsky envisioned and formulated a plan to use the emerging technological advances in color photography to document the Russian Empire systematically. Tsar Nicholas II granted him permits that allowed him to travel unmolested across restricted areas and instructed the empire's bureaucracy to cooperate with the photographer. For six years from 1909 through 1915 Prokudin-Gorsky travelled across the length and breadth of the vast country in a specially equipped railroad-car darkroom capturing vivid portraits of a lost world. His subjects ranged from the medieval churches and monasteries, to the railroads and factories of an emerging industrial power, to the daily life and work of Russia's diverse population. According to one estimate, Prokudin-Gorsky took over 10,000 photographs during these years.

After the Russian Revolution, Prokudin-Gorsky left Russia in 1918 and eventually settled in Paris. Prokudin-Gorsky couldnt take all of his photographs with him when he left Russia. Some sources claim he only had about 3,500 negatives with him before leaving the country, of which nearly half were confiscated by Russian authorities for containing material they deemed strategically sensitive for war-time Russia. Some of Prokudin-Gorsky's negatives were given away, and some he hid on his departure. The remaining negativesabout 1,900 of themand about 700 more album prints were purchased by the United States Library of Congress in 1948, four years after the death of Prokudin-Gorsky.

An Armenian woman from Artvin in national costume.

A merchant at the Samarkand market displays colorful silk, cotton, and wool fabrics as well as a few traditional carpets. A framed page of the Koran hangs at the top of the stall

Dressed in traditional Central Asian attire, a vendor of locally grown melons poses at his stand in the marketplace of Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan.

Prokudin-Gorskii and others ride the Murmansk Railroad in a handcar along the shores of Lake Onega near Petrozavodsk.

Young Russian peasant women offer berries to visitors to their izba, a traditional wooden house, in a rural area along the Sheksna River near the small town of Kirillov.

Wooden mills using wind-power to grind wheat and rye are photographed in the middle of summer on the vast Siberian plain in rural Ialutorovsk county in Western Siberia.

A young Kazakh family in colorful traditional dress moving across the Golodnaia (or Hungry) steppe in present-day Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Many Central Asiatic peoples, for example the Kirghiz, Kazakhs, and Uzbeks, lived nomadic lives on the steppes, valleys, and deserts, migrating seasonally from one place to another as opportunities for obtaining food, water, and shelter changed.

Wearing traditional dress and headgear, a Turkmen camel driver poses with his camel, laden with what is most likely grain or cotton. Camel caravans remained the most common means of transporting food, raw materials, and manufactured goods in Central Asia well into the railroad era.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii poses near a mountain stream, thought to be the Karolitskhali River in the Caucasus Mountains near the seaport of Batumi on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.

This photo shows the interior of a tea packaging and weighing operation located at the Chakva tea farm and processing plant just north of Batumi, close to the Black Sea coast in what is now the Republic of Georgia. The Chakva farm and plant was one of the major suppliers of tea to all parts of the Russian Empire.

In this portrait, Prokudin-Gorksii captures the traditional dress, jewelry, and hairstyle of an Uzbek woman standing on a richly decorated carpet at the entrance to a yurt, a portable tent used for housing by the nomadic peoples of Central Asia.

Five inmates stare out from a zindan, a traditional Central Asian prison--in essence a pit in the earth with a low structure built on top. The guard, with Russian rifle and bayonet, is attired in Russian-style uniform and boots.

A small nineteenth-century wooden chapel, was on the north side of the White Lake in north central European Russia.

In the early years of the First World War, Prokudin-Gorskii photographed a group of prisoners of war from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The men are probably Poles, Ukrainians, and members of other Slavic nationalities, imprisoned at an unidentified location in the far north of European Russia near the White Sea. This image escaped being confiscated by border guards probably because what is being represented is not immediately obvious.

A Bashkir switch operator poses by the mainline of the railroad, near the town of Ust' Katav on the Yuryuzan River between Ufa and Cheliabinsk in the Ural Mountain region of European Russia.

The Ural Mountain region is noted for the richness of its iron deposits and ores. The Bakaly hills, in the area outside the city of Ekaterinburg, provide the locale for a small-scale family mining operation.

Workers, identified by Prokudin-Gorskii as Greeks, pose while harvesting tea from plants spreading over rolling hills near Chakva, on the east coast of the Black Sea.

An ethnic Russian settler family in the Mugan Steppe region, south of the Caucasus Mountains and west of the Caspian Sea. Settlement of Russians in non-European parts of the empire, and particularly in border regions, was encouraged by official government policy and accounts for much of the Russian migration to Siberia, the Far East, and the Caucasus regions.

A Sunni Muslim man of undetermined nationality wearing traditional dress and headgear, with a sheathed dagger at his side.

A couple in traditional dress poses for a portrait in the mountainous interior region of Gunib on the north slope of the Caucasus Mountains in what is today the Dagestan Republic of the Russian Federation

A group of Jewish boys, in traditional dress, studying with their teacher in Samarkand.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii and members of his photographic team are shown here at their overnight campground. The site is near the Chusovaia River, on the western side of the Ural Mountains which divide Europe from Asia.

Woman in formal dress, posed, standing near gate.

Kush-Beggi, Minister of Interior, Bukhara, Uzbekistan, wearing an imported silk-brocade robe, gilt-and-enameled saber, and medals.

General view of the wharf at Mezhevaya Utka, 1912.

A water-carrier in Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan), ca. 1910.
During the Great Famine of Ireland in the mid-19th century, tens of thousands of starving Irish families fled the country and emigrated to Canada and the United States. Most of the ships that sailed during the famine years were overcrowded and poorly built and had a horrible reputation of unseaworthiness.

Lasting up to six weeks, the Atlantic crossing was a terrible trial for those brave, or desperate, enough to attempt it, says the website of the Dunbrody Famine Ship museum in New Ross, Ireland. Packed cheek by jowl below decks, the steerage passengers barely saw the light of day. Allowed up on deck for no more than one hour a day, in small groups, they would gather around open stoves to cook. When their time was up, it was back down into the dark, dank hold. During the regular storms the hatches were battened down, and the passengers would subsist on hard-tack biscuits.

Painting by Rodney Charman, Irish Coffin Ship, Below Deck, 1970

Hygiene was notoriously poor aboard most ships. With nothing more than buckets for toilets, and only sea-water to wash with, disease was rampant. Cholera and Typhus accounted for a great many deaths.

According to History Places, many of the passengers were already ill with typhus as they boarded the ships. Before boarding, they had been given the once-over by doctors on shore who usually rejected no one for the trip, even those seemingly on the verge of death. British ships were not required to carry doctors. Anyone that died during the sea voyage was simply dumped overboard, without any religious rites.

Belowdecks, hundreds of men, women and children huddled together in the dark on bare wooden floors with no ventilation, breathing a stench of vomit and the effects of diarrhea amid no sanitary facilities. On ships that actually had sleeping berths, there were no mattresses and the berths were never cleaned. Many sick persons remained in bare wooden bunks lying in their own filth for the entire voyage, too ill to get up.

Despite the horrible conditions, Irish emigrants still boarded these ships in order to escape starvation back home. A journalist for the Irish Times observed that passengers "were only flying from one form of death".

Many perished during the journey due to disease and malnutrition. Those who died were buried at sea. So many bodies were thrown overboard that sharks were often seen following the ships. In time, these boats became known as 'coffin ships'.

The ships that survived the Atlantic crossing arrived at the quarantine station on Grosse Isle, a small island thirty miles downstream from Quebec City, Canada. The first vessel arrived on 17 May 1847 carrying 430 fever cases, followed by eight more ships a few days later. One week later seventeen more vessels appeared at Grosse Isle, and only two days afterwards the number of vessels reached thirty, with 10,000 immigrants now waiting to be processed. By the end of May, forty ships containing 14,000 immigrants formed a line two miles long down the St. Lawrence River.

It took up to two weeks before anybody could see a doctor. Many healthy Irish awaiting entry into the island contacted typhus and succumbed to the illness having been forced to remain in their lice-infested holds. One ship reached Grosse Isle with 427 passengers but only 150 survived the waiting period.

Of the 100,000 Irish that sailed to British North America in 1847, an estimated one out of five died from disease and malnutrition, including over five thousand at Grosse Isle.

The National Famine Monument at the base of Croagh Patrick in Murrisk, County Mayo, Ireland depicts a coffin ship with skeletons and bones as rigging. Photo credit: Pat O'Malley/Flickr

Photo credit: Smythe Richbourg/Flickr

Photo credit: Tanya Hart/Flickr

A reproduction of the insides of a coffin ship at the Dunbrody Famine Ship. Photo credit: www.dunbrody.com

A reproduction of the insides of a coffin ship at the Dunbrody Famine Ship. Photo credit: www.dunbrody.com

Life Onboard the Coffin Ships at Cobh Heritage Centre, Co. Cork, Ireland. Photo credit: Nicola Barnett/Flickr
MENOMONIE  Like the west-central Wisconsin residents he attended meetings with, Thomas Pearson became aware of frac sand mining as a citizen, concerned about a new industry that threatened to alter lives and landscapes.

His concern, as he watched the drama unfold, grew into a research project and then, over the course of several years, a book. When the Hills Are Gone: Frac Sand Mining and the Struggle for Community, was published in early November by the University of Minnesota Press.

With its title a dead giveaway, the book takes a critical look at the controversial industry and how the corporations behind the mines exerted their influence in the region. None of that is surprising, given that Pearson is an anthropologist and an associate professor of social science at University of Wisconsin-Stout.

The 248-page book, however, is more a case study of grass-roots community activism and democratic process than a condemnation of the industry itself, he said, noting that the industry has its supporters too.

I want people to understand the growing influence of corporate interest and how corrosive that can be for local democracy. A lot of people were caught off guard by frac sand mining. People felt like the mining companies had much more power than they should have, Pearson said.

Im trying not to romanticize grass-roots activism. Im looking critically too at the circumstances in which grass-roots efforts like these succeed or fail, he said.

As frac sand mining became a reality throughout west-central Wisconsin starting in 2006 with a rush to open mines on rural land, residents in the affected areas mobilized, if slowly at first.

Pearson was one of them, attending meetings in garages and going to town halls in the lower Chippewa River valley where residents, officials and corporate representatives clashed in cities like Menomonie, Glenwood City, Chippewa Falls and New Auburn and townships like Cooks Valley, Howard, Red Cedar and Tainter.

As of 2016, the region had more than 70 active mines in 13 counties, bounded by Barron and Rusk to the north, Monroe to the south and Wood and Pierce to the east and west. Trempealeau and Chippewa counties have the most, with about a dozen each.

Battle lines in the sand

Residents feared degradation of the landscape and threats to the environment and their health, the latter from silica dust. Sand companies saw profits, jobs, wealth for landowners and claimed that a flattened hill could be turned into farmland, an assertion disputed by activists.

Sand mine operations crush prehistoric ridges into sand once again. West-central Wisconsin sand, prized because of its hardness, is mostly transported by rail to oil fields for high-pressure drilling.

Citizen groups like Save Our Hills, Save the Hills Alliance and Loyalty to Our Land fought the process. Notable successes, such as a groundswell effort leading to the rejection of a mine proposed near the Hoffman Hills State Recreation Area in Dunn County, also were met with failures as mines overcame regulatory hurdles, or lack thereof, and opened throughout the region.

One such major proposal by Vista Sand has been on hold for several years. It would include a mine near Glenwood City with a processing plant near Menomonie. The young industry already has experienced boom and bust periods, depending on the oil market.

For many, frac sand mining presented a sudden threat that drew into question deeply held assumptions about rural landscapes and environmental well-being, Pearson writes.

I try to cast a social science light on activism as a phenomenon. A lot of the activism was by people who lived next door and had very little experience at it, he said, adding that it took several years for established environmental groups to begin supporting residents efforts.

He took an on-the-ground approach with his research, essentially embedding himself within the movement, examining why people were opposed and providing firsthand accounts of their efforts.

Pearson, a Chicago native who lives in Menomonie, visited Harlan and Edith Syversen of Dovre. They had sold part of their small dairy farm 10 years earlier to an aspiring farmer, who then sold out to a sand company and moved away. Before long, a mine was open a short walk from the Syversens once bucolic homestead, which had been in the family for generations.

Part of the book deals with the loss people felt or feared from a landscape being changed forever.

We inscribe places with meaning, with a sense of history. Mining eliminates, or at least distorts, the cultural script from which that meaning is derived, Pearson writes.

When the Hills Are Gone follows opposition to frac sand mining for about a decade, through 2015. Hopefully it will offer lessons from the first phase, if and when it becomes a significant issue again, he said.

Praise and support

Adam Briggle, author of A Field Philosophers Guide to Fracking, said Pearsons book is a masterful blend of stories and scholarship that will be the definitive account of a major environmental justice issue.

Along with activists from the region, Pearson said he received support in writing the book from colleagues in UW-Stouts social science department and Center for Applied Ethics; 10 applied social science majors who helped with research via an applied anthropology seminar in fall 2014; undergraduate research assistants; and the university through a Faculty Research Initiative grant.

When the Hills Are Gone, paperback, sells for $25 and can be purchased through the University of Minnesota Press. Learn more at www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/when-the-hills-are-gone.
(refiling with picture).

(ANSA) - Caltanissetta, March 31 - A prelinianry hearings judge on Friday indicted suspended Palermo judge Silvana Saguto and other suspects charged with wrongdoing in the handling of seized Mafia assets.

Saguto is accused by prosecutors in Caltanissetta of alleged corruption and abuse of office in collusion with judicial administrative staff and family members.

In October last year prosecutors ordered the urgent precautionary seizure of money and property allegedly deriving from crimes attributed to Saguto and her alleged accomplices.

Saguto was suspended by the Supreme Council of Magistrates (CSM), which is the judiciary's self-governing body, late in 2015 on the request of Justice Minister Andrea Orlando and Supreme Court Prosecutor Pasquale Ciccolo.

The "gravity" of her alleged behaviour has led to an "irreparable loss of prestige", the CSM said at the time.


In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Sadly, poor acting by the lead actress lets it sink to insufferable heights.

Rating:

Cast: Raai Laxmi, Pankaj Tripathy, Rati Agnihotri, Ravi Kishan, Aditya Srivastava, Yuri Suri

Director: Deepak Shivdasani

There are many facets to an actors life that one could look into and weave a compelling story. Since the job of an actor  male or female  is no ordinary one, what with pitfalls that he or she faces, and resultantly, either receives brickbats or accolades that come his or her way, an earnest probe into a celebrated film personalitys life would definitely be worth a dekko. But that only if there is a film. And a plot. Julie 2 is neither, but becomes all the more interesting because its none other than our erstwhile sanskari former CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani as one of the producers. On being asked about the sleaze that the trailers seemed to suggest the film contains, his answer was dubiously non-committal. Its something the entire family can watch together, he clarified.

It is not. I am afraid, the film let alone being qualified to watch with ones family, is in reality, a dud that includes half-baked notions of stardom and ends up becoming a liberal dose of skin show and melodramatic saga pandering to all those who look for scandals associated with an actress life. Needless to add, its not meant for anyone!

Julie 2 could have been a story of a simple girl who rises to be a big star. One gets to know that her success is not without its dark side, and one instantly imagines, many dark secrets that celebrities like her tend to hide, and would rather die protecting. An ambitious girl who loves acting as an art and learns Kathak, Bharatanatyam, horse riding and all that it takes to be a Bollywood actor, Julie has had a traumatic childhood. But all producers would rather have her body than her talent to help her make it big. She doesnt give up and knocks many doors to try her luck. In return, all she gets from all those she has loved dearly is betrayal. There are flashbacks used to tell her past story comprising her stepfather (Yuri Suri) who abused her, her mother, her hairdresser-cum-friend Annie aunty (Rati Agnihotri), who is like her second mother. As Annie is seen helping assistant commissioner of police Dev Dutt (Aditya Shrivastava) solve Julies mysterious past, one gets more and more confused about what films director Deepak Shivdasani is trying to tell us through this mish-mash tale that leaves many loose ends. Julies life has many incomplete culminations  be it her relationships or her career. But things get out of hand when Julie signs a Hollywood film based on the life of Sumitra Devi, a politician who is likely to be the chief minister, whose husband Ashwini Asthana (Pankaj Tripathy) is seen sounding the clapperboard on the day of the muhrat. With other characters flitting in and out, the film tries hard to keep its viewers sagging interest alive with songs, dances thrown in suddenly.

Sadly, poor acting by the lead actress lets it sink to insufferable heights. In fact, its at times agonising to sit through an over two-hour long film which could boast of great actors like Tripathy and Aditya Shrivastava. Raai Laxmi looks unsure of the demands of the script; when she is expected to strip out of the blue, she does make the extra effort to infuse her character with some heft. She is also seen seeking solace in Christ  the lord who incidentally becomes a sort of testimony in unfolding a mystery.
Not directly referring to the controversy, but films and art in general, he warned against undermining the rule of law in the country.

His remarks, however, assume significance as they come amid protests by many groups against Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed Padmavati, alleging that the movie distorts history. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: Amid the Padmavati row, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said on Saturday that giving violent threats and announcing rewards for physical harm was not acceptable in a democracy.

Not directly referring to the controversy, but films and art in general, he warned against undermining the rule of law in the country.

Naidu, at a literary festival in Delhi, said there is now a new problem over some films where people feel that they have hurt the sentiments of some religions or communities and that has led to protests.

He said while protesting, some people go overboard and announce rewards.

"Whether these fellows have that much money or not, I doubt. Everyone is announcing Rs one crore reward. Is it so easy to have Rs one crore?

"This is not acceptable in a democracy. You have the right to protest in a democratic manner, go to the appropriate authorities...you cannot physically obstruct and can't give violent threats. Let us not undermine the rule of law," he said.

Stressing that he was not talking about a particular film but in general, Naidu read out names of previously banned films like Garam Hawa, Kissa Kursi Ka and Aandhi.

His remarks, however, assume significance as they come amid protests by many groups against Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed Padmavati, alleging that the movie distorts history.

Historians are divided on whether Rani Padmavati even existed.

Some leaders and groups have also reportedly announced a bounty for beheading Bhansali and the female lead Deepika Padukone.

"You have no right to take laws into your own hands. At the same time, you don't have the right to hurt the sentiments of others", Naidu said.

The vice president also warned against selective condemnation and said it was wrong to link it to religion.

He said there was a difference between religion and culture. While religion was a way of worship, culture was a way of life, he said.
According to police, the accused woman had an argument with the victim's mother a few days back.

The child's family started looking for him when he did not return home and found him at the accused's house injured, police said. (Photo: File/Representational)

New Delhi: A woman has allegedly killed her neighbour's two-year-old son to exact revenge for an argument with his mother in southwest Delhi's Uttam Nagar, police said on Friday.

The police said that the accused woman lived on the second floor of a rented accommodation.

It is suspected that the accused killed the child by banging his head on the floor. The child used to play with the accused's children, the police said.

The accused woman had an argument with the victim's mother a few days back, they said.

On Wednesday, she called her neighbour's son to play at her home and allegedly killed him, the police said. The child's family started looking for him and found him at the accused's house injured, they added.

The child was rushed to a hospital where he was declared brought dead, the police said, adding the woman was arrested.
Hadiya on Saturday left Kochi in Kerala for New Delhi for the hearing of the case on November 27.

SC on October 30 had directed Hadiyas father to produce her before the court on next date of hearing (November 27). (Photo: File)

Kochi: The Supreme Court will hear the Kerala love Jihad case on Monday. Hadiya who has been asked to be present before the apex court during the hearing said, I am a Muslim. I want to go with my husband. Nobody forced me to convert.

Hadiya, on Saturday, left for Delhi for the hearing of the case on November 27.

The Supreme Court on October 30 had directed Hadiyas father to produce her before the court on next date of hearing (November 27).

Earlier on Saturday, Hadiya's husband Shafin Jahan filed a complaint stating that attempts were being made to reconvert her to Hinduism ahead of her being produced in the apex court on Monday.

The Supreme Court had on Wednesday refused to accord urgent hearing on a plea filed by the father of the woman, who converted to Islam before marrying Shafin, that interaction with the woman be conducted in-camera.

The counsel for Ashokan KM, Hadiya's father, sought an urgent hearing on his plea saying that it would become infructuous if the earlier order mandating open court interaction is not modified.

Ashokan referred to the communally sensitive nature of the case and sought in-camera interaction on some grounds including that radical elements could jeopardise the safety and privacy of his daughter and the family.

The apex court had earlier observed that the free consent of a major to marriage has to be ascertained amid an assertion by National Investigation Agency (NIA) that an indoctrinated person may be incapable of giving free consent to marriage.

The NIA had claimed that this was a case in which the woman was indoctrinated and hence the court could invoke parental authority even if she was a major.

The woman, a Hindu, had converted to Islam and later married Jahan. It was alleged that the woman was recruited by Islamic State's mission in Syria and Jahan was only a stooge.
A three-storey residential building collapsed on Friday morning in Bhiwandi in Thane district.

Many people were injured, while several others feared to be trapped inside the debris. (Photo: Debasish Dey | The Asian Age)

Thane: The death toll in a building collapse in Bhiwandi has risen to four after the recovery of a woman's body and the police has booked its owner in connection with the case.

The unauthorised four-storey 'Tahir Biznor' building, situated in Navi Basti area, had collapsed on Friday.

Regional Disaster Management Cell chief Santosh Kadam said that the fourth deceased was identified as Parvin Khan (65).

The other three deceased were Ruksar Yakub Khan (18), Asfaque Mustaque Khan (38) and Jaibunissa Rafique Ansari (61).

The officer said nine people were injured in the collapse and they were admitted to various hospitals. He also said rescue and relief operations launched by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were called off at 6.45 am.

Read: Three dead, 9 injured in Bhiwandi building collapse

A case under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act was registered against the building's owner, a senior police official said.

The accused, Mohammad Tahir Rafique Ahmed Ansari (46), was absconding, he said, adding that efforts were on to nab him.

Bhiwandi Tehesildar Shashikant Gaikwad had said the building was over ten years old and it was not in the list of dangerous buildings.
Daughter of Tukaram Ombale, who was killed while trying to capture terrorist Ajmal Kasab, says her family still awaits his return.

On November 26, 2008, 10 Pakistani terrorists arrived in Mumbai by sea route and opened fire indiscriminately at people on different locations, killing 166, including 18 security personnel, and injuring several others, besides damaging property worth crores.(Photo: AP)

Mumbai: The daughter of policeman Tukaram Ombale, who was killed while trying to capture terrorist Ajmal Kasab, says her family still awaits his return, nine years after the Mumbai terror attacks.

"We feel papa will come home any moment, although deep in our heart we know that he will never be amongst us now," says a teary-eyed Vaishali Ombale, the eldest daughter of the Mumbai terror attacks hero.

"We always think that Papa has gone out on duty and will return home. We have kept his belongings at the place they used to be in our home. Our family is proud of his supreme sacrifice," Vaishali Ombale, who has completed her M Ed (Masters in education) and aspires to be a lecturer, said.

Ombale, an assistant sub-inspector, was killed by Kasab's bullets in the early hours of November 27, 2008.

In a daring act, he had pounced on Kasab without thinking much about the consequences. His bravery had made it possible for the police to overpower Kasab, the only 26/11 terrorist to be captured and hanged.

"Not a day has gone by in the last nine years that we have not remembered him," said Vaishali Ombale, who stays at the Worli Police Camp with her mother Tara and sister Bharti, who is an officer in the state GST department.

"For how long will police or armed forces personnel continue losing their lives in the name of supreme sacrifice," she asked.

"This should stop somewhere. There should be a change in this scenario. Every citizen should always be alert and foil incidents in which we are losing our men," she said, ahead of the 26/11 attacks anniversary.

Vaishali Ombale said citizens should know their responsibilities and must understand that when policemen or armed forces personnel get killed in the line of duty, it is not only the family's loss but also that of the country.

"Satara district in Western Maharashtra from where my family hails has a long history of martyrs. Among the recent ones are CRPF head constable Ravindra Dhanawade, who was killed while fighting terrorists in Kashmir in August and Colonel Santosh Mahadik, who died while fighting terrorists in Kashmir in 2015. The list is unending, which disturbs me a lot," she said.

"We treat every member of a martyr's family like our own family and we help them overcome the grief," she said.

Vaishali Ombale gives tuitions to students from class 8th to junior college, which keeps her busy and makes her forget the pain of losing her father.

On November 26, 2008, 10 Pakistani terrorists arrived in Mumbai by sea route and opened fire indiscriminately at people on different locations, killing 166, including 18 security personnel, and injuring several others, besides damaging property worth crores.
The home ministry has proposed to extend it for another six months in Nagaland from December, after its term of extension lapses.

In a gazette notification in June this year, the home ministry had extended the AFSPA for six months in Nagaland.(Photo: Representational/PTI)

Guwahati: In a significant move, the government of Nagaland has opposed the extension of Armed Forces (Special Power) Act (AFSPA) in the state while asserting that Nagaland is no longer a disturbed area.

Informing that the entire state was declared a disturbed area and term of AFSPA was extended for six months on June 30 this year, security sources told The Asian Age that the home ministry had sought the opinion of the state government on extending it further in the state.

In a letter written to the union home secretary, the special secretary of Nagaland S R Saravnan said, In reference to your letter no. 7.10.20003NE-I (Pt) dated October 5, 2017, I am directed to inform you that government of Nagaland is opposed to the proposals for extension of notification declaring Nagaland as disturbed area.

The special secretary pointed out, The overall situation in Nagaland is by and large peaceful compared to other states of the country. The law enforcement agencies of the state are satisfactorily dispensing its duties.

While opposing the extension of the AFSPA, he referred, Most of underground factions are in truce with Government of India, except NSCN (K). The joining of six Naga National Political Groups in the ongoing peace-talks on the Naga political issue and support of civil society organization is significant sign of peaceful atmosphere.

The letter of the special secretary, written to the home ministry on November 13, said, In view of the relatively peaceful situation, the state government is of the view that extension of notification declaring Nagaland as disturbed area is not necessary.

It is significant that contrary to its proposal for extending AFSPA in Nagaland, the home ministry had refused to extend the AFSPA in the neighbouring Assam but Assam government decided on its own to extend it for another six months recently.

There have been demands from various organizations in the Northeast as well as in Jammu and Kashmir for repealing the controversial AFSPA, which, they say, gives "sweeping powers" to the security forces to act against "civilians".

In a gazette notification in June this year, the home ministry had extended the AFSPA for six months in Nagaland. While extending the AFSPA home ministry said that it is of the opinion that the area comprising the whole of Nagaland is in such a "disturbed and dangerous condition" that the use of armed forces in aid of the civil power is necessary. The home ministry has proposed to extend it for another six months in Nagaland from December, after its term of extension lapses.
Ahmed Mir has successfully defended Rajesh and Nupur Talvar accused in the murder of their daughter Aarushi.

Lawyer Tanveer Ahmed Mir on Friday confirmed that he will be defending the 16-year-old student accused in the murder of Pradyuman Thankur in Gurgaon's Ryan International School. (Photo: AFP)

New Delhi: Lawyer Tanveer Ahmed Mir on Friday confirmed that he will be defending the 16-year-old student accused in the murder of Pradyuman Thankur in Gurgaon's Ryan International School, according to a report in Hindustan Times.

Ahmed Mir has successfully defended Rajesh and Nupur Talwar accused in the murder of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj, after which they were acquitted by the Allahabad High Court on October 12.

Seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur was found dead with his throat slit inside the toilet of Ryan International School, on September 8.

In a sensational twist to the case, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested a class 11 student of the same school and gave a clean chit to the bus conductor, Ashok Kumar, who was arrested by the Gurgaon police for the murder and sexual assault of the child.

According to the agency, the Class 11 student, believed to be weak in his studies, allegedly slit Pradyuman's throat to get the school to declare a holiday in order to defer a scheduled parent-teacher meeting (PTM) and an examination.

The CBI is also investigating the involvement of a second student in the case.

The Pradyuman murder has drawn certain similarities with the 2008 Aarushi murder case because of its twists and turns.

Investigation in Pradyuman murder case has revealed illegality and destruction of evidence by Gurgaon police, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sources said on Sunday.

A shoddy investigation and lapses by the CBI and the UP Police not only delayed investigations, but also generated considerable controversy.

The police also did not bother to search the terrace of the house even though bloodstains were clearly visible on the staircase, and announced its honour killing theory even before the investigations were over.

UP Police accused Rajesh of killing his daughter in a fit of rage.
Principal Archana Thomas also asked him to not disrupt the schools functioning by asking unnecessary questions.

Anand Vihar School, a missionary school, has objected to one of its Muslim students wearing a headscarf to school.

Lucknow: A school in Barabanki district has barred Muslim students from wearing headscarves to class on the ground that the scarves dont match the dress code.

Anand Vihar School, a missionary school, has objected to one of its Muslim students wearing a headscarf to school. When the students father sought permission for the same in a written application to the principal, he received back the following reply.

It is to clarify you that this is a minority school, but there are many communities in minority category, and one community cannot impose its rules on other communities. The school will not be able to provide any exemption to its rules, letter read.

Principal Archana Thomas also asked him to not disrupt the schools functioning by asking unnecessary questions.

If you face any inconvenience, you can admit your ward in an Islamic school, she told the students father.

Mohd. R. Rizvi, the students father, said that his daughter had been studying in the school since kindergarten, and as per Islam tradition, she had to cover her hair after reaching the age of nine.

My daughter was asked not to wear headscarf to school and another girl was made to remove it as well. I argued that our Sikh brothers are also allowed even though their turban is not part of the dress code, he said.

Mr Rizvi said that he had also met the district magistrate regarding the school order but no action was taken.

The school principal, Archana Thomas, meanwhile, said that the letter did not imply that the students were told to leave the school.

It said if they have a problem with the rules, they can admit their child in another school, not necessarily an Islamic school the principal said.

On the question of differentiating among communities by allowing Sikhs to wear turbans and barring Muslims from practising their beliefs, she said that the school did not have Sikh students and hence, the question did not arise.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had on Saturday termed the release of Saeed as a hugplomacy failure of PM Modi.

New Delhi: On Saturday, minutes after Rahul Gandhi termed the release of Jamaat-ud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeeds release a failure of Prime Minister Narendra Modis hugplomacy, the BJP hit back by calling the Congress scion a known sympathiser of LeT, and asking if he had congratulated the mastermind of 26/11 Mumbai attacks yet.

Rahul Baba, aadatein nahin badalti hain (Rahul Baba, habits dont change). For once, stand with the country & not with terrorists as is your habit. You are a known sympathiser of LeT. WikiLeaks & Ishtar Jahan case cover-up exposed your links. BTW, have you congratulated your Hafeez Saheb on his release yet? @officeofrg, tweeted G.V.L Narasimha Rap, the partys national spokesperson.

The BJP also asserted that unlike the UPA, the Modi government has succeeded in isolating and cornering Pakistan as Terroristan, not just in the region but globally and in all international fora.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had on Saturday termed the release of Saeed as a hugplomacy failure of PM Modi.

Amid a busy schedule of campaigning in Gujarat, where many feel that the BJP is facing its toughest elections in years, Mr Gandhi tweeted, Narendrabhai, baat nahin bani (Narendrabhai, it did not work). Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail.

He signed off the tweet with more hugs urgently needed and uploaded a news clipping of the US Congress passing a bill delinking Haqqani network from the LeT.

Earlier this month, the US passed a bill that requires Pakistan  if it wants to continue receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in military funding  to work with the Afghan and American forces to destroy the Haqqani network but left out LeT.

Mr Gandhis tweet came a day after Saeed, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba chief, was released from house arrest after Pakistan government decided against detaining him further in any other case.

Hugplomacy was a snide reference to Mr Modis bearhug with US President Donald Trump when the two had met in June this year.

Earlier too Mr Gandhi had taken a similar dig at Mr Modi when the US President had tweeted about developing a much better relationship with Pakistan and its leaders. The Congress vice-president had then tweeted, Modi ji quick; looks like President Trump needs another hug.

After Mr Gandhis tweet on Hugplomacy, the BJP not only attacked him for being a sympathiser of LeT, but also accused the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government of treating Pakistan as a victim state and letting it off lightly.

Along with his tweet, BJP national spokesperson uploaded a news clipping of a whistleblower website reporting Mr Gandhis conversation with the then US ambassador.

Here is proof that Rahul Gandhi is an apologist for LeT and is the architect of Hindu Terror, Saffron terror, Hafiz Saheb, Osamaji  terms mouthed by Sushil Kumar Shinde and P. Chidambaram and Digvijay Singh... Was it not on Familys orders that P. Chidambaram changed affidavits giving a clean chit to LeT operative Ishrat Jahan killed in assassination bid on Narendra Modi... What was Congress motive in bailing out LeT, Ishrat, ignoring NSA? Rahul, speak up! he tweeted.

Mr Rao also accused the Congress leadership of repeatedly betraying the country by pandering to anti-India elements.

The manner in which they questioned surgical strikes against the terror launch pads across the LoC and the utterly disgraceful attacks against the Army chief as a street thug and Rahul Gandhi joining the groups shouting Bharat ki barbaadi slogans are symptomatic of Congress Partys support for anti-India sentiments, said the BJP spokesperson. He added that statements of Congress leaders eulogising and praising militant Burhan Wani and their solidarity with separatists clearly show their sympathies for pro-Pakistan elements.

Congress ka Haath, Aatankivadiyon ke Saath is a more appropriate slogan for the Opposition party, the BJP leader added.
Speaking on the occasion, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra rejected the perception that there was judicial activism in the country.

New Delhi: President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday called for better representation of women, OBCs and SC/STs in higher judiciary and said that their current strength is unacceptably low.

Speaking at Law Day celebrations, the President said, There is unacceptably low representation of traditionally weaker sections such as OBCs, SCs and STs, especially in higher judiciary. Only one in four judges is a woman.

Suggesting that the present situation should be remedied, he asked the judiciary to walk in pace with other public institutions in being truly representatives of societys diversity.

Like our other public institutions, our judiciary too has to be judicious in being representative of the diversity of our country, and the depth and breadth of our society, Mr Kovind said.

Of the 17,000 judges in our subordinate courts, high courts and the Supreme Court, only about 4,700  roughly one in four  are women, he added.

Speaking on the occasion, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra rejected the perception that there was judicial activism in the country. He said protection of fundamental rights of the citizens is the duty of judiciary.

The citizens have been guaranteed fundamental rights and the governing entities are not expected to encroach upon it. The moment they encroach upon it or there is an apprehension that there is an encroachment, the judiciary is obliged to stand by them, the CJI said.

Countering claims that the judiciary tends to interfere in policy-making, the CJI said that the judiciary has no desire to make policy.

Nobody intends, nobody desires to enter upon the policy-making areas. We dont make policies but we interpret policies and thats our job. The prime task of the three wings of the state is to defend the Constitution, its values, morals and philosophy.
Without directly referring to the Sanjay Leela Bhansalis film, Mr Naidu warned against undermining the rule of law in the country.

A still from the song Ghoomar in the film Padmavati that has sparked a controversy.

New Delhi: Amid the raging controversy over Padmavati film, vice-president M. Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said that giving violent threats and announcing rewards for causing physical harm is not acceptable in a democracy.

He also said that dissent is agreeable in the country but disintegration is not acceptable and any attempt to undermine its integrity and unity by forces inimical to growth of the country must be nipped in bud.

Without directly referring to the Sanjay Leela Bhansalis film, Mr Naidu warned against undermining the rule of law in the country.

Mr Naidu, while addressing a literary festival, said that off late people have started protested over films alleging that these have hurt the sentiments of some religions or communities. While protesting, some people go overboard and announce rewards.

Whether these fellows have that much money or not, I doubt. Everyone is announcing `one crore reward. Is it so easy to have `one crore?

This is not acceptable in a democracy. You have the right to protest in a democratic manner, go to the appropriate authorities... You cannot physically obstruct and cant give violent threats. Let us not undermine the rule of law, he said.

Claiming that he was not talking with reference to any particular film, Mr Naidu read out names of previously banned films like Garam Hawa, Kissa Kursi Ka and Aandhi.

Mr Naidus words of caution come after Haryana BJPs media coordinator Suraj Pal Amu was booked by Gurgaon Police for criminal intimidation on November 21, two days after he s lead actor Deepika Padukone and Mr Bhansali for allegedly distorting history.

Mr Naidu said, India always believed in pluralistic traditions and ethos and never allowed narrow and bigoted views or practices to rear their ugly heads.

Dissent is agreeable but disintegration is not acceptable. That is the bottom line and any attempt to undermine integrity and unity of India by forces inimical to growth of India must be nipped in bud, he added.

Criticising violent protesters, the vice-president said, You have no right to take law into your hands. At the same time, you dont have the right to hurt the sentiments of others.
Citizens also expressed their happiness over the sudden appearance of new footpaths.

Hyderabad: Ahead of US Pesidents daughter and advisor Ivanka Trumps visit to Hyderabad, the citizens have aggressively taken to social media platforms requesting her to visit their localities so that at least then, GHMC will clean up the places on a war footing. One such message is a purported WhatsApp conversation between a Manikonda resident and Ms Trump, where the resident requests her to visit Manikonda so that new roads will be laid before her visit. When she replies that she will inform the Prime Minister, the resident says the Centre would then impose road service tax. Touche.

Netizens have taken to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to extend an invitation to the visiting dignitaries to tour their localities. Tarusha Saxena, a PR professional posted, Ms. Ivanka Trump, we the citizens of Masab Tank, Banjara Hills and Punjagutta collectively cordially invite you to grace Banjara Hills Road no 1 and Punjagutta with your convoy during your Hyderabad visit. This will ensure smooth and traffic-less roads for us for next 3-4 months in these areas.

Another Facebook user, Sandesh Johny posted, Ivanka Trump is coming to Hyderabad and all the routes she will be taking are being repaired. I hope she comes to Hafeezpet... Bahut hi kharab road hain.

Citizens also expressed their happiness over the sudden appearance of new footpaths. In a personal mail to GHMC Commissioner, an anonymous resident wrote, Impressive, the way footpaths are being developed all over Western Hyderabad. It has already given a clean look to the roads. However, citizens are apprehensive about how they are going to be maintained. I foresee them being occupied by the food trucks that will soon damage the footpath by flattening them at places for their access. I also see various roadside vendors putting up their shops. Please dont allow this to happen, GHMC must issue a stern warning and stringent action should be taken on those who destroy or occupy the footpaths.
He also promised that if the Congress comes to power it will create a new fisheries ministry.

New Delhi: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on his sixth campaign visit to the poll bound state of Gujarat reached out to the fishing community.

He also promised that if the Congress comes to power it will create a new fisheries ministry.

Interestingly, the Congress has recently created a fishermen cell at the national level in AICC.

Speaking to fishermen in Porbandar Mr. Gandhi said, Fishermens work is equivalent to that of farmers. Sometime back, you demanded that if there is a ministry to look after the agriculture sector, then why not for fishermen? I agree with you, and I promise that the Congress will set it up after forming the government at the Centre.

In his current two-day visit, Mr. Gandhi is scheduled to visit Porbandar, Ahmedabad Gandhinagar, Arvalli, Mahisagar and Dahod district.

He will also be interacting with teachers and public health workers.

He also lashed out at the government for removing diesel subsidy being given to fishermen.

Mr. Gandhi said, When Congress was in power, fishermen used to get 25 per cent subsidy on the purchase of diesel. That subsidy, which was just Rs 300 crore (per annum), has been abolished by the BJP government here. What kind of magic is this? They can give Rs 33,000 crore for factory but they cant give Rs 300 crore to you.

The Congress has already entered into an alliance with the Patidar leader Hardik Patels organisation Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS). In the first list released by the Congress, it has accommodated 23 candidates from the influential Patidar community.

Polling for the two-phase elections in the state, having a total of 182 seats, will take place on December 9 and 14.
The Dutch national institute for wartime documentation said Saturday it has been given a rare watercolor painting by Adolf Hitler.

The owner did not want the painting in her home and two Dutch auction houses declined to put it up for sale. (Photo: AP)

The Dutch national institute for wartime documentation said Saturday it has been given a rare watercolor painting by Adolf Hitler, believed to be the only one in existence in The Netherlands.

The aquarelle  a technique of painting with thin transparent watercolors  depicting a tower in Vienna was donated to the Amsterdam-based NIOD institute by a woman whose identity was not revealed, the leftist daily De Volkskrant added.

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The woman did not want the painting in her home and two Dutch auction houses declined to put it up for sale, the paper said.

It was donated earlier this year to the NIOD, originally set up just after World War II to create a national archive of documents relating to the 1940-45 Nazi occupation of The Netherlands.

The unidentified womans father originally bought the painting at a stamp and coin market for 75 cents and only realized when he got home that it was signed by A. Hitler, the paper said.

After months of following an authentication process the conclusion is: its an original from the hand of Adolf Hitler, the NIOD said in a statement.

Between 1909 and 1913 Hitler made a living from selling painted postcards, it added, saying the young dictator made an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 cards of which around 800 were known to exist today.

By taking ownership of the painting the NIOD has prevented it from going onto the open market, its director Frank van Vree said.

I dont want to sound patronizing, but its good that this type of thing does not get sold in an auction containing Nazi paraphernalia, he told De Volkskrant.

The Netherlands was occupied for around five years by the Nazis, who carried out a reign of terror, including deporting more than 100,000 Jews to death camps such as Auschwitz and Sobibor where they were murdered.

During the 1930s in Germany, Hermann Goering and Adolph Hitler examine a painting at an exhibit put on about degenerate art (Public domain)

The victims included world-famous Dutch teenaged diarist Anne Frank and most of her family.

Most of Hitlers artworks are now in private collections in Austria, Britain, Germany and the United States, and the US Army still has four works which it confiscated during the war, De Volkskrant said.

Neither the NIOD, nor experts knew of any other of Hitlers artworks in The Netherlands, it said.
According to researchers physical attractiveness strongly influenced how women and their mothers saw the target men.

Men with the most desirable personality profiles were rated more favourably than their counterparts only when they were also at least moderately attractive. (Representational Image)

New York: Unattractive men are not viewed as potential dating material by women and their mothers even when they possess the most desirable traits, a study claims.

Researchers at the Eastern Connecticut State University in the US assessed the mate preference of 80 women between the ages of 15 and 29 years old, and 61 mothers.

The women were presented with colour photographs of three male targets varying in attractiveness. Each photograph was paired with one of three trait profiles.

The "respectful" profile included the traits "trustworthy and honest", and the "friendly" profile included being "friendly, dependable and mature".

The "pleasing" profile meant that the man was "of a pleasing disposition, ambitious, and intelligent," according to the study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science.

The women had to rate the photographs and trait descriptions in response to how attractive they found the man, how favourably they rated his personal description, and whether they would consider the person as a dating partner for themselves or their daughters.

Physical attractiveness strongly influenced how women and their mothers saw the target men. The attractive and moderately attractive ones came up trumps.

Men with the most desirable personality profiles were rated more favourably than their counterparts only when they were also at least moderately attractive.

Even when unattractive men possessed the most desirable traits, the mothers and daughters did not view them as potential dating material.

"We conclude that a minimum level of physical attractiveness is a necessity for both women and their mothers," said Madeleine Fugere, from the Eastern Connecticut State University.

It was also found that daughters are pickier than their parents when it comes to choosing between potential mates.

Mothers rated all men, even the least attractive ones, as potentially desirable partners for their daughters, while the younger women did not.

"This may signal that unattractiveness is less acceptable to women than to their mothers," she said.

"It might also mean that women and their mothers may have different notions of what constitutes a minimally acceptable level of physical attractiveness, with mothers employing a less stringent standard than their daughters," she added.
Dolly was lame in one knee. But the extent of osteoarthritis (OA) revealed by the scans was "not unusual" for a naturally-conceived sheep.

Dolly was lame in one knee. But the extent of osteoarthritis (OA) revealed by the scans was "not unusual" for a naturally-conceived sheep. (Photo: AFP)

When Dolly the sheep was put down before her seventh birthday in 2003, she was said to suffer from age-related osteoarthritis, raising red flags that clones may grow old faster.

But scientists said Thursday that the fear of premature, clone-related ageing appears to have been misplaced. Dolly's joint disease was, in fact, quite normal.

Researchers in Scotland and England based their conclusion on X-rays of Dolly's skeleton, held by National Museums Scotland (NMS), in Edinburgh.

Dolly was lame in one knee. But the extent of osteoarthritis (OA) revealed by the scans was "not unusual" for a seven-to-nine-year-old, naturally-conceived sheep.

"The original concerns that cloning had caused early-onset OA in Dolly were unfounded," the researchers concluded, adding that their research was driven by a desire "to set the record straight".

The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Dolly was put down at the age of six years and eight months due to a progressive lung disease. Dolly's breed of Finn-Dorset sheep normally live to about 10-12 years.

The researchers said their findings were backed up by X-rays of the skeletons of Bonnie, Dolly's naturally-conceived daughter, and of Megan and Morag -- sheep cloned using a different technique.

Their bones are also in the NMS collection.

The only formal record of OA in Dolly was a "brief mention" in a submission to a scientific conference, said the team. None of the original diagnostic records or scans were preserved.

The same team published a study last year in which they reported that four genetically-identical copies of Dolly had aged normally with no symptoms of osteoarthritis.

Debbie, Denise, Dianna and Daisy -- identical sisters of Dolly born 11 years later -- were made from the same mammary gland cell line that yielded the world's most famous sheep.

- Healthy sisters -

None of them were lame, and none had osteoarthritis uncommon for their age.

Osteoarthritis is a painful condition caused by mechanical wear and tear on joints. It can be genetic in origin, but risk factors include old age, trauma, and obesity.

At age nine, none of Dolly's four sisters were diabetic and all had normal blood pressure -- further dousing concerns of premature ageing in clones, at least in sheep.

Cloned lab mice have previously shown a propensity for obesity, diabetes, and dying young.

The researchers conceded there were a few limitations to their research -- including that only the bones of the sheep were available, whereas OA is a disease of the entire joint, including the sinews and cartilage.

Also, X-ray evidence of OA does not necessarily reflect the extent of disease experienced by an animal.

Dolly was created using somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).

It involves removing the DNA-containing nucleus from a cell other than an egg or sperm -- a skin cell, for example -- and injecting it into an unfertilised egg from which the nucleus had been removed.

Once transferred, the egg reprogrammes the mature DNA back to an embryonic state with the aid of an electric jolt.

The egg starts dividing to form the embryo of an animal almost identical to the original DNA donor.

Animal cloning is used in agriculture, mainly to create breeding stock, and in the business of "recreating" people's dead pets.
As the victim collapsed inside the bus, the boys managed to jump out of the vehicle unchallenged after the murder.

New Delhi: In an alleged case of theft going wrong, a group of five to six teenagers in school uniforms stabbed a man to death inside a moving bus on Mathura Road in south Delhi after he tried to frisk them on suspicion of stealing his mobile phone, following which all of them were apprehended. The incident took place on Thursday afternoon

Deputy commissioner of police (Southeast) Romil Baaniya said the murdered passenger, who is believed to be in his mid 20s, remains unidentified as a search of his pockets did not yield any documents. The conductor of the bus, which had about 40 passengers, said the boys and the victim boarded the bus from a bus stop in Ashram and soon the man began checking their pockets. According to the conductor, the man alleged that they had stolen his mobile phone.

There was a scuffle in which one boy stabbed the man in his neck with a knife while the other boys restrained him, he said.

The conductor added that the boys were wearing white shirt and navy blue trouser, suggesting they were students of a government school. As the victim collapsed inside the bus, the boys managed to jump out of the vehicle unchallenged after the murder. The bus was moving slowly because of the traffic, so they managed to jump out and escape, said the driver of the bus, Jai Bhagwan.

DCP Baaniya said the boys were aged between 13 and 16. He said the investigators are also probing the possibility that the accused could be the members of a gang that recruits boys in uniform to pick the pocket of the passengers. Police said the description of the boys uniform has provided crucial leads for the probe but there was no breakthrough in the case until Friday afternoon.
Sinha claimed that there were neither legal nor technical issues with the name, Vandemataram Mahavidyalaya.

New Delhi: Amid ongoing controversy of renaming of the Delhi Universitys Dyal Singh (Evening) College, chairperson of the college governing body Amitabh Sinha on Friday alleged that it is the oppositions anti-national agenda at work.

He claimed that there was neither legal nor technical issues involved with the name Vandemataram Mahavidyalaya.

According to Mr Sinha, Supreme Court lawyer, a lobby inside the college forged by some opposition parties are misleading the people in general and the teachers fraternity and students in particular by propping up Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in order to make it appear like an issue concerning the Sikh community.

Mr Sinha cited regulation, precedents and orders of the University of Delhi to establish how this was not the first occasion when an evening college was given the morning slot and renamed.

Claiming former deputy chief minister of Punjab Sukhbir Singh Badal has been misled, Mr Sinha has invited him for a discussion or debate to clear the air over the renaming exercise.

Either he convinces me and I reverse the decision to rename the new college, or I convince myself and he issues a statement clarifying that he was misled, said Mr Sinha.

Giving the examples of Deshbandhu College and Ram Lal Anand College, which were renamed as Ramanujan College and Aryabhatta College respectively, Mr Sinha asked why there was no controversy over those exercises.

Are Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das and Ram Lal Anand not respectable figures? When those colleges were renamed, were the legacies of C.R. Das and R.L. Anand insulted? he asked.

Pointing out the colleges history, Mr Sinha said that the trust failed to pay its dues, following which the control of the college was transferred wholly to the University of Delhi.
Bihar deputy CMs remark may silence voices of dissent.

Kolkata: The JD(U) and the BJP are natural allies and the two parties will fight the 2019 polls together, Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi said.

When the time comes, we will sit together and divide the seats. We will fight together and Narendra Modi will be again the Prime Minister in 2019, he said at an event here on Friday night.

Mr Sushil Modi was replying to a question on whether the BJP might not feel the need for JD(U)s support in the elections in 2019.

The BJP in alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP), Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and the Hindustani Awam Party accounts for 32 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar.

Alliance is a give and take. When both the partners feel they will benefit from it then only it will work. We will fight together with Nitish Kumar-led JD (U) in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he said.

His remarks assume significance as there were some discordant voices from leaders of both the parties on seat sharing for the next general elections earlier. After a meeting with MPs from Bihar, Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah had asked partymen to strengthen it down to the booth level in all 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

The JD(U) also appealed to its workers to brace for contest on all the 40 seats.

Rashtriya Lok Samta Party supremo Lalu Prasad and other opposition parties leaders had used the occasion to attack Nitish Kumar, claiming that he was marginalisedby the saffron party to avenge an incident in 2010 when he had cancelled a dinner for BJP leaders over a tiff with Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat.

The JD(U) and the BJP are made for each other, Sushil Modi said.

Nitish Kumar has been our partner for 17 years and again the JD(U) and the BJP have come together, it is a natural alliance, said the senior BJP leader, who also served as the deputy chief minister in the earlier NDA government.

The JD(U) had severe ties with the BJP in June 2013 over elevation of Mr Modi as the prime ministerial candidate.

After collapse of an alliance comprising the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress in July this year, Mr Nitish Kumar and the BJP once again joined hands after four years to form a coalition in the politically sensitive state.

Mr Sushil Modis allegations against Mr Lalu Prasad and his family of acquiring benami properties had played an important role in the disintegration of the alliance comprising the JD (U), the Congress and the RJD.

When the JD(U) and the BJP coalition was sworn in again on July 27 this year, Sushil Modi was made the deputy chief minister.

The senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader dismissed speculation that a seat- sharing adjustment, in which the JD(U) would also be accommodated, might upset the sitting BJP MPs if they were denied tickets.

What is the guarantee that every minister will get party ticket a second time? And what will they do by getting upset. If people make up their mind then it hardly matters who is getting ticket or not, Mr Sushil Modi said.

Mr Sushil Modi accused Mr Lalu Prasad of being chaotic, disorganised and an irresponsible man.

No gentleman can work with a person like Lalu Prasad. An unnatural alliance (of the JD(U), RJD and Congress) died a natural death. The day Nitish Kumar left the NDA, I knew this alliance (with the RJD) would not work but, I never thought it would break so soon, he claimed.
On Senas demand, both proposals were held back by the civic administration.

Mumbai: More than 400 trees are likely to be uprooted for metro projects in the western suburbs of Malad and Goregaon. However, Shiv Sena, the ruling party in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), has continued its staunch opposition to the tree cutting for metro projects.

In the civic tree authority meeting on Friday, Sena again vehemently opposed the tree cutting and transplantation proposals for metro projects and demanded detailed scrutinisation before approving them.

The civic administration has tabled a proposal before the civic tree authority for the construction of a depot and workshop at Charkop, Malad, for the Metro II A project, which required cutting and transplantation of 350 and 22 trees respectively. In addition to this, 15 and 23 trees are proposed to be cut and transplanted respectively for the construction of metro station at Goregaon.

However, Sena opposed the proposals, saying that it requires a large number of tree cutting. More than 400 trees are to be either cut or transplanted for the metro projects. So the proposals need to be scrutinised in detail by visiting these places. It has to be seen whether the tree cutting and transplantation on large scale is really required for the projects, said Shiv Sena corporator and house leader Yashwant Jadhav.

On Senas demand, both proposals were held back by the civic administration.

Sena has been opposing metro projects on the grounds of tree cutting. It has been opposing the Metro-3 project (Colaba-Bandra-Seepz) by fiercely protesting against the cutting of large number of trees for the construction of the metro carshed at Aarey Colony.
'A case under the relevant sections of the Prevention of Corruptions Act of 1988 has been registered and a probe is underway,' Alphale said.

'The duo demanded Rs 10,000 from the woman for removing the encroachments on her land.' Aphale said. (Photo: Representational | File)

Thane: Two officials of the Vasai-Virar Municipal Corporation (VVMC) were arrested for allegedly demanding and accepting bribe from a woman, a senior Anti-Corruption Bureau official said on Satuday.

Pradeep Jadhav (50), Chief of the anti-encroachment department of I Ward in VVMC and Manish Patil (25) junior engineer (contracts) I Ward of the VVMC were apprehended on Friday, Deputy Superintendent of Police, ACB Palghar Division, Ajay Aphale said.

He said the duo demanded Rs 10,000 from the woman for removing the encroachments on her land.

Following a complaint, a trap was laid last evening and Patil, who accepted the money, was apprehended. Subsequently, Jadhav too was arrested, Aphale added.

A case under relevant sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988 was registered, he said, adding a probe was underway.
The accused kidnapped the 14-yr-old girl and took her to Shirdi and later Haridwar with an intention of marrying her in 2015.

The accused has been sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment for kidnapping in 2015. (Photo: Representational | File)

Thane: A 35-year-old man from Wada has been sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment by a Thane court for kidnapping a 14-year-old girl in 2015.

District Judge SC Khalipe also slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on the convict Radheyshyam Jagdish Chaurasiya, originally from Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh.

Upon realisation of the fine, the same will be paid as compensation to the victim, the Judge said in his order.

Prosecutor Rekha Hiwrale informed the court that on July 22, 2015, the accused kidnapped the girl and took her to Shirdi and later to Haridwar with an intention of marrying her.

Chaurasiya, along with the girl, was caught at the Haridwar railway station by the local police and handed over to the Wada police, the court was informed.

A case was then registered at the Wada police station.

Defence counsel S J Patankar contested the claim, saying the accused was victim's cousin brother and had taken the girl to Haridwar for religious purposes.

However, the judge, in his order, said, "I conclude that the prosecution has proved beyond all reasonable doubt that the victim was below 18 years and she was taken by the accused without her father's consent to Shirdi and Haridwar".
The tehsil chief of revenue department had sent notices to farmers informing them of the land acquisition process.

Mumbai: Thousands of farmers and landowners from fifteen villages who are protesting against a proposed oil refinery in Ratnagiri districts Rajapur tehsil have refused to back down. For the fifth consecutive day, agitators have been preventing government officials from mapping the land needed for the project. TheRs 1 lakh crore oil refinery is slated to be built on the coastline and 15,000 acres of land from 15 villages are required for it.

The tehsil chief of revenue department had sent notices to farmers informing them of the land acquisition process. However, on reaching Nanar village every morning to measure land, officials were prevented from entering the hamlet. Nanar and 14 surrounding villages have been notified under Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation Act, 2013. The Act under which land is to be acq-uired is draconian and stifles the voice of the people. The people were not taken into confidence for the project, said Satyajit Chavan, convener, Konkan Vinashkari Prakalp Virodhi Samiti, which is leading the protests.

One of the major reasons why the villagers have been opposing the project is pollution. The government say it is green project. But which oil refinery in the world is green? This shows that government is misinforming people, said Mr Chavan.

Another issue is the location of the project, which is in close proximity to the 9,900 MW Jaitapur nuclear project. It is unsafe and illogical to have two big, sensitive projects in a periphery of 20 km. There is no such example in the world. The government is playing with the lives of people, said Aravind Samant, a protester.

Meanwhile, Ratnagiri guardian minister Ravindra Waikar said he has asked the police not to use force against protesters. I will talk to the chief minister about the development on the coming Monday, he said.
Both the petitioners have contended that their foetuses are suffering from different medical complications.

The HC has asked a panel of doctors to examine them and give report about medical conditions. (Representational Image)

Mumbai: Two women from Pune have approached the Bombay high court seeking permission to terminate their pregnancy, which is in the advanced stage. Both the petitioners have contended that their foetuses are suffering from different medical complications and chances of their survival are slim.

The women have also mentioned that it could pose danger to their lives if not terminated. The HC has asked a panel of doctors to examine them and give report about medical conditions.

One of the petitioners through her lawyer Priyal Sarda told the court that she got married in April 2017 and during a medical check up the doctor informed her that the foetus is having life threatening condition.

Advocate Sarda argued that the petitioner has right to preserve her life in view of the foreseeable danger to it, in case she allows the current pregnancy to run its full course. He informed the HC that the medical papers clearly suggest that the foetal kidneys are enlarged and bulky and echogenic. The foetal urinary bladder is poorly visualised, which suggests non-functioning multicystic kidneys so the foetus will not be able to survive outside the uterus, he said.

The petitioner approach the HC as her pregnancy has entered 28 weeks, which is beyond permissible abortion period of 20-week ceiling. However, it was argued that the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act allows termination of pregnancy after 20-weeks if it involves a serious risk to the life of the foetus or pregnant woman.

The second petitioner through advocate Kranti L.C. contended that she is 27-weeks pregnant but her medical tests confirm that the skull and brain of the foetus is suffering from serious ailment.

After hearing both the petitions the division bench of Justice Shantanu Kemkar and Justice G.S. Kulkarni directed the medical board of B.J. Medical College and Hospital, Pune to examine the women and file report within two days so that the court can decide their applications.
Mr Thackeray slammed the BJP over the loan waiver scheme mess, among other things.

Mumbai: Shiv Senas efforts to position itself as an Opposition party by criticising the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on almost every issue despite remaining in government seems to have worked.

Now, the BJP and even the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) consider the Sena as part of the Opposition. Party insiders believe that this stand could prove fruitful for the party as the Congress and NCP are still seeking credibility.

Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray had been touring Western Maharashtra, where his party doesnt have much of a footing, for two days.

Mr Thackeray slammed the BJP over the loan waiver scheme mess, among other things. He also met traders in Hatkanangale, Kolhapur and voiced his support for them in the face of their troubles with the goods and services tax. Mr Thackeray also threatened to walk out from government if it failed to address the peoples problems.

Uddhavji knows that our real battle is with the BJP. Congress and NCP are too weak to take on the BJP. So, criticising the government on issues that are hurting people and distancing ourselves from the governments failures is necessary, said a two-time MLA of the party from Western Maharashtra.

Opposition leaders have come down heavily on the Sena for its tactics. NCP chief Sharad Pawar said, The Sena need to decide first whether it is in power or not. You keep claiming (credit for) every decision and still criticise the government.

Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee chief Ashok Chavan also blasted the Sena for doublespeak. The Sena doesnt want to lose power, but at the same time doesnt want to own up to the governments failures. Its politics has been exposed now, said Mr Chavan.

Anticipating this attack by the Opposition, Mr Thackeray already tried to clear his stand. We are not power hungry. When this government stops working for the peoples interest, we will kick the power (sic), Mr Thackeray said in Kolhapur on Friday.
On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was devastated and three days later, on August 9, Nagasaki was decimated.

To deliberate upon various aspects of nuclear strategy and security in the second nuclear age, practitioners and scholars from across the world met at a conference in Washington D.C. recently.

The first nuclear age dawned during the closing days of World War II when the then US President Harry S. Truman authorised the use of the atomic bomb on Japan. On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was devastated and three days later, on August 9, Nagasaki was decimated. With this, the world woke up to the devastating potential of atomic power.

As the Iron Curtain descended across Europe, dividing the continent into two parts, a terrible arms race began. The erstwhile Soviet Union acquired atomic weapons in 1949 followed by Britain in 1952, France in 1960 and China in 1964. Thus, the Permanent Five of the UN Security Council acquired a nuclear veto within two decades of the end of World War II.

The first nuclear age unleashed the movement against weapons of mass destruction and it did achieve some success. US President Dwight D. Eisenhowers Atoms for Peace initiative is an example. Another early success was the negotiation of the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT). The roots of this treaty can be traced back to Indias novel initiative in 1954 calling for a standstill agreement on nuclear tests. That was the time the US and the Soviet Union were detonating powerful nuclear weapons with increasing frequency. India worked towards building an international momentum for the 1963 treaty, banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and underwater. This significantly reduced global levels of fallout but, unfortunately, did little to check the nuclear arms race. It led to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), though India didnt become a part of it.

As the peace movement intensified across the world, seeking a halt on further production as also a rollback of the burgeoning arsenals of the P-5 or N-5, the dominant nuclear veto powers midwifed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) into existence (in 1968), effectively dividing the world into nuclear weapons states (NWS) and non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS). This was regarded by the ayatollahs of non-proliferation as the gold standard of the global nuclear order.

India carried out a peaceful nuclear explosion on May 18, 1974, enigmatically named Smiling Buddha, the first known nuclear test outside the N-5. However, it was not until 1998 that the second nuclear age began in the right earnest. In May 1998, both India and Pakistan carried out back-to-back nuclear tests. By then there was a buzz around the world that certain other nations were also de facto nuclear weapons states, while some others were just a step away from becoming so.

On October 9, 2006, North Korea shattered the East Asian calm with its nuclear test. Though initially estimated as just a fizzle, it laid the foundation of a highly-corrosive and unstable nuclear weapon and missile programme that is now the biggest headache for the world. However, one thing that must be acknowledged is that the second nuclear age is a reality that leaders of the first nuclear age cannot ignore.

One successful template of rolling back the second nuclear age, though partially, is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal between Iran on one side, and the US, UK, Russia, France, China and Germany on the other. With the US now diffident on continuing this agreement, uncertainty prevails about the future trajectory of even this significant breakthrough of recent times.

The fundamental question now is: where do we go from here in reconciling the monopoly of nuclear weapons states of the first nuclear age, sanctified by NPT, and the realities of the new global realities that constitute the second nuclear age?

A good starting point would be by revisiting the basic postulates of the NPT itself. An initial template of this process was the nuclear agreement signed between India and US in 2008 that recognised a hard reality  that while India was a de-facto nuclear weapons state committed to the tenets of non-proliferation, it had legitimate security concerns that couldnt be brushed aside.

The same cant be said about Pakistan, North Korea and some other second nuclear age powers whose unfortunate track record of proliferation of technologies and weapons of mass destruction is now too well-documented to even be impeached. The A.Q. Khan Nuclear Walmart cooperation between Pakistan and North Korea in the trade of nuclear weapons and missile technology and more recently, the emerging evidence that a NWS ostensibly supplied the motors powering the North Korean missile project are some well-documented examples of this malfeasance.

All other legal regimes connected with the entire nuclear pantheon, be it the suppliers group or the missile control technology regime, must adjust themselves to the basic reality that no longer can the second nuclear age powers be forced to subscribe to the geo-political realities of 1968.

India is a responsible nuclear power committed to the doctrine of No-First-Use despite serious provocations in our neighborhood. India continues to seek the abolition of all weapons of mass destruction; nuclear, biological, chemical and autonomous that are presumably still being incubated. While India is a realist and recognises the hard geopolitical realities, it still doesnt wish to give up its idealism to achieve a world order free from the fear of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction. Most of all, India has an impeccable track record on non-proliferation and has itself imposed a moratorium not to test now for close to two decades despite questions raised by some members of the scientific community about the validity of some aspects of the 1998 tests. A good starting point, therefore, of distinguishing between responsible and rogue nuclear powers of the second nuclear age would be that, in the 50th year of NPT and on the 20th anniversary of Indias nuclear tests, the P-5 or N-5 should offer India the full membership of the treaty as a nuclear weapons state.
A furious Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning and pledged to 'respond with brutal force'.

Egypt Mosque Attack: Worshippers were finishing Friday prayers at mosque when a bomb exploded. (Photo: AFP)

Cairo: Attackers killed at least 235 worshippers Friday in a bomb and gun assault on a packed mosque in Egypt's restive North Sinai province, in the country's deadliest attack in recent memory.

A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque, roughly 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish, before gunmen opened fire on the Sufi worshippers gathered there for weekly Friday prayers, officials said.

Witnesses said the assailants surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles and then planted a bomb outside.

The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they tried to flee and used congregants' vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque.

Between 10 and 20 armed attackers "entered the mosque, killing more people than they injured," Magdy Rizk, who was wounded in the attack, told AFP.

"They were wearing masks and military uniforms," he said, adding that the area was predominantly Sufi and that locals have received threats from extremist groups.

The state prosecutor's office said in a statement that 235 people were killed and 109 wounded in the attack, the scale of which is unprecedented in a four-year insurgency by Islamist extremist groups.

US President Donald Trump condemned on Twitter the "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenceless worshippers".

A furious Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning and pledged to "respond with brutal force".

"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period," he added in a televised speech.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent condolences to Sisi, calling the attack "striking for its cruelty and cynicism", while condemnations poured in from Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other countries.

UK foreign minister Boris Johnson decried the "barbaric attack", while his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian labelled it "despicable".

109 people were injured in the attack on Friday. (Photo: AFP)

Pope Francis and Egypt's highest Muslim religious authority joined in the condemnation.

"His Holiness joins all people of good will in imploring that hearts hardened by hatred will learn to renounce the way of violence," the pope's office said.

The grand imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, condemned "in the strongest terms this barbaric terrorist attack".

ISIS targeting of Sufis

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bloodshed.

The Islamic State group's Egypt branch has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and also civilians accused of working with the authorities, in attacks in the north of the Sinai peninsula.

They have also targeted followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Sunni Islam as well as Christians.

The victims of Friday's attack included civilians and conscripts praying at the mosque.

A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights IS told AFP that the mosque is known as a place where Sufis gather.

The Islamic State group shares the puritan Salafi view that Sufis are heretics for seeking the intercession of saints.

The jihadists had previously kidnapped and beheaded an elderly Sufi leader, accusing him of practising magic which Islam forbids, and abducted Sufi practitioners later released after "repenting".

An IS propaganda outlet had published an interview earlier with the commander of its "morality police" in Sinai who said their "first priority was to combat the manifestations of polytheism including Sufism".

The group has killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, forcing many to flee the peninsula.

The military has struggled to quell jihadists who pledged allegiance to IS in November 2014.

IS regularly conducts attacks against soldiers and policemen in the peninsula bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip, although the frequency and scale of such attacks has diminished over the past year.

The jihadists have since increasingly turned to civilian targets, attacking not only Christians and Sufis but also Bedouin Sinai inhabitants accused of working with the army.

The Gaza Strip's border crossing with Egypt that had been due to reopen Saturday will remain closed until further notice because of the attack, a Palestinian official said.

Aside from IS, Egypt also faces a threat from Al-Qaeda-aligned jihadists who operate out of neighbouring Libya.

A group calling itself Ansar al-Islam -- Supporters of Islam in Arabic -- claimed an October ambush in Egypt's Western Desert that killed at least 16 policemen.

Many of those killed belonged to the interior ministry's secretive National Security Service.

The military later conducted air strikes on the attackers, killing their leader Emad al-Din Abdel Hamid, a most wanted jihadist who was a military officer before joining an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Libya's militant stronghold of Derna.
US has asked Pak govert to re-arrest and charge Saeed for his crimes. It also asked Pakistan to ensure that the LeT leader is behind bars.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder, who has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan on Friday. (Photo: File | AP)

Washington: Mumbai attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed has "blood on his hands", and wants to bring extremism into the mainstream politics of Pakistan, a former top American spymaster said on Saturday.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder, who has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan on Friday.

"Saeed is a terrorist. Worked with the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Kashmiri militant group, and al-Qaida on attacks," Michael Morell, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deputy director, who has also served twice as its acting director, said in a tweet.

Read: 26/11 attack mastermind Saeed walks free, says will fight for Kashmir

"He has blood on his hands. Now wants to bring extremism into the political mainstream in Pakistan," he said after Saeed, a UN and US designated terrorist, was released from house arrest in Lahore.

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January. The fire-brand cleric's release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

A deeply concerned US has asked the Pakistan government to re-arrest and charge Saeed for his crimes. It also asked Pakistan to ensure that the LeT leader is behind bars.

"NO! JuD is NOT tied to Islamic State. What a rookie...Seriously. Hafiz Saeed's Release Completes the Political Mainstreaming of jihadists in Pakistan," tweeted Christine Fair, a well known South Asian expert on terrorist groups.

NBC news said Saeed's release could once again sour US relations with Pakistan. The New York Times said, for decades, Pakistan has cast a benign eye on groups like LeT which is perceived as an asset because its attacks target Indian soldiers in Kashmir even as the government battles jihadist groups like the Pakistan Taliban that directly threatens the country.

Read also: US demands arrest, prosecution of LeT chief Hafeez Saeed

"But despite its pressure on Pakistan to move against militants like Saeed, the United States has also sent mixed messages. Just a month ago, the United States Senate struck down a provision tying American government funding to Pakistan to the country's efforts to curb Lashkar-e-Taiba's operations. The provision, part of a broader Pentagon funding legislation that Congress introduced this past summer, would have forced the secretary of defence to certify that Islamabad was thwarting Lashkar-e-Taiba's activities inside Pakistan or risk USD 350 million in American assistance," the Times wrote.

Meanwhile, in an op-ed, The Washington Examiner said the Trump administration "should work with India" to "capture or kill" Saeed.

"Trump should call Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and offer to work with him to capture or kill Saeed," the daily said, adding that Saeed intends to lead a new Muslim theocratic political bloc in 2018's parliamentary polls.

"Although Pakistan's electoral commission has refused to certify the bloc, Saeed's populist power should not be understated. Charismatic and determined, if left unchecked in his political party or terrorist activities, Saeed could destabilise the region," the daily added.

The JuD is believed to be the front organisation for the banned LeT which is responsible for carrying out the Mumbai terror attack.
Saeed, who has a USD 10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pak on Friday.

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder is a UN and US designated terrorist. (Photo: AP)

Islamabad: Pakistan has justified the release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, claiming that Islamabad was committed to the implementation of UNSC sanctions regime on terrorists.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) head and LeT founder, who has a $10 million American bounty on his head for terror activities, was freed by Pakistan on Friday.

He is a UN and US designated terrorist.

Indias Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Saeeds release confirmed once again the lack of seriousness by the Pakistan government in bringing to justice perpetrators of terrorism, including individuals and entities designated by the UN.

It also appears to be an attempt by the Pakistani system to mainstream proscribed terrorists. Pakistan has not changed its policy of shielding and supporting non-state actors and its true face is visible for all to see, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in New Delhi on Thursday.

Responding to the comments made by the MEA, Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan was committed to the implementation of UNSC 1267 sanctions regime and has taken several steps in this regard.

The (MEA) spokesperson took exception to self-serving insinuations, he said in statement issues late on Friday night.

Faisal said that courts in Pakistan, pursuant to their constitutional duty, were determined to uphold rule of law and due process for all citizens of Pakistan.

Legal processes were anchored in rule of law, not dictates of politics and posturing, he said.

It is in the interest of all States to speak and act in a manner that is consistent with the imperatives of adhering to rule of law at the national and international levels, Faisal said.

He said that Pakistans resolve, actions and successes in the fight against terrorism, terrorist violence and terrorists are unmatched in the world.

Pakistan condemns and opposes all forms of terrorism by any individual or group, the FO spokesperson said.

Saeed, in his late 60s, was under house arrest for 297 days since January.

The fire-brand clerics release after midnight came ahead of the 9th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.

Saeed was individually designated by the UN under the Security Council Resolution 1267 in December, 2008.
Egypt has witnessed a series of terror attacks this year claiming scores of lives.

Egyptians walk past bodies following an attack at the Rawda mosque in Egypt. (Photo: AFP)

Cairo: An angry Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi pledged to respond with brutal force against militants who massacred at least 235 people at a mosque during weekly prayers on Friday.

The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period, he also said in a televised speech.

Militants struck a mosque during Friday prayers in Egypts restive North Sinai region, in the deadliest terror attack in the country.

The militants launched a targeted bomb and gun attack on the al-Rowda mosque in Al-Arish city during the Friday prayers, the state-run MENA news agency reported.

After the bomb ripped through the mosque, the gunmen on four off-road vehicles opened fire on the worshippers who tried to escape from the site after the explosion, it said.

About 50 ambulances were rushed to the attack site to shift the injured to hospitals. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

The Egypt government has announced three days of mourning, even as President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi chaired an emergency meeting with officials to review security situation after the deadly attack.

Egypts North Sinai region has witnessed many violent attacks by militants since the January 2011 revolution that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak.

The attacks targeting police and military increased after the ouster of Islamist ex-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by military following massive protests against his rule. Over 700 security personnel have been reported killed since then.

The military has launched security campaigns in the area, arrested suspects and demolished houses that belonged to terrorists, including those facilitating tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip.

Egypt has witnessed a series of terror attacks this year claiming scores of lives.
by John Ai

The fire in an apartment complex caused 19 deaths, of which 8 children. Beijing launches a home-country campaign + against illegal apartments and structures, small industries and offices by evicting those who live there. Thousands of homeless. Cai Qi, a friend of Xi Jinping, has decided to clean the city of "low-income industries" and reduce the population.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - Beijing began to purge cheap apartments after a compound in suburb Daxing District set ablaze on the evening of 18th November. Beijing authorities announced a 40-day long blanket search and campaign against illegal apartments and structures. The tenants in many apartments across Beijing were evicted and became homeless.

The fire last Saturday killed 19 people including eight children. Most of the tenants in the compound called Jufuyuan Apartment were migrant workers. According to the report of state-run CCTV, the victims died from lethal carbon monoxide. The fire broke out from a newly installed underground refrigeration facility in the apartment. Police arrested 18 suspects including the leaseholder, six people in charge of running the apartment and 11 workers working on refrigeration facility construction, debugging and circuit maintenance. Local government said the 11 workers were unqualified for their jobs. However, authorities said that the reason of the fire is still under investigation.

It is reported that hundreds of people lived in Jufuyuan Apartment and most of them were migrant workers. Small factories cluster in the outskirts of the mega-city and affordable housing cost of cheap apartments are preferred by migrant workers and young graduates. Some of the compounds in Beijing were revamp into multi-function structures hosting business, warehousing and apartments for tenants.

The aftermath of the fire was that riot police came to seal off the area. Illegal structures were demolished and businesses and migrant workers were faced of imminent eviction. Since 20th November, the measure of purging apartments was carried out across Beijing city. Authorities cut water and power supply of such apartments and forced thousands of tenants to move out without compensation. Many evicted tenants posted online that the rent they had paid were not returned, what is more, price of rent and hotel soars as thousands of people are eager to find a place to stay. The footages of people dragging trolley cases, force eviction and shops destroyed by personnels on Weibo, Chinas Twitter equivalent service, were quickly censored. But AsiaNews succeeded in recovering some:

https://twitter.com/LunaLinCN/status/933542695582044160

https://twitter.com/JiangsongWang/status/933695070535946240

https://twitter.com/cnfreewang/status/933694518393757696

Cai Qi, Communist Party boss of Beijing ordered to check house by house and village by village. Cai also claimed to control the population and lower the increase rate of population in Beijing. As Xi Jinpings protege, Cai was promoted as the member of powerful Politburo after the 19th Congress of Communist Party.

Since 2017, Beijing has accelerated the campaign to dismiss non-capital functions. Beijing closed several wholesale markets and garment markets as the part of the campaign which caused protests. Online comments say that the fire and risks are excuse for authorities drive low-revenue and vulnerable groups out of Beijing. But an article on the front page of party mouthpiece Beijing Daily on Friday said that dismissing non-capital functions never targets any specific groups.

In April 2011, fire in a garment workshop in Daxing District caused 17 deaths. Most of the victims of two accidents are in labor-intensified industries. At that time, unlicensed factories were forced to close that lead to unemployment. The similar tragic happened recently happened miles further from the downtown than the previous one, but brings about more impacts on margined groups.
by Nirmala Carvalho

"I want to show him the richness of the Church of the poor." For the cardinal, the Pope's meeting with Rohinghya in Dhaka is "touching and healing those who are on the peripheries", "to be witnesses of the Gospel". The mission in Asia: dialogue and commitment to the poor.

Mumbai (AsiaNews) - Card. Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Mumbai, will accompany Pope Francis on his trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh, which begins tomorrow. The cardinal is President of the Federation of Asian Episcopal Conferences (FABC) and is also a member of the Group of Cardinals called the Pontifical Council for Reform of the Curia (the so-called C9).

Speaking to AsiaNews, he explains the meaning of the impending Pope's journey. "Myanmar has a great significance for Pope Francis because there is a small Church: Catholics are about 700,000, 1.28% of the whole nation. And Catholics live as a minority in a Buddhist nation. Nevertheless, the faithful seek new creative ways to better serve the people and society of Myanmar. Yes, the Church is a minority, but Catholics make their presence heard with their service to the poor and unfortunate, defending justice and peace in society. "

"Even in Bangladesh - he adds - Catholics are a minority and yet serve society and the nation through the apostolate in education, health care and development. I learned of the news that the pope will meet the Rohingya in Dhaka. This touching the sorrows of Christ, this touching and healing those who are on the periphery is really the presence of Jesus, being a witness of the Gospel. "

"In Asia  he concludes - the mission of the Church is to be in constant dialogue: dialogue with cultures, with other religions, with the poor. And it's one mission. The Church in Asia is very active with concrete measures serving the poor and marginalized. Evangelization takes place through concrete gestures of charity toward the poor. "

Card. Gracias, who was a close friend of Mother Teresa, was also a friend of the poor and often "touched Jesus' wounds" in the poor as a priest and even a cardinal.

Yesterday the cardinal celebrated his 10 years as cardinal. "My greatest joy - he said - is to serve the Church in Asia. Accompanying Pope Francis to Myanmar and Bangladesh will give me the opportunity to show him the richness of a Church of the poor. "
Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Persecutions and violence "perpetrated in the name of fundamentalist extremism" against the Assyrian Church of the East and the other Christian Churches of the region evoke the Cross " Easter light in a world enveloped by so much darkness", "hope and peace to come". This was Pope Francis reflection in his greeting yesterday to the members of the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East on the occasion of the signing of a Joint Declaration, which establishes "a happy conclusion the phase regarding sacramental life" in which "the sign of the cross is referred to as an explicit symbol of unity among all sacramental celebrations".

"When we look at the cross or make the sign of the cross," said Francis, "we are also invited to remember sacrifices endured in union with Jesus and to remain close to those who today bear a heavy cross upon their shoulders. The Assyrian Church of the East, along with other Churches and many of our brothers and sisters in the region, is afflicted by persecution, and is a witness to brutal acts of violence perpetrated in the name of fundamentalist extremism. Situations of such tragic suffering take root more easily in contexts of great poverty, injustice and social exclusion, largely caused by instability, often fuelled by external interests, and by conflicts that have also led in recent times to situations of dire need, giving rise to real cultural and spiritual deserts, within which it becomes easy to manipulate people and incite them to hatred. Such suffering has recently been exacerbated by the tragedy of the violent earthquake on the border between Iraq, the homeland of your Church, and Iran, where your communities have also long been established, as well as in Syria, Lebanon and India".

"As a result, particularly during periods of greater suffering and deprivation, large numbers of the faithful have had to leave their lands and emigrate to other countries, thus increasing the diaspora community, with the many trials it faces. Arriving in some societies, emigres encounter challenges stemming from an often difficult integration, and a marked secularization, which can hinder their efforts to preserve the spiritual riches of their traditions, and even prevent their witness of faith. In all of this, the constant repetition of the sign of the cross is a reminder that the Lord of mercy never abandons his brothers and sisters, but embraces their wounds within his own."
by Sudha Ramachandran*

Beijings intervention in the Rakhine conflict conceals economic and political interests. Beijing has already invested tens of billions in the region, building a deep-sea port for cargo ships, as well as oil and gas pipelines to Yunnan. Rakhine is an important component in Beijings Belt and Road Initiative. Bangladesh is the second largest importer of Chinese weapons. Mediation will be difficult and may cause more violence.

Bangalore (AsiaNews)  In recent days China has been involved in hectic diplomatic activity in the Rohingya crisis. After praising the Myanmar militarys action against them, Beijing is now acting as a mediator between Myanmar and Bangladesh.

It is unclear whether the agreement reached yesterday between the two countries for the return of Rohingya is the result of Chinese mediation. What is certain is that Beijing is worried about the intervention of other powers in the Rakhine region, where China has spent tens of billions to build infrastructures, including oil and gas pipelines, making the area one of the hubs of the Belt and Road Initiative, the new Silk Road.

In the article we publish, courtesy of the Jamestown Foundation, the author lists all the economic and military relations that Beijing has with Dhaka and Naypyitaw, and explains Chinas new role as an international mediator, motivated by economic interests rather than by humanitarian reasons.

During his visits to Dhaka, Bangladesh and Naypyitaw, Myanmar on November 18 and 19, Chinas Foreign Minister Wang Yi put forward a three-phase plan to resolve the Rohingya crisis. First, Wang called for a ceasefire in Myanmars devastated Rakhine state, which is at the center of the crisis. Aimed at restoring order and stability in the Rakhine state, the ceasefire is expected to halt the flow of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh. China envisages that this will pave the way for the second stage: negotiations between Myanmar and Bangladesh to address the refugee problem. The third and final stage will involve the economic development of the Rakhine state to address the underlying causes of the violence (Global Times, November 20). Chinas plan has reportedly found acceptance in Naypyitaw and Dhaka and marks the start of a new phase in Beijings involvement in the Rohingya conflict (FMPRC, November 20). Chinas role has hitherto been limited to providing humanitarian aid to the Rohingya refugees and protecting Myanmar from international censure. Why is China now adopting a mediatory role in the conflict? And is it likely to succeed in bringing peace to a restive region?

The Rohingya Conflict

The Rohingya crisis began on August 25 when the Myanmar government declared the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) a terrorist organization in response to deadly attacks on police and army posts in Rakhine state in western Myanmar (Mizzima, August 28). It also launched a military crackdown in Rakhine, which it maintains is aimed at the militants (Mizzima, October 16; Terrorism Monitor, November 10). However, horrific violence has been unleashed on Rohingya civilians, including women and children. Entire villages have been razed. Over 600,000 of the estimated 1.1 million Rohingya in Myanmar are reported to have fled to Bangladesh (The Wire, November 17). The current crisis is the most severe that the decades-old Rohingya conflict has witnessed.

While the roots of the Rohingya conflict (like Myanmars other ethnic conflicts) can be traced back to colonial times, independence brought with it discrimination against the Rohingya that became systematic and serious. A Muslim ethnic group that has inhabited the Rakhine state for centuries, the Rohingya do not figure among Myanmars 135 official ethnic groups. Since 1982, they have been denied citizenship, effectively rendering them stateless (Daily Sabah, October 23). In addition to suffering at the hands of the military, the Rohingya have been targeted by Rakhine Buddhist vigilante groups too (The Wire, November 17). The violence has triggered waves of Rohingya migration to neighboring countries like Bangladesh, Thailand, India, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Unwelcome in these countries as well, Rohingya refugees have been pushed back or languish in makeshift, overcrowded camps (The National, September 13).

Chinas Support

The Myanmar militarys reported atrocities against fleeing Rohingya civilians have evoked international outrage. UN Human Rights Council Chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein described the situation in the Rakhine state as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing (UN News Centre, September 11). Several Muslim countries and the western powers have criticized Myanmars brutal crackdowns on the Rohingya too (Arab News, September 5 and FirstPost, September 23).

However, China has publically praised the Myanmar governments crackdowns in Rakhine. In September, the Chinese ambassador to Myanmar, Hong Liang, strongly welcomed the counterattacks of Myanmar security forces against [Rohingya] extremist terrorists and described its military campaign as just an internal affair (The Global New Light of Myanmar, September 14). Later that month, Hong assured the Myanmar government that China would stand firmly by it on the international stage and continue providing it with necessary assistance to help it uphold internal stability and development (The Irrawaddy, September 27).

At the UN, China has blocked resolutions against Myanmar and forced statements critical of its brutal military campaign against the Rohingyas to be watered down. On November 6, for instance, the UN Security Council (UNSC) expressed grave concern over reports of human rights violations and abuses in Rakhine State and called on the Myanmar government to ensure no further excessive use of military forces there (United Nations, November 6). While this was strong censure of the Myanmar militarys use of force against the Rohingya, this being a statementand not a resolutionis not enforceable. China and Russia are reported to have forced the UNSC to issue a presidential statement rather than a resolution. The UNSC statement denounces Myanmars violent handling of the crisis but it is inconsequential.

Chinas Interests in Rakhine

Chinas interest in the Rakhine state stems from its strategic location and rich resources. The state is located on the Bay of Bengal, which opens into the Indian Ocean. Like Pakistans Gwadar port, which enables Beijing to transport West Asian oil, gas and other commodities through a shorter route via Pakistan to underdeveloped western China, the long Rakhine coastline provides southern China with access to the sea and eastern China with a shorter route to the Indian Ocean (China Brief, July 31, 2015 and Mizzima, October 31). Ports and pipelines in Rakhine significantly free Chinas trade with Africa and West Asia, especially its oil imports, from dependence on the congested Straits of Malacca (China Brief, July 31, 2015).

Additionally, Rakhine is rich in natural resources. Large gas reserves were discovered in the waters off its coast in 2004. Beginning in 2008, China has bought gas from the area and transported it from Kyaukphyu on Rakhines coast to Chinas Yunnan Province through the Myanmar-China Gas Pipeline since 2013. This gas meets the needs of Chinas Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi provinces as well as that of other counties and cities. Since April this year, oil from Rakhine is being transported to China through a pipeline running parallel to the gas pipeline (China Daily, May 11 and Mizzima, October 31).

China is said to have invested around .5 billion in the oil and gas pipeline projects and is also investing billion in the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone, which will include a deep-sea port and an industrial park, with the goal of turning Kyaukphyu into a maritime economic hub (Mizzima, October 31).

The areas that are the worst affected by the ongoing violence are in the north of Rakhine, near Myanmars border with Bangladesh. Although neither Kyaukphyu nor the oil and gas pipelines are located in or run through these restive areas, Beijing is still concerned. The rise of ARSA and its mounting capacity to carry out attacks on well-secured targets indicates that it is only a matter of time before it strikes outside its stronghold. This has triggered concern in Beijing over the safety of infrastructure it has invested and built in the Rakhine state.

The Rakhine state plays a significant role in Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Like Gwadar port in Pakistan, Kyaukphyu port and Myanmar will be important links in both the Maritime Belt and Silk Road components of the BRI. As a result, the stability of Rakhine is regarded as important to the success of the BRI, political and ethnic affairs analyst U Maung Maung Soe has said (The Irrawaddy, September 4). Concerns over the impact that violence and unrest in Rakhine could have on the success of its projects in Myanmar and the BRI, in particular, underlie Chinas interest to end the Rohingya crisis and restore stability in the region.

Chinas Strong Ties with Bangladesh

China has similarly invested heavily in upgrading and building port infrastructure, roads, bridges and railway lines in Bangladesh too. It is also Bangladeshs top trade partner; Bangladesh provides a large market for Chinese goods. Defense ties are strong as well; Bangladesh is the second largest importer of Chinese weapons (after Pakistan) and accounted for 82 percent of all Bangladesh weapons purchases between 20092013 (China Brief, June 21, 2016).

China is also keen to protect its strong and growing interests and ties in Bangladesh. There is concern in Bangladesh about Myanmars military campaign against the Rohingya, which is directly responsible for the flood of refugees into Bangladesh and has left Dhaka with the burden of providing shelter and relief to the Rohingya refugees. Not only has Myanmars military strategy contributed to the refugee exodus but also, this has triggered Rohingya militancy. For Bangladesh, which is grappling with an array of jihadist groups already, the emergence of ARSA and the reported training of its cadres in sanctuaries in Bangladesh, poses an additional security threat. Chinas endorsement of Myanmars strategy on the Rohingya issue has understandably evoked great disappointment in Dhaka (Daily Star, November 13).

To ease Dhakas burden of looking after the Rohingya refugees, China is providing aid, including tents and blankets to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh (Xinhuanet, October 13). Chinese leaders are concerned with Bangladeshs attempts to draw extra-regional powers to intervene in the crisis, prompting Beijing to accelerate efforts to bring Myanmar and Bangladesh to the negotiation table and end the refugee problem.

Will Chinas Mediation Work?

In the past, China avoided playing mediator in conflicts beyond its borders, arguing that this went against its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. However, in recent years it has shown increasing willingness to mediate an end to conflicts. It has, for instance, been involved in efforts to bring the Afghan government and the Taliban to the negotiation table (Express Tribune, March 7). More recently, it undertook shuttle diplomacy between Afghanistan and Pakistan to arrest spiraling tensions between the two neighbors (Times of India, June 26). China appears to be taking on a mediatory role in regions where it has strong economic and other interests, and is the primary motivation behind Beijings mediation in the Rohingya crisis.

Chinas promotion of a military-economic development approach to the Rohingya crisis can be expected to worsen the conflict. Development of a violent region by external actors rarely benefits locals, as seen in Pakistans Baluchistan province. Chinas development of Gwadar port in the region prompted militants to target outsiders (Express Tribune, April 12, 2015; China Brief, July 31, 2015). Projects in Rakhine are likely to benefit foreign investors, Rakhine Buddhists and the Barmar majority, not the marginalized Rohingya. Development that does not result in economic inclusion of the Rohingya will deepen existing grievances and generate new conflicts.

To resolve the conflict, it is important that Myanmar tackle the roots of the problems, which are primarily political: denial of citizenship and rights to the Rohingya people and discriminatory policies. China is unlikely to nudge Myanmar on the citizenship issue. Moreover, Myanmars military is known to be sensitive regarding state sovereignty, and is unlikely to respond positively to Chinese pressure on these issues.

China may have significant political and economic influence in Bangladesh and Myanmar but it lacks other qualities that a mediator would need to succeed in settling the Rohingya conflict. Notably, Bangladesh believes that China is biased towards Myanmar, and Beijings substantial economic and other interests in Rakhine can be expected to fuel Myanmars suspicions of Chinas intentions and actions.

Conclusion

Chinese mediation is unlikely to resolve the Rohingya conflict. At best, its intervention could keep a lid on the violence being unleashed by the Myanmar military in the Rakhine state. This could usher in a measure of stability but not peace in Rakhine. In the future, China can be expected to offer to mediate in conflicts within and between countries where it has significant interests, especially involving countries that are part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

* Dr. Sudha Ramachandran is an independent researcher and journalist based in Bangalore, India.
by Loula Laham

The attack on the faithful at the conclusion of Friday's prayer left 235 dead and 140 wounded. There are 30 children among the victims. First time a Sunni mosque targeted in Egypt. President Al Sisi declares three days of national mourning and promises to respond to the attack with "maximum force". Air raids against terrorist weapons stores. Pope Francis: Let us pray for hearts hardened by hatred to learn to give up the path of violence.

Cairo (AsiaNews) - Pain for the victims and condemnation for the bloody attack on the Al Roda mosque were expressed by Pope Tawadros II, Patriarch of the Orthodox Copts of Egypt. Last night, a telegram signed by Card. Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, expressed Pope Francis deep sorrow and solidarity to the entire Egyptian population. The attack targeted faithful gathered in the mosque at the end of Friday's prayer and killed 235 and wounded140. It is the first time that a Sunni mosque has been targeted in Egypt, where Sunnism is the majority religion.

"We present our sincere condolences to the families of the dead," said Tawadros, "and pray for the Lord to heal the wounded. Let us also pray for God to be merciful to Egypt and to be able to drive out any act of violence and to distance himself from this brutal terrorism that has never been seen in its history. We are in agreement with the whole of the Egyptian people and state institutions in their war against terrorism and violence in the name of religion. "

A similar message was circulated by patriarch Ibrahim Isaac, spiritual leader of Catholics of Egypt.

Pope Francis telegram, signed by Card. Parolin, expresses "deep sorrow to the news of the huge loss of life caused by the terrorist attack on the Al Rada Mosque in North Sinai." "Expressing his solidarity with the Egyptian people at this time of national mourning, he [the pope] commends the victims to the mercy of the Most High Almighty God and invokes divine blessings of consolation and peace on their families. By renewing his firm condemnation for this arbitrary act of brutality directed at innocent civilians gathered in prayer, His Holiness joins all men of good will in imploring that hearts hardened by hatred learn to forsake the path of violence that produces so much suffering, to embrace the path of peace. "

Egyptian President Abdelfattah Al Sisi has declared three days of national mourning and in a television message he promised to respond to the attack with "maximum force". Yesterday, the Egyptian army announced that it had carried out an air raid on "terrorist targets". A spokesman said some points weapons and ammunition deposits believed to belong to terrorists were destroyed.

The day after the attack new details are emerging. Yesterday, at 13.30, a bomb exploded in the courtyard of the mosque, just as hundreds of faithful had finished praying and were preparing to leave the building. As ambulances arrived and cared for the wounded, terrorists aboard some SUVs began to shoot with machine guns. Of the 235 dead, there are also 30 children.

Al-Roda Mosque is located 20 km west of Al-Arich town, the capital of North Sinai governorate, in the east of the country, in a village named Bir Al-Abd. It is attended by followers of Sufism (the mystical tradition in Islam) which the Salafis regard as apostates. Last December, the head of the "religious police" of Isis in Sinai had said that if the Sufis did not "repent," they would be killed. Days before the group had beheaded two elderly men, who were Sufi religious.

Other local witnesses claim that the mosque was frequented by police and army people, and by tribes of the peninsula who co-operate in the fight against jihadists.

The brutal attack occurred just as the Egyptian state proclaimed its victory in the war on terror in the Sinai Peninsula.
Rally senior official Jaideep Vohra and also the managing director of Sarova Hotels, which include Whitesands, Stanley and Panafric is dead.He died on his way to Amboseli to watch the East African Safari Classic Rally. His car had an accident and rolled several times that left him dead.He was accompanied by his colleague and a rally director Raju Kishnani, who was also injured, was flown to Nairobi Hospital.Rally management mourned Vohra, saying: "We believe he would want the rally to continue. We, as organizers believe the event should continue in his memory.""Our condolences to his family and friends," read the statement signed by Richard Leeke, who is Clerk of Course.Wildlife Direct CEO Paula Kahumbu mourned Vohra in a tweet, saying lack of road safety is robbing the country of its best."Our deepest condolences to Sarova for your loss. We are saddened that our Kenyan roads have taken yet another one of our heroes. May he rest in peace. Lack of road safety in Kenya is stealing our best." said CEO Paula Kahumbu.President-Elect Uhuru Kenyatta has also mourned with the sudden death of his close ally saying he known Vohra almost 20 Years ago. They have shared tables several times and he is a good man. May his soul rest in eternal peace.
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After the bustle of Black Friday shopping at major malls and chain stores, local business owners are encouraging Southeast Texans to shop and eat at their one-of-a-kind spots for Small Business Saturday.

Area shop owners said it's worth making the trip out today for special offers, unique items and chatting with sales representatives from your community.

"Black Friday is not as big for small town shoppers," said Keely Gore, owner of Silsbee's The Neon Gypsy boutique. "So we try to provide more incentive for customers to make it out and hop to many places."

The Neon Gypsy is one of 25 stores participating in a Small Business Saturday event sponsored by the Silsbee Economic Development Corp.

Receipts from purchases at any of the participating businesses will get customers discounts at other stores, as well as enter them in a $500 cash drawing. And it's not just limited to clothing stores. Businesses include: Rosey's Antiques, Candy's Southern Skillet, Big Thicket Pawn, Crossroads Florist and Christian Books, Supplies and Gifts.

"I always invited other businesses to participate in my events or offers," Gore said. "It's important to support each other."

Diane Trove, the co-owner of The Cedar Chest in Fannett, said they stock their

store with unique and whimsical items that can't necessarily be purchased at a department store.

"All the time, we have customers who say they wished they had stopped here before going into Beaumont to go to the mall," Trove said.

Since they offer "a little bit of everything," like clothing, home decor, jewelry and food,customers can get a variety with a personal touch, she said.

After Tropical Storm Harvey, Cheri Mitchell had to pay out of pocket to restore her Fast and Furious Hobby Stop and move locations to U.S. 90 in Beaumont.

"At this point, we're in survival mode," Mitchell said.

Any customer they get this weekend will be a blessing to the store that sells aerial equipment and drones, she said.

Mitchell knows that a lot of her clientele are struggling financially this year to stay afloat, but as a business owner, she hopes offering coupons and deals will help entice customers to spend what they can.

The Cedar Chest always does a Christmas open house to kick-start the holiday season, but this is Trove's first year hosting it on Small Business Saturday, a day to utilize sales, coupon codes and freebies.

Ella & Scott, a Beaumont boutique, used social media to promote Black Friday and Small Business Saturday discounts and prizes. Some customers won chances to come in early to shop on Friday and the first 20 customers today will get goodie bags.

With each price point someone spends, they can win T-shirts, wine glasses and phone accessories as a way of saying "thank you," Store Manager Kaitlin Diez said. There will even be mimosas.

"I think we can be a lot more personal with out customers than big corporations," Diez said. "It's really important to support local businesses and we want everybody to have fun doing it."

MGstalter@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/morgGstalt